New Thoughts (01/28/09-02/02/09)
As ever, there is a wealth of material to consider in these words of Jesus. I have to note, at the outset, that of all I have thus far studied, this passage provides perhaps the widest variation in translation. It is one case where I think some of the tools of text criticism could actually be useful. For instance, the repeated antiphon of worm and fire in Mark seems to run counter to the perfect Teacher we see in Jesus. It is not in His style to speak so, and really, the repetition detracts from the impact of what He is saying.
On the other hand, the combining of two examples as we have it in Matthew also runs counter to the typical form of Jesus’ teaching. The combined image of hand or foot, as opposed to the separate illustrations found in Mark’s account is weaker. It distracts unnecessarily. Of course, Matthew has already recorded another occasion when this same message was delivered to somewhat different purpose. There, it was Jesus reinforcing the full measure of the Law in the minds of those listening. It’s not just murder, it’s every thought preceding, even the insult. It’s not just intercourse, it’s the very first lustful contemplation. Then comes the advice that a hand that makes you sin or an eye that makes you sin is better disposed of than allowed to continue having such an evil influence.
On that occasion (Mt 5:22-30), there is no mentioning of the Life to counter the imagery of hell. Neither is hell painted in such terrifying images. It’s better a part of you dead than the whole, seems to be the gist of things. Here, the focus is more fully upon the end result. Choose: the Life, or the Death? You have one shot at this, and an eternity to enjoy the fruits of your answers, what shall it be? Oh, and before you mistake death for oblivion, the coward’s way out, you should be clear on what the Death really looks like. It’s not the instantaneous snuffing out of consciousness. Not at all. It’s an eternity of conscious decomposition, an eternity of not just decomposing, but feeling that worm digesting your flesh, feeling the fires that consume the corruption that is you. Yet, never consumed, never digested, just the constant agony of an ongoing process with no hope of completion. Ever.
It would seem that Matthew, as he doubtless wrote far more quickly than I have been parsing through his writings, still had the previous account from the Sermon on the Mount in his thoughts as he began to record this present discourse. Quite likely, he had Mark’s account for reference, as well. But, the nature of the writing (even for the best of contemporary historical records) did not require an absolute, verbatim transcription of the words. That’s the stuff of modern journalism, not of antiquity’s records. It does not make the record of the Gospels any less accurate and trustworthy to recognize this to be true. Nothing in Matthew’s apparent rearranging of the words alters the content of the message. It is a stylistic modification to set this use of the illustrations apart from that prior use, and nothing more.
Another aspect of translation in this somewhat difficult passage is illustrative more of the translators’ theological positions than of any actual failing in the texts. In particular, I find it interesting to notice the variations in how the skandalizei of hand, foot and eye get treated. Indeed, it would appear that the very term is something of a skandalon to some! The underlying meaning of the word, as I explored in the previous study, is pretty plain. It’s the underhanded entrapment, the apparently innocent thing whose very intent is to get your trust, get you to take that one seemingly innocuous action which will spring the trap. It’s a stumbling block. It doesn’t stand out. It’s not a thing you look at and say to yourself, “oh! I need to stay clear of that!” There’s no bio-hazard label applied to it. It looks OK. It looks so nearly normal that you take no notice of it until it catches your foot, and you find yourself face down in the dirt.
That this is a terribly apt description for sin is plain to any man who has come to recognize his sinfulness. It’s apparent to anyone who has ever found themselves battling an addiction, whether it be addiction to drugs, alcohol, or even something as seemingly non-threatening as the news. Nobody starts into such behavior in the hopes of becoming addicted. Nobody who truly understood and believed that addiction was a real possibility would ever sample. We start because it looks, if not good, at least innocent enough. It’ll be fun. It’ll be hip. Everybody’s doing it, what harm could there be? Until, one day we realize that the fun’s gone out of it, we are only hip in our own imagination. The reality is that we’re a wreck. The reality is that the only reason it seems that everybody’s doing it is because we’ve limited our circle of associates to those who are as much a wreck as ourselves. And, with that realization, sadly, comes the realization that we are all but powerless to break free. We’re trapped in a habit, an addiction, that had we known it’s power, we would never have given a chance.
So, how can some translator look at that word and its clear implications and come away with a meaning of “lose your faith”? If your foot causes you to lose your faith? Maybe it’s just the Calvinist in me, but the very choice of terms here seems to me to belie the translator’s views, not the intent of the message. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that it were possible for a true disciple of Christ to truly lose his faith. Let us suppose that. What purpose, then, the sacrifice of God’s Only Son? What reason do we have to trust a One Who says He has never lost one soul that was entrusted to Him, but then tells us that it’s really up to us after all? To me, it’s unthinkable that this could be the case. To suppose it is the case is to make Him a liar, and at that point, if we’re right, then we are to be most pitied among men.
Even supposing I am completely off track with such a suggestion, one has but to consider the context. We’re not talking about falling from grace, here. We’re talking about sin. More precisely, we’re talking about the twin prospects of the Life, or the Punishment. We are being handed a contrast between heaven and hell. We are being shown just how dire the consequences of sin are, and we are being shown just how devious the temptation that leads to sin can be.
Again, go back to what triggered this lesson. John is all proud of himself for having rebuked that stranger (to him) who had been claiming to work in the name of Jesus. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was operating in the interest of God; just like Paul thought He was doing God’s work and magnifying His glory by persecuting and murdering the Christians. This was no loss of faith, on their part! If anything, it was a holy fervor that was sadly devoid of proper guidance, and so it blurred their vision of the Truth. No, it was not a loss of faith, it was a snare. It was something that seemed right, but was terribly, terribly wrong.
Sin is sneaky. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have an issue with it! That the believer is still capable of sin is such a commonplace of our own daily experience as to be undeniable. That our response to this reality, our reaction to sin when we find it in ourselves has changed is equally undeniable. It is no longer our chosen lifestyle, but rather the agony of our daily battle. It is the cross we pick up daily, the burden we bear all unwilling.
Jesus is not addressing the weakness and potential vagaries of faith in the believer. He is not, let us be clear, telling the believer that he’d better watch out or even the salvation that was bought on Calvary will be of no use to him. No! What He is doing is giving us a new tool by which to combat the power of sin. This is a tool the Church has by and large forgotten how to use. The God is Love [and nothing else!] message of our watery Gospel becomes powerless because we refuse to present the reality of the alternative.
We’re pleased as punch to tell you about Life, but we aren’t going to offend you by talking about Death. We may mention, in passing, that hell is a real place, just like heaven. But, you know: understanding that the barrios of Brazil are real places conveys nothing of the realities of having to live there. Understanding that the mansions of Newport are real houses where real people have lived does nothing to convey to me the experience of actually living there. One who has never taken ship on the sea can know full well what the sea is, and that ships exist, and yet have not the least comprehension of what it’s like to combine the two. He knows nothing of the days spent beyond sight of land, the isolation, the cramped quarters and enforced fellowship of the crew. He can’t.
What Jesus has done in these verses is lay out the risk of the trap in very real, very understandable terms. He is making the danger as plain as can be, searing it into the imaginations of His listeners, to serve as a warning system. Lose your faith? Not in the least! It’s the snare that’s in sight, and it’s the recognition that the worst snares for us to battle are those that we come equipped with ourselves. It is absolutely of a piece with what James would later teach. You have nobody but yourself to blame for your sins, for it is your own lusts, your own corrupt desires that entice you. Traps! Beware! Before you fall for your own lies, remember where it’s leading!
I realize that the connecting thought Matthew gives us here is the same one Luke used to bring in the preceding passage in his account. That’s fine. But, what a connection it makes here! It’s like the leading tone, moving our thoughts to realize the implications for what follows. We are attuned to the stumbling block, and the danger thereof, and this is still in our thoughts as Jesus now points us inward to discern those stumbling blocks. Woe to the one through whom the stumbling block comes!? Yes, and sadly, that will prove to be yourselves, for the most part. You are your own worst tempter, which does nothing to reduce the severity of the punishment that would befit such a crime. That you were your own victim does not make the sin any less sinful. Sin is sin. If it were better for that one who caused a young believer to stumble to have been drowned with full apprehension, how much more dire the consequences for the mature believer who causes himself to stumble?
Indeed, this is exactly the line of thought Jesus is prompting here. What if it’s me? What if I stumble? And, Jesus is leaving no wiggle room at all. Even if its such an integral part of you that you cannot avoid its company that’s no excuse. The fact that it’s just the flesh rising up does absolutely nothing to the nature of the crime, does absolutely nothing to reduce the sentence. Your hand can’t help itself? Your eye can’t help but look? Well, here, let me give you something that might inspire greater effort on your part. You see that valley over there? The one where all the human waste gets dumped, the one with all the decaying bodies littering its floor? You’ve seen it. You’ve smelled it on the air. It’s a truly horrific place, isn’t it? Indeed, horrific enough to contemplate coming to such an end that such a place was to be your grave. Well, just think of the horror of being thrown into that grave, but unable to truly die! Think about that! Think about a never ending decay of body, a never ending consumption by the flame, awake all the way through, but never getting all the way through. That’s closer to the reality of the punishment your sins can expect. That’s the ultimate deterrent, and should it fail to deter, there is no appeal process. There is no probation. Forever, my friends, is a very long time. How would you spend it?
I have to say, though, that Jesus does not present a lopsided picture here. He does not leave these men with nothing but hell to look at. It strikes me that most of the more literal translations shortchange Jesus in trying to make it ‘readable English’. The fact of the matter is that throughout this message, He is speaking of the LIFE. We’re not talking about the physical factory, the merely animate. There is nothing particularly wrong with physical life, but what He’s pointing us to is something far greater. Yes, there is the counterbalancing eternality of the Life He is speaking of. Yet, He does not speak of it in these terms, and so, to inject that into the translation seems a bit forced. There are other places, numerous places, where Scripture makes plane the eternal nature of the Life Jesus brings in our rebirth.
It is given to man once to die (Hebrews 9:27), and then comes the judgment. Implicit in that declaration is that there is indeed life after death. Not much sense to judge and punish a dead man. Just as the dead body is no longer enticing nor enticed by sin, so, too, that dead body is hardly likely to take note of sin’s punishment. No, for judgment to be meaningful, the defendant must be alive, and so he shall be. Resurrection is not a thing reserved for the saints alone. It is something all flesh shall experience. What becomes interesting and distinguishing between saint and unbeliever is what comes after that. There is an eternity which will be laid out before every man and woman. It will be such an eternity as our choices in this brief temporal life have dictated. When Joshua looks out at the nation of Israel and says, “choose you this day”, it’s the single, most critical choice those people will ever make. And, it’s a choice we shall have every day: if this is it, if this is the end of life one, what does this decision hold for me in the life that comes?
What Jesus is speaking of, then, is not the duration of life, but the quality. Greek has at least two terms for life. There is the bios, which is a term familiar to most of us computer geeks, and our understanding of it in the computer context should help us to understand it in the fleshly context. It’s the nuts and bolts of life, the basics. It’s the animation, but it is possessed of no higher functions. Those higher functions may depend upon this underlying animation, but the bios itself is of limited use.
Then, there is zoe. This is what Jesus is speaking of here. Indeed, it is generally what He speaks of when He speaks of life. Adding the definite article to this just amplifies the meaning. Life: The essence of man, his ethics and morals, his character and tendencies. That is what we’re about now. It’s the stuff that sets man apart, the stuff that is more than animal. And to this Jesus is adding the emphasis of that leading the which everybody wants to leave out. It’s not just higher life, it’s the highest life. It’s not just ethical, it’s the very essence and definition of right ethics. This is the flip side of your choice.
As I said, eternity is a given. The choice you are being pointed to here is that of the nature of your eternal state. On the one hand life at its most perfect and fulfilling – every cause of sin and tears removed, every sorrow left behind, every tendency for error corrected once for all. On the other hand life at its most tormenting – a never ending punishment, an unrelenting torment in body and in thought, a forever to regret that you didn’t care enough to address the issue, a forever of knowing that all that you are suffering is no more and no less than justice served, a forever of knowing that God is just over the horizon, so near but forever beyond your reach.
So, on the one hand Jesus points to the Valley of Hinnom and as much as says, “If you think that valley is a terrible place, you should see its eternal counterpart!” On the other hand, the better options He points to are terrible themselves, or would at least seem so to His hearers. It’s not just the physical issue of being one limb short, or one eye short. It’s not even the terrible contemplation of removing that offending limb yourself. What would be truly terrible, in the minds of those listening, would be the disqualification for heaven implicit in such a disfigurement.
Consider that this was a period when the office of the high priest had been particularly politicized. This was a period when one of the potential candidates for that office had had an ear removed by his opponents. He had been scarred and maimed to what end? Because such physical imperfections were a disqualification for holy office. Now, I cannot recall at this stage whether this was something to be found in Mosaic Law, or something that had grown up in the Rabbinical tradition. Certainly, where sacrifices were concerned, God had so laid out His law that no place was left for giving the lamed cow, the diseased goat, the valueless cullings of one’s holdings to Him and calling that a sacrifice. No! The Law demanded that the sacrificed animal be one of particular perfection and value. What sacrifice to give God the garbage? What sacrifice to support your favorite missionary by sending him your junk? Either give of your best, or forget it.
That such a conception would come to be seen as applying to the priesthood – whether or not it was so intended – is quite understandable. We will have only the best, the physically perfect and intellectually sharp, as our representatives before a holy God, for He is holy, and those who serve Him sacrifice themselves to His service.
My, my. If this was true for those of old, how much more in our day, when we are called to offer ourselves to Him as living sacrifices (Ro 12:1-2)? How much more, when we are called to live out our days as His devoted servants, wholly and exclusively at His service, marked as never the high priest was, with the permanent mark of ‘Holy unto the Lord’!
For the purpose of this particular study, though, let me focus on the fact that once again the better alternative is hardly desirable in the least. On every level it is nothing one would choose. On every level, it is something to be avoided at just about any cost, in so much as it lies in our power to avoid. And yet, Jesus points to such a physical and spiritual calamity as this and says, better that than you should face the consequences of your sins! It’s that serious a matter.
This is the very heart’s cry of Jesus. The kingdom is near. It’s here! You are so unprepared to receive your King. You don’t take your sin seriously. You think it a small thing and unnoticed. But, I tell you: Take your sin this seriously because God does! It’s that disgusting in His sight that even the Valley of Hinnom is a pleasant spot compared to the punishment He has stored up for the sinner. It’s truly that dangerous for you to get caught up in. It’s so dangerous that you would be far better served to go to such extremes to avoid sin that the results disqualify you for higher office in the house of God.
If ever there were a place in that day that expressed the meaning of God-forsaken, this was the place! We might look forward to the prison camps of the Holocaust and think it a greater example, but I’m not sure that would be true. It was horrible, horrible beyond what one would like to think men capable of. But, it was finite in its duration. The fires went out eventually. The deaths and the dying stopped. In the Valley, the fires were always burning. Death was always present. Always. And Jesus looks to that image and says, “That’s nothing! That doesn’t even count compared to the eternity that awaits the sinner!” You may not understand eternity, but understand this: It would be like living (if you could call it living) in that Valley, not just for the rest of your days, but over and over again, lifetime after lifetime without surcease. Is your sin with its momentary pleasure worth all that to you?
One more point I should like to take from these comparatives Jesus puts forth, and I think it one worth keeping in mind. Part of the shock of His better alternatives, as I have noted, was that they were disqualifiers in the minds of those listening. Now, one would think that the choice between hell and heavenly exclusion was no choice at all, just two words for the same thing. One would think it, and one would be correct. Hell is just that: eternal, knowing separation from God. That is not, however, the comparative Jesus has set out here. Indeed, it seems to me He is correcting this particular misconception in His disciples. It’s not the physical imperfection that will disbar you from serving God. It’s the spiritual imperfection. It’s the soul of a rebel, the insistent predilection for sinning, for having one’s immediate pleasures and damn the cost.
[01/31/09] I need to say, this morning, that I cannot say enough about how much we have lost by translating Gehenna as hell. Hell is remote. Hell is, for most people, fictional – a bogeyman for scaring children into obedience. It has no reality to us. Gehenna, on the other hand, refers to a very real place with a very real, very terrible history. It would be far more beneficial for us to hear that name, consider what was then the present state of that valley, and more importantly, why it had come to be that way. Far better were we to think upon what became of the people who worshiped Tophet and Moloch. Far better to think about what became of God’s people when they first allowed such worship to continue in their midst, and then began joining in. Oh! How the mighty Israel had fallen! And, oh, what terrible punishment that drew from a truly loving Father!
Honestly, when I consider that that idol worship consisted of: when I consider how thoroughly debased a people must have become for them to lay their own children on the hot iron lip of that altar; when I consider what sort of parent could even think about roasting their own flesh and blood in hope of personal gain, let alone carry it out and cheer on others who do the same! Well, my first reaction, thinking historically, is that it is far more shocking to learn that God preserved anything out of such a thoroughly evil society than to learn that He punished the nations severely for this event. I have to say, were I God, I would not have left that punishment to chance as it were. I would have swallowed that region up whole, every last man, woman or child. Never mind the question of whether they had participated in these vile deeds. They had done nothing to eliminate the evil from their midst, and this – especially in the face of such obvious evil – was evil in itself. Why, then, preserve any of it? It’s like removing 90% of the malignant tumor and leaving 10% to reassert its evil on the body. Why?
I must assume it’s in the nature of the wheat and the tares. Somewhere in that mass of fallen humanity there must have been one or two who, though powerless to stop the overwhelming evil had still given it no quarter so far as was in their power. I must assume that somewhere in all those weeds grew one tender shoot of the True Vine and this, the Master of the Vineyard would in no wise suffer to be destroyed.
Well, it’s fine to look back on the past and decry its evils, but this is nearly as useless to us today as the vague, mythical conceptions of hell that we have. Face it. Most of our concepts of hell come from cartoon shorts, or maybe the imaginations of some writer or another, perhaps the classic Dante, perhaps one of the more recent fantasy novelists. Little enough of our sense of the place is built upon any real understanding, little enough of it is built on the Scriptures that point out its dangers to our souls. In part, that is because far too little is said of the evils of hell in our churches anymore. We’re too busy trying to be attractive, too busy trying to push the whole “God is Love and nothing else” concept because that sells way better than “God is Just”. Hell may not sell, but if history is any indicator, it sure does promote repentance when folks start to get a sense of its reality! And it’s repentance that God is after, after all, not sales.
What use has He for numbers? If it were numbers He were after, He could simply flip some spiritual switch and we would all be His. Presto! The ultimate congregation! But, He’s not after numbers. He’s after true believers. Jesus never says, “God is looking for every last man to worship Him, however superficially.” No! He said, “The time is coming when people will worship in spirit and in Truth.” Really! Just look at the historical records of Scripture. Look at the battles of Israel entering Canaan. Look at the Twelve Jesus chooses as His core team. It’s never about numbers. If anything, God is forever moving to reduce the numbers, that His power might shine through more clearly, and no man think himself worthy of the credit for what transpires.
So, let us – we who declare our great desire for revival in our day – look back on the history of real revival. Let us not hunger after show, but after a real, incontrovertible move of God. Look back on those real times of revival and understand that every time, it is a revival of real repentance. Real repentance, folks, requires a real sense of a real hell. Real repentance requires that the sinner have a very clear picture of where he’s headed. The blinders must be pulled away, the eyelids pried open. It’s not a gentle business forcing a man to face reality. It’s not a gentle business even between spouses, when one must get the other to look past the deceptions of the heart. But, we must be willing to lay out the reality of the situation if we ever expect the blinded to see.
Gehenna, as an historical reality, is a start, but unless we bring it forward to our own day, it will have lost its power to move the hearts of men. We no longer have such a place that we can go look upon. The typical city dump doesn’t present us with anything that even approaches the image of that place, let alone the history. But, the reality is that we are establishing that very same history for ourselves, and this time, we are establishing it on a world-wide scale. No longer is the evil contained to one specific valley. It’s everywhere. In pretty much every city, in pretty much every nation, the altars of Tophet and Moloch are open for business n our day, and we not only tolerate it, we fund it. We encourage it. Now, I admit and recognize that much of the Church, particularly in its official stances, proclaims as loudly as it knows how against this evil in our land. But, we have become sadly numb to the carnage.
It’s more civilized, to be sure. It’s no longer a burning charnel house of an altar out in the open valley for all to see. No. The sacrifices are done behind closed doors – a very quiet, very personal affair. And yet, those little lives are sacrificed daily for nothing but the convenience of the one who would otherwise give them birth. So much easier to bear, when those little ones have not yet had the chance to see the light of day, not yet uttered their first cry. There’s no screams from the burning altar anymore, nothing to trouble the worshiper at all. It’s all very clean, very clinical, very impersonal. It’s just a minor inconvenience that needed dealing with. My God! We are worse by far than those disgusting Canaanites and the Jews who joined them around the idols! At least those ancients had the steel to commit their evils knowingly. At least they thought to gain something more than just convenience by their terrible deeds. Perhaps, for many of them, it seemed a choice between starvation and survival. Perhaps it seemed the only way for them to make it at all. And, perhaps there are some in the modern temples to abortion who feel that same way, but I don’t believe it’s the majority.
What future can we expect for the nation that not only tolerates these temples in her midst, but encourages them? What future can we expect for the nation that has once more decided it would be a grand thing to fund the building and operation of these temples in other nations too poor (or too smart) to do so for themselves? For all that certain factions in this country have denounced the country for its rather rough and ready approach to delivering democratic rule to unlikely corners of the world, where is the outrage at our exported murder of the innocents? Where’s the outrage that, rather than fighting the terrorists, we prefer to fund abortion clinics for the victims?
You know, it’s a very rare thing for me to engage with this particular issue. But, how can one look at the Valley of Hinnom; what it was, what it became and why, and not see the danger signs for our own time? Does it matter, do you suppose, that everybody’s doing it? Has that ever been a viable excuse? Of course not. It didn’t work with Mom and Dad when we were kids. It doesn’t work with law enforcement when we’re young adults. It certainly isn’t going to accomplish much in the perfect courthouse of heaven. It is the most absolutely worthless cop-out of a defense ever contrived by the sinful mind of man.
If all the world is doing it, then quite frankly, it seems to me that all the world is exceedingly likely to find itself made one, vast Valley of Hinnom. Indeed, is not such an end hinted at by the New Testament pictures of the last day? No, God will not again flood the earth. He will rather cleanse it with such fire as will melt the very elements! Look upon the open promotion and acceptance of this incredible evil of abortion and you need no longer wonder why. It’s not the Muslims that bring punishment. It’s not the Buddhists or the Hindus or any religion whatsoever. It’s not a malevolent political party that will bring about the just punishment of the nations. It’s the universal disregard for the sanctity, the marvel, of human life. It’s the shocking ease with which we discover ourselves willing to dispose of the troublesome matter of a baby, lest our convenience be disturbed. Nor does it stop there. Already it spreads to our feelings about the severely disabled. Already it spreads to our treatment of the aged. The minute a person has become a burden upon us in any way, the least bit of a responsibility for us, hey! Get rid of that person. Let the state take care of him, or let him take care of himself. But, if he’s going to be a drag on my energies, my wants and needs, then he’s expendable.
This is where our world is at, by and large today. And if you think we are immune to this attitude in the Church, I fear you are sadly mistaken. We may be careful of the extremes. We will keep our noses clean. Thou shalt not murder, and all that. But, when it comes to the less obvious forms, when it’s still just calling our brother a fool, we lose sight of it. It’s all OK. That one who’s become damaged goods? We can’t be bothered. Let him go. If God wants him, he’ll be back. If not, oh well. And, don’t think this is something unique to those wacky predestinarian Calvinists. Nope! It’s just the pervasive, me first, you if I’ve got energy left for it, spirit of the age. How shocking to discover that we are even yet preserved alive!
Let me say this, though: the image of Gehenna, with all its historical memories, is not entirely bleak. It’s not entirely without hope. For, you see the Valley of Hinnom as it was known to the disciples was evidence of God’s mercy. By His mercy, Israel awoke from that national nightmare it had been in. The discipline may have been severe upon them, but it had truly been a discipline, not a destruction. The remnant had been preserved, and the nation of God’s people survived. Now, I would not wish to presume upon this pattern and insist that God will do likewise for us in our day. Yet, I pray He will. Yet, I pray with a certain, assured hope, that He is indeed preserving a remnant in our time, as He has ever done in times past. I can pray with absolute certainty, that He would cause His true witness to persevere. And I can pray with fear and trembling that I shall be counted among the number of that remnant. I can, in the meantime, pray fervently that this nation of ours would awake from its own national nightmare.
[02/01/09] This morning, let me begin to look at that particularly enigmatic that closes our portion from Mark. “Everyone will be salted with fire.” What? Which everyone? Are we talking about everyone in hell, or everyone period? If I say everyone period, then how does it fit together with the concept that those who belong to Christ have escaped judgment? I mean, if we still get tossed in the fire, what exactly have we gained? On the other hand, if I say everyone in hell only, then how does that jibe with the believer’s call to be made a living sacrifice (Ro 12:1)? It’s no wonder that the translations of this particular verse are so varied!
This shows far more clearly, of course, in the more paraphrastic translations, where we have a full range of possibilities presented, from the TLB’s, “in that place, all are slated with fire”, to The Message’s, “Everyone’s going through a refining fire sooner or later.” Even in the lexicons, the debate continues, with Thayer’s noting a majority opinion of sorts that takes this to mean that every True Christian is made fully prepared for communion with God by the fiery trials of affliction. Well, that is certainly true enough, but I’m still not certain that’s where Jesus is going with this particular lesson.
One thing that can be said, and ought to be observed, is that both the fire and the salt are images taken from the Law’s treatment on sacrifices. Of course, the consuming fire of the altar is fundamental to the system. One cannot roast the meat of the sacrifice without it. From the earliest times onward, the fire upon the altar has been a necessity of the offering. We see it strongly in the image of Isaac carrying the firewood for what was to be the offering up of himself upon the altar. We see it in Elijah’s challenge to the Baal worshippers. Which God will Himself come in fire to consume the offering? But, salt is also a material closely associated with the sacrifice, if less firmly fixed in our present-day images of the event.
Salt was something God required of His people. Without salt, the sacrifice was unacceptable. Well, just consider what follows in Mark’s account. “If the salt is not salty, what will you use to make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other” (Mk 9:50). Now, turn again to Romans 12:1. “I urge you by God’s mercies to present your bodies as living, holy sacrifices acceptable to God: your spiritual act of worship.” The sacrifice needs salting, don’t you see? If it has not the salt, it has not the acceptance in God’s sight. A believer that has lost his flavor is no believer, I suppose. At any rate, he is in that same lukewarm category that Jesus says He will spit out: no longer fit for consumption.
What, then, leads to the use of these two things in the sacrificial system? What leads to their symbolic power? Perhaps we can draw something of the reason from their natural applications. Considering first the fire, I have noted in the preparatory notes for this study how the very word itself bespeaks its meaning. Puri. This is the Greek term. You can look at it and see our own purity coming from this source. It can’t be missed! That’s the point of fire. It purifies. Think about the pasteurization process used to purify milk. High temperatures to kill off the bacteria – fire. Think about the fact that we by and large do not eat meat uncooked. How is it cooked, purified of whatever impurities may be within? Fire! So powerful is the purifying nature of fire that God lays claim to the name for Himself. He is the all-consuming Fire. When His fire has passed through, what remains is Pure – end of discussion.
Salt we recognize as a preservative. We can look back to the old days, when the pioneers were heading out across the western plains. They had no idea whether they would find further provisions along the way, so they brought supplies of meat with them. But, how to keep that meat edible in an unrefrigerated wagon on the summer plains? Salt! Likewise the navy. Those old ships could find themselves at sea for months on end with no land in sight. Something had to be done to feed the men, and men with no meat to eat are not men for long. What to do? Salt! Meat cooked and salted properly could keep indefinitely.
Well, now: take that back to the Christian walk, the living sacrifice. Fire has purified – the Fire of the Living God. Salt then preserves that purified state, keeps the disease of sin from creeping back in. Indeed, so powerful a preservative is that salt that it is able to stop most anything from growing. Think about it! You wanted revenge on your enemy? Salt his farmlands! They’ll never harvest another crop from that soil. That’s the dark side of the salt, as it were, but the bright side is that this same thing applies in a preservative fashion. So, look to yourself. You have been purified by the fire of God. You have been cleansed on the altar of Christ, washed by His blood and burned clean by His fire. Salt has been applied that what has once been thus cleansed shall remain so. Sin cannot grow in the soil of your flesh any longer, because the salt of God’s love has been liberally sprinkled abroad in you. Salt preserves! Is it any wonder, then, that Jesus makes a point about staying salty? It’s not about flavor. It’s about keeping the parasites from taking hold of you.
Turn back to that fire for a moment, though, and another thing appears to mind. Fire eliminates the chaff. That’s part of that purifying process. That’s part of the promise of God. When we stand before Him, our works will indeed be tested in the fire. Whatever is chaff shall be burned away, revealing the pure gold of what remains. Oh, that what remains might outweigh what is burned off! Oh, that He might be pleased by what that fire reveals, that He might find that which He paid for in blood has been preserved well by the salt of faith to be presented before Him in that day.
So, then, one question I find myself asking is whether this verse might be one upon which the concept of purgatory hinges. After all, the suggestion that all must face those eternal fires might lead one to wonder how the duration is determined. If all must have their works cleared of chaff, then a higher percentage of chaff in those works must surely be indicative of a longer purification process. I can see such a view arising from verses such as these. I can see how reasonable men might come to such a conclusion. Yet, I would find it otherwise. I would find it so, because the whole sense of what has preceded rather demands it of me.
Throughout, though Jesus has been talking to His disciples, what He has been talking of has been avoiding sin. He has been laying out the punishment for sin that they might, with that punishment in view, be more able to avoid its snares. Yet, really, it’s not even the falling for snares that He speaks of as severely as the snare-setting. It’s not the child who falls upon whom He pronounces woes, but the one who caused the child to fall. It’s not the flesh that is taken in by the temptations presented to hand and eye, but the hand and the eye that willfully, knowingly supported that temptation. The consequences, as He develops this thought, do indeed spread to the entire body, not just the sinful appendage, yet the body, He says, could have been saved had that one limb been removed.
That is actually something of a national warning, isn’t it? Or a corporate warning. We are part of the body of Christ, to be sure. We are also part of a local body or church. Yet, we have a tendency to view the sins of other members of that church, should we become aware of them, as being matters not for our concern. So long as our nose is clean, we reason, then God can deal with these others in His time and fashion. A fair part of the time, that may even be a reasonable way to deal with the matter, especially where there is any least question or doubt in our minds as to which of us may be actually the cleaner (which ought to be always, I fear). But, the reality that Jesus shows us here is far worse. If that sinful, sin pursuing limb is suffered to remain a part of the body, He says, it is the whole body that will be finding itself in the fires of eternal punishment.
This is nothing new. Just look back on the Law that was handed to Israel at the outset. Purge the sin from your camp! Don’t suffer it to remain in your midst. You must cleanse your lands of it, lest by failing to do so, it comes to be your sin as well. Indeed, let me put this much more bluntly: The failure to remove that temptation from your midst is itself a sin. To suffer the presence of sin in your vicinity unchallenged is sinful. You are leading yourself into temptation, whether you realize it or not.
We might as well continue, and take this whole message up to the national level, for the same rule clearly applies. If we suffer the sorts of sins that are becoming acceptable practice to continue in our nation; if we are not seeking with such means as are available to us to counter these sinful practices; we can expect to join in the national punishment for sin. What do I mean by that? Am I advocating legislated morality? Yes and no. I would love to see our legislation reflect a true moral foundation. However, I do not believe that such a goal is achievable until and unless the heart and soul of the nation has first rediscovered the morals such laws would reflect. It is not the power of legal injunction that is needed, but the power of the pulpit. It is the power of God’s Witness proclaimed not only in the pulpit, not only when we are safely gathered in our congregations, but out on the streets, out in the town meetings, out in the wide-open marketplace of ideas.
It will take a special sort of believer, and I am quite certain that God is not only able to prepare just that sort, but that He is actively doing so. It’s going to take an intelligent believer who can speak to the scientific community, the educated community, and those influenced by these communities on their own level, in terms they understand and respect. It’s going to take believers after the fashion of Paul, who went into the very heart of Greek philosophical debate and presented the Truth of God as in every way answering to their quest. He brought before a polytheistic, myth-ridden culture the One True God, and said, “Hey! You’ve even got a place here for the God you didn’t know about. Well, let me introduce you to Him!”
Notice the approach Paul uses: He does not belittle them for their invalid beliefs. He does not accuse them. He does not chide them as sinful heathens. No! He comes to them on their terms, with concepts fashioned by their own understanding, and he shows them how this points them to the Truth of God. He does not reject every outside voice as if it were impossible that anybody outside the Church could so much as glimpse the Truth. No! He realizes that God reveals Himself to all of creation through all of creation. Of course they are going to see something of the Truth. It is only that they do not see it so clearly as they think. So, help them see. That’s his model. That’s the model that might just restore Truth to the hearts, minds and souls of our nation once again. Apart from such a restoration, such a revival, all the laws in the world are not going to be of any use. Judgment will still fall because the only Law that matters is still ignored and violated.
One final thought on this whole passage. Our eyes are being turned repeatedly upon the eternal fires in hell, the fires of punishment. But, as I have noted, we are also, with that closing verse, forced to look upon the altar of the True God, as well, and see that there, too, there is fire. He is the All-Consuming Fire. This, too, is a flame that never can be satisfied, never shall be extinguished. When I think upon that fire which is upon the altar of God even now, I cannot help but recall the days when we shared our church building with the Jewish community who had built it as a temple.
In those first few years, they were still the true owners of that place, and they set the rules. We had use of the facilities at specific times, and we were most fully excluded from the facilities at others. One of my tasks in that period was to come of a Saturday night and set out our worship equipment. This was carefully out of sight, particularly on the Sabbath, and as this was a fairly conservative synagogue, we learned how to measure the Sabbath properly, with all due safeguards. We had the calendar that carefully specified when sunset would arrive in Jerusalem, and we learned to add the hour of safeguard this group considered law, ere we dared venture up the stairs to the sanctuary.
What I always (or most always, anyway) loved about doing this particular service was that when we had finished, and I was left alone in that sanctuary to turn out the lights, there was one light remained. Over the Torah closet was a brass lighting fixture fashioned to resemble fingers of flame rising above that revered place. Above this fixture, the mosaic image of Moses would catch the light. This light, we were given to understand in no uncertain terms, was never to be turned off. I don’t know how they dealt with bulbs burning out, for I never saw it in such a state, but presumably this had somehow been covered.
At any rate, when only this light remained on, well! It was an awesome place to sense the presence of God. Here was our weak attempt at representing His eternal flame. Here was the altar of God, ever open for those who would approach. Here was a place truly designed to lead a man to worship, to all but force him into a place of worship! Here was a temple that was built with an understanding of the power which the building would have and house. Whatever one might feel in that room by day, whatever shaking of the walls might transpire of a Sunday, to be there in the dark of night, with only the light of that eternal flame: that is the image of God’s presence to me.
That is the summation for me of what it means to truly serve in God’s house, to truly and properly lead in worship. It is when we, in our service of Him, are become so invisible that all the eye can see is His light. It is when we have as fully removed ourselves from the picture as we possibly can that God is most evident in His house, and it is only as He is evident in His house that anything about that house matters. It is only as He is manifestly present and working in His fields that there is any harvest worth mentioning.
Oh, you know? I really wish that we would restore that light. I know the folks from the temple took it with them when they left, and rightfully so. It was theirs. But, we have done a disservice to ourselves, I fear, by leaving that light extinguished. Is God, then, in the light of an electric bulb? Of course not! But, we who are entrapped in these fleshly tents as we await our redemption need every help we can get to recall the Father of Lights. We need every help we can get to help us take our eyes off of ourselves, off of our world, and focus more fully upon that heaven which is our true home, and upon our Father Who awaits us there. Yes, and assuredly, upon our Brother, our Lord, our Christ, who sits upon heaven’s throne awaiting the day we shall be reunited with Him.
