GospelDrivenLife

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Quote mania and Sola Scriptura

Citing favorite quotations has become epidemic among bloggers and facebookers and tweeters.  Perhaps it is the media that determines the size of the message, but I have some concerns. 

For the rest, go to my new location HERE.

The Christian Parallel Universe

I like certain forms of science fiction.  OK, I admit it, I am a Trekkie.  One of my favorite episodes of Star Trek explored the possibility of parallel universes.  Quite to my pleasure, the new TV series Fringe does the same.  They imagine that there could be various quantum realities and we breached the wall between them.

Well, I have news for them.  I think there are parallel universes.  At least, it seems that way to my eyes.

What I mean is that Christians in the USA seem to have created a universe parallel to the secular one.

There are more obvious versions of this -- the Christian Yellow Pages being foremost in my mind -- but there are subtle versions too.  Think of all the ways we have devised to "Christianize" every conceivable form of human relationship in education, commerce, diet, and exercise.  There are Christian food co-ops!  Christian exercise videos.  The list is long.

While I certainly do not deny the right to free association, I do have one question: is this what Jesus called us to?  I believe he prayed explicitly in John 17 that we would NOT be taken out of the world.  I believe Paul wrote these words:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. (1 Corinthians 5:9-10 ESV)

Well, I think Paul would be quite shocked that we have managed to do exactly that -- we have "gone out of this world" -- at least in practice, if not in body. We have created a parallel Christian universe. 

But the problem is more subtle than that.  As I listen to friends speak of their work or their neighborhoods or their schools or their kids sports -- it is almost always in the context where they note who the Christians are in those places ("My son is in little league, and his coach is a Christian").  They do so with a sense of relief or with greater confidence in the safety of their kids or with some sense of the magic of influence the coach will have over others.  It is even better if the coach is a former professional athlete who is a Christian.   

I would also observe that for some it seems desirable for Christians to work and play alongside of people who are not in Christ and somehow manage to avoid too much intersecting of their lives with them.  In other words, some would avoid any breaches between these parallel worlds.  It would never occur to them to engage their colleagues world and life.

Granted I am stereotyping, and there are many many exceptions.  There are traditions in the evangelical world that are not so world-detached. But this stereotype is based on years of data collection. Generally, I think mainstream evangelical USA Christians are uncomfortable with associations with unbelievers that are too close, too personal. Generally, we are afraid that simply being with them will have some corrupting influence.  So we create a parallel universe. We have effectively done what Paul thought impossible -- we have gone out of the world.

I sometimes think that we live in fear and call it wisdom.  But we live in fear -- fear of the negative influences of the world.  We live as though we have far more to fear from the "world" than they have to fear from us.  We carry with us the Good News of Jesus the crucified and risen.  The explanation of that news changes people; it removes them from the kindgom of darkness and brings them into Jesus kingdom. It is far more a threat to their way of life than they are to us.  

We live in unbelief and call it moral separation.  We live in unbelief, and actually deceive ourselves into thinking that we can create a parallel universe and thereby escape the corruptions that are in the world.  We are not confident in this message and its power in us and its power toward others.  

Now, of course I am aware of our vulnerability, and of course I am aware of the care of my children, and of course I am aware of all the arguments that can be marshalled for caution and safety and the rest -- but I am pressing for the other side.  I am doing so because the Gospel calls us.

We follow the One who was a friend of sinners, who took on flesh and blood as he entered a world in which there was nothing but defilement.  He came down into this world, in association with people ruined by sin and living in sin in all its various forms, he lived in the same universe, not a parallel one.  He was a friend of sinners and lived in purity at the same time. And he has sent us into this present age with the same mission -- to be the people of God in the midst of this world, not to isolate ourselves from the people of this world.

God wants believers to have confidence in the Gospel and to pass this on to our children to as well.  I am simply asking -- are we confident?  are we imparting confidence to our children or teach them to live quarantined lives?  Are we living in invisible hazmat suits?  in a parallel universe?

 

 

Rob Bell, and Functional Universalism updated

I would not in any way want to give the impression that I have read Ron Bell's recent book or really dug into the current discussions about universalism.  I would also not want to give the impression that doctrinal clarity and critique is anything but essential.

Yet, as I have seen a bit of this debate and remember previous debates on the same matter during the last thirty years, I come to a pastoral and practical question:  Am I a functional universalist? Let me explain.

A friend of many years became part of a previous church where I served as a pastor.  He was a man with a consistent evangelistic pattern of life.  I knew him for many years and could not remember any time when he was not in some serious continuing Gospel conversation with people outside of Christ, with lost people.

After getting to know me and the church, listening into what we complained about and what we celebrated, he asked one day, Do we believe hell is real?

This was not a doctrinal question.  It was a functional doctrine question.  He was not doubting our orthodoxy on paper.  He was questioning our orthodoxy in practice. What we believe, really believe, is seen in what functions in our lives.  It is one thing to believe on paper that Jesus is the gracious gift of the Triune God to bring salvation from the wrath to come and everlasting joy in the fellowship of the Godhead.  It is quite another to live that belief -- to have it function in our lives.

Many of us function like universalism is true.  Really.  Yes, there are many reasons why we can manage to live in a parallel universe to the lost all around us.  Selfishness, fear, a wrong understanding of holiness -- yes, all these play a part.  But when I get to the core of it, my friend's question was correct.I live as though there are no consequences -- I live as though we will all be happy in the end.

And Jesus did not.  Why did the Son of God speak so often of the realities of Gehenna?  Because he looked at the people he saw as living forever, in a state of joy or misery. As Lewis says it, they would someday either be so glorious that we would be tempted to worship them, or a horror such as we see not even in a nightmare. And they will be so as a consequence of their choices.  

Hell, for Jesus, was real, but he never used it as a threat. Rather, he held it up as a sober statement of the significance of our lives and actions.  He seemed to think that a doctrine of hell was the ultimate reason to treat people with the deepest respect. We are image bearers.

We are so much to be treated with respect that God will give us the fruit of the choices we make in life.  Jesus inserts the doctrine of hell into situations that deal with consequences.  Better to enter the kingdom with no hands than enter hell with both.  He is saying, "Your life and choices matter.  There will be everlasting results and consequences.  Do not go traipsing through life like it is a party." And we know that our actions have vast significance.  We know that those who do the things we do are worthy of death (Romans 1:32) -- yet we still do them.

Universalism is an insult to the image of God.  When someone pities me and says, "There, there stupid one, you make bad choices but do not worry, I will keep you from the consequences," they are condescending and insulting. Granted mercy may alleviate consequences at times -- but to be a perpetual object of pity and to be treated as irresponsible and protected from all the consequences of my actions is a lowly position, a demeaned status.

Universalism turns the love of God into weak-kneed sentimentalism.  It turns God into a parent figure who simply cannot bear to let his children suffer the consequences of their choices. I recall a conversation on this matter where the person could not imagine a God who would judge people into an eternal misery.  Then we turned to look at their idea -- a God who lets people off the hook and protects them from their own choices forever.  They agreed that was not a God they would want to call God. I was able to note that God did not give everyone a pass.  He could not. He brought consequences upon God the Son for us.

My point in all this, before I diverted, is that Jesus was not a functional universalist.  The reality of eternal blessedness or punishment is woven into his words and his actions. His message was not, "This is really serious.  I came to die for sin.  But, in the longrun, it doesn't matter.  It will all be like the last episode on LOST.  We all end up in a place of light." 

I am all for the historic orthodox understanding of eternal punishment.  Richard Bauckham's essay shows that this position is eroding but needs to be upheld. It is the position of the historic orthodox church.

We must defend the Scriptures from distortion. I cannot reduce orthodoxy to my practice.  It is true and objective and outside of whatever functional beliefs I have.

But if it does not function it my life, it is not enough to defend it and walk away commending myself for defendings its truth.  You believe in eternal punishment -- the demons do too.  

I return to the question, are we functionally universalists?  Is our personal lack of evangelistic engagement anything but functional universalism?  Are we more concerned with orthodoxy than with orthopraxy?  Are we grieved with a lack of engagement with people outside of Christ with the Good News of Christ?

Isn't it remarkable that followers of the One who came to seek and to save those who are lost, could think they are following him, and simultaneously live with no serious and thoughtful evangelistic purpose?

He came to make fishers of men, not keepers of the acquairium.

He became flesh, entered a world of us -- remained holy but was a friend of sinners. He wept over Jerusalem for her stubbornness of heart. 

He obeyed unto death, even though the death he would know was dreaded unto sweating blood. It was a death for us and for our sins, to rescue us from judgment.

Are you and I functional universalists?  Jesus certainly was not. I can rest in his perfect obedience for me, that his life is my life and my death becake his death. But I can also begin today to look around me at people whose choices will matter before God forever and seek ways to call them to the only One who protects them from the wrath to come.

The Depths of Hospitality and Evangelism

Fred Sanders work, The Deep Things of God punched me in the gut, with a good hurt.  Its not so much Dr. Sanders who punched me, as the doctrine of the Trinity.  You see, my world tends to be small.  My imagination is limited.  I am really good at staring at my toes and a foot or two ahead of me. 

This book grabbed my attention, raised my eyes to the heavens, and carried me back to the world of the Godhead, before there were any worlds made.  I have turned my meditations there again and again since.

Just recently, seeking to hear God's Word and its call to look outward, I wrestled with how to engage our people with that word.  Another message on the Great Commission?  

I started by asking a different question -- if we were to turn outward in Gospel proclamation, and Gospel service, and Church planting, what would that look like?  How would God work?

That is when I started to reflect on the ways of God.  God sent his Son who became a grain of wheat that fell into the ground to die so that it would bear much fruit.  Death was his path to life and fruitfulness. And, as I meditated further, I saw that death (in the form of suffering) is the path he takes us on to bear fruit as well.

Suffering and loss are the means of living Christ and provide the context for proclaiming Christ.  We shall not be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while the Son of God poured out his blood for us.

Well, that was a jarring note to us all, including me.  And it drove me further into considering how evangelism and church planting is not just a command, it is a pattern.

Then there was a coalescence of ideas from Sanders and Scripture. If the great news behind the good news is that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the gladness of the Trinity have opened up their life to bring adopted sons and daughters to their table, then the root of evangelism is in the depths of the Godhead.  Evangelism is not something Christians do on Thursday nights, it is a reflection of something God is in eternity past.  It is not peripheral or optional.  It is essential.  

Out of the depths of the Triune God, God in his goodness and love chooses to redeem and welcome sinners into the circle of his glory.  He seats us, not at the guest tables, but at the head table, co-heirs with the Son.  We are made one flesh with Christ, our heavenly husband. 

When we welcome the stranger, meet the new neighbor, make room in our schedules for the unbeliever, disrupt our fellowship to send people out to do church planting and missions -- we are reflecting the deep things of God.  That is is costly should not surprise us.  God in Trinity ruptured their everlasting fellowship of love to open the circle to the likes of us.  The Father send the Son and the Father made the Son a curse for us.  The Son did it gladly.

This is stunning.  

If you want to consider this more, listen in HERE.

 

 

More thoughts of death and suffering for Christians

I have been asking some questions: What is suffering for the Christian?  for the pastor? Is it a mark of God’s disfavor or favor? 

To help me with these questions, I am continuing in my meditations on 2 Corinthians, aided by Scott Hafemann’s excellent commentary.

Here is what I am seeing: Suffering is not something out of the normal, not something to be relieved. It is not to be hidden in shame.  It is to be redeemed and turned to advantage in the purposes of Christ.  

We tend to think that deeper faith reduces suffering.  In reality deeper faith does not lead to a life of triumphant health, trim bodies, with well-behaved and ideal families.  Paul goes so far as to say that those whom God will use in ministry will be led into suffering, into a march toward death, themselves to be set upon the altar. 

That may sound strange to you.  But these thoughts are not aberrant; they are biblical, rooted in Paul’s words. Notice this text:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing . . . .  (2 Corinthians 2:14-15 ESV)

My former reading of this was simple: Christ is taking us on a victory parade, leading us in triumph.  The context seems to make this obvious.  Paul is so anxious for the Corinthians that he bypasses an open door for ministry in Troas (2:12-13).  And it all works out for good!

Au contraire, says Hafemann, no modern linguist-exegete could reach that conclusion.  The triumphant procession therein is the march of the victorious Roman General.  But behind him in the parade are not his victorious soldiers, but the prisoners of war -- and he displays them as marks of his conquest -- as he leads them to death.  

This means that we are to interpret Paul’s early departure from Troas as weakness; and, that weakness, far from being a mark of spiritual emptiness, a blot on his character, is a mark of this triumphal march of the Son of God. 

Hafemann concludes that Paul is the conquered (see Acts 9), and the Lord Jesus is leading Paul to death, so that in his body he is always bearing the death of Christ so that the life of Christ may be seen in him.  Paul’s life and message matched.  And the Christ who is offered upon the altar in death makes Paul’s life an odor of Christ to all who are about.

This is a game changer for me.  It kills triumphalism.  It runs deeply contrary to American values which see suffering as an evil in itself.  It kills a minimizing of suffering and a preoccupation with suffering.  This is not a call to be self-pitying, preoccupied with our afflictions, heaving sighs in our adversity -- but a call to glory in our weakness so the power of Christ may be perfected in us.

Paul is utterly transparent in this letter -- he is not hiding the effects of the death march in his own life -- but neither is he seeking pity.  He is like a woman in child birth -- deeply aware of the pain, but focused on the fruit of the process.  

Pastorally, I do not serve my people well by gliding over their anguish of soul.  I serve them by drawing out their anguish and helping them see it redemptively.  I am not called to tell them three steps to a pain free life.  I am not called to tell them to have greater faith or to cease to feel their pain.  I am called to help them press through the pain and weakness, the delivering over to death -- and to press toward power made perfect in weakness, the life of Christ manifest in them. 

God’s deep work is often in affliction.  As Lewis noted, he whispers in our pleasure, but he shouts in our pain.

Ministry is cruciform.  We should not be surprised when sufferings come to elders or missionaries in greater abundance that to the people we serve.  Suffering is not a mark that something is wrong; it is a mark that something is right, that Christ and the Spirit are at work.

Ministry is not technique and method.  We are not professionals who provide a service.  Ministry is the work of God through a person, shaped and worked by God’s Spirit through death/resurrection experiences.  And resurrection for Paul meant endurance with faith and joy far more than it meant freedom from suffering.

 

 

The Story of the Bible

The Bible is a book about God's activity to redeem a people for himself and exalt them into his glory.  That means that every part of the Bible whispers redemption and in some fashion points to Christ.  It is not a book of self-improvement though it makes us new.  It is not a book of morality though it contains morals.

It is a book of the God who saves.

That all sounds good on paper, but what is the key to finding redemption and Christ in Scripture?  What are we to do with all those good and mostly bad examples of the Old Testament?  And what about all those laws?  

Last Saturday, we gathered the men of grace church together to consider The Story of the Bible.  You are welcome to listen in HERE.  Notes and lectures are included.

 

Pastoral Weakness and Power

What do you admire in a leader?  What do you think makes a great leader? It is an age old question and one faced by the early Christians.  

 This last week, as I prepared to preach from 2 Corinthians, I asked those questions.  And I was a bit surprised by where I landed.

2 Corinthians may be the longest treatise in the Bible on leadership.  This is not Paul the Christian; this is Paul the apostle.  He argues against a secular view of leadership.

You see, Paul's critics in Corinth considered the apostle a less than adequate leader.  They believed leadership was a matter of charisma, powerful presence, strength and an air of triumphant confidence. They believed that real leaders were men on top of their game, especially leaders who preached the resurrection.  

Paul was weak. He changed his mind. He was not eloquent.  He suffered a great deal.  Surely, they concluded, this is not much of a leader. Paul argues quite a different perspective.  Gospel preaching leaders look like the Gospel.  Their lives and experience preach without words what they proclaim with words. This is where my world got rumbled.

You see, for Paul, and especially for Paul, a leaders’ life and experience and public persona are a constant display of their weakness and limitations and neediness, and a constant display of the power of Christ alone could accomplish much with such a person.

Christian leaders are not "wise men" with "brilliant and creative ideas."  They are certainly not celebrities.  They are the dregs of the earth, the humble caboose of the train.  They are the prisoners led behind the conquering general (2 Cor 2:14-17).

Paul discloses the pattern of ministry -- power in weakness,  sharing in the suffering of Christ, so that his comfort may be known as well.  

He defines what it means to enter into the suffering of Christ. 2 Cor 1:8-10 says it means being brought into circumstances so beyond us, so far above our powers, that we experience the sentence of death in ourselves.  This, Paul says, is so that we will not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead and thus experience his resurrecting power.

In other words, God designs the circumstances of leaders to reveal (to them and to others) their deficiencies, their emptiness, their neediness -- so that the work that is done is clearly a work of God.

Sometimes this means deliverance, sometimes not.  

In 2 Cor 12:7-10 Paul tells of the affliction God sent to him, a thorn in the flesh. I am not sure what the thorn is but I know it was some form of chronic pain.  It was a day in and day out reminder to Paul that he was mere dust, flesh and blood.  Migraines? Insomnia? Arthritis? Melancholy?  Those would be modern examples.

This thorn was designed by God, once again, to make clear to Paul and to others that God's grace is sufficient (therefore, Paul is not and we are not). This is to make clear that God's power is perfected in weakness, not in our strengths, or overcoming our own weakness.   Shockingly, power is most seen, not in healings, not in triumphant living, but in weakness and limitations and being in over our heads. 

The reason for this is simple: the treasure of the Gospel is located in earthen vessels (clay pots, brown paper bags) so it is clear to all that the pot is just a pot and the treasure is the treasure.  God designed leadership in the church to display his great power and glory. His ability to use such weak and broken vessels for his purposes of grace is remarkable. The skill of the workman is seen in what he can do with such limited tools.

And he designs the circumstances of leaders to remind them of their weakness again and again, and to display his sufficiency again and again.

The opponents of Paul looked on his suffering and weakness and said, "What kind of a leader is that? What is he hiding?  Surely the favor of God cannot rest on a man who suffers this much?"  

Paul says, "How can a man be a preacher of the Gospel and not experience such suffering and weakness? God displays the Gospel through words spoken and the life lived.  God alone saves in Christ.  So God makes that clear through the public display of the weaknesses and afflictions of leaders."

Leadership is a mix of God's glory and human frailty. As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor yet making many rich; as having nothing and yet possessing all things. (2 Cor 6:8-10)

In other words, God reenacts the Gospel in the experience of leaders so that the Gospel preached is matched by the life lived. "Always being given over to death for Jesus sake, so that the life of Christ may be seen in us" (4:8-10).

My surprise was this: I was more sympathetic with the opponents of Paul than with Paul.  I want strong and gifted and charismatic leaders.  I want to be a gifted leader, whose weaknesses and flaws are less obvious.  I want to lead with strength, not with weakness.  I want to fix my weaknesses, eliminate mistakes, hide my sin, or at least grow to the point where I am sufficient.  

In other words, and I paraphrase a friend, I want to get to the point in my life and circumstances where I am mature enough and gifted enough and skilled enough to no longer be desperately dependent on God. HA!  I want to preach the Gospel but not live by the Gospel.

And, I find around me people who want the same.  I find leadership idolatry.  I find people with very high expectations of leaders and people who get quite upset when leaders make mistakes and even more so when they do not see their own sin.  I understand.  What they desire is what I want and that forms an unholy co-dependency (co-idolatry is better to describe this).

It will not be so.  God seems to go overboard to make us as unimpressed with the heroes of the Bible as we can be.  Abraham -- the man of faith -- lied to protect his own skin.  Jacob, whom God blessed, was a cheat.  Moses, impulsive and easily angered, led the nation.  I could go on.

We come to the New Testament and we find Jesus with the twelve.  Now that is quite a contrast.  Peter, of course, is front and center, foot in mouth.  He is proud, self-confident, a selfish coward who denies his Lord.  Then, 15 years later, he denies him again in Antioch.  Hmmm, would I want as a leader a man who denied his Lord both before the crucifixion and did so again, years later, under pressure from his peers in Antioch? Yet he is an apostle.

I am not justifying sin.  Elders meet certain qualifications.  But read them again, that list is quite un-extraordinary.  And, given the background just noted, certainly not to be seen as a list of perfections. These are graces, marks of the work of the Spirit in their lives.

I think Bruce Winter (9 Marks interview) is correct.  We need to minimize our use of the word "leader" in our churches.  It is a good word, but is carries with it so much baggage, so many notions of power and skill and ability, that it corrupts our thinking.  I support his notion that the proper notion is people responsible to serve the church, to care for and love the people of God and the local church unto Christ. It is slave work, menial labor for the King.

 

Pastors: what is your perspective?

I came across contrasting texts the other day:

Paul wrote: I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. (Romans 15:14 ESV)

John wrote:

I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority.  So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church. (3 John 1:9-10 ESV)

Do you see the contrast?

Paul views the church without control, with faith, with confidence in God and in them.  He is not denying the doctrine of sin. But he is amazed at the doctrine of regeneration and the indwelling of the Spirit.

There is no suspicion in Paul.  There is no fear of what they might do without his immediate oversight.  He does not seem to need to micromanage their lives.  He does not think they must have close and detailed pastoral care or they will not make it.

John is writing about another kind of pastor -- the control freak. He is busy ruling the church, telling the church who they may or may not have dinner with. He is busy being discerning and critiquing other pastors.  He is lording it over the flock.  He is telling them where to school their kids and whether to jump and how high.

And what is the difference?

Paul knows who God is,  Diotrephes thinks he is God. He thinks he should be the center of things.  Paul does not.  He is content to be a servant of the living God.

I read these words and realize I would never write what Paul wrote.  I would be concerned if I heard someone preach those words today.  But the man writing them is inspired, writing the very word of God. He is right.  I am wrong.

Pastors: do you trust God to work in your people?  What would your people say about your control of their lives?  about your heart for them?  are you suspicious of them?  are you "careful" with them?  Or do you want them to see Christ?  Do you believe Christ is at work and keeping them?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer looked at this from a different angle.  He put it this way:

A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p 29

 

Humility and Pastoral Leadership

I have just finished relistening to the IX Marks interview with Bruce Winter.

Winter is a significant scholar, especially on historical backgrounds.  And in this interview he turns the world upside down on the issue of leadership.

In short, Dr Winter says that the notion of "leadership" as emphasized today in the church is counter to the New Testament.  The cult of leaders, the exaltation of leadership as the paradigm of ministry, the accent on teaching people to be followers -- all of these are, in his grasp of the ancient world and the New Testament, a great error. 

And he knows whereof he speaks, as his doctoral work is a direct study of how Paul refused to take up the mantle of leadership as understood in his day.  Most exceptionally, this is seen in 2 Corinthians.

Dever presses him multiple times, trying to push him into the notion of leadership, cites Scripture and practical example.  But Winters answers consistently.  Being a pastor in a church is a responsibility, and it calls for serving and feeding the people. It is not to be defined as an authority, but a service.  It is not a call to teach people to be followers, for only Christ is to be followed.  It is a familial role, not a hierarchical role. 

Winters issued a clear word to pastors, to think God's thoughts about leadership -- not secular thoughts.  

I commend this interview again, and want to get a hold of his book on Paul and the Sophists, found HERE. I am sure his book will give further food for thought. 

All of this begins to make sense. If Paul was the leader par excellence in the New Testament, what do we have?  Not a man of charisma, but a man of exceptional suffering, a man who was despised and maligned and considered to be the offscouring of all things.  He refused to live up to the charismatic leader model.