published May 22, 2012
Concrete/Spiritual Conundrum—The Big Change
By Christina
Wilson
May
21, 2012
Overview of Article: Three examples from scripture highlight
“The Big Change” from the Old Testament to the New—God and Christ inaugurate
Spirit, where before there was only concrete.
I. Semantics.
The word “literal” has mixed meanings, depending upon who is
using the word. In some minds, “literal” means concrete, as opposed to
figurative. For example, if you receive a birthday card with a picture of a
cake on it, or a picture of a $100 bill on it, those would be figurative gifts,
as opposed to literal gifts. Often, as in the above example, the word “literal”
becomes synonymous with “truthful”, as opposed to false. Frequently, the word
“literal” is seen to be in opposition with “spiritual”, as when “spiritual” is
equated with “figurative” or “metaphorical”.
“Literal” then, takes on positive values when used as in the
above paragraph, and spiritual, when equated with “figurative”, takes on
negative values. “Literal” is seen to be real and truthful, whereas “spiritual”
receives connotations of “metaphorical”, and is therefore seen to be false, as
with the cake on the birthday card example.
How does scripture use the word “spirit”?
“Spirit”, as used in scripture, is a very real, and a very
“literal” word, when “literal” is used as meaning “truthful”. Spirit, however,
is not concrete—it is spirit. Spirit is, however, literal. I prefer using the
word “literalistic” to indicate “concrete”, when concrete is meant to be
contrasted with “spiritual”. As I use the words, “literal” means true, and
“literalistic” means concrete.
II. The Big Change—Example One: the Household of Cornelius
A. The condition of mankind in the Old Testament was
literalistic, in the sense of being concrete. People died to God spiritually in
the Fall in the Garden. Their spirits died within them; they had no
communication with God internally, by means of His Spirit. God is Spirit and
truth. When humankind was excluded from the Garden, people no longer had spiritual
communication with God. Communication with God became concrete.
B. How did God communicate with people? God communicated
with people as He wished and when He wished through visible manifestations of
messengers (Genesis 18—the three men who visited Abraham by the oaks of Mamre),
through concrete manifestations of Spirit (Exodus 3—Moses and the burning bush;
Exodus 13:21—the cloud and pillar of fire), through visibly concrete miracles
(parting of the Red Sea, water gushing from a rock), and through prophecy
(Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah).
C. People communicated with God through obeying His
commands, sacrifice, prayer, payment of vows, and by sending requests to God through
the prophets. The Holy Spirit did not for the most part indwell the hearts of
Old Testament saints.
D. Prophecy was often very concrete in the Old Testament.
Ezekiel and Hosea, for instance, frequently acted out messages from the Lord as
He directed them. Ezekiel, for example, would wear certain clothes or present
his body in a certain way, he would perform actions specified by God, and then
use words to explain the meaning.
I believe it would be fair to say that Old Testament
understanding of God and His message was quite a bit different for saints
(believers, those who feared God) and for nonbelievers alike (one who perhaps
was an ethnic Israelite but whose heart was not sincere towards God) without
the Holy Spirit as we know Him today.
E. The Holy Spirit Prophesied
The prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Joel promised
the coming of the Holy Spirit.
NET Isaiah 44:3 For I will pour water
on the parched ground and cause streams to flow on the dry land. I will pour my
spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your children.
NET Jeremiah 31:33 "But I will make a
new covenant with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the
land," says the LORD. "I will put my law within them and write it on
their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people.
NET Ezekiel 39:29 “I will no longer hide
my face from them, when I pour out my Spirit on the house of Israel, declares
the sovereign LORD."
NET Joel 2:28 After all of this I
will pour out my Spirit on all kinds of people. Your sons and daughters will
prophesy. Your elderly will have revelatory dreams; your young men will see
prophetic visions. 29
Even on male and female servants I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
F. The Prophecies Fulfilled…but Wait!—God Included Gentiles
in Their Fulfillment
Were Gentile nations or the church mentioned in the above
prophecies? No. Was the church thereby excluded? No. The New Testament clearly
shows that God’s Holy Spirit was poured upon the Gentiles.
NET Acts 10:44 While Peter was still
speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the message. 45 The circumcised believers
who had accompanied Peter were greatly astonished that the gift of the Holy
Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46 for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising
God. Then Peter said, 47
"No one can withhold the water for these people to be baptized, who have
received the Holy Spirit just as we did, can he?"
Israelite believers were the first group to receive the Holy
Spirit on the day of Pentecost and shortly afterward. In the above scripture,
the “circumcised believers…were greatly astonished that the gift of the Holy
Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles”.
Does the fact that the “circumcised believers” did not exclusively receive the gift of the Holy
Spirit negate the validity of fulfillment of the Old Testament promises of
God’s Spirit for the nation of Israel? No. Those prophecies were
literalistically and literally fulfilled. The fact that God chose to extend the
gift to Gentiles and “the church” did not in any way invalidate or negate
fulfillment of the promises to the nation of Israel.
Would anyone at all dare say that in order to consider the
promises of the Holy Spirit to be fulfilled literally, concretely, and fully—that
is, the specific Old Testament promises of God that he would send His Holy
Spirit upon those people’s “offspring”, “children”, “house of Israel”, “sons and daughters”, “elderly”, and so
forth—that the promises needed to be fulfilled in a way that did not include
the church?
We saw in Acts 10:45 above, that indeed the expectation had been that these were promises God had made
exclusively to “circumcised” believers, not Gentiles. The text says that those
with Peter were “greatly astonished” to see the extension of the prophecy to
Gentiles. And clearly, it was God who had done so, not the Gentiles claiming
the gift for themselves.
In view of the above scriptures, would anyone today dare insist that there
must come a future time for Israel to receive the Holy Spirit when the church
would no longer be present on earth and the Old Testament “house of Israel”
would be purely alone, in order to consider the promises literally and
completely fulfilled? I have never heard anyone say that.
Is God’s sovereignty permitted to extend to Gentiles the fulfillment of a
promise He made to ethnic Israel only?
Peter in Acts 10:46-47 said
yes, God’s sovereignty is allowed to do that—“then Peter said, 47 ‘No one can withhold the
water for these people to be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just
as we did, can he?’”
G. Greater to the Lesser
When Peter in Acts 10 above requested the baptism with water of the Gentile
believers, in his mind, which was the greater of the two events—the receiving
of the gift of the Holy Spirit or the physical baptism in water? Peter’s
statement reveals his reasoning to be the following: if God Himself gave the
greater gift of Himself in the giving of the Holy Spirit to these Gentiles, how
can we, His servants, refuse to give the lesser action of a physical baptism in
physical water?
H. Conclusions
From the above discussion involving the fulfillment of Old Testament
prophecies concerning the giving of the Holy Spirit, we have seen certain
facts.
1) The prophesies had been made specifically to the “house of Israel” (Ezekiel 39:29).
2) In fulfillment of them, God had extended the blessing to
the Gentiles.
3) No one present in the Acts 10 example protested, although
they were “greatly astonished” (vs 45).
4) No one to my knowledge has ever claimed that the
extension of the blessing to the Gentiles caused the original promise to be
considered as not having been fulfilled and as still awaiting fulfillment.
5) Peter realized that God’s action in giving the Holy Spirit
to the Gentiles was a greater action than physical water baptism applied by
men.
I. Questions
Given that 1) the promise of the Holy Spirit was
specifically given to ethnic Israelites,
2) that the promise as fulfilled by God was extended by Him to Gentiles,
and 3) no gift can ever be greater than the gift of God Himself—then, why would
a promise of land to Abraham be considered as different from the promise of the
Holy Spirit? Especially when the entire New Testament is a message of inclusion
of the Gentiles into the people of Israel? 1
Is the land promise considered differently than the promise
of the Holy Spirit? and in what way?
Many Christians will say that Gentiles, i.e., the church,
are specifically excluded from the land promise simply because they were not
specifically included in it. Yet, we have seen that Gentiles were not
specifically included in the promise of the Holy Spirit, yet they were not
excluded from fulfillment of the promise, nor does anyone complain. So, that is
a different response in a similar circumstance.
The promise of the Holy Spirit was given to ethnic
Israelites, yet Gentiles were included in its fulfillment. The land promise,
likewise, was given to ethnic Israelites, yet many Gentiles (Christians)
themselves insist that they are and should be excluded from fulfillment of the
promise, the grounds being that they were not specifically named in it. This is
not consistent. It is a split hermeneutic.
Someone might try to explain away the inconsistency by
saying that the two promises were completely different—one was spiritual to
begin with (the Holy Spirit) and the other concrete (land). That doesn’t explain,
however. It merely states. Why should the lesser—concrete, physical, material,
created things (land)—be given a tighter standard of fulfillment than the
greater—non-created, eternal, godly things (the Holy Spirit—God Himself)?
III. Jesus Explains The Big Change—Example Two: Nicodemus
Jesus challenged two people in John’s gospel to make the
change in their understanding from the concrete of the Old Testament way of
thinking to the spiritual way of thinking characteristic of the New.
First, how do we know that Jesus intended such a change? The
answer is that He talked about change.
NET Luke 5:36 He also told them a
parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old
garment. If he does, he will have torn the new, and the piece from the new will
not match the old. 37 And
no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst
the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38 Instead new wine must be
poured into new wineskins. 39
No one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is good
enough.'"
Background to Nicodemus (Example Two) and The Woman at the Well (Example
Three)
Nicodemus represented the best of Israel. We can assume his morals were
great, his education the best, and his pedigree pure. Jesus did not confront
Nicodemus in the areas of moral virtue or the purity of his ethnicity, but he
did confront Nicodemus in the area of his religious learning and thought.
The Samaritan woman at the well, on the other hand, represented the worst.
She lacked moral virtue, as a woman she presumably had no education, and her
ethnicity was mixed, containing pagan elements, as did that of all Samaritans.
While Jesus did comment on her lack of moral character and upon her lack of education
(“You people worship what you do not know”), he never suggested she lacked
intelligence or an ability to understand. He accepted her questions at face
value and engaged in serious conversation with her, revealing Himself to her in
a surprisingly direct and complete way.
Nicodemus
NET John 3:1 Now a certain man, a
Pharisee named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council, 2 came to Jesus at night and
said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.
For no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God is with
him."
Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, wanted to know the source of Jesus’
ability to do miracles. (Could this man possibly be Messiah?)
That Nicodemus was thinking about Messiah is acknowledged by
Jesus’ reply—
NET John 3:3 Jesus replied, "I
tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see
the kingdom of God." 2
Wasn’t Nicodemus a Pharisee, a member of the “Jewish ruling council”? As
such, he would surely know that the “kingdom of God” was a concrete kingdom
with a concrete king, concrete land, and concrete boundaries, wouldn’t he? So
then, why did Jesus say that a person must be “born from above” to see the
kingdom of God? That intimates at the very least a spiritual aspect to the
kingdom, doesn’t it?
But Nicodemus’ understanding was firmly rooted and grounded
in the concrete, and he could not grasp the spiritual content of Jesus’
statement. To our ear, his second question seems ridiculous, due to its being
pinned to the concrete—
NET John 3:4 Nicodemus said to him,
"How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother's womb and
be born a second time, can he?"
Jesus expanded the spiritual elements in His second reply to
Nicodemus’ very concrete question.
NET John 3:5 Jesus answered, "I
tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he
cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6
What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be amazed that I
said to you, 'You must all be born from above.' 8 The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the
sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So
it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."
Jesus directly distinguished that a difference exists
between flesh and spirit: “flesh is flesh” and “Spirit is spirit.” Already,
“The Big Change” has arrived and is bearing down upon Nicodemus, who has no
equipment with which to understand what Jesus is talking about. To understand
what Nicodemus must have been feeling at that moment in terms of frustration,
remember that he went to Jesus with a concern about His perhaps being Messiah
and that perhaps the long awaited kingdom was about to arrive. And, from his
point of view, Jesus began talking about what could only appear to Nicodemus as
nonsense.
NET John 3:9 Nicodemus replied,
"How can these things be?"
It appears that next Jesus scolded Nicodemus soundly for his inability to
understand—
NET John 3:10 Jesus answered,
"Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you don't understand these things? 11 I tell you the solemn
truth, we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you
people do not accept our testimony. 12
If I have told you people about earthly things and you don't believe, how will
you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
Notice that Jesus again distinguished between “earthly things” and
“heavenly things”. Jesus named “belie[ve]f” as the issue at hand. It was a
matter of accepting Jesus’ testimony. Jesus named two groups: “us” and “you”.
The “you” that Nicodemus belonged to, according to Jesus, refused to believe
the testimony of “us”, which at that time was limited to earthly things but in
the future would include heavenly things as well.
NET John 3:13 No one has ascended
into heaven except the one who descended from heaven– the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who
believes in him may have eternal life."
Nicodemus went to Jesus with very concrete concerns on his mind—visible,
material miracles, Messiah, and the kingdom. Jesus replied using an exclusively
spiritual vocabulary. Even something as concrete as Moses lifting up a
metallic, sculpted snake on a literalistic pole in the wilderness received at
the very least a metaphorical meaning that Nicodemus at that time could not possibly
have understood. Jesus then mentioned “eternal life”. What does eternal life
have to do with Messiah and the inauguration of an earthly kingdom?
This was how Jesus, the King, answered Nicodemus, an Old Testament thinker,
when he went to Jesus and asked a concrete question about the kingdom. Had
there been a big change of which Nicodemus had no clue?
IV. Jesus Explains The Big Change—Example Three: Woman at
the Well
NET John 4:4 But he [Jesus] had to
pass through Samaria. 5
Now he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob
had given to his son Joseph. 6
Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, since he was tired from the journey, sat
right down beside the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to
her, "Give me some water to drink." 8 (For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy
supplies.) 9 So the
Samaritan woman said to him, "How can you– a Jew– ask me, a Samaritan
woman, for water to drink?" (For Jews use nothing in common with
Samaritans.)
Notice all the concrete details John has given in this
narrative; it is as though John included all these physically concrete details
with a purpose in mind. The details are literalistically real, historical, and
contextually rooted in Old Testament scriptural history: “Sychar”, “the plot of
land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph”, “Jacob’s well”, “sat right down
beside the well”, “about noon”, “Samaritan woman”, “draw water”, “Give me some
water to drink”, “his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies”,
“you—a Jew…me, a Samaritan woman”, “water to drink”.
The woman’s question to Jesus was as literalistically historical
and contextually concrete as one could possibly hope for, “How can you—a
Jew—ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” John’s comment was also
literalistically historical and contextual—“(For Jews use nothing in common
with Samaritans)”.
NET John 4:10 “Jesus
answered her, ‘If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you,
“Give me some water to drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have
given you living water.”
Had it been Nicodemus to whom Jesus spoke these words, he
would have replied, “Huh?” But the woman, to her credit, was quick on the
uptake and shot right back at Jesus—
NET John 4:11 "Sir," the
woman said to him, "you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do
you get this living water? 12
Surely you're not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you? For he gave us this
well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock."
Notice, however, that the woman has not left her concrete
mindset. She accepted Jesus’ enigmatic proclamation of “living water” without
question, apparently not even stopping to consider what kind of water that
might be. Her mind remained rooted in the historical, contextual, concrete fact
of her ancestor Jacob, who physically drank from the well himself, along with
his sons and livestock (this is so concrete we can almost hear the goats bleat
and breathe the dust in our nostrils that their hooves kicked up). Further,
Jacob has passed the well down through his progeny to her own people. That is
also historically very literal and contextual.
Jesus’ next reply is very similar to a childhood fairytale,
These are magic beans that will grow up into the sky when you plant them.
NET John 4:13 Jesus replied,
"Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks some
of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water
that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to
eternal life."
I find it fascinating that Jesus, as a teacher, never left the plane of the
woman’s concrete thinking, but persisted in using His own spiritual vocabulary,
introducing new terms and concepts each time He spoke, expanding His spiritual
meaning without contradicting her concrete level of understanding. We, as New
Testament Christian readers, know exactly what He was talking about without
having to stretch at all (having gone to Sunday school and countless Bible
studies in which the teacher “told us the answers”), but the woman received simply
and completely what Jesus spoke in her own concrete way.3
NET John 4:15 The woman said to him,
"Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come
here to draw water."
At this point, Jesus performed the miracle of supernatural perception of
the woman’s past. She, for her part, realizing that He was a prophet, asked a
question one would ask of a prophet.
NET John 4:19 The woman said to him,
"Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where
people must worship is in Jerusalem."
Notice that the woman’s question was still entirely
concrete, rooted in the contextual, historical aspect of religious worship—“our
fathers worshiped”, “this mountain”, “you people”, and “Jerusalem”.
Jesus, for His part, gave the woman a concrete, historically
contextual response in keeping with her question—but, He then extended His
answer and taught her directly some new vocabulary and concepts that left the
concrete and entered into spirit.
NET John 4:21 Jesus said to her,
"Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22
You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because
salvation is from the Jews. 23
But a time is coming– and now is here– when the true worshipers will worship
the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his
worshipers. 24 God is
spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
Jesus made several noteworthy points:
i) “a time is coming” (there will be a change)
ii) “and now is here” (the change has arrived)
iii) “when you will worship the Father neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem” (the change would be complete—neither of the only
two forms of worship then in practice would be continued)
iv) “you do not know…we know” (there was a right and a
wrong)
v) “true worshipers” (false worshipers are implied as an
alternative)
vi) “will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (the
change, which “now is here” is specified)
vii) “the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers”
(the change is willed and named by God)
viii) “the people who worship him must worship in spirit and
truth” (there will be a correct way to worship God, no exceptions)
The woman had described the then current situation of
worship—which was rooted in literal, historical, concrete facts—“this mountain”
and “in Jerusalem”. Jesus changed all that. He set up a contrast between the
literal, historical, and concrete and the new, the big change—to…“spirit and
truth”.
Was Jesus “spiritualizing”? Yes. But Jesus is God. He can
and did do that. Was He speaking figuratively? No. Jesus was speaking
literally, as indicated by His saying, “…the people who worship Him must
worship in…truth”. Very truthfully, Jesus was announcing a truthfully literal
change from the concrete to the spiritual.
The conversation closed with a literal, absolutely
historical statement of a concrete fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy—
NET John 4:25 The woman said to him,
"I know that Messiah is coming" (the one called Christ);
"whenever he comes, he will tell us everything."
NET John 4:26 Jesus said to her,
"I, the one speaking to you, am he."
Recap: What had the literal, concretely contextual and historical Messiah
said? “"…a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem…a time is…now…here– when the true worshipers will
worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be
his worshipers. 24 God is
spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
From concrete to spiritual in an entirely concrete, literal, historical,
contextual conversation between a woman and the Son of God, Messiah.
V. More Questions and Conclusion
We’ve seen three solidly biblical examples of how concrete
Old Testament expectations were changed by God in the New Testament. They were
1) the previously unknown and unannounced gift of the Holy Spirit to Gentile
believers, contrary to Old Testament expectations, 2) the necessity of a
spiritual rebirth to see the kingdom of God, completely unknown to Old
Testament believers such as Nicodemus was, and 3) the necessity of a change of
worship, in order to be acceptable to God, from physical actions in a physically
concrete, historically contextual location to a worship entirely in spirit,
having no physical location as a marker at all.
All three of these changes were made by God Himself.
Question: in view of the above, how could it possibly be
considered unreasonable for believers to question whether or not other features
of Old Testament understanding need to be re-examined in light of New Testament
revelation previously unknown? 4
God “greatly astonished” Peter’s Israelite companions by
giving the Holy Spirit to Gentiles, an event completely unknown in Old
Testament promise and prophecy. Nicodemus, a traditional Old Testament
religious ruler and teacher, was at a complete loss to comprehend the nature
and necessity of a spiritual rebirth in order to “see the kingdom of God." And, Jesus
completely toppled Old Testament worship when He made “The Big Change” from the
physically concrete, literal, and historical mode of Old Testament worship to
“spirit and truth”.
Wouldn’t it behoove us to walk humbly
in our assertions concerning things concretely literalistic, our claims
concerning what the sovereignty of God may and may not do, and our demands that
because God “said it” in such-and-such a concretely Old Testament way, that He
therefore must perform exactly according to our literally concrete, physical,
Old Testament understanding?
I do not claim to know the answers to the Old Testament land promises, but
I do know that those promises need to be prayerfully examined in the light of
The Big Change which Jesus Himself and God Himself inaugurated in Jesus’ first
advent to earth, the big change from concrete flesh only to “spirit and truth”.
__________
1 See “Overview of Paul in Ephesians 1 through 3—One
Election or Two?”, Christina Wilson, Appendix, and http://users.bible.org/articles/overview_paul_ephesians_1_through_3%E2%80%94one_election_or_two
2 For a complete discussion of the
biblical meanings of “kingdom” of God and Christ, see George Eldon Ladd, “What
is the Kingdom of God?”, from The Gospel
of the Kingdom, Grand Rapids, MI, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., © 1959,
as reproduced in http://gospelpedlar.com/articles/Last%20Things/kogladd.html
3 Herein lay a great difference between this woman and Nicodemus. Jesus had
said to Nicodemus, “I have told you people about earthly things and you don't
believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”. The woman,
on the other hand, readily believed every word that Jesus spoke to her, even
though her understanding remained entirely concrete. In her mind, she believed
that Jesus could offer her water that, once in her stomach, would continuously
flow in a physically concrete way, to the extent that she would not have to go
to the well to draw water again. The fruit of this woman’s belief came to
include an entire town; whereas scripture gives us no indication of Nicodemus’
having born any fruit at all outside his own heart. She believed; Nicodemus
didn’t.
4 See “Part IV: Ephesians Chapter 3—The Mystery” in “Overview of Paul in
Ephesians 1 through 3—One Election or Two?”, Christina Wilson, Appendix, and http://users.bible.org/articles/overview_paul_ephesians_1_through_3%E2%80%94one_election_or_two
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