We Are a Royal Priesthood: The Biblical Story and Our Response

By John E. Huegel

This book is divided into two parts. The first part is a summary of the story the Bible that tells from creation through the human rebellion and God’s remedy in Jesus’s death and resurrection to the consummation and the worldview it reveals. The second part is an exposition of how we should live out our vocation in response to the biblical story and its worldview. The author explains that we need to rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal our union with Christ in his death and resurrection. This enables us to practice the virtues that lead to holiness, which is the foundation of our vocation as kings and priests of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781984574800

John E. Huegel

John E. Huegel was born in the city of Aguascalientes, Mexico, the son of missionary parents. He also served as a missionary of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Mexico for forty-two years. During that time, he was the pastor of various Protestant churches, professor and president of the Union Evangelical Seminary in Mexico City, and director of the Center for Theological Studies in the city of San Luis Potosí. After he retired in 1996, he moved to Texas, where he served briefly as professor of pastoral theology in the Edinburg Theological Seminary and was interim pastor of three congregations. He has written various books in Spanish and English. He is married to Yvonne West, and they live in New Braunfels, Texas. They have four adult children who all serve the church in different ministries, and eleven grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2019 by John E. Huegel.

ISBN:                  Softcover                        978-1-9845-7481-7

                            eBook                             978-1-9845-7480-0

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

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Rev. date: 03/12/2020

Xlibris

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I

dedicate this book to my grandchildren:

Johnathan and Missy, Evan, Isaac and Aaron,

Ándre, Benjamin, Alecsandra and Jasmine,

Joel, Ellie and Carlos

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

PART ONE

Pléroma Tou Chrónou

1 -   God Created Everything Good

2 -   The Human Rebellion

3 -   God’s Restoration Project

4 -   The Arrival Of The King

5 -   The Hinge Of History

6 -   The Consummation

PART TWO

Nepantla

7 -   Living In Nepantla

8 -   The Helper

9 -   Three Adversaries

10 - United With Christ

11 - The Foundation Of Holiness

12 - The Royal Priesthood

Conclusion

Appendix

End Notes

INTRODUCTION

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The Bible has been an important part of my life since childhood. My father read the Bible to us almost every evening in our family devotions, and I heard its stories retold in Sunday School. I began exploring the Bible on my own at the age of ten and have continued reading it almost every day during my adult life. When I went to Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Howard T. Kuist, professor of English Bible, introduced me to the serious study of the Bible through his courses on the inductive and recreative methods of Bible study, and I have used these methods in my own teaching of the Bible.

Thanks to the influence of my father and my theological studies, two norms have guided my study of the Bible. First, I have tried to avoid going off into unproductive tangents by heeding Jesus’ own warning: You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life (Jn 5:39,40). I strive to keep my focus on Jesus as I read and study the Scriptures.

And secondly, I have attempted to keep in mind Paul’s words to Timothy: All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2Ti 3:16,17). I have tried to let the Bible guide my behavior.

The Bible is a treasury of stories, some of which are based on actual historical events, others are not, such as the parables Jesus told. There are others which scholars are not sure whether they refer to actual events or not. However, many of them have the inherent power to touch the core or our lives and move us, and they all contribute to the overall story the Bible tells.

More recently, I have come to realize that many of the stories people have told over the centuries, and even now tell, are not simply entertaining but are also ways in which the people try to understand the meaning of life by answering these existential questions:

What is the nature of the world we live in?

Who are we and what are we doing here?

What has gone wrong with this world?

What is the solution to the situation?

The answers they give to these questions through the stories they tell become the key to forming their worldview. In similar fashion, the stories that religions, cultures and even nations tell, reveal their worldview. The worldview that is embraced shapes the personal behavior of people and the actions of nations.

For example: The worldview of a person who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan is shaped by stories of white supremacy and the fear of groups other than white Anglo-Saxon protestants taking over the country, and that person behaves accordingly.

Early in the history of the United States a view arose known as manifest destiny, that believed the United States was divinely destined to rule the continent. This fueled the westward expansion of the country and even supported a war against Mexico which obliged that country to surrender more than half its northwestern territories.

As I considered the influence of stories and worldviews, I became interested in trying to discover the story the Bible tells us, the central conflict it presents, how this is developed and the final denouement.

The story the Bible tells takes place within these two passages of Scripture, or what might be called the two bookends:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

and

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. (Revelation 21:1)

As I pondered the Biblical story, I wanted to know how it answers the basic questions listed above, how these answers reveal to us the Biblical worldview, and most importantly, how this worldview impacts our lives. The existential question is, how should we live out our lives in the light of this world view? In this book I will attempt to explore two interlaced themes, the story the Bible tells and our response to it.

I have divided the book in two parts. In the first, I will attempt to give an overview of the Biblical story. For a title, I have given this section the expression Paul uses in his letter to the Galatians:

pleroma tou chronou, the fullness of time (Ga 4:4).

With this phrase the Apostle is referring to the coming of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of God’s dealing with Israel.

For the title of the second part of the book I have used a word from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs:

nepantla, which means in betweenness

In this section I will flesh out what I believe should be our response to the Biblical worldview, that is, how we should live out our lives in the time between Jesus’ first appearance and his appearance at the end of time in what we call the consummation.

I must acknowledge that I have been deeply influenced in my thinking by N.T. Wright, professor of New Testament at St. Andrews University in Scotland. I have not only quoted from his writings, but I must confess that many of his insights have become part of my thinking, and it has become difficult for me to separate the two.

I also wish to express my thanks to Mrs. Suzan Eubank who read the manuscript, corrected it and made some valuable suggestions.

I invite you to join me as we consider the story of Emmanuel, God with us, with its fascinating and unexpected twists and turns and how we are to respond to it.

PART ONE

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Pléroma Tou Chrónou

In the fullness of time,

God fulfilled his promise to Israel by sending his Son,

who through his ministry, death, and resurrection

inaugurated the kingdom of God.

1

GOD CREATED EVERYTHING GOOD

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For everything God created is good. 1 Timothy 4:4

He has made everything beautiful. Ecclesiastes 3:11

When I was six years old, my Aunt Fannie Lane, a gentle Christian lady of Presbyterian persuasion, gave me a leather bound, red letter King James Version of the Bible, and it became a cherished possession. It wasn’t until some years later that I decided to read it through in a year, three chapters each weekday and five on Saturday and Sunday. My father suggested I start with the New Testament, but I was determined to start at the beginning where you are supposed to start every book.

I soon observed that at the top of each central column of cross references there was a date. The date for the first chapter of Genesis was 4004 BC, but, at the time, I didn’t give this much importance. It was only later, when in the university in a course on historical geology I was confronted with the paleontological table, that I began to ask myself how creation could have taken place in 4004 BC in the light of what I was studying. I discovered that this date had been calculated by Archbishop James Ussher in 1650, but found its way into many King James editions of the Bible.

To start our explanation of Genesis 1:1-2:3, I suggest it should be read aloud:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault sky. And there was evening, and there was morning – the second day.

9 And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning – the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning – the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky. So, God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning – the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the seas and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning – the sixth day.

2:1 Thus the heaven and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

During my first year in seminary, as I began to think more deeply about the question of origins and especially how to reconcile the Biblical record with the findings of anthropology and paleontology, I was introduced to the work of the Australian Institute of Archaeology. I was intrigued with some of the charts and folders the Institute had published which showed the general agreement between the sequence of epochs in the paleontological record and the sequence of days of creation in the Biblical record: The first day the creation of light, the second day waters, the third day earth and vegetation, the fifth day sea creatures and birds, and the sixth day land animals and man. The Bible inserts the seasons on the fourth day.

As I pondered the Biblical record, I came to the conclusion that the six days of creation were not necessarily twenty four hour days. The term day could be a figurative way of referring to epochs. The Bible itself states that with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day (2Pe 3:8). I decided that whether the events described in Genesis 1:1-2:3 occurred in six literal days, or whether they took place in a slow process over millions of years as the paleontological/geological timeline seems to indicate, this was of secondary importance. What was of foundational importance was that God created everything. The Biblical text is abundantly clear - by repeating the name of God thirty-three times in just thirty-four verses it is emphasizing that God created the universe and all that is in it. He is the initiator, the one who completes and sustains the whole creative process.

I believe the conflict between faith and science is not about how and when creation took place, but rather about whether the universe is the result of random forces or the work of a merciful and wise Creator. If we are here by pure chance then surely Sir James Jeans, the English astrophysicist, was right when he wrote:

We find the universe terrifying because of its vast meaningless distances, terrifying because of its inconceivably long vistas of time which dwarf human history to the twinkling of an eye, terrifying because of our extreme loneliness, and because of the material insignificance of our home in space – a millionth part of a grain of sand out of all the sea-sand in the world. But above all else we find the universe terrifying because it appears to be indifferent to life like our own; emotion, ambition, and achievement, art and religion all seem equally foreign to its plan. Perhaps indeed, we ought to say it appears to be actively hostile to life like our own. (The Mysterious Universe)

If there is no merciful God who created the universe and who reaches out to us in love, and we are here by the accidental interplay of cells and molecules, the cosmic loneliness and existential meaninglessness are truly terrifying. But the Biblical story unequivocally affirms that God created the universe and all that is in it. If this story is true, then the God who is present in our vast expanding universe also holds our planet, a tiny ball in immense space, in a friendly embrace, and he infuses meaning into our very brief sojourn on it.

The Creation of