Jim Johnson's List: Bible

• This is a five book series that presents all the stories of the Bible, written in an easy to understand conversational style. Each story is presented in its simplest form and is accurate to Scripture.

• Your books playfully but insistently picture God as Trinity. Why is the Trinity so important to you?

   

    Because it grounds both relationship and love. If you have a distinctiveness of persons within the very nature of God, and you have oneness (which is absolutely essential), you have a basis for love inside the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• What's up with picturing God as a black woman?
• When I look at Scripture, imagery was never intended to define God. In fact, the more concrete your imagery gets, the more you're toying with idolatry. It's picture language to help us understand the character and nature of God.

• How would you describe the root of sin? What is the main problem?

   

    Independence. It is declaring ourselves the arbiters of right versus wrong, rather than being in a dependent relationship.
• For me, salvation is fully accomplished in the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It was God in the hands of angry sinners—that's the phrase that I would use. I'm not a penal substitutionary guy. But I am a substitutionary guy. But I don't see the Father pouring out his wrath on the Son. I see the human race pouring out their wrath on the Son. So I see the only hope for the entire cosmos is what the Son chooses to accept
• I grew up inside a paradigm that said wrath was punitive and retributive in nature. I now see it as restorative.
• So to me, fire is something everybody has to deal with, because we all have crap. It needs to be dealt with, and it's going to be. To some degree we're dealing with it in this world, but we're going to deal with it at some point.

• So do you believe in the Last Judgment—with emphasis on last?

   

    Yeah, probably. If you've read C. S. Lewis's introduction to The Great Divorce, in a beautiful way he acknowledges that he and George MacDonald and other writers are dealing in speculation. The only certainty I have come to with regard to any of this is that I'm now way more certain about the kindness and the goodness of God, even if it's also a fire. I'm certain of his goodness. But I don't know how it all works out.
• One question I get, of course, is, "Are you a universalist?" I'm not, because I don't think you can make that step doctrinally. I don't think Scripture is that obvious. There is this respect for the human creation's ability to say no. God will not force love. And we still have to choose to be reconciled. But Colossians says that's what we are to be praying for, that everything gets reconciled back to him.
• John 14-17 is the center of the Bible; right before Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, he talks about coming to live inside of us, bringing the Father and the Spirit. It's an objective union.
• This is very different from how I grew up. Then, it was, "You are two natures warring it out," and, "Who are you going to feed today?" Instead of: "You're a new creation and you don't know it." Part of this transformation is for us to begin to think accurately about who we are. "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." If you believe a lie, you will function according to a lie. I'm not at war with myself anymore. No. We are in the process of the healing of the heart and the soul and eventually the body—and all in terms of the reconciliation of this cosmos.

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• God gave Israel his law in order to shape them into a society that would reflect God's character and values in the midst of the nations—what we might call a missional motivation (Lev. 18:3–4; Deut. 4:6–8). The Israelites were to be distinctive by living in God's way, the ways of personal integrity, economic and social justice, and community compassion. The law was not a set of arbitrary rules to keep God happy. It was a way of life, a way of being human, a culture in a particular time and place, to show what a redeemed people under God looks like.
• To imagine that "living biblically" means trying to keep as many ancient rules as possible just because they are in the Bible misses the point of the law in the first place. Old Testament law was not just about rules but also about relationship with God, founded on God's grace and redemption, and motivated by the mission of living as the people of God in the world, so that the world should come to know the living God.
• There's an old tradition that divides Old Testament law into three categories: moral, civil, and ceremonial.

• we need to recognize that the ancient Israelites had at least the following kinds of law.

   

    Criminal laws:
• Civil laws:
• Family laws:
• Religious or cultic laws:
• Compassionate laws:
• The point is that on one hand, all of these kinds of laws were intended for Israel's society and not directly for us. They are culturally specific and limited. Yet at the same time, as Paul says, all of the laws were "written for our instruction" and are "useful" for us. So we should not find ourselves asking, "Which of these laws do I have to obey, and which can I ignore?" Rather, we should ask, "What can I learn from all of these laws about how God wants me to live and how he wants his people and society at large to live?"
• biblical law can function sharply as a paradigm or model for our personal and social ethics in all kinds of areas: economic, familial, political, judicial, sexual, and so on. We are not "keeping it" in a literalist way like a list of rules. But more important, we are not ignoring it in defiance of what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16–17. We are studying and using it as guidance, light for the path, in the joyful way of Psalms 1, 19, and 119.
• The good news is that the God who created the world has kept his promise to save the world. He has done it through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And we can be part of the story that ends in a new creation, with Christ reigning as king. The good news also is that once we have entered that story by repentance and faith, God gives us his Spirit, precisely so that "the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit" (Rom. 8:4).

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• The quest for gender-inclusive language has been a preoccupation of many mainline Protestants and liberal Catholics for decades.

• Jesus taught his disciples to call God "our heavenly Father." Therefore, the loving relationship he has with the Father from eternity now extends to those adopted into God's family (Rom. 8:15). The father-son relationship is the most intimate personal relationship, one marked by reciprocal love and respect, and it is God's supremely personal and loving nature that the term father is meant to underscore.

   

    To claim, as many feminist theologians do, that the very presence of masculine metaphors for God excludes women simply does not square with the way Scripture uses them. Masculine images of God do not always convey exclusively "masculine" qualities. For example, Isaiah 54:5–7 refers to God as the Husband who with "deep compassion" (a stereotypically "feminine" quality) called estranged Israel back to himself (see also Isa. 49:13). The term father, then, excludes not feminine qualities, but rather the idea of a distant and impersonal deity, which is precisely the picture of the supreme being still seen in many primal religions.
• The term Trinity is simply shorthand for the Christian story of God the Father, who sent his Son Jesus Christ and gave us his Holy Spirit.
• If we leave out God's nature as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we risk turning the Christian story into another story.
• Another strategy for eliminating what's been called sexist language is to simply avoid using masculine pronouns for God.
• But avoiding the use of personal pronouns for God unwittingly downplays God's personal nature.

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• tithing is not the New Testament standard for giving. Perhaps more than any other factor, giving reflects the condition of our hearts: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21).
• We should not tithe because God wants us to give generously, and tithing is the bare minimum.
• The Bible teaches that God, who richly has supplied us with all good things, wants us “to be generous and ready to share” (1 Tim. 6:18)
• If you examine the references to Abraham’s and Jacob’s tithing, you will see that God did not command them to tithe and there is no indication that this was their regular practice.
• In the Old Testament, there was both required and voluntary giving. The tithe was required. It was commanded for every Israelite to fund national worship and help the poor.
• In actuality, there was not just one tithe, but rather two or three ([1] Lev. 27:30-33, Num. 18:20-21; [2] Deut. 12:17-18; [3] Deut. 14:28-29)
• Thus if we are required to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse today, we had better up the percentage from 10 to 22 percent!
• The writer to the Hebrews refers to Abraham paying tithes to Melchizedek and Levi paying his tithe to Melchizedek through Abraham ..., but he never taught his readers to follow their example. Paul writes about sharing material possessions to care for the needs of the poor ... and to sustain the Christian ministry .... He urges and commends generosity ... but never once does he demand, as a command from God, that any specific amount be given.
• If the early church practiced tithing, then the concept should surface somewhere in the writings of the church fathers of the second and third centuries. But it does not, even though giving was an important part of early Christian worship
• Tithing has a tendency to put a person on a legal basis with God, rather than a love relationship. It’s the wrong emphasis.

• Tithing leads to a false concept of stewardship.

   

  It leads to the notion that 10 percent is God’s money and 90 percent is my money. In reality, 100 percent is God’s money,
• Tithing is burdensome for some and too easy for others.
• grace giving is not sloppy, irresponsible, haphazard giving whenever we feel like it.
• says, “Lord, You gave all for me! What can I give back to You?”
• The concept of stewardship. “You are not your own, for you have been bought with a price ...” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). All that we are and have belongs to God, not just a tenth. I am merely the manager of His resources.
• Inner motivation, not outward compulsion (2 Cor. 8:3-5; 9:7).
• We should not think, “How much do I have to give?” but rather, “How much can I give?”
• How much should you give? How much has God prospered you? (Note 1 Cor. 16:2, “as he may prosper”; Acts 11:29, “in the proportion that [they] had means”; 2 Cor. 8:3, 11, 12). Generally, they gave according to their ability, and in some cases beyond their ability. Sometimes you should give sacrificially.

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