Tag: discipleship

One Seat on the Throne

Faith Recovery Podcast
Faith Recovery Podcast
One Seat on the Throne
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In the kingdom of God, there’s only one seat on the throne.

In “One Seat on the Throne,” Alex, Kent, and Nathan look at God’s plan for leadership under the gospel and conclude that God doesn’t need human control to protect his people.

“One Seat on the Throne” – Episode Notes:

It may sound strange to talk about letting God rule. Is he not sovereign over his creation? Doesn’t he have the wisdom to hand down righteous decrees and the power to enforce them? Won’t he eventually call all people to account?

God rules creation and orchestrates history, but he won’t force anyone under his reign. We won’t experience his rule in our lives until we submit ourselves to him – until we let him rule. Any despot can make people conform but God is no despot. He deserves the job of universal ruler, but he won’t impose his will on the unwilling. This is true of individuals and groups. The gospel invites individuals under God’s reign, but it also grants them the opportunity to reject him. The Holy Spirit has come to guide the church, but we can grieve, quench, and despise his leading.[i]

If it’s up to us to let God rule, how can we ensure that’s what we do?

Since we are realized Israel, let’s look to the history of our nation to learn how God wants to rule his kingdom.

“I will restore your judges.”

Do you remember that time Israel deposed God in a coup?

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”

But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.” (1 Samuel 8:4-8 NIV)

Israel’s demand for a king wasn’t just a rejection of Samuel or even of the office of judge which Samuel held, it was a rejection of God as their king. God responded to this insult by agreeing to give them a king. This exchange demonstrates God’s insistence that people obey him willingly.

God told Samuel that Israel had rejected him as king from the day he brought them out of Egypt. God became Israel’s king through the defeat of Pharaoh and his gods. At Mount Sinai he declared them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, his own treasured possession. He gave them his law. He provided for their needs. His Presence remained among them to guide them and to enforce his law. He put his Spirit on Moses to empower and enable him to serve as a judge among them. When the job got too big for Moses, God took some of the Spirit that was on him and distributed it among seventy(two) elders[1] who then judged Israel with him. This was God’s administration over his own kingdom.

This governmental structure continued in Israel as they entered the land of promise. God’s Presence went ahead of them as the Commander of the LORD’s Army[ii] to conquer the land. His provision changed from manna to the produce of the land. By his Spirit, he enabled Joshua to succeed Moses as leader of the people. Neither Moses nor Joshua took the title of king because God continued to rule as king over Israel. Moses and Joshua served as stewards in God’s kingdom.[iii] They moved under God’s explicit instructions and wielded his power to carry out his will.  

After the death of Joshua, the Messenger of God’s Presence continued to rule as king in Israel. In the book of Judges, we find him walking around in Canaan rebuking the nation from a mountain top, accosting Gideon from under an oak tree, setting stuff on fire, telling a woman how to raise her kid, and hitching a ride on a plume of smoke. He enforced his law directly by raising up the nations in the land to punish Israel. Once the nation learned its lesson, God’s Spirit empowered judges to deliver them from their oppressors. It was a time of miracles and personal freedom, but that freedom proved too much for Israel to bear.

By the end of the book of Judges we find the nation on the brink of total collapse resulting from sin’s corrosive influence. God’s call was to each person to fear him and obey his law. In this way they could live together in peace with no need to be controlled by earthly leaders. But Israel was still made up of fallen people. Through two horrific tales of religious and moral degradation we find the refrain, “There was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” God had set his people free, but their rebellious hearts turned that freedom into anarchy. God gave them a king at their request because each person’s rejection of him as their personal king was destroying the nation.

I think it’s noteworthy that once God gave Israel their king, he stopped appearing bodily in Israel as the Messenger of Yahweh. God had ruled directly as king in Israel from the time of Moses through the era of the judges. All the while Israel had resisted God’s reign, so he gave them a human king according to their request. This wasn’t God’s first choice for them because he knew that power corrupts and that nearly all their kings would mislead the nation. It was to a corrupt kingdom of Israel that Isaiah penned these words:

Your princes are rebels

and companions of thieves.

Everyone loves a bribe

and runs after gifts.

They do not bring justice to the fatherless,

and the widow’s cause does not come to them.

Therefore the Lord declares,

the LORD of hosts,

the Mighty One of Israel:

“Ah, I will get relief from my enemies

and avenge myself on my foes.

I will turn my hand against you

and will smelt away your dross as with lye

and remove all your alloy.

And I will restore your judges as at the first,

and your counselors as at the beginning.

Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness,

the faithful city.” (Isaiah 1:23-26 ESV)

God would remediate Israel’s corruption by resuming his role as king in a return to the era of the judges. I believe that era has commenced with the exaltation of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Our God Reigns

Jesus promised that some in his audience would see the kingdom of God come with power.[iv] On the day of Pentecost that promise was fulfilled. In Christ, God has resumed his direct reign over his people. Like in the era of the judges, Christ, the Messenger of Yahweh lives among us. Unlike the era of the judges Christ also lives within us. Like in the era of the judges, God has given his law. Unlike that time, this law is written on our hearts by his own Spirit. As under the Moses, Joshua, and the judges God personally punishes wrongdoers like Ananias and Saphira.[v] And true to his word he has restored Spirit-empowered ad hoc leaders, judges, over his people.

Judges aren’t kings. They have spiritual authority instead of positional authority. Just like Gideon’s leadership was contingent on the power of God or Deborah’s on her ability to prophesy, so Paul based his authority on God’s power at work in him. Consider Paul’s leadership credentials in the following passage:

I have made a fool of myself, but you drove me to it. I ought to have been commended by you, for I am not in the least inferior to the “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing. I persevered in demonstrating among you the marks of a true apostle, including signs, wonders and miracles. (2 Corinthians 12:11-12 NIV)

But what if some despised his authority or what if they were rebellious? How could Paul as God’s regent enforce his word?

I already gave you a warning when I was with you the second time. I now repeat it while absent: On my return I will not spare those who sinned earlier or any of the others, since you are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you.

This is why I write these things when I am absent, that when I come I may not have to be harsh in my use of authority—the authority the Lord gave me for building you up, not for tearing you down. (2 Corinthians 13:2-3, 10 NIV)

Paul didn’t have or need organizational endorsement. His suffering for Christ and the power of the Spirit were his credentials. As Christ’s duly appointed representative, he warned them that if they didn’t repent, he would once again demonstrate Christ’s power to punish their wrongs. He didn’t need a majority vote to carry out church discipline because Christ had given him authority and Christ would do the disciplining.

It’s important that we acknowledge the only legitimate authority in God’s kingdom is that which flows powerfully from Christ. As his Spirit-enabled leaders wield that authority he remains king and they are spared the corruption that comes with office. In the era of the judges a person didn’t need to wonder whether God endorsed the judge. The evident power of God with them was his endorsement. This system is self-regulating as Paul wrote, “For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.” (2 Corinthians 13:8 NIV)

Lest we think Paul and the other apostles possessed a unique leadership dispensation, we should consider that Paul expected other would-be leaders to put their power where their mouth is.

Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you. But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a rod of discipline, or shall I come in love and with a gentle spirit? (1 Corinthians 4:18-21 NIV)

God’s promise through Isaiah to restore the judges was a promise to resume direct reign over his kingdom. Kings command; but judges minister. Paul’s authority came from the power of the Holy Spirit. He didn’t expect other people to defer to him based on his title but on his work. He was an apostle because God had empowered him to perform that role. Leaders in the kingdom of God don’t resort to positional authority to make God’s people obey them. They minister their God-given gifts to feed and protect God’s flock.

The ancient judges were empowered by God to serve their generation and not to build a dynasty. Christ rules his kingdom and will never pass it on to another, so leadership succession has been done away. We have the same Holy Spirit today as Paul or Peter or James did. What possible need could we have for “apostolic succession”? We can certainly benefit from the gifting of those men through reading the New Testament, but we shouldn’t allow their rulings to set timeless precedent while the king continues to reign in our midst. We have the gospel which is the very spirit of prophecy.[vi] Can it not teach us something for today? Might God not raise up Spirit-empowered teachers and prophets to share mighty truths for our generation? We want to borrow authority from the apostles, but the source of their authority belongs to us today.

Let me be very clear. Every hierarchical church, denomination, association, or alliance is an affront to God’s kingdom reign. They arise from the same faithlessness that caused Israel to ask for a king. They traffic in contrived authority which they generate, define, and celebrate according to the rudimentary principles of this world. “Let us build,” they say, “and make a name for ourselves. Lest all our progress die with our generation and our legacy be scattered to the wind.”   

Someone might defend Christian institutions by pointing to the need to defend the church from heresy. That thinking supposes God needs our help to defend his gospel.

A great house with a firm foundation

When the Reformers elevated the Bible to the place of final authority in place of the Catholic hierarchy, the Christian movement immediately began to fracture. Differing interpretations became the bases for various sects. To combat this proliferation of Christian variants they codified their biblical interpretations into creeds and catechisms. Sects trained new leaders in their version of orthodoxy. Those leaders were then ordained to indoctrinate their parishioners in the same. In this system, everyone must be told in detail what to believe. The transition from church authority to biblical authority produced yet another form of ecclesiastical control. Inclusion required conformity. Dissent brought expulsion.

While the authors of the New Testament seem to have been concerned about heresy, their methods indicate a different perspective on protecting orthodoxy. For instance, leaders who took upon themselves to throw doctrinal dissenters out of the Christian community were seen as unorthodox. Diotrephes was such a leader and John censured him for his actions:

I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us. So when I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, spreading malicious nonsense about us. Not satisfied with that, he even refuses to welcome other believers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church. (3 John 10-11 NIV)

John certainly took exception to Diotrephes’ slander, but he counted his top-down control of church membership the greater offense. By way of contrast, consider Paul’s response to reports of factions in the Corinthian church:

But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. (1 Corinthians 11:17-19 ESV)

Paul never attempted to control the composition of any congregation. In this time before the return of Christ we long for unity and work toward it, but we also know that divisions will persist. Because God is sovereign even factions will come to serve his greater purpose. They will serve as a backdrop to highlight the glory of his gospel. The heretics and hypocrites in the church have job to do as well. Consider how Paul depicts the purpose of even false believers in God’s household:

Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have departed from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some. Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.”

In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work. (2 Timothy 2:16-21 NIV)

Notice that even though Paul doesn’t mince words about the status of these false teachers he also assumes that they and their ilk will be present in the church. Not only will they be present but God has placed them there and has a place for them there. One of the greatest challenges to letting go of biblicism to follow the gospel standard has always been the fear of heresy. Paul could live above a prescriptive, written standard because he didn’t entertain the pretense that he had the power or even the right to extinguish heresy. Paul knew that Christ was on the throne and there was only one seat there. That’s still true today. If we find false teachers among us, we surely can’t believe it’s because Christ needs us to remove them. We must commit to submitting to his kingdom authority over our own lives and over the life of the church.

[1] In Numbers 11:10-30 God called out seventy elders to share the burden of leadership with Moses. When he poured out his Spirit on them, they all prophesied. In addition to those seventy, another two prophesied in the camp.

[i] Verses on don’t grieve or quench the Spirit and not to despise prophecy

[ii] Joshua 5:13-15

[iii] Numbers 12:7

[iv] Mark 9:1

[v] Acts 5:1-9

[vi] Revelation about the gospel is the spirit of prophecy.

Three Tips for Growth

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Faith Recovery Podcast
Three Tips for Growth
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We continue discussing how to retool discipleship with three tips for growth.

In “Three Tips for Growth” Alex, Kent, and Nathan discuss some gospel-based practices for churches to disciple their members.

Three Tips for Growth – Episode Notes:

How do we minister the living experience of the gospel to one another? While an exhaustive list of possible ministry activities would be difficult if not impossible to produce, there seem to be some basic practices mentioned in the New Testament which the church would do well to adopt until it becomes skilled enough in the word to innovate.

Below, I will list and unpack three New Testament ministry practices from a gospel perspective. They are:

  • Corporate Prayer
  • Gospel Rehearsal
  • Loving Confrontation

I’ll survey each practice in turn.

Corporate Prayer

The Christian life consists of obedience to the gospel. We can’t obey it directly, though, since it is simply the announcement about Christ. We obey the gospel when we conduct our lives in response to reality as the gospel reveals it. When Paul wrote, “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” (Ephesians 4:25 NIV) he rooted his truthfulness ethic in the gospel rather than simply saying, “Don’t lie.”

Since the gospel is the message of reconciliation between sinners and God, it calls forth prayer from its very core. A believer can obey the gospel at any time simply by praying confidently to God her Father. Through prayer, we identify with the experience of Christ and we enter our own experience of the Father. Disciples pray and the act of praying disciples.

While any believer can pray powerfully at any time, there seems to be a particular benefit to praying together. Through the book of Acts, the disciples gathered regularly to pray. Indeed, it was the first thing they did together after Christ’s ascension. When they were threatened, they came together to pray. When Peter was imprisoned the church gathered to pray. In the first Gentile church, prayer activated the missionary enterprise:

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

(Acts 13:1-3 NIV)

These were teachers in the church who weren’t too busy teaching to pray. I get the sense that this gathering of five had spent quite a bit of time addressing God together before the Holy Spirit spoke. Then, after his commission, they spent more time in fasting and prayer. These men were called to teach and preach, but prayer was their central focus.

Corporate prayer gets things done, but the practice of corporate prayer also builds disciples. As we pray together, we expand our vision of what God might do through us. That vision, in turn, pulls us to pray for his guidance and supply. As the disciples witness God perform his own will through them, their faith grows exponentially.

Notice the interplay between Christlike love, confidence before God, and effective prayer in this passage from 1 John:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.

1 John 3:16-22 NIV

Notice how faith and love orbit a life of prayer and increase with every revolution. Think of a believer who has enough material goods for today and tomorrow encountering a sister in Christ who doesn’t have enough for today. He obeys the gospel and gives her what he has for tomorrow. That act of giving causes joy and confidence to flood his heart. From that confidence, he asks God to supply his needs for tomorrow. When that prayer is answered his faith grows, prompting him to do more acts of love and the cycle begins again.

Gospel Rehearsal

Nobody in God’s kingdom needs to be taught, but we often need reminding. The gospel is an alien presence in our hearts and in our midst. Our previous tendencies threaten to reject its graft into our hearts. The surrounding society entices and coerces us to compromise this message that refuses black-and-white norms. In short order, we can begin to convert the gospel rather than allowing it to convert us.

The early church seems to have gathered to rehearse the essence of the gospel by various means. This aspect of church life is depicted in elegant detail in this passage:

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

(Colossians 3:16 NIV)

The gospel lives at the center of the faith community as they gather to celebrate it in a spiritual dance with God and one another. We gather to celebrate our salvation, compare notes, and remind each other where to find true north. The Christ hymns which we can find in Paul’s letters seem to have been designed to facilitate gospel rehearsal. Here is one such hymn as an example:

Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him,
we will also live with him;
if we endure,
we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
he will also disown us;
if we are faithless,
he remains faithful,
for he cannot disown himself.

(2 Timothy 2:11-13 NIV)

This hymn both recites the essence of the gospel and encourages faithfulness to it. The last stanzas strongly suggest a movement under pressure to renounce Christ. Believers in such circumstances would need to gather to remind one another of the truth and their stake in it.

We need to rehearse the gospel to keep it from accommodating culture or serving our sensibilities. The church has been tasked with upholding the gospel but often usurps it instead. Rather than preserve its integrity she’s given birth to twisted perversions like sacramentalism, easy believism, the social gospel, liberation theology, and the prosperity gospel. Should the church become once again subject to the gospel it will again produce powerful disciples as it provides the place to rehearse its simple truth.

Loving confrontation

Sin is insidious. Scripture wastes no time depicting it as a beast waiting to consume the unwary. In Genesis 4:7, God warns Cain:

 “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

(NIV)

There’s an enemy at the gate, but it presents itself as a friend. An injustice stirs righteous indignation that hardens into judgment. Compassion becomes control. Relational reciprocity becomes indebtedness and then personal compromise. Workaholism demolishes lives under the banner of a high calling.

Not only does sin operate in secret, but its operation also dulls our awareness of its presence. We, like Cain, must be wary of sin before it has come through the door lest it becomes our welcome guest. We also need others to minister God’s warning to us in real-time. We need proactive accountability.

The church values accountability in theory but fails in execution. Retrospectives of the fall of Ravi Zacharias or Mark Driscoll condemn their opacity. More troubling, their inner circle protected their secrecy. Accountability among the rank and file is more selective. Churches publicly brand someone for adultery while turning a blind eye to the questionable business practices of a major donor. This double standard indicates the core malfunction in church accountability which is a fundamental misunderstanding of sin.

We hesitate to confront others when we define sin as a violation of a written standard. Since a standard has been broken, accountability must come with accusation. As with the secular legal system, we’re slow to prosecute unless the optics of the situation require that we do. We don’t want “to make a federal case” out of gossip when this sin seems so common. Wouldn’t it be more “grace based” to model the right behavior without pointing any fingers? Besides, aren’t we all sinners without legitimate stones to throw? But that’s just the problem, we see confrontation as an injury while the New Testament writers saw it as protection and help.

We can align our view of accountability with that of the first Christians when we return to the gospel standard. Since there is no condemnation in Christ, we have no basis to accuse each other. We no longer ask whether our brother’s actions were lawful because such a question is nonsensical for God’s children. Without prohibitions, the more challenging question emerges, “Is it helpful?” This type of confrontation elicits no shame over the past because it concerns itself with progress toward our shared goal.

Without the trauma and trepidation of prosecution, we’re free to weave confrontation into our ordinary life as a community. While infractions and accusations create upheaval, loving confrontation smooths the road and energizes the recipient. Why wouldn’t we share and receive it liberally?

An American Christian who maintains a basic moral veneer may never experience confrontation today. How different that experience is from the advice of Hebrews:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

(Hebrews 3:12-15 ESV)

We are not under a law of works but a law of faith. Rather than concerning ourselves with prohibitions we attend to one continuous imperative, “Believe.” That’s the law of faith. This law doesn’t require prescribed penalties because it’s self-enforcing. Unbelieving actions produce unbelieving hearts which exclude themselves from eternal life. This hardening can begin in a moment and happen at any time. So, the author of Hebrews calls on believers to warn each other on the day of rebellion – the day called, “today.”

Each disciple needs the church to help them faithfully follow the path marked out by Christ. That’s a practical principle of the gospel.

The Recipe to Make Peace

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The Recipe to Make Peace
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The Three Failed Pastors continue their pursuit of the simple gospel and stumble across the recipe to make peace.

In “The Recipe to Make Peace,” we continue our exploration into how the gospel saves people. Spoiler alert: It’s by faith.

Healers with Dirty Fingers

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Healers with Dirty Fingers
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In “Healers with Dirty Fingers” the Three Failed Pastors caution the church.

Leaders in the church should be more concerned about the use of power than the use of porn. When they resort to worldly methods to gain compliance they become healers with dirty fingers.

“Healers with Dirty Fingers” Episode Notes:

The notion that we Christians must be free from the dynamics of control has urgent implications for the church.

A person who seeks to mold the behavior of others will always come under the sway of Satan. I’m not saying we shouldn’t want justice to be done. That desire is part of the divine image in us. Efforts to achieve it through interpersonal control become snake venom in our veins. They stroke our egos while blinding us to our faults. We confuse our personal ambition to be significant for concern for the “right.” Here’s what Jesus’ brother, James, had to say about the justice warriors in his church:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

(James 3:13-15 NIV)

Can’t you just hear this guy complaining?

“I’ve got a lot of good ideas, but nobody listens because I’m not in the right clique.”

“I guess it’s about who you know, huh?”

“Why should we listen to _____? I’ve never heard him say anything remotely impressive.”

“They don’t want me in leadership because they know I’ll shake things up.”

We might not think James’ warning applies to us because we think we’re free from “envy and selfish ambition.” But what was the surface-level ambition of the people he was warning? Look at the next three verses:

For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

(James 3:16-18 NIV)

Notice what James promises them at the end of this section – “a harvest of righteousness (actually “justice” in Greek).” James wrote this letter to Christians who wanted to apply their faith toward making their society fairer. They wanted to reap a harvest of justice, but we can’t plant justice in other people. That is, we can’t convince them they’re being unjust. Even if we can force them to behave justly, they will believe they’ve been treated unfairly and so injustice perpetuates. The only way to harvest justice is by planting peace. That will require us to retain a posture of humility even as we’re being treated unfairly. It’s a divesting of power back into the hands of God where it belongs. Christians don’t fight for justice because they become corrupt in the process. Instead, we absorb injustice in pursuit of peace trusting that justice will spring forth.

The Satanic voice doesn’t say, “Do evil,” but “How can you do nothing when everything is so bad?”

That was the voice Jesus heard in the mouth of his own dear disciple Peter:

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

(Matthew 16:21-23 NIV)

Skeptics criticize Jesus for not doing more to alleviate suffering in the world because they assess Jesus according to worldly standards.

Jesus came to save us from the corrupt society by setting us free from the elementary principles of the world. He certainly wouldn’t have resorted to using them to make people do the right thing. In dying, Jesus divested himself of all human power. By ascending to heaven, he rules above the elementary principles of this fallen world. Hear Jesus’ words as quoted by John:

“They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”

(John 17:16-19 NIV)

When Jesus said he was going to sanctify himself, he meant that he would be set apart from this world. From heaven, he rules over the hearts and minds of each subject. As his subjects on earth, we reject the worldly principles and so are set apart as well. Christ’s disciples must never enslave one another under the elementary principles of the world because Christ has set his people free from them.

Healers with dirty fingers can’t offer pleasing worship to God.

Leaders must reject the temptation to resort to them for the “greater good.” Charisma can’t appear among the qualifications for leadership, not even the unwritten ones. Surely our insistence on “hip and cool” or “relevant” does a disservice to him of whom it was written:

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

(Isaiah 53:2b NIV)

People want to be accepted by competent and attractive leaders. That’s just the way of the world. You can build a church that way and it will probably become large. But it won’t represent the gospel of Christ and it won’t be predicated on faith. Worldly methods work, but they corrupt those who use them. No wonder scandal emerges from within so many megachurches and international ministries.

It seems to me the avoidance of these methods is at least part of what James meant when he said that pure religion includes keeping oneself unspotted from the world. It’s surely no coincidence that he goes on to forbid interpersonal favoritism beginning in the very next verse.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing  fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

(James 1:27-2:4 NIV)

It’s my hope that anyone who attempts to employ the elementary principles in a church setting would come under strong conviction or that those under their leadership would offer them a loving rebuke.

Share your thoughts on “Healers with Dirty Fingers.”

Every Third Person Wang Chung Tonight! DDWJWD Part 3

In 1986 pop music reach its zenith with the release of “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” by the group, Wang Chung. Check out this excerpt to see what I mean:

Across the nation
Around the world
Everybody have fun tonight
A celebration so spread the word
Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody Wang Chung tonight
Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody Wang Chung tonight
Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody have fun

Okay, so maybe it’s not a classic, but it was fun to sing especially for high school sophomores. One of my friends at the time couldn’t just sing along, though. Keith sat there thinking out loud, “What does it mean to Wang Chung? How do you do it? Is it a good idea for everybody to Wang Chung at the same time? If they do, what will happen to society? Wouldn’t it be more responsible to say, ‘Every third person Wang Chung tonight’?”

I never learned to Wang Chung and I’ve never met anyone who has. We needn’t petition Wang Chung to amend the song for fear of societal collapse.

Keith’s ponderings, when applied to WWJD, do require a response. If we’re going to aspire to do what Jesus would do and encourage everyone we know to do that same, we’d better ask, “What does it mean to do what Jesus would do? How do you do it? Is it a good idea for everybody to do what Jesus would do?”

For most people I’ve met, doing what Jesus would do requires reading through the Gospel accounts to form an algorithm of sorts and then overlaying it onto our lives. We read that Jesus spent time socially with sinners, so we go to share the gospel in the entertainment districts. He gave up his earthly possessions, so we sell what we have and give to the poor, or at least we think we should. He cared for marginalized people, so we volunteer at a soup kitchen. These are the kinds of things that Christ did which we admire, and aspire to reproduce.

This approach has some fatal flaws. For one, we tend to selectively purvey vignettes from the Gospels to construct our template. Most “radicals”¹ ignore Christ’s tendency to push people away to find a time of repose. In Mark 7:24 we’re told that he went to a pagan city and cloistered himself in a house, posting his disciples outside his door to keep visitors at bay. Many people imagine Jesus as always gentle. That image comes more from pastoral paintings of him than from the actual Gospel accounts. Recently on a Facebook group, I was accused of being un-Christ-like for dismantling Mormon doctrine. I directed my accuser to Matthew 23. Almost every Christian I’ve met would distance themselves from red-faced street preachers shouting at the “whoremongers” to repent, but that style of ministry much more closely resembles Jesus’ own than the one we’re comfortable with. I’m sure everyone would agree that Jesus was generous, but the Gospels present not a single vignette of Jesus giving anything to anyone. There was that one time that he paid the temple tax, but that four-drachma coin had never actually been in his possession.
Jesus got money from the mouth of a fish. Now, go and do what Jesus would do!

 

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Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

 

Christ’s spiritual mastery shakes our attempts at imitating him. Jeff Walling, the well known Church of Christ preacher, once related a story about a time that he came into his kitchen to get a glass of chocolate milk only to walk in on his son holding a glass containing the last chocolate milk in the house. Bro. Walling hinted around that he wanted some of the milk. As the willfully ignorant son put the glass to his lips, the preacher blurted out, “Now Billy, what would Jesus do?”

Billy responded, “Jesus would make more,” and he downed the entire glass.

Peter preached to Cornelius’ household that Jesus, “went around doing good,” but those good works consisted of miraculous deliverance and healing empowered by the Spirit of God. When we contemplate doing good because it’s what Jesus would do, we usually mean serving in some way or giving money to the needy. Very few Christians in America would answer the question, “What would Jesus do?” with “heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons!”² Don’t get me wrong, I believe that Christ’s disciples can and will do these things in his name, but they are not the first things we consider when seeking to emulate his life. If performing these works is what it means to do what Jesus would do, then very few people will be found to have met the standard on the last day.

Besides our inability to rise to the miraculous example of Christ, there’s another more mundane problem with aspiring to do what Jesus would do.

We just can’t know for certain what Jesus would do in every situation by reading about what he did do. We can’t know for certain what anyone would do in every situation. Human personalities defy predictions. Variations in mood, recent history, and immediate environment affect choices and attitudes. In a way, we’re a bundle of reactions. As fully human, Jesus was affected by these factors as well. He had tendencies to be sure, but he was more than that. In a way, our attempts to formulate a behavioral decision-tree based on the accounts of his life dehumanize him to the point of making him inaccessible.

Even if we could come up with a list of things that we could say with absolute certainty Jesus always would do, adhering to that list wouldn’t be possible or practical for most believers. Jesus of Nazareth was the only person to live that specific life. Much of what he would do cannot be generalized to everyone. We might say that Jesus would always welcome and bless children, but Jesus never had children of his own. Applying the “always welcome and bless” value to parenting will no doubt produce a generation of self-indulgent brats.

 

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Image by ariyandhamma from Pixabay

 

It’s a pretty safe bet that Jesus would preach everywhere without regard for personal consequences, but it’s probably not best for a married father of four with a mortgage to stand up on his desk and call on his workgroup to repent and believe the gospel.

Jesus left his home and traveled throughout towns and villages. Does that mean a mother of small children should do the same? If so, should her husband? How about both sets of that couple’s parents and their aunts, uncles, cousins and so on? If so, who’s going to take care of the babies?

Forget about the implications of everybody Wang Chunging (or is it Wanging Chung?) for one night; an entire society of people living the life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels is simply untenable.

As much as we’d like to think that everyone ought to just quit their jobs and do life together, not even the early church could make that way of life work for very long. If anyone was ever qualified to do what Jesus would do it was his twelve chosen disciples. They’d lived with him for over three years and experienced a rich taste of kingdom living. They had abandoned their homes and occupations for total immersion in Christ’s teachings, example, and community. After three thousand people joined their ranks on the day of Pentecost, those people were incorporated into fulltime kingdom living as Acts 2:42-44 describes:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.

Christians often read that passage with a mix of longing and guilt. We see the experience of those first believers as the golden age of the church. We compare that description to our earthbound existence and long for the church to go back to that expression of the kingdom. There can be no doubt, we think, that those Christians were doing what Jesus did, or at least what the disciples did when they were physically following Jesus.

At this point, it’s probably important to make the distinction between what Jesus did and what he would do. I’ve been saying that we shouldn’t do what Jesus would do, but I don’t mean that we shouldn’t imitate Christ. I’m saying that the attempt to produce a template from the Gospels and live that way isn’t something Jesus – the real, living, dynamic person – would do.

The early disciples continued doing what they did when they were with Jesus, but with the addition of thousands more, that way of living became unsustainable. In the very next verse of Acts 2, Luke relays, “They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

This example of radical generosity also places an expiration date on the golden age.
By the beginning of chapter 4, the church has experienced further growth with the number just of the men reaching five thousand. At the end of chapter 4, Luke lets us know that this growth wasn’t just numerical:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:32-35)

Luke understood that the coming of the kingdom of God would be accompanied by the abolition of need as wealthy citizens learned to share with the materially poor. We’re meant to interpret the selling of land and houses as tangible expressions of grace – and they are. But, as any financial advisor will tell you, paying bills by liquidating property won’t last forever. Without income, the system will eventually go bankrupt. By Acts 8, God mercifully allowed the First Church of Jerusalem to disband and disburse before scarcity turned the members against each other.

 

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Image by Hang Nelson from Pixabay

 

Everyone can’t do what Jesus did because during the years of his earthly ministry he was a financial liability. In Luke 8:1-3 we’re told that Jesus and his retinue soaked up the resources of a cadre of women who traveled with them. No doubt, Jesus’ supporters received back far greater treasures in terms of spiritual blessings, but those don’t feed hungry bellies. At some point, someone’s gonna have to not do what Jesus did so they and others can eat.

Just like Jesus, those who have been gifted and called to spend full time ministering the word of God have a right to support from those to whom they minister, but only a very small percentage of all believers is called to the full-time ministry of the word. Most believers will pursue God’s calling on their lives by maintaining honest secular occupations.

God means to express the beauty of his kingdom through the productive conduct of his subjects. High unemployment in a nation suggests a failure on the part of the government. The citizens of God’s kingdom exhibit his wisdom and righteousness when they go to work.

Christ commanded his followers to love one another as he loved us. Yes, we’re to imitate Christ but not by mimicking the behaviors we see in the Gospels. We can imitate Jesus because we’ve experienced his love at his cross. When we believe that sacrifice was for us and that God vindicated Christ’s trust, we imbibe his love and his faith. Resurrection faith and cruciform love are the DNA of God’s Son. When we express those traits in an incalculable variety of situations, we imitate Christ.

In my life and yours, imitating Christ will often require that we not do what Jesus did. Love requires that we give our resources to those in need. We must work so we can have those resources in the first place. To encourage obedience to the gospel of God’s loving kingdom, Paul chose to serve bi-vocationally. Here’s what he had to say about it:

For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. (1 Thessalonians 1:4-6 NIV)

Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. (1 Thessalonians 2:9)

Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. (1 Thessalonians 4:9-12

Paul imitated Christ by not doing what Jesus did, and he encouraged others to do the same.

 

Footnotes:

  1.  The word “Radical” has appeared recently in titles of books devoted to encouraging Christians to mimic the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Two that come to mind are Shane Claiborne’s, Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, and David Platt’s, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream. 
  2.  Matthew 10:5-8

The Bible on the Bible

“Hey, you’re dressed queer.”

I look over. The speaker is an elderly man, mid-70s I’d guess. He is tall and thin and is wearing of those caps that cabbies wore in movies from the Forties.
“You’re dressed queer,” he snarls. “Why you dressed so queer.” I have on my usual fringes, and, for good measure, have worn some sandals and am carrying a knotty maple walking stick I’d bought on the Internet for $25.
“I’m trying to live by the rules of the Bible. The 10 commandments, stoning adulterers…”
“You’re stoning adulterers?”
“Yeah, I’m stoning adulterers.”
“I’m an adulterer.”
“You’re currently an adulterer?”
“Yeah. Tonight, tomorrow, yesterday, two weeks from now. You gonna stone me?”
“If I could, yes, that’d be great.”
“I’ll punch you in the face. I’ll send you to the cemetery.”
He is serious. This isn’t a cutesy grumpy old man. This is an angry old man. This is a man with seven decades of hostility behind him.
I fish out my pebbles from my back pocket.
“I wouldn’t stone you with big stones,” I say. “Just these little guys.”
I open my palm to show him the pebbles. He lunges at me, grabbing one out of my hand, then chucking it at my face. It whizzes by my cheek.
I am stunned for a second. I hadn’t expected this elderly man to make the first move. But now there is nothing stopping me from retaliating. An eye for an eye.
I take one of the remaining pebbles and whip it at his chest. It bounces off.
“I’ll punch you right in the kisser,” he say.
“Well, you really shouldn’t commit adultery,” I say.
We stare at each other. My heart is racing.
Yes, he is a septuagenarian. Yes, he had just threatened me using corny Honeymooners dialogue. But you could tell: This man has a strong dark side.
Our glaring contest lasts ten seconds, then he walks away, brushing by me as he leaves.

This little vignette from A.J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically, hilariously highlights the impracticality of attempting to obey the Bible in our contemporary world.

As my own, less funny, experience with shutting down a church and trying to stay within the confines of the speed limit attest, following the letter of the New Testament isn’t any more tenable.

Following all the Bible’s instructions isn’t possible, but that’s okay because the Bible doesn’t expect us to.

While it contains rules, they weren’t written specifically to us. Yet, for some reason we’ve come to believe they were.

Our generalization of commands written to other people can be subjective and arbitrary too.

As a for instance, would you include, eating only meat that had first been drained of blood on a list of rules Christians should observe?

No?

What about Acts 15:29 which says, “You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things”?

In context, these instructions are very clearly from a letter written as a specific response to a specific situation affecting a specific group of Christians living in a specific region of the world. Having the benefit of the backstory with the letter situated in a larger narrative, we instinctively know that those instructions weren’t given to us.

And yet, when we look at the greeting just a few verses earlier, it reads a whole lot like the other epistles to which we feel beholden, “The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: Greetings.”

If it’s an authoritative epistle written by a council of the Lord’s apostles, why don’t we afford it the same treatment as the other epistles? The only difference seems to be situational. Should this letter have survived outside the book of Acts and been collected with the others, I have no doubt that it would have been dubbed, “The Epistle to the Syrians,” or just “Syrians.” I also have no doubt that Christians would have been arguing throughout the past sixteen centuries as to just how much blood might be acceptable in a piece of meat.¹

While the epistles contain a trove of wonderful wisdom and commentary on the gospel, we must keep in mind that they are other people’s mail.

The authors of those letters indicate no inkling that they thought they were writing volume two of God’s book. Paul seems least of all aware that anyone would later compile his letters to include them in a canon of holy writ. Near the end of his life, he put his hope in the transferability of his simple message and manner of life rather than in the codification of his writings. In 2 Timothy 2:2 he wrote to his beloved protégé, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” Not coincidentally, this also seems to have been Jesus’ method for perpetuating truth.²

To be fair, Peter does call the writings of Paul Scripture in 2 Peter 3:16. But what does that mean?

Let’s look at the designation in context to get an idea:

And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Peter 3:15–16)

There it is. I agree that the writings we find in Matthew through Revelation are inspired, so I have no problem agreeing with Peter that the letters of Paul are Scripture. Under grace, “Scripture,” comes to fulfill a purpose different from the one it served under law. Whether we find it in the New Testament or the Old, Scripture provides wisdom. Paul proclaimed that regenerated people were under no obligation to follow the letter of the Torah, while also encouraging them to find Jesus in it. In the same way, we needn’t follow the letter of the New Testament, but must seek Jesus there.³

By including Paul’s writings along with “the other Scriptures,” Peter classifies them along with the books of the Old Testament like Deuteronomy. I’ve never been inclined to cook a young goat in its mother’s milk, but should the need arise, I am free to do so without pang of conscience. I can also pray with a hat on.

Under grace, we must treat all Scripture as wisdom literature.

Why? Because everything is lawful, but not everything is beneficial. Isn’t that what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23?

Consider what Paul wrote about the value of the Hebrew Scriptures:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 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. (2 Timothy 3:14–17 emphasis mine NAW)

Just because the Torah no longer bound believers with the condemning power of a legal code didn’t mean it no longer had value. By the way, Paul didn’t pen these words in reference to any portion of the twenty-seven books we call the New Testament. In encouraging him to attend to the Scriptures he’d been raised on, Paul didn’t mean for Timothy’s conscience to be bound to its procedural dictates.

When we, as Peter did, acknowledge Paul’s writings as Scripture, we must treat them like Paul treated the Scripture he had in hand. To do anything else would be to violate Paul’s own intent since he himself said:

For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.(Galatians 2:18–21 ESV)

Had Paul meant for his writings to enslave those set free by the gospel, he would have been a transgressor according to his own words.

I don’t know what kind of awareness might be granted to those who’ve passed on, but if Paul knows that his words have been turned into a new law, he must be fuming. What’s more, those who handle Matthew through Revelation that way come under Peter’s indictment as those who’ve twisted the Scriptures.

Treating the Scriptures as a trove of divine wisdom actually will make us value them more. If we see the New Testament as a book of laws, all it can do is condemn us and divide us. From my previous experience, I know that people don’t go looking for more rules than the ones they’re already keeping. If we see it as a book of wisdom, we’ll pore over it time and again mining all of its beneficial insights.

On the other side of the coin, if we read something in the New Testament that our gospel-renewed minds know would not benefit our spiritual family or the cause of Christ in our day, then we’re beholden by the gospel to violate that instruction. While laws can be arbitrary, wisdom must stand the test of experience. Let that sink in a minute.

The church I serve with comes from a tradition which held very closely to the prohibitions against women speaking in the assembly of believers. Pauline passages such as 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 and 1 Timothy 2:11–15 seem to prohibit female participation in the public gathering of the church. While those passages might be interpreted otherwise, it takes a bit of work. Certainly, there might have been extenuating circumstances to which we’re not privy. That’s most likely the case, but even if Paul meant for all churches to silence their women until Christ returns, should we observe that restriction?

I don’t think so.

The intent of this sort of instruction seems to have been to provide procedural order in the churches to maximize mutual encouragement and to expedite the spread of the gospel. If we really are under a covenant of spirit and not the letter, then faithful treatment of these texts would require us to violate their particulars when they become discouraging and counterproductive.

We’re free to make that call because Matthew through Revelation isn’t our covenant. God wants us to obey the gospel. That’s why Jesus could hold up a cup at his last Passover and say, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” A bunch of letters collected and bound together over three hundred years later mustn’t be allowed to supersede the mandates implicit in the redemptive death and resurrection of Christ. We’re beholden to the gospel and the consequences for disobedience are dire.

You might be wondering how we can obey the story of Christ’s death, resurrection, and future return. I urge you to reread Paul’s epistles with a view toward taking note of places where he bases his instructions on the implications of the gospel. The gospel reveals the nature of things. It then becomes incumbent upon us to live accordingly.

Since we’ve been talking about it, let’s take a minute to apply gospel wisdom to gender roles in the church:

Proposition 1: Christ died for men and women alike.
Proposition 2: Women receive the same Holy Spirit as men.
Propositions 3: Our bodies are vessels for the one treasure inside everyone.
Proposition 4: Believers in Christ gather to encourage one another as the various gifts given through the Holy Spirit operate to distribute grace to every member.
Conclusion: Women and men alike should exercise their gifts for the building up of the church.

In addition to pragmatic concerns, the gospel mandates that we make no distinction between people. Paul himself expounded this truth in Galatians 3:28. The gospel ethic teaches equal treatment and opportunity for everyone, doesn’t it?

In a time when women serve as CEO’s and senators, following the letter of Paul’s letters has relegated the church to the cultural sidelines in a zone not unlike the one inhabited by the Amish. The living gospel must push through calcified notions even if they’re found in our own traditions because it’s alive.

Our human nature wants God to write an infallible book which will perfectly reveal his will to humanity.

Like Adam and Eve, we want to ingest something that will provide us the knowledge of good and evil. We’ve appointed the Bible to fill that role, but the Bible doesn’t exactly play along. The Bible speaks equivocally in both human and divine voice.

I believe the Qur’an was written to fill this human longing which the Bible left unmet.

Compare Surah 2:2–5 from the Qur’an…

This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear Allah. Who believe in the Unseen, are steadfast in prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them; And who believe in the Revelation sent to thee, and sent before thy time, and (in their hearts) have the assurance of the Hereafter. They are on (true) guidance, from their Lord, and it is these who will prosper.

…with Luke 1:1–4:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

I know that the Bible contains sections which claim inspiration directly from God such as in the Old Testament prophets and the Revelation, but none of them endorse all sixty-six books. They don’t even seem to be aware of all of the other books in our canon.

Nothing within the biblical canon endorses or even acknowledges the canon. On the other hand, the Qur’an commends itself in its entirety as the revelation of God from the very beginning. The Bible might make similar claims of inspiration over various books or sections, but never will you find the equivalent of Surah 2:2–5 in the Bible. Nor will you find anything like Luke 1:1–4 in the Qur’an for that matter.

The Bible resists our expectations not because it cannot conform to them but because it means to change them.

The gospel that Paul preached from the Scriptures immediately liberated people from the code of law found in those same Scriptures. This just didn’t compute for many of his Jewish contemporaries and they tried to shut him up.

Some came into one of the first churches Paul had founded to teach that anyone who claims to be in covenant with the Jewish God must keep the law of Moses. They had, it seemed, the endorsement of Scripture on their side. That is, until Paul went further back to the very basis of God’s covenant with Israel, the call of Abraham:

So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. (Galatians 3:6–9)

The Bible tells of a person who had a relationship with God but didn’t have a Bible. What’s more, that person is held up as the archetype for those who will come to God when the promised blessings come to pass. Paul wanted the Galatian believers to know that the time of prescriptive rules written in a text and predicated on punishment had been provisional.

We often see Abraham’s relationship with God as basic, with later revelation adding on that base. That’s not how Paul saw it, though. For him, that relationship was exemplary with later revelation being provisional until more people could experience an Abrahamic relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

God had called Paul to bring in the Gentiles through faith in Christ. For that to happen, they would need a relationship with God as simple and profound as Abraham’s was. The early church had no access to a copy of the Scriptures. They certainly couldn’t take one home to labor over using the inductive study method. What they knew of God, they learned not primarily from the Scriptures, but from what the writers of the New Testament called, “the word of God.”

Time and again throughout the book of Acts, Luke tells of how the word of God spread among a wide variety of people throughout the Roman Empire.⁴ But what was the word of God? Luke couldn’t have meant the contents of the Old Testament because that had already spread through the known world in the Jewish synagogues. It couldn’t have been the contents of the book we call the New Testament because that book resulted from the activity recorded in Acts. The “word of God” that spread over the known world over the span of about a generation was the proclamation about Jesus the Messiah.

That proclamation is the power of God to salvation⁵ which we experience by faith.

Notes:

  1. The New Testament was canonized in the middle fourth century.
  2. Acts 1:8
  3. Romans 3:31; 15:4; 2 Corinthians 3:12–18; 2 Timothy 3:14–17
  4. Acts 4:4, 29–31; 6:2–7; 8:14–25; 10:36–44; 11:1, 19; 12:24; 13:5–7, 44–49; 14:25; 15:7, 35–36; 16:32; 17:11–13; 18:5, 11; 19:10, 20
  5. Romans 1:16

Growth Groups Questionnaire

Growth Groups Questionnaire

 

This tool, based on Neil Cole’s Life Transformation Groups, is designed to facilitate a one on one/one on two discipleship process.  As with LTG’s, participants gather for one hour per week to ask and answer the accountability questions.  At the meeting they agree upon a passage of Scripture to read on their own through the week.  Unlike LTG’s, Growth Groups require participants to make weekly commitments to pray, join Christ in his mission and to obey his Word through Scripture.  Because of this dynamic approach, we needed a means to update commitments on a weekly basis.  So, we created this online form.  Give it a try and see where it grows.  

Churched to Death

funny-church-signWhy do simple church? Because Jesus told us to make disciples. ” But,” someone might respond, “aren’t sermons, Sunday School, VBS, mission trips, weekend seminars,small groups, and a myriad of other programs carried on by institutional churches just methods for making disciples?”

From what I’ve observed after a couple of years of attempting to make reproducing disciples, not only are these initiatives not discipleship, they actually have become counterproductive toward fulfilling the Great Commission.  How can this be?  The answer can be found within the Great Commission itself:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matt. 28:19-20 NIV emphasis mine

The difference comes down to one word, “accountability.”  All the programs which I mentioned at least as they are most often administered, teach people what Jesus commanded but they do not teach them to obey everything he commanded.  Without obedience the entire culture of a church can become one of quiet disregard for the commands of Christ.  In time, we begin to excuse each other’s (little) sins so they will excuse ours.  By teaching what Jesus said without expecting that a disciple obey, we actually teach disobedience.  So, we all come together regularly to carry out empty religious activity which we substitute for obedience.  Sadly, the church-goers are the only ones who are fooled into thinking that those observances matter.

Discipleship requires loving, mutual accountability.  As a believing community we must ask each other, “What is Jesus calling you to do and when will you do it?”  Then we must expect that everyone who claims to follow Jesus will carry those things out.  We ought to expect that everyone will expect us to be “doers” rather than just “hearers.”  When this happens we go from an irrelevant religious society to the counter-culture expression of Christ’s kingdom in the midst of real lives.

Some have called that form of religion which has supplanted discipleship “churchianity.”  That word fits this discussion.  In the Bible belt where I live, we’re sick with it.  I’m sick with it.  Last year, while having dinner with church planter, Neil Cole, I recognized the degree to which I had succumbed .  As we discussed the challenges of facilitating spiritual growth in recently redeemed people, I remember saying, “Yeah, those guys got drunk the other night but I overeat sometimes.  I guess we all sin.”  I expected Neil to nod and agree.  That’s how we do it in the church of church.  He didn’t.  He just gave me a puzzled look.  In that moment I felt the Spirit convict me that if I, a professed disciple of Jesus, consider something to be outside his will, I shouldn’t do it.  I also shouldn’t excuse other people when they do things they know to be wrong.

Making disciples is hard because it calls us to go beyond spiritual feelings and scriptural insights to personal obedience and interpersonal confrontation.  For those who are tired of gathering attenders and want to join Jesus in building an army, it’s the only way.

D-church Unshackled!

django-unchained-quentin-tarantino-movie-2012-1920x1200 (640x400) I am a planter of simple churches who also pastors a conventional church.  “How does that work?”,  you ask.  Check out this quote from Steve Smith in the book T4T: A Discipleship Re-revolution:

Giving groups the freedom, even the empowerment, to become new churches takes the limit off the budding movement. You could view yourself as the pastor of a large church. If you are a pastor, how much better to view yourself as a pastor of pastors and your church as a training base for a movement! Take the shackles off. This is what we mean by the counter-intuitive ways of the kingdom!

This accurately describes what we’ve been attempting to do.  I love that the Holy Spirit can speak to lots of people at once!  Our job is to make disciples.  It’s everything.  So we could be described as a D-church (“D” for discipleship).  In order for our members to make disciples we must equip them and release them from tending shop here so they can get out where wanderers live and hang out.  They must be “unshackled.”  So, I guess you could say that we are D-church Unshackled!

Life Transformation Groups – A Testimonial

I have a friend who is also an elder at our church.  In the past couple of years I’ve watched him grow into a spiritual leader who inspires and challenges me every time we talk.  God has done many things in his life to effect this season of growth but much of it started with his participation in a Life Transformation Group or LTG.  Read his testimonial below –

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” James 5:16a NIV

For many years I struggled with a particular sin that was very stubborn. Try as I might, I could not get mastery over this shortcoming. I pleaded with God to take it from me but I was unable to get any lasting relief. Last summer I started an LTG with another guy. To my amazement the sin I had struggled with became a footnote. It is not to say that there has been no struggle whatsoever, but knowing that I am going to be asked about it every week is a strong deterrent.  I have been able to move on and work on other areas where God is prodding me.

An LTG is formally called a Life Transformation Group, but it could also be called a laughing together group or a learning together group because those things happen as well.  An LTG has three parts to it: scripture reading, accountability questions and praying for the lost.  The scripture reading is done at home. You come together once a week and ask each other the scripted accountability questions, discuss the scripture reading and pray for three people you know who are lost.

It is interesting that James says to confess your sins and pray for each other and you will be healed. Sin does a powerful amount of damage to ones soul. Spiritual progress cannot happen until the wound of sin is healed. An LTG with another committed believer can be a vehicle of healing that allows your relationship with God to go to a much deeper level. Won’t you consider joining one?

For more information, click the picture below:

LTG