BOOK OF RUTH: RIGHTEOUS SPEECH AND ACTION

The Book of Ruth has much to say about the people of God.  (You may wish to read it before reading the following reflections.)  Here are some of the key motifs to notice in the book.

The first named character is Elimelech, whose name means, “My God is King.”  That name sets the tone of the book.  One of the narrative ironies of the book is that there is very little overt activity of God mentioned, but the audience still has a sense of God’s hand at work behind the scenes.  For example, the narrator tells us in 2:1 that Naomi (mother-in-law) of Ruth has a relative from her deceased husband’s side named Boaz in the area.  We watch as Ruth goes out to glean in a field and discovers “her happenstance happened” [trying to catch the word play of the Hebrew] that she was working in the field of Boaz.  The audience sees God’s hand at work on behalf of the key characters Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz.

But why is God at work for them?  The first defining personal quality of the main Israelite characters of Naomi and Boaz is that when they speak, they speak blessing.  For Naomi, see 1:8-9; 2:19.  For Boaz, see 2:4, 12; 3:10.  Ruth, a foreigner, manifests her character by making an oath in the name of Yahweh in which she gives up all of her family rights and attaches herself to Naomi to care for her (1:16-17).

The second defining feature of these characters is their righteous behavior.  Naomi is concerned about the well-being of her widowed daughters-in-law (1:8-13).  Ruth is concerned about the well-being of her mother-in-law (1:16-18), laboring for her (Ch 2), and proposing marriage to Boaz not for her own sake, but to carry on the lineage of her deceased husband (3:1-10).  Their circumstances set them apart as the epitome of the needy.  They are both widows, “orphaned” from their families, and are poor and homeless.  Ruth, moreover, is a foreign immigrant.  That is: together, they almost fully represent the class of people whom God cares most about.  One of many such commands that are found in the Law, the Prophets, and the Wisdom literature about caring for the needy is Deut 10:17-18):

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who is unbiased and takes no bribe, ¹⁸ who does justice toward the orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing. (Deut. 10:17-18) 

Boaz demonstrates his righteousness by caring for Ruth and Naomi (2:8-16) and serving as the kinsman-redeemer (4:9-10) so that Elimelech’s family lineage could carry on.  [The kinsman redeemer married the widow, with the result that the first-born son would carry on the deceased husband’s line and not his own.]

The closing surprise to the Book of Ruth is that the son who is born to Ruth and Boaz is the grandfather of David (4:16-22).  Without the righteousness of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz, there would not have been a King David.

Applications:
First, what are the words that come out of my mouth?  Out of the same mouth comes cursing and blessing (paraphrase of James 3:10).  Decades ago, an impact the Book of Ruth had on me was to encourage me to bless people.  I try to do it both openly with people and silently when I see people in need.

Second, am I practicing righteousness?  There is popular notion among some Christians in our culture that righteousness is a judicial matter.  That is, they rest on a teaching that Christ’s righteousness is legally imputed to them so that God sees them as righteous.  That notion fails to understand what the Bible explicitly teaches about righteousness.  When someone entrusts themselves to God through faith in Jesus, that person is now “right” with God.  Moreover, someone who is right with God will then act rightly in God’s sight (e.g. Matt 25:31-46, James).  They will practice righteousness.  And, throughout the Bible, the people who deserve righteous treatment are the needy: the widow, the orphan, the poor, the foreigner, the prisoner, the naked, the oppressed, etc.  My eyes are to be looking for them; my feet are to walking toward them; my hands are to be acting for them.  Righteous behavior comes from those who are right with God.

The message of the Book of Ruth can be summarized thus: speak blessing and act righteously!  Such are the people of God.

May it be so in my life.  Amen.

THIS FAITH BY ITSELF, IF IT DOES NOT HAVE WORKS, IS DEAD (James 2:17)*

 Martin Luther famously did not like the Letter of James in the NT, calling it “that letter of straw.” To Luther it lacked the nature of the Gospel; it did not present “righteousness by faith.”  But James IS presenting righteousness by faith.  Entrusting oneself to God in Christ (faith/belief) results in an inseparable correlation, like two sides of the same coin.  To be “righteous” before God is to be rightly related to God AND others.

How did Jesus, and good Judaism, sum up the Law?  “Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-31).  The so-called “Ten Commandments” are first about being rightly related to God and then to others (Exod 20:1-11, 12-17).  The Lord’s prayer is first about being rightly related to God and then inclusively for self and others/“us” (Matt 6:9-10, 11-13).  In my devotional reflection on Psalm 24:4 (9/25), the requirements of being completely perfect/whole and able to come into the presence of God are balanced pairs, such as “clean of hands” (actions towards others) and “pure of heart” (internal disposition) before the eyes of God.  On the one hand, Jesus could teach that all evil deeds such as theft, adultery, and greed come from the heart and that it is the heart that makes a person unclean (Mark 7:20-23).  On the other hand, Jesus could base judgment before the throne of God upon whether a person fed the hungry, took care of the sick, etc. (Matt 25:31-46).  Jesus addresses both the heart AND one’s actions.  There is a correlation between “love God” and “love your neighbor” that cannot be separated.

God’s people are called to be holy and, therefore, both “pure of heart” and “clean of hand.”  This is what James is getting at.  He understands that Abraham entrusted himself to God and God saw that as righteousness (James 2:23 quotes Gen 15:6); but, just before that quotation he points to Abraham’s obedience (2:20-22); that is, to “have faith in God” includes faithful obedience.  Unlike Luther (apparently?) a reader of James should recognize both that James’ understanding of “righteous by faith” is complete, but that in this letter he is particularly rebuking those who profess “faith,” but it is not there to be seen in obedience.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone would claim to have faith, but not have works?  Could this “faith” save him?  If a brother or sister were existing naked and were lacking daily food, and someone among you were to speak to them, “Go in peace!  Warm yourselves and fill yourselves with food!” and would not give them their bodily needs, what good is it?  Therefore, this “faith” by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

Lord, it is often easier for me to profess my faith in you, than to live faithfully before you in my relationships with others.  Help me to be faithful “in heart” and “in hand.”  Amen.

*This post is a follow up to a comment and response on the post of 10/2/23 on holiness and perfection that developed the previous post of 9/25/23 on Psalm 24 about perfection and seeking God.

HOLY AND RIGHTEOUS, ME?

 Just how holy and righteous am I to be?  My good friend and author of God and Human Wholeness: Perfection in Biblical and Theological Tradition responded to my last devotion (Sept. 25) with the concern that while it is true that God looks at the heart and honors those who seek God, we must not play down “innocent or hands” and “pure in heart” as impossible demands.  The Bible does not present such perfection as impossible; and, this is not just an OT command.  Jesus never lowered the bar.  Drawing on the OT (e.g. Lev 19:2; Deut 18:13) Jesus, in the “Sermon on the Mount,” commands, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48).

I think Christians, including myself, try to find ways to sidestep this call to perfection.  Some people who adopt the forensic notion that Jesus’ righteousness is imputed to them (that is, God sees Jesus’ righteousness and not one’s own sinfulness) can lead them to such a sidestep.  They are already righteous!  This belief may serve as a corollary to the “cheap grace” practice of coming forward at church and saying the “sinner’s prayer” so that one “gets saved” and will not “go to hell,” but their lives do not change.  Another example would be those Christians who uphold a form of Dispensational theology that actually tosses out the Sermon on the Mount as not applicable to Christians!  My best excuse for self-tolerance (better: self-justification) fits a pattern of seeing myself as not quite as bad as some of those other folk.

But God is serious about the call for God’s people to be holy (distinct) and righteous in their relationships with God and others.  God works through God’s people.  It is through them that others are drawn to Christ and find blessing, healing, wholeness in relationship with their Creator.  Again, and embedded in Psalm 24, is the key answer: the practice of seeking God.  Those who truly seek God will be moving toward such perfection.  They will have the heart’s desire to change, and they will have the efficacious Presence of God to enable that change.  From them will radiate what Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit,” love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22 – 23).

Lord, I want to be such a faithful seeker of you, your kingdom, your righteousness.  Help me.  Amen.

THE PROBLEMATIC ABSTRACT GOD

A motivation behind some of my posts has been to counter the problems of an abstract God.  Too often, popular Christian theology treats God like an impersonal, auto-response machine.  Behind this treatment lies abstract definitions of God.

Long explanation.  I noticed that NET2 translates Rom 4:3 (Greek) quotation of the OT Gen 15:6 as "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."  There is a note at “credited” (logizomai) citing a reference to it being a commercial term in secular Greek.  But, the same reference source continues to note that this word was used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible for a more personal, subjective term and that this subjective nuance influence later Jewish use of logizomai!  And, Paul had just used it in the subjective sense of “consider” in 2:26 and 3:28!  (I would translate, "Abraham entrusted himself to God, and that was considered [by God] a right relationship."

[Note: accounting terms are used in the Bible as one symbol of forgiveness, for example the forgiveness of debts in the Lord’s Prayer, to which I will return below.]

So, why the impersonal accounting term?  Although I do not know the mind of this particular translator, an impersonal God goes back to a trajectory in Christian thinking that was influenced by Neo-Platonism in which God is defined “from the bottom up” (by our reasoning) and which used abstractions in an absolute way: God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, apathetic (not moved by emotion), etc.  So, for God to be absolutely just, salvific images had to be viewed literally: Jesus’ death was a literal ransom (Origen; one might ask, paid to whom?); Jesus’ death was a debt payment necessary to satisfy a feudal God (Anselm); Jesus’ death paid the criminal penalty for our sins (e.g. Calvin).

However, that is not the picture we get of God when we move from “the top down” (from the revelation of God in Scripture).  There God is not an abstraction ruled by definitions, but very personal.  Rather, this gracious, merciful God even asks us to be merciful and to forgive debts as God has done for us; that is, not demanding payment!  "And forgive us our debts, as even we have forgiven our debtors" (Lord’s Prayer, Matt 6:12).  (This is why I recently wrote that "God is not just" in an abstract sense, 8/31/23.)

Application:  Once again, my heart is moved by the mercy of the personal God who seeks relationship with me, a debtor.
Lord, may I learn to be more appreciative of your grace and grow to be as merciful to others as you are to me.  Amen.

GOD IS NOT JUST: ATONEMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT*

If by “just” one means a forensic, abstraction in which every crime/sin must receive appropriate punishment, then God is not just.  [This post follows up on my post of 8/25/23 in which I looked at some of the justice vocabulary in the Bible.]  Moreover, much of what people presume is atonement language about Jesus in the NT, particularly in Paul’s writings, is not atonement language.  It is not drawing on the atonement language and concepts used by ancient Israel in the OT, but on later foreign concepts (e.g. by Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Bede.)  And, it matters.  What is often lost as people conflate God’s gracious offer of salvation with the more specific category of atonement is the order, the sequence, of God’s outreach of reconciliation.

The sequence in the OT is this.  First, God condescends in grace and mercy to offer relationship to Abraham, to Moses, to the people of Israel.  There is nothing said about those people being righteously qualified, and there is no atonement for their previous sin/s.#  In fact, Moses tells the people that they were chosen NOT because they were more righteous or powerful or numerous – in fact, they are “stiff-necked” (Deut 9:1-6).  God offered a covenant relationship with them simply because God was faithful to the promise he made to Abraham.

Second, when Abraham entrusted himself to God, God reckoned that response as righteousness (Gen 16:5); that is, a right relationship.  There is absolutely nothing in God’s dealings with Abraham, Moses, or Israel in which God responds as a courtroom judge who must first exact punishment for sin in order to make things “just.”#  That forensic concept is not there and should not be projected into the NT!

The third step takes us into atonement language proper.  As people in relationship with the Holy God, they are called to be holy as well, but they, like us all, fail.  So, God established the symbolic atonement system.  This system was basically adopted from the sacrificial symbolism of the surrounding cultures, BUT was changed to remove polytheistic, magical, and nature-god elements.  In brief, the atonement system attempted to convey the seriousness of intangible realities such as sin and forgiveness through dramatic rituals.  The seriousness of sin, disobedience to God, was portrayed as a kind of miasma that polluted God’s dwelling place, the temple, and was such an impediment, if not removed, that God’s Presence would depart.  Blood, represented life and was manipulated around altars to symbolically overcome and remove the filth of sin.  This system symbolized God’s mercy and grace to forgive and to reconcile.  Of course, those making sin offerings were to be repentant, to desire reconciliation, and to want to be obedient in the future.
Here are a couple of key corrective thoughts about the sin offerings and scapegoat rituals for atonement:

·        Sins were not transferred or “imputed” from the person to the animal; that would involve forbidden magical thinking.  [To follow in a later post: This is why, for example, Paul does not say that Jesus became sin, but rather that Jesus became the “sin offering” in 2Cor 5:21 (see Rom 8:3) and why a common assumption that our sin could be imputed onto Jesus would be a foreign concept to Paul and other Jews.]

·        The death of the sin-offering animal is not key; the blood is.  The “life” in the blood (see Lev17:11) was greater than the deadly effects of sin.  Jesus provided the blood of a spotlessly pure sacrifice.  [Again, for a later post:  The actual death of Jesus is key symbolically for other reasons, but not as being punished for our sins to satisfy a god who is bound to an abstract system of forensic justice.]

Note: In Rom 4:18-25, Paul includes Gentiles in the “hope” of Abraham (18) and applies atonement language to all “who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered over on account of our sins [understood as the sin offering] and was raised for the sake of our righteousness/justification” (24-25).

Application: The order, the sequence, of God’s outreach of reconciliation always demonstrates the grace and mercy of God who does NOT execute abstract justice on people (or on Jesus) but, rather, who lifts/cleanses/buries/casts into the sea, etc. the sin of those who entrust themselves, who repent and seek forgiveness, who walk in obedience with God.

Lord, help me to always cherish your unfathomable mercy and grace such that you would allow me to abide in your Presence.  Help me to show that mercy to others.  Amen.

#Some interpreters and translators misunderstand a reference in Rom 3:25 to God “passing over” sins of the past as leaving “unpunished” (see NIV Original, but rendered better in the later version).  The term paresin used here is about remitting a debt rather than negligently forgetting it.  It is another image of God’s offer of forgiveness.  Actually, anyone who has really forgiven another person knows what it is like not to exact punishment, but to “pass over” the transgression.

*I have a detailed exegetical treatment of some of the key statements of Romans 3 in Part 2 of “Hope for the Future of New Testament Theology,” in Religions 2021, 12(11), 975; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12110975