GospelDrivenLife

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.