“… the people … spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.  The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived” (Numbers 21:5-9).

This dramatic story from the Old Testament is the background to something Christ said to the Pharisee Nicodemus:  “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (John 3:14-15).

The parallel mentioned by Christ makes it clear that the serpent erected on a stake by Moses was not some kind of healing  idol, but a symbol of sin and evil – a foreshadowing of the fact that Christ would personify sin in taking upon himself all mankind’s sin and evil (1 Peter 2:24) on the stake of crucifixion.  But there is much more that we can say about the strange incident of the serpent on the stake.

In his classic book, The Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer commented many years ago that there is an interesting parallelism between the original account and what Jesus said about it.  Tozer pointed out that when the Israelites “looked at the bronze snake, they lived” (Numbers 21: 9, emphasis added) and that everyone who “believes” on  “the Son of Man who must be lifted up” would have eternal life (John  3:15).  As Tozer pointed out, it is clear that “looking” on the serpent was the equivalent of “believing” on Christ – that looking and believing are in a sense equal, that faith is in a very real sense “looking” without the eyes, or beyond what the physical eyes see, to a reality that saves.

Although Tozer did not develop the principle further, this understanding helps us to correlate a great number of scriptures that speak of “looking” with the concept of faith, and in so doing perhaps helps us to better understand faith itself.   Think, for example, of these words from the Psalms: “Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always” (Psalm 105:4); these from Isaiah: “Look to Me, and be saved, All you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22), or these from Micah:  “But as for me, I will look to the Lord;  I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7).

The principle is one to utilize in study of the Scriptures. When we read “look to” in the Bible, we should often think “believe in.”  It’s a simple fact that gives new meaning to many verses – or perhaps helps us see the original meaning that was there all along.

Many Christians carry around a “portrait” as it were of a number of biblical figures. The portraits aren’t real ones, of course; they are mental ideas or “images” that we build up of individuals after reading and hearing about them.  We might have only a blurry or very partial portrait in our minds for some people mentioned in the Bible, but for others the image is often well developed – and wrong!

Take the apostle John, for example.  Many people know that John is often called the “apostle of love,” and he is often remembered as “… the disciple whom Jesus loved,” who reclined next to him (“leaning on Jesus’ bosom” KJV) during the Last Supper, and who wrote of strange visions in the Book of Revelation.  The mental picture many have of John is a somewhat ethereal one based on these images alone – a kind of gentle soul who perhaps didn’t mix well with the rough-hewn fishermen and some of the other disciples, but who understood Jesus’ call to love better than most, and who was a man of  mystical, otherworldly visions.

It helps to realize that although John certainly was a teacher of love and recorded mysterious visions, he was also a very real, warm-blooded man who was known as a man of thunder!   Mark’s Gospel tells us that when Jesus selected his disciples, he chose among the twelve “James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means ‘sons of thunder’)” (Mark 3:17).  The nickname is based on the Semitic custom of naming a person or thing after its distinguishing characteristic (as sparks are “sons of fire” - Job 5:7) and clearly reflects an aspect of personality and character that is anything but appropriate to someone who was merely a gentle teacher of love. 

It was John and his brother James, we must remember, who wanted to bring fire down from heaven on a village that would not welcome their Master (Luke 9:53-55) and had to be rebuked for this excess. It was John who wanted to forcibly stop the work of someone else casting out demons (Luke 9:49) and who had to be gently rebuked again. But it was John, by the end of Jesus’ ministry, whom Jesus selected as someone who would be both strong and loving enough to protect and look after Mary, his mother (John 19:26).

So John was no mild pushover of soft and ineffectual “love.”  Perhaps no other New Testament writer so forcibly teaches the need for truth and turning from darkness. We actually see this firm stress on truth, and on the “light” which symbolizes it, just as much as love in all his writings. And the love John taught was not a wispy or feeble emotion either, it was a reflection of the vigorous and commanding love that his Master, the Christ, had demonstrated every day John had known him – the love that mingled with, touched and helped the sick, the outcasts and the socially undesirable despite the outrage of the religious leaders of the day.   

To portray John as an ethereal teacher of love is in clear contradiction to the portrait the Bible actually gives of the apostle.  John, perhaps more than any other disciple, constantly portrayed in his writings the balance between an accepting love and uncompromising truth. The apostle of love was always, and equally, an apostle of truth.  He was always an apostle of love, and equally a son of thunder. 

Global warming continues to be a topic provoking concern, debate and cries for action among many. We are used to meteorologists making accurate forecasts of the temperature even many days in advance – often to the precise degree – and so we listen when climatologists forecast dangerous temperature changes for the next hundred years or so.  

But what would you think about a forecast that predicted temperatures several thousands of years in advance?

Some two thousand years ago the Son of God made such a forecast regarding moral and ethical temperature declines at the end of the present age, saying: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12).

Perhaps there has always been evil in this world, and a resulting coldness in human hearts and interactions, but Christ clearly stated that there would come a time when the love of most would grow cold. The Greek expression (ton pollon) translated “of many” in some Bibles  is better translated – as in the NIV – “of most” or “of the majority,” showing that this coldness was something that would eventually be widespread  and would be the norm rather than the exception.

Spiritually, the problem our world faces is not global warming, but global cooling. We see this moral chill every day in news reports of atrocities committed not only by religious and political fanatics, but also even by parents against their own children and spouses against each other.  Just as frightening is the fact that the immediate context of Christ’s forecast is not necessarily only talking about the unconverted of the world – it seems to apply to religious people as well.

If you or I heard a forecast of impending unbelievably cold physical temperatures, we would doubtless take action to do what we could to survive the situation and help offset the cold as best we could. But do we take Christ’s moral forecast seriously enough to take action in that regard? And what, if anything, can we do to offset the growing lack of love this world seems even now to be experiencing – and which unavoidably affects Christians also?

Fortunately, the same book that forecasts the cooling of love indicates things we can do to turn that climate change around, even if only in our own lives.  Consider these four Christian climate warmers:

1)  Forgiveness: The Gospel of John tells us the story of the woman who anointed Christ in the home of a disapproving Pharisee.  Jesus told the Pharisee that although the woman had sinned much in her life, those who are forgiven much, love much (John 7:46-47).  We can apply that principle to ourselves in terms of looking at those around us in the moral wilderness in which we live.  As society worsens around us, it’s easy to become judgmental – like the Pharisee – if we are not careful. But reminding ourselves of how much we have been forgiven can help us feel and show more love to those whose lives are still in the grip of sin.

2) Prayer: We can and should be praying for God’s love, of course, but sometimes we have to remind ourselves to break that prayer down.   Something that can help in this regard is to put names to the prayer. Praying for help to love person X and Person Y can be far more effective than praying for the “idea” of love.  Try it and see for yourself.

3) Study:  Regularly studying the life of Christ may be one of the most valuable climate warmers at our disposal.  Actually seeing God’s love  in living everyday action through the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus shows us love in a way in which we don’t usually see it.  It can help us by providing both a model and an inspiration.  Notice these words of the apostle Paul:  “… the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5 Holman).  Frequently focusing our study of God’s word on the topic of love becomes more important the colder society becomes around us.

4) Encouragement: The Book of Hebrews contains these important words:  “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds … encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:23-25).  These verses make it clear that encouraging one another is directly related to spurring one another to love. The fact that this is said to be all the more vital as we see the end of the age approaching ties directly to Christ’s warning of the love of the majority growing cold in the last days.

In some ways these pointers seem so very basic, yet they are so very true. The Bible is clear that love is increased, fanned like a flame,  by these specific things – and each one is something we can do personally if we are determined to do so.   The important thing for us in the cooling world in which we live is to be sure to utilize them – to increase the love in our lives – and not to become numbed by the cold around us. 

Matthew 6 records one of the best-known sayings of Jesus: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth … But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven …. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

It’s easy to read these verses – and to think about them – out of their immediate context, but have you ever noticed what that context is?  In Matthew 6 Christ instructed his disciples on a number of aspects of religious life – beginning with the warning: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:1).  He then proceeded to elaborate in three areas: giving to those in need, prayer and fasting.

In each case, Christ singled out the religion of those who were not doing right for the right reasons.  In the case of those who gave to be seen giving, he stated: “Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:3).  He then went on to talk about those who prayed to be seen of others, ending with the same statement exactly: “Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:5).  In his final example, Christ spoke of those who fasted for show and religious recognition, and – as you doubtless guessed – ended with the same “… they have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:16). 

In every one of these cases, Jesus instructed his disciples to give, pray and fast secretly and assured them that “ …your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:4, 6, 18). It is then, at that exact point, that Jesus announced: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth … But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven …” (Matthew 6:19-20).  So this injunction follows directly after the repeated statement that those practicing religion for self-gratification or to be seen of others have their reward in the present world, but those who practice true religion will be rewarded by God.

It is perfectly possible Jesus had switched thoughts and the instruction to lay up treasure in heaven stands alone and is simply warning against putting our trust in earthly treasures and possessions. But that thought is not found in the context, and it seems more likely that Jesus was instructing us to conduct our religion for the right reasons so that we have a reward stored with God that will be given to us later ("Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done" – Revelation 22:12), rather than a reward we recieve now.  

In either case, the warning against self-gratifying and self-elevating religion is clear in Matthew 6, but the problem can also be expressed in less obvious ways.  Can we think of ways in which we ourselves may fall down in terms of the examples Christ gave? When praying publicly, do we speak to God or speak words to please or impress those around us?  Do we give when we are asked to give at work or in some other public setting because it would not look good not to do so?  If we fast, do we do so at times others will be aware? Giving, prayer and fasting are only three areas – are there other aspects of our religion that we do with an eye to how those things will be perceived by others?  Christ’s words remind us that God does desire to reward our religion – but only if it is directed at and through Him.

Unfortunately, this blog post does not claim to offer the true significance of existence – but it does look at the meanings of the words for “life” in the New Testament, and the lessons we can draw from them. It is often pointed out that the different words used for “love” in the Greek New Testament help us better understand the breadth of that concept. In the same way, the three Greek words used for “life” can also give us insight into some important biblical verses.

The most basic word for life found in ancient Greek, and in the New Testament, was bios – from which we take our bio- rooted words such as biosphere, of course. Bios was commonly used for life in the simple sense, for the period of one’s “lifetime” and for those things that sustain physical life such as physical resources and even wealth. It is found with this meaning in scriptures such as Luke 21:4: “All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

The next word for life is psuche from which we take our psych- rooted words relating to the mind such as psychology, though in ancient Greek the word had a broader meaning including the breath of life, the vital physical force which animates the body,  the physical life or “soul.” We find this word most often in the New Testament with the simple meaning of our physical life – in verses such as Matthew 10:39: “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”  

The final word for life, and the most important, is zoe. We take our zoo- rooted terms such as zoology from this word, but zoe signifies not only the animate aspect of life, but also life in the absolute and fullest sense. It is the word used repeatedly in the New Testament in statements regarding the kind of eternal life God has (John 5:26) and wishes to give to us – life which is both qualitatively and quantitatively greater than the life we have now.  Zoe is found in verses such as 1 John 5:11-12: “And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” 

Keeping the different meanings of these three words in  mind can often give us greater understanding of passages in the New Testament. An example is 1 John 2:16: “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.”  Here, knowing that the word “life” in “the pride of life” is a translation of the word bios helps us to see that the pride being spoken of is not arrogance, but pride of physical possessions – which fits better with the context. 

In Matthew 6:25, where we find: “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink ... Is not life more than food …?” the word “life” is actually not bios, and the stress is not on the things that sustain life, but psuche – our very existence itself. 

As a final example, notice John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life and may have life  abundantly.” Here, knowing the the word used for life is zoe, we see that Jesus’ goal was not that we just have a better or more abundant physical life, but that we get true life and come to have that life abundantly. 

By simply checking which word for “life” is used in a given scripture, when it might make a difference, we can often come to a fuller understanding of what is being said. To do that, all we need do is check the verse in an online Greek interlinear New Testament such as the one here.  It’s a simple enough procedure in order to be able to know the meaning of life. 

Given the nature of the Christian faith, it’s only natural to think that our lives would be different in many ways from those who don’t walk in the faith, but are they?

A fascinating study conducted by Barna Group shows that self-identifying Christians who are churchgoers (one would hope that means fairly committed Christians) don’t really differ from non-churchgoers in most ways.  With the obvious exception of the answers to the option “I would describe myself as deeply spiritual” (18% unchurched as opposed to 69% churched), the answers were surprisingly similar for both groups.  Take a look at this snip of part of the Barna  graphic from their “Sacred Roots”:

After the “deeply spiritual” question, the only other measure that shows a significant difference between the groups is whether respondents felt they were “fulfilling [their] calling in life” (61% “unchurched” vs. 77% “churched”),  but differences regarding other questions were often within the statistical range of probability and certainly not as great as one might expect.  When we consider the responses to questions such as “concerned about the future” and  “dealing with addiction,” the answers are almost alarming if we believe the results of Christian living should be much different from the alternatives. 

It’s a fascinating survey and would seem to lead to only two possible conclusions.  Either we Christians are not as different as we think we are (though plenty of biblical verses suggest we should be), or many churchgoers are not much different because they are not really following the guidelines that make us different.  We can only look at the study and ask ourselves where we fit in, and if our lives really are different from those who don’t have believing access to the word of God. If we see our lives are not that different, perhaps we can recognize the need for transformation.

As always, Barna Group is to be congratulated for providing meaningful studies that not only show us where we are, but also may sometimes point us in better directions.  You can check out the Barna website here.

The Gospel of John records the healing by Jesus, at the Pool of Bethesda, of a man paralyzed for many years.  The account is a moving one and provides some interesting questions.  There were many sick people at the pool that day – why did Jesus single out this particular individual for the healing? And why did Jesus ask the man a question which we would normally never ask a sick or paralyzed person: "Do you want to be well?"    
   The answers to these questions may throw additional light on the story of the healing - and they are answers that apply to all of us.  See our new article, uploaded today: "Do You Want to Be Well?"  

We have been busy recently producing and publishing our own new eBooks:  The City on a Hill: Lessons from the Parables of Jesus, and Some Days We Soar: Words of Encouragement for the Christian Life (you can download them for free from the Downloads page of this site if you haven't done so already), so we have not had a lot of time to produce reviews of older books.

We did, however, select a few good recent and classic titles for the Books in Brief section on our sister site, here, and on this site we uploaded a  short review of  a book new this year - Why Suffering? Finding Meaning and Comfort When Life Doesn't Make Sense by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale.  It's an excellent book and you can read our short review here. 

Scripture: Matthew 6:28-29 ESV:  "And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

Something to think about:  Beyond the obvious meaning in this statement made by Jesus – of trusting God to supply our basic needs –  we might notice that he did not specify the flowers of human cultivation, but the wildflowers of "the field" – those that survive without any help from humans at all.  The point emphasized  by this reference to the "lilies of the field" is that God completely supplies our needs - often without and beyond the ability of human action.  The lesson for us is not only to intellectually believe that God can supply our needs, but also to banish anxious thoughts as to how our needs will be fulfilled.  This takes constant reminders.  Each part of the Creation around us can be such a reminder if we let it.