Immediately after beginning His public ministry with His baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted by the devil three times. One of those temptations went like this:
“And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”” – Luke 4:5-7
As you probably know, Jesus did not succumb to this temptation but suppose Jesus had decided to take authority over all the nations of the world in this way. He would have decisions to make. What form of government would He choose for “all the kingdoms of the world”? There are so many to choose from, and certainly He’d have the wisdom to pick the right one, right?
Here in the United States, technically a federal constitutional republic, people often just call it a democracy. For many, it’s a good form of government, and as Winston Churchill said, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”. Churchill was saying that no system of government is perfect, but regardless we should choose the best. The best available option is what we should aim for, right?
However, Jesus refused to succumb to the temptation of accepting authority over the imperfect nations from the devil (and under the devil), and we should be very thankful He did. To us, it seemed like a very enticing offer, but from Jesus’ perspective, was it as attractive? Was it attractive at all? How does the Bible describe God’s attitude toward the world’s nations that Jesus was tempted to rule?
In Psalm 2:4, Jesus “laughs” at all the worldly kingdoms and “holds them in derision”. In that Psalm, He sees all of mankind’s attempts to govern themselves as laughable! Isaiah 40:17 perhaps takes this even further:
“All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.”
From His perspective, “all the nations” are “less than nothing and emptiness.” Why rule these kingdoms that are laughable and empty? Kingdoms that are infinitely less than perfect? Therefore, Jesus wasn’t overcome by the devil’s temptation because His objective was a perfect kingdom made up of perfect people. Being offered “all the kingdoms of the world” was not at all attractive to Him under those circumstances.
If it wasn’t tempting to Him, why should we be tempted by it? Why is worldly power so attractive to us, and why do we sometimes act like a perfect government can exist in this world?
We might act like this because we believe the perfect system can overcome the imperfections in each person’s heart. Therefore, we focus on the political system; the form of government instead of the nature of its people. However, all the power of earthly kingdoms can’t heal the human heart; only God’s can. Any system made up of imperfect people is inevitably imperfect. Jesus’ mission was to create a new people willing and able to live in a perfect kingdom absolutely ruled by Him. Perfection can be achieved no other way.
Fortunately for us, instead of falling for the devil’s temptation in the desert and forming an imperfect government of imperfect people, Jesus’ response was:
“And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”” – Luke 4:8
Whatever system of government we live under, that government is temporary and will inevitably be abolished by the kingdom of God that already should rule in His people’s hearts. Therefore, “worship the Lord your God” and pray for the culmination of His kingdom, while faithfully loving God and loving our neighbor, regardless of our form of government. God’s rule of love is relevant everywhere and will outlast all the kingdoms of this earth, proving each of them to be “less than nothing and emptiness.”
Jesus knew what He was doing when rejecting the world’s kingdoms and He wants us to follow His example.
The story of Herod and the three wise men is familiar to most who celebrate Christmas. After the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the wise men came looking for Him, having seen a star they believed signaled His coming. Arriving in Jerusalem, they asked “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”[1] Word of this search made it to Herod, the then-current king of that region under Rome’s authority, and his first instinct was to eliminate what he saw as a threat to his own power. In Herod’s eyes, only he was king of the Jews.
Herod came up with a simple plan: to use the wise men to help him find this threat. “And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.’”[2] However, the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they went home after visiting Jesus. “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.”[3]
Herod believed so strongly in the necessity of the power of Rome and of his place in it that he was willing to commit mass murder. If he couldn’t find the one child he wanted, he’d just kill them all. He feared Jesus (or His followers) would overthrow him as king, and he was right but in the wrong sense. Jesus would overthrow Rome. He was born to overthrow every earthly kingdom – that is inevitable.
Isaiah 40:17 proclaims that “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.” The word “emptiness” here is the Hebrew “bohu,” part of the phrase “tohu va’bohu” translated as “without form and void” in Genesis 1:2. This phrase represents empty things with no eternal value or purpose. So, while Isaiah doesn’t use the whole phrase from Genesis, he uses “less than” for emphasis instead. When compared to God’s eternal purposes, all that every nation has ever devised and achieved is less than useless. God has nothing to learn from our political and economic visions – He transcends them all. No nation can or will accomplish what God has accomplished and will accomplish.
Therefore, Jesus’ other mission was to overthrow Herod’s dominion over Herod. But Herod was determined to resist. His heart was so hard that he preferred to hang on to a government willing to commit mass murder to preserve its own self-centered ways. He thought he could preserve the façade of “Pax Romana,” the idea that worldly government can solve all of our problems, even while he, as an agent of Rome, was killing innocent children. Herod saw it as in his own best interest, and in the interest of Rome, but this is one of many examples of “a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”[4]
Jesus can overcome death only by overthrowing our views of our own “best interest” and what “seems right.” He was not born and did not die and rise again just to overthrow Rome, but He came so we would have a way to overthrow ourselves and death itself. Jesus will establish the only government that will matter in eternity: His Kingdom. The soul of Herod, and of all of us, will outlive every society that ever existed, and ever will, on this earth. The nations are all “accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.” While Herod could find hope in Jesus if he wanted to, Rome itself never had any hope.
Therefore, the question Jesus asks all people is: Will we let Jesus overthrow us or will we, like Herod, go to great lengths to resist Jesus and try to preserve a world that is doomed to fail?
Isaiah 9:6 says “and the government shall be upon his shoulder.” His Kingdom will be the only government we need, and He alone is uniquely qualified to establish and rule it.
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
[1] Matthew 2:2 [2] Matthew 2:8 [3] Matthew 2:16 [4] Proverbs 14:12, 16:25
At the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, He spent 40 days alone in the wilderness and at the end of this time was confronted directly by the devil with three temptations. In the first, the temptation was to fulfill His physical need for food. In the second, to display His power presumptuously. This post will focus on the third temptation, as recorded in Matthew 4:8-10:
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’””
As with the first and second temptations, Jesus uses God’s Word to combat the temptations, in this case quoting Deuteronomy 6:13. Jesus knew that to live a life of perfect obedience, He needed to worship God only in every action He took. Even one action that gave in to Satan’s ideas for Him would have made Him an imperfect sacrifice and we would all still be dead in our sins. There would be no Christianity and no salvation for anyone.
But I also think Jesus knew that the kingdoms of the world just weren’t worth ruling. Sinful people need a Savior who can heal them, before anyone will be able to rule them. Therefore, Jesus was not interested in the unredeemed kingdoms of the world, but in redeeming His people and building His perfect kingdom person by person. The world as it is just isn’t good enough.
After all, what good is a kingdom full of people who only worship the wrong things? What good is a world without hope of redemption in Christ? In his book A History of Christianity, British historian Paul Johnson doesn’t shy away from the evils of the world and the failings of the church, which some say disprove that there’s a loving God. However, in the epilogue Johnson asks what if there was no Christianity at all?
“Certainly, mankind without Christianity conjures up a dismal prospect. The record of mankind with Christianity is daunting enough… for there is a cruel and pitiless nature in man which is sometimes impervious to Christian restraints and encouragements. But without these restraints, bereft of these encouragements, how much more horrific the history of these last 2,000 years must have been!”[1]
On the other hand, what if Christianity is true? In a world redeemed by Christ, man does not have “a cruel and pitiless nature,” but the perfect sinless nature of Jesus. There will be nothing but encouragements to live a life of love for God and others. Restraints won’t even be needed.
This is the kingdom that Jesus finds worth ruling, and will rule, eternally, thanks to His overcoming of Satan’s temptations and perfect life of obedient love, so we someday may have a perfect life. In this kingdom,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’””
Eternally. Amen.
[1] Johnson, Paul. A History of Christianity. (1976). P. 517.
I am on vacation this week, so I’ve collected some old posts about James 1:27 for the week. I’m reposting them as is, but they definitely need some editing!
It’s common to think that the point of religion is to have the right laws and to follow them. However, James 1:27 says “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” This is a different definition of religion than we often think of. Today continues a series based on this verse, focusing on the insufficiency of laws as a way to salvation. Only by Christ’s fulfillment of the laws of God through His life, death and resurrection can we achieve salvation, or a restoration of a right relationship with God and with each other.
Which laws do I mean? In the Old Testament, there are three types, which include what many people think of as “religion”: moral laws of what is right and what is wrong, civil laws about what to do when those laws are broken, and ceremonial laws that explain requirements for restoring relationship with God. But also in the Bible are signs that all civil and ceremonial laws are provisional, or temporary and incomplete, even if they are designed by God. They exist because man cannot keep the moral laws, which is where this post begins…
The Poor Among You Consider these verses from the same chapter in Deuteronomy: “But there will be no poor among you; for the LORD will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess— if only you will strictly obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today.” – Deuteronomy 15:4-5 “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’” – Deuteronomy 15:11
Just a few verses apart, it says that “there will be no poor among you”, but then that “there will never cease to be poor in the land.” It seems like a contradiction, but the two thoughts can coexist because the first one is conditional on full obedience of the law – “if only you will strictly obey…” God knows His moral law is perfect, but also that our obedience is imperfect, which will lead to poor in the land. So, He further commands that His people take care of the poor. This second command shows that He provides additional moral and civil laws to help those who are hurt by the failures of people to follow moral law. Every failure of His people throughout time was known to Him when He gave the law, but He gave it anyway because it was not intended as an ultimate solution.
Jesus also recognized that poverty would not be solved until we reach Paradise, after He comes a second time. In Mark 14:7, He said “For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.” He said this because His disciples were criticizing Mary of Bethany, who decided to use ointment worth a years’ wages to anoint Jesus rather than to sell it and help the poor. The gospel of John singles out Judas as the accuser of Mary, but also says that Judas “said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.”[1] Elsewhere, Jesus quoted Isaiah, who said “this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.”[2] What we now call “virtue signaling” is not new. Throughout history, people have been better at promoting virtue in concept than in practice, and in others rather than in themselves. Therefore, even if the law we have is perfect, we will never achieve its ends.
Ruth and the Civil Law Second, the Old Testament story of Ruth shows that even a perfect moral law, perfectly followed, cannot solve every problem – specifically the problem of “orphans and widows in their affliction.” In addition, civil law can only limit the impact of some problems, not eliminate them. The civil laws for gleaning and levirate marriage are key to Ruth’s story, while providing examples of faithfulness in a broken society, are also reminders that society is broken in ways laws can’t fix.
Gleaning, provided for in Leviticus 19:9, 23:22 and Deuteronomy 24:19, is necessary because “there will never cease to be poor in the land.” God commanded His people to leave the edges of their fields unharvested, so the poor could eat what was there. Levirate marriage, defined in Deuteronomy 25:5-10, is necessary because there are widows and orphans in the world. It gives provision for widows by obligating relatives of the deceased husbands to care for, or even marry, the widow to preserve the family line and inheritance. However, these laws didn’t prevent Naomi and Ruth from becoming poor, or from losing their husbands.
One aspect of Ruth’s story is that people of faith can rely on God’s provision, both through His civil law and through others who follow it, to make a tangible difference in a world where many ignore God’s law. Good civil law can improve the conditions of the poor, the orphan, and the widow, if people also follow the eternal moral law of love.
Civil law is a provision for a fallen world, not a pathway to a perfect world.
Another aspect of the story of Ruth is how it keeps us “unstained from the world.” The world wants us to believe that with enough time, effort, resources, cultural revival, laws, coercion, or whatever, that we can produce a widow, orphan, and poverty-free utopia. But whatever its source, civil law is a provision for a fallen world, not a pathway to a perfect world. There will always be widows and orphans as long as there is death, and no law can overcome death.
Jesus, Our Religion For me, the power of thinking about James 1:27 this way is not that I come away thinking, “now I know what to do! Let’s go!” but that I come away knowing there is no way any of us could possibly measure up to the standard God requires. Every time we see someone left behind it is a reminder of our collective failure, evidence that we really don’t have the answer even to our own individual problems, much less a path to perfection for the world.
Fortunately for us, the book of Ruth ends with hope, in the form of a genealogy showing her as an ancestor of King David, and therefore an ancestor of Jesus Himself.[3] Through His life, death, and resurrection, He overcomes both death and the cause of death – our inability to generate religion that is acceptable to God the Father on our own. Only Jesus, in a perfectly lived life, seeking out and loving “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” fulfilled the requirements of “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father.” He offered His perfect record to the Father in our place, so we could be accepted based upon His religion, not ours. He fulfilled the moral, civil, and ceremonial laws in our place, providing a way to a world with no poor, no orphans, and no widows.
For many in the world, civil law is their false gospel, their hope of salvation. But the Bible lets us know that in this world, we will always have poverty. There will always be widows and orphans here. However, because we cannot follow moral law perfectly, we need temporary civil law as a provision for a fallen world. To keep society from falling apart until Christ returns and molds us into new creations that follow the moral law of love naturally, with no need for civil or ceremonial law.
Until that day, Christ rejects both the tyranny of, and freedom from, law as the answer for His people. Any civil law – even that of the Old Testament – can only mitigate the damage of sin, but in many cases, the wrong laws can make the damage worse. However, absence of, or rejection of, all law is not the answer because the gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news of a Kingdom. Jesus said in John 8:31-32: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” This freedom is from the failed kingdoms of this world, but not license to reject His righteousness as our personal standard of behavior.
Jesus said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”[4] His righteousness brings us into a Kingdom like no other, where to “Visit orphans and widows in their affliction” is the freely offered sacrifice acceptable to our Lord, and an example of what James refers to later in his letter: “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”[5]
[1] John 12:6 [2] Isaiah 29:13, Matthew 15:8, Mark 7:6 [3] Ruth 4:17-22 [4] John 14:6 [5] James 2:18
I am on vacation this week, so I’ve collected some old posts about James 1:27 for the week. I’m reposting them as is, but they definitely need some editing!
If Christianity is a message of salvation to all people, in all times and places, then the religious practices it recommends must be broad enough, and also flexible enough, to apply in every situation. The political and cultural societies we each live in today have only existed for a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of history, and people reading this post may be living in societies entirely different from the one I’m writing this in.
What are these religious practices? When the apostle James wrote in James 1:27 – “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” he didn’t just mean “pure and undefiled” right here and right now, but that to an eternal God whose character doesn’t change, there is a religion that remains pure and undefiled in all circumstances. There is no expiration date or limited jurisdiction on James 1:27.
To apply James’ words that way doesn’t mean he was using “orphans and widows” only as a metaphor for something other than actual orphans. He does mean to take care of them. But he was also using them as the best example of people unloved in his society and by the world – the ones who fell through the cracks of society, and that “to keep oneself unstained from the world” means that pure religion leaves nobody behind the way the world does.
The world has many people who believe perfect society is only a matter of time, effort, and ingenuity, and it also has many people whose very existence shows the folly of that belief. This tension reflects human history all the way back to Adam and Eve, who had to decide whether the kingdom of God they already lived in was what they wanted, or whether they wanted to build a kingdom based on their own ideas. This tension existed when Jesus ministered on earth in the Pax Romana, or “Roman Peace” of the society He lived in. The Caesars declared in what they called “gospel,” or “good news,” messages that they should be revered as gods for producing the most peaceful and prosperous society the world had ever known. But when Jesus came, all He had to do was walk down the street – any street – and find problems not being solved in Caesar’s great empire. [1] Jesus didn’t shake his fist at the utopians in protest, He just loved those in need of love, exposing the immensity of the flaws that exist in any human system, and proving by example that His kingdom is better.
WWJD
So, when James says “visit orphans and widows in their affliction” he means to do as Jesus did – to seek out and care for those left behind by the utopian imaginings of the world, and its related denials that these abandoned people matter. This does include literal windows and orphans, but it’s also whoever is left behind in your area of the world. The people in your neighborhood, country, organization, or even your church that the system doesn’t notice because there is nothing worldly to be gained by noticing them. In Jesus’ eyes, even Zacchaeus, a wealthy Jew in a Jewish society that valued wealth, was one of “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” because nobody saw him as a person with a personal and spiritual need.[2] These “lost sheep” Jesus referred to in Matthew 10:6 and 15:24 need to know “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”[3] because this world’s kingdoms have failed them.
Each and every world system leaves some behind, proof that Adam and Eve made the wrong decision to go their own way. There are always those who it is unpopular or uncool to pay attention to, even in churches. Therefore, James calls us to love the unloved and the genuinely oppressed, whoever they are, wherever you are. By definition, there’s no program to reach these people, because they are the ones who were missed. It takes the actions of individual, loving people to reach them and that’s kind of the point. Christianity is about the restoring of people and relationships, not the building of theoretical systems.
But does this really apply in every time? How is the ethic of James 1:27 eternal, while other ethics are not?
At the risk of oversimplifying (inevitable in a blog!), the difference is that worldly ethics depend entirely on “progress” toward a solution that is theoretical and in the future. Those pursuing worldly utopia hope they will progress to a solution for the orphans and widows’ problem, but what about the widows and orphans of the past? Or right now? In a framework of Darwinian evolution, death is just part of the process and an inevitable circumstance we must accept until we find a solution. Death itself is Darwin’s philosophical orphan and widow they don’t want us to notice. A solution in the future has no real hope for people in the past or present.
In Christianity the solution already exists – it was available even to our first ancestors – and death is only the result of refusing to accept it. And in all times places and situations “love God and love neighbor” is the right ethic, epitomized by James 1:27 and to be consummated in Heaven. All those who have ever turned to God and accepted His solution, in the past, present, and future, will see His salvation. We don’t have to hope that someday our children, or their children, and so on, will be loved, and know love, perfectly.
Until mankind actually produces a utopia, it is unscientific to believe utopia is possible, but because Jesus exists and walked among us, it is scientific to say perfect love is possible, even in this world. From this perspective, Christianity is only horrendous if false; other systems are horrendous if true.
Today you may live in the greatest empire the world has ever known, or the worst tyrannical state, or you may live in a country most people on the world couldn’t find on a map. In every case, and all cases in between, there are orphans and widows among you because only the kingdom of God is a perfect solution, and it will only be fully realized in Heaven. Find them in their affliction and visit them, “And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” – Matthew 10:7
