God defines good

We do not like God because He is good; we like goodness because it is Godly.  The reason that we delight in things we see as good, whether truth or love or justice or peace, is not the existence of some abstract standard of goodness to which we all ascribe.  There is not some ethereal ideal against which we measure whether something is good or loving or right or true.  All that we honor and hold dear finds its ultimate definition in the character of God.  All other things in which we rejoice are delightful only because they contain hints and shadows of multi-faceted perfection of the Lord.  If you want to know what good is, what truth is, what beauty is, or any other such thing, look deeply into the face of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.  "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen."

gird your loins

so i was listening to the mars hill men's "advance" 2007, and the idea of the armor of God was brought up. a lot of good was said about it, and the message overall was a helpful call to thoughtful action.

i grew up reading the king james' version of the Bible. it wasn't until high school that we started using the niv. so when we started reading shakespeare in school, and all of my friends were struggling with the "old english", i just thought it was like church. anyway, the point is that many passages of the Bible that are the "classic" memory verses, i have memorized in the kjv.

you might wonder what these have to do with each other. well, many modern day translations (niv, esv, nlt) call the first part of the armor of God the "belt of truth" (Eph. 6). growing up on the kjv, i learned it as "girding your loins about with truth."

the reason i bring this up is that, in my experience, belts are often in modern times just decorative, not necessarily serving much of a purpose. but in ancient times, men would wear long robes, and when they would prepare for battle or something that required ease of movement, they would tie up their robes about their loins so that it would not impede them. this is what the apostle paul had in mind when he was talking about truth in the armor of God, namely, that it prepares us for action.

1 Peter 1:13 also uses this same imagery. many translations get the gist of it right, "preparing your minds for action", and the esv does make a note that in the greek, it says "girding up the loins of your mind." this is what the truth is to do for us: in learning truth, we are to be preparing for acting on it. we are to tie up what may get in our way, and be ready to act on truth, particularly the truth of the Word of God, the Truth that is in Christ.

i guess sometimes it pays to be old school.