The Upper Register Blog

Have you seen Brian McLaren’s latest book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007)? Yikes, it’s a doozy. Scot McKnight has been summarizing/reviewing it on his blog. Basically McLaren asks “What are the biggest global problems we face right now?” (war, racism, genocide, poverty, global warming, and capitalism are high on his list) and then tries to restate the “gospel” in a way that it provides the answers. Using N. T. Wright’s work on Jesus as a guide, McLaren interprets Jesus’ message of the kingdom as a here-and-now solution to these global problems. In one appalling section of the book he compares the “conventional view” of the gospel with the “emerging view” (p. 78):

The Human Situation: What is the story we find ourselves in?

Conventional View: God created the world as perfect, but because our primal ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not maintain the absolute perfection demanded by God, God has irrevocably determined that the entire universe and all it contains will be destroyed, and the souls of all human beings — except for those specifically exempted — will be forever punished for their imperfection in hell.

Emerging View: God created the world as good, but human beings — as individuals, and as groups — have rebelled against God and filled the world with evil and injustice. God wants to save humanity and heal it from its sickness, but humanity is hopelessly lost and confused, like sheep without a shepherd, wandering further and further into lostness and danger. Left to themselves, human beings will spiral downward in sickness and evil.

Note that the conventional view is caricatured, as if it claims that “the entire universe and all it contains will be destroyed,” leaving only a whole bunch of immortal souls, some in hell and some in heaven. While there is some variation in the conventional view over the degree of continuity between the present creation and the new heavens and earth, all orthodox theologians follow Scripture and envision a future for creation and emphasize the glorification of the body.

As far as the emerging view goes, I find it interesting that McLaren regards the problem primarily in terms of sickness, confusion, wandering, and danger. There is a reference to “rebellion” at the beginning, but the focus is on structural sin and injustice in society, downplaying personal guilt before a holy God.

McLaren goes on to describe the solution (p. 79):

Jesus’ Message: How did Jesus respond to the crisis?

Conventional View: Jesus says, in essence, “If you want to be among those specifically qualified to escape being forever punished for your sins in hell, you must repent of your individual sins and believe that my Father punished me on the cross so he won’t have to punish you in hell. Only if you believe this will you go to heaven when the earth is destroyed and everyone else is banished to hell.” This is the good news.

Emerging View: Jesus says, in essence, “I have been sent by God with this good news — that God loves humanity, even in its lostness and sin. God graciously invites everyone and anyone to turn from his or her current path and follow a new way. Trust me and become my disciple, and you will be transformed, and you will participate in the transformation of the world, which is possible, beginning right now.” This is the good news.

Again, distortion. McLaren’s crass characterization of the atonement hints that he agrees with some of the criticisms currently being leveled against penal substitutionary atonement — it sanctions violence, it pits the Father against the Son, it is cosmic child abuse, and/or it does not reflect God’s love. McLaren ignores the Trinitarian and Chalcedonian context of the atonement which orthodoxy has always maintained. The Father loves the Son, even when the Son is undergoing divine wrath for us, for the Father is most exalted and most pleased by his Son’s obedience unto death. Furthermore, the giving up of his Son to bear divine wrath in order to satisfy divine justice is an expression of the Father’s own love for sinners.

With regard to his own view, notice the inherent moralism of his gospel. One simply changes his or her current path and becomes a disciple of Jesus with the goal of trying to transform the world. In other words, repentance means switching from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, switching from being a gas-guzzling, capitalist consumer to a Prius-driving, recycling, African-orphan-adopting, war protestor.

Further clarification is provided in the next section (pp. 79-80):

Purpose of Jesus: Why is Jesus important?

Conventional View: Jesus came to solve the problem of “original sin,” meaning that he helps qualified individuals not to be sent to hell for their sin or imperfection. In a sense, Jesus saves these people from God, or more specifically, from the righteous wrath of God, which sinful human beings deserve because they have not perfectly fulfilled God’s just expectations, expressed in God’s moral laws. This escape from punishment is not something they earn or achieve, but rather a free gift they receive as an expression of God’s grace and love. Those who receive it enjoy a personal relationship with God and seek to serve and obey God, which produces a happier life on Earth and more rewards in heaven.

Emerging View: Jesus came to become the Savior of the world, meaning he came to save the earth and all it contains from its ongoing destruction because of human evil. Through his life and teaching, through his suffering, death, and resurrection, he inserted into human history a seed of grace, truth, and hope that can never be defeated. This seed will, against all opposition and odds, prevail over the evil and injustice of humanity and lead to the world’s ongoing transformation into the world God dreams of. All who find in Jesus God’s hope and truth discover the privilege of participating in his ongoing work of personal and global transformation and liberation from evil and injustice. As part of his transforming community, they experience liberation from the fear of death and condemnation. This is not something they earn or achieve, but rather a free gift they receive as an expression of God’s grace and love.

McLaren gets the conventional view right when he says that Jesus saves people from the righteous wrath of God, a view that he obviously rejects. I’m not sure about the comment at the end that obeying God produces a happier life on earth; that may be true of the prosperity gospel, but biblical Christianity teaches that suffering, cross-bearing, self-denial, and dealing with adversity are an integral part of what it means to live in union with Christ.

Regarding his own view, I love the slogan that Jesus came to save the earth. Apparently, this is meant literally. Why not say, Jesus came to save the whales. Or, Jesus came to solve global warming. Or, Jesus came to prevent genocide. If that is why he came, his coming doesn’t seem to have been terribly effective. Of course, the orthodox view does affirm that all evil will be expunged from this physical creation and that a renewed, glorified creation will emerge out of the fires of judgment at the end of time. But that is something that we must patiently wait for at the parousia of Christ. We cannot work for it.

In addition, McLaren never answers his own question, “Why is Jesus important?” If God’s goal was to plant a seed of grace that will prevail to overcome all the evil and injustice in this world, why was the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God necessary? If the conventional view is correct, that Jesus came to accomplish the salvation of the elect through the atonement, then the incarnation, death, and resurrection make sense. But if the emerging view is correct, there is no reason for it. On McLaren’s view, Jesus would seem to be relevant merely in the sense that he taught some good things about loving our neighbors, turning the other cheek, and being non-violent. But there would seem to be no evident need for the pre-existent Son of God to be born of a virgin, to take a true human nature into personal union with himself, to become obedient to the point of death thus undergoing the wrath of God in our place, to be raised on the third day, and to be vindicated and exalted at the right hand of God. That’s a pretty elaborate metaphysical Rube-Goldberg machine on McLaren’s view. All God really needed to do, in Bob Newhart fashion, was to send a new prophet to tell the planet-destroying, violent, racist, capitalist world to “Stop it!”

I also detect a hint of Open Theism here. God is working with the world and with us in order that we might together create the world that God dreams of. God isn’t a coercive God. So he invites us participate with him in this creative, transformative enterprise. We don’t know if it will work, but we can know that God aches over the pain, evil, suffering, and injustice in the world as much as we do. But we have hope because Jesus planted a seed that will grow — if we nurture it.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather stick with the “old, old story” of personal guilt, God’s holy wrath, Christ’s atonement (obedience unto death), and the hope of the resurrection. Yes, Christians ought to be deeply involved in doing good deeds that are helpful to our neighbors — all kinds of good works, from adopting unwanted babies, to seeking racial reconciliation in our communities, and even to recycling if need be. But we do so in order to bring glory to Christ and to adorn the gospel, not to save the earth. We leave that job to Christ at the end of the age.

HT: Way of the Master

David Kirkpatrick’s recent article The Evangelical Crackup in the NYT is worth reading. He cites various reasons to hope that the Religious Right’s stranglehold on the Republican Party may be showing signs of loosening. The article cites a number of factors that might be behind this:  disillusionment with the war in Iraq, the passing of the first generation of Religious Right leaders, and churches growing weary of holy war sermons to rally the troops for yet another anti-abortion or anti-gay political campaign.

But there is a troubling dimension to this alleged crackup. The most important factor that Kirkpatrick cites is the rise of the evangelical left, of which emergent is a significant part. This is a very real phenomenon that we must come to grips with. They tend to hold policy positions similar to those of the Democratic Party with a focus on tax-supported, governmental solutions to poverty, health care, and so on. The problem is not with the positions per se, which could be argued pro and con on rational, secular, evidence-based grounds. The problem is the way the evangelical left attempts to theologically justify their policy positions by proof texts — typically, in the case of care for the poor, to various measures that were instituted in the theocracy of Israel. In addition, denizens of the evangelical left also tend to be committed pacifists in the Mennonite-Anabaptist tradition (I’ve seen this at Fuller). So one finds regular appeals to the Sermon on the Mount, as if turning the other cheek was Jesus’ carefully crafted position on how nation-states ought to engage in foreign relations.

The one area where I tend to resonate with the evangelical left is when they critique the theocrats on the Religious Right. But then they completely lose me when they simply exchange a theocracy of the right for a theocracy of the left. So even if a crackup is in the offing, it may not make much of a difference from the point of view of those like myself who hold that civil government ought to be religiously neutral. We’ll just have Republican theocrats and Democratic theocrats duking it out over “what theocracy would Jesus do” (WTWJD).

The evangelical left includes people like Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis, Rick Warren and now even Bill Hybels. Quoting now from the Kirkpatrick piece:

[Hybels] described the message of his Willow Creek Association to its member churches in terms that would warm a liberal’s heart.

“We have just pounded the drum again and again that, for churches to reach their full redemptive potential, they have to do more than hold services — they have to try to transform their communities,” he said. “If there is racial injustice in your community, you have to speak to that. If there is educational injustice, you have to do something there. If the poor are being neglected by the government or being oppressed in some way, then you have to stand up for the poor.”

I can’t help but comment here. Full redemptive potential? What the heck is this guy smoking? Even if we succeed in making a difference in our communities by helping the poor or getting improved schools, we have only succeeded in helping on a this-worldly plane. We have not redeemed the culture. True redemption is eschatological and ushers us into the world to come. It cannot be effected by tinkering with this world.

Furthermore, how can we even begin to say that the church has redemptive potential? Don’t we preach that we have no redemptive potential in ourselves, and that our only hope of redemption is found in Christ and his cross and resurrection? “We do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Cor 4:5). Yes, we can and must preach Christ, not only with words, but also with good deeds that bring glory to Christ. Paul even exhorts Titus to “speak confidently” so that his people will be zealous to engage in good deeds which he describes as “good and profitable for men” (Tit 3:8). But “having redemptive potential” isn’t mentioned. Our good works can “adorn” the gospel (Tit 2:10) but they are not the gospel.

Okay, back to Kirkpatrick’s reporting: 

In the past, Hybels has scrupulously avoided criticizing conservative Christian political figures like Falwell or Dobson. But in my talk with him, he argued that the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement had lost touch with their base. “The Indians are saying to the chiefs, ‘We are interested in more than your two or three issues,’ ” Hybels said. “We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world.”

He brought up the Rev. Jim Wallis, the lonely voice of the tiny evangelical left. Wallis has long argued that secular progressives could make common cause with theologically conservative Christians. “What Jim has been talking about is coming to fruition,” Hybels said.

Conservative Christian leaders in Washington acknowledge a “leftward drift” among evangelicals, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and the movement’s chief advocate in Washington. He told me he believed that Hybels and many of his admirers had, in effect, fallen away from orthodox evangelical theology. Perkins compared the phenomenon to the century-old division in American Protestantism between the liberal mainline and the orthodox evangelical churches. “It is almost like another split coming within the evangelicals,” he said.

In a forum on the state of evangelicalism over at Touchstone magazine, Darryl Hart seconds the motion and also sees the handwriting on the wall:

Arguably the greatest tension within Evangelicalism currently concerns the movement’s relationship to electoral politics. The older generation of Evangelical spokesmen, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, is gradually being replaced (informally and mainly through the mainstream media) by a younger generation, including people like Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Jim Wallis.

The younger (though hardly youthful) Evangelical leaders are reluctant to participate in the culture wars and have embraced causes fairly distinct from those that defined the Religious Right. A Left-Right political struggle could well be the next fault-line within Evangelicalism.

I didn’t know that New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III (BW3) had studied under Meredith G. Kline (MGK) at Gordon Conwell. He summarizes Kline’s influence on his own thinking, particularly Kline’s analysis of the ANE suzerainty treaties. It’s great to see this, but I need to point out that I don’t think he quite gets Kline right at every point. For example, he says that all biblical covenants are vassal covenants with blessings and curses, whereas Kline would clearly distinguish between two types of covenants — law covenants and promise covenants. Still, he does have some good things to say, including this good comment on the relationship between the old and the new covenants with respect to stipulations or law:

When a new covenant is inaugurated, a suzerain may choose to carry over some of the promises and stipulations and sanctions into the new covenant, as well as adding to them new promises, stipulations, and sanctions. One of the reasons Christians get confused about the relationship of the old and new covenant is that they both have some of the same rules and regulations and features. This is hardly surprising since God, who makes these covenants, has not changed in character.

But it needs to be stressed, that only those commandments given as a part of the new covenant are binding on Christians. Thus for instance, Christians are not obligated to keep the sabbath, food laws, and a host of other stipulations we find in Leviticus. On the other hand, Christians are obligated to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and leave retaliation or vengeance entirely in the hands of God. This is a striking difference between the old and new covenants. The reason why Christians keep the commandment — ‘No adultery’ is because Jesus stipulated it was part of his law for his disciples. Not because it is part of the ten commandments. In fact Jesus basically reaffirmed most of the ten commandments, but not the sabbath commandment.

HT:  In Light of the Gospel 

One of the cool things about working with my Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Hagner, is that he was a student of George Eldon Ladd back in his seminary days. So through Hagner I have been (re-)introduced to Ladd’s work on the kingdom, which I think still stands. Ladd defines the kingdom in terms of the already/not-yet dynamic: 

Our central thesis is that the Kingdom of God is the redemptive reign of God dynamically active to establish his rule among human beings, and that this Kingdom, which will appear as an apocalyptic act at the end of the age, has already come into human history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil, to deliver people from its power, and to bring them into the blessings of God’s reign. The Kingdom of God involves two great moments:  fulfillment within history, and consummation at the end of history … The Kingdom that is to come finally in apocalyptic power, as foreseen by Daniel, has in fact entered the world in advance in a hidden form to work secretly within and among human beings … This is the mystery of the Kingdom.

[George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (rev. ed., ed. D. A. Hagner; Eerdmans, 1993), pp. 89-92.]

I highly recommend this as one of the best New Testament theologies out there. Yes, it is a bit dated in parts, but Hagner did a good job revising it.

A brief follow-up on my previous post. In the essay I quoted yesterday, William Abraham ponders the potential impact of inclusivism on evangelicalism. This is something that occupies only two brief sentences — one at the very beginning and one at the very end.

At the beginning (p. 131), he points out that, while inclusivism is the working ideology of the mainline churches, it’s not at present very influential among evangelicals, at least not in the driven, abusive sense described by Abraham. Nevertheless, it has the potential to be, since …

evangelicals readily pick up on the agendas of the mainline in a decade, or maybe a generation or so, after they have been readily accepted elsewhere.

Then at the end Abraham says (p. 145):

It is the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, which alone can save us from our corruption and idolatry. We can surely hope that evangelicals will be assiduous in ensuring that this medicine is kept available for all who seek its healing.

I hope evangelicals will be assiduous in preserving the medicine of the gospel. But I’m not sure how many of them really feel their need. The truths of the gospel — the atonement, justification, sanctification, assurance – are a healing balm only to those that know their spiritual need before a holy God. Many evangelicals appear to be too preoccupied with transforming the city of man through lefty politics and a revived social gospel (e.g., Brian McLaren, Red Letter Christians, etc.) to care about preserving any soul-healing medicine for Professor Abraham. 

William J. Abraham is a professor of Wesley Studies at the Perkins School of Theology at SMU. He does not self-identify as an evangelical, but he has a great article in an evangelical multi-author book on ecclesiology edited by two Wheaton guys. In the article, Professor Abraham analyzes the malaise of the mainline churches in the United States, drawing extensively from his experience in the United Methodist Church. While fully embracing the stand of the mainline churches against racism and patriarchy, he is fed up with the way these original protests have taken on a life of their own and evolved into an idolatrous pursuit of inclusivism as the end-all and be-all of the church.

Here are some excerpts from his insightful analysis. I think it’s fair to say that he doesn’t pull any punches!

(1) The origins of inclusivism (p. 133):

How did this call to inclusivism arise? Clearly the origins of inclusivism lie, as far as the recent past is concerned, in the quest to rid the world of racism and patriarchy in the social revolution of the sixties. Inclusivism began life as a response to racism, the doctrine that white races are superior to black races, and to patriarchy, the doctrine that men are essentially superior to women.

(2) How inclusivism migrated (pp. 133-34):

In time inclusivism migrated as a solution to other forms of oppression and exclusion … As the boundaries of exclusion were extended and other victim groups were added to the initial list, it is easy to see how inclusivism became de facto the orthodoxy of modern mainline Protestantism.

(3) Current characteristics of inclusivism

a. It has become a new oppression (pp. 134, 136):

The morally charged nature of our situation makes it virtually impossible to question the place of inclusivism in the life of the church, society or academy. Reformers will immediately be castigated as racists and oppressors … What began as an effort to include excluded minorities and women becomes over time an instrument of exclusion silencing those who want to raise fundamental questions about crucial moral, educational and theological proposals in the church … Truth be told, some among the oppressed have rapidly turned into oppressors … The march to progress becomes relentless, systematic, blind, pharisaical, self-righteous and manipulative.

b. It is ultimately a form of idolatry (p. 137):

When we worship together now in mainline corporate settings, the first question before us is not whether God is present but whether the right range of diversity is present … One T-shirt recently captured the limiting case for me when it noted that embracing diversity was embracing God. At this point we are on the edge of idolatry. We have made a god of ourselves, putting our varied identities at the core of our worship.

c. It engenders a poisonous moralism (p. 138):

What has happened overall is that a virulent form of moralism has poisoned the church … Those driven by moralism have great difficulty seeing that their moralism can readily turn into self-serving idolatry. A spiritual egocentrism develops that becomes virtually incurable; it is as if moral endeavor excuses moral blindness.

d. It fosters a misplaced sense of identity (p. 140):

The kind of identity promised in the gospel and in baptism has been trumped by our biological and ethnic identities. We are first identified in terms of race, gender and ethnicity and only secondarily identified in terms of faith and baptism.

(4) Strategies for combatting abusive inclusivism:

a. Voting with one’s feet (pp. 143):

When inclusivism elbows out the great mercy of God and usurps the place of the cross in the gospel, ordinary believers readily slip away and find food for their souls elsewhere … In the limiting case, where things are hopelessly out of order, say, in one’s local church, then one can simply leave and go elsewhere. In cases where there is a real danger to one’s spiritual life, I would not hesitate to endorse such a strategy.

b. Reinstating the gospel (pp. 143-44):

The best antidote to abusive and self-serving forms of inclusivism is to reinstate the gospel at the core of the church’s life … When it comes to our turn to speak, we can change the subject and return to the first order of discourse of the gospel. We can immerse ourselves in the great themes of the gospel; we can drink afresh from the mercy of God in the cross; we can ensure that the full faith of the church is tended to and taught; we can lift up Christ like the serpent in the wilderness and watch him draw all to himself; we can cry out for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church; we can do all we can to ensure that the sacraments are duly administered; we can pray without ceasing for the comprehensive renewal of the whole people of God.

[William J. Abraham, “Inclusivism, Idolatry and the Survival of the (Fittest) Faithful,” pp. 131-45 in The Community of the Word: Toward an Evangelical Ecclesiology, eds. Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity; Leicester: Apollos, 2005).]

Under 4a, one might add that entire congregations can vote with their feet too. This is happening in the PC(USA) where a number of conservative congregations are voting to withdraw and join the EPC’s transitional presbytery. (Thanks to EPC Pastor David Fischler for providing these updates on his blog, Reformed Pastor.)

Here’s a Google Map of the 20 or so fires in Southern California. Since I live and work in the urban core of LA, we’re not directly affected. But we are ringed on all sides, as it was back in October 2003. And as you might expect, the air quality is really bad, even dangerous for those with asthma. The following satellite image was taken on 10-22-07.

Peter O’Brien has a good article defending the idea that Paul was converted, contra the New Perspective theory that he was merely called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. Commenting on Phil 3:8ff, he has this to say about Paul’s Christ-focused piety:

Central to the total reorientation of Paul’s life is his understanding of Christ Jesus his Lord. As he contrasts his past in terms of boasting in the flesh, his matchless Jewish credentials and his own righteousness achieved through obedience to the law, with his present situation as one who has received God’s righteousness as a gift through faith in Christ, Paul asserts that Christ is the decisive difference who has now become the center of his life (v.8) … With great warmth and deep personal devotion that breathes through the whole expression Paul writes of the incomparable value of his personal relationship with Christ Jesus his Lord (διὰ τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ κυρίου μου, v.8). Then, using parallel and overlapping expressions he speaks of his ultimate aims in terms of Christ, namely, his knowing him fully, gaining him completely, and being found in him perfectly (v. 9). He enlarges his desire to know Christ fully by speaking of his knowing the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings in the everyday events of his own life (v. 10). While Paul participates in Christ’s sufferings, the tribulations through which every Christian must pass, so he desires to understand and experience the life-giving power of God. Paul enters into a deeper relationship with his Lord and thus becomes more like him each day, being continually conformed to Christ’s death.

[Peter T. O’Brien, “Was Paul Converted?” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, Volume 2 — The Paradoxes of Paul, eds. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 374-75, emphasis added.]

Four observations on Phil 3:8:

(1) The word γνῶσις here clearly means “experiential, personal, intimate knowledge,” what we would call ”a relationship.” For example, in Rom 3:20 Paul says that “through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.” This doesn’t mean merely that through the Law we come to have an intellectual understanding of the difference between right and wrong, though that is true. Rather, through the Law we come to realize just how sinful we are, just how bankrupt we are. In fact, we can know the difference between right and wrong through other means besides the Law (e.g., God’s revelation in creation and conscience, Rom 1:20; 2:14-15). Paul’s point in Rom 3:20 is that when we try to keep the Law and fail, that is when the power of sin is experienced, felt, and brought home to our hearts. So with “knowledge” in Phil 3:8. Paul has not been gripped by a series of doctrines but by a person, the living Christ himself. 

(2) Paul says that this is the most valuable thing in the world: “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” There is nothing that can compare with this personal knowledge of Christ. It is “the unsurpassable, incomparable thing” (τὸ ὑπερέχον). There is nothing greater than knowing Christ Jesus in this way. All of Paul’s religious heritage and accomplishments are rubbish in comparison with this.

(3) To make sure we get the point, Paul adds a personalized phrase at the end:  “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (τοῦ κυρίου μου). Of course, all Christians confess that “Jesus is Lord.” We all confess that he has been exalted to the right hand of God as cosmic Lord of all creation, that every knee will bow to him. But do I believe that he is my Lord? Am I conscious of the fact that I, personally, Lee Irons, have been purchased with his blood and am now his bond-servant, and that he is my personal Master, Lord, Head, and Sovereign? Do I feel my personal allegiance to him? Do I go about my daily tasks in the awareness that I am serving my Lord, doing his will, seeking his approval? Paul said there is nothing greater that knowing Christ Jesus as one’s personal Lord.

(4) Paul is setting himself forth as an example. He wants the Philippian Christians to imitate him in his Christ-focused piety. This is made clear by the context. In vv. 2-3 he is giving the Philippians a prophylactic warning gainst the Judaizers who may approach them in the future with their blandishments, as they did in Galatia. He is saying, in effect, “Don’t be taken in by their law-centric piety. Getting circumcised and taking on the law may seem attractive. It has an outward show of glamorous piety, but in reality it is worthless. I should know, because I’ve been there and done that. I was even a member of the Pharisees, the strictest sect of Judaism. But I have traded all of that in for something that cannot be surpassed, a personal relationship with Christ.” The fact that Paul is describing his Christ-focused piety in vv. 8-11 in order to set an example is confirmed a little later in v. 17:  “Brothers, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.” He sets himself forth as an “example” and “pattern.”

Let us imitate Paul in his Christ-focused piety. Let us consider all other things to be dung in view of the incomparable value of knowing Christ Jesus as our personal Lord.

If you’re tempted to see a nouthetic counselor, save your money and watch Bob Newhart channel Jay Adams.