The Human Book — Warrior+Priest

Consider Acts 12.

Those of us with even a small amount of church experience or background will no doubt think of it as the chapter that details the miraculous rescue of Peter from Herod Agrippa’s jail. An angel appears while the apostle is shackled among soldiers whose duty it is to guard him until after the Passover. Chains fall off, gates open on their own, and Peter is delivered by the power of God back to the church.

This is a familiar story to most Christians, as it is told and retold often from our earliest Sunday school and VBS lessons all the way through to full-grown, big church sermons. The power of God to deliver His people from harm is a potent and recurring theme throughout the Bible. It is something we are meant to treasure and cling to when times get tough. Not only that, it is part of the amazing series of events that helped to define the miraculous birth of the Church after the ascension of Christ and one of the preeminent accounts in the book of Acts.

But make sure not to miss the first three verses of the chapter:

About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.

Stop there. Don’t rush to get to the dramatic miracle. Let the circumstantial dynamics that surrounded Peter while he was in jail sink in a little.

James, the brother of John, one of Zebedee’s sons and one whom Jesus named a “Son of Thunder” (affectionately, I believe, in Mark 3:17); James, one of the inner circle of Christ’s closest disciples who got to see the Lord of Glory transfigured on the mountain (Matthew 17); James, whose brother would go onto write five books of holy Scripture including the Revelation: here is a man who knew the living Christ more closely and literally than anybody reading (or writing) this blog, who walked with Him and heard His voice and witnessed His many miracles and witnessed Him raised from the dead and saw Him ascend into Heaven.

And he just gets offed.

Herod, in an apparent move to gain favor with the Jews whom he ruled (in order, no doubt, to mollify his own Roman overlords), seizes and murders one of the apostles of the early church, probably on a trumped up, fallacious charge of idolatry (check out Deuteronomy 13:12-15 for a possible insight as to why the Jews would kill him with the sword). About ten years after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, the first martyred apostle meets his fate.

Now consider Peter’s miraculous rescue in light of all of this. What do you think Peter was thinking about, chained as he was in his cell? What do you think was running through his mind? What about the people that were amazed to welcome him back after his rescue (in vss. 12-17)? Even after Peter’s deliverance, can you imagine what must have comprised the thoughts of most of these earliest Christians? Would you not have thought, as I’m sure I would have, about why Peter was delivered but not James?

So often contemporary Christianity focuses on the dramatic, miraculous acts of God at the expense of the much more human, much more usual, and much more mundane and depressing aspects of the biblical accounts. James, a brother, a son, a friend, perhaps a husband and father, and an apostle, gets cut down by the enemies of the Gospel… and life just moves on. Two verses describe the atrocity and then the account just continues on to other things.

Make no mistake: this is no commentary on how God viewed James or his gospel work or his ministry or his life. It is simply the nature of the dark fog in which we all live that we trust as the sovereign will of God. Life as we know it as broken people can itself be broken, incoherent, frustrating, and senseless. So often we cry out to God for a reason why and receive as an answer only the faint echoes of the Scriptures that make their way through our minds:

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. (Psalm 116:15)

For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1:21, 23)

For He delivers the needy when he calls… From oppression and violence He redeems their life, and precious is their blood in His sight. (Psalm 72:12, 14)

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. (II Corinthians 5:1, 8)

And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him. I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:17-18)

The Christian hope is that what awaits us on the other side of death is so far beyond comprehension or comparison to our current situation that we need not fear death. Or persecution. Or injustice. Or unfairness. Or victimization. And yet, those things remain very present realities in a Christian’s life and must be wrestled with as they come. If our hearts do not break for those who have gone on before (because we know that what they have received is so spectacular as to defy language’s ability to adequately describe it), they should still break for the current state of the world and for the lostness of the humanity that inhabits and animates it.

So often, our consolation is like that of Job: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted… Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know… I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” (Job 42:2-3, 5-6). We find ourselves caught between the rock of our circumstances and the hard place of the will and power of God.

And it is those moments that we learn to trust. Do we really trust that God knows what is better for us, even though all we feel is nothing but senseless pain? Do we believe that God still has our best interests at heart when our world seems to be falling apart around us? Do we remain hopeful that what waits for us on the other side of this misery is worth it?

God is not oblivious to the hard reality of our lives. It is within the dank, dark pit of sinful human existence that He does His work. He is for us, but right now, He is for us in the midst of the evil, having experienced it firsthand Himself in order to purchase for us the right to be called the children of God (Hebrews 4:15, I John 3:1).

So the Bible, divinely conceived, concocted, and compiled, turns out to be not merely divine, but also profoundly, honestly, and unabashedly human. It does not shirk away from the brutality that is mortal life, broken by sin and so often defined by pain. It is honest both about our current reality and our desperate need for God in the midst of it. The Bible, though inspired by the Holy Spirit of God and miraculously handed down to us through the vast stretches of time over which it was written, stands as the most truthfully and powerfully human book we could ever read.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. – Hebrews 4:15

For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. – Hebrews 2:18

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. – I Peter 5:10

But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. – Acts 14:19-22