God’s Grace to His Enemies

While reading Genesis I have been particularly struck by how gracious God is even to those who are his enemies, and those who will become his enemies.

When Hagar is driven away from the mother of the covenant child Isaac, God has mercy on her and promises her that her child will become a great nation. That child is Ishmael, who is the father of the Arab Muslims today. When God determines to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness, Abraham intercedes for any righteous who may dwell in the city. Because of this, God has mercy on Lot, and allows him to escape the judgement with his daughters. By incestuous union, those daughters bear both Moab and Ammon.

Ishmael, Moab, and Ammon later become Israel’s greatest enemies and stumbling blocks to the people of God.  But God not only allows them to prosper when they are evil, but he ensures that they will come into being by acts of special preservation.

Of course, we also remember that God uses this to his ends.  Later from Moab comes Ruth, who will be one of the great women in the line of Jesus Christ.  And as long as we are talking about those who were the enemies of God, we must remember ourselves.  Christ prayed for those who were crucifying him.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
Romans 5:10

God’s Mercy is His Covenant Love

The Kyrie Eleison is one of the best-known parts of the traditional liturgy of the church, when the congregation brings petitions to God, each one of them sealed with the alternating phrase: “Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy.”  I used to think that was kind of unnecessary ritual self-abuse.  I mean . . . yes, we are in need of God’s mercy, as we are sinners.  But our sin is forgiven in the confession.  Why then does the Kyrie take its place during the prayers of the faithful later in the service?  Why does the liturgy require that the people beat themselves up over their own sin during the bringing of petitions?  In order to understand this, we again need to put Old and New Testament together and look at them side by side.

I am sure I am saying nothing particularly new here, and to some it might already be common sense.  But it is new to me, at least with this degree of clarity, and hopefully will be helpful to any who read it.  I came to this realization recently while constructing a metered version of Mary’s Magnificat from Luke 1:46-56, which I will hopefully set to music in the near future.

My attention was drawn to verse 54.  “He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy.”  The Greek word for mercy used here is ἔλεος in its basic form.  And by a strictly lexical definition, it means exactly what it sounds like.  It is an attitude or action of pity and kindness to those who are less fortunate or undeserving.  And it certainly means that.  We are undeserving and pitiable creatures to God, and the goodness he shows to us is mercy indeed.

But the phrase “in remembrance of his mercy” drew me deeper because it is very similar to Old Testament constructions such as those found in Psalm 136, where the psalmist proclaims that God’s “steadfast love endures forever.”

The Hebrew word for “steadfast love” is hesed.  In fact, in the King James Version, it is translated as “mercy.”  But that does not really begin to describe what it means.  The ESV’s “steadfast love” and even the NLT’s “faithful love” are closer.  Hesed is constance, faithfulness, covenant keeping, and ever-abounding love.  It is the love that God has for his people, which the Old Testament writers celebrated time and again.

So the question this raised in my mind was: could ἔλεος be legitimately translated as “steadfast love”?  Can it be taken as the Greek form of hesed?  And if not, then what word in the Greek expresses the same idea?  Of course, to determine this I turned to the Septuagint.  And the answer was quite clear.  So clearly obvious that I’m sure I can’t possibly be the first to see it, and I wondered why I hadn’t heard it before.

In the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, which was produced nearly 300 years before Christ and was accepted by the apostles, the word hesed is consistently translated as ἔλεος.  The gospel writers composed their accounts with a pen in one hand and the Septuagint in the other, as it were.  They used the language of the Greek Old Testament.  So if the Septuagint so consistently used the word ἔλεος to render the Hebrew word hesed, we can be sure that the gospel writers used ἔλεος to denote the same concept.

Old Testament hesed = New Testament ἔλεος.

When we read the New Testament and see “mercy,” then, this should bring an added dimension to how we understand it.  It is not just the mercy of a judge who acquits, or that of the benefactor who rescues.  Yes, it is that.  But there is a lot more to it.  God’s acts of compassion, his forgiveness, and his salvation are a result of ἔλεος—his hesed—his covenant faithfulness and love to his people.

So when we say “Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy,” we are not only asking God to forgive us our sins and look upon us with pity, though that is part of it.  But more than that, we are asking God to remember his covenant faithfulness, just as the Old Testament saints called on YHWH to remember his hesed.  Mary understood this through her deep-rooted faith in the God of Israel.  She understood that in sending Jesus, the Savior, God had finally come to rescue his covenant people.

Because he remembered his mercy.

Names and Roman Weddings

“Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia.”
“Wherever thou art Caius, there I am Caia.”

I first came upon this phrase when reading Quo Vadis, and thought it was the sweetest thing ever.  After having given it some thought, I like it even more.  These are the words that were spoken by a Roman bride at her wedding, probably in response to the groom’s question, “What is your name?”

After the bride’s response, the groom would then (ideally) sweep her off her feet and carry her across the threshold into his home.

I think the phrase is pretty much the most succinct and, at the same time, possibly the most romantic one I have ever heard or read of in a wedding.  But there are specific reasons I find it so, which transcend mere sentimentality.  Those Romans were not much for bandying about words.  Not like the Greeks, in any case.  The less said the better, if it got the point across.  And these words are loaded.

We are all familiar with the traditional wedding vows, and the Roman one is much like them.  One might even find that our modern form originates here in part.  In this phrase, the bride vows to go and to be wherever her husband is, whenever he is.  Eternity is implied.  The phrase encapsulates the marriage vow (at least the bride’s side of it) into five words in the Latin.

It is also a symbolic renaming.  The bride declares that she is taking the name of her groom.  In this case, not literally.  There were dudes not named “Caius” who got married in Rome.  The name Caius/Caia (or Gaius/Gaia) means happiness and rejoicing.  An appropriate description of a wedding, intended to portend the fortunes of the new couple.

But no matter the given names of the couple, the symbolism remains.  The bride declares that she will henceforth be identified with her husband, as she has been identified with her father until this point.  In fact, by using the name Caius/Caia, she pledges not only her physical presence but her heart and her emotions as well.  Wherever he rejoices, there she also will find her joy.

To a Christian, what does this mean?  Can we possibly learn anything from the pagan Romans?  Sure, why not?  In the same way that the bride pledges her life to her groom and takes his name upon herself, we also have pledged our lives to Christ and taken His name.

The Church is the Bride of Christ, and every one of the baptized community is a member.  From the point of our entrance into that body to now, and until Christ returns, we should ever be saying:  “Wherever thou art Christ, there I am Christian.”

In fact, we do something like this every week before we come to the Lord’s table, our earthly foretaste of the Lamb’s marriage supper.  When the officiant asks the congregation: “Christian, in whom do you believe?” we respond, “I believe in one God the Father Almighty . . . And in one Lord Jesus Christ . . . And in the Holy Spirit.”

“In whom do you believe?” is a question very much like “What is your name?”  For we become identified with that in which we believe.  Our Credo is an affirmation of our baptism into the name of the Triune God.  And having confessed Christ and having declared our identity in Him as a body, we are then welcomed to the wedding feast at His table.

Love or Idolatry?

Observations on romantic love: the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church and gave His life for her.

Love necessarily requires sacrifice. However, there is an important distinction between sacrifice for the bride and sacrifice to the bride.  The former is what Christ does.  It maintains the proper structure of authority and headship found in the Bible.  On the other hand, the latter reverses the authority structure, and corrupts the symbol.

When a man sacrifices for a woman he loves—when he is willing to give up convenience, comfort, and life for her—he is properly reflecting Christ.  However, when he gives in to her every whim and becomes subservient he has ceased to reflect the truth of Christ and the Church.  He is now sacrificing to her and has crossed the line into idolatry.