The Eyes of the Risen Christ as a “Flame (phlóx) of Fire” Part 2. Preface to the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: The love of self, the love of money (philárgyros) and the flame of God’s Holiness

[Reading Time: 16 minutes]

Review

In the opening study on the NT use of the word, flame (phlóx), we began at the end, seeing that the “flame” of the “eyes” of the Risen Christ was inextricably tied to the holiness of the Divine Presence (Ex 3:2-> Acts 7:30). As such, it operated in two simultaneous ways when penetrating into the soul of man: For those who reject the redeeming grace of the Gospel, the holy flame of JHWH’s Presence brings the “agonizing torment” of “righteous judgment” (Lk 16:24-> II Thess 1:7b-10); For those, however, who in obedience and love receive this Gospel, the holiness of God gloriously transforms them into his holy image. His “ministers” (leitourgós), we are told, are “made” as a “flame (phlóx) of fire” (Heb 1:7) with the glory of His holiness transforming the depths of their person, making them like Him as they become, in the words of the the Desert Fathers, “all fire”.

The final three uses in Revelation, which extend from the opening vision of the “Son of Man” (1:13a-14, cf. Dan 7:9-14) all the way to the Last Battle (Rev 19:11-21) and Final Judgment (20:11-15), center the fire of God’s holiness in the Person of the Risen Christ Who comes with “eyes like a flame (phlóx) of fire” (Rev 1:14, 2:18, 19:12; cf. Dan 10:6b). For it is His eyes alone that can see beyond the external life of man, beyond all of his projected virtue, into the depths of his being where the spirit of corruption is operating (Rev 2:19-22). Penetrating to “search the minds and hearts” , the flame of His eyes burns in holiness, bringing judgment and destruction for those who “hate the light” or glorious transformation for those who receive it.

Introduction

Having begun our writing at the end, we now move back to the beginning in the opening use of “flame” (phlóx) in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Here we will encounter the vice of the love of money. And just as the Parable, no doubt, shocked its original hearers (“How could this successful man simply enjoying the fruits of his labors be eternally condemned?), so we may be shocked with where the love of money leads us.

We know well the warning of Paul that those who

strive to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition (I Tim 6:9).

With the explanation being that the

love of money (philargyría) is the root of all evil,

for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows (6:10).

This is the pathway of philargyría.

When it is an adjective describing man who becomes a “lover of money” (philárgyros), it expresses not merely this evil that follows, but moreover, how it actually occurs. As we shall see in the preface to the Parable together with its only other use in the NT that details the 18 marks of the “last days”, philárgyros reveals how this “destruction”, “perdition” and “sorrow” take root in the human personality.

A Parable for the Pharisees who are lovers of money (philárgyros)…and deride Christ

Before, we come to the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus and the first use of flame (phlóx) in the NT, we should pay close attention to how Luke introduces it. Having just presented the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Lk 16:1-13), he closes with Jesus’ stark warning:

No servant can serve two masters;

For either he will hate the one and love (agapáō) the other, or else he will hold fast to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and mammon43 (Lk 16:13)

And lest we in the modern church project this idolatry of money onto our culture, Luke presses these words directly into those of us who claim to be “religious”:

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money (philárgyros), also heard all these things and derided Jesus (16:14).

This love of money, the Evangelist declares, leads us when we “hear all” the words of Christ to scoff at, mock, deride, disdain (ekmyktērízō) Him in His ministry among us. Luke’s use of this particular verb signals that this derision extends even up to the very dying breath of Jesus (Lk 23:35), which is the only other time ekmyktērízō occurs in the Scriptures. Again,

Either he will hate the one and love the other…

There is, apparently, no middle ground, try as we might to convince ourselves otherwise.

If we love money…then we will, just as the religious-appearing Pharisees, come to hate and despise Christ...even if we, like them, cover it over with religious-sounding words and religious-appearing actions that successfully veil this from everyone else…even from ourselves. Yet, as Christ will go onto declare (to which we will return), our deception cannot remain hidden, for “God knows [our] hearts” (16:15).

And in our heart there rules not His self-denying love, but rather the love of money, which, in the understanding of Paul, signals the coming of the “last days”; For the only other time philárgyros occurs in the NT comes in Paul’s final letter to Timothy, written while in prison in Rome (2:9) with his own death fast approaching (4:6).

And what are his last words to his disciple?

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come…

The love of self, the love of money (philárgyros) and the 18 marks of the last days

There begins, then, a list of 18 marks that identify this transition into the “perilous times” of these “last days”, each documenting with psychoanalytic precision the progressive devolution of the human personality. And it begins with the disordering of our love. The two marks, which are the fountainhead of all that follows, reveal what will now drive mankind: It is not the love of God and our neighbor, but self and money:

For men will be lovers of themselves (phílautoi), lovers of money (philárgyroi, II Tim 3:1-2a)

Our deepest affections now begin to turn inwards away from God, Who is Love. into self (who is not). And the very next movement after self love is the love of money.

Why is that the case?

Is the love of self invariably expressed in the love of money?

In loving self more than God, do we begin to think that money can actually offer us more in This Now Age than God? Can it somehow give us god-like power over our own little lives so that we can now take the helm? So that we can now direct our lives to whatever momentary ends we determine?

Whatever the case may be, this disordering of affection, makes us, as the passage continues,

boasters (alazṓn, which speaks of a ‘wandering vagrant, boasting to anyone who is foolish enough to take him seriously!’),

proud (hyperḗphanos: lit. ‘shining forth’ [phaínō] over and ‘beyond’ another [hypér]),

blasphemers—the fifth mark (3:2b)

The love of self, now fueled by the love of money, drives us to place ourselves in an empty and foolish way above our brother, becoming so filled with self that, in the end, we become blasphemers not only against His image-bearers, but, moreover, against the eternal God Himself.

Then, having rejected the authority of our Heavenly Father, we reject His God-given authority in our family on earth, becoming

disobedient to parents

And when we despise all authority both in Heaven and on earth, we then become

unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving—the tenth mark (3:2c-3a; cf. Rom 1:18-32)

This, in short, is Hell.

A place where there is neither gratitude nor thanksgiving;

Neither purity nor holiness;

Totally heartless with no love of anyone beyond ourself; and with no possibility of forgiveness, healing or restoration.

Here our sins isolate us from one another and eternally reign over us, penetrating every facet of our personalities, endlessly disfiguring and destroying the eternal image of God in us.

This, however, is not all.

Continuing to work yet deeper in our soul, we become

slanderers (diábolos), literally taking into ourselves the image of the diabolical nature of Satan himself, who ever lives to slander and “accuse the brethren” (versus Christ Who “ever lives to intercede” for His people).

Thriving in division and losing the divinely created order within our personality, we devolve still further into an animal-like state, being

without self-control and given to excess,

savage and brutal (both terms are the only occurrences in the NT expressing the extremity of this end-times state),

The final result—the 14th mark—is that we are literally

devoid of the love of any good (aphilágathos: From A + phílos + ágathos)

And losing all vital contact with the good, we become

traitors (prodótēs), which is used only two times in the NT with both identifying those who betray Christ Himself, first in the Gospels to mark out Judas [Lk 6:16] then in Acts to designate those who “betrayed and murdered the Righteous One” [Acts 7:52]).

Now, not only consumed with self but also with a pride that drives us to dethrone God-in-human-flesh, we become

reckless and impulsive, puffed up and swollen with conceit,

Driven by our fallen impulses, we then have nothing left but to become slaves to them, as

lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

There is something fascinating, however, in this 18-fold pathway that details the dissolution of the divine image in us, beginning with the love of self and money, bringing boastful pride that leads us into blasphemy, making us heartless and diabolical, brutal and beastlike, becoming a traitor to all that is good, even to Christ Himself.

What is fascinating is that the list is still not complete. Even with all of these horrors operating in the depths of our person, we somehow retain the ability to project

a form of godliness

but which

denies the power thereof (II Tim 3:5).

The movement is now accomplished.

We have, in Jesus’ words, metamorphosized into “wolves” yet all the while retaining the image of “sheep” (Mt 7:15). We are still “good Christians” to everyone else (to use the language of Flannery O’Connor), while living for self and pleasure and in pride betraying all this is good.

Absolutely extraordinary (as well as terrifying).

And it is something which should give us pause for honest reflection. Riddled through by these 18 attributes of the darkness of the last days, we can still succeed in presenting to the world (and to the Church, for that matter) a “form of godliness.”

Kyrie eleison!

Yet as we saw in the opening writing on the use of phlóx, specifically in the appearance of the Risen Christ to the church at Thyatira, His “eyes” see beyond the surface level of “good” church activity to the hidden spirit operating among them.

But God knows our hearts even if men don’t see

We return to Luke 16. Though we can maintain an outward—though utterly powerless—“form of godliness”, God, nevertheless, “knows our hearts”:

And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.

For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination (bdélygma) in the sight of God (16:15).

An “abomination”.

This particular word, which Jesus had already employed in speaking of the “abomination of desolation[a] spoken of by the prophet Daniel” (Mt 24:15; Mk 13:14, cf. Dan 9:20-27), He now employs to describe the actions of the outwardly religious in His day (…and our day too).

The abominations of the luxury of Babylon

This particular term carries us forward into the Final Judgment, foreshadowing the abominable actions of the “Great Harlot” in Revelation:

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me,

“Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication (porneúō), and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication (porneía)” (Rev 17:1-2).

Who, to link this back to Jesus’ Parable, will be arrayed in the same dress as the rich man (Lk 16:19) with its luxury related to the same blasphemies (II Tim 3:2):

So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness.

And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

The woman was arrayed in purple (porphyroûs) and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls (17:3-4a)

All the luxury This Age can offer is displayed in full by the Queen of Babylon for all to see and lust after...

And this opulence, we should admit, is actually granted for a short season to those who follow after her and are made “rich through the abundance of her luxury” (Rev 18:3). The temptation is genuine because the temporary benefit is very real.

A reason, no doubt, why Agur prays,

Two things I request of You
(Deprive me not before I die):

Remove falsehood and lies far from me;
Give me neither poverty nor riches.
Feed me with the food allotted (choq) to me;

Lest I be full and deny You,
And say,

“Who is the Lord?” (Prov 30:7-9)

The luxury of these worldly riches, even if attained only for a moment, come at a great spiritual price (Mt 16:26); For they lead us not to God and to our neighbor (Jam 2:1-7); but deeper into the darkness of self and, ultimately, further into the fires of judgment.

For the text of Revelation continues, making it clear that this Queen is not merely materially rich but holds

in her hand a golden cup full of abominations (bdélygma) and the filthiness of her fornication (porneía).

And on her forehead a name was written:

MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS (PORNEIA)
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS (BDELYGMA)
OF THE EARTH (17:3-5).

Her wealth and luxury that drive the abominations of her porneía end, finally, in death—the death not of the wicked, but of the saints:

I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (17:6a).

Can we better see now that Paul was in no way exaggerating when he warned of the “evil” and “perdition” and “destruction” that follows in the wake of the “love of money”? There is pride, blasphemy, the hatred of the good, spiritual adultery and the betrayal of Christ.

The final two words before the Parable

Jesus then in His grace draws us back from the snares of such foolish and harmful lusts fueled by our love of money that will led us into the sorrows of destruction and perdition.

How?

He does this by recentering us on the Law and the Prophets that drive us into the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The next verse continues:

The Law and the Prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached (euangelízō), and everyone is pressing into it (biázō, cf. Mt 11:12[b]).

And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of the law to fail (16:16-17).

We must “press” into the Gospel with every fiber of our being, for it is the only thing that will not fail us. Money, pleasure, pride will all fail us, disfiguring our person in the process and cutting us off from Christ and His Kingdom. Only the foundation of the Gospel will uphold us.

An unexpected word on divorce and its relation to philárgyros

Then the final word before the Parable—and maybe not what we would initially expect:

Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery (16:18).

Given what we now about the devolution of our person through the divisive actions of the love of self and love of money, it is no wonder that this movement strikes into the very heart of our most intimate relations. And it begs the question for us,

How much is adultery and divorce actually rooted in these two disordered loves: The love of self (phílautos) and the love of money (philárgyros)?

With all of this background we now come to the Parable and the opening use of flame (phlóx) in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which will be the focus of the next writing.