(remember, these are unedited/draft show notes, not a transcript — listening is always better, and if you follow along while listening, you’ll see why)
Focus Question:
Is Jesus a conservative or progressive?
Intro:
Is Jesus a conservative or progressive? I’m talking theology here, not politics, but the answer to today’s focus question might surprise you, and we’ll be riffing off our NT passage today in Mark 7.
Hey, welcome to the new Bible-reading week, and would you do me a favor? I’m looking at you Maisy, Scott, Carla, Norma, Allyson, and the many of you who communicate every once in awhile…what did you think of having an interview yesterday in place of the Sunday Reflection. Keep the Sunday Reflection and just drop in interviews somewhere else? Or if we had regular interviews, would you want them in place of the Reflection on Sundays.
And just in case you missed it, I do hope you’ll catch yesterday’s interview with Jeff Olson about his new book, The King Will Come. It got me all excited about the Old Testament, and ‘round these parts we already read it a lot more than probably most people.
New Testament segment:
In our NT segment today we’re in Mark 7 where we hear about Jesus’ conflict, so to speak, with tradition. Let’s get after it.
Passage: Mark 7
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 37
Words: ~783
Old Testament segment:
Do you remember what the promise of the Promised Land was back in Numbers 34? Of course you do!
The Lord spoke to Moses, “Command the Israelites and say to them: When you enter the land of Canaan, it will be allotted to you as an inheritance with these borders… Nu 34:1–2, CSB
And that’s what we’re going to hear about today in Ezekiel 48. But wait, you say, didn’t they already arrive and, in fact, get kicked out? Yup. And we’ll tackle that very briefly after this reading.
Passage: Ezekiel 48
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 35
Words: ~1022
Remember, Ezekiel’s vision is for something in the future, and I think it’s still future, but here’s why I don’t care: What was the promise of the Promised Land? Peace and rest. What you grow you get to keep vs those taking it from you unfairly by force or taxes. And remember — the Israelites have been wanderers since God told Abraham to leave his people, which is a good lesson for us. Wanderers and exiles do desire rest, and fairness, and no oppression. And there’s a reason why Jesus said ‘come to me, and I will give you rest’ (Mt 11), and there’s a reason why we refer to the Gospel as “have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved.” We’re still exiles — maybe a little too comfortable where we’re at sometimes — and we still desire to keep what we make without having it taken by force or unfair taxation, we still desire rest. And the God who has kept all His promises up ‘til now will keep another…the final rest isn’t when you get buried, unless you’re in Christ.
Wisdom segment:
Passage: Proverbs 10:22-24
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 3
Words: ~48
The bottom line:
I said our focus question — Is Jesus a conservative or progressive? — isn’t political, and that’s true. But there will be those overtones only because politics is downhill from culture, and culture is downhill from worldview.
When Jesus gets in the bidness of the scribes and Pharisees, they just got done calling him out for not keeping the tradition of the elders. And Jesus’ response is to quote Bible a them — they keep the rules, but they’re wrong in their hearts.
Oh, you say, score one for the progressives! See? All those fundamentalist rules are bad, loving people is good! And besides, did you see how Jesus loved on the outsider woman that the Jews called dogs?
But wait. Is that what Jesus said? No, he said they were nullifying the eternal word of God. In other words, their traditions were human traditions, bound up in time, versus the timeless law of God, His word. Oooh, score one for the conservatives, right?
I’m going to argue Jesus isn’t conservative or progressive in the way that we might think, but let me define what I mean and do so biblically.
We live in time, but we’re called to do so in light of eternity. God’s word, God’s law, doesn’t change. So what do conservatives try to do? Preserve that. If you get away from that, you lose the gospel. It’ll cost you eternally — that’s the risk of progressives who want to do social justice or whatever, but often cross the line of losing the unchanging, nonnegotiable eternal law of God. But what’s the risk for conservatives? In an attempt to preserve, they hang on to too much like the Scribes and Pharisees, sometimes at the expense of legitimate progress.
And we saw that in the Jews calling Gentiles dogs when two things are abundantly clear from Scripture.
God’s heart is, and has always been, for all people at all times. That’s eternal and unchanging.
For some reason, He chose to come to the Jews first, then everyone else. That’s part of how salvific history has unfolded in time.
And speaking of time, and for the sake of time, we’re just going to have to hold that in tension. Scripture is really clear about both. Conservation or preservation is about the timeless, eternal, non-negotiable. Progress is a word that, by its very definition, connotes change. It’s in time. And God doesn’t change, but we do, the cosmos does, and that’s our experience IN time. Progress isn’t wrong if not at the expense of God’s nonnegotiables. Conservation isn’t wrong, if not at the expense of growing and adapting.
And to be fair, that’s something I do here a good bit — conserving — largely because I’m pushing back against prevailing culture that, statistically, is more prone to lose the nonnegotiable stuff.
Is Jesus a conservative or progressive? He’s fully God and fully human. So he’s neither or both.
I love you. Amen? Amen.
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
(1) Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 1586.