So You Don’t Quit

10 June 2025

Really grasping the doctrine of heavenly rewards is an important tidbit in the Christian life. I’ve noticed that some people really like to believe in some version of a democratic socialist heaven, where everybody is rewarded the same regardless. The notion of different rewards for different investments of devotion and service really offends them. But the Bible speaks of this regularly, so it would behoove us all to get our heads around it. (See the Personal Eschatology section of my Free Grace Theology page for a little more on this.)

Once you’ve grasped the idea, though, there are still some pitfalls to avoid. One of them is developing a calculator mentality, where you’re constantly keeping score in your head, thinking about all the heavenly rewards you’re racking up. Jesus does encourage us to lay up treasures in heaven “where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break in and steal,” but He discourages keeping score. When Peter asked Him “What do we get for all we’ve left behind to follow you?” Jesus told the parable of the workers in the vineyard, a tale wherein nobody gets cheated, but a lot of folks get surprised.

Another pitfall is to keep score in the opposite direction: constantly mindful of your sins, failures, missed opportunities, and keeping track of all the reward you’re losing as a result. Obviously, that’s a miserable way to live.

So what are we to do with this doctrine, once we grasp it?

Use it to fuel the mission, that’s what. God didn’t put you on earth so you could daydream about heavenly rewards, or so you could be paralyzed by the thought of losing them. God put you on earth for a purpose. Focus on the purpose. If you’re driving to a friend’s birthday party and you want to actually get there, you don’t daydream about how good the party’s going to be, nor do you spend all your time staring at the ditch you don’t want to accidentally drive into. You keep your eyes on the road, right? Now obviously, you’re motivated by the party; that’s why you’re driving there to start with. But on the trip, you focus on the task at hand.

Be about the mission. God in Christ is reconciling the world (that means you, too!) to Himself, and has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. Quit thinking about the hoard of goodies that awaits you in heaven, and focus on helping the people around you become fully reconciled to God, whether that means leading unbelievers to Christ or helping believers grow in maturity or helping unbelievers inch their way closer to the cross, even if they’re not going to convert this year. Or just being the hands and feet of Jesus to the people who are around you, loving the hurt and lost and broken because God loves them, whether they love Him or not. You don’t need some higher purpose to feed a hungry man or dress a homeless woman’s foot wound; it’s enough that this person is the image of God and He loves them. Love them. (Wear gloves when you dress the wound; I’m not saying you should be stupid!)

When you join in the dirty, dangerous, soul-harrowing work of being present to the people God loves (that would be all of them), the doctrine of rewards will help you — not because you’re keeping some kind of running tally in your head, but because the work is hard, and the results are not always visible. It gets discouraging. I tell my disciples “If you don’t wanna quit every couple months, you’re probably not playing hard enough.” Sometimes it’s really helpful to remind yourself that every good thing you do, every ziploc bag of Clif bars and tampons you give away, every wound you dress, every ounce of love and attention you share — none of it is for nothing. God is telling a magnificent story; you get to be part of it. Every little detail matters; He isn’t wasting any of it. Everything you do is seen in the halls of heaven, and you have never given so much as a cup of water unnoticed — you’ll see a reward for that some day.

You don’t reflect on that so you can rub your hands together like Scrooge McDuck; you reflect on that so you don’t quit.

  • When an angry girl throws her entire plate of food across the room because you won’t give her a second cinnamon roll, you don’t quit.
  • When you have to turn a haggard man with holes in his shoes out into 10-degree snowy weather because your shelter is out of space, you don’t quit.
  • When a guy you loved and counseled gets his life turned around, then relapses and dies of an overdose, you don’t quit.
  • When the lady you just fed turns around and chucks a hammer through your window for some meth-induced reason, you don’t quit.
  • When a dear friend drinks herself to death rather than face the hard work of healing, you don’t quit.

You remind yourself that God never wastes anything, that everything good, even if it “failed” as far as we can see, is rewarded. You shrug off your crippling self-pity, get your head back in the game, and love the next person God puts in front of you. God in Christ is reconciling the world to Himself, and He has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. (And by the way, none of the examples above are invented, and I still feed the lady with the hammer. Had a good little conversation with her just last Saturday, in fact. God brings some rewards here, too, if we have eyes to see.)

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Drawn in the Wrong Place

15 April 2025

Framing eschatology as ‘optimistic’ or ‘pessimistic’ is deliberately tactical; it’s a postmil recruiting tool, and a really useful one, too! (At least for Americans; we are an optimistic people.) As an accurate descriptor of anybody’s Christian eschatology, ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ are lazy oversimplifications. We are surrounded by pagan eschatologies from Ragnarok to heat death; all Christian eschatologies are wildly optimistic.

When we’re talking about prophecy, I often recommend that we go back and look at prophecy that’s already been fulfilled in order to get our bearings. As a test case for the labels ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ within the biblical milieu, let’s consider the first advent. There’s a raft of prophecies that the coming Messiah would conquer and reign; this is what Peter, et al., expected Jesus was going to be about — an optimistic eschatology if ever there was one! There’s also prophecies that the coming Messiah would suffer and die. How pessimistic! But it turns out that both of those things are true, and it didn’t look how anybody expected.

Anyone who thinks that we win in the end, and knowledge of the glory of Yahweh covers the earth like water covers the sea — all those people are expecting victory, and have reason to live like it.

Of course, if you think that victory to be inaccessible now…I wonder. But that’s not a premil/postmil thing; it’s a “Is the Kingdom of God a present reality?” thing.

But that isn’t a package deal with your eschatology. I’m a convinced premil, because as far as I can tell that’s what the Bible says, and I know that the Kingdom is a present reality, because — wait for it — that’s what the Bible says. Jesus wasn’t embarrassed to talk about the Kingdom coming in the present; can’t think why I would be. If the Kingdom came when He cast out a demon, then it’s coming when we cast out a demon. It’s coming when an addiction gets broken. It’s coming every time we face a temptation and say no, and it’s coming every time God gives us an opportunity to serve and we say yes. We pray for it — “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” — and God is pleased to answer our prayers.

Premillennialism’s critics frequently characterize us as thinking that “we lose now, but we win in the end.” Unfortunately, there are actual premillennialists who really think that. But none of them — neither the shallow premil guys nor our critics — have thought about it deeply enough. If Jesus dying on the cross was losing, if Stephen being stoned was losing, then sure, premil means “we lose now.” What nonsense. God never wastes anything; every good deed done here lives forever, one way or another, and God is brilliant at victories that don’t seem like victories as the world reckons things. The final destruction of the world is one more such death, and it will be followed by one more such resurrection! It may be the case that every paper copy and recording of Handel’s Messiah is going to melt with a fervent heat, but do we seriously think we won’t have Handel’s Messiah — with a rousing polyrhythmic djembe section that’s not been written yet — in the Kingdom? And knowing that, is there any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and write that bit today?

People who think the bright lines in eschatology are between amil, postmil, and premil are fundamentally mistaken about the discipline. It’s a common misconception bred by the fact that far too many of our theologians never get out of the classroom. Here’s what matters far more: When we wake up in the morning to a headline that tells us the kings of the earth have taken counsel against the Lord and His Anointed, what do we do? We know what God is doing — He’s laughing. Psalm 2 says so! He thinks it’s hilarious, mock-worthy. The question is whether we laugh with Him, or whether we go out in the yard and do our best Chicken Little imitation. THAT is the bright line in eschatology, and people who think it tracks with a-, post-, or pre-mil need to get out more. I’ve known postmil folk to fall apart at a headline, and my people here are overwhelmingly premil folk who join in the mockery.

1 Comment | Chicken Bones, Kingdom of God | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Can We Afford It?

20 November 2024

Treating someone graciously is a form of generosity. As with all forms of generosity, graciousness is greatly cramped when we don’t think we can afford it. This is true whether we can actually afford it or not.

Say we have a single mother in the church who asks one of the men in the church to come look at her tires. It seems to her that something’s wrong, she says. He goes out into the parking lot, and the tire has a great big bulge in the sidewall.

“I don’t get paid until Friday,” she says, “and I have to pay rent out of that. Do you think it can wait until I get paid again in two weeks?”

No, it cannot. Now suppose as they’re talking about how she really shouldn’t delay replacing the tire, another fellow walks over and also takes a look. He agrees with the first guy that the tire should be replaced immediately.

Now suppose that one of these guys has $30,000 in the bank and no pressing need for it, while the other has $700 to his name, and his own rent payment looming at the end of the week. Which one of these guys is going to help this lady pay for tires?

You’d be tempted to say that of course the first guy will do it, but if you’ve been around people a little, you know better than to be so sure. We’ve all known people with tens of thousands of dollars who didn’t think they could afford to part with ten bucks, and we’ve all known people with only a few hundred who would buy you lunch if you looked hungry. Generosity does not depend only on some objective measure of what you can afford. Generosity depends on what you believe you can afford.

The guy with a few hundred bucks to his name, who goes and buys the lady’s tires? He believes that God has been good to him. He believes that God has given him everything he has, and everything he has is therefore at God’s disposal. He believes that God put him here to help take care of the tires, and that God knows the rent is due at the end of the week, and He will take care of it. He knows himself to be living in the lap of God’s largesse; why would he struggle to share? “You can’t outgive God!” he’ll say. Or “I shovel it out, and God shovels it in, and He’s got the bigger shovel.”

I’ve known a bunch of guys like that over the years; had occasion to be one now and again. Let me tell ya: it’s a lot of fun giving God’s money to people who need it! You maybe feel a little dumb come Friday afternoon and you’re still not sure how the rent gets paid, but you know what? I’ve seen God come through over and over and over again. (Standard disclaimer: It’s possible to overdo giving just like it’s possible to overdo anything else. I’m not saying you should just be a moron with your money; I’m saying you should be generally wise, and also know that at any given moment, God might call you to do something that looks really foolish. He gets to do that; everything you have is His. When He does, know that He’s got your back, and He’s good for it.)

To return to the observation I began this post with, it’s not just money. I digressed into money because money is easy to talk about, but you can be generous (or not) with any resource you have. It might be your time, your effort, your expertise. It might be a little space on your web server, or a little space in your garage for someone to store a couple boxes. It might be a late-night run out to the airport to pick up an old friend’s stranded kid, and another run back out there in the morning to get the kid on the next flight out. It might be your sympathy. It might mean showing grace to someone who–this being the meaning of grace–doesn’t deserve a bit of it.

In any of these cases, the key to generosity is the belief that you can afford it, and that, in turn, depends on your gratitude for what God has given you. This is particularly the case with showing sympathy, moral grace.

People who feel a need to signal virtue, people whose virtue is brittle, shallow, only skin-deep, can’t afford to be generous. It would endanger their fragile bona fides. They need to be hard on others, critical, scathing even, lest somebody begin to wonder if they themselves are somehow soft on that particular sin. When you’re about the impossible task of establishing your own righteousness, there’s no audience too small or occasion too petty.

Go thou, and do un-likewise. But this is not something you’re likely to be able to fake, or to muscle through as a raw exercise in self-control. You should be a deep and genuine conduit of God’s grace, and that means you need to become grateful for God’s grace to you. So begin to meditate on God’s grace to you. If you need a place to start, you could do worse than Ephesians 2:1-10. Let’s get about it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Worldly Amusements

29 August 2024

If you go back a few generations in certain parts of the American church, you will encounter a strong current of thought that Christians ought not partake in “worldly amusements.” Drinking, dancing, card- and pool-playing all get roundly condemned, along with moving picture shows and various other pastimes. Sometimes it would take a thoroughly amusing turn: some of my older relatives have informed me that when TV was new, it was off-limits as a “worldly amusement,” but when color TV came out, somehow black and white TV became ok!

Despite the poisonous legalism, they were onto something. Evangelicals typically fear being branded as legalistic, so (ironically) we focus on the legal aspects of a leisure-time activity. We ask if it’s morally wrong for some clear reason, and if not, well, that’s really all we have to say about it. But in a consumer culture drowning in entertainment options, we need to ask more questions than that.

One of the questions has to do with opportunity cost, and this is where our Holiness-movement forbears might have a point worth considering. What am I giving up in order to give the next 90 minutes to this innocent and fun activity at hand? Now, there is a tight-shoed and wicked way to apply that question. If absolutely everything has to be filled with maximal purpose, and if purpose is defined in the hopelessly short-sighted and narrow way such people tend to define it, we will become very dull, joyless folk, incapable of enjoying anything. But if we refuse to entertain the question, we cannot escape becoming distracted, vapid idiots flitting from one amusement to another.

One of the enemy’s basic weapons is distraction. He doesn’t actually have to destroy us to keep us off the battlefield; it’s enough to keep us focused on our own amusement. We can’t allow that.

The job here is to find the road between the ditches. God “gives us richly all things to enjoy,” and it’s wrong not to enjoy them. He also gives us a mission to fill the earth and subdue it, to disciple the nations, to reconcile the world to Himself, and we must be about it. Rightly construed, each of these reinforces the other. The God who is reconciling the world to Himself is the God who wants His good gifts to be enjoyed. We win the world in part by inviting them to enjoy His good gifts with us. Look around your life: who can you invite to join you?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Wreckage In All Directions

23 July 2024

I think most of us are clear on the fact that Jesus wasn’t a Republican. But there seems to be some confusion about His credentials as some sort of espresso-swilling progressive.

And you know, I see why people get confused. Jesus was witty, sarcastic, frequently at odds with the religious and political power structures, a homeless public intellectual who wasn’t averse to couch-surfing with rich friends, or a little freegan grazing, and it seems that He once told a story wherein some gay people go to heaven.

But then, He took the Old Testament creation story literally (and wasn’t afraid to build doctrine on it), took a very hard line on marriage and divorce, told people to pay their taxes to the predatory imperial power, said more about hell than the Apostle Paul (not ironically), talked about sin a lot (also not ironically), defended an extravagance that cost a year’s wages and could have been used to feed the poor, and was so unapologetically ableist that healing blind, deaf, and crippled people was a mainstay of His ministry.

In other words, His perspective and way of living make a wreckage of our modern political and social positions in all directions.

No matter who you are, Jesus is gonna mess with you. And that’s a good thing.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Right Between the Shoulder Blades

19 December 2023

In case you’ve missed it, there seems to be a bit of a furore about Christian Nationalism all of a sudden. The thought seems terrifying to the secular media, and they seem to be joined in their terror by all the Best Christian Thinkers. (You know, the same ones that thought “Do not forsake assembling yourselves together” was optional if Caesar has any objections to it.)

Some of us are wondering what the big deal might be. Me, I love my country as I love my mother: not because everyone else’s is trash, but because in God’s good providence, this one is mine, and has been a blessing to me. Mixed blessing, to be sure, but how are we to make it better? Why, by seeking to live according to what is true, good and beautiful.

“Ah,” they say, “But who is to say what is true, good, and beautiful? After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everybody has a different idea of good. And truth?” They shrug, Pliate-like. “What is truth?”

Right. So don’t give the steering wheel to those guys. And in case you haven’t noticed, those guys seem to be the ones doing most of the steering in our culture right now. They’re happy to let us all continue to celebrate Easter, continue to think of Jesus as risen from the dead, and like that, just as long as we think it personally and privately, and don’t attempt to insert it into any discussion that matters. You want to believe in Jesus? Fine. You want a baby in the womb to be legally protected from murder, because Jesus? Oh no, that just won’t do. That’s Christian Nationalism, you see.

Also in case you hadn’t noticed, those guys aren’t just steering the culture. They’re also steering the Best Christian Thinkers. As it turns out, the Best Christian Thinkers are all afraid to be called Christian Nationalists, and that fear causes a little steering wheel to grow right out their backs, right between the shoulder blades. Periodically, the powers reach out and turn that wheel just a little. There was some Christian Nationalism in the road ahead, you see. A little to the left…there we go! Missed it! Phew! What a relief.

Again, do not let those guys have the steering wheel.

Here’s what’s actually happening: there’s at least two different kinds of Christian Nationalism. There’s Bugbear Christian Nationalism, which is what the talking heads at NPR (and the talking heads who listen to them) will accuse you of advocating if you want your Christian beliefs to have any impact in the public square—if, for example, you want to outlaw murder (like, say, dismembering babies in utero, you misogynist), or if you want to enshrine liberty of conscience, or any other Christian value, in law. Every discerning Christian is guilty of these charges—haters, every one a’ youse—and there’s no point in quibbling about the label; might as well hold our heads high and ask “As opposed to what?” Molochian Nationalism? Liberte, Egalite, and Guillotines? The Five Year Plan to reach true communism? Looting liquor stores for racial justice? The options just keep getting better. It’ll work next time, you’ll see….

Then there’s a second kind: Wierdbeard Christian Nationalism, which is all prairie muffin dresses and fines for wearing clothing of mixed fibers, or some such thing. In a nation of 350 million people, there are literal fives of people holding this view, and the talking heads are hoping to steer the rest of the Christians by making us afraid to be associated with them. Now, to be fair, they really do have some things I don’t want to associate with—I like my poly/cotton shirts and my dental care, ya know? On the other hand, the nice folks in button-down shirts are selling baby parts in bulk. Compared to them, the wierdbeards are starting to look downright civilized. If the choice is between high-end necromancy and square dancing, swing your partner!

This really doesn’t have to be complicated. I love my neighbors and I want good things for them. I want their faucets to run with clean water, their neighborhood streets to be smooth and pothole-free, the cracks in their sidewalks to be repaired promptly, their toilets to be a one-way system. Even for the poor families. I want their children to live free of the danger of being abused, mutilated, or murdered by anybody, including their own parents. I want them to have public order, that they might lead quiet and peaceable lives, and I want them to have the freedom to worship in accord with their consciences.

You don’t have to be Christian to want clean water for yourself, but wanting clean water for your neighbors is another matter. Historically, that ‘love your neighbor’ thing gets very limited play in places where the gospel hasn’t seriously penetrated the culture. All these things—every one of them—are Christian values, and I vote in support of them, because Jesus thinks I should. If that makes me a Christian Nationalist…what the heck? Ain’t the worst thing I been called this week.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Many Tribes, One Lord

30 May 2023

A friend sent me a link to this article by Professor Jay Green at Covenant College. I commend it to your attention; he offers some helpful commentary, and I’ll be using his terminology throughout this post.

Prof. Green’s taxonomy certainly improves on the right-left continuum he’s proposing to replace, but it leaves out an important element: liberal order absolutely depends on Christian values enacted in the public square. This is not a political hypothesis; it is a simple historical fact. The liberal order Green so values as an Emancipatory Minimalist did not spring whole from the head of Zeus, nor was it among the gifts of the Romans. It is the result of a very long, very Christian obedience in the same direction, and it would be instructive to see him classify some historical figures according to his taxonomy. To my eye, Green the Emancipatory Minimalist stands on the shoulders of Boniface, Ambrose, Luther, and Kuyper the Civilizational Maximalists. More, he relies on the thought of folks like William Penn and Roger Williams who defended religious liberty on Christian principles: historical figures who could afford to be Emancipatory Minimalists precisely because they were Civilizational Maximalists, as it were (which I think exposes the key weakness in his taxonomy.)

When he speaks of Emancipatory Minimalists believing “the liberal order is what gives space for the exercise of religious freedom,” he gets it exactly backwards. It was the exercise of Christian freedom and the Christian defense of freedom—over Caesar’s frequent and strenuous objections—that gave us the liberal order. In this article, Prof. Green treats the liberal order as something that’s just there, feet firmly planted in midair, rather than a structure that rests on a particular foundation. When he speaks of Emancipatory Minimalists accepting pluralism as a permanent fixture in the culture, he misses two important facts. 

First, the pluralism he so values is not sustainable, as present events demonstrate. The younger generation of practitioners in fields as diverse as medicine, law, psychotherapy, education, and news media (and all the way down to high school debate) are not simply failing to uphold liberal ideals; they actively reject them as inimical to their own subchristian concepts of class identity, equity, and justice. Some god will be the god of the system, and if we will not have Yahweh, we will have some pretender. We’ve been living off the accrued capital of Christendom for some time, but in the end, pluralism is polytheism. Those other gods are demons, and inviting the demons into a coalition government with Yahweh was exactly what Israel stumbled into time and again. Didn’t work then; can’t work now.

Second, he forgets that he knows the end of the Story. Pluralism is not a permanent fixture; when the assembled throng gathers before the throne on the last day, we will have a magnificent diversity of tribe, tongue, and nation, but not of religion. Pluralism will be a thing of the past, and good riddance. Heaven is not a pluralistic place. “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven” is not a prayer for enduring pluralism.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“And such were some of you”

29 November 2022

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
(1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

There are two ways to abuse “…and such were some of you, but you were washed….”
1. think it’s an instant, automatic transformation
2. think that it doesn’t really happen

Both of these are mistakes. I’ve known no shortage of addicts who want to believe that #1 is their reality. God can really do that, and sometimes, He does. More often, He shows you the possibility of success, and then lets you walk it out the hard way. He doesn’t just want you off yoru substance of choice; He wants to make the non-addictive life a part of your character. He wants to teach you how to feel your feelings rather than numb them — and cast them on Him when they’re too much. Whatever the hungry darkness that waits to consume you, He wants you to know that He can walk you through it. Not theoretically; He wants you to know it in your bones. He wants to walk through it with you. In the words of C.S. Lewis, He is making you fit for the Kingdom of God, and He doesn’t care what it costs Him, or what it costs you.

The opposite error is to think that being a “Christian drunk” or a “Christian kelptomaniac” or a “Christian lesbian” is just who you are as a person, that that’s that. No, I have the worst–and best–possible news for you: you were washed. These things about you–nobody is saying they weren’t really true. But that was then; you were washed. There is nothing inevitable about your sins, not anymore.

What are we to do with this? Tell the truth, of course. If you fit the definition of a drunk, then there’s nothing wrong with copping to it, as long as you do it in a spirit of confession. “Hello, my name is Jack, and I’m an alcoholic,” may be true today, and you shouldn’t hesitate to tell the truth if it is. But when the Kingdom of God has fully come, it won’t be true anymore. Which is to say, that’s not who you are. Your identity is something else; “alcoholic” is a barnacle clinging to you. You will enter into the Kingdom; the barnacle will be scraped off in due time. You should be looking forward to it, not investing your identity in the barnacle.

If you pray “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven,” and mean it, then you need to admit the possibility that the barnacle could be scraped off sooner than later.

So call your sins out for what they are and really confess them. Nothing wrong with that. And then, having laid your sinful desires at the foot of the cross, don’t pick them back up. Don’t identify with them, because God says you were that, but you were cleansed from it. Confession isn’t the whole process; the next step is accepting the identity God has given you.

2 Comments | Exegesis, Kingdom of God, Meditations, Telos of the Gift | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Not Automatic

2 August 2022

In conversation with a young female friend about how the church handles conversations on modesty, we stumbled on something interesting.

Men need female attention; women need male attention. “Need” is actually the right word here — God made us for relationship, and we actually do need each other. When a young woman’s father has not been doing his job well, and she then she hits puberty, that’s a recipe for disaster. Suddenly, she’s getting male attention she never got before. It feels like water in the desert, and it doesn’t take her long to figure out how to dress to get more of that sort of attention.

Now, normally in the church, we want to say something to her like “You don’t need to do that.” Here’s the thing: for a lot of these girls, that’s just not true.

If she’s been neglected by her father and the other men in her life, if no one has taken the time to nurture her talents and abilities, then her legitimate needs have gone unmet. She’s spent her whole life hungry for male attention. The only reason she’s getting it now is her body, and she knows it. Of course, in the abstract it’s certainly true that a young woman could get a better class of attention through musical talent, intellectual prowess, writing well, athletic achievement, and countless other ways. But the thing is, none of those things come automatically, and if no one has taken the time to nurture her talents, then not only does she lack those skills, she doesn’t know how to develop them. Meanwhile — pardon me putting it crudely — she got her hips and her boobs for free, and that’s getting her the attention she never got before.

In her experience, she does need to flaunt her body. As far as she knows, that’s all she’s got.

If we know better — and we do! — then the path forward is not to shame her for using what she’s got. Scolding that girl about her necklines is not going to get her where she needs to go. We know that she’s handcrafted in the image of God, shaped with God’s purposes in mind. Even if nobody knows what her talents are, we know they’re in there. What if we just decline to notice her neckline, look her in the eye, and focus our attention on her talents, her achievements, her growth as a human being? Maybe, if we can give her a better class of attention focused in the right direction, she’ll find she likes that attention better. We aren’t likely to succeed at getting her to give up the wrong kind of attention if we offer nothing in return.

2 Comments | Equality and Difference of Man and Woman, Kingdom of God, Love of Generous Fruitfulness | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

What is the Kingdom of God?

27 August 2019

We looked last week at the difficulties inherent in saying that the Kingdom of God is future (which it is) and still trying to maintain that it is somehow a present reality (which Jesus said it was.) That causes headaches, and one of the major questions that arises is “What do we mean by ‘Kingdom of God’?”

So let’s tackle that. I need to begin by observing that we get in a lot of trouble when we over-theologize biblical words in the effort to manufacture theological terms. People who talk/teach for a living love doing that sort of thing–it makes job security for them–but the truth is often much simpler. This is one of those cases.

The kingdom of God is where God rules.

There you go.

All the rest of this post is in anticipation of the acute whataboutitis that afflicts theological discussions. They want it to be more complicated than it really is. 

Does God rule in heaven now? Yes. So that’s part of God’s Kingdom. Will He rule on Earth on the last day? Absolutely. So that’s what the consummated Kingdom looks like. Was God’s rule extended when Jesus cast out that guy’s demon in Luke 11? Yup, sure was. So the Kingdom of God came right there. (See Luke 11:20 and its parallel in Matthew 12:28, and note the verb tenses.)

In between the Fall and the Consummation, Jesus brought the Kingdom of God, and said so. His followers preached the word of the Kingdom, and did the works of the Kingdom, as Jesus did. We still do so today (saving where we have accepted the excuses of institutionalized unbelief and allowed ourselves to be discouraged from actually following Jesus.)

From that day to this, anywhere the word of the Kingdom is obeyed and the works of the Kingdom are done, the Kingdom of God has come upon you, just as it once did in Jesus’ day.

Has the Kingdom come in its permanent fullness? No. No more than it did in Jesus’ day. Is the kingdom really, truly present? Yes—just as it was in Jesus’ day. Then He was bodily present. Today, He is present in His Body, and where the King is present, honored, and obeyed, the Kingdom is among you.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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