Matt Chandler explains why the ‘swoon theory‘ (that Jesus didn’t really die but simply fell unconscious, then awoke and exited the tomb) is ridiculous. Anyone who has experienced even a temporary disabling condition involving the feet will understand!
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The LORD is risen!
And this risen Lord made disease and disability a central part of his ministry.
As God, he declared to Moses: “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Exodus 4:11)
He showed us how a king behaves when David actively sought to keep his promise of care and redemption to the disabled grandson of the man who wanted him dead: “Mephibosheth ate at David’s table, like one of the king’s sons.” (2 Samuel 9:11)
He confirmed he has authority over sin: “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose. . . (Mark 2:10-12a)
He sees people with disabilities: “As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.” (John 9:1)
He taught us disability brings him glory: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3)
He demonstrated he is the One: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (Luke 7:22-23)
He blinded Paul for three days (Acts 9:3-5) and made him spend a lifetime of suffering so that Paul could teach us: For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. . . (2 Corinthians 4:17)
Even as he died, powerful men understood who he was: And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:37-39)
Dead people rose to talk about him: And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:51-53)
He is the risen King of Kings!
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” Luke 24:1-6a
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Jesus is the light of the world, granting spiritually blind eyes the ability to see his glorious light!
And he kindly shows us what that means in additional miraculous ways, like giving naturally blind eyes the ability to see. What a picture of the totality of our depravity and the extraordinary power and kindness of God!
R.C. Sproul walked through the first 17 verses of John 9 yesterday, Man Born Blind, beginning with this question: what does your sin have to do with your suffering. In his usual style, Dr. Sproul presses into the question guided by the scriptures and shows us the glories that can be found in Jesus.
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In the midst of suffering we can wonder, does Jesus really have the power to help me, or my child?
Back in 1982 on Good Friday, Pastor John meditated on John 19:26-27: So Jesus, seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there, said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his family.
The word of Jesus to his mother from the cross is a great encouragement to our faith. For if he could provide for his own in the moment of his weakness and humiliation, how much more can he meet all our needs today from the right hand of God, full of power and wealth and glory. John Piper, The Third Word from the Cross, April 9, 1982
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Frequently, when I write on a subject like embryonic stem cell treatment, a person will comment that if I were in that same situation I would also choose to use whatever treatments were available, including embryonic stem cells. I’ll admit the temptations would be strong, very strong.
I’ll let one of my dear sisters in the faith respond:
I will not trade my son’s future eternal weight of glory for this vapor’s breath bowl of stew.
That needs to be read a couple of times.
She is referring to two sets of scripture:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. Hebrews 12:15-16
Eternity, and all the pleasure that will come with being with Jesus, are vastly superior to anything this world has to offer. And this mom is one of those women Pastor John refers to as having steel in her spine. She and her husband have had to make decisions about their child’s health and future that are simply incredible, far beyond what all but a few parents will ever have to experience.
And she won’t choose killing tiny people to benefit her son, because there is glory that is coming and her God loves those tiny people and he has planted in her heart a deep regard for those tiny people.
Or this dad, who has already gone through deep waters with his son and may be entering even deeper waters:
I have this peaceful feeling about the situation; not necessarily because I think “everything is going to turn out okay” but because whether the issue turns out to be relatively minor or potentially significant, God is big and He is in charge and He is good.
I wept when I read that, for the pain his family is experiencing but equally so with joy in his confidence in his God. My faith was strengthened as I read this brother’s email. As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
The statement that ‘you would choose differently if you were in that situation’ is one of the reasons why this blog exists. I want more people to be prepared when the hard thing comes, either for themselves, their family, their neighbor or their church. There are real, foundational principles upon which we can stand and not be moved. We need to know what they are.
Actually, better yet, we need to know who they are anchored in: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
After my oldest son was born I rejected all that is good and completely turned away from God and his people. I was not prepared to live in the reality of God’s awesome sovereignty over all things, including hard things. If I didn’t define it as good, it wasn’t good.
God broke me of that pride and replaced my bitterness and anger with a much softer heart that longs to be in relationship with Jesus. I am a wretched sinner, but I love Jesus and understand more clearly (though not completely) what his horrific, painful death bought for me. God gave me that heart as well.
And God helps me with the hard questions and through brothers and sisters who are willing to walk in faith with me that God will provide. Today I can answer the question of what I would do with confidence – no, I would not choose even a life-saving treatment for myself or for my disabled son if it involved the destruction of tiny human beings. Yes, I would be tempted, even beyond my ability to see clearly. And God would help me.
I invite you to know this Jesus like that, for his glory and for your eternal joy.
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There are significant moral arguments that can be made against embryonic stem cell research. Scott Klusendorf provides five arguments in this article from last year.
As one commenter also pointed out, adult stem cell research is perfectly fine, and has already demonstrated significant successes without the need to destroy people. I speak only against embryonic stem cell research and application.
I referenced a Biblical argument yesterday, and several people asked what it was. Here is a brief overview.
First, to harvest stem cells from an embryo destroys it. This is an intentional act against a genetically unique human. The commandment against murder is appropriately applied.
But it is not the only case that should be made against destroying the weakest of the weak:
- God knows us before we are formed (Jeremiah 1:5)
- God calls the weaker members indispensable (1 Corinthians 12:22)
- God has regard for the weak, and he will judge those who take advantage of them (Ezekiel 34:16)
- Paul instructs us that we should help the weak, recognizing the blessing we receive when we give rather than take (Acts 20:35)
- We are warned not to mistreat a child without a father to protect him (Exodus 22:22)
- We shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great (Leviticus 19:15)
God has great regard for the weaker member. We do well to warn people against incurring increasing measures of his wrath.
We should tremble at what the embryonic stem-cell industry represents – the powerful completely dominating the rights and even the existence of the weak. This immoral exchange is being sold as a benefit – but only for those already living, and only to achieve a certain quality of life. This is not similar to someone who has died and who has donated the use of their organs – unless we killed that person to harvest those organs.
It is completely opposite to how Jesus behaved. He served us, to the very end.
Embryonic human beings have no rights, babies in the womb have no rights, children with disabilities in the womb are expected to be aborted, and there are arguments made that children born with disabilities should be ‘mercifully’ killed. Where does it end if it doesn’t end here?
And for those living with disabilities, God himself warns those who would do you harm:
You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:14
Let us live differently, trusting God to provide all that we need. And not at the expense of embryonic human life.
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The Sunday Saint Paul Pioneer Press included a story on a young man with disabilities who is taking part in an experimental treatment that includes the use of embryonic stem cells.
We knew this day was coming. But this particular story was alarming because of how it positioned Christians against the interests of the embryonic person.
The young man suffered a severe injury in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. From all accounts he is a young man who trusts Christ and attends church regularly.
But he and his pastor are using profoundly flawed logic to justify the use of embryonic stem cells in this young man’s treatment.
In summary:
The cells implanted into his spine were obtained from embryos being discarded at fertility clinics, he notes.
“It’s not life. It’s not like they’re coming from an aborted fetus or anything like that. They were going to be thrown away,” he said. “Once they explained to me where the stem cells were coming from, once I learned that, I was OK with it.”
His pastor, Troy Bailey, of the Reynolds Holiness Church, came to the same conclusion:
Bailey realized he had to sort out his own stance, given that some people who, like him, oppose abortion also consider embryonic stem cell research to be immoral. But Bailey concluded that that he, too, believed the experimental treatment is acceptable because the cells were obtained from embryos that had never been implanted in a woman’s womb and so had no chance of developing into a fetus.
“I am adamantly against abortion in any form. It did cause me some searching and researching biblically what is the proper answer,” he said. “I don’t really see a baby’s life was destroyed for this to take place.”
‘Adamantly against abortion in any form,’ yet willing to use stem cells from embryos that were destroyed in the process.
It’s like one human being saying to another, “since I can’t save you, it’s ok for me to use you.”
The only difference between those embryos and an aborted baby is length of time in development and placement. The fact that the embryos were going to be discarded does not change the moral question one bit: they are still human beings.
This paper from Joni & Friends explains that we are dealing with a human:
Neurobiologist Maureen Condic, Senior Fellow at the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, has forcefully argued that based on universally accepted scientific criteria, the human zygote/embryo comes into existence at the moment of sperm/egg fusion, an event that occurs in less than a second. Upon formation, the zygote immediately initiates a complex sequence of events that establish the conditions required for embryo development. The behavior of a zygote is radically unlike that of either sperm or egg and is characteristic of a human organism.
Like you, I want a cure for disabilities like what this young man is experiencing, but not at the expense of the very lives of other human beings. The fact that fertility clinics have hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos is a huge and vexing problem. But a clinic’s callous destruction of embryos does not change the morality of embryonic stem cell research or their use in other people.
The reporter for this story noted this irony:
Atchison’s story reveals provocative insights into one of the most closely watched medical experiments, including what some may see as an irony: that a treatment condemned on moral and religious grounds is viewed by the first person to pioneer the therapy, and his family, as part of God’s plan.
“It wasn’t just luck, or chance,” said Atchison, who thinks, six months after the treatment, that he may be feeling the first signs that the cells are helping him.
“It was meant to be.”
He is right – it isn’t luck or chance. God is always purposeful. And the temptations to seek out any rescue from his disabling condition will be strong. Very few people in this culture will think twice about the decision he made and won’t mind that he’s wrapped it in religious language.
But we must stand ready to trust that God has a better plan that does not require the destruction of smaller human beings to change our life circumstances. We must demonstrate that God is greater, more valuable, and more beautiful than comfort in this present age. We must not let the clear evidence of humanity be clouded by the circumstances of their destruction. We must support those who have made the harder, deeply personal decision to not participate in embryonic stem cell experiments, like Joni herself:
I want people to know that not all Americans with disabilities believe in using human embryos.
And when pastors make poor decisions, we must respectfully yet persistently call them back to the Bible to study it more carefully. We must, peacefully, continue to stand for the little ones who cannot speak for themselves. And we must be more proactive in serving and being served in our churches by those who live with life-long disabling conditions.
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I spent a few days in Chicago this week for The Gospel Coalition 2011 Conference. All of the plenary sessions are available online for free – including in French, Simplified Chinese and Spanish!
But I think the highlight personally was meeting two men ‘by accident’ at different times on Wednesday. Peter lost a baby daughter. Paul is the father of 10, four with disabilities.
There is something about deep suffering that blows away socially-sanctioned pretense or the desire for small-talk. I’m not sure exactly how God does it, but spending even the little time I did with each man was encouraging to my soul in ways that are hard to describe. And the time in prayer with and for them was very sweet.
I’m grateful God does things like that for me (and hopefully for them as well!). It was good to meet these brothers I didn’t know I had.
We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. 2 Thessalonians 1:3-4
May God be pleased to add to your family of faith this Holy Week!
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From Pastor John, in a 1999 Taste and See Article, Luther, Bunyan, Bible and Pain:
(O)ne of God’s gifts to us in suffering is that we are granted to see and experience depths of his Word that a life of ease would never yield.
Martin Luther had discovered the same “method” of seeing God in his Word. He said there are three rules for understanding Scripture: praying, meditating and suffering trials. The “trials,” he said, are supremely valuable: they “teach you not only to know and understand but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God’s word is: it is wisdom supreme.” Therefore the devil himself becomes the unwitting teacher of God’s word: “the devil will afflict you [and] will make a real doctor of you, and will teach you by his temptations to seek and to love God’s Word. For I myself . . . owe my papists many thanks for so beating, pressing, and frightening me through the devil’s raging that they have turned me into a fairly good theologian, driving me to a goal I should never have reached” (What Luther Says, Vol. 3, Concordia Publishing House, 1959, p. 1360).
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All conference audio and video for The Works of God: God’s Good Design in Disability are now available at Desiring God!
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This Maundy Thursday – Pray for Pastors’ Wives
April 21, 2011 by John Knight
Maundy Thursday services are some of the most solemn, and important, of the year. We are walking toward the greatest sin ever committed – the murder of the sinless One.
So why emphasize pastors’ wives?
On Tuesday Dianne and I had the incredible privilege of having the Downtown Elders pray and anoint our Paul with oil, asking for God’s intercession in his seizure-like spells. I cannot begin to describe what that meant to me, for these men to place their hands on me and my son and my wife and pray earnest, Bible-soaked prayers.
As we left, Dianne noticed how many leaders were there on a Tuesday night. There were at least seven pastors we saw, either in that prayer meeting or doing other things like rehearsing music for the special services this week or leading an evening class.
Dianne remarked, “we ask a lot of pastors’ wives here. Look how many men are here at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday night!”
These men, their husbands, are spending hours and hours of time to serve the church – serve us – and they can do so because their wives are managing things at home. My son was prayed over because faithful women were equipping faithful men to serve me.
So, on this serious day when we commemorate the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, remember to pray for these women who serve with their husbands. They do far more for us than we realize.
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