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Romans 60: On That Day… (15:8-12)

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Introduction

Our views of evangelism are far too tiny, too anemic, and too weak. Evangelism is not a matter of recruiting enough people so that your church can pay its bills. Evangelism is not a matter of getting market share. Evangelism is not a matter of the Israelite army settling for a portion of Canaan. Evangelism is about the salvation of the whole world.

The Text

“Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers: 9 And that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name. 10 And again he saith, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people. 11 And again, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud him, all ye people. 12 And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust” (Rom. 15:8-12).

Summary of the Text

Jesus Christ was a minister of the Jews, a minister of the circumcision, in order that the promises that God made to the patriarchs might be confirmed (v. 8). Jesus was a rabbi of Israel. But He was not just as rabbi of Israel, but was also the desire of the nations. He came in such a way that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy to them (v. 9). In support of this, Paul cites 2 Sam. 22:50 and Psalm 18:49—confession is to be made among the Gentiles, and songs of praise sung in their midst (v. 9). Then he quotes Dt. 32:43, where the Gentiles are invited to join in the praise (v. 10). Then he quotes Psalm 117:1, where all the nations are called upon to sing praise to the Lord (v. 11). And then he tops it off with a most instruction quotation from Isaiah 11:10, where the prophet tells us that the root of Jesse will spring up, that He will rule over the nations, and that the Gentiles will in fact hope in Him (v. 12).

A Minister of the Circumcision

Jesus Christ came to the Jews, and He came to them as a servant, as a deacon. He is described here as a minister or servant of the circumcision, in order to accomplish two things. The first was that He came in order to fulfill the promises that had been made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But the second was based on the first, and it was something that the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had not understood. The promises made to the patriarchs of the Jews were not exclusive promises, but rather promises that encompassed the whole world. The confirmation of these promises therefore overflowed into the Gentile world as well—Jesus was a minister of the circumcision so that the uncircumcision would be able to glorify God for His mercy. This was not an esoteric aspect of the promises given to the fathers. Abraham was told, remember, that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. The Lord had pointed to the stars and had said, so shall your descendants be. And as Paul argued earlier in Romans, Abraham believed God in this before he was circumcised, making him the archtypical Gentile. And he was then circumcised, making him the archtypical Jew. He truly is Father Abraham.

Let the Gentiles Sing

As the great King David was on his death bed, he sang about how he would praise the Lord in the presence of the Gentiles (2 Sam. 22:50). A variation of this is found in Ps. 18:49). The Gentiles watch while David praises the Lord. But they are destined to be more than spectators. Remember that Dt. 32 has been a key to understanding Paul’s view of Israel’s apostasy. In that verse, the Gentiles are invited to praise the Lord, together with His people, for the Lord will avenge the blood of His servants. The Gentiles are invited to sing and rejoice in the context of the coming demolition of Jerusalem (Dt. 32:43). Then Paul cites the very short psalm, where the nations are invited simply to praise the Lord—His merciful kindness is great toward us (Ps. 117). The Church needs to stop preaching to the devil’s stragglers, and start preaching to the world.The salvation that the Lord is bringing upon the earth is by no means limited to the Jews. This salvation is for all the world, all the nations, all the peoples, and all the tribes. The Church needs to stop preaching to the devil’s stragglers, and start preaching to the world.

Is Isaiah Out of His Mind?

The next quotation, from Isaiah 11, is quite instructive. Let’s look from the beginning of that chapter.

1And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: 2And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; 3And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: 4But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 5And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. 7And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. 9They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. 10And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious” (Is. 11:1-10).

What is Paul doing? He is citing this passage, along with all the others, in order to justify his mission to the Gentiles, which he began two thousand years ago. There are two things we must remember in this regard. The first is that these days of glory do not arrive, wham, overnight. The leaven works through the loaf, and the mustard seed grows. But the second is that Isaiah tells us what the loaf looks like fully risen, and Paul tells us that the leaven was at work in the loaf in his day. Is Isaiah out of his mind? No, but we who call ourselves Christians are frequently out of ours. Why do we not believe what the prophets have spoken?

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Romans 54: Time For The World To Get Up (13:11-14)

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Introduction

The Incarnation of the Word, and the resurrection of that Word from the dead, has entirely remade the world. We fail to recognize this because we don’t understand history—and the way the world actually was before Christ came into it. But humanity lived through a long night indeed, and when Christ came, the sun rose. Men still sin, but the sun is up. We can still have cloudy days, and even storms, but the sun is up—and cannot be made to ever go down.

The Text

“And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom.13:11-14).

Summary of the Text

We have seen how the believers are to submit themselves to the old authorities. They were true authorities, but their rough governance of humanity was in the process of being replaced. We have also seen how believers are to treat one another lawfully from the heart, which is what love is. And so now we come to some very interesting applications. The apostle Paul takes the Decalogue, the meaning of love, and pushes it into some interesting corners. Paul says that the Roman Christians should know the time (v. 11). What time was it? Time to wake up, because salvation was nearer than when the first Christians first believed (v. 11). What is this approaching salvation? It is the cataclysm that Paul has been preparing the Roman Christians for—the final conclusion of the Judaic aeon and the formal, unfettered commencement of the Christian aeon. Note that the night is far spent (v. 12), and that the day is “at hand” (v. 12). Paul is not talking about the second coming, many thousands of years in the future. The response to this immediate eschatological reality is to cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light (v. 12). Once up, with the panoply on, what are these believers to do? They were to walk honestly, because it is day time (v. 13). This honest walk excludes six things—riotous partying, drunkenness, fornication, wantonness, strife, and envying. Put off the old man, and instead put on the Lord Jesus (v. 14), making no provision for the flesh or its lusts (v. 14).

Armor of Light

How should someone act if they are dressed out in the armor of light? What should their behavior be? Right away, it excludes certain things. Orgies or riotous parties are out. So also is drunkenness. The next sin is translated chambering, but the word means sexual immortality. After that is a rejection of sensuality, lasciviousness, or filthiness. Then comes strife or quarreling, and after that is envy. We are dressed in the armor of light, and we are to walk as the children of light (Eph.5:8). We are to do this in a way that produces the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of light—that which is good, right, and true (Eph. 5:9). Set your minds on heavenly things (Col. 3:2). Whatever is pure, (Phil. 4:8), think about that.

Put Off, Put On

These instructions are given to Christians. When you were first converted, you put off the old man, and you put on the new man, Jesus. That was a fundamental action. But it is not the kind of action that never needs to be repeated. We repeat this motion throughout the course of our lives. We put off, and we put on. We put off the old, corrupt way of being a human being, and we put on the new and glorious way of being a human being—the Lord Jesus.

No Provision

An important part of what it means to put off the old man concerns the way we speak. “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers” (Eph. 4:29). “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Eph. 5:11-12). Right after this, Paul uses the same image he used in our passage here, that of waking up from sleep so that Christ the sun could shine on us. One of the disgraceful things in the modern church is slack entertainment standards, being willing to be entertained in our homes by people that we wouldn’t have in our homes. But digitizing a dirty joke doesn’t clean it up any. And then Christians begin speaking and joking that way themselves—although the Bible plainly says not to. Wake up, sleepers.

Eschatological Ethics

The Bible calls us to holiness because of who we are—we are named as Christians in our baptism. But the Scriptures also summon us to purity because of where we are in the story. That is what is happening here.

The Roman Christians were told not to behave in a certain way because it was morning. Christ is the sun, and this is why this contextualization does not make it inapplicable to us in our situation. The first Christians were staggering down for coffee at 5:30 am. We are busy at work, mid-morning. Does this reasoning apply to us, less or more? We are engaged in the work of the Great Commission, which consists of racking people out of their beds. As the morning progresses, this becomes even more of a necessity. As the day progresses, we have to stay with it. Some lazy men have trouble getting up, which is what Paul was addressing. Other lazy men have trouble working through the day, which is what we are addressing—but the point is the same. Don’t be like the archbishop who once joked that he didn’t get up early because it made him proud all morning, and sleepy all afternoon.

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Romans 45: Theology and Doxology (11:33-36)

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Introduction

Paul’s response to the very dense theology he has been working through is to break out into song. His theology bursts forth into doxology. These are not two unrelated things—rightly done, rightly understood, theology leads inexorably to praise. Let’s consider why.

The Text

“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:33-36).

Summary of the Text

The wisdom and knowledge of God have deeps that cannot be comprehended (v. 33). His judgments and His ways are beyond finding out (v. 33). Who could begin to undertake such a search (v. 34)? Who has known the mind of the Lord (v. 34)? Who could dare to volunteer to walk into the throne room of God to give Him advice (v. 34)? Who is able to give to God in such a way as that God needs to repay him? Who can place God in debt (v. 35)? These are all rhetorical questions, the assumed answer to which is no one. And the reason the answer is no one is that all things are of Him, and through Him, and to Him (v. 36). He is the one responsible for all that is, and He is the one who receives glory for all that is (v. 36). And amen.

All Things

Take a glance at the number of stars revealed in a photograph from the Hubble telescope. The God we worship knows every one of those stars by name (Ps. 147:4). The hairs on every head are all numbered (Matt. 10:30)— about 7 billion people are alive today, and the average number of hairs on a head range between 90,000 for redheads and 140,000 for blonds. God numbers them all. Not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of the Father (Matt. 10:29). God simply spoke and the vast expanse of heavens and earth came into being (Gen. 1:1; John 1:3). The human body contains somewhere between 50 and 75 trillion cells, each one an exquisitely made library, each with the capacity to manufacture what the information in its library tells it to. Every last bird that hops from branch to branch in the deepest wilderness is known to God (Ps. 50:11). Every raindrop is prepared by God (Ps. 147:8), and does not hit your forehead accidentally. He gives food to ravens (Ps. 147:9), and uses ravens to give food to the prophet (1 Kings 17:4). Galaxies, oceans, mountains, nations, planets, giant stars, and all such things added together are just dust on His scales (Is. 40:15). “Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast” (Ps. 36: 6). His understanding is infinite (Ps. 147:5). It must be—for of Him and through, and to Him, are all things (Rom. 11:36). Never forget the Godness of God.

Mighty to Save

Now this God—can He save the Jews along with the world? Of course He can (Rom. 11: 23). God is clearly able to do this. But will He? If He is the one who cares for sparrows the way He does, what should we conclude from this? We are worth more than many sparrows (Luke 12:7). The psalm that tells us a number of these glorious natural gifts is also the same psalm that tells us that He gathers the outcasts of Israel (Ps. 147:2). The God who governs is the God who saves. We do not divide up the world—the God of nature is the God of grace. The Creator is the Redeemer, and the Savior is the one who spoke all things into existence.

Remembering Two Things

This is the doxological conclusion to a very densely reasoned passage of theology, chapter after chapter of it. But for many people, the chapters immediately prior can be summed up by “God can damn who He wants; deal with it.” With regard to His authority and power, that is true enough (Rom. 9:18). We don’t deserve His mercy. He has the strength to condemn us, and no injustice would be involved if He did. But this stretch of Romans deals with two fundamental issues. The first is the divine nature of His authority. God is God, and we shouldn’t try to pretend otherwise. The second is that this is power of the God who has determined to save the world. Two things must be remembered—His power and His intent. Can He destroy? Yes. Will He save? Emphatically, yes. We need to be humbled down to the ground, true enough. But this humbling is not the prelude to the world’s damnation. It is the threshold of salvation for all men, for all who believe. And here is the kicker—the world will believe.

Who Has Been His Counselor?

When we emphasize (as we ought to) how strong the power of His right arm actually is, we then make the mistake of believing that He is going to use that strength in order to strike the world, and all the sinners in it, such that they are blown to smithereens. Christians who emphasize God’s power tend to believe that He doesn’t really want to save anybody, but will save a few reluctantly. Those who emphasize His love (forgetting his justice, holiness and power) tend to veer off into a soupy sort of sentimentalism. We insist upon both. God hates sin, and He will make short work of it on the earth. God loves the world, and He did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world (John 3:17), but rather that the world through Him might be saved.

Now, by “saved” we mean saved. You mean saved saved? Yes—Africa, South America, North America, Europe and Asia, Australia, and the weather stations in Antarctica. All those people? Yes—red, and yellow, black and white. All those. As soon as this sinks in, what do we want to do then? We set up shop to be His counselor. We tell Him that all this is eschatologically irresponsible. We search out His judgments and bring them under review. His ways, which are past finding out, we claim to have found out.

Nebuchadnezzar came to understand that God’s hand of rule could not be stopped (Dan 4:35). But neither can He be stopped when He stretches out His arm to save.

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Romans 42: Smoke in the Eyes (11:12-16)

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Introduction

There are two dangers when it comes to the interpretation of biblical prophecy. The first, fairly common among evangelicals, is to picture the fulfillment in lurid and garish colors, filled out with a crass literalism, but which fully retains the right to be called “fantastical.” Such fulfillments, were they to happen, would be amazing. But the second error is to learn about the first error, and then to retreat into an acceptance of the kind of biblical fulfillments that could conceivably escape the notice of virtually every historian. These things were “spiritually” fulfilled, you see, and you can’t expect them to alter the flow of history in any visible way. But this is not how the Bible teaches us to think. We are not to give way to a wooden literalism when it comes to prophecy, but neither are we to dilute it all into a homeopathic nothingness. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9). Eye has not seen it now, but all eyes will see it then.

The Text

“Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing?? of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches” (Rom. 11:12-16).

Summary of the Text

Paul’s argument is that if the apostasy of most of the Jews was such a blessing to the Gentiles, how much more of a blessing (to the Gentiles) will their fullness be (v. 12)? Paul is speaking to the Gentiles there at the church in Rome, and he makes a big deal out of the fact that he had been designated to be an apostle to the Gentiles (v. 13; Gal. 2:8; 1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11). The reason he does this is that he wants to provoke his brothers the Jews, and to provoke them into salvation (v. 14). And as it bends around again, this provocation of the Jews will be a blessing for the whole world (to whom Paul was sent), resulting in “life from the dead” (v. 15). Paul then argues that if the first fruits were holy, then the lump would also be holy. If the root were holy, then the branches would be also (v. 16).

Learning How God Plots Stories

This is how God works. When something negative happens, like the apostasy of the majority of first century Judaism, this is because God is working on a great blessing for the world. And we need to note that this apostasy was not just an unfortunate series of events, or a sad time. It was a disaster for the Jewish people, a cataclysm in which over a million people lost their lives. Jesus spoke of it as the very worst moment in the history of the world (Matt. 24:21). This was to be understood, in the words of Paul here, as the “reconciling of the world.” Just as the death of Jesus, another great disaster, was our salvation, so the destruction of the Jewish nation was designed to open the door for everyone else.

We think we get this, and we would reason that if that is true, then when blessing returns to the Jewish people, then that will mean that we have to see-saw back to a time when the Gentiles are excluded and cursed. Not at all, Paul says. If the Jewish fall was a great blessing for us, how much more will their restoration be an even great blessing for us.

The Jewish Nation

Just as the apostasy did not include the remnant (the one that Isaiah had prophesied, and that Paul discussed a little earlier in Romans), so also it does not include the many Jews who have come to faith in Christ over the centuries. In the first few centuries of the Church, there appears to have been a large migration of Jews into the faith. But all that notwithstanding, the Jewish people as such have not believed in the Messiah that all their sacred books talk about. Those Jews who have come to Christ have tended to lose, over the course of a few generations, their identity as Jews. For example, our family is a Gentile family, even though my wife’s great grandfather was a Jewish rabbi. Those Jews who have kept their cultural identity have been those who have kept their distance from Jesus Christ. Paul is here talking about a Jewish return to Christ that would be as public and as visible as their rejection of Him was. This was not something that a number of individual Jews could just drift into. This prophecy will not be completed until we can say that Judaism is Christian. And when that happens, there will be no middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2:14).

Godly Provocation

The word Paul uses for “provoke to jealousy” in verse 11 is the same word he uses here in verse 14. He wanted to make much of the fact that Gentiles were coming into salvation, were coming into the inheritance of Abraham, so that Jews would be stirred up by this and respond by coming to Christ. This is all in Deuteronomy, and it demonstrates that we are talking about something that goes far beyond what we evangelicals consider to be a “good testimony” about how Jesus saved us. We are talking about cultures, and we are talking about cultural jealousy. This tactic of God’s was predicted in the latter part of Deuteronomy, and it is the same way that God worked when He was blessing the Jewish during the times of the older covenant. This is how God works. “Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?” (Deut. 4:6-7).

The Jew Thing

One of the great tragedies in the history of the Church thus far is that we have not understood the evangelistic potency of cultural identity and cohesion, rightly held and rightly understood. Instead of provoking the Jews to jealousy, which is God’s game plan, we have been envious and jealous of them, falling into the anti-gospel of anti-Semitism. And then, when we are feeling bad about that (as we ought to) we as a result abandon all attempts at building biblical culture and cohesion, believing that this sort of thing results in things like the Holocaust. In all this, we are refusing to do what our Master told us to do. We are being like that servant in Proverbs, the one who is smoke in the eyes of the one who sent him (Prov. 10:26).

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Romans 29: Too Deep for Words (8:19-27)

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Introduction

The glory welling up with us is the future of creation, and it is the future of the entire creation. This is a much neglected passage, perhaps because the view from here is so stupefying. We don’t quite know how to take it in – but that is all right because the Spirit will help us.

The Text

“For the earnest expectation of the creature waiters for the manifestation of the sons of God…” (Romans 8:19-27)

Summary of the Text

The creation, everything that was made, is earnestly looking forward to something. That something is the manifestation (the unveiling, lit. the apocalypse) of the sons of God (v. 19). Remember, we have just defined the sons of God as those who are being led to put the old ways to death (vv. 13-14) and who hear the testimony of the Spirit to their hearts (v. 16). When these sons come into their own, the creation will see what it is longing for.

Th reason the creation longs for this is that it will signal the end of creation’s distress. The creation was not willingly subjected to vanity (v. 20), but God did it, intending from the beginning that this futility would look up in hope (v. 20). When that hope arrives, the creation will be delivered from its current bondage, and will share in the liberty of these newly manifested children of God (v. 21). Note Paul’s striking image here – the whole creation is in labor (v. 22). Not only does the mother long to deliver, the baby longs to be born (v. 23). We also groan, and Paul lets us know here what the day of “manifestation” is. It is our final adoption as sons, meaning the redemption of our body (v. 23). He is talking about the coming day of resurrection, the last day.

The creation was subjected to vanity in hope (v. 19). We were saved in hope (v. 24). But it would’t be hope if you could see it, right? Not seeing it enables us to cultivate patience in the groaning (v. 25). Because we can’t see, we can hope. But because we can’t see, the Spirit has to help us in our infirmity (v. 26). We don’t know what to pray for, because this is a baby that has never been born before. So the Spirit groans along with us (v. 26), and His groans are deeper than words. In the meantime, Jesus searches our hearts and He also knows the mind of the Spirit. He is the one who prays for us constantly, and this means that everything is lining up (v. 27).

A Few Oddities

Paul says a few strange things in passing here. The creation was made “subject to vanity” (v.20). The creation is currently struggling under the “bondage of corruption” (v. 21). The whole creation groans and travails (v. 22). But when you couple all this with the false ideas of perfection, you could get the idea that any entropy at all is a sign of the fall. So we should ask (and answer) a few questions about the unfallen Adam. Could he have shuffled a deck of cards before the Fall, or would he have kept coming up with one royal flush after another? Did the leaves of the forest floor of Eden (were there leaves on the forest floor?) form perfect geometric patterns? When Adam ate the fruit he was allowed to eat, did that fruit get digested? In other words, the fact that the creation groans with longing now does not mean that it was made out of stainless steel before. That is not perfection. That was not the world God declared to be so good.

Three Groanings

Never forget that this section of Romans is part of a larger, sustained argument. We need to be reminded of this because there are some memorable phrases here that tend to get quoted out of their context (“all things work together,” “the Spirit groans,” etc.). Paul is here driving toward the eschaton, the day of resurrection. That is the subject. The creation groans, looking forward to that manifestation. We share in that groaning, longing for the same thing. And the Spirit shares in our groaning, meaning that He is straining toward the same end. What is that end? It is the apocalypse of the sons of God; it is glorious liberty; it is our final adoption, the redemption of our body. This is the central meaning of predestinationn for Paul (Eph. 1:5), and the famous predestination in the next section. We are predestined to be conformed, and we groan in the direction of that predestination. Those who truly affirm predestination groan. This is not a denial of a more general foreordination; it rather depends on it. But they are not the same.

So the creation groans toward something. We groan toward that same thing. The Spirit sees us struggling and so He enters in as well. And our great High Priest looks down on the whole thing, lifts it up to God, with His intercession and amen (look ahead to v. 34).

The Apocalypse and Day of Delivery

The entire created order is heavily pregnant with power and glory, and you sons and daughters of God are the baby. This means history is driven before the Holy Spirit of God, and the entire point of the whole narrative is to reveal the Church for who it is – the bride of Christ.

History is pregnant, and there can be no thought of an abortion, however much the devil would love to bring one about. Of course, we know that our abortion culture is murderous, and it is. Blood does pollute the land. But there is something else going on here. The abortion culture that believes itself to be so powerful is actually a desperate and pathetic form of wishful thinking. AS early as Genesis, we knew that the seed of the woman would be born, and He would crush the serpent’s head. And we know now that the sons of God will be revealed in all their glory. This is not some horror flick, where some chthonic monster will be born into the world. No, it will be power, light, glory, and radiance. And when we gaze into that resurrected radiance, we will see… one another.

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