Introduction

Our premise in what follows is that there is a unified message permeating throughout the entire Bible: both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.  That message represents God’s “signal” concerning how we are to treat Him (love and reverence), and each other (love, as we love ourselves).  But His signal must penetrate through lots of modern distractions and Biblical texts that have little, if anything, to do with living in accordance with God’s will and with one another in love.  Thus, they are “noise” obscuring His signal.

If we follow the instances of that message, we travel along, euphemistically speaking, the “Blue Thread” of Biblical texts, which leads us to the metaphorical “Needle” – the truth about God’s will that He wants us to not only know, but become equipped to practice, and do.  What we’ll find in following it is a story of immense beauty, and clear simplicity.   This is the story featuring a headline that needs to get told, and understood.

The “Blue Thread” Metaphor – Background

I recently heard an online discussion in which one of the speakers (Dr. James Tabor) used the phrase “Blue Thread verses” to describe Biblical verses of the type we will examine here.  However, I could find no clear definition for the phrase.  What my search did turn up were descriptions of the blue thread used in the “tzitzit” corner fringes on Jewish prayer shawls (Tallit).

Numbers 15:38 contains the instruction regarding the wearing of these threads:

[38] “Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner.  39 And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after. ”

These are the symbolic and physical aspects of the blue thread found, at one time, woven into the tassels of the Tallit.  And they have to do exclusively with obedience and faithfulness to YHWH.

Biblical Blue Thread

Our meaning here for a Biblical “Blue Thread”, therefore, is as a series of interlinked scriptures that reveal God’s heart and desire for His humanity — us — that we are to obey. It is a euphemistic device to help us clearly focus on God’s heart in the Bible so that we can be faithful to it. We’ll look at several such passages, below.  Our goal in tracking this literary Blue Thread (both Testaments) is to reveal that which for many remains “hidden” in the noise of some of the narratives and hyper-detailed priestly instructions.  Our goal is to find the prize “Needle” (i.e. ”signal”) in the cultural and textual “Haystack” (i.e. ”noise”).

Just as the blue thread in the wearer’s Tallit recalls God and the ways of God, so too will our literary Blue Thread direct our attention to God’s (and only God’s, i.e. not the religions of God) desires for His people.  Controversially, this means that in endeavoring to track our Blue Thread throughout the Book, there is a substantial portion of the Hebrew Bible for which we need to establish filters that separate for us those verses revealing God’s heart, and those that do not (typically the texts describing religious practices).

However, before we start tracing that thread, there are a couple of macro issues affecting people’s understanding of the Bible, or their willingness to accept it, that we need to address.

Reader Encouragement

Biblical Authorship

I’ve previously written several pieces[ii] that examine some of the questions surrounding who wrote the Hebrew Bible, and when.  

According to virtually every Biblical scholar, the Hebrew Bible was written by several authors who tended to align into a few identifiable literary and religious “schools”.  The most prolific of these was the group known as the Deuteronomic Historian(s) (“D” or “Dtr1”, “Dtr2” and “Dtn”[iii]).  They were responsible for most of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1&2 Kings (and likely, Jeremiah).  They wrote into the late monarchy (6^th century BC), when there was no longer a united Israel, only Judah.  It turns out that most of the verses we’ll find in following our blue thread come from these authors.

Their viewpoint, literary style, and content is vastly different from the school identified with the Priestly (P) authors.  And, these both vary in distinctive ways from material written by the schools identified as the Jahwists (“J”) and the Elohists (“E”) (later combined into “JE”).  The “D” authors emphasized exclusive obedience to YHWH, practicing worship only at the place He identified (by their time, the Temple in Jerusalem before its destruction), the veneration of Moses and his torah (reportedly (2 Kings 22:8) found in Josiah’s Temple).

They emphasized care for “the widow, orphan and sojourner” in their midst, and loving God “with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength/everything”.  In short, the Deuteronomistic or “D” authors, expressed the most reverence toward YHWH and the most compassion, and compassionate instructions, for their neighbors, and so, as noted, the bluest of the Bible’s verses.

If you’re one of those who reject the idea of multiple or late authors of the Pentateuch, that’s fine.  Just understand, that only some of its material reflects God’s true heart for His people and so conforms with our Blue Thread image.

Victims of Religion

There are many reasons why you might not be persuaded to follow our Blue Thread.  One of them is the profound tragedy that many who have participated in our modern institutional religions have been damaged by the experience: emotionally wounded, constrained to think and agree with what the local leaders think – and no other way; disdained, perhaps even exiled, for making statements that violate some dogma or asking questions about church/synagogue issues that deserve questioning.  The real problem is that when such wounds occur, the congregant in too many cases, in parting ways with the institution simply slams the door on God behind him, judging the issue to be a problem with the God the institution’s spokespeople claimed to represent.

These now-“nones” should follow our thread with us and find our Needle with at least the same urgency as our fundamentalist and atheist friends.

Tracing The Blue Thread – What God Clearly States He Wants (and Doesn’t Want) For, and From, Us.

Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible consists of a few principles and a few instructions that explain the nature and intent of God concerning His humanity.

‘You shall be my people and I will be your God’ (Ex 6:7, Lev 11:45, 22:33, 25:38, 26:12, Num 15:41, Dt 29:13, Jer 7:23, 11:4, 30:22, Ezk 36:28). 

This is the preeminent purpose of God going all the way back to the Genesis garden story.  What does this phrase mean to God?  I would think it means that we are to acknowledge Him as our God; our Lord, our Master (both very non-Western concepts) in all that we do and have.  He is the source of all. 

And so, realizing this, we would then assumedly enter into an attitude of thanksgiving and reverence toward Him (1 Chr 16:8, 34-35, 2 Chr 20:21, Ps 9:1, 28:7, 30:4, 12, 33:2, 44:8, 54:6, 57:9, 75:1, 79:13, 86:12, 92:1, 97:12, 100:4, 105:1, 106:1,47, 107:1, 108:3, 111:1, 118:1, 122:4, 136:1-3, 26, 138:1, 140:13, 142:7, 145:10, Is 12:1,4, Je 33:11, Dan 2:23, Lk 2:38, Ro 1:21, 2 Cor 1:11, Ep 1:16, 1 Thes 5:18, 2 Thes 1:3, 2:13, Rev 11:17), as these verses so exuberantly express.

The Will of God

Acknowledging God as our Lord also leads us to desire to carry out His will for us.  How do we know what that is?  Because He’s told us how He desires us to live in His “Ten Words”.  Here I’m going to use the Decalogue found in the so-called “Moses Scroll” (MS) (which you can see here alongside the canonical lists, and about which if you’re unfamiliar, I’ve written here and here.)

Why not use the lists in Deuteronomy or Exodus (or even Ezekiel 18:5-13)?

For me, a Christian, that’s simple:  because Jesus of Nazareth referred to a variant of the MS’s tenth commandment as a “commandment” (Mt 22:39), while the canonical lists don’t include it. 

(If you’re interested, click this text to see my explanation of Jesus’ “commandment” in Mt 22:39 being based on the MS tenth “Word” [“You shall not hate your brother in your heart”].) 

Leviticus’s “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” isn’t literally presented in the Moses Scroll for Jesus to appropriate.  True.  But let’s see what is. The word used in these verses rendered “love” is (assumedly) 157. אָהַב ‘āhaḇ (as it is in Lev 19:18) which can mean all manner of desires for something.  The Hebrew Bible contrasts this word with the word rendered ‘hate’ (ESV, KJV) or ‘love less’ (Leah’s condition compared to Rachel who Jacob is said to “love more”), 8130. שָׂנֵא śānē’ (Gen 29:30-31).  So, it seems likely that semantically this commandment is to not שָׂנֵא śānē’ your brother, leading directly to its corollary in its blessing: “Blessed is the man who אָהַב ‘āhaḇs his brother.”  So how do we get to: “You shall love your brother as yourself” (Lev 19:18b)? 

For me, the key is the semantic we see in Gen 29:30-31:

[30] So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved (אָהַב ‘āhaḇ) Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years. [31] When the LORD saw that Leah was hated (שָׂנֵא śānē’ ), he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

Leah was loved less than Rachel (v30) which v31 characterizes as “hated“.  From this, I think it is perfectly reasonable to read this MS command as: “You shall not love less (שָׂנֵא śānē’) your brother”.  But “love less” than what?  Well, the other things you love, especially yourself.  If you don’t love him less than yourself, it seems you love your brother as much as you love yourself, so the semantic equivalent of “love your brother as yourself”.

We can see the same concept expressed in Lk14:26:

26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

The word “hate” here is the Greek μισέω miséō; contracted misṓ, fut. misḗsō. Its meaning here is:

(IV) To love less. In Lk 14:26 … The meaning of miséō as loving less is made clear in Mt 10:37, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Translating both Hebrew and Greek terms as “hate” is a bit hyperbolic in the contexts in which they are used.  At least that’s the way I read it.

Let’s see what the MS’s Words are (as paraphrased – remember you can see the actual text here).

There shall not be to you other Elohim. You shall not make or worship Idols.

Sanctify the Sabbath and You Shall Cease on it Because in Six Days I Made the Heavens and the Earth and All That is in Them, and I Ceased on the Seventh Day

Honor Your Father and Your Mother

You Shall Not Kill the Soul of Your Brother

You Shall Not Commit Adultery with the Woman of your Neighbor

You Shall Not Steal the Property of your Brother

You Shall Not Swear in My Name to Deceive

You Shall Not Respond Against your Brother with a Testimony of Deceit

You Shall Not Desire your Neighbor’s Woman, his Servant, his Maidservant, or Anything that is His.

You Shall Not Hate your Brother in your Heart[iv].

There are a few instructions in the MS not contained within this Decalogue.  For example, the very Blue Thread “Shema” (as in Dt 6:4-5)

“Hear, O Israel, Elohim our Elohim, Elohim is one, and you shall love Elohim your Elohim with all your heart and with all your soul – very exceedingly.

Having the Instructions of God, What are We to Do About It?

According to the Deuteronomist, we are to “Listen, Learn, Keep, and Do” them.  We’re to listen to what God tells His people through His prophets and His Messiah, Jesus; we’re to learn those instructions so that we understand their meaning and then place them top-of-mind (not obscured in a sea of noisy cultural distractions); we’re to “keep” (“guard”) them from misuse or the corruption of changes by men; and finally, we are to do them, to obey them (even when that’s not our natural inclination – which it only rarely is). 

Here is a selection of verses (only from Deuteronomy) that encourage us to treat God’s instructions in this way (Dt. 4:5-6,10,14, 5:1,27, 6:1, 7:11-12, 11:32, 13:18, 15:5, 16:12, 17:10,19, 26:14,16, 27:10, 28:1,13,45, 29:9, 30:8,10,12-14, 31:12-13).  Not much room for confusion there! 

Of course, all of the Prophets overflow with admonitions to “follow My commandments”, or “return to Me” (by which God means to return to obedient faithfulness to Him; e.g. Ne 1:9, Je 3:1,7,10, 24:7, Joel 2:12, Am 4:6,8-11, Zec 1:3, Mal 3:7)  “, and I will return to you.”

Circumcise Your Heart

One of the bluest of Blue Thread passages we find in Dt 10:12-16:

12 “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? 14 Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. 15 Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.”

Notice here that the one to take action — do — is the people of Israel.

Many other verses expose God’s will for His people which is contrary to theirs.  I encourage you to skim through this piece to get familiar with His disdain for sacrificial offerings (Ho 6:6, Am 5:21-24, Is 1:10-17, Jer 7:21-23, Mi 6:6-8), a Temple (where those sacrifices were slain and offered — 2 Sam 7:5-7, 1 Kings 8:21, Jer 7:3-7), and a human King for Israel/Judah (1 Sam 8:5). And then have a look at these Blue Thread passages: Dt 11:1, Dt 13:3, Joel 2:12, Dt 16:14, Dt 6:6-7, Ps 78:6-7. 

If we follow the Blue Thread through the Bible’s description of God’s authentic will for us, we have to turn on our mental filters when we encounter passages endorsing these things that God, by His own admission, disdained (but did want in the scriptures nonetheless.)  They are not, and were not, God’s will for His people according to Him, even though vast tracts of the Hebrew Bible are consumed with their promotion and that YHWH eventually, and grudgingly, accepted from the same Israel that had ignored Him.  Seems like He had more to His plan than we have seen so far that would result in the prophet Micah’s plain statement (Mi 6:8 as a kind of hyperlink from Dt 10:12, above):

8 He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Verses don’t come any “bluer” than that[xiv].

What’s Our Problem?

If these verses lay out the Hebrew Bible’s Blue Thread, why don’t we follow them?  And why didn’t the Israelites follow God’s will for them for something like 1400 years, with perhaps brief episodes along the way of at least trying to be faithful (e.g. Hezekiah and his great-grandson Josiah)?  That, of course, is the question.  

Why don’t we (today), and why didn’t Israel (2500 years ago) love God?  Well, OK, let’s lower the bar a bit.  Why don’t we, and why didn’t they, think in a manner consistent with His Ten Words – see human society and relationships as He saw them?  The humanist argument seems to be that we’re just not enlightened enough, or trying hard enough. 

The truth is we naturally covet stuff, as did the Israelites!  Why can’t we just stop it?  Men desire (covet) other men’s wives!  Why can’t they just stop it?  Every day some of us kill the soul of our brother.  Why don’t we stop?  After all, God prohibits it!  In fact, there are curses associated with failing to live up to each MS commandment.  And why do we often “hate” (8130. שָׂנֵא śānē’, i.e. “love less” — see the discussion of this interpretation in the Mt 22:39 explanation drop-down, above) our neighbor — love him less than ourselves?  Why do we routinely place ourselves and our interests above the interests and needs of our neighbors?  And, again, why don’t we stop doing that?

This is the fundamental issue the Bible is here to expose:  that humanity as a species is naturally unable to fulfill their Creator’s instructions – His Torah, and so to live within His will.  And this is precisely why we find the New Covenant promises in the Hebrew Bible.  God will be the One to change us.

For many of us, it’s not that we don’t want to live within His will, intellectually.  We say we love Him, and no doubt in our mind we’re being honest.  But what we think of as “love of God” rarely seems to prevail against our natural weaknesses.

When was the last time you saw and wanted something that you didn’t have?  That’s covetousness (and also Western marketing!) and God has forbidden you from doing that. 

When was the last time you thought of yourself before the other in your life?  

Please understand: there’s no shame in admitting who we are.  In fact, the first step of redemption is to be aware of and admit our natural weaknesses, and then to repent of it (turn away from it and toward God).  This is exactly the state of affairs Paul was bemoaning in Ro 7.  As documented throughout the Hebrew Bible, God wanted a family of children that wanted Him and realized that to have Him, they had to abandon themselves.

As a species, we’re just not naturally “good”, as attested by the several millennia of our history (though the humanists seem to disclaim this indisputable fact).  And if 100% of the world’s population believed there was One God who created them and had given them His principal desires for the living of their lives as reflected in His Ten Words, what real difference do you think that would make, given our nature? 

Surely more people (than now) would attempt, of their own resources, to live by those Words.  But they nonetheless would not succeed.  How do we know that?  Because we can read human history that comprises an unrelenting saga of man’s asserting his ego and self-interest over other men (including ancient Israel, despite their having God’s Torah and prophets to call them to it).

So, we’re left with a systemic problem: our God wants us to live one way, and we (through no particular fault of our own, other than being born into the species) naturally desire to live other ways.

We should ask: Is it hopeless?

The New Testament’s (Largely Unknown) Gospel Message

You should be encouraged to know that the Bible’s New Testament delivers a solution (speaking from experience[v]); a redemption from our chronic condition/problem.  Some (including the Apostles) have, therefore, called this the “good news” (2098. εὐαγγέλιον euaggélion).  (And, no, that news is not about you getting to go to heaven when you die. [How can we ever shake off this tragic, but ubiquitous and persistent, misunderstanding?  I wish I knew.])

To understand it, we should first digress a bit to pick up some segments of the Blue Thread that contain symbols and images introduced in the Hebrew Bible that were never completely explained or resolved there.

A great place to start is Deuteronomy 30:

“[6] And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” 

According to the Hebrew Bible, this act of God apparently never occurred.  We should note that it is in stark contrast with what our Blue Thread verses from Dt 10 said, above. There the people of Israel were to take the action to “circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart”. 

I’m not sure what the Talmud has to say about heart circumcision or Jewish expectations for it.  I couldn’t find anything.  And, admittedly, the Moses Scroll doesn’t mention it[vi]. 

But Dt 30:6 is a pre-announcement by God of His New Covenant, one in which He alone takes the required actions to redeem His wayward people.  This New Covenant, whichever of its Biblical texts you want to consult (e.g. Je 31:31-34, Ez 11:19-20, Ez 36:26-27, Ez 37:26-28, Joel 2:28-29), makes the fundamental declaration that the LORD (YHWH) is going to replace people’s stone hearts with hearts of flesh, write His law “on their” (circumcised) “hearts”, cause everyone to “know Him”, etc.  In other words, as I read it, this New Covenant was going to be God’s unilateral solution to the systemic problem of man’s natural inability to live as God desires him to live, and to love and reverence Him. 

Notice that He didn’t say “when” this would occur, or “how”.  Just that He would do it.

Adopting a Family

The overarching context and rationale for this Covenant can’t be missed: Israel (as representatives of the human race) were incapable, naturally, of living by God’s laws, despite His direct intervention with them in declaring His will for them and showing Himself as worthy of the people’s adoration and obedience. 

But here’s the problem:  God Created so that He would have the communion of a family of His created beings both now and forever (“You will be my people,…”, “whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made”).  That Creation, however, could not and did not want to abide by His instructions and thus experience His adoption.

So, to achieve His purpose of establishing His family, God had to equip them with the means to aspire to be His children[vii].  We’ll see how He has done this, below.  God Himself was going to enable us to live within His will.

The Ruach

What is the mechanism for this promised “enabling”? Jesus tells us in John 16:7-11 that after his death and resurrection, He will send the “Helper”, God’s Spirit (Ruach) to us.  It is the mechanism that enables our transformation from a member of the human species to a member of God’s family; and to live your life as Christ would live it if He were you[xiii].

This is not some fictitious interpretation or religious sleight-of-hand.  And this is definitely not some religious trapping.  This is an empirically experienced reality prophesied in both Testaments of the Bible.  I and millions of true “followers of Jesus” (i.e. Disciples) have experienced this transformation that produces in them what amounts to a new person, one utterly different from the person they were before their transformation.  

Such people are said to be members of God’s family and citizens of the “Kingdom of God” – where God is, well, their King.  The vast majority of Jesus’ teaching was on this subject of the Kingdom of God and its new availability (i.e. “at hand”, “in the midst of you”).  In these messages, He was describing the “precinct”, if you will, wherein His faithful (and thus transformed[viii]) followers lived and interacted in love. 

Now, no matter what you think about Jesus of Nazareth, the veracity of His narratives in the Gospels, or His allusions to being God’s “Son”, this phenomenon that He, and subsequently the Apostles, announced in the New Testament and that the prophets of the Hebrew Bible prophesied, is an experiential reality in His disciples today.

When you have lived your life attached to worldly objects and diversions for decades yet one day find yourself no longer interested in those things but rather focused on God and His instructions for how to live your life, how else can you explain that change, particularly when it’s not just you, but millions who have experienced the same transformation?  I can’t think of another plausible explanation.  The “proof texts” of the implementation of God’s New Covenant are millions of transformed lives.

Let’s look at a few New Testament verses professing this phenomenon of the Spirit of God:

Jn 3:3-6 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Jn 16:7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

Jn: 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Rom 12: 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

2 Cor 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit[ix].

Rom 14:17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

2 Tim 1:7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

These verses describe the implementation of God’s New Covenant solution, first announced in the Hebrew Bible’s Blue Thread verses, to create a family who yearn to love and revere Him, to live by His Words, and with their neighbors in love.

False Flags

You may object that Jesus’ words here don’t seem to describe the “Christians” you know.  Of that, I have no doubt.  The sad truth is that the majority of participants in Western Christian religion are not followers of Christ, and as a result, not transformed by the Spirit and therefore not actually Christian in the Biblical sense of the word[x].  Rather than rely on their examples to disclaim the New Covenant’s reality, seek out those that you recognize are clearly changed from what they once were, and listen to their story.

Jesus’ Exposition of the Blue Thread

Is Jesus a reliable, accurate teacher of the message of the “Blue Thread”?  Even most non-Christians think so.  Jeremiah challenged the scribes (Je 8:8). Jesus challenged the insincerity and hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees (Mt 23).  Moses (in the MS) articulated God’s blessings (the “Blessed Be’s”) to be experienced as a result of obeying each instruction.  Jesus endorsed and then extended these blessings to all those who were oppressed (Mt 5, Lk 17:1-4).

He used the literary device of Mashalim[xi] (parables) to brilliantly articulate the meanings of God’s Laws and their applications.  For example, the blessing associated with the MS’s tenth “Word” is “Blessed is the man who loves his neighbor.”  Jesus elaborates on this via the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37) and the Parable of Lost Sheep (Lk 15:3-7), among others.  And of course, He taught His “Golden Rule”, Mt 7:12. But He also pointed out the corrupted applications of the letter of the (Levitical) Law by religious leaders, and the unbelief of the people (e.g. Mt 19:8, Lk 16:31)

The following table (click the link) presents a representative sample of NT texts.  For each verse of Jesus, the companion OT verse to which he was alluding is presented along with its authorial “source”, and whether He was repudiating the OT statement, endorsing it, or even extending it:

Table: Jesus’ Interpretation of OT Verses Significant to the Blue Thread

One of the features of Jesus’ teachings that He critically exposed and elaborated is the heart of the person that God was seeking, along with the essence of God’s will found in our Blue Thread verses.  And, He did this not only in His instructions, which are captured in the Gospels, but in the example of His life of service to others, and willingness to suffer for God’s purpose and our sake (Jn 15:13).

Losing the Thread

Many God-fearers, having been disillusioned or wounded by Christian church experiences, or teachings claiming to be Christian, have abandoned Christ.  And they have done so, I contend, for generally two reasons. 

First, they likely never heard presented the true Christian message – the one of transformation into eternal divine life that we’re focused on – “on earth as it is in Heaven”.  They simply aren’t aware of it. (This is not nearly as outrageous as it sounds.  I think it is safe to say that most churches today don’t raise the expectation of transformation/regeneration to their members as they know that it will be unpopular with their unregenerated members.  And that’s just within the somewhat serious churches.  There are thousands of them that never, ever speak of that ultimate grace.  It never enters their thinking, as they embrace the role of something like social action clubs.  And so their attendees remain blissfully oblivious.)  What they likely heard instead were mainly platitudes about hell, Christ’s sacrifice, “Pray this prayer”, God’s irresistible Grace, and that if they “believed in” Christ, they were going to heaven when they died.

Second, they have never experienced this transformation of their minds and hearts after trusting Christ for their lives.  So they can’t possibly understand its reality and power. 

This trust in Christ isn’t the same thing as the Western term “believe” (a word that has been fatally neutered by modern Western usage compared to its Greek ancestor, πιστεύω pisteúō).  This trust is a commitment in which the one trusting stakes the rest of his life on the truth of the promise, and so becomes free to live in obedience to God, and dependent on doing so.  He is fully invested in the truth of the promise and depends on it to sustain his life.  (Sadly, there are many fewer of these fully invested Disciples today than their uncommitted, unserious, onlooker brothers who fill many of today’s church pews.)

You may be one of those scarred by a traumatic experience in an institutional church.  Or a revelation there that, lo and behold, they weren’t teaching you the truth, or perhaps the whole truth.  Or a treatment by its leaders that disclaimed the Jesus they professed to follow. 

Hey, welcome to the club! 

I don’t want to be disrespectful, but you simply have to get over yourself.  Go back and study, reflect, and pray.  If God revealed Himself to Israel and its prophets as the Hebrew Bible relates, and we see that the history of those of even His “elect” disobeyed Him, perhaps you shouldn’t hold your grudge against similarly flawed people who thought they were proclaiming the truth and doing so in the ‘right’ way.

The Needle

Consider for a moment your, and society’s, nature.  How could God act to redeem us to Himself and into His family?  What would that look like, particularly given His Blue Thread New Covenant verses? 

Wouldn’t it look exactly like God ‘cleansing’ his people of their natural ungodliness[xii], through the sacrifice of His incarnation, so that His Spirit could take up residence in us, transforming those of us who wanted Him and the life He offered more than we wanted our previous lives?

What the Levitical Torah documents is an elaborate system of the Temple Cult to cleanse impurity from God’s Tabernacle and later Temple — which was His perceived residence on earth.  This was the purpose of the vast majority of sacrifices carried out in the name of preserving a degree of holiness in and around His residence that allowed Him to continue to live amongst His people.

In His New Covenant, however, as explained in the New Testament, we’re told that God is going to send His Spirit to live within us.  Is it not predictable that in order to have His Spirit living within us, we have to first be purified?  Wasn’t that the entire purpose of the Temple system the first Israelites lived under?  If we are His new home, I don’t think it is hard to understand that some “housekeeping” has to be done first to enable Him to “move in”.  And that “housekeeping” was Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection.

This transformation is the culmination (for me, at least) of following the Blue Thread.  It is the Needle buried deeply in the noise of non-Blue-Thread Bible texts and modern cultural distractions – our metaphorical Haystack.  Anyone, with a little sincere effort, can find and see it.  And anybody, with the desire to submit to their Lord, can have it.

God the Creator desired a human family to live His life with Him – forever, no less.  In my opinion, this is precisely how He is fulfilling that desire.

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[i] The disappearance of the use of blue threads in Tzitzits has similarly interesting meanings for Jews today.  The fundamental issue was the gradual disappearance of the mysterious Mediterranean chilazon, the sea animal from which the blue dye was created necessary to produce blue thread.  Interestingly, the Kabbalists interpreted the loss of the blue thread with the loss of spirituality of the people.  They think that once their Messiah returns, they will know what the chilazon was and how it was used to produce the dye, and so again return to wearing blue threads.

[ii] “Who Wrote the Hebrew Bible?”, “A Reassessment of the Source(s) and Authenticity of the Hebrew Bible”, “Wrestling With the Origins of the Pentateuch”

[iii] These are the designations used by Richard Elliot Friedman (“Friedman”) in his book “The Bible With Sources Revealed”.  He explains these authorial groups in his book “Who Wrote the Bible”, which I review in “Who Wrote the Hebrew Bible?”,

[iv] See “Jesus and the Moses Scroll” (or the drop-down, above) for my explanation of why Jesus phrased this “commandment” as He did, rather than using these literal words. And no, it wasn’t because He was quoting Lev 19:18b, though the Levitical author probably used the same logic that Jesus used to phrase his admonition the way that he did.

[v] Here I am not claiming to yet be sanctified to the extent that following God’s Ten Words is my first (unselfconscious) nature.  No disciple of Christ claims that.  What I am claiming, simply, is that to a great extent, the Spirit of God has taken over directing my life – where, and on what, I spend my time.  For example, I now have virtually no interest in pointless diversions and entertainments.  Replacing it, I have a profound desire to know God more and more through the study of the Bible (and directly related material) and meditation on it.  I specifically hate the idea of violating any of His instructions (whether by myself, or by anyone else), and I look forward to the day when they all come naturally, as my first nature, whenever that may be.

[vi] Interestingly, Deuteronomy 30 mostly comes to us from the Dtr2 source (including 30:6), not the Dtn (historian, later redactor) or the “D” author of the Dt 12-26 Law Code, according to Friedman.

[vii] You can review Jer 31, and Eze 11 & 36, at your leisure to see His words describing it.  Interpreting the New Covenant elaborates on those words and discusses their applicability – Judah and Israel, or all humanity.

[viii] Some use the terminology “regenerated”, rather than transformed.  It’s the same state of repentance and submission to God.

[ix] Notice that even having the indwelt Spirit of God, one can ignore or resist it.  One must continually desire that it guide and transform his life.  God never forces Himself on the apathetic.

[x] Orthodox Christianity comes as close to authentic Christ-following as I have found in the institutional church.  Their well-developed concept of “Theosis” – of becoming more and more like Christ through the work of the Spirit – I unpack a bit in A Critical Analysis of Eastern Orthodox Beliefs.

[xi] See “How Jesus Taught”

[xii] First, most people are unfamiliar with the ancient Jewish concept of “cleanliness” (a.k.a ritual purity) and its extreme importance in Temple practice.  If you’re one of those, please have a look at “Uncleanness, Sin, and Holiness in the Hebrew Bible“.  It certainly was an eye-opener for me. 

Next, many people reject the notion of Jesus’ death and resurrection as a sacrifice, i.e. not that He wasn’t crucified, just that His death was only that, death.  However, those familiar with the obsessiveness of the Torah’s cleanliness/purity practices might want to consider what those practices were designed to teach us.  They were devices to remove the perceived impurity (which is to say, ungodliness) from the people, the priests, and the tabernacle sancta.  Why?  So that God could live with them; in proximity to them; “in their camp”, within His tabernacle.  Some of us think the priests didn’t hear their excruciatingly detailed laws from God.  But then we have to come up with an explanation for their obsessiveness about ritual cleanliness compared to their surrounding cultures.  Surely the Temple Cult practices were designed to teach us something about ourselves and God — perhaps many things.

Could natural man live in the presence of God in his normal state of moral and spiritual uncleanliness?  The Hebrew Bible doesn’t think so.  Could God actually reside within such men without any action to restore them to the necessary level of sanctification/cleanliness to allow God’s Spirit to indwell them?

Metaphorically, we know He lived/communed with Adam and Eve right up to the point that they displayed their natural ‘uncleanliness’ (or lack of godliness or righteousness, if you like).  God then immediately had them leave His presence.  So the Biblical concept of uncleanliness (or sin, or iniquity, or transgression) has as its anchor Genesis 3, as does its consequence of separation from God.  And, in the extreme, we have the cleansing of the Flood, again metaphorically removing uncleanness from God’s presence.

It does not seem far-fetched, therefore, to imagine that these concepts weren’t made up out of whole cloth by some 7^th-century Temple scribe, but rather were somehow expressed early on as a core principle of the relationship between a Holy God and His people.  The next thing you know, you’ve got an elaborate priestly Temple cult premised on the distinction between God’s holiness and man’s natural spiritual/ritual/moral uncleanliness (ungodliness, unrighteousness, unholiness).

Importantly, the texts tell us that we can’t naturally commune with God (Gen 3, Ex 3:5).  Such communion requires a certain state of purity that we don’t naturally possess.  If it were otherwise, why would He not have just lived with and within His humanity from the beginning, without condition? That’s the question.  By so doing, He would have reformed mankind and his attitudes (heart) and achieved something like the paradise described in Isaiah 11.  But that’s not what happened.

No.  It surely seems as though some action had to be taken by God to allow Him to live with and in us.  That action was Jesus of Nazareth’s death and resurrection, at least for those who want God and His life.

[xiii] Willard, Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy, HarperOne, February 6, 2009

[xiv] In fact, this verse has been called “The Bible in the Little” as it encapsulates God’s will for us.