The Purity Principle: A Biologist's Perspective on the Timing of God's Wrath and Salvation

This'll be a long post with lots of pictures, yay! Make sure to click "Read More" so you don't miss out! 

The Purity Principle

Thesis abstract: my observation and speculation that the reason the Fall happened before Adam and Eve had children, and that the Flood destroyed all of mankind except Noah’s family, is that God chose those times to avoid the far more complicated consequences of what would happen if only a part of mankind fell at once, or how to keep the Messianic Line undiluted from Adam to Christ. They appear to be decisions made mainly on the basis of demographics, with respect to their relation to sinfulness and its effects on the righteous who are living, keeping in mind God’s respect for the deterministic autonomy of man.

How can I say that with simple words? = Specific points in history have seen God’s intervention, I speculate, because of an implied, but (to my knowledge) inexplicit, goal of maintaining the spiritual purity of believers: first the patriarchs, then Israel, and then the Church.

Here’s my big idea: have you noticed, for instance, that every single person in Jesus’ lineage as given in Matthew and Luke (as far as can be told from Biblical background information on them) were saved? What are the chances of that? Now, there must certainly be unbelievers in His ancestry somewhere, BUT nevertheless the fact that there is at least one lineage containing an unbroken chain of belief in God, from father to son, from Adam to Christ, is a very conspicuous observation. And it begs analysis of why this might be the case.

I should clarify how I am using the word purity. You may have gotten the idea from the last paragraph, but let me dispel any possible misunderstanding. My notion of purity in this article concerns itself with spiritual genealogy. The physical lineage doesn’t matter; this isn’t promoting nationalism or ethnic divisions between people. In the context of Israel and the Church, Biblically, purity means you have believers inside and unbelievers outside. Let unrepentant ones in, and the passage “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” comes true. The idea is that unbelief is, from a demographic viewpoint, infectious. Leave it alone without a purge of some sort (does not need to be violent), and over time it has the tendency to totally corrupt everything. We see this in the example of Noah, whose culture had become so far removed from God (from the impurity of the God-believing Sethites intermarrying with pagan Cainites, which tainted the succeeding generations with the Cainite godlessness) that he was the ONLY man alive on earth who walked with God!—out of the millions or possibly billions of people alive at that point. As a student trained in biology, this makes me think of serial dilutions. 

Right-click on any of the following images to see them in a full size view.

Faithlessness, if tolerated by the faithful, and absent God’s intervention, has the effect of diluting faithfulness over time so that there is less and less faith on earth, by proportion of the total population, by every succeeding generation.

This is obviously a bad thing, and if God does not desire (as I believe the Bible gives us strong support to believe) for faithfulness to ever disappear completely from the earth, at any one time, then He would have to do something to protect the diminishing remaining faithful from the corrupting godlessness around them.

And this is, I believe, a supporting reason for God’s decisions in history to a) send the Flood, b) call Abraham out of Ur, c) the Israelite Exodus, d) the Zionistic theocratic laws for Israel that forbade intermarriage with foreigners, and ultimately why Jesus came at just the time that He did.

Naturally, the main reasons from a theological point of view, and a historical point of view, are different, more obvious, and more important. But every good thing done has more than one good reason for doing it, and I’m going to use the space after the jump to describe how God’s desire for the spiritual purity of the various people God has dealt with has, I believe, been a supporting reason for His decision making and His perfect timing.

About that Scarlet Thread.

I flipped on the radio as I drove up to the YMCA parking lot yesterday, and someone on one of the Christian-radio stations I get in my area was reading from Genesis, specifically the scene where Joseph ultimately reveals himself to his brothers. But first, he tests them.

For those who don't know, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, out of envious anger because he was their father's favorite son. They then deceived Jacob, their father, into believing that Joseph was dead. Benjamin was Joseph's brother by the same mother (the 12 tribes of Israel being born from 4 different women), and the youngest and most cherished of Jacob's children after the loss of Joseph. Joseph, now a governor in Egypt, hid a silver chalice in Benjamin's rucksack and then pretended that Benjamin had stolen it, in order to demand that Benjamin would remain behind as the other brothers returned to Jacob.

It was a clever plan. It would ensure that Jacob would come to Egypt, so that Joseph could be reunited with his father. And even if not, he now had his only immediate brother with him, either way.

Then this happened:

Judah Intercedes for Benjamin18 Then Judah came near to him and said: “O my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s hearing, and do not let your anger burn against your servant; for you are even like Pharaoh. 19 My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’ 20 And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age,who is young; his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’ 21 Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’ 22 And we said to my lord, ‘The lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ 23 But you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall see my face no more.’24 “So it was, when we went up to your servant my father, that we told him the words of my lord. 25 And our father said, ‘Go back and buy us a little food.’ 26 But we said, ‘We cannot go down; if our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down; for we may not see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’ 27 Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons; 28 and the one went out from me, and I said, “Surely he is torn to pieces”; and I have not seen him since. 29 But if you take this one also from me, and calamity befalls him, you shall bring down my gray hair with sorrow to the grave.’30 “Now therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the lad is not with us, since his life is bound up in the lad’s life, 31 it will happen, when he sees that the lad is not with us, that he will die. So your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father with sorrow to the grave. 32 For your servant became surety for the lad to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father forever.’ 33 Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the lad as a slave to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brothers. 34 For how shall I go up to my father if the lad is not with me, lest perhaps I see the evil that would come upon my father?”

I highlighted verse 33 for a very particular reason.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2014/02/25/free-ebook-the-scarlet-thread-through-the-bible/
As the above link reveals, the "Scarlet Thread" is a reference first used in a mid-20th-century sermon, and it refers to the existence of a "Story within the stories" of the Old Testament--that the story of Redemption, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is interwoven and echoed or paralleled in the vast majority if not every major Old Testament account. I had heard of this before and accepted the concept, but I hadn't realized its relevance to Judah the patriarch of the tribe of Israel by the same name.

"Now therefore, please let [Me] remain instead of [the one who you have determined is guilty] as a slave to my lord, and let the lad [be free to] go up with his brothers." What is this but the essence of substitutionary atonement and the kinsman-redeemer concept? Judah is revealing to Joseph--unknowingly, since he's unaware that Joseph is his long-lost brother--a drastic internal change, from a man who put himself first at the expense of his brother and his father's joy, to a man who puts his brother and father first, and willingly offers himself to take the punishment he doesn't deserve. Judah has become an illustration of Jesus Christ** in this passage.

Topical Bible Study I -- Righteousness and Goodness

Part of the reason for utilizing a blog is to hopefully bless others through the sharing of my personal experiences. Some of the random insights I've come across are too short to rise to the amount of material necessary for a full sermon -- so there aren't many you can find online about that. And they're obscure enough that the big-name commentary and theology-glossary sites like Biblehub (used to be Bible.cc but they've apparently purchased an easier domain name) and GotQuestions haven't devoted resources to it--or if they have, it's too hard to find among the thousands of pages on their websites. Therefore, be it thus resolved that I'll share some of these insights periodically and call them "Bible Study" or "Word Study" or other names like that, and make a series out of them over time. Here's my first attempt.

Righteousness and Goodness: A Biblical Word Study

The way I think of these words now is probably very different from the way a typical person uses them, because I think of them in Biblical terms. Without getting too technical, let me spell out the distinction between them, and then give some verses to back up my point.

Righteousness is one of two things: godly behavior (what we would usually think of) OR the positional righteousness that saints have because of the Cross--namely, that God considers us to be perfect like Jesus even though we're not, because we've traded places with Him so that our sins could be dealt with separately from us.

Goodness in the Bible can be something we do as humans, indicated by Galatians 5, but it is appropriate to translate the word 'good' as perfection, which is consistent because goodness as a fruit of the Spirit is something that we don't manufacture on our own, but it comes from God. 

Here's my super-simplified idea: No one is good, but some are righteous. Lemme show you my proof-text:

Romans 5:6-8
6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

This verse used to make no sense to me. What is the distinction between righteous and good? And why is righteous seemingly placed below good on an apparent grading-scale of holiness? The verses arrange it like so: ungodly-->righteous-->good. If righteous and good aren't the same thing, then what do they mean? And here's the answer:

Good Means Perfect

Mark 10:17-18

17 Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”

18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. 19

Jesus isn't saying that He's undeserving of being called good. On the contrary, He's subtly implying that since the 'rich young man' of this passage recognized Him as good, that He IS God. This is yet another example of Jesus' sense of humor, as I see it. But notice what He says--no one is good except God. And God is perfect. So this passage identifies the Biblical word "good" as equivalent to our modern English definition of the word "perfect." Consider this, and we'll look at another example of the same.

Genesis 1:31
31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Logically, since there was yet no sin in the creation, everything was still sinless, and thus perfect. So the use of 'very good' at the conclusion of the creation account is to be understood as 'totally perfect.' If I understand the scholarship, the word translated 'very' in the Hebrew signifies completeness, lacking nothing. 

Of interest, since I now have the conclusion that good = perfect in Biblical terminology, I wondered if this would hold up concerning Galatians 5 where one of the fruits of the Spirit in believers listed is 'goodness.' I looked up the word in GotQuestions and cross-checked the word in the Mark 10:18 passage with the Greek interlineary provided by BibleHub and verified that the exact same Greek word was used. Agathosune is the Koine Greek for 'goodness' as read in the New King James Version (the one I prefer to use on BibleGateway because it's less cluttered with hyperlinks), in both locations, and is understood to mean selfless acts for the benefit of others.

What really nailed it down for me was the James 1:17 passage that GQ included which said that "every good and perfect thing comes from God above" (paraphrased the ending), which affirms that goodness doesn't come from us but God, since God being the only perfect being, is the only One who can cause goodness to be done in the earth. 
Out of curiosity, I searched the BibleHub database for the Greek word translated as 'perfect' in that passage, and it is teleion, which appears to be the Greek counterpart in this passage to the Genesis 1 Hebrew word "very." Look at the 7 uses in the New Testament listed and see if you agree. I think a safe definition for teleion would be "completeness." Don't you?

Righteousness Means You're Not Righteous

I'm just being cheeky, here. But when you consider that righteousness is a word that comes with certain qualifications, you realize it's not a word that confers any opportunity for pride to a person. Not in itself, at least. The word "self-righteous" means that you think you are righteous in and of yourself, and this is wrong. The correct way is to be "God-righteous," to be considered righteous by God's standards. So how can we do this?

Isaiah 64:6
"all our righteousnesses [not even our sins!] are like filthy rags."

Titus 3:5
we were not saved because of any righteous acts we did.

Romans 3:21-26

“²¹ But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, ²² even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, ²⁶ to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

I highlighted the key part. Do you see that God, when He justifies the repentant sinner, GIVES His righteousness to them, through Christ? This means that God considers us righteous, but it's not our righteousness that we have, it's HIS righteousness. So that's why it's called 'positional righteousness.' We are righteous by virtue of our relationship to God, and not by any special ability to be good that we inherently have which other people do not. In fact, the whole point is that we don't have the ability to be righteous by ourselves, that's why God has to give us His righteousness. Otherwise we couldn't be saved. That's why the doctrine of substitution is so important. 

This is a repost of the video from "The Gospel in 60 Seconds." It explains substitution from 2 Corinthians 5:21 -- "He made Him, who knew no sin, sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

Summary

None of us are good. The good we do is by the power of God.

None of us are truly righteous. Those of us whom God considers righteous have the righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to us, we have no inherent righteousness of our own.

Good to know, huh? :) I hope this was an interesting and informative read. And now you'll know what I mean in future posts if I refuse to use the words good or righteous to refer to someone...or on the other hand, what I would mean if I do use those words.
Also see these previous posts for similar articles:

Jesus, King of Insults
Be Careful What You Pray For
Feeling Bad in a Good Way

~ Rak Chazak