1.20.2008
From plowboy to king
One of the reasons (a big underlying, unrecognized reason) it is so rare for someone to connect with and get real understanding of the Bible (other than issues of regeneration) is the fact that the Bible is a document for royalty. To get into it is like getting into, at first, something that is above you, or that is 'not you', sort of like getting interested in aristocracy when you are a plowboy. What does that have to do with me? the plowboy says and feels. A Christian is a king, and part of a royal priesthood. It takes awhile to come into realization of that. Meanwhile the Bible presents itself to the still-plowboy as some kind of transaction or business carried out in a royal court where the plowboy has never been nor would be welcome. In the worldly sense. But as the plowboy by degree comes into realization of his new state of being a king and a priest and a prophet he begins to not only see the royal nature of the teachings of the Bible - covenants, for instance - but he slowly begins to appropriate them just as by faith he appropriates the saving work of the King of kings Jesus Christ.
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2 comments:
This is spot on. What a great post. I love that, "the Bible is a document for royalty." It really is THAT alien. That first Genesis to Revelation experience was, for me, quite torturous and painful to the point of meaningless at times - it is the sheer gulf between that ploughboy & the King.
As I was writing the post I hiccuped a little at the point of listing royal things in the Bible (I came up with covenants, but stopped there). The obvious is that the Kingdom of God exists and believers become kings and a royal priesthood and so on. But I was searching my mind for the teachings that corresponded with royalty. I think justification itself - or, being paid for - is definitely a royal or aristocratic thing. When born into royalty or the aristocracy you are 'paid for' in a sense in that you have an inheritance that gets you out of the bondage other human beings aren't free from such as poverty or class limitations and all that. This worldly analogy threatens to dirty up the Biblical reality if one doesn't keep it all clear in one's mind though.
The Word of God makes a 'call.' God calling his people into his Kingdom. The most 'royal' Kingdom of them all.
Also, the teachings in the epistles - and the Gospels - that refer to being and one's 'conversation' with the world and with God is a teaching intended to form a kingly, noble, understanding being.
But, being 'in Christ' means the genealogies apply to you, record your history, your people; the Pentateuch and the prophetic history of the 'early prophets' (1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings and so on) not only recite the history of your people but give examples of how God interacts with His people and so on. It all applies to you once regenerated and converted and you appropriate it all by faith in the Saviour.
It's kind of like getting a glimpse of how the Olympians interacted with the 'royalty' in the Homeric epics, the kings and warriours, except that you ARE those kings and they are your people...
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