Year: 2017

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those recovering from hurricane Harvey and now from hurricane Irma. For information concerning the impact of Irma on our members in the Caribbean and the U.S., click here.

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Let’s turn now to a topic that needs to be addressed from time to time. It involves two aberrant teachings that advocate esoteric religious practices for Christians. Both come with the promise that those who adopt the advocated practice will gain favor with God. The first is known as the “sacred names” doctrine, and the second teaches that Christians must observe the holy days God gave Israel through Moses.

The sacred names doctrine

Though the Bible does not teach that the Hebrew language (or any language, for that matter) is sacred, the sacred names doctrine asserts that God must be addressed using the Hebrew name Yahweh and Jesus must be addressed using the Hebrew name Yahshua. The falsity of this assertion is seen by noting that by inspiring the New Testament to be written in Greek, God has clearly shown that the Hebrew language is not required to hear an authoritative and life-giving word from him. Understanding this to be true, the Jews translated the Old Testament into Greek, producing what is known as the Septuagint. Many of the quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament are from the Septuagint.

Human languages, being created things, are not sacred, nor are they magical—they have no special power in and of themselves. Human languages do not operate as mediators controlling access to God or his blessings. Treating created things as if they had such powers is idolatry. While Scripture is God’s inspired Word, its words (in any language) have no power apart from the action of the living God by his Spirit. Though the language used in writing Scripture is God’s gift, it is not one that should control (in either a legal or a magical way) our relationship to God.

Israel’s holy days

Most of us are familiar with the annual cycle of festivals set out for Israel by God in the Law of Moses (see the chart below). As a focus of this worship, Israel was required to perform various ceremonial duties—kill a lamb and put its blood on the doorposts at Passover, remove leaven from their property for the week of Unleavened Bread, blow shofars to announce the arrival of the New Year on Trumpets, fast on Atonement, and live in temporary dwellings throughout Tabernacles.

Some well-meaning Christians try to observe Israel’s holy days to varying degrees, thinking that God is more pleased with the Christians who do so. These folks seem unable to grasp the biblical teaching that the purpose of the worship practices given to Israel was to point them to Jesus and his atoning ministry—a ministry that has already been accomplished, and thus fulfilled. It is Jesus’ shed blood that secures our forgiveness—not killing and eating a ritual lamb. It is Jesus who cleanses us from sin, not deleavening our homes. It is Jesus who trumpets our salvation, not the blowing of shofars. Because Jesus is our eternal dwelling place, there is no need to dwell in temporary booths. Now that Jesus has come and completed his work of salvation, observance of these holy days can actually point people away from Jesus to their own works.

As an example, consider the observance of the Day of Atonement (known to the Jews as Yom Kippur). It begins this year at sundown on Friday, Sept. 29. This day of fasting was considered the most holy of all of Israel’s festivals, and so was a principal focus of Israel’s annual worship cycle. Unfortunately, some Christians think God commands them to observe this day so that they might receive God’s forgiveness and so be cleansed from sin. In doing so, they overlook the New Testament’s teaching that we in no way contribute to our salvation, nor do we maintain it through works of the Law of Moses (including observing Israel’s holy days).

Believing that we must fast on Yom Kippur in order to be atoned for, negates the all-sufficient atonement that Jesus already has provided for the sins of the world. To observe the Day of Atonement as if it were required for Christians would be to say that Jesus’ completed, atoning work is somehow not enough—that we must somehow atone for ourselves. But note what is said to the contrary in the book of Hebrews:

For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Heb. 9:24-26)

God gave Yom Kippur to Israel as a map pointing them forward towards the relationship that God, through Christ, would have with all humanity. By fasting, Israel acted out the reality of our need for the never-ending eternal life that is ours in and through Christ who, alone, is our atonement. If one discontinues eating for a lengthy time, death results. Fasting thus symbolizes passing from life to death. The symbolism then comes full-circle when eating (picturing the return to life) commences at the close of the Day of Atonement. Those who have fasted for 24 hours know how good food tastes after a fast!

In ancient Israel, Yom Kippur was the only day of the year when the High Priest was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies (sometimes called the Most Holy Place)—the inner chamber of the Temple pictured above. Because of this, Jewish Midrash (commentaries on Scripture) associate Yom Kippur with the ancient Jewish idiom, face-to-face. Not surprisingly, the apostle Paul, who knew these commentaries well, spoke this way of our relationship with God through Christ:

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Cor. 13: 12)

Jews view Yom Kippur as the day on which people are closest to God. The Jewish website www.chabad.org says, “[it is] the day on which we are the closest to G-d and to the quintessence of our own souls.” Leviticus 16:30 says, “On this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.” These are precisely what are ours through Jesus’ atoning work on our behalf. Through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and continuing high priestly ministry in heaven, we are cleansed from sin and reconciled to God. Note Paul’s comment:

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them…. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor. 5:18-19, 21)

In Jesus, through his once-for-all atonement, we have come face-to-face with the Living God. We trust in him to be God’s presence to us and with us. He is our great High Priest and God’s own atonement, who mediates to us our fellowship and communion with the living God.

Celebrating that Jesus’ work is both abundant and more than adequate for us all,
Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I know we’re praying for the thousands of people who continue to suffer as a result of Hurricane Harvey, and now there is great concern about Hurricane Irma’s impact in the Caribbean and on Florida. For an update on how our members in Texas fared, and how you can join in assisting them, click here. In times of tragedy, I’m comforted knowing that Jesus is Lord of all, and that includes his lordship over storms. As I’ll now explain, it also includes his lordship over time itself.

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Back in 1970, the music group Chicago had a hit titled Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? Perhaps you remember its chorus:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
If so, I can’t imagine why,
we’ve all got time enough to cry.

Time fascinates us—some are captivated by the past, others by the future, and time travel is the theme of many popular books and movies. Enter a room filled with people and you might hear one group lamenting their lack of time and another lamenting their struggle to fill it. Personally, I often wish I had more time. Better still, would be to share in Jesus’ ability to exist both within and outside of time. His resurrection, post-resurrection appearances, ascension and promise of a new creation, all point to the reality that the incarnate Son of God truly is “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Rev. 22:13).

Sovereign over the past, the present and the future, Jesus is Lord of time.

Explaining exactly how Jesus exists both within and outside of time (a concept with cosmological and philosophical implications) is certainly beyond the scope of this letter (and beyond the powers of any time-bound creature!). However, I do want to address what Scripture tells us concerning Jesus’ relationship to time. Let’s begin with this important passage:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. (John 1:1-2)

The Word (Logos) of God, “for whom and through whom everything exists” (Heb. 2:10) was present when time (and all created “things”) came into being. The Word is thus Lord over time. As Karl Barth notes, defining what this created thing we call “time” is, including how it could have a point of beginning within God’s eternity, is no small undertaking:

The nature of time and eternity is not something we can fathom for ourselves. We grasp it only when, against the background of God’s intervention in human time, we understand what time really is.

We cannot explain how Jesus, the incarnate Word, exists both within and outside time. Whereas the BBC’s Dr. Who needed his spaceship TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) to travel through time and space, Jesus is “the Alpha and the Omega”—the “Almighty” one, “who is, and who was, and who is to come” (Rev. 1:8). Jesus exists simultaneously within time (temporality) and outside time (eternity). His “eternal presence” encompasses that which was, now is, and is yet to come. In love and for love, the triune God gave his creation a “triadic temporality” in which there is a past, a present and a future.

Karl Barth helps us think of time as existing in two ways: chronological (temporal) time and uncreated (eternal) time. Scripture tells us that God transcends temporal time—Psalm 90:2 declares that God is “from everlasting to everlasting” (with no beginning or end), an idea we cannot fathom from our perspective within the confines of temporal time. Psalm 90:4 then contrasts God’s eternity with human temporality: “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by.” The apostle Peter put it this way: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8). In making this statement, Peter is not providing a secret code for calculating the date of Jesus’ return (the Bible warns us against trying to do that). Instead, Peter, like the Psalmist, is using a metaphor to explain that God, who is beyond time, sees and inhabits the past, present and future simultaneously.

This metaphor helps us understand something of God’s relationship to time. Knowing “the beginning from the end” (Isa. 46:10), God takes in the full panorama of human existence while also focusing his attention on particular moments within temporal time. Note, however, that this does not mean that the cosmos operates in accordance with some sort of “fatalistic determinism.” Instead, God interacts with created time from outside time, all the while giving time and space as a gift, within which his creatures may interact with him.

The virgin birth and bodily resurrection of Jesus give powerful witness to how God interfaces with the time of the created world. When God created the universe in and through the eternal Son of God (the Word), he created it in such a way that he could interact with it. Then, via the Incarnation, the Word stepped into created time while remaining what he was, the eternal Son of God. He did so to bring to completion his plan for fellowship and communion with his human creatures and all creation.

With these thoughts in mind, Barth instructs us to view eternity as fulfilled time rather than as timelessness. Our Triune God has his own kind of time. The Father, Son and Spirit have always had divine time for one another, for relating or interacting with one another in loving, knowing and glorifying ways. God’s kind of time we call eternity. It has no beginning or end, and needs no perfecting. God exists in the fullness of time, all the time, in his own kind of divine time. More than this, we cannot say. But our time, the time created through the Word of God (the Logos), apparently has some created similarity to God’s time, though our time must be perfected—liberated from its passing away into nothing as we now experience it.

Because Jesus is Lord of time, he is present in terms of who and what he was in the past, who and what he is in the present, and who and what he will be in the future (made clear when he returns and all time is redeemed). As Lord of time, only Jesus can redeem the past. He has not allowed anything to happen in his good creation that he cannot, in the end, redeem. The crucifixion of the Lord of created and uncreated time was turned into eternal life and immortality for us in him by the astounding grace of his resurrection (1 Cor. 15:53-54).

In this reality, we take comfort. As we live in the here and now—the already, but not yet—with its challenges and even threats, we look forward to eternity when fallen, unfulfilled time will be no more, and our Triune God will have all the time for us, and we’ll have all the time for him and for one another. It will be a glorious time—one with no pain, no regrets, no evil, for the past will have been completely redeemed. Let us have hope, relying on Jesus, the Lord of time, and on his words of promise:

Behold, I am making all things new. (Rev. 21:5, ESV)

Happy knowing that God, who transcends time, dwells in time with us,
Joseph Tkach