The Nature of Revelation

In our on-gong study of Christianity 501, we are exploring what it means to be, as our mission statement states, "a Word-centered community and individuals ..." We've explored how the Bible is inspired and how it has been preserved over thousands of years. Next we want to better understand the nature of revelation. Being Word-centered obviously means taking God at His Word. We believe that God is not absent or silent in His creation. He has spoken a word to reveal Himself and His intentions.

There are two basic kinds of revelation. First, there is what may be known of God by everyone, believer and non-believer, without the Bible. This is called general or natural revelation. Every culture in the history of humanity has developed a religion, a belief in the supernatural. There is some innate human desire for transcendence, typically in response to the natural world. The other kind of revelation is called special revelation. This content cannot be deduced from the natural world around us nor from our experience or logic. This doesn't mean it is illogical; special revelation is information about God that only God can tell us.

General Revelation

Being Word-centered means we want to understand special revelation; we want to major in how God sees things. In Romans 1 God actually gives us His truth about natural revelation. So instead of taking a lot of time trying to trace the human history of religion from the ground up, let's look at it top-down, as it were, from God's perspective. What was natural law designed to do spiritually as well as materially.

Romans 1:19-20 says:

What may be known of God is plain to them (humanity) because God has shown it to them (natural revelation). For His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power, and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So people are without excuse.

People throughout time testify to the inherent nature of religion. Humans seem to know intuitively that there is a supernatural realm with gods or a God. They know this by looking at the world around them and, perceiving it's order, it's perpetuity, and it's grandeur, conclude that the One who made the world must be eternal, powerful, and something wholly other ("divine) in contrast to humans who are mortal, death-trapped, and by nature not very giving. By looking at the world, our ancestors perceived that there was a God. But logic and experience does not reveal a loving God, but an angry Deity.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (v.18)

The typical aboriginal response to the gods has been to appease supernatural anger by creating sacrificial victims to stand in place of themselves. Today's unbelievers are at least being honest when they conclude that if there is a God He must be angry as hell. God is angry because people fail to measure up; that's the meaning of the religious word "unrighteousness." People are supposed to be godly. Godliness must presume a standard of behavior since it cannot possibly refer to being God-like in terms of power and eternity. So, natural revelation tells people intuitively that there is a God and a standard of behavior we call morality. Some things are right and some things are wrong in every culture. Intuitively people know it is wrong to kill, wrong to rape, wrong to steal. In order to pacify themselves and deal with the issue of their own moral failure, people do all sorts of things to suppress the truth of natural revelation. People go the other way from God, what the Bible describes as "ungodliness."

The next verse sheds the light of special revelation on what God expected us to do in light of natural law and natural revelation.

For although they knew (that there is a) God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (v.21)

So, being confronted with natural revelation, people were supposed to honor God and be thankful to him. But instead of standing in awe, people "miss the mark;" that's the root meaning for the Bible words translated "sin." Sin isn't just doing bad things; sin is being someplace else than where your Creator meant for you to be. The word futile means running in circles, being unfulfilled. Futile thinking is being so smart you never find any answers or truth, just more and more questions. "The foolish heart is darkened;" this poetic language pictures the utter futility of discerning truth. Foolish in the Bible doesn't mean stupid as much as it means empty. As Proverbs says, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." The next verse clarifies that we're not talking about stupidity.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal humans and birds and animals and creeping things. (v.22-23)

Speculation replaces faith. What can be seen and touched (idols) takes preference over what is unseen and uncontrollable. Imagination and fantasy become the stuff of religion. Verses 24-25 suggest that the motivating reason behind idolatry is our base desires and carnal appetites (sex and violence).

So God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. (v.24-25)

God doesn't rush to the rescue to stop the human slide into perdition, but allows people to have their own way. The Garden of Eden story in Genesis 3 is one account of this process and in Romans 1 we have another perspective of the same reality. The sin of Eden is not that Eve ate the fruit, but before that, she dishonored God's Word, believes the half-truth of the Deceiver, and exchanges the truth of God for a lie. And such behavior is not without consequence, which we also intuitively know, but don't allow ourselves to think about.

Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things (malice, envy, murder, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander, boasting, etc) deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (v.32)

Intuitively people know they will face a judgement for how they have lived. The belief that there is a day of accountability for one's life is part of the natural world God made. Of course, atheists deny such notions. But if the special revelation is right, the atheist and agnostic are suppressing the truth, and like anyone who suppresses or represses truth, there is a price to be paid in health, relationships, and happiness.

One of the ways we ( all of us, not just atheists and agnostics) deny the truth of this is to say, "Well, I'm not a bad person." And the only credible response to this is to ask, "Compared to whom?" I wonder if our fascination with capturing the bad guy in police shows, westerns, and science fiction is because we need to see ourselves as innocent of the heinous and morally superior to what we think are society's antagonists.

As British comedian, Stephen Fry, said in an interview this week, "I am the reason the world is so screwed up. If we could all say and mean that, the world wouldn't be screwed up."

So, the bad news is we've all screwed up the world God made. We are under this curse. Everyone fails to measure up. And rather than confess this truth, we blame God or build idols and push the truth still further down making things worse and worse. No one makes it out of here alive.

Special Revelation

The picture is pretty hopeless when our thinking about God relies only on our reason, logic, speculation, and experience. Without special revelation, the existentialists are right: we might as well all kill ourselves. But the existentialists have not accepted the truth of special revelation. Special revelation is not from the world we see around us, or our logic, or experience.

But now a righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the natural law. The Scriptures of the Old Testament bear witness to it, but it is the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe/trust. (Romans 3:21-22)

There is a way to hit the mark. God introduced His big idea in the Old Testament but it gets worked out in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He's the only one who did make it out alive, even after going through death and hell. You could never invent the historical Jesus (although many still try). There's nothing in nature or human nature by which you could ever come to the conclusion that God takes the responsibility himself for keeping the moral law perfectly.

Great for Jesus, but how does it get transmitted to us? Most Bibles mis-translate Romans 3:22. It's not just faith in Christ, but the actual faith of Christ that is communicated to us as our act of justification (that is, being declared not guilty by God). You only receive this gift of faith by hearing the proclamation of the Gospel (the historical truth of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus). You can't do anything to deserve it or earn it. Jesus was the blood sacrifice, the appeasement and satisfaction for God's anger at my failure to measure up to God's standard.

In some ways I guess it's too bad that people can't discover this fact without going through the Scriptures, but then it wouldn't be special revelation. Contrary to what many boneheads would have us believe, all religions are not alike. No other religion teaches this Gospel. This is why Jesus said there is no other way to the Father except through Him. All other religions are based on the truth of natural revelation. Angry God demands obedience and submission while humans go on messing up their own lives and the world itself and then creating myths and fantasies about how God can be placated or safely ignored.

Christianity 501 is about becoming Word-centered, knowing that there is a way out of the continual disappointment that is my religious intention. God has acted in Christ to reveal a loving Father who waits for his children to come home. If you hear the Gospel and you can respond with faith even the size of a sesame seed, you will escape the coming wrath and face the judgement with the only Advocate who can ultimately declare you righteous before God.