"No Fences: Pharisees, Philosophers, Legalists, and Jesus" Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Do What?

We have discussed how the Council of Jerusalem made the ruling that Gentile believers were to refrain from eating blood (or perhaps murdering people), from eating things strangled, from idolatry, and from sexual immorality. Paul said, without directly challenging them on that, that whatever was sold at the meat market was fine and not to ask too many questions. Unless they were buying from a kosher butcher, in that society the meat was quite possibly strangled (therefore killed with the blood still in it rather than draining it per Old Testament regulations) in a ritual to an idol. Paul made no mention of blood eating. Is this because he, as a former Pharisee, would have considered that obvious given Gentile God-fearer familiarity with the Septuagint? (The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Old Testament. Jesus preferred its rendition of Psalm 8:2 in Matthew 21:16. It was a translation authoritative enough for the author of Hebrews to quote from repeatedly. Pastors in the early Church quoted from it just like your pastor reads Bible verses now in a language you understand.) Or, did he see the rending of the veil in the Temple at the Crucifixion as a definite end of the Old Testament sacrificial system, with Leviticus 17:11 being set aside per Hebrews 8:13? Did his understanding of the truths recorded in Mark 7, Acts 10, and Romans 14 allow the consumption of blood in addition to meats formerly considered unclean? Some believers won't eat rare steak. I distinguish between myoglobin and blood. The patriarchs probably couldn't achieve a perfect "well-done" with the uneven heating technologies they had access to, so I take the instructions about draining blood at face value; they didn't drain myoglobin. Other believers avoid reading the Old Testament altogether, they read the "blood" in Acts 15 as murder, they focus hard on Jesus' words in Mark 7, and they eat blood sausages. What do I have to say about that? Let me check Romans 14:4. No comment. Wait, Paul called for the excommunication of believers who were engaged in sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 5, so why not pursue the sin of blood-eating as vehemently? Because in the case of sausages, it is debatable whether it’s biblically “blood” anymore. “The life is in the blood” per (Leviticus 17:11); if I allowed someone to transfuse the contents of a sausage into my bloodstream, I would have a stroke and die. It seems that we are at least a step away from consuming blood (which would have been done in a pagan ritual to absorb the power and virility of a bull, etc.,) by Paul’s yardstick. The Catholic Church lifted their blood-eating prohibition in the fifteenth century at the Council of Florence by somehow invoking a local lack of Jewish people to convert and quoting Titus 1:15: “to the clean, all things are clean”. Some use that same formula for sexuality to the horror of the aforementioned Catholics, and we’ll examine what Jesus (John 8) and Paul (1 Corinthians 5) said about things like that later in this book. For today’s applications of the Acts 15:20 rule about eating blood: Would I serve medium-rare steak to a believer who objects? No, and if I know their objections beforehand, I'd order well-done for myself when eating with them if friction could be avoided. I know I'm being repetitive, but it's to reinforce the pattern. Check all the Scripture and its nuances and context, listen to the Spirit, and have concern for a weaker brother. In the truth of Christ, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in everything, love. 

There are Christians on either side of most any question. I grew up in a legalistic tradition, so let’s address a number of contemporary issues among Christians that have solutions that could have been mostly forbidden to me had I not read a Bible:

Some believers don't drink. Yes, drunkenness is warned against in the New Testament. However, let's apply more Scripture than a few words out of context and see where we end up. Who warned against "drunkenness"? Paul, who had a four-drink minimum every Passover since he was twelve. People had wine at every meal back then because of bad water supplies. Whom did Paul warn against "drunkenness"? Former pagans who used to go to the Temple of Dionysus, the god of wine, and drink until they blacked out so that the "god" would fill and control them¹⁵. Doesn't being filled and controlled by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) sound much better? We live in a world with cars now. Drunk driving is a Romans 13 "obey the government" issue. Don't endanger other people. However, being unsafe to operate a 3,000 pound weapon is not the "drunkenness" the original audience would have understood. Drunkenness isn’t on the Noahide list, you say? A willingness not to know whether you made vows in God’s Name is a willingness to swear falsely. Don't get so drunk that you father your own grandchildren like Lot did in Genesis 19, and being willing to drink to a blackout is a willingness to risk doing that. Don't nap in a gutter due to alcoholism like Frank Gallagher on “Shameless” if you have any say in the matter; you’re an ambassador for Christ (Colossians 3:17). Back when Paul was writing his letters, after the drinking parties, bands of revelers would pour into the streets with torches and pipes to go from house to house, often uninvited, to serenade or accost. Drunk rich young men and their retinues made public nuisances of themselves and imposed themselves on the neighborhood, with the implicit understanding that nothing would happen to them for it. Behavior like this for members of a house church in a Galatian city, who were already conspicuously absent from the civic cult, would have been a visibility problem as well as a moral one. If the consequences of your drinking are adversely affecting other people, then it is unloving; don’t be a Parade of Annoying Drunks. On the other hand, Psalm 104:15 has been traditionally interpreted by Jews and Catholics that it's not a party without alcohol. Proverbs 31:6-7 endorses alcohol for the hard times, too. Some of my best witnessing has been over a few pints; it might be your best chance to get past your unbelieving friends’ pseudo-intellectual walls. I’ve been sober now (apart from rare social gatherings) for quite some time, but that was a personal choice based on the physiological effects of alcohol that got worse after age 40 and not a religious obligation. Jesus' first miracle was providing at least 120 gallons of wine to people that were already what modern people would call drunk (John 2). Sinless Jesus went to many dinners with many sinners, to the extent of being called a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:19); if He did nothing wrong, who are we to criticize what his tablemates did? The condemnations of drunkenness in the Old Testament were for 1) priests on duty, so they didn't get zapped for making mistakes with holiness and 2) leaders, who should have been leading instead of partying, and who shouldn't have been taxing their people heavily enough to stay as hammered as described in Isaiah all the time. Isaiah 1:22 speaks disapprovingly of watered-down wine, so modern condemnations of "strong drink" distilled to concentrations not available in biblical times are probably less important than the level of inebriation reached. Know your limits and drink responsibly, if you choose to. Now it's time to consider when not to: Am I going to drink in front of recovering alcoholics? The grape juice Communion elements that are derided as illegitimate among some traditional denominations began out of concern for weaker brothers such as this. Am I going to scandalize traditional-minded believing acquaintances with my behavior anywhere near them? Or generate stories that will do likewise? No. Additionally, plants are declared good at the front of the Bible and medicinal at the end of the Bible. I think lighting them on fire and breathing them is weird, but I have no grounds to judge those that think otherwise (apart from Romans 13’s required obedience to the government, the high expenses to families for cancer treatments for tobacco smokers, lost potential wealth that could have been invested or donated, unloving exposure of others to secondhand smoke against their will, etc.). Drug-assisted hallucinogenic idolatry would have been the closest behavior to that the apostles prohibited as pharmakeia or “sorcery” in that historical and cultural context, which also included poisoning people and putting spells on them. As always, don't give the faith a black eye, and don't use your liberty as an excuse to be a spectacular idiot.

Let's talk about gluttony. There is a difference between enjoying food and being ruled by appetite. Sodom was described in terms of abundance coupled with indifference to the needy. The fat sheep in Ezekiel 34:20 are not condemned because somebody discovered the existence of biscuits; powerful people like religious leaders were exploiting others (and the goats of Zechariah 10:3 are another symbol for them)¹⁶. If you are enjoying a good meal and sharing your abundance with people who need it, I have nothing to say about your fourth slice of pizza unless you are stealing your neighbor's groceries. Fasting is not a spiritual tax we pay to convince God to like us. The Old Covenant had its appointed fasts, and the New Testament repeatedly warns believers not to turn food, drink, festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths into measurements of righteousness. If you want to fast, fast. If you want to celebrate the goodness of God by eating a cheeseburger the size of a masonry block, eat the cheeseburger with thanksgiving. Love, justice, self-control, and what we are actually doing to other people matter a lot more than if a holiness committee approves of your dessert. Regarding Matthew 9:15, I’m sure the disciples probably lost their appetite while Jesus was in the tomb, but He is with us all the time now (Matthew 28:20, Hebrews 13:5). Fasting may help some believers focus on praying sometimes, and I’m not throwing stones at it (Colossians 2:16), but you are free to celebrate Him always.

On the subject of speech, on one hand we are supposed to only say things that are helpful (Ephesians 4:29). On the other hand, Paul says what American readers would recognize as the "s-word" in Philippians 3:8. Everything is worth a big, steaming pile of it next to knowing Christ. In the ancient world, sinning with speech was less about a list of dirty words, and more about blasphemies, false oaths in the Name of the true God, any oaths in the names of false gods, and calling down actual curses on people. For example, remember when Jacob said to let whoever stole Laban's idols die in Genesis 31:32? And then Rachel did? That's what Proverbs 26:2 is getting toward about an undeserved curse not landing. Even saying true but hurtful things was frowned upon; it is the intent to harm that matters. For such a lashon hara Miriam was temporarily a leper (Numbers 12). (Yes, that's another later Hebrew phrase for the gamut of evil speech seen in Scripture; again, I'm just using such terms because they make things easier to remember.) Calling curses upon God and the rulers was illegal (Exodus 22:28). Telling humorous parables about the rulers seemed to be okay (Judges 9:1-21). Elijah literally mocked the prophets of Baal by suggesting their god was on the toilet (1 Kings 18:27—"perhaps he is relieving himself"). Paul, in Galatians 5:12, suggests that if the legalists love circumcision so much, they should just go ahead and castrate themselves (apokopsontai). If your "new heart" is using a sharp tongue to call out religious hogwash like Jesus did, you aren't being "un-Christlike." Being gross or emphatic like Paul may be part of being genuine in some circles. Don't scandalize traditional-minded believers by going into your grandmother's house saying words they don't want to hear. Do the loving thing. Depending on the circumstances, even some lies are protective and loving. Rahab lied and is commended (Heb 11, James 2). The Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh and God blessed them. The "lying is always sin" absolutism is more Kantian than biblical¹⁷. 

Politics, sex, religion, and money all used to be inappropriate topics of conversation (as those things can be pretty divisive), and all of those arguments are fundamentally religious arguments. For example, tikkun olam is “repairing the world” from Mishnah, and it is a Reform Judaism notion of amending even the Law to keep society “well-functioning”. It’s similar to a thought in the Amidah Prayer (similar to the “Lord’s Prayer”); asking for His Kingdom to come and for His will to be done somehow became God looking for partners to establish the Millennial Kingdom through generally left-leaning politics, in their view. This also rhymes with the Kabbalist notion of returning Divine Sparks to their Source as a form of world repair. The more politically conservative element within Judaism says that free markets and private tzedakah (charity) provide the greatest good to the public and the greatest reward from God. Christians are free to have political opinions or to wait for Jesus Christ to return and conquer/replace the world; we love each other and preach about Him in the interim. See Psalm 102:25-26. 

Yoga, martial arts, meditation, and similar practices deserve a look¹⁸. Just stretching is not idolatry. Practicing punching for exercise is not automatically Buddhism. Sitting quietly and controlling your attention is not inherently occult. The object of worship matters. The theology attached to a practice matters. If somebody is actually participating in another religion's worship, that is no longer merely stretching. But Christians do not need to treat every useful human activity as spiritually contaminated because somebody else once attached a different philosophy to it. Paul walked into pagan intellectual territory, read pagan poets, understood pagan arguments, and quoted them when preaching Christ. He did not need to pretend those poets had never existed in order to remain holy.

There are Christians who think contact sports are unsuitable for us. After all, coveting a title and being willing to harm each other physically couldn't be loving, right? On the other hand, Paul says we can emulate him as an example of Christian behavior (1 Corinthians 11:1). Why would Paul use boxing as a sermon example (1 Corinthians 9:26, 2 Timothy 4:7) if it were off-limits to us¹⁹? Ancient Greek boxing was more like a striking-heavy MMA match from today. Eye gouges were prohibited, but no one wore padding, and ground-and-pound was the norm. Nowadays, people think that consent and man-made rules can circumvent God's rules about sexuality. However, in sports and other pastimes not otherwise forbidden in Scripture, consent and rules mean a world of difference between what is essentially entertainment that can distract people from their troubles and a brutal mugging in the parking lot outside the arena after the match is over. Biblical love is less a warm, fuzzy emotional state than it is loyal actions (in Hebrew, hesed); it's doing right by others even if they are not a friend to us. We are to look out for each other as bearers of God's Image, but dangerous activities like lumberjacking are still approved of in the Bible (Deuteronomy 19:5). You can love your neighbor as much as yourself while doing your best in a fair physical contest in which either of you could be victorious, bearing no ill will afterward regardless of the outcome, still being willing to consider donating to your opponent's crowdfunding campaign should they experience a mishap in life, etc.   

Let's consider an oft-maligned form of athletic performance art: professional wrestling (and by extension, all entertainment). Is it even lying anymore if we're all in on the outcomes being predetermined? Wrestling at least admits that the performers may not be behaving according to their true personalities; everyone is just trying to make as much money as possible by capitalizing on the audience’s emotions and recent trends in the zeitgeist. There’s a whole world of entertainment, politics, news, etc., occupying so much headspace in our “real” world doing the same thing, but desperately trying to make you believe that the talking heads are being genuine. Let’s look back: in the days of the New Testament, convicted criminals fought each other to the death in stomach-turning spectacles. Now, acrobats looking out for each other's well-being distract us from our troubles with artistic performances and set records for visiting Make-A-Wish kids in their off time. When Brodie Lee died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, Big E and Cody Rhodes spent Christmas sitting with Brodie's young son. At the time of this writing, the company his father worked for lets the child be the on-screen manager of his father's friends. This is wolf-lying-down-with-lamb stuff (Isaiah 11:6-9). For years, wrestlers were treated like vagrants. The prophets traveled. Jesus traveled. Paul traveled constantly and made tents to fund it. The traveling performer who goes from town to town with a skill and lives outside settled community structure is doing what almost every significant biblical figure did. Settlement is not holiness. In Genesis 32, Jacob wrestled with God. Some say it was an angel, others say it was the pre-Incarnate Christ. If it were a fight, God would have been able to destroy Jacob immediately, but this was a wrestling match with rules and Jacob (a known liar and cheater) wouldn't let God win. Since he made his debut pulling on his brother's heel, being a "heel" (bad guy) wrestler is no surprise. As a result of this encounter, Jacob was renamed Israel or "Wrestles With God". Names often mean destinies in the Bible, and the way Israel got its identity is a big deal. The funny thing about "heel" wrestlers is that if the crowd finds something to like about them and they start getting cheered, the promoter will start writing their story as if they were a "face" (good guy). Their disposition may not change a lot all at once, but they will naturally stop doing things that will make the crowd boo them and ruin their t-shirt sales. Do you see our story in that? We were born heels in Adam and dead in our sins. Thanks to what Jesus did for us, we are now faces (whether we know it yet or not), and our actions will reflect that; we will either express Christ and be fulfilled, or sin and feel miserable. The cloud of witnesses in Heaven cheers us on (Hebrews 12:1-2). If acting and storytelling were the same as the lying God doesn’t like, wouldn’t 1 Kings 20:38-42 be different.?  In 1 Kings 20:37, a prophet even gets “busted open” (to borrow wrestling jargon) in order to tell a story more convincingly. Will a believer get amped up enough to try to stick a performer with a hat pin, like some little old ladies tried to do at the Mid-South Coliseum? I bring up this amusing anecdote to say that in general, believers are noticeably more at peace than they were prior to gaining the new life. If something would have riled up the old you to a 10 on the grumpy scale, it might get you to a 5 before you get a chance to think about it (and then it will fall off pretty quickly) now that you understand your own sainthood. Consider the size of Paul's abstraction: If you can eat grocery store meat formerly sacrificed to idols, then watching actors and wrestlers pretend to hate and fight cannot be a problem. When I was a child, I loved The A-Team. The legalists tried to steer us away from depictions of violence, lying, etc., but let’s look at four chaotically good fellows who defied social norms in Mark 2. Faced with a huge crowd, they tore a hole in someone’s roof to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus in order for him to be healed. In addition to the stated destruction of property, do you think everyone else just let that happen? Or might there perhaps have been some stealth, fibbing, shoving, intimidation, etc. in service of a good cause? Their faith was counted as righteousness as far as granting the request to heal their friend, so their hearts were in the right place. Judges contains murder, sexual violence, assassination, political intrigue, betrayal, and enough family dysfunction to make a daytime soap opera look like a documentary about geese. Genesis has attempted murder, favoritism, sexual manipulation, sibling rivalry, deceit, and a father-in-law who changes the bride after the wedding. The Bible does not sanitize human behavior in order to protect the reader from knowing that evil exists. Therefore, watching a crime documentary is not automatically participation in crime, and watching actors portray evil is not automatically approval of evil²⁰. The question is what the material does to you. If a particular show turns you toward cruelty, lust, hatred, or some other actual sin, turn it off. If you can watch a story, understand the darkness it depicts, and remain free to love your neighbor, you have not committed murder merely because an actor pretended to do it on Wednesday night.

May we gamble? After all, games of chance are prime opportunities for cheating, coveting, and starting fights. Casino games' odds favor the house, so they're a way to transfer money from your pocket to theirs. People with poor self-control and addiction issues fall into betting rent money, their children's food money, etc. For people without those problems, surely money that can be treated as disposable could be put to better use supporting persecuted Christians and advancing the Gospel, right? Plus, Roman soldiers gambled for Jesus' clothes at the Crucifixion. However, on numerous occasions throughout the Bible God's people have thrown dice as a way to ask God's will. (We have the Bible and the Holy Spirit now for that, by the way.)  The Bible condemns the love of money, greed, exploitation, and covetousness. It also contains plenty of people casting lots, taking risks, investing resources, traveling by sea, farming uncertain crops, and otherwise participating in a world where outcomes are not guaranteed. Risk itself cannot be the sin, or every farmer and entrepreneur is going to need a lawyer. Thinkers like Wesley have historically used the line about money having better uses than that as a way to ban all forms of entertainment, including the sports and parties Jesus and Paul spoke of with approval in their sermons. Ultimately, your money is your money (Acts 5:4), and you can be as smart and altruistic with it as you wish. Assuming it is legal where you are (Romans 13), and everyone knows what they are doing, plays fairly, and can afford it, wagering can be just another hobby. Don't scandalize anyone with your behavior, and always have concern for the weaker brother, but you are free in Christ.  

Must we be utter pacifists? Jesus told His Jewish students to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount. In that culture and in that day, a slap was more of an insult than a physical attack. The notion of not "resisting" an evildoer is from Psalm 37. Over there, it's "don't be vexed by" an evildoer. We don't plot revenge for insults, pilfering, etc., because vengeance is God's, and He will repay (Deuteronomy 32:35). He has called dibs on vengeance, and we stay off of His throne. Read the plagues of Egypt, Deuteronomy 28, or Revelation to rest assured that whatever He chooses to do about what was done to you will outdo anything you'd like to in a moment of fleshliness. We can see in Job that He pays double to His people for our troubles. (He's going to burn this whole physical reality and replace it with a better one for us, and that's why Christians are naturally generous. We're like an orphan happily handing out his socks to the other kids at the orphanage because he's getting adopted today, and he knows that there's much better stuff at his new home.) However, God's people were never called to complete pacifism. The principle of preserving human lives because we are made in the Image of God extended to protecting ourselves and others from attacks. The Noahide covenant establishes capital punishment for murder. (On the other hand, while the government doesn’t bear the sword in vain, did we catch the right guy? Gentile governments aren’t bound by the two witnesses limit of the Law of Moses, but let’s not “Naboth” this if possible.) Killing an attempted murderer to stop him was not questioned because if he were successful, Genesis 9:6 would have demanded his death anyway. (It is this same principle at work in the treatment of ectopic pregnancies. As for the broader topic of abortion, another author summed most other cases up as a human sacrifice to the god of convenience featuring the most helpless and innocent victim by human standards being killed by his or her own mother and a doctor who has sworn to do no harm, and it is hard to think of something that would excite the Accuser more.) Being martyred for a greater love of God and laying your life down for love of neighbor are exceptions derived from the two greatest commands in the Law; the default position has always been closer to the times God helped Abraham (Genesis 14) and David (1 Samuel 30) go kill kidnappers to get their people back, which is one historical justification for the concept of a “just war”. Why would God train warriors (2 Samuel 22:35, Psalm 18:34, and Psalm 144:1) if he always opposes that sort of thing? Many believers have trouble reconciling God’s command to exterminate the Canaanites with the popular understanding of these matters, but all Scripture is inspired (2 Timothy 3:16-17), even the Book of Joshua. Jesus (Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name that we call Joshua in English, coincidentally) told His disciples that they would need swords (Luke 22:36) as they spread the word. When He said "That's enough" it can be read as "That's enough talk" rather than "That's enough swords". Plus, the legitimate use of force by governments and militaries is upheld even in Romans 13 (and even John the Baptist didn’t disarm Roman soldiers in Luke 3). Finally, would Paul have gone on about the Armor of God and the Sword of the Spirit in Ephesians 6 if fighting were forbidden in all contexts? A modern pastor hopefully wouldn't tell you to hold the Flame of Love to the Rock of Good Deeds and breathe deeply through the Crack Pipe of Faith, would he? If you choose to be a responsible gun owner as allowed by your government (Romans 13), be safe, don't harm anyone outside the scenarios God's traditional character allows, don't scandalize anyone with your behavior, and don't get into heated arguments with believers that think differently.  

The tithe was an agricultural tax (not applicable to all jobs), some of which the farmers got to use for a feast for themselves. See Deuteronomy 14:22-29, which includes "spend the money on anything you desire: cattle, sheep, wine, strong drink, or anything you wish." Giving the first things honored the Source and showed faith that more and better things were coming. Notice that partying in Jerusalem with it was one way for them to do that in addition to giving alms to the poor. Tithing is mentioned in two contexts in the New Testament. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for tithing their windowsill garden products but neglecting weightier matters of the Law like mercy (Matthew 23:23). This teaches us that tithing is a matter of the Law, and we're not under the Law (Romans 6:14) because Christ is the end of the Law for believers (Romans 10:4)²¹. The other place tithing is mentioned is in Hebrews when the author mentions the time Abraham gave ten percent of the loot he got killing bandits to Melchizedek once. The author of Hebrews used this example to prove the superiority of the priesthood of Melchizedek (a role filled forever for us by Christ now) to that of the Levites; in short, to prove we're not under the Law which includes tithing. Levites’ property was severely restricted to keep them focused on their role in the Temple system; modern pastors have houses, cars, book deals, jets, etc. Don’t get suckered into following half of a command that has been set aside (Hebrews 8:13). In 2 Corinthians 8 and 2 Corinthians 9, we find that we're free to give out of our abundance what we would like to (cheerfully, at that) in order to meet pressing needs. Jesus fed more people (five thousand vs. four thousand) with fewer loaves and fishes. Antics like “The church doors are locked, and no one leaves until everyone donates another $20” provide opportunities to use the wisdom God gave us to discern the difference between a worship service and a stick-up. For any given verse, look for the speaker, the audience, and the context.

When Paul talks about the "rich" in 1 Timothy 6, that is translated from the Greek plousios which means abundantly wealthy, having more money that you'd probably know what to do with; rich like Pluto the Roman god (or Scrooge McDuck, for those who haven't studied Roman fairy tales). When the modern equivalent of a Roman collaborator land baron starts a charitable foundation (and it's not a cynical tax avoidance scheme), then the Spirit may be at work. If you have the illusion of ownership in some companies in a retirement account, if you feel the effects of inflation on your budget, and especially if anyone can still call you an employee, you don't have to worry about plousios. Read Genesis 47 to find that based on your property tax, income tax, mortgage, etc., you’re probably a “slave” to someone by this definition. Doctors were "slaves" when the New Testament was written. We are supposed to owe no one anything but to love them (Romans 13:8), so staying out of debt and building a strong enough portfolio to avoid becoming a bum in your old age are important. (Being content with what you have in Hebrews 13:5 isn’t a prohibition of professional ambition, it was aimed at people tempted to renounce Christ to return to the synagogue for the associated social support and job opportunities.) If we are to "owe no one but to love them" then getting free from debt is a legitimate concern. Don't give more than you can afford to. Paul said to get free if you can (1 Corinthians 7:21, and someone giving everything away wouldn’t be able to do that). Also, owe no one but love, but there is institutionalized debt forgiveness built into even the Law of Moses: the Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25) and sabbatical debt release (Deuteronomy 15), so the modern Pharisees can stop being judgmental about bankruptcies, etc. There is a Christian tradition that sometimes treats wanting anything nicer than a lawn chair and a secondhand Bible as evidence that Mammon has personally moved into the guest bedroom. Proverbs 31 describes a woman buying real estate, producing merchandise, making investments, and turning a profit. Abraham had substantial resources and a trained household force. Solomon's court was not exactly a rummage sale; Solomon’s lifestyle was a multimedia presentation of God’s wisdom to the Queen of Sheba (and were he not a king, it all would have been fine by Deuteronomy 17). God Himself is repeatedly described as the giver of the ability to produce wealth. Exploiting widows to finance a preacher's third mansion is not made holy by putting a cross on the deed, but owning something nice is not the same thing as worshiping it. What you do with what you have, and have you forgotten the people around you? Yes, it's okay to retire. Retirement is not laziness, and having a nontraditional work arrangement is not rebellion against God. The Levites themselves had an age at which their ordinary service changed. Doctors nowadays keep extending our lifespans (through Frankenstein-esque means at times). In Bible times, people generally worked until they died or until their five sons took over the farming and supported them in their infirmity. The New Testament warnings against idleness (like in 2 Thessalonians 3) were directed at believers that thought Jesus was returning immediately. They had quit their jobs to wait for the end of the world, and they were becoming a drain on the productive members of the congregation. They mistook Him returning "quickly" like a flash of lightning with no time left to repent once He's started with Him returning "now". God is very merciful and has waited a long time (not for Him) for as many of us to be saved as can be (2 Peter 3:9). That being said, even though "idleness" was a nicety for "don't be a bum"²², energetic retirees are great for advancing the Kingdom. 

What about music? “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1), including awesome guitar riffs. Despite old fairy tales about people selling their souls to a devil for musical talent, all human attributes and skills come from God (Exodus 4:11, Exodus 35:30-35, and 1 Corinthians 4:7). Don’t give the enemy credit where it is not due, and don’t lessen your estimation of our Maker. Considering loud music, heavy metal, rap, and every other art form that has caused somebody's grandmother to say, “That devil music,” the Temple worship involved trumpets, horns, cymbals, harps, lyres, and shouting. The Psalms contain battle imagery, boasts, insults, grief, celebration, death, and rap-like poetry. David did not apparently receive a memo informing him that the appropriate volume for worship was one acoustic guitar and a man whispering into a microphone. The fact that a modern genre has an aggressive sound does not make it sinful. If the lyrics dishonor God, and the Spirit moves you to change the channel, change the channel. This will also give you ample opportunities to pray that the musicians be granted opportunities to hear the Gospel. Some of the “vilest” sex-and-drugs-crazed blasphemers end up converting. In Matthew 12:31, we are told that “every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven”, and only always failing to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading to Christ aka “blasphemy against the Spirit” (considering His good to be evil as in Isaiah 5:20) will not be forgiven. God likes to use infamous former opponents of Jesus like Paul to spread the Gospel.  

If God is offended by every instance of self-promotion, somebody is going to have to explain Paul's second letter to the Corinthians²³. When people challenged his authority, Paul responded with an enormous catalog of his credentials, sufferings, accomplishments, and experiences. Nehemiah records his own achievements. The Psalms repeatedly speak about the Psalmists themselves. Paul even instructed churches to exchange letters. Being known is fine; what you are willing to do to become known, and what you think your fame means about you can be snares. A Christian can have a social-media account, build a platform, publish books, make podcasts, promote a business, speak publicly, or become an internet weirdo with a microphone without committing the sin of vanity merely by existing online. If your entire identity depends on strangers clicking a button, however, perhaps the Spirit has something to say to you, but that is an issue of the heart, not a prohibition against Instagram. Podcasting and public intellectualism are particularly funny examples because Paul practically invented the “I'll meet you in public and argue about it” ministry model. He reasoned in synagogues, marketplaces, lecture halls, and among philosophers. He knew what other people believed well enough to quote their own poets back to them. Therefore, reading widely—including reading people whose ideas you reject—is not automatically dangerous. If reading Nietzsche, Marx, Dawkins, a Kabbalist, a Muslim philosopher, an atheist biologist, or somebody who thinks your entire theology is nonsense makes your faith collapse, perhaps you need to grow in understanding rather than banning books. Paul knew the pagan world well enough to preach Christ to it. You cannot effectively explain the Gospel to people whose arguments you refuse even to understand.

Regarding enjoying solitude, Jesus repeatedly withdrew from crowds to pray. Elijah went into the wilderness and was met there with food, sleep, and gentleness rather than a lecture about his failure to attend enough small groups. Some Christians recharge in a crowd; some recharge alone. The Bible commands love, not extroversion²⁴. Meeting with other believers is valuable because we belong to one another, encourage one another, and sometimes need somebody to tell us that the thing we are about to do is catastrophically stupid, but the Church is not a parole officer checking whether you have accumulated enough attendance points this week. You are already the temple of the Holy Spirit. You cannot skip yourself.

I keep speaking of church unity, what about the unpleasant Christians? You may have, for example, some racist old people at your church or in your family. What to do about them? Yes, everyone's descended from Adam, God wants to save everybody, and we are to love one another. But we’re also supposed to love the unloving, too. This is slightly out of context, but Christ did call a Syro-Phoenician woman a dog, Paul called Greeks barbarians, and Simeon had a nickname that would get people “canceled” now. Getting wound up about wedge issues should usually take a backseat to unity in the body of Christ. Be kind to, pray for, and respect your elders as much as possible. On the other hand, Christians are not supposed to hate fellow Christians (1 John 3:15 and 1 John 5:1). Be polite, but don’t partner with evil.   

May we dance, as Christians? That is an odd question for believers from most denominations. There was dancing at the party when the Prodigal Son returned home in Jesus' parable, and He wouldn't have confused us with that if it were a problem. David danced so hard when the Ark of the Covenant returned that he flashed a few girls. (Have you ever had that much fun at church? Explain.) Zephaniah 3:17 says God dances with joy over you. How did this become an issue? Well, dancing too closely (as considered by some people that "leave room for the Holy Spirit" ignoring the fact He's within you now, Believer) might lead to kissing (which in Bible days was a greeting, and it still is in much of the world). Kissing might lead to some other stuff, and babies might happen, so some denominations nip it all in the bud. Some call this godly wisdom, others see a Pharisee fence. You are free in Christ. Don't mock someone's convictions, get in a big argument over it, or take their daughters dancing if it would be an affront to Christian unity. Again, I know I'm being repetitive about not scandalizing other believers and having concern for the weaker brother, but Paul wrote more about keeping us all together, loving each other, and maintaining the public image of Christianity by not falling into a bunch of warring factions than he enumerated lists of bad behaviors. I've highlighted a few topics to demonstrate that a biblical view is often more nuanced than any one denomination's policy about it, and that despite any differences in opinion, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. We can walk in Christian freedom, and God is big enough to guide us with Scripture and the Holy Spirit.  

What about tattoos, piercings, cosmetics, elective physical modifications, and the endless argument about what it means to be the Temple of the Holy Spirit? Paul was not writing 1 Corinthians 6 to a congregation arguing about nose rings (like Rebekah’s in Genesis), cigarettes, cheeseburgers, tattoos, earrings, or hair dye. Leviticus 19:28 sits among regulations about mixed fabrics and agricultural practices that nobody thinks Gentile Christians are required to follow²⁵. If “fearfully and wonderfully made” means we may not modify the human body, then apparently God would also be opposed to haircuts, dental work, eyeglasses, braces, and the entire dermatology industry, let alone circumcision. We can disagree about whether a particular modification is wise, attractive, affordable, or necessary without pretending that our personal taste is a divine mandate for others.

Other traditional-minded believers make gender an issue in places that the Bible does not. They might try to explain Deborah’s role in Judges 4:4 as an exception in the wild days of the Judges²⁶. However, let us not make the mistake of thinking women are not allowed to lead. God would not break His own rules. He can pick anyone He wants to speak for Him, including Balaam’s donkey, but Deborah did more than deliver messages; she sat in the same judgment seat that passed from Samuel to Saul and then to David. Saying women can’t lead or teach also creates problems with the story of Huldah the prophetess (2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34), the story about the wise woman who got the rebel beheaded (by convincing all the people in Abel, men included) in 2 Samuel 20, etc. Philip’s daughters prophesied (Acts 21:9), Phoebe was a deaconess (Romans 16:1), Priscilla helped teach Apollos (and I consider him a good candidate for the author of the Book of Hebrews), Junia was well regarded among the apostles²⁷, etc. The verses (1 Corinthians 14:34-35) about women remaining silent in a church service (despite the same author addressing the same congregation telling them to make sure a woman’s head was covered when praying or prophesying in 1 Corinthians 11) has a context. Even in some traditional congregations today, men sit on one side of the room while women and children sit on the other as in the historical synagogues. Paul telling women to ask their husbands at home was telling them not to yell across the room during the sermon. Many Bible translations title 1 Corinthians 14 “Order in Worship”, “Intelligibility in Worship”²⁸, etc. The other passage frequently quoted about this matter is 1 Timothy 2:8-15, and taking a verse out of context out of that chunk loses the meaning. 1 Timothy 2:2 introduces a theme of peace and quiet. 1 Timothy 2:8 continues with men free of strife. 1 Timothy 2:9-10 features women not going overboard with the new Christian egalitarianism (see Galatians 3:28) by dressing in whorish/ostentatious ways that would have been seen as disrespectful to their husbands. 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is better translated including “wife” learning in quietness and submission; Paul did not permit a “wife” to “admonish” or “lord over” her “husband”, which is consistent with his treatment of Genesis²⁹. Wives were invented to help husbands, and that help can take many forms, including work outside the home (Proverbs 31). Wifely submission within marriage is a part of marriage being a depiction of Christ’s relationship with the Church (Ephesians 5), but not every woman has to take guff from every man. A summary for groups that think too much about these issues would be “complementarian within marriage, egalitarian elsewhere”.   

What about having children? “Be fruitful and multiply” was spoken into a world that needed to be populated by Adam and repopulated by Noah³⁰. Similar commands were given to Jacob (Genesis 35:11) and to the exiles (Jeremiah 29:6) in the years leading up to the advent of Christ. However, Christians reproduce through evangelism. The New Testament does not give Gentile believers a universal command to reproduce biologically. Paul actually discusses singleness as a legitimate calling and practical gift. Care for children in this world who need care, and don't turn somebody else's reproductive decisions into a holiness test God never gave you.

Some denominations treat divorce as an unforgivable sin. Marriage is a union that God created, so splitting up is not to be done lightly. Marriage is a depiction of Christ’s relationship with the Church; we worship Him alone, and He provides for us (Philippians 4:19) and protects us (Hebrews 7:25). Ephesians 5:21-33 explains Christian marriage. Many husbands want the verse 22 submission without the verse 25 laying-down-his-life-for-her and vice versa. The “Church fathers” wrote many unbiblical things about this topic, including discouraging remarriage after the death of a spouse, which is plainly allowed (Romans 7:1-6). Staying single to better serve the Lord is a good option as well, but widows, widowers, and the biblically divorced are free to remarry if they wish. Believer, if at any point in the following discussion you think you may have had an unbiblical divorce and feel accusation over something you can't fix anymore, remember Numbers 30:3-8. Rather than focusing on the misogyny and paternalism in Iron Age texts, take comfort in being able to claim that as part of the Bride of Christ (the Church) and as a child of God, any rash vows you have ever made (including proclaiming someone was “the one”) were already nullified by the Omniscient One. Don’t abuse this freedom by trying to apply it proactively, please (Ecclesiastes 5:4-5, Deuteronomy 23:21-23, Matthew 5:33-37, and James 3). The grace we live in is not cheap; Jesus gave everything for it. The grace we live in is not cheap; for us, it is free. However, if anyone tries to enforce the divorce teachings from the Sermon on the Mount (to 1st century Jews about how they all failed to keep the impossible standard of the Law of Moses, and how they needed grace per Romans 3:19) regarding your divorce situation, they are a hypocrite if they haven’t given away everything, and if they aren’t missing a hand and an eye. We all stumble in many ways (James 3:2); to be perfect like God (Matthew 5:48), we need Jesus Christ’s finished work on the Cross (Hebrews 10:14, 2 Corinthians 5:21).

The Gospels contain references to Jewish practices and phrases like “for any cause” that would have been unfamiliar to anyone outside the Holy Land in those days. Oddly, thanks to archaeological finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls and old divorce documents with rabbinic commentary, we have more background to understand what Jesus and Paul were talking about than the 2nd century “fathers”³¹. When Jesus was asked about whether it was okay to divorce a woman “for any reason”, he was being asked to pick a side in the Shammai/Hillel disagreement. Moreover, He was being asked to answer that question publicly in the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, who had taken his brother’s wife thusly. They were trying to set Jesus up to be killed like John the Baptist. Some background on the dispute: Shammai said Deuteronomy 24:1-4 divorces required serious grounds like sexual immorality such as not actually being a virgin when advertised as such (contract fraud), since adultery was already a separately regulated death penalty offense. Hillel interpreted it as being “for any reason”; this was meant to be a kindness, since it wouldn’t require the airing of dirty laundry in front of a judge at the city gate that would make a crowd want to stone someone to death (and only the Romans’ say-so prevented that). It was this sort of quiet putting-away Joseph considered once regarding the unexpectedly pregnant Mary. Roman law permitted divorcing without even giving her a certificate, let alone a reason. Leaving a woman without a divorce certificate could allow a scoundrel to keep the dowry (Genesis 31:14-16 makes it clear that part of the bride price was intended to endow a wife financial security against widowhood) and prevented her from marrying again (The whole certificate business showed that a husband had quit his claim and would not come back later to try to get the wife back from the new husband; it basically said “you are free to remarry any man you wish”). There are well-meaning Christian educators that think Moses snuck Deuteronomy 24:1-4 into the Law. What do you think the God that allowed Miriam to contract leprosy for saying true but critical things about Moses, that prevented Moses from entering the Promised Land for the rock-bonking stunt, that is implicated in killing 14,700 people for complaining about the other people He was recently implicated in killing, and that threatened to add the plagues of Revelation to anyone who added to the text would have done to Moses for doing something like that? When Pharisees talked about Moses commanding divorce and Jesus talked about Moses permitting it, that was shorthand for the Law of Moses given to him by God. When Jesus said that it was added due to their hardness of heart, He meant that divorce was not part of God’s plan before the Fall; hence, He quoted Genesis 2:24 regarding the true spirit of marriage to preface His comments about a particular divorce scenario.

When Jesus said in Matthew 19:9 “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery,” it was in regard to the correct application of Deuteronomy 24:1-4, not to the rest of biblical divorce law. Paul didn’t just invent desertion as grounds for divorce, and what Paul wrote does not contradict Jesus because that is rooted in the Exodus 21:10-11 grounds that Jesus did not object to. In context, Matthew 19:9 is more like “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife using Deuteronomy 24:1-4, except for sexual immorality, like the Hillelites with their unbiblical “for any reason” divorce rule, and marries another woman commits adultery because the marriage with its associated responsibilities was still alive, therefore providing for this new heifer instead of the wife of his youth puts him in breach of contract.” There was a one-wife rule in the Greco-Roman culture; otherwise, adding wives like the patriarchs would have been fine. When Jesus said in Matthew 5:32, “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery,” no woman divorced a husband in the ancient world to go find herself. Women had few economic prospects apart from a man. Jesus saying marrying a divorced woman is adultery is in regard to the scenario of getting a woman to divorce for the purpose of marrying her like Herod did. Any cast-off victims are freed by their partners' breach of contract and can remarry.

Exodus 21:10-11 is about the treatment of a slave: Jewish lesser-to-greater argument posited that a wife is to be treated better than a slave, so even the Pharisees of Shammai’s school allowed divorce for physical abuse and neglect. Since a slave could expect food, clothing, and shelter, then a wife was not to expect any worse treatment than that. Ephesians 5:29 reiterates this principle. Exodus 21:10-11 says that a concubine could be released from her relationship if her man diminished her portion of food, clothing, or shelter. The same groups that insist that the spies merely “lodged” at Rahab’s brothel somehow insist marital/conjugal rights are in this verse. Jesus is away building us a mansion in glory; He doesn't sin, and the traditional interpretation would make Him a sinner for not staying here on Earth instead to have sex with the Bride of Christ (For those keeping score, He is the Bread of life that feeds us in John 6:35, and believers are clothed with Christ in Galatians 3:27). David, who did right except for the Bathsheba incident per 1 Kings 15:5, refrained from sexual relations with concubines his son had slept with in 2 Samuel 20:3. Plus, there’s no way marital/conjugal “frequency” stayed the same as the righteous polygamist patriarchs added wives (The Law covers several issues pertaining to having multiple wives rather than prohibiting the practice). In the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 7:2 just says “have”, and translation teams added phrases like “sexual relations”. The “marital duty” or “conjugal duty” in some translation teams interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:3 is just the duties of marriage – wives help and obey, husbands provide, etc. See Ephesians 5:21-33. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:4 frames these obligations in the sense of being one flesh. 1 Corinthians 7:5 points out the importance of our relationship with God even though marriage naturally divides our focus (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). “For richer or for poorer” sounds like guys were trying to hedge their bets. In the view of churches that allow divorce and remarriage, since 1 Timothy 5:8 says people who won’t provide for their families have denied the faith and are worse than unbelievers, therefore spendthrifts wed to “sugar-mommas” are ripe for the Matthew 18:15-17 plus 1 Corinthians 7:15 two-punch (supported by the straightforward "if...he does not provide..." interpretation of Exodus 21:11; if you see that contingent upon the "if he takes another wife" in verse 10 and he hasn't, then get out the Al Green record and stay together). There doesn’t have to be a divorce; we’re just identifying circumstances in which an innocent party may initiate legal proceedings reflecting a relationship that has already died and then may subsequently remarry without committing adultery. Do you think God wanted all the old men to get divorced because Viagra hadn't been invented yet? To be blunt, all those old guys were capable of the same erection quality and frequency as at the beginning of their relationships? That’s what it would take to prevent reducing her portion by the prevailing modern interpretation of the text. Plus, the old adage about putting a penny in a jar for every sexual encounter in the first year of marriage and then subtracting one for every subsequent encounter over the course of the marriage reveals that most couples fail by that interpretation. Paul’s advice about withholding relations to enhance prayer life would be a problem as well. Therefore, what is owed by a husband to a wife or concubine is food, clothing, and shelter. If you prefer the Septuagint for Exodus 21:10, those translators went with homilia (ὁμιλίαν) for the Hebrew ōnāh, and since the people who really care about this hang out in 1 Corinthians 7, homilia is just companionship in 1 Corinthians 15:33. Demanding sexual relations from an unwilling partner regardless of gender is marital rape, unloving, un-Christian, etc. There will likely be pastors that oppose things I say later, and because of their stance on mandatory relations, I can safely say that they are rapists and supporters of rapists.

Many people have been encouraged to remain in abusive relationships because the Church traditionally only recognizes adultery and abandonment by an unbeliever as grounds for divorce. God takes care of the widows and orphans, so the divorce prohibition is in part against putting a woman in the street, and the adultery prohibition is in part against a child not being able to honor the right parents. Would Jesus, who said the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, wish continued harm upon women and children toward maintaining a symbol of His love for the Church? People have been told to “turn the other cheek” when beaten; in context, that meant to endure insults rather than retaliate because God avenges (Deuteronomy 32:35). Genesis 2:24 and Leviticus 19:18 prohibit abuse in marriage for everyone but masochists. The Law of Moses freed slaves who had been brutalized (Exodus 21:26-27). The 1st century Jewish religious authorities endorsed lesser-to-greater arguments (and Jesus did too with his comparison of circumcision on the Sabbath to healing on the Sabbath in John 7:23; He also said these authorities were authorized Torah interpreters in Matthew 23:2-3), so they reasoned that since a slave could expect that, then a wife was not to expect any worse. Regarding a spouse who won’t listen to you, to the Church, and to Jesus, and who instead insists on acting like an unbeliever, Matthew 18:15-17 says to treat them as an unbeliever. Marrying an unbeliever is “unequal yoking”, and both Testaments discourage it (Deuteronomy 7:3, 2 Corinthians 6:14); Paul says you can let them go if they want out, and you can remarry (1 Corinthians 7:15). Paul said “in such cases” rather than “in this instance”, so literal abandonment by an unbeliever is just one application of valid divorce and remarriage. Driving you away is abandoning you, and saying they want to stay married to continue to abuse you is semantics. If Paul would have to hide in a basket and get lowered over a wall to run away from potential converts that act like your “spouse” (Acts 9:23-25), they have already abandoned you, and they are in violation of the marriage contract. The paperwork is a formality.

The party that leaves is not necessarily the party that broke the one-flesh relationship. God (after being good to people who were not good to Him for a long time, unilaterally keeping His part of the covenant as the best example for us) wrote the certificate of divorce in Jeremiah 3:8, but Ezekiel 16 lists the ways God’s people had already broken faith with Him. At the end of Ezekiel 16 (and in Jeremiah 3:14), God took His wayward wife back as in 1 Corinthians 7:11. Remember, Deuteronomy 24:1-4 also includes a prohibition of a first husband taking a woman back after a second marriage; this prevented wife-pimping and wife-swapping under legal pretext. After all, God expected Israel to be faithful to their treaty with the tricky Gibeonites of Canaan and even supported them in doing so with one of the greatest recorded miracles (Joshua 9, Joshua 10). See also 2 Samuel 21. They were told not to “marry” them, but they were expected to keep their word once wed (Deuteronomy 7:1-4 but Genesis 2:24). The incest issue often doesn’t get enough attention here. The issue of Herod’s marriage was complicated by Herod “marrying” his living brother’s wife (Leviticus 18:16). The second-marriages-are-binding principle would have only worked if their pairing could have otherwise been legally approved per the Law of Moses. (Marrying Canaanites was prohibited, but it was not a death penalty offense like incest per our earlier discussion of Hebrews 9:22.) As to the notion of “perpetual adultery” bandied about by jilted men on Christian talk radio, Jesus said that the act of remarrying under the wrong circumstances is adulterous. If God refused to recognize remarriage as legitimate, and a physical relationship between a remarried couple was essentially an affair, then dissolving the second marriage and returning to the original spouses would fix it. On the contrary, whether the second marriage began lawfully or not, it becomes as binding as the original marriage was supposed to be (I know, we're on Earth, stuff happens); in order to avoid more adultery, the remarried person needs to remain faithful to the new marriage instead of trying to go back to the previous spouse. By the way, 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 in context seems to address the Greek philosophy fans who had asked about being celibate for the Lord in 1 Corinthians 7:1 whom Paul placates in 1 Corinthians 7:5,29. Yes, God got a Deuteronomy 24:1-4 divorce, therefore Jesus did not disallow all of those. The subsequent remarriage is legal because of the truth of Isaiah 45:5: there is no other real god for them to marry, so there was no complication of a second marriage to prevent reconciliation. Malachi 2:14-16 is about dumping faithful Jewish wives to pick up pagan wives instead under a one-wife rule, and its intent is just as pro-endogamy as Ezra’s mass divorces. The God who hates divorce did not leave Abraham’s physical descendants forever per Paul’s argument in Romans 11, and He will never leave you nor forsake you. He won’t divorce you for being divorced. 

In conclusion, it appears that churches that allow divorce with the possibility of remarriage (after applying Proverbs 18:17 “listen to both sides” first and only proceeding after much careful consideration and counseling unless anyone’s safety is at risk) may use Ephesians 5 (“Are they treating you rightly?”) and 2 Thessalonians 2:15 (“Will they even listen to the Church when we tell them to straighten up and reconcile?”) to then apply Matthew 18:15-17 to declare the soon-to-be-former spouse an unbeliever, then use 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 based on Deuteronomy 7:3-4 to invoke 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 to say that an unbeliever has left the marriage by breaking the oath. Spouses blatantly behaving as unbelievers are treated as unbelievers, with unequal yoking being a form of "sexual immorality" and abandonment being derived from acting as if free from the marriage contract (the love and provision in Ephesians 5:21-33), whether still physically present or not. I assure you that assertions I will make later in this book will require far fewer backflips than things like that which are common practice in churches now. 

Legalism isn’t only about the “no-no’s”; plenty of churches are more than happy to give you plenty of things to do as well. Sometimes, it seems like they aren’t happy unless you aren’t happy. “Spiritual disciplines” sound godly. People mean well. They want to be better Christians, so they set their mind to becoming better Christians by disciplining themselves to pray more, read the Bible more, join accountability groups³², etc. If you wanted to be a better magician, that would logically be the way to go about it. You could practice more, study better teachers, get more experience in front of audiences, etc. The problem is that Christianity is a relationship, not a hobby. If you believe Christ died for you and rose again, and you confess that He is Lord, you are a child of God. How would you feel if your own child came up to you and said that they didn't really want to talk to you, but their friends in the accountability group were making them? Your Father wants to spend time with you, and you get to spend time with Him! Isn't that great? If you wrote your child a letter about how much you love them, would you expect them to have to schedule time to make themselves read it? I don't say this to make anyone feel bad. Once you get into regular Bible reading, if you get away from it (life happens), you don't have to feel guilty, but you will feel "hungry". Gathering with other believers for mutual encouragement and support is biblical, but "accountability groups" that ask believers that are one Spirit with the Lord according to 1 Corinthians 6:17 "What is the state of your soul?" as if their recent performance had anything to do with it smell like worldly attempts at works-based religion to me. Jesus did it all for us. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells me that He who knew no sin became Sin for me so I became the righteousness of God; Christianity is the world's best Lack of Accountability Group. 

The New Covenant does not hand us a giant coloring book in which every possible modern activity has already been shaded red or green. We have something more demanding and more freeing. On many issues, you may choose differently from your brother, and your brother may choose differently from you. One believer may drink; another may abstain. One may dance; another may sit on the porch. One may have tattoos; another may think tattoos look like somebody attacked him with a permanent-marker factory. Believe in Christ. Love one another. Abstain from the specific things the apostles actually prohibited. Walk by the Spirit. Don't use your freedom as an excuse to hurt people. Obey legitimate civil authority. Don't drag Christ's name through the mud by behaving like a hypocritical lunatic in public. Consider the weaker brother. You are free. That does not mean every choice is wise. It does not mean every choice is beautiful. It does not mean every choice is good for you. Read the Bible in context to know whether your denomination's fence is a verse.

15  The claim that Paul's warning against drunkenness in Ephesians 5:18-19 specifically evokes the cult of Dionysus, whose devotees associated wine-induced ecstasy with divine possession, is advanced at length by Cleon Rogers in a 1979 Bibliotheca Sacra article surveying the cult's pervasiveness in first-century Asia Minor (Rogers 1979). Ephesus is well attested archaeologically as a center of Dionysiac and related Bacchic devotion, and more recent work situates Ephesians 5:18–19 against the broader backdrop of the Greco-Roman drinking party (the symposion) and its associated drinking songs (skolia), with Paul's call to "speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit" forming a deliberate replacement of the pagan symposium's repertoire with a Christian one (Howell 2020). Drunkenness was also simply endemic to Greco-Roman urban life independent of any particular cult (see the balanced treatment in Arnold's commentary, cited widely alongside Rogers). The wider culture of Dionysiac and symposiastic wine-drinking as a vehicle for ecstatic religious experience or social status forms an illuminating and well-evidenced backdrop against which Paul's positive alternative (Spirit-filling) makes rhetorical sense as a contrast of two rival forms of “possession.”

16  In Matthew 6:16–18, Jewish disciples fasting under Torah’s own provisions (the Day of Atonement, Lev. 16:29–31, and later voluntary fasts) are addressed, and Jesus corrects the manner of an assumed Jewish practice without thereby legislating that practice for a Gentile church that did not yet exist. Acts narrates fasting among mixed and increasingly Gentile congregations like at Antioch before commissioning Barnabas and Saul, and before appointing elders on the first missionary journey (Acts 13:2–3; 14:23), but as description of practice, not command. The one Pauline text that pairs fasting directly with a married couple’s devotional life, 1 Corinthians 7:5, is itself a live text-critical question: the word “fasting” (nēsteia) appears in the Byzantine textual tradition but is absent from the earliest and best manuscripts (P46, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus), and Gordon Fee’s NICNT commentary judges it a later scribal addition, a judgment reflected in the shorter text printed by modern critical editions and by translations such as the NIV and ESV, which mention only prayer (Fee 1987, 289–90). Matthew 9:14–15 (par. Mark 2:18–20; Luke 5:33–35). Fasting is attested as a real early-church practice, available to any believer who finds it a useful discipline for prayer or self-denial, and not established as an ongoing command to the Gentile church. The most commonly cited text, Ezekiel 34’s condemnation of the “fat sheep,” is worth examining directly rather than assumed. Daniel Block’s NICOT commentary on Ezekiel reads the fat-sheep oracle as addressed specifically to Israel’s corrupt shepherd-kings, who fed and clothed themselves from the flock while failing to strengthen the weak, heal the sick, or search for the lost (Ezekiel 34:2–4) — an oracle about exploitative leadership, not a general dietary indictment of well-fed people as such (Block 1998, 273–91). Treating a second helping as freestanding evidence of spiritual failure asks a specific, targeted political oracle to do work it was not written to do.

17  The claim that Rahab’s deception of the men of Jericho (Joshua 2:4–6) demonstrates that protecting innocent life can rightly override the general prohibition on false speech engages a genuine and long-running debate in Christian ethics rather than a settled question. Augustine’s De Mendacio ("On Lying") argued for what is now called unqualified absolutism: he said that lying is intrinsically wrong in every case without exception, a position Augustine held with notable difficulty given cases like Rahab’s, and one later held in modified form by Charles Hodge and John Murray (see the survey of positions in the standard evangelical-ethics literature). Norman Geisler’s Christian Ethics: Options and Issues mounted the most influential evangelical rebuttal, arguing for “graded absolutism”: moral norms exist in a real hierarchy, and when two absolute obligations genuinely conflict (truth-telling and preserving innocent life), the higher obligation governs without guilt attaching to the necessarily unfulfilled lower one — Geisler’s own example, alongside Rahab, is the Hebrew midwives’ deception of Pharaoh (Exodus 1:15–21), whom the text says God explicitly rewarded (Geisler 1989, 74–101). Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25 both commend Rahab’s faith specifically in connection with this act, which is a real textual problem for the unqualified-absolutist reading, since neither text qualifies its commendation by carving out the deception as a regrettable exception.

18  R. Albert Mohler’s widely discussed 2010 column argued that yoga cannot be neatly divided into a physical component (acceptable) and a spiritual one (not), because its physical forms were designed as vehicles for a specific non-Christian understanding of body, mind, and the divine, a position he developed in dialogue with Denver Seminary philosopher Douglas Groothuis (Mohler 2010). Candy Gunther Brown, a historian of American religion at Indiana University whose scholarship on complementary and alternative spiritual practices is the more academically rigorous treatment of this question, documents in detail how thoroughly yoga’s popularization in the West retained explicitly religious content even in ostensibly secular or fitness-oriented settings, complicating any simple claim that the postures have been fully de-sacralized by import into a gym (Brown 2019, 45–89). Against this, a considerable body of practicing Christians and some theologians maintain that physical postures and breathing exercises can be performed, and are in fact performed by many, with Christian rather than Hindu or Buddhist intent and content, analogous to how the New Testament treats other borrowed cultural forms. The visible intent to engage in pagan worship matters: if grocery store idol meat is fine, then light aerobics in your church’s Family Life Center is not pagan worship.

19  Ancient Greek athletics, including the harsher, less-padded boxing and pankration combat sports, are well documented (Miller 2004 remains a standard sourcebook on Greek athletics). Someone told me that a modern writer might speak of "going toe to toe" with an opponent without thereby endorsing boxing, but "going toe to toe" is a dead idiom; most people who use it have never given boxing itself a thought. Paul's comparison in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27 is a different rhetorical act: it is sustained across four verses, technically accurate (he distinguishes aimless shadow-boxing from actually landing blows, using the verb hypōpiazō, literally "to give a black eye"), and offered admiringly, as a model of disciplined effort the reader should emulate, not as a passing turn of phrase. Sustained, technically informed, approving use of an athletic comparison would be odd for the apostle to use without comment if the game were a sin.

20  Jerome Creach’s study of violence in Scripture notes that the book of Judges in particular narrates atrocity — assassination, mass killing, sexual violence, the dismemberment recorded in Judges 19 — without editorial sanitization, using the material to indict rather than glorify the moral collapse of a leaderless Israel (“in those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit,” Judges 21:25) (Creach 2013, 87–112). The narrator’s willingness to depict evil in order to expose it, rather than to approve it, is itself an interpretive datum bearing on how a modern reader might evaluate depicted, rather than committed or endorsed, evil in other narrative media.

21  David Croteau's doctoral dissertation and subsequent monographs remain the most thorough treatment of tithing in Christian theology available (Croteau 2005; Croteau 2010). Croteau distinguishes pre-Mosaic tithing (Abraham's one-time gift to Melchizedek in Genesis 14; Jacob's conditional vow in Genesis 28) from the Mosaic legislation's tithing system, in his view adding multiple distinct tithes totaling considerably more than a flat ten percent of income (Numbers 18:21–32; Deuteronomy 14:22–29; Deuteronomy 26:12–15), and argues that the New Testament never applies any of this material to Gentile believers as a giving requirement: Jesus's one direct comment on tithing (Matthew 23:23) addresses Pharisees still living under the Mosaic covenant and criticizes their neglect of "justice, mercy and faithfulness," not Gentile believers' giving practices, while Hebrews 7's extended discussion of Abraham's tithe to Melchizedek serves the letter's christological argument for the superiority of Christ's priesthood, not a stewardship principle (Croteau 2005, 124–27, 201–40). Andreas Köstenberger, working independently and from a more traditionally evangelical theological starting point than Croteau's, reached the same conclusion in a jointly authored systematic assessment: no New Testament text applies a tithing requirement to the church, and the New Testament's own vocabulary of giving is deliberately non-quantified, oriented instead around cheerful, need-responsive generosity (2 Corinthians 8–9) (Köstenberger and Croteau 2006). This convergence across scholars of different confessional starting points is a reasonably strong indicator that the anti-mandatory-tithing position is not a marginal or motivated reading; Croteau's own edited volume Perspectives on Tithing nonetheless includes serious contributors defending a continuing tithing principle, on the grounds that Scripture's overall pattern of giving establishes a floor rather than a ceiling even under the New Covenant, so the question is not entirely without dissent among careful readers (Croteau, ed., 2011). However, we didn’t add extra Sabbaths or foods to avoid under the New Covenant, so I call shenanigans.

22  My reading of 2 Thessalonians 3's warning against idleness (that certain believers had stopped working because they expected Christ's immediate return) reflects a longstanding and still widely held interpretation, but it is not the only one. Bruce Winter's study of the letter's civic and economic context argues instead that the "disorderly" (ataktoi) in view were likely engaging in a recognized Greco-Roman social practice of client dependency, attaching oneself to a wealthier patron for support while contributing no reciprocal labor, rather than sitting idle out of imminent-return expectation as such, since Paul's own stated solution requiring work to eat targets a specific economic relationship of dependency more than a psychological state of eschatological excitement (Winter 1994, 44–60). Abraham Malherbe's standard critical commentary treats the eschatological-excitement reading more sympathetically, noting Paul's proximate discussion of the day of the Lord earlier in the letter, while acknowledging the social-dependency reading as a live alternative (Malherbe 2000, 448–60). Either way, Paul was not establishing a general theology of retirement or leisure, but addressing a specific abuse of some type of communal generosity.

23  Paul’s extended self-defense in 2 Corinthians 10–12, sometimes called the “Fool’s Speech,” catalogs his own credentials, sufferings, and visionary experiences at length in response to rivals questioning his authority. Murray Harris’s NIGTC commentary on 2 Corinthians reads this material as deeply ironic and self-undermining even as Paul deploys it. He boasts while repeatedly signaling that boasting itself is “foolish” and redirects the substance of his boast toward weakness rather than achievement. Nevertheless, would the Holy Spirit have preserved this letter for us if Paul were not to be emulated (1 Corinthians 11:1)?

24  Elijah’s wilderness retreat after Horeb (1 Kings 19) is genuine biblical warrant for withdrawal as a legitimate response to exhaustion and despair, and God’s initial response is food, rest, and a gentle presence “in a still small voice” rather than reproach. The repeated divine question “What are you doing here, Elijah?” is read by a number of commentators as carrying a genuine edge of challenge alongside the comfort, confronting Elijah’s self-pitying claim to be the last faithful Israelite left rather than simply validating it (Provan 1995, 145–51). The chapter as a whole therefore supports withdrawal as legitimate without supporting withdrawal from any real engagement with one’s calling; God restores Elijah and then sends him back out with fresh assignments.

25  The claim that tattooing is prohibited to Christians on the authority of Leviticus 19:28 ("do not... put tattoo marks on yourselves") requires the same treatment this book has given every other Levitical citation: context first. Jacob Milgrom’s Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus 17–22, the standard critical treatment of this material, situates the tattoo prohibition within the same verse’s ban on cutting the flesh for the dead, identifying both as specifically Canaanite mourning rites (self-laceration and permanent marking as expressions of grief or as apotropaic protection for the dead) rather than a general regulation of body art or self-expression (Milgrom 2000, 1697–1701). Gordon Wenham’s commentary concurs, reading the prohibition as part of a cluster of verses (Leviticus 19:26–28) aimed at practices “associated with the cult of the dead” in Canaanite religion (Wenham 1979, 271–72). Whatever one concludes about tattoos as a matter of personal wisdom, taste, or testimony, the specific textual basis for calling them intrinsically sinful does not survive contact with the verse’s own context, and it sits within the same material about fabric mixtures and agricultural rules that virtually no Christian tradition treats as binding on Gentile believers.

26  Judges 4:4–5 describes Deborah as a prophetess (nevi'ah) who "was leading Israel at that time" and before whom Israelites "came to her to have their disputes decided." Standard commentaries on Judges (e.g., Block 1999) treat this as a genuine judicial and military-strategic leadership role continuous with the book's other judges, not a merely exceptional or symbolic case. There is little serious scholarly dispute that the text presents Deborah as exercising real authority over men in Israel; disagreement about the text's contemporary application turns on theological method (how normative a Judges-era narrative example is taken to be for later church order) rather than on what the Hebrew text itself describes.

27  Romans 16:7 greets "Andronicus and Junia . . . outstanding among the apostles" (NIV) — or, on a rival translation, "well known to the apostles." The Greek phrase episēmoi en tois apostolois is ambiguous. Michael Burer and Daniel Wallace's 2001 article argued on comparative grammatical grounds for the exclusive sense (Junia and Andronicus were well regarded by the apostles, without being apostles themselves) (Burer and Wallace 2001). Eldon Epp's monograph Junia: The First Woman Apostle and subsequent work by Richard Bauckham mounted a detailed reply, arguing on the basis of the comparative constructions actually available in Greek literature that the inclusive sense (Junia was herself an outstanding apostle) remains the more natural and more widely attested reading, and that the manuscript and patristic tradition overwhelmingly read the name as feminine (Junia, not the masculine "Junias" invented by some medieval and modern editors uncomfortable with a female apostle) (Epp 2005; Bauckham 2002, 165–86). The debate remains live, but the burden of recent scholarship, including from scholars who do not otherwise favor an egalitarian reading of Paul, has shifted toward accepting both Junia's female identity and, more contestedly, an apostolic title of some kind.

28  I read Paul's instruction that "women should remain silent in the churches" (14:34) as addressed narrowly to disruptive questioning during worship, harmonizing it with 1 Corinthians 11:5's assumption that women do pray and prophesy aloud in the assembly. Some scholars hold that 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 was not written by Paul at all. The manuscript evidence is unusual: in the Western textual tradition (Codex Claromontanus and related witnesses), verses 34–35 appear not after verse 33 but after verse 40, at the end of the chapter as a floating block of text found in two different locations across the manuscript tradition, which text critics say is a classic sign of a scribal marginal note later inserted at different points by different copyists. Gordon Fee, in his widely used NICNT commentary, judged the internal case decisive independent of the transposition evidence: the verses interrupt Paul's discussion of prophecy, use vocabulary uncharacteristic of Paul, and flatly contradict his own assumption two chapters earlier that women pray and prophesy publicly (Fee 1987, 699–708; Fee reportedly regarded himself as "99% sure" of the interpolation view in subsequent correspondence). Philip Payne's more recent text-critical work adds the discovery of a distinctive scribal mark (a distigme-obelos) beside the passage in Codex Vaticanus, which he argues indicates the scribe's awareness of a manuscript lacking the verses (Payne 1995; Payne 2017). This position is contested in turn; Curt Niccum and others defend Pauline authenticity on the grounds that the external manuscript evidence for outright omission is essentially nonexistent (no surviving manuscript lacks the verses altogether; they only move), and Jeff Kloha and Timothy Wiarda have proposed reading the verses in question as a quotation from a letter the Corinthians sent Paul, which Paul then refutes in the next verse (Kloha 2006; Wiarda, in a Priscilla Papers/CBE-published quotation-refutation reading; on the traditionalist side, D. A. Carson defends Pauline authorship and a context-specific application to a particular disruptive practice). My harmonizing reading (silence about disruptive questions only, compatible with public prophecy elsewhere) is one reasonable resolution among at least three live scholarly options, and that two of the three options with the most scholarly support (interpolation, quotation-refutation) would remove this passage from serious contention as a general restriction on women's public speech altogether.

29  Regarding 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to authentein a man," the verb authentein occurs nowhere else in the New Testament and only rarely in surviving Greek literature before Paul's time, which has made its precise sense a genuinely difficult lexical question rather than a matter of theological preference alone. Catherine Kroeger's proposal that the term carried connotations drawn from fertility-cult practice ("to proclaim oneself the originator/source of") was influential in early egalitarian scholarship but has not been accepted by the major lexicons and is now widely regarded, including by scholars sympathetic to an egalitarian reading overall, as insufficiently grounded in the extant evidence (see the critical survey in Wolters 2000; the assessment is echoed even in resources generally sympathetic to egalitarian conclusions, e.g., Mowczko's survey of the word's history). The live debate is narrower than the popular "authority versus abuse of authority" framing suggests: essentially all sides now agree the root concept involves some kind of authority or self-assertion; the dispute is whether it denotes a neutral or positive exercise of authority (Baldwin 1995; Köstenberger 1995, arguing from the grammatical parallelism of the oude ("nor") construction that authentein must share didaskein's positive sense) or a negative, domineering exercise of it (Wolters, in his own more recent and more cautious restatement, concludes the term denotes self-assertive or self-initiated authority without a firmly established positive or negative valence on lexical grounds alone; Al Wolters's full monograph on the word's history, cited in Köstenberger and Schreiner 2016, remains the standard reference). Philip Payne and, independently, Cynthia Long Westfall have challenged Köstenberger's grammatical argument itself, proposing that the two infinitives didaskein and authentein function together as a single hendiadys ("to teach in a domineering way") rather than as two separately prohibited activities, which would restrict the prohibition to a specific abusive manner of teaching rather than to teaching or authority as such (Payne 2009; Westfall 2016). Köstenberger and Schreiner's edited volume Women in the Church remains the standard complementarian rebuttal, maintaining the two-activities reading and the positive sense of authentein (Köstenberger and Schreiner 2016). Then, there’s the rest of Scripture: When the high priest and king found the Book of the Law in 2 Kings 22, they went directly to the prophetess Huldah to hear God's true message. Philip’s daughters prophesied in Acts 21:9, etc.

30  Gordon Wenham’s Word Biblical Commentary on Genesis treats the repetition of the command to procreate as a deliberate echo marking a new beginning for humanity after the flood, not as evidence that the two commands carry identical weight or an identical universal, perpetually binding force independent of their narrative occasions (Wenham 1987, 33–34, 192–94).

31  David Instone-Brewer's Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (2002) argues, on the strength of a detailed study of Second Temple and rabbinic divorce documents, that first-century Jewish divorce practice recognized several distinct grounds — material and emotional neglect derived from Exodus 21:10–11's protections for a slave-wife (food, clothing, and onah, conjugal rights or emotional care in Instone-Brewer), alongside the Deuteronomy 24:1 "indecency" ground debated between the schools of Hillel and Shammai — and that Jesus's teaching in Matthew 19:3–9 addresses only the narrower question of whether the Hillelite "any cause" ('al kol-davar) reading of Deuteronomy 24:1 was valid, not whether the Exodus 21 grounds remained available. On this reading, Jesus sides with Shammai against Hillel on the Deuteronomy question specifically, while the Exodus grounds — and therefore divorce for abuse, abandonment, or severe neglect — remain untouched and available (Instone-Brewer 2002, 133–83). The Hillel/Shammai dispute over Deuteronomy 24:1 is not a modern invention; it is recorded in the Mishnah, Gittin 9:10, which preserves both schools' positions in terms close to those the Gospels presuppose. The same caution flagged in earlier chapters about rabbinic dating applies here, however: the Mishnah was redacted around 200 C.E., roughly a century and a half after Jesus's ministry, and reviewers of Instone-Brewer's work — including a critical review in Themelios and a lengthy point-by-point critique by Leslie McFall — have pressed him specifically on how much weight an early-third-century compilation can bear as direct evidence for what a first-century Galilean audience would have understood by Jesus's words, as opposed to a somewhat later crystallization of an ongoing and perhaps more fluid debate (McFall 2006; Themelios review, Evidence Unseen 2013). This is a fair methodological question rather than a decisive refutation, and Instone-Brewer's own scholarly credentials in rabbinics are not in serious dispute; the point is that the chain from Mishnah Gittin back to Jesus's own hearers involves a genuine inferential gap. At least two distinct scholarly alternatives deserve a mention. First, the position argued at length by Gordon Wenham and William Heth in Jesus and Divorce holds that Jesus’ exception clause ("except for sexual immorality," Matthew 19:9) permits separation in the case of a spouse's sexual immorality but does not clearly authorize remarriage while the first spouse lives, and that Exodus 21:10–11's protections for a slave-wife are a poor analogical basis for general marital law given their setting within what Wenhem and Heth consider to be a fallen institution (slavery) already regulated rather than endorsed by the Torah (Heth and Wenham 1984; the Wenham critique of Instone-Brewer specifically presses this point about Exodus 21, arguing the passage is being asked to bear more weight than its original, narrower context supports). Second, and considerably more restrictive, Leslie McFall's critique argues that the entire modern "exception clause" tradition rests on a textual and translational error dating to Erasmus, and that Jesus in fact permitted no remarriage after divorce under any circumstance while both spouses live, full stop (McFall 2006). This is a minority position even among scholars skeptical of Instone-Brewer, but it illustrates the real range of serious, textually engaged scholarly opinion on this question — from Instone-Brewer's comparatively permissive multiple-grounds view, through the moderate "adultery and abandonment only" position that represents something closer to a working evangelical consensus (represented in standard commentaries such as Blomberg's and Carson's treatments of Matthew 19), to McFall's near-total prohibition. The idea that divorce is available in cases of abuse, abandonment, or severe neglect, and not only for sexual immorality does not depend on winning the full Instone-Brewer reconstruction. Three narrower and more secure textual points carry most of the weight. First, 1 Corinthians 7:15 states plainly, independent of any rabbinic background, that a believer is "not bound" if an unbelieving spouse leaves; whatever else is debated, Paul himself supplies a second, non-adultery ground for release from a marriage, and "not bound" is the ordinary Greek idiom for freedom to remarry elsewhere in Paul's marital vocabulary (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:39, using the same verbal root of a widow's freedom to remarry). Second, the lesser-to-greater style of moral reasoning the original manuscript applied to Exodus 21:10–11 is a genuinely attested first-century Jewish interpretive method (compare Jesus's own argument from lesser to greater regarding Sabbath law in John 7:23), even if its specific application to marital neglect is Instone-Brewer's own construction rather than an attested ancient conclusion. Third, and most simply, both Jesus (Matthew 19:8) and the Old Testament that he interpreted (Deuteronomy 24:1–4; Jeremiah 3:8) treat divorce itself as a real, sometimes divinely-modeled response to covenant-breaking (God's own "divorce" of unfaithful Israel), which is difficult to square with McFall's near-absolute prohibition, whatever its textual arguments for Matthew 19:9's grammar.

32  Zane Hodges and the Free Grace movement (Grace Evangelical Society, Bob Wilkin) built their whole soteriology around explicit opposition to John MacArthur's "Lordship salvation" camp. Making Jesus our Savior without making Him our Lord is impossible; if He has authority to save us, then He is our Lord (and everyone’s).

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