Map and Mountain

4 November 2025

It is foolish to set two good things at war with one another. Many Christians do exactly this with sound doctrine and supernatural experience. People who talk as though we should focus on one at the expense of the other are advocating for a deeply subchristian existence, no matter which way they lean. Happily, many of them don’t really practice what they preach — by the grace of the Holy Spirit, lots of folks find their way to doing the right thing despite their professed beliefs, for which all thanksgiving! But how much better would it be if we got the beliefs straightened out?

Sound doctrine — every last shred of it — relies entirely on supernatural experiences. From creation ex nihilo through the plagues of Egypt, Joshua’s long day, water into wine and right on to the resurrection of Jesus, supernatural miracles are the beating heart of the actual Christian faith. Will it all stand up to reasonable examination? Of course. Can you domesticate it with logic? Not a bit. Saul of Tarsus didn’t reason his way into Christianity. Nor did Blaise Pascal, nor Anthony Bloom. From biblical times right on to the present day (and on to the New Jerusalem), actual encounter with the living God is more than an exercise in logic; it is the thing that the sound doctrine is about.

Running your finger along trail on the topo map and climbing to the top of the mountain are related endeavors, and you climb best and make fewer errors if you’ve paid attention to the map. But they’re still not the same thing, and someone who’s paid less attention to the map, but actually climbed the mountain, knows some things that those who only read the map have never guessed at. “Which one is more important?” is a foolish, foolish question to ask.

If you don’t have the thing itself, then you have what the Pharisees had, and what Jesus was at war with. If you have it, but refuse to account for it in your theology, then you live a split spiritual life, acting on visceral instincts you can’t explain and won’t admit to, while theology remains an exercise in map-reading at the kitchen table — intellectually interesting, no doubt, but that’s not what the map is actually for. It’s doubly silly in that you’re actively trying to climb the mountain but refusing to admit that’s what the map is about.

We were made for better. Sound doctrine teaches us to expect the Holy Spirit to operate; every part of Scripture resounds with this message — only people who have been catechized by something other than the Bible think actually experiencing God is “debatable.” Nobody ever obediently read the book of Acts and then scoffed at supernatural experience. Scripture never teaches us to think that any gift ceases short of heaven, and the history of the church proves this out, if you bother to actually read the history.

Growing up in the Bible Church movement, I’ve been a rock-ribbed sola Scriptura guy my whole life. I didn’t really wake up to the reality of the Spirit’s present ministry until my 30s. I’ve served in significant capacities in two charismatic churches over the years, so I know a bit about that corner of the world. Charismatics, as a rule, lack exegetical rigor. But then, so do most theological conservatives; the far majority will prioritize party-line doctrine over actual exegesis. The Bible Church folk at least usually care about getting the exegesis right. You won’t hear those folks scoffing at how “boring” it is to “live out of a book.” You’ll hear plenty of charismatics say stupid things like that.

On the other hand, you’ll hear no shortage of Bible Church folks blithely asserting that “sound doctrine” is all you need to live the Christian life — as though ideas were enough and God’s actual presence in your life were immaterial! Honestly, it’s embarrassing. The New Testament flatly asserts the reality of mystical experience over and over, from John 17:3 to Gal. 2:20 to Rom. 8:10-11. It’s just impossible to live biblical spirituality without God’s actual intervention. And He does intervene; frequently people even recognize it, but through a variety of cognitive strategies, manage to keep their participation in tangible spirituality a secret from their theologizing.

Spiritual experience and theology are not natural enemies, and shouldn’t be set at odds with one another. “Which is more beneficial?” is a stupid question, a false question. You can’t live an intelligent Christian life without both.

You need sound doctrine to map the world. But when you’re beside a hospital bed, counting seconds since the last breath and looking at your watch in case you need to give the nurse time of death, sound doctrine just doesn’t get it done alone. “Peace that surpasses understanding” really exists, and talking about it is not the same thing as having it. (If you think it is, bookmark this post. Come back and read it again when your providentially ordered life teaches you otherwise.)

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Can a Christian do Energy Work?

28 October 2025

Some while back, a friend asked me about energy work. Isn’t it all some new age mumbo-jumbo, after all? Or is there more to it than that? This was my answer.

Moving into bodywork was…well, it was a surprise. I expected to spend the rest of my life in the study and classroom, doing exegetical work more or less full-time. But God has an infinite capacity to surprise.

I remain a theologian, and I want to be able to offer a theological account of what’s going on as I work with a client in my new capacity. Doing that work has proven to be an adjustment. By comparison with the exegete’s calling, stepping out to theologize about what happens on the massage table felt a lot like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon with no net. Being an exegete by training and inclination, I was not much given to wandering out into areas that the text of Scripture didn’t explicitly address. Or so I thought…  But as I have come to grips with my new calling, I have begun to notice all the ways in which I was already plowing the fertile fields of general revelation, ways I was blind to because I just thought of them as “the way things are done.”

As a teacher, I had no qualms about showing a new preacher how to set up a 3-point topical sermon. That’s certainly not a particularly biblical structure; it’s just something that works well, and gives newbies a starting point. There’s nothing unbiblical about it, of course. It’s craft knowledge, discovered by working in my calling in God’s world, and paying attention to what works and what does not. There are any number of other teacher tricks — use of slides and visual aids, intelligent use of assignments, questions, discussion, and so on — that are likewise discovered in the doing, and then passed from master to apprentice, down the generations. I learned many of them from my teachers, discovered some on my own, and I pass them on to my students in their turn, which is all as it should be.

The same dynamic of craft knowledge applies to everything. Scripture tells us much, and it is authoritative. But in most fields of endeavor, special revelation walks us right up to the edge of the field, legitimizing the inquiry — and there it leaves us to explore. Scripture teaches us that the physical creation is real, and good, and worthy of our study, and then leaves us to study it. It doesn’t tell us that the oak tree has several different kinds of tissue in it, nor that all those tissues are composed of complex molecules, nor that those molecules are composed of atoms, nor that the atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, nor that those particles break down into still more elemental particles, and so on. All that, we have to find out by examining the oak tree. Scripture gives us warrant for the examination, but it doesn’t tell us what we’re going to find.

And so it is with my work. Scripture tells me that the body is real, that it can be ill or healthy, but precious little about how to get it from the former state to the latter. That, we have to learn by exploring the fertile fields of God’s general revelation in the world. And by consistent and careful examination, by honest experiment, we have learned a whole lot — and we have a lot more to learn. Likewise, Scripture tells me that the spirit is real, which brings me to your question about energy work.

For pretty much any subject, I find the best way to begin is at the beginning, which is to say, in Genesis. The foundations of biblical anthropology are in those first few chapters. We first learn that we are designed to be God’s miniature self-portrait, His signature on the work of art that is the universe, which means we — male and female as a married team — are responsible to cultivate and guard the world. Thus far the first chapter. In the second chapter, we discover our composition: God compounded man from dust and breath. Dust is the material part that returns to the earth when we die. Breath is the immaterial part, the spirit that returns to God who gave it. But crucially, in the expression “dust and breath,” what is meant by “and”? In the complex interaction between physical and spiritual, there’s a lot we don’t really understand.

Our exploration of general revelation helps here, but it only takes us so far. We are learning that cells respond to very subtle influences — magnetic fields long thought to be so weak as to be indistinguishable from background noise, for example, or inputs as small as a single photon. It turns out that the human hands generate magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation that is certainly strong enough for a body to respond at the cellular level. (See Oschman’s Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis, 2nd ed., for a treatment of the physical science. Thanks to Flexner and his blinkered minions, we are a century behind on really exploring the field, so it’s maddening in spots, but it’s also really intriguing. The Healing Touch Program also maintains a research archive at healingtouchresearch.com, and they’re pretty good about keeping it up to date.) So that’s one thing we might end up meaning by “energy work:” instinctive manipulation of very subtle physical electrical, magnetic, and photonic inputs. 

But as a Christian, I see no reason to stop there. The things which are seen are not made of things which are visible, and we’re not just talking about subatomic particles here — electrons are visible in principle; it just takes a really expensive set of glasses to see them. But behind all that, behind the physical matter and energy, is something…other. Something spiritual in nature, that manifests in physical reality, but is prior to it and cannot be reduced to it.

In the language of the Eastern Church, everything that exists is made of God’s divine energies. Not His essence — that way lies pantheism or panentheism — but His energies, which flow from His being. There was no pre-existing material; it is all made by Him, and it all exists in Him — in Him we live and move and have our being, as both the pagans and Paul affirm. All that is, is the spoken word of God. He spoke, and it is, and He upholds all things by the word of His power.

And so when there is a person on my massage table, there is dust and breath, body and spirit. Following the biblical anthropology, I can use my body to work on their body, relaxing hypertonic muscles, releasing trigger points, and so on. Could I also use my spirit to work on their spirit? It seemed a hypothesis worth exploring, and upon experimentation, I find that it works. Moreover, when I set to work with that intention, and invite God to enter into the work and accomplish His will for my client’s well-being, I find that He shows up, and very interesting things happen. With some clients, it all happens quietly (because they’re not ready to be prayed over out loud), and with others, I come all the way out of the closet. We pray together, and God moves. I’ve seen everything from physical healings to spiritual turnarounds on my table. In all modesty, I’m good at what I do, but I’ve seen God do things that go way beyond anything I could accomplish.

So this is a very long way round to answering your question. As best I can tell, my energy work is partly manipulation of subtle physical energies that we’re only beginning to study, partly my spirit working on my client’s spirit in much the same way that my body works on his body, and partly the Holy Spirit (or whatever delegated angelic powers may be at work) responding to my prayer of invitation to do what the client and I are unable to do on our own.

I need to emphasize that the above is a description of my energy work. I make no guarantees about someone else’s work. Certainly the process is open to demonic manipulation, and some energy workers directly invite it. Others address their requests to “the universe,” which is sending your request into the spirit world addressed “To Whom It May Concern” — a dangerous practice if ever there were one. Lots of entities out there that might answer that request, and not all of them friendly. Some seem to address their requests to God without quite knowing who they’re talking to — “to the unknown god,” as it were. It is my pleasure, in that instance, to make the introductions. As with Paul’s experience in Athens, I find that most people aren’t too excited to have the veil of divine anonymity ripped away. But some want to hear more, and they’re the ones I came for.

The possibility of demonic intervention makes a lot of Christians nervous, and they want to be able to set up some kind of wall to separate our work from the bad stuff. A lot of people want that separation to be a matter of technique, as if you could photograph the difference between us and them — but no. There are doctrines of demons, but we don’t differentiate our teachers from theirs by their teaching techniques; we discern the content and results of the teaching. You don’t tell the difference between Moses and Jambres by technique — they both threw a staff on the ground that became a snake, both poured out water that became blood. It’s not the technique that distinguishes us; it’s which outlet your power cord is plugged into. We are made to live in partnership with God; nothing could be more natural than a human being seeking spiritual help in an endeavor. We shouldn’t be frightened by partnership with spiritual power. That admittedly leaves us with no escape from the task of actual discernment. But in my experience, the difference between God and a demon is not particularly subtle.

In my practice, I work spirit-to-spirit under God’s authority, and by His leading. The Scriptures lead me to expect that this might be a fruitful endeavor, practiced in service to Christ and under His Lordship, and I find that it is. I have seen wounded bodies restored and broken hearts healed. Some of that work was a stunning demonstration of human possibility. Some of it was plainly beyond my ability — and yet it happened nonetheless, thanks be to God. As with physical healing, not everything I try works — so I remember what does, and what doesn’t, and I try to do more of what does next time.

I look forward to growing in craft knowledge as I go. I already have a fairly good stock of knowledge that I couldn’t back up with a verse, any more than I could put a verse behind quenching O1 tool steel at 1475 degrees. But O1 hardens best when quenched at that temperature all the same, and likewise for what I’ve learned about energy work.

Well, I had better stop. I’m sure this was far thicker of an answer than you were really asking for, but I didn’t think I could do your question justice with less. Perhaps as I grow, I’ll be able to make it simpler.

Leave a Comment » | Dust and Breath Anthropology, Functioning Supernaturalism, Healing | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Got That List From Demons

9 July 2024

I recently found myself once again in a conversation about yoga. We’ve discussed that (and yoga’s history) here before, but in this case, the question specifically centered on the postures involved in modern yoga practice. “Isn’t it true,” the questioner wanted to know, “that certain postures are worshipping a particular Hindu god (i.e., a demon)?”

It’s a good question to raise, and the answer is no. Some Hindus say that particular poses mean you’re worshipping some specific god. Silly Christians believe the false prophets of the demons rather than their own Scriptures, which tell us that “the earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” and “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” I can’t believe I need to say this, but I heartily recommend believing the Bible, not the demons!*

Certainly some demon — let’s take Hanuman for example — might proclaim dominion over some posture or another. As it happens there is a posture in yoga called “Hanuman’s posture” (Sanskrit hanumanasana). It’s essentially a front split with the arms reaching straight up. Is it the case that every gymnast who’s ever done a front split is unknowingly worshipping Hanuman? Don’t be ridiculous.

“But it’s not just a front split,” says the suspicious Christian. “See the arms reaching up? Is that praying hands I see?”

Let me tell you why the arms are reaching up: the fascial network. Specifically, in this case, reaching up helps open the superficial and deep front lines. Better yet, let me show you. You don’t even need to do a split for this. Get into a deep lunge, with the right leg back. As deep as you can reasonably manage. Now, look straight up, and reach straight up (or maybe even slightly back) with both arms. Feel that additional stretch and opening through your right front ribs, abdominals, hip, and quads? That’s why.

Now, can someone use this posture to worship Hanuman? Of course! Might it even be standard practice among Hanuman-worshippers? I suppose it could. Is it therefore true that everyone who adopts this posture into their exercise is worshipping Hanuman? Of course not. Hanuman might claim that is the case, of course, but Hanuman is a liar just like all the other demons. There’s no reason why we–indwelt by the Holy Spirit as we are–ought to take them seriously. Certainly you can sin with your body (stealing, committing adultery, and the like), but we know those things are sins because God told us so. You will search the Scriptures in vain for some divinely sanctioned list of postures that irrevocably belong to demons and are off-limits to Christians. Yoga’s Christian despisers claim to have such a list, but they got that list from demons. The truth is that if it’s healthy for your body, it’s fair game, to the glory of God. “Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

*This recommendation would fuel a variety of inflammatory statements if I cared to make them. Can you imagine if I took to Twitter to say, “The problem with Dave Hunt is that he trafficks in demonic revelation rather than Scripture”??? But in this case, it’s true, isn’t it?

Comments Off on Got That List From Demons | Discernment, Functioning Supernaturalism, New Fundamentals, Physicality | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Bodywork and the Dominion Mandate

12 March 2024

For those of you who don’t know, I went back to school when I was 40. I had a Bachelor’s in Biblical Studies, a 4-year Th.M. in New Testament, and was working in my field. I expected to spend the rest of my life in the study and classroom, doing exegetical work more or less full-time. Going to massage therapy school…it was unexpected to say the least. But God has an infinite capacity to surprise.

I remain a theologian, and I want to be able to offer a theological account of what’s going on as I work with a client. By comparison with the exegete’s calling, stepping out to theologize about what happens on the massage table felt a lot like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon with no net.

Several years into it, I have come to understand that my task is not all that different from any other field. We all plow the fertile fields of general revelation; we just don’t think of it that way. We think in terms of “It works” or “That’s just how you do it.” For example, as a teacher, I had no difficulty showing a new preacher how to set up a 3-point topical sermon. That’s certainly not a particularly biblical structure, but it’s hardly unbiblical. It’s craft knowledge, discovered by working in my calling and paying attention to what works and what does not. The 3-point topical outline just works, and it gives newbies a starting point. There are any number of other teacher tricks — use of slides and visual aids, intelligent use of assignments, questions, discussion, and so on — that are likewise discovered in the doing, and then passed from master to apprentice, down the generations. I learned many of them from my teachers, discovered some on my own, and I pass them on to my students in their turn.

The same dynamic of craft knowledge applies to everything. Scripture tells us much, and it is authoritative. But in most fields of endeavor, special revelation walks us right up to the edge of the field, legitimizing the inquiry — and there it leaves us to explore. Scripture teaches us that the physical creation is real, and good, and worthy of our study, and then leaves us to study it. It doesn’t tell us that the oak tree has several different kinds of tissue in it, nor that all those tissues are composed of complex molecules, nor that those molecules are composed of atoms, nor that the atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, nor that those particles break down into still more elemental particles, and so on. All that, we have to find out by examining the oak tree. Where Scripture speaks about the oak tree, all that it says is true, but it doesn’t speak to every question we have. For many questions, Scripture gives us warrant for the examination, but it doesn’t tell us what we’re going to find.

And so it is with my work. Scripture tells me that the body is real, that it can be ill or healthy. It does say some things about the factors involved (e.g., “A merry heart doeth good like medicine.”) But there’s a lot it doesn’t tell us about how to get it from illness to health: treating specific infectious diseases, setting bones, making medicines, correcting postural imbalances, releasing visceral restrictions. That, we have to learn by exploring the fertile fields of God’s general revelation in the world. And by consistent and careful examination, by honest experiment, we have learned a whole lot — and we have a lot more to learn.

Likewise, Scripture tells me that the spirit is real. So why wouldn’t the same kind of craft knowledge dynamic apply to working with the spirit? Of course we start with what God has given us, but then we learn by experience from there. (If that sounds hazardous, try not learning from experience, and see where that gets you!)

For pretty much any subject, I find the best way to begin is at the beginning, which is to say, in Genesis. The foundations of biblical anthropology are in those first few chapters. We first learn that we are designed to be God’s miniature self-portrait, His signature on the work of art that is the universe, which means we — male and female as a team — are responsible to cultivate and guard the world. Thus far the first chapter. In the second chapter, we discover our composition: God compounded man from dust and breath. Dust is the material part that returns to the earth when we die. Breath is the immaterial part, the spirit that returns to God who gave it. But crucially, in the expression “dust and breath,” what is meant by “and”? There’s a complex interaction between the physical and spiritual, and there’s a lot there we don’t really understand.

Our exploration of the dust and only take us so far. It is now beyond scientific question that living cells respond to very subtle influences — magnetic fields long thought to be so weak as to be indistinguishable from background noise, for example, or electromagnetic inputs as small as a single photon. It turns out that the human hands generate magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation that is certainly strong enough for a body to respond at the cellular level. (See Oschman, Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis, 2nd ed., for a look at the physical science. Thanks to Flexner and his blinkered minions, we’re a century behind on research, so it’s maddening in spots, but it’s also really intriguing. This kind of subtle physical phenomena will be one of the things people mean by “energy work.”)  

But as a Christian, I see no reason to stop with the dust — we know there’s more to a human than that! The things which are seen are not made of things which are visible, and we’re not just talking about subatomic particles here — electrons are visible in principle; it just takes a really expensive set of glasses to see them. But behind all that, behind the physical matter and energy, is something…other. Something spiritual in nature, that manifests in physical reality, but is prior to it and cannot be reduced to it.

In the language of the Eastern Church, everything that exists is made of God’s divine energies. Not His essence — that way lies pantheism or panentheism — but His energies, which flow from His being. There was no pre-existing material; it is all made by Him, and it all exists in Him — in Him we live and move and have our being, as the pagans inferred and Paul affirms. All that is, is the spoken word of God. He spoke, and it is, and He upholds all things by the word of His power.

And so when there is a person on my massage table, there is dust and breath, body and spirit. Following the biblical anthropology, I can use my body to work on their body, relaxing hypertonic muscles, waking up hypotonic ones, reorganizing fascia, breaking up unhealthy adhesions, releasing trigger points, mobilizing organs, and so on, right down to (maybe) using my hand’s magnetic field and biophotonic outputs to affect the injured area at a cellular level—but that’s not all. If I can use my body to affect their body, why can’t I use my spirit to affect their spirit?

It seemed a hypothesis worth exploring, at the very least. Upon experimentation, I find that approaching the interaction conscious of both dust and breath makes for a more effective result. Moreover, when I set to work with that intention, and invite God to enter into the work and accomplish His will for my client’s well-being, I find that He shows up, and very interesting things happen. With some clients, all that happens very quietly (because they’re not ready to be prayed over out loud), and with others, I come all the way out of the closet. We pray together, and God often moves in dramatic ways. I’ve seen everything from physical healings to spiritual turnarounds on my table. This is work I was born to do, and in all modesty, I’m good at it — but I’ve seen God do a lot of things that go way beyond anything I could accomplish.

As best I can tell, my work is partly manipulation of the body, partly communication with the body through subtle physical energies that we’re only beginning to understand, partly my spirit working on my client’s spirit in much the same way that my body works on his body, and partly the Holy Spirit (or whatever delegated angelic powers may be at work) responding to my prayer of invitation to do what the client and I are unable to do on our own.

I need to emphasize that the above is a description of my bodywork. I make no guarantees about someone else’s. Insofar as it’s an interaction between two fallen people, it’s certainly possible there will be demonic attack or interference, and some practitioners openly invite it, addressing the demons by name. Others address themselves to “the universe,” which is sending your request into the spirit world addressed “To Whom It May Concern” — a dangerous practice if ever there were one. Lots of entities out there that might answer that request, and not all of them friendly. Some seem to address their requests to God without quite knowing who they’re talking to — “to the unknown god,” as it were. It is my pleasure, in that instance, to make the introductions. As with Paul’s experience in Athens, I find that most people aren’t too excited to have the veil of divine anonymity ripped away. But some want to hear more, and they’re the ones I came for.

The possibility of demonic intervention makes a lot of Christians nervous, and they want to be able to set up some kind of wall to separate our work from the bad stuff. A lot of people want that separation to be a matter of technique, as if you could photograph the difference between a prophet of Yahweh and a shaman — but no. There are doctrines of demons, but we don’t differentiate our teachers from theirs by their teaching techniques; we discern the content and results of the teaching. Moses and Jambres both threw a staff on the ground that became a snake, both poured out water that became blood. It’s not the technique that distinguishes us; it’s which outlet your power cord is plugged into. That leaves us with no escape from the task of actual discernment. But in my experience, the difference between God and a demon is not particularly subtle.

In my practice, I work spirit-to-spirit under God’s authority, and by His leading. The Scriptures lead me to expect that this might be a fruitful endeavor, practiced in service to Christ and under His Lordship, and I find that it is. I have seen wounded bodies restored and broken hearts healed. Some of that work was a stunning demonstration of human possibility. Some if it was plainly beyond my ability — and yet it happened nonetheless, thanks be to God. As with physical healing, not everything I try works — so I remember what does, and what doesn’t, and next time, I try to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

I look forward to growing in craft knowledge as I go. I already have a fairly good stock of knowledge that I couldn’t back up with a verse, any more than I could put a verse behind quenching O1 tool steel at 1475 degrees. But O1 hardens best when quenched at that temperature all the same; the only verse we need is the Dominion Mandate. Likewise for much of what I’ve learned about bodywork. The more I do, the more I learn. I can’t wait to see what God will show me this week!

2 Comments | Autobiography, Dust and Breath Anthropology, Functioning Supernaturalism, Healing, Livin' the Bivocational Dream, Physicality | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Supernaturalism

19 February 2024

Check out this post from Douglas Wilson, talking some hard sense about the supernatural. Money quote: “The first point is that while the Bible teaches us the reality of the spiritual world, it also teaches us that that world, like the physical world around us, is filled with liars. When we enter the spiritual realm, the need to have every fact established with two or three witnesses, and confirmed as being in line with the Word, does not go away.”

Amen.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Shiny Foil Wrappers

10 October 2023

Many times here in Englewood, I’ve seen Christians practicing so-called “Christian charity” by giving warm burritos to homeless folks. They’re doing exactly the same thing as when our local pagans give out burritos. Exactly. Right down to the delicious bacon crumbles and those shiny foil wrappers.

The parallels are really quite disturbing. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, people! Don’t be deceived!

***

“Pagans do something that looks like this” isn’t a valid means of discernment. Pagans pray, perform acts of charity, eat apple pie, go to work, wear clothes, make love, raise children. Pagans turn water into blood and staffs into snakes, and yet Moses is one of the good guys. We have to learn to pay attention to the difference that makes a difference.

An American soldier from WWII and a German soldier from WWII look an awful lot alike in dress and equipment. Suppose we have those two men in a lineup, along with a Minuteman and a Navy SEAL with the latest equipment. Which ones look most alike? The two guys from WWII, of course–but that doesn’t tell you which side they’re on.

We want discernment to be easier than it is. We want the good guys to look entirely unlike the bad guys. We want criteria we can photograph from across the street, and very often, it just doesn’t work that way. If we’re to believe the examples furnished to us in Scripture itself, God regularly steps over lines we wouldn’t. We need a discernment in the church that’s willing to reckon with the kinds of surprises God likes to give us.

  • There was no biblical precedent for God revealing Himself in a burning bush or a wet fleece…and yet He did.
  • Touching bones makes you unclean, and yet the guy who touched Elisha’s bones was raised from the dead.
  • Touching lepers makes you unclean too, but Jesus did–and they didn’t make Him unclean; He made them well! He let an immoral woman touch Him, too.

The key in all these things is not “does this look like something the pagans might do?” The key is “What has God given us permission to do? Is He in this?”

If the answer is yes, then get to it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Wearing the Old Jacket?

22 August 2023

I was raised with a particular picture of what the terms “old man” and “new man” mean in the Bible. We took them to refer respectively to our continuing proclivity for sin, and our new nature in Christ. We would illustrate this (literally) as two tiny people fighting it out for dominance in the human heart. As it turns out, that picture was entirely wrong.

Colossians 3:9-10 says you already have put off the old man and put on the new. Ephesians 4:20-24 says the same thing: you already put off the old man, you are being renewed in the spirit of your mind, and you already put on the new man. (The grammar in Ephesians 4 is arguable, and it would be difficult to nail down if that were the only passage we had, but the grammar in Colossians is very clear, as is Romans, and Ephesians 2:15 nails it down nicely, as we’ll see below.) Romans 6:6 says the old man was crucified with Christ.

The renewing of your mind is an ongoing process, but the old man/new man transaction is not. Moreover, the old man and the new man are not inside of you; you are inside of them. Think of it like a jacket: when you take an old jacket off and put a new one on, you aren’t still wearing the old jacket. You were in the old man, but he was crucified with Christ and you put him off, and now you have put on the New Man, and you are in Him. It is helpful here to remember that “Adam” literally means “man.” You were in the old Adam, and now you are in the new Adam, Christ. The old man is your corporate identity in Adam, and the new man is the Body of Christ, as Ephesians 2:15 pointedly says.

So if I have put off the old man, Adam, and have put on the new man Christ, why I am still drawn to sin, and I still sin regularly? Ephesians 4:20-24 gives us a hint already — our mind is being renewed. Some part of the process is still under way, which means it’s not done yet. Romans fleshes it out a little more, and the best way to see it is to start with a puzzle. At the end of Romans 7, Paul–already a believer–cries out, “Wretched man that I am — who will deliver me from this dead body?” In the beginning of Romans 12, Paul challenges us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. So the question is, what happens between these two passages that transforms the dead body into a holy and acceptable sacrifice?

The answer is in Romans 8:10-11. Your body is dead, which is to say, unresurrected. The world still waits for the redemption of our bodies. Christ paid for it at the cross, but the reality for which He paid has not yet come to fruition. But in the meantime, the Holy Spirit is alive in you, and so God does something which is fundamentally impossible: He gives life (now!) to your dead body through the Holy Spirit. So you are a hybrid being. Your inner man is redeemed (“I delight in the law of God according to the inward man”), but your body is not yet redeemed. Your inner man is alive, and your body is dead. Therefore there is a struggle between the two. The struggle will one day be resolved by the resurrection of your body. Until then, your mind is being renewed, and God is working a miracle in your body, to allow your dead body to be a living instrument of righteousness. It makes no sense and it shouldn’t be possible, but there it is — a continual miracle.

The ascetics grasped the death of the body and the life of the spirit, but rushed to the wrong practical solution. Instead of trusting God to work the miracle of life, they attempted to be sanctified through what they could do, which was bring death. Unable to strengthen the spirit, they decided to weaken the body. But that is not the solution that Paul presents to us in the passage. The passage doesn’t say to put the body to death; it says to put the body’s deeds to death. And Colossians 2:16-23 tells us that the various artificial restrictions designed to weaken the body are actually of no value in our struggle against sin.

Of course there is a bodily discipline that profits, but it is discipline, not destruction. The ascetics got it fundamentally wrong. But we’re trying the same thing anyway — and I believe that’s why the two nature view is so popular. It gives us something to do: fight that sin nature! The only difference is, we have “spiritualized” the struggle by making it against an immaterial “sin nature” rather than our material flesh. But making the enemy less visible doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the error.

The thing most necessary for us is something which we cannot do for ourselves: for God to give life to our bodies, for God to work the continuing miracle in us that makes it possible for us to present our bodies to Him as a holy and acceptable sacrifice.

It is easier to fight against sin than it is to lean on God. (Actually, it’s not easier — it’s impossible. But it’s easier on our pride, which is the point.) We can fight against sin without involving God in any immediate way. Rather than admit my helplessness and cry out to God to deliver me right now, I can struggle, trying to whip my sins from sheer force of will. It’s a doomed effort, but it’s that or admit I can’t do it and become a mystic.

The miracle we’re talking about is not just an arrangement of mental furniture or a set of secret principles that I can choose to live by. Someone Who is not me shows up and does things in my heart that make it possible for me to live righteously, when otherwise I could not. That offends us. We hunger for the illusion that we can do it, that we have it under control. In the Protestant world, we’re more than happy to admit that we would be powerless to resist sin without the finished work of Christ in the past, so long as we are spared the humbling experience of moment-by-moment dependence on Him. But that is what we are called to: we put off Adam and put on Christ.

Only He can save us.

***

Editorial note: if the discussion in the comments below intrigues you and you’d like to hear more, read Portraits of Righteousness.

7 Comments | Functioning Supernaturalism, Mystical Union | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Overemphasizing God?

7 February 2023

In the run-up to the panel discussion on the Holy Spirit that my friend Chris hosted for Gulfside Ministries, I was mulling over a series of questions that he was planning to toss to the panel. I had a strong opinion about one particular question, but just for fun, I decided to toss the questions to my apprentice and see what she thought. I didn’t tell her any of what I was thinking; I just said “I have the list of talking points for that panel tomorrow — want to see it?” Like me, she’s a theology nerd, so of course she did.

She looked them over, and pinged on the same question I had. “There seems to be on one hand an over-intellectualizing of the faith that minimizes the HS as well as an overly-mystical approach to the faith that overemphasizes the HS. Perhaps not minimizing or overemphasizing but something else. In terms of major errors, is this a proper framing?” She read the question, pondered for a moment, and then asked, “How does one overemphasize a person of the Godhead?”

How, indeed. I made my case for reframing the question in that discussion, which you’re welcome to watch, but there’s a piece of it I want to develop here.

What is it that we think the Holy Spirit does? Do we think that He tries to get us to do irresponsible, disorderly things? Is it the case that we need to hem the Spirit in with Scriptures to get him to behave?

No. Holy Spirit is not some slightly better behaved Bacchus who’s going to drive us mad for His own personal amusement. He is the God of the universe. It is He who inspired the Scriptures to start with. When an assembly (like Corinth) goes completely bananas to the point that those who are outside the church come in and it seems that everyone’s lost their minds (you can read about this in 1 Cor. 12-15), it is not because they “overemphasize the Holy Spirit.”

It is because they are far from Him. In their theologizing, they may talk about the Holy Spirit all the time, but they’re liars, aren’t they? The Spirit does not lead you to commit sin. The Spirit is a God of order, not confusion. What they are doing, these people who “overemphasize the Spirit,” is blaming their own stupid and irresponsible excesses on the Spirit. It is precisely because they are failing to follow the Spirit’s leading that their excesses have a chance to creep in: “I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh, for the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh….”

The Spirit lusts against the flesh. The Spirit is at war; He wants all the territory for Himself. And He’ll take it, if we let Him. When we insist on going our own way, all manner of disobedience creeps in as a knock-on consequence. We cannot avoid being the puppets of our lusts apart from the Spirit.

So walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Functional Mysticism

19 November 2022

Here’s a Merriam Webster definition of mystical: “involving or having the nature of an individual’s direct subjective communion with God or ultimate reality.” Let’s start with that.

Does the Bible describe direct subjective communion with God? Yes, and this is not remotely controversial. Abraham met God and talked with Him. Moses conversed with God as a man speaks to his friend. Gideon argued with God; Jacob physically fought Him. Isaiah saw a vision that nobody else saw; God told John to look for the Spirit descending like a dove; Saul of Tarsus heard a voice where everyone else heard thunder.

What about today? Today, the Christian faith teaches that you can be a partaker in the divine nature. The Christian faith teaches that if you belong to Jesus, you have been born again spiritually, and are presently indwelt by God Himself in the Person of the Holy Spirit. The Christian faith teaches that the indwelling Spirit comforts and teaches you (among other things). If these subjective experiences are actually happening in your life, then you have a direct, relational experience of God Himself. 

You might not like the word mystical to describe it, but…re-read that definition. If you have a real relationship with God, there it is. 

If those things are not happening in your life…well, then you’re not a practicing Christian. I’m not saying you’re not going to heaven; how would I know? You and Jesus can work that one out. But if you do not have an actual, real-life experience of the realities the New Testament promises to God’s people, if those things aren’t actually happening in your life, then you do not have a Christian spirituality.

At best, you’re an ideologue whose drug of choice happens to be theology. Maybe your doctrinal paperwork is all in order, and that’s great as far as it goes. As far as doctrinal paperwork goes, Jesus was a Pharisee (and so was Paul) so you see how far that gets you. 

Gentle Reader, I am confident of better things where you’re concerned — there’s lots of folks whose doctrinal paperwork ain’t caught up to what they actually do in real life. But that’s a problem, because that gap between your actual walk with God and the things you’re willing to affirm causes you to criticize people who are willing, not just to live, but to tell the truth. You need to update what you’re willing to say, so that it matches what you know in practice.

If you don’t, then you will push people into the arms of the enemy. When kids that grew up in the church go looking for a functioning spirituality at the coven down the street because all they ever saw at church was talk and moralizing, that’s on us. And it’s high time we quit talking like we don’t have the real thing, because we actually do.

3 Comments | Functioning Supernaturalism, Meditations, Mystical Union, New Fundamentals | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Apostles: Just the Twelve?

1 November 2022

Some folks have an idea that apostleship died out in the first century; that it was just the Twelve, and no more. This is a theologically convenient (for some) stance that has no basis in exegetical reality. The attempt to limit apostleship to the Twelve by appealing to Acts 1:21-22 fails because of Acts 14:4,14, Gal. 1:19, 2 Cor 8:23, and (arguably) Rom. 16:17. The mere existence of Barnabas, James the brother of Jesus, and especially Titus as apostles is enough to blow the whole thing wide open: it’s plainly more than just the Twelve. Once we know that, we don’t have to resort to tortured explanations of passages like 1 Cor. 9:2 and Rev. 2:2, and those passages begin to make a whole lot more sense.

The broader usage gives us a hint at what apostleship looks like beyond the Twelve, and Paul gives us another one in Rom. 15:23. Paul says there’s no longer room for him to minister where he is. What is it that there is no longer room for? Certainly there are plenty of unbelievers to evangelize and plenty of believers to disciple. He’s an apostle, which is to say a spiritual arsonist. He gets the fire started; once it grows to a certain point, he hands it off to others to feed, and he moves on to start another one.

We still need those people today; they’re the ones that start new works of all kinds. Might as well give them the right name, and acknowledge their spiritual gift for what it is.

Comments Off on Apostles: Just the Twelve? | Cessationism Or Not, Functioning Supernaturalism, Meditations, New Fundamentals | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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