Christmas really is one of my most favorite times of the year. I love the decorations, the gifts, the parties, and the church Christmas programs, but most of all I love the music. The traditional Christmas carols, the sacred Christmas hymns, they just give me all the feels when it comes to Christmas; in the car, at home, at church, you will almost always find me listening to Christmas music during the month of December. And one of my most favorite Christmas songs is the song “Mary, Did You Know?”, and my most favorite arrangement of the song is performed by Mark Lowry with the acapella group Voctave singing backup (posted above). Mark Lowry wrote the lyrics in 1985 when he was asked to write a script for a church Christmas play, and the lyrics were put to music in 1991 by Buddy Greene. Of course, it has been recorded by many varied recording artists over the years, both secular and sacred, and it is sung and played regularly during Christmas programs in churches all across the United States and, no doubt, around the world.
However, every year it seems, I read some renewed or repeated criticism of the song on social media. Some attempt to dismiss the song theologically, citing the Annunciation and the Magnificat as evidence that “she knew”. I have even seen some who have attempted to go line by line through the song to give a yes or no answer to each rhetorical question. Similarly, those in the Roman Catholic tradition take issue with the suggestion that Mary needed to be “delivered” and “made new” because of their (erroneous) beliefs about the sinlessness of Mary. Others argue that the song is mawkish, sappy, and infantilizing, that it is “the most sexist Christmas song ever written,” or that it “treats her like a clueless child.” Still others dismiss the song simply because it is overplayed and/or poorly performed by well-meaning church members during the Christmas season as “special” music. And to be honest, when I read criticisms like these, I just shake my head and wonder how we have lost our wonder at the miracle of the incarnation.
Biblically, it is true that Luke presents Mary as a paragon of faith. When she is confronted by the angel Gabriel with the news that she will conceive by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God, she responds with simple faith, “See, I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said.” (Luke 1.38) And her Magnificat (Luke 1.46-55) clearly indicates that she understood that this was a pivotal moment in the unfolding of God’s plan of redemption for the world. However, we also know that at one point during his earthly ministry, she came with her other children to try to hide Jesus away because they thought he was an embarrassment to the family. (Mark 3:31-35, parallels Matthew 12.46-50, Luke 8.19-21) Time and again, the Gospels detail how the first followers of Jesus struggled to fully understanding the significance of who he was and what he had come to do, and we should assume that Mary would have been no different. We know that Mary treasured and pondered all these things in her heart, but the Bible is clear that the first followers of Jesus, including Mary and his brothers, grew in their understanding of the person and work of Jesus over the course of his life and ministry and that they did not understand him in full until after his resurrection and the coming of the Spirit.
The point is that we should not underestimate the richness of what it means for God to become flesh. When Jesus was born in the Bethlehem 2000 years ago, there was already plenty of theological and cultural expectations as to what he was supposed to be and do. But Jesus turned those expectations on their heads, and he demonstrated that he is a Messiah who cannot be fit into a preconceived box. And as his followers, we should never lose our wonder at this fact. Jesus will always be more than we could possibly hope to comprehend; we will never have him fully figured out. Even when we reach glory, we are told that “He had a name written that no one knows except himself.” (Revelation 19.12) This means that even then there will be more to learn and understand about him when he returns as glorious king. We must never lose our wonder at the person and work of Jesus. Even the things we think we know about him pale in comparison to the fullness of his glory.
And so, when we hear the song “Mary, Did You Know?” this Christmas season, we shouldn’t try to dissect it theologically. We shouldn’t dismiss it because of its musical style, its tone and perspective, or even its emotionality. We should allow it to spur our reflections, to feed our wonder, to drive us to worship the God who became flesh for our sakes, who suffered and died in our place, and who is coming again to receive us unto himself. The song is an artistic, poetic reflection on the miracle of Christmas and the sheer mystery of the incarnation. Mary was in a unique position to feel the weight and wonder of it all, and at Christmas, it is right for us to enter into her experience, to ponder anew what it must have been like, and to fall down in worship of the God who became flesh. This Christmas, let us rekindle our wonder. Let us stand in awe and silence, and let us rejoice in the fact that we have a savior who came to heal our brokenness, to free us from sin, and to restore in us the joy of living in his presence. He is Emmanuel; He is God with us!
The New Testament is clear that the Christian Gospel rises and falls on the historical factuality of this truth, that Jesus Christ truly lived, truly died, and truly rose again. There simply is no way around it; as the Apostle Paul writes, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith. … And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.” (1 Cor 15.13-14, 17) Jesus had to truly die in our place to satisfy the wrath of God toward sin, and he had to truly be raised from the dead in victory over sin and death. The work of Christ in His death and resurrection is the means by which he secures our salvation; His death achieves for us our forgiveness, and His resurrections assures us of our life eternal.
However, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is more than simply a historical event; it is more than merely a transaction between the Father and the Son. No, the logic of the Gospel is that the work of Christ in his crucifixion is the pattern for our life as well. By faith, we are united with Christ; we have died with him to sin and we have been raised with him in newness of life. (Romans 6.4-5) This is the logic of the Gospel, namely that His death becomes our death and his resurrection becomes our resurrection. In the space that follows, I would like to spend just a few brief moments reflecting on the implications of this essential principle of the Christian Gospel.
On the one hand, we participate in his death and resurrection spiritually, which means we experience it through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. This happens at the point of conversion; when someone trusts in Christ, they die with Him to the tyranny and slavery of sin, they die with Him to the old self and its fleshly desires. “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin.” (Romans 6.6) Consequently, they are, then, indwelt by the Holy Spirit who gives life. As Paul goes on to write, “Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.” (Romans 8.10) We are renewed and transformed by the Spirit that we might walk in righteousness and holiness before God and others in this life. This is what it means to be resurrected with Him spiritually; as Paul says elsewhere, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5.17) This is the good news of the Gospel.
However, we must also affirm that we will participate in his death and resurrection physically. This is also essential to the logic of the Gospel. Death is the consequence of sin and its corruption in a fallen creation. As the author of Hebrews writes, “it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment.” Every human being, saved and unsaved, will die physically, but those who die in Christ will also be resurrected physically. The Apostle Paul writes, “the dead in Christ will rise,” (1 Thess. 4.16) or again, “the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed.” (1 Cor 15.52) In the same way that he was raised in a glorified and perfected physical body, so also we will be raised in a glorified and perfected body. “We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is.” (1 John 3.2) This is the hope; this is the promise. This is the logic of the Gospel. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Cor 15.49)
Of course, we may be tempted to conclude that the position that I have sketched out here is hopelessly illogical. How can it be possible that we must die and be raised both spiritually and physically? This seems like a contradiction in terms. How can Paul claim that we have been raised with Christ but then claim that we will one day be raised with Christ. I believe the answer to this apparent contradiction lies in the New Testament reality of the already and the not yet. In fact, I believe that this hermeneutical principle is fundamental for understanding the New Testament in general. In Christ, the last days have already been inaugurated. The fulfillment of God’s work of salvation has begun in the person and work of Christ. Christ has been raised from the dead as the “firstfruits”, and he has given us the eschatological indwelling of the Spirit. We already live the life of the age to come, aka eternal life, and we stand redeemed under the promise of the New Covenant.
And yet, we understand that the full consequences of the redeeming work of Christ have not yet been completely realized. We await the day when he will come again in power and glory to do away with sin once and for all, and it is then that we will be raised in glorified bodies. This is how the Apostle Paul describes the order of the resurrection, “Christ, the firstfruits; afterward, at his coming, those who belong to Christ.” (1 Cor 15.23) Yes, those who are in Christ by faith have already been made new; we are already regenerated by the indwelling Spirit,. But we await the day when our faith will be made sight. “We ourselves have the Spirit as the firstfruits, [yet] we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8.23) Christ is risen; he came up out of the grave – physically, bodily, gloriously, and one day we too will be raised from the dead physically, bodily, and gloriously.
The point of all this is to say that the inherent logic of Christ’s resurrection requires the physical bodily resurrection of believers. To deny this truth is to deny the gospel itself. We cannot have a gospel, we cannot have a salvation, we cannot have a redemption, that does not find its completion in the physical bodily resurrection of those who have been united with Christ by faith. One article I recently read sums up this truth by saying, “The end of the work of God, as regards man, is the glorification of his restored and sanctified nature—body and soul—in eternity. Without this, salvation and restitution would be incomplete. The adoption cannot be consummated without the redemption of the body.” Or to put it more sharply, a gospel that denies the physical resurrection of believers at the physical second coming of Christ is a false gospel, as the Apostle Paul would say, “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!” (Galatians 1.9)
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. 16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. 17 In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.
~1 John 4.7-21
Title: On Love as the Heart of Christmas Text: 1 John 4.7-21 Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR Date: December 17, 2023
6. The whole counsel of God concerning everything essential for his own glory and man’s salvation, faith, and life is either explicitly stated or by necessary inference contained in the Holy Scriptures. Nothing is ever to be added to the Scriptures, either by new revelation of the Spirit or by human traditions.
Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the inward illumination of the Spirit of God is necessary for a saving understanding of what is revealed in the Word. We recognize that some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the church are common to human actions and organizations and are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian wisdom, following the general rules of the Word, which must always be observed.
7. Some things in Scripture are clearer than others, and some people understand the teachings more clearly than others. However, the things that must be known, believed, and obeyed for salvation are so clearly set forth and explained in one part of Scripture or another that both the educated and uneducated may achieve a sufficient understanding of them by properly using ordinary measures.
~Second London Baptist Confession (1689), 1.6, 1.7
Series: The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR Date: October 11, 2023
5. The testimony of the church of God may stir and persuade us to adopt a high and reverent respect for the Holy Scriptures. Moreover, the heavenliness of the contents, the power of the system of truth, the majesty of the style, the harmony of all the parts, the central focus on giving all glory to God, the full revelation of the only way of salvation, and many other incomparable qualities and complete perfections, all provide abundant evidence that the Scriptures are the Word of God. Even so, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority of the Scriptures comes from the internal work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.
~Second London Baptist Confession (1689), 1.5
Series: The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR Date: September 27, 2023
8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light— 9 for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth— 10 testing what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what is done by them in secret. 13 Everything exposed by the light is made visible, 14 for what makes everything visible is light. Therefore it is said:
Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
15 Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise— 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit: 19 speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.
~Ephesians 5.8-21
Title: On the Value of a Distinctively Christian Life Text: Ephesians 5.8-21 Series: The Letter to the Ephesians Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR Date: August 20, 2023
19 So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building, being put together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you are also being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit.
~Ephesians 2.19-22
Title: On the Security, Preservation, and Success of the Church Text: Ephesians 2.19-22 Series: The Letter to the Ephesians Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR Date: June 25, 2023
15 This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.
20 He exercised this power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens— 21 far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.
~Ephesians 1.15-23
Title: On the Ground of Christian Hope Text: Ephesians 1.15-23 Series: The Letter to the Ephesians Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR Date: May 28, 2023
Despite the claims of postmodern literary critics, it is reasonably certain that the meaning of any given document or literary work is grounded in and governed by its author. To put it another way, the meaning of the text is limited by the message that the writer of that text intended to communicate. This principle has been the foundation of biblical interpretation for most of the modern period, and rightly so. The Word of God comes to us through human authors who were writing to historical audiences, so we must work within the boundaries of literary and historical context in order to understand it. The problem, however, is that an overemphasis on authorial intent could relegate our interpretive efforts to nothing more than an exercise in historical investigation. But, the Word of God is more than a historical artifact; it is living and active, and its truths are just as relevant today as they were when they were first written. Over the last twenty years or so, more and more emphasis has been given to the intent of the divine author in an attempt to arrive at a more robustly theological interpretation.
However, this too has led to certain hermeneutical problems, particularly when the supposed divine intent in a given text is set in competition with or in contradiction to the human intent. This appears to be the underlying assumption of a question that was posed on Twitter a few days ago (pictured above). A pastor on Twitter recently asked, “Did the human authors have perfect/sinless intentions while writing Scripture?” Of course, Twitter polls are probably not the best resource for scholarly research, but the results are nevertheless concerning. Some 73% of respondents answered the question in the negative, meaning that almost three quarters of those who answered the poll believe that the human authors of the Bible had sinful intentions when they wrote the words of Holy Scripture. While the relationship between the human and the divine in the writing of Holy Scripture may be complex, we must conclude that this answer is out of bounds for those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God. How can sinful words be received as the Word of a sinless and righteous God? This is a contradiction in terms. As we read in Second Peter, chapter 1, verse 21, “instead men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Based on this text, we must affirm that there is no divine intent apart from the words of the human author. In other words, our interpretive efforts must deal directly with the words of Holy Scripture; we must labor to understand the genre, the syntax, the vocabulary, the grammatical relationships, and the literary flow of thought of the documents themselves. This is the fundamental work of biblical interpretation. There is no such thing as meaning that is separate from the text; there is no mystical or hidden Word that may be sought apart from the words on the page. Whatever the timeless supernatural theological implications of the text may be, these truths must be grounded in and derived from the actual words of Holy Scripture. In theology, this doctrine is known as verbal plenary inspiration, meaning that the quality of inspiration extends to very words that comprise the text and not just the ideas that stand behind those words. In the act of inspiration, God so worked in through and with the human authors of Holy Scripture, such that their words are His very words, thus they are without error in every way.
If their words are His words, then we may conclude that their intent is His intent as well. The difficulty, however, lies in the reality that the God of the Bible is infinite in His understanding, that He sees more and knows more than the human authors could possibly comprehend when they were writing. So, there is a sense in which the divine intent is so much more than what the human authors could understand; some have referred to this as the sensus plenior, or the fuller sense of the text. In their book Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard identify the problem with this idea, namely that “we have no objective criteria to posit the existence of a sensus, or to determine where it might exist, or how one might proceed to unravel its significance. In other words, if the human author of a text did not intend and was unaware of a deeper level of meaning, how can we be confident today that we can detect it?” To put it another way, if we understand textual meaning as something that is grounded in authorial intent, then we must assume a certain amount of similitude, if not even near identity, between the intent of both the Divine and the human author. Otherwise, we would never be able to understand what God is saying to us in any real or meaningful way.
In the final analysis, we must conclude that there is no competition or contradiction between the intent of the human the divine authors of Holy Scripture. While it is possible that the Spirit intended more than human authors, He certainly did not intend less than what they intended to communicate to their audiences through the words that they wrote. In other words, authorial intent in the Bible must be viewed as finely woven tapestry in which the human and divine is so interlaced and knitted together, such that any attempts to divide or separate them would in effect destroy its beauty and grandeur. As interpreters, we must hold these facets of the text in harmony and proceed with conviction the Bible is the very Word of God. B.B. Warfield puts it this way in his book The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, “The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God’s book, in every part expressive of His mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men’s book as well as God’s, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.”
For further study, see: Warfield, B.B. “The Divine and the Human in the Bible.” Pages 542-548in Selected Shorter Writings, 2 Vols.
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will: To the faithful saints in Christ Jesus at Ephesus. 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
~Ephesians 1.1-2
Title: On a Historical, Literary, and Theological Overview of Ephesians Text: Ephesians 1.1-2 Series: The Letter to the Ephesians Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR Date: April 30, 2023
Faith seeking Understanding 