Category: Scripture Reflections

Meditations on specific passages, listening for the whisper of God’s voice in the text.

Does God Expect Moral Perfection?

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

Israel does not arrive at Mount Sinai as a nation trying to become worthy of rescue. They arrive as people who have already been rescued.

They have lived beneath Pharaoh’s power. Their labour built an empire that treated them as expendable. Pharaoh ordered the deaths of their sons, increased their work, and refused to hear their cries. Then the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob remembered his covenant. Egypt’s gods and rulers were exposed, the sea opened, and the people who had been enslaved walked into freedom.

Only then does Israel reach Sinai.

The mountain is covered in smoke. Thunder rolls across the wilderness. The people tremble as God speaks, but the Ten Commandments do not begin with a demand. They begin with deliverance:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2).

Many Christians have learned to hear the rest of the story in a different order. God may rescue us by grace, but acceptance still feels tied to performance. Faith becomes a cycle of effort and failure, repentance and shame, devotion and fear. Prayer turns into self-examination. Ordinary weakness begins to feel like rebellion. Even people who believe that salvation is a gift can live as though God is constantly measuring whether they deserve to remain.

This raises a difficult question. Does God expect moral perfection?

God calls his people to holiness, truth, justice, and love. Scripture never treats cruelty, exploitation, or idolatry as harmless. Yet it also does not portray discipleship as earning God’s acceptance through flawless moral performance. In Exodus, grace precedes command. In Jesus, perfection is wholehearted love. In Paul, the Spirit forms people who already belong to Christ.

The Christian life involves real obedience and real change. It does not require us to confuse being human with being sinful.

Why Do Christians Feel That God Demands Perfection?

Moral perfectionism can take root in almost any Christian tradition. It is not always taught explicitly. Sometimes it settles into the emotional atmosphere of faith.

A person may hear that salvation comes through grace while also learning that God is easily disappointed. They may be told that every failure reveals insufficient surrender, every doubt threatens faith, and every unwanted thought exposes the heart. Over time, the inner life becomes a spiritual inspection site.

The questions keep returning. Did I repent sincerely enough? Was that temptation itself a sin? Have I confessed everything? Did I pray with the right motives? Is God still willing to receive me?

Christian teaching should take conscience seriously. We are capable of hiding from the truth about ourselves. We can excuse anger, greed, manipulation, lust, dishonesty, and the misuse of power. Grace is not a reason to avoid responsibility.

Perfectionism produces a different problem. It struggles to distinguish moral responsibility from creaturely limitation. Exhaustion feels like laziness. Grief feels like unbelief. Uncertainty feels like disobedience. Needing help feels like failure. A person can become preoccupied with maintaining a flawless spiritual condition while losing sight of love, justice, mercy, and the people in front of them.

This confusion often appears in experiences of religious trauma and spiritual abuse. When fear and control are given theological authority, anxiety can be mistaken for conviction and shame for holiness. The image of God beneath the teaching matters as much as the language of grace placed on its surface.

Rescue Comes Before Commandment

Exodus gives this question a different starting point. God acts before Israel receives the law.

At Sinai, God tells the people, “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus 19:4). The covenant begins with God’s action and invitation. Israel is then called to become a priestly kingdom and a holy nation, representing God’s character among the nations (Exodus 19:5–6).

The commandments belong inside that relationship. God does not hand Israel an entrance examination for escaping Egypt. Torah, the Hebrew word commonly translated “law”, is instruction for a people learning how to live after slavery.

That context changes the way the commandments sound. Israel must not reproduce Pharaoh’s world. They are commanded to worship God rather than the powers that enslave. Sabbath places a limit on endless production and gives rest to servants, immigrants, and animals. Laws concerning debt, restitution, courts, land, and harvests shape a community responsible for the vulnerable. Israel has been liberated, and now it must learn not to become another Egypt.

The covenant still includes commands, consequences, and judgement. Israel’s rescue does not make its life morally indifferent. The prophets later confront the nation for worshipping God while exploiting workers, neglecting the poor, and corrupting justice (Isaiah 1:10–17; Amos 5:21–24). Grace creates a people whose life should reflect the One who rescued them.

The order nevertheless remains important. Deliverance does not wait for moral achievement. Obedience grows from belonging; it does not purchase belonging.

What Was the Old Testament Law For?

Christians sometimes reduce the law to an impossible standard given to prove that everyone fails. Paul does say that the law brings knowledge of sin and cannot, by itself, heal the human heart (Romans 3:20; 7:7–13). Galatians describes the law as a guardian until Christ (Galatians 3:23–25).

Paul also calls the law holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12). The law reveals God’s concern for worship, neighbour-love, justice, bodies, land, truth, and covenant faithfulness. Deuteronomy does not describe God’s instruction as an absurd test placed beyond human reach. It tells Israel that the command is not too difficult or too distant, but near enough to be heard and practised (Deuteronomy 30:11–14).

These claims have to be held together. Torah is good, and human beings can use it badly. It exposes sin, yet sin can twist the law into a tool of accusation, exclusion, or self-righteousness. The law can name what faithful life looks like without possessing the power to create that life within us.

Jesus reads the law through its purpose. He confronts interpretations that protect religious performance while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23). He cites Hosea’s words, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”, when religious leaders condemn people whom God is restoring (Matthew 9:13; 12:7). The problem is not that Jesus cares less about holiness. He refuses a version of holiness that leaves people proud, frightened, or abandoned.

Reading Torah as covenantal instruction does not solve every difficult law. Historical setting, genre, and the development of Scripture still matter, as they do when moving beyond biblical literalism. It does, however, prevent us from turning Sinai into a second Egypt, with God replacing Pharaoh as an impossible taskmaster.

Why Does Jesus Say, “Be Perfect”?

Jesus appears to settle the question in one sentence: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Read alone, the verse can sound like a command to achieve flawless moral performance. Its setting points elsewhere. Jesus has been teaching about enemy-love. God gives sun and rain to the righteous and the unrighteous. The disciples must love beyond the boundaries of tribe, reciprocity, and personal deserving (Matthew 5:43–48).

The Greek word translated “perfect”, teleios, can describe completeness, maturity, or something reaching its intended purpose. Jesus is calling his followers towards the complete love revealed in the Father. Luke’s parallel teaching makes the emphasis even clearer: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

This reading does not make Jesus’ command easy. Loving enemies is more demanding than maintaining a respectable religious image. It reaches into resentment, retaliation, speech, money, power, and the ways we divide the world into people worthy and unworthy of care.

Jesus is not presenting God as a celestial examiner searching for minor faults. He is describing mature participation in the Father’s love. Christian perfection, in this setting, is love becoming whole.

Jesus also shows us what fulfilled humanity looks like. As we are conformed to Christ, we become more truthful, more free, and more capable of giving and receiving love.

The same pattern appears throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus moves beneath visible compliance to the kind of person we are becoming. Reconciliation matters alongside avoiding murder. Faithfulness involves the integrity of desire, speech, and promise. Generosity is freed from public admiration. Prayer becomes communion with the Father rather than performance before an audience.

The goal is a transformed person and community, not an immaculate record maintained through fear. That still leaves an important question: does Scripture expect this transformation to become sinlessness in the present life?

Does the Bible Expect Christians to Become Sinless?

No, if sinlessness means reaching a static condition in which a Christian no longer fails, misunderstands, or needs grace. The New Testament calls people into real holiness while assuming that their growth remains unfinished.

John writes so that Christians may not sin, then immediately assures them that Christ is their advocate when they do (1 John 2:1–2). The same letter warns that anyone who claims to be without sin deceives themselves (1 John 1:8). Paul pursues Christ while admitting that he has not already reached the goal or been made complete (Philippians 3:12–14). Hebrews says that Christ has perfected his people while they are still being made holy (Hebrews 10:14).

The tension is deliberate. Christian identity and Christian growth belong together without becoming identical. Grace does not make sin harmless, and unfinished growth does not make grace unreal.

Gregory of Nyssa and Growth Without a Finish Line

The early Church often described salvation as growth, healing, and participation. Irenaeus pictured newly created human beings as infants who must mature into communion with God. Finitude and development belong to created life. God is not surprised that creatures need time to grow.

Gregory of Nyssa develops that vision further. In On the Making of Man, he describes humanity as one living image of God, created to participate in divine goodness, freedom, and love. Sin obscures that image, but it cannot become the final truth about human nature. In On Christian Perfection, Gregory treats our capacity for change as a wing that carries us towards the good. True perfection, he says, is never to stop growing towards what is better.

For Gregory, holiness is endless participation in God. Christ reveals fulfilled humanity, and the Spirit forms that likeness within us. Sin remains serious because it deforms our movement towards communion and love. Grace heals that movement and draws the image towards its fulfilment.

This participatory emphasis remains prominent in Catholic and Orthodox accounts of grace. John Wesley’s teaching about Christian perfection also deserves care. Wesley describes it as love governing the heart and life, not freedom from ignorance, mistakes, weakness, or every human limitation. Christians may disagree about his expectation of entire sanctification in this life, but his central concern was perfect love rather than spiritual scorekeeping.

Calvin and the Weight of Wretchedness

Reformed theology usually explains the tension by distinguishing justification, God’s gracious declaration that sinners are righteous in Christ, from sanctification, the continuing work of the Spirit. The distinction protects the priority of grace. It becomes damaging when “total depravity” is heard as total worthlessness or “wretched sinner” becomes a Christian’s permanent identity.

Calvin himself is more complex than some later slogans. In Institutes I.15.4, he says that the divine image was not “utterly annihilated and effaced” and describes salvation as restoration through Christ. In the same passage, however, he calls what remains after the fall “horrible deformity”. Book II describes fallen nature as “destitute of all good”. Calvin intended this language to magnify grace, but it carries a heavy pastoral weight.

Classical Reformed theology does not claim that every person is as evil as possible or that the image of God has disappeared. It teaches that sin affects every dimension of life. Even with that qualification, I do not find permanent wretchedness a helpful account of Christian identity. When deformity becomes the controlling image, grace can sound like God’s willingness to tolerate people. The New Testament gives us a richer vocabulary: adoption, new creation, participation in Christ, and renewal in the image of God.

Christian traditions disagree about how much freedom from sin is possible before death. Scripture nevertheless gives us no permission to make peace with cruelty, exploitation, or deceit, and no reason to turn contempt for our humanity into a virtue. The goal is Christlike love formed in people who continue to need grace.

That leads to a more constructive question. If holiness is not permanent flawlessness, what kind of humanity is God forming?

Holiness Is Becoming Truly Human

Holiness is God’s work of restoring human beings to communion. In Jesus, divine life does not diminish humanity. It brings human life to its fullness. Becoming holy therefore means becoming more truly human, more fully alive to God, our neighbours, ourselves, and the creation of which we are part.

Scripture takes sin seriously because sin works against that humanity and damages communion. Idolatry distorts worship. Greed consumes neighbours. Lies corrode trust. Violence wounds bodies and communities. Pride refuses truth, and injustice protects the powerful at another person’s expense.

Human limitation is different. Bodies need sleep. Minds cannot know everything. Grief interrupts concentration. People need friendship, food, time, safety, and care. A trauma response may shape how someone reacts before they have understood what is happening. Those limits can affect moral choices and may need patient attention, but limitation itself is not rebellion against God.

Jesus’ humanity makes this distinction difficult to ignore. He becomes tired and sleeps. He hungers. He weeps at Lazarus’s grave. In Gethsemane, he is distressed and asks his friends to remain near him. Luke even says that Jesus grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52). None of this separates him from the Father.

Perfectionism can turn ordinary dependence into shame. It imagines maturity as needing nothing, feeling nothing, and making no mistakes. The gospel gives us a different picture. The body of Christ is composed of people who need one another. Spiritual gifts are distributed across a community. Sabbath interrupts the fantasy that worth depends on constant output.

Discernment still matters. “I am only human” can become an excuse for refusing responsibility. The answer is honest naming. If I have deceived someone, I need truth and repair. If I am exhausted, I may need rest rather than condemnation. If fear has shaped a harmful response, I may need both compassion and accountability.

God’s mercy gives us room to name sin, receive our limits, and seek healing without collapsing them into one another.

Grace Does Not Make Obedience Unnecessary

Rejecting perfectionism can sound like lowering the moral vision of Christianity. Paul refuses that conclusion.

Ephesians says that salvation is God’s gift, not the result of works, and then describes believers as God’s workmanship, created in Christ for good works (Ephesians 2:8–10). Grace comes first and grace produces a new way of life. Philippians tells Christians to work out their salvation because God is already at work within them (Philippians 2:12–13).

Obedience is participation in what God is doing. The Spirit forms love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control within a community (Galatians 5:22–23). These are not techniques for persuading God to keep us. They are signs that the life of Christ is taking shape among us.

Perfectionism can also draw power from an account of the cross centred on punishment. I reject penal substitutionary atonement as an account of the gospel. When punishment and satisfaction become the cross’s controlling logic, Jesus can sound like the one who saves us from God. The New Testament tells a larger story: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).

As I argued in Did Jesus Save Us From God or From Sin and Death?, Christ enters the powers that enslave humanity and opens a way into life. He defeats sin and death, restores communion, and gathers creation into his risen life. Forgiveness belongs within this work of liberation, healing, reconciliation, resurrection, and union with Christ.

Grace therefore opposes both legalism and moral carelessness. It removes obedience from the economy of earning while making transformation possible. God receives us before we are complete, then refuses to abandon us to whatever destroys us and our neighbours.

What Perfectionism Does to Faith

When grace is placed after performance, perfectionism reshapes faith before its damage becomes visible.

Prayer becomes a performance review. Confession becomes an attempt to remember every possible failure. Rest creates guilt. Scripture is read primarily for correction, and the voice of God becomes difficult to distinguish from the harshest voice in a person’s mind.

Perfectionism also makes honesty dangerous. If mature Christians are supposed to appear consistently victorious, people learn to hide doubt, temptation, depression, conflict, and failure. Leaders may protect an image of spiritual authority instead of admitting harm. Communities can become skilled at presenting transformation while avoiding the truth required for it.

Some people eventually pull the whole structure apart. Their deconstruction may lead them towards a deeper orthodoxy, but the process can be painful. Beneath the doctrinal questions sits a more personal one: can God be trusted when fear no longer carries the faith?

The New Testament offers tests for spiritual growth that are harder to fake. Does a community become more truthful? Are vulnerable people protected? Do enemies receive love without evil being excused? Does authority serve? Is confession connected to repair? Are patience, gentleness, and self-control becoming visible?

These questions still expose us. They do so without requiring the pretence that mature Christians never struggle.

Does God Still Love Us When We Fail?

The New Testament does not ask Christians to guess whether every failure has placed them outside God’s mercy. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Nothing in creation can separate God’s people from the love revealed in Christ (Romans 8:31–39).

Peter’s failure gives that promise a human face. He denies Jesus after insisting that he never will. After the resurrection, Jesus does not pretend the denial never happened. He meets Peter, questions him about love, and restores him to a life of service (John 21:15–19). Failure is brought into truth without becoming Peter’s final identity.

God’s love is not indifference. Love confronts what deforms us and harms others. Divine mercy can include painful truth, consequences, discipline, apology, and repair. Yet correction occurs within God’s commitment to heal and restore, not as a recurring threat of abandonment.

When Christians imagine God as permanently disappointed, they often become either frightened performers or exhausted avoiders. Jesus reveals a Father who receives returning children and goes looking for the lost (Luke 15). Grace gives us somewhere to return when the truth about ourselves becomes difficult.

Holiness can grow from that security. It does not need the threat of abandonment to keep it alive.

How Can Christians Pursue Holiness Without Perfectionism?

Holiness without perfectionism begins by recovering the order of the gospel.

  • Begin with rescue. Return to what God has done before measuring what remains unfinished. Israel hears the commandments as the people brought out of slavery. Christians pursue holiness as people joined to Christ.
  • Name sin precisely. Confess deceit, resentment, exploitation, cruelty, or avoidance instead of condemning your entire existence. Specific truth makes repentance and repair possible.
  • Distinguish guilt from limitation. Some situations call for apology and restitution. Others call for sleep, grief, patience, support, or the acceptance that you cannot control everything.
  • Measure growth by love. Knowledge, intensity, certainty, and religious activity can coexist with harm. The New Testament repeatedly returns to love of God and neighbour as the shape of maturity.
  • Receive formation through community. Christians need worship, Scripture, sacraments, friendship, correction, and shared practices. Private self-surveillance cannot create the life of the body of Christ.
  • Allow growth to take time. Repentance can be immediate, while habits, desires, fears, and ways of relating may change slowly. Patience does not excuse harm. It recognises how people are actually formed.
  • Keep returning to Jesus. Holiness takes its shape from his life. He tells the truth, welcomes the excluded, confronts abusive power, forgives enemies, restores failures, and gives himself for the life of the world.

These practices do not create a new method for controlling spiritual progress. They place growth within grace, truth, community, and time.

The Holiness God Desires

Does God expect moral perfection?

Not if perfection means earning acceptance, reaching flawless independence, or living without the need for grace. God desires holiness. God opposes the sin that destroys people and creation. Jesus calls his followers towards a complete love that extends even to enemies. The Spirit continues the work of forming Christ within a people.

Holiness, then, is becoming truly human in the truly human One. It is the healing of our loves, desires, relationships, bodies, communities, and ways of using power. It makes people more alive to God and more present to one another.

None of this requires us to earn rescue, deny our limitations, or live beneath constant fear of rejection. Exodus places deliverance before commandment, and the rest of Scripture never finally reverses that order. God acts, calls, forgives, forms, corrects, and completes.

Christian maturity tells the truth about sin without calling human weakness evil. It receives grace without turning grace into moral indifference. It pursues love while admitting how much remains unfinished.

God is not waiting for flawless people to become bearable. In Christ, God has come near to real human beings and begun the long work of making us whole.

Sources and Further Reading

Why Does the God of the Old Testament Seem Different From Jesus?

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

Some Bible passages are difficult because their world is foreign to us. Israel is commanded to destroy entire populations (Deuteronomy 20:16–18). Joshua is said to kill men and women, young and old (Joshua 6:21). Samuel tells Saul not to spare children or infants (1 Samuel 15:3). One of the Psalms ends by blessing the person who kills Babylonian children (Psalm 137:9).

Then we meet Jesus, who tells us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, forgive repeatedly, and refuse retaliation. When his disciples want to call down fire on a Samaritan village, he rebukes them (Luke 9:51–56). When soldiers arrive to arrest him, he tells Peter to put away his sword (Matthew 26:52). After one of his followers cuts off a servant’s ear, Jesus heals the wounded man (Luke 22:50–51).

The question is unavoidable. If Jesus reveals God perfectly, why do some portrayals of God in the Old Testament seem so unlike him?

Some Christians fear that asking this question puts the authority of the Bible at risk. I think refusing to ask it creates a greater risk. It can leave us defending actions that we would condemn anywhere else, simply because a biblical character attributes them to God. It can also teach people that faithfulness requires silencing their conscience.

I don’t think those are our only choices. Christians can take the whole Bible seriously while recognising that Jesus is its interpretive centre. We don’t have to choose between keeping the Old Testament and following Jesus. The Christian claim is that the Scriptures lead us to Christ, who shows us most clearly what God is like.

Why Does God Seem Different in the Old Testament?

Violence is a big problem, though not the only one. Readers also encounter troubling laws, severe punishments, and stories in which God seems quick to anger. Taken together, these passages can leave the impression that the God of the Old Testament is wrathful while Jesus is merciful.

The Old Testament repeatedly describes God as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (Exodus 34:6–7; Psalm 103:8). Hosea portrays God recoiling from judgment because of divine compassion (Hosea 11:8–9). Jonah becomes angry precisely because God shows mercy to Nineveh, one of Israel’s enemies (Jonah 4:1–2). The prophets imagine nations laying down their weapons and learning war no more (Isaiah 2:2–4; Micah 4:1–4).

The New Testament also contains judgment. Jesus speaks severe words against religious hypocrisy. Ananias and Sapphira die in Acts 5. Revelation contains terrifying images of violence and divine wrath. Dividing the Bible into an angry Old Testament and a loving New Testament does not survive a careful reading of either.

None of this explains the commands to destroy the Canaanites or reconciles them with Jesus’ teaching about enemies. The difficult passages remain. The difference is not between two simple collections of texts. The tension runs through the entire Bible.

The Old Testament Does Not Reveal a Different God

One early attempt to solve the problem was to separate the God of Israel from the Father of Jesus. In the second century, Marcion taught that the creator described in Israel’s Scriptures was a lesser and harsher deity than the Father revealed by Christ. He rejected the Old Testament and removed parts of the New Testament that connected Jesus to Israel’s God.

The Church rejected Marcion’s solution. Irenaeus insisted that one God stands behind both Testaments and that the God who created the world is the Father revealed by Jesus (Against Heresies 4.32). Christians could not detach Christ from Israel’s story without distorting Christ himself.

Jesus was Jewish. He prayed Israel’s Psalms, taught from the Torah, spoke through the prophets, celebrated Israel’s feasts, and announced the fulfilment of Israel’s hope. His language about covenant, kingdom, Messiah, mercy, justice, and resurrection came from the Scriptures of Israel.

Careless contrasts between an angry “Old Testament God” and a loving Jesus can reproduce an old anti-Jewish caricature. The Hebrew Bible is not a primitive religious failure that Christianity came to replace. It is the scriptural world in which Jesus lived and through which the first Christians understood him. Christian interpretation has to hold two convictions together: the God of Israel is the Father revealed by Jesus, and some biblical portrayals of God remain genuinely difficult when read beside Jesus.

Jesus Is the Clearest Revelation of God

The New Testament presents Jesus as more than another source of information about God. Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). He is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). John says that no one has seen God, but the Son has made him known (John 1:18). Jesus tells Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Taken together, these passages place Jesus at the centre of Christian interpretation. We do not construct an image of God from every biblical description and then adjust Jesus until he fits. We begin with Jesus because the apostles identify him as the clearest revelation of the Father.

This doesn’t mean that the Son is kind while the Father is violent. The cross is not Jesus rescuing us from a God unlike himself. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). The Father, Son, and Spirit act together for the healing and liberation of creation.

In Jesus, divine power looks unlike the power humans usually admire. He confronts evil without imitating it. He tells Peter to put away the sword, forgives enemies, and restores people shut out by respectable religion. At the cross, he gives himself instead of claiming another victim. In the resurrection, God defeats sin and death without vindicating the methods of the empire that crucified him.

If Jesus is the exact representation of God, his life cannot be treated as an exception to God’s character. Enemy-love is not a temporary mood adopted during the incarnation. It reveals who God is.

The Bible Records a Developing Understanding of God

The Bible is a library formed across centuries. Its laws, stories, poems, prophecies, Gospels, and letters come from different historical situations and reflect different levels of understanding.

That claim doesn’t deny inspiration. It asks us to take the form of inspiration seriously. God speaks through human language and culture, through memory, literary form, and theological reflection. As John Calvin argued, God accommodates revelation to human capacity. God stoops to communicate with people as they are. This same principle helps us interpret Genesis within its historical world.

Accommodation helps explain why Scripture contains development. The law of “an eye for an eye” limited retaliation within a violent world by preventing escalating revenge (Exodus 21:23–25). Jesus later carried that movement further, teaching his followers to relinquish retaliation and love their enemies (Matthew 5:38–48). The prophets looked beyond national warfare towards a future in which swords would become farming tools. The biblical movement is towards reconciliation, restored creation, and peace.

God does not improve morally over the course of Scripture. Human understanding of God develops, and Scripture lets us see it. Job challenges shallow explanations of suffering. Habakkuk questions God’s use of violent empire. Abraham asks whether the Judge of all the earth will do what is just (Genesis 18:25). The lament Psalms give faithful people language to protest, grieve, and demand an answer.

A flat reading obscures that development. As I argued in Moving Beyond Biblical Literalism, it assumes every passage communicates in the same way and every portrayal carries the same degree of clarity. A literary and theological reading asks who is speaking, what kind of text we are reading, where it sits within the biblical story, and how it relates to Christ.

How Did Jesus Read Difficult Scripture?

Jesus did not reject Israel’s Scriptures. He also did not repeat every command without interpretation. He read the law in light of its purpose and brought it to fulfilment in the kingdom of God.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes up the law concerning proportional retaliation: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” That law had restrained vengeance by limiting what an injured party could demand. Jesus then directs his followers beyond proportionate retaliation towards non-retaliation, generosity, and enemy-love (Matthew 5:38–48).

He does something similar when he cites Hosea’s words, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13; 12:7). Jesus uses one part of Scripture to expose readings of another part that produce condemnation without mercy. His argument turns on the purpose of the law, not the Pharisees’ ability to quote a rule.

Luke gives another example. When a Samaritan village refuses to receive Jesus, James and John ask whether they should call down fire from heaven. Their request recalls Elijah’s confrontation with royal soldiers in 2 Kings 1. They have a biblical precedent, but Jesus rebukes them (Luke 9:51–56). Possessing a precedent does not mean the disciples have understood the mission or character of Christ.

After the resurrection, Jesus interprets Moses and the prophets in relation to himself (Luke 24:27). The early Church learned to read Scripture through his death and resurrection. Israel’s history, law, worship, suffering, exile, and hope were gathered into the story of Christ and the renewal of creation.

How the Early Church Read Violent Old Testament Passages

Early Christians disagreed about how to interpret difficult passages. Yet many recognised that a surface reading could be morally and theologically inadequate.

Origen believed Scripture contained historical, moral, and spiritual depths. In On First Principles, he argued that apparent impossibilities and incongruities can function as “stumbling-blocks” that stop readers from remaining at the surface and direct them towards a spiritual meaning (On First Principles 4.2.9).

Gregory of Nyssa offers us insight in The Life of Moses. When he reaches the death of the Egyptian firstborn, he refuses to pass over the moral problem. How can a new-born child justly suffer for a parent’s wrongdoing? Gregory recalls Ezekiel’s insistence that a child should not bear the guilt of a parent (Ezekiel 18:20). He then reads the passage spiritually: the “firstborn” to be destroyed are the first beginnings of evil within us, before anger becomes murder or desire becomes exploitation (The Life of Moses 2.91–94).

Gregory does not respond to the death of children with a casual appeal to divine sovereignty. He allows the moral contradiction to change how he reads.

Augustine supplied another important principle. In On Christian Doctrine, he argued that anyone who interprets Scripture in a way that fails to build love of God and neighbour has not yet understood it as they should (1.36.40). That did not make love a sentimental excuse for ignoring hard teachings. Love was the goal of Christian interpretation because Jesus said the law and prophets hang upon love of God and neighbour (Matthew 22:37–40).

Origen, Gregory, Augustine, and Irenaeus differed from one another, and their interpretations should still be examined critically. Their work nevertheless disproves the claim that faithful Christians have always treated the surface meaning of every violent passage as the final meaning. Moral concern about a text was not automatically dismissed as unbelief. It sent these readers back to the text.

How Do Christians Interpret Violence in the Old Testament?

No single approach resolves every violent text. Some passages are narratives about human violence. Others portray divine judgment. Some contain commands attributed directly to God. Poetry, law, conquest accounts, prophetic rhetoric, and apocalyptic imagery cannot be handled as though they were one genre. Several approaches appear in Christian scholarship, and they can overlap.

Divine Judgment in a Unique Historical Setting

A traditional approach argues that God, as creator and judge, may bring temporal judgment and may commission Israel to act within a specific covenant setting. These commands belong to a unique moment in salvation history and give no continuing permission for religious violence.

This view keeps conquest from becoming a reusable political programme. It also recognises that the biblical writers present Canaanite judgment as connected to entrenched injustice rather than ethnicity alone (Genesis 15:16; Deuteronomy 9:4–6).

The moral difficulty remains, particularly where children and non-combatants are included. Saying that God has the right to judge is a theological claim, but it does not answer every question about how a particular human description or command reveals the Father seen in Jesus.

Ancient Warfare Language and Hyperbole

Other scholars emphasise the rhetoric of ancient warfare. Claims that an army “destroyed all” or left no survivors could function as conventional victory language rather than a literal census of every death. Joshua itself uses totalising language and then continues to describe Canaanite populations living in the land (Joshua 10–11; 13:1; 15:63; 16:10).

Recognising hyperbole changes how some conquest texts are understood. It does not remove the violence or make the problem disappear. People still die and land is still taken; the text still attributes the campaign to God.

Progressive Revelation and Divine Accommodation

Another approach distinguishes God’s unchanging character from humanity’s partial understanding of that character. God genuinely meets Israel within the ancient world, but the people’s perception of God is shaped by that world. Revelation develops within the relationship until it reaches its clearest expression in Christ.

This approach takes the humanity of Scripture seriously. The danger is that readers can appoint themselves judges over the Bible and accept only what already agrees with them. Christ, rather than modern preference, must remain the criterion. Historical study, the wider canon, the Church, and the fruit of an interpretation all help restrain private judgement.

Spiritual and Cruciform Readings

The spiritual reading associated with figures such as Origen and Gregory asks how violent imagery portrays God’s struggle against sin, death, oppression, and the powers that deform human life. The enemies to be destroyed are not flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12), but the evils that enslave creation.

A cruciform reading focuses more specifically on the cross. “Cruciform” simply means cross-shaped. Scholars such as Gregory Boyd argue that God’s fullest character is revealed in the self-giving love of the crucified Christ. Even Scripture’s violent portraits must ultimately be interpreted in that light.

Christians disagree over how far this approach should go, but it insists that the cross is not one divine act among many. The cross shows how God confronts evil and saves enemies.

A Christ-Centred Reading Does Not Reject the Old Testament

Reading through Jesus doesn’t erase difficult texts or pretend they say something harmless. It doesn’t reduce the Old Testament to a set of Christian symbols either.

We still need to ask what these texts meant within Israel’s history. Christians should listen to Jewish interpretation and remain alert to readings that treat Judaism as the dark background against which Christianity appears enlightened. The Old Testament also contains its own critique of violence. Matthew Lynch develops this point in Flood and Fury, showing how the biblical narratives can expose the destructive logic of violence even while using violent language.

A Christ-centred reading shouldn’t make Jesus tame. Jesus confronts exploitative power, warns of judgment, overturns tables, and calls people to costly repentance. Divine love is not passive approval. It opposes whatever destroys human beings and creation.

The question is how God opposes evil. Jesus answers through his life, death, and resurrection. He overcomes the powers through faithful, self-giving love. His followers are commanded to take up a cross, not a sword.

Why Our Interpretation of God Matters

The way Christians describe God shapes the way Christians use power. If cruelty becomes good whenever it is attributed to God, people can learn to distrust their moral awareness and obey religious authority without question. If divine love is imagined as coercion for a person’s own good, coercive leaders can easily present themselves as godly. If enemies may be destroyed once they are labelled evil, almost any act of exclusion or violence can acquire religious approval.

The consequences are historical, not hypothetical. Scripture has been used to defend conquest, slavery, colonialism, domestic abuse, racism, and war. Calling an interpretation “biblical” does not settle whether it reflects the character of Christ.

The same pattern appears in religious trauma and spiritual abuse. A person’s image of God can make manipulation feel holy. Fear can be called conviction. Control can be called discipleship. Harm can be defended as obedience.

Jesus gives the Church a concrete standard. Christian authority serves. Correction seeks restoration, truth refuses manipulation, and love protects the vulnerable. The God revealed in Christ does not require us to call evil good.

How to Read Difficult Bible Passages Without Losing Faith

There is no method that makes every troubling passage easy. A few practices can help us read without denial or despair.

  1. Name the moral problem honestly. If a text disturbs you, say why. Honest attention is more faithful than rushing to protect God with an answer you do not believe.
  2. Identify the genre and speaker. A lament, battle report, legal text, prophetic warning, and theological claim do different things. Psalm 137 records the rage of an exiled and brutalised people; it does not issue a timeless command to kill children.
  3. Study the ancient setting. Historical context can clarify warfare rhetoric, covenant language, social structures, and the purpose of particular laws. Context may reduce a difficulty without removing it.
  4. Read the whole Old Testament. Do not isolate conquest from Exodus, wisdom, lament, prophetic criticism, mercy towards outsiders, or the hope of worldwide peace. Israel’s Scriptures contain debate, development, and self-critique.
  5. Bring the passage to Jesus. Ask how it relates to his teaching, character, cross, and resurrection. This is a theological judgement grounded in the New Testament’s claims about Christ.
  6. Read with the Church and with good scholarship. The Christian tradition contains several approaches to these texts. We need voices from different periods, cultures, and theological traditions, including scholars who challenge our preferred explanation.
  7. Allow some questions to remain unresolved. Faith does not require a confident answer to every moral and historical problem in the Bible. Forced certainty often produces weaker interpretations than patient honesty. For some Christians, relinquishing that pressure becomes part of reconstructing a more durable faith.

The God Jesus Reveals

Why does the God of the Old Testament sometimes seem different from Jesus? Part of the answer lies in genre, historical context, ancient rhetoric, and the long development of Israel’s faith. Part lies in the difference between God and every human attempt to describe God. Some passages yield to careful study. Others remain difficult after the usual explanations have been considered.

Christians still have a centre. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He does not reveal a second God or persuade a violent Father to become merciful. He reveals the Father who has always been working to rescue, heal, judge evil, and reconcile creation.

Honouring Scripture requires careful and truthful reading in the light of the One to whom it bears witness. We don’t have to defend every interpretation handed to us.

When the Bible sounds unlike Jesus, discarding one side of the tension will not help. We have to return to the text, test our assumptions, and hear how the wider Christian tradition has wrestled with it, always keeping Christ at the centre. The difficult passages may not become simple, but they need not control our picture of God.

Jesus shows us the Father. For Christians, every interpretation must finally be tested there.

Sources and Further Reading

Moving Beyond Biblical Literalism

Camaron G. W. Smith2 Comments

The Bible Is Not One Kind of Book

“The Bible was not meant to be read merely literally. It was meant to be read literarily.”

For many Christians, ‘taking the Bible literally’ is often seen as a sign of faithfulness. Questioning a literal reading can feel like doubting Scripture itself. But this idea quickly runs into trouble, since the Bible is not just one type of book, written in a single style or for a single purpose.

The Bible is a library. Even the word itself reflects this reality. It comes from the Greek phrase ta biblia, meaning “the books”. From the beginning, Scripture was understood as a collection of writings spanning centuries, cultures, authors, and literary styles.

Within its pages, we find poetry, wisdom literature, parables, prophecy, apocalypse, genealogy, narrative, law, and song. Some passages are historical. Others are metaphorical. Some invite reflection. Others provoke imagination.

Psalmists speak of rivers clapping their hands and mountains singing for joy (Psalm 98:8). Jesus says faith can move mountains (Matthew 17:20). Revelation describes beasts rising from the sea. Few Christians insist these are literal descriptions. We instinctively recognise genre.

The issue is not whether the Bible contains truth, but what kind of truth a passage is communicating.

Modern readers often approach Scripture with assumptions shaped more by post-Enlightenment Western culture than the ancient world. We expect precision, science, and factual reporting. Ancient authors were often doing something else.

Old Testament scholar John H. Walton argues that modern readers ask questions that the biblical authors were not trying to answer. These texts are often concerned with meaning, purpose, and theology more than technical description.

This becomes especially clear in books like Genesis, Job, the Psalms, and Revelation. They are not merely reporting information. They are inviting readers into reflection, wisdom, and participation in the story of God.

As Tremper Longman III notes, responsible interpretation requires attention to genre. Different kinds of texts communicate differently.

“Good interpretation asks not just what happened, but what the text is trying to say.”

Literalism, in its modern form, often flattens Scripture into something it never claims to be: a single genre document written with modern expectations in mind.

Biblical Interpretation Has Never Been As Simple As We Imagine

“Modern biblical literalism is often a reaction to modernity, not a reflection of historic Christianity.”

One of the great myths surrounding biblical literalism is that Christians have always interpreted Scripture in a single, straightforward way. History tells a different story.

From early Judaism through the Church, Scripture has been read with depth and diversity. Ancient interpreters saw layers of meaning. A passage could be historical and symbolic at the same time. Jewish traditions long before Christianity engaged Scripture through poetry, symbolism, and pattern. This continued into the early Church.

Origen argued that some passages were designed to push readers beyond surface meaning (On First Principles). Augustine warned against rigid readings that ignored reason and reality (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), even cautioning Christians against making foolish claims about the natural world.

Even the Reformers did not read Scripture the way modern literalism often assumes.

Martin Luther read the Song of Songs not simply as romance, but as a picture of Christ and the Church (Lectures on the Song of Songs). John Calvin argued that God accommodates revelation to human understanding (Commentary on Genesis). He noted that Moses described the world in ways people could grasp, not as a scientific explanation. When Scripture speaks of the sun rising, it uses ordinary human language, not astronomy.

For much of Christian history, interpretation included multiple layers:

  • literal
  • allegorical
  • moral
  • anagogical

Scripture was seen as capable of communicating on multiple levels at once.

This does not mean agreement. It means diversity has always existed.

“There has never been a single, universally agreed ‘plain reading’ of Scripture.”

Modern literalism often emerges as a response to scepticism, treating the Bible like a document that must defend itself through precision and certainty. Ironically, this imposes modern expectations onto ancient texts.

Even Jesus and the New Testament Do Not Read Scripture Hyperliterally

The New Testament authors often interpret the Old Testament in ways that do not fit modern literalism. This is not because they take Scripture lightly, but because they take it deeply. They see patterns, symbols, and trajectories pointing toward Christ.

Jesus regularly moves beyond surface-level readings. When he speaks of destroying the temple (John 2:19), his listeners think in physical terms. John tells us he meant his body. Literalism misses the point. Jesus also teaches through hyperbole and metaphor: mountains moving, camels through needles, eyes torn out. These are not instructions. They are invitations to deeper reflection.

Paul continues this pattern. He reads Sarah and Hagar allegorically (Galatians 4), and describes Christ as the rock in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:4). These are theological readings, not literal ones.

Matthew does the same. He applies Hosea 11:1 to Jesus, even though Hosea is clearly referring to Israel’s past. Matthew reads typologically, presenting Jesus as embodying Israel’s story. He does something similar with Jeremiah 31:15, applying it to Herod’s massacre (Matthew 2:17-18). This also echoes the Exodus narrative, where Pharaoh kills Hebrew children.

Matthew is not just quoting predictions. He is drawing patterns.

  • Israel suffers.
  • Israel comes out of Egypt.
  • Israel enters the wilderness.

Jesus relives this story.

This was normal in the Jewish world of the first century. The issue is not seriousness. It is recognising the kind of reading Scripture invites.

Literalism Often Creates Fragile Faith

“Many people do not lose faith because Scripture failed, but because their framework for reading it could not hold.”

Modern literalism often tries to protect Scripture but ends up weakening faith. When every passage must function as science, history, or precision, the system becomes fragile. One challenge can feel like everything is collapsing. This is especially clear with Genesis.

Many were taught it must function as a scientific account of origins. When that clashes with modern knowledge, people feel forced to choose between reality and faith. But this is a false choice created by the framework, not the Bible.

John H. Walton argues that Genesis is concerned with function and meaning, not scientific mechanics.

The same issue appears elsewhere:

  • Proverbs are treated as guarantees.
  • Revelation is treated as a predictive code.
  • Poetry is treated as science.

Literalism often shrinks Scripture, and when cracks appear, people feel betrayed. A richer understanding of Scripture does not weaken faith. It strengthens it.

When Literalism Becomes Harmful

“The question is not just what a text says, but what it produces.”

The problem with literalism is not just intellectual. It can become harmful. Throughout history, rigid interpretations have been used to justify abuse, control, and injustice. This is not a problem with Scripture itself, but with how it is read. A flat reading struggles with the Bible’s movement and development. Scripture is a story moving toward Christ.

Jesus consistently resists rigid interpretation. He prioritises mercy, restoration, and human flourishing. “The Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27). In the Sermon on the Mount, he deepens the law beyond behaviour into the heart. Literalism can confuse faithfulness with control. Texts become tools of enforcement rather than tools of transformation.

This is especially damaging around:

  • shame
  • power
  • mental health
  • fear

“People are often taught how to be afraid of being wrong, rather than how to love God.”

This raises a deeper question:

What kind of person is this interpretation producing?

Scripture points to Christ. And Christ becomes the lens through which Scripture is read. The goal is not information, but transformation.

Toward A Better Way Of Reading Scripture

“Scripture is not just meant to be understood. It is meant to form us.”

Rejecting literalism does not mean abandoning Scripture. It means reading it more faithfully. The Bible is not a modern textbook. It is a collection of human texts through which God reveals himself.

Reading well requires asking:

  • What kind of text is this?
  • What is it doing?
  • How would it have been understood?
  • How does it point to Christ?

It requires humility. No one reads Scripture neutrally. It requires comfort with mystery. The Bible does not offer simplistic certainty. It invites wisdom, trust, and transformation. Historically, Scripture was meditated on, not just analysed.

A healthy reading holds together:

  • literary awareness
  • context
  • theology
  • community
  • formation

Its poetry deepens. Its tension becomes meaningful. Its humanity becomes part of its beauty. The Bible was never meant to produce certainty alone. It was meant to form a people capable of love, wisdom, justice, and communion with God. And perhaps that is not a departure from Scripture, but a return to reading it well.

Sources and further reading

John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.

Tremper Longman III, How to Read Genesis.

Origen, On First Principles, Book IV.

Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis.

John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis.

Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture.

G. K. Beale, “The Use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15.”

Easter Sunday: The Defeat of Death and the Birth of New Creation

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

In my last post, I asked a question that sits underneath much of our theology, whether we realise it or not. Did Jesus save us from God, or from sin and death?

This is a question that comes into sharp focus on Good Friday, and Easter Sunday offers the answer.

If Jesus really rose from the dead, Easter signals the single greatest change in reality: the ultimate defeat of sin and death. The resurrection is not about dealing with guilt or our moral standing but about the breaking of powers that hold humanity captive. Because Christ has risen, fears, shame, and failures no longer have the final word. Resurrection is not abstract hope, but a source of real freedom and courage in daily life. This is the heart of the Easter message.

This means the resurrection should not be seen merely as an appendix to the cross. Instead, it is the lens through which we truly understand what the cross accomplished.

The Resurrection Is Not Proof. It Is Victory

We often describe the resurrection as proof of Jesus’ identity and God’s acceptance of his sacrifice. But the New Testament presents it differently.

Paul describes the resurrection not just as proof, but as a victory. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). Not managed. Not reinterpreted. Destroyed.

The resurrection is not God saying that a payment has been made. It is God declaring that the enemy has been defeated.

This is why Peter says it was impossible for death to keep hold of him (Acts 2:24). Death could not hold Jesus. Death lost its grip.

From the earliest centuries, the church understood this. Irenaeus speaks of Christ entering into death to undo it from within, recapitulating Adam and reversing humanity’s trajectory (Against Heresies 3.18.1). Athanasius says that by his death and resurrection, Christ “trampled down death by death” (On the Incarnation 27).

This is not just metaphor. It is about reality itself. Something has shifted.

So What Were We Saved From?

If Easter is victory, then we need to ask the question again. Saved from what? Scripture does not present us as saved from God.

Scripture consistently presents God as the one who saves, not the one we are rescued from. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19), not reconciling himself to the world.

What then holds us? Sin. Death. Corruption.

Paul describes sin as a power that enslaves us (Romans 6:6). Death is not just an event, but a force that spreads through humanity (Romans 5:14).

We are not depicted as trapped between an angry God and a moral ledger, but under powers that deform, enslave, and destroy.

Easter tells us those powers have been confronted and broken. Therefore, we do not need to live in fear. In Christ, we are free from the grip of sin and death and can walk in confidence and hope.

The Cross in the Light of the Resurrection

Without Easter, the cross looks like failure. A righteous man executed. Another life swallowed by the machinery of empire and death. But with Easter, we see the cross as the moment when death tried to go too far.

Jesus enters fully into the human condition, even to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). And in doing so, he allows death to do its worst.

But death cannot hold him. In swallowing Christ, death swallows something it cannot digest.

Paul says Christ has disarmed rulers and authorities, making a public spectacle of them (Colossians 2:15). Their apparent victory is actually their defeat.

Some scholars argue that the resurrection is about life after life after death—the beginning of a new creation breaking into the present (see N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope). Michael Gorman describes the cross and resurrection as a single movement of divine self-giving love that defeats the powers and creates a new way of being human (Cruciformity).

The cross is not set aside by the resurrection. It is more fully understood in its light.

A Garden Again

John tells us that Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener (John 20:15). It is a strange detail that almost seems unnecessary. Unless it is not.

The story began in a garden. Humanity was called to bear the image of God, to cultivate, and to participate in the life of creation (Genesis 1:26, Genesis 2:15). That vocation was fractured. The ground itself became a place of resistance and decay.

Now, on the first day of the week, in a garden, a man stands alive after death. Mary is not entirely wrong. New creation has begun.

Paul calls Christ the firstfruits (1 Corinthians 15:20). Not an isolated miracle, but the beginning of a harvest. What has happened to Jesus is not unique to him. It is the future of creation brought forward into the present.

God has not abandoned the world. He has begun to remake it. And this work of new creation is not something God does alone. We are invited to take part, to join together as a community in cultivating hope, working for renewal, and tending the places where resurrection life breaks into our world. As we participate in God’s ongoing work, we discover that new creation is something we are called to share and build together.

Unrecognised Life

Yet, no one recognises him.

Mary does not. The disciples on the road to Emmaus do not (Luke 24:16). Even those closest to him struggle to see. This is not incidental.

Resurrection life is connected to this world, but it is not limited to it.

Resurrection life is real, embodied, and tangible. Jesus eats, speaks, and bears wounds (Luke 24:39-43, John 20:27), yet is also transformed and no longer bound or limited in the same way.

The problem is not that the resurrection is unclear; it is that we do not yet know how to see it. For many, this can be difficult. Doubt and uncertainty are genuine parts of the journey for disciples, then and now. If you find yourself struggling to perceive resurrection life, know that you are not alone; those closest to Jesus did not recognise him at first either. As we honestly bring our questions and hopes before God, even small acts of trust can open us to new ways of seeing. Sometimes we borrow others’ faith until we catch a glimpse of resurrection life for ourselves.

Gregory of Nyssa writes of the resurrection as the transformation of human nature into incorruptibility, not the abandonment of embodiment but its fulfilment (On the Soul and the Resurrection).

The risen Christ is not less physical. He is even more alive than before.

The Wounds Remain

Thomas is invited to touch the wounds (John 20:27). This matters.

The resurrection does not remove suffering’s marks, but transforms them. The scars, no longer signs of defeat, become evidence of victory. God redeems, not erases, history.

The cross is brought into resurrection life, not as a sign of shame, but as a sign of glory.

Raised With Him

If this is true, then Easter is not just something that happened to Jesus. It is something we are all drawn into.

“Sin entered the world through Adam, bringing death to all humanity, but through Jesus Christ, righteousness and life are offered to all.” (Romans 5:12)

“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead… we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

“Set your minds on things that are above… for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:2-3).

Resurrection is not just something for the future; it is participation in the now.

Dallas Willard speaks of eternal life not as duration but as a kind of life, the life of the age to come made available in the present. Easter is the moment that life breaks into history and becomes accessible.

Following Jesus is not just about believing things about him; it is living from a different reality now. This means allowing the hope and freedom of resurrection to actually shape our daily actions and attitudes. For example, when we extend forgiveness rather than hold onto resentment, or when we choose hope in the face of disappointment, we are living out this new reality. Serving others, practising kindness, or showing generosity even when it is difficult are all practical ways in which resurrection life breaks into our world through us. Each ordinary act, offered in trust that Christ’s victory is real, becomes a sign of the new creation at work.

Sunday

Easter Sunday does not just undo death; it breaks its power completely. This is at the heart of the Christian message: death’s rule is over, and new creation has started. It is the end of its authority.

God did not need to be reconciled to us. We needed to be saved from everything that was destroying us.

Sin has been confronted. Death has been undone. Creation has begun again.

And the risen Christ stands, still bearing wounds, still calling our name, inviting us not just to believe in resurrection, but to live out of it.

Advent: Maybe Christ Is Waiting For Us

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

Advent is usually described as a season of waiting.
Waiting for Christ.
Waiting for light.
Waiting for hope.
Waiting for God to draw near.

But I have begun to wonder if that might be the wrong way round. Because the more I sit with the story, the more I sit with Scripture, the more I sit with the strange and holy hunger of Advent, the more it feels like Christ is not the one who is slow.

Maybe Christ is already here. Maybe he has already arrived and keeps arriving.
Maybe the world is full of him and we simply have not caught up.

Maybe Advent is not waiting for God. Maybe Advent is God waiting for us.

The slow awakening of the human heart

When Paul tells the Ephesians to wake up from sleep so Christ will shine on them (Ephesians 5:14), he is not telling them to summon Christ from a distant place. He is urging them to open their eyes to a presence already at work. When Jesus says the kingdom is near and among you (Luke 17:21), he is not pointing to a future event on the horizon but to a reality already pressing against the surface of the world.

It is not that God has not come. It is that we have not yet learned how to see.

The Church has always spoken this way. The early fathers taught that the coming of Christ was not a moment locked in the past but a mystery that unfolds in every age. His birth is once for all, but his appearing keeps breaking open wherever hearts soften. Wherever we forgive (Matthew 6:14). Wherever we love without fear (1 John 4:18). Wherever the image of God in us pulls free from the dust (Genesis 1:26). Wherever humanity remembers what it was made to be. In these places Christ is born again.

This is not sentiment.
It is the pattern of salvation itself.

The God who is always arriving

We imagine Christ’s coming as if he moves and we sit still. But what if the deeper truth is that Christ moves in every direction at once and we are the ones struggling to move with him?

Advent hints at this.
The prophets speak of God drawing near (Isaiah 40:10), yes, but they also speak of people returning, lifting their heads, following the path back to the face of God (Isaiah 55:6–7). The story is mutual, relational, alive. James says draw near to God and he will draw near to you (James 4:8). Not as an ultimatum, but as the rhythm of communion. God moves. We move. God comes. We awaken.

Augustine once wrote that God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. If that is true, then the Advent hope is not that Christ will one day close the gap. It is that He already has.

The long formation of the soul

Most of the time we do not see Christ clearly because we have not grown into the kind of humanity that can recognise him. He is not absent. We are unformed.

Like Israel in exile, we wait for freedom but carry the habits of captivity (Jeremiah 29:11–14). Like the disciples on the Emmaus road, we walk beside him but do not know his name (Luke 24:13–32). Like Mary in the garden, we think he is the gardener until he speaks (John 20:14–16).

Advent is the slow work of becoming attentive.
Advent is the discipline of desire becoming mature enough to discern God’s presence. Advent is the training of the eyes so that we can see the world as it truly is: full of God, held within God (Acts 17:28), moving towards God.

This is why the season emphasises repentance and preparation. Not because God is unwilling to come, but because receiving divine presence requires a heart that is being reshaped. The fathers said that God is always giving God’s self. The problem is not God’s giving. It is our capacity to receive.

Advent asks us to grow that capacity.

Christ in our midst

When Jesus promises that he will be with us always (Matthew 28:20), he is not speaking in metaphors. His presence fills creation and also dwells uniquely among his people. In the gathering of believers (Matthew 18:20), in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:30–31), in the quiet prayers whispered through tears (Romans 8:26), he is there. Not symbolically. Truly.

The Church is not the whole of his presence, but it is the place where his presence becomes visible, embodied, and communal. The early Christians called themselves the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27) because they believed something profound: Christ continues his life in and through the community that bears his name.

In other words, he has already come. He keeps coming in the world.
He keeps coming in the Church. He keeps coming in the human heart.

Christ is not running late.
Christ is waiting for us to join him.

The goal of all things

Advent stretches our desire toward the future. Toward a world renewed. Toward a humanity restored. Toward creation set free from its groaning (Romans 8:19–22). Toward the final unveiling of Christ in all things (Colossians 1:27).

But even this future is not passive waiting. Paul says creation groans as in labour pains. Something is being born. Something is coming to term. God is drawing all things toward fullness (Ephesians 1.9–10), and Christ is the centre of that movement. Everything bends toward union. Everything bends toward restoration. Everything bends toward the One who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17).

The promise is not that Christ will eventually arrive.
The promise is that all creation will eventually open its eyes and be made new (2 Corinthians 5:17, Revelation 21:5).

The end is not Christ drawing near.
The end is us becoming able to recognise the One who has always been near.

Advent as invitation

So perhaps this is the quiet scandal of Advent. We wait for Christ. And Christ waits for us.

He waits for us to trust that God is near.
He waits for us to grow into the likeness he planted within us (2 Corinthians 3.18).
He waits for our vision to sharpen.
He waits for our love to deepen.
He waits for our courage to rise.
He waits for our wounds to be healed.
He waits for our communities to become homes of mercy and fire.
He waits for us to finally recognise that the world is not empty but saturated with his presence.

Advent is not the countdown to God’s arrival. It is the training of the human gaze and heart.

It is the season where Christ says, again and again:
I am here.
Catch up.
Grow.
Wake.
Become.
Step into the fullness I have already begun in you.

Maybe the question is not:
When will Christ come?

Maybe the question is:
When will we become the kind of people who can see that he’s already here dwelling among us?

“The Saviour has already come to dwell among us, and still we must awaken, for only those who learn to see him now will more easily know him in the age to come.”
– St Athanasius, St Symeon the New Theologian