Less than a Fool

1 Corinthians 3:16 – Don’t you realize that you yourselves are God’s temple? “Welcome to the house of the Lord!” “It’s so good to be in God’s house today!” Every Sunday at church I hear some variation on this phrase – usually more than once. It’s so much a part of Christian vocabulary and it flows from our mouths so naturally that we don’t even think about it. Why do Christians speak as if God’s house were a building? Not only is it unscriptural, but it also has some important and damaging implications. In the Old Testament, the tabernacle (in the wilderness and the early years of Israel’s independence) and later the temple (during the monarchy) was God’s house. Of course, this is no longer true. When Jesus came both he and the New Testament authors recognized that God lived in Jesus much more fully than He had lived in the temple (John 2:21, Colossians 2:9) . When Jesus left Earth he promised his disciples that the Holy Spirit would come to live in them, thus making the...

  Mark 12:31 – Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. I was talking with my friend at church and the LGBTQ issue came up. “I love them but I don’t accept them,” he said. “We shouldn’t accept sin in other people.” Is he right? Should we, or should we not, accept sin in other people? Well, we accept sin in ourselves, don’t we? Every day I see sin and failure in my life, and yet I accept myself. Why? Because God accepts me. God has accepted me into his kingdom. God has accepted me into his family. At the cross, my sins were placed on Christ and his righteousness was imparted to me. God chose me, forgave me, loves me, and shares his glory with me. In God’s eyes I am just as righteous as Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21) . Doesn’t God know that I’m sinful? Isn’t he aware that I sin every day? Yes – but he chooses to forgive and forget and accept me “just as I am.” He didn’t wait for me to overcome all of my sins before accepting me. If God accepts me despite my sin, how can I refuse to ...

  1 Timothy 2:12 – I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet. A few months ago I was in a Bible study on Colossians 3:18-25. Verse 18 says, “Wives, submit to your husbands.” The teacher (who was, of course, a man) carefully explained that a wife’s submission to her husband is a picture of the church’s submission to Christ, and although the world disagrees, the wife’s duty to submit transcends cultural norms. After all, male superiority is part of the natural order of creation since man was created first and Eve was created for Adam. However, let’s look at the teacher’s rationale more carefully. First, what about the woman’s submission as part of the natural order of creation? The teacher conveniently ignored the fact that Christ came to reverse the curse of sin, and female submission is part of the curse – after all, Eve was not told to submit to Adam until after they both had sinned. It’s true that Eve sinned first – I suppose...