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The beginning of a new year brings with it a flurry of New Year’s resolutions….lose weight, exercise more, de-clutter the closets, etc.  We all have issues and things about which we feel guilty.  So with the dawning of the new year, we muster up a renewed determination to rid ourselves of that guilt!

For those of us who are Christians, one of the things we feel guilty about is not reading our Bibles enough.  This was underscored at a recent church service I attended when the pastor asked, “How many of you feel guilty about how much you read your Bibles?” Virtually every person in the congregation raised their hand.  We know we ought to read our Bibles more, but we don’t.  So for many Christians, January 1 begins with a stalwart resolution to read through the Bible by the end of the year.

Usually, this begins well, reviewing the exciting lives of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph in Genesis.  Next, we are riveted by God’s incredible rescue of His people from Egypt in Exodus.  Ah, but then, we reach Leviticus.  Why did God have to put Leviticus so close to the beginning of the Bible to stop us in our tracks just as we were doing so well with our New Year’s guilt-bashing project?  We miss a day of reading, then two days, then a week.  Then we think to ourselves, “Well, I’ll try again next year.”  We feel guilty for having failed yet again.  I don’t know about you, but for me, this was a common pattern for decades.

For many years now, however, my experience has been entirely different.  My heart delights to spend time reading my Bible, and it aches when I don’t.  I can’t wait to read through and then start over again!  What’s changed?  Have I become more disciplined than ever?  Have I unlocked the secret to optimal time management?  No.  Anyone who knows me can affirm that my closets are still messy, and my schedule is as full as always.

What’s changed is the discovery that behind all the poetry, the history, the commands, the genealogies—behind every word—is a person:  God.  The Bible is God sharing His heart with us.  The accounts of peoples’ lives, the retelling of history, the instructions regarding how to relate to God and others all reveal the heart of a God who loves us and longs for an intimate relationship with us.

In Leviticus 26:11, God says, “I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.  And I will walk among you and will be your God and you shall be my people.”  It’s a theme that’s repeated over and over again in the Bible, until its culmination in that beautiful passage in Revelation 21: 3-4 “Behold the dwelling place of God is with man.  He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. ” Can you hear the intimacy and tenderness in that?  Only in a close relationship would one reach to touch the face of another and wipe away a tear.  From Genesis to Revelation God reveals His desire for that kind of relationship with us—not out of some human-like neediness—-but because He loves us.

You might be thinking, “Well, of course He loves us.  He’s God.  That’s what He’s supposed to do.  John 3:16 and all that.”  But this love is not just a global God-loves-the-world kind of love, though He certainly does.  He loves you.  And me.

At Jesus’ baptism, we get a glimpse into the intimacy of the relationship of the Trinity when the Father, through the Spirit, expresses His love for the Son.  Mark 1:11 says, “A voice came from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Again at the transfiguration in Mathew 17:5, we hear the Father’s words of love to His Son, “…and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ ”

Romans 5:5 tells us that “…God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  Yes, in the same way that the Spirit shares the love of the Father with the Son, so the Spirit shares God’s love with us.  Is the love He shares with us something He tosses at us from afar?  Absolutely not!  As Jesus prays for us in John 17, He prays that we might know that the Father loves us even as He has loved Him (Jesus).  And Jesus goes on to pray, in John 17: 26, “…that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”  The love the Father and Son share, through the Spirit, is the same kind of relationship God wants to have with us.

This is the God who shares His heart with us in the Bible.  The God who tells us over and over again that He wants to be our God, and He wants us to be His people.  The God who is so close He can wipe the tears from our eyes.  The God who pours His love into our hearts through the Spirit.  The God who loves us in the same way He loves the Son.

If you are considering reading through the Bible in the coming year, may I offer a suggestion?  Instead of opening your Bible to “do the right thing”, or to keep your New Year’s resolution, open your Bible to listen to the heart of the One whose love overflows as He speaks to you in close, intimate relationship.  He’s waiting for you.

[This post originally appeared in 2015 here]

The post A Different Kind of Resolution first appeared on Cor Deo.

“God recapitulated in Himself the ancient formation of man, that He might kill sin, deprive death of its power, and vivify man” [Against Heresies, book 3.18.7, ANF].

His use of “God” here referred to Jesus, the divine Son.  The ministry of Jesus was to recapitulate—“to be a new head”—for humanity so that where Adam failed in the face of temptation, Jesus succeeded.  Where Adam embraced and followed Satan, Jesus defeated and dismissed him.  So the question for us this year is this: which “head” now leads us?

Here’s more of what Irenaeus had to say in making his case.

“[W]hen He [the Son] became incarnate, and was made man, He commenced afresh the long line of human beings, and furnished us, in a brief, comprehensive manner, with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam—namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God—that we might recover in Christ Jesus” [3.18.1]

So the humanity of God, the Son, is the basis for “that fellowship which refers to Himself” because we now are in “communion” with him by our spiritual adoption.  This union with Christ allowed him to restore our once-dead-humanity by undoing Adam’s disaster and redoing it successfully through his earthly life: “Wherefore also He passed through every stage of life, restoring to all [stages] communion with God” [3.18.7].

We, then, are saved and transformed by faith in the Son whose life-work defeated death in a step-by-step march that began when he was birthed by God’s creative work of the Spirit in a virgin—as Adam, too, had been uniquely created by the Spirit’s work.  He then began to fulfill “all righteousness” [see Matthew 3:15-4:11 for a portrayal of Christ succeeding where Adam failed], until he completed his faithful work by dying, accursed, in our place on the cross, though he was sinless.  Then in his resurrection he trumped death with life.

How did Irenaeus come up with his salvation narrative?  He started with a face-value reading of Romans 5:12-21.  Let’s recall a couple of Paul’s main points in that chapter and then read it all when we next have a Bible in hand:

While “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin,” so now, “much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (verses 12 & 17).

In salvation, then, we actually participate in Christ’s new and successful humanity as his Spirit pours out God’s life and love in our hearts (Romans 5:5).  And, as we read in Romans 8, at every moment we are invited to set our minds on the Spirit who reassures us that we are now forgiven and invited to approach God as “Abba”.  And with that, “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:27).

I only wish some of our more recent theologians could be as clear and helpful as our dear forefather Irenaeus was in his day.  But let’s now move on and let Irenaeus rest.

The question we can answer as we enter a new year is this: are we living in the grace and love Jesus offers us?  Are we looking to him as our true head and new way in all we do, with a heartfelt devotion so that as he looks back at us, he smiles with pleasure?

It’s a profound invitation in this new year.

The post A New Way first appeared on Cor Deo.