The biggest struggle I had with this passage was application. Or, as Tim Choy puts it: how does this relate to me? I tried to stretch the "Jew => Christian/ Circumcision => Baptism" thing a little further (from ch. 2 to here). I'm not 100% convinced that it's theologically sound, but I think I can make a good enough case to defend my position. In any case, the same questions still arise with Christianity. Some may ask why they must become a Christian. They might say "I'm a good person, and (drawing from ch. 2) am probably a better person than half of the "Christians" out there." The traditional answer would be "good works don't save you. Faith in Jesus Christ does." That is true, but I wonder if God gives us an additional answer here in ch. 3: [we] have been entrusted with the very words of God. When I think about that, I am reminded of all the saints who carried the Bible through the ages, sometimes at great personal cost. There are people who died for the Bible. Clearly they took this stewardship very seriously.
Verse 2 here says that "[we] have been entrusted wit the very words of God." According to various definitions found in Dictionary.com, to 'entrust' means to "charge or invest with a trust or responsibility", and "to confide in". And of course the root word of 'entrust' is 'trust'. Jesus puts it this way: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I have learned from my Father I have made known to you." (John 15:15) We talk about God choosing to partner with us in the creation story and the salvation story, and that is rightly so. But when I read this, I am amazed, because I would never want to work with someone who not only doesn't know how to do something right, doesn't even care. Anyone who has been in a disappointing group project knows this. And yet God not only accepts my presence, He invites me. And He confides in me.
What did God entrust me with, or confide in me? None other than His very words. I don't know if it's supposed to be the Word, or just God's words, but I think it scarcely makes a difference. With a word He brought creation into being. With a word He created light, and with another word He created the sky, and with another dry land, and so on. When the Israelites had nothing to drink in the desert, God told Moses to speak to the rock (Moses chose to hit the rock instead, but that's beside the point). Jesus, during His ministry, merely spoke and people were healed. Peter and John did the same thing to the lame man in Acts 3. One of my favourite examples is on the cross, when Jesus cries out "It is finished!" Whether or not those words had any power in them is beyond me, but at those words creation was restored to harmony with God and Satan was eternally defeated (he just doesn't know it yet). I could fill the Internet, as vast as it is, with examples of God's powerful word, but suffice to say, entrusting that to me is like giving a kid a nuke.
And it is at this point that Paul brings in faith. What if (as we all fear when handing a child a nuclear device) I am unfaithful with what I've been given? For example, the Israelites were entrusted the gospel, but they ended up crucifying it. What did Christians do with the gospel? According to Paul Washer, we've watered it down to three easy questions (do you know you're a sinner, do you want to go to heaven, do you want to be saved) plus one simple prayer. Luckily, God has a safety in place, and that is His own faithfulness. Just because we Christians have been messing up the gospels for the last 2000 years (and the Jews messed them up before us for another 2000 years) doesn't mean people aren't coming to Christ. Rather, God is working overtime to fix any screw-ups we've been doing.
Before I go further, I want to briefly reflect on God's character. He is not only a trustworthy God (that is, we can trust Him), He is also a trusting God (meaning that He will trust us too). When was the last time my father trusted me enough to climb a tall tree? But God is so loving He lets me experience, and He is so wise He knows exactly how much I can try. And He is also so powerful and so patient for picking up after my messes. All this and I'm only at chapter 3. Paul hasn't even started talking about God's awesome plan yet!
The final part I have little to write on, because I both struggle with this a lot (but only intellectually), and because I don't struggle with this at all (morally). If the Japanese hadn't raped Nanjing to pieces, the world would never have seen the kindness and bravery of John Rabe and the others who ran the Nanjing Safety Zone, but that doesn't mean the Imperial Japanese who raped Nanjing were any less evil. It's not like John Rabe would go up to the Japanese commander and say "thank you for raping the women so that I could show them kindness." More likely, he'd say something along the lines of "tell your ******** soldiers to leave those poor women alone!". As Paul puts it, their condemnation is deserved.
Matthew
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