Reading the Bible Again

I've read the whole Bible twice before, and I've studied various parts of it to varying degrees of depth.  I've heard countless sermons and read a hundred Christian books.  There's nothing, however, quite like returning to the Word and reading it again for the big picture.  There's a lot of truth to the idea that you can never see both the forest and the trees.  As I write this I'm wrapping up an intro New Testament course where, in 3 months, we took an overview of Romans through Revelation.  We've read the whole thing, along with a basic intro supplement, a book on Paul's theology, and a book on interpreting Revelation.  It's been awesome to see the forest in a short period of time, and three big ideas have jumped out at me more strongly than I'd ever seen before.

The teachings of Jesus and the apostles were amazingly counter-cultural.

We know this, instinctively, but the degree to which it's true amazes me.  When the apostles realized the extent of the "mystery" of the faith that God has welcomed the Gentiles into his covenant, their teaching went against a couple thousand years of understanding by the Jews.  The degree of controversy might be on the same level as if we suddenly realized the sun wasn't actually the center of our galaxy.  When Jesus and the apostles redefined the family roles for Christians and flattened the social order, they were going against the entire cultural arrangement of the Roman empire.  Today's equivalent would be if some group started arguing that capitalism wasn't the ideal economic system.  That Christianity was multicultural was about as confusing to Romans as could be.  The teaching of Christianity was turning the entire known world upside down because it was so counter to what culture taught.

The Bible is far more focused on good works than we often speak of.

Martin Luther endowed us Protestants with a strong conviction of "sola fide," or faith alone.  Indeed, the Bible teaches clearly that we are saved by faith alone.  However, this was never to the downplaying of good works - usually talking about the marginalized.  Paul, who said in Ephesians 2 that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works, immediately in the very next sentence says that we are created by God to do good works.  All of the New Testament agrees: faith that doesn't produce good works is not saving faith.  Jesus and Paul, not just James, taught the importance of good works.  We don't emphasize this nearly enough.  We talk a lot about having a relationship with God, and His forgiveness, but we don't talk much about what kind of life we need to live if we are to claim to follow Him.

Christianity in the New Testament was uncompromising and radical.

While Paul famously talked about being all things to all people, and Jesus' prayer in the Garden is the basis for people saying "in the world but not of it," the wholesale message of the New Testament is one of extreme refusal to compromise with the world.  The New Testament authors envisage or assume Christians who look radically different than the world.  I'm not sure what they would make of Christians who look just like atheists and agnostics all week long.  As I study Revelation, in fact, I'm coming to realize how radical it is - John only allows for two options - either you are one who "overcomes" (really his language is that of sacrificial death - martyrdom) or you are cast out.  Jesus does the same type of separation.  This book that we follow and believe is unbelievably radical in its propositions, and we soften their blows at our own peril.