John’s vision in Revelation 2:3 also mentions the enduring of hardship for the sake of Jesus’ name. If you’re suffering, it does not mean you’ve been disobedient. Jesus was the only perfect human who ever lived, and yet he suffered to the point of death.
I attended a Christian school from preschool through high school, an unlikely place to experience persecution for my Christian faith, right? I wish I could tell you that it was a thriving faith community. Unfortunately, I felt a lot of pressure to stop taking my faith so seriously. I was never beaten up physically, but I was teased a lot. “God” was a topic reserved for Sunday school and Bible classes, but was unwelcome on the playground. I was called a “goody two shoes” when I talked about following Jesus the rest of the week. No doubt I didn’t always handle some of these interactions as well as I could; I suspect that even some of my teachers felt I was giving God too much air time. (My fourth-grade teacher made me choose something other than the Bible to read during free reading time.) Many of my former classmates are now mature Christians who have devoted their lives to ministry, but that was not the case during our childhood. It made friendships difficult and awkward.
There’s another legitimate kind of suffering we may experience. Not just persecution or rejection, but prolonged waiting for God to answer our prayers. All is not well in the world. Things don’t go as they should. We don’t always know what we ought to do. We go through liminal seasons. It’s human nature to try to make sense of our experience, to wonder why. And to question who we are and where we belong. Just as a variety of narratives battled for Israel’s attention, our hardships can be spun any number of ways: Is this trial a mark of failure? A spiritual attack? A punishment from God? Do I have what it takes to overcome this? Does God even care if I do?
In those seasons of waiting, we are faced with many questions. We may no longer be certain about who we are. We are not sure how God is leading, or even if he’s leading. In our desperation to restore a sense of order to our lives, we’re always in danger of adopting the wrong narrative. But God has lessons to teach us that can only be learned in a state of dislocation. Lessons about who we are. About who he is. And how he’s calling us to be in the world. Wrapped in liminality are gifts such as perseverance, perspective, rest, creativity, empathy, gratitude, and most of all, faithfulness. Rushing on to the next thing may prevent us from becoming who he wants us to be when we get there. In this place of upheaval and instability, we must let him shape us. We serve a God whose primary purpose is not to make us comfortable or successful in the eyes of the world, but to transform us. Liminality—that unsettled and unsettling place that reveals our deepest fears and longings—is his workshop.
God has lessons to teach us that can only be learned in a state of dislocation.
Israel’s failure to trust God’s goodness in the wilderness was fatal for an entire generation. But liminality is not unique to Israel. As we move in and out of liminal seasons, we are invited to exercise a trust in God that leads to life. The key to cultivating that trust is to remember what God has done on our behalf, to keep telling the story. He is faithful! When we take time to remember the victories, we’ll have strength for the in-betweens. God has gifts for us in this uncomfortable place if we can stick it out.
We sometimes assume that following Jesus would eliminate struggle, even if we should know better. The good news is that Jesus promises his presence with us. And he promises a future day when all that’s wrong will be made right:
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, and 10,000 besides.13
Sinai is a paradigm of God’s revelation and our vocation, but it is not the climax of the story. The New Testament authors are ready to move beyond Sinai. Let’s see what they have in mind.
SINAI 2.0: THE HEAVENLY MOUNT ZION
So far it has not been difficult to demonstrate the continuity between the Sinai covenant and the New Testament. Jesus saw himself as bearing Yahweh’s name. He commissioned his disciples to bear that name among the nations, carrying out God’s mission in the world. Matters are more complicated when we come to the apostle Paul. I’ve claimed that Yahweh’s law at Sinai is a gift. Paul, on the other hand, has very negative things to say about the law, equating it with slavery. As Daniel Block states, “Taking Paul’s statements about the law at face value creates an intolerable opposition to the Torah.”14 How can we reconcile my understanding of Sinai with Paul’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for it?
Galatians especially seems to complicate matters:
Before the coming of this faith we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. . . . When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law. (Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-5)
Paul even goes on to associate Sinai and its laws with Hagar and her son Ishmael, the rejected son of Abraham, calling readers to come out from under the Jewish establishment in Jerusalem and live in freedom (Galatians 4:21-31). What are we to make of this?
Our problem comes when we try to read Paul back into Exodus, as though Paul is saying that the law was bad from the beginning. Paul certainly opposes the way the Torah is being interpreted and applied in his own day, but Moses would have shared his opinion. Both insisted that circumcision of the heart was what truly mattered (Deuteronomy 10:16; Romans 2:29).15
At the time of the exodus, the law was considered a gift, showing the Israelites how to live as God’s people. Even Paul calls the law “holy, righteous, and good” in his letter to the Romans (7:12). But it was only ever a means to an end: relationship with Yahweh. In Christ a new pathway to that relationship opened for us, based on his own faithful obedience to the law. To continue to live under the law ourselves, ignoring Jesus’ faithfulness, would be a form of slavery not unlike slavery in Egypt. The reason is this: God set aside the tabernacle system, providing a perfect sacrifice in Jesus. He destroyed the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, making a way for anyone to become part of his family, without circumcision. Laws regarding sacrifice and laws regarding ethnic separation were no longer appropriate. They had become a form of slavery to how things were. The law was never meant to offer salvation. It was merely the means of maintaining what had been given. Redemption was always made possible by God’s gracious gift. To reject that gracious gift offered in Jesus would be a return to Egypt.
Think back before the exodus, when Joseph went to Egypt. He went as a slave against his will, but God blessed him in Egypt so that he rose to a position of power and was able to save his entire family from the famine that ravaged the region. When Jacob and his sons joined Joseph in Egypt, it was God’s gracious provision for their needs. In time, Egypt became a prison for their descendants. We must continue to look to God for redemption. A gift to one generation can become shackles for the next, if we fail to see what God is up to.
Mount St. Helens is part of the Cascade mountain range in the Western United States, a long-time favorite for residents of the region. Just north of the mountain was a pristine vacation spot, Spirit Lake, around which camps, resorts, and cabins became the destination for generations of Washingtonians in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. In March of 1980, the mountain started to rumble, emitting smoke and ash. Volcanologists from all over the world gathered to watch, measure, and wait to see what St. Helens would do. Within a week, earthquakes, plumes of volcanic ash, and steam had become so frequent (up to thirty volcanic events per day!) that residents and vacationers in the surrounding area were forced to evacuate. All except one. Harry R. Truman (not the US president) lived for over 50 years on the shores of Spirit Lake. For decades, vacationers had enjoyed their holidays at his lodge. Harry, in his eighties by then, was unwilling to leave. He was skeptical about the possibility of an eruption, but if the mountain blew, he wanted to be there. If
it buried him, that’s where he wanted to die.
In the days preceding May 18, 1980, the mountain grew calmer. Though earthquakes continued, the eruptive activity paused. After several uneventful days, forest rangers escorted residents back to the lake on May 17 to retrieve personal belongings. On the morning of May 18, the mountain awoke with no advance warning. An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale caused an explosion on its western slopes, triggering a massive landslide, the largest in recorded history. Ash combined with melted glaciers and boiling groundwater to produce a thick river of mud that flowed seventeen miles downriver, destroying forests, bridges, and homes. Trees covering 230 square miles were strewn like matchsticks, stripped and toppled by the force of the blast. Spirit Lake was deluged with 60 meters of debris from the avalanche, swallowing empty buildings and burying Truman. The mountain had been his life. To him, it was the only thing worth living for. On it he staked his entire existence. With the eruption, it became his tomb.16
If we’re not careful, Sinai could become like Mount St. Helens for believers in Jesus. This was precisely Paul’s concern. He told the church in Galatia that if they clung to the law as a means of salvation it would be death for them. Sinai was critically important in its day—unveiling God’s gracious covenant. It remains critically important for us as we seek to know the God who revealed himself there and as we wrestle with what it means to be his people. However, if we try to set up shop in its shadow, hanging our hopes on the law rather than the lawgiver, and ignoring the seismic shift that comes with the fuller revelation of Jesus Christ, Sinai will become our death.
Hebrews 12 has a similar message. The author contrasts Sinai with the heavenly prototype of Mount Zion. Yahweh’s visit at Sinai provoked fear and trembling. The people refused to hear more from God because they feared what his presence would do to them. In contrast, the assembly of God’s people at the heavenly Mount Zion is full of joy. They are receiving a “kingdom that cannot be shaken” (12:28), with Jesus as the mediator of a renewed covenant. While the joy of Mount Zion outpaces that of Sinai, it does not replace it altogether. God’s people enjoy the same covenant status—worshiping the one, true God and bearing his name among the nations. The difference is that in this new era, God’s people have internalized his law with the help of the Spirit. They can celebrate the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus, with no more need for the daily sacrifice of bulls and goats.
For the author of Hebrews, the first covenant is insufficient for two reasons. As Michael Kibbe explains, “that covenant would inevitably fail because Israel refused to keep it and because those appointed to sustain Israel’s obedience were unable to do so.”17 The problem was not the covenant itself. The problem was sinful people, relying on other sinful people whose ministries were only temporary. Jesus brings the covenant relationship into a new era, providing a perfect sacrifice—himself, offered by a perfect and eternal priest—himself, so that the benefits would never fade. Jesus provided “perpetual access to the presence of God that enables continued obedience and life.”18 Rather than mediate between Yahweh and the people, as Moses did, Jesus ushers God’s people into his very presence.
That can’t be topped.
IMAGE CONSCIOUS:
ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES
Jesus is greater than Moses and what he offers us is even greater than God’s gracious gift at Sinai. According to Colossians 1:15, Jesus is “the image of the invisible God.” He represents the Father perfectly, but he is not the first image of God. The first humans were designated as God’s image in Genesis 1:26-27. Scholars have suggested a variety of possibilities for what this might imply. Rather than an indication that they looked like God or shared some of his characteristics (e.g., creativity or relationality or eternal nature), I read Genesis as saying that humans function as the image. Humans are not like God’s image, they are his image.19
In the ancient world, an “image” or tselem was something concrete. Every deity had a temple, and every temple had an image. The image was a physical representation of the deity, a visible sign of his or her dominion. John Walton argues that the creation account in Genesis is meant to remind us of a temple dedication.20 Yahweh has built the cosmos as the temple in which he resides and the domain over which he presides. Rather than setting up a statue of himself, he makes men and women. We function as the sign of his rule to the rest of creation.
This sounds quite similar to bearing Yahweh’s name: Covenant members are also representatives of God to the nations. However, there’s an important difference between the concepts of being the image and bearing the name. Discussing it here will help to clarify the implications of each and offer a fuller picture of biblical theology.
Both being the image and bearing the name relate to the concept of election. God has chosen people and given them a job to do.
Too often we think of “election” as a matter of “being picked to be saved.” But in Scripture, election is more like a game of blob tag, where if I’m “it,” and I tag you, then we’re both it. We run around together and try to tag as many others as we can, who join hands with us and continue tagging others until everyone has been tagged. In this game, the essence of “it-ness” is to tag others. So, too, the essence of election, and therefore the essence of the believer’s vocation, is to represent God by mediating his blessing to others. Once we are “it” we don’t lean back in our recliners, glad that someone picked us. No, to be “it” is to tag others. And to be elect—to be his—is to bear his name among the nations, to demonstrate by our lives that he is king and to mediate his blessing to others. That is the whole point of being the elect. Theologian Suzanne McDonald coins the phrase “election to representation,” insisting that “this approach considers election to be the means through which God’s purpose of blessing is enacted, not the way in which the parameters of that blessing are defined.”21
Every human being is an image bearer, whether conscious of it or not. As the crown of creation, humans bear witness to the majesty of our creator God. We extend his rule over creation by caring for it and bringing order to it.
Name-bearing, on the other hand, is restricted to those in covenant relationship with Yahweh. It’s a second dimension of election involving only a subset of humanity. The purpose of covenant election is to provide a visual model of people rightly related to the creator God, Yahweh.
Jesus fulfills both dimensions of election by perfectly imaging God and bearing his name with honor. He is the human par excellence as well as the faithful covenant member through whom others can be reconciled to God.
Jesus alluded to these two dimensions of election in a fascinating conversation with the Pharisees. In Matthew 22, they set out to trap him, asking whether Jews should pay taxes to Caesar. He saw right through their scheme, employing a clever tactic of his own. Requesting a coin as an object lesson, he asked,
“Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” (Matthew 22:20-22)
The coin had a physical imprint of Caesar’s head; it bore his image. It was also inscribed with his name. The covenant people share the twin distinction of being God’s image and bearing his name. Jesus evades the tricky political question (shall we pay taxes?) by turning attention to the more important one. Sure, pay your taxes, but devote your entire lives to God’s service. Live out your vocation as his representatives.
With all this in mind, we have a final issue to address. So far, we’ve skirted a key question (though I assumed it in this chapter). I’ve saved it for last. What is the relationship between Jewish covenant members who follow Jesus and those of us who are Gentiles? How is it that Sinai becomes our covenant too?
DIGGING DEEPER
*Richard Bauckham. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
Da
niel I. Block. The Triumph of Grace: Literary and Theological Studies in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Themes. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017. Chapter 17 (Deuteronomy 18) and chapter 18 (Galatians).
Richard B. Hays. Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Michael Kibbe. Godly Fear or Ungodly Failure?: Hebrews 12 and the Sinai Theophanies. ZNTW 216. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016.
*Suzanne McDonald. Re-imaging Election: Divine Election as Representing God to Others and Others to God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.
Catherine L. McDowell. The Image of God in the Garden of Eden: The Creation of Humankind in Genesis 2:5–3:24 in Light of mīs pî pīt pî and wpt-r Rituals of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Siphrut 15. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015.
*Richard J. Middleton. A New Heaven and A New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014.
Francis Watson. Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith. New York: T&T Clark, 2004.
*Christopher J. H. Wright. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006.
Related videos from The Bible Project: “Reading Biblical Law” and “Image of God.”
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WHO LET YOU IN?
Gentiles and the Mission of God
PROFILE UPDATE: PETER
AND THE GENTILES
It would be rather odd to write a book all about Sinai for Christians if Sinai has nothing to do with us. I hope it has become clear how Jesus intentionally connects himself with the Sinai covenant—by fulfilling its laws and showing himself to be the lawgiver, by living out his vocation as a name bearer, and by commissioning his disciples to do the same. But as we’ve discussed the theme of God’s people bearing his name, our focus has been solely on the Jews as the name bearers. They’re the ones at Sinai. They’re even the ones chosen as Jesus’ disciples. Even Paul’s letter to the Galatians was aimed at those who were tempted to convert to Judaism and live as Jews. Obviously Sinai would have been of great interest to them. But what about the rest of us? Is Sinai for us, too?
Bearing God's Name Page 17