Category Archives: Old Testament

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God uses little people—Exodus 6:28-30

The last post discussed how Exodus uses Moses’s genealogy (Exod 6:14-25) to underline the weak sort of vessel that God chooses to use. Exodus frames that genealogy with Moses’s fearful protest in the presence of YHWH: “I’m uncircumcised in lips; so how is it that Pharaoh is going to listen to me?” As with some other framing devices in ancient oral literature, this one is somewhat inverted, transposing the order of the two clauses (6:12, 30).

Because Exodus emphasizes the point by repeating it, it seems fair for us to do the same.

Yet the Lord had already answered Moses’s objection earlier. “I’m not a good speaker,” Moses protested, “and my mouth and tongue are heavy!” (4:10). “Who made a person’s mouth?” the Lord demanded. “I will go with your mouth and teach you what to say” (4:11-12).

Who are we to question God’s call? Who are we to evaluate by the world’s criteria? God will back up what he calls us to do. Some speakers who do not sound eloquent are nevertheless anointed by God in such a way that people’s hearts are changed. Eric Liddell did not have the best form, but God made him fast. Unlike George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards was not the most eloquent speaker, but the Spirit could fall when he simply read a sermon. Natural gifts are a blessing, but for God’s call we cannot depend solely on them. We depend on the one who called us, and he can gift us in new ways as he chooses.

If God gives you ways to fulfill your calling better, take advantage of them. But don’t think that God cannot use you because you are too small. God uses especially those who know they are small. As mentioned earlier, someone once introduced Hudson Taylor, nineteenth-century founder of a very effective ministry to China, as a very great man. When Hudson got up to speak, he countered that he was a very small man with a very great God. He understood the ministry principle revealed in this passage.

Ultimately we are called to speak whether people will listen or not (as in Isa 6:9-13; Jer 1:17-19; Ezek 2:5-7; 2 Tim 4:2-5). Sometimes the fruit comes later (cf. Acts 7:58). It is not our role to predict which seed will bear fruit, but we can trust that it will always be enough; God’s message will bear fruit in its time (Isa 55:10-11; Mark 4:14-20, 26-29).

Jeremiah lived to see his land devastated and his people enslaved; yet a generation beyond him, God’s people recognized the truth of his message and never again turned to physical idolatry (2 Chron 36:21-22; Ezra 1:1; Dan 9:2). Paul lamented that all Asia—the place of his greatest ministry (cf. Acts 19:10, 17, 20)—had turned away from him (2 Tim 1:15). Yet his writings have shaped and challenged the church for two millennia.

Moses could not enter the promised land, though God did allow him to see it (Deut 34:1-6). The next generation, growing up under God’s revelation, apparently treated Joshua much better, but Moses faced opposition even from his own people. Yet God fulfilled the purpose for which he raised Moses up. We later see the same principle regarding David: he died, “after he had served God’s purpose in his own generation” (Acts 13:36). We should never forget that we are each only part of the story. Yet we can also celebrate the privilege that God has given us, that we do get to be part of his story, a story that will echo throughout the ages of eternity.

Whether our role seems to us big or small, let us fill that role with our whole hearts, and give all the honor to the story’s Author, to the Lord himself.

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A boring genealogy—Exodus 6:10-26

God calls us to serve his purposes and does not wait for us to figure out whether he might use us. God takes weak people and shows his glory by using us. Moses eventually learns this lesson, despite his protests, and so can we.

After Moses questions whether God’s call in his life is accomplishing anything fruitful (Exod 6:12), God simply reiterates his call (6:13). But then Exodus suddenly digresses to rehearse Israel’s genealogy up to Moses (6:14-25), before returning to the topic where the narrative started (6:26-30).

This genealogy includes only three tribes: Reuben, Simeon, and Levi. Why these three? They were the first three sons of Jacob by birth order, so this was the sequence in which one would recite genealogies (cf. Gen 46:8-11). The list in Exodus 6 stops with and fleshes out more fully Levi’s descendants (6:16-25) because that that family tree brings us to Moses, Aaron, and their kin.

But since the list will focus on Levites, why does it first briefly summarize the clans of Reuben and Simeon (6:14-15)? When we memorize something in order, sometimes it is difficult for us to recall it out of order. One accustomed to orally reciting a full genealogy of Israel might be accustomed to noting Reuben and Simeon (Exod 6:14-15) before reaching Levi (6:16-25).

Nevertheless, granted that point, an experienced narrator easily could have skipped them. At some point an editor could have removed this oral feature; why mention again Reuben and Simeon at all? The answer to this question might be related to our next consideration.

Why rehearse this genealogy here? Why not at the beginning of Moses’s story, like genealogies introducing Noah (Gen 5:3-32, esp. 32) or Abraham (Gen 11:10-30, esp. 11:26-30)? Maybe the narrator wanted to get listeners engaged in the story before digressing for a genealogy? After all, there was a genealogy in Genesis 46, toward the end of the Joseph story (and after the climax of its action), so it may have been too soon for another genealogy at the beginning of the Moses story.

But granted that a genealogy might not have fit best at the beginning of Moses’s story, Exodus does not even name Moses’s parents until this point (though his brother Aaron is already part of the story at 4:14). And if there was to be a genealogy, why specifically at this moment? And why does the narrative of Moses’s questioning frame this genealogy as a digression?

This genealogy, like its context, helps to depict in stark fashion how mortal and finite Moses is. Reuben, Simeon and Levi were all patriarchs who sinned grossly. They thereby forfeited their place of honor to Joseph, who received the blessing of the firstborn toward the end of Genesis (Gen 48:5; 49:4-7, 26). Moses and Aaron are mortals whose lives were set in wider kin circles of other mortals. That is, they are historically contingent individuals, dependent on and existing in a series of temporally limited generations in history.

In other words, who is this little Moses to question the big, infinite, eternal God? Probably to reinforce such a point, the narrative repeats what it was saying before it digressed. “This was the very Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, ‘Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their hosts.’ They were the very ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt to bring the Israelites from Egypt—that was this same Moses and Aaron” (Exod 6:26-27). The Hebrew text seems emphatic.

God commanded small people to do a big thing; the big thing succeeded not because Moses and Aaron were so great, but because God is so great. God did make Moses increasingly into the servant that God was calling him to be, but Moses was a vessel, an agent, a messenger through whom God worked, and Exodus is emphatic about this point. He is to speak to Pharaoh what God spoke to him (6:29); that is what a messenger does. Messengers of kings can’t boast as if they are kings themselves; we cannot boast as if we originated the message. We are just messengers, agents of the one who sent us.

Moses himself would not have wanted it any other way; he was, after all, the lowliest, humblest man in the whole world (Num 12:3). That was one reason that God could use him. God uses the weak things of the world to confound the powerful (such as Pharaoh), that the honor might belong to the Lord himself alone (Isa 42:8; 48:11; John 5:44; 2 Cor 13:4; esp. 1 Cor 1:27-29).

We all know ministers who got messed up because they got big heads, forgetting where God had brought them from. Should God choose to use us because we are weak, we must never to forget he chose us as weak vessels (cf. Deut 6:10-12; 1 Sam 15:17). He gets the credit, and we have the privilege of watching what he does even through us.

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Mission Impossible—Exodus 6:9-13

Have you ever been in an impossible situation? But if you’re following the Lord’s plan, he’s got your back.

The Lord summons Moses to go back to Pharaoh, so that Pharaoh will let God’s people go (6:10-11). God does not promise that Pharaoh will comply on the next try, but he is sending Moses nonetheless. Already rejected by the Israelites at this point (6:9), Moses protests that this is an insane predicament. His own people have not listened to him, and does God think that Pharaoh will listen to him (6:12)? Moses is still not very persuaded; from the beginning, he has insisted that he is not qualified, and Moses probably does not understand why God is still not listening to Moses’s objections.

Moses reminds God that Moses cannot speak well (6:12). Moses had already explained this to God in 4:10, but now he uses even more shocking language. Moses literally describes himself as one “uncircumcised in lips.” Perhaps he evokes his previous resistance to God’s demand that he circumcise his son (4:24-26), or implies that his lips are like those of Gentiles. But it is probably simply a way of depicting his lips negatively, so that his speech cannot persuade Pharaoh, before whom ambassadors would present skillfully prepared speeches.

Many of us can probably sympathize with Moses. We can be grateful for communicators who provide slick, precisely-timed presentations, but most of us are not at that level. Some people have great content and are great communicators, but most of us think of ourselves as fairly average. Yet God chooses whom he wills for particular tasks. Many of Billy Graham’s jokes fell flat, but God commissioned him with a mantle of authority in evangelism that drew people to Christ. Some people gifted in healing are terrible preachers, and some who preach well do not have great track records with healing gifts. God has gifted me to write after thinking matters through, but I don’t think quickly enough to excel in debates. When God calls us to do something we’re not great at, we might still not be great at it. But it is something that God wants done.

Undoubtedly much to Moses’s dismay, the Lord simply reiterates his instructions (6:13), this time to both Moses and Aaron (the latter initially appointed to compensate, if need be, for Moses’s reticence to speak, 4:14). These instructions pertain to both resistant entities: Israel and Pharaoh (cf. 6:12). Moses and Aaron are to bring the Israelites out of Egypt—something humanly impossible for them to achieve.

Only the Lord can make that happen, and, from Moses’s erroneous perspective, the Lord’s meddling so far has only made things worse. Pharaoh will surely not listen to YHWH. But Moses does not yet understand what YHWH can do to persuade Israel, Egypt, and, last of all by God’s design, Pharaoh himself. Along the way, Moses himself will come to understand. God’s instructions do not always make sense to us, even in Scripture, but God knows exactly what he is doing.

Moses faced opposition not only from Pharaoh but even from his own people. We should not expect all our service for the Lord to be easy. When you face discouragement and doubt as to why God would call you, remember that you are not the first to face this.

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The unexpected God

God comes in ways we don’t expect, for example:

  • A chosen nation descended from a couple unable to have children (Abraham and Sarah)
  • A deliverer of his family initially scorned, nearly killed and ultimately sold into slavery by his own older brothers (Joseph)
  • Another deliverer initially rejected and often resisted by his own people (Moses)
  • A line of scorned and rejected prophets, culminating in a rejected Messiah
  • The true deliverer and ruler of humanity, first executed by them as a criminal on the accusation of dishonoring the emperor by claiming to be king
  • Even today, God often does more through the lowly and unseen than through what seems biggest and best to his own church (and certainly to the world)

Only the truly humble (or duly humbled) recognize and embrace his work. We dare not judge his gifts by the paper they come wrapped in. And when we’re dealing with God, we can expect the unexpected—God will work out what is best, but often not through the means that we expect.

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Thinking about some characters in Exodus

Recapping some of the character development so far in Exodus (in the earlier Bible studies):

(1) Moses. Moses seems perfectly understandable from a human point of view. Imagine that you have heard of the God of your ancestors, but you’ve never seen a miracle. Your people have been enslaved by another people who claim that their gods are much stronger. But you are now old and you have made peace with your life, giving up on youthful dreams of changing things. Suddenly the God of your enslaved people appears to you and commissions you and ruins your satisfied life. You’re told to confront the most powerful leader in the world, who claims to be backed by lots of powerful gods. God gives you some signs, but these are fairly low-level magic tricks as far as the leader’s own paid signs-workers are concerned.

Nevertheless, under duress from your ancestors’ God you confront the powerful leader and give the best signs that you’ve got. Sure enough, he’s not convinced, and things get even worse for your people. Your own people realize things are worse and turn on you. Do you think you would be happy with your commission?

How many of us are ready to give up sharing our faith, or praying for someone, etc., when something does not go the way we want? Do we really have much more faith than Moses? Before long, Moses does grow in faith (although his people take a lot longer). That means that there is hope for us too. We can learn from the example of Moses because many of us are a lot like him.

(2) The Hebrew foremen. The Hebrew overseers also are perfectly understandable from a human point of view. Say someone comes to you promising deliverance and working a few tricks. You trust them and stick your neck out, but then you get burned. Things get worse for you rather than better.

We all know there are false prophets, and we’ve all been burned by sales gimmicks that turn out to have strings attached. Once burned, twice shy, as the saying goes. Moses, who has been away for years while you have been laboring as slaves, confronts Pharaoh. And as a consequence, you get loaded with more work and eventually get whipped. Would you still trust Moses? Of course, Hebrews have less excuse for their unbelief after the plagues start, but as of Exodus 6, you can see why Moses is still in the doghouse with his people.

The Hebrew foremen are a reminder to us of our own need to trust God’s plan beyond what we can see or even be sure about on a human level.

(3) Pharaoh. It might be harder to imagine Pharaoh’s point of view. If you’re arrogant enough to think the universe revolves around you, as Pharaoh presumably did (with the encouragement of his supporters), you probably wouldn’t be reading Bible studies or devotionals. But imagine somebody who from childhood has been groomed to believe that his destiny is to rule the world’s greatest empire. The gods supposedly support this, and Pharaoh himself is supposedly divine.

You think that the pitiful deity of the Hebrews has let them stay in slavery for generations. Thus he seems weak, in contrast to the splendor of Egypt’s gods displayed in monuments and artwork all around you (never mind how much of it was built by slaves and other conscripted workers). The only way to answer impudence and laziness is to crack down. Given his context, Pharaoh’s incalcitrance is not too unbelievable. It is nevertheless misinformed and deadly.

The narrative focuses especially on Moses; he is the protagonist with whom we are most invited to identify. The main driver of the action throughout, however, is a different character: YHWH. YHWH works, sometimes behind the scenes and yet now in often obvious ways, to fulfill the promises he made long ago to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He doesn’t stoop to speak to arrogant Pharaoh directly; he raises up instead a descendant of the patriarchs (also a descendant of Levi, who with Simeon was not a particularly nice guy in Genesis). It’s God who stretches Moses and proves that God was right all along in calling him.

It’s God who predicts Pharaoh’s obduracy, and who shows himself more powerful than Pharaoh’s gods at each step (cf. Exod 12:12). (At the same time, he shows himself more merciful than Pharaoh in allowing reprieves each time that Pharaoh backs down, until Pharaoh reneges on his word each time and escalates the conflict.)

It’s God who has the long haul planned out, when his servants are ready to give up in the short run. We don’t imagine things from God’s point of view, but we can see God’s plan unfold in Exodus. Indeed, we already see part of it promised in Genesis.

When the world and your own life seem out of control, remember that God has a plan that’s bigger than we can see from our finite, time-bound perspective. That’s not an excuse to stay in slavery or to be content with injustice. It is a challenge to grow in faith and cooperate with God’s plan to change things, even when that plan extends far beyond what we can see. Let’s be ready for whatever God calls us to do. And most certainly, let’s be obedient to what God has already called us to do, sometimes individually in prayer, and always, corporately and individually, in his Word.

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Independence, individualism and loyalties—Judges 17:6, 21:25

Some cultures understand loyalty better than others do.

Some cultures identify strongly with their leaders. In some cultures, people are prepared to die for the king, the queen, or (more often) their nation. Sometimes such loyalty may be blind or misinformed, but it gives these loyalists a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.

More relevant to the point here: by providing a sense of what it is like to be loyal, it makes it natural for believers in those cultures to express loyalty to our king Jesus in a similar way.

There are serious strengths in individualistic cultures, including appreciation for independent, critical thinking (though most people even in such cultures still fall in line with majority views, which can function as a sort of massive peer pressure). But in our individualistic cultures we often downplay loyalty. We are not loyal to kings and sometimes not even loyal to families. My own country from the start has prided itself on its hard-won independence (celebrated every July 4, which is also my birthday). “Loyalist” was not considered a positive title.

With that independent streak in our culture comes both the strengths and weaknesses of our individualism, which can also influence us as Christians. On the positive side, we should be able to stand up against peer pressure that would make us at all disloyal to Jesus; we should be willing to stand even alone for the sake of truth and what’s right. On the negative side, sometimes we tend to stand too alone, as if we don’t need the rest of the body of Christ.

When taken to its extreme conclusion, the danger in such a culture is that everyone can end up doing what is right in our own eyes—a sort of moral anarchy (Deut 12:8; Judg 17:6, 21:25). This can also make it more difficult for Christians in our culture to envision what loyalty should look like.

We need to think of elements of loyalty (to friends, ideals, family, nation, work, or whatever else) that help us understand what loyalty should look like. Also we often admire our heroes and root for them, and this can give us at least a faint appreciation for what our admiration for our Lord should be like.

But even if we cannot envision it in any other way, we need to overcome this cultural blind spot.

Loyalty to Jesus recognizes that he is our king and lord, and we should live wholly for him. He is also our hero who at great cost overcame and won salvation for us. We rejoice when he is honored, and feel pain personally when people dishonor him. We live and die for him, because our lives are wrapped up in him.

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Families Separated at the Border—Genesis 12 and Romans 13

This post is in response to U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions citing Romans 13:1-7 with respect to taking children from their parents at the border.

To be fair, the larger context of his statement is that nations need to be able to legally protect their borders. But the larger, larger context is response to the issue of separating families. Although this post will touch on biblical thoughts related to immigration policies (which will not be resolved here), it is the attorney general’s appeal to Scripture that has invited my wading into the issue.

(Also, up front about me: my wife and kids are legal immigrants from Africa. All came from very dangerous situations, but given the limited number of refugees brought into the U.S. each year, probably none of them could have come as refugees. As of two years ago, the estimated total of involuntarily displaced persons globally was 65 million. The U.S. currently has a cap of 50,000 refugees allowed per year, which would be just over 0.08 % of the total. In the special circumstances of 2016, Germany admitted perhaps ten times that number, mostly from the Middle East.)

But is there biblical precedent for separating families at borders?

Well, sort of: when Abram entered Egypt as an economic migrant or refugee, Pharaoh took Sarai from him (Genesis 12:10-16). God judged Pharaoh’s household for what Pharaoh did to God’s servants (12:17). Some families separated at the U.S. border today might also be God’s servants.

Obeying the Government in Romans 13

But the attorney general was referring instead to Romans 13:1-7. Unfortunately, there is plenty of precedent in church history for governments exploiting this passage to justify conformity to laws that they did not have to create or apply the way they did—including by slaveholders and the Nazi and apartheid regimes.

I am not implying moral equivalence with Hitler’s regime. I am just saying that quoting Romans 13 does not prove its applicability for every situation. Paul wrote that lengthy (paragraph-long) admonition to just one church—the one in the capital, where Christian witness and relations with the imperial government were most at stake. There had also been recent unrest about paying taxes. Add to that unrest in Judea, which in just over a decade would break out in war. It already had a number of other Jews trying to explain to the government that many Jews were loyal and not about to start a revolution.

Speaking of revolutions, the British applied Romans 13 differently than the colonists during the States’ War of Independence. (I personally think the British had a better case than does the attorney general. But now, aside from stepping outside my expertise, I may be getting too controversial …) For further comments on the proper context of Romans 13:1-7, see especially the comments of Wheaton College professor Lynn Cohick (soon to be provost/dean at Denver Seminary and president of the Institute of Biblical Research) in USA Today.

When I was a young Christian, my father at one point forbade me to talk further with my brothers about the Bible. When I tried to persuade him of his need to accept Christ, he said I was disobeying the verse that says to honor one’s parents. The Bible said to obey one’s parents. What was I to do? I felt guilty either way, but chose what I thought was the lesser of two evils. I met with my younger brother Chris to disciple him when my parents were asleep. I kept attending church and sharing Christ on the street despite being aware of my father’s displeasure. I wish I had understood back then that Jonathan and Michal were right to protect David from their father Saul, who wanted to kill him. My father and I eventually had a wonderful relationship. But I share this account reluctantly (and for the first time publicly) to point out that sometimes we have to disobey authorities, though it must be only when absolutely necessary.

The Bible and immigrants

There are more complex issues about immigration, Scripture, and security that I cannot address here, but I will survey some Scripture before going on to questions of application.

God commanded his people to welcome and care for foreigners (see especially Lev 19:34; 23:22; Deut 10:18; 14:29; 24:14, 17, 19-21; 26:13), even embracing as “citizens” (members of Israel) those willing to become part of their people (Num 9:14; 15:14, 16, 26, 29-30; 19:10; 35:15; Deut 1:16; 26:11; 31:12). (Thank God: this provides some of the Old Testament basis for gentiles being grafted into God’s people in the New Testament. Any of us who are ethnically gentile should appreciate God’s kindness in welcoming us as fellow citizens with his people—Eph 2:19.)

  • “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Lev 19:34, NIV).
  • “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Deut 10:19, NIV).
  • “Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge” (Deut 24:17, NIV).
  • “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow” (Deut 27:19, NIV).

What might apply to economic refugees might apply even more to refugees from violence, such as the family of Jesus traveling to Egypt to evade Herod’s brutal regime.

The hard part: how does this apply to public policy?

I will offer some suggestions about what I think, but a reader who protests, “You are outside your expertise!” would be correct. We all do our best to apply the Bible as wisely as possible. I am doing my best in this section, but this is not where my qualifications lie.

Security issues differ today from those in ancient Israel, and that I am not sufficiently qualified regarding modern public policy or economics to speak as directly to these issues. Most nations back then did not restrict entry or control borders to the extent practiced today. It would have violated ancient protocols of hospitality, not only for Israel, but also for most of their “pagan” neighbors. Of course, individuals or families migrating differed from a massive group like Israel passing through someone’s territory. Edom and some other nations perceived them as a threat and turned them away (Num 20:18-21).

So some rightly point out that Abram was not an “illegal” immigrant. (In fact, he was warmly welcomed, albeit partly because Pharaoh took a liking to his wife. A great “me too” passage, but that is for another time.) Neither, however, was Abram a “legal” immigrant in the modern sense. I don’t know how much paperwork he had to fill out, but he certainly didn’t have to wait six months or a number of years to enter the country.

I also recognize that part of the stated reason the U.S. government is separating children from their parents is to prevent detaining them with their parents in unhealthy or penal settings. Part of the stated reason for detaining the parents is that the influx of immigrants is becoming too great for the social systems around the border to handle. (I dislike this reasoning, but while my biblical expertise informs my ethical convictions, nobody consults me on public policy matters.)

It is also true that few nations can think of absorbing all the tens of millions of refugees fleeing violence around the world today, whether from governments or gangs. Happily, some nations, such as Germany, Lebanon, Uganda and Jordan, have been accepting and sometimes absorbing massive numbers of refugees, despite many problems along the way. More prosperous and stable nations naturally do become greater magnets for those in need.

I do not have a solution, but I believe that one ethical component of such a solution that would benefit everyone is to invest heavily in improving the stability of economic development of other nations, not least those at one’s borders. We all know that various factors make this ideal impossible in many places, but a country that could invest in building a massive wall on its southern border (for probably much more than $20 billion) might also be able to make staying at home more attractive for people in some countries.

According to the intergovernmental Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which supports democracy and market economics, the U.S. ranks a respectable second (at some $31 billion) only to the European Union (at some $92 billion) in development aid to other countries. In terms of its development aid per capita, however, it ranks eighteenth, and in gross national income, it spends closer to 0.17%, ranking twentieth. That is almost $100 for every U.S. resident; many of us as Christians give far more than that through Christian or other NGOs. But Norway, by comparison, invests more than $800 per resident. What we learn from such figures certainly is limited: how money is used often matters more than how much money is used. But my point in citing these figures is to remind us that there remains room for us to do better—at least for those of us with biblical values.

Applying biblical ethics to secular governments?

Again, I have to concede that my above considerations from Scripture do not dictate what the United States must do. Ancient Israel was a theocracy supposed to obey God’s virtues; as an individual Christian I recognize that non-Christian nations will not abide by specifically biblical virtues, such as loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev 19:18), loving foreigners as oneself (Lev 19:34; cf. Deut 10:19), or loving or defending the value of all human life. Aside from the issue at hand, I also understand why a nation not exclusively composed of Jesus’s followers might not want to practice Jesus’s even stronger ethic, given to his disciples, of turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:39; Luke 6:29).

Secular nations or businesses or other institutions will not work by Christian ethics. Still, those of us who are Christians had sure better heed these principles ourselves. Moreover, those of us who live in democracies are expected to use our voice and vote to promote values that we hold. Love of neighbor, by the way, also appears as the epitome of biblical ethics later in the chapter that Jeff Sessions cited, in Romans 13:8-10.

Before returning to matters of immigration, one more digression for U.S. readers: what precipitated this post was a Bible quotation used in a political context, not a particular U.S. political party. I believe that, for those of us who do not believe that human life begins only at birth, caring for the vulnerable includes caring for the unborn. Loyalty to Christ must trump any partisan loyalties, whether on the right or the left.

Immigrants in life-threatening situations

Obviously, many people migrate for better economic opportunities rather than life-threatening circumstances; further, some nations might limit others’ immigration for the sake of the economic welfare of current residents (I admit my lack of expertise here).

Nevertheless, sometimes people’s lives are in danger, as is the case for at least some immigrants to the United States from Central America. A law restricting entry in their case would be clearly unjust. I for one would ignore such a law if genuinely necessary to save lives, and would recommend other endangered persons to do so.

Before some readers take me as a political subversive, let’s make that hypothetical situation more concrete. U.S. immigration policies during the Nazi genocide in Europe denied entry to thousands of Jewish refugees, many of whom then died under Hitler. The U.S. did not yet know about the gas chambers or ovens, but by 1938 they knew very well that Germany was persecuting Jews. Congress, apparently in keeping with the general sentiment of the U.S. public, rejected a bipartisan bill to admit 20,000 Jewish refugee children in 1939. You know what came afterward.

What about famine? Abram didn’t face danger from violence, but he did face danger from famine, which can kill people. My wife’s entire neighborhood became refugees during the civil war she was involved in (further details in our book, Impossible Love). They lacked adequate food and clean drinking water. When, after the war, she returned to the ruins of her home, she was overwhelmed by the silence. Most of the neighbor children had died.

Does Romans 13 justify the issue at hand?

Some issues might be debatable, but others are not. The question that started this post is not just immigration. It is the use of the Bible to justify, as ethical, detaining families at the border even to the point of separating children from their parents. The attorney general may have been quoting the verse simply to say that it’s unethical to break a nation’s laws by entering it illegally. In ordinary cases might be true, though again, most Christians would make exceptions for danger to life, smuggling Bibles for persecuted Christians, and so forth.

But Romans 13 hardly resolves the question of whether those laws themselves are ethical. And when given in answer to questions about separating children at the border, an answer implicitly addressed instead to the immigrants is beside the point.

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How grace reads the Law—a sample in Psalm 119:1-37

The psalmist celebrates the blessedness of those who observe God’s law, not doing wrong (Ps 119:1-3). God genuinely desires this ideal of full loyalty (119:4). Yet the psalmist is not yet claiming this ideal as his own life: “O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!” (119:5, NRSV/ESV). (Later in the psalm the psalmist will both claim that he keeps the commandments and ask God to help him keep them.)

Nevertheless, once he is wholly right with God, he can read the law not with the shame of failure but with praise: “Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments. I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances.” (119:6-7).

He recognizes that he cannot do this by his own effort alone. He seeks God, but asks God to enable him to obey. “With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments” (119:10). “Put false ways far from me; and graciously teach me your law.” (119:29, NRSV). “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will observe it to the end” (119:33, NRSV). “Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart. Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight” (119:34-35, NIV). “Turn my heart toward your laws, and not toward selfish gain (119:36). “Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity, And revive me in Your ways” (119:37).

It is grace, not self-condemnation, that enables us to do righteousness. For those who are in Christ, we start with the gift of God’s righteousness, both in his sight (no condemnation) and by his power (with his new nature now at work in us). Approaching the law as a means of self-justification is the wrong way to read Scripture; it always leads to condemnation. Reading Scripture as a message of grace, trusting in the heart of the God who gave His Son for us, is the right way to read Scripture, reading not by a law by works but rather by a law by faith (Rom 3:27), a law that subjects us not to sin and death but an experience of God’s word empowered by the Spirit (8:2).