Previously, we have seen that God speaks to us through His written Word. How we access this Word can come in many media, be it through reading the written words, or hearing it spoken through others. But regardless of medium, God still speaks to us today through His Word.
And we get to speak with God too.
Definition 1. In the Old Testament, to pray means to ask of God to act. The content of what was prayed is called a prayer.
Remark 1. In some Christian traditions, to “pray” means to “ask of”, regardless of subject. Therefore, the phrase “praying to (Saint)” communicates the idea of “asking of (Saint)”, which does not immediately imply a worship of (Saint). Consistent with an older use of English, Catholic Christians, for instance, “pray to Mary” in this sense, rather than as an act of regarding Mary as God. More often in modern culture, however, the subject of the word “pray” is almost always exclusively reserved for divine beings and deities. Therefore, we will adopt this convention as per Definition 1.
Remark 2. As with other blog posts, we use the English Standard Version’s (ESV) use of the word “pray”. Other translations in contemporary English may render other words as “pray” as well.
Lemma 1. The Old Testament records for us many known and named individuals who prayed to God, who listens to their prayer by taking action.
Proof. We have the following non-exhaustive list:
Now then, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live…Then Abrahamprayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. [Genesis 20:7; 17]
So Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to sacrifice to the LORD your God in the wilderness; only you must not go very far away. Plead for me.”…So Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the LORD. And the LORD did as Moses asked, and removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people; not one remained. [Exodus 8:28; 30–31]
Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant (i.e. Solomon) and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day…And the LORD said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever… [1 Kings 8:27; 9:3]
The literary pattern of the Bible, and the Old Testament therefore, is that humans pray to God by asking of Him to take action, and God listens to them by taking action.
Lemma 2. There are moments when God listens to one’s prayer, but His responsive action is to delay His response.
Proof. The prophet Daniel prays that God will restore the kingdom of Israel, since the prophet Jeremiah’s prophecy seems to have been fulfilled:
Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, “…Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate.” [Daniel 9:3–4; 17]
However, God responds to Daniel by delaying his request:
He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, “O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved. Therefore consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks (i.e. 490 years) are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place…” [Daniel 9:22–24]
Jesus Himself prayed to the Father that He might not go to the cross:
And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” [Mark 14:36]
God responded to Jesus by doing the Father’s will: bringing Him to and through the cross, by which the world has the real possibility of being saved:
…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. [Hebrews 12:2]
How then, ought we pray to God? Funnily enough, this is the exact same question that Jesus’ disciples asked Him:
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” [Luke 11:1]
And while non-exhaustive, the famous ‘Lord’s Prayer’ or ‘Our Father’ offers a good starting point on how we can and should pray to God our Father.
Theorem 1. Jesus teaches us to pray to God our Father by asking Him for good gifts, and in particular, the following:
God’s holiness and His kingdom to come into our world,
God’s generous provision of our all of our daily needs, including
The forgiveness of sins and debts in us by Him, and around us by us.
Furthermore, we can, and should ask Him confidently, who delights to give good gifts to His children.
Proof. The passage in Luke 11:1–13 highlights these ideas.
“Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” [Luke 11:2–4]
Furthermore, Luke 11:5–13 emphasises God’s eagerness and delight to act upon His children’s prayers for good gifts:
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” [Luke 11:13]
The Bible Project expands on this prayer and how God even answers Jesus’ prayers through it.
Remark 3. The Gospel of Matthew also records a similar prayer and discourse (Matthew 6:5–15; 7:7–11), which includes many of Jesus’ other teachings that, reasonably, He has repeated many times and that His disciples have internalised thoroughly before they recorded it down in writing.
However, prayer is not our only way of relating to God. Prayer is one kind of speaking to God, and is by no means the only kind of speech we can and should make to Him.
Lemma 3. The Old Testament records for us many known and named individuals who spoke with God in dialogue, yet are not called “prayers”.
Proof. We have the following non-exhaustive list:
Abraham answered and said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes…” [Genesis 18:27]
Moses saidto the LORD, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ [Exodus 33:12]
You have said, “Seek my face.” My (i.e. King David) heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.” [1 Kings 8:27; 9:3]
Admittedly, these are three very different forms of speaking to God. Abraham spoke to the LORD as a human (Genesis 18:1–2). Moses spoke to the LORD as a friend (Exodus 33:11). David spoke to the LORD as his God (2 Samuel 7:18). Yet, in all three cases, these men spoke to God, though the Bible does not use the word “pray” to describe their interaction.
Remark 4. The purpose of Lemma 3 is not to dissuade us from praying; rather it clarifies that many individuals in the Old Testament has spoken to and with God, and in the special case they ask of God, they are said to be praying to Him. If anything, it should imply that it is plausible that we engage God in conversation, including but not limited to requests.
Theorem 2. Many people in the New Testament spoke with God in dialogue.
Proof. Since Jesus is God, any person who spoke with Jesus did, in fact, speak with God. Some acknowledged it:
And those in the boat worshiped him (i.e. Jesus), saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” [Matthew 14:33]
Some doubted it:
The disciples of John reported all these things to him. And John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord (i.e. Jesus), saying, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” [Luke 7:18–19]
Others resented it:
And the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death. [Mark 14:63–64]
And finally, at least one doubter repented and believed it:
Thomas answered him (i.e. Jesus), “My Lord and my God!” [John 20:28]
But they did, in fact, converse with the living God, since Jesus is God.
Theorem 3. Today, we get to speak to God in dialogue, and when we ask of Him, that is called prayer. If we are in Christ, we can be confident that God will take action in response to all of our prayers.
Proof. We get to speak to God, since God is all-present and all-knowing:
O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. [Psalm 139:1–3]
Furthermore, Christians have God the Spirit living in and among them:
For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. [1 Thessalonians 4:7–8]
Therefore, Jesus calls all Christians, through the Holy Spirit, His friends:
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. [John 15:15]
Therefore, we get to dialogue with God through His Words as recorded by His apostles:
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you (i.e the apostles) into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
Because God lives in us, we can and should pray to God, and He will gladly respond to our prayer by granting our every God-willed request:
In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you….In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. [John 16:23; 26–27]
Previously, we have seen that God is a God of love and a God of truth, therefore a God of righteousness. We have also seen how He has created us to be His images, and we rebelliously usurp His authority in vain, plunging ourselves into a suffering of our own making.
In His mercy, God solved our sin-problem—both our sin-debt against Him (i.e. our crimes against a holy and righteous God) and our sin-addiction as its result (i.e. our helplessness in worsening our desire to rebel against Him). He sent Jesus to die on the cross, removing our sin-debt before God and declaring us as having right-standing (i.e. made righteous) before Him.
For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. [Romans 3:22–25]
Furthermore, He has given us His life-giving Spirit that empowers us to live free from our sin-addiction:
For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. [Romans 8:13]
Accordingly, then, what are we here for?
Theorem 1. We are here to be eternal living monuments to the glorious grace of God through delighting in a personal intimate relationship with the Triune God of all Creation—Father, Son, and Spirit.
Proof. God calls us to be His children—one of the most intimate forms of relationship that we can experience on earth.
In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. [Ephesians 1:4–6]
Jesus describes eternal life as knowing God—that is, having a personal intimate relationship with God:
And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. [John 17:3]
The Apostle Paul even likens the closeness of this relationship to marriage between Jesus and the church:
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. [Ephesians 5:31–32]
God has designed this life to be vibrant, joyful, and thus delightful:
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasuresforevermore. [Psalm 16:11]
Theorem 2. We are here to establish God’s kingdom on earth by loving one another and living out distinctively good conduct before others, living free from our otherwise inescapable sin-addiction.
Proof. Jesus didn’t describe God’s kingdom as disjoint from the world; rather He describes God’s kingdom invading the sin-marred world:
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. [Matthew 6:10]
The Apostle Paul describes this kingdom as one brimming with rightness, peace, and joy:
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. [Romans 14:17]
God’s ideals for human living are detailed in His laws, and His laws are summarised by loving one another:
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. [Romans 13:8–10]
In a similar vein, Jesus’ reiterated commands to His new kingdom citizens are, centrally, to love one another, because He first loved them. Through their love for one another, others will recognise their citizenship in heaven:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” [John 13:34–35]
Therefore, as we love one another, we shine God’s good light to the world, and let the world see God’s glory through our good works:
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. [Matthew 5:14–16]
Even rebels of God’s kingdom would have no reason to accuse us in that case:
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. [1 Peter 2:11–12]
Theorem 3. We are here to spread the good news of Jesus wherever we go—the good news that through His death and resurrection, He offers us new citizenship in His Kingdom.
Proof. The final marching orders Jesus gave His disciples (and by extension, the rest of us) is to make disciples everywhere:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:16–20]
Jesus’ response to His disciples wondering about the restoration of the kingdom of Israel is the call to bear witness that He died and resurrected, and now is the way for all of humanity to be saved:
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” [Acts 1:6–8]
Notice that Theorems 1–3 make no mention of what specific form we should adopt to carry out these tasks. That is because the kingdom of God transcends different forms to establish it, and centres on bringing God’s blessing to the nations through one man:
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:1–3]
As human history unfolds, we learn that this individual is the Lord Jesus Christ:
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. [Matthew 1:1]
Furthermore, this Jesus did not come to abolish human cultures; but unite them in Himself as one people under God’s kingdom family, full of their diverse flavour that harmonises into a single unified beauty before God:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” [Revelation 7:9–10]
The “right” way to approach God, then is through Christ in our inner life and our outer life:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. [Romans 12:1–2]
Theorem 4. We are to wait excitedly for the day of Jesus’ return, where He will fully bring His kingdom onto earth—the same kingdom that He inaugurated in His first coming.
Proof. When Jesus ascended, two men in white robes assured the disciples of Jesus’ eventual return:
And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” [Acts 1:9–11]
The Apostle Paul did not teach moralistic good deeds, but good deeds in anticipation of Jesus’ return, almost as if we are to live the values of the kingdom even as we wait for the kingdom to fully arrive:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. [Titus 2:11–14]
Finally, in this kingdom, God will dwell fully with His people forever, and rid the world of all evil and suffering:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” [Revelation 21:1–4]
Different denominations in Trinitarian Christianity will differ on what expressions suffice as acceptable worship before God, but would all mostly agree in Theorems 1–4 as we have highlighted, summarised in the words of the Apostle John:
By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. [1 John 4:17–19]
Corollary 1 hopefully summarises the previous discussions sufficiently.
Corollary 1. The purpose of man is to worship God by imaging God, and namely, become more like Jesus—God the Son.
Proof. God defines human beings as made in the image of God:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:26–27]
Furthermore, they are predestined to image His Son:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. [Romans 8:29]
This relationship agrees with Theorem 1, and the acts of love it produces accords with Theorem 2. In this manner, we worship God:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. [Romans 12:1–2]
This is, after all things are said and done, the whole duty of man before God:
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. [Ecclesiastes 12:13–14]
Theorems 3 and 4 describe outward acts such worship toward God produces.
Having laid out the core essentials of God, us, and why we are here, let’s take a slightly deeper look into Christianity, and explore several crucial themes discussed throughout the Bible.
For a start, we will explore what it means to be the people of God, what that looked like in the Old Testament, and how the Old Testament ideas connect into the New Testament reality of being saved by Jesus.
One of the goals of these blog posts is to establish that God speaks through His Words, and His Words are recorded for us in the Bible—namely, the Protestant Old Testament and the New Testament. We remark that God’s words cannot contradict, so that any source claiming to speak God’s words and yet contradicts these written revelations discredit their own claims.
Furthermore, we remark that we make no comment on the Apocrypha or the Deuterocanon, since Christians from various disagree on their validity (i.e. canonicity), but all agree on the Protestant Old Testament minimally. All Christians agree on the New Testament.
Lemma 1. Using contemporary labelling, the Old Testament consists of 39 books.
Proof. The Old Testament is also known as the TaNaK; where each consonant abbreviates each chunk in the Old Testament: Torah (Ta), Nevi’im (Na), and Ketuvim (K). In more contemporary terms, the Torah is known as the Law or theTeaching, the Nevi’im is known as theProphets, and the Ketuvim is known as the Writings:
The Torah recounts Israel’s origin story as a society whose God is the LORD, who gives Israel life-giving instructions that lead to a kind of blessed living that sets them apart from every other nation. It consists of 5 books titled in English as follows: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The Nevi’im describe Israel’s national history, from the Promised Land to the kingdom’s rise and fall, and the prophetic rebukes and encouragements in-between. It consists of the following 6 + 3 + 12 = 21 books: Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel,2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.
The Ketuvim details Israel’s accumulated wisdom in its many various genres across vast time periods, like songs, pithy sayings, existential crises, as well as post-exilic recounts. It consists of the following 3 + 5 + 5 = 13 books: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles.
In total, using contemporary labels, the Old Testament consists of 5 + 21 + 13 = 39 books.
The Bible Project summarises the core storyline of the Old Testament below:
While they are all related, some books are more closely related than others, and these relations are detailed in Remark 1 below.
Remark 1. We note the following technical remarks for some of the aforementioned books:
1 Samuel and 2 Samuel is written as one book ‘Samuel’ but split into two due to scroll length.
Likewise with 1 Kings and 2 Kings and 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles.
The books Hosea through Malachi are grouped as ‘the Twelve’ and, cumulatively, have a similar total length to the other prophetic books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) each.
The Ketuvim is sometimes referred to as the Psalms since the largest book Psalms (a collection of 150 songs), opens the Ketuvim.
Ezra and Nehemiah are actually one single piece of post-Babylonian work, un-creatively labeled ‘Ezra-Nehemiah’.
Finally, Chronicles has nontrivial overlap with Samuel and Kings, but is written as an abbreviated history of Israel’s history in anticipation of the future Messiah.
Remark 2. We use the word “book” in a purely contemporary sense; the modern “book” with hard-covers and whatnot only arises from the printing press, and ancient writings were recorded on carefully-preserved and transmitted parchments.
Lemma 2. Using contemporary labelling, the New Testament consists of 39 books.
Proof. The New Testament consists of the writings of Jesus’ earliest followers.
The Gospels are four eyewitness biographies of Jesus of Nazareth—His life, teachings, death, and resurrection via 4 different nuances: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels due to their synoptic similarity.
The Actsof the Apostles is a follow-up account of the Gospel of Luke that traces the early church and the spread of Christianity beyond Jerusalem and into the rest of the Roman Empire and even beyond. This book introduces Jesus’ earliest disciples, as well as the missionary efforts of the Apostle Paul, who prior to conversion was feared as the terrorist Saul of Tarsus. It consists of 1 book: Acts.
The Pauline Letters were letters written by the Apostle Paul to various fledgling churches that he or his mission team started. He wrote these letters to reinforce correct Christian doctrine and fiercely rebuke specific erroneous teachings that have invaded these early Jesus communities. There are a total of 13 such letters: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon.
The more general Apostolic Letters were letters written by these early Jesus-following Jewish church leaders to fledgling churches on the core doctrines of Christianity, and hence, the indispensable moral codes of Christians—members of Christianity. These 8 letters includes the following: Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude.
Finally the Apocalypse is written by an elder named John (presumably the same author as the Gospel of John and the letters of 1–3 John) regarding the revelation of Jesus pertaining the certainty of His return and the increasing tension and conflict that must take place leading up to it. It contains one very difficult-to-analyse book: Revelation.
In total, using contemporary labels, the New Testament consists of 4 + 1 + 13 + 8 + 1 = 27 books.
The Bible Project summarises the core storyline of the New Testament below:
Without re-hashing the core storyline of the Bible, I’d like to explore why Christians need to concern themselves with the Bible in the first place. The Bible faithfully records God’s words to us, and so Christians hear God through His Word. How does that happen?
Theorem 1. Through reading the Bible, we can hear God speak and personally know Him.
Proof. The author of Hebrews tells us that God has revealed Himself to humanity through prophets in the days of old, and most recently and ultimately, through His Son:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. [Hebrews 1:1–2]
The prophets included the key figure Moses, who is primarily responsible for scribing the Torah:
And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel. [Deuteronomy 34:10–12]
The prophets also included key figures like Elijah, who served as a covenant watchdog for Israel’s loyalty to the LORD:
And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. [1 Kings 18:36–38]
The rest of the prophets’ writings are recorded in the Old Testament for our benefit. Through their writings, God speaks to humanity, calling them to return to Him:
I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that was not called by my name. [Isaiah 65:1]
Years later, God revealed Himself by His Word—God the Son—becoming human:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. [John 1:1; 14; 17]
The New Testament records the words of Jesus through His disciples’ writings:
But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. [John 15:26–27]
The words of Jesus are the words of God—for Jesus is the Word of God:
And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. [2 Peter 1:19–20]
Furthermore, when rightly understood, the entirety of the Old Testament points to Jesus:
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” [Luke 22:44]
Therefore, when we hear the words of God as recorded for us in the Bible, we are hearing the actual words that God Himself spoke:
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. [1 Thessalonians 1:13]
And when we read God’s words, God’s Spirit causes us to understand these words and thus personally know the Jesus of the Bible, and therefore, the God of all creation:
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. [1 Corinthians 2:12–13]
As such, the classic verse pertaining divine inspiration not only directly refers to the Old Testament, but furthermore, extends to the New:
All Scriptureisbreathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. [2 Timothy 3:16–17]
Theorem 2. Through reading the Bible, we receive the words of life and experience this life with greater clarity.
Proof. The first psalm describes life in God’s words as life-abounding:
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. [Psalm 1:1–3]
God’s words will last forever:
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. [Isaiah 40:8]
The words of God enlighten the eyes and delight the soul:
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. [Psalm 19:7–10]
God’s words are powerful in defeating all spiritual evil:
In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. [Ephesians 6:16–18a]
God’s words confront our addictions to sin and bring us into real freedom from it:
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. [James 1:22–25]
God’s words set us apart from the sin-addicted world:
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. [John 17:17–19]
God’s words lead us in a future that we can never understand:
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. [Psalm 119:105]
Finally, God’s words prepare us for every good work:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. [2 Timothy 3:16–17]
We can therefore sing God’s words as the only words of life forevermore:
Remark 3. There are many genres of writing in the Bible, so reading with genre-specific lenses increases the fruitfulness of our reading.
Remark 4. For the vast history of Christianity, most Christians were illiterate, and could not technically read. They “read the Bible” largely through audio rather than visual: hearing the Bible through one another, as their church leader speaks the Bible during weekly gatherings, and as they spoke the Bible to one another. In other words, to “read the Bible” does not require the visual words-based medium (even if it were, in some sense now, the most direct way to read the Bible). It is worth noting that the Old Testament was designed to be dialogued about and contemplated over and over again that bring life, rather than a one-stop shop of historical facts:
Blessed is the man…(whose) delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. [Psalm 1:1; 2]
Thus, we can receive God’s words of life regardless of medium, as long as we are receiving God’s Words as recorded for us in the Bible.
I believe any other benefit of reading the Bible can be elaborated without restraint, but for this post, Theorems 1 and 2 ought to do the trick. We have a God who delights to speak to us, and even speak with us, and hear us speak to Him. We call speaking to Him the word prayer—more on that in the next post.
Previously, we have established that the God of the universe is the Trinity—the one divine maximally great being in three co-eternal co-substantial persons: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. As a result, the proposition “God is Love” is a logical corollary, implying that true love exists and has existed even before the creation of any human being. Furthermore, since love is inherently relational, we can even say that God is inherently relational—in the Trinity before the creation of even the universe.
However, that concept of God is, at first glance, far removed from what we mean by God. We envision God as an all-loving supernatural being who created us with relationship in mind. Yet, this God seems rather distant, seemingly silent when we speak words to him in what we call “prayer”. Who are we in relation to this God, and how can we relate to this God, really?
Once again, these discussions can take up many, many, many blogposts that extend beyond this lifetime. But for now, we outline the core ideas.
Theorem 1. God created us as His representatives in creation. Since He is love, He created us to reflect His creative life-giving love.
Proof. The first book in the Old Testament, Genesis, says this about human beings:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:27]
Just as God is one divine being in three co-eternal persons, God did not create human beings with just one sex—He created human beings male and female, to visibly live out the love of the multi-personhood of the (not as visible) Trinity.
Theorem 2. God has called us to live as delegated rulers of His blessed kingdom.
Proof. In Genesis, God gives to human beings the following command:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” [Genesis 1:28]
God’s kingdom is one that is full of light and life:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. [Revelation 22:1–5]
Theorem 3. We have rebelled against God, refusing to live under His delegated rule, and choosing to live as as please (i.e. that makes us the ultimate rulers, rather than God). This rebellion is called sin, and it produces death (and its associated curses like sickness and suffering).
Proof. In Genesis, the serpent tempted human beings to become their own ultimate ruler:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” [Genesis 3:1–5]
We have adopted this pattern by disbelieving that God exists, and even if we do so, choose to deem ourselves as of ultimate importance, rather than the God who created us in the first place:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. [Romans 1:20–21]
We then live as we please to our own peril:
Therefore God gave them upin the lustsof their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. [Romans 1:22–25]
In practice, here’s what our lives are full of, be it committed by others, or more realistically, by us, and are rightfully banished from God’s good kingdom:
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. [Galatians 5:19–21]
Summarily, God made a good world that was even deemed very good when He created human beings:
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. [Genesis 1:31–2:2]
However, we betrayed God and rebelled against Him, plunging ourselves to the just consequences of separation from the life of God—death:
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. [James 1:14–15]
The death that we incur is a vicious cycle: we rebel against God, God allows us to suffer the consequences of our sin, and in our sin-addiction we rebel against Him even more, leading to inevitable death and suffering:
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. [Romans 1:26–28]
The rest of the Bible, in a sense, is God’s rescue mission to reconcile human beings from themselves back to Himself, so that they may live as they have been created—to glorify Him forever:
Everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed and made. [Isaiah 43:7]
To live for God’s glory is the most delightful experience that we can have in this life or even beyond:
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. [Psalm 16:11]
How does God accomplish this rescue mission? We will explore some of the Old Testament details later on, such as the Kingdom of God, the covenants, and the salvation pattern. However, the most to-the-point answer would be through the God-Man Jesus Christ.
Theorem 4. God the Father sent God the Son to take our death punishment on our behalf. In that manner, we can be set free from our sin-addiction and the death it produces, and instead life a new, freeing Spirit-life.
Proof. The author of Hebrews describes Jesus as a perfect man—one who is without sin.
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. [Hebrews 4:4–15]
The prophet Isaiah describes Jesus as follows:
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. [Isaiah 53:5]
He further calls this an intercession—a plea for God’s kindness on our behalf:
…he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. [Isaiah 53:12]
Because Jesus was condemned on our behalf for our sin, we can be set free from our sin-addiction, and experience “Spirit-addiction” that leads to life and peace and joy in God:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. [Romans 8:1–2]
The new life that God offers us through the Spirit of life (i.e. the Holy Spirit), at its core, isn’t a list of religious commandments, but as the Apostle Paul describes it, delightful:
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. [Romans 14:17]
Theorem 5. Through Jesus, we can enjoy God’s life-giving kingdom now and forevermore—a far better life than the sin-addiction death-bound existence we have trapped ourselves in.
Proof. The two commandments in the “constitution” of God’s kingdom are simply commandments that reflect and reveal the God who sent His Son in the first place:
“The most important is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” [Mark 12:29–31]
Comparing life with God and life without God is the difference between life and death:
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. [John 10:10]
But God now offers us the privilege to be a member of His kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy right now:
For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. [2 Peter 1:11]
And He promises that at some future appointed time, He will right all wrongs and fully bring His kingdom onto the earth:
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” [Revelation 21:5–8]
With all that said, what is life about? I hope that I’ve made a robust case that whatever life is about, it has to do with the God who made life in the first place; for apart from the life-giving God we can only exist with a lack of life—death.
Where do we go after we die? Christians believe in “heaven” and “hell”, and unfortunately, have loaded these words with unhelpful imagery. Some pictures are somewhat accurate: heaven being a place of pure bliss and hell being a place of pure torment. Others are unhelpful and even hurtful: heaven is for morally superior humans and hell is for morally inferior humans.
While this post won’t describe heaven and hell in its totality, it aims to describe these ideas in their essence, and outline their prevalence in the Bible. Furthermore, the creators of the Bible Project do a far better job of illustrating these ideas than I.
I’m here to just give a brief outline of the key ideas.
Definition 1. Define the proper noun Heaven to be God’s personal dwelling place.
Consequently, all joys, small or large, are simply instances of Heaven.
While the word “heaven” appears in many contexts apart from Definition 1, we will use the proper noun Heaven to refer to any place where God personally dwells. This use is justified by the patriarch Jacob’s reference:
And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” [Genesis 28:17]
Lemma 1. The Garden of Eden was an instance of Heaven. Human rebellion against God (i.e. sin) has led them to be removed (i.e. exiled) from the Garden of Eden.
Proof. For a direct reference, we see God walking in the Garden of Eden, denoting His personal presence there:
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. [Genesis 3:8]
After humanity’s rebellion, God banishes them from His good garden:
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. [Genesis 3:22–24]
The rest of the Bible describes God’s rescue plan to restore humanity to Heaven as per Definition 1. The next direct instance of God’s plan to dwell with people is in the time of Moses. Here, God has just freed them from a 400-year-long slavery in Egypt through Moses, and we see God detailing the construction of a tent (i.e. a tabernacle).
Lemma 2. The tabernacle in the book of Exodus functioned as a portable Heaven. God confirmed His dwelling through fire. Wilderness Israel was almost banished from this Heaven.
Proof. When detailing God’s agreement (i.e. covenant) with Israel, the people whom He saved out of mercy and consistent loyalty to His promises, God instructs the building of the tabernacle as His dwelling place:
And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it. [Exodus 25:8–9]
This tabernacle, also known as the tent of meeting, after being cleansed and set apart for special use, serves as God’s dwelling place with His people:
I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God. [Exodus 29:44–46]
This tabernacle was designed to move together with Israel’s travels. One can even strengthen the statement to mean that Israel moves only wherever God’s presence goes, and hence, where the tabernacle goes:
Then the tent of meeting shall set out, with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camps; as they camp, so shall they set out, each in position, standard by standard. [Numbers 2:17]
However, while God was giving the terms of agreement to Israel through Moses, the people of Israel rebelled by setting up a golden calf. God resisted traveling with Israel, and Moses interceded with Israel not for God’s blessings, but for God’s presence:
And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” [Exodus 33:14–16]
God even confirmed His presence by visible fire:
And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. [Leviticus 9:24]
Many generations later, after King David unified Israel into a nation and declared Jerusalem as its capital (that he named Zion), King David sought to build God a house, rather than a portable tent. Due to the many wars that David fought, this task was relegated to his son Solomon instead:
Then he called for Solomon his son and charged him to build a house for the LORD, the God of Israel. David said to Solomon, “My son, I had it in my heart to build a house to the name of the LORD my God. But the word of the LORD came to me, saying, You have shed much blood and have waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth. Behold, a son shall be born to you who shall be a man of rest. I will give him rest from all his surrounding enemies. For his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days. [1 Chronicles 22:6–9]
Lemma 3. The temple of Solomon functioned as Heaven for national Israel, confirmed by fire again. This time, the temple was destroyed, and Israel was completely exiled from the temple, due to their rebellion against God.
Proof. The temple was described as the “house of the LORD”:
In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the LORD. The house that King Solomon built for the LORD was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. [1 Kings 6:1–2]
To be sure, Israel’s God did not literally or metaphysically dwell in the temple. Nevertheless, the temple functioned as Heaven in that God’s name would be the defining feature of that place, from which God listens to the prayers and pleas of His people:
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built! Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you have said, My name shall be there,’ that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place. And listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive. [1 Kings 8:27–30]
Furthermore, God approved of Solomon’s prayer by responding by fire, just like in Lemma 2:
As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD filled the LORD’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” [2 Chronicles 7:1–3]
The corresponding account in the older book of Kings records a cloud as well, mirroring the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night in Exodus:
“And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.” [1 Kings 8:10–11]
However, Solomon turned away from God and set a downward-spiral rampantly-accelerating rebellion among subsequent kings, princes, fathers, and all the people of the land. According to God’s loyalty to His covenant with Israel, he destroys their shared dwelling place with Him and banishes them from the land:
In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month—that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the LORD and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen. [2 Kings 25:8–12]
The separation from God’s dwelling place, effectively, could be described by the proper noun “Hell”, even if this particular word is rendered in other words in the Old Testament, such as Sheol or the grave.
Definition 2. Define the proper noun Hell to denote the sum total of existence without God’s personal presence. In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, Hell can be defined as maximal non-Heaven-ness.
If we accept that God is omnipresent, then strictly speaking, God is present in Hell. Nevertheless, it could still be said that His personal presence is absent. By implication, every joy that one can experience, small or large, is non-existent in Hell.
Remark 1. The word “hell”, in common polite society, is tragically loaded. Many societies view the phrase “X is going to hell” as “X is morally deficient”. In that manner, the discussion on hell is inherently offensive. However, in this blog post, we are strictly using the word ‘Hell’ in the sense of Definition 2, and do not use ‘Hell’ as a moral evaluator (using some meaningless arbitrary socially-contracted moral standard in the first place).
The experience of life, joy, and vitality are all samples of Heaven:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. [Genesis 1:28–31]
The experience of pain and suffering are all samples of Hell, as humanity gets exiled from God’s personal dwelling space:
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” [Genesis 3:17–19]
We can therefore conclude that God created His good world to be part of Heaven, but sin has infected this good world with elements of Hell. God’s heart is not to plunge the world further into Hell, but to redeem this world and turn it into fully part of Heaven once more:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” [Isaiah 49:6]
How does God accomplish this lofty goal? That is, what is God’s plan to purify this sin-infected world into His dwelling place? While many details take a long time to unpack, the centre of His plan is to enter our world in His Son:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made….And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. [John 1:1–3; 14]
In Lemmas 2 and 3, God details elaborate ceremonies involving animal sacrifices in order to purify the shared space between people and His holy personal presence:
Then he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. And he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, and cleanseit and consecrate it from the uncleannesses of the people of Israel. [Leviticus 16:19]
Therefore, if Jesus were to really bring humanity to God’s personal presence, He needs to cleanse the shared space of humanity’s filth of sin and rebellion.
Theorem 1. Jesus brings Heaven to humanity, and grants humanity access to Heaven by cleansing them of their sin through His blood.
Proof. The word “dwelt” in John 1:14, in the original language, is the same word as “tabernacled” in the sense of Lemma 2:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt (i.e. tabernacled) among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. [John 1:14]
Jesus cleanses humans by the shedding of His perfect blood:
For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. [Hebrews 10:13–14]
Therefore, humans can be made clean to enjoy a shared space with God’s personal dwelling, being declared as having right standing before Him:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [2 Corinthians 5:21]
Individuals who regard this Jesus as their saviour, king, and God are called Christians. Some individuals are, by this definition, regarded as Christians, even though they do not yet know the Jesus that needs to be believed on. Yet, Jesus is regarded as their saviour, king, and God, on account of their confidence that God will carry out His promise to personally bring the king that saves humanity, even though not yet in their lifetimes:
And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. [Hebrews 11:39–40]
Nevertheless, such individuals, like Abraham are counted as having right standing before God on the basis of conviction in God’s good character to certainly carry out His promises:
No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” [Romans 4:20–22]
Corollary 1. Christians today have first-hand access to Heaven right now, as if they are already a part of Heaven.
Proof. God has guaranteed Christians with the fullness of His in-dwelling by giving them His gracious gift of His Spirit:
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. [Ephesians 1:14]
Furthermore, the Holy Spirit dwells in Christians as one body, just as though Christians were part of Heaven:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. [Ephesians 2:19–22]
For this reason and more, Jesus’ earliest followers endlessly exhorted virtuous lives, not in order to qualify to enter Heaven, but to live out part of the new identity as a child of God, and therefore, a citizen of sorts of Heaven:
Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. [Philippians 3:17–4:1]
Corollary 2. Jesus promises Christians that the fullness of Heaven will come on earth, and that Christians will certainly be welcomed into Heaven.
Proof. Jesus is the first who resurrected from the dead, and promises that all Christians will be resurrected from the dead as well:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
When Christ returns, Christians will be with Him forever—i.e. in God’s personal presence forever, and therefore, in Heaven forever:
Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. [1 Thessalonians 4:17]
This kingdom will never be shaken, that is, it will last forever:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel….Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. [Hebrews 12:22–24; 28–29]
Christians will never be rejected from Heaven:
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” [John 6:35–40]
Finally, God will eventually dwell with humanity forever, eliminating all pain, suffering, and death:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” [Revelation 21:1–4]
Corollary 3. Any person who is not in Jesus will not be permitted into Heaven, and thus exist in a state of Hell as per Definition 2.
Proof. Jesus came to save humanity from perishing:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. [John 3:16–17]
Jesus taught that He was the only way to God the Father:
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” [John 14:6]
Furthermore, Jesus’ earliest followers taught that there was no salvation (i.e. entry into Heaven) outside of Jesus:
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” [Acts 4:8–12]
Each person stands condemned if and only if he does not believe in Jesus:
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. [John 3:18–21]
In that sense, we do not believe in Jesus because we loved the darkness rather than the light, and if this is our commitment until we breathe our last breath, God will give us up to the results of our passions:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. [Romans 1:24–25]
And since Heaven will not contain the sins that we revel in, we can only be cast out of God’s personal space, and end up in Hell:
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. [Galatians 5:19–21]
Corollary 3 is a warning to every human being, especially those who identify as Christians in a formal sense: the belief that “Jesus is technically my saviour so I’m off the hook”. No, but unless Jesus is truly our saviour, king, and God, we will only keep on living our Hell-bound sin-lusting lives, and have no place in Heaven. And unless we turn to Him now, we remain on the road to Hell and end up there, willingly or not.
The issue isn’t the moralsuperiority of some humans over others; it’s the other way around. It’s about the moral inferiority of all humans—regardless of race, language, or religion—when compared to the perfect moral goodness of the God who created us. Furthermore, God’s heart isn’t to keep us condemned. His heart is to save us through His Son, and welcome us back into His presence: Heaven:
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. [John 17:24]
We get to experience samples of Heaven now, and the fullness thereof when He returns. But with longings to save even more people, Jesus delays His return, so that more people can return to Him:
But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. [2 Peter 3:9]
This is the Christian message: we all need saving, and Jesus is God’s solution to save us from our sin and rebellion against Him (and Hell and its road to it) and bring us into His full and personal presence (i.e. the real Heaven).
Previously, we have established the following historical facts with high confidence:
There actually existed a Jesus of Nazareth who lived and taught and died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), even in English, are historically reliable in recounting the life, death, and sayings of Jesus.
The Old Testament (even in English), are accurately transmitted since the Old Testament in Jesus’ day, comprising of a three-part structure: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.
Jesus made claims to divinity according to accurately interpreted Old Testament passages and imagery.
Now we come to the all-important question: did Jesus rise from the dead? This question is of profound importance, since Jesus isn’t just some random individual to have been supposedly resurrected, but that He claimed to be God, and resurrection justifies His claim to divinity in the following sense:
Theorem 1. Jesus’ claims to divinity are legitimate if and only if He resurrected from the dead.
Proof. Suppose that Jesus’ claims to divinity are legitimate. He claims not just to be God, but to be the Messiah figure described in the Old Testament. This Messiah figure is said to be a descendant of David, as God’s servant, the Son of Man whose kingdom given to him by God will last forever:
You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor let your Holy One see corruption. [Psalm 16:10]
In particular, if Jesus is God, then he is the Holy One, and thus will not see corruption, i.e. not remain in the dead. Therefore, Jesus must resurrect from the dead.
Suppose Jesus resurrected from the dead. Only God can resurrect anyone from the dead:
See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. [Deuteronomy 32:39]
Suppose for a contradiction that Jesus’ claim to divinity are not legitimate (i.e. that he is not God). If Jesus resurrected, that means God resurrected a liar. However, God is not a liar:
God is not man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? [Numbers 23:19]
Furthermore, God’s condemnation against false prophets is death:
But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. [Deuteronomy 18:20]
More specifically, God commands death by stoning for any blasphemer:
Whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death. [Leviticus 24:16]
Therefore, if Jesus is not God, then He is a liar and a blasphemer. God would have kept Him dead, and would not resurrect Him, a contradiction. Therefore, if Jesus resurrected, then Jesus’ claims to divinity are legitimate.
Therefore, if Jesus resurrected from the dead, then his claims to be God are legitimate, and thus He is God, and whatever He speaks are, quite literally, the words of God.
Corollary 1. If Jesus resurrected from the dead, then He is God.
Therefore, we need to answer the resurrection question: Did Jesus resurrect or not? If he didn’t resurrect, then he was a false prophet and we should not regard any of his words or even remain Christian at all:
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. [1 Corinthians 15:17–19]
However, if he did resurrect, then he really is God and deserves our worship:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:16–20]
Therefore: Did Jesus resurrect or not? We claim in the affirmative, and eventually expound on its implications for our lives today.
For now, we will adopt the minimal facts argument developed by Gary Haberman for the resurrection of Jesus.
Lemma 1. The following claims are historically true:
Jesus died by crucifixion.
Very soon afterwards, his followers (i.e. disciples) had real experiences that they thought were actual appearances of the risen Jesus.
The lives of Jesus’ followers were transformedas a result, even to the point of being willing to die specifically for their faith in the resurrection message.
The resurrection of Jesus was taught very early, soon after the crucifixion.
Jesus’ unbelieving brother, James, became a Christian due to his own experience that he thought was the resurrected Christ.
The Christian persecutor Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) also became a believer after a similar experience.
Proof Sketch. Here’s a summarised sketch of the varied historical sources that assert each of these historical claims.
Jesus’ death by crucifixion: Tacitus, Annals 15.44; Flavius Josephus, Antiquities 18.63–64; Justin Martyr, First Apology 35; Galatians 3:13.
Resurrection appearances to disciples: 1 Corinthians 15:3–8; Luke 24; Acts 2:32; Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 3.
Transformed followers: Mark 14:50; John 20:19; Acts 4:33; Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 5; Ignatius, To the Trallians 9.
Early proclamation of the resurrection: 1 Corinthians 15:3–7; Galatians 1:18–19; Acts 2:24–32; Didache 10.6; 16.1.
Conversion of James: Mark 3:21; John 7:5; 1 Corinthians 15:7; Galatians 1:19; Flavius Josephus, Antiquities 20.200; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.23.
Conversion of Paul: Galatians 1:13–16; Philippians 3:6–8; Acts 9; 22; 26; Ignatius, To the Ephesians 12; Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 5.
Note that the New Testament passages are not assumed to be divinely inspired, but regarded as historical sources akin to its contemporaries like Josephus and Eusebius. By verifying that the sources are reliable, consilient, and place the person in real places or institutions, connected to at least one anchor, we can conclude with confidence that these claims are historically factual.
For a more complete exposition, see this blog post by Frank Turek of Cross Examined. In fact, we will be adapting the contents therein for this blog post.
What explanations can account for these facts? The most coveted claim is that Jesus resurrected from the dead. If Jesus resurrected from the dead, then all of these historical events would have occurred as a corollary. However, what if Jesus didn’t resurrect from the dead?
Firstly, either Jesus actually died or he didn’t. The latter is called the swoon theory, and is false by Lemma 1. Therefore, the events that follow happen after Jesus died, and his tomb is empty (yet another historically verifiable fact). What could account for the empty tomb?
Lemma 2. The disciples could not have stolen the body.
Proof. By Lemma 1, the disciples were willing to suffer and even die for their proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection, a commitment that would be irrational if they knowingly fabricated the claim. The earliest polemic against the resurrection—the bribing of the guard to circulate a theft story—is itself evidence that opponents conceded the body was missing, not that the disciples possessed it (Matthew 28:11–15). Moreover, the conversions of James and Paul occurred independently of the apostolic circle; their acceptance of the resurrection lacks plausibility if the original witnesses had confessed to hiding a corpse. Therefore, theft fails to satisfy the sincerity and independent verification embedded in the minimal facts.
Since the body of Jesus did not remain in the tomb and Lemma 2 precludes the disciples stealing the body, by Lemma 1, perhaps the disciples hallucinated the resurrection of Jesus.
Lemma 3. The disciples couldn’t have hallucinated the resurrection of Jesus.
Proof. Lemma 1 includes group experiences and physical interactions such as eating and conversation independent from the twelve:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. [1 Corinthians 15:3–6]
When he was at table with them (i.e. Cleopas and friend), he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” [Luke 24:30–34]
Collective hallucinations of this kind lack precedent in ancient or modern testimony, especially when they involve sensory modalities beyond sight. Additionally, James and Paul were both skeptics prior to their experiences; their encounters were private and adversarial, making suggestion or mass ecstasy implausible. Paul’s letters state that he investigated other witnesses, indicating critical scrutiny rather than psychological contagion:
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. [Galatians 1:18–19]
Hence the hallucination hypothesis cannot explain the breadth, content, and transformative effect of the reported appearances.
Since the disciples did not hallucinate the resurrection of Jesus, their experiences of the resurrected Jesus are real and actual. Therefore, we have come to the crucial conclusion of our writeup:
Theorem 2. Jesus resurrected from the dead.
Proof. Since the disciples did not steal Jesus’ body nor hallucinated the resurrected Jesus by Lemmas 2 and 3, their experiences of the resurrected Jesus are real and actual. Thus, Jesus actually resurrected from the dead.
Corollary 2. Jesus is God.
Proof. Theorem 2 and Corollary 1.
The implications of Jesus being God are huge.
Corollary 3. The words of Jesus are absolutely true.
Proof. Since Jesus is God by Corollary 2, the words of Jesus are the words of God. Since God speaks only truth, Jesus speaks only truth.
Corollary 4. The Old Testament is the Word of God.
Proof. Jesus describes the Old Testament using its tri-partite sectioning.
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” [Luke 24:44]
Whenever Jesus prefaces his quotes with the phrase “God said” or its equivalent, he quotes the Old Testament:
For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’ (Exodus 20:12); and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ (Exodus 21:17) But you say…thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” [Mark 7:10–13]
Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God…have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? [Mark 12:24; 26]
David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ [Mark 12:36]
Therefore, Jesus regarded the words in the Old Testament as the words of God. By Corollary 3, his words are true, and therefore, the Old Testament is the Word of God.
Therefore, any challenge against the Word of God is a non-issue for Trinitarian Christians who regard Jesus’ words as true: since Jesus affirms the Old Testament as the Word of God, the Old Testament really is the Word of God. Therefore, the Old Testament is true in all that it intends to communicate. Furthermore, the central thrust of Old Testament is toward Jesus Christ (i.e. Jesus the Messiah), truly man and truly God:
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” [Luke 24:44]
Now we have one more loose end to tie: is the New Testament the Word of God? Trinitarian Christians say ‘Yes’, and this we aim to justify in the next post.
For now, we can sing the hymn of the ages:
Christ is risen, He is risen indeed! Oh, sing hallelujah Join the chorist’ and all the redeemed Christ is risen, He is risen indeed
—Christ is Risen, He is Risen Indeed by Keith and Kristyn Getty
We have undertaken an exceedingly nontrivial effort to establish the following propositions to be true:
There exists a maximally great being whom we describe using the English word ‘God’.
Being maximally great, this God is one being.
This God is absolutely truthful, morally perfect, and full of perfect love, and thus must exist in at least two co-eternal persons.
There exists a Jesus of Nazareth who lived in Judea and died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, and resurrected from the dead.
This Jesus claims to be God, and this claim is vindicated by His resurrection.
The words of Jesus, therefore, constitute the words of God—both the Old and the New Testaments.
This last point, therefore, allows us to take reference from the Bible to answer the three biggest questions of human existence:
Who is God?
Who are we?
What are we here for?
Let’s begin with the first question, and take our cues from Jesus’ proclamation of who God is.
We begin with the more technical aspects of who God is.
Lemma 1. God is one being.
Proof. The Old Testament clearly describes God as one in being.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” [Deuteronomy 6:4]
“I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God.” [Isaiah 45:5–6]
The New Testament clearly describes God as one in being.
“There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” [1 Timothy 2:5]
“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” [James 2:19]
“To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.” [1 Timothy 1:17]
Therefore, God is one in being.
Lemma 2. God exists co-eternally with at least one Father and one Son.
Proof. The Old Testament describes God existing co-eternally with at least one Father and one Son:
“I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One…What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Surely you know!” [Proverbs 30:4]
Servethe LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. [Psalm 2:11–12]
The New Testament describes God existing co-eternally with at least one Father and one Son:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” [John 1:1–2]
“Glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” [John 17:5]
Therefore, God exists co-eternally with at least one Father and one Son.
Lemma 3. The Father is fully God.
Proof. The New Testament describes the Father in the same way, affirming His eternal divinity and role as Creator:
“Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” [1 Corinthians 8:6]
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” [1 Peter 1:3]
The Old Testament describes the Father as the one true God, the Creator, and Lord over all:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” [Genesis 1:1]
“I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no God.” [Isaiah 45:5]
Therefore, the Father, who is revealed in both the Old and New Testaments as the one true Creator and Lord, is fully God.
Lemma 4. Jesus, the Son of the Father, is fully God.
Proof. The New Testament describes the Son as fully God and one with the Father.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” [John 1:1; 14]
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” [Colossians 1:13–15]
The Old Testament describes the Son as divine and the eternal ruler.
“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness; you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions…” [Psalm 45:6–7]
“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” [Daniel 7:13–14]
Therefore, the Son, revealed as Jesus Christ, is fully God—eternal, divine, and equal with the Father.
Lemma 5. There exists a third person in the Trinity, called the Holy Spirit (abbreviated to the Spirit). This Holy Spirit is God.
Proof. The Old Testament describes the Spirit of God as a divine and personal being who acts, speaks, and empowers:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” [Genesis 1:1–2]
“Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon him mightily, and he judged Israel. He went out to war, and the LORD gave Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand, and his hand prevailed over Cushan-rishathaim.” [Judges 3:10]
“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” [Joel 2:28–29]
The New Testament describes the Holy Spirit as fully divine and personally distinct within the Godhead:
“And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” [Matthew 3:16–17]
“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” [John 15:26]
“But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.’” [Acts 5:3–4]
Therefore, the Holy Spirit is not a mere force or attribute, but truly God—eternal, personal, and coequal with the Father and the Son.
Theorem 1. God is the maximally great being existing in three co-eternal persons—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In this case, we say that God is triune, and call this God the Trinity.
Proof. Combine Lemmas 1–5. As per Jesus’ revelation of God, we conclude that God is, and must be, Trinity.
What bearing does God being Triune have on us? Everything! We are made for love and to love, and this centrality of love is the centrality of God if and only if He is Triune.
Corollary 1. The core of God’s being is relationship.
Proof. From Theorem 1, God is triune—three co-eternal persons. By definition, persons are irreducibly relational, and to be a person is to be toward another. Since the Father, Son, and Spirit exist eternally in relations of mutual, self-giving love and communion, relation is not an accident of God’s will toward creation but constitutive of who God is. Hence the core of God’s being is relationship.
Corollary 2. God is love. Furthermore, actual perfect love exists if and only if God is Trinity. In particular, to know perfect love is to know God.
Proof. By Corollary 1, the essence of God’s being is relationship. Love is the highest and fullest form of relationship—a self-giving union of persons. The result follows by Theorem 1.
We prove by contrapositive. Suppose that God is not Triune. Then God exists as at most one person. If God is not a person, then God cannot love. If God is one person, then there is no eternal “other” to love, by the definition of love. Since God cannot change, even after God creates, His love is not essential to His nature. Therefore, God is not love.
Finally actual perfect love only exists in God.
The more we know God, the more we can delight in His love, which causes us to know Him more, leading into an upward cycle of His love. One helpful concise collection of statements or creeds comes from the Nicene Creed—arguably the core defining tenet of Christianity, even if discussions on how to express these tenets in practice vary greatly across Trinitarian Christian denominations.
In what follows, I will take reference from the Nicene Creed according to the First Council of Nicaea (325), and the First Council of Constantinople (381) regarding the Holy Spirit. I will also keep these theorems short and concise, and leave the wonder of knowing God as a lifelong exercise for the reader.
Theorem 2. The one God, the Father Almighty, is the Maker of all things visible and invisible. The Father is fully God.
Proof. The Bible describes the Father as the Almighty Creator and Sovereign Lord over all:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” [Genesis 1:1]
“The LORD, He is God; it is He who made us, and not we ourselves.” [Psalm 100:3]
“Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” [1 Corinthians 8:6]
Theorem 3. The one God, the Son of the Father Jesus Christ the God-Man, is the only begotten of the Father, and is fully God. He is the light of light, by whom all things are made. He is God’s perfect revelation of Himself to humanity.
Proof. The Bible describes the Son as the eternal Word who was with God and is God, through whom all things were made and by whom humanity is redeemed:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” [John 1:1–5]
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. [John 1:1–18]
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. [Hebrews 1:1–3]
Theorem 4. The one God, the Holy Spirit, is the Lord and Giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and is fully God.
Proof. The Bible describes the Holy Spirit as both divine and personal:
“And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” [Genesis 1:2]
“When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.” [Psalm 104:30]
“While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’” [Acts 13:2]
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” [Ephesians 4:30]
Remark 1. In Theorem 4, there is sharp disagreement as to whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only, or the Father and the Son. This debate is called the Filioque, and is a core distinction between the western churches (e.g. Catholicism, Protestantism) and the eastern churches (e.g. Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, etc).
Each co-eternal person of the Trinity will take an eternity to know—and even eternity will not suffice for us finite beings to comprehend the infinitude of the Trinity. What we can know, however, is who God is in relation to us. We devote the next post to explore that connection.
Using historical inference and accurate literary analysis, we have demonstrated that there exists a Jesus of Nazareth who died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and resurrected from the dead. These facts affirm His claims to divinity, and His identity as the one true God. In particular, his words are true, and therefore, when He claims that the Old Testament is the Word of God, His claim is true.
Theorem 1. The Old Testament is the Word of God.
However, Christians go one step further and assert that the New Testament is the Word of God. That said, let’s first clarify what we mean when we use the phrase “Word of God”.
Definition 1. An individual is an apostle if and only if they (i) were a witness of the risen Jesus, (ii) were personally commissioned by Him, and (iii) were authenticated by God with signs and wonders appropriate to that office.
Example 1. The persons Simon Peter, John the son of Zebedee, and Paul are apostles.
Proof. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus calls Simon Peter among his apostles:
And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John… [Luke 6:13–14]
In the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus calls Saul (with Roman name Paul; see Acts 13:9) to mission:
Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” [Acts 9:3–6]
Furthermore, the Apostle Peter endorses Paul as a recipient and teacher of the correct Gospel:
…and when James and Cephas (Peter) and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. [Galatians 2:9]
The synoptic gospels and Acts can verify that both individuals were witnesses of the risen Jesus and authenticated by God with signs and wonders appropriate to that office.
Lemma 1. The apostles considered a document to be part of the Word of God if they consider it to be Scripture. In that case, it is authoritative in communicating truth to us.
Proof. We quote the words of Paul from 2 Timothy 3:16–17:
All Scripture is breathed out by Godand profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. [2 Timothy 3:16–17]
So we have reduced the task to determine if the apostles considered the New Testament to be Scripture. Actually, we need one more piece of the puzzle to assure that the New Testament really is Scripture.
Lemma 2. The documents that the apostles considered as the Word of God are the documents that Jesus considered as Word of God.
Proof. Jesus delegates His voice and authority to His commissioned messengers:
“The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” [Luke 10:16]
He commands the apostles to carry His message to the nations:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. [Matthew 28:19–20]
Therefore, when the apostles, under Christ’s commission and the Spirit’s guidance, identify writings as God’s Word, such identification reflects Jesus’ own judgment.
Corollary 1. The documents that the apostles considered as Scripture are part of the Word of God.
Proof. By Lemma 1, any document that the apostles considered as Scripture, they considered as part of the Word of God. By Lemma 2, any document that the apostles considered as part of the Word of God is a document that Jesus considers as part of the Word of God.
Therefore, we have reduced the task to determine which books are considered by the apostles as Scripture.
Lemma 3. The writings of Simon Peter, namely 1 Peter and 2 Peter, and John the son of Zebedee, namely John, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation, are part of the Word of God.
Proof. By Example 1, Simon Peter and John the son of Zebedee are apostles who have seen Jesus pre-crucifixion and post-cruxifixion. As per Matthew 28:19–20, they teach the commands of Jesus, and therefore, they teach the words of God. Therefore, these writings are part of the Word of God.
Corollary 2. The apostles convey the words of God.
Proof. The Apostle John records the words of Jesus as follows:
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. [John 12:46]
Since John is the Word of God, the Holy Spirit is the teacher of the words of Jesus to the apostles. Since the apostles remember the words of Jesus through the Holy Spirit, and Jesus is God, they remember the words of God, and thus communicate the words of God.
Lemma 4. The writings of Paul, namely Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon are part of the Word of God.
Proof. By Example 1, Peter is an apostle. According to his letter in 2 Peter, Peter affirms Paul’s words as Scripture:
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. [2 Peter 3:15–16]
Lemma 5. The synoptic gospels, namely Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as the Acts of the Apostles (written by Luke) are part of the Word of God.
Proof. According to Luke’s writings, Matthew is named as an apostle of Jesus pre-resurrection:
And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: …Matthew… [Luke 6:13; 15]
Post-resurrection as well:
And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. [Acts 1:13]
By Definition 1, Matthew is an apostle, and by the same argument in Lemma 3, his gospel is part of the Word of God.
According to Paul’s writings, Paul considers Luke’s writings on par with the Torah as Scripture:
For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.” [1 Timothy 5:18]
Here, the bolded verse is a quotation from Luke 10:7. By Corollary 1, the gospel written by Luke is the Word of God. Since Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles, that is part of the Word of God.
Mark writes within Petrine apostolic oversight:
She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son. [1 Peter 5:13]
The church received Mark as the authorized apostolic memoir of Peter. By Corollary 2, the gospel written by Mark is the Word of God.
Lemma 6. The writings of Jesus’ half-brother James are part of the Word of God.
Proof. Paul refers to “James the Lord’s brother” as an apostle:
But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. [Galatians 1:19]
Furthermore, the Jerusalem church recognizes his decisive authority:
On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. [Acts 21:18]
Thus the Epistle of James conveys delegated, Spirit‑guided apostolic instruction.
Lemma 7. The epistles Hebrews and Jude are part of the Word of God.
Proof. Jude self‑identifies as “a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (Jude 1), thereby linking himself to the recognized Jerusalem leader. He writes with binding, church‑regulating authority:
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. [Jude 3]
Jude directs readers to the standard of “the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 17). Operating within this apostolic framework and exercising normative authority over doctrine and fellowship (Jude 20–23), Jude’s letter functions as apostolic instruction under Christ’s commission and the Spirit’s guidance (Lemma 2). Hence, by Lemma 1, Jude is Scripture and thus part of the Word of God.
Though anonymous, Hebrews explicitly situates itself within the apostolic transmission:
“it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” [Hebrews 2:3–4]
The author also ascribes speech directly to the Holy Spirit when citing Scripture (e.g. Heb 3:7; cf. 10:15–17), and issues binding exhortations to the churches (Heb 3:12–13; 10:19–25; 13:7,17).
Therefore Hebrews bears the attested apostolic message, sealed by divine confirmation; by Lemmas 1–2, it is Scripture and thus part of the Word of God.
Theorem 2. The New Testament is part of the Word of God.
Proof. Lemmas 3–6 exhaust the books in the New Testament, and since each of these books are part of the Word of God, the New Testament as a whole is part of the Word of God.
Theorem 3. No book written after the resurrection of Jesus apart from the existing New Testament is part of the Word of God. That is, among documents written after the resurrection of Jesus, the 27 books of the New Testament in Theorem 2, and only these books, are part of the Word of God.
Proof. In 367 AD, the 39th Paschal letter of Anathasius contained an exact list of the exact same 27 books that we have today. Since no apostles lived beyond 200 years, there are no other books after 367 AD that can be included as the Word of God. Furthermore, the person of Jesus the God-Man is God’s culminated authoritative revelation of Himself toward us (Heb 1:1–2), codified through the 27 books of the New Testament.
Therefore, whatever we mean by “the Word of God”, we must include the Protestant Old Testament (also known as the Hebrew Tanakh) and the New Testament as parts of the Word of God. Different Christians contest on a subset of Greek books written before the time of Jesus, known as the deuterocanon by Catholic and Orthodox churches, and called the apocrypha by Protestant Christians.
Remark 1. I’m open to hear how you might strengthen the arguments for Lemma 7. Systematic theologian Wayne Grudem summarises a proof by hypothesis testing for Hebrews being the Word of God in the following sense: if Hebrews is not the Word of God, then the probability of a non-apostolic author writing the large Christological content of Hebrews is exceedingly low.
Remark 2. This post’s main weakness is that it attributes the authors of the books in the New Testament according to tradition; there is some debate on the actual authors behind the New Testament, upending some subtle premises made in this post. Check out this post by Chris Nye for a more holistic approach to the ultimately same conclusion. For a more historic orientation, check out this post by Michael J Kruger.
Nevertheless, we can all agree that, minimally, all books present in the Protestant Bible are parts of the Word of God. That is, God speaks to us in the person of Jesus whose words are encoded for us in the Protestant Bible, and His Spirit enables us to understand these words not as literature, but as life in the Word:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. [John 1:1–5]
We can now start discussing some baby biblical theology.
Just to recap: Genesis 1–2 describes the good God’s good creation establishing His shared dwelling place with His creation, paramount to that creation being human beings, whom He has crowned as being made in His image:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:27]
However, Genesis 3 discusses what is commonly known as the “fall of man”, which is humanity’s rebellion against the good God by giving in to the serpent’s “become-like-God” temptation:
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. [Genesis 3:5–6]
As a result, God’s warning of certain death (and by implication, death of all kings), becomes reality for all of humanity:
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” [Genesis 2:17]
However, in the list of rightful curses that God invokes on to the serpent and on to humanity, He offers hope.
Lemma 1. God promises to defeat the serpent through one of the woman’s offspring.
Proof. Genesis 3:15 records the following:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” [Genesis 3:15]
As sinful humanity becomes refused entry into God’s sinless goodness (Genesis 3:22–24) and various events in humanity’s downward spiral of rebellion, pain, suffering, and death unfold (Genesis 4–5), God saves a subset of humanity from His judgement through one man, Noah. He commands Noah to build a boat, and in that boat, save this subset through the waters of death (Genesis 6–9:17). However, Noah’s family continues to rebel against God and plunge humanity further away from the goodness of God (Genesis 9:18–11:32).
In this chaos and turmoil (which results in tragically unsurprising death and suffering), God still holds out hope for humanity.
Lemma 2. God promises to bless the world through one man, Abraham, who is himself an offspring from the woman in Lemma 1.
Proof. Genesis 12:1–3 records God’s pivotal promise to Abraham:
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:1–3]
Our attention then turns to Abraham’s family, who, once again, rebels against God’s goodness (Genesis 12–50). God keeps on showing kindness to them and upholds His promise to save them, even as they get enslaved in Egypt and are saved into their new land (Exodus–Deuteronomy):
Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass. [Joshua 21:43–45]
The cycle of rebellion and salvation repeats ad nauseam (Joshua; Judges; Samuel; Kings), to the point that Israel themselves are driven out of God’s blessing:
And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. [2 Kings 17:7–8]
Nevertheless, God never stops promising to save. He appoints prophets as “agreement-watchdogs”, calling Israel to repentance and authenticated by signs and wonders (Isaiah; Jeremiah; Ezekiel; Hosea–Malachi).
Lemma 3. God promises to David, a descendant of Abraham, that He will establish a forever-kingdom of one of his descendants. Furthermore, through this kingdom, all nations will be blessed, as per God’s promise to Abraham in Lemma 2.
Proof. The book of Samuel records this pivotal promise:
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. [2 Samuel 7:12–13]
The global impact of this kingdom is implied from Jacob’s blessing over Judah, Abraham’s descendant and David’s ancestor:
The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. [Genesis 49:10]
Lemma 4. The prophet Daniel describes the king in Lemma 3 as the “son of man”:
I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. [Daniel 7:13–14]
All of our aforementioned discussion can be summarised as follows: God promises to save the world through one woman’s offspring (Lemma 1), and refines that promise through Abraham, through whom all the nations will be blessed (Lemma 2). In particular, God will raise up a Davidic king from the line of Judah (Lemma 3), known as the son of man (Lemma 4), and establish his forever-kingdom, through which all nations will be blessed.
The Old Testament itself doesn’t identify this individual, and the descendants of Abraham are left wondering—who is this saviour king that God has promised to bring?
Theorem 1. Jesus is the promised Davidic saviour king. In particular, He:
defeats the serpent who lured humanity into rebellion against God,
blesses the nations beyond Abraham’s biological descendants,
through His forever-kingdom in the line of David,
as the eternal ruler of the kingdom of God.
Proof. Jesus claims to be the son of man in Lemma 4:
And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” [Mark 14:62]
Jesus receives the hopes of the people as the promised Davidic king in Lemma 3:
And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” [Mark 11:9–10]
The kingdom Jesus preaches extends beyond the biological descendants of Abraham, as per Lemma 2:
And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled. [Mark 5:19–20]
The author of Matthew summarises Jesus’ crucial ancestry as follows:
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. [Matthew 1:1]
Finally, Jesus defeats the serpent in Lemma 1 by dying (i.e. this is how the serpent “bruises” the heel) and resurrecting from the dead:
And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. [Mark 16:6]
Furthermore, Jesus’ resurrection validates his claims to deity, and therefore establishes the truth of his claims in Lemmas 2–4.
Jesus’ followers help us unpack what Jesus being God’s answer to His humanity-healing promises means for us today.
Corollary 1. God carried out every promise that He has made in Lemmas 1–4 through Jesus.
Proof. The Apostle Paul makes this analysis of God’s answering His promises through Jesus:
Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. [Acts 13:23]
This answer that God gives humanity regarding this saviour king is described as “good news” (i.e. gospel):
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh… [Romans 1:1–3]
Corollary 2. The impact of Jesus being the promised saviour king for all of humanity is as follows: for any human being of any ethnicity in Jesus, what is true of Jesus as a human becomes true of said human being:
can defeat death and their sin-addiction against God,
can enjoy God’s blessing as God’s adopted children,
as new citizens in God’s forever-kingdom,
whose king and God is Jesus.
Furthermore, every human being in Jesus is freely forgiven of their sin-addiction.
Proof. Baptism is the outward expression of uniting with Jesus. Since Jesus died and resurrected, so shall we die and get resurrected:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. [Romans 6:2–5]
Since Jesus died and resurrected, those who are in Jesus will also die and be resurrected by the power of God’s Spirit:
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. [Romans 8:9–11]
This God welcomes us into His family as children, with Jesus as our heavenly brother:
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. [Romans 8:14–17]
This God now empowers us with His grace to frees us from our sin-addiction:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. [Romans 6:12–14]
In Jesus, we are now welcomed into God’s kingdom:
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. [Colossians 1:13–14]
And Jesus is our king:
Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. [Hebrews 8:1–2]
The content of Corollary 2 is awesome, but how can we actually be “in Jesus”? By having faith in Him.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. [Ephesians 2:8–9]
But what does it mean to “have faith” in Jesus?
Corollary 3. A person X is said to have “faith in Jesus” if X regards as true that Jesus is the real, promised, sin-forgiving saviour God-king for X as per Theorem 1, thereby X’s one and only object of worship.
Proof. Abraham is said to “have faith” in God by believing that God will carry out everything that He has promised:
No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. [Romans 4:20–21]
Faith is described as conviction that God would carry out His said promises, though they may be invisible from our point of view:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. [Hebrews 11:1–3]
In particular, that God would graciously cleanse us from our sin-crimes against Him and give us a right-standing before Him:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [2 Corinthians 5:21]
And for all who believe in Jesus, they regard Him as their God-king:
And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” [Matthew 14:33]
To believe in Jesus, therefore, is to be convinced that through Jesus’ death, God has really forgiven us of all of our sins and given us a new standing with Him, according to His promises that He has and will carry out, and welcomes us as His eternally living children and people, and Him as our God:
For all the promises of God find their Yes in him (Jesus). That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. [2 Corinthians 1:20]
Definition 1. A human being is a Christian if he/she has faith in Jesus as per Corollary 3.
Being with God is the essence of being in heaven, which we shall explore in the next post.
Having taken great pains to establish the historicity of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as well as the historical reliability of the synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke regarding the sayings of Jesus, what’s the overall main point? Christians claim that Jesus is God, but how do we know for sure?
If Jesus never called himself God, then there really is not much discussion to be had. However, Christians claim that Jesus did call himself God, which is a massive claim, to say the least. How do we know that is the case?
The Gospel of Mark records for us an exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees in the midnight leading up to his death.
But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” And the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death. [Mark 14:61–64]
The Pharisees understood Jesus’ claim to be a claim to divinity, since they charged him with the religious crime of blasphemy. However, did they just misunderstand Jesus? Or was what they interpreted really what Jesus said?
To make sense of this question, we need to answer a few questions. Who is “the Christ” mentioned by the high priest, and who is “the Blessed”, and “the Son of the Blessed”? Jesus uses the phrase “Son of Man”, “seated at the right hand of Power”, and “coming with the clouds of heaven”—what do these phrases mean?
Before we unpack these phrases, and do a little bit of exegesis (i.e. a fancy word for Bible study), we first need to do a sanity check that the Old Testament we currently have genuinely corresponds to the Tanakh in Jesus’ day, so that by reading our Old Testament, we can sufficiently accurately understand the high priestly interrogation.
Theorem 1. The Old Testament was continuously transmitted from the Tanakh in Jesus’ day.
Proof. The tripartite structure of Torah, Prophets, and Writings that Jesus names in Luke 24:44 matches the organization preserved in Second Temple sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus, showing continuity of the canonical corpus (Sources: 4QMMT; Josephus).
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses (i.e. the Torah) and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” [Luke 24:44]
Manuscripts from Qumran (third century B.C. to first century A.D.) contain every Old Testament book except Esther and align closely with the later Masoretic Text, demonstrating that the Hebrew consonantal text in circulation during Jesus’ ministry is substantially the same as that transmitted by Jewish scribes in the early Middle Ages (Source: Dead Sea Scrolls).
In particular, the scroll of Isaiah that Jesus used and is now recorded for our reference has been largely well-preserved barring superficial damaged portions (Source: Isaiah Scroll).
Greek-speaking Jews likewise circulated the Septuagint, a translation begun in the third century B.C., which quotes the same narratives and laws that appear in our present Old Testament (Source: Septuagint Pentateuch).
Taken together, manuscript continuity, cross-linguistic translations, and consistent canonical references establish that the Old Testament in modern Bibles was continuously transmitted from the Tanakh known in Jesus’ day.
In what follows, we will trace the Jewish understanding of the Tanakh, since that understanding would correspond to what Jesus means in his words.
Lemma 1. In the Tanakh, “the Christ” refers to the individual that God will send to save Israel.
Proof. “Christ” is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew mashiach (“anointed one”), usually translated as “Messiah”, a title applied in the Old Testament to kings consecrated for Israel’s deliverance:
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. [Genesis 49:10]
“…he says: It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” [Isaiah 49:6]
“…the LORD and against his Anointed…As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” [Psalm 2:2; 6]
The Torah describes this Messiah as the snake-crushing offspring from Eve, refined into the offspring of Abraham through whom all nations are blessed, filtered further into the king that comes from the line of Judah, and finally proclaimed by Moses as a Prophet who speaks the words of God to God’s people:
“…her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” [Genesis 3:15]
Now the LORD said to Abram, “…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:1; 3]
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. [Genesis 49:10]
“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…” [Deuteronomy 18:15–18]
The Prophets extends the title to a future figure who will restore David’s kingdom, shepherd God’s people, and inaugurate the age of salvation:
“The LORD…will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.” [1 Samuel 2:10]
When your (i.e. David’s) days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body…and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. [2 Samuel 7:12–13]
In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recoverthe remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. [Isaiah 11:11]
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as kingand deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: The LORD is our righteousness.’ [Jeremiah 23:5–6]
And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be their peace. [Micah 5:4–5]
Finally the Wisdom writings (i.e. Psalms, Daniel, etc) describe a coming, God-sent ruler/deliverer (i.e., “the Christ,” the anointed one):
The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty sceptre. Rule in the midst of your enemies! [Psalm 110:1–2]
“…and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom…” [Daniel 7:13–14]
Consequently, when the high priest asks Jesus if he is “the Christ,” he is invoking the well-established hope that God will send a specific anointed deliverer for Israel.
Lemma 2. In the Old Testament, God is the unique being that will reign forever and be the ultimate judge of all humanity.
Proof. Foundational texts assert the exclusive kingship and judicial prerogative of Israel’s God:
Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’ [Deuteronomy 32:36]
Prophets reinforce this theme by equating the universal judgment of the nations with the self-revelation of God alone:
The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; against them he will thunder in heaven. The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.” [1 Samuel 2:10]
For the LORD is our judge; the LORD is our lawgiver; the LORD is our king; he will save us. [Isaiah 33:22]
Let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. [Joel 3:12]
Wisdom writings likewise proclaim that God will judge every deed, bringing total accountability under His reign:
The LORD is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land. [Psalm 10:16]
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. [Psalm 145:13]
“…before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.” [Psalm 98:8–9]
For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. [Ecclesiastes 12:14]
Therefore, Jewish theology attributes eternal kingship and final judgment exclusively to God.
Theorem 2. In Jewish thought, the “Son of Man” title that Jesus uses refers to God.
Proof. Jesus’ self-description echoes Daniel 7:13–14, where “one like a son of man” comes with the clouds of heaven—imagery reserved for divine appearances:
“…and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom…” [Daniel 7:13–14]
And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloudto lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. [Exodus 13:21]
Furthermore, this son of man receives from the Ancient of Days an everlasting dominion and worship (“service,” Aramaic pelach) that elsewhere in Daniel is rendered only to God:
These men, O king, pay no attention to you; they do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. [Daniel 3:12]
“…his dominion is an everlasting dominion…and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”” [Daniel 4:34–35]
Later Jewish exegesis preserves this exalted view:
The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. [Psalm 110:5–6]
Because eternal rule and universal judgment belong solely to God, the Danielic “Son of Man”—enthroned on the clouds and receiving divine honors—participates in God’s unique identity. Thus, in the Jewish interpretive framework familiar to the Sanhedrin, the “Son of Man” title invokes a figure who shares in God’s authority and status.
Theorem 3. Jesus claims to be God.
Proof. It suffices to show that Jesus identifies himself with the “Son of Man” in Theorem 2. In response to the high priest’s question, Jesus declares,
“I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven” [Mark 14:62]
The citation fuses Psalm 110:1—where God invites His co-regent to share the divine throne—with Daniel 7:13–14’s cloud-riding Son of Man. By affirming “I am” and predicting that His interrogators will witness Him occupying the divine throne and administering eschatological judgment, Jesus applies the Son of Man identity as described in Theorem 2 directly to Himself.
Since Theorem 2 establishes that this title belongs uniquely to the divine sphere, Jesus’ self-identification constitutes a claim to God’s authority and status. Therefore, Jesus openly claims to be God.
By Theorem 3, Jesus claims to be God. Did Jesus blaspheme? If Jesus is not God, then claiming to be God, he has blasphemed. But how do we know that Jesus is not God? To be sure, no sinner can be God. The evidence we garner is that every human we know of has sinned, and therefore, cannot be God. That is true. But did Jesus sin? If he did, then he cannot be God. Therefore, we must be sure that he has not sinned.
The only place where Jesus may have sinned is in claiming divinity when he is, in fact, not divine. Therefore, we return to the question: is Jesus God or not? If Jesus is not God, then he did blaspheme. If Jesus is God, then he did not blaspheme. One thing is for sure: Jesus definitely claimed to be God. Is this claim a justified one?
The answer lies in whether Jesus actually resurrected or not. We will investigate this paradigm-shattering event next time—the pivot point of all of Christianity, and I’m convinced, for all of the world.
Suppose that Jesus’ claims to divinity are legitimate. He claims not just to be God, but to be the Messiah figure described in the Old Testament. This Messiah figure is said to be a descendant of David, as God’s servant, the Son of Man whose kingdom given to him by God will last forever:
Suppose Jesus resurrected from the dead. Only God can resurrect anyone from the dead:
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