IDENTITY AMNESIA

When we, as sinners, get concerned about our standing before God, we usually think first about our sins. We’ve broken laws, transgressed commandments, trespassed forbidden boundaries, omitted obligations and in many ways “missed the mark” (the literal meaning of sin in the Bible, from how poorly aimed arrows miss targets). This initial concern is natural for humans, and God may use it to get our attention. In John 8:24, Jesus told those who doubted that He was God’s Son, “if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” But earlier, in the same chapter, His words to a woman caught in adultery clearly expressed His Father’s attitude: “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

Because God is gracious to repentant sinners, He forgave sins and transgressions in the Old Testament, long before Jesus became the sacrificial Lamb of God. But, while guilt for sins was one problem the Cross addressed, God’s major target was the sin nature: our disposition to sin. Because God created us with an intrinsically united body-spirit nature—the human body created to be spiritual and the human spirit created to be incarnate—Adam and Eve could not help but genetically pass on to all their descendants this bent toward sinning. We all inherit it, and receiving pardon for sins doesn’t eliminate it. Genesis 3:1-7 tells how Satan strategically worked to get this functional source of sins inside of us as a race. But 1 John 3:8 proclaims that the Son of God showed up on earth to destroy “the works of the devil.” This was His pragmatic purpose, but not His motivating goal.

The motive of His heart was revealed when Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” We lost much in the Fall of our first parents, but the most crucial loss was in the memory of our created identity. Personal sins, whether in thought, word or deed, do not cause this spiritual amnesia. Sinning is a developed habit, bred and fed by deeming ourselves independent from our Creator. Yet this way of thinking seems to come naturally to us. We are born with no memory of our absolute and total dependence on God. Complaining that this ignorant situation isn’t our fault will change nothing. The effects of this missed mark on the human condition are universally persistent. The personal multiplication of sins, in acts or attitudes, continues to confirm this race-wide matrix of sin, which functions in this absence of an authentic, dependent relationship with our Maker.

Mark 1:4 states that “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (plural).” But when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to him, he said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin (singular) of the world!” (John 1:29). Oswald Chambers explained this theological difference between sins and sin extremely well:

The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin . . . entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Hebrews 9.26)—an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. (My Utmost of His Highest, October 5th)

By a preoccupation with sins instead of a focus on sin, many have misconstrued what happened in the beginning. We know from Genesis 1:31 that after completing creation, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” This divine evaluation included “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:9), even though its early misuse derailed its “good” purpose from being revealed. God merely told Adam to take care of it, to guard it, but not to eat from it, warning that, if he did, it would kill him. When Adam and Eve ignored this warning and ate that tree’s forbidden fruit, they immediately died spiritually, and afterwards, physically. What they took into themselves had the deadly effect of making them morally independent from God. Once ingested, it gave them their very own “knowledge of good and evil”—an ability to determine right and wrong for themselves. This laid the groundwork for humans to develop a myriad of conflicting personal and cultural moralities down through history, each relying on a knowledge not directly received from God.

When a father warns his child, “Don’t play with the gun . . . it can kill you,” and the child disobeys and dies, the disobedience may have led to the death, but a bullet killed the child. Similarly, when Satan duped Adam and Eve into ignoring God the Father’s warning, they disobediently consumed something that had the power to separate them spiritually from Him and from the divine life He wanted for them. The ultimate effect of imbibing moral independence from God was to kill themselves and us, their descendants. Incorporating this spiritually lethal fruit into their lives and into the human race was the precise point where “sin entered the world, and death through sin,” as described by Romans 5:12-19. But in that same passage, God’s gracious solution to the sin problem is also explained.

Any possibility of having restored human bodies, souls and spirits with clear memories of our original role in servant-leadership required a new humanity. This hope materialized when God’s Son became a body-spirit human being. Christ’s unique conception (Matthew 1:20) from one of Mary’s ova and from the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing (Luke 1:35) combined both the necessary genes of the sin nature, which Mary inherited from Adam, and the essential “seed” of a new human race, which the Holy Spirit’s breath freshly created from earthly matter (as God had first done in Genesis 2:7).

God’s Son becoming a human being is the greatest of all cosmic and celestial miracles. This marvelous Incarnation initiated a new human genome, one with an intrinsically divine nature. But the genetic presence of the sin nature in Jesus, and its utter defeat throughout His earthly life, allowed Him to take this disposition for sinning to the Cross. Paul describes this incredible fact in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” It’s the theological ground for his insistence that “our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin,” (Romans 6:6). This amazing facet of the Incarnation enables both Paul and us to say, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me,” (Galatians 2:20).

Because it’s our self-life of sin that produces sins, God’s goal in salvation was not just forgiveness but renewal. The DNA of the old Adam was nullified by Christ’s bodily death. But the new human genome, the immortal DNA in His resurrected body, made Jesus “the firstborn from among the dead” (Colossians 1:18), with many others to follow. Resurrection introduced a new order of human life, a new humanity destined to reign forever over “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1), led by Christ the Savior and King.

Our upbringing in a world alienated from God’s will and ways confirms and nurtures our sin-bent false self in sinning. God’s plan for us is that we stop being sinners and remember our true selves. Christ’s saving gift of new birth begins a new creation in us that reinstates our lost memory. By indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, He facilitates our growth in remembering and living out our true identity as servant-leaders, created “in the image of God,” the Supreme Servant-Leader (Genesis 1:26-27).

If you’re not a Christian, you’re still suffering from spiritual amnesia. God wants to remedy that, but He will not override your personal will in order to do so. You must freely choose to surrender yourself to Him, the Lord of heaven and earth Who came to restore your spiritual memory loss. Heed Christ’s warning in Mark 8:36, “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” Nothing is more eternally precious than the true self God intended you to manifest in creation. He calls you to forget your false identity of a self-directed self-sufficiency, so you can discover your forgotten identity as a uniquely designed servant who depends on divine guidance. Your success in that holy remembering is enabled by the special grace that accompanies your choice to obey Christ’s familiar invitation, “Follow Me.”

If you’re already a Christian, but have been so preoccupied by worldly concerns or distractions that you have forgotten “your first love” (Revelation 2:4), then you also must surrender. Choose to remember who you really are. Don’t let the world define your identity. Only your Maker and Lord can tell you who you are. If you wake up each day with your Christian memory foggy or fading, then realize your need for forming new habits. Start spending more time talking to God in prayer, more time reading His Word, more time focusing your mind on Christ and listening for His voice in your daily activities. Memorizing Scripture is one of the best habits to develop, and modern technology has brought modern help in that area (Google “the Verse-Locker app”). There’s really no such thing as a once-for-all surrender. The NKJV of Luke 9:23 records Jesus instructing each disciple to “take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”

The following verses offer a concluding summary and poetic reinforcement of these finals exhortations.

SURRENDER

Never wait until disaster
wraps your body in a ball,
or your limbs get set in plaster
after feeble flight and fall:
cease today to flee the Master,
slowing down to heed His call.

Boast no sinful self-reliance
to disparage Heaven’s Throne;
wave no scepter of defiance,
proudly claiming, “I’m my own!”
or you’ll drown in dark compliance
to a demon’s rule alone.

Inner conscience is observant,
when away from God we swim:
our Creator is a Servant,
calling us to image Him
with devotion full and fervent,
waylaid not by wish or whim.

God won’t confiscate decision . . .
we must relegate our will
to His radical excision
of the sin that made us ill.
Dream no shallow, quick revision:
we’ve a void He longs to fill

When a sinner’s heart is willing
to become a saintly soul,
Christ indwells by Spirit filling,
making broken places whole.
Even angels find it thrilling,
watching Jesus meet His goal.

— David L. Hatton, 10/17/2020

DEATH & LIFE AT THE TABLE

(Online Holy Communion link here and at bottom of this article)

Holy Communion, or the Eucharist [from the Greek word for “thanksgiving”], is a powerful means of grace. I touched on this briefly in my blog article of 3/9/2018, “Two ‘Means of Grace’ for Healing,” which you might want to read before this one. God has never stopped using means of grace, although most Christians today have stopped thinking clearly about them. But we must be very clear on the Table. For too many years Holy Communion has been treated as merely an act of ritual obedience. The Eucharist must be retrieved for what it is: a means of grace for personal spiritual growth, inner healing and, at times, spiritual warfare.

A Mystery Beyond Human Speculation

The Lord’s Supper is a mystery. Making what’s on the Table fit our theological explanations may comfort human minds, but it often robs Holy Communion of its centrality to Christian life and witness. Disputes about the virtues of one position over another have divided the Body of Christ. It might be best to approach the Table always repenting that we ever tolerated such division. Roman Catholics insist on transubstantiation, the more ancient Orthodox on objective transformation; for Lutherans it’s a sacramental union, for the Reformed a spiritual union, or for many other Protestants, a holy memorial; unfortunately, for some denominations, it was a temporary rite no longer needed. Please, for the sake of our King, put all these rationally-defended theories and viewpoints on hold and bask in the mystery. Heaven will eventually vindicate or obliterate your chosen view. But right now, and for the rest of your earthly life, be a servant subject to our Sovereign Lord, and take Him at His word. With the trust of childlike faith, regardless of your viewpoint, accept at face value what is written in the Book:

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” (John 6:53-57, NASB)

And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood,” (Luke 22:19-20, NASB).

And to solidify your meditation on the Eucharistic mystery, plunge your heart deep into what Paul says about the ongoing celebration of this Holy Meal: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16, ESV, emphasis mine). Both Paul’s understanding and Christ’s clear instruction should convince us that approaching this sacred Table is physically the closest we can get to what Jesus accomplished on Calvary. In a mysterious way, to “eat this bread and drink this cup” is to both participate in and “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26, NIV).

A Table of Death

Christ’s crucifixion was a terminus, an end point for many things; His Resurrection, the beginning for many others. The Cross and empty tomb divided time into BC and AD—now renamed BCE and CE, which hasn’t altered that division. They closed the Old Testament with a New Covenant, turning a Jewish story into a global one. For every believer, they end the old life with new birth, as sacramentally portrayed in baptism.

Baptism—a one-time rite for initiation into the Christian community—is a burial of the old life (as in a watery tomb) and an emergence into a newborn life (as from a watery womb). Paul describes this in very plain language: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-4, ESV). This break with the old life and entrance into the new life is demonstrated once in baptism, but our ongoing need for replacing old ways of living with Christlike living is repeatedly demonstrated at the Table. There we participate again and again in the fruits of Christ’s sacrifice and empty tomb for the rest of our earthly sojourn.

It’s highly significant that Jesus introduced foot-washing in the context of His Table. He told Peter its purpose in John 13:10 (ESV): “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” Whether or not foot-washing accompanies Holy Communion, the need for cleansing is ongoing. We bring to the Table an array of worldly attitudes and behaviors that we must part with and leave behind. They need to die, and Paul says their death is the work of Christ’s Cross: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” (Galatians 6:14, NIV).

God is not into magic. Physically taking the Eucharist does not automatically free us from worldliness. This is why Jesus said, “you are clean, but not every one of you.” Judas missed out, despite having his feet washed by Jesus and eating the new Passover meal. An authentic participation in the body and blood of Christ at the Table is a relational act dependent on personal faith. Just as baptism is a physical confession of faith in Christ’s work on Calvary, so is partaking of the fruits of the Cross presented to us again on the Table. This makes Holy Communion a means of grace—a focal point where God’s power can put to death those vestiges of worldly ways clinging to our lives—as long as we faithfully bring them to Him, remembering that the purpose for His death was to eliminate them from our lives.

Practically, this means spending time in prayer before coming to the Eucharistic Meal, asking the Holy  Spirit to convict us in whatever areas we have participated in those dispositions and deeds that belong to the realm of darkness. It may be helpful to ask Him to show us if we have:

• any attitude we need to confess and forsake
• any behavior we need to bring to an end
• any habit or addiction from which we need to be set free
• any laziness or laxity needing banishment from our lives
• any ties we have inherited or formed that need to be severed
• any obsessions or compulsions that need to be broken
• anything else in us that needs to die

But the most profound question to be asked and answered is the one Jesus asked of the lame man, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6, ESV). This is the primary question. Do we really want to change? Are we ready to bring to His Table whatever needs to die, whatever needs to end, to cease, to stop? If we do, we will agree with whatever the Holy Spirit points out to us and make it our intention to bring them to the crucifying work of Christ represented on the Table and leave them there.

A Table of Life

If we have made our prayerful preparation and are bringing our worldly trash and baggage to leave at the Table, we will likely approach Holy Communion with tears of grief. It is right to be sorrowful that such things have been held back from our Lord, in spite of having received new birth from Him. But when what the Holy Spirit has shown us is left on the Table, we can then take His life from the Table with tears of joy and celebration. Holiness and wholeness and freedom must fill up those areas where unrighteousness and darkness and bondage have been banished.

This participation in His resurrection life is a relational act of faith in its initiation and its continuation. When you accepted Christ as your Savior, you entered salvation by new birth. But you have been exhorted to “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose,” (Philippians 2:12-13, NIV). Jesus stipulated baptism as a physical faith-affirmation of new birth, and He gave us His Table as an ongoing physical faith-reminder of our need to let His resurrection life fill every area of our personal lives.

With the same heart-searching prayer and personal intention, we must come to the Table of Christ’s resurrected life, taking from Him what we need in the area of:

• attitudes and desires aligned with the mind of Him Who indwells us
• choices and behaviors that reflect “not my will but Yours be done”
• habits of devotion to prayer, Bible study and spiritual growth
• a serious concern for others and commitment to serve them
• gathering with other Christians for spiritual fellowship
• waging spiritual warfare against the realm of darkness
• whatever else God reveals that needs to come alive in us

Christian growth is based not on accumulating knowledge about God and the Scriptures, but on obeying God’s will and making Jesus Lord of our lives. We can’t do that on our own. We’re totally dependent on Christ’s resurrected life in us to empower us to live and grow as Christians. But God has given us physical means of grace to highlight our dependence on Him, and Holy Communion is one of them.

Conclusion

We may not be used to thinking of physical rituals, like baptism and Holy Communion, as truly spiritual activities. We may have a Gnostic view that sees no relationship between the physical and the spiritual, no intrinsic union between the body and the spirit. If so, have ignored God’s many uses of physical means of grace throughout Scripture, but worse, we have fail to uphold the central significance of Christ’s incarnation, bodily death and resurrection. Our faith is incarnational, or it is not the Christian faith found in the New Testament. The fruits of the Cross and of the Resurrection are on the Table, and Christ’s “in remembrance of Me,” includes His words, “my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” Embrace the mystery and participate in it.

I hope that all reading this article will discover a new way of coming to the Communion Table. I hope all will start seeing it as a return to the Cross, where Christ’s death brings us life, by putting our old life to death so that we can freely participate in His resurrected life. The following poem makes an apt conclusion, describing the approach both to the Cross and to the Table.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE CROSS

Brokenly we stumble down the twisted trails of life,
Struggling to discover peace in self-made worlds of strife,
Fighting to escape our fears of losing what we gain,
Craving for a feast of pleasures free from any pain.
Yet, upon these broad and damning roads beneath our feet,
There’s a solemn shadow that our steps may often meet.
In the setting sun of earthly dreams there stands a Cross,
Casting hope upon those paths of everlasting loss.

From its slender shade, which seems at first so cramped and tight,
Comes a whispered offer for a journey into Light.
Once, there was no exit; now a doorway stands in view,
Open for the weary passerby to walk on through.

Oh but how it looks constricted, narrow as the grave,
Waiting to convert the seeker’s soul into its slave
By its strong death-dealing nails for fixing limbs to wood:
No more wandering the world we thought we understood;
No more squandering of precious gifts that God bestows;
No more pity for ourselves for self-engendered woes;
No more place for stubbornness within our willful heart—
Selfish thrones must topple, proud dominions fall apart;
No more so-called freedom for our flesh to play the fool;
Only crucifixion, setting Jesus free to rule . . .

Harsh and strict, this pathway through the Cross of Christ appears,
Warning all who enter of its dark side’s loss and tears.
Yet, if we have thought it out and in that way have stepped,
We elude what choked our lives, rejoicing where we wept.

Such emancipation on the Cross’s other side
Opens up to us a realm extremely rich and wide.
Heaven’s light unveils a vast expanse where glory shines.
Holy wealth with pure delight and beauty intertwines.
Far beyond imagination, rapture fills our souls.
Endless joy in useful service flows from godly goals.
What were not true friendships in the world we leave behind
Change to new, real fellowship we’d always hoped to find.
On the Cross’s brighter side, our destination’s clear.
Working out His Word and will, we sense His presence near.

Jesus walked the dying side to hellish depths below
To unlock the living side, where treasures overflow:
Mysteries of faith and prayer, His Body’s bread and wine,
Light of Life, a life of Love, and love for Light Divine.
What He purchased when He hung as “nothing” on the Tree
Was to be our everything: His life in you and me.

So, don’t flee the Cross because you see its darker side.
Don’t keep running off to find a wider place to hide.
Stop and leave the worldly highway, choose no more to roam:
Make the Cross of Jesus yours, and it will lead you home.

— David L. Hatton, 4/6/1993
(from Poems Between Darkness and Light ©1994, 2014)

( For a 10-minute, online Holy Communion
 observance, go to https://youtu.be/lWQtfOM3caY )

PANDORA’S BOX & THE EMPTY TOMB

Greek mythology tells about a woman named Pandora who received a box that was supposed to remain closed. When curiosity got the best of her, she yielded to the temptation to lift the lid. Before she could shut it, a swarm of disastrous curses instantly escaped from the open box, filling the world with tragedy. In the Garden of Eden, Eve did essentially the same thing by eating the forbidden fruit.

These similar stories have another crucial similarity. God told Eve that the “offspring” of a woman would someday defeat the devil, whose deception brought death into the world. The other story tells of what was left behind in the bottom of Pandora’s box. Still awaiting release was something the world—now plagued by sickness, suffering and sorrow—desperately needed: hope. Jesus Christ fulfilled both of these expectations.

The Bible explains the nature of this fulfillment: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil,” (1 John 3:8b, ESV). It also describes how it was accomplished: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil,” (Heb 2:14, NIV). Through the Incarnation, God’s Son became a true human being to defeat death by His Cross. His empty tomb became the symbol of Christ’s victory over death and His proven promise of our access to eternal life.

As hope was finally released from the open lid of Pandora’s destructive box, so

“Hope beckons to a death-bound human race from the open doorway of Christ’s empty tomb.”(DLH)

Forbidden fruit from a lethal tree had led humanity into death’s tomb. The promised Fruit from Mary’s womb died on Calvary’s Tree to liberate us from the realm of death—starting now by giving us spiritual life by new birth, and finishing up later by sharing His own bodily resurrection with us for eternity. This is humanity’s ultimate hope declared by history’s most human-friendly faith!

The ancient Christian salutation on Easter morning, “Christ is risen!” declares this awesome hope. The responsive return-greeting echoes our resounding faith in it: “He is risen indeed!” I pray that this hopeful faith be both in your heart and on your lips!

WHY JUST ONE GOSPEL?

Among my favorite writers is a man who was way ahead of his time—the missionary statesman and prolific devotional writer E. Stanley Jones. One of the paragraphs in his Mastery devotional not only answers the above question but reflects on why the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the paramount doctrine behind a true hope for the human race:

The Gospel then begins with the Incarnation. All religions are man’s search for God; the Gospel is God’s search for man; therefore there are many religions—there is but one Gospel. All religions are the Word become word; the Gospel is the Word become flesh. Therefore all religions are philosophies; the Gospel is fact. Philosophies may be good views; the Gospel is Good News. The Gospel is not primarily a philosophy—it is Fact. The philosophy grows out of the Fact. The Fact of Jesus is our starting point and is our Gospel. It is the Gospel of Jesus before it is the Gospel of God or the Gospel of the Kingdom. The Gospel lies in His Person-He didn’t come to bring the Good News-He was the Good News. This Gospel is not spelled out, therefore verbal; it is lived out, therefore vital. Jesus didn’t come to bring the forgiveness of God—He was the forgiveness of God. There is no other way to God, for Jesus is the Way from God. He is God coming to us. Therefore there can be no other way.

Those who insist that every religion is a valid way to God are like those who argue the unfairness of failing their math test. The teacher grading them is not bigoted or narrow-minded for insisting on mathematical accuracy but merely being realistic. Man’s search for God runs off in as many directions as finite human thinking can imagine. But logically, if the Maker of matter and mathematics, the Engineer of time and space, is on a hunt for lost humanity, His search would be as precise as the natural laws that run His universe. He would make a straight and narrow bee line to find those who have wandered from Him.

Do an exhaustive study of the religions, or be so bold as to invent your own. You will discover the “good news” of Jesus Christ light years beyond their reach. His Incarnation—God becoming human to search and rescue wayward humans—is without parallel among the belief-systems devised by human minds. The way of the true God, the God Who really exists, is that of a Shepherd searching for lost sheep, that of a loving Father seeking His wayward children. The Creator’s way is as insistent and accurate and absolute as His math.

Michelangelo's sculpture

As E. Stanley Jones said, “there can be no other way” than His for resolving and repairing the shortcomings of the human condition. God had to get involved personally and intimately by becoming one of us. But the only way God could get any closer to humanity than by taking upon Himself our human flesh was to take upon Himself our human sins. This makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ the most uniquely human-friendly faith conceivable. Theologically and spiritually, it does not get any better than this!

There is no greater affirmation to our fleshly humanity than the Bethlehem manger,  no greater demonstration of God’s divine love for us than the Cross of Calvary, no greater proclamation of true human hope than the empty tomb of Jesus Christ. The Christian Gospel is matchless, unparalleled, outstripping all other religious claims and concepts. That’s why it’s exclusive . . . why it alone is authentically “good news” . . . and why any honest student of religion, who really grasps the message of Christ in the New Testament, will be forced to conclude, “If there is a Gospel, there’s only just this one.”

SOUL AWAKE—DNA SLEEPING

Death has different meanings in Scripture, depending on what part of a person dies. Paul’s prayer in Thessalonians 5:23 (WEB) lists these parts: “May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

 These three components or our human nature are similarly described in the creation of Adam: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath [spirit] of life; and man became a living soul.” (Gen 2:7, KJV).

What is the Soul?

The soul seems to begin when that fleshly dust and spiritual breath come together. It connects them as a God-designed mediator. Our soul integrates our visible animal bodies and our invisible angelic spirits, making us body-spirit beings who can interact with both the material and spiritual realms. These three parts of our humanity form a lifelong amalgamation—a human trinity—that images the Creator in special ways, both separately and in union.

The soul has self-awareness and a personal identity that thinks, feels, chooses, and remembers. Other people can perceive an individual’s spiritual character when the soul reveals his or her unique personality via the body. A person’s soul, though not seen directly, is recognized through the bodily activity of thoughts communicated, emotions expressed, and actions taken.

A computer can illustrate this tri-unity of body, soul, and spirit. The body with its brain, nervous system, sense organs and musculature, is like the computer’s motherboard, RAM and ROM memory, hard drive, and input and output devices. The spirit is like the electrical power energizing the whole unit. But the different programs loaded and the personally stored data make up the functional soul of the computer.When the power is turned off or an essential physical component breaks down, the programs and data continue to exist on disk or backed up on a cyberspace memory cloud. When the physical computer (body) is turned on (spirit), it has a functional character (soul). The computer’s body is visible; its electrical spirit is not. While the programs and data are also invisible, they become uniquely recognizable through the running computer. While not perfect, this analogy might be helpful to some.

The “Soul Sleep” Misinterpretation

Because the Bible often speaks of death as “sleep,” some teach that the soul goes nowhere at death but either ceases to exist or unconsciously rests in “the grave” with its disintegrating corpse. The latter scenario becomes a strained interpretation when the grave is the ocean, or when an explosion literally makes a real grave impossible. The former idea fails to explain the martyred souls in heaven described in Revelation. Those “souls” weren’t asleep in their graves but had wide-awake wills actively choosing to express mental thoughts with strong emotional feeling, all in a definite, non-earthly location:

“And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:9-10, KJV)

If it’s important in our conception of death to know which part of us dies, it’s also important to know which part of humanity is sleeping, when Scripture metaphorically uses “sleep” to indicate death. People can mistake which part is asleep by confusing the metaphor. The appearance of literal sleep provides the metaphorical significance of “sleep” as a description of how a dead body appears. Observers no longer see choices of the will, perceive no more sad or happy feelings, hear no thoughts being communicated. Shake a dead person vigorously. Why is there no response? “The dead know nothing,” says Ecclesiastes 9:5. The corpse is profoundly asleep. The dead body has nothing more to do with the ongoing activities of this physical world, except to disintegrate and be reabsorbed by it.

What Sleeps in the Body’s Death?

Christians believe that bodies, sleeping in death, will awaken at the resurrection. How so? How can a buried corpse absorbed by a tree root, or a drowned body scattered throughout the ocean, or one vaporized by an fiery explosion, be reconstructed into its original state as a resurrected body? In Christ’s resurrection, all the matter in His body was still local. In ours, some molecules from those who died at sea might end up on our table in the next bite of fish. This thought may bring emotional discomfort, but it poses no scientific problem. What sleeps in death is not the body’s array of personal dust but each person’s specific arrangement of DNA.

The material composing the bodies of living creatures is in constant flux. Cellular structures are continuously being built up or repaired with new molecules taken in as food. Old cell material is likewise being broken down and discarded from the body as waste. This process of construction and destruction replaces all the atoms in a human body approximately every seven years. In other words, “we’re not what we used to be.” We’re not living in the material body we had seven years ago. Even the old atoms on each double-helix DNA molecule have been exchanged for new ones. However, the DNA stays the same, except perhaps for some minor mutations.

When reduced to its essence, our personal DNA is a numerical arrangement, much like the computer’s stored programs. If the physical computer is destroyed, the programs can be reloaded on an entirely new unit. But the difference with DNA is that it holds the specific formula for the physical unit’s unique design. This is why I personally believe that the intangible numerical formula of our personal DNA—expressed tangibly in this life through the medium of matter—is registered in the soul and taken with it, along with our entire personal memory, when the soul and spirit leave the body in death. As far as our bodies are concerned, “we’re just a number,” but a number “wonderfully and fearfully made” by creation’s Master Mathematician.

Michelangelo's "Resurrection of the Dead"

On Resurrection Day, what’s the point of having our bodies restored from the same material our DNA was borrowing for the last seven years of our lives? Any nearby dust will do. What about the undesirable results of a believer’s DNA defects, caused by sin in a fallen world? Surely each of our DNA programming will be restored to the perfection of the Creator’s original design. Jesus said He “came to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), and not only the soul and spirit were lost in the Fall. Christ’s glorious physical resurrection is the prototype of our own. He will reconstruct our bodies to be “like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Sadly, this hope for “the redemption of our bodies” is a part of the Gospel not emphasized in modern evangelism. Yet bodily resurrection is so important that Paul declares, “in this hope you were saved” (Romans 8:23b,24a, ESV).

Putting the Soul Sleep Doctrine to Sleep

But this resurrection hope doesn’t include the unconsciousness of the soul in death. Widespread belief in “soul sleep” or in the soul’s annihilation at death is relatively recent. Various versions of this concept have been held by Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses since the late 1800s. However, this doctrine is absent from the teachings of the primitive church, although one critic reports that “according to historian Philip Schaff, soul sleep fomented in the mind of a specious fourth century pantheist named Arnobius.”

In modern times, the growing number of those bold enough to share their personal testimonies of near-death experiences have confirmed the early church’s teaching. Even though these episodes are usually only “near-death,” some of those describing NDEs were professionally evaluated as clinically “dead.” In other words, God let them miraculously come back from death to tell their stories. While their descriptions may vary, these people unanimously report a continuing consciousness, sometimes seeing the bodies they left behind. They talk about still experiencing their soul’s ability to think, feel, choose and remember. It might take only one NDE to convince teachers of “soul sleep” that their doctrine was erroneous. If not, their final death certainly will.

In discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I sometimes show them Genesis 49:33 in their New World Translation: “Thus Jacob finished giving these instructions to his sons. Then he drew his feet up onto the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.” I explain how this verse mentions first body, then spirit, and finally soul. If they say, “Oh, but to be ‘gathered to his people’ means to go to the grave,” I show them the next verse, Genesis 50:1, “Joseph then threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him.” Then I point out, “You forgot something. Jacob wasn’t buried yet. His body was still there, but a special part of him had just been ‘gathered to his people.’ Don’t you find that theologically embarrassing?” No, they don't. A footnote in the Watchtower translation tells them to ignore the clear implications of this phrase by insisting it to be merely “a poetic expression for death” rather than a divine revelation of what actually happened. This is the kind of stubbornness that could benefit from an NDE.

I had a Seventh-day Adventist friend who was similarly adamant in her belief about the soul’s unconsciousness in death. When she died, I envisioned her immediately regretting her insistence on that doctrine. I even wrote a poem to be read at her graveside service, believing that someday in the afterlife she will thank me for doing so.

That poem is probably the best conclusion I can make for this article.

SOUL SLEEP

For eighteen hundred years was taught

That only corpses went to graves,

That souls went on, awake in thought,

While bodies slept ’neath dust or waves.

I choose to keep the older creed

That says our flesh must rest from toil,

Awaiting, like the planted seed,

That Day of Rising from the soil.

If later teachers’ words are right—

That souls must sleep before they rise—

Then when I hear that Trumpet bright,

I’ll wake up and apologize.

But if they’re wrong, then their mistake

Was known the moment that they died,

For even now they’re wide awake

Repenting for what they denied.

I’d rather be aroused from sleep

To find that I was duped by lies

Than be awake in death to weep

Till God decides to dry my eyes.

— David L. Hatton, 3/12/2013

(to be in Poems Between Here and Beyond)

POEMS BETWEEN BIRTH AND RESURRECTION - Introduction

(My books are available on Amazon at this link.)

(Before becoming a preacher, a nurse, an amateur artist, or a massage therapist, I was a poet. I still am. Getting my poetry published in more than homemade binders had been a dream for years. Health challenges and the rise of modern book-publishing technology merged to motivate me to make the effort. This and my other books are published through Kindle Direct Publishing in both paperback and Kindle editions.

I wanted to put the introductory essays for each poetry collection on my blog. If you want to know what makes me tick, my poems tell it better than a biography.

This "Introduction" and the concluding poem are from my 4th book of poems. To read the posts from my others, click on these links:

Poems Between Heaven and Hell

Poems Between Darkness and Light;

Poems Between Death and Life;

Poems Between Here and Beyond;

Poems Between Fear and Faith;

Poems Between the Beginning and the End.)

“Introduction” to

Poems Between Birth and Resurrection

My life journey has brought me delightful discoveries, all of them best described in their relationship to love and truth. Loving brings joy, whether through sending a check to a worthy cause, putting extra care into someone’s body-work massage, or holding my wife in an affectionate embrace. Joy rises especially strong when a sudden burst of love for God overflows in silent, verbal, or poetic praise. But love’s nature is fully experienced only when fully reciprocated. I find the same joy in loving as in being loved and appreciated, whether by my wife, family, Christian friends, hospital co-workers, or grateful new parents I’ve helped with newborns. Love returns to us in sincere “thank you” notes, in spontaneous hugs, in a silent presence at times of grief. The God of love has prescribed equally mixed proportions of loving and being loved as the divine epoxy glue that binds human hearts together. He ordains this mutually reciprocating love to characterize our journey from the womb to the tomb. It’s our calling during this present life and for the eternal glory beyond it.

In a similar way, love itself must be tempered with truth, and vice versa. As loving draws us closer to the God of love, so discovering and embracing truth draws us closer to the God of truth. Truth liberates love from the dysfunctional rut of sentimental lies. Love emancipates truth from the chains of stifling legalisms. The wedding of love and truth gives birth both to an abundant life and to an authentic lifestyle.

Two special theological truths make the Christian Gospel the most alive and human-friendly faith in existence. One is the Incarnation. God, our Creator, “became flesh to dwell among us.” He was born into this world as a real human being to teach us, as our Master; to die for us, as our Redeemer; and to restore us and the rest of creation, as our Deliverer. The other human-friendly truth is the Resurrection. This same incarnate God-Man was physically raised from death to be the body-spirit Mediator and priestly Ruler of all worlds, cosmic and celestial. His bodily resurrection is the guarantee of our own, for which the whole “creation waits in eager expectation” (Romans 8:19-23). In His own physically resurrected human body, God—as King of the universe—will forever lead the rest of redeemed and resurrected humanity in ruling over the whole material and spiritual creation. Nothing is more human-friendly than these two truths: in His Incarnation, Jesus is Savior; in His Resurrection, Jesus is Lord.

In my journey of digging out rich gems from these two deep mines of doctrinal truth, I’ve had to grapple with some human-unfriendly attitudes toward the material world, and toward our physical bodies in particular, which seem firmly embedded in the popular “Christian” view of earthly life. This first happened in my job as an RN, when my frank view of unclad female bodies didn’t arouse in me the immoral, lustful thoughts that all my life had been faithfully preached to me as inevitable. Many years of experiencing this discrepancy between religious teaching and realized truth led to intense research about the phenomenon of human nakedness, not just by a careful review of Scripture, but by a laborious investigation of various historical, aesthetic, and psycho-social disciplines. The resulting fruits of this educational pursuit was nothing less than a major paradigm shift in my thinking. That bold intellectual endeavor helped me see the heretical Gnostic influences behind the “body shame” issues in the typical modern church. It led me full circle, back to the awesome implications for human destiny in those two doctrines, Christ’s Incarnation and His Resurrection.

Some people do personal journaling. I do poetic journeying. My poetry often records personal experiences of love and truth during my earthly sojourn. The title of this fourth book of my poetry, Poems Between Birth and Resurrection, describes the source of many of the themes in my poetry since the turn of the century. Much in the world has changed, especially in this last decade, and much has changed in me. A poet’s poems cannot help being autobiographical, but I’ve always wished mine to be prophetic, in the sense of proclaiming truth that corrects and reforms.

Contemplating the truths of the incarnate birth and resurrection of God’s Son have brought my theological thinking “down to earth,” where it belongs. I’ve gained a new awareness of humanity’s original, God-given responsibilities as body-spirit beings, and of our duty to recognize the God-pronounced goodness of this physical world, even while it still groans under sin’s curse. These twin doctrines have dramatically changed my attitude toward the wholesomeness of the human body, with or without man-made, fig-leaf dress.

This shift in attitude toward human embodiment led me into taking art classes, learning massage therapy, and trying to practice natural ways of health maintenance. These involvements, overflowing into my poetry, reveal the direction and depth of this conceptual shift. If I sometimes sound radical and startling, it’s on purpose. Shocking minds to alertness is often the only effective prelude to dislodging long-believed lies and sacred half-truths. If the surprising reality about the human body hadn’t jolted me awake, I couldn’t share some of these poems. I felt consciously called to write them, and now feel relieved of a prophetic burden in publishing them. Through them, I hope my readers can experience an epiphany similar to what gave them birth.

God bless your journey between birth and resurrection! May these poems inspire your life as they have mine. Don’t miss any of your life’s mission in the here-and-now by an otherworldly focus on the hereafter. God intends our eternal life in Christ to be lived out with overflowing abundance in these “fearfully and wonderfully made” earthen vessels from the cradle to the grave, and beyond.

— David L. Hatton

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

GOD’S NAKED LAMB


When Jesus died stark naked on the Tree
Prescribed by Roman minds for cruelty,
Shrewd Pilate had his will against the hoard
Who pushed his hand to crucify our Lord.
Above Christ’s head he made the placard stay
That said, “Here dies the King of Jews today.”

Stripped to the skin of every Jewish thread,
His body, bare, had one thing left they read
That marked His place distinctly by the sign
Of promise in the Abrahamic line:
That tender cut received eight days from birth
To seal God’s vow of blessing all the earth.

But we, who like to cover up His loins,
Forgetting how He went for thirty coins
The way nude slaves did in the marketplace,
We blush to look, so miss the glow of grace
That shines from His exposed humanity
To light salvation’s path to sanity.

The unclad body of our Lord displayed
That God took up the very flesh He made
To show by sacrifice without His robe
That every human tribe around the globe
Was purchased in a body like their own.
We see this in God’s naked Lamb alone.

— David L. Hatton, 2/14/2008
(Poems Between Birth and Resurrection,  © 2013)

For more single poems from this volume, visit my website's “Poetry Page.”

BETWEEN THE WOMB AND THE TOMB….

What are we supposed to learn during our lifetime, during our journey between “the womb and the tomb”? What has been built into creation that can teach it to us? I’d like to share this poem—from my fourth book of poetry, Poems Between Birth and Resurrection—which tries to answer those questions, and more:

CREATION QUEST

There’s beauty in a panoramic view of land and sea.
There’s dancing in the heart that hears a birdsong’s melody.
There’s sweetness in a flower, majesty within a storm,
Amazing grace and glory in our naked human form.
There’s mesmerizing loveliness in every clear night sky,
Enchantment in a sunset, as it captures every eye,
And mysteries in ocean depths beyond the sunlight’s rays:
God’s miracles abounding all around us, all our days.

But while we stare bedazzled at creation’s lovely charms,
Our God who stands behind them waits for us with open arms.
Enthrallment and enjoyment were intended by His hand.
In everything He crafted are delights divinely planned,
Not just to please our senses, but to set our souls aflame
With thirst for greater pleasure than this world can give or name,
A joy that all creation was proclaiming from the start
That’s found alone in union with our Maker’s loving heart.

— David L. Hatton, 6/21/2006

Creation is waiting to be set free by the Divine Human, the God-Man Jesus Christ. Even in its longing and “groaning” in awaiting that liberation, it teaches us where the human race can “alone” find happiness: “in union with our Maker’s loving heart.”

(see also on this blog "Poems Between Birth and Resurrection")

IS YOUR HUMANITY HUMAN-FRIENDLY?

In human self-understanding, what makes sense philosophically, religiously, or relationally, is always human-friendly. In fact, if it’s not, it’s probably a deception. By human-friendly, I mean in sync with our human nature as created by God. No matter how clever it sounds, any belief that conflicts with our basic humanness, or contradicts our corporate experience of being human, is never of divine origin. It might even be demonic.

Bottom-line, we are creatures of body and spirit. We are not bodies with a spirit or spirits in a body—not two separate dimensions of personal being somehow pasted together. We are body-spirit beings: an intrinsically interpenetrating amalgamation of both. It’s our human nature in this life (Genesis 2:7). It’s our future destiny in resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:51-53).

Some may exalt the materialistic view of humanity preached dogmatically by scientism, but no one really laughs or loves or lives that way. Our minds and souls are spiritual entities, not merely chemical processes of matter. Others may adopt a pantheistic monism, where “all is one,” and try to imagine that any perceived variation in personal choices, emotional feelings, and bodily experiences is nothing more than maya, an illusion. Again, none can conscientiously hold such a belief and at the same time act authentically in satisfying hunger, working a job, creating art, enjoying a friend, seeking comfort, fleeing pain, grieving loss, or crying for justice. Life as maya is definitely not human-friendly. Nor is Gnosticism, that ancient, but lately re-popularized philosophical system that divides body and spirit. Denigrating the material world as evil baggage, and positing ultimate value in spiritual existence alone, creates a Jekyll-Hyde split personality in human self-perception. Such dualistic thinking treats our physical embodiment as a nightmare. But in real life, if we listen to our heart of hearts, all of us feel quite at home in human flesh.

At root, all these beliefs are foreign to what we—as body-spirit beings—know personally. None are friendly to gut-level humanness. None arise from within natural human experience. All are foreign, imposed from without, philosophically, religiously, superstitiously, but often eloquently. To gain greater credibility, modern proponents of these creeds may offer alternative interpretations of the Bible to support their ideas. Don’t be fooled. From Genesis to Revelation, the Scriptures are incarnational.

Christ’s Incarnation is the reason I look to human-friendliness as the ultimate standard for evaluating any belief system about humanity. That our Maker became a true Human is central to the Christian faith. It’s the best news the human race could ever receive.

Let the many prospects of God’s Human Incarnation become your meditation. Contemplate deeply its significance for the fulfillment of humanity’s holiest dreams and highest destiny. One by one, you’ll abandon every human-unfriendly belief you ever held. You’ll find that Truth is a Person, as you embrace Jesus Christ, the resurrected God-Man. You’ll discover the ultimate condition for human self-acceptance, as our loving, personal Creator embraces you.