Emphasis

With what should I enter YHWH’s presence? With what should I bow before the sovereign God? Should I enter his presence with burnt offerings, with year-old calves? Will YHWH accept a thousand rams, or ten thousand streams of olive oil? Should I give him my firstborn child as payment for my rebellion, my offspring – my own flesh and blood – for my sin?
He has told you, O man, what is good, and what YHWH really wants from you: He wants you to carry out justice, to love faithfulness, and to live obediently before your God (Micah 6:6-8).

We understand well how the truth of God in Christ through the Spirit involves the witness of God regarding Himself and His people in the Scriptures. We recognize the importance of insisting on the “whole counsel of God” (cf. Acts 20:27). We seek to discern this whole counsel of God by means of the substance of what has been revealed. Yet we tend to expose much about ourselves in terms of what aspects of that truth we emphasize.

Emphasis involves placing special value or importance on something, or an aspect of something. Emphasis is related to focus and priority: that upon which we focus is something we tend to emphasize, and our priorities tend to define that which we emphasize.

Ironically emphasis has often been neglected both in terms of how we understand what God has made known in Christ and how we embody and proclaim the faith. We have reasoned how truth is truth whether much or little is made of it. We have seen how some have attempted to justify beliefs and practices not consistent with what God has revealed in Scripture by undermining aspects of the truth on which little, if any, emphasis was placed in the New Testament. Furthermore, emphasis seems subjective, and thus at variance with the quest to ascertain and uphold objective truth. We do not want to be seen as “playing favorites” with the truth and imagine we can consistently and fully uphold everything which is true in God in Christ through the Spirit.

Any attempt to deny the existence and presence of emphasis in Christian faith and practice proves a fool’s errand. We might imagine we uphold the full truth of God in Christ through the Spirit in a consistent and equal manner, but in this we deceive ourselves. We are all finite created beings; our sense impressions and our brains can only discern and process so much. We only have so many hours in a day and so much effort we can expend on anything and everything in our lives. We tend to understand this better in terms of focus and priority than emphasis. By definition, if we focus on something or some things, we comparatively neglect that upon which we do not focus. Prioritization, by definition, represents a judgment by which certain things are reckoned as more important or are to be privileged over other things. Thus, by definition, we cannot focus on or prioritize everything. Likewise, we do not, and cannot, represent the faith and practice which embodies Jesus without emphasis.

Yet even within the witness of God in Christ through the Spirit as witnessed in the Scriptures we find emphasis. Not only that, we find God condemning His people for maintaining misplaced emphases.

In Matthew 5:19 Jesus, in indicting the Pharisees, condemned anyone who would violate the “least” of the commandments; if there are “least” commandments, there also exist “greater” commandments, and “greater” and “least” are judgments of emphasis. In Matthew 23:23, He condemned the Pharisees for tithing in minutiae while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness, deemed that which was more important in the Law. Yes, Jesus did say the Pharisees were right to tithe in the matters of minutiae; recognizing emphasis by no means commends or justifies disobedience in more comparatively minor matters. Yet the force of the indictment remains: the Pharisees had made much of little and little of much, or, as Jesus would put it, they were straining gnats while swallowing camels (Matthew 23:24).

Christians often make much of Micah 6:6-8, and for good reason; in it Micah recognized a trend which bedeviled Israel for generations. As far as we can tell, throughout the period of the kings, Judah was fastidious about offering the requisite sacrifices before YHWH. The rulers, priests, many of the “prophets,” and the people thus imagined they maintained full standing before YHWH because they continued to offer the sacrifices YHWH commanded them. Micah asks if such sacrifices are sufficient to really obtain YHWH’s favor: what is good, and what YHWH really wants from His people, is to do justice, love faithfulness, and live obediently before God.

Samuel similarly rebuked Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22. Amos told Israel how YHWH was tired of their sacrifices and songs and reminded them how they did not offer sacrifices and grain offerings in the Wilderness; what YHWH really wanted was justice to run like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream (Amos 5:21-27). Isaiah had a similar word for post-exilic Judah who imagined their fasting would get YHWH’s attention: Isaiah made it very clear how the “fast” YHWH wanted was for them to remove chains, to tear away the yoke, to set free the oppressed, to share food with the hungry, shelter the homeless and the oppressed, and clothe the naked (Isaiah 58:1-9).

The Pharisees, therefore, were doing just what their ancestors had done: they focused on, or emphasized, what was “objective,” easily discernible and measurable, and were satisfied. In the process they had entirely missed the point, just as their ancestors had done. They had imagined God was not only pleased with their fastidious observance of certain laws but that such would justify them in the end, just like their ancestors imagined God was pleased with their sacrifices and that such would justify them. In both instances God provided almost entirely the same rebuke: you have misplaced your emphasis. God wanted them to uphold what was just, right, fair, and good, and to use what they had to alleviate the exploitation and oppression of the powers around them. Sacrifices, fasting, and tithes had their place. Yet they were not YHWH’s intended emphasis, focus, or priority.

To this very day the same critique can be leveled among the people of God. The people of God today focus on and emphasize what is “objective,” easily discernible and measurable, and are satisfied. Assembling with the saints, giving on the first day of the week, and wearing approved clothing styles are today’s versions of sacrifices, fasting, and tithes. And, at the same time, justice, mercy, and faithfulness do not receive the emphasis.

Such is not restricted to matters of practice; even in terms of beliefs and doctrines the people of God have maintained misplaced emphases. Much is made regarding preaching “the distinctives,” and much emphasis, focus, and priority is placed upon the plan of salvation, the organization of the church, the nature of the acts of the assembly, and upon where others have either fallen short of or have gone on beyond what God has made known regarding the Kingdom of Jesus through His Apostles. Not a few equate “the Gospel” with such issues.

We do well to instead consider how Paul himself approached matters. In every letter he returns to what God has accomplished in Jesus to anchor and ground all of his concerns, doctrinal or practical. Paul’s emphasis is on the Christ of God crucified and risen, and everything else flows from that source.

Thus, for Christians, what should be our emphasis? Jesus should be our emphasis, and we should emphasize what Jesus would have us emphasize. Even if we all want to take it for granted, the Gospel for the past two thousand years has been the good news of what God has accomplished in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and preparation for His imminent return, and that will remain the Gospel until He returns and God is made all in all. Jesus’ emphasis was on love, humility, and compassion, and such motivated true faithfulness and obedience. Such love was not pretense but substantive, and it bore the appropriate fruit.

Does this mean we should entirely neglect or suppress that which was not emphasized? Absolutely not! Israel was to fast, offer sacrifices, and tithe in everything; Christians should assemble with the saints, give on the first day of the week, wear clothing which glorifies God in Christ, and seek in all details to uphold God’s purposes for individuals and congregations in the Kingdom of Jesus. Yet in emphasizing and focusing on the details, Israel was found lacking and guilty before God; we run the same risk as Christians, and we should be no less concerned about the prospect of the judgment of God than they were.

Thus we do well to recover a healthy sense of emphasis in our Christian faith and practice. We must understand how emphasis is a matter of truth: if we say we follow God, but we maintain misplaced emphases, we easily deceive ourselves and will find ourselves as liable to judgment as did Israel of old. It is not for us to determine what should be emphasized, or the framework through which we should understand all things; it is for us in humility to submit ourselves to the emphases laid out for us by God in Christ through the Spirit, to emphasize Jesus and the Gospel over all things: to recognize and accomplish the weightier provisions of faithfulness, justice, love, and mercy over the more “objective” and easily definable yet comparatively more minor aspects of faithful observance of the Lord’s purposes, and to remember what makes us “distinctive” has far less to do with matters of church polity and much more about being transformed by the good news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and the prospect of His imminent return, and understanding all things through that prism. May we not only uphold the truth of God in Christ through the Spirit but also maintain appropriate emphasis in our faith and practice so we might obtain the resurrection of life!

Ethan R. Longhenry