The Pig of God?

Did you know when Wycliffe Bible Translators translated the New Testament for a tribe in Borneo, Jesus was referred to as "the pig of God" in John 1:29, rather than "the lamb of God"?

More on Wycliffe's interesting translation later...

Read Romans 12:1:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

Paul gives the command to "offer your bodies as living sacrifices." He describes the living sacrifice as "holy and pleasing to God" (it's something God really wants us to do) and finally points out that "this is your spiritual act of worship".

The NIV translation is actually misleading on the last part. In this case, the King James gets closer to the truth by rendering it, "this is your reasonable service." In the Greek, Paul says it is "your logical service."

In other words, Paul is saying that not only does offering our bodies as living sacrifices please God, it's also a no-brainer. It's a head-smacking, "does-the-word-'duh'-mean-anything-to-you?" idea: if you're a Christian, you are a living sacrifice to God.

But what does it mean to be a sacrifice?

In the Greek, "sacrifice" literally means a thing or person burned by fire as an offering to a god or to God. The idea is simple enough as it is presented, but I'd like to give it a bit more depth. Hal Lindsey wrote this article on the significance of one kind of sacrifice in Jewish culture, the paschal lamb.

This lamb was offered by a Jewish family to atone for sins. The lamb itself was to be without blemish and one from the family's own flock (not purchased or given to them). The process of choosing the lamb began with selecting several lambs that looked to be perfect, and then setting them apart and watching them for a time to spot deficiencies. Once the proper lamb was selected, the family would take it into their house and would care for it as if it were a family pet, so as to prevent anything from happening that might disqualify it as a sacrifice. Of course, in a household with small children, it's easy to see how a lamb like that would become dear to the family - the children especially. Nevertheless, the day would come when they would have to kill it to atone for their sins.

When that day came, the entire family would go to the temple with the lamb in tow. Then, the father of the house would take the lamb to the altar and the priest would examine the lamb, approve it for sacrifice, and hand the father the sacrifical knife. The father would have to kill the lamb since it was a sacrifice for he and his family's sins. He sacrificed the lamb first by rendering it unconscious by compressing two veins in it's neck. Then he would nip those veins with the knife, and bathe his hands in the outpouring of blood. The carcass would then be burned completely. Often, parts of the sacrifices were given to the priests for their food, but not in the case of the paschal lamb.

The lamb was a perfect, but difficult sacrifice - it meant giving up something that was dear to and prized by the entire family. It came at considerable cost and was a vivid way to remind the Israelites just how serious sin was to God. Yet that cost pales in comparison to the price God paid to remove the sins of those who believe in His Son. This is why John the Baptist referred to Jesus as the "lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" in John 1:29.

So why did Wycliffe's Bible translators refer to Jesus as the "pig of God" in it's effort to reach a culture?

Quite simply, the native population Wycliffe was trying to reach had never seen sheep, so the "lamb of God" would mean nothing to them. In order to communicate the meaning and purpose of this sacrifice image, they had to use the animal that best fit the Jewish image of the lamb - in this case, the pig. Not surprisngly, this has stood as a rather controversial translation. Nevertheless, it was deemed appropriate for the cultural context.

So how does the concept of a "living sacrifice" apply to the Christian life?

During the course of the last week, I did something I never thought I'd do - I fasted. Fasting is something I always assigned to people whom I believed were more "spiritual" than me. Nevertheless, I was hit with the conviction last Monday that this is something I ought to do. So, I tried it. I went two days without solid food and drank mostly water. On two occasions I had 100% fruit juice to allieviate some light-headedness. Then, after almost 60 hours, I broke my fast. I suppose I had my first true "breakfast" ever last Friday morning!

I can't say that I had some sort of "mountain-top" experience as a result of my fast, but I do feel as though I was closer to God for it. Times I would have spent eating and doing other things to entertain myself were spent in Scripture or in prayer. My hunger pangs reminded me of why I was fasting (to seek God and to draw near to Him) so I used them as opportunities to do just that. As a result, I can see why it is a valued practice among so many even today. While I don't believe fasting is any sort of spiritual "cure-all" for what ails us, some use fasting for a variety of purposes, like these guys from XXXChurch who are doing a 40-day fast as a "movement" to mobilize the church.

While I believe the primary (certainly, the most noble) purpose of fasting in a Christian context is to draw near to God, another benefit was how it reminded me of the consuming nature of pleasure. Case in point, going two days without solid food made the can of Pringles sitting on our kitchen table look like a T-Bone steak to me. I never wanted a potato chip so badly in my life! The experience clearly demonstrated how lust can completely dominate my mind if I permit it.

Ultimately, it has served as a great way of demonstrating just how much of a sacrifice it is to offer our bodies to God as living sacrifices. It is neither convenient nor cheap to sacrifice to God the things we love the most in this life. Yet I believe there is nothing that pleases God more than what we willingly sacrifice out of gratitude and love (not obligation and fear) and it is a natural and inevitable result of being a Christian.

Just some food for thought. :)

- Graffy

What's in your heart?

Well, it's been a while since my last post, but things have been busy - filling in for a friend and teaching his adult Sunday School class can get a bit tricky, especially when fresh material isn't coming quickly to mind...

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!"

Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,' he is not to 'honor his father' with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

" 'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.'"

Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.'"

There's more going on in this passage than meets the eye. When Jesus' disciples are challenged for not practicing handwashing before eating, Jesus responds by pointing out a hypocrisy among the Pharisees. Specifically, the Pharisees have permitted people to give offerings to God that could have, instead been given to support thier parents. The Pharisees believed this was a good thing - after all, God is bigger than our parents. However, they overlooked the point that God said, "Honor your father and mother - that it may go well with you" (see Exodus 20). Thus, for whatever reason, the Pharisees were actually breaking God's law in a show of religious piety.

But what's really interesting in this passage is that Jesus isn't just defending his disciples by turning the attention on the Pharisees' hypocrisy; he was actually pointing out that his disciples didn't even need a defense. The reason? No where in the law of Moses (which the Pharisees charged Jesus' disciples with breaking) is there a command to wash one's hands before eating. The only handwashing command to be found deals with purification rituals priests go through before offering sacrifices. While not that washing your hands before a meal may be a bad idea, it's not a law of God. Rather, it's a "rule taught by men".

So where did the Pharisees over-zealous sense of religious piety come from?

Turn to Leviticus 11:42-45:

'Whatever crawls on its belly, and whatever walks on all fours, whatever has many feet, in respect to every swarming thing that swarms on the earth, you shall not eat them, for they are detestable. Do not render yourselves detestable through any of the swarming things that swarm; and you shall not make yourselves unclean with them so that you become unclean.

'For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth.

For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.'"

The first paragraph provides us some context. If you know anything about Leviticus, you probably know it's the least interesting read in the Bible, since it consists largely of the several hundred laws that God gave to Israel through Moses. In this particular instance (about halfway through), God is going into detail about what creatures are clean and unclean. Then in the middle of all of this lawmaking, God commands Israel, "Consecrate yourselves ... and be holy, for I am holy." Then He repeats Himself, "thus you shall be holy for I am holy." (One does well to remember that when something is repeated in the Bible, it's usually because it's important. )

God gives Israel two commands regarding what to do with His law:

• Consecrate yourselves (an external act)
  
• Be holy (an internal state of being)
  

To consecrate oneself is to set oneself apart (by ceremonial cleansing, prayer, fasting, etc.) for the purpose of performing a sacred ritual. The Pharisees were skilled at consecrating themselves - in fact, that's what the word, "Pharisee" means: "separate one". They did this because they honestly believed that by acting holy and consecrating themselves with God's law, they would eventually be holy or be like God.

Case in point: I am a seven-week-old father of a son (there's a way of putting it, eh?). I know I have many new experiences in child-rearing yet ahead of me and one that I anticipate with a mixture of excitement and fear is when my toddler son starts to mimic the things that I do. That means when I get up to go to work in the morning, he might pretend to do the same. Certain mannerisms and habits that I have, he'll mimic. Why? Because he wants to be "just like dad". (I find it funny that we all do this as children, but when we've grown up, we bemoan the fact that we really are just like our parents...)

But no matter how perfectly my son mimics what I do in an effort to be just like me, he can't accomplish it - not just by doing what I do. Why? Because in order for my son to be like me, he needs a lot more maturity - and that takes time. Eventually, I expect my son really will be like me, and if he's smart, he'll be greater than me. (I admit, there's a lot of areas where I'm not as mature as I could or should be...)

But can we say the same about God? If we act like Him long enough, will we eventually be like Him?

There's this tension throughout the Old Testament about God's Law. Moses says, "Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out." (Deuteronomy 27:26). Contrast that with what Solomon says in Ecclesiates 7:20, "There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins." (His father, David, stated it a bit more dramatically in Psalm 14:2 & 3.)

Clearly, there is a very big difference between acting like God and being like God. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that being like God takes, well, an act of God. Case in point: Only one man is reputed to have led a sinless life - Jesus of Nazareth (Hebrews 4:15). Yet did Jesus somehow become God by obeying the law? Or did he obey the law because He already was God?

That's what the Pharisees missed. The purpose of the law wasn't to make Israel holy. It was merely to show them that they could never measure up to God's standard. Thus, trying to obey God's law to the letter doesn't make a person holy - it only makes them aware of how sinful they are. Paul said exactly that in Romans 3:20.

This is Jesus' point back in Matthew 15. When he talks about what makes us clean and unclean in vs. 10 & 11, he expounds in vs. 17-20:

"Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.' "

Very simply, then, our deeds do not define us, they reveal us.

Have a great week (or maybe two...)

- Graffy