Monday, April 29, 2019

Olympians Rage in Vain

Psalm 2 opens with the nations raging, the peoples plotting, and the rulers of the earth conspiring against Abba (God the Father) and Jesus his Anointed One (the meaning of Messiah and Christ). Even today these Olympians attack the integrity of church buildings, Christians, and especially the Bible (vs. 1-2). They experience the liberating Word of God as a challenge to their false self-centered freedom of doing whatever they want to do regardless of the consequences (v. 3).

Abba laughs (v. 4). He also speaks to the nations and their rulers with wrath (v. 5). Remember: God is love. When we reject God’s love, we experience that love as wrath. God’s wrath is his loving rejection of our unloving rejection of him. This fiery love is scary because our Olympian society, culture, and personality find it unpleasant and persistent. And what is Abba’s wrathful word to today’s Olympians? Even the many who currently busy themselves in his churches? By raising Jesus Christ from the dead, he has established him alone as Ruler of Rulers forever (v. 6). He has made Jesus Christ alone the truth who sets us free to love and leads us to eternal life. He has made truth, freedom, love, and vitality our definitive future and doomed falsehood, power, indifference, and death to destruction.

Yes, Jesus Christ alone is Abba’s only-begotten son by nature (v. 7). All the nations, peoples, and rulers are under his rule already no matter how severe the tantrum they are now throwing (v. 8). Even now his liberating words of love are breaking our rigid Olympian society, culture, and personality into harmless pieces for his glory and our good (v. 9).

So the psalmist concludes by encouraging all of today’s Olympian rulers to be wise and worship Jesus Christ with joy (vs. 10-11). They can find eternal life only in subordinating themselves to him (v. 12).

Copyright © 2019 by Steven Farsaci.
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