100 Prison Meditations: Cries of Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain (6 page)

Sayings Missing in the New Testament

It is important to observe in the Bible not only what it contains, but also what it omits.

One interesting feature of the New Testament is that Jesus never asked anyone to tell Him about the circumstances of his sins. He knew men to be sinful, so the details of their trespasses, be they small offenses or huge crimes, did not interest Him. Instead of probing in dirt, He went from one man to another saying, “Be of good cheer, son; be of good cheer, daughter. Your sins are forgiven.”

Another important feature is that no one ever said to Jesus, “Please, forgive me,” or, “I am sorry.” On the last evening all the apostles fled and one denied Him. Later, when the resurrected Lord appeared to them, it would have been appropriate for them to ask His forgiveness. None did.

Whoever looked into Jesus’ face saw there so much love and goodness that he felt, “With Jesus forgiveness is self-evident. His willingness to forgive me is much greater than my readiness to ask for forgiveness. His wish for me to be saved is far greater than my own. His desire for my fellowship in heaven is greater than my wish to go there.” They did not approach Jesus with words of apology, but only trusted in His goodness.

There is something else that cannot be found in the New Testament: Jesus never turned down anyone’s invitation. To refuse an invitation would be foreign to His nature. You just invite Him into your home and heart. He accepted invitations even from His worst enemies. He will surely accept yours. He gives us His word: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).

Let us be attentive to the verses missing in the Bible.

Words Missing in the Bible

Now that, being a prisoner, I have nothing, I realize the importance of the fact that in the Old Testament the verb “to have” never occurs. It does not exist in the Hebrew language, not even in modern Hebrew. To lack even a word for expressing the idea of having is real “not having.”

It is sinful to have. All the first Christians who were “possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 4:34,35). They were Jews and discovered, thanks to Jesus, what had long since been revealed through the genius of their language: it is wrong for God’s people to have. A child of God does not truly have by owning, but can only administrate things that really belong to the Creator.

In Greek the word
echo
is used for “to have,” but it has several other meanings as well: “to be able,” “to be possessed with,” “to count,” “to do,” etc.

The idea of “having” is a false notion. l was born without my consent—I did not choose the time or place, my bodily shape, or my inherited character. My life developed in circumstances that were largely not of my own forming. I do not “have” my life. It proceeds according to laws established beyond myself. Nor do I have the things pertaining to life.

The renowned tenor Caruso was obliged to sing in the opera on the day of his mother’s death, in order not to disappoint the thousands of fans who had come especially to hear him. After the performance he exclaimed, “I believed in the beginning that I had a voice; now I realize the voice has me.”

Even joys and sorrows are given or withheld by others, and in the last analysis, by one other Being.

Not only is the infinitive “to have” absent from the Hebrew vocabulary, but even the genitive case is little in use. In Hebrew one does not normally say “the house of a man,” perhaps because nobody is meant to own one. In everyday Hebrew speech the genitive is replaced by the so-called “construct case,” which consists in shortening the word for the thing possessed. Thus any person or object reduced to being a possession loses value.

In the Lord’s Prayer the word “I” is missing completely, although it is one of the most frequently spoken words in the prayers of men.

There is one thing worse than praying before an idol: praying before one’s own image and bowing to it.

Christians should not be I-centered, but God-centered. The “I” should completely disappear in prayer, even as a reminder of the identity of the person who prays. True prayer is an outstreaming of love so pure that all that matters is the good of the whole and the will of God.

Another word that is completely absent from the Bible is the word “history.” History is the record of events as they succeed each other in time. In history an event is assumed to be the effect of preceding events which are its cause. All this is illusion. What I see in a cinema also seems to be a succession of events, but the projectionist could have run the film backwards, showing the events in reverse sequence, or the film could have been spliced to put the events in a different order. Everything is predetermined by God. The pen with which God has written all things that will happen until the end of the world has long since dried, and will not again be dipped in ink to write an alternative version.

Interesting Biographies Missing in the Bible

The New Testament recounts repeatedly and in great detail the life history and conversion of the persecutor Saul of Tarsus to Paul the future apostle, although there must have been other biographies which, at the time Acts of the Apostles was written, seemed more interesting than that of the persecutor.

Paul said, “Many of the saints I shut up in prison…and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme” (Acts 26:10,11). Not only had he killed Christians, he broke their resistance and made some of them become apostates.

These were the first renegades and martyrs of Christianity, but the Bible does not report their names or even tell the story of their suffering, betrayal, or heroic death.

Perhaps the biblical authors wished to prevent future abuses in the veneration of saints. In later centuries, stories of martyrs were told in minute detail and often embellished with fantasy.

The Bible says about the fellow prisoners of Old Testament Joseph, who was put in charge of them, “Whatever they did there, it was his doing” (Genesis 39:22). Likewise, the lives of martyrs are Christ’s doing. It would not have been biblical to make a great fuss over them; they themselves would not have desired it.

Why should martyrs be so honored? What they have done is not the maximum, but the minimum required from a disciple of Christ. Even to be like Christ in life and death would be below what could be expected of him. Whoever is
like
Christ is not Christ. We are meant to
be
Christ. We are the body of Christ—so we are He. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The union between the believer and God is perfect. Martyrdom is a small thing in comparison with this calling.

Other highly interesting biographies are absent from the Bible. We are told in Acts 2:41 that on one day, in Jerusalem alone, three thousand souls were added to the church. Did they remain steadfast? Did they, in their turn, bring others to the church?

Why do you need answers? We continually hear about many who accept Christ at evangelical mass rallies. What happens with these people afterward? Are their decisions sincere?

Whoever asks many questions gets many depressing answers. The Bible teaches us to rejoice that some men had at least partial good will and good intentions, even if only for one day.

A Samaritan woman brought her whole town to Christ (John 4:30). Had she continued like this, no unconverted cities would have remained in Palestine. The Bible tells us only what she did on that one day. After this a veil is thrown upon her life.

A thief, Zacchaeus, promised under the Lord’s influence to give half his goods to the poor and to restore fourfold what he had stolen (Luke 19:8). The Bible story concludes with his promise, but we are not told whether he fulfilled his pledge. Luke rejoiced that a thief showed even a single moment of contrition.

Jesus praises an officer as being the most faithful man He had ever met (Matthew 8:10). It would seem to be instructive to know how this officer continued his life. A man who is faithful today might not always remain so. However, the Bible does not give us whole biographies, but teaches us to rejoice in the little and transitory good we find in men.

Echad and Iachid

An ancient Chinese parable tells of a hunter who went out to set traps with his son. The son, despite all warnings, set the traps on the road, instead of waiting to arrive in the forest. Soon many people were caught in the traps, including the boy’s mother and sister. Next, love and truth and hope were caught, and finally even the road fell into the snare. The world remained without a road.

After a long time, the father convinced his son to unlock the traps. The road was so happy to be free that it stretched out until the whole world became a road. “How beautiful
my
road is now!” exclaimed the boy. The road, hearing that someone claimed it as his possession, died. Since that time there has been no road in the world.

It is a pessimistic story. There
is
a road to God. The Bible is His revelation, a map that must be read with careful attention to its wording. This road also cannot be claimed by anyone as “mine”; it is God’s only.

The Bible’s main teaching is that God is one; our faith and baptism are one. But the Hebrew language has two expressions for the concept “one.”

Iachid
stands for absolute oneness, as in Genesis 22:2: “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love…”
Echad
represents composed oneness, as in the literal Hebrew for Genesis 1:5: “It was evening and it was morning, one day.”

God is never called
iachid
in the Hebrew Bible, but always
echad
, a composed unity. The literal translation of Deuteronomy 6:4, the keystone of the Jewish faith, is: “Listen, Israel, Jehovah, your gods [plural] is a Jehovah of composed unity [
echad
].”

“God was never alone, but being the only One, was many, for He was not wordless, nor wisdomless, nor powerless, nor counselless” (Hippolyt). “There are always present to Him the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit through whom and in whom He made all things freely and spontaneously” (Irenaeus).

God knows Himself with perfection. The Eternal Son possesses all the attributes of the Father whom He knows. The two are united in perfect divine love. The Holy Spirit also has all the attributes of the Father. The three entities are one. This oneness is
echad
, composed, a oneness between entities who also retain their distinction.

The atom, nature, the individual—all are unities. Parts in a state of extreme tension achieve the miracle of oneness.

There is oneness in diversity, and tension even within the Godhead. According to Isaiah 53:10, it “pleased” the Father to bruise His Son. The Son, in agony in Gethsemane, begged the Father to spare Him. The Father’s decision stood.

Jesus said, “Who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Is this also true when you have seen Jesus weeping and in despair?

Jesus also spoke the mysterious words, “If I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you” (John 16:7), giving the impression that the two cannot be in the same place at once.

We commonly say that Jesus is our mediator and intercessor with the Father, which seems to imply that the Son intervenes to change the Father’s decision in our favor.

God is one,
echad
, not
iachid
. If His unity were not so complex, there would not be such a great need to proclaim it.

The church is one, man and wife are one—
echad
, composed unities. Believe in oneness despite diversity and the tensions that sometimes impair the basic harmony. This oneness cannot be broken.

The way is not your property. Nobody can possess the One. The one God owns us, and we belong to the one church.

The Mystery of Unanswered Prayer

The Bible is full of unaccepted prayers.

Paul writes to the church in Rome that, without ceasing, he is “making request…[to] have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you” (Romans 1:10, KJV). Instead of a prosperous journey, he traveled as a prisoner in fetters and was shipwrecked. Other examples abound throughout the Bible.

Many requests in prayer show a lack of submission to what God in His wisdom and love has foreordained. What would the world be like if God were required to follow man’s will and change His plan every time someone expressed a desire in prayer?

The Talmud says that the Jewish high priest entered the most sacred place of the temple once a year to pray for the people, and always concluded his prayer with the words, “God, disregard the requests of wayfarers.” This was wise: everyone who traveled on Monday asked that there be no rain on that day; likewise those who traveled on Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. If God listened to them all, the people would perish because of drought.

The following story illustrates the best manner of prayer. Two Christians each planted an apple tree in front of his house. When the time for reaping apples came, the first looked angrily at his tree: it bore not even one apple. When he approached his neighbor’s house, he became even angrier. The branches of his brother’s tree were cracking under the weight of beautiful fruits. He asked his brother, “Explain this to me. We planted our trees at the same time; we serve the same God. How is it that He gave you so many apples and none to me?” The other answered, “Perhaps you did not pray for your tree.” “What! Not pray?” said the first. “I prayed every day: ‘God, give rain; God, enough, now stop the rain. God, sun is needed now; too much now, it might scorch my tree.’ I never neglected prayer, and it was all in vain. How did you do it?” The brother replied, “I am not so keen at prayer as you are. I prayed only once, in the beginning, like this: ‘Father, I have planted an apple tree and wish to have fruit in due time. It is not for me to teach You how much sun and rain to give. You are a more ancient gardener than myself. You created Eden and all trees grow under Your direction. Grant me apples in due time.’”

We experience unanswered prayer because we ask for too many things without knowledge of their long-range results. There is really only one Christian request: “Here I stand, a sinner forgiven by grace and, at the end of my life, I pray to dwell in heaven with my beloved ones. Teach me to serve You on earth as I journey toward Your heaven.” Such a prayer never goes unheeded.