And so we went into the town of Bethlehem, a little afraid. We looked and looked. We thought that the couple would be in a good inn. We were just about to give up, but we walked by a barn and saw a baby in swaddling clothes!

The couple asked us, “What do you need?” We said, “We have come to see the baby that the angel was talking about.” We asked the name of the baby and the could told us His name is Jesus.

We left after a while, and ever since every day and night we talk about that one night.

They were VERY afraid! The never saw an angel before, but they knew they existed. He smiled and said to them, “Fear not! For behold! I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” And then Gabriel was joined by a crowd of angels praising God.

The night came. I kept glancing out my windows. There was a star, but this star was the brightest I’d ever seen. I wonder why it’s there? Then ANOTHER knock at my door!

“I don’t have ANY room!” I said to this couple. But by the look of it, the woman standing there was giving birth! Something inside me told me I had to help them, so I told them to go to the stable. It was all I had left, and it, too, was crowded. I wished I could have given her someplace else, but, like I said, it was all I had.

Then the star burned brighter and brighter. And then came shepherds. They looked quite frightened and excited all at the same time.

Now, if I had known my Savior was being born, I would have given Him my home.

This memory epitomizes my entire educational experience. Elementary school was torture, high school a long, slow bore and college a crushing disappointment. The tragedy of this is I was eager to learn. I was an avid reader, retained facts easily and quickly understood patterns of data. In elementary school, I was banned from the library because I read too much. My educational experience spanned the range of traditional options from public school to Christian school to curriculum based home school, and none fit me. Although I was knowledgeable, intelligent and curious, I spent my entire educational career feeling like a failure.

This led me to spend a great deal of time investigating and considering learning models. When our children came along, I determined their experience would not mirror mine, and I made a thorough study of the Scripture to understand how God had intended children to be taught and to learn. It is out of two decades of study and consideration as well as several years of practical experience with my children that this paper comes. I hope it opens eyes and hearts and perhaps helps to deliver children from an educational experience such as mine.

I’ve seen the people bustle by
Intent upon their way.
I’ve heard their thoughts
And shared their dreams
And joined them as they pray.

I’ve spoke the tongue of ancient race
And read their storied past.
I’ve heard the songs of ancient days
Seen relics unsurpassed.

I’ve settled now upon my chair
My children gathered ‘round.
And, though my wandering feet have stilled,
My memories won’t be bound.

I tell my children many tales
Of lands so far away.
And though my heart would hold them close,
I hope some day they stray.

And bring me stories new and old
Of places they have seen.
Of people they have spoken to
Of dreams that they have dreamed.

This verse is as familiar to me as my own name.  I’ve read, heard and quoted it many thousands of times.  I’ve heard it preached over and over as an encouragement to depend on the unchanging love of Christ for me. Unfortunately, the verses that are the most familiar are often the easiest to gloss over and miss the real meaning because we already “understand” it.

Every time I read the whole chapter, though, I felt uncomfortable about what this verse was saying in context about the love of God.  So Christ loves me no matter what my circumstances: I “get” that.  The next verse, however, seems to say that because Christ loves us,  He has us killed all day every day.   I know God sometimes expresses “tough love”, but is that the encouragement Paul is offering the suffering church?  “Hang on, Christ loves you so much He’s having you killed”?

We never doubt the eternal, sacrificial and unconditional love of Christ.  The Scripture attests to it over and over.  But not in Romans 8:35.  The problem comes from interpreting the genitive “tou Xristou” (of Christ) without comparing the context.  I’m going to get a little bit technical, but I believe this is easy to follow so stay with me.  If it isn’t, then comment and I will try again.

When a genitive case (which “of Christ” in this verse is) follows an “action noun” such as love, there are three possible functions it can fulfill.  Only the first two would fit the grammar of this sentence, so I will leave off the third. The only clue we have to chose which function is appropriate is context.  In this place, the subjective function has always been used, making “love of Christ” the subject of the sentence. In other words, Christ is the lover, the one doing the action.  There is no grammatical barrier to this usage, but does it fit the rest of the passage?  Possibly, but I believe there is a better way.

The second possibility is the objective function, placing “of Christ” in the position of direct object of love.  In other words, Christ is the one receiving the love, or being loved.  If we were to use this function, we could translate the verse “Who shall separate us from our love for Christ?”  In other words, after discussing the brevity and insignificance of our suffering compared with the glory Christ has purchased for us, and then going on to consider the help and hope He offers through His Spirit even though we brought suffering on not only ourselves but all His creation, he asks, “How much do we love Him?”.  He then goes on in verse 36 to quote Psalm 44, indicating we willingly lay down our lives for the One who loved us so.

It’s interesting to compare the lists from verse 35 and verses 38-39.  The things Paul lists as possibly coming between us and our love for God are all earthly – tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword.  The things he lists as not possibly coming between us and God’s love for us are all spiritual — death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing.  Because God defends us from what we cannot overcome, He gives us the strength to overcome the things we can.

What can separate you from your love for Christ?

As a pastor, I am occasionally asked to explain why a loving God would allow the horrible things we each encounter in our lives.  Sometimes the question cries out from genuine pain, but more often expresses a sense of skepticism.  Seldom is an answer expected.  This is presented as the final, unanswerable argument against Christ.

The truth, however, is plainly found in the first three chapters of the Scripture.

Genesis 1 describes how the Universe came into being.  All of creation (including angels) came about by the power of the spoken word of God — except Man.  In Genesis 2:7, God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.  Man is God’s special creation — made from the earth and the breath of God.  He was created in the image of God as God’s representative to all the rest of His universe.  God gave to man authority over all creation and the responsibility to subdue it.

Moses then describes in chapter 2 the Garden God made for man.  From a world God described as “very good” (Gen. 1:31), He collected all the best and designed a home for Man.  In the midst of this perfect garden God planted two unique trees, both of which tell us something of Himself as well as of His creation — man.

The first tree God planted was the Tree of Life.  Man was given full access to this tree.  Man was made with the potential for immortality.  From the beginning, God has made everlasting life freely available to man.  We have, however, no record that Adam or Eve ever ate of this tree.  God’s best gifts are often left untasted.

The second tree God placed in the heart of His Garden was the  Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  This was the tree God warned him about.  God gave Adam a commandment not to eat of this tree because in the day he ate of it, he would surely die.  The name of this tree is intriguing: Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Not the Tree of Evil, or the Tree of Knowledge.  Man already had intimate knowledge of good — he lived in a good garden with a good wife and had fellowship with the Good God.

Part of being created in the image of God included a necessity of free will.  God offered man a life of Good, with no knowledge of evil; however, the alternative had to be available for free will to be true.

The serpent presented the fruit of this tree to Eve as something “desirable to make one wise”(Gen. 3:6).   Living in perfection, Eve deliberately chose to know what life would be like in a world apart from God.  She desired to know evil.  Adam chose to place his love for his wife above his love for God, and ate.

The Scripture says they knew they were naked, and sewed fig leaves for themselves.  It is hard to imagine it was simply physical nakedness that horrified them so.  After all, husbands and wives today are “naked and unashamed”.  Hebrews 13:4 says “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled”.  Rather it was a sudden understanding of vulnerability.  They understood they had been manipulated and became distrustful.  Adam was “afraid because he was naked”; afraid, not embarrassed or ashamed. Sin brings division and distrust into the family, community and society.

God, rather than responding angrily to Adam’s sin, sorrowfully allowed Man to face the consequences of his choice.  God’s justice demands separation from sinful man, but it is important to note that man freely chose this separation.  It was to fulfill man’s wish to understand evil that God cursed the ground.  Genesis 3:17 “cursed is the ground for your sake” could be better translated “for your benefit”.  The attitude is not “You caused this!”, but rather, “Since this is what you want…”.  God has given Adam and Eve what they demanded — the opportunity to see evil in the world.

Yet, as man is rebelling, God is offering provision for restoration.  A promise of a redeemer is in the midst of the curse:
“And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
(Gen. 3:15)
Why is the first promise of the victorious seed of woman directed toward the serpent, rather than to Adam or Eve?  It seems neither Adam nor Eve yet understood the enormity of the choice they had made.  Here God is outlining the consequences of their decision, and Adam decides this is the right time to name his wife (Gen. 3:20).  It seems they were listening with some anticipation to the adventures of their new life.  Michelangelo got it wrong — rather than stumbling broken-hearted from the Garden, Man marched arrogantly into the new world he had caused.

And still, God killed two animals and made clothes for their journey.  He gave them a sacrificial system to remind them of the enormity of their sin, and the promise of a Savior.  God’s love is shown to us in that while we were in the midst of sinning, Christ died for us! (Romans 5:8)

Every time we experience evil, it is another reminder of the goodness of God. Truly, Christ will come
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.
(Isaiah 61:3)

One of the cornerstones of literal seven days of twenty-four hours each Creationist argumentation is that there was no death or decay before the Fall of man. We have been taught that all animals were vegetarians, and carnivores only developed after the flood. Nothing ever died or decayed, and the second law of thermodynamics was not in force. Is this a biblical position, or are we doing ourselves harm using a false argument that is easily disproved? I believe there had to be death and decay before the Fall. A careful examination of the Scripture, leaving aside the Creationist bias, will prove this.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1. We understand this statement to be literally true. God, through a divine act by the power of His word, brought into existence that which did not before exist. Over the course of the first six literal twenty-four hour days, He spoke into being out of nothing all that now or ever has existed except for Adam, whom he formed from pre-existing material (dust of the ground) with His own hands (Gen. 2:7). On the seventh day, God rested, sealing His creation (Gen. 2:1). Thus, we must conclude that in the earth that God pronounced “Very good” (Gen. 1:31), He had already created flies, bacteria, viruses, molds, fungi, and the human immune system.

Did God open a special eighth day of creation when Adam rebelled? Certainly to believe that would be to contradict Scripture. If Adam could never be cut or bruised, why did God create for him a self-healing body? If there was no death or decay, what function did molds, fungi, and bacteria play? How did they survive with no decaying material to process? God commanded Adam to eat the fruit of all the trees, save one (Gen. 1:29, 2:16-17) . How did his digestive system work if the fruit didn’t decay, producing both nutrition and waste? God commanded the plant life with the seed in its fruit (Gen. 1:11-13). If the fruit never died and decayed, how would the seed be released?

God made a garden for Man of the best of His creation. God commanded Adam to “dress the garden and keep it” (Gen. 2:!5) What does it mean to dress and keep a garden? If there was no tendency to disorder, what could Adam and Eve find to do? Weeding is not necessary. Pruning would be unthinkable, and what would they do with all the undying branches they cut off? There would be no sticks to gather, no wilting blooms to trim.

Did Adam and Eve age? We understand that God created them as mature people, but He did command them to have children (Gen. 1:28). Imagine if they had not chosen to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. By being obedient to God, they would have had children. Would their children have grown and matured? Of course, because they also would be under the command to multiply so they would have to grow to marriageable age. Would they have lost their baby teeth? Does not growth and maturity require some decay and change?

If God created Adam and Eve as everlasting beings who only began to experience physical death when they disobeyed, then why did He place in the middle of the garden the Tree of Life (Gen. 2:9), only to take it away the first moment they had need of it (Gen. 3:22-24)? It does damage to the Scripture to argue that Man “began to die” the day he ate of the fruit. God did not say “in the day you eat of it, you shall surely begin to die”, but “in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die!” (Gen. 2:17). Therefore, God cannot be talking about physical death, or He would have been a liar, since they did not die physically that day. On the day Adam accepted the fruit from his wife and chose to rebel against the clear command of God, his relationship with God was irreparably broken, and the entire human race died spiritually (I Cor. 15:22).

It would seem that the great effect of the curse was not the beginning of death and decay, but rather the loss of balance in creation. Viri already existed, but man’s immune system kept them in balance. Decay took place, but as a part of the whole circle of life. Everything was pleasant and good and balanced, and it was Adam’s responsibility to keep it that way. When Man sinned, the perfect balance was upset.

When Jesus spoke these words, he was responding to the disbelief of his hearers. He is not explaining to them why they weren’t “chosen” but that their refusal to chose Him was not unique.

In the Elijah story, from I Kings 17, the widow of Zeraphath was not elected to salvation, but to service. We can’t believe that no widows in Israel were under the grace of God, as in chapter 19 God informs Elijah there are 7000 Israelites who have remained faithful to him, and it seems impossible none of them were widows. God chose the widow of Zeraphath to perform a special work, “which God had prepared beforehand that [she] should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)

In the story of Naaman (II Kings 5), the issue still is not election to salvation, but to be used to show the power of God. In this story the question is not really WHAT he was elected to, but WHY he was chosen. Why did God choose to heal a foreign leper rather than a Jewish one? Naaman was chosen because Naaman asked to be healed. God didn’t simply “elect” to remove Naaman’s leprosy, he responded to Naaman’s request. “You do not have, because you do not ask.” (James 4:2)

The Bible clearly states that “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” (I John 2:2) We understand plainly that the Lord is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (II Peter 3:9)

This is why God chose to use leaven throughout Scripture as a picture of sin in the life of the saint. A little bit of sin, given time and the right life conditions, can change the saint completely.

In Matthew 16, Christ has a particular and particularly virulent strain of sin in mind.  I won’t copy the passage here because of its length, but please take a moment to look it up and read down through verse 16. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Finished? Good!   As we begin the chapter, we see Christ confronted by an odd coalition of enemies — the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  These two schools were theological opposites and bitter opponents under most conditions. The Sadducees were the materialists of the day.  They rejected the supernatural, and saw the Mosaic law as a good moral code.  They did not believe in life after death, spirits or angels.  To them, the whole purpose of the Torah was to produce a good society.  The Pharisees were the conservatives of their time. We would have much in common with them.  They believed all Scripture was divinely inspired, inerrant and authoritative.  The accepted that after death was judgement and rewards.  They loved the law so much, they added to it all kinds of man-made proscriptions and prescriptions.  It was only opposition to Jesus Christ that could unite these bitter enemies.

After rejecting their request for a sign from heaven (as though there hadn’t been every possible sign given), Christ leaves these doubters and takes his disciples across the lake, Mark (8:22) tells us they were going back to Bethsaida.  It seems from the tone of the passage, that Christ continued to be preoccupied with the confrontation during the voyage, and wasn’t really paying attention to the journey.  The disciples, on the other hand were preoccupied with what was for them a much more immediate crisis — they had forgotten provisions.

As they are landing the boat and discussing their lack of bread, Jesus turns to them, and makes a very odd statement, “Take heed, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.”  Of course, the disciples, hungry and upset, immediately thought He was trying to tell them something about their forgetfulness. Perhaps He didn’t want them buying bread when the opposition was around?

Jesus was very frustrated with His people, and rebuked them strongly for their misunderstanding as an indication of their lack of faith.  He reminded them of the times (one very recent) when He provided large groups with plenty from little, then repeated His warning against the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.  ”Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

It’s interesting He’s warning them against the DOCTRINE, singular, of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.  Of all the theological differences that divided these schools, what teaching could they share that would be of such concern to Christ?   Although the Pharisees, as it were, took the “high road” and the Sadducees took the “low road”, both ended by focusing on earthly concerns.  The Pharisees wanted all to see their heavenly piety in their outward actions and appearance without experiencing an eternal change.  The Sadducees saw the moral life as an end in itself with no eternal consequences.  Both lived for this world and its concerns.

I can understand Jesus’ frustration with His disciples when they missed the point to such a degree.  Overcome by immediate hunger, they failed to understand the spiritual meaning of His words.  We find this so often in modern Christianity.  Our “Christian culture” is leavened with practical everyday feel-good spirituality that produces no inward transformation.  Holiness is a forgotten concept, and the fish symbol and silver cross replace Christ-likeness and inward submission.

Rather than looking for “Seven Steps to a Better Marriage” or “Leadership Principles from the Gospels”, we must allow God’s word to change who we are eternally, and better marriages and godly leadership will naturally blossom.