In “When Making Good is Bad,” Kent and Nathan explore what the Bible has to say about Christian Nationalism.
In the Wilderness Way, Nathan critiques the Christian Nationalist movement from John 10:22-42 and Jesus’ confrontation with nationalistic Jews on Hannukah.
In “From Good to Excellent,” Kent and Nathan discuss the Christian doctrine of sanctification. It’s not what you may think.
Last week we discussed the justification that is by the faith of Christ. This week we’ll discuss the sanctification that is by the faith of Christ. Here are my questions for Nathan today:
I think someone becomes righteous through faith. That is, the person who lives by the faith of the son is righteous according to God’s standard.
The notion that justification and sanctification are different stages in the Christian life presumes an anemic gospel. It presumes little change at the point of faith with a slow progression across the divide between imputed righteousness and actual righteousness. Every place in the NIV where “sanctified” is used refers to something a Christian receives at the point of faith. I think “justified” refers to a person’s moral standing while “sanctified” refers to their spiritual status. They’re really two sides of the same coin.
I’m not sure if “spiritual formation” as commonly used is a biblical concept. The phrase comes from Paul’s indictment on the Galatians in 4:19.
I plead with you, brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you. You did me no wrong. As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. Where, then, is your blessing of me now? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?
Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you. My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you,
Galatians 4:12-19 NIV
Notice that Christ isn’t formed through growth but through birth. Notice that he’s in birth pains “again” until Christ is formed in you. He wants them to get back to the way they were when Christ was formed in them, not go forward through a process of spiritual disciplines until Christ will somehow imperceptibly develop within them.
So, if we’re going to use the phrase “spiritual formation” as Paul did, it more closely equates to the common use of the term “regeneration.” This was Peter’s understanding of what happens when a person believes the gospel according to 1 Peter 1:23-25.
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
And this is the word that was preached to you.
NIV
What does it mean to become like Christ? The person who has the faith of the Son is like the Son.
Excepting prayer and corporate worship, the spiritual disciplines are only incidentally mentioned in scripture.
Paul mentions exercise in godliness as paying off some dividends but to what end? In most cases, prayer and worship seem to result in immediate benefits such as a change of circumstances, the receiving of wisdom, or direct insight from God such as through a prophetic word, or divine empowerment.
The mechanism of spiritual growth comes from the exercise of the new life.
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:7-14 NIV
Yes!
In that Romans 5:21 dichotomy, Paul contrasts two things with three. Grace contrasts with sin while righteousness and eternal life contrast with death. 1 John 5:11-13.
Romans 8:11-17 integrates the concepts in a process that he equates to resurrection from death.
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of[fn] his Spirit who lives in you.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
In “The Gift of Right Living,” Kent and Nathan examine the Christian doctrine of justification. We compare traditional Protestant teaching about “imputed” righteousness scripture.
It seems to include a legal standing, but it also supersedes it.
According to Paul in Romans 1:18 the wrath of God is manifest on the ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who hide their truth in their unrighteousness. Then he goes on to describe the false worship and idolatry of the pagan world. They didn’t know the law, but they still had behaved unrighteously. So, a person can be unrighteous without breaking a law.
In Romans 5:13, Paul says that sin isn’t imputed where there is no law. Based on that we could say that until Moses, everyone had imputed righteousness if the only definition of unrighteousness is the breaking of a law, but Paul goes on to say that “death reigned from Adam to Moses even over those who hadn’t sinned in the likeness of Adam’s transgression.” If simply being absolved of legal culpability was enough, then all those people would have been just fine, but they weren’t.
It seems that not only were they not righteous, but they needed to acquire some legal guilt for their own good.
The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:20-21 NIV)
It would seem that legal guilt is secondary to a basic unrighteousness that precedes legal guilt and is manifested by it.
At the same time, we could say that it’s legal standing if we understand the nature of the law we’re under. More on that later.
Bottom line: The justification provided in Christ is more than, “counted to have performed the law.” If that’s all it was, then God in giving the law would have made us guilty only to absolve us in Christ. This would make God’s standard of righteousness pretty low and arbitrary.
“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ” (Luke 17:7-10)
The best the law can make anyone even as a standard we’re declared to have fulfilled is “unworthy.”
If you mean “once saved always saved,” I don’t think so.
Back to the legal aspect of justification, it doesn’t seem that judgment will just be on the basis of external performance of a written code but on the condition of a person’s character.
For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
Romans 2:12-16 NIV
We’re reckoned righteous like Abraham was on the basis of faith. It’s the entrance into a relationship with God based on grace and faith as his was. Now, his faith wasn’t perfect and neither was his moral performance. But he believed enough and God accepted it. And at the same time we might say that God advanced Abraham the righteousness based on faith trusting that he would come to have and express saving faith in time.
It seems to refer to character in conformity with the nature of things. Appropriate disposition and action.
This is why Paul puts “ungodliness” and “unrighteousness” together.
It’s why Jewish judgmentalism was the same sin as pagan idolatry.
Paul makes a distinction between the righteousness that is according to the law and the righteousness of God. Surely they can’t be the same since God doesn’t follow law. And those who follow law are looking to hit the minimum requirement. In fact, law presumes unrighteousness.
Paul says that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel – that suggests it’s not revealed in the law.
This has to do with the notion of merit, but wouldn’t that make God a debtor to a person who lived a certain way?
Could any human life merit God’s favor? If it did, could it be favor?
God isn’t gracious because Christ earned grace.
Christ came and died because God is gracious. Christ graciously died because he is God.
It wasn’t Christ’s perfect legal compliance that is counted to us, but his grace:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men[fn] because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.18 Therefore, as one trespass[fn] led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness[fn] leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Romans 5:12-19 NIV
In Christ, humankind has been woven into the grace and faith of the Trinity. By the faith of the son we’ve come to fit in this austere community and our belonging we have become empowered to minister the grace flooding into our lives.
In Romans 5:12-19, grace is the echelon we inhabit through Christ but it’s also the mechanism whereby we actually become righteous.
Justification is progressive as we live by the faith of the Son.
That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Romans 4:22-25 NIV
Is it a permanent status? Can you lose it? Does it come and go as we vacillate in our faith?
No, it’s not permanent.
Yes, you can lose it.
No, it doesn’t come and go as we vacillate in our faith. When we act outside of faith we find ourselves to have violated the covenant. The good news is that if that happens, we only need to resume a life of faith to know we’re justified by grace.
Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. 21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.[fn] 22 The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (Romans 14:20-23)
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.[fn] 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. (Gal. 2:11-13)
I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified[fn] by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. (Gal. 5:3-5)
In “Get Ready for Death and Life,” Kent and Nathan compare popular notions about hell and judgment with what the Bible really says. Spoiler: They’re not the same.
Now let’s discuss “What the hell?” What version of hell best accounts for the data? Is eternal conscious torment simply what the Bible teaches? Or are there other interpretations that offer a sufficient, or better, account for the biblical data? And what about the data of our moral sensibility, or philosophical views of the eternal soul, or of justice? Do these also count as data that needs to be accounted for?
A word about words
Our word “hell” along with the concept is of pagan origin: also Hell, Old English hel, helle, “nether world, abode of the dead, infernal regions, place of torment for the wicked after death,” from Proto-Germanic *haljō “the underworld” (source also of Old Frisian helle, Old Saxon hellia, Dutch hel, Old Norse hel, German Hölle, Gothic halja “hell”). Literally “concealed place” (compare Old Norse hellir “cave, cavern”), from PIE root *kel- (1) “to cover, conceal, save.”
Old Norse Hel (from Proto-Germanic *halija “one who covers up or hides something”)was the name of Loki’s daughter who ruled over the evil dead in Niflheim, the lowest of all worlds (nifl “mist”) It might have reinforced the English word “as a transfer of a pagan concept to Christian theology and its vocabulary” [Barnhart].
“Hell” represents four(ish) words in the original languages of the Bible. Note that there are 13 occurrences of the word in NIV compared with 54 in KJV.
“Sheol” is literally “the grave” but could also refer to the place of imprisoned spirits. It’s translated “death” or “hades” in the Greek Old Testament.
“Tartarus” and “Hades” in Greek refer to the place of disembodied spirits that was somewhat synonymous with the pagan notion. This was thought of in Jewish and Christian thought as a soul jail for those awaiting final judgment.
“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.
(Luke 16:22-23 NIV)
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.
(2 Peter 2:4-9)
The last word is the one most associated with a place of eternal judgment – “Gehenna.” Jesus spoke of it in vivid terms that evoked modern notions of a place of eternal torment.
“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where“ ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
(Mark 9:43-48 NIV)
The Valley of Hinnom was infamous as a place of defilement and violence.
“This is what the LORD says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests 2 and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you, 3 and say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. 4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. 6 So beware, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. “ ‘In this place I will ruin[fn] the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who want to kill them, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds and the wild animals.
(Jer. 19:1-7 NIV)
See, the LORD is coming with fire, and his chariots are like a whirlwind; he will bring down his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For with fire and with his sword the LORD will execute judgment on all people, and many will be those slain by the LORD. “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the LORD, “so will your name and descendants endure. 23 From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the LORD. 24 “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
(Isaiah 66:15-16; 22-24 NIV)
Some have said that Jesus updated the prophetic image into a metaphysical one, but there doesn’t seem to be any basis for that: “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
(Matthew 5:29-30 NIV)
Since it’s a place for the incineration of bodies, the mention of eternal fire and worms doesn’t suggest eternal suffering but is metaphorical for final, inescapable judgment. Hell is the place of final eradication of the wicked. Far from being a place for souls to live and suffer eternally, it seems to be a soul incinerator:
“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
(Matt. 10:28)
It is not only an incinerator for the souls of the wicked but for all that is outside the will of God:
“The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
(Rev. 20:13-15 NIV)
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
(John 3:16 NIV)
The counterargument:
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.
(Daniel 12:2-3 NIV)
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
(Matt. 25:41-46 NIV)
They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
(Rev. 20:9-10 NIV)
A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.” This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
(Rev. 14:9-13 NIV)
The counter-counter argument. In Daniel 12 it is the contempt that is everlasting while the shame isn’t modified. In Matt. 25, we must confront the connection between the failure to show mercy and eternal suffering. It seems that Jesus was commenting and expanding on Daniel.
“As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
(Matt. 13:40-43)
Note the contrast between “life” and “punishment.” What might that punishment be? Notice that fire “devoured” the human armies besieging the camp of God’s people in Rev. 20:9. Rev. 14 obviously describes divine judgment as in Luke 19 and other passages. The mention of the “smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever,” seems to be apocalyptic language as was used in Isaiah 34:
For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of retribution, to uphold Zion’s cause. Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch, her dust into burning sulfur; her land will become blazing pitch! It will not be quenched night or day; its smoke will rise forever. From generation to generation it will lie desolate; no one will ever pass through it again.
(Isaiah 34:8-10 NIV)
Unlike with the doctrine of final judgment, the notion of eternal suffering as just punishment dissonates with the rest of the scripture.
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid. If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
(Deut. 21:18-23 NIV)
‘Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution—life for life. Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.’ ”
(Lev. 24:17-22 NIV)
God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
(Romans 3:25-26 NIV)
And what about the data of our moral sensibility, or philosophical views of the eternal soul, or of justice?
The moral argument against hell is insurmountable. It seems well within the rights of a creator to uncreate as he so chooses. It doesn’t seem “right” for an omniscient creator to give rise to multitudes of sentient beings knowing full well that most of them will spend an infinitesimal time on earth and then eternity in unimaginable torment. Attempts at justification make things worse or at least no better. He’s God, get over it? That’s true but it sure does seem like a high hurdle/low bar for people to cross to know this God of love.
People will choose hell over God’s presence?
The philosophical view on the eternal soul doesn’t seem to hold up. That the soul is eternal comes from Plato’s specious dualism.It’s unsupportable/unfalsifiableIt seems likely that anything that can come into being can cease to exist.The Bible seems to teach conditional immortality from first to last.
And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
(Gen. 3:22 NIV)
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
(Rev. 22:1-2 NIV)
And in the middle:
“So listen to me, you men of understanding. Far be it from God to do evil, from the Almighty to do wrong. He repays everyone for what they have done; he brings on them what their conduct deserves. It is unthinkable that God would do wrong, that the Almighty would pervert justice. Who appointed him over the earth? Who put him in charge of the whole world? If it were his intention and he withdrew his spirit and breath, all humanity would perish together and mankind would return to the dust.
(Job. 34:10-15 NIV)
All of this means that if people are conscious in hell, God is keeping them alive so they can suffer.
If there’s no “hell” why bother preaching the gospel? Because the gospel is good news! There is no mention of hell in the book of Acts nor really anything more than a passing warning about “judgment.” Because if we love people we’ll want them to have eternal life.Because God wants people in his kingdom/family.
Because other people need to glorify God.
What if I disagree? That’s fine. It’s not really a core issue.
I would advise you to stop and consider: If you’re wrong you are perpetuating a monstrous caricature of God.
That monstrous depiction is making people choose between the good news of Christ and a legitimate moral sensibility.
This is the first of a two-part conversation about the doctrine of hell. In “Fire that Burns for Good,” Kent and Nathan answer the question, “Why the hell?” What possible reason could there be for a loving God to threaten people with a fiery judgment?
Whatever position we take on hell must be demonstrably consistent with the ancient revelation of the gospel. We can’t take a position on any Christian doctrine because it fits cultural sensibilities.
If the gospel does, indeed, save us from cultural conformity, we must be hyper-critical of the unrelenting pressure of inculturation. While human authority is overt, cultural pressure is insidious:
“Obedience and conformity both refer to the abdication of initiative to an external source.”
“Subjects deny conformity and embrace obedience as the explanation of their behavior.”
Milgram, Stanley. “Obedience to Authority”
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Christ remains the same but culture continues to shift.
Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
(Heb. 13:7-8)All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.
(John 16:1-2 NIV)
If we redact scripture, we concede the argument to the skeptics.
We’ve been saying that the gospel is the final revelation of God but that doesn’t mean the scriptures are misleading.
The concept of God’s wrath and his readiness to punish sinners isn’t incidental in scripture. There are 206 mentions of the word, “wrath” in the ESV Bible. Places that describe God as wrathful, punitive, and deadly are critical to the Old Testament narrative.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ 2 I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 3 Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
(Exodus 33:1-3; 34:6-7)
They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding. For a fire will be kindled by my wrath, one that burns down to the realm of the dead below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains. “I will heap calamities on them and spend my arrows against them. I will send wasting famine against them, consuming pestilence and deadly plague; I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts, the venom of vipers that glide in the dust. In the street the sword will make them childless; in their homes terror will reign. The young men and young women will perish, the infants and those with gray hair.
(Deut. 32:21-25)
He said: “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’ “But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’ “He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.’ ”
(Luke 19:12-14; 27)
It’s not out of character for Jesus to kill his enemies. The pre-incarnate Christ appeared to Joshua as the “Commander of the LORD’s armies” in Joshua 5 and in 2Kings 19:35:
“That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies!”
Of the 13 mentions of “hell” specifically in the New Testament 11 are made by Jesus. Including:
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.
(Matt. 23:33-36)
Not only will there be an eschatological judgment, but Jesus will be the judge, jury, and executioner according to Paul’s teaching in Acts 17:31; Romans 2:16; 2 Thess. 1:4-10:
Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.
All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
If we say that Bible is time-bound, then we must admit God had no role in its creation or that he engineered a misrepresentation of himself.
If we say certain sections are authoritative while others are not, then we make ourselves or our culture the arbiter of Scripture making it altogether superfluous.
Any suggestion that we revise our understanding of the Bible must come from the Bible or scripture is undermined entirely.
If Jesus died for our sins, then we must understand that sin is lethal. If God could redeem us from sin apart from Christ’s death, then the crucifixion becomes nothing more than theater.
That it was a violent death suggests a need for retributive justice of some kind.
The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
(Gen. 4:10-11)
But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”
(Heb. 12:22-29 NIV)
For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.
(Eph. 5:5-10 NIV)
Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.
(Phil. 1:27-29)
In “The Full Disclosure of God,” Nathan shares why the cross is the only logical way to ever fully know God.
After God’s joyful provision of a son for Abraham through his aged wife Sarah, Scripture blurts out:
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
(Genesis 22:1-2 NIV)
Even sight-read, these words sting my ears.
This episode begins with the editorial note that God was testing Abraham, but does that make it any less barbaric? Atheist, Adam Lee, writes:
That the sacrifice was not actually carried out does not change the moral revulsion we should feel at this episode. What kind of god would demand a man prove his obedience by murdering his only son? And more so, what kind of man would obey such a command?
What kind of a man indeed! Lee probes deeper into the believer’s moral character with a question he ironically calls, “The Abraham Test.” Here’s how he formulates it:
Do you believe that violence in God’s name is wrong, or do you merely believe he hasn’t personally told you to do violence? If God appeared to you and spoke to you, commanding you to commit a violent act – to murder a child, say – how would you respond? [i]
How would you answer? What do you think your answer says about you?
And yet this test falls short of the one God gave to Abraham. God didn’t just command him to “commit a violent act” or even to “murder a child.” That would have been much easier than what God required. Look again.
It wasn’t, “murder a child,” but “take your son.”
It wasn’t just, “take one of your sons,” but “your only son.”
And God reveals that he knows just what emotional price he expects Abraham to pay when he further specifies, “whom you love – Isaac.” It’s one thing to contemplate the ghoulish possibility of murdering anyone’s child, but to take one of our own, even our only one?
I suspect that Adam Lee might not have kids because if he did, he wouldn’t have gone so easy with his wording. This isn’t just a moral issue; it’s an existential one. When we have children, we discover what might be called the immutability of existence. That is, we can’t imagine our lives without them. And we come to know instinctively their inherent irreplaceability. In naming just who he required from Abraham, “Isaac,” God acknowledges the pricelessness of this offering.
Nothing could ever compensate any sane parent for the loss of their child. No offer of fame, fortune, or honor could ever be promised in trade for their continued presence with us. And God doesn’t make any such offer. He simply makes this staggering demand without qualification or assurance of any kind. This is no quid pro quo for there could never be any quid that could adequately reward such a quo.
The narrative goes on to waylay us with another blow while we’re still reeling from the implications of this command. God’s command is met with Abraham’s equally perplexing response:
Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
(Genesis 22:3-10)
I’ve seen dramatizations of this story where Abraham struggles with God’s command. I suppose they were trying to make the story relatable. But scripture portrays inhuman compliance. Abraham doesn’t delay. He gets up early the next morning and makes all necessary provisions. Part of that due diligence was to take servants with him, but it’s noteworthy that he left them behind when it came time to do the deed. Surely, if he’d taken them along they would have tried to stop him. From the moment the command came, Abraham had every intention of seeing it through.
Nobody can relate to Abraham’s actions in this story, but the details keep the events very human. Isaac and the servants seem to assume Abraham knows what he’s doing when he takes them three days into the wilderness to worship. Surely, all three of them noticed that he’d failed to bring along an animal to sacrifice, but they most likely assumed he’d acquire one along the way. As he and Isaac ascend the mountain together, the prospects of finding an animal dwindle to zero. Lest we become numb to the parental agony Abraham must be feeling, the narrative gives Isaac lines. Both we and Abraham are prevented from objectifying him with his first word, “Father.”
It’s hard to imagine how the feeble old man remained on his feet under the weight of innocence and trust conveyed in his son’s address. And yet, rather than distance himself, Abraham responds with a tender, “Yes, my son?”
Then, after Isaac’s naive question and Abraham’s shrewd lie, the narrator adds, “And the two of them went on together,” as if he’s talking about a father-son camping trip. We might make ourselves believe that’s what is happening except for the explicit depiction of the father tying up his son to slaughter him in the very next verse.
Yes, Mr. Lee is correct, this story is a test for us. He’s just wrong about exactly what it was designed to test for.
Adam Lee’s “Abraham Test” is meant to answer, “What type of man,” but the answer to that question is secondary to the answer to the first one he asked above, “What kind of god would demand a man prove his obedience by murdering his only son?”
And that answer is, “The only kind.”
This closing episode in the Abraham saga doesn’t concern itself with morality but with theology. People who make moral judgments about Abraham and God in this story reveal a fundamental misunderstanding. We can’t join Adam Lee in comparing God’s actions to what we would have done because we aren’t God.
When we speak of God, we refer to the ultimate reality and the ground of all being. That notion defies definition because all definitions are comparative, and nothing can compare to God. When we consider God, we must relinquish all other considerations. The act of doing this is called “reverence” or “fear.”
Imagine coming face to face with a being who alone is eternal and from whom all things have sprung. This being exists apart from time and yet is present simultaneously in every moment in every part of this universe and all others that might exist. No law applies to this being and no words can fully describe it. That’s because it predates laws, language, and even ideas. In its presence, everything melts into insignificance.
Only a being like this deserves to be called, “God,” because only an ultimate being is worthy of worship. Anything penultimate would only be quantitatively superior to us. If quantitative superiority made one worthy of worship, then toddlers owe me a lot more respect than they normally demonstrate. You might say that the difference between me and a toddler isn’t great enough to merit worship, but who are you to say? Exactly what is the quantitative distance that creates the divine divide? Suppose a god like Thor did exist. We might respect him or fear him, but since his attributes are just like ours only larger, we wouldn’t really owe him worship. If he required it, we might comply but only by coercion.
And yet the God of the Bible isn’t anything like Thor because he’s nothing like us. While the gods of antiquity obviously expand on human traits, the God of the Bible is transcendent. That is, he’s holy. This is why images of him were prohibited because any depiction would only misrepresent him.[ii]
Because he’s qualitatively different from us, we are prone to underestimate him as Adam Lee and other skeptics do. Before anyone has a chance at connecting with God, they must learn to properly esteem him. For God to be God he must be supreme. For him to be supreme he must be beyond all other considerations including the closest familial bonds, “common decency,” or any other human moral construct. Otherwise, the superior consideration would become ultimate, and he would just be “big” or “impressive.”
This brings us to the next section of the Abraham story:
But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
(Genesis 22:11-12 NIV)
Perhaps most of us are so relieved that the father of our religion doesn’t kill his son that we fail to notice how weird things get at this point.
At the point of high drama in the story we’re suddenly introduced to a new character, “the angel of the LORD.” We might not think much of it and just assume God who spoke directly to Abraham in vs. 1 has randomly opted to revoke his command through one of his minions.
But this is no minion.
He speaks as if he is God himself, “because you have not withheld from me your son…” At the same time, he speaks of God in the third person, “Now I know that you fear God.”
What’s going on here?
This enigmatic personage appears several times, especially in the early books of the Old Testament. For example, he comforts Hagar in Genesis 16 and commissions Moses in Exodus 3. In both cases, he’s referred to as the Angel (more accurately Messenger) of the LORD. In both instances, he speaks as though he is God and not just on behalf of God. He seems to be God and yet is also God’s messenger. In the current story, he must be God since only God could countermand an order given by God. This agrees with his self-identification as the recipient of Abraham’s sacrifice.
So, God has always been a unified community.
But that’s not the primary consideration here. The person who stops the sacrifice isn’t referred to as “the Messenger of God,” but as “the Messenger of the LORD.” That’s striking because this is the first mention of the proper name of God in this story. Look back over it. In verses 1-10, the divine being is exclusively referred to as “God.” He’s designated “the LORD” for the first time in verse 11.
We might attribute the shift to the author’s literary choices except for the fact that “God” drops from the narrative altogether at this point making way for only “the LORD.”
Look over the conclusion of the story to see what I mean:
Abraham looked up and there in a thicket, he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.
(Genesis 22:13-19 NIV- emphasis mine)
The Hebrew word translated “God” in Scripture refers to the generic concept of the divine being. The word, LORD, in all caps in most English translations, stands for the sacred name of God written in four Hebrew letters and pronounced (we think) “Yahweh.”
The word for God’s nature appears exclusively in the first section of this story where the deity speaks abruptly and makes an ultimate demand. The proper name, Yahweh, introduces a section marked by mercy, provision, and promise. These two sections turn around an axis where the Messenger of Yahweh speaks in the third person about Abraham’s fear of God while also identifying himself as one and the same.
This looks intentional to me.
God in his nature compels fear expressed as the ultimate sacrifice. Surely any consideration that could override the will of God would itself be god as far as we are concerned. This reality is inescapable and without it, nobody can truly know God. So, to answer Adam Lee’s question, everyone who claims to worship God must be willing to do as Abraham did.
At the same time, Yahweh as a person would never accept such a horrible sacrifice since his character is benevolent love.
This dichotomy between God in his nature and Yahweh in his character sets up a divine dilemma. Without the ultimate sacrifice, God’s holiness remains unsettled. But if he should accept the ultimate sacrifice, his love would be obscured. Abraham on the horns of that same dilemma surmised its resolution, “God will provide for himself the lamb…” (Genesis 22:8a ESV).
Abraham’s supposition proved true with the ram offered in place of Isaac, but that sacrifice hardly qualified as a substitution in kind. The ultimate sacrifice was yet to be made. So, Abraham gave the place a name that would serve as a placeholder for the day when God’s holiness and love would come together in the loving sacrifice of God’s son, his only son whom he loves – Jesus.
At the dawn of this era, the Messenger of Yahweh was born the Offspring of Abraham. On a mountain called Calvary, the LORD provided the Lamb as the ultimate sacrifice who was both the placard of his holiness and the gift of his love.
[i] Lee, Adam. The Abraham Test – Big Think
[ii] Deuteronomy 4:15-20
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In our 40th episode, the Three Failed Pastors talk about a church mission statement that requires no interpersonal control. It’s our job simply to win friends and love people for his sake who loved us.
While it’s our 40th episode overall, it’s only the 16th installment in our current series, “Recovering Faith” where so far we’ve argued that the gospel rescues us from the clear and present danger of cultural corruption and internal personal corruption, leading to interpersonal breakdown. And it rescues us by transferring to us the faith of the Son, so that living by the faith of the son, by sonship faith, we have the resources to live free personally and live in free and loving community with one another.
Last week in Episode 15, we said that some common healthy expressions of cruciform love and resurrection faith are: corporate prayer, gospel rehearsal, and loving confrontation.
Ministry is my second career. I used to be a UPS delivery driver. In some ways I think I was a better disciple back then. Even though I spent most of my time in secular activities I was always looking for an unbeliever to convert or a fellow Christian to connect with. I remember delivering a package to an office and glancing down at the desk and across the man’s keys. His keychain had three words on it that knocked my head upright, “Releasing spiritual leaders.” I asked him what it meant. He said it was his church’s mission statement.
I left his office reciting those three words under my breath. I contemplated them through the rest of the day. I recognized the name of my customer’s church. It’s one of the largest in our area. Having grown up Baptist in the church-growth era, I knew that large churches result from inviting not releasing. Attendance records and visitation all aimed at retaining, not releasing. I understood church as centripetal, but here was a church that had boiled its purpose down to three centrifugal words. How could a church grow so large by investing its energies into individuals who it would then send away?
This mission isn’t a PR stunt either. Their founding pastor once told me, “Whenever our best people leave, we say, ‘Mission accomplished.’” Over their history, they have developed leaders who’ve gone on to start ministries and churches. They have spent millions of dollars to establish those efforts and then completely released them under their own independent leadership.
For all their sending leaders and even whole segments of their congregation away, they have continued to grow. I think God has blessed them for their faithfulness to him. I also think sincere disciples are repulsed by the stench of institutional self-interest and this church offers them a breath of fresh air.
By most metrics, this church is a testament to the benefits of a well-crafted and faithfully followed mission statement. They’ve consistently grown in numbers while devoting their energies to the development of their members who they hope to send away. That kind of church doesn’t happen every day. While I’ve never been a member there, much of my ministry career has been in their orbit. Because of their example, I’ve attempted to articulate a clear mission statement in every ministry or church I’ve led. I haven’t yet come up with anything so compelling, though.
At my breakfast with the founding pastor, I told him the keychain story. He let me know that those three words were shorthand for the whole mission statement which goes:
To produce and release spiritual leaders who know and express the authentic Christ to Northwest Arkansas and the world.
About Us | Fellowship NWA
Somehow knowing the whole thing took some of the magic out of it, but I thought it was still great. I asked him how he came up with it. He told me that it was just the Great Commandment and the Great Commission compiled and expressed in more vernacular language. According to the church’s website:
…we seek to love God and love others by making disciples. We’ve established our Mission and Vision on these Biblical mandates and let that vision drive all that we do.
When he told me that, I realized that while this church has brilliantly articulated their mission, it’s essentially the same as thousands of other church mission statements around the world. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, for instance, has simply adopted these two famous passages as their mission. The Great Commission and the Great Commandment seem to focus the church on external growth and internal health. No wonder these churches have achieved results.
This all begs the question, “Out of the whole Bible, why these two passages?” It does seem that Matthew highlights them as particularly important. For instance, he records Christ as saying that the whole law hangs on the commands to love God and neighbor. The Great Commission lands on our ears with the weight of the final word. I don’t question the importance of these instructions, but I do question how they’ve come to such dominance in the way we formulate the mission of the church.
Maybe we should begin by asking, “Who are we to formulate the mission of the church in the first place?” There’s a presumption in writing a church mission and vision. If Christ really does have all authority in heaven and on earth, shouldn’t we defer to him? Someone might rebut that the Great Commission is his mission for the church but that doesn’t seem to be the case. He has commissioned us to make disciples, but that instruction was given to a collection of individuals rather than to the church as a whole. It’s individuals who go, baptize, and teach. The same can be said of the Great Commandment. Organizations don’t love; people do. When we apply those instructions to the church, we countermand Christ. We nullify his word to individuals and coopt them for our organization.
Crafting our church mission from passages we select from scripture won’t do. It requires visionary dreaming on the part of the leader/leaders. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words almost in anticipation of the megachurch phenomenon:
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself.
He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.
“Life Together”
These words ring true even when the dreamer constructs his vision from passages in the Bible. Even in the healthy examples I’ve cited, the mission of the church defines faithful participation. Leaders celebrate members who participate in the church’s program for making disciples. Members whom God has called to a different approach must operate against the tide. Wherever humans craft the mission of the church there will be human control. We mustn’t use scripture as raw materials from which to build our own church.
We need to understand the purpose of the church as it springs from the gospel of God. Thankfully, the New Testament articulates this purpose:
His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Ephesians 3:10-11 NIV)
Unlike the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, these verses explicitly state God’s purpose for the church. God means to display his wisdom to heavenly beings through the church. That’s God’s mission statement for the church, but we’d rather synthesize one of our own. Surely church leaders know about this passage, but they look elsewhere because this one doesn’t inspire buy-in. God’s mission as written here doesn’t capture our attention like, “Releasing spiritual leaders” did for me.
Does that mean the pastor up the road is a better organizational leader than God? Maybe it just means we resonate more easily with human thinking than with the divine. As we will see, we aren’t compelled by this mission statement because it’s too big for our human expectations.
To begin to perceive the significance of God’s mission statement we’ll need to examine its context. In doing so, we’ll find that God’s mission for the church is based on a mystery and expressed through a prayer.
I confess the idea of heavenly rulers saying, “Oh wow,” when they look at the church does nothing for me. I don’t give their opinion (whatever “they” are) a second thought. From my perspective what God puts on display matters more than who will see it. If God counts the church as a personal achievement, it must be truly glorious.
Such was the glory of God’s church that he veiled her beauty for long ages until the time came for her big reveal. Notice the anticipation in Paul’s words:
Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets.
(Ephesians 3:2-5 NIV)
People couldn’t discover God’s mystery on their own. It had to be made known by revelation. Even after its revelation it remained obscured to those without insight. This mystery had been hidden from all generations to await its revelation by the Spirit. What truth could merit such a build-up or require such rare insight? Surely this mystery concerns the very nature of God or the basis of existence!
After the long ages of waiting, Paul makes his readers wait no longer. He plainly tells them the mystery:
This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
(Ephesians 3:6 NIV)
Does that seem like a letdown? Chances are you’re a Gentile. If you consider yourself a Christian, it’s probably because you responded to an invitation to put your faith in Christ. I’m sure nobody told you that you had to be included in Israel to be saved and you’ve probably never thanked God that he included you there. In preaching the gospel, Paul shared his birthright with a bunch of unwashed pagans. It was a big deal to him, but the pagans might have even taken it for granted. In his pre-converted life, Paul saw an insurmountable divide between Jew and Gentile. Now through the gospel, that partition had disintegrated and blown away. Based on faith, God has included Gentiles in Israel without requiring them to become Jews.
The inclusion of the Gentiles was Paul’s theme and ultimately the reason he suffered such persecution. But the mystery is deeper still. We weren’t just included in Israel; we were all made members of one body. To make two people groups into one nation is a major feat but knitting them into one body is a miracle. This is no détente. It’s a deeply intimate union based on ultimate sameness and redeeming inherent differences. God means to show his wisdom to the heavenly authorities by uniting people across every human divide into one.
This union is at the very heart of the gospel as Paul wrote in Galatians 3:26-28:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
(NIV)
Christ supersedes all human distinctions to make us one. Such unity has long been a human aspiration, but never a human accomplishment. Our sin and lust for power have kept it out of our reach. We mistrust each other and keep score. Nobody in the fray that we call life has the wherewithal to create unity, so God must do it. This is why Paul’s reflection on God’s purpose for the church sent him into prayer for them.
God has worked through the long ages and in Christ to bring people together across every divide into one body. He did this to demonstrate his manifold wisdom to the heavenly rulers. It seems like a lot was riding on the Ephesians coming together in unity. The stakes were so high that they drove Paul to his knees.
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
(Ephesians 3:14-19 NIV)
Christians need to do more than accept the mystery of the Trinity, they must participate in it. Just as God is three persons in one being, so we are many members in one body. Just as God is love, so we in one body are rooted in love so we can grasp the scope of his love and come to an intimate knowledge of it. Love isn’t a free-floating virtue. It only exists in relationship. God is love because God is a relationship. His love takes residence in us as it is expressed among us. The church is called to become persons in loving unity and so we become filled with God’s fullness.
This union is the work of God. If we want it, we must join Paul on our knees. We must call on our Father to strengthen us with his Spirit so that Christ will be reproduced in each of us through his faith in our hearts. Christ in me must actively love Christ in you so his love can grow until it consumes every other motive and knits us into one. This is God’s calling for the church and he will carry it out. We just need to stop messing it up.
Paul goes on in Ephesians to write:
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
(Ephesians 4:1-6 NIV)
We can’t create the unity of the Spirit. God has already done that. Also, our unity is predicated on realities over which we have no control. We are one because “There is one…” All we can and must do is “make every effort to keep” the unity that is.
And it will require our every effort because coming together across cultural, racial, gender, socio-economic, and ethnic divides will afront the prevailing regime. Our old friends will come to hate us for hanging out with “those people,” and those people will make us miserable with their strange habits. It takes strategy, creativity, and charisma to pursue human mission statements. To fulfill God’s calling on the church, we’ll need to employ humility, gentleness, patience and longsuffering. It’s not very sexy on the ground, but this unity is what God celebrates.
Any vision for church beyond God’s purpose will undermine our call to keep the unity we’ve been given. For a while, we may put up with those backward members who refuse to take this thing to the next level, but we’ll eventually deem them liabilities which Christ’s cause will be better without. Then we’ll choose the work of our own hands over his handiwork. While we celebrate our ministry accomplishments, the Spirit will weep, and the heavenly powers will scoff.
The image of the church as Christ’s body pervades the Ephesian letter, but then Paul mixes in the idea of the church as Christ’s bride. And he doesn’t even do us the courtesy of transitioning out of the-church-as-Christ’s-body before broaching the-church-as-Christ’s-bride.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
(Ephesians 5:28-32 NIV)
So, husbands should love their wives as Christ loves his bride the church which is the way everyone loves their own body since the church is Christ’s body.
Huh?
My Bible has a heading before vs. 21 of Ephesians 5 that reads, “Instructions for Christian Households.” The NIV translators put that there because Paul in this section is borrowing from a common genre in the Greco-Roman world called, “household codes.” It was common for philosophers to demonstrate the practical outworking of their ideas by prescribing rules of conduct for various members of the household.[2] The heading is accurate but would be more accurate if Paul hadn’t jumped onto a tangent. When seen as instructions on how husbands should treat their wives, this passage quickly becomes confusingly circuitous. But Paul tells us that his primary focus at least by the time he gets to verse 31 is the profound mystery of Christ and the church.
The profound mystery to which Paul refers harmonizes the idea of the church as Christ’s body and that of the church as Christ’s bride into a central idea – One Flesh. The church is both his body and his bride because of the prophecy contained in Genesis 2:24:
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
(NASB95)
Christian premarital counseling always includes a section on “leave and cleave” which teaches the importance of the new couple distancing themselves from their respective families of origin. I suppose that’s fine, but the Jews didn’t do that. The man would build a bridal suite onto his parents’ home and move his wife into it. That disparity could be problematic if this passage was primarily meant to establish marital norms. It doesn’t seem that Paul saw that as its primary meaning. What looks like an axiom once again gets interpreted as a prophecy through the Christological hermeneutic.
“A man” who is Christ.
“Will leave his father” and join humanity through the incarnation.
“And his mother” in death on a cross.
“And be joined to his wife” in one inheritance and destiny.
“And they shall become one flesh” through one Spirit.
God became flesh in Christ. Through the Spirit, God remains flesh. The church is the continuation of the incarnation. We aren’t “like” his body. We are his body. Since we were made to be united with Christ as his companion and partner, we have become his bride. Again, not “like” his bride. The church is the extension and companion to Christ. We can only be both through this mystical union called One Flesh. He experiences our pleasure and pain because we are his body. We offer our bodies for his pleasure and in doing so receive pleasure in return because we are his bride.
As Paul said, this is a profound mystery.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t experience it right now.
We offer our bodies for his pleasure. That sounds sexual. That’s because it is. If Paul was right about Genesis 2:24 pointing to Christ, then the sexual union points to the One Flesh mystery of Christ and his church. This doesn’t mean that the church has sex with Christ or anything as crass as that. It means the One Flesh union includes mutual pleasure. In the creature-creator relationship, this happens through worship.
If you’re very familiar with the New Testament you might have recognized the phrase “offer our bodies.” It’s from a well-known verse that goes like this:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
(Romans 12:1 NIV)
This verse has always been just out of my reach. How could I offer my body as a living sacrifice? Without a clear idea as to its application, I’ve defaulted to thinking it must be some sort of inner commitment to give God everything should he wish to collect. Or it could be a decision to serve him in some dramatic way should he lead me there. I would “put myself on the altar” through some private decision in my heart.
Yeah, that’s not what it’s talking about.
This verse opened to me when I realized that it’s tightly connected to what comes immediately before. Paul first connects it by using “therefore.” Then he specifies that his instruction to offer our bodies comes “in view of God’s mercy.” Romans 12:1 is based on something about God’s mercy which can be found in the preceding chapter:
Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their (the Jews’) disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.
(Romans 11:30-32 NIV)
By God’s mercy, we Gentiles have been included in Israel. We must consider Paul’s call for us to offer our bodies from that perspective. This isn’t some personal choice to devote ourselves completely to God but the fulfillment of Israel’s cult of worship. Just as the Jews would come to the temple and offer a sacrifice, so we now come to the temple and leave a gift for God.
During his earthly ministry Christ called his body the temple. For centuries, the pre-incarnate Christ who was known as The Presence dwelt in Israel first in the tabernacle and then in Solomon’s temple. In the incarnation, God the Son took on flesh and tabernacled among us. His body became the temple. Since we are his body, we are also the temple. In view of God’s mercy, then, we must offer our bodies to his body.
It just so happens that Romans 12:3-8 depicts worship at Israel’s true temple:
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
(NIV)
God has given me the faith of Christ, but I’m not its only recipient. I’m part of a body of people in whom Christ dwells. If Christ dwells in this body, then whatever I offer to its members I offer to Christ. As someone in whom Christ dwells, I offer his gifts to his people on his behalf. Because we are his body which is God’s temple, God receives our gifts as “holy and pleasing.” Because he truly indwells his people by his Spirit he truly receives the gifts they offer to one another. While physical Israel worshiped God in symbol, our worship is true (aka “real”) because he truly benefits from the gifts offered to him through his people.
Christian worship can’t be reduced to singing. Just as with Israel, worship requires an offering. We worship in Spirit and truth when we as Christ’s body give our gifts to Christ’s body for God’s pleasure. Worship might be the offering of a song to encourage God’s people. It could also be paying our sister’s water bill or cleaning our brother’s house. If we limit worship to an event that happens once per week, most of the body of Christ will never obey Paul’s instruction in Romans 12:1. However we express the kingdom of God through the visible church, it must encourage and facilitate the full expression of the gifts through the daily life of the community.
In Ephesians 5, Paul quotes from the Septuagint translation of Genesis 2:24 which specifies that the two will become one flesh. The Hebrew texts say, “they will become one flesh.” Paul obviously used both the Hebrew and the Greek Old Testaments, but the latter seems to serve his purpose better in this case.
As we’ve seen, Paul’s thesis in Ephesians is that through the gospel Jew and Gentile, the two, come together into one people of God.
Not only do Christ and his church become One Flesh, but in the union, all other twos become one.
Consider the following passage:
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
(Ephesians 2:14-18 NIV emphasis mine NAW)
It seems that Paul understood Genesis 2:24 as a promise of unity between humankind. The union between Christ and his church finds its earthly expression whenever two people lay down their differences to join his one new humanity. The church fulfills God’s ancient vision in Christ through her unity. Nothing matters more. In a culture of throw-away relationships, the world needs to see Christians who stay together.
A couple of years ago, a family left our church because some of the members were Trump supporters. They felt they couldn’t be associated with such “evil.” I lamented their decision. I considered them spiritual family and then they were gone. I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t know what to say.
I know now.
If I had another chance, I’d point them to Romans 15:1-3:
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”
(NIV)
Paul had no idealistic notions about his fellow Christians. He knew how costly unity would be. He knew that participating in a group of transforming people would mean putting up with their shortcomings. He knew that membership in a group of flawed people would come with guilt by association. But we’re not too good to be dirtied by our brother’s misdeeds because Christ carried our sins and bore our shame. Going to church with Trump supporters is what Jesus would do. Leaving because you don’t want to be associated means you’re better than your Lord.
We’re not moralists; we’re Christians. We keep loving our spiritual family even when we have moral objections to their actions. When most of our fellow believers behave so poorly that the name, “Christian,” takes on reproach, we continue to wear that name and identify with those people. We do this because nothing we do as individuals will ever measure up to the mystery of One Flesh. In that mystery, the “two” across every human divide come together into the “one” who is Christ. In him, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, Democrat nor Republican, vaxxer nor anti-vaxxer, black nor white, poor nor rich, male nor female, conservative nor progressive. Those labels may continue to describe us, but they won’t define us. Nor should they affect the way we treat one another.
The One Flesh must be paramount for the Christian movement because it is God’s mission for the church. Every other vision must fade to bring this one to the fore. As One Flesh with Christ, we offer pleasing worship to God. As One Flesh with each other, we demonstrate God’s glory to every spectator in heaven and on earth. After all, Christ said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Sadly, we never get around to becoming a famously loving group because we always find a reason to distance ourselves from one another. This must end.
In “Three Tips for Growth” Alex, Kent, and Nathan discuss some gospel-based practices for churches to disciple their members.
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:
I’ll survey each practice in turn.
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.
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:
(2 Timothy 2:11-13 NIV)
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.
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.
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.
