Philippian commentary

This link may point you in the right direction for starting a more in depth reading on the book of Philippians.  It's a commentary by Gordon Fee, one volume in the IVP New Testament Commentary series.  It's a bit older, but you may recall from previous posts that I had read a great book called "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, which was co-authored by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.  I was a fan of that book, so Fee's commentary on Philippians seemed like a great place to start!

Can God hate?

Malachi
I will attach a paper that I wrote about the book of Malachi, for those who would like to do some more intense reading on this book (stay tuned for that post).  In addition to that, I would just like to pass on a tidbit of information that I recently read in, guess what?, "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth".  In the beginning of Malachi, God says Jacob have I loved, but Esau I hated.  Hate?  Where did that come from?  Isn't hate wrong, sinful?  Clearly, our definition of hate is not what is meant here.  A typical definition for hate in Hebrew is rejection, and that is what God was talking about.  God rejected Esau, rather than hated him in the sense that he would have wanted him to go to hell for eternity.  This wording in Malachi is an example of how we must be aware of the language used in scripture, and what we might think it means versus what the author meant.  We should avoid making errant theological judgments based on a poor grasp of the actual meaning of the text.

John
Sometimes, having read through the gospels, one might tend to think that we have all the information about Jesus.  John's conclusion clearly demonstrates otherwise!  There could have been so many volumes written about his life and work that we would be swimming in the information.  Isn't so interesting that God had people pass along just what we would need to get to know God, rather than all the information we could possibly want to satisfy all our insatiable curiosities?  We need faith that what we can't figure out or what people didn't write about isn't crucial to our knowing God fully.

Imprecatory psalms

A friend of mine mentioned the other day that some of the psalms seemed extremely violent, and as much as it is useful to express anger that one feels, these violent psalms seemed to be a bit over the top.  Well, as my faithful readers might know, I have been reading “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth”, and just today I came across the section dealing with imprecatory psalms, or psalms that identify the author’s feelings of hatred toward his enemies.  These psalms, while drastic or hyberbolic in language, provide us an example of how we can approach God with our anger, rather than take out our rage against our enemies, verbally or physically.  As inspired text, we can trust that  we can follow the psalmist’s approach to conversing with God about our negative feelings.

The sensus plenior

Remember the post from two days ago on John 19?  I mentioned that it referenced Psalm 22 and the casting of lots for Jesus' clothing, although Psalm 22 didn't really seem to prophesy about that event.  Well, I was reading today in "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth" that New Testament authors, since they were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what they did, were allowed to read into the Old Testament and use it as allegory for New Testament events (most relating to Christ).  This secondary meaning is called the sensus plenior or the "fuller meaning" of the OT text.  Modern day readers of the bible should not try to make up their own sensus plenior, however, because we are not inspired by the Holy Spirit to do this.  We are illumined readers of the text, not inspired authors.  So when we read the OT and only see it in its original context, that's fine.  The NT writers can use those older texts to help us understand the new covenant in a better way, but we should avoid doing this on our own.