“‘Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11.17-20)

With its talk of unity and a heart directed toward serving God, this passage evokes many New Testament principles, even though it’s found in the Old.  In fairness, the entire Old Testament was constructed in order to pave the way for the New, but parts of it are difficult to comprehend—perhaps especially those that in some sense straddle the line between Old and New.  Most of Ezekiel fits into that category, and as a result it doesn’t get its fair share of study; but it contains important lessons both for the Jews during their captivity to Babylon, and for us today.

Before this oracle, one of the leaders of the people remaining in Jerusalem died, and although those leaders had been rejecting God’s law and creating more and more trouble, the prophet Ezekiel still mourned his death, taking it as a sign of God’s judgment on his people.  He asked God, “Ah, Lord God! Will you make a full end of the remnant of Israel?” (Eze 11.13).  God responded with the wonderfully encouraging promise with which we began.  In short, his answer was, no.  Rather than giving Israel what they deserved, he intended to gather the far-flung exiles from the lands where they’d been scattered, and bless them.  This is even more extensive than we might at first realize. 

When the northern ten tribes, the kingdom of Israel, had been conquered by the Assyrians in the 720’s BC, much of its population was deported to various regions, in keeping with Assyria’s divide-and-rule policy.  The Bible doesn’t record the details of where these Israelites ended up, and it also does not record any major return of those exiles to their native homeland.  What it does record, in fact, is a general lack of desire among the Babylonian exiles to return to Jerusalem and Judea, even when Cyrus and the Persians proclaimed the freedom to do so.  It’s only natural—they’d lived in their new homes in Babylonia for generations by then, and while the return “home” had been everyone’s goal, it wasn’t exactly an easy task to accomplish!  Thus, the Jews remained, for the most part, scattered where they’d been taken by various conquerors.

Thus, it’s an astonishing promise God made, to gather his people “out of the countries where [they] have been scattered,” and plant them back in their ancestral homeland (Eze 11.17).  It’s especially important to note that, as with many other times when God made this promise, he didn’t limit it to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, but referred to “the whole house of Israel” (v15).

Has this happened?  Well, that depends on how you’re looking at it.  Whether the exiles in the far reaches of the diaspora chose to return following Cyrus’ decree, they had the ability and the legal right to do so, en masse, at that time.  Was God promising to force the Israelites home against their will?  No, it’s presented as a great blessing, not a burden.  In fact, while the great majority refused the call, many thousands did return and set up a new Jewish state in the land promised to Abraham and his descendants.  But, as usual when we discover underwhelming short-term fulfillments of grandiose promises from God, he wasn’t just talking about the physical.  He had in mind the spiritual, too.  This collected nation of God’s people were to have a new heart and a new spirit.  That sounds suspiciously like the new covenant God promised through the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Je 31.33).  This also pertained to “the house of Israel” (v33a), and if the promise to “forgive their iniquity” and “remember their sin no more” (v34) wasn’t enough to clue us in, the New Testament tells us explicitly that this prophecy always meant the covenant that Christ would later inaugurate (He 8.6-13).  In the same way, this prophecy from Ezekiel isn’t just for the people of Israel, it’s for us!

Does that mean God no longer cares about his promises to the Jews?  Paul holds out hope.  He writes that “a partial hardening has come upon Israel” (Ro 11.25), and that God is eager to graft them back into the tree of Christ’s kingdom (vv23-24), hinting at the possibility of a greater degree of conversion to Christ, to come at some point in the future.  Up to now, we haven’t seen much of that, but it’s a worthy goal and prayer.  By and large, the Israelites have rejected their own Messiah.  The very next sentence in the prophecy we’ve been considering tells what God had in mind for the Israelites who refused to walk in his ways:

“But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 11.21)

It’s easy to read that and come away with the conclusion that they simply got what they deserved.  But didn’t we find this prophecy is about the kingdom of Christ, more than the kingdom of David?  In fact, the same threat looms over our heads, if we seek to retain our old, stony heart.  Let God’s word and Spirit soften your heart and mold your goals and purposes to walk in his ways.  Adopt the unified heart and spirit of the people of God.

Jeremy Nettles

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10.25-29)

Rather than providing a dictionary definition of the word, πλησίον-plēsion-“neighbor,” or appealing to the context surrounding the lawyer’s quotation from Leviticus 19.18, Jesus answered his question by telling a parable, which we know as the parable of the good Samaritan.  In the story, a man is savagely beaten and left for dead, then ignored and avoided by two men who present themselves as righteous and holy.  Finally a Samaritan sees him, recognizes his need, and helps him even though it inconveniences himself.  Then Jesus asked, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (Lk 10.36).

We’re left to conclude that the character worth emulating is the Samaritan, and that’s exactly what Jesus then commands the lawyer to do, before Luke moves on to the next episode.  But wait a second!  Was that the answer to the lawyer’s question?  Not really, no.  He had asked, “who is my neighbor?”  This was prompted by the commandment to love one’s neighbor, so what he really means is, whom must I treat with love?  Jesus’ answer was that the Samaritan, “the one who showed him mercy” (v37) was a neighbor to the man in need.  So, he should love…Samaritans?  Or perhaps it’s broader than that—maybe Jesus means you should love anyone who shows you mercy.  But that doesn’t make any sense!  Rather, it makes perfect sense from a fleshly perspective, but it’s not what Jesus himself preaches elsewhere!  Just a few chapters earlier, he said, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Lk 6.32).

We can understand this better by recognizing that, if I’m your neighbor, then you’re my neighbor, too.  This reciprocity means that by being a neighbor to the traveler, the Samaritan was recognizing the traveler as his own neighbor, and implementing God’s instruction by acting in love toward him.

That’s a start, but it’s still an incomplete explanation.  Weren’t the priest and the Levite, who avoided the man and passed by on the other side of the road, under the same obligation?  Could they defend their actions before God on the grounds that Jesus said they weren’t the man’s neighbor, and therefore had no obligation to love him?  No.  So why did Jesus say this? 

As he often did, Jesus was gently correcting the lawyer, who was “desiring to justify himself” (v29).  Jesus clearly knew that, and his parable wasn’t intended as a direct answer to the question posed; rather, it provided the answer to the question the lawyer should have asked—“what does it mean to be a neighbor.”  Why wasn’t the first question the right one?  Because the answer is too easy and too obvious, and it wouldn’t get to the heart of the matter.  The lawyer asked, “who is my neighbor?”  The straight answer is simple: everyone you meet.  You ought to love them all as yourself, regardless of whether they’re kind to you, whether they show mercy to you, whether you like them, and whether they can repay you.  They’re all your neighbors.  But now the question changes to something else: what does it mean to love my neighbor?  And that is the point of the parable.

We often approach God with some kind of question, and just like children with their parents, we have such a poor understanding of what’s really happening that we don’t even know what to ask.  This shouldn’t surprise us; Paul tells us that “we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us” (Ro 8.26).  This is broader than our questions and includes our requests, but it’s the same idea—we just don’t fully understand.  And there’s no reason we should!  We’re flesh, and he’s Spirit.  Thank God we have a mediator who does understand!  Jesus was active in the creation of the universe, and observed everything that has taken place since.  The only potential gray area would be the few decades he spent living as a man—to what extent he “emptied himself” (Php 2.7), we don’t fully know.  Even during that time, not only did he demonstrate a level of understanding far superior to the people around him, but on resuming his proper position at his Father’s right hand, he reassumed all that he had put off in becoming a man.  But this same time spent in the flesh allows him to fully sympathize with our shortfalls.  He’s not angry with us for not always knowing the right thing to ask.

Parents are proud of their children when they ask a question that reflects a genuine attempt to apply what they’ve been taught, even if they don’t have quite the right words to express it.  It reflects growth, and shows that they’re not only becoming more mature, but are maturing in such a way that, if the trend continues, will lead to a steadfast relationship of love and pride between parents and child in the long term.  We don’t have the right words, and we won’t until we see our Father face to face.  Until then, let’s do our best to ask the right questions, and let’s take God’s hints about what those right questions are, from his word.

Jeremy Nettles

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (John 6.63)

The last issue of Iron Sharpens Iron asked the question, “are you fleshly, or spiritual?”  We drew a distinction between these two mindsets and motivations, and highlighted a problem for even those who are already Christians: they’re still infants in Christ—still fleshly.  Of course, most of these people don’t realize it.  It’s not that they’re unaware of the need to be transformed—they became Christians, after all!  But many Philosophy 101 students become hilariously overconfident in their ability to argue logically and effectively; and as a result they end up making fools of themselves.  In the same way, many new Christians, having “tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come” (He 6.5), come to believe that they’ve experienced the fullness of the kingdom of God and its good fruits, when in fact the seed planted in their hearts has only just begun to sprout.  Will there be any depth to their roots?  Will the thorns choke out their attempts to bear fruit over the course of their life?  Will they bear fruit a hundredfold?  We don’t yet know.  To continue the comparison to Jesus’ parable of the sower, these new Christians have received the word with joy—a good start!  But they’re in only the earliest stage of this new life, and we shouldn’t expect them to be mature. 

What kinds of mistakes is the spiritual infant likely to make?  We can see, through some careful reading in 1 Corinthians, several examples.  First, let’s remember from last time that Paul has lamented the Corinthian Christians’ fleshly mindset, saying, “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh” (1Co 3.2-3a).  He’s not done with this topic though!  The very next thing he says is this:

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? (1 Corinthians 3.3b-4)

He’d spent the first two chapters of the letter telling them to cut it out with their internal divisions, putting themselves into competing factions.  Along the way, he discussed their elevation of earthly wisdom, when they should have been seeking God’s.  Where is their focus, then?  On the pursuit of wisdom.

In itself, that’s a good thing, of course—provided it’s pursued in line with God’s instructions and revelations.  But is that what the Christians of Corinth were doing?  Let’s take a quick trip through the rest of the letter, and see.

Chapter 5 outlines a perverse sexual scandal that the church has not seen fit to address.  Chapter 6 indicates that they’ve been taking fellow Christians to court over one grievance or another.  It also implies very strongly that they’ve been visiting prostitutes.  That’s a shock to us—Christians?!—but Paul, in the course of his argument to show them why this is so terrible, gives us an indication of what made them think this was acceptable.

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. (1 Corinthians 6.12-13)

The ESV puts the key phrases in quotation marks.  Of course, those aren’t present in the Greek manuscripts—punctuation was used sparingly, if at all, during the time the New Testament books were written, and in most of the manuscripts there’s no punctuation to be found (there aren’t even spaces between words!).  But it’s a good conclusion that Paul is putting these words into their mouths, as if they support the Corinthians’ freedom—as they saw it—to sin.  Why would they believe such a thing?  Some help comes from the next chapter, where we find this:  “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman’” (1Co 7.1).  One faction at Corinth was championing celibacy; another was encouraging fornication—and both claimed to have been transformed by Christ!

This sort of thing continues through the rest of the letter, including the extended discussion of food offered to idols in chapters 8-10, and the extended discussion of supernatural spiritual gifts and their use in chapters 12-14.  What had happened?  The Christians of Corinth got wrapped up in the metaphysical musings of human philosophy, to the extent that they detached the spiritual from the physical.  For some, that meant freeing their physical bodies to do whatever they wanted, on the grounds that it had no bearing on the spirit.  For others, it meant freeing their minds from the physical through asceticism.  Neither of these is what Christ wanted!  Both extremes—the overly-permissive and the overly-restrictive—would have answered, “No!” to our question, “Does the flesh matter?”  They were both wrong.

In this very letter, what did Paul say about the flesh?  “I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1Co 9.27).  The flesh is not to be the focus, but it does matter.  The flesh is where the spiritual transformation plays out, in our actions in the physical world.  We are not to be enslaved to the flesh; rather we are to put the flesh under the control of the spirit.  What you do in the flesh matters.  What you do in the flesh answers for all the question, “are you fleshly, or spiritual?"

Jeremy Nettles

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2.14-16)

This incredibly uplifting passage is found nestled between two sections of the letter in which Paul tears into the Christians at Corinth for a long list of sins, failures, and bad attitudes.  In fact, knowing that broader context makes it harder to receive and appreciate the encouragement in what Paul is saying.  He’s about to follow up these gently comforting words by saying,

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. (1 Corinthians 3.1-3a)

Reading these two passages gives us an experience of mental whiplash, because Paul deliberately contrasts the way things should be, and the way they actually are.  The line has been plainly drawn—on one side those who are spiritual, and on the other, those who are, as Paul says, “natural.”  Many is the person who finds consolation for his faults, by reminding himself that it’s only natural to feel or behave that way.  We live in an age of excuses and blame-passing, and for many years it’s been common to explain away vile behavior, finding a way to assign fault to anyone but the person who actually did the deed—in this case, the scapegoat is nature.  As usual, the lie begins with a kernel of truth—that the person who tempts someone else is partially responsible for the other person’s sin, and should bear a portion of the consequences.  Jesus warned against becoming stumbling blocks, for example saying,

“whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18.6)

But all too often, we go beyond this, and instead of allotting a portion of the blame to the tempter and the bulk of it to the sinner, we refuse to accept blame for ourselves or the people we love, and instead cast it all on the nearest convenient scapegoat.

Diverting blame, judgment, and especially punishment, regardless of the truth, is itself a natural behavior—little kids do it by instinct, and even animals do it.  But natural does not mean good, or right.  We shouldn’t console ourselves, or defend ourselves, on the basis that we’ve done something natural!  And that’s getting pretty close to the point Paul is making in 1 Corinthians—the natural person, that is, the person looking at the world from the perspective of the flesh or of the physical, cannot comprehend spiritual things.  They do not make sense to him.  In fact, we could describe “the things of the Spirit of God” as unnatural, although perhaps it would sound better to call them supernatural.  Can what is unnatural be good?

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5.22-23)

Of course it can be good!  Paul points out that even our law recognizes that such qualities as these are good, and never prohibits them.  But that’s not how the fleshly person behaves.  The fleshly person is motivated by fleshly desires to do fleshly things.  Paul provides us an admittedly incomplete list of these behaviors just a couple verses prior in Galatians:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. (Galatians 5.19-21a)

When we read this, we tend to imagine a single person engaging in all of these evil, soul-crushing behaviors at once, and so it’s easy to compare ourselves to that depraved caricature and reassure ourselves we’re doing ok.  But that’s not what Paul said.  Perhaps you’re not a drunk, a sorcerer, or a craven fornicator; but do you indulge your jealousy?  How often do you lash out with angry words?  Are you divisive, rather than a peacemaker?  All of these are works of the flesh.  None of them leads to the kingdom of God.  In fact, each one of these fleshly behaviors, even in the absence of all the others, is an obstruction between you and God, keeping you from the fullness of his love and care, keeping you from his presence.

When you become a Christian, you are reborn according to the Spirit, but that doesn’t mean the temptation to live according to the flesh will go away entirely.  Nor will it go away overnight—Paul told Christians at Corinth that they were still people of the flesh.  Salvation is fundamentally a very simple thing, focused on a complete change of mind, attitude, and behavior in a single moment—an act of submissive faith in surrendering through baptism.  But while we rejoice at the birth of a beautiful new baby, we don’t expect that the work is finished!  That child needs to be fed, nurtured, protected, and taught, and his life could still turn out to be a great tragedy.  It’s the same with the “infants in Christ” Paul addressed in his letter.  The new birth was cause to rejoice, but it’s time to grow up.  Growing up in Christ entails seeing the world as it really is—both the physical, and the spiritual.  Are you a spiritual person?  Or, are you only fleshly?

Jeremy Nettles

Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God accept you.” But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. (2 Samuel 24.22-25)

The background of this little episode has to do with an unauthorized census and a plague sent by God as punishment for David’s lack of faith.  The idea was that, whether the census was for taxes, military conscription, or both, David’s help came from God, so why was he now assessing his own strength for the first time?  But the particular sin isn’t really what’s important right now.  Consider David’s response to judgment.  God had told him the pestilence would last three days (v13), but his sorrow led him to to the point of offering up a sacrifice anyway.  The owner of the land didn’t feel right profiting from David’s problem, and offered his own property as a gift, both to David and to God.  David’s response, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing,” is a lesson lost on far too many people today.

Consider an illustration from current events: Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, after years of moving in this direction, finally unleashed an invasion of Ukraine, under the dubious justification of having been asked for help by the totally-legitimate and totally-not-funded-by-Russia-in-the-first-place separatist forces in the eastern corner of the country, and never mind that the invasion extended over pretty much all of Ukraine from the very first day.  He also said his invasion represented the “de-Nazification of Ukraine,” which was morbidly amusing, considering that Ukraine’s current president is Jewish, but let’s move on.  There has been discussion among political leaders around the world, as well as the usual risk-less opinion spouting by pundits across the spectrum, but at least as of this writing, no one outside Ukraine has actually seen fit to lift a finger in its defense. 

It’s not the goal here to answer the question, whether anyone should step in to help.  But it’s revealing how relatively united the western world has been in condemning Putin and shouting that something must be done—and yet what measures are actually under consideration?  No one wants to send soldiers to die on the other side of the globe, but everyone wants to spout off about how evil Putin is.  Everyone wants to threaten economic sanctions on Russia, but there’s less support for actually imposing them.  When there are finally sanctions, there are massive exceptions—rather than a complete embargo, Europe is happy to keep selling high-value goods to Russia, as well as buying gas and oil from them, which is the industry that keeps Russia’s economy afloat almost on its own.  Why?  Well, we wouldn’t want to hurt our own industries, would we?  Nor would we want the cost of energy to increase.  So the consensus seems to be that Putin is a very bad man doing very evil things, and someone should put a stop to it; but not me!  Perhaps you can see how Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others in the 20^th century graduated to greater and greater depths of evil, while the world looked on and shrugged.

It’s so easy to profess righteousness, then refuse to act in keeping with the profession.  But in the end, if we’re not willing to take a hit in the name of righteousness, it’s just a hollow shell.  Satan doesn’t mind us saying godly things, so long as, when the chips are down, we do his will, instead.  The invasion of Ukraine is in sharp focus right now for 40 million Ukrainians, but for the average person on the other side of the world, it’s just a lucid illustration of the struggle we face every day, which was with us long before the invasion started and will remain long after it's over.  We all face the temptation to say one thing, but do another.  Jesus took the Pharisees to task for this very thing, saying that

“they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others.” (Matthew 23.3-5)

They didn’t really care about pleasing God.  When they thought no one was looking, they made no effort.  But it wasn’t just a problem among those who rejected Jesus—Christians in the early church faced the same struggle!

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? (James 2.15-16)

We justify inaction by saying we don't have time, can’t afford it, or have other duties to fulfill.  These are common excuses precisely because they may be legitimate!  Whether we’re sincere in any one case is a judgment call, and we dare each other to make that judgment.  Look from the other side—rather than judgment, who receives praise?  When Christians in Judea suffered financial need, Paul says of the churches in Macedonia,

their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints…” (2 Corinthians 8.2-4)

It’s supposed to hurt.  It has to hurt.  When they knew it was going to hurt, these Christians gave anyway.  Go, and do likewise.

Jeremy Nettles