Have I committed the unforgivable sin?

Jumping to application, failure to explain current fulfillment and too many points. Though I am not able to make all of the corrective changes, I thank Gajanan and MJ for their insightful, useful and helpful critique on True Believers from Isaiah 19: I “jumped to practical application” before adequate hermeneutics and exegesis, and I did not explain how the prophecy regarding Egypt is being fulfilled. TBT, I did not because I do not know! MJ and her sister also pointed out that my preached sermon last Sunday had too many points, since I do not like to leave anything out. I want to seriously consider these critiques and be conscious of them, though, to be honest, I will likely continue to fail!

God’s people ignoring reality as though everything is fine. This is my paraphrase of what Isaiah says is the unforgivable sin. The day of God’s judgment is coming upon Jerusalem (Isa 22:5). God calls for them “to weep and to wail, to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth” (Isa 22:12). God desires that they seriously consider the error of their ways. But instead, “there is joy and revelry, slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep, eating of meat and drinking of wine! ‘Let us eat and drink,’ you say, ‘for tomorrow we die!’” (Isa 22:13) As a result of their nonchalance, the Lord Almighty revealed to Isaiah, saying, “Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for” (Isa 22:14). This is surely the worst statement that anyone can possibly hear from God. Interestingly, this was not declared to all the godless nations around Judah (Philistia to the west, Moab to the east, Syria to the north, Egypt to the south, or even to arrogant Babylon and Assyria), but to God’s very own chosen people in Jerusalem!

Seemingly not that hard to do. It was rather surprising to me to realize that it is not that difficult to commit the unatonable, unpardonable and unforgivable sin, even by God’s own chosen people: Just ignore the reality and live as though everything is fine!

Isn’t it too easy to just ignore or refuse to face reality? I used to think that only non-Christians commit the unforgivable sin. Thus, we Christians are “not that bad” and basically OK. But are we, really? Don’t we also have offensive and glaring blind spots? Aren’t we also self-righteous, proud and condescending toward others? Aren’t we also defensive and refuse to be accountable when our errors and sins are pointed out? Don’t we also ignore reality with blinders on as though everything is just fine?

Historically, Egypt has been the enslavers of God’s people and their most memorable adversary. But one day they will be converted, transformed, saved and become the people of God together with Israel. They will display evidences of true believers, such as:

• the fear of God (Isa 19:16-17),
• pledging allegiance to God (Isa 19:18),
• relating all of life to God (Isa 19:19-22),
• being united with those who are unlike them (Isa 19:23), and
• regarding all others as equals (Isa 19:24-25).

Fear God (Isa 19:16-17). The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7). The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10). People might generally prefer the love of God to the fear of God. I probably do as well. But I contend that to fear God is not to live in fear as commonly understood, but to live in awe and respect for what the Almighty will do (Isa 19:16-17). Also, I’ve found that when I fear God, I do not fear anyone else (Prov 29:25). Not fearing people does not mean that I become belligerent or disrespectful. It simply means that I acknowledge that my life is entirely in God’s hands, and in not the hands of other people. During Isaiah’s time, everyone lived and behaved as though the world was in the hands of Assyria, the superpower nation of the day (Isa 10:12-14). It is also why an important major theme of Isaiah is to not to trust mere humans (your leaders and shepherds!), but to calmly and confidently trust God alone (Isa 7:4a, 9b). Jesus practiced what Isaiah taught (Jn 2:24-25).

Pledge allegiance to the God of Israel and learn their language (Isa 19:18). To put this in contemporary context, it is like Americans submitting to Koreans and speaking “Konglish,” or Koreans submitting to Filipinos and speaking Tagalog instead of Korean. Some might prefer death to such subjugation and humiliation. But in that day the Egyptians swear allegiance to the God of Israel and learn their language (Isa 19:18).

Relate all of life to God (Isa 19:19-22). They build an altar (Isa 19:19), which signifies reconciliation with God. They cry out to God for help (Isa 19:20b), instead of seeking human and political solutions. They know God as God reveals himself (Isa 19:21a). They understand that to know God is to respond to God’s revelation of himself, and not just them seeking to know God by their own efforts or good intentions. They make sacrifices and vows in response to God’s revelation (Isa 19:21b). They walk the walk. They turn to God and experience healing in times of divine discipline (Isa 19:22), rather than becoming bitter. A true believer relates every aspect of their life–both good times and hard times–to God.

Unite with those unlike themselves (Isa 19:23). Egypt and Assyria were enemies. But in that day, they will worship together. There will be a highway connecting these unlikely bedfellows. The highway–a favorite metaphor in Isaiah–connotes the removal of alienation and separation. We human beings understandably prefer like-minded people. We prefer our own ethnicities and culture, which explains why there are ethnic communities in virtually every city. Even churches tend to be sharply segregated along racial, ethnic and denominational lines. But true believers welcome and unite with those they might not generally welcome or prefer. For virtually all of my 35 years of Christian life since 1980, I have done ministry virtually primarily and exclusively with UBF people, such that I do not really know how to relate well to or interact with non-UBF Christians. I hope to learn the spirit of inclusivity and ecuminism, which John Armstrong introduced to me over the past decade. Reading books by contemplatives such as Richard Rohr has been quite helpful to help me overcome my unique sense of exclusivity. UBFriends, comprising of many ex-UBFers, is also a great place of interaction and unity for me, since in the past I would never have maintained any relationship or interaction with anyone who has left UBF.

Regard all others as equals (Isa 19:24-25). Egypt, Assyria and Israel lived in enmity and animosity for hundreds of years. But in that day they will first acknowledge and submit to the God of Israel (Isa 19:16-17), even humbly learning their language which was foreign to them (Isa 19:18). But they do not remain in a subordinate position indefinitely. Rather, God declares that they are all equally God’s people, God’s handiwork and God’s inheritance (Isa 19:25). This is how God’s people from different ethnicities and cultures become a blessing on the earth (Isa 19:24). This exposes the repeated failure of missionaries over the centuries to this day. Unlike Paul who turned the ministry over to his indigenous converts within a few years during his four missionary journeys (Ac 14:23), Christian missionaries have generally acted as the leaders who continued to lord over their converted indigenous peoples for years and decades. This is well explained in Roland Allen’s classic book, Missionary Methods. I wrote about this in 2012: Let Local Leaders Lead. I sense that many are coming to a gradual realization that each country’s indigenous UBF leader should be leading the ministry, and not the original missionary pioneer nor a foreign overseas director.

I don’t preach what I write because I preach extemporaneously. This write up is part of my preparation and reflection which I may or may not share on Sunday. Please feel free to critique it both as a sermon, as well as for content and substance.

Jesus words are harsh and direct “You hypocrites!” The second point here is that Jesus realizes the stakes are high and reserves no harsh words, and compromises nothing when dealing with this fall teaching. The disciples even question this asking “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” But Jesus’ response is twofold: first, that judgment will come (verse 13) and since it will come we cannot afford to have the blind leading the long. Jesus often rebukes his disciples, but he reserves his harshest critics for teachers, because they spread teachings and therefore represent true danger. The early church would often put down groups, not because they hated them- but because they wagered that it was better to have a group eradicated than to have the gospel messaged changed and distorted amongst the body of Christ. Although their methods were at times harsh, their aim was the same as Jesus’ in this passage. Right beliefs preclude right action, on the other hand wrong beliefs preclude wrong action. Jesus concludes by teaching both the Pharisees and the disciples the right belief, that our heart is what determines our holiness. He concludes that the ritual does nothing to determine a person’s faith. Righteousness comes by faith, and adherence to any tradition in and of itself is meaningless (Gal 2:21). I have heard people in UBF go so far as to out rightly claim that a person’s spiritual maturity is based on adherence to their traditions. It is fanaticism in its truest. It’s wrong through and through.

A specific tradition may be invaluable to a particular person at a particular time, but it takes a special type of evil to unilaterally decide that that’s the way it ought to be for all. When I think of myself I have to be very careful myself not to fall into this trap. It is easy enough for a person to fall into, but I find the danger only grows with time. Perhaps there is a certain maturity I have yet to reach where I take all of this with the right amount of levity, but I find that I have the same tendency to asset my religiousness over others. The gospels seem clear to me that this is a problem to be fixed, not a feature to be upheld and enshrined.

Forestsfailyou

…And Instead Dwell In Christ

Admin note: Reading Kevin’s testimony, I immediately resonated with what he shared below. I know that the Christian life should be full of love, joy and peace (Gal 5:22), as well an overflowing and abundant life (Jn 10:10b). But after a quarter of a century as a Christian, I was experiencing anger, joylessness and anything but peace–perhaps like Kevin after 26 years of “endless self-pruning” as a Christian, as he vividly shares in Part 2: Lost in my human efforts to love God. The Christian life felt to me very much like such a torturous unbearable drag. At that time I didn’t quite know why. But I knew that I needed to seriously re-evaluate my life as a Christ-follower…and make major drastic changes if I were to restore my joy of intimacy with my Lord. See if you can relate to Kevin pouring out his heart in what he shares below.

Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (NIV).

Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (NIV).

Deuteronomy 6 discusses ways in which, we, as believers, can guard our hearts when we are on the cusp of abundant blessings from God. The Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land, and receive houses and fields that were not theirs. A former slave people would become a nation. On the brink of receiving many blessings, they were in danger of losing their hearts to the world and drifting away from the God who saved them.

For any believer, it is when we are being blessed by God, that we are the most vulnerable in losing our hearts to the temptations of this world. We could end up following the idols of the culture in which we live. We could forget the Lord. We could loose a thankful heart and take all of our blessings for granted. We could even become proud, thinking that all of the blessings we have accumulated actually were procured exclusively by our own “human” efforts. In doing this we end up giving glory to ourselves and not to Christ, who is the actual source of our blessings. Our love for our Savior can grow cold.

Anyway, we know that we must guard our hearts, for God’s blessings are being poured out on us continuously. We are so blessed. We live in one of the most blessed countries of the world. We are living in the most blessed generation. We have freedom of religion and freedom of thought and expression. The greatest blessing is yet to come, the resurrection from the dead into life everlasting in the Kingdom of Heaven where we will live with our Savior Jesus, face to face. But, as a result, we are the most vulnerable generation. We Christians, must make it a point to guard our hearts.

How? Dt 6:5 says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Mk 12:30 says. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” I will explore each aspect of devotion, to love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. Then I will explore the dangers of continuously trying, with our own human efforts, to become more efficient in showing love for Jesus, verses simply being found in Christ, through faith, and allowing the God, the Eternal Gardener, to prune and perfect our expressions of love to Christ. This will be illuminated by my personal testimony.

Part 1: Suggestions On How To Better Love God: But Be Warned!

People have been endowed by God, with various tools to love the Lord. They can be found in the following verses:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Dt 6:5).

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30).

God has given us heart, mind, soul and strength. He has given us these characteristics to love him. He has given us the direction to love him intensity, using these qualities, so as to guard our hearts and protect and nurture our relationship with him, especially in the vulnerable time when we are on the cusp of great blessings.

But be warned, trying to apply these teachings, without having a “vine and branch relationship” (Jn 15:5) with Jesus Christ, can make a person into a disciplined disciple who is depressed and devoid of joy and laughter, limited in their ability to exalt the name of Jesus. With this in mind, we will explore different ways to love God in the modern context. Keep in mind… this is not a check list on how to become more efficient in our walk with the Lord. It is not a blueprint on how to self prune ourselves of our useless branches. It is an ideal that could inspire us as we follow Christ.

First, loving God with all of our heart: A person’s heart is the seat of their passions. We give our hearts to many things. Young people give their hearts to their friends, to music and self improvement. They achieve great things when they give their hearts. Adults give their hearts to their hobbies, families and pursuit of their dreams. They too can achieve great things. Loving God with all of our heart, is loving God with all of our passion. How can we do this? What we are passionate about comes naturally. It is unique for every person. Our passions are somehow related to our giftings. God can redeem our passions and use what we are passionate about, for his glory. Or, a person can do what doesn’t come naturally…forcing their passions to be in line with what they think is loving God. I would not suggest this. This will lead to joylessness.

Second, loving God with all of our soul: We have two components to our being, body and soul. The soul is made in the image of God. With the soul we can commune with God. We can relate to God. We can love God and we can worship God. Loving God with all of our soul means that we worship God. We nurture our relationship with God as we worship, revere and adore him. Loving God with all of our soul is something that spontaneously erupts. It is a response to an encounter with Jesus. It is a result of experiencing God’s grace. We can encourage worship to happen, by joining in worship with the local congregation or a church meeting. But ultimately it is God that causes our soul to overflow with worship and praise. Forcing ourselves to worship him can only go so far.

Third, loving God with all of our mind: Our mind is very powerful. When humans begin to pursue something with their minds, nothing seems impossible. Even extending human life to 200 years, resurrecting a mastodon, or starting a colony on Mars seems possible. Once the mind starts to pursue a topic, it is hard for us to get it out of our minds. There are those who can’t put down a 700 page book until it is completed. Others pursue a hypothesis until they uncover the truth. We can love God with all of our mind. We can read books about God. We can develop mission fields with its many systems and networks with our minds. We can write about God and spiritual life. We can imagine the Kingdom of God and what great things the Gospel will bring to a people group, with our minds. In an attempt to love God, we can discipline our minds to think about Christ honoring things. We can discipline ourselves to engage in daily devotionals etc. But, we can also burn ourselves out, denying our mind to dwell on what it has a passion for and forcing a round block into a square hole for too long.

Fourth, loving God with all of our strength: People have a lot of strength to do things with. We can apply our strength to loving God. God gives us the strength. He inspires us, and loves us, hopes in us. This inspiration, hope and love gives us more strength. We can focus our strength to love Jesus. For example some people get up at 5 am to ensure they have time for devotionals. They sacrifice sleep in order to engage in a mission. We can muster strength to read a spiritual book. We can get a degree in Christian ministry. We can shed useless things in our lives in order go further with the strength we have been given. This is where the danger lies. A person may get so focused on shedding “the baggage” in order to muster more strength to love God, that they actually forget about God. Without a vine and branch relationship with Jesus, they become disciplined in spiritual things but lose the full life that Christ would have for them. The end result is a joyless, yet efficient, life of faith. This is where we fall into burnout if we are not careful. And this brings me to my own testimony.

Part 2: Lost In My Human Efforts To Love God

Now is the time to talk about the dangers of trying to be more and more efficient in our loving God using our own efforts. Out of a deep sincerity of heart, we try to become more disciplined, as we self-prune ourselves, to get rid of few more useless branches from our lives. We try to excise a little more selfishness and self serving tendencies, in order to devote ourselves to our mission, which we equate with loving God. Maybe we could squeeze out a little more offering, devote a little more prayer time, introduce a little more Bible reading, make sure that there is less time for ourselves and our “selfish” pursuits and more time for Jesus and his mission. All of this is done in our sincere quest to love God with all of our hearts, minds, soul and strength.

I operated like this for 26 years, all the while ignoring the importance of dwelling in Christ and finding my peace and rest in him. I largely ignored the truth of being still and knowing that God is control. This way of life helped me to be disciplined and to find my giftings in the Lord, but it also took a great toll on me.

Over the course of two and a half decades, I become very devoted to my mission in the church. So devoted that some days I would sleep for 4-5 hours a day, occasionally having to stop and take a nap in my car. After working all night, I would be up at 2 pm to meet students for Bible study at 230 pm. For over 5 years, I would memorize 10-30 Bible verses every two weeks and write a four page testimonial and travel 140 miles (there and back) to join a meeting. I would leave at 9am and get back at 7pm. I would study the Bible with about six people per week on a 1:1 basis each week. I would write a message weekly and deliver it on Sunday. Every two weeks I would do the Sunday thing with only three hours of sleep. There was a huge expenditure of money. Above tithing, there were conference fees and travel fees and the paying of two mortgages for a few years, one for our home and the other for a church house. On Sunday there were three Bible studies with the kids after the Sunday worship service. All of this was happening, after working full time and raising five kids with my wife. They activities varied over the years, but the intensity of it all carried on for 26 years. At the end of it all, I was running like a machine. I got this way from attempting to cut off one useless branch after another, becoming more efficient in expressing my love for God while ignoring the relationship with Jesus Christ.

The result of this kind of drive for efficiency was both good and bad. The good thing was that I did get to know Jesus better. I got to know my Bible. I grew to be a 1:1 Bible teacher. I could become a Christian mentor. I could lead group Bible studies. I could write and deliver Gospel messages. I could relate to other Christian leaders and work together with them. I prayed. I could write reports about the work of God. I could slowly grow to be a writer and a devotional writer. I could be a networker in the work of God. I could promote missionary support groups.

I am very thankful for these skills that God bestowed. They provide me with the tools I will use, as I serve the Lord Jesus, throughout my entire lifetime, even into the twilight of my life…even in a nursing home, I can serve Jesus with these tools. They are meaningful tools that are bringing about lasting fruit in my life. This is because of Jesus Christ, and the disciplines that I experienced while growing as a disciple and pruning useless branches.

But then there were the bad things. I was very efficient but largely joyless. Years ago I remember being attracted to Afro-American Gospel music and Southern Gospel music. I liked these genres of Christian music because they were full of joy. They were not full of joy, because of the number of people coming to an outreach event, or the numbers of disciples engaged in ministry. They were singing about the Kingdom of God and the Resurrection. They were sincerely celebrating life everlasting with the Lord Jesus forever and ever. Something that I knew about, but was not doing.

And then there was Jn 1:4 that I could not ignore. This verse reads, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” And also John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” These verses continually knocked on the door of my heart. In Jesus is Life. This life is the light of all mankind. Jesus came to bring life. He came to grant us life to the full. I could not give testimony to these statements. I was not experiencing this life, nor life to the full, and yet I was sincerely trying to follow Jesus for 26 years! Though I was getting super efficient, I was depressed, without laughter, with momentary episodes of joy, and strained relationships. I doubted that anyone would ever choose to follow Christ, by looking at my life. What I was portraying was more, endless “boot camp” training than life in Christ.

In regards to ministry, did such a lifestyle bring about a larger church? Did it attract people to our fellowship? Did it attract missionaries to voluntarily gather to preach the Gospel together? Did it create a fellowship where joy in the Lord was overflowing? Did it create more Bible teachers and spiritual mentors? Did it inspire others to follow what I was doing? No.

After 26 years of trying to make myself more and more efficient in loving God, I saw no prospects for change, operating in that paradigm. Some would have me think that if I just suffered a little longer then the dams of God’s blessing would burst open. I didn’t believe that. Nor do I now. I knew that things would only remain the same, endless self pruning and refinement. I did believe in the parable of the five loaves and two fish. If I just offered what I had, then God would accept that and multiply it. But I was offering up my five loaves and two fish for twenty six years and I was left depressed. Once a thought crossed my mind, “What if I need to offer up my five loaves and two fish” more intensely and sincerely? Maybe then God would bless. When I shared this with a brother in Lord, he laughed. He saw the folly of my legalistic way of thinking. I was really stuck. No one was telling me I was wrong. I appeared to be devoted to the mission and appeared to be loving God with all my strength. But Jesus, seeing, my need, broke the chains himself.

Part 3: The Dawn Of A New Day

Jn 1:4 and Jn 10:10 resounded in my heart. If Jesus came to give us life to the full, then why was I not experiencing life to the full, even after streamlining my efforts for 26 years! I was stuck in a rut. I knew something was missing but didn’t know what. I was hard hearted. But God led me along a painful awakening in 2012 until now. Along this leg of the journey, I came to discover what it means to dwell in the Lord.

Jn 15:5 reads, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

I learned about resting in the Lord and taking the unique yolk that Jesus has for me and my life and my family in this season of living…the Missio Dei in my life.

Mt 11:28-30 reads, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I learned about being still and knowing that God is control.

Ps 46:10 reads, “He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’”

Over the last three years Jesus has taught me that loving God with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength, has nothing to do with endless refining and pruning myself to be more efficient. It has everything to do with remaining in Jesus. It has everything to do with allowing God to bear what he wants in my life, in his time and in his way, and not forcing the issue. There is life in Jesus, to be certain. There is life to the FULL in him. There is the fruit if joy, peace and love, but that is not found in self pruning one’s self for decades. It is an outpouring of our relationship with Christ.

Jn 4:14, “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

I thank God for each leg of my life’s journey thus far. God has grown me into the man I am today. God willing, I will still have 50 more years to serve my Lord Jesus in this world. (That is if I live to 100!) I thank God for his gifts and his blessings and the missions he has called me to. It is now time to enter into the next season of my life and ministry and it not going to be marked by endless self pruning and streamlining of my expressions of love to the Lord. I will be more concerned about having a vine and branch relationship with Jesus. I will, by the grace of God, dwell in his love and allow him to bear his fruit in my life and family. I will allow him to exalt his name through my life. And I will enjoy the life to the full that Christ gives. I will bear testimony to the world, that in Jesus is life, true life and we can have life to the full by faith. I have a great hope that endless, God-honoring fruit will be born. It is God who will nurture and blossom love in my heart, allowing me to love him with intensity. No more endless refinement and self pruning, only remaining in Christ and trusting him.

Pride has traditionally be viewed as the worst of the sins. St. Augustine attributed nearly all other vices to pride. Pride, as he says, is the sin of loving yourself more than God. It manifests as contempt for others, shows itself as competition between others, and poisons everything it touches. People much closer to God than I could ever hope to be, have reserved no insults or denouncements for this sin. They have offered it no disguise. In short, the church has always held that if we could rid the world of pride, we would have no need for a second coming.

There are two things that often go unnoticed about pride. First, it is easily disguised and therefore hard to correct. If someone speaks of how he has sacrificed much for God or his family, is he seeking praise? Or is he simply proclaiming how he is thankful he could be so lucky to give to God? Pride, being closest to our Adversary, mirrors the temptation that Eve fell to. The second thing that is often unnoticed is that the Church and Christianity in general have often been at odds with the World in its view on if pride is even a sin to begin with. It is hard to find a non-Christian who agrees with violence, greed, or adultery (even if they might find excuses for them). But if you find someone who sees pride as an issue, you have found a Christian. In fact, when a non-Christian even addresses it as an issue and says “He is arrogant.” The issue is usually because his own pride, his own ego feels threatened. But he never thinks that should he actually be better than the guy he criticized that bragging or pride would be his reward for his own abilities.

Pride manifests as an arms race. The idea present in the proud person is that he needs to be better than other people. People can usually discern if they are lustful, violent, envious, but rarely will they discover they are proud. Pride is so close to people, so ingrained in people that they cannot see it easily. For this reason hardest all of all sins to correct. A preacher preaching against pride will therefore find himself talking to an empty room. Everyone in the audience finds his neighbor guilty but never themselves.  The only method I have learned to tell how proud I am is ask myself how offended I am when I (or my accomplishments) go unnoticed. You may even ask how mad are you when your status is left unrecognized? The madder you get, chances are the prouder you are.

A few final things I will leave you with. First, I am not at all suggesting that we cannot find enjoyment in life. It is not proud to find a sunset enjoyable, or to take delight in a walk, or even to feel happiness while on a date. We should be like children, who find enjoyment in things meant to be enjoyed, but never enjoy yourself for the sake of yourself. We are not a proper item of worship. Second, being proud of your child, or feeling proud of a job well done is a different use or the word. Here the admiration is felt because you are giving approval to something outside yourself. Nor is it pride to suppose that one cannot feel good about being a servant of Christ (or doing good deeds). The bible says clearly “Well done my good and faithful servant…Come and share your master’s happiness.” But in that moment, we must resist the urge to feel that is was by my own goodness but rather the goodness of Christ. St. Augustine in Confessions ponders the same question, how can you know if it is pride or if it is really given to God?:

“I cannot pretend that I am not pleased by praise…But I have to admit that not only does admiration increase my pleasure, but that adverse criticism diminishes it. When this symptom disturbs me, self- justification worms its way into me, of a kind which you know, my God.”

But his answer is to be pleased, not with yourself- but with the love of others.

“Your will is that we should love not only you but our neighbor. Often when I am pleased to be praised by someone whose understanding is good, my pleasure lies in my neighbor’s progress or promise of it… But once again how can I know whether that is my reaction because I do not want my admirer to hold a view of me different from my own? Truth, in you, I know I see that if I am to be praised be not on my own account but the account of my neighbor.”

Admiration spoils fast, if it is not given to God is becomes poisonous. The final thing I should mention is regarding a bad definition of pride. It is pure fiction to suppose that pride means disagreeing with church authority, or anyone else for that matter. I am unsure how such an unreasonable definition can be held without bursting into laughter. Neither good sense, the bible, church tradition, nor anything else has ever had this definition. Not to say that disobedience is good, I am simply saying that to call it pride is to misdiagnose the patient. When it comes down to it there are really only two types of people, those who are proud and know it- and those who are proud and do not know it.

Cs Lewis starts his address by stating that he will not be talking about what many of them assumed he would talk about: post World War 2 Europe. He says this is because most cannot be expected to marginally contribute to this condition in the next 10 years because “You will be busy finding jobs, getting married, acquiring facts.” This was striking to me because it is totally avoid of the modern mentality of “you can do anything” and the idealism that sweeps across modern campuses. He is being real here. He says instead he will give them advice for their lives. The next part is good enough to quote in its entirety:
“And of course everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist of my type warns his juniors against. He warns them against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. But one of this trio will be enough to deal with today. The Devil, I shall leave strictly alone. The association between him and me in the public mind has already gone quite as deep as I wish: in some quarters it has already reached the level of confusion, if not of identification. I begin to realise the truth of the old proverb that he who sups with that formidable host needs a long spoon. As for the Flesh, you must be very abnormal young people if you do not know quite as much about it as I do. But on the World I think I have something to say.”
He goes on to say that in all groups of people the world over there exists an unwritten social code. Some people are “in” and some are “out”. He says many times there are no formal admissions, no formal expulsions. “People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names.” From the outside, if you despair of getting into it, you call it “That gang” or “they” or “So and so and his inner circle”. If you are up for admission you probably don’t call it anything. To discuss it with the other outsiders would make you feel outside yourself. And to mention talking to the man who is inside, and who may help you if this present conversation goes well, would be madness.
He proceeds though the rest of the essay to show that through all points in all people’s lives there is this intense desire to be “in”. Even those who protest being a part of the “in” crowd form a different group, and view themselves as “in” that group- the group protesting. “People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form.” He continues to say that trying to be a part of the in crowd (what he calls an inner circle) is a permanent main spring of human action. He says if you have never stayed up at night wondering why you did something to be a part of a group, to be included…then are you are more fortunate than most.
He gives two cautions. The first is that there is a difference between wanting to merely be a part of a group to be a part of a group and being a part of a group with a purpose. A person who loves chess and joins a chess club becomes a part of a ring, but he has found an “inside” worth having- whereas the person who joins the chess club because he wants to be in a club doesn’t really have a reward. The second caution is that Inner Rings are a large part of what allows good people to do bad things.
“And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”
And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.
That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”

He concludes that the quest to be a part of the in crowd will break you unless you break it. Friendship is necessarily about something else- it is two hearts loving the same thing. He says that inner rings are avoidable- but we can through friendship and true love form something that looks identical to an inner ring.

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.
We are told in Scripture that those who ask get. That is true, in senses I can’t now explore. But in another sense there is much truth in the schoolboy’s principle “them as asks shan’t have.” To a young person, just entering on adult life, the world seems full of “insides,” full of delightful intimacies and confidentialities, and he desires to enter them. But if he follows that desire he will reach no “inside” that is worth reaching. The true road lies in quite another direction. It is like the house in Alice Through the Looking Glass.

“What did Jesus really mean when He said, ‘Follow Me?’”

This pamphlet has three parts:

Part I. The great invitation (Mt 4:19; Mk 1:17).

Part II. The great cost (Lk 9:23).

Part III. The great change (Mt 28:19).

Repent, deny yourself, make disciples. Without going into detail, Platt explains in Part 1 that every person’s fundamental problem is sin and that we need to repent of our sins (Mk 1:15). In Part 2 he explains our need to realize that the great cost required in following Jesus is to deny ourselves and to give of ourselves entirely to Jesus (Mt 16:24-25; Mk 8:34-35). Finally in Part 3, he states that if one is truly following Jesus he will invest his life for making disciples (Mt 28:19). Platt’s point is to speak against being nominal Christians (which is not following Jesus), and instead be a “radical” Christian who is completely sold out for Christ. This in essence is what Platt says Jesus expects of any Christian who responds to his command, “Follow me.”

Formulaic? I do not disagree with any of Platt’s main points, for I am very much pro-repentance, pro-self-denial, pro-all in for Christ, and pro-making disciples. But I do not like the way he answered this very important and fundamental question of what it means to follow Jesus. (Platt also wrote a 246 page book with the title “Follow Me: A Call to Die, A Call to Live,” which I did not read.) Perhaps, a decade ago I would have fully embraced his answers with a high five. Perhaps it might still be a good primer for new believers and a challenge to “nominal Christians.” But today I find this rather unsatisfying or formulaic, if not a turn off. Let me try to explain why.

(1) The focus and emphasis is on YOUR PROBLEM–SIN–rather than on God’s mercy, love, grace and forgiveness. Basically, “your problem is sin and you must repent…or else…”

(2) Thus, the focus is on what is wrong and bad and sinful and horrible (YOU) rather than what is right and good and holy and wonderful (God).

(3) It primarily addresses and emphasizes what you must do (repent, deny yourself, make disciples) rather than on what Jesus has done for us through his incarnation, condescension, suffering, crucifixion, death, resurrection and ascension.

(4) While there is mention and affirmation of it, yet there does not seem to be any great proclamation or excitement regarding God’s goodness, grace and generosity, nor is there any awe and expression of how truly majestic, magnanimous, marvelous and mysterious our God is.

(5) In my opinion, such a presentation of what it means to follow Jesus makes Christians rather judgmental and critical of others (perhaps without realizing it), rather than on being loving, gracious, generous and ever forgiving and patient Christians like our God.

Judgmental Christians. I think that when following Jesus is articulated, expressed and communicated in such ways, it may be little wonder why Christians often come across as being judgmental, intolerant, angry and impatient toward those who sin (which is basically everybody …. except themselves!). We are judgmental of those who, in our opinion, do not repent, deny themselves, or are not making disciples. Some Christians even come across as being constipated and intolerant of anyone who is not a Christian like themselves; they are rather ungracious and condescending toward “other Christians” who are not living like them, making disciples like them, marrying like them, dressing like them, behaving like them, preaching like them, etc. It is for these reasons (and more) that I dislike the above answers as to what it means to follow Jesus. Perhaps, Platt does a more wholesome and comprehensive job in his book.

David Platt may be a wonderful Christian, pastor and preacher. I heard David Platt preach on missions from Revelation 5 a few years ago at a Gospel Coalition conference. He is gifted and passionate with much heartfelt unction. I loved his sermon and preaching. So this is not a criticism of Platt as a person, preacher or pastor, but simply of his pamphlet.

What does it mean to follow Jesus? I am sorry that I did not answer this question myself, but only critiqued the way Platt answered it.

Do you agree or disagree with my reasons regarding Platt’s answers to what it means to follow Jesus? Do such answers appeal to non-Christians? Christians? Are such answers good, satisfactory and adequate?

When I listened to Grace’s testimony about her struggle with her teacher and friends I realize clearly that for many people they view Christianity as just a system of morals. The position is that the bible is first and foremost about ethics, and there is an idea that Jesus should be transcended in favor of the ethics he gives. At least that is their position. This is why you hear all this rubbish about Jesus being a good moral teacher. This idea was present with my friend Ali I had dinner with last week. He struggles with atheism and feels like the world is meaningless. He wants to kill himself at times and experiments with drugs to try to find anything to help him find meaning. He used to be Muslim but after a year of evangelizing him he gave up Islam. But to my sadness instead of becoming Christian he became atheist. The other night we met for dinner and after an hour of conversation he admitted that it is easier to live with yourself as a Christian, but it is harder to be a Christian. Nevertheless he would not believe. His point was ultimately the same as Kant, religion is about ethics, and while he said he had no ethics, he then said he had ethics. So there was no problem for him. In the past when I read the bible I always thought of morality and ethics when I read “Repent.” I had been taught that it means turning away from a sin. But it means something more than that. Kant was wrong. Jesus says in Mark’s gospel “Repent and believe the good news.” The word ‘repent’ is the same as John the Baptist used. The word literally means “to go beyond the mind that you have”. As you recall from his sermon, the word used is metanoia. When I break a rule or violate my conscience I am called to go beyond the mind I have. But more than that, Jesus urges us to change our way of thinking and see the world that is coming. The priest said that morality is not the central theme of the New Testament. The theme is a coming of a new way of things. A paradigm shift to viewing things unseen that ends in Revelations 21 with the New Jerusalem. That is why St. Paul tells the Corinthians that the time is short. That is why the scriptures say that what matters is a new creation. Why all of Paul’s achievements are nothing, why he tells the Roman’s their deeds are nothing, why circumcision means nothing. The predominate message of the early church was nothing besides the resurrection of Christ. The transformation of this world into some more, something greater. The curse that Adam brought, death is in retreat. That is the message of repentance. To go beyond death, by dying so that Jesus might live inside you.

At the heart of it all is a choice. Repentance requires a decision. We need Christ’s help to make this decision.To repent, to go beyond one’s mind is a choice. It is faith to step out into the unknown and depend on God. The forerunners to my culture believed that a man is his own master. The American dream is at its core the idea that I control my destiny. But as Kierkegaard states, when man is dependent on God, he is independent. When I make a choice I exclude all other choices. And the choice to repent excludes non repentance, and while this seems easy to understand, I constantly feel like I want it both ways. I want to repent but not really change anything. And while John says “The kingdom of heaven is near.” Jesus says “you are not far from the Kingdom”. Jesus helps me, and when I am unwilling he helps me become willing. I think of all that he has done for me and all that I have done by his power and grace and I am confident in his might. I can do all things though Christ who strengthens me. Let me go beyond this mind I have and take up my place with children of God. There is room for another at the foot of the cross.

“Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter I do not regret it.”

2 Corinthians 7:8-10 “Even if i caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it- I see that my letter hurt you but only for a little while. Yet know I am happy not because you were made sorry but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regrets. But worldly sorrow brings death.”

KV “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regrets.” 2 Cor 7:10

When we think about suffering and sorrow many Christians shy away from the topic. Images of starving children and broken hearted widows abound. Today’s message is on the topic of suffering. I picked the topic because a wise man once told me that if a lay person is to give a sermon, it is best if they give the message exactly where they are in their walk with the Lord. So where am I at with the Lord? Yesterday Hope and I went ice skating. Afterwards she asked me how I saw the gospel in our ice skating. I told her “I let you fall because otherwise you would have never learned.” This is the first use of suffering, to allow a person to succeed they must be allowed to fall. We can see that in this way suffering is a prerequisite to the goodness of God. In his love he allows us to fall because otherwise we cannot move forward to Him. We are fallen, and we fell after God in his love gave man free will, a free will that was needed for love to have any meaning. So we find that suffering produces perseverance, so that we might love and be loved.

The second purpose of suffering is one parents are all too familiar with. A parent who has repeatedly warned a child will often say “Fine. Learn the hard way.” Suffering is when our heavenly father says “Fine. Learn the hard way.” God uses suffering to shatter that illusion that we like to create for ourselves. The illusion that says “I am sufficient without you God.” Of course “there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Pro 16:25) and a very wise and common rebuke by church elders is not to love the gifts of God more than God himself. Truly created things have kept me from God, yet if they had not been in Him they would have not been at all. Nevertheless our God hates idols. He destroys idols. Christ zealously destroys our idols, calls, shouts to us in our deafness. He shines with such radiance that even in our blindness we see him. Like the sun at noon all shadows fade. Suffering awakens us to the fact that any creation is inferior to its creator. The most beautiful masterpiece can never be called a child of God. I like to think of a poor man who made a beautiful masterpiece. Years after his death his art was remember and cast high in the opinion of mankind. But the man was a Christian, and so to God he was his child and the masterpiece nothing more than a passing thought. Moreover when we establish an idol over God he breaks that idol with suffering. “He who is exalted will be humbled, he who is humble will be exalted.” So sufferings come to good and bad men in the same way, but even though the suffering is the same the sufferer is different. The Godly are brought closer to God through their suffering. The worldly and wicked become more desperate. As the unholy see all their idols destroyed they become worse and worse. After putting all their stake in becoming educated they feel unfulfilled so they place their worth in finding an attractive spouse. When they find this does not fulfill them, they look for more money and on and forth. They keep trying to fill the spot in their heart that was made for the living God. Every time the idol fails to bring about fulfillment they feel sorrowful. In the end this sorrow leads to death. We find that suffering is like a hammer. It can be used to build up or teardown. Christ builds us up. Unlike idols he never fails. As Christ suffered our sufferings ought to become like His. As we become like him we take our place as sons and daughters of God. Indeed the son of God became the son of man so that the sons of men might become the sons of God. Amen. Admittedly, suffering doesn’t get a lot of praise. People liken suffering to death. Afterall, the wages of sin are death. But the cross turns death into a victory. In a sardonic turn of events we find that death leads to life, and as the passage today assures us that suffering ultimately leads to salvation. Salvation! That’s the gospel right there. How can you expect to be like Christ of you never carry a cross. How can you be like Christ if you never put the will of the Father before yourself? We consider that our present sufferings are not even worth comparing with the future glory of God. This is what was meant by verse “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regrets.”

Now that we have an understanding of what suffering is, why it exists, and how it’s relevant to the gospel; the next question is how any of this relates to us day to day. You may agree with all I have spoken- but might think it to be impractical musing. With the understanding that suffering is for our benefit we might now address how this should look in our lives. I admit that there is a difference between knowing a path and waking it, and that I often fail in what I am about to say. But I am convinced of its truth. The truth is this: Godly suffering is for the sake of others. Christ did not suffer for his own sake, but for the sake of everyone else. Abraham when be left everything behind suffered, but ultimately he blessed all nations. Mary suffered indignation and the possibility of death when she became pregnant as a virgin, but birthed a savior. Stephan was stoned for the truth, but his death led Paul to later become a powerful witness to the gentiles. Godly suffering is for the sake of others. As such sufferings should lead us to continually love our neighbor. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. We should strive to have a spirit of sacrifice even when we feel down and out. When you find yourself suffering under the stress of school or work, when you find yourself being persecuted by those who hate you because you will not conform to the pattern of this world, when you struggle with your spouse or co-worker. Never stop loving others. Never stop sacrificing for others. The Apostle John testifies that your sacrifice will not be in vain. “The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” And what is the will of God? To love one other. Jesus says “A new command I give you: love…” As you love and suffer God will never leave you, he will never forsake you. Job testified admits his suffering “If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me so that his terror would frighten me no more.” Unlike Job we now have Christ the Lamb of God, worthy. Let his light shine on us so that we might shine upon others. Let us suffer so that we might become like Christ. His grace transforms us. Redeems us. His love never leaves us. As the apostle says “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” When you struggle remember that Christ suffered more. He could have came down from cross. But he didn’t. So I am asking you, I am begging you, I commanding you: struggle until end, never giving up because Christ never gave up on us.

The last day of the year

A key verse for a new year. A yearly practice I love from being in UBF for 34 years is to write and/or reflect on what has been called a “new year key verse testimony.” It should be a pleasant poetic poignant time to reflect on the past year with gratitude and a time of prayerful anticipation of what one hopes for in the coming year.

Happiness in 2015. (I am likely obsessed with happiness, having written two such articles in the past two years: A Happy UBF chapter and Happy, Healthy, Humble View of Self.) Two weeks ago, I reflected not just on the past year but on the last six years: West Loop UBF, 2008-2014. On this last day of 2014, my prayer and hope is that 2015 may be for you a year of love, joy, peace, mercy, grace and happiness on the basis of Psalm 1.

Seven practical applications. What is the secret of happiness? Psalm 1 suggests that our happiness is closely related to our life (Ps 1:1), our heart (Ps 1:2), our foundation (Ps 1:3), and observing the lives of others (Ps 1:4-6). But I also felt that one can easily become self-righteous, critical and condescending toward others who we might regard as “not blessed because of their sins.” Thus, to be happy, consider these personal practical applications:

1) Love those who are unhappy. Do not judge, criticize or condemn others for what you regard as their wickedness and sins.

2) Repent of self-righteousness and condescension toward others, just because you think that God has blessed you, your family and your church. Ultimately, it is not because of you.

3) Know the wickedness within yourself when you:

• blame others, including God.
• worry anxiously about your future rather than trusting God.
• are jealous and envious of others, especially those who have what you want.
• gossip and slander others behind their back.
• speak, act and behave in a “holy Christian way,” while your heart may hypocritically not be as holy as what you project to others.
• lie, are dishonest, and do not speak the truth.
• do not love others the way God loves you.
• are ruled by your ego that seeks value, validation and vindication from people and the church rather than from God.

4) Know that if you regard yourself as blessed, it is because of the mercy and grace of God, and not because of any righteousness of your own.

5) Know that to be happy you need to be blessed more than you need anything else in all of life.

6) Jesus is the only truly blessed and righteous person who ever lived out Psalm 1, not you!

Do you have a happy and hopeful new year key verse testimony to share? Do you find such a practice helpful or useful? Overrated? Formulaic? Whatever the case, may you be truly happy and blessed in 2015.

In a nutshell, Enns explains that the OT writing process most likely started around the time of David’s reign, when there was relative peace and tranquility within the kingdom, and ended during the postexilic or second temple period (referred to by some as the “inter-testamental period”). Contrary to what many think about the second temple period, in that it was largely silent especially from a prophetic point of view, this was most likely an extremely active time for Israel’s scholars in terms of recording, editing and compiling the nations long-held oral tradition as well as historical records (e.g. The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel is referenced in the book of Kings as a source). The motive behind this activity was Israel’s desire to make sense of their national failure; they wanted to look back at their history, which was inextricably permeated with broad-sweeping theological ideas, in the hopes that it would provide some clear answers for their present plight as well as a road map for the foreseeable future. Enns quotes Old Testament scholar and theologian, Walter Brueggeman [1] who says,

It is now increasingly agreed that the Old Testament in its final form is a product of and response to the Babylonian Exile. This premise needs to be stated more precisely. The Torah (Pentateuch) was likely completed in response to the exile, and the subsequent formation of the prophetic corpus and the “writings”  [i.e., poetic and wisdom texts] as bodies of religious literature (canon) is to be understood as a product of Second Temple Judaism [=postexilic period]. This suggests that by their intention, these materials are…an intentional and coherent response to a particular circumstance of crisis….Whatever older materials may have been utilized (and the use of old materials can hardly be doubted), the exilic and/or postexilic location of the final form of the text suggests that the Old Testament materials, understood normatively, are to be taken precisely in an acute crisis of displacement, when old certitudes—sociopolitical as well as theological—had failed.

While no interpretive model is free of erroneous thinking, this particular model is one that deeply resonates with me. Even from a casual reading of the OT, it is fairly obvious that an editing process took place and, upon further inspection, that all of the texts put together as a whole present a cohesive theological and historical message. In terms of the editing process, we have the death of Moses recorded at the end of Deuteronomy, which would be implausible had he been the sole author of the book. I’ve seen quite a few strain mightily to reconcile phenomena like this; for instance some would say that Moses’ death was revealed to him beforehand, thus giving him the ability to record it. I am the type of person who likes to look at the evidence, regardless of how unpleasant it is, head on. In light of the scholarship of the past century or so that has informed Enns’ interpretive model, I can no longer embrace interpretations which vociferously attempt to hold on to fantastical and implausible ideas concerning the authorship of the OT. This being the case, I do not subscribe to naturalism or materialism; I believe in the occurrence of the type of miracles which are recorded in the Bible.

An Inspirational Analogy

I am by no means a conspiracy theorist, therefore I do not believe that there existed a nefarious or duplicitous motivating reason as to why the OT was edited the way it was. The way I see it is that God certainly inspired those who were editing and compiling what would eventually be known as the Old Testament; he used a multiplicity of human agency for this creative, thoughtful and expansive (in terms of both time and geography) reflective process. This kind of inspiration comports somewhat analogously with how the Christian community today finds its bearings and maps out a future for itself in human history.

As those indwelt by the Holy Spirit, believers are powerfully moved, with great effect, to contribute their godly gifts to the furtherance of His cause. They pray for guidance, think, write and speak reflectively about their current collective place in history as well as ponder and plan out their future endeavors. Many are convinced that they are being inspired by God both directly as well as indirectly through one another, in various ways. And this proves true when something radically heart-changing and truly impactful in human history takes place through the church, of which there are many examples.

Destructive Dividing Lines

My previous point speaks to another issue I have with a narrow or rigid view of Scriptural inspiration. Often times, the church marks out its intellectual limits by way of its interpretation of particular passages of Scripture. This may be beneficial in some cases, but recently, it has led to the loss of the creativeness, thoughtfulness and fearlessness of the church, thus preventing its message from resonating with those in our present day and age.

The entire evolution vs. creationism/intelligent design debate is a perfect example of this. The creationist (young and older earther alike) hopelessly binds themselves to such a narrow interpretation of what the first several chapters of Genesis “clearly say” as to become a laughing stock and a source of derision to those espouse well-founded, modern scientific findings. This is absolutely tragic and unnecessary because in the first place the OT was never meant to address everything under the sun, so to speak, but rather was meant to inform the theological thought processes of an ancient people group.

Therefore, this particular assertion from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which is to be taken as authoritative by evangelicals, places a burden upon Scripture which it simply cannot bear (and was never intended to, for that matter):

We deny that biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may be properly used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood. (Article XII)

And secondly, if the saying “all truth is God’s truth” is accurate, then certain parts of the body of Christ are needlessly and harmfully demonizing those who embrace certain observational truths discovered by modern science.

Of course, many will argue that Enns introduces a slippery slope, which in some respects may indeed be true. For instance with an interpretive model like his, how much of the OT should we take to be true or historically reliable? What if archaeological evidence eventually reveals that some of the things recorded in the OT are embellishments or outright false? What does this then say about the nature of inspiration and furthermore about the character of God?

These are genuine concerns, but might I submit that there is already present a slippery slope on the other side of the argument which is driving the church further and further back into a brand of fundamentalism which says that it is “the church versus those godless and agenda-driven scientists” or “biblical inerrantists versus those syncretistic, liberal bible scholars” or what have you.

A Weight Lifted

For my part, I desperately wanted to believe that there was a magic bullet that would prove everything in the Bible as factually true; that if given enough time and with enough archaeological investigation, scholars would exactly match every claim stated in our sacred text. To be honest, this type of view ironically led me to be very uneasy because for instance, the veracity of the Bible and thus the trustworthiness of God rested on the claim that, at one point in history, humans lived for several hundreds of years or that there was a literal Noah’s ark, that the entire world was flooded or that Isaiah was the sole author of his eponymous book.

Through modern scholarship, there appears to be very convincing alternative explanations for the things written in Scripture that chafe against our modern sensibilities. Are these findings mere coincidences or could this be evidence of God leading us into necessary, deeper, albeit uncomfortable truth? Some critics would shoot back that in the liberal scholar’s attempt to think outside of the box on theological matters, they run the risk of going so far off the deep end that they will lose God altogether or sully his name. But I echo the Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr’s sentiment in which he says that ideological boxes are good for a time; they provide a necessary foundation for many things, however they are never a good way to continue or to end.

At some point we have to put ourselves in the midst of the uncomfortable and inconvenient facts that reality presents to us for this is ultimately where life-changing, beneficial truth is found. As Christians we should know that, both factually and experientially, standing in the center of various paradoxes is where we begin to discover the nature of God. While views like Enns’ introduce a different kind of uncertainty to my walk with God and the Christian community, I believe that this will ultimately help me to continue in a healthier type of communion with Him and his people.

Some questions for our readers

• What is your view of biblical inspiration and why does it matter to you?
• In what way is the church’s battle against certain ideologies held by secular society helpful or harmful?
• How can an interpretative model like that of Enns serve to either add to or detract from our view of Scripture and/or God?

[1] W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 74-75.

This is the 11th week of Seminary. The academic challenge I am getting here is very restorative to my faith. There are two classes in particular that are changing the way I view life: Introduction to Theological Research and Hermeneutics (interpretation of the Bible). These are the two first classes for any seminary student.

Through these classes I am becoming aware of the pre-understandings and value assumptions present in me. Life is not black and white; it is a million shades of gray. For example, let’s take the issue of Gun Control. There is a conflict between the values of public safety versus freedom of choice. Both these ideas are good. It is good to be safe, but it is also good to be able to exercise your freedom. In the US obviously individual freedom is valued higher and hence its is relatively easy to get a gun. To make any decision you are comparing two or more values. It is important to be aware of those values and make sure that they are based on a trustworthy foundation.

Even in the Apologetics class I am taking I see the difficulty of simply conversing with those who have a different worldview because their idea of truth is different from mine. My professor defined worldview as the thing that affects every decision, thought, action, feeling, etc. all the while being completely undetected by us. Basically it is the lens through which we view the world; without it we simply cannot see. (*Note: one can call himself a Christian but that does not guarantee a correct worldview. Those who call themselves Christian can have a wrong view of God and scripture, i.e. Matthew 7:21)

Those with different worldviews are speaking different languages. For example, when a Christian and Muslim talk in English they can be understanding each other on a surface level but not on a deeper level. In Islam there is no questioning the Quran. Islam is about submission and obedience. Muslims are not allowed to question any grammatical mistakes in the Quran. Christians, however, can question, scrutinize and criticize the Bible and we must. We must question the basis of our faith, the scriptures. If you have the chance to learn Hebrew and Greek then please take it. (If you are only reading one translation of the Bible right now you really must invest into another translation. At least, have one formal and on functional translation of the Bible. The NIV is a functional translation.) Even the definite or indefinite article in “an angel” or “the angel” can have huge theological implications.

As Christians we understand that the motive of our faith is God. Our motive of faith is: 1) What God affirms is true. 2) God affirms the teachings of Scripture. 3) Therefore, the teachings of Scripture are true. The motives of credibility, however, are all the items of evidence that lead someone to believe that Scripture is God’s word, i.e., archaeological evidence, testimony of historians, instances of fulfilled prophecy, a sense of Scripture’s majesty and an acquaintance with Scripture’s power to transform lives (House 2011, 83). The motives of credibility change with time and more research. “They [motives of credibility] give rise to only to a human and fallible faith. One needs this human and fallible faith nevertheless to obtain the motive of faith, from which divine and infallible faith springs (House, 83).” We must go upstream and check our sources and question our Pastors. St. Paul praised the noble Bereans in Acts 17:11 because they examined scripture to make sure what Paul was saying was true. We also need to practice examining the scripture.

Ravi Zacharias has written about the Quran. He wrote, “Let us consider just one troublesome aspect, the grammatical flaws that have been demonstrated [in the Quran]. Ali Dashti, an Iranian author and a committed Muslim, commented that the errors in the Quran were so many that the grammatical rules had to be altered in order to fit the claim that the Quran was flawless. He gives numerous examples of these in his book, Twenty-three Years: The Life of the Prophet Mohammed. (The only precaution he took before publishing this book was to direct that it be published posthumously) (Rhodes 1995, 83).”

Ali Dashti wrote, “The Quran contains sentences which are incomplete and not fully intelligible without the aid of commentaries; foreign words, unfamiliar Arabic words, and words used with other than the normal meaning; adjectives and verbs inflected without observance of the concord of gender and number; illogical and ungrammatically applied pronouns which sometimes have no referant; and predicates which in rhymed passages are often remote from the subjects. These and other such aberrations in the language have given scope to critics who deny the Quran’s eloquence. . . To sum up, more than 100 Quranic aberrations from the normal rules and structure of Arabic have been noted (Rhodes, 83).

I am not saying don’t read the Quran. By all means read it (Christians should be educated about all religions.) I am saying don’t read it without questioning it. Don’t read the Bible without questioning it either.

The Bible has many different translations. Some gospels have different accounts and leave certain details out or add details. Sometimes the number of characters in the story is different. (These are all normal things. When there are eye witnesses questioned about an event; they remember different things.) But the authors left clues and places to go to to get more information. In Christianity, one can voice their doubts without the fear of being persecuted, hopefully.

While studying I have realized how little I know and how little anybody really knows. Even Biblical scholars are not completely sure of everything they write. But we always function on partial information. It is how we survive. The important thing is to keep asking questions, keep searching and examining. 1 Corinthians 13:12. “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

Do you question everything? Are there any questions that have been on your mind lately?

House, H. Wayne, and Dennis W. Jowers.Reasons for Our Hope. Nashville: B & H Pub. Group, 2011.

Rhodes, Ron. Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Muslims. Eugene, Or.: Harvest House, 2002.

I recall a childhood story about a girl from India. She was arranged to marry someone from birth. The girl grew up and fell in love with another man and when the time came for her to marry she told her family no. “But this is how it has always been. You marry the man that has been decided.” But the girl, now woman said “But why does it have to be how it has always been? I will still marry.” This is very much the story of a person trying to change the methods while preserving the ideal. In one sense our task as Christians in judging the aims and means is very easy. For most of us the aim is quite easy to judge. A confusion of methodologies and ideologies is a constant source of problem across many different disciplines and institutions. It is very much the story of a person attempting to break tradition.

To start there is wisdom in tradition. Tradition has been tried, and it has worked for a long time. I have heard it described that tradition is giving votes to our ancestors. When going against tradition one must be very careful. There are often times unknown dangers that come with the territory. I like to think of the practice of cohabitation that developed in the midcentury. Prior to this the method of courtship never contained living together prior to marriage. Then my parent’s generation questioned this norm and now most contemporary courtship contains cohabitation. Sadly this method has been tried and found wanting. Couples who live together prior to marriage tend to have less successful marriages.

Sometimes though the methodology is tried and is found to be better. The norm used to be that women could not hold jobs outside of strictly “matronly” activities like being a man’s assistant or housing a large number of kids for 8 hours a day. With women entering the work force the size and scope of the American economy has grown. This was greatly resisted. Gk Chesterton, the man I quoted up above, went so far as to say that women were selling themselves into the slavery of their employers.

The problem with evaluating Christian tradition is that is quickly becomes bogged down in ideology. They are often times confused. This happens outside of Christianity when people equate science, a methodology, to atheism, an ideology. Historically they have been viewed as the same, because the methodology comes by authority, which is given by scripture which is the basis of the ideology. I am a firm believer in being orthodox in our beliefs. To be relativistic is to be intellectually weak. On the other hand our methodology has to be relativistic. There is scriptural basis for this. “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” (1 Cor 12:4-6) “But test them all; hold on to what is good” A methodology is pretty easy to test. If the methodology goes against natural law then it has no basis in scripture. By natural law I mean anything that contributes to the family life. If a Christian methodology overwhelmingly leads to anything that abuses or harms a family or person, this methodology should be discarded. There is nothing else to say. The methodology should also make the person into the ideal. Does your Christian methodology produce people like Christ? If the answer is no then it should be discarded. These are the criterion for our methods. Note that this criterion is a product of the ideal, Christ and his love for us as creations of God the Father. If you have a verse that disagrees with the criterion then criterion is not wrong your interpretation is, because Christ and his love are beyond question for the Christian.

One common response is not that the method does not work, just that the person is not taking to the method perfectly. Indeed nobody can follow Christ perfectly but we are to try anyways. I have heard it said “He is rejecting the call of discipleship.” The tacit implication is that the person is wrong and the method is not. This argument seems to carry weight, but we can easily compare the magnitude of the result of the methodology when it is hypothetically being rejected to the norm. When we find terrible, terrible stories of suicide, divorces, and the like- all in the name of becoming like Jesus the evidence seems to indicate that the method is in the wrong. Not the person.

In summary, we cannot escape methodology as teachers and leaders of the church. But we ought to test everything. We should be orthodox in our aims, but relative in our methods.

Sense of Smell

Because of the “aroma of Christ” comment in this section, N.T. begins with describing the importance of smell to the ancient faith systems. Imagine the smell of the sacrifices, the incense, and the temple. All those smells conjured up divine thoughts to the ancients. To them, knowledge had a smell. Today we might call this the “smell test”.

The opening question, then, is this: What smell brings back the most vibrant and clear memories for you?

I find that considering the sense of smell enriches my study of the Holy Scriptures. As I sift through my memories, looking through the smell of kimchee, I recall the smell of the Catholic church on Sunday. Every Sunday as a child I remember the smell of the cool entrance, almost a holy water smell. The smell of lingering candles and incense all remind me of God.

Study notes

The study again has 12 questions. This time the questions are more like paragraphs, which contain notes about the text. Although I would rather just think about questions, I see that Wright’s comments are not distracting. Instead, he gives comments that are contextual in nature. I don’t see any particular theology or loaded questions, so I am able to continue to trust the study.

Punishment and Forgiveness

In 2 Corinthians 2:1-11, Paul expresses what he calls great distress and anguish of heart. He had previously instructed the church there to discipline one member who had taken his father’s wife. Perhaps Paul is expressing anguish over that event, or perhaps other events as well. In any case, he teaches something of great importance and relevance: the path to forgiveness includes church discipline.

“If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you to some extent—not to put it too severely. The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.” 2 Corinthians 2:5-8

The life of a faith community is closely bound up together. A healthy faith community not only has the courage to deal with sin, but also has a willingness to forgive in both the right sequence and the right balance. Punishment and forgiveness are important dynamics to ponder. Does your faith community take church discipline seriously? If so, do they also take forgiveness and restoration seriously? How can Christ-followers talk about forgiveness but skip the discipline part?

Captives in Christ’s Triumphal Procession

Wright reminds us that the ancient world was familiar with the image of a king’s victory procession. During such a procession, a king who had won a notable military victory would parade the prisoners they had captured and display their plunder in a glorious celebration. The prisoners would later be executed. So then what was Paul communicating in 2 Corinthians 2:12-17? Why are Christians presented as the prisoners in the imagery?

This line of thought opened my eyes to see this section of the text in a whole new light. I’ve heard these verses quoted a lot. But it never occurred to me that we are the captives! I only thought about the aroma of Christ and the great victory. But perhaps Paul was communicating a sober reminder to all Christ-followers: You are the prisoners who will be executed. But as captives of Christ, we have much hope and even our execution can be an aroma that brings life. Perhaps a faith community should remember this vivid image of Christ as the king as we live out the discipline and forgiveness paradigm.

Letters of recommendation?

In chapter 3, Paul’s thoughts again turn toward the legitimacy of his ministry.

“Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Here is a sobering thought: the only letter of recommendation that counts for your faith community is the human hearts you have impacted. The result of your ministry is shown by what kind of people are raised up among you. Does your faith community seek out letters of recommendation? What kind of people are being developed among you? When the world reads the human hearts of your faith community, what do they read? Is your faith community focused on the letter of the law or the spirit of the law?

Surpassing Glory

In the last part of chapter 3, Paul draws on text from the Old Testament, such as Jeremiah 31:33 and Exodus 34:29-35. I can sense Paul’s earnest longing for the Corinthians to get out of their rut and move beyond their problems. His longing is so strong that he makes some extremely bold statements about the Old Testament way of life.

“Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!” 2 Corinthians 3:7-11

The glory of the obedience/curse way of life presented in the Old Testament has no glory now, according to this text. There is simply no comparison with the surpassing glory of following Jesus, even if following Jesus brings shame, misunderstanding or death. Paul’s anguish is clear. He loves the OT Law. He was a Pharisee. But now he looks to the lasting hope and glory of Jesus the Messiah.

Unveiled Faces

Paul’s thoughts on his vision for the Corinthian faith community continue with amazing imagery.

“Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.” 2 Corinthians 3:12-13

Do people in your faith community wear masks or seem to have a veil over their faces? Do people reveal their authentic self to each other? How can you lift your veil, become transparent, and help build a faith community with unveiled faces reflecting Christ to each other?

Prayer

Wright encourages us to pray by reflecting on the amazing way the Spirit has made a new covenant in the hearts of Christians around us. Pray with thanksgiving for the transformation of your faith community so that they reflect God’s glory. Remember that human hearts are the only letter of recommendation that matter.

I’ve come to the realization the past several years that following Christ and His teachings is far more about learning how to love than learning how to obey the commands found in the Old Testament. At first I felt guilty. Shouldn’t Christians be striving to obey the 10 Commandments? My answer now is an emphatic, guilt-free “no!”.  My “yes” is the gospel and my “no” is the Law. Here is why.

Seven teachings of Paul the Apostle

In the past four years or so I’ve done more actual study of the bible than I did for the prior 20+ years. I actually love the Holy Scriptures now. And I respect them deeply, striving to discern what the Scriptures are saying. I cannot say my current theology resembles what Spurgeon or Wright would approve. However, both Charles H. Spurgeon and N.T. Wright have deeply influenced what I’ve learned and how I approach Scripture.

Teaching #1 – Striving to obey the OT Law is a cursed way of life.

A full Galatians, Romans and Ephesians study is warranted here, which I did in my personal bible study a couple years ago. Galatians 3:10 expresses this teaching most clearly: “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.'”

Teaching #2 – The OT Law is no longer our supervisor for right and wrong

How do we know what is right and wrong without the Law? I’m not an anarchist, so I believe in laws in society. And I’m in favor of documented laws in churches. But in practice, as we live and how we determine those laws, those laws really should no longer be checked against the OT Law. They should be checked against love. Again, we must read and study all of Galatians and many more texts. But Galatians 3:25 and Galatians 4:21 express this clearly: “Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.” and “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?”

Teaching #3 – The OT Law been nailed to the cross

A full study of Colossians is warranted here. This teaching is a point of contention, even among the greats, as to what “nailing to the cross” means. Still, Colossians 2:13-15 expresses this clearly: When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Teaching #4 -The OT Law has been fulfilled

I found that I didn’t really understand the word “fulfillment”. And thus I was confused by Jesus’ words. The OT Law was not abolished, so it does exist today. And the Law was not nullified, so it has a purpose (Romans). My contention is that the resolution to the Law not being abolished and not nullified is the teaching from Jesus that He fulfilled the Law. I find that Matthew 5:17-20 has been greatly misunderstood and misapplied. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Teaching #5 – The OT Law has a purpose to teach us about Jesus

In Acts we read the story of Philip being led by the Spirit to Gaza where he meets an Ethiopian eunuch, who was reading Isaiah. Did Philip or the Holy Spirit want this Ethiopian to learn about obeying the OT Law? No. He was taught the good news about Jesus. Acts 8:34-35 “The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.”

Teaching #6 – The OT Law is not for Gentiles to strive to obey

When the early church was confronted with what to teach to the Gentiles, what did they teach them? They shared only three (four) things. This was their letter:

Acts 15: 23-29  With them they sent the following letter:

The apostles and elders, your brothers,

To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:

Greetings.

We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.

Farewell.

Teaching #7 – The OT Law is an all or nothing proposition

So suppose I decide to obey the OT Law. Which part of it? Many have tried to dissect the Law, breaking it up into manageable chunks. But always it is discovered that these chunks are not manageable at all. We cannot ignore any part of the OT Law. We must either obey all of it, or admit failure even for breaking the least of the commands. Again, Galatians says this best. Galatians 5:2-4 “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.”

There are many other passages that teach the same thing: God’s Law is not binding nor unifying on Christians, but the Spirit of God is binding and unifying.

Two teachings of Jesus

Teaching #1 – Jesus’ standard is infinitely higher than the OT Law

Jesus turned the OT Law upside down in the Sermon on the Mount.  And after expounding brilliantly, what did He conclude with? Did he say “Now go and obey the OT Law?” For the Jewish leper he healed right after the Sermon, yes he did say that. But in the Sermon, the sermon He knew would be heard by millions of Gentiles, Jesus concludes with this “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Matthew 7:24-29

Teaching #2 – Jesus’ standard is love for others

Who will be in Heaven? Jesus simply asks a question: Did you visit Me? “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”  Matthew 25:31-46

Love is a full-time job

I am compelled to stop worrying about whether getting a tattoo is right or wrong. Loving your self, your neighbors, your friends, your family, your strangers and your enemies is a full-time job. There is so much to learn about how to love our fellow human beings, especially those closest to us.

What kind of world would this be if we all stopped worrying about what is right or wrong about other people and started to learn how to love?

I hear Jesus saying “Go and learn how to love. I’ve got your sins covered.” I’ve decided to do just that.

Reading the text

2 Corinthians 1:1-2:4

“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.” –2 Corinthians 1:3-7 ESV

Apart from “God” and “Christ”, the word “comfort” is most repeated in this passage.

A reminder of the Gospel

The study guide begins with a reminder of the gospel. We are pointed to 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. The gospel is presented as being about Jesus the Messiah, his death for our sins according to the Scriptures, his burial and his resurrection three days later. These were real events to Paul, and the lens through which he saw the world. The gospel, to Paul, was a collection of events that were real, and rather then dive into some intricate meaning of those events, we find Paul often merely announcing those events.

Opening question

Before going further, the study guide opens with a question: Describe a time when you needed comfort. When did you need comfort?

This question seemed to be an eisegesisical opening. Isn’t N.T. Wright just planting his own ideology before addressing the text? So this made me re-read the Scripture. I could only conclude that indeed, this passage has something to say about comfort. Then I realized some important values being taught by this format.

Asking an opening question like this does at least two good things. First, the question keeps the study focused an obvious theme of the passage. How could we delve into what this passage says about other topics if we ignore the most repeated word in the passage? Second, this question opens the possibility of never getting to the study questions, keeping the focus on people. What if someone in your study group answers with a recent time, saying they need comfort now? Ramming through the study guide would be pointless if there were some immediate need among the people studying. This opening question gives everyone, including the study facilitator, the chance to share something about themselves.

So then, I can see three points of emphasis from Wright in his approach to Scripture:

• Remember the Gospel
• Pay attention to the repeated words of the passage
• Keep the focus on people around you

This approach is entirely refreshing and new to me. Shouldn’t we be learning about God? Shouldn’t we be dissecting the bible verses by now? I suspect Wright would say something like “Of course we will be learning about God. But we cannot learn about God at the expense of learning about the people around us. Unless you are in seminary of some kind, you have no business dissecting the word of God in such a disrespectful manner. Learn what the passage says. Learn about the people around you and their perspective on this passage!” Well ok, that is what I would say, after this first study. But that is what I hear Wright saying by his approach, which, as you can tell, is deeply important to me right now.

Study 

The study guide for this section has twelve questions. I would encourage you to get this study guide and work through your answers in a group setting. I’m using this group study guide as a personal study, so I’ll just share my answers to one question that stood out to me.

Question 2 asks us to describe the “pattern of interchange” between the Messiah and his followers and between the apostle and the church, as displayed in verses 1 to 7. Wright wants us to notice the back and forth nature of the relationship Paul presents. This is a new concept for me, to observe patterns about relationships between the people in the Scriptures.

In verses 1 to 7, I see respect for the lordship of Jesus over both Paul and the church. He is an apostle, yes, but only by the will of God. Paul does not own the people in Corinth, nor do the people own Paul.

What is exchanged between the Messiah and his followers? I see “mercies and comfort” being given by the Messiah to his followers. I see a sharing in sufferings.

What is exchanged between the apostle and the church? I see “concern and awareness” being given by the apostle to the church. I also see hope being exchanged. The apostle does not hide the fact that he is afflicted.

Prayer

After the 12 questions, the study guide urges us to pray for the “places in life where there is suffering and sadness” and to use the words of Paul in this chapter in our prayers.

A concluding note says that we cannot know for sure what was behind Paul’s change of plans in this passage. We do know his visit and trip did not go well. He was in distress. And  he was open and transparent about it. Often, in times of affliction, that is what we need– someone who doesn’t pretend to be “superman” but who is real and honest. Someone who shows compassion, concern and hope.

I have found that my own, no-pressure bible reading and the group topical bible studies are very enjoyable, challenging and helpful. Those approaches to bible study gave me time to process my own belief system, rather than dictate a belief system to me. But now I want more; I want to get closer to the bible text and enrich my personal faith fabric. So I’ve decided to learn from and trust N.T. Wright and his study guide on 2 Corinthians. So far this has been a good decision.

We Don’t Know

My fears about being indoctrinated with some odd ideology were put to rest right away. The man who some have called the greatest Christian theologian of our time says this in his introduction.

“The historian, particularly the ancient historian, is often in the position of the puzzled spectator. The historian may have evidence about an early phase of someone’s career, and then again a later phase; but what happened in between is often hidden. So it is with Paul. He has gone into the house, striding cheerfully along; we have watched him do so in his first letter to the Corinthians. Now in 2 Corinthians we see him emerge again, battered and bruised. Even his style of writing seems to have changed. But we don’t know what happened [in between the two letters].”

We know Paul suffered something apparently rather horrific. But we don’t really know what his struggles were specifically. Like many writers in the ancient world, Paul is far more concerned with the meaning behind the suffering and struggles, rather than detailing out all the symptoms. Suffering in the ancient world meant divine anger or displeasure. And Paul contradicts this thinking to give us a far deeper meaning of human struggles.

Suffering is Not Divine Punishment

N.T. Wright makes a broad-stroke observation about Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. This observation is highly cathartic for me.

“Whatever Paul had gone through, it would have been easy for his enemies, or those who were jealous of him, to think to themselves that it probably served him right, that God was most likely punishing him for something or other. Not so, says Paul. These things come not because God is angry but because he wants us to trust him more fully. Paul was breaking new ground.”

The Earth-shattering Gospel

I really appreciate the gospel emphasis I continue to find in N.T. Wright’s writings. He observses that 2 Corinthians is a letter of “deep sorrow and raw wounds”. Yet he also sees what he calls “earth-shattering implications of the gospel”.

After reading this introduction my mind and heart are at ease. N.T. Wright shows me not even a single “red flag” that would tell me he is being manipulative or deceptive. What is more, he also displays all the “green flags” that tell me I can trust him. This does not mean I will agree with everything he teaches; I surely won’t! But I can trust that he knows the gospel messages and has an approach to bible study that will allow me the freedom of mind to build my own faith. His study guide appears to be structured so that I have the freedom to learn not only from N.T., but from the Holy Spirit.

Questions

What is your approach to bible study? What methods have encouraged you the most? What qualities do you look for in a bible study guide? How do you listen to the Spirit’s voice?

Approach

I have come to appreciate a multi-faceted approach to the bible text. What I mean is to learn from a high level overview of the whole book, topical summaries from various viewpoints and verse-by-verse exposition. So I begin this study with some observations others have made about the book (more rightly called a letter) of 2 Corinthians. Two main sources are bible.org study on 2 Corinthians and executable outlines from Mark Copeland.

Nature

This section of Scripture has always been attributed to the Apostle Paul. It reads more like correspondence than most of Paul’s writings, because in it he reacts to specific needs and issues rather than making theological dissertations. It is claimed that there are fewer commentaries on 2 Corinthians than any other book in the bible.

Problems

In this 13 chapter letter, Paul the Apostle addresses a community fractured by at least four groups of people. One group of believers supported traditional Roman culture and customs. Another a group of believers supported traditional Greek rhetorical training. A third group of believers supported traditional Jewish culture and customs. And yet another group of believers from the powerless and the disenfranchised people of society supported social reforms.

Paul had been criticized with regard to his person, motives, authority, delivery style and gospel message.

Outline

So many problems had arisen that we find it difficult to outline or summarize 2 Corinthians. Paul displays his human side, sharing his mood swings, writing on a variety of subjects, using broad stroke thinking and leaving out many details about the local situation that make it difficult for us to know what or who Paul was reacting to.

Still, three big messages can be seen at a high-level:

1. Reactions and reflections on his ministry (ch. 1 to 7)

2. Encouragement to complete the Jerusalem offering (ch. 8 to 9)

3. Defense of his leadership (ch. 10 to 13)

Purpose

This letter has been called the most biographical of Paul’s writings. Instead of learning theological constructs and doctrine, we get to see more of the person named Paul the Apostle. Paul seems to be writing in order to address the questions raised about his authority and ministry. In light of heavy criticism, Paul did not remain silent. He responded with one of the most insightful and Spirit-led writings of the bible texts.

Questions

What resources do you have about 2 Corinthians? What have you learned from this letter? What are your initial thoughts on how someone should respond to challenges and criticism? What reactions does this introduction prompt in your mind and heart?

Is ordination is a waste of time?

Many questions arose in my mind after resigning from being a ubf director. Are Christian pastors neglecting God’s world mission command? Is doctrinal study useless? For may years while at ubf, my opinion of ordained Christian pastors was poor, to say the least. All of us ubf shepherds I knew shared a similar attitude: Ordination is not necessary and even a waste of time. We also shared the opinion that most, if not all, Christian pastors outside of ubf were selfish sinners who were neglecting God’s world mission command to feed Jesus’ sheep. We viewed ourselves as the “true Shepherds”. We held onto our Shepherd X identity so strongly that we could not conceive the idea that ordained pastors had anything of real value to offer the world. I remember being so proud of that idea that we had almost all college students in our ministry, while those ordained pastors focused on old people and neglected the youth of our generation. I recall vividly the idea that we ubf Shepherds (always spelled with a capital S) had the pure, untainted bible messages because we didn’t waste time with commentaries, books or foolish ordination doctrines. Christian doctrine, we thought, just got in the way and caused divisions. Besides, the teachings of Jesus are so obvious and simple to understand. What really matters is what we do… or so I thought.

Are Psychology and Philosophy distractions from God’s mission?

The first thing that struck me from interacting with Christian pastors is their respect and knowledge of psychology and philosophy. They really knew how to interact and communicate with other human beings. These pastors respected me and my perspective. They listened to my opinions. They shared frankly with me. They spoke God’s word to me. They befriended me. One of them ate with me in a bar. Not one of them violated my conscience. Not one of them intruded into my emotions. Not one of them disrespected my autonomy. And every one of them respected my claim to be a Christian. In short, these Christian pastors entered my life the proper way, through Jesus the door for the sheep.

The pastors I met are all deeply committed to knowing the bible and their knowledge of psychology and philosophy greatly enhanced their understanding of the bible, contrary to what I had always thought, namely that such things were distractions from bible study. Realizing this made me see myself in a new light. I was not some superior Shepherd Brian who knew more about obeying Jesus than Christian pastors. I was just some guy who read the bible text a lot. I discovered that my disdain for psychology and philosophy and doctrinal study and ordination was what kept me as an amateur leader and immature Christian. This helped me see that the ubf heritage is not some world-class training system, but an ideological system that is vastly inferior to the systems the Christian church has employed over the years. I found also that I had become disconnected from the rich, diverse, and magnificent historical fabric of Christianity.

Jesus is the Shepherd

The other big thing I noticed from my interactions with Christian pastors is their kingdom attitude. They all surrendered to our Lord Jesus Christ. None of them demanded my obedience or asked for my submission to their authority. It was clear from my interactions that Jesus is both Lord and Savior.

And thus my grand experiment was over. Sometime in 2010, I had decided to find out if my shepherds in ubf were Christian pastors. I asked questions. I spoke frankly. I attempted to interact just the way I did later on with the Christian pastors. What I found at ubf was a lot of hired hands. Almost everyone abandoned me when I expressed my honest thoughts and feelings too much. Of course, then things got ugly as the “Karcher” in me kicked in. But after interacting with Christian pastors outside of ubf, I  am fully convinced that such a thing would never have escalated to the bitter heights that my interactions with ubf shepherds escalated to. Christian pastors would have reacted very very differently from the ubf leaders.

So today I ask anyone in ubf to do the same experiment. At your next testimony sharing, share your honest thoughts, feelings and perspectives. Say what you want to say. Declare Jesus as Lord and Savior, and that Jesus alone has all authority and power and glory. Begin respecting the door to the sheep, Jesus. Start connecting with Christian pastors on the campus, in the city you live in.

Oh and one more bit of advice. If any ubfer wants to learn about how to become a Christian pastor, please visit pastor Ben Toh at Westloop Church. Then take a trip to Penn State :)

John 10:1-21 ESV

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

19 There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. 20 Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” 21 Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

First, notice that sections of the italicized definition are pasted below and numbered, followed by questions/comments that can help expose the underlined errors therein and (perhaps incompletely) point to some more biblical perspectives.

Second, a much better definition of the church (by no means the only one), is provided. I adapted this definition from a class on Ecclesiology at Reformed Baptist Seminary with Greg Nichols. I loved his class because he drew on no other sources than the scriptures (as will be evident).

Third, I will suggest positive steps for UBF’s future, pointing out that UBF shouldn’t identify itself as a local church (in form) while it almost exclusively operates as a para-church (in function). Based on concepts from 9Marks, I suggest UBF either fully commit to para-church life, or reform into an association of local churches.

UBF is close to my heart, and I love many who still serve therein. So I write this to promote what scripture says about church life. Also, I write this not only to be polemical, but to promote a careful readership that refuses to take simplistic statements at face value, but rather puts everything under scripture’s scrutiny. My purpose is to stir the waters, so that what seemed clear becomes muddy, so that thinking Christians would once again “go back to the Bible.” I hope to encourage even more elaboration.

1. A Bad Definition of Church on UBF’s new Heritage Website

1) UBF definition: “Church is a group of believers.”

This definition seems true on the surface, but hidden beneath is an over-simplification. Believers all throughout church history have wrestled with whether a true local church only needs a group of believers, or whether there needs to be an ordained elder present who can perform Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. So this statement is overly simplistic, overlooking the sincere struggles of those in the historical church who grappled with this question. When I invite Christian friends over for tea and Twinkies, does that form a church? At the simplest level, a church is not only a gathering, but an assembly that performs the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper (John 4:24; 1 Cor. 14:23-25; Heb. 13:15, Acts 2:41, 10:47, 48; 1 Cor. 10:16, 17, 11:25).

2) UBF definition continued: “So it is diverse in that every believer is unique, yet is one in that every believer has many things in common, notably faith (Eph. 4:4,5). The church was formed when Jesus ascended into heaven. About one hundred and twenty people gathered in Jerusalem, stayed in one place, and prayed together waiting for the Holy Spirit Jesus had promised (Acts 1:14). After the Holy Spirit came upon them Peter spoke boldly about Jesus in front of the public. On that day about three thousand were added to the church (Acts 1:41). The church bounded in number (Acts 2:47). As the church expanded, she faced many problems as well. For example, she had to care for widows that had not been the plan of the church. To handle many practical problems in the early church the Apostles appointed seven stewards (Acts 6:5). No Apostles had any blue print on running the church as an organization.”

This statement does not do justice to scripture or to church history. If there was no blueprint on running churches, why do the Pastoral Epistles exist (1-2 Timothy, Titus)? Why does Paul tell Timothy to “Guard what has been entrusted to him” (1 Tim 6:20) and proceed to give him and Titus instructions on church structure, elders and deacons, and procedures to guide church life? What was Timothy to guard? What else did Paul mean by “the tradition they received from us” (2 Thess. 3:6)? The apostles DID HAVE A BLUEPRINT, and they got it from the Lord Jesus Christ, the master architect of his church. From whom do you think Paul learned these traditions pertaining to the church? As professing Christians, we must seek to structure our local churches after that design, found not in our tastes, preferences, or imaginations, but in scripture.

Also, there is a scriptural contradiction by using Acts 6 in the above paragraph. If the apostles had no blueprint, then why were deacons chosen in order for the apostles to better devote their time to prayer and the word? Obviously there were some priorities and pre-defined roles for leadership already at this early stage in church history.

3) UBF definition continued: “The church was the outcome of their devotion to world mission.”

Again, an aspect of truth is here, but it is imbalanced and potentially misleading. Largely, this is a theological and biblical error, for the church was not the outcome of human devotion, but of Christ’s personal building project (Matt 16:18). God chose and gave to Christ the elect, the group believers of all time who would belong to him and believe in him (John 17:6, 24; Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet 1:1-2). Christ himself planned and ordained and built his church, and had in mind certain aspects and features for its well-being, and he still governs and shepherds it today, in particular, tangible ways. So, the church and world mission was the outcome of God keeping his promise to Abraham, that his seed (Israel>David>Christ: the True Israel and True David) would bless the nations—NOT because of the devotion of the apostles to world mission.

4) UBF definition continued: “So the infrastructure of the church was flexible and adaptable as needed.“

Again, see #3 above. What scriptural support is cited for this statement? The church has been very INFLEXIBLE throughout the ages, again, because Christ has been guarding it. Hasn’t the church’s history been replete with heretics being thrown out, of reformations, of wrestling with and clarifying true biblical doctrines? If anything, one of evangelicalism’s biggest scandals is that it HAS BEEN TOO FLEXIBLE AND ADAPTABLE, often not in line with scripture by the leading of the Sovereign Church Director Jesus Christ. Rather, it has been FLEXED by the cultural prejudices, whims, trends, and tastes of the society around it. The apostles and church members are not those who “adapt the church as needed.” The Lord Jesus Christ actively administers and governs all true local churches today, and at any time He sovereignly chooses, He can remove a church’s lampstand (Rev 2-3).

5) UBF definition continued: “As time passed, the church took its own course and made its own shape. For example, it became the imperial state church by AD 400. At her climax around AD 1200 every person born in Europe was born into one church – the Catholic. Then the religious reformation came and the church was diversified into many independent organizations. The UBF has become one of them.”

See #4 above. Also, the church never “takes its own course.” This is a sad characterization of the church that is instituted, built, nurtured, and led by the Lord Jesus (c.f., Matt 16:18).

Furthermore, this statement jumps from the Protestant Reformation (the one that gave us Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Whitefield, Packer, Stott, Edwards, Owens—the rest of the puritans—Keller, Piper, Carson, etc.) to UBF! Shouldn’t we want to listen to how the Holy Spirit throughout the centuries taught and led these reformers to come to fuller, more biblical, and more Christ-centered understandings of the gospel? Wouldn’t it be arrogant to assume that we have the biblically true church design, while never having learned from these Bible teachers?

I think it’s a great disservice to the casual reader (who will not study church history beyond this paragraph) to say the reformation’s only effect on the world was to make “many independent organizations” (!). Calvin would cry at this. Luther would shout! The reformation GAVE US BACK THE GOSPEL that had been lost (sorry for the oversimplification).

One last thing: this bad definition of church neglects a discussion of CHURCH MEMBERSHIP, which, at the time of writing this article, UBF currently does not have. The word “member” is on the page 3 times, but UBF provides no guidelines/requirements for membership. This is very dangerous, since lack of membership creates difficulty for loving church discipline to be intentionally and consistently carried out, and it creates opportunities for those who hold heretical viewpoints to rise in popularity and influence within UBF chapters. Also, because

1. Scripture explicitly affirms church membership (Eph 4:25, 5:29-30)

2. Pastoral care mandates church membership (Acts 20:28-32)

3. Church discipline mandates church membership (Matt 18:15-18)

4. Joining the church mandates church membership (Acts 9:25-30)

Look up the references and study for yourself.

2. A Better Definition of “Church”—in one very long sentence (with scripture references)

What follows is a better definition of the church, adapted from an excellent class I took on Ecclesiology with Greg Nichols. It’s one LONG sentence. Be sure to study the scripture references.

The Church is Christ’s saved society…

… PURPOSED in God’s eternal plan and solemn pledge of salvation (Eph. 3:10; 2 Thess. 1:1, 4-5; Gen. 3:15);

which was PORTRAYED in supernatural creation; in covenant promises of salvation, and in John’s gospel commencement (Rom. 5:14, Isa. 54:9-10; Heb. 12:22, John 4:1-2);

which was FORMED through salvation accomplished and applied by Christ (Matt. 16:18, Acts 20:28),

in its Identity: God’s new creation (Christ’s body, bride, and posterity), the covenant community (his children, people, kingdom, temple, and priesthood), and Christ’s gospel assembly of glorified spirits in heaven and of his disciples on earth (Rom. 5:14-19, Isa. 54:9, Isa. 53:9; Heb. 2:13-14, Rom. 9:6, 24-26; Matt. 21:43; Col. 1:13; Eph. 5:24-33 Acts 11:26, 19:32-41);

in its Extraordinary form: structured collectively as one universal assembly consisting of many local assemblies and disciples (Gal. 1:13, 22)

and distinguished by seven prominent features;

instituted personally by Christ (Matt. 16:18);

composed evangelically of believers in Christ (Acts 2:47, 5:14, 14:21-23);

administered universally by Christ, his Spirit, and apostles, locally by elders and deacons (Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18, Acts 13:2, Acts 16:4; 1 Cor. 7:17, Acts 14:23, 20:17, 28; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:8-13);

constituted solemnly by divine covenant with Christ’s blood symbolized in the Lord ’s Supper (1 Cor. 10:16, 17, 11:25; Heb. 8:6-13);

consecrated by endowment with God’s Spirit;

convoked weekly on the Lord’s Day (Acts 1:5; 1 Cor. 3:16, Exod. 20:8; Acts 20:7);

and commissioned to display God’s glory in Christian salvation and integration (Acts 11:26; Eph. 3:5-10);

in its Sacred vocation (upward, inward, outward), appointed and endowed by Christ

to draw near to God in worship, ordinances (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and prayer (John 4:24; 1 Cor. 14:23-25; Heb. 13:15, Acts 2:41, 10:47, 48; 1 Cor. 10:16,17, 11:25, 1 Tim. 2:1-8);

to love God’s people by nurture, benevolence, and discipline (John 13:34-35, 1 Tim. 5:16, Matt. 18:17; 1 Cor. 5:1-13);

and to love humanity by gospel evangelism (Matt. 28:18-20);

and in its Institutional relations  within the Nohaic covenant community, a compliment to family and state (Matt. 19:3-12; Eph. 5:22-24, Rom. 13:1-7);

which is PRESERVED throughout its militant history through the gospel application of salvation in every generation in spiritual warfare with the world, sin, devil, death, and hell, through great apostasy, and with a gospel recovery (Matt. 16:18; Eph. 3:21, 6:10-18, 2 Thess. 2:3-12; 1 Tim. 4:1-2, Acts 3:19-21; Rom. 11:17-32);

and which WILL BE GLORIFIED at its triumphant destiny in the completion of salvation with ultimate victory (1 Cor. 15:25-26), with translation unto glory, and with eternal life (Eph. 5:27; 1 Thess. 4:13-17).

Here’s a quick summary of the definition: The church is Christ’s saved society: purposed in God’s eternal plan and solemn pledge of salvation, portrayed in covenant promises of salvation, formed in Christ’s accomplishment of salvation, preserved through the gospel application of salvation, and glorified in the completion of salvation.

I hope that readers of this will at least go through the scripture references. If not even that, please take away from this that the first paragraph on the web page cited contains a biblically and church-historically inaccurate definition of the church. Then, the web site attempts to proceed in argument from this definition to justify the structure of UBF. However, careful readers should expose and question the errors of this definition, so that what proceeds from it may also be found biblically baseless. And it’s okay to publish an article on your organization’s structure. But it’s not okay to make it seem like your organization’s structure is supported by biblical teaching, especially when the way you use the bible verses and narrate church history is imbalanced and misleading.

3. My Hope for UBF’s Future

My wife and I lived with, cried with, grew with, and were nurtured by people in UBF for over 9.5 years! We love them, so everything written here should be understood from that viewpoint. So, in recognition of the scriptural definition of the church above, it is my sincere hope and prayer (I actually have been praying this for 3 years) that UBF refrain from identifying itself as a local church (in its outward form) while it continues being essentially a para-church organization (in its day-to-day function). (See 9Marks Journal, April 2011 issue for a distinction on church vs. para-church organizations.)

In particular, UBF should either:

1. Commit to being only a para-church organization. UBF should shift its major focus to protecting, supporting, promoting and nurturing nearby local churches, sending those it evangelizes on campuses eventually to nearby local churches; by sending out trained, seasoned shepherds/house churches to serve nearby local churches; and by requiring all UBF participants to have membership, or at least associate membership, in a local church; OR UBF should

2. Commit to being an association of autonomous local churches. UBF should “reform” into an association of autonomous local churches (UBF chapters–> local churches), each of which develops:

1) local church polity for members, deacons, and pastors/elders (a church constitution), ordination and preaching-license requirements;

2) membership requirements, and especially a church discipline covenant; and

3) a doctrinal confession that not only includes traditional evangelical beliefs  but articulates clearly and adduces scriptural support for all of UBF’s uniquely-nuanced-yet-unwritten practices. Provide written/published explanations of expectations for members, and scriptural support for terms/concepts like marriage by faith, fishing, one-to-one bible study, common life, the polarization of grace and truth, the use of the term “sheep” to refer indistinguishably to believers and unbelievers, etc.—so that expectations and concepts are explicitly and verbally articulated rather than only implicitly and nonverbally infused in the behavior/culture of UBF.

These are just (imperfect) suggestions that I’ve been thinking/praying to God about. I defer to God to do exceedingly and abundantly more than I can ask or imagine. But whatever changes take place, I pray that those who do them are motivated by the fact that the Church is wholly the possession and the executive responsibility of Jesus Christ, and His church exists to display his glory in its upward, inward, and outward vocation. Then UBF, committing either to Christ-centered para-church or to local church life, would have, I believe, a much greater impact in its intended mission.

Remember, when you write a definition of “church,” you are writing about Christ’s bride, whom He looks after, and is jealous for. I’d be careful how I write about someone’s bride. So, just stick to the New Testament’s teaching on it, which came from Christ himself (Jn 16:13; 14:26; 15:26, 27).

Celibacy as the only answer

Wesley begins his book by sharing various viewpoints regarding same-sex attractions. He present the idea that LGBT people who are not Christians can choose for themselves how to express their non-hetereosexual natures. He insists that his choice is to accept what he calls the Christian teaching that celibacy is the only answer for a homosexual person. He does all this cautiously, trying not to be offensive and trying to allow room for other people to make their own choices.

At times we are left to wonder however, just what Wesley believes. He is not persuaded by the traditional bible interpretations and church teachings. For example:

“At times, though, for me and many others, the weight of the biblical witness and the church’s traditional teaching against homosexual practice can seem rather unpersuasive. The list of Bible passages and the statements from the Vatican and other church leaders just don’t seem compelling enough to keep gay and lesbian people from looking for sexual fulfillment in homosexual relationships. In fact, not only are they not compelling; these biblical texts and Christian pronouncements appear out-dated, perhaps slightly cruel, and, in any case, not really workable or attainable.”  Page 56

Wesley’s premise is clear though:

“At the end of the day, the only “answer” I have to offer to the question of how to live well before God and with others as a homosexual Christian is the life I am trying to live by the power of the gospel.” Page 26

“For reasons I described in chapter 1, I do not think the option of same-sex, erotically expressive partnerships is open to the homosexual person who wants to remain faithful to the gospel. Which leaves the gay or lesbian Christian with few options, it seems.”  Page 108

Glimpses of the Hamster wheel gospel

As with any Christian book, I am highly sensitive to what kind of  gospel message is being taught. I was rather disheartened to hear the oft-repeated message that we Christians have to focus our energy on cleaning ourselves up. I call this the “hamster wheel gospel” because this belief makes you run in circles, entrapping you in a vicious cycle. This gospel attaches the concept of repentance to sin and views forgiveness as a constant struggle and search. Wesley writes:

“If we have failed in the past, we can receive grace—a clean slate, a fresh start. If we fail today or tomorrow in our struggle to be faithful to God’s commands, that, too, may be forgiven.”

Dark themes

This book was rather difficult for me to read. I felt depressed as I listened to the endless struggle, as if I was drowning and could not breathe. Wesley seemed to return to the “kamikaze” type thinking throughout the book:

“While taking a German class in college, I learned that in some old Teutonic and Scandinavian religions and mythologies there is an ideal of the “fated warrior.” This is the champion who heads into battle fully aware that doom awaits him at the end. “Defeat rather than victory is the mark of the true hero; the warrior goes out to meet his inevitable fate with open eyes.”  Page 71

“And yet we ache. The desire of God is sufficient to heal the ache, but still we pine, and wonder.”  Page 118

The other dark theme is what Wesley calls “a profound theology of brokenness”. I remember adopting this theology many years ago. But that theology proved to be only a transition into a wonderful new life when my theology of brokenness turned into the theology of transformation. As a young man in his 20’s, Wesley seems to be weaving a cocoon of brokenness around himself. I hope his journey continues and he emerges with the new life of a butterfly.

It is clear from reading this book that Wesley may have the gift of celibacy. But he presents celibacy sometimes as a gift and other times as a ball and chain. I appreciated listening in on his holy struggle.

Many quotes and poetry

Wesley shares many quotes from many people. He especially focuses on Henri Nouwen.

“For several years, all I knew about Nouwen was what I had read in these two books, The Return of the Prodigal Son and Adam: God’s Beloved. Then one afternoon, I was in the library at Luther Seminary in St. Paul and noticed a new biography of Nouwen. I picked it up and started to read, still standing in the lobby near the “new arrivals” shelf. I remember vividly the shock and ache I felt in my stomach, as if from acrophobia or a sudden lurch, when I discovered that Henri Nouwen had been a celibate homosexual and, as a result, had wrestled intensely with loneliness, persistent cravings for affection and attention, immobilizing fears of rejection, and a restless desire to find a home where he could feel safe and cared for.”  Page 88

Desire for companionship

In the end, Wesley asks the right questions and gives the reader a taste of what it must be like to live the LGBT experience.

“All our lives we’re searching for someone who will take us seriously. That’s what it means to be human,” a friend of mine once mused. Whether heterosexual or homosexual, people are wired, it seems, to pursue relationships of love and commitment. Maybe it’s possible to be more specific: it seems that we long for the experience of mutual desire. We’re on a quest to find a relationship in which we can want someone wholeheartedly and be wanted with the same intensity, in which there is a contrapuntal enhancement of desire.”  Page 101

“Is there any legitimate way for homosexual Christians to fulfill their longing—a longing they share with virtually every other human person, both heterosexual and homosexual—the longing to be desired, to find themselves desirable, and to desire in return?”   Page 101

• What are your thoughts, reactions, comments, questions, ideas about this book?
• Have you read Henri Nouwen? What do you think of the discovery that he was gay?
• How have you reacted to anyone around you who is homosexual?
• How will you reach out and be a friend to the marginalized people in your UBF chapter?

The sin beneath the sin

My identity was as a UBF man for 27 years (1980-2007). I am a Christian. I tasted the love of God through the marvelous grace of Jesus. But my identity was in my faithfulness to never miss a UBF Sun worship service, never miss any meetings, never miss writing a testimony every week, never missing any UBF conferences, having 10 1:1 Bible studies a week, etc. I did well as a UBF man. Yet, though I love Jesus, my identity was not in Christ but in what others in UBF expected of me. I was an “exemplary UBF shepherd” and supposedly the “best American UBF shepherd,” which is quite embarrassing, if not funny. (Thank God that it is not so any more!)

A Christian identity that is not in Christ. I am again reading James Danaher’s excellent book Eyes That See, Ears That Hear, that Brian reviewed. Chapter 4 alone–The Sermon on the Mount and the Concept of Sin–is worth the price of the book. Danaher explains how many Christians (and Pharisees) view sin as doing something bad, such as breaking the Ten Commandments. But their sin is ultimately in finding their identity in something else other than Christ.

Anger. We know murder is a sin. But Jesus says “that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister…will be in danger of the fire of hell” (Mt 5:22). It means that anger becomes our source of energy and strength, rather than finding our energy and strength in Christ alone. It is sad when Christians, in anger, slander other Christians because of disagreements about doctrine, tradition or methodology.

Lust. We know adultery is a sin. But Jesus says “that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28). It suggests that off limits romantic and sexual thoughts gives us energy, excitement and direction in a way that should be reserved for God alone.

Oaths (my “prayer topics”). Jesus says to make no oath (Mt 5:33-36). Why? We think we are good and noble when we keep our word: “I promise to go fishing once a week and feed three sheep each week.” We like to think that we are people of our word and that our word is enough to motivate us to do what we promised. So we derive our strength and motivation by keeping our word, which can serve as a source of strength and identity apart from God.

Punishing others. We love an “eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” but Jesus says, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Mt 5:38-39). Yeah, right! We easily focus on the sins of others and find energy and motivation through scheming ways of how to punish and shame them. But with God alone as our source of energy and strength, we can turn the other cheek, because we want to love others as Christ loved us, instead of giving them what we think their sins deserve.

Loving enemies (Mt 5:43-45). Jesus loved Judas to the end (Jn 13:1). But when we speculate or imagine that someone in church might be a Judas, we marginalize and exclude them rather than love them. The only way to love an enemy is if we are connected to an incredibly loving and forgiving God as the source of our being and identity. Such love is behind everything Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount.

Desire for honor and recognition. When you suffer and sacrifice for Bible students, do you share in your mission report to make sure that others know just how much you suffered and sacrificed (cf. Mt 6:2)? Jesus said that doing so means that we are seeking an identity founded on prestige, reputation, honor and the recognition of others, rather than on our relationship with God.

Is your identity in Christ alone and driven by love? Or might your identity be driven by anger, the desire to punish others for their sins (real or imagined!), or the desire to be honored and recognized?

A shocking confession. After 32 years of marriage, I have never told my dear wife, “I love you.” I strongly do not recommend this to any husband!! I never said those three words to her, partly because I am a shy introverted person from the east who has great difficulty articulating emotions of love to others. (Unfortunately, I have no problem articulating anger!) Also, a sad story of humanity is that countless millions of people throughout the world have said, “I love you,” yet behaved in ways where the loved one felt anything but love. Mainly, I thought that my love for my wife should be expressed in ways far beyond uttering three little words. I did not realize this but I might have backing from Deuteronomy chap. 6 about loving God! God does not want his people to love him by just saying “I love you” (cf. Isa 29:13; Mt 15:8; Mk 7:6).

You can read the rest of my sermon write-up and outline here.

My fifth Deuteronomy sermon is Law (Dt 5:1-33), which is the Ten Commandments (literally “ten words”) or the Decalogue. My theme is that Grace always precedes the Law. Law follows Grace. The Law is preceded by the Gospel. The three parts are:

1. Grace (Dt 5:1-6): I am the Lord who redeemed you from slavery (Dt 5:6).
2. Law (Dt 5:7-21): Love God and love your neighbor (Mt 22:37-39; Mk 12:30-31).
3. Response (Dt 5:22-33): We will listen and obey (Dt 5:27).

The point I tentatively hope to make is that God’s amazing love and grace is expressed when he delivered his people from slavery, a most helpless, hopeless and inhumane state, where death might be preferable to life. (The horrific condition of slavery is graphically and viscerally depicted by the gut-wrenching movie 12 Years A Slave.) Following deliverance and redemption, the Law was then given not to enslave them to the Law but to enhance the liberated life. Similarly the Bible was not given to enslave us to its teachings rigidly and inflexibly, but to liberate us when we grasp, by the help of the Holy Spirit, just who the God of the Bible is.

(a sermon based loosely on Romans 1:18-32, delivered at Hyde Park on 9/22/13)

The topic for today is wrath. More specifically, the role of God’s punishment in understanding the gospel. This is a topical message, and I hope that you will bear with my ramblings, listen critically, and judge for yourselves whether or not I am being faithful to the witness of Scripture.

The gospel is summarized by John 3:16: “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” (Jn 3:16) The gospel is good news of love and life. But there’s a flipside to that in certain gospel presentations, that if you reject the good news, there will be “hell to pay.” Sometimes that flipside becomes the main story. As in that famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which depicts the non-believer dangling over a pit of hellfire, held up by only a spider’s web which can break at God’s whim. The message is that, unless and until we believe in Jesus, we are the objects of God’s wrath. ”For God was so ticked off at the world that he gave his one and only Son…” Now some people will say that the Church has gotten too soft, that we have become morally lax and ineffective in our witness because we’ve stopped confronting people with their sin and no longer warn them about God’s wrath. And others will say that we should stop up talking about wrath altogether, because it gives an ineffective and misleading picture of what the gospel is about.

Being raised as I was in the Roman Catholic Church, wrath and divine punishment were very much a part of my childhood education. I was taught that if I committed a mortal sin (such as missing Mass on Sunday) and then died before going to confession, my soul would go straight to hell. In the evangelical world, I heard that God is love, but he is also wrathful; he wants to forgive us of our sins, but he also has to punish every sin, so he decided to punish Jesus instead of us, which satisfied both his love and his wrath. Love and wrath were the opposing sides, the opposite poles of God’s character, as were grace and truth, and those opposing sides were brought together at the cross. Bingo! Problem solved.

That explanation sounded logical, and it was good enough to keep me from worrying about it for a long time. But after two decades of assuming that I had this gospel thing all figured out, I began to have doubts, and I started to notice some deeper contradictions. As I became more honest with myself, a terrible truth started to dawn on me. The truth was: I didn’t love God very much. All along, Christians had been telling me that the gospel brings people to “a personal relationship with God” and “a love relationship with God.” But I began to admit that I didn’t really have that. Don’t get me wrong; I was deeply involved in church activities, I was doing lots of things for God. I was carrying out my Christian duties. But I wasn’t in love with God in the sense that I wasn’t liking him. I wasn’t longing to be with him, to see him, to worship him, to know him. For the longest time, I had just assumed that the problem was me. I supposed that I had failed to grasp the deep truth of the message that was given, that I just hadn’t believed it enough, that I hadn’t tried hard enough, and so on. I put all the blame on myself, thinking that I, as an individual, was deficient. But as the years wore on, I began to notice that lots of other Christians – evangelical Christians, the ones who supposedly “knew the Bible” and had gotten the gospel “right” – were in essentially the same boat as I was. For all our talk about having a personal relationship with God, our experience of God was impersonal, driven by rules and principles and teachings; our worship was intellectual, abstract and sterile; all of that wonder and joy and heavenly sunshine that we promised people they would experience if they “just accepted Jesus as their personal savior” wasn’t fully there; it wasn’t being realized in our lives and in our community.

So I went back to fundamentals. I asked myself some basic questions like, “What is love?” and “Is it possible to love someone if you don’t actually like them?” I decided that the answer to that second question is “No.” If you claim to love someone but you don’t actually like them, then something is fundamentally broken; that love is retarded, it is stunted, and it can’t be fixed by reinforcing the status quo and doing more of the same. And I came to realize a truth I had never known before. That truth is that love requires freedom. If an expression of love isn’t given freely simply because the giver wants to give it, then it’s not love. Many of the gospel presentations that I’ve heard have more than a hint of coercion. “God loves you, and he has a wonderful plan for your life. And oh, by the way, if you don’t accept his offer, you’re gonna burn in hell for all eternity, so you might as well say, ‘Yes.’” Picture a man proposing to his girlfriend. He gets down on one knee, takes out a diamond ring, and says, “I love you more than anything in this world; I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me? And oh, by the way, if you say no, I’ll find ways to punish you and ruin your life.” Would that marriage be off to a great start? If the purpose of the gospel is to bring us into a loving relationship with Jesus the bridegroom, then how could such a relationship be established by threats or by force?

The understanding that love requires freedom has enormous implications for how we live out our faith. One of my spiritual breakthroughs, a real “Aha!” moment, came when I read the classic book True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer. Early on in that book, he makes a point that is profoundly profound. He say that if you are a Christian, it is not good enough for you to simply do the right thing; you have to do the right thing in the right way and for the right reason. What he means is this. It is possible for any of us to generate good behaviors by our own human strength and willpower. But that isn’t how God’s kingdom operates. To a pragmatist, motives don’t matter. A pragmatist would say, “What does it matter why you do something? As long  as somebody is doing something good, there’s no need to worry about why.” (Some will even support this with Scripture, as Paul wrote in Philippians 1:18: “But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.”)  But in Christianity, the why really does matter. In God’s kingdom, the good works that we do are of no value unless they are being brought forth through the living person of Jesus Christ who has made his home in us – or, in other words, by the active work of the Holy Spirit who is alive in us. The outward fruit that Christians bear must be the visible manifestation of the inner fruit that comes from the Holy Spirit, and according to Paul in Galatians 5:22, the most basic fruit of the Holy Spirit is love.

What I’m saying is this. Whatever we do as Christian life, the motive for doing it must be love. Not a sense of honor or duty. Not a sense of fear. Not peer pressure or groupthink or pleasing mommy or daddy. Not to make myself look like a leader and gain acceptance by people because I do what’s expected and follow the rules. My motive must be pure affection for God and pure affection for others, the pure affection of Jesus that flows like a river from the throne of God into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. That kind of pure love is not generated by our efforts; it is simply a gift. If the reason why we do what we do is not love, then what we are doing is not gospel work. This isn’t rocket science. This is Christianity 101. This is the language of the new covenant (Jer 31:31-34). This is part of what Jesus meant when he said that all the law and prophets, in other words, the whole teaching of Scripture, hinges upon love for God and love for our neighbor (Mt 22:40). The authentic Christian life is motivated by love, powered by love, experienced in love, consummated in love. Love reigns supreme.

I used to think that love was one of the many excellent qualities of God. In western Christianity, there’s a tradition of defining God by listing his attributes. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-sufficient, all-holy, and so on. Who is God? “Well, God is a being with all those attributes. If your walking down the street, and by chance you encounter a being with all those attributes, you have found God!” That understanding of God can be helpful up to a point. But it is impersonal and it falls short when we come to love. The Bible doesn’t merely say that God has love. Scripture says that God is love (1Jn 4:8). Love is not an abstract quality or attribute that a single person can have in isolation from other persons. Love manifests itself in relationships. Love is an other-centeredness that is realized only when others are present.  Unless multiple persons are involved, there is no love.

This is why it’s so important to understand that God is not a single person but a Trinity – three persons, distinct but co-equal, each one fully free and fully God, but living together in unity and dwelling in one another and delighting in one another. When some people imagine God, they picture him as one white haired guy sitting on a throne completely in love with himself and demanding that everyone love him too. But the God of the historic Christian faith is a Triune community of love. So when the Apostle John said, “God is love,” he really meant it.  God’s missional purpose, his plan for us and for the world, flows from who he is. His intention is to draw us into his loving community, to delight in Father Son and Spirit and be delighted in by them as they delight in one another, participating with them to the extent that we can as earthly human beings on in that amazing dance that has been going on in the heavenly realms since before time began. That was the reason why we were created. That is the reason why the kosmos  was created. That is the reason why God incarnated himself to become part of the kosmos to redeem us and all the kosmos. “For God so loved the kosmos that he sent his one and only Son…” (Jn 3:16)

If we want to explain the gospel well, we need to start in the right place. Some gospel tellings start with Romans 3:23, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” Sin is a huge part of the story. But we won’t be able to understand sin unless we go father back to see what God was in the process of making before sin broke it. It’s hard to come up with a definition of sin that internally resonates with everyone because, although everyone has some sense of good versus bad, the way people understand good versus bad varies greatly from one culture to another. Western understandings focus on guilt: people sense they are bad when they as individuals break a rule or violate an objective moral standard. But Eastern understandings focus on shame: people sense they are bad when they fail to live up to the expectations of their group and bring dishonor to the family or community. In a guilt society, order is maintained by explicit rules and punishments for breaking the rules. In a shame society, order is maintained by marginalizing and ostracizing people who step out of line. These differences make it very hard for Easterners and Westerners to agree on how to deal with unethical behavior, or even on what constitutes unethical behavior.

The manner in which we understand sin will deeply affect our understanding of biblical terms like justification. Evangelical Protestants tend to explain the gospel in legal or forensic terms. We imagine a courtroom where God the Father is the judge, and we are on trial for everything we have ever done. The evidence is presented, and we are found guilty and sentenced to hell. But just before we are handed over for eternal punishment, Jesus bursts in and says, “I died for his sins! The price is paid!” and we are set free. In this framework, justification means that God declares us as individuals to be innocent of the crimes we have committed. Children of the Reformation tend to think in terms of law, because the Reformation was carried out by lawyers. Zinzendorf, Melanchthon, and Calvin all studied law. They inherited the Western tradition of Lex, Rex (“Law is King”) which supposes that people of all standing, even rulers and kings, must submit themselves to legal principles and be punished in a fair and impartial manner if they disobey.  Now if you take this western legal understanding of the gospel and bring it to eastern cultures which operate on a system of shame and honor, a great deal will be lost in translation. This is one of the issues that the UBF ministry has been wrestling with, and we need to better understand what is happening here if we are going to develop a workable ecclesiology, a system of church governance that sets the ground rules by which we operate. But I digress.

Kingdoms of the west maintain the social order by rules, guilt and punishment. Kingdoms of the east have developed elaborate systems of honor and shame. So what about God’s kingdom? How does it operate? If the kingdom of God is the realm of the Father, Son and Spirit, it must function as the persons of the Trinity relate to one another. Is the Father ever ticked off at the Son? Does the Father say to the Son, “Don’t ask questions, boy, just obey”? Do the Father and Son draw up rules for the Spirit and say , “Holy, we want you to go into the world and do this, because this is safe, but don’t ever work that way, because that way is too unpredictable”? In the first three centuries after Christ, the Church Fathers had passionate, heated debates about this, sometimes resulting in fistfights, because they sensed they needed to get it right. They were not arguing over esoteric abstractions. They were grappling with the most basic question, “How does the kingdom operate?” They looked carefully at the apostolic tradition, including the writings of Paul and the Upper Room discourse of John 13-17. They struggled to find just the right words to describe who the Father, Son and Spirit are and how they relate to one another. What they said, in essence, is that the persons of the Trinity never bind one another, never lord it over one another, never impose rules or obligations or guilt trips or manipulations of any kind. Their relationship is one of complete equality, complete freedom, complete openness and honesty, complete unity in the midst of creative diversity, to the point where they are not simply admiring one another from a distance but actually getting inside of one another and indwelling one another in an atmosphere that can only be described as pure joy.

The persons of the Trinity are doing the “happy dance.” As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Their delight in one another is so infectious that it bursts out of them in creative energy that produces new life. Think of what happens when a husband and wife who delight in one another and come together in freedom and just do what comes naturally; their passion leads to babies. Babies are amazing.  From the moment they come out of the womb, they are an explosion of joy and wonder. The are little autonomous beings who want nothing more than to just be with people and thrive on the receiving and giving of love.  We are the children of God, the babies of the Trinity. God’s whole purpose for us is to draw us into his everlasting happy dance and experience a baby’s pure love and joy and wonder.  The dance that God intends for us is not on some pie-in-the-sky heavenly cloud, but right here in this world, in this physical, natural environment that he created us for and that he created for us. Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

In light of this understanding of how the kingdom operates, we start to realize that the views of guilt and shame that dominate the cultures of west and east fail to describe the full scope and tragedy of what sin has done. Sin is something like a cancer which has metastasized, twisting and distorting and injecting hurt and pain into every aspect of that happy dance for which the children of God were created – our relationship with Father, Son and Spirit; our relationships with one another; our relationships to ourselves; and our relationships to this created world. In our fallen state, we come together and try to perform damage control in these various areas using the tools of social engineering that our parents handed down to us. Some of our solutions are quite creative and work better than others. But in the end, none of our treatments can cure us or truly heal our relationships. And may I suggest that many of our deficient understandings and outright misunderstandings of the gospel stem from taking our personal and cultural ideals of what a good, orderly human society or church ought to look like – all of our creative strategies for sin management — and forcibly projecting those views onto God’s kingdom, rather than stepping back and asking God with open hearts and minds, “Lord, how does your kingdom operate? Reveal yourself. Show me how you work.”

When we ask that question and go back to Scripture, we gain insight upon insight. There are so many ways to describe about how God brings his kingdom to us and us to his kingdom.  Those insights from the Bible tend to come not so much in the form of doctrinal statements that we are told to just accept, but as colorful stories, narratives and parables that we hear and chew on and discuss with one another until they take root in us. The key figure present in all those Scriptural stories and parables is a single character, a man named Jesus, who has been revealed as the Messiah by virtue of his suffering, death and resurrection. When we approach Scripture as Jesus and the apostles taught us – a method that can be described as “forward and backward” – when we read it prospectively in its original historical context, and then re-read it retrospectively in light of the historical experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension – then we gain glimpses of how that kingdom is already breaking into this world and into our experience if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

God’s kingdom is already fully realized and fully present in the person of Jesus. Jesus is fully divine and fully human. He is all God, all man, all the time, and two natures in one person, and the divine and human are always in harmony, never in conflict. Where Jesus is, there is the kingdom of God, insofar as human beings can experience it. Since Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he is no longer here in bodily form. He has promised to return to us in the flesh, and when he does we will be together with him and experience the full reality of the kingdom in our spirits and our bodies. Until then, while we wait, we have his presence among us in the body of the Church through the activity of the Holy Spirit, whom Paul described as a seal, a downpayment , an arrabon (engagement ring), a foretaste and sure promise of the kingdom life that is to come (Eph 1:13-14).

Now when the Holy Spirit comes to us, his intention is not to throw us into a fog of guilt and shame. Nor does he want to terrorize us with fear. Nor does he come to us chains of slavery, with long lists of rules and conditions that we need to fulfill before we measure up to God’s standard. Scripture is very, very clear on that point. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Sonship, the polar opposite of fear, the one who unites us to Jesus and enables us to cry out, “Abba, Father” (Ro 8:15, Gal 4:6).

To conclude this sermon, I want to return to the subject of God’s wrath. That word, which basically means anger, appears in the Old Testament (NIV) 152 times, and in the New Testament 29 times. I believe Scripture is divinely inspired, and I believe that word is an accurate reflection of how human beings in our fallen state experience God as he works to reveal himself to us in our context. I find it extremely fascinating how often the psalmists use wrath in ways that, in light of the teachings of Jesus (for example, in the Sermon on the Mount) are distinctively unchristian. For example, in Psalm 79:6: “Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the kingdoms that do not call on your name.” And Psalm 69:24: “Pour out your wrath on them; let your fierce anger overtake them.” And Psalm 6:1: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.” The psalmists appear to be totally in favor of God pouring out his wrath, as long as God does it on other people and not them. This is often how we feel, and it is an accurate reflection of how fallen human beings sometimes pray. But this is not the teaching of Jesus; he commanded us to love our enemies. I have found a similar spirit at work in certain kinds of gospel preaching: the idea that God’s wrath is being poured out on other people, on people outside of the fold, on people who are not seen as God’s people by virtue of their beliefs and behaviors.

But when we turn to the New Testament, we see a distinct shift in the frequency and manner that wrath appears. In the NIV gospels, Jesus used the word only twice: Once in Luke 21:23 when he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, and again in John 3:36, when he’s speaking to Nicodemus: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”  Colorful and intense preaching about God’s anger, the kind that appears in Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, is very rare in Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel. In Jesus’ parables, he does occasionally speak of God’s judgment, but it tends to be against God’s people who refuse to forgive and reconcile with one another (Mt 18:34), those who claim to be Jesus’ followers but refuse to show love and mercy to people in need (Mt 25:46), and against hypocritical religious leaders who misuse their positions if authority and abuse people under their care (Mt 24:51). I have not yet found anyplace in Scripture where Jesus applies wrath and anger against nonbelievers, pagans, Samaritans, Gentiles, tax collectors, public sinners, or anyone who lies outside the boundary of those who were considered God’s people at that time.

The most systematic development of God’s wrath that I see in the New Testament appears in Romans 1:18-32, where Paul declares, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness…” I won’t take the time to go over the details of that passage, but I will comment on the big picture. Paul says that God’s wrath “is being revealed.” He uses the present perfect tense to indicate that it is going on now. How is God now revealing his wrath? Is he bombarding us with pestilence, famine, earthquakes and tsunamis? As the passage progresses, Paul explains how God is pouring out his wrath. Three times – in verses 24, 26, and 28 – Paul says that God “gave them over.” In response to human wrongdoing, God gave them over to sexual impurity, to shameful lusts, to a depraved mind. The response is not an active, willful punishment by God, but a removal of his protection that allows people to go out from his presence to experience the consequences of sin on their bodies, their minds, their families, their society. If God’s loving design is to draw fallen human beings into joyful relationship with him, with one another, with themselves, and with the created world – and if love requires actual freedom — then it makes sense that God’s wrath would be to give wayward people what they are asking for, to remove his hand of protection, and allow the forces of sin to metastasize in them and in the world, leading to horrendous and deadly consequences.

I believe this picture of God’s wrath, a wrath that is more like the passive flipside of love than the active retribution, is fairly consistent with how God dealt with sin throughout the Bible. [Note to self: I don’t think it explains everything in the Old Testament; there are still difficult problems in the OT that none of us seem to understand very well.] I can see this picture in the Levitical system of animal sacrifice. Animals offered for human sin as a picture of atonement, but the animals were simply killed; they weren’t tortured to death. Above all, our understanding of God’s love and wrath must be shaped by what happened at the crucifixion. At the cross, God allowed Jesus to experience the full cup of suffering, to taste God’s wrath and experience human death. At the cross, I do not see the Father actively meting out punishments against the Son. I do see a Father who has apparently forsaken the Son, removed his hand of protection from him, and allowed the forces of darkness to take their course, as sinful human beings do unspeakably cruel things to Jesus.

In conclusion, I do believe that a violent form of wrath that we perceive as punishment is sometimes part of our human experience. It is how fallen people often deal with one another. It is how we may perceive (or misunderstand) God’s working as he breaks in to our lives. I do believe that God gets angry, but his anger flows when things and people he loves dearly are being devalued and destroyed. God is love. He is not equal parts love and wrath. His wrath flows from his love.

Our tendency to think of God as equal parts love and wrath may also stem from our tendency to “flatten” the Bible, to read the Bible as though every part of Scripture is equally important, that every verse no matter where it is reveals God’s character to the same degree and with the same clarity. We tend to suppose that every psalm, every chapter in Leviticus and Numbers and Judges and Jeremiah, carries the same kind of surface-level revelation of God’s character as, say, Jesus’ teaching in the Upper Room.  The Old Testament passages about holy war and genocide are read the same way and given the same weight as Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. But that is not the way that most Christians have always approached the Bible. Many Christians throughout history have understood the Bible as God’s progressive revelation of himself. As the story progresses, the portrait of God being painted through his written word becomes clearer and clearer, and culminates when he himself shows up as Jesus, the living Word.

And [I owe this insight to pastor Greg Boyd] we need to remember that the Bible is a story with a surprise ending. In a typical movie, the story marches along, and the plot takes various twists and turns. But some movies hit the audience with a big surprise at the end. A good example of this kind of movie is The Book of Eli. As you watch that movie, the plot unfolds, and there’s plenty of excitement and action. But in the final moments of the story, the last sixty seconds, something is revealed that is totally unexpected, and that revelation causes you to go back and reframe and reinterpret everything that came before.

The Bible is that kind of story. The Bible shows in human language how God works through the nation of Israel to reveal his salvation plan. But when the Messiah shows up, some things happen that are totally unexpected. First, he looks like a very ordinary man. Then he is rejected, he suffers and is put to death on a cross. Then he rises again; his body comes to life and bursts out of the tomb. He appears to his disciples and then ascends bodily into heaven. Then he sends the Holy Spirit upon the Church and the good news is spread to the Gentiles. All those happenings were totally unexpected, and what you then see in the epistles is the early church trying to make sense of what just happened; and  the authors of the New Testament go back and reframe the entire Old Testament in light of the historical realities of Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost. If we stop flattening the Bible; if we stop treating all passages in the same way regardless of their historical setting and genre; if we realize that God’s ultimate revelation of himself is not in the written word of a document but in the living Word who is a person; and if we believe that the kind of love that characterizes God is defined by the cross; then God’s wrath and love start to come into proper focus.

In closing, I believe, as the Scripture testifies, that the death of Jesus is a substitution; he died for us (Ro 3:25-26). But that isn’t the whole picture. Scripture also testifies that it is a union; at the cross, he died with us, and we died with him; on Easter he rose with us, and we rose with him (Ro 6:1-14). The Christian rite of baptism, the initiation into the family of God, has always been seen as a baptism into his death and resurrection, an initiation into a relationship where we die with him and rise with him. The atonement is“for” us but it is also “with” us. So that we may be “in” Christ and Christ may be “in” us. So that we may join with one another in that everlasting union, that eternal happy dance, with the Father, Son and Spirit. Glory be to God.

The ancients never had the Law. Without the Law they felt the following:

1. The gods are angry with me.
2. My sin has caused the anger of the gods.
3. I must do something to placate the gods’ wrath.

Without the Law their ignorance is also threefold:

1. I do not know which god is angry.
2. I do not know which particular crime I committed that provoked the divine fury.
3. I do not know what exactly it will take to placate the wrath of the gods.

Into this dark world the Law (Torah) of Moses shines its beacon of glory and grace:

1. Israel’s God has revealed himself.
2. Israel’s God has declared the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable conduct.
3. Israel’s God provided a way of forgiveness that actually solves the human problem of sin.

The plan of God. In the plan of God through the obedience of his people they would demonstrate their greatness to the nations and so fulfill the promise of the ancestors and serve as agents of worldwide blessing (Dt 4:6-8). In the language of the NT, Paul says that Israel was to be a letter from God to the world, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts (2 Cor 3:3).

The failure of Israel. Sadly, the nation as a whole failed in this mission, and the individuals within the nation who fulfilled this calling were rarely more than a remnant. But Israel’s failure negates neither the grace nor the power of the Torah to yield life when understood in proper perspective. Israel’s failure testifies simply to the hardness of the human heart.

What does “keep/obey my commands” mean? It does not simply mean, “Do as I tell you from now on.” “My commands” (Jn 14:15; 15:10) alludes to specific commands revealed long ago as God’s will. When the disciples hear this from Jesus, they are hearing the voice of the One who revealed his “decrees and laws” (Dt 4:1) long ago at Horeb. Through obedience to Jesus we demonstrate our covenantal commitment (“love”) to him. We also display to the world the privilege of salvation, divine presence, knowledge of his will, and blessing. Delighting in obedience to the revealed will of God represents the key to fulfilling the divine mission of reaching the world with his grace.

Is the Law a blessing? John 1:16-17 say, “Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (NIV 2011). The 1984 NIV says that “we have all received one blessing after another.” It is not as though the Law is a curse and that grace and truth through Christ is a blessing. Both are blessings. Both are God’s grace. The contrast here is not between law and grace, but two ways of expressing grace: mediated grace (Law) and embodied grace (Jesus). For the Israelites, possession of the Law was a supreme grace (Rom 9:4), a grace exceeded and superseded only by Jesus.

May your obedience be a loving obedience to a loving God. May your obedience be rooted and grounded (not in the Law but) in the grace of Jesus who loves you and all people immeasurably.

Approach

How then do I approach this magnificent sermon? With a microscope? Such an up-close approach has been attempted by many a preacher the past 2,000 years, and has lead to much confusion and disarray. My approach to something so grand, so high and so beautiful is to step back.

I step back a little and am filled with guilt upon guilt. So I step back further. I contend that to comprehend the Sermon of Sermons, we ought to fly into space and gaze upon it! From space, there are only a few objects that are viewable on the earth. The Great Wall of China is one of them.

What do we see in the Bible from space? We see the broad message of God: faith, hope and love. We see the Great Story: Creation, Fall, Training, Redemption and Return. And we can see the Sermon of Sermons, a glorious light shining up at us.

Now let’s come back to reality, back to earth where we are. Now we gaze up at Scripture, each verse shining as stars in the sky. The Sermon is one of the brightest collections of those stars. Now we need a telescope to observe such brightness. What do we see?

Law or Grace?

The two ancient lenses with which we can interpret Scripture are law and grace. Through the lens of law we develop a mind of self-righteousness, elitism and legalism. Through the lens of grace we cultivate a mind of godliness, humility and freedom. Law is the common road that leads to shackles and finally death. Grace is the narrow road that leads to joy and finally life.

The world is filled with preachers who chose the lens of law to present the Sermon of Sermons. Such an approach snuffs out the fire of truth in Jesus’ words, sapping the very breath out of those who hear.

27 Words

When I observe the Sermon of Sermons from the lens of grace, I see 10 words in chapter five, 10 words in chapter six and 7 words in chapter seven. Twenty-seven words. I contend that if we would listen to these 27 words and let them define our life, we would find the effervescent joy, the all-surpassing power and the deep tranquility Jesus came to give.

Matthew 5: Love your neighbor (Codex 3 – Social/Civil)

1. Blessed
2. Salt
3. Light
4. Fulfillment

1. Reconciliation
2. Purity
3. Faithfulness
4. Integrity
5. Long-suffering
6. Love

Conclusion 1: Be perfect.

Matthew 6: Love God (Codex 2 – Ceremonial)

1. Generosity
2. Prayer
3. Forgiveness
4. Humility
5. Treasure
6. Discernment
7. Devotion
8. Security
9. Self-esteem
10. Contentment

Conclusion 2: Seek God. 

Matthew 7: God’s Will (Codex 1 – Moral)

1. Mercy
2. Self-examination
3. Discretion
4. Dialogue
5. Goodness
6. Grace
7. Logic

Conclusion 3: Do God’s will.

27 words that teach us about Jesus! 27 words that teach us how to live! May these words transform me by renewing my mind. Lord, help me to apply Your words with grace, courage and faith in You, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Forge in me the heart of a lamb and the soul of a lion.

Final conclusion: Build your life on Jesus.

Twenty seven words; twenty seven sermons! …and maybe 27 blogs :) The first four words of Jesus’ Sermon of Sermons are: blessed, salt, light and fulfillment. These four words form an introduction, and an invitation. The first word is “blessed”. Blessed! Isn’t this what we want? Do we not crave to be blessed?

Let’s read today’s text:

¹ Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him,² and he began to teach them, saying:

¹¹ “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Who is blessed?

Nine times the word “blessed” appears in this text. To begin to understand their depth and earth-shattering significance, I would need nine more sermons! So what can we plainly learn from these words? First and most plainly, we can learn who is blessed. Most of us want to be blessed, but we wonder if I am such a person who could ever hope to be blessed. Perhaps God would bless others, but would God bless me?

Jesus lists nine traits found in people who are blessed. The poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted because of righteousness and those insulted because of Jesus.

Why are such people called “blessed” by Jesus? Is this not a bit strange? If you asked me to list the kinds of people who are blessed, my list would look very different from Jesus’ list. At the top of my list would be: Those whose mortgage is paid off! Now that is blessing in my natural mind! As I see my list of “the blessed” I see a pattern. My concept of blessing is all about gaining something.

What is Jesus’ concept of blessing? Jesus talks more about losing something or about inner strength of the heart. In Jesus’ mind, the blessed people are not those with outward strength or with many accomplishments. To Jesus, the blessed people are people with a lamb’s heart.

What is blessing?

As I alluded to, I tend to have an upside-down concept of blessing in my natural mind. Jesus listed a nine-fold description of the blessings received by those with a lamb heart:

1. The kingdom of heaven
2. Comfort
3. Inheritance of the earth
4. Fulfillment
5. Mercy
6. The ability to see God
7. Identity as children of God
8. The kingdom of heaven (in case you missed it the first time :)
9. Me (Jesus)

Rejoice and Be glad

How do we respond to Jesus’ opening statements about blessing? In verse 12 Jesus not only indicates what response he expects, but does so in the form of a command: “Rejoice and be glad”. Rejoice! If you want to obey something, obey that. Be glad.

Jesus did not come to bind believers to an “upgraded” law. Jesus said his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:30). Jesus came to give rest for the soul of the believer. Scripture declares that “his commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3-4). Do you believe that? For most of my life I tried to believe that, but in my mind I always concluded: “Easy and light? Yea right! You gotta be kiddin’ me! Christian life is anything but easy or light…”

I was a believer, but I lived my life as if I were a donkey tethered to a millstone. My only claim was “Yes I’m tied to a millstone, but it is a better millstone than what Moses gave!” I thought, “My millstone came from Jesus, and I’m going to pull it by golly!” So I ended up looking, feeling and acting like this:

Jesus’ yoke is something like Thor’s hammer. Not even the mighty Hulk could pick up Thor’s hammer. In fact, Hulk could not even move the hammer one inch! But Thor lifted it easily, and used it well! The one who tries to pick up the law with his own strength will never budge it even an inch. Cursed is anyone who relies on observing the law (Galatians 3:10). Only those who accept the grace of Jesus will find the blessing promised in the law. Only Jesus can lift the law, and he does it with ease and uses it well.

My friends, if you see the Sermon of Sermons and walk away sad or burdened with guilt or heavy laden with anxiety, you’ve not yet heard what Jesus said. If you think Jesus was merely giving you an “upgraded yoke” or a “higher morality”, you’ve missed the point. Jesus’ yoke is not a new way to be tethered to the law. Jesus’ yoke is grace. Jesus’ yoke is blessing!

Come to Me

Jesus’ blessed invitation to find rest for your soul still stands open today:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

HE HIMSELF IS OUR PEACE

Based on Ephesians 2:11-22

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians makes me feel like an ant. Here I am, walking around on the earth, dealing with the countless pressures of my everyday life. Projects at work that are running late. Debts that need to be paid. Things around the house that need to be fixed. Paying attention to how my wife and children are doing. Worries about our aging parents. Worries about this church, managing the building and wanting this congregation to prosper. I’m like an ant in  rainstorm, getting pelted with huge raindrops. My little ant-world is flooding; I’m up to my neck in water, and I’m about to get swept away. When I try to pray, the only words that come to mind are:

God, what am I supposed to do?

My terror is mixed with nagging feelings of guilt, because many of these problems are of my own doing. I’ve been making a mess out of life. There are so many things that I should have done but didn’t do, and so many things I did that I shouldn’t have done. I wish I could go back in time 10, 20, or 30 years and fix up all the mistakes I made. But in this life, there are no do-overs. So I’m up to my neck in problems, and if God did nothing to help me, I suppose it would serve me right. And when I try to speak to God, again the only words that come out are:

God, what am I supposed to do? Help me out here. Please tell me what you want me to do to become the person that you want me to be.

If the Apostle Paul were a life coach, he might say: “Where do you want to be 5,10 or 15 years from now? Understand your passions, goals and ambitions. Figure out where you want to be and take some baby steps in that direction.  Go for it! Make it happen! And don’t forget to ask for God’s help because, as the Bible says, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’”

I’m joking, of course. The Bible doesn’t say, “God helps those who help themselves.” But it might as well say that, because that’s how many of us have been taught to think. We’ve learned to approach life with the attitude that “If anything good is going to happen here, I’ll have to make it happen. I’m only a little tiny ant, but doggone it, I’m going to be a hardworking and industrious ant!”

Of course,  God doesn’t want us to be lazy. He wants to bless the work of our hands. But all too often, we envision God sitting on the sidelines and assume it’s up to us to move the ball. This DIY mentality has seeped into the foundations of the church and our conceptions of church leadership. As a pastor, it often seemed to me that the members of my church weren’t doing enough, that the project was failing for lack of effort, and I needed to motivate people to get them more involved. One of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson, put it this way (Practice Resurrection, p. 118):

Americans talk and write endlessly about what the church needs to become, what the church must do to be effective. The perceived failures of the church are analyzed and reforming strategies prescribed. The church is understood almost exclusively in terms of function – what we can see. If we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Everything is viewed through the lens of pragmatism. Church is an instrument that we have been given to bring about whatever Christ commanded us to do. Church is a staging ground for getting people motivated to continue Christ’s work.

This way of thinking – church as human activity to be measured by human expectations – is pursued unthinkingly. The huge reality of God already at work in all the operations of the Trinity is benched on the sideline while we call timeout, huddle together with our heads bowed, and figure out a strategy by which we can compensate for God’s regrettable retreat into invisibility. This is dead wrong.

Why is this view wrong? Because the Father, Son and Spirit are not sitting on the sidelines. They are with us on the field calling plays, moving the ball and running interference. They are engaged in many kinds of vigorous activity that we are usually unaware of, because we are engrossed in the detailed minutia of our ant-lives and ant-colonies; we have no idea what God is really up to.

That’s what Ephesians is about. In this amazing letter, Paul doesn’t say much about any of the specific problems in the Ephesian church. We know the church had problems; some are mentioned in Revelation chapter 2. But in this letter, Paul pulls back the curtain to show them what’s been going on invisibly behind the scenes. He brings them to a new place and a new perspective which he calls “the heavenly realms.” That phrase, “the heavenly realms,” appears in this book five times. It’s a signpost that points to a huge paradigm shift in our understanding of the Christian life. While we are crying out, “God, what am I supposed to do?” God wants to make the scales fall from our eyes to see what he has already done.  He wants to wake us up and shake us up to an amazing new awareness of who we already are and what we already have.

Listen to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:18-19:

18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

Now I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about the details of our lives. Yes, he does. But God wants us to know that he’s up to something big. How big? So big that it cannot possibly get any bigger. The plan starts with our redemption. But then it extends to the whole church, to all of humanity, to the whole created world, and to the entire cosmos.

Listen to Paul’s words in 1:7-10:

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

He’s talking about a great cosmic unification. Perhaps you think it sounds Hinduish and New Agey.  “We will we become one with God and plants and rocks and planets.” No, it’s not like that at all. We aren’t going to lose our personhood by getting dissolved into a nebulous pantheistic soup. I will still be me; you will still be you; and God will still be God. But we will be together in the kind of community that God intends, a human community where we have harmonious and loving relationships with one another, with the created world, and with God himself. God is a Trinity. That means he is three distinct persons – Father, Son and Spirit – with their own distinct individuality and personhood, tied together in bonds of love that are so tight that they are “indwelling” and actually living inside of one another. From everlasting to everlasting, the Father, Son and Spirit have been experiencing a deep, supernatural intimacy. As Christians, we are being drawn into that family, into those relationships, to participate in that indwelling to whatever extent we can as finite human creatures. And as human beings, we are being restored to our proper role, the purpose for which we were created, to be rulers over the earth. Not tyrants who exploit the world for selfish purposes. We are collectively being remade into the race that God always wanted us to be, to serve the world as his regents in his own image, managing with his character and his authority.

At the center of this cosmic unification, there stands one person whose name is Jesus Christ. He is fully God and fully man. He is both the Creator and a part of the creation. He is equally at home in heaven and on earth. By virtue of who he is and what he has done, he is the unique focal point of God’s big plan. In him, all people and all things in heaven and on earth are coming to head. And to a large extent, they already have (Col 1:15-20).

When we imagine the kingdom of God, we tend to think of what will happen in the future, in the end times, at the great apocalypse, at Jesus’ second coming. But the surprising thing about Ephesians is how rarely Paul uses the future tense. Most of what he writes is in the past and in the present. That word “apocalypse” doesn’t mean destruction. The literal meaning is revelation or unveiling. The apocalypse will not be a demolishing of the earth but a full unveiling of the reality that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus has already become King. By virtue of his life, death, resurrection and ascension, he is already sitting at the right hand of the Father which means he is equal to the Father. He is ruling the heavens and the earth right now. But at present, his kingship is visible only to his followers, those who have eyes of faith. After the great apocalypse, when “faith becomes sight,” the reality of his kingdom will be seen by everyone.

But Jesus has already become King. And the glory of his coming kingdom is so powerful, so dynamic, that it’s bursting out of the future and breaking into now. It’s like a wrinkle in time, a time warp. That’s how we can understand the language of Paul when he writes about the future kingdom in the past and in the present. Through the resurrection of Jesus, a cosmic wormhole has opened up connecting the end-times to the present; the glorious future world is pouring into our world.

Now where in this world can we see the glorious future reality pouring in? The surprising answer, according to Paul, is in the church. The gathering believers in Jesus Christ is the kingdom “ground zero.” This is where the evidence of Christ’s rule becomes evident. From our perspective, that is extremely hard to believe. The church — any church – is full of ordinary people with ordinary problems.  But Paul tells us that in the church, there’s far more going on than meets the eye. Paul wants to pull back the curtain to show us that what goes on here in the church – more specifically, what goes on in the church in terms of our relationships – our relationships with one another – this is not just a preview of the kingdom of God; this is the actual future kingdom of God breaking into the present. By God’s help, we can see that, if he gives us eyes to see.

With that background, let’s listen to today’s passage, Ephesians 2:11-22:

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 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, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

In this passage, Paul is saying: “Look at this amazing thing that has happened. Jews and Gentiles have come together in the church!” More specifically, it was the Jewish followers of Jesus Christ who opened their community to receive Gentiles without requiring them to become Jews first. If you think that’s a small matter, think again. To embrace Gentiles, the Jewish believers had to overcome their deeply ingrained tribalistic tendencies and their feelings of religious rightness. They had to put aside the customs that they cherished, the laws that defined their personal identity, and say to the Gentiles: “We welcome you as full members of our family, not on the basis of anything that you have done, but purely on the basis of what Christ has done for you.”

This surprising marriage of Jews and Gentiles didn’t just start a new tribe. Paul says that it created a new kind of humanity. A whole new way of being human. And even though the awkward and messy details of this cross-cultural marriage were still being worked out, Paul says that it had already taken place. The union took place in the flesh, in the physical body, of Jesus Christ, as he was nailed to the cross. Because it was on the cross that he put to death the requirements of the law.

In these verses, Paul makes the surprising claim that the law – God’s law, which was given to Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai – created hostility between Jews and Gentiles and erected a wall, an insurmountable barrier, which had kept them apart. This is true. Because of their law, Jews were compelled to separate themselves from non-Jews. They had to avoid all physical contact. Jews could never have fellowship or eat with Gentiles, because Gentiles’ food and utensils and homes and bodies were defiled. For Jews, the mere thought of eating with Gentiles would have made them feel physically ill.

Modern research in the fields of moral psychology and neuroscience has shown that there are actual physiological reasons for this. There’s a fascinating book on this subject by a psychologist from the University of Virginia (The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt). The book describes in scientific terms how human beings construct their belief systems, how we make moral and religious decisions, how we decide right from wrong. Most of us suffer from “the rationalist delusion.” We think that our moral judgments are well reasoned and thought out. We believe that, before arriving at a position, we carefully consider the arguments for and against and then come down on the side that has the better evidence. But that is not what people do. The vast majority of the time, we make moral decisions very quickly, in a split second, shooting from the hip. We make our choices based on emotion and gut instinct formed through our experiences, relational commitments and tribal affiliations. After we make our choice, the rational parts of our brains start working to construct arguments to reassure ourselves and to persuade others that our instinctive judgments are correct. It has been demonstrated over and over, through laboratory experiments and brain scans, that moral judgment and rational justification are two separate processes.

There’s a part of the brain called the gustatory cortex which is responsible for smell and taste. If an animal happens upon something that looks like food, the animal pokes around and smells it to decide whether it’s fresh or rotten, good or gross, yummy or yucky. The gustatory cortex is where that information is processed. And in human beings, that’s where most of our moral decisions are made. Judgments about whether a behavior is right or wrong are closely related to our sense of whether something is delicious or disgusting. And it’s related to our sense of personal cleanliness and hygiene. If we see a behavior that we think is wrong, it causes a physical sensation that tells us it feels wrong. When we see others do it, it makes us think that they are disgusting. And if we do something wrong, it makes us feel dirty. Under certain conditions, it’s possible to override the gustatory cortex and make judgments using the more rational portions of the brain, but that’s not easy. That kind of judgment is inherently risky; it takes enormous amounts of mental energy, so most of the time we just operate on instinct.

In fact, studies have shown that you can mess with people’s moral judgments by exposing them to bad smells. A researcher from Stanford performed experiments where he stood next to a garbage can and asked people to fill out questionnaires about morality. The garbage can was completely empty. But part of the time, he sprayed the can with fart spray to make it smell bad. People exposed to fart spray were harsher in their moral judgments than those who were not exposed.

You know those dispensers of hand sanitizer that you see in doctor’s offices and hospitals and supermarkets? In another set of experiments, subjects became temporarily more conservative just by standing next to hand sanitizer.

So how does this relate to the Bible? If you look at the Old Testament law – for example, all those regulations in the book of Leviticus – some of the laws are about what we would call ethical or moral behavior. Alongside of them are rules about what foods the Israelites should and should not eat. And rules about cleanliness, health, hygiene, sexual behavior, and so on. All these rules are mixed together; to the Jewish mind, they were all part of the same law. And when God spoke these commands, he didn’t give them high-level arguments to help them understand why. Much of the time, he said things like, “Don’t eat that; it’s detestable. Don’t do that; it’s foul and corrupt. Don’t pollute yourselves with that kind of behavior.”

In giving Israel the law, God knew what he was doing. God didn’t give them rationally consistent reasons why they should keep the law, because that’s not how human beings normally operate. He was planting instincts, deep gut-level reactions to help them keep the law automatically. And he was planting instincts to keep his chosen people together by keeping them apart from the other nations, so they would not fall into idol worship. When Jews saw how people from other nations lived, the foods they ate, and so on, the Jews instinctively felt the Gentiles were unclean and turned away from them in disgust. After being steeped in the law for many generations, that law became deeply embedded in the Jew’s national psyche. It continually reinforced their tribalism, their sense of collective rightness and purity and became an insurmountable barrier to forming relationships with Gentiles. That barrier, the one law that most clearly drew the dividing line, was the practice of circumcision. To the Jews, circumcision was not simply a custom. It was their identity card, their badge of citizenship that set a clear boundary who was in and who was out.

God’s law put up a wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles. But when Jesus arrived, that wall of hostility started to crumble. During his three-year earthly ministry, Jesus repeatedly violated the moral instincts that had marginalized lots of people (tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, etc.) and pushed them to the edges of society. These people were considered repulsive, but Jesus embraced them. He ate with them and welcomed them to his family, his circle of followers. By their fleshly experience and contact with Jesus, these people experienced the grace of God that washed them clean and returned them to the fold of God’s people. And according to Paul, when Jesus suffered on the cross, in his body he fulfilled and set aside  the requirements of the law. Paul says that, in a mysterious way that we don’t fully understand, Jesus on the cross subsumed into himself all Jews and non-Jews – in other words, all of humanity – and in his humanity made them one with him, and in his divinity brought them into fellowship with God. His death on the cross became a birth, the birth of a new race, a new kind of humanity, where the tribalistic tendencies and rules of the old humanity died and no longer apply.

This new humanity becomes visible starting in the book of Acts. The turning point comes in Acts chapter 10, when the Apostle Peter has a vision while he is praying on a roof. A sheet comes down from heaven, and on this sheet were all kinds of non-kosher animals which Peter instinctively regarded as offensive. A voice says to him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” Peter reacts with disgust: “No way! I have never eaten anything unclean.” Perhaps he thought that God was testing him to see if he would keep the law. Then God said to Peter: “Do not call anything unclean that I have made clean.” That message came to Peter loud and clear. Shortly thereafter, Peter was summoned to the home of a God-fearing Gentile named Cornelius. Peter preached the gospel to Cornelius, and all the members of his household were baptized, and Peter ate with them. By the leading of the Holy Spirit, Peter defied his deeply rooted instincts and made the startling decision to recognize Gentiles as God’s people without circumcision, by their faith in Jesus alone.

By the power of Jesus’ cross, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Jews and Gentiles dropped their tribalistic hostility and came together in a single body. In verse 19, Paul calls them fellow members of God’s household. What is God’s household? God’s household is the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit. The second person of the Trinity, in his humanity, has now subsumed the Jews and Gentiles and brought them into the inner sanctum of the Trinity, to participate in that incredibly intimate everlasting fellowship.

And in verses 20-22, Paul switches to the imagery of architecture. We, the diverse people of God, are coming together like stones and bricks, forming a new building, with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. That building is a holy temple, the new dwelling of God, the place that God calls home and makes presence known on earth as he is in heaven.

Each of the three metaphors Paul uses for the church — the body of Christ, the household of God, and the temple of God – implies a very high level of unity, integration and interdependence. He is not talking about a congregation of Jewish Christians over here, and a separate congregation of Gentile Christians over there. He is talking about loving, intimate personal relationships forming between adversaries, people who otherwise would never in a million years be together. Wherever and whenever we allow Jesus to override our tribalistic instincts, to put aside our differences and come together to worship and fellowship in the person of Christ – wherever these intimate relationships are forming in the church – that  is where the glorious future is pouring into the present, and the kingdom of God is most clearly in our midst.

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…”

]]> http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/01/28/critique-my-ephesians-sermon/feed/ 72 http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/01/27/arent-we-christians-all-jonahs/ http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/01/27/arent-we-christians-all-jonahs/#comments Mon, 27 Jan 2014 23:26:17 +0000 http://www.ubfriends.org/?p=7440 My Jonah moment. I am reviewing Prophet on the Run for Cross Focused Reviews. It is a short, thorough and excellent practical commentary on Jonah by Baruch Maoz. I am enamored by it and highly recommend it. I am reminded of my first Jonah moment which occurred in the 1980s when I felt upset about two young men I was mentoring for several years. They were getting married with the blessing of our senior pastor. I thought, “These two young Christians need to prove themselves first, before enjoying matrimonial bliss!” Though I felt it was wrong to feel this way, I could not shake how I felt. I knew I was a Christian like Jonah who was unhappy when “certain people” were given grace, mercy, forgiveness and a godly wife (when I thought they needed to squirm a little more)!

Translating the Hebrew. An interesting aspect of the book is that the author used his own translation of the Hebrew to more clearly convey its sense of poetry, imagery and flow. Though he “sacrificed the English to serve the Hebrew,” he made it a fresh reading of a familiar book. Also, the summary bullet points at the end of each chapter are very helpful and useful.

Highlights and insights. The exegesis often addresses our heart’s deepest motives. They are also foundational for a proper preaching of the gospel and teaching of the Bible.

All humans will be judged by the Law. “Their evil has come up before me” (Jon 1:2). God takes our sin seriously and so should we. God holds people accountable for their actions. Yes, God is the God of mercy and grace–toward Jonah and all people. But God’s grace does not remove his hatred for sin, nor erase his determination to punish those who persist in sin (Rom 2:6-8)–including Jonah. The right way to preach the gospel is to begin with this foundational truth. Only when people understand God’s holiness and see their sin in light of that holiness will they also understand their need of a savior.

The servant of God, Jonah, became stupid (Jon 1:3). None of God’s people are without sin. We will never be completely free of sin until Christ returns. When he fell into sin, Jonah became really stupid thinking that he could “flee from the presence of the Lord” (Jon 1:3). Though he knew the Bible and knew better, he acted in violation of everything he knew and believed. This is what sin does to our intelligence.

It is impossible to escape from God because God rules over all, including the forces of nature. When Jonah fled from God, God actively “hurled a great wind onto the sea” and “the ship considered breaking up” (Jon 1:4). The language is evocative. Nature does not act on its own. The power of nature and even the ship itself submit to God in putting an end to Jonah’s vain effort to escape from God. There is no situation over which God does not have control.

Our sins have consequences and we cannot escape the consequences of our actions. Jonah’s sin brought disaster to non-believers (Jon 1:5). His sin made him escape reality, become indifferent to the troubles he brought on others, and made him unable to pray (Jon 1:6).

The servant of God, Jonah, was acting irresponsibly and was severely rebuked by non-believers, yet he did not care (Jon 1:6-8). Christians should be a blessing to others. But when we fall into sin, as Jonah did, then even non-Christians seem far wiser and even “more spiritual” than us. This should greatly humble us.

The servant of God, Jonah, was evading responsibility and remaining silent for as long as he could (Jon 1:6-8).

Through non-believers, God helped Jonah to confess who he is, what sin he committed, and what should be done to him (Jon 1:9-12). Without any choice left, Jonah accepted responsibility and submitted to the punishment he knew his sin deserved (Jon 1:12). This is a fundamental gospel principle–recognition of sin and of the fact that our guilt renders us liable to punishment. Though this is an incomplete view of the gospel, it is often a necessary one at the beginning of our journey toward Christ. Before we understand the magnitude of God’s grace we need to understand the greatness of his anger and the weight of our own sins. Learning to recognize our sins is how God works in all of our hearts to lead us to know the depth of his love and grace for us.

Jonah repented when he realized that God did not destroy him by treating him as his sins deserve (Jon 2:1-10). In his distress, he remembered the Bible verses in Psalms that he knew by heart as a prophet of God. He realized that though he brought this trouble upon himself, God was merciful to him. He knew that though he should have died for his sin, yet God saved him. His prayer shows his understanding of salvation that is not due to man’s merit or effort but entirely due to the grace of God (Jon 2:9). Because of God’s saving grace, he also vowed to make good (Jon 2:9). Repentance is not simply a verbal acknowledgment of sin, but an actual change of one’s heart and actions.

When Jonah simply spoke the message that God gave him (Jon 3:1), a national repentance and turning to the Lord happened (Jon 3:1-9). Jonah’s message was a message of judgment: “Forty more days and Ninevah is destroyed!” (Jon 3:4) It is rather simplistic, unimpressive, rudimentary, crude and judgmental. But when he did just as God said (Jon 3:1), a national repentance and revival broke out (Jon 3:5).

Exemplary leadership from a pagan king: Repentance happened “from the greatest to the least” (Jon 3:5b). It is interesting that Nineveh’s king, a pagan ruler, exemplified godly leadership, by humbling himself before God and his people (Jon 3:6-9). The king did not think of himself, his dignity or his privileges. He approached God with a deep sense of sinfulness, in shame and sorrow for sin. “This is how things should be. Leaders are supposed to lead in spiritual and moral matters, although it is precisely those who lead that often find it most difficult to accept responsibility. It is hard to stand at the peak of the pyramid and admit your weaknesses. It is tough, when everyone’s eyes are on you, not to hide your sins. But in Nineveh, repentance began ‘from the greatest’ and proceeded ‘to the least of them'” (Jon 3:5b). “This should be the process in every context. Leaders and all who are looked up to need to set an example by leading others in the ways of God. They should be the first to accept criticism, the first to examine their ways, the first to admit their own faults and to correct them. A people, a church or a family will seldom be better than its leaders. Good leaders will strive for spiritual and moral perfection, and will seek purity of motive and action.” This quote about leadership is my favorite quote of the book, though it is not the main theme of Jonah.

The servant of God, Jonah, was so angry that God blessed “others” (Jon 4:1-11). Chapter 4 is the heart of the book of Jonah. It reveals the punch line, the book’s central lesson. We should learn what God taught Jonah and draw important conclusions for ourselves. Mainly, Jonah’s response to the grace of God on “others” (the world) was one of anger, resentment and bitterness (Jon 4:1-3). Is he any different from the the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son? From the Pharisees? From US?? With Ninevah’s repentance, “God repented of the evil he had determined to do to them, and did not do it” (Jon 3:10). But Ninevah’s repentance “was to Jonah a very great evil, and he was angry” (Jon 4:1). Jonah was furious. He was saddened. He refused to accept the grace shown to Nineveh and charged God as being wrong, though he knew exactly who God was. He prayed, “Please Lord, was this not what I thought when I was still on my land? This is why I at first tried to escape to Tarshish, because, I knew you were a merciful and gracious God, patient and full of grace, and that you repent from evil” (Jon 4:2). Despite Jonah’s horrible attitude, God is stubborn in his love and did not leave Jonah in his sin but continued to extend grace to him (Jon 4:5-11).

Some closing questions:

• Are we not often like Jonah?
• When God blesses those (like Ninevah) who have hurt you and others, are you angry? Do you have a right to be angry (Jon 4:4)?
• Is there anything that God does that you consider inappropriate or unjust?

Heart, soul and strength. For over three decades of having one to one Bible studies with many young adults, I have always explained the Great Command (Dt 6:5; Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30) as loving God with all our emotions (heart), all our intellect (mind), and all our effort (strength). It is to love God emotionally, intellectually and volitionally. I like this exegesis. But I am technically off.

In the original language, the Hebrew word translated “heart” refers both to emotions as well as our mind, i.e., to our inner person. “Soul”–which means “throat”–has meanings of appetite/desire, life, the whole self; “soul” refers to one’s entire person. “Strength,” meaning power, also means “greatly, exceedingly.” It is best captured by a word like “resources.” This includes physical strength, but also economic and social strength, as well as all things we own–our family, house, tools, toys, savings, even our church and ministry.

Inner being, whole person and everything we own. A more thorough rendering of the Great Command would be to love God with all of our inner being (heart), with our whole person (soul) and with everything we claim to own (strength). In brief, it means to love the only God (Dt 6:4; Mk 12:29) without reservation or qualification.

Hopefully, this is helpful as you share Jesus and Scripture with others. May God bless you and UBFriends to love God in 2014.

Overview of BITE

The model contains four elements: Behavior control, Information control, Thought control and Emotional control. Based on his own and other’s experience with the Korean religous group called the Moon organiaztion, Hassan developed a structure to help identify excessive control over people’s lives. BITE provides a framework for distinguishing between helpful mentoring and harmful “lording over” control.

Many people think of mind control as an ambiguous, mystical process that cannot be defined in concrete terms. In reality, mind control refers to a specific set of methods and techniques, such as hypnosis or thought- stopping, that influence how a person thinks, feels, and acts. Like many bodies of knowledge, it is not inherently good or evil. If mind control techniques are used to empower an individual to have more choice, and authority for his life remains within himself, the effects can be beneficial. For example, benevolent mind control can be used to help people quit smoking without affecting any other behavior.

Reference: Steve Hassan’s BITE model

The Bible and BITE

Someone may claim that BITE control is what Jesus did to his followers, and that such control is both normal and necessary in order to obey Jesus’ command to make disciples. Rev. Robert Pardon disagrees. Below are some excerpts from his article explaining why Jesus’ methods of discipleship are very different from BITE control.

Those who seek to defend their allegiance to an aberrational Christian group will often claim that Jesus utilized “thought reform/mind control” techniques (as traditionally understood) upon His followers. What is troubling in these  assertions is that they do not arise from those who reject Christianity and the claims of Christ, but rather from those whose devotion to Christianity is often misguided, extreme or dangerous.

Jesus sought to empower His followers to be all that God intended them to be, not enslave them to a group or system. A person’s ability to make decisions is always encouraged. The issue is following Him, not some group. He also constantly admonished His disciples to “count the cost” of their discipleship to Him that they might persevere in adverse circumstances (Luke 14:28). However, He never said to his disciples, “Follow me, and together we will conquer the world.” Rather He said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matt. 4:19).

According to Scripture, Jesus never sought to promote Himself for his own glorification, but rather for His Father’s. And He always encouraged His disciples to think for themselves (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27).

Source:  Biblical Discipleship Versus A Totalistic Environment

Some questions to consider

If you are part of a disciple-making ministry, how do you avoid BITE control? What are helpful ways of mentoring? What steps can you take to keep your personal freedom?

In his own words

I conclude with a video where Steve Hassan shares an overview of BITE in his own words.

Reference: Steve Hassan’s BITE model

“ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. “ (NIV)

This is for all those who preached grace and talked grace, but held onto some forms of legalism in the deep crevices of their hearts. This is my story and I pray it may set free, someone who was struggling as I was. This one is for you!

2 Samuel 22: 21-25 reads, “The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me. 22 For I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from my God. 23 For all his rules were before me, and from his statutes I did not turn aside. 24 I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from guilt. 25 And the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness in his sight.” (ESV)

From a young age David set his life toward God. He meant to keep the ways of the Lord and live according to the word of God, trusting that the Lord was faithful to his promises and would credit him with righteousness. When we read this, in this New Testament age, we think that David was sounding a little self righteous with this “According to my righteousness”. “according to the cleanness of my hands”. King David was a great man, but he did sin. And some of sins were ubber serious. But I realize that he can say these things because he received the forgiveness of sins from God. He received the grace of God and that is how he can be declared righteous in the sight of God and that is how he can say that is hands are clean. He could have confidence that he is blameless from God’s point of view and that he has fulfilled all of the law’s demands, only because of God’s grace. David knew this salvation, this justification apart from works. Romans 4:6-9 reads, “just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” (ESV)  It was not something new to King David. Abraham himself was considered righteous by believing, before he was circumcised. (Romans 4:1-12)

As King David could have sought many different kinds of rewards, but for him the greatest reward was being found righteous in God’s sight. Look at verse 25, “And the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness in his sight.”  What was God’s reward? God’s reward for King David was that he was delivered from the hand of his enemies and that his kingdom was established and upheld. He received the love and forgiveness and the peace of God in his heart. He also knew that his body would not see decay and that he would not be abandoned to the grave, but would experience resurrection and eternal life in the kingdom of God with God, forever. This is the greatest reward and it is given to us, not because of our works, but because of the pure grace of God.

Holding onto the grace of God and knowing that we are justified by the grace of God alone is an imperative. We can not live without it. Over the last few decades of Christian living I knew this and I held onto the grace of God. But there was another part of my heart that held onto salvation by works. I was the type of Christian who quietly and privately held onto legalism while talking about grace. But the effect of this on my life could not be ignored. I felt “right” and accepted by God and my peers if I was always engaged in mission, always doing something positive and related to my mission and calling in my life. If I deviated, even a little, or took some rest, there would be feelings of failure, guilt and fruitless feelings brewing in my heart. If I was not bearing outward fruit in my life, then my solution was to work harder. Maybe I needed to simply reposition my life within the paradigm I was operating in, and from that new vantage point, work harder. If I suffered a few more years doing the same thing and I would somehow make breakthrough. With human effort I tried to keep my “hands clean” and never to turn away from the Lord. I attempted to live a blameless life by obeying what I knew was the law to the Lord, all the while telling the world, “by the grace of God I am what I am.”

What is the end of that verse? “No, I worked harder than all of them. Yet not I, but the grace of God that was within me.” (1 Cor 15:10, NIV) I was operating on the premise that if I had the faith to hold onto the grace of Jesus, then automatically I would work hard, even striving to work as hard as Apostle Paul. I literally ignored “Yet not I, but the grace of God that was within me.” I knew very little the difference between the working hard and the grace of God; the difference between human effort versus divine inspiration; human strength versus spiritual strength. What was the end result of this striving and seeking to be right before God using my human efforts? It was years of depression, anger and frustration, unreal expectations on family members, and joyless Christian living with no relationships with the greater body of Christ. I had no way to be set free. Who do I blame? Myself. I was the leader of a single family house church for 14 years with just me and my family and few Bible students who came and went. I let it happen. For over twenty years, I ignored pieces of the Bible. I thought depression was part of the package of suffering for Christ. I was willing to live in it my secret legalism. I even promoted it.

It took my wife’s courage and “wifely” wisdom to let me know that something was not right. It has been a very tough two years, coming out of my old ways, but by God’s grace I have been digging deep in the crevices of my mind and heart and sweeping away vestiges of legalism. I have been making strides towards understanding more fully, “by the grace of God I am what I am.” and “Yet not I but the grace of God that was within me.”  And even my recurrent nightmares of not measuring up, have gone away, being replaced with dreams of being proactive and overcoming. (That is another story.)

Consider preaching extemporaneously

My typed recollection of my extemporaneous preaching. Let me start by saying that there is nothing wrong with preaching by reading off a manuscript. But do let me suggest that preaching extemporaneously has tremendous benefits that I have personally found. After preaching yesterday on The Kingdom of This World Becomes The Kingdom of Christ (9/29/13), this is my typed recollection of a part of what I preached extemporaneously: Eat The Word, Not Spit It At Others. Feel free to critique it.

Below are my random thoughts and experiences. Let me start with some negative sentiments and bias against extemporaneous preaching.

Extemporaneous preaching seems unspiritual to some older UBFers. Those who have  for decades (20 to 45 years) listened to preaching that is being read from a prepared manuscript may find it very hard to listen to extemporaneous preaching. Older missionaries in particular who have listened predominantly to UBF preaching are very comfortable when they listen to someone reading from a manuscript. They feel as though such a preacher is very well prepared, for they have spent many hours in prayer and in preparing their manuscript with much labor. So when they hear someone preaching without a manuscript, they feel as though that messenger is not prayerful nor prepared, since they seem to be primarily speaking off the cuff from a stream of consciousness. They feel as though the preacher is lazy, unspiritual, unprepared or immature, because they seem to be preaching whatever they like without any weight, gravitas or holiness. In brief, those who are unfamiliar with extemporaneous preaching may despise it and demean it and discredit it.

You cannot give “message training.” When someone is reading off a prepared manuscript you can train the messenger to write and re-write their message over and over again until the message trainer is satisfied. But in my opinion such “UBF message training” has caused some UBF messengers to become unnatural and suboptimal communicators, as many recent comments have said regarding our poorly delivered 2013 ISBC messages. Encouraging and helping younger messengers to preach extemporaneously as a part of their preaching arsenal may be a way of raising more natural preachers and effective communicators of God’s word.

Preaching extemporaneously does not mean preaching without preparation. This should hopefully be obvious. I still write out my sermons as my preparation to preach each week. But I no longer read what I have written. I primarily prepare an outline of what I would preach. For instance, my simple outline of my sermon yesterday (which is quite easily memorized) is:

I. The Kingdom of The World: Under Judgment (The most unpopular message of the Bible)

• Devastation – Devastation of the world (Rev 8:6-12): The first four trumpets.

• Woe – Woe, woe, woe to those who reject God (Rev 8:13-9:19): The fifth and sixth trumpet.

• Idolatry – Refusal to repent of idolatry (Rev 9:20-21).

II. The Kingdom of Christ: Under Grace (Nothing can thwart the final victory of God)

• Prayer – The purpose of God is accomplished through the prayers of the people of God (Rev 8:1-5).

• Prophesy – The mystery of God will be accomplished (Rev 10:1-11): Take and eat the scroll, which is sweet and bitter.

• Power – The witness of the people of God, the church (Rev 11:1-14): God’s providence, provision and protection despite devastation and destruction

• Praise – God will reign (Rev 11:15-19): The kingdom of Christ is the final and ultimate reality of the people of God.

With this outline I preached extemporaneously for about 40 min.

Some benefits of preaching extemporaneously:

• I depend on the Holy Spirit more than on my well prepared notes.
• I share things on the spur of the moment that I did not think of during my preparation.
• I speak conversationally, rather than lecturing others.
• I share stories, rather than speak down to others.
• I am like my audience, and not above my audience.
• I can gauge my audience’s response better and speak longer or less.

A reason you might not want to preach extemporaneously. It will scare the living daylights out of you the first time you walk to the podium to preach without any notes! The first time I did so, I felt as though the ground would open and swallow me alive.

Would UBF messages and the teaching of Scripture be helped by learning and practicing how to preach extemporaneously?

Within the past few weeks, my friend in Toledo UBF shared a Sunday lecture. This lecture is now published publicly. Here is my reaction to it. Here is the public version: THE PLANS HE HAS FOR YOU.

What is springboarding?

Springboarding is a word I made up. It does not exist in Merriam-Websters dictionary. Why did I make up such a word? I made up “springboarding” to describe how I used to write messages in UBF. At that time, I would not care about the common definitions of words. I would redefine words, take them out of context and arrange them to make my point, a point I often didn’t understand. I took much liberty with language.

The word springboard however does exist. No I’m not talking about that flexible board used in swimming pools. I am talking about the other meaning: “a point of departure; a jumping-off place”.

The most common problem I have discovered with my UBF messages, and a problem that is rampant among UBF messengers, is the act of taking a “key verse” and using that verse as a point of departure from the bible text. The late James Kim warned me about this when he critiqued my messages. He warned me of the danger of making my own framework and then jumping into that framework from one of the bible verses in order to talk about something I wanted to talk about. He said we should respect and understand the framework presented by the text before making any conclusions or applications. For some reason, I didn’t listen to his good advice. I am listening now however!

Feeling exiled

My friend really wants to talk about hope. He clearly feels some connection to the exiles mentioned in the book of Jeremiah. He and his ministry is in quite a bit of chaos lately, and has been for about three years. And in the back of his mind he knows the chaos has been there all 25 years he’s been there. Listen to some of his words about how hopeless he feels:

“In my 25 years in Toledo UBF, to my knowledge we have never studied a passage from the book of Jeremiah.”

“We don’t always get to choose were we are to be and our best laid plans often don’t work out. Maybe you planned for 2 children, but God gave you 4 instead. Maybe you planned to study computer science but God changed your major to creative writing.”

Jumping into Hope

Ok so my friend is feeling a bit down and rather quickly remembers one of the most quoted verses in Toledo UBF, Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” He then gets excited and launches into preparing a message about hope. He longs for hope and correctly recognizes that the people still left in Toledo UBF need hope. So what does he do? He jumps into talking about hope from Jeremiah 29:11. He really wants to talk about hope, and by the stars in heaven, he is going to.

I find it highly insightful to notice what words the Holy Scripture talks about and what words my friend talks about in his message.

This is my friend’s message visualized in Wordle:

Based on word counts, his message is unbalanced and creates a framework different from the text in the bible. He talks mostly about these three words:

1. God (God or God’s appear 96 times)
2. hope (hope appears 37 times)
3. plans (plan or plans appear 33 times)

This is Jeremiah 29:1-14 visualized in Wordle:

What are the top 3 words this text talks about?

1. LORD (appears 8 times)
2. exile (appears 5 times)
3. Jerusalem (appears 5 times)

Hope is not hope-so but a know-so

I’m not making this up. The Toledo UBF messenger says “hope is not hope-so but a know-so”. What does that mean? Because I know this man personally, I know he is capable of so much better writing. Why is he so confused?

“Hope is the main message I really want to talk about today. But how can I ever hope to explain the meaning of hope. Underneath every story from Genesis to Revelation you can find a message of hope. Essentially, the stories all follow the same basic pattern. Man puts his in something other than God, man fails, God disciplines man; man either repents and finds hope in God again or loses hope and dies miserably. These stories also teach us that humans have definitions of hope that are different from God’s. We might hope our team wins, or we might hope we don’t lose our jobs or our house. But the biblical definition of hope is not hope-so but a know-so.”

“Hope-so hope is not for sure. There is no absolute certainty about it. But godly hope is know-so hope, because there is no doubt that what God says, will happen. It is surer than the rising of the sun each day. Here are just two words of God for which we can be certain.”

1 Cor 10:13b “And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

And Rom 5:5 “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

Clearly my friend is seeking “a way out” of the mess in Toledo UBF. He has been disappointed the past three years and longs for love to be poured out. What hope does he find? What hope does my friend offer us? Keep reading.

“God’s hope never disappoints, because God is always faithful to His word. He is our anchor in the present and for the future. The apostle Paul tells us in 1 Cor 15:19 “19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” Godly hope is not hope for in the things of this life, but for God’s heavenly treasure. Our true hope is Jesus and his kingdom. Until we reach it we must keep believing, keep trusting, keep obey and remaining in Jesus and his words.”

So my friend gives us a vague hope for future life in heaven. Wait a minute, I need hope now! Can’t we have hope now too? That verse he quoted does not say “Don’t have hope in this life.” It just says “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” That means we can and should have hope for this life and also for the future. My friend falls for the typical UBF misrepresentation of 1 Corinthians 15:19. The UBF teaching almost always presents a false dichotomy. The verse is not saying we have to choose between hope for this life and hope for Heaven. It is simply saying don’t have hope only for this life. The hope Jesus gives is for now. It is for today. And it is for tomorrow and the future and in Heaven. Hope is hope. We need it now and in the future.

Self-generated Certitude

The Toledo UBF messenger then launches into teaching us three methods of generating certitude.

“The condition to receiving the plans that God has for us, and for realizing God’s hope is three-fold. Call, come and pray, and seek with all your heart. Calling on God is not like calling someone on your cell phone. To call on God is first to acknowledge God’s sovereignty and power over our lives. In this way we can “approach the throne of grace with confidence…and receive His mercy and grace in the time of our need.” Secondly, to pray. Pray for the forgiveness and God’s help in following the plan He has laid out for us. Finally, seek me with all your heart. We won’t know God’s will, seeking him half-heartedly. Only seeking him in desperate times. We won’t come to know God’s hope, if our heart remains divided between our worldly hopes for wealth, and relationship and God’s hope for eternal riches that remain unseen.

Call, and God will come! Pray and He will listen. Seek with all your heart and you shall find. Then, we our spirit within shall experience God’s living hope! A peace amidst the storms of life! A knowledge and understanding of God’s plan that enables us to make sense of the world around us.”

I hope my friend reads other parts of the bible when speaking about hope in the future, such as Psalms 62:5 “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.” and Colossians 1:27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

The hope found in the bible is not dependent on our seeking or our praying. The bible presents the great story of hope in the person of Christ.

Hope is not Certitude

I think we should take a look at the dictionary for a moment. My friend is presenting methods to generate certitude, not preaching the gospel of Jesus which inspires hope that is living.

hope (noun)
desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment
someone or something on which hopes are centered

hope: (verb)
to cherish a desire with anticipation; trust

certitude:
the state of being or feeling certain; certainty of act or event

Conclusion

Here is the conclusion of this hopeless message:

“We all experience times of exile. We often can’t wait for our current struggle to be over. But through the message of Jeremiah we learn that we must never give up. We must do our part and continue living one day at a time in obedience to God’s word. God does have a plan for us but His plan might not be on our timing. Until then, we call, pray and seek, In so doing Christ Jesus will reveal himself to us. God’s spirit will speak to our hearts and lead us in paths of righteousness. Even though our present reality may be like a valley of death, we shall not fear, but hope in the Lord and in goodness. In His hands we shall prosper and dwell in the house of Lord forever.”

I don’t hear hope here. I hear about plans and working. I hear selfish ambition to grab God’s blessing. Is our Lord so inclined to listen to such plans and work? I hope so.

An example of hope

I find this paragraph to be utterly offensive and hopeless.

“God commanded the exiles to pray for their captors. It is easier to pray for the people and places we like, but God says we must also pray for the people and places we don’t like. “Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers we all prosper.” In Toledo, our Public school system is not good so I and many of our co-workers send their children to private schools, charter schools or do home schooling. Be we really must pray for Toledo schools, because if they fail, people will leave Toledo, then business leave, then the University declines and so on. And so Toledo could fall into ruin like our neighbor Detroit who recently declared bankruptcy and who lost 25% of it population in less then 10 years. 30% of its houses remain empty and abandon. I don’t believe it will happen to Toledo. The point is whether we are from Toledo, Frankfurt, Cologne, Seoul, or wherever, we must Pray for our cities and countries and it’s leaders.”

Perhaps my friend in Toledo UBF will come to visit Detroit and learn about hope?

My short answer is NO! This post addresses what I believe is bad Bible study, wrong Bible interpretation, and horrible theology. It is NOT what the Bible teaches. It is a butchering of Gen 50:20. It goes something like this: “Because good resulted from evil, therefore the evil is OK or not that bad. Since God allowed the evil to fulfill God’s good will and blessed people anyway, then the evil is acceptable.” Such a Bible teaching says that a good result justifies a bad means. I do not believe that the Bible ever teaches that the ends justifies the means. The Bible teaches clearly that evil is evil, even if good resulted from evil. (Read J.I Packer’s excellent short book: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.)

Does UBF teach that since many people became good Christians through UBF, therefore UBF must be an exemplary Christian church and ministry? After being in UBF for 33 years, I believe that some UBF leaders teach this, if not explicitly, then implicitly. I believe that such a teaching–whether direct or indirect–is not healthy. It does not produce a humble Christian, but an elitist Christian. It does not promote inclusivity but exclusivity. It is in fact the exact opposite of what the gospel is. The gospel says that God blesses us in spite us. But such UBF teachings suggest and hint that God blesses UBF because we are good.

For sure no one in UBF ever says this explicitly. But UBF has been a proud church and Christian ministry that looks down and criticizes mega-churches (they don’t disciple people 1:1 like UBF), liberal churches (they are not absolute toward the Bible like UBF), and churches that serve mercy ministries (they are just doing social work instead of teaching the Bible like UBF). Also, I have heard UBF leaders say, “UBF has no weak point,” or “UBF is on the cutting edge of raising disciples.” Criticizing other churches and ministries and highlighting what we believe is UBF’s strength does not produce humble Christians. Worse yet, it does not highlight and promote the gospel of God’s grace (Ac 20:24).

The faulty Bible teaching, which is subtle, subjective and subjunctive says: “Because people who went through UBF did well and became pastors and good Christians, therefore, somehow UBF contributed to their good. Whatever evil or abuses that was done to them in UBF was still blessed by God. Thus, you should just bury the past abuses and move on.” I do not accept such reasoning and logic as biblical nor healthy.

In my opinion, such Bible teaching justifies spiritual abuse. It protects those UBF chapter directors who continue to exercise their authority in UBF in controlling, manipulative, clandestine and abusive ways. Some leaders in UBF keep insisting that since good was done through UBF, then UBF is basically OK. If this is so, my contention is that the problems and abuses in UBF will continue.

What do you think? Does UBF teach that a good result justifies a bad means? Does UBF imply that since God blessed you through UBF, you should just be thankful and not complain about any abuse done to you in UBF? Is this biblical? Healthy?

Scary words of Jesus.

I want to be blessed. I hesitated studying Revelation for the longest time. Yet this book promises a blessing to anyone who reads it, hears it and takes it to heart (Rev 1:3). Since I want to be blessed, I began to read several books in order to understand apocalyptic literature, which is the genre of Revelation. Last year, while in Manila, I preached on The Revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev 1:1-20), What Is Heaven Like? (Rev 21:1-22:5), and Christian, Listen Up! (Rev 2:1-3:22); my intent was to cover what Jesus says to the seven churches in one sermon. I wanted to be done with it. But the Filipino UBF leaders asked me to teach on the seven churches at their Easter Conference (Apr 29-31, 2013). So I had to restudy them…again. I was surprised how relevant it was to me and to our contemporary churches. This is a very brief summation of what I learned.

Ephesus: Discernment Without Love (Rev 2:1-7). They were very good and solid with truth, but they lacked love for others. They loved Jesus, but their dwindling declining love for people displeased Jesus.

Smyrna: The Riches of Poverty (Rev 2:8-11). This is one of two churches with no rebukes, because they were willing to suffer, be imprisoned and martyred by not denying the name of Jesus.

Pergamum: Compromising and Defiled (Rev 2:12-17). Though they were true to the name of Jesus like Smyrna, yet they compromised with idolatry and sexual immorality, thus defiling themselves.

Thyatira: Love Without Discernment (Rev 2:18-29). They were the opposite of Ephesus. They were doing more out of love than before, yet like Pergamum they compromised with idolatry and sexual immorality.

Sardis: Giving False Impressions (Rev 3:1-7). They were very good at making themselves look like a really good and lively church. But Jesus saw that they were dead.

Philadelphia: Keeping God’s Word With Little Strength (Rev 3:7-13). This is the second church after Smyrna with no rebuke. Despite having little strength they kept Jesus’ word.

Laodicea: The Poverty of Riches (Rev 3:14-22). They are the opposite of Smyrna, who was poor yet rich. Their wealth and self-sufficiency made them lukewarm, wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked!

Hear what the Spirit says. To all seven churches, Jesus exhorts repentance and faithfulness to Jesus to the end, and says, “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” To all who overcome and are victorious Jesus promises ultimate blessings that nothing in this world can ever give.

Do I love as I did at first? Personally, I perhaps relate most to Ephesus, since I love the Bible, but might have trouble loving as I did at first…especially when I am annoyed. Living in affluent America, the temptation of idolatry, immorality, duplicity and money is ever present, which was the defilement of Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis and Laodicea. I pray to live the faithfulness unto death of Smyrna and the unwavering perseverance of Philadelphia despite having little strength.

Does Jesus have anything against you? Which church do you most relate to?

No growth = Deficiency of leadership.

All four gospels emphasize “no lording over others.” According to Jesus, good leaders lead without lording over others, which is what worldly leaders do. It is to influence without imposing oneself, without being intrusive and without interfering. A few weeks ago I preached on Christian leaders are not to lord over others. Matthew, Mark and Luke all record Jesus’ emphatic negation by stating clearly and explicitly that his disciples are not to lord over others like worldly rulers (Mt 20:25-28; Mk 10:42-45; Lk 22:24-27). John’s version of “not lording over others from above” is Jesus’ attitude toward his disciples as his close friends (Jn 15:15), rather than as their lord and teacher (Jn 13:13). Jesus also showed his leadership as one that takes the lowest humblest role (Jn 13:1-5), which shocked his disciples.

Obedience follows love, not the other way around. Not lording over others is hard for any leader to put into practice because it is easier to “get things done” by telling others what to do based on your position of authority as a leader. What is wrong with this? It reduces the human interaction into a command-style relationship. Command-obey relationships is a lording over others that the NT speaks out against (Mt 20:26; Mk 10:43; Lk 22:26; Phm 8-9, 14; 1 Pet 5:3). To Jesus it is NEVER obey me and be loved by me, which would be a top down manipulative relationship. In fact, it is the very opposite (Jn 14:15, 21, 23).

The Christian leader is functionally the Holy Spirit. Perhaps, the greatest damage of a top-down lording over others ministry is that the Christian leader functionally becomes like God. Even if the leader emphatically denies it, those under his (or her) leadership will feel as though obedience to them is a prerequisite to pleasing God. By lording over others, the leader produces a form of slavery to the leader, and obscures one’s own relationship with God. This also produces guilt not based on one’s sin before God (Ps 51:4), but false guilt based on one’s obedience or disobedience toward the leader who lords over them. This creates an anthropocentric ministry that draws attention to the human leader’s direction and directives, rather than to Christ and Scripture.

Have you experienced a leader who lords over you?

Why able and capable young leader’s leave

In judging fairly who the person is should not matter. In my sermon on Deuteronomy chapter 1, The Words Moses Spoke, Moses also taught us that good leaders MUST judge fairly without partiality (Deut 1:16-18). This means that a good leader’s judgment should not be affected by any consideration other than the truth. Practically, it should not matter in the least if one person is an Israelite and the other is a foreigner (Deut 1:16). Ajith Fernando writes eloquently:

“Applying this to the life of the church or nation today, it would mean that sometimes a judgment may be made against a loyal member for the benefit of an outsider. In our cultures there is a strong sense of community solidarity that goes to the extreme of protecting one’s own when outsiders are involved. To do otherwise is considered an act of disloyalty and betrayal. But Moses instructs the judges to judge against members of their own group if necessary.”

“Pronouncing judgment against one’s own and in favor of an outsider is very hard for leaders as sometimes it looks like ingratitude and disloyalty to one who has worked so loyally and hard. But though there will be hurt at first, in the long run such thoroughgoing commitment to justice will reap good results.”

In judging fairly favoritism and partiality should not be shown to the one with status. Good and fair judgements must also treat the small and the great alike (Deut 1:17a). Sadly, in many societies and in some churches too, people with influence are considered to be above the law or immune to prosecution. But showing favoritism or partiality in judgment toward anyone, regardless of who they are or what they have done, will invariably result in a sick nation or a sick church, because it blurs the fact that God is always fair and just (Gen 18:19, 25; Prov 31:9). Therefore, a good leader fears no one but God (Deut 1:17b; Prov 29:25; Mt 10:28).

Have you experienced fairness and justice when judgments were made by your leaders?

That saying, “Go back to the Bible,” features the word back. But this juncture, we have no choice but to move forward. No matter how much we pine for familiar comforts, we press on to a future that is strange and uncertain.

In this climate of postmodernity, we hear questions that  a generation ago were unimaginable. In my undergraduate days, people were asking, “How can I know that Christianity is true?” The words know and true needed no explanation. But today, many are asking profound, unsettling questions about the foundations of truth and knowledge. If we cling to old ways of speaking about the Bible without understanding the ethos of the times, we risk alienating an entire generation, rendering ourselves and our message irrelevant.

Is going back to the Bible an appropriate direction for today? That depends on the context.

Imagine you are speaking to Christians who have little or no engagement with the Scriptures. Telling them to go back to the Bible might be the best advice that you could give, and if that advice were taken, it could lead to genuine renewal.

On the other hand, suppose you meet someone who spends so much time in “spiritual” (translation: church-related) activities that he becomes detached from reality, ignoring his wife and children and the emotional, relational or financial problems that may be ruining his life. Telling him to go back to the Bible might be the worst advice imaginable. It would only encourage him to retreat deeper into an abstract religious fantasyland where the people in his life are summarily dismissed and the conflicts in his life are spiritualized** away.

[**Spiritualize: the practice of minimizing, dismissing or avoiding problems based on the misguided idea that this is what Christians are supposed to do.]

Or suppose you find a community that invests a great deal of time in Bible study. And suppose the community has cultural, generational and ideological conflicts that threaten the community’s health and existence, but leaders don’t want to talk about those problems, because they find those conversations too awkward and uncomfortable. I imagine that if Jesus were standing before them, he wouldn’t be telling them to go back to the Bible. Rather, he would tell them to put the Bible down for a while and start to act on its teachings, especially the teachings about relationships and conflict. Problems in a community cannot be solved merely through personal Bible study; they need to be faced by the community.

A few years ago, I asked a ministry leader, “Is it possible to study the Bible too much?” The leader immediately responded, “No, I don’t think so.” Yet I have seen people study the Bible too much. I’ve watched them retreat to their comfort zones when, in my estimation, they really ought to be doing something else.

Bible study is important. Hearing God’s word is essential. But more of a good thing is not always a good thing. Sooner or later you cross a threshold where studying becomes a cheap substitute for doing. James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” If we are not careful, long hours of Bible study can become self-deception. It becomes what author Peter Scazzero has called, “Using God to run from God” (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Chapter 2).

I’ve spent a great deal of time studying the Bible over the last thirty years, and sometimes it’s been wonderful. The experience of sitting down to read and discuss the Bible with believers whom you love and respect can be exhilarating. But Bible study can also be boring. It can be depressing or even infuriating.

The outcome of Bible study depends on our attitudes toward Scripture. And it depends on the happenings of our lives and the drama of our interpersonal relationships. I have found that it’s very difficult – actually, it’s impossible – for Bible study to be effective among people who are in serious conflict. If participants do not openly acknowledge the conflicts and start to work them out beforehand, buried problems and suppressed emotions start to come out in inappropriate ways. Leaders start to use Scripture as a tool to suppress opposition. Pastors use the pulpit to stifle dissent and advance their agenda. I have watched people do this (including myself), and it gets very ugly.

Another set of problems arises when the entire community aspires to be Bible teachers. At times, we have placed such heavy emphasis on teaching that we spoke of spiritual leadership and Bible teaching as if they were identical. Not long ago, someone in our ministry noticed that, in Ephesians 4:11, the apostle Paul mentions five different kinds of leaders (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers). This young man asked his elders, “What is an apostle?” He was told, “An apostle is basically a Bible teacher.” Then he asked, “What is a prophet?” He was told, “A prophet is basically a Bible teacher.” Then he asked, “What is an evangelist?” Again he was told, “An evangelist is basically a Bible teacher.” Every type of leader was portrayed as a Bible teacher, despite the fact that Paul’s intention in that passage was to distinguish the offices and highlight the diversity of gifts.

We have at times artificially inserted this emphasis on Bible teaching into the Old and New Testaments. Some have claimed that Jesus, in his three-year ministry, spent the vast majority of his time teaching the Scriptures. And that Jesus’ top priority for his disciples was to train them to carry on his work of teaching the Scriptures. But in fact, very little of Jesus’ ministry was devoted to expository preaching from the Old Testament. Jesus engaged in fresh storytelling through parables and all kinds of imaginative discourse.

Throughout the four gospels, the followers of Jesus are referred to by the Greek word mathetes which we translate as “disciple.” A disciple is not primarily a student of books or writings but a follower of a living person. The distinction is important. Writers of the gospels do mention some who could be regarded as the Bible teachers of their day. They are called scribes, teachers of the law, and experts in the law, and the manner in which they are portrayed is usually negative. Despite all the time and energy they had spent on Scripture and all of the knowledge they had accumulated about God, they failed to recognize the Son of God when he walked among them. Jesus delivered to them a devastating critique in John 5:39-40: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

Is it possible to immerse oneself in the word of God while becoming disconnected from God? Not only is it possible, it is exceedingly common.

In a thought-provoking book titled What We Believe and Why, author George Byron Koch explains it this way (Chapter 22). Before us stand two doors. The first door is labeled, “The Way to God”; the second door is marked, “Lectures About God.” Going through the first is extremely frightening, so most of the time we opt for the second. In our study and in our worship, we talk about God, expounding on his attributes and discussing principles and doctrines. We speak of him in the third person as if he were not there. Rarely if ever do we address him directly. Encounter with God is buried under layer upon layer of abstract teachings. Over time, we cling to our ideas and imagine that they are the real thing, that in possessing them we have God himself, to the extent that we begin to worship our ideas. Without realizing it, our Christian faith mixes with religious idolatry which becomes extremely difficult to detect and root out. Our ideas, principles and doctrines may be good and correct. But by focusing on them rather than God himself, we become detached from him and from one another. And we begin to identify ourselves not by our common love for Christ, but by the unique teachings and practices that distinguish us from other groups.

When Samuel Lee advised people to go back to the Bible, I’m not entirely sure what he meant. But I have heard this motto used to reinforce practices which are thought to come directly from the Bible but are, in fact, just expressions of our local tradition. The misconception that we are purists who simply follow the Bible alone is common in the evangelical world. The New Testament scholar N.T. Wright wrote eloquently about this:

Most heirs of the Reformation, not least evangelicals, take if for granted that we are to give scripture the primary place and that everything else has to be lined up in relation to scripture. There is, indeed, an evangelical assumption, common in some circles, that evangelicals do not have any tradition. We simply open the scripture, read what it says, and take it as applying to ourselves: there the matter ends, and we do not have any ‘tradition’… But I still find two things to be the case, both of which give me some cause for concern. First, there is an implied, and quite unwarranted, positivism: we imagine that we are ‘reading the text, straight’, and that if somebody disagrees with us it must be because they, unlike we ourselves, are secretly using ‘presuppositions’ of this or that sort. This is simply naïve, and actually astonishingly arrogant and dangerous. It fuels the second point, which is that evangelicals often use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ when they mean the authority of evangelical, or Protestant, theology, since the assumption is made that we (evangelicals, or Protestants) are the ones who know and believe what the Bible is saying. And, though there is more than a grain of truth in such claims, they are by no means the whole truth, and to imagine that they are is to move from theology to ideology. If we are not careful, the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ can, by such routes, come to mean simply ‘the authority of evangelical tradition…’

[Quotation from “How Can the Bible be Authoritative?” by N.T. Wright]

To go back to the Bible in the best sense could mean to put aside our notions, biases and traditions and approach Scripture as if for the first time to learn something new. Over the last three decades, I have frequently heard our leaders encouraging people to do this. I believe that we want to do this. But we overestimate our ability to put biases aside. Everyone who reads Scripture does so through lenses tinted by prior beliefs, experiences, traditions and commitments. It’s hard to take our lenses off because, most of the time, we are not even aware that we are wearing them. Despite our best intentions to read the Bible in a fresh way, our assumptions and habits are so deeply entrenched in our character that we can’t identify them anymore. At that point, it becomes impossible to get something out of Bible study that we haven’t gotten in the past. As the saying goes, if you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.

Let me say that again. If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.

Which leads to a paradoxical truth. In order to really get back to the Bible, we sometimes need to get away from the Bible.

When I came into this church three decades ago, I was taught a particular style of Bible study, a style that, perhaps with a few minor changes here and there, is still practiced by most UBF chapters throughout the world. For the first ten years, that style of Bible study helped me to grow. After twenty years, I was no longer learning from it. And after 25 years, it was actually making me worse. Not everyone has experienced the same problems that I have in the same manner or degree. But I have been around long enough to see that there are indeed some common elements to the ways that we do things. There are good habits and bad habits that have spread throughout the community. And some of the bad habits that I picked up were hindering my spiritual growth. Whatever bad habits I acquired, it is ultimately my fault that I acquired them. But I did pick them up in our community, and I spread them to others, and the community reinforced (or at least did not discourage) them.

My Bible study had become self-focused and moralistic. I approached every passage with the intent of finding and extracting the right principles and then applying them to my life. The point of every Bible study became, “What am I supposed to do?” In every passage, I tried to locate the tasks God was directing me to do, the sins I was supposed to repent of, the bad habits I was supposed to avoid, the promises I was supposed to claim and believe, and so on.

Over time, this reduced my Christian life to a to-do list. That list became so long that I could never, ever fulfill it. I constantly felt like a failure, because I was never living up to the standards and expectations that I had set for myself and that our culture had set for me. So I did what I had been implicitly taught to do, what others had taught me to do: Keep choong-shim. Maintain soldier spirit. Keep up appearances as an exemplary servant of God at all costs. I hid my weaknesses in order to save face, so that I wouldn’t become a “bad influence” on others.

As I treated the Bible so mechanically and hid my weaknesses so effectively, my soul withered; prayer became ineffective and my personal relationship with God almost nonexistent. But as long as I continued to say things in my Bible studies, testimonies and messages that sounded good, people continued to praise me, and no one seemed to notice that I was adrift. We had put so much emphasis on mission and so little on friendship, relational honesty and intimacy that no one could tell that I had any serious problems. No one, that is, except my wife, who saw what was going on and was greatly concerned.

For me, the keys to coming out from this difficulty were: (a) opening myself up to Christian influences in the greater body of Christ by reading articles and books and by making friends with committed Christians outside of UBF; (b) becoming honest and revealing my weaknesses, allowing myself to express doubts and ask tough questions about the Bible — the kinds of questions that raise eyebrows and make people uncomfortable in traditional group Bible studies, because they are considered too volatile, controversial or off-topic; (c) taking time off from my habitual Bible study to read, think, contemplate and pray, and just to be with God, and to be with God’s people; (d) to stop beating myself up over the fact that I never pray enough, never study the Bible enough, never work hard enough, and am always falling short of standards and expectations; and (e) to take seriously what the Bible says about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, opening myself up to living by the Spirit’s power rather than by self effort.

And thus it was by getting away from the Bible – more precisely, by getting away from the only kind of Bible study that I knew – and taking time to read, meditate, pray, and interact with people in other settings, that my Bible study was greatly refreshed. Although I spent less time in the Bible than I had done before, I got more out of Scripture than ever before. I began to own my faith. I began to write and speak with genuine conviction. I became an honest student of the Bible rather than a role-player and imitator of someone else.

Getting away from the Bible in that way wasn’t easy. Rumors began circulating (and still circulate to this day) that I had gone off the rails, given up my mission, and denied God’s grace upon my life. The biggest obstacle was my own fear that, if I stopped doing Bible study and testimony writing in the usual way, that God would become very disappointed in me and I would lose his love and blessing. But those fears were unfounded. I discovered the basic truth that God does not love me any more or less based on anything I do. And, quite ironically, when I stopped trying to live up to the challenge of Psalm 1 to meditate on God’s word “day and night,” I suddenly found that without trying I was, in fact, ruminating on Scripture and spiritual issues a great deal of the time. By apparently doing less, I learned to depend on God’s grace and experienced his love and blessing all the more.

Dear Bibleman,

[Okay, I lied. The reader didn’t call me Bibleman. But please indulge my superhero vagaries.]

I was wondering if someone can write an article on UBFriends regarding John 15, specifically mentioning John 15:2. Do you mind explaining to me briefly the meaning behind Jesus’ words? I want to clarify what that verse actually means. I was told often to cut of certain things in my life that did not bear fruit. To a certain degree, I agree with that. For example if I habit of lying and end up hurting people, that does not produce in me Christlike character. At the same time, this verse is often used or implied as you need to get rid of your girlfriend, job, whatever, because it doesn’t bear fruit! If you don’t mind explaining that verse to me, I would appreciate it!

Dear Reader,

If I someone gave me a nickel for every time I have been asked that question, I would have five cents!

I’m sure that many of our readers have encountered that interpretation of John 15:2 before. Let’s call it the “We should prune ourselves” or WESHPRO interpretation.

Before going any father, let’s agree that, in many cases, pruning yourself may be a perfectly good thing to do. Suppose you are running a business, and some of your investments are failing to generate profits. Sooner or later you have to say, “Enough!” and cut your losses by eliminating the unprofitable ventures from your portfolio. WESHPRO is often a reasonable principle to follow in business and in your personal life, because it is good, common sense.

But WESHPRO is not found in John chapter 15. To claim that WESHPRO is being taught there, we have to ignore what Jesus actually says.

Here are the words of Jesus in John 15:1-4, quoted from the New International Version.

1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes* so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

* The Greek for he prunes also means he cleans.

The first thing to notice in this passage is that there’s a whole lotta prunin’ goin’ on. But who is being pruned? Jesus. And who is doing the pruning? The Father. To squeeze WESHPRO out of this passage, we would need to replace both Jesus and the Father with ourselves. Is that an accurate and responsible way to read the Bible?  Not on your life, or my name isn’t Bibleman!

The second thing to notice here are the instructions that Jesus gives to his disciples. If WESHPRO is an acceptable meaning, then I suppose that, somewhere in the passage, Jesus would actually tell his disciples to prune themselves. But that is not what Jesus does. There is only one command that Jesus gives to his disciples in this passage, and that command is: Remain in me.

The third thing to notice here is that the Greek verb translated as he prunes also means he cleans. In verse 3, Jesus brings his disciples into the metaphor, depicting them as branches attached to the true vine. The disciples are, in some sense, being pruned or cleaned. But Jesus says this action has already taken place. The disciples have already been pruned. From now on, their job is simply to remain in Jesus, to stay in a life-giving union with him as branches attached to a vine, and if they do, the fruit of the saving work of Jesus Christ will be borne through them.

To really understand what Jesus is saying, we need to carefully consider the context. Jesus is not speaking in a vacuum. This teaching, which is part of the Upper Room discourse (John chapters 13-17), must be understood in light of his imminent suffering and death. And this teaching is shaped by the historical context of first-century Judaism and the language of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament often depicts the nation of Israel as a vine. For example, consider Isaiah 5:7:

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty  is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah  are the vines he delighted in.

And consider this passage from Psalm 80:

7 Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.

8 You transplanted a vine from Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.

9 You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.

10 The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.

11 Its branches reached as far as the Sea, its shoots as far as the River.

12 Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes?

13 Boars from the forest ravage it, and insects from the fields feed on it.

14 Return to us, God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine,

15  the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself.

16 Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish.

17 Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself.

18 Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name.

19 Restore us, Lord God Almighty; make your face shine on us that we may be saved.

Psalm 80, which appears to have been composed during the Babylonian exile, is a collective cry by the Jewish captives for God to save them and restore their kingdom. Jews of the first century prayed the psalms every day. There is little doubt that the disciples. when they heard Jesus’ metaphor of vine and branches, would immediately connect it to this psalm. The disciples, who were raised in Jewish homes and steeped in rabbinical traditions, held great pride and confidence in their heritage as God’s chosen people. Their identity was defined by their historical connection to Israel, which they viewed as God’s true vine.

Against this backdrop, the teaching of Jesus in John 15 becomes profoundly shocking. Notice his claim at beginning of verse 1: “I am the true vine…” What Jesus is actually saying, in Bibleman’s paraphrase, goes something like this.

Hey guys. I know that, for all your lives, you have taken immense pride in your identity as Jews. That’s okay. I’m a Jew too, in case you haven’t noticed! But I’ve got something important to say, something that will rock your socks. From now on, I am the True Vine. I am the source of all life and all nourishment. My arrival is the fulfillment of the psalmist’s cry for redemption and restoration. In fact, Psalm 80 is actually about me, even though the psalmist probably didn’t realize it. Haven’t you noticed, for example, that in verses 15 and 17 of that psalm, it talks about the “son” and “the son of man”? Well, that’s me. God has worked powerfully through the nation of Israel. That work was preparation for my arrival. From now on, your primary identity will be shaped by your connection to me.

“But Bibleman,” you may ask, “what does Jesus mean by pruning?”

Bibleman thinks that pruning is a complex metaphor with multiple meanings. Your English teacher may have taught you to avoid mixed metaphors. But Jesus never took your English class. He used language in ways that were common in the first century, and the authors of the New Testament enjoyed mixing their metaphors.

Bibleman thinks that, in John 15:1-4, Jesus is trying to convey the following points.

• The Father is about to prune the Son. The Father will cut off the Son’s earthly life by sending him to the cross. But this pruning will create new life and new fruit after his resurrection.

• The death and resurrection of the Son will become a means of wrath and judgment against those who have rejected him. Those events will cause some branches — some parts of the Jewish nation and aspects of their traditional faith (for example, the sacrificial system and temple worship) — to be cut off and destroyed.

• The death and resurrection of the Son will clean the disciples (in fact, it already had!) and firmly establish their identity as branches of Jesus, the True Vine.

“But Bibleman,” you may ask, “what does this passage mean to me? What is this passage saying about what I’m supposed to do?”

Bibleman thinks that, whatever this passage meant to Jesus’ disciples in the first century, it means essentially the same thing to us today. Two millennia have passed, and our situation is somewhat different from that of the apostles. But Jesus is still the True Vine. He is still our source of life and nourishment. Our primary identity must still be grounded in him.

And regarding that last question, “What am I supposed to do?”, Jesus answered that himself. The command is clear: Remain in Jesus. Later in the chapter, Jesus clarifies what that means. It means to remain in his love. It means to love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

And that, says Bibleman, is enough.

How did I teach Joseph? I emphasized the goodness of Joseph and the evilness of his brothers and that Joseph was pure, innocent and naive, which is all true to a degree; that Joseph had dreams, while his brothers had jealously and evil schemes; that Joseph faithfully carried out his father’s errands, unlike his irresponsible brothers. In brief, Joseph was good and his brothers were bad. Therefore, be like Joseph, have dreams, and live responsibly. Also, don’t be like Joseph’s brothers, who had no dreams, and who were filled with murderous jealousy.

What’s “wrong” with teaching Joseph this way? It does not make Joseph out to be a sinner, who desperately needs God’s mercy, grace and deliverance just like everyone else. It is as though Joseph had no real sins, and just some mild innocent naivete, and that he was simply better and a cut above others. It creates a false dichotomy as though Joseph’s brothers needed salvation more than Joseph himself. It could cause people to think that we can just be better like Joseph and not become like his evil brothers by our own resolve.

How should we teach Joseph? A key is in Gen 37:2, which says, “he (Joseph) brought his father a bad report about them.” I taught this as Joseph being a good steward who simply reported the bad things that his bad brothers did. Is this correct? The Hebrew word for “report” (dibbah) denotes news slanted to damage the victim. It suggests that Joseph exaggerates the bad things his brothers did. Dibbah or “tales” is always used in a negative sense of an untrue report. It indicates that what Joseph did was to misrepresent his brothers to his father. Thus, what the author of Genesis is communicating about Joseph is not his innocence and naivete, but that Joseph is quite an unlikable character: he is immature, tattles on his brothers, and exaggerates their flaws. In short, the narrator sketches the young Joseph as a fool: he is unwise. Joseph acts in similar foolish fashion in telling his two dreams of his own exaltation, and thus infuriating his brothers to the point of murderous jealousy. {Greidanus, Sidney, Preaching Christ from Genesis. Chap. 18. Joseph’s Sale into Slavery (Gen 37:2-36). Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmas Publishing Co. 2007, 335-356.}

What is the difference in these two ways of teaching Joseph? Teaching Joseph in the former way communicates that some people like Joseph (and perhaps ourselves) are better than some other people who are like Joseph’s evil, jealous and malicious brothers. We Christians know that this is not true (Rom 3:9-11,23). When I taught Joseph as though he is good, pure, naive, and innocent, I did not show how Joseph himself needed the gospel of salvation. But teaching Joseph in this latter way as a foolish brat and a self-centered tattle tale leads us to understand how Joseph (and ourselves) urgently and desperately need Jesus and the gospel.

I am not saying that everyone in UBF teaches Joseph the way I did. But is this “adjustment” helpful and/or necessary in the way Joseph is taught?

Many Christians regard the psalms as divinely inspired model prayers that we ought to imitate. But if you actually try to use the psalms in your devotional life, you will find aspects of them that are puzzling. Some psalms are difficult to understand.  Others display attitudes that are  apparently  unChristlike. What should we do with the so-called cursing psalms that wish injury, violence and death on one’s enemies? And how should we handle verses like Psalm 131:1, “My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty…” It seems impossible to pray this without making yourself seem unbearably proud. Most English translations of the psalms maintain a style reminiscent of the King James Version, giving them a noble and churchy sound. But if you were to express the psalms in everyday language, they would appear so raw, unholy and unChristian that many congregations would think they are inappropriate for use in church.

Even the psalms that are gushing with praise toward God can be problematic. I find them hard to pray in an authentic manner because, frankly, the occasions when I feel that I can praise God like this are exceedingly rare. It’s not because God isn’t worthy of this kind of praise; he certainly is. But it’s a rare occasion when I can praise God without reservation. Life is stressful, full of disappointments, trials, hurts and defeats. Those psalms sound like they can be be uttered only by super-spiritual, high-level Christians, not by ordinary sinners like me. My renditions of these psalms seems to fall flat.

For the past several years, our church at Penn State has been trying to incorporate psalms into our Sunday worship service. And I have been using them in my own personal devotions and in times of family prayer. This experience has been partly rewarding and partly disappointing.  I’ve read a few books about the book of Psalms and learned some useful things. I believe that the psalms are important. Yet I still don’t feel that I deeply grasp how to use them in personal and corporate worship.

One of the reasons why modern Christians are puzzled by Psalms is that many of us tend to ignore their genre.  We approach them in the same manner as all the other parts of the Bible. We asked the usual questions: What is the message intended by the author? What are the principles and lessons that God is trying to teach me now?

It’s easy to forget that psalms are songs. More precisely, they are the lyrics to ancient songs in Hebrew whose original tunes have been forgotten. The psalms were designed for private singing and liturgical performance. They became the background music of the Jewish religious life.

Songs are different from historical narratives and logical discourse. They appeal to a whole person, to our heads, hearts and guts, and impact us in powerful and subtle ways that mere words cannot.

The effect that a song has on a person depends on how the song is performed. The same lyric sung to a different tune can produce drastically different results. Shifts in tempo and key can transform a song into something far from what the original composer or performer imagined.

Back in the early 1980’s, one of the most popular tunes in America was Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper. It was a squeaky, bouncy pop song about a young, working class woman who regularly stayed out late partying with her friends. The song was addressed to the girl’s disapproving parents, and she pleaded with them to understand her thrill-seeking lifestyle. In 2007, a male singer named Greg Laswell, recorded the same song in a different style. He sung it much slower to a different tune, and the effect on the listener is radically different.

A song can be sung in many different ways. But even if it’s always performed in exactly the same manner, it can evoke diverse emotions depending on who the listeners are and the context in which they are hearing it.

Consider the hymnbook that is used in UBF chapters throughout the United States. To younger people, many of the hymns in that book sound stodgy and dreary. But once upon a time, all those hymns were brand new. They reflected musical styles and tastes that were popular in their day. Some of the melodies were adapted from popular folk songs. When they were sung for the first time, some churchgoers thought they were inappropriate. After a while, congregations grew accustomed to them, and the songs began to seem churchy and devout. A few generations later, they began to sound dated.

Perceptions of songs change over time. And even when people are in the same place at the same time, they can perceive the same song very differently. Imagine a church where different generations are worshiping together. Imagine that they sing one of the old traditional hymns like The Old Rugged Cross. What is going through people’s minds? Chances are the older folks really like it. The song feels pious to them, and it evokes positive emotions and memories from their past. But the younger people who didn’t share those experiences may feel indifferent. To them, the hymn sounds boring. And perhaps some will find it offensive, because they sense a hidden message of intergenerational judgment and rebuke. Through that song, they hear a voice telling them that their youth culture is sinful and they ought to be getting back to the values of their elders, back to the supposedly purer and holier faith of the past.

A song is a complex form of art whose effects on people are diverse, subjective and malleable. It does not carry a unique message for all people at all times. The meaning of a song is hard to separate from the culture in which the song is embedded.

Last year, when my family was on vacation, we were listening to the car radio. We came across a show where they were talking about the comedian Jimmy Fallon. Fallon is a talented impersonator. They played a clip of Jimmy Fallon doing an impersonation of Neil Young singing the pop song Whip My Hair. And in the middle of the song, Bruce Springsteen walks out on stage and joins in. The performance was hilarious. What made it hilarious was the sound of Fallon’s voice, the strange mix of personalities and the complex crossing of intergenerational cultural references. Suppose you take that recording and bury it in a time capsule. Imagine that a hundred years from now, someone opens the time capsule and listens to the recording. Would they get it? Probably not. Would they laugh? Probably not. If they hear the howls of laughter coming from the audience, they would sense that it was very funny in its time. But unless they were experts who immersed themselves in our culture, they wouldn’t have a clue why it would be funny.

So what does this mean for us if we open the book of Psalms and try to use these song-prayers today? It’s tempting for us to try to understand a psalm on its own terms. We may want to get back to the meaning of the text as the composer and performers originally viewed it. But that will be nearly impossible. The original meanings were rooted in an ancient culture that we no longer understand.

Does this mean that using the psalms today is futile because the original meaning has been lost? Not at all. We just need to recognize that the feelings and messages evoked by a psalm will change with the context. Adaptation to context is normal and natural. I believe that this is part of what it means that Scripture is God-breathed, living and active (2Ti 3:16, Heb 4:12).

Many of the psalms appear to have been composed during the pre-exilic period (roughly 1000-586 BC) when Solomon’s temple was still standing. Other psalms (for example, Psalm 137) were written during the Babylonian exile or during the so-called Second Temple period after the exiles returned home. Imagine how a psalm from the First Temple period might sound to a Second Temple audience. A grand hymn that originally evoked solemnity and awe when it was performed in Solomon’s temple might, in the Second Temple period, bring out a mixture of confusion and tears. Was it wrong for the different audience to react differently? No, it wasn’t. In the years leading up to coming of Christ, when messianic fever was running high, the Jews must have read their nationalistic hopes and expectations into the psalms. Was it wrong for them to do so? No, it wasn’t. After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his disciples did some wholesale reinterpretation of the psalms in light of the events they had witnessed. Was it wrong for them to do so? No, it wasn’t. When Benedictine monks from the sixth century incorporated the psalms into their monastic life, their understanding of the psalms was shaped by their own unique experience and was somewhat different from what the early Christians thought of them. Was it wrong for them to interpret the psalms in light of their unique experiences? No, it wasn’t. And consider how the psalms were heard by 19th century African-American slaves longing for freedom. Their understanding may have been unlike that of anyone who came before.

As we read the psalms today, we shouldn’t just be looking at some words on the page and trying to discern their original intent. Original intent does matter, and if anyone can discern what the original intent was, then let me be the first to say, “Bravo.” But that original intent is only a small part of what these living, breathing song-prayers can bring to us today.  Each psalm can be a window through which we take in breathtaking views of the panorama of God’s history through the ages. It’s astounding to think of the variety of ways that God’s people interacted with him through the words of the psalms. They are not just ancient words on a page. They are divinely inspired songs that are lying dormant, waiting for creative and faithful believers to pick them up and allow the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into them at any moment.

Basically, I was taught to examine short portions of Scripture – a few verses or a chapter at a time – and then carefully notice the details, deduce the meaning, and strive for personal application. It was assumed that every passage had a self-contained message aimed directly at my situation today. I was supposed to ask myself: Are there promised to claim? Commands to obey? Sins to be repented of? The outcome of every Bible study was supposed to be some kind of revelatory, life-changing experience (accepting “one word”) that could be shared in a written testimony. If that experience didn’t happen, it was because something was wrong with me, because I hadn’t tried hard enough, gone deep enough, repented sincerely enough, and so on. To strive for anything less than a personal revelatory experience in each Bible study was to demonstrate a lack of faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God.

I don’t think this method is categorically wrong. It can sometimes produce useful results, especially when applied to portions of the New Testament. But it is not the sole, divinely-ordained and God honoring way to approach Scripture. This method has plenty of shortcomings. For example, it ignores the fact that Scripture was written as books, and focusing on short passages tends to obscure the message of the book. And the focus on personal interpretation tends to neglect the role of Christian tradition. In effect, it substitutes one’s local community tradition for the understanding and testimony of saints through the ages.

This method can be unhealthy when applied to parts of the Old Testament. When studying the OT, the temptation to treat every passage as timeless commands and principles must be resisted. No Christian can sensibly treat the OT as commands to be obeyed today. To do so would create a religious system full of legalism, nationalism (us-versus-them thinking) and violence. I was taught to interpret the OT commands allegorically, adapting them to my church’s understanding of its present mission in the world. For example, God’s commands to Israel to conquer the land of Canaan became a metaphor for conquering college campuses with the gospel and our church’s specific brand of discipleship. At the time, I thought this was a reasonable way to honor the OT as the inspired word of God while making it relevant to my immediate situation. But now I believe that there are much better ways to approach the OT that are more consistent with the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Now I am striving to read the OT not as a series of commands and principles, but as the colorful, beautiful and sometimes disturbing story of how God interacted with the nation of Israel. I try to remember that the OT story is a progressive revelation that reaches its fullness in Jesus. The religion of the OT is only a murky shadow of the reality of God revealed in Christ (Col 2:17, Heb 10:1). God’s full, authoritative self-revelation is not contained in written words of the OT but in the living person of Jesus Christ (Heb 1:1-3)

In the remainder of this article, I’d like to explore some ideas about how to read the Pauline epistles in a way that is both realistic and honoring of their central place in the theology and life of the church. Specifically, I want to ask these two questions.

First: Did Paul possess some kind of infallibility that came from his God-given position as an apostle? Or was he a sinful, fallible leader who often made mistakes?

Second: If we accept that Paul did make mistakes, how would that influence our approach to reading his Epistles and applying his apostolic teachings to modern life?

To me, that first question seems straightforward. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life, but his followers did not. The four gospels paint an honest, transparent and somewhat embarrassing portrait of the apostles during the three-year ministry of Jesus, highlighting their numerous mistakes and failures. After the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples (on all of the disciples, not merely the apostles) and empowered them to be living witnesses of the risen Christ. The Holy Spirit worked through them but did not wipe out their sinful nature. The apostles’ positions of leadership did not give them any special exemption, and throughout their lives they needed to learn and receive correction. One obvious example is described in Galatians 2:11-14, where Peter was distancing himself from Gentile Christians and Paul publicly rebuked him for it.

Paul too must have made mistakes. Despite his best efforts and intentions, he remained a sinful man living in sinful times. When God appointed him as an apostle, he did not magically wipe out Paul’s failings but worked powerfully through Paul despite his failings as a testament to grace.

The Roman Catholic church maintains a doctrine of papal infallibility. In that view, the pope’s pronouncements are considered reliable and true when he is making decisions in his official capacity as leader of the church. Protestants reject the notion of infallibility. However, it is worth pointing out that even in the Catholic view, infallibility pertains to only one person, the bishop of Rome, and only when he is speaking ex cathedra, in his official capacity as pope. Moreover, Catholics claim that the first bishop of Rome was Peter, not Paul. So even if one were to accept the Catholic view, Paul would not have any special infallibility.

The book of Acts presents Paul as a strict Pharisee who persecuted Christians but then underwent a profound conversion on the road to Damascus. Almost immediately, within a few days, he began to zealously preach in the name of Jesus, but is preaching stirred up a great deal of opposition. Paul retreated into a quiet period of personal growth. Some years later, Barnabas brought him to Antioch where he became a prominent teacher. From there, he and Barnabas received a special calling and commission from the Holy Spirit and were sent out on their first missionary journey. I believe that Paul’s walk with Christ was always a work in progress.  There was no point at which he magically became an infallible leader. Rather, he must have been actively growing throughout his life, seeking God’s guidance in his weakness and continually learning from his mistakes.

That first question was easy to answer, but the second one is more thorny. If we acknowledge that Paul was a sinful human leader who made mistakes, how should that influence our reading of the Epistles and their application to us today?

One possible answer is to ignore this and act as though the limitations of Paul didn’t impact his Epistles at all. For many conservative evangelicals, admitting Paul’s limitations would be a scary thing, as it would seem to undermine the authority of the Bible as the inerrant, infallible word of God.

For the record, please understand that I believe the Bible is authoritative and that it testifies to its own authority. Scripture says that it is Spirit-inspired, a God-breathed living system capable of dynamically speaking with Christian individuals and communities (2Ti 3:16, Heb 4:12). I believe that God continually breathes new life into us as we seek to hear his voice through Scripture.  I believe that if we approach the Bible in a reverent, careful and honest fashion, that what it can teach us is truthful and trustworthy. But I do not believe that Scripture claims that it is inerrant in the plain English meaning of that word. To plausibly argue that Scripture is inerrant requires a great deal of nuanced and careful explanation of what that word actually means.

To suggest that Paul’s sinfulness and human limitations did not make their way into the Epistles is, in my opinion, not a plausible stance. To believe this, we would have to think that Paul operated in two different states or modes. We would have to think that, most of the time, as Paul went about his daily business and spoke and interacted with people, he would exhibit the characteristics of a fallen sinner in need of God’s redemptive grace. But on the few occasions when (unbeknownst to him) he was composing a letter that would later become part of the canon of Scripture, God miraculously covered up all his sinful or mistaken tendencies and produced written works with no marks of human fallibility. In effect, there would be two versions of Paul: the fallible human Paul who lived in a fallen world serving in a fallen church,  and the infallible superhuman version of Paul who spoke through the Epistles.

If we imagine that Paul spoke through the Epistles without error, it would suggest that the all the teachings he gave to his readers were (unless he specifically stated so) coming directly from the mouth of God, as if they were spoken by Jesus himself. There would be no question that all his teachings were absolutely binding on the early church. Then the only question would be, “Are all of these teachings equally binding on us today?” To my knowledge, there is no sensible Christian who would answer yes and keep that with any degree of consistency. For example, I know Christians who believe, based on 1 Timothy 2:12, that women should never be allowed to teach men. But these same people do not insist, based on 1 Corinthians 11:13, that women must keep their hair long or cover their heads when they pray. Everyone who reads Paul’s instructions as God-given teachings makes judgments that some teachings are local, limited to Christians in specific times and places, whereas others are universal, meant to be obeyed by all Christians for all time. Many of these decisions appear to be subjective and haphazard. The impulses and standards by which they make these decisions are rarely explained and usually come down to gut instinct.

It seems to me that, if we imagine that when Paul is writing the Epistles that he is issuing instructions to his readers directly from the mouth of God, then we are immediately placing ourselves in the position of having to decide which instructions we are to keep and which ones we are allowed to discard. This is a position that I find awkward and uncomfortable.

Is there a way to read the Epistles that is less awkward and more realistic, a way that recognizes Paul is an imperfect man weakened by his own sinfulness and by the limitations of his culture, and yet still honors those writings as canonical and God-breathed?

I believe there is. I suggest that we can approach the Pauline epistles in a way that is not radically different from how we ought to be reading the narratives of the Old Testament. The Epistles are something like narratives. They are letters from an apostle to the churches of his day. These letters open for us a window into the life of the first-century Christian community. We can treat them as divinely inspired first-person accounts of how one man, who is a great apostle and yet a fallible sinner, is doing his best to faithfully shepherd the flock that God has entrusted to his care.  God is working powerfully through Paul, but he is never speaking through him in a way that overrides Paul’s humanity. In some respects, Paul is unique. As the first apostle to the Gentiles, God has given him special insight and a special task of helping to define many of the basic doctrines of the early church. But in other respects, Paul is not so different from other church leaders at other times. He makes mistakes. He has personal opinions, cultural biases and character flaws.  As we read the Epistles, we strive to keep in mind both his uniqueness and his ordinariness. The main question on our minds is not, “Do these God-given teachings apply only to Paul’s audience, or do they also apply to us?” Rather, we continually ask ourselves, “What do these dialogues between Paul and the first-century church teach us about the character of God, the nature of the gospel, and the purpose of the church?”

Maintaining a primary focus on God, the gospel and the church does not mean that we will never have to face tough questions about what the implications are for us today. Those questions will eventually have to be asked. But it seems to me that they are secondary and should be brought up later, after we meditate long and hard about the first things first.

Even though I loathe myself and my life, I cannot deny your love, mercy and grace to me. I also cannot deny your discipline and your divine love which I know will help me to indeed loathe my life in the world. But as a physical man and an earthbound man, I still seem to cling to the small pleasures of life, such as enjoying friendship and intimacy with my wife and children, as well as entertainment. But I pray that I may embrace your disciplinary love until I no longer enjoy my physical life and the things of the world.

Although I have failed the first 17 years as a Christian, I pray that, if you are willing, I may have the chance to restore your presence and your blessing upon me in the next 30 years. I know that I am a most stubborn stonehead like my father. I know that I well deserve your judgment and punishment for “God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Gal 6:7), and that “God will give to each person according to what he has done” (Rom 2:6). I know that I am experiencing “wrath and anger” as well as “trouble and distress” because I have been evil, self-seeking and pleasure seeking, instead of seeking glory, honor and immortality (Rom 2:7-9).

I know that because of me, your precious flock under me are all wondering and directionless in their hearts without exception. Forgive me for this and help me to restore my heart, until I might someday pray like my Lord, “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (Jn 17:19). Help me to discipline myself until I learn to value prayer in the AM and PM.

I think I know and can see the sins that are before my eyes over the last 10 years. I have inadvertently and by choice enjoyed the lust of my eyes through TV, videos and movies that have robbed me of my spirit. I have enjoyed meaningless excitement and meaningless victories through sports. I have wasted countless hours playing computer games like Tetris, and reading about sports, movies and entertainment. I have done all these things while living in the midst of your great servants, Dr. Lee and Reverend Mother Barry, who are giving their lives in the world mission headquarters. I know that I am an unforgivable sinner before you and before your people.

I know that I am “weary and burdened” because I lived in the flesh and did not “live by the spirit” (Gal 5:16), and because I did not take Jesus’ yoke upon me nor learn from him.

Someone said that I am scientific, analytical, and for the most part objective, because of my training as a doctor. So when I heard that I became corrupted after I found out (something sexual), I began to think about it and analyse it. My conclusion is that this discovery allowed me to justify my curiosity about sexuality that obviously arose from my own sinful nature and from the evil inclination of my own heart.”

I ended rather abruptly. This was what I wrote 14 years ago. Please comment, or compliment, or critique, or query, or advise Ben Toh-1998.

• Sin. Isaiah had an acute awareness of his sin. Christians often treat their sins lightly, while blasting others for their sin. When Isaiah met God, he cried out, “Woe to me! I am ruined!” (Isa 6:5) Some Christians say, “Yeah, I sinned. But that guy’s sin makes me sick!” No one senses their sin without seeing God. A revival begins with honest self-criticism and personal repentance, while “regular” Christians are often moralistic and judgmental.

• Sanctification. When Isaiah felt the pangs of death of his sins and guilt, he experienced God’s cleansing, forgiveness, newness of life (Isa 6:6-7) and times of refreshing (Acts 3:19). But one who treats their sins lightly experience dryness, deadness and defeat.

• Sent. Isaiah was ready to be sent by God to his people to share the message of God. But it didn’t go well for him. His message was resisted. His life was hard. The people’s response was progressive hardness of heart leading to God’s wrath and judgment upon his entire people.

• Salvation. However, God would preserve a remnant through Isaiah’s ministry. Though his people were cut down, “the holy seed will be the stump in the land” (Isa 6:13). A remnant of holy people would be preserved.

Colson experienced a revival when he met God newly. After becoming a committed Christian, Chuck Colson wrote: “By the end of the sixth lecture (of R.C. Sproul’s tapes on the holiness of God) I was on my knees, deep in prayer, in awe of God’s absolute holiness. It was a life-changing experience as I gained a completely new understanding of the holy God I believe in and worship. My spiritual drought ended, but this taste for the majesty of God only made me thirst for more of him.” (Loving God, pp. 14–15)

Job was a devout man of prayer, a man who feared God and shunned evil (Job 1:1). But after losing virtually everything–wealth, children, health–he met God newly and said, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6).

Is anything happening in me or my ministry? I cannot force/create a revival. No one can. But I can strive to intentionally and continually seek to see God in his holiness and pray. Do you experience a revival in yourself?

This is my response to your report “How to Read and Study the Bible” which you gave at our 2005 summer conference. Please accept this as constructive criticism from an informed source. I know a great deal about you, more than you realize. And my existence and prosperity depend on you.

When you said those things in your report, you spoke with an air of certainty and conviction. You tried to sound as though you were declaring absolute truth directly from God’s mouth. Face it: those declarations were applause lines. To that audience, they made your message “powerful.” But none of them are absolutes. For each of those statements, an informed reader of the Bible could give counterexamples. Real life and the Bible are more complicated than you suggest.

Here’s something I’ve noticed about you, Joe-2005. Whenever you give a message, you talk about principles. You seem to think that the Christian life is about identifying biblical principles and mixing them together in just the right proportions. Don’t get me wrong. The Bible does contain principles. But a principle-based approach to Scripture grows tiresome and stale, because that’s not how people really think. The human mind is a processor of stories. That’s why most of the Bible is written as narrative. The Pentateuch is not a list of laws; it’s a story of how Israel was given the law, and that story is more important than the laws themselves.

I could go through your message and critique all your principles, but I won’t. Instead I will make some general observations about story.

Observation #1: Your message affirms your community’s story.

Why did the people in your audience like your message? Was it because you got your principles just right? Of course not. As they listened, they were reading between the lines. What they heard was a well educated American man validating and promoting a story that is very dear to them, a story for which they sacrificed their lives.

All your messages have this same basic quality. They are built on the story that’s told again and again at through UBF messages, testimonies and mission reports. The story is based on actual events, but it’s a selective and subjective shaping of those events. To longtime UBF members, that story sounds beautiful and exciting. It evokes powerful memories and makes them feel privileged to be a part of it. They see it as the great story of their lives, and they long to see others adopt the story and live in it too.

In a nutshell, the story goes like this. In the early 1960’s, God began a great work in South Korea. A young female American missionary left her missionary compound and lived among the poor. Together with a young Korean pastor, they taught the Bible to university students. Instead of relying on outside funds, the movement became independent and self-supporting. Students overcame their “beggar mentality” and sacrificed everything to support this work. In absolute obedience to Jesus’ world mission command, they went overseas to preach the gospel. God blessed all their sacrifice, hard work, simple faith, etc. and transformed Korea from a nation that receives outside help to a nation that sends missionaries throughout the world. Unlike other churches and movements, this group raises highly committed disciples who are extremely disciplined in Bible study and prayer. They marry by faith, support themselves on the mission field, excel in their studies and become leading doctors, engineers, diplomats and professors. Although they seem highly intelligent, their success is not due to their intelligence but to their self-denial, their boldness in proclaiming the gospel, their absolute obedience and their uncomplicated, childlike faith. Their unique disciplines (Daily Bread, testimony writing, obedience training, marriage by faith, etc.) and their pure, inductive approach to Bible study are extremely potent, and other churches could learn a great deal from them. As they faithfully continue in this special calling, God will use them to sent thousands more missionaries and raise countless disciples on university campuses throughout the world. And this is going to transform the nations. For example, it will turn the United States from corruption to its former glory as a nation of people who trust in God. As disciples are raised and missionaries are sent out, each nation will become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

This was the story told by Samuel Lee. When he spoke, he told stories that made people smile. Those stories were repeated over and over and became community folklore. The details of his stories were not always factual. He often stretched the truth to make his points. But people didn’t mind because, even if the details weren’t true, those stories supported the larger community that they believed. This, I think, is a key reason why the disciples he raised are so strongly committed. People won’t sacrifice their lives for a principle. But they will give anything to support a person whom they love and to advance a story that deeply inspires them.

And this, Joe-2005, is why you get invited to speak so often: because you affirm the community story and enhance its credibility. You are a feather in their cap. You are an anomaly, a white North American with a Ph.D. from Harvard who has remained in this Korean-led church to live within its story and advance it. Within UBF, you are a mythical hero who has done great things. Those stories don’t really reflect who you are and how you live. But you aren’t willing to reveal your true self yet. You still want to enjoy that recognition and acceptance.

Observation #2: That community story cannot explain the Bible.

When I say that your church’s members are living in a story, I’m not saying that they are deluded. They are just doing what human beings do. Every person has a story, and every community has a story. Those stories get shaped and revised over time. Stories are the means by which people make sense of their lives. Stories are the stuff of human culture.

The Bible is also a collection of stories about specific people in specific times. The Old Testament is about Israel and the Jews. The New Testament is about Jesus, the apostles and the Church. But taken together, they declare the Great Story, the metanarrative that tells all people what life is all about. It explains how we came to our present state, and it reveals where the world is headed. Protestants tend to describe this story into four great acts: Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. Redemption was achieved through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Now we are living in the time of Restoration. It is the age of the Church and the Holy Spirit, bearing witness to Jesus until he returns to fully unveil his kingdom. To be a Christian is to accept that Great Story as true and to live within its context. Christian communities must maintain their own stories, but they need to understand how those stories fit into the Great Story. Their need to keep putting that Great Story in the front and center and make their own stories subservient to it.

In your approach to the Bible, Joe-2005, you haven’t been doing this. Here is a revealing quote from your message: “It is when we study the Bible within the context of our own purpose and mission that the application becomes relevant and the word of God really comes alive” [italics yours]. You are resting on your local community story and confusing it with the Great Story. When you read the Bible, you instinctively focus on elements that support your community’s activities and values. All the elements that don’t fit your paradigm are glossed over; your eyes don’t see them anymore.

You read into the Bible your community’s categories. Your community has a category called “Bible teacher.” This is an idealized person who finds sheep and engages in one-to-one Bible study, which means sitting down with a sheep, reading short passages of Scripture, and discussing those passages by responding to questions typed on a sheet of paper. That activity may work well in certain contexts. But none of the characters in the Bible did that. You said that Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles were all Bible teachers. Those men engaged the word of God and taught others. But none of them resembled your community’s category of Bible teacher. If you could travel back in time and ask them, “What is your mission?” none of them would have said, “I study the Bible with sheep and help them to do what the Bible teaches.” They couldn’t think in your terms. The Bible as you know it didn’t exist at that time. Bible teacher is your category, not theirs. Please hear me out. I’m not saying that becoming a Bible teacher is wrong. I’m saying that when your church members hear “Bible teacher,” they have a specific concept in mind. And when you state that characters in the Bible were Bible teachers, you treat that community concept as a divinely inspired principle that work for all people at all times. You state that with such conviction and certainty, even though there is not a single example of anyone in the Bible who fits your image of a Bible teacher.

And you insert into the Bible your community’s language. Here is another quote from your message: “Jesus was not merely a teacher; he was also a trainer.” That statement would be okay if you understood training as what Jesus did with his apostles. But that’s not how your church members use that word. For them, training is a loaded term. It includes all the methods that Samuel Lee used to fashion disciples, first in Korea and then in the United States. Whether you realize it or not, you are implicitly lumping together all those practices that your church members think of as training and then suggesting that Jesus did it all. But Jesus didn’t do many of those things. Is there any record of Jesus or the apostles acting as matchmakers and arranging marriages for anyone in the church? No, there isn’t. Matchmaking is not found in the New Testament. Nor is testimony writing, testimony sharing, and so on. When you state with conviction that Jesus was a trainer, you plant the idea that your church is doing exactly what Jesus did. You equate things that are not equal. Your message is full of sloppy language that results from sloppy thinking.

This is what you have done. You have canonized your community’s story and are reading the Bible in light of that story. It’s a provincial approach to Scripture that resonates with members of your church but sounds strange to outsiders. How would your message be received by Christians outside of UBF? They would sense that it is infused with the values of a small, insular community that they do not understand. They would sense that you think your community’s story is superior to theirs. You have gotten so wrapped up in your community’s story that you no longer critique it.

You’ve shrunk the Great Story into a handbook for how to be a successful campus evangelist. Nothing in the Bible surprises you anymore. Nothing in the Bible disturbs you anymore. You’ve stopped wrestling with fundamental questions because you’re convinced that you’ve got the big picture figured out.

How do you read those passages about the military conquest of Canaan? You treat them as allegories for living a victorious Christian life and conquering the fallen world with the gospel. Once upon a time, you didn’t know what to make of those passages. You were horrified that God’s people were apparently being commanded to engage in ethnic cleansing and genocide. You had no idea how to reconcile the cruelties of the Old Testament with the gentle image of Jesus and the apostles. For two thousand years, Christians have tried various ways to address these and other problematic aspects of Scripture, and they haven’t been able to agree on any single approach. In so many respects, the Bible remains enigmatic and elusive. But you’ve taken those difficult aspects of the Bible and allegorized and spiritualized them away. You’ve stopped asking tough questions about the Bible because others have suggested to you that raising those questions could weaken your faith and distract you from your mission.

In your allegorical reading of the Old Testament, you place yourself and your group and the Church in the position of God’s chosen people and identify the outsiders as Canaanites. Those are dangerous waters, Joe-2005, and you don’t have the experience or maturity to navigate them properly. Isn’t that the essence of what the Pharisees were doing? Isn’t that the fatal mistake of Constantine which eventually led to Crusades, colonialism, and missionary triumphalism?

Ideas have consequences in real life. Those ideas about how to approach the Bible are influencing you more than you realize.

Your approach affects how you relate to the people in your life. Based on your reading of the Old Testament, you’ve concluded that the ideal Christian is a courageous tough guy who always soldiers on, staying on task even if some people get hurt along the way. Broken relationships have become acceptable losses along the road to victory. You expect people in your fellowship to stay in line and keep marching no matter what. You treat them as fellow soldiers and coworkers but not as friends.

Your approach makes it hard for you to relate to other Christians. You’ve invested so much in your community’s story that you can’t understand people whose stories are different. Do their stories have the same validity as yours? Does yours supersede and override theirs? Those are tough questions, and you don’t know how to process them. For now, you avoid those people and the questions they raise.

And your approach shapes how you relate to God. You read promises into Scripture that aren’t really there. You think God has been saying to you, “Joe-2005, if you just stop being a wimp and live as a one-to-one Bible teacher and help me make America into a kingdom of priests and holy nation, then I will bring you into the promised land and make you prosper.” You assume that all the problems in your life stem from the fact that God is not pleased with you, because you’re failing to live out that idealized mission of your community’s story.

Your present approach to the Bible isn’t categorically wrong. It did help you for a while. But you’ve gotten stuck in this approach and, as a result, you’ve stopped growing. You’ve locked up Scripture into a box and aren’t experiencing its creative power. It’s been a long, long time since your reading of the Bible challenged your fundamental understanding of God and the gospel. That, my friend, needs to change.

Growth requires that we acknowledge this subjectivity.  A person who is emotionally and spiritually mature knows many of his own prejudices and understands where they came from.  He will allow his prejudices to be examined and challenged as he engages in respectful dialogue with those who see things differently from him.

For Christians who maintain a high view of Scripture, it is tempting to think that we are reading the Bible straight, that we are getting back to the original and plain meaning of the text. But everyone is reading through a lens. As Paul wrote, “For now we see through a glass, darkly” (1Co 13:12, KJV). From time to time, it’s helpful to stop looking at Scripture and consider the lens through which we read it.

Most of the time, we look through our glasses, not at them. But occasionally we need to take them off and examine them to see if they need to be cleaned or adjusted. And sometimes we need to get a new prescription. A single pair of eyeglasses doesn’t work for a lifetime. When you get a new pair of glasses, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the old glasses are inferior or flawed. You are simply admitting that time has passed, that you are older and more mature, and that he old pair just isn’t working anymore.

For some time now, I’ve been reading and thinking about hermeneutics. (For the normal people out there, “hermeneutics” is a fancy-pants term for processes of Scriptural interpretation.  It rhymes with “schmermeneutics.”) I’ve been examining the hermeneutic that I had been given by my church, a hermeneutic which seemed to work for me in the past but now is no longer working.  I’ve been trying to identify and critique my own biases by examining how various groups of Christians approach the Bible. The big question on my mind is, “How should I be approaching Scripture at this stage in my spiritual journey?” I’m not ready to answer that question yet.  But I do think that I can identify many of my own biases. That is, I can accurately describe the ways that my church taught me to approach Scripture, ways that I accepted, endorsed and promoted.

To see whether I really do understand how I was taught to approach Scripture, I conducted a thought experiment. I imagined myself as I was back in 2005. Someone has invited me to attend a UBF conference and give a special lecture on how to study the Bible. I imagined what I would have said back then and wrote it down. The report that I produced is not a satire. I deliberately tried to avoid caricature and sarcasm, because I didn’t want it to be perceived as mocking or demeaning. It my best attempt to describe what I once believed and taught, presenting it in the most charitable and positive light that I can, in the hope of generating respectful discussion and constructive criticism.

Please read this report and tell me what you think. For those of you who were discipled in UBF, is this an accurate description of what you were taught? For those of you who knew me in 2005, is this the kind of report that I would have given back then?

And please join my experiment in the following manner. Imagine that you – the person that you are today – are attending a conference and hearing me – Joe Schafer, as I was in 2005 – giving this lecture to a live audience. Imagine “Joe 2005” presenting it with positivity and enthusiasm. When the conference is over, you write a personal letter or email to Joe-2005 explaining what you thought of his lecture. Please be honest and tell him what you really think. What did he say that was good and true? Is anything wrong? Is anything missing? Do any of his points need counterbalance? Does Joe-2005 seem to have a mature outlook? If not, what issues does he need to think about? Where should he go to improve his perspective?

If you participate in this experiment, please address your comments to Joe-2005, and remember that he was (and still is) an actual person. Although Joe-2005 may hold views similar to those of members and leaders of his church, you are not writing to UBF in general, nor to any current or former leaders. You are personally communicating with Joe-2005. Remember that he has feelings and commitments. If you speak to him without sensitivity, he might not be able to process what you are saying. But if you feel the need to be brutally honest and say something that appears harsh, that’s okay. Use your best judgment.

At some point in the future, Joe-2012 may write a letter to Joe-2005 about his presentation. If so, I will share it with you. But I want to hear from you first. Please react to this presentation and begin your responses with “Dear Joe-2005.”

And if you address a comment to Joe-2005, you just might get a response from him.

HOW TO READ AND STUDY THE BIBLE

(hypothetical presentation by Joe Schafer in July 2005)

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22).

Part 1: We should approach the Bible as the word of God

Thank you for inviting me to come and speak on the all-important topic of we approach Scripture. How do we approach the Bible? How should we approach the Bible? These questions are so important. The condition of our souls and the trajectory of our lives is largely determined by how we approach the Bible.

The most important thing I will tell you tonight is this. We need to approach the Bible as the word of God. Sarah Barry, the General Director of UBF, has said that the turning point of her life was when she, as a young university student, decided to read and study the Bible as the word of God. She began to treat the words of Scripture not as the utterings of human beings, but as the God of the universe speaking directly to her. When she decided to approach the Bible as the word of God, her relationship with God suddenly came alive and the course of her life was altered forever.

The Bible needs to be read, and it needs to be studied. We shouldn’t approach the Bible as if it were a textbook. A textbook can be read informationally, but the Bible should be read formationally. The Bible does contains lots of information to understand and digest. But God didn’t give us the Bible to fill our heads with knowledge. He gave us the Bible to repair our character, to re-mold and remake us in the image of Jesus Christ.

The Bible should also be read frequently. I’m sure you are familiar with Psalm chapter 1. Psalm 1 declares that the person who is truly blessed is the person who meditates on God’s law day and night. Those words “day and night” are really daunting. Is that a hyperbole? Is it an exaggeration? Some statements in the Bible are hyperbole. But in this case, I think it’s accurate. Very few people have a lifestyle that allows them to spend long periods of time each day and night to read and study Scripture. But we all have the freedom to direct our thoughts toward God’s word anytime we choose. Throughout the day, as we go about our business, our minds go in all sorts of directions. We think, worry, calculate and daydream. But by practice and self discipline and with God’s help, we can successfully direct our attention back where it should be, focused on the words that God has given. But we can say with confidence that the person who does this will be blessed, and is life will fruitful in all sorts of ways; everything he does will prosper (Ps 1:3).

As a career academic, I live in a world of theories and ideas. It’s a great challenge for me to bring Bible study out of the realm of abstraction into real life. Yet the Bible is about all about real life. It contains real commands from God that need to be taken seriously and implemented in real life. For this reason, I suggest that any session of Bible study, wither individually or in a group, ought to end with a solid point, something concrete that we are actually going to do based on what we learned. It’s okay to muse about this and that, but at the end of the day, we need to let God’s word operate on the real issues of life.

And that is the essence of what it means to walk as Jesus’ disciple. We weren’t called to live as nominal Christians. We were called to be disciples of Jesus. Since Jesus died and rose and ascended to heaven, we no longer have him here to communicate with us. We now have the Bible as the primary means through which we communicate and interact with God. The word of God created the world, and the word of God breathes new life into us. 1 Peter 1:23 says, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

Part 2: We should read the Bible in light of our mission

It is when we study the Bible within the context of our own purpose and mission that the application becomes relevant and the word of God really comes alive.

The Bible begins with the book of Genesis. Genesis explains that God made everything for a purpose. He made human beings with a mission and purpose, which is to be rulers and stewards over the earth (Ge 1:28). After sin entered the world, the ground became cursed, and our lives were filled with meaningless toil (Ge 3:17-19). We lost the noble mission of ruling and our lives were reduced to struggle for survival. But soon God began to work to restore that mission. In Genesis chapter 12, God called Abraham to begin a new history by living a new kind of life, a life of faith in obedience to God’s word. God promised Abraham that he would bless him and make him a blessing (Ge 12:1-3). That blessing is a reversal of Adam’s curse. But it didn’t happen right away. It was a process that evolved over many generations.

Through Abraham and his descendants, God raised a new nation, the nation of Israel. He delivered them from slavery in Egypt (a vivid depiction of the life of curse) and brought them into the promised land. God’s hope and purpose for the Israelites is described in Exodus 19:5-6: he intended them to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” But God didn’t force them, and it didn’t go according to his plan. Once they came into the promised land of Canaan, that glorious purpose began to fade. Once they got a taste of milk and honey, they indulged themselves and forgot their mission. They fell into an easygoing lifestyle. They lost their thankfulness for God’s grace of deliverance and began to lust after foreign gods. Their walk of faith degenerated into superficial observance of traditions and rites of worship. God rebuked them through many prophets but they stubbornly refused to listen. Eventually God’s people were invaded by foreign armies; their temple was destroyed and the people were carried off into exile. When they their mission, they lost everything.

But God wasn’t finished with them. After 70 years of Babylonian captivity, God returned a remnant and rebuilt the nation through them. And a few centuries later, something remarkable happened. The New Testament opens with a man on a mission. His name is John the Baptist,  and he preached a new message of repentance and forgiveness. And he prepared the way for the coming of Jesus. Jesus was no ordinary prophet. He was God’s one and only Son. Jesus embarked on a three-year ministry. He took care of the needy crowds, healed the sick and cast out demons. Yet his focus was on teaching the word of God and raising a handful of disciples to become leaders and shepherds of the future church. At the end of his ministry, Jesus suffered and died on cross to pay price for our sins. He paid for all our sins – past, present and future. And his resurrection demonstrates that he achieved complete victory over sin and death.

The risen Jesus gave this command to his followers: “Go and make disciples of all nations…”(Mt 28:19). This so-called Great Commission is the mission statement for the Church of Jesus Christ. This is the grand purpose on which the church rises or falls. We were called by Jesus and saved by him not merely for ourselves, but to declare his saving truth to others. 1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Note the similarity between this verse and Exodus 19:5-6. The two are really saying the same thing. God saves us and makes us his people in order to serve him by declaring his glories to the world.

And this leads me to my next point about the mission of Jesus’ disciples. Throughout the world, Christians are engaged in many acts of mercy. They are feeding the poor and clothing the naked. They are building orphanages, hospitals, and schools to improve people’s lives in this world. All these activities are good. But at the end of the day, there is no eternal benefit to people unless these activities happen within the context of preaching and teaching. Very early in the ministry of Jesus, he went into Capernaum to proclaim the word of God. He also healed the sick and cast out demons. As a result, many more needy people came to him to be healed. His disciples wanted him to stay there and establish an institutionalized system for social work. But Jesus refused to stay. “Jesus replied, ‘Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come’” (Mk 1:38). Jesus did take care of people’s human needs. But he gave first priority to teaching God’s word and raising disciples. He did teach the crowds, but his primary method was not mass evangelism. It was personal interaction with his disciples on an individual basis. It was a one-to-one ministry. When Jesus spent time with one disciple, he was not merely helping that disciple; he was helping all the other people that the disciple would help for the remainder of his life. And he was helping all the people that those people would help. This is a Biblical principle that goes back to God’s interaction with Abraham. One person is not just a person. One person is a nation. When you teaching one person, you may actually be influencing a whole nation for many generations to come.

Jesus was not merely a teacher; he was also a trainer. He gave his disciples on-the-job training to live a godly life and to take care of God’s flock. And he commanded them to do to same. In the Great Commission he said, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). It is very important that we do not lose this point. A Bible teacher is not merely an instructor; he is also a leader and a trainer. He is a shepherd. This emphasis on teaching and shepherding is one of the unifying themes of the whole Bible. The book of Genesis reaches a climax in the final chapters where Joseph became Bible teacher for his brothers, training them and leading them to repent and return to God. All of the great servants of the Bible — Moses,  Samuel, David, the prophets, and so on – were all Bible teachers. They declared God’s word to their generation and taught the Bible on the college campuses of their day. The same thing happens in the New Testament. John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and so on – they are all shepherds and Bible teachers.  Of course, the best example in this regard is Jesus, who is our Chief Shepherd and Bible teacher. The best methods and practices to follow are those of Jesus. Jesus shared a common life with his disciples in order to teach them the Bible by his own words and example. Through sharing a common life, the disciples overcame selfishness and learned love and compassion. Though they failed again and again, Jesus loved them just the same, restoring them from failure until they became the world’s best Bible teachers and shepherds and disciplemakers. Raising disciples who can teach and make other disciples is the way that the kingdom of God spreads.

Of course, Christians are not all the same. We have different talents and callings. We are not all called to preach Sunday worship messages or to lead fellowship meetings. But every Christian can be a Bible student and a Bible teacher. Every person can be a shepherd and a disciplemaker in his own life context. This is what the Great Commission demands. No matter what you say about Jesus, you can’t ignore the fact that all three of the synoptic gospels ends with a Great Commission. And the Gospel of John ends with a threefold command to feed Jesus’ sheep because we love him (John 21:15). Many people say they love Jesus, but they don’t necessarily feed his sheep. If they don’t feed sheep, do they love Jesus? Only God knows their hearts. But based on what the Bible says in John chapter 21, I believe that our love for Jesus is directly measurable by what we are doing to feed his sheep today.

Part 3: Concluding remarks

There are many more things that I could say about how to study the Bible. But I will finish up now with a few recommendations.

First, use the Bible as your primary source of spiritual food. Reading Christian books and commentaries is good. Listening Christian music is good. But we should spend the bulk of our time focusing on the words of the Bible itself. When you study a passage, do it prayerfully, noting all the details. Pray and ask God until the Holy Spirit reveals its meaning to you. It’s important to pray and receive the words of God first, before jumping to other books or commentaries. Think deeply about the passage and memorize most important verses. Then your Bible study will have depth and power.

Second, apply Scripture to yourself in concrete ways. Ask what God is saying to you. Are there promises to claim? Commands to obey? Sins to repent of? If you read the Bible it in context of your present life and mission, then every passage becomes deeply relevant, even the parts that appear difficult and obscure. For example, the Old Testament is filled with stories of warfare and conquest. How can we apply these to our life of faith today? Every Christian is engaged in warfare. Our enemies are not flesh and blood. It’s not a human battle, but a spiritual battle against Satan, the true enemy of gospel. We are under attack by a sinful culture. The postmodernist system of thought tells people that there is no absolute truth. We have to fight against these influences and declare God’s absolute truth today with conviction and confidence. The warfare passages in the Old Testament teach us how to keep our identity as God’s people in a hostile world, how to fight the forces of evil and win the victory through obedience and faith.

Third, combine Bible study with personal holiness and devotion. Be holy, as God is holy (Lev 19:2).  This is especially important for our mission as shepherds and Bible teachers, because God won’t bless our ministries if we indulge in sin. “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1Pe 2:12). Many of the most troubling sins are done in secret, when no one is looking. Many Christians engaged in ministry are secretly indulging in pornography. That kind of secret, double life makes us ineffective and miserable. God cannot bless us until we allow his word to cleanse us and make us holy.

Fourth, pay attention to what the Bible says about relationships. The Bible has a great deal to say about marriage, family, church and community. If we are having problems in our relationships, we need to seek out biblical answers. The Bible does have answers. Most of the time, the solution to relationship problems lies in our own personal transformation and repentance.  The word of God empowers us to overcome our individualistic, “I want to be my own man” mentality and, with spirit of humility and simple obedience, maintain the spiritual order in our relationships which is key to a harmonious Christian life.

Fifth, deal with questions, doubts and fears in a godly way. Sometimes our faith grows weak and we are not sure what to believe. If you have doubts about fundamental issues of faith and church practice, don’t speak about them too openly. Use godly wisdom. Speak confidentially to a spiritual elder or mentor who can encourage and counsel you. When Mary became pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, she must have been filled with uncertainty and fear. What did she do? She hurried to visit her older cousin Elizabeth, who encouraged her faith and helped her to see what God was doing. If you bring your questions and fears to trusted elders and mentors who will pray for you and encourage you.

Sixth, put the Bible into practice by teaching and shepherding others. We have to boldly go and do what Jesus commands and feed his sheep in today’s world.  The idea of sharing your faith and inviting others to Bible study can be a very scary thing. What if you don’t feel ready? I know the feeling. At some level, none of us ever feels ready. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t actually matter how we feel about it. In the Great Commission, Jesus doesn’t talk about feelings; he tells us, “Go!” If we take this as the word of God and simply do it, we find that God helps us overcome our fears.

Imagine going to the beach on a hot summer day. The water is cold, and you are afraid of diving in. You hesitate. But then you gather up your courage and dive in. The cold water is a shock to your system. But after a few seconds, your body adjusts to the new temperature. You swim around, and you find it’s great fun. Your body and soul are refreshed.

So go ahead. Dive in! The Bible is an ocean. The life of mission as a Bible student and as a Bible teacher and shepherd is the most refreshing and satisfying life that you can imagine. Praise be to God!

• Belief and Behavior.
• Creed and Conduct.
• Doctrine and Duty.

Necessarily, the first always precedes the second, or the second always follows the first. Through Bible study, our behavior follows our belief, our conduct follows our creed, and our duty follows our doctrine, and not the other way around.

Freedom and rest. Tit 3:8 says, “…those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.” When we trust God, we do what is good. When we truly believe, we behave. Those who know the grace of God are eager to do what is good (Tit 2:11,14). The Christian life is not one where we have to squeeze goodness out of reluctant people. Rather, it is a life that is joyfully lived out when the gospel is preached and taught. It is truly a life of freedom (2 Cor 3:17; Gal 5:1) and rest for our souls (Mt 11:29).

Bible study should proclaim, teach and emphasize the first BCD, because the second BCD follows the first.

What about me? My confession is that for over 2 decades of teaching the Bible as a Christian, I primarily emphasized the second BCD. My Bible teaching is laden with imperatives and commands: deny yourself (Mt 16:24), take up your cross (Mk 8:34), feed sheep (Jn 21:15-17), make disciples (Mt 28:19), meditate on God’s word day and night (Ps 1:2), be joyful (1 Th 5:16), pray continually (1 Th 5:17), always give thanks (1 Th 5:18), etc. If I felt the Bible student was not adequately responding in a timely fashion, I would throw in severe threats for good measure. (If you don’t repent, God will give you AIDS … or the Ebola virus!)

Did I do something wrong? “No” and “Yes.” “No,” because I did teach what the Bible said. But “yes” because I stressed the second BCD of behavior, conduct and duty, rather than the 1st BCD of belief, creed and doctrine. I did not deny the first BCD. However, I stressed the Christian life rather than Christ. I stressed being good rather than the gospel. I stressed doing rather than done. I stressed, “Finish your job,” rather than “It is finished” (Jn 19:30).

Is that a problem? I think it is because when behavior, conduct and duty is emphasized in Bible teaching and preaching, our outward Christian life can seem to be right, while our heart may drift (Mt 15:8; Isa 29:13). But God looks at the heart, not the nice outward Christian appearance (1 Sam 16:7).

Weary and tired. Also, when Christian duty is stressed, we soon become weary and tired. When behavior and conduct is emphasized, the Christian life is driven by a sense of duty and burden, rather than the unending wonder of who Jesus is.

Is the BCD of Bible teaching and preaching relevant and practical?

When I heard Duncan’s sermon, I was surprised at what I had not realized about this narrative, about Elijah and about God. I did not realize Elijah’s failure at the close of his glorious ministry, Elijah’s idolatry, and God’s gracious dealing with him.

1. Elijah’s Fear is Unbelief (1 Ki 19:1-3)

In fear, Elijah ran for his life (1 Ki 19:1). I assumed this was “reasonable,” since he was exhausted, he experienced a let down, and he was threatened by a powerful godless queen (1 Ki 19:2). But he had just experienced the almighty supernatural power of God and killed 450 false prophets. Yet the very next day, he did not believe in the Almighty God he had just proclaimed, and ran for his life (1 Ki 19:3). As a result God asked him twice, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Ki 19:9,13) Clearly God was not pleased with Elijah. What caused Elijah’s unbelief?

2. Elijah’s Unbelief is Rooted in His Idolatry (1 Ki 19:10,14)

What? How could this be? I had never thought that Elijah, a truly great prophet of God, could ever succumb to idolatry. Elijah had boldly preached against his nation’s idolatry throughout his ministry. How could he have given in to the idolatry he preached against? Elijah had 1 single desire as God’s prophet: To see his nation worship God, not idols. When he experienced the spectacular destruction of Baal worship, he expected his nation to turn back to God. But they continued to reject God’s covenant, tear down God’s alters, and kill God’s prophets (1 Ki 19:10,14), and Queen Jezebel promised to kill him. His treasure was not in God, but in what he had hoped God would do. This is noble. It is also idolatry.

3. Elijah Refused to See God’s Glory (1 Ki 19:11-13)

I had not noticed this before. When God asked Elijah to to go out from the cave he was in and stand on the mountain (1 Ki 19:11), he did not do so even though there was a whirlwind, earthquake and fire. Only when God spoke in a gentle whisper, did Elijah go out, and then with a cloak over his face (1 Ki 19:13). He apparently was so discouraged and disappointed that he could not bear to behold God’s glory.

4. God Retired Elijah, yet God was Gracious

I also had not realized the depth of God’s grace and goodness toward Elijah when I read and studied this passage in the past. Elijah’s disappointment exposed his idolatry of expecting a great spiritual revival through his ministry. But God wanted to give Elijah something better: Himself. Elijah fled and wished that he would die. God then shelved him. The only ministry left for him for the rest of his life was to prepare the way for his successor Elisha to do the job (1 Ki 19:15-16). Elijah’s ministry was essentially over. It didn’t end well for him. Elijah has all but had his day. God retired Elijah, as God had refused Moses entry into the promised land after 40 years of hard service when he was at the very edge of the promised land. God dealt with his chosen servants relentlessly and “harshly,” not to hurt them, but to give them the very best gift of Himself (Gen 15:1).

Despite Elijah’s failure and his refusal to see God’s glory on the mountain, God took him up to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Ki 2:11). It gets better. Centuries later, God sent Elijah up a mountain again. What did God want Elijah to see? The glorious transfigured image of Jesus (Lk 9:29-30). God wanted Elijah to behold “the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). Does it all make sense now? What is the lesson for us?

It is a costly and brutal lesson. God ruthlessly and emphatically pursued Elijah’s fundamental idolatry and ripped it from his heart and crushed it. God was essentially saying, “I’m enough for you, Elijah. I’m the only treasure worth having and I’m the only treasure that can’t be taken away from you.”

My personal testimony is this: I need Jesus only, not Jesus plus a glorious fruitful discipleship ministry, which can so easily become an idolatry to me. Yet, despite all my sins and idolatry, God is gracious to relentlessly pursue me, in spite of me. This is the gospel of God’s grace. Perhaps, I’ve stirred your curiosity enough to listen to this glorious sermon.

Have you thought of 1 Kings 19:1-18 in this way before? Do you agree? Is not idolatry at the very root of our sin (Ex 20:3-4), even for the very best of God’s prophets?

The consequences of sin remain, even after God forgives our sin. David did not want his adultery with Bathsheba known. He committed the “greater” sin of murder in order to cover up his “lesser” sin of adultery. His sin found him out. God forgave David’s sin (2 Sam 12:13). We Christians will meet him in heaven. But the consequences of David’s sin were devastating. David’s oldest son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar (2 Sam 13:14). To ask a few “silly” questions to make a point:

• How would a father feel about his daughter being raped?
• About his oldest son raping someone?
• About his own son raping his own daughter?

That’s not all. David’s most handsome son Absalom killed Amnon for raping his sister Tamar (2 Sam 13:28-29).

• How does a father feel about his oldest son being murdered?
• About another son being a murderer?
• About one son killing another son?

Next, Abasalom slept in public with all of his father’s concubines (2 Sam 16:22), and attempted to kill his own father (2 Sam 17:2-4), and take over his kingdom. The end result was that Absalom was killed, breaking David’s heart to pieces (2 Sam 18:33). God does not mince words when the Bible says, “you can be SURE that your sin will find you out.”

Supposing no one finds out my sin… Yet, many are able to “hide their sins” so that no one really knows what they did. Do they escape their sin being found out? Suppose I am addicted to watching pornography. But I know how to make sure that I am “never discovered,” not even by my wife or by anyone else. Say I go to my grave being addicted to pornography, but no one on earth knows that. Do I then escape my sin being found out, since no one knows what I did?

Sin WILL still find you out. It is obvious that pornography will distort my view of my wife, women in general, and even my own daughter. We hear of incest committed by a father toward his own daughter. We are repulsed. These daughters are scarred and wounded for life. But there is another “strange” consequence. When a father’s daughter grows up from a cute little girl and becomes an attractive woman, the daughter begins to look like the pornographic images that the father watches. As a result, he “withdraws” from his own daughter, because he cannot control his sexual urges and feelings toward his own daughter. Because the daughter needs her father’s love, she is also scarred and wounded by her father’s withdrawal from her. She then begins to seek “a father’s love” from boys and very often becomes promiscuous. Even if no one else knows, my sin WILL find me out.

Is there no hope since we all sin? Yes, sin WILL find us out. But the marvelous majestic mystery of the gospel is that my sin found itself on my Lord Jesus Christ. All my vile sins that have to expose me for the dirt bag that I truly am, found itself on the person of the purest man, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If my sin did not find itself on Christ, it would land entirely and squarely on me. This is the mystery of the gospel. Only the gospel can transform me from the jerk and creep that I am to be a pure, holy and blameless precious child of God.

Yes, your sin WILL find you out. Did your sin find itself on Christ?

The world cannot touch Paul. Of course, it is because Jesus is all the world to him (Phil 3:7-11). Therefore, the world has no handle on him whatsoever. There is nothing in the world that can bind him or hold him. Imprisonment has no hold on him. The envy and rivalry of Christians does not bother him (Phil 1:15,17-18). Suffering, persecution and opposition cannot touch him (Phil 1:28-30). Dying is not dreadful, but truly beneficial (Phil 1:21). Like his Lord Jesus, he has overcome this world in every possible way (Jn 16:33).

Curved inward on oneself. In contrast to Paul and Jesus, it so easy for me to be irritated at the most mundane of matters. If I am watching TV with my wife at night and she starts to fall asleep, I do not think of how hard she has worked all day, but how disinterested she is whenever we are together! (Sob, sob.) For sure, I am a sinner who is incorrigibly incurvatus in se, which means “curved inward on oneself.” And this sentiment is toward the person whom I love the most in this world, next to my Lord. What about toward others who are annoying!

Happy, healthy, humble. I realized what Paul’s healthy, happy, humble attitude toward himself was. Because of the grace of Jesus, Paul’s passion was to become like Jesus in his death (Phil 3:10). He was not trying to attain some level of success in the world, or even in the church. Seeing the beauty and the majesty of Christ, he knew and felt that he was the worst person alive (1 Tim 1:15). Whomever he met, he considered and felt that they were all better than he (Phil 2:3). If he did think of himself, he did so with sober judgment (Rom 12:3). His genuine view of himself seemed too humiliating or degrading. But he was fully aware that though he was still a very sinful man, yet Christ loved him and gave himself entirely to him (Gal 2:20). Though Paul’s life was wasting away, he was being renewed day by day with a glory that is out of this world (2 Cor 4:16-17). This ongoing never ending tension of his utter sinfulness and of Christ’s incomprehensible love enabled Paul to be a truly happy, healthy, humble man.

How can we truly be happy, healthy, and humble like the Apostle Paul?

What is sanctification? You can read in depth how Louis Berkhof (1873 – 1957), a renowned 20th century theologian, explains Sanctification. Briefly, Berkhof stresses the fact that God, and not man, is the author of sanctification and that the spiritual development of man is not a human achievement, but a work of divine grace. Thus, and I like his sentence: “Man deserves no credit whatsoever for that which he contributes to it instrumentally.” Berkhof states that this is so important because studying the Bible anthropologically (man-centeredly) and activism are such characteristic features of American Christianity that they glorify the work of man rather than the grace of God.

Probably, this is true not just of American Christianity but of Christianity through out the world, because the default mode of every man’s sin is incurvatus in se, which means to be “curved inward on oneself.” So it it “normal” to study the Bible self-centeredly, rather than God-centeredly or Christ-centeredly. It is also “natural” to think and feel and function as though my sanctification is up to me, even if I say that it is up to Christ.

How does the Apostle Paul view sanctification? For sure, Paul acknowledges that his sanctification is all because of Jesus and not him (Php 2:12-13; 1 Cor 15:10). Paul also views his sanctification as “I am not there yet.” Where does he say this? Paul said, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal…” (Php 3:12a). Again, he said, “I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it” (Php 3:13a). Paul’s single goal and desire is to be like Christ. But Paul basically said, “I’m not there yet.”

When Paul said this, he was likely addressing a false teaching called “perfectionism,” which suggests that a Christian can become perfect (or close to it) in this lifetime. Perfectionism is not an uncommon sentiment among Christians today. There is an account of an older minister who preached in church that he had achieved a state of perfection as a Christian. A man asked him after the sermon, “Does your wife agree that you have achieved this state of perfection.” He answered, “She does not believe in that doctrine yet!”

Such a teaching began with John Wesley who explained from studying Php 2:12 and Php 2:15 that Christians should strive for perfection (true) and concluded that some Christians could reach some degree of perfection in this life (not true). Wesley’s motivation for saying this was good: He wanted to combat the dead formalism of the church in his day. He wanted to see real, vibrant holiness among Christians. But to say that perfection is possible or attainable for a Christian in this lifetime is not supported by the Bible.

I have also sensed an implicit idea that Christians may regard themselves as more holy, more godly, more spiritual, and more mature the older they get. It is likely true that Christians, quantitatively speaking, “sin less” as they get older. But are older Christian really less sinful? I painfully acknowledge that a major reason that I seemingly “sin less” today is because I had a lot more strength to sin more when I was younger!

Such an idea that older Christians are holier, more godly, and more spiritually mature was not what Paul communicated. Such an idea promotes subtle (or blatent) elitism and a self-righteousness, which is not healthy for any church or Christian community. Paul was not an elitist. He never viewed himself as above the rest, or above his flock. He testified freely that he is the worst of sinners not as a young Christian, but as a mature, seasoned, Christian (1 Tim 1:15). He regarded all his fellow Christians as co-servants (Php 1:1), partners (Php 1:5) and brothers (Col 1:1), and not as his subordinates or “foot soldiers.” How could Paul be so genuinely humble? He knows from his heart and core being that he is not there yet, that he is nowhere hear perfection or Christ-likeness. Though Paul pursued perfection in Christ with all his heart, he did not teach perfectionism.

Do you agree? Do churches implicitly teach or promote perfectionism? Do older Christians communicate elitism? Is sanctification as being “not there yet” a good and helpful and healthy attitude to have (especially as we age)?

Remember: “These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word” (Isa 66:2).

Are any of you willing and interested to make the commitment to read the whole Bible in 2012? Hopefully, by God’s grace, my New Year’s resolution would not fail in Jan 2012!

Whenever I taught Cain and Abel in 1:1 Bible study since the early ’80s, I emphasized the utmost importance of “doing what is right” from Gen 4:7. I even titled my Bible study “DO WHAT IS RIGHT.” I taught Gen 4:7 as an imperative/command: “You must do what is right.” But was this how God was communicating Gen 4:7 to Cain?

One of my favorite short (non-theological) quotes is from the movie Hitch (2005)–a romantic comedy where Will Smith plays a date doctor. In advising a young man on how to win the girl of his dreams Smith says, “60% of all human communication is nonverbal body language. 30% is your tone. So that means 90% of what you’re saying ain’t coming out of your mouth.” I love this quote, because it says in a cute practical way what we are truly communicating with anyone (not just the one we love). How was God communicating to Cain (beyond his words)? What are you truly communicating when you preach, teach the Bible, or interact with others?

When Cain became very angry (Gen 4:5), God didn’t say, “How dare you get angry at me? Who do you think you are? Do you know who I am?” God also didn’ say, “Let me tell you what you must do.” Rather, when we observe Gen 4:6-7, God asked 3 questions (Gen 4:6-7a) followed by a statement of truth (Gen 4:7b).

Wouldn’t you agree that our God was full of grace toward Cain when God stated the truth to him in Gen 4:7? Isn’t the gracious God of angry Cain also the gracious God of the wayward younger son and the gracious God of the Pharisee-like older son (Lk 15:11-32)? Shouldn’t grace (not just truth in our words) color all we do as Christians?

Related to the above questions is a “famous” quote from Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” which atheists love. Dawkins himself read it at the end of the documentary movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic (woman hater), homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal (killing one’s child), pestilential (causing disease), megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic (denying pleasure), capriciously (impulsive) malevolent (doing evil) bully.” (Brackets mine.)

Answers (and rebuttals) welcomed.

I am reading How the Gospel Brings us All the Way Home by Derek Thomas. It is a commentary on Romans 8, which has been called the best chapter and the greatest chapter in the Bible. Just as Blagojevich and I are both guilty before a human court, all mankind is guilty in God’s sight, for “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom 3:10, 23). Every inclination, imagination and intention of our inner thoughts are evil all the time (Gen 6:5). Our heart is incurably deceitful (Jer 17:9). Even our very best righteous acts are like filthy rags–like a soiled menstrual cloth (Isa 64:6). Because of our sin we are all deserving of condemnation. However, Rom 8:1 amazingly declares the best news imaginable, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” This verse always reminds me of my friend Jim Rabchuk, for he has shared often that this is his conversion verse.

Just how radical is this good news of no condemnation? Our past and present sins may still guilt us into feeling condemned. How could I still lust like that? Lie like that? It is because of our performance mentality that is all too common. We feel good or bad depending on whether we do spiritual things or give in to sin. But Paul says that our state of “no condemnation” is not based on or dependent on our performance, but on being “in Christ.” Paul could have said it in the positive, “In Christ, there is justification,” which is God declaring righteous those who are in Christ (2 Cor 5:21). But he said, “In Christ, there is no condemnation.” This is the gospel of good news. This is the grace of God that we Christians have not merited or earned, nor can we ever merit or earn it.

Are there objections to this gospel of grace (Acts 20:24)? Yes. They have come from Christians. It goes something like this: “If you only teach grace, you will produce nominal uncommitted disobedient Christians who will sin as they please. So you need to balance grace with the law.”

Is it true that teaching grace (without adding law or performance) produces lawless Christians or antinomianism, which means anti-law, disregarding God’s law, or a license to sin? Paul anticipated this charge and asked, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (Rom 6:1) In fact, Paul’s response in Romans goes like this: “If we are not tempted to think that we can sin freely and still be Christians, we have not understood the gospel.” To Paul, grace MUST raise the temptation to think that we can sin as we please; if it does not, we have not understood the depth and true extent of grace. Yet, at no time can we yield to the temptation to think this way. Paul answers his own question in Rom 6:1: ”By no means!” (Rom 6:2)

How then should we respond to the gospel that gives freedom from condemnation? Grateful law-keeping is the saved sinner’s response to grace. When we add law to grace, a result is legalistic Christians. When we proclaim Paul’s gospel of radical free grace, the result is a life of holy obedient gratitude and thanksgiving for a very costly priceless grace.

Do you feel good or guilty based on your performance in keeping the law? Or do you live a life of “no condemnation in Christ” whereby you love and delight to keep the law of God?

YOU MUST NOT EAT (Gen 2:17). This “strange” verse was my conversion verse when I began 1:1 Bible study in 1980 with John Lee, a pediatrician who attends Lincoln Park UBF. I regard this as a “strange conversion verse” because I have not read of anyone else in history who was converted to Christ through this verse. Gen 2:17 caused me to cry tears of repentance for many hours. It convicted me of my life long sin of completely disregarding my Creator and living as though I am my own god, and yet God had not destroyed me, but loved me all my life to that day.

SEEK FIRST (Matt 6:33). After conversion I the word “first” in Matt 6:33 exposed my sin of never allowing God and the things of God to have first priority in my heart and life. “Things” always preceded God: girls, romantic/sexual fantasies, studying medicine, being a doctor, watching movies, watching sports, going jogging, hanging out, etc, was always “first.”

HOW FOOLISH! (1 Cor 15:36). 6 months after conversion, Samuel Lee, the founder of UBF, introduced me to my future bride. I was terrified of her because she seemed too domineering and powerful, and not at all the kind of woman I ever envisioned marrying. I knew she was a good, godly woman who loves Jesus, and I was foolish in my sinful sensual self for not wanting to marry such a woman. So, I married “by faith” by painfully acknowledging that my life and my marriage belong to God, not to me. After 30 years of an utterly sublime marriage, I joyfully and thankfully conclude that God knows me far better than I will ever know myself.

DENY YOURSELF (Luke 9:23). I know how sinful, worldly and selfish I was and still am. Without a doubt, I knew that I could not follow Jesus as I was. I absolutely needed to deny myself in order to follow Jesus. Though I fail daily, I always need to deny myself, especially as I get older.

HAVE FAITH (Mark 11:22). One of Samuel Lee’s great strength was his faith in God. By his faith, our gracious God used him greatly to convert Koreans to be world conquerors. Lee said and I agree that my weak point was my lack of faith. It still is. I need faith to challenge the impossible, which was my back pain and my visa status of being an illegal immigrant for 7 years. God helped me experience the victory of faith by no longer having back pain, and by becoming a US citizen after being an illegal alien for 7 years. Still, faith is my weak point and quite baffling to me.

I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE (Jer 31:3). In 2005, I was scammed of $1,000,000 because of greed, pride and a desire to retire ASAP. By this sin I totally dishonored my God, my church, my wife, my children, myself. I hated myself. But God spoke to me tenderly through Jer 31:3. I was newly amazed at the love of God that was indeed greater than all my sins.

GOD INTENDED IT FOR GOOD (Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28). When I had conflicts with some friends in church, I felt disillusioned after 25 years in UBF. Though they are godly Christian friends and well intentioned, some of their decisions and words devastated me. Of course, this was my own sin of being affected by their actions. The only respite I found was in the absolute goodness of God (Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28) that could not be thwarted by any man, regardless of what they say, do or decide. Is there a greater verse in the Bible that can help any Christian in any situation in life?

NO MORE FEARING MAN (Prov 29:25). To fear a man is to insult God who is above the man you fear. To cause others to fear man is to play God. “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe.”

JESUS BECAME SIN FOR ME (2 Cor 5:21). Historically, 2 Cor 5:21 is known as the Great Exchange. I never ever quoted or referenced this verse in sermons and Bible studies for 30 years. Now I do so repeatedly with gratitude for what Jesus has done for this soul of mine.

THE OLD TESTAMENT IS ABOUT JESUS (John 5:39). I had studied the Bible as though it was mainly about me and about others. But Jesus said that the OT is about him (John 5:39; Luke 24:27,44), and that Moses also wrote about Jesus (John 5:46). So I asked and answered the question in this post: What is the point of Genesis?

MY UPWARD HEAVENLY CALLING IN CHRIST (Phil 3:13-14). How comforting it is that God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus. Regardless of the circumstances of life, good or bad, this is a constant that never changes. Only in Christ can I forget what is behind, strain toward what is ahead, and press on toward my heavenly goal.

WORK OUT YOUR SALVATION WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING (Phil 2:12-13). Practically, I pray to work out my salvation with fear and trembling and with humility and tears (Acts 20:19). I pray to know with absolute unwavering certainty that this is only the grace of Jesus that God is first working in me so as to enable me to work out my own salvation.

What are the Bible verses that have helped to transform you? To have a crystal clear direction in your life (Psalm 119:105)?

When I studied Genesis in 1980, I was taught that God created man for mission (Gen 1:28). Dr. Samuel Lee, the founder of UBF, came up with a catchphrase which I loved: “Man = Mission, Mission = Man.” This catchy phrase is found in UBF’s Genesis Bible study materials worldwide. Because of the grace of Jesus poured out on me, I wanted to give of myself for my mission from God, which was to devote myself to one-to-one Bible study with anyone and everyone. This has been my staple of Christian life for the last three decades of my life to this day. This is surely nothing but the marvelous grace of Jesus to me.

So why am I now rethinking the phrase “Man = Mission” which has revolutionized the purpose of my entire life?

Many of our Bible studies could be synagogue sermons. In my article “What is the Point of Genesis?” I argue that Jesus and the New Testament apostles testify that all the Old Testament Scriptures, including Genesis, are about Jesus and the salvation found in him (John 5:39; Luke 24:27,44; 1 Cor 15:3-4). So does teaching that Man = Mission point us to Christ and lead us to salvation? Edmond Clowney says that any sermon or Bible study that does not take into account the full drama of redemption and its realization in Christ is a “synagogue sermon,” one that a Jew would agree with. So if “Man = Mission” is the point of a Bible study or sermon, it might be agreed with by many a non-Christian, while they still remain lost in sin and bound for eternal condemnation.

A “Man = Mission” theology makes mission, not Christ, the focus our Christian lives. Furthermore, the teaching of “man = mission” might shape our Christian psyche in a way that may not focus on or emphasize the main point of the Bible, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27). Mission-centered (instead of Christ-centered) Bible studies and sermons could subtly or implicitly idolize mission in place of worshipping God. Whenever anything becomes an idol, even something good like God’s mission, it stops glorifying God. Then our idolatry of mission, rather than God himself, becomes our practical identity and our self-worth as a Christian and as a church.

Mission as idolatry. Tim Keller defines an idol as making a good thing an ultimate thing. For instance, our children are among God’s best gifts to us human beings. But if our children become ultimate to us, knowingly or unknowingly, they become ab idol, taking the place of God). Then our joy is dependent on our children doing well and making us proud parents. We may unwittingly crush them, spoil them, even ruin them for life. Similarly, when our mission becomes our idol, our strongest joy and delight is not God (Ps 37:4), but how well we are carrying out our mission. The object of our glory becomes a fruitful, exemplary ministry with many growing disciples, growing church attendants, and missionaries being sent out. Then our disciples and members are regarded not as precious redeemed people, but as objects and tools for our glory, church growth, and mission. If any particular disciple in our church disappoints us, or “doesn’t produce,” or leaves the church, they become marginalized or stigmatized. They are labeled as selfish and worldly and are said to have “run away.”

Though mission is important, I do not believe that it can be the major driving force of any Christian individual or church. Even mission can become an idol if it, rather than Christ functions as the ultimate joy and meaning of our lives. So, according to Genesis, how might we rethink teaching the purpose of man’s life?

Before God gave man a mission, he created man for relationships (Gen 1:26-28). When God created man in his image, he wanted man to be a relational being. God created man in relationship to God, to himself, to others, and to the world, which was all broken when man sinned created man for relationships. Only Christ, through his redeeming work on the Cross, restores all our broken relationships. Tim Keller said, “If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about.” If we make mission rather than relationships as primary, we could be “faithful” to our mission while damaging precious and priceless relationships. What if I’m a so-called “exemplary, fruitful, influential Christian leader,” but my wife is not happy, my children don’t relate to their dad, my fellow Christians think I am unapproachable, and my non-Christian friends think that I’m arrogant and self-righteous. I guess you could still insist, “I am mission-centered.” Someone said, “It doesn’t please God to sacrifice our families on the altar of Christian mission,” or something to that effect.

Mission is ultimately the mission of God, not man’s mission. When I emphasize that “man is mission,” I think that mission is what I must do as a responsible Christian. If I do my mission “well,” I could be commended and honored, but if my mission is “not fruitful,” I could be regarded as unimportant. But is mission ultimately my duty, or God’s doing? Countless promises through out the Bible begins with God saying, “I will…” Therefore, God is the One who will fulfill His mission. When I realize that mission is really not my mission or man’s mission, but God’s mission, then all I need to do is to humbly and prayerfully jump on God’s bandwagon, and go along for the ride. God will fulfill his mission, with or without my participation or involvement, and regardless of my obedience or disobedience. Jesus said to Peter, “I will build my church” (Matt 16:18). It is really not up to Peter or me to ensure that God’s mission is carried out correctly or properly. It is nothing but the grace of Jesus that Peter or I or anyone else am enabled and empowered to participate in God’s mission.

Mission is ultimately completed by Christ. Tim Keller’s audio sermon entitled Made for Stewardship (Gen 1:26-2:2, 7-9, 15) explains man’s work and “mission” differently from UBF. Keller explains man’s work in relationship to rest, for God worked for 6 days and rested on the 7th day. God created us to live in a cycle of work and rest. But because of our sin, we lost our rest, regardless of whether we work or not. Also, our work becomes a burden and a curse. Even Christian service, serving God and living for God’s mission is a heavy unsustainable burden and a curse without finding rest in Christ (Matt 11:28-29).

Without understanding the rest purchased for us in Christ, our work, including our Christian mission becomes our sense of identity or self-worth. To Rocky Balboa, his “work” was to go the distance for 15 rounds in the boxing ring. The Jewish 100 meter runner in Chariots of Fire said, “I have 10 seconds to justify my existence.” Even someone like Madonna finds fulfilment and meaning only when she produces creative work over and over again. Otherwise, she feels useless and mediocre, saying, “Even though I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove that I am Somebody.” Similarly, as a Christian, am I still trying to prove myself through my mission? Am I still functionally finding fulfilment only when I preach well, disciple others well, grow my church well, and am respected by others, etc.? But such a life of God’s mission is a life that is too heavy for me to bear. Furthermore, God did not intend for me to do so with such a mission driven or performance based attitude.

Saying “man is mission” is not wrong. But ultimately, it is not my mission or my work, but Christ completing his mission and his work, when he said, “It is finished” (John 19:20). Only Christ fulfilled perfectly “Man = Mission.” When I realize that Christ completed the mission where I failed, I find rest in Christ’s completed work. Then, and only then can I live a life of mission by His strength and grace alone with the utmost of gratitude, thanksgiving and joy.

Do we overemphasize mission when teaching Genesis? Should Genesis point to Christ who alone fulfilled his mission?

This question is especially pertinent to us because, for the last fifty years, the study of Genesis has been the bread and butter of UBF’s Bible study ministry throughout the world. God has blessed thousands of people through our study of Genesis. It has led to many genuine conversions to Christ. It did for me when I studied Genesis in 1980 with Dr. John Lee of Lincoln Park UBF.

How I had understood Genesis. Having studied and taught Genesis for the last three decades, I can say that my understanding and presentation of Genesis was built upon imperatives: God is the Creator, and you are not; therefore, you must honor God as the Lord of your life (Gen 1:1). Man sinned; therefore, repent of your sins (Gen 3:1-7). Cain proudly rejected God’s sovereignty; therefore, you must humbly accept God’s sovereignty (Gen 4:1-7). Noah obeyed God and built an ark of salvation; therefore, you must obey (Gen 6:1-22).

I saw the patriarchs as examples to be emulated. Be an ancestor of faith and a source of blessing, and offer your “Isaac” to God as Abraham did (Gen 12:2-3; 15:1-21; 22:1-19). Marry by faith as Isaac did (Gen 24:1-67). Struggle with God as Jacob did (Gen 32:22-32). Forgive others as Joseph did (Gen 50:15-21).

Genesis surely contains ethical and moral principles, illustrations and examples for our Christian lives today (1 Cor 10:6,11). But are these teachings to be obeyed the point of the book? How are Christians to understand Genesis? What did Jesus say about Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament (OT)?

What Jesus said. In John 5:39, Jesus spoke to Israel’s Bible teachers about the OT: “These are the Scriptures that testify about me.” Luke 24:27 says that Jesus “explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” In Luke 24:44, Jesus said, “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Basically, Jesus said that all of the OT Scriptures, including Genesis, are about him. They are not primarily about Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. They are not primarily about me. They are primarily about Jesus.

What Paul said. In Acts 20:27, Paul said, “…for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” The “whole counsel of God” refers to the OT, because the NT had not yet been written. Throughout his thirteen epistles, Paul regarded the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection as matters of first importance, and he believed the gospel was “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:1-4). Paul confirmed that Jesus’ death and resurrection are in accordance with the whole counsel of OT Scriptures.

What Peter and the four gospel writers said. All of Peter’s sermons in Acts were a proclamation of Christ by citing the OT Scriptures (Acts 2:14-41). The gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all quoted extensively from the OT to demonstrate that Jesus is the promised Messiah.

If Jesus, Paul, Peter, and the evangelists presented the OT Scriptures as a proclamation of Christ, shouldn’t we be doing the same?

I have found that it is possible to teach, reveal and proclaim Christ from Genesis. Here are just a few illustrations from select stories of Abraham and Jacob.

God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen 15). When Abraham asked God how he would gain possession of the promised land, God answered by explaining a covenant ritual that involved cutting a heifer, a goat and a ram in two and arranging the halves opposite each other (Gen 15:8-10). Then when Abraham fell into a deep sleep, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch (representing God) appeared and passed between the pieces (Gen 15:17-18). This was how God made a covenant with Abraham. What is the meaning of this grotesque and bloody ritual which involved cutting three animals in half? When parties made a covenant in ancient time, both parities would walk between the divided animals so as to signify, “May this be done to me if I break this covenant. May I be torn apart. May I be cut in half.” But after Abraham prepares the animals, instead of the firepot moving between the animals side by side with Abraham, God went through this bloody alleyway all by himself. God takes the full responsibility for the fulfillment of the covenant all by himself, even when we fail to keep our part of the deal. Whenever we sin, it is God, not us, who becomes like the butchered and sliced animal. This is grace. When we personally know this immeasurably costly grace, we begin to understand that the only one true blessing is Christ, not Abraham or anyone else.

Abraham offered Isaac (Gen 22). When God asked Abraham to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice, it was not to command us to offer him our Isaac. God stopped Abraham, because the actual sacrifice of Isaac wasn’t necessary; one day God was going to sacrifice his Son for us all (Rom 8:32). This was explained in a previous article.

Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Gen 28). At Bethel, Jacob saw “a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” What is the personal application we are supposed to draw from this passage? Is the passage teaching us that we should make a disgustingly selfish vow, as Jacob did, so that we will see a vision? Or does this dream teach us something significant about God?

Jacob wanted God’s blessing, as do we all. Jacob was not seeking God. But God was seeking him. As God came down in judgment on the tower of man’s pride at Babel (Gen 11:4), so in Jacob’s dream God came down to Jacob in grace. The angels ascending and descending on the stairway signified an opening of communication between heaven and earth. The climax of the vision is that God came down the stairway to stand over Jacob. The Lord stood “above it” (Gen 28:13) has also been translated and understood to mean “beside him” or “over him.” Jesus identifies himself to Nathanael as the one on whom the angels ascend and descend (John 1:50-51). Standing by Jacob, the Lord taught Jacob about Himself. He is the God of the past (Gen 28:13), the future (Gen 28:14), and the present (Gen 28:15). He is the God who takes the initiative with selfish Jacob and with selfish me. God comes to us in the person of Jesus.

God’s initiative in establishing a relationship with fallen mankind is a recurring theme throughout the book of Genesis. God approached Adam and Eve (Gen 3:9), Noah (Gen 6:13-14), Abraham (Gen 12:1-3), and now Jacob. God’s initiative challenges our natural, default way of thinking that we must make a sincere effort to seek God and please God enough to bring forth his blessing upon our lives. The painful, honest truth is that “there is no one who seeks God,” “not even one” (Rom 3:10-12; Ps 14:1-3, 53:1-3; Eccl 7:20). Jacob did not earnestly seek God, and neither do we. It is God who takes the initiative to seek us, ultimately at great cost to himself (John 4:23).

Jacob’s struggle with God (Gen 32). This famous wrestling match took place at night at the ford of the Jabbok River. Does this passage teach that we must also struggle with God until God blesses us? Does this mean that anyone and everyone who struggles with God gets to see God and receive his blessing? Is my struggle the determining factor as to whether or not I see God and get his blessing?

In any wrestling match, who wins? The one who is stronger and better. In a wrestling match between God and man, who is the stronger one? The answer is obvious. Yet God declared Jacob the winner (Gen 32:28). How could this be? God wrenched Jacob’s hip, declared him the winner, and then blessed him (Gen 32:25-29). In the morning, Jacob understood the grace of God when he said, “I saw God face to face and yet my life was spared” (Gen 32:30). Obviously, God allowed Jacob to win. But one day, God would have to lose. God blessed Jacob, but one day he was going to have to curse his Son (Gal 3:13). Jacob struggled at the river and victoriously won. One day, Jesus was going struggle at Gethsemane’s Garden in unbearable agony and then lose in an apparently conclusive defeat. For Jacob and for us to see the glorious light of the face of God (2 Cor 4:4), God had to hide his face in the darkness of Calvary (Matt 27:46). Only by God losing in heartbreaking humiliation could we ever gain the final victory.

What is the point of Genesis? It is Jesus. It is the gospel. It is the marvelous grace of Jesus. It is the initiative of God to seek us out, to love us and to save us at great cost to himself.

Do you agree that Genesis is about Jesus? Do you focus on Jesus when you teach Genesis?

References

1. Preaching Christ in All of Scripture, Edmond P. Clowney, 2003
2. The God Who is There, D. A. Carson, 2010
3. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, Graeme Goldsworthy, 2000
4. The Gospel Coalition 2011 Conference: “Preaching Jesus and the Gospel from the Old Testament.” (9 excellent lectures)

In part two I did not discuss an important facet of the interpretation of the sower parable: namely, the ambiguity concerning whether it is the word or the people who are sown. If you look carefully at verses 14-20, sometimes the seed that is sown is the word (14-15) and sometimes it is the people (16,18,20). What might be the significance of this? Was Mark just being sloppy?

The explanation for this apparent conundrum lies a bit later on in the Isaiah 6 passage from which Mark quotes. Isaiah reports God’s declaration that in spite of the devastating judgment to come upon the land, “as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land” (13). Here, the “holy seed” refers to the people of God. God’s activity in Jesus’ ministry was not only the sowing of the word in people, but the sowing of people in the land. More specifically, in Jesus God was re-sowing Israel, the people of His kingdom. Jesus confidently prophesied that this kingdom would grow like a mustard seed into “tallest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade” (Mk 4:32).

The kingdom God envisioned for His people has always been a kingdom to be established through the hearing of His word that leads to faith and obedience. To touch on a UBF favourite, before God prefaced his declaration to the Israelites that they would be for Him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation with the clause, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant….” (Ex 19:5). In this context it is also worth noting that what Jesus himself calls the first and greatest commandment, the Shema, also begins (as does the parable of the sower!) with the call to hear: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut 6:4-5). And apparently the word “to hear” in Hebrew also has the meaning, “to obey” so that there is no question of truly hearing God’s word but being disobedient to it. I hear echoes of James at this point: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says…. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:22,25).

Maybe this is starting to sound dangerously like law- or works-righteousness to you? Well, I would like to say two things about this (which, by the way, links this series back to a short discussion that went on between Joe, Dr. Ben and myself had in the comments on the last part of Joe’s 13-part series). First, even though I believe in justification by faith alone (Ro 1:17; 3:28), I also think we need to uphold James’ point that faith without works is dead (2:17,24), which I think Paul actually agrees with at several points even in the letter to the Romans (1:5; 6:16-18). John 6:29 brings this out neatly: “Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’ ” To bring this back to the sower parable, those who truly hear the word are those who also accept it and bear fruit. BUT, I also want to add that the obedience that comes from our faith and is integrally linked to it does not really come from us, and so there is still no room for boasting. In the language of the sower and connected parables in Mark 4, it is the seed sown in us that grows up and bear fruit, causing those who hear to grow up and bear fruit along with it. The seed grows up and bears fruit, and the kingdom of God comes, like this: “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain–first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head” (4:27-28). In other words, a life that bears the fruit of the kingdom is the natural outflow of the work of the word of God sown in us.

The last point I want to make is to draw attention once more to the reversal Mark makes of the apparent insider/outsider distinction based on Isaiah 6:9-10. The disciples, unlike those on the outside, have been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but they themselves do not understand. And they really don’t understand, as Mark makes clear over and over again throughout his gospel. I mentioned what happens in Mark 8 in the last post. We could also cite Mark 6 – the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, but they think it’s a ghost. After Jesus calms the wind and waves, Mark comments, “They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened” (6:51-52). Take a look also at 7:17-18. “Are you so dull?… Don’t you see..?” “Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?” (8:17-18) “But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it” (9:32). The disciples repeatedly fail to understand what is happening around them. They argue about who is the greatest instead of seeing the greatness of the kingdom revealed in Jesus who came to serve. They are indignant when they see Mary pour out her perfume on Jesus. They try to resist with violence against the mob that comes to arrest Jesus instead of understanding the way of the cross. They don’t believe the good news of Jesus’ resurrection.

What might Mark be trying to convey to his readers by presenting the disciples in this way? Remember that these very disciples are the apostles and leaders of the Church, the heroes of the faith for the early Christians Mark initially wrote for. If even these guys struggled so hard to understand the kingdom, what about us? Are we likely to be doing much better than they did? “Consider carefully what you hear,” Jesus warns us in Mark 4:24. The way I have often heard people deal with Mark 4 is to go through the different obstacles (path, rocks, thorns) and ask what sort of soil we are. In those discussions, hardly anyone thinks he or she is like the hardened path that the word doesn’t even get inside. But I think our hearts are often hardened like the path, hardened by repeated use. We have heard the gospel stories so many times that, just as ground that gets packed down by frequent travelling, we have such fixed ideas about what they mean that we aren’t really open to hear anymore, and the word Jesus is speaking to us now often doesn’t even get in.

I think we have a lot more to learn from blind Bartimaeus (Mk 10:46-52) than we would like to admit. (I am mainly talking about myself here, as I continue to realize how much I have to learn and how little I know of God’s kingdom.) Bartimaeus was under no illusions about his blindness. With this in mind he cried out with all his strength, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” When Jesus asked him what he wanted, he simply said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” To this man, Jesus replied, ” ‘Go… your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road” (52). The attitude we need to have as hearers of the word combines a serious humility: sober judgment about our ignorance, but combined with a vibrant hope in Jesus, who “even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” (7:37; see also 7:33-35 and 8:22-26).

God has indeed given us the secret of His kingdom in the person of Jesus. Now it’s up to us to heed His main imperative, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” (9:7).

References

1. Bailey, K.E. Poet and Peasant: A Literary Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976.
2. Capon, R.F. Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
3. Crossan, J.D. “The Parables of Jesus,” in Interpretation, July 2002, pp. 247-259.
4. Evans, C.A. “On the Isaianic Background of the Sower Parable,” in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 47:1985, pp. 464-468.
5. France, R.T. The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
6. Hedrick, C.W. Many Things in Parables: Jesus and his Modern Critics. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.
7. Heil, J.P. “Reader-Response and the Narrative Context of the Parables about
8. Growing Seed in Mark 4:1-34,” in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 54:1992, pp. 271-286.
9. Myers, C. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.
10. Snodgrass, K. Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
11. Westermann, C. The Parables of Jesus in the Light of the Old Testament. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990.
12. Yoder Neufeld, T.R. Recovering Jesus: The Witness of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007.

I chose to discuss the parable of the sower because it is the “parable of parables” or the “master parable.” In Mark 4:13 Jesus says to his disciples (the Twelve and the others around him), “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?”

Let’s begin at Level 1, where we consider the meaning of the parable itself, in isolation from its narrative context. Strictly speaking, the actual parable of the sower only takes up six verses (3-8). Before that, Mark gives us the narrative setting (1-2), and after the parable itself we have Jesus’ challenge to his audience (9), followed by a shift in scene to Jesus giving private instruction to his disciples (10-32), followed by a return to the crowd setting with a summary statement in 33-34. In the private instruction section, the disciples ask Jesus about the parables (10); Jesus responds by first providing a general principle drawn from Isaiah 6 (11-12), then issues a challenging question (13), provides an interpretation of the sower parable (14-20), and tells two related figures of speech (21-25) and two more parables about growing seeds (26-32).

Most of us are already familiar with Mark’s interpretation, so it is hard to do this, but try to imagine yourself only hearing Jesus tell the actual parable (verses 3-8). What might we think? Here is a story about a farmer going out to sow his seed, who experiences a progressive three-fold failure followed by a three-fold success. Failure or success is linked to the sort of soil the seed falls on, not to the quality of the seed, which is presumably the same in each case. The seed on the path doesn’t even get into the soil; the seed on rocky places gets in but doesn’t take root and so ends up scorched; the seed among thorns grows up nicely but gets choked and fails to bear grain. The successful seed yields a surprising crop – some of it producing thirty, some sixty, and some even a hundred times what was sown.

Without the narrative setting, how might we understand this parable? Taking into consideration socio-economic considerations about peasant life in first-century Palestine, some scholars suggest that this parable, in its original telling, offered sympathy and even revolutionary hope to typical overworked and oppressed farmers who would be familiar with the tragic experience of crop failure. A harvest as abundant as the one described in verse 8 would enable such a farmer to pay off his debts and free himself from his servitude to the landowner under the vassal system. According to Ched Myers (1988), Jesus describes the kingdom of God as envisioning “the abolition of the oppressive relationships of production that determined the horizons of the Palestinian farmer’s social world” (p. 177). While this brings elements of the parable’s social and cultural setting to bear on its interpretation, showing a way Level 4 can contribute to reading the parable, such an interpretation – however exciting it might be for those inclined toward socialism – might not seem very plausible, at least, not without more explanation.

Without clear interpretive constraints, the parable on its own could mean just about anything anyone wanted it to mean. And to my mind this is the biggest problem with either restricting interpretation to the narrative world of the parable on its own (Level 1) or opening it up too broadly, a danger facing anyone who would use Levels 4-6 on their own and then speculating and allegorizing away. Either way we have no clear guide for reading the parable. But if we read the parable at Level 2, as an integral part of the overall narrative Mark has put together, we quickly get a grip on some firm constraints to work with. In the case of the sower, more so than most of the other parables that appear in the gospels, Mark gives us a lot of help. For one thing, he provides an actual allegorical interpretation (14-20). In light of this, we see that the sower parable is about what happens to the word that is “sown in” people who hear it. Three types of obstacles hinder those who hear from bearing fruit: the birds (Satan) eat up the seed (word) sown along the path; the sun (tribulation and persecution) scorches the shallow-rooted plant in the rocky ground; and the thorns (cares of the world and deceitfulness of wealth) choke the healthy plants that grow up among thorns. But amidst the apparent failure of the word, there is also surprising success – “those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold” (20).

Mark’s interpretation doesn’t tell us who the sower is or what the fruit refers to, or what makes the difference between those who bear thirty, sixty, and a hundred times what was sown. But the broader context of Mark’s gospel provides some clues. Just as there are three failed responses to the sowing in the parable, in chapters 1-3 we find three groups not responding well to Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom (1:14-15): the Scribes (2:6-7; 3:22), the Pharisees (2:16,24; 3:6), and Jesus’ own family (3:20-21,31-35). In spite of this, we also see successful response in the disciples (1:16-20; 2:14; 3:13-19) and in the increasing numbers of people following Jesus (1:27-28,37,45; 2:1-2,13,15; 3:7-9,20,32; 4:1). The other elements in Mark 4 all support the idea that the sower refers to Jesus and the seed/word to his preaching of the kingdom.

(a) The hearing of Jesus’ word (here spoken in parables) is emphasized throughout the chapter: Jesus introduces the parable, “Listen!” and concludes it with the challenge, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Structurally, the whole section is framed by comments on Jesus teaching/speaking the word to the crowds in parables (1-2, 33-34).

(b) The quotation from Isaiah 6 distinguishes between superficial and genuine hearing. Jesus gives us the impression that his very purpose in using parables is to make sure people “on the outside” don’t understand what he’s talking about, even though they “hear” the word. It almost sounds like a version of double predestination – God chooses to let some hear, turn and be saved, but causes others to harden their hearts and be unable to turn and be forgiven. But as the next point will show, a complete understanding of what Mark is doing in 4:1-34 mitigates against this, even if the actual result of Jesus’ preaching is a kind of polarizing or sifting of his audience.

(c) Jesus uses the lamp image (21-23) to say that what is hidden (namely the mystery of the kingdom in Jesus’ parables) is meant to be disclosed. He repeats, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” The measure saying (24-25) is also introduced with the words, “Consider carefully what you hear,” suggesting that the measuring has to do with applying oneself to Jesus’ words. Both of these sayings have the function of clarifying the earlier quotation from Isaiah – Jesus is not intentionally preventing anyone from being saved. In this context it is relevant to notice that even the disciples, those on the inside, to whom the secret of the kingdom of God has been given (11), don’t understand the parable. In fact a major theme of the rest of Mark’s gospel is the persistent and serious lack of understanding of the disciples, who like everyone else need to have their eyes and ears healed (see for example 8:17-21,29-33).

(d) The two additional parables explain two further aspects of the same process discussed in the sower. The parable of the growing seed (26-29) indicates the inevitable growth and fruit-bearing of the sown seed, which has nothing to do with human effort – in other words, it happens by the power of God. And so the harvest is assured. And the parable of the mustard seed (30-32) depicts the unexpectedly great effect that the growth of this seed will have in the world. The focus here is on the “seed sown on good soil” (20), which, just like Jesus’ ministry, will win out in the end in spite of small beginnings, all sorts of opposition and obstacles, and unlikely odds.

To my mind, reading the parables in their immediate narrative contexts (Level 2), as I have done for the sower above, only makes sense. The fact is that we only have the parables of Jesus embedded in narrative contexts, and when we take these contexts into consideration, the significance of the parables themselves, and of the narrative in which they are set, becomes much clearer. But even at Level 2 we already saw the broader Scriptural and theological context creeping in via Mark’s quotation in verses 11-12, and in some of the interpretive moves I made in points (a)-(d). At Level 3 a lot of new possibilities break in, and the potential for allegorizing breaks open as much as it does at Level 5, given a sufficiently fertile imagination, so much care is needed when working at Level 3.

There is so much more to say about this parable, and about the way the different levels of meaning can contribute to its interpretation, but let me conclude this installment by stating in what sense the sower is the parable of parables. The kingdom of God, which Jesus has come as God’s agent to establish, gets established via the word of God. When the word of God gets sown in us, it powerfully and inevitably produces a great and glorious harvest of righteousness. This happens by the power of God, but it also requires obstacles to be overcome. Many people, even those who hear, will fail to produce the fruit of the kingdom. But many others will hear, accept, and bear fruit, and the harvest will be astounding. When this happens, lives will change and our world will be transformed. The purpose of all the parables is to describe what the kingdom of God is like and/or to stimulate us to think about, come to understand, and then to decide and act in ways that realize this kingdom. The sower is the parable that reveals to us the foundational secret of how this takes place – through the hearing, receiving, and response to the word of God. So “he who has ears to hear, let him hear”!

This is the first part of a three-part series on the parable of the sower, focused on the version of that parable that appears in Mark 4. In the second installment I will give my analysis of the parable itself, and in the third I will share some lessons I think the parable has for us.

To understand the parables of Jesus is crucial for anyone seriously interested in knowing what Jesus taught during his time on earth, since the New Testament gospels are the main documents that preserve the teachings of Jesus, and parables make up a large portion of these teachings – about thirty-five percent in the synoptic gospels (Snodgrass, 22). Jesus was clearly a teller of parables, so any student of Jesus’ teachings needs to come to terms with the parables. For people in UBF, understanding the parables takes on additional significance since the gospels make up the bread and butter of our theological understanding. Sunday sermons and correlated Bible studies typically move passage-by-passage through a book of the Bible, and the general pattern of book selection in many UBF chapters takes one of the gospels, then another OT or NT book, and then back to another of the gospels, alternating between a gospel and other books of the Bible. Knowing, then, what Jesus’ parables are supposed to be doing can only help us as we seek to follow him.

So what is a parable, anyway? The New Testament’s use of the Greek word parabole, and the Hebrew word mashal (most frequently translated parabole in the Greek version of the Old Testament), actually cover a wide range of literary forms that precision-oriented people would want to distinguish from each other. Metaphors (“You are the salt of the earth” (Mt 5:13)), aphorisms (“Let the dead bury their own dead” (Lk 9:60), proverbs (“Physician, heal yourself!” (Lk 4:23)), allegories (e.g. the two eagles and the vine in Ezekiel 17), simple comparisons or similitudes (“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly” (Prov 26:11)), extended narrative comparisons (e.g. the parable of the prodigal son in Lk 15) and more can all be referred to as “parables” in the biblical sense of that word.[1]

New Testament scholars who do research on the parables disagree with each other on various points concerning both the nature and the function of parables. I won’t be able to go into much detail on the fine points of this vast literature, but will simply present what I see as a good working definition of the term “parable,” and a good general characterization of how parables are supposed to work. For the purposes of understanding the sort of thing the parable of the sower is (and what most of the other texts we usually think of as parables are), it will be sufficient to define a parable as an extended comparison in narrative (story) form with a beginning, middle and end, that compares some event from human experience or nature to something else (usually to some aspect of the kingdom of God). Whatever else the function of parables might be, it is clear that Jesus used them to teach. Many scholars see the theme of Jesus’ teaching, especially in the parables, as concentrated on the overarching theme of the kingdom (or reign) of God. From this point of view we can explain the wide variety of different parables by noting that, just as a king does many different things, so to does the King whose kingdom Jesus describes. So the kingdom of this King can be compared to many different things, each of which is intended both to give us insight and to move us to the sort of faith, decision and action appropriate for subjects of the King.

A core question to ask about the parables is how we should read them. The rest of this installment will investigate this question. To get our minds around the different possible ways of reading a parable, it is useful to think of parables as narrative worlds. Part of what you do when you tell a story is to generate a world of meaning. For example, J.K. Rowling, in writing the Harry Potter series, created a narrative world that is populated by various fictional characters (e.g. Ron Weasley, Lord Voldemort), institutions and settings (e.g. Hogwarts School, Ministry of Magic), and that has its own history. The parables of Jesus are obviously much shorter than the fantasy novels of Rowling, Tolkein or C.S. Lewis, and the narrative worlds generated are relatively sparsely populated. The characters in Jesus’ parables do not get developed much, and he includes only the details needed to make his point. Still, they generate small narrative worlds. An interesting thing about Jesus’ parables is that they are stories within stories. Each one occurs within the larger narrative context of a gospel, which is itself a story (in this case a story whose main character is Jesus), and so a distinct narrative world. Parables, then, are stories embedded inside of bigger stories. We can take this further: the gospels themselves are part of the New Testament, and the New Testament is one part of the two-part canonized work Christians call the Bible. It is possible to see the entire Bible, even with all its diversity, as generating an over-arching narrative world.

Each of these world-levels – (1) the parable itself, (2) the gospel as a whole, (3) the whole of Scripture – can play a role in how we read and understand any given parable. Some scholars have wanted to pull the parables out of their narrative contexts and examine them in isolation (focusing exclusively on Level 1). The motivation for reading the parables in this way is to get at the “original” parable, as Jesus actually told it in its historical, first-century life setting. People worry that when the author of the gospel recorded the parable, he adapted and shaped it to fit his own theological agenda, and so lost the function and intention of the historical Jesus. The effort to understand how Jesus’ first-century audience would likely have heard his parables brings an additional level into play: (4) the parable within the first-century cultural context of Jesus’ life and ministry. Reading the parables informed by what we know about Jesus’ cultural context and social setting can enable us to fill in the unspecified details of the parabolic worlds more accurately.

Another worry that drives these scholars comes from the tendency of parable interpreters in the past to “allegorize” the parables. Allegorizing means treating the parable as a secret code that needs to be deciphered, and resolving its meaning in ways disconnected from the actual text and the original intention of telling the parable. The way Augustine interpreted the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) often gets cited as a particularly bad example of this. Augustine says the man who gets beat up is Adam, the thieves are the devil and his angels, the priest and Levite are the priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament, the Samaritan is Jesus, the donkey is the incarnation, the inn is the church and the inn-keeper is Paul, and this goes on for pretty much every single object in the story. Is this what Jesus meant when he originally told the story? Allegorizing introduces still another level or two of meaning from which parables can be read: (5) the parable within the network of Christian theological doctrines, or even (6) within the network of universal truths about human beings, God and the world. But even if we agree that allegorizing in an overly imaginative way is a problem, it seems clear that we shouldn’t get rid of it altogether. As we will see in the parable of the sower, either Jesus himself or the gospel writers (or both) allegorized to some extent (see Mk 4:14-20), and in doing so followed a practice common in Old Testament writings and in other writings around the time of Jesus and the early church.

In the next installment, I will try to show how reading the parable of the sower at each of the levels of meaning (1)-(6) can help us to get a deeper understanding of the text, but at the same time can limit us and lead us astray if we aren’t careful.

I began this series by asking what happens when our understanding of Scripture is contradicted by the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is easy for us to convince ourselves that we are holding to “biblical” values and principles simply because we belong to a ministry that strongly emphasizes Bible study, and yet miss what God is saying to us here and now. The epistle to the Hebrews contains a vivid description of how the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with Scripture (Hebrews 4:12-13, NIV):

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

For the Bible to do its work, we must do more than just try to understand the meaning of the written word. We need to come in the presence the living Word and allow him to expose unpleasant truths about ourselves. In the King James Version, “laid bare” is rendered as “naked.” Studying the Bible while you are naked sounds rather uncomfortable. Unless our Bible study is somewhat uncomfortable, we are not approaching Scripture as we ought. In the next chapter, the author delivers a stinging rebuke to his readers (Hebrews 5:11, The Message):

I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening.

There are countless bad habits that keep us from listening to the voice of God. The bad habit of pulling verses and passages out of context to support our pre-existing positions. Using the Bible to affirm our identity and make us think we are better than others. Treating the Bible as a collection of timeless principles and moral examples rather than the great metanarrative of history culminating in the person and work of Jesus. From my own experience, I know how easy it is to fall into a pattern of bad habits which, while we are interacting with Scripture, allows us to remain distant from Jesus. As Jesus said in John 5:39-40:

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

The Spirit wants to awaken us out of complacency into a dynamic, life-giving relationship with Christ. He wants to refresh our mission, giving us a renewed understanding of the gospel and how to participate in missio Dei.

As the 50^th anniversary of UBF approaches, I have mixed feelings about what has been happening in our ministry. I am grateful for what God has done among us thus far, but I am apprehensive about the talk about preserving our “spiritual heritage” and passing on “UBF principles” to the next generation. The reason I am apprehensive is that, when leaders articulate what the heritage and principles are, it sounds like a description of the fruit of the gospel work among the first generation of UBF members, not the seed that generated that fruit.

The seed is, of course, the gospel. The historical facts of the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, his ascension, lordship and Second Coming, are the universal message that must be proclaimed by the Church in every time and place. The call to believe this message and personally follow the risen Christ are the core of the universal Christian witness. The fruit is the renewal of persons and restoration of relationships seen among those who receive the gospel message, the visible work of the Holy Spirit who dwells in the fellowship of believers.

If someone has come to a saving faith in Christ, evidence of that faith must appear in the person’s life in the form of visible fruit (Heb 6:8; Jas 2:26). But that visible fruit may look very different from one person to another and from one community to another. Profound differences began to appear within the first generation after Christ. The first disciples of Jesus were Jews, and they expressed their gospel faith in visible ways within the context of distinctly Jewish lifestyle. But when Gentiles received the gospel message, they began to live out their faith differently. This led to a crisis around 50 A.D. culminating in the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15, when distinctions between Jewish and Gentile Christians were openly acknowledged and blessed. If the apostles had decided to impose Jewish life-patterns upon Gentile Christians, the growth that the Church experienced in its first two decades would have been unsustainable. The key to continued growth was for the apostles to simultaneously hold on to the historic message of salvation through Christ alone and let go of their implicit, culture-bound notions and expectations about what the “ideal” Christian life should look like, allowing the Holy Spirit to work creatively among new converts.

Too many evangelistic movements have fallen into the trap of trying to sustain activities that are inherently unsustainable. When the Spirit works powerfully in a particular time and place, those who are changed by it may naturally begin to think that this is how it’s supposed to be in other times and places. There is a very fine line between (a) giving thanks to God for what he has done and faithfully building upon it, and (b) canonizing the formative experience of the evangelistic movement by constructing a system of theology, principles, and rules around it in an attempt to perpetuate it. Those who cross this line try to absolutize what is provisional and, despite good intentions, obscure the gospel message and stifle the work of the Spirit among those who would come after them.

The actual fruit of the gospel consists of inward qualities (love, joy, peace, etc.) which cannot be directly observed (Gal 5:22-23). These inward qualities are universal, but their outward manifestations are context-specific and culturally conditioned. During the last century, conservative evangelicals in the United States promoted “Christian” values by demanding that church members abstain from smoking, drinking, gambling and dancing. Interestingly, none of these activities is specifically prohibited in the Bible; Christians in the first century wrestled with a different set of moral issues and dilemmas. A personal decision to refrain from smoking, drinking, gambling or dancing may be an appropriate response to the gospel in some contexts, but these are not timeless laws, and treating them as such can produce unintended negative consequences for individuals, congregations and society at large. When standards like these are imposed as a matter of policy, disciples may adhere to them, but their adherence may not be the evidence of real inner transformation; rather, it will appear through self effort, relationship pressure, cultural expectations and church rules. It will be counterfeit fruit, not the result of genuine Christian spirituality, and its benefits will not last.

When missionaries bring the gospel message into a new culture, they also carry tacit notions of how an ideal Christian disciple should look and act. It is almost inevitable that missionaries will impose many culture-bound standards and expectations upon their disciples. As the disciples mature and begin to exercise independent faith and judgment, they begin to challenge the missionaries’ standards with ideas of their own, leading to tensions and conflicts within a ministry. Appeals to the Bible may not solve the problem, because each one can make a compelling case (in their own minds, at least) that the Bible is on their side. The fundamental question being raised is this: Who determines what the ethical implications of the gospel are in that specific time and place? Should the missionaries decide? Or should the native disciples decide?

The correct answer, I believe, is neither. In a genuine gospel ministry, the Holy Spirit must decide. Fruit-bearing is the prerogative of the Spirit who comes upon each believer in Christ, young and old, male and female, and upon the Church as a whole (Acts 2:16-18). The work of the Spirit is mysterious, unpredictable and surprising. He cannot be treated in a mechanical fashion or be reduced to rules, principles or methods, because he is a person. There is no greater need among us now than to become personally acquainted with Holy Spirit and discern what he doing in this present generation among missionaries’ children and among native disciples, so that this work may be encouraged and blessed.

Editor’s note: Last month, Ben W posted an article that was supportive of the NIV 2011. The piece below, which was written by Chris Kelly and first appeared on his own blog, presents a different view.

As most of you know, the NIV Bible has been used by millions of readers since it first appeared in 1984 and is one of the best-loved translations for many reasons. But this year those who hold the copyright to the NIV have introduced an updated version on BibleGateway.com, and their plan is to replace the 1984 version with this new version. This new translation is not only needless and dishonest, but harmful in the following respects:

It is an attempt to win the approval of people. It is a capitulation to the whims of men and women of this godless age rather than a resolve to be faithful to the word of God. It will lead to the loss of a great and beloved translation, which is being replaced with a lesser, though newer one.

One does not need a crystal ball to see into the motives of the folks at Biblica, the newly named International Bible Society. For already, they have produced two similar translations under different names, first 1n 1996 the New International Readers Version, then in 2001 the Today’s NIV. The updated NIV-2011 resembles the TNIV far more than it resembles the original NIV of 1984. Why take something really old and conform it to something newer that one already has in print? Why give the new translation an old name?

This move cannot be honest. Even Professor Moo’s explanation defies common sense. He talks about “transparency”, which is a modern euphemism for “conformity”, in the way that chameleons are “transparent” by blending in with their surroundings. When I expected to hear “faithfulness to the original text”, what I hear is “conformity to the contemporary English usage”. (I am simply translating Dr. Moo’s words for clarity and ease of understanding to non-academics.)

Conformity to what? To a culture steeped in feminism and immorality; conformity to a language that demands political correctness over truth; conformity to a Christianity that is increasingly lukewarm and unwilling to challenge people of this age.

I don’t remember reading this goal in the 1984 version Translators’ Preface. They write instead of “continuity with the long tradition of translating the Scriptures into English” and of “accurate translation, clarity and literary quality”. The 1984 NIV was popular for all these reasons. The 2011 NIV is something else. 5% has been changed, by Moo’s estimate, “not just here and there, but in every verse“. It sounds as if what he means (if again I may “translate”) is, “The spirit of this translation is updated, and you will sense it in every verse”.

No clairvoyance is needed. The words of these translators tells it all. The 2011 Translators’ Notes read: “When the original Bible documents first emerged, they captured exactly what God wanted to say in the language and idiom of ordinary people. There was no friction between hearing God’s Word the way it was written and understanding it the way it was meant.”

Au contraire! The word of God has always rubbed some people the wrong way, because “the wisdom of God is foolishness to men”. It rubbed the educated the wrong way because the New Testament was written in common Greek. It rubbed every Gentile the wrong way because it was written by Jews. It rubs all sinners the wrong way because it demands holiness. This goal of “reducing friction” is exactly the goal of making the Bible more acceptable to our generation, to make it less abrasive.

Then there is a scholarly argument that the KJV was out of date (after 400 years) and likewise the NIV is now in need of an update, if we would maintain the lack of friction they imagined the KJV had in its day. But after only 30 years, they suggest there is a similarity. Has our language actually changed that much in 30 years? Of course it hasn’t. But our culture has changed dramatically; many, many things that didn’t cause friction then rub people the wrong way now.

The point here isn’t to argue whether some might need a newer translation, or one that doesn’t cause any friction to their modern mindset. The point is, they’ve already given us such a translation twice. So why not just make these little updates to one of the two other NIV-like versions? The 5% changes to the original NIV would only constitute around 0.5% in the TNIV. Really! Here is an example, that is quite common. Look at Phil 3:10 in the old and new NIV and the TNIV:

NIV (2011): I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death

TNIV (2005): I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death

NIV (1984): I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death

Why replace the NIV with the TNIV? or give the TNIV the name NIV and leave the older, more familiar NIV in the dust? I have suggested that money or pressure from feminists are at the root of this move. I ask Professor Moo, then, please tell us the full rationale.

I was told by members of my church that strong language wasn’t necessary in this matter, that I needed to be more “christian” in how I write. But sirs, the Bible is the word of God and you know this. I’m sure you value it as such, just as all true believers. It has always been a touchy matter to tamper with the words in this Holy Book. I will, then, be Biblical in my criticism. Romans 12:2 reads,

And do not be conformed to this world …

Is this not your goal in these changes? It is HIS word, not yours or mine. It is not for us to make it less abrasive, but to translate it faithfully and preach it boldly. The very roughness of the original, which you consider outdated, was assuredly rough to those who heard it then. You know this is true. It was never a politically correct book. Do not do this to the Bible.

What is more, it is unbecoming of us to conform the Bible to the culture in ANY age, especially one that is increasingly immoral. Spurgeon wrote (on March 28th in his devotional Faith’s Check Book):

It is for the saints to lead the way among men by holy influence: they are not to be the tail, to be dragged hither and thither by others. We must not yield to the spirit of the age, but compel the age to do homage to Christ. If the Lord be with us, we shall not crave toleration for religion, but we shall seek to seat it on the throne of society.

Shall we adapt our Holy Bible to the whims of an unholy age? I trow not! Men, do not be the tail of society, be leaders. Do not follow feminists who take offense at the word He—for indeed this constitutes the bulk of the substantive changes you’ve made. Do not follow bean counters who’ve noticed the dismal sales of your TNIV. Do not foist upon Christians something totally changed in spirit from what we have loved and read. It will not be blessed by God. The Spirit in which it was surreptitiously replaced on BibleGateway back in January tells it all, it is a Spirit we do not know.

PS: My son just reminded me that I need to consider other people’s viewpoints (bias) on this, or I risk being ignored by all who don’t share my own. I admit that 40 years ago, when the Living Bible and the NIV first came out, I heard the same points I’m making now being argued about those translations. I brushed them off as being from old-fashioned people who resented anything new. At that time, I did not consider those people’s points of view at all. I’m older now, and I am a little better at recognizing my own as well as others’ biases. I want to be fair. Thus, I do not condemn the TNIV or NIrV or ESV or any translation at all. I’m not on a crusade to bring back the King James. But I insist that replacing the NIV with the TNIV is needless and hurtful to Christian tradition. And I suspect, but not insist, that this move is purely driven by business goals (translated, “greed”).

In a nutshell, Paul says that God hardened the hearts of most first-century Jews to reject the gospel message of righteousness by faith. The remnant who accepted the gospel did so by the grace of God alone. And the Gentiles who accepted the message did so by the grace of God alone. Paul also expressed his hope that someday the Jews, seeing God’s work among the Gentiles, would be aroused to envy, believe the gospel and be saved.

Why did God choose to work this way? Paul’s analysis suggests the following.

• If most of the first-century Jews had accepted Christ, then Christianity would have been so closely bound to Jewish lifestyles and traditions that the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles would have been hindered, and the message of salvation by grace alone would have been watered down.
• If most of the first-century Jews had accepted Christ, then they could think it was their superior character, discipline, keeping of the law, etc. that allowed them to fulfill their purpose as the chosen people. The fact that only a remnant accepted Christ was a mark of shame upon the Jewish Christians which humbled them, making the remnant less arrogant and less likely to impose their own cultural standards upon the Gentiles (although some of them still tried).
• The Gentiles who received the gospel from the Jewish remnant also had to be extra careful not to think of themselves as superior in any way, because if God did not spare arrogant Jews, he would not spare arrogant Gentiles either.
• If and when the gospel ultimately flows from the Gentiles back to the Jews, it will again be an act of saving grace by God’s own choosing.

Another powerful description of election is found near the beginning of 1 Corinthians, where Paul notes that neither Jews nor Gentiles were naturally inclined to accept the gospel (1Co 1:22-24):

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Note the use of the word called. He uses the same term again a few verses later: “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called” (1Co 1:26). That term emphasizes that it was God who, by his divine sovereignty, selected and called the believers in Corinth out from their respective cultural groups to follow Christ. It was not their own choice, their own faith, their own character, their own anything. It was only because of him that they became Christians, and so they have absolutely no reason to boast (1Co 1:30-31). This sense of being called by Christ, and not approaching him by their own merit or choosing, was so pervasive among the early Christians that it is reflected in the name of their community. The Greek word ekklesia, which we translate as “church,” literally means, “ones who were called out.”

What does Paul’s teaching on election imply for the spread of the gospel and missionary work today? Here are three practical lessons that I draw from it.

First, it underscores the fact that evangelism is not driven by human planning, vision, or zeal, but is undertaken by God’s initiative and the work of the Holy Spirit.

There is a short passage in the middle of Romans chapter 10 where Paul writes (Ro 10:14-15):

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

This paragraph has often been interpreted as an exhortation to evangelism. Countless pastors have quoted these verses to urge their members to volunteer, go out, and carry the gospel to an unbelieving world so that they too can have “beautiful feet.” In the context of Romans 9-11, however, this is not an exhortation to evangelism. It is an explanation of why a remnant was chosen out of Israel to believe in Jesus. The original disciples of Jesus didn’t volunteer; they were called by Jesus and then sent by him and the Holy Spirit to the preach the gospel to the rest of Israel, who for the most part rejected the message because God had hardened their hearts. And the hardening of their hearts was part of God’s plan!

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that evangelism is unnecessary. It is necessary. But it is God who calls and sends some to evangelize, and it is God who manages the outcomes, either positive or negative, and uses them for his own mysterious salvation purpose. To think that we can decide to accept a vision and go out and evangelize, and that we will be successful if we only try hard enough, pray long enough, and use the correct methods, then we are deluding ourselves. God’s interest is to save the nations, not to expand our churches and ministries. He is more than willing to allow us to fail, to chasten us, to humble us, etc. if necessary to show us the world that no group is intrinsically privileged, that salvation comes to everyone by the grace of God alone. He is more than willing to use poor, ineffective, arrogant, or ethnocentric evangelism to reveal the weaknesses of evangelists, churches and Christians and show the world that everyone, including all missionaries and all religious leaders, are sinners not just in theory, but in actuality. He is not interested in helping unrepentant Christians to save face. He wants to show off the amazing grace of his Son, not to dazzle people by the greatness of us.

Second, it shows that God’s mission travels in all directions.

God did not intend for the gospel to travel just from Jews to Gentiles. His plan was for the gospel to start with a remnant of Israel, to flow out the Gentiles, and then ultimately come back to Israel. If the gospel were to flow in one direction only, then it would elevate certain persons and groups to privileged status over others. But the gospel flows in all directions. As missionaries evangelize disciples, they must allow themselves to be re-evangelized by the disciples. This makes the concept of a missionary-sending nation somewhat dubious. Rather than praying for any nation to be “a missionary-sending nation,” it would be more reasonable to envision “a gospel-proclaiming and a gospel-receiving nation.” A church that sends missionaries overseas should not imagine itself to be just a power-station for mission, always giving but never receiving, insulating itself and not allowing itself to be influenced by the Christianity of the converts. As the Church welcomes new believers into the fold, it must itself be transformed. God is always interested in using the various parts of the Body of Christ to evangelize, renew and reform other parts. If any part seeks to reform another, it had better be prepared to be reformed right back.

In part 4 of this series, I discussed the problems with the “mission-station” strategy in which foreigners enter a new culture, set up a church that resembles the one from back home, and attempt to raise disciples in their own image. Donald A. McGavran (1897-1990), the missionary and scholar who coined this term, criticized the mission-station strategy on the grounds that it is ineffective and inhibits church growth. Although I believe his arguments have merit, I do not consider slow growth to be the main reason why Christians must avoid establishing mission stations. We must avoid doing so because this approach conflicts with what the New Testament teaches about election and undermines the gospel of salvation by grace alone.

Third, it underscores the need for great humility – not a false modesty, but a true acknowledgement of our own spiritual poverty – in the way we do apologetics, evangelism and discipleship.

Paul’s teaching about election leads explicitly to the conclusion that at no point may any Christian individual or group think of themselves as superior to any believer or nonbeliever. This does not mean that there is not a proper time for some to teach and others to learn. Indeed, election means that some are called by God to positions of teaching. But the role of teacher carries a grave responsibility to examine himself to uncover the weaknesses of himself and the group from which he comes. As Paul warned in Romans 2:17-20:

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

We have no business evangelizing others if we are not simultaneously allowing ourselves to be evangelized by the message we are preaching and by the work of the Holy Spirit among those we are attempting to reach. At no point does evangelism depend on our own effort, faithfulness, righteousness or obedience, because the gospel comes to all not because of our wonderful goodness, but only despite our horrible badness. And if our efforts do not produce the desired result, if the message we preach is rejected, what are we to conclude? Lesslie Newbigin (as quoted by Bosch in Transforming Mission, p. 413) wrote:

I can never be so confident of the purity and authenticity of my witness that I can know that the person who rejects my witness has rejected Jesus. I am witness to him who is both utterly holy and utterly gracious. His holiness and grace are as far above my comprehension as they are above that of my hearer.

In the next, and final, article of this series, I will pick up a question that was left unanswered at the end of part 4: Who decides the ethical implications of th gospel?

I open with these questions as I review King’s Cross (Feb 2011), which is Tim Keller’s new book. The book is adapted from sermons he preached from Mark’s Gospel. (Keller is the senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York.) I was quite impressed and moved by Keller’s presentation and emphasis in his study of Mark’s Gospel, especially in that what he taught as central was not what I had emphasized in my own Bible teaching of Mark’s Gospel. Very briefly, Keller’s emphasis of his Mark’s Gospel study is “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” while my emphasis was “You better be like Jesus and SERVE and GIVE YOUR LIFE, you lazy selfish sinner!” Of course, I never said that, but that was my point. Let me explain.

King’s Cross is neatly organized into two parts, corresponding to Mark’s two symmetrical halves or acts:

1. The King (Mark chap 1-8): The identity of Jesus (King over all things)
2. The Cross (Mark chap 9-16): The purpose of Jesus (dying on the cross)

Hence the catchy title from its two parts (“The King” and “The Cross”), each part consisting of 9 chapters, with each chapter focusing on a particular theme by exploring a selective key part of the story told in Mark’s Gospel, explaining the background, illustrating the main point, and applying it for readers. So the book retains the essential elements of good preaching. (But a handful of well-known passages aren’t addressed in detail in the book.) I will not review each chapter of the book, but only selectively address a few points:

The Dance of the Trinity (Mark 1:9-11)

Chap 1, The Dance, identifies the Trinity during the baptism of Jesus: the Father, who is the voice; the Son, who is the Word; and the Spirit, who is the dove (Mark 1:10,11). Keller makes an analogy to the Trinity being present at creation (Gen 1:1-3; John 1:1-3). He ties the story of redemption through Christ with the story of creation in the beginning to show God’s overarching orchestration of God’s plan and purpose in the Bible, as being both a project of the triune God.

Keller titles this chapter The Dance, which is the description of the Trinity used by C.S. Lewis who wrote in Mere Christianity: “In Christianity God is not a static thing…but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama…a kind of dance.” It is a continual never ending dance of perfect love, submission, deference, humility and service toward the other Persons of the Trinity. Being made in the image of the Trinity, we were created to “dance” around God/others. But our sin causes us to expect others to dance around us, thus breaking relationships. Even among holy Christians in the church (1 Cor 1:2), a leader may expect his members to dance around his directives, while the members may expect the leader to dance around their needs and expectations. Keller’s point is this: “If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about.”

Food for thought: Do we preach and teach the Bible by focusing on relationships, or on making sure that I and others carry out our “mission”? Do I “dance” around others in love, or do I expect others to dance to my tune and expectations?

The Gospel (Mark 1:14-15)

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ opening words of declaration to the world concerns “the gospel” (ESV) or “the good news” (NIV) (Mark 1:15). Keller’s repeated emphasis in his previous books, Counterfeit Gods and The Prodigal God, including King’s Cross, is this: “The essence of other religions is advice; Christianity is essentially news.” Do we primarily see the Bible as what God has done for me in Christ (1 Cor 15:3,4) and communicate it to others as such (good news), or do I present the Bible as what I must do and how I should live and what I must believe (advice for right living)?

I acknowledge that it’s not easy, in fact it’s downright difficult, to teach the Bible simply as “good news.” Why? I think it is because when you ask, “What I must do?” in response to the gospel, the answer is basically, “Nothing! Absolutely nothing!” But we’re afraid to say, “Nothing,” thinking that we will be teaching “cheap grace.” But isn’t it true that I can really do nothing for God, for Jesus, and for the Holy Spirit? Yes, God loves me for sure, and yes, he does have stuff for me to do. But God doesn’t really need me to complete Himself (or His mission), as the cute romantic movie line goes, “You complete me.” So, if I succeed in teaching the Bible as good news, not good advice, and my “sheep” realizes by the work of the Holy Spirit that they don’t have to do anything at all, then I have succeeded in proclaiming the gospel as good news. If not, I would have taught them to save themselves through religion by doing good works as their righteousness before God and people. But when one truly realizes that they don’t have to do anything (because Jesus has already done it through the Cross), it is only then that they will WANT to do all things with all their heart (Deut 6:5), for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). In the gospel of grace, there is no “I have to,” but “I want to.”

The Call (Mark 1:16-20)

In Jesus’ time, students sought out rabbis whom they wanted to learn from. But Jesus sought out and took the initiative to call his disciples. When teaching Jesus’ calling of his disciples (Mark 1:16-20), I usually press others in some way to respond to God’s calling. But the truth of the matter is that no one can really respond to God’s call unless God himself calls that person (John 6:44, 65). My application is that I should teach the Bible not by pressing others for a response (or for repentance or obedience), but to depend on the Holy Spirit to work in that person’s heart (John 16:8). Then their decision to follow Jesus is not because of my human pressure and “push,” but because of God working in their hearts through his word, and by his Spirit. Then they will understand that God’s call is not primarily up to their response or repentance or obedience, but that it is nothing but sheer grace that God called them.

Authority (Mark 1:21-22)

Perhaps, we throw around phases like “spiritual authority,” as though the one who has it has some kind of advantage, or superiority, or an elevated elite status over others. I never thought of this before, but “authority” comes from the word “author,” where the authority does not come from the man, but from the Source. Thus, Jesus taught with original rather than derived authority.

Therefore, my authority as a Christian should not draw attention to myself as having authority that others in the church should acknowledge or submit to. This causes an unhealthy fear of man (Prov 29:25), rather than a healthy fear of God (Prov 1:7; 9:10). Also, if I do come across as the “head honcho” (God forbid!), it functionally becomes as though a man is the head of the church, and obscures the truth that Jesus is the Head of the church (Col 1:18; Eph 1:22). But my sin is to always default to myself and to expect others to submit to my “spiritual authority” in the church, thus clouding God’s glory. Ultimately, only the Holy Spirit can glorify God and enable man to glorify God (John 17:2).

The Ransom (Mark 10:45)

Whenever I taught Mark 10:45, my emphasis was on Jesus who came to serve, and on Jesus who gave his life. Therefore, you and I, if we are Christians, must likewise serve and give our lives, just as Jesus did. But Keller spent 15 pages of this chapter focusing almost entirely on Jesus as the ransom, the substitutionary sacrifice, the debt that had to be paid, either by us sinners, or by God himself. (David Lovi has written on this in 2 parts: The Necessity of Penal Substitution.)

Practically and functionally, we humans think that the route to gaining influence is to have power and control. We hold the power and control whenever we try to ensure that others work hard, serve, live for their mission, and give their lives for the church and for world mission. It then becomes as though our own power and control is the determining factor that makes the church prosper and grow. But keeping the power and controls is really self-centered leadership, and not trinitarian. Moreover, holding and communicating such power and control really doesn’t change sinner’s hearts. Only Jesus who died as a ransom changes hearts. When Jesus died on the cross, he gave up all power and control; he became the symbol of utter weakness, helplessness and vulnerability. But in this way, and only in this way, are we empowered (Rom 1:16), and our hearts transformed by the Spirit (2 Cor 3:18) with gratitude, love, joy and peace (Gal 5:22,23).

Keller closed King’s Cross with these words: “God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can finally and dazzlingly become your true self and take your seat at his eternal feast.”

By all means, read the book. If not, check out my summary of each chapter:

Chap 1: The Dance (Trinity) (Mark 1:9-11): Do you expect others to dance around you?
Chap 2: The Gospel, The Call (Mark 1:14-20): Is your gospel good news or good advice?
Chap 3: The Healing (Mark 2:1-5): Are your sins against God or people (Ps 51:4)?
Chap 4: The Rest (Mark 2:23-3:6): Are you desperately seeking significance?
Chap 5: The Power (Mark 4:35-41): Do you enjoy goodness and calm in a storm?
Chap 6: The Waiting (Mark 5:21-43): Do you have peace when God delays?
Chap 7: The Stain (Mark 7:1-23): Do you feel unclean, insignificant?
Chap 8: The Approach (Mark 7:24-37): Do you know you’re a dog, yet loved?
Chap 9: The Turn (Mark 8:27-9:1): Why is forgiveness so hard?
Chap 10: The Mountain (Mark 9:2-29): What if you are filled with doubt?
Chap 11: The Trap (Mark 10:17-27): Is money just money to you?
Chap 12: The Ransom (Mark 10:45): Is Jesus all you want and need?
Chap 13: The Temple (Mark 11:1-18): Are you both a lion and a lamb?
Chap 14: The Feast (Mark 14:12-26): Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Keller might be a contemporary champion of the church in regards to presuppositional apologetics (especially Reason For God), which perhaps we might be weak at as a church. King’s Cross is similarly presented presuppositionally and rationally and persuasively (while assuming nothing or very little). It has countless gems in every chapter, which I have not addressed. I’ve only quite randomly and selectively high lighted a very few points.

Perhaps, through reading this post, might you consider reassessing or tweaking how you have personally understood Mark’s Gospel and taught Mark’s Gospel to others?

Reading Romans to learn about justification by faith is a useful exercise. But it is also helpful to take off those Reformation goggles to see what Paul was actually saying to Roman Christians in the first century. If we do so, then we may find that the central teaching of Romans is not justification by faith. Rather, I believe we will find that the key idea is divine election.

Allusions to election appear in the very first verse: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God…” (Ro 1:1). Notice the terms “called” and “set apart.” Paul’s status as an apostle and servant of Christ were not attained by virtue, dedication, hard work, values, character, etc. but were given to him as a gift of pure grace. It was God who called him and set him apart from his fellow Jews to serve the gospel rather than promoting Jewish law, custom and tradition.

Paul was writing to a church that he did not personally found. His letter was intended to give them a rich theological and historical perspective on the gospel, to help them better understand their identity as a mixed congregation of Jewish and Gentile Christians. Comparisons and contrasts between Jews and Gentiles are made throughout the book, in virtually every chapter. Vast differences existed between these two groups with regard to history, culture, lifestyle and conscience. Paul did not want them to ignore those differences, but to pay attention to them, wrestle with them, and understand God’s purpose in bringing these polar opposites together in light of missio Dei.

The thesis of the first half of the book (Chapters 1-8) is that a divine message of salvation has now been revealed, a message that can save Jew and Gentile alike, and that both groups are saved in exactly the same way: through a righteousness that comes by faith (1:16-17). Both groups are sinful and deserving of God’s judgment, but in different ways and for different reasons. Gentiles have fallen into blatant godlessness evidenced by idolatry, sexual immorality, violence, and depravity (1:18-32). Jews have violated God’s covenant with them by breaking the laws that he gave them (2:17-29). Neither group has the right to point a finger of judgment at the other, because neither one is repentant (2:1-5). But Jesus Christ came to save both Jew and Gentile in the same way, granting them righteousness that comes by faith (3:21-26). God’s manner of salvation makes it impossible for anyone to boast (3:27). This gospel of righteousness is not new; it is found in the Old Testament, through the accounts of Abraham and David (chapter 4). Jesus is the new Adam who recreates the entire human race (chapter 5). Anyone who believes Christ is united with him in his death and resurrection, and the risen Christ comes alive in him, giving him a new life (chapter 6). Christians are not bound by law, but have been freed to live by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit accomplishes what the law was powerless to do: bring our dead souls to life, give us victory over sin (chapters 7-8).

Partway through this treatise on the gospel is a defense of the doctrine of election (3:1-8). Paul explains that even though the Jews failed to uphold their covenant, God’s purpose for them did not fail. He hints that human unfaithfulness is foreseen by God and is ultimately used for his glory, but that fact does not absolve anyone of genuine guilt. He picks up this theme again in chapters 9-11, where he wrestles with a subject that for him was intensely personal and painful: the Jews’ overwhelming rejection of the gospel.

If we look to Romans chapters 9-11 to answer all of our questions about Calvinism versus Arminianism, we will be disappointed. Paul was not constructing a theological system. His purpose was limited to making sense of what God had done, was doing, and will do with his chosen people, to help Jewish and Gentile Christians understand their respective positions in God’s redemptive history.

In chapter 9, Paul shares his deep anguish over the Israel’s rejection of the gospel. Despite their glorious spiritual heritage as God’s chosen people, they rejected God’s Messiah. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone,” because they pursued righteousness through the conditional, failed covenant of Mosaic law rather than the unconditional Abrahamic covenant of righteousness by faith. God foresaw all their failure and their future rejection of Christ, yet he patiently bore with them for many centuries because he had a different purpose for them. His purpose was to raise up through them a faithful remnant to carry the gospel to his elect among the Jews, and to use the Jews’ majority rejection of Christ to propel the gospel out to the Gentiles.

In the middle of chapter 9, Paul makes a startling claim. He says that underlying reason why the majority of Jews rejected the gospel is that God hardened their hearts. He compares the Israelites to Pharaoh, of whom it is said numerous times (I counted ten times in Exodus chapters 4-14) that God hardened his heart against the message of Moses. Paul repeats the claim in chapter 11, using references from Deuteronomy 29 and Isaiah 29 to show that “God gave them a spirit of stupor” so that they would reject the message.

Paul’s claim is difficult for us to swallow, because it deeply conflicts with our modernistic notions of fairness, freedom, and autonomy of the individual human person. It was also confusing for Christians in the first century, but for different reasons. It conflicted with their understanding of the Old Testament. How could they reconcile this reasoning with God’s numerous promises to Israel? Had God changed his mind and rejected those whom he had chosen? Paul offered some clarifications to help his readers, and it is useful to examine them even if they do not put to rest all the questions and concerns of 21^st century evangelicals. First, Paul notes that “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (9:6). It is not the physical descendents of Abraham who are reckoned as God’s children, but those among them who accepted his promise of blessing. Second, he says that even if God hardens someone’s heart, it does not absolve them of personal responsibility (9:19-21). Third, even though most of the Jews had at present rejected God’s offer, they had not stumbled beyond recovery (11:11). All of God’s promises throughout the Old Testament still stood; his gifts and promises were irrevocable, which led Paul to believe that the hardening of their hearts was temporary. He still hoped that at some point in the future, many of them would eventually come back into a saving relationship with God, because God’s desire was to show mercy to all (11:25-32). Realizing that this is still very difficult to understand, that we do not at present see exactly what God is doing but must trust his judgments, Paul consigns these teachings to the realm of mystery and exclaims, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (11:33-36).

Editors of the NIV placed Romans 11:25-32 under a section title, “All Israel Will Be Saved.” Some evangelicals believe that all Jews will ultimately receive salvation, and this is tied to various beliefs about the future of the nation of Israel. Although I do not dismiss these theories, I remain skeptical because I do not know the extent to which Paul’s use of the term “Israel” relates to any modern-day ethnic or religious group or geopolitical entity. Like Paul, I am happy to place this in a file cabinet under “mysterious teachings of the Bible.” I don’t know what the future holds for Israel, but I suspect that however it pans out, everyone will be surprised. (That’s why I call myself a pan-millennialist.)

Although Paul doesn’t answer many of our questions about predestination, he does give us a definitive understanding of God’s overall purpose in election, and he does present a “practical application” of this teaching to his first-century readers. He tells them that, whether they are Jews or Gentiles, their acceptance of the gospel did not “depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (9:16). The historic covenant of law had to fail prior to the coming of the gospel; if it did not, it would have undermined God’s plan to grant people righteousness by faith alone (9:30-33). If the people of Israel had not rejected Christ, then Jewish missionaries who carried the gospel to the Gentiles could still claim ethnic or religious superiority over the people they were evangelizing. The rejection of the gospel by the Jews underscored the fact that the minority, the remnant who accepted the gospel, were chosen not because of their superior character or effort or achievements but by the grace of God alone (11:1-6). And the Gentiles who received the gospel from the Jewish remnant had no right to boast either, because they too were chosen by grace alone (11:13-21). At no point should anyone in Christ feel smug or self-assured in their salvation. No one in the church has achieved standing before God on the basis any decision they have made or any action that they have taken; their standing has always been by grace alone, and if they deny that, they themselves will be cut off (11:22).

The principle of election should foster in everyone a deep, heartfelt gratitude toward God and humility before other people, as Paul says in the next chapter: “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” (12:3). Although we have been saved by faith, the faith itself is a gift from God. Whether we think of ourselves as having weak faith, strong faith, or no faith, no Christian individual or group at any time has any basis for pride over anyone else, because whatever faith they have was distributed to them by God as an undeserved gift.

This understanding of election leads us inevitably to a rule of love, not a rule of law, as the sole ethic of the Christian life. A Christian must not by driven by desire to achieve a superior status or blessing from God on the basis of anything he is or does; such motivations are incompatible with the gospel. The sole motivation for everything we do must be love for God, for our neighbor, and for our enemy (12:9-21). Love is the fulfillment of the law (13:8-10). Christians who understand election will not pass judgment on one another. Those who seem to be “strong” will never judge those who seem “weak,” or vice-versa, because God accepts all regardless of strength or weakness (14:1-22).

And in a stunning reversal of common sense, Paul uses the term “weak” in chapter 14 to refer to Jewish Christians who, because of their consciences, felt compelled to adhere to dietary and religious laws. I’ll bet that those believers did not consider themselves to be weak. From childhood, they had been trained to think of adhering to their laws (which, by the way, were biblically based) as a sign of holiness, discipline and purity. Paul characterized their reliance upon those disciplines as a weakness and freedom from those laws as strength. But he warned those who were free to be mindful of those who were not. He urged everyone not to impose their moral scruples upon one another, but to respect one another’s consciences, to love one another and live in peace as demonstrated by unity-in-diversity.

Historians have called the early Church “a sociological impossibility.” This description is very accurate. There was no human way for Jews and Gentiles, who in so many ways were polar opposites, to come together as friends and form a loving community. But it happened in the first century, and the reason why it happened is found in the book of Romans. Understanding the doctrine of divine election enabled the Jewish and Gentile Christians to embrace their differences and see why God had put them together in the same church.

Similarly, the world mission command of Acts 1:8 functions as an outline for Acts, and its true meaning cannot be discerned apart from the entire book. As I have previously noted, this verse is not a command but a promise. Jesus said to his apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” What Jesus promised came to pass. The apostles became witnesses of the risen Christ, and the gospel did go out from them to Jerusalem, to all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. As I explained in part 5 of this series, this propagation of the gospel did not come about through the apostles’ visionary planning, effort and zeal. It happened just as Jesus said it would, through the power and initiative of the Holy Spirit.

The preeminent role of the Holy Spirit in missio Dei is one of the great underlying themes of the book of Acts through which we are to interpret the world mission “command” of Acts 1:8.

As I re-read the book of Acts last month, another underlying theme caught my attention. This theme was so obvious that I was shocked that I hadn’t noticed it before. In addition to the work of the Holy Spirit among the apostles, there was another powerful force at work that drove the gospel out from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Can you guess what it was?

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, here’s the answer: It was the rejection of Christ by the Jews.

Not all the Jews rejected Jesus, of course. All of the apostles were Jews. The original 120 disciples, and the 3,000 who were baptized on the day of Pentecost, were overwhelmingly if not exclusively Jewish. So it would be more correct to say that it was the acceptance of Christ by a minority of Jews, combined with the rejection of Christ by the majority, that carried the gospel to the Gentiles.

The author of Acts does not present the Jews’ rejection of Christ as an incidental detail, but as a key piece of the mysterious puzzle of missio Dei. Here is some evidence.

In Peter’s evangelistic message on the day of Pentecost, he told his audience, “This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23). Peter did not absolve the people of their responsibility; he declared them to be culpable in Jesus’ death. But he also explained that God deliberately planned for this to happen. It was an integral part of his glorification, a necessary step for him to become our rejected, crucified, risen Messiah.

After the day of Pentecost, the Jewish authorities were not able to stop the apostles from preaching the resurrection of Christ; the apostles had become too popular, and the good works that God was doing through them were undeniable (chapter 4). But a fresh wave of Jewish opposition arose when Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew who had been appointed by the apostles to a position of leadership along with six other Hellenistic Jews, began to preach and perform miraculous signs. Stephen’s ministry (chapter 6) and speech before the Sanhedrin (chapter 7) infuriated the religious leaders and the populace of Jerusalem. In the middle of Stephen’s speech, they dragged him out of court and stoned him to death. The stoning of Stephen was a gross violation of civil and religious law; he had not been convicted of any crime.

Why did Stephen’s speech infuriate them so much? That is a truly interesting question. To answer it well would require a careful exegesis of his speech, which is beyond the scope of this article. But two features of the speech stand out. First, Stephen pointed out that God does not dwell in any building made by human hands (Acts 7:48). He greatly diminished the importance of the temple, inferring that Jerusalem was no longer (and, in truth, never had been) the focus of God’s redemptive history. Second, he declared that the Jews had failed all along to keep the covenant of law that God had given them. All along they been resisting the work of the Holy Spirit, and the crucifixion of Jesus was just the latest and most blatant example of their rejection of God’s purpose for them (Acts 7:51-53). To hear these words from the mouth Hellenistic Jew – and Hellenistic Jews were generally regarded by the Hebraic Jews as worldly, compromised, too liberal in their lifestyles, etc. – struck at the heart of their religious identity. It brought to the surface huge amount of conflict, anger and resentment.

After the murder of Stephen – and it is correctly called a murder, because due process was not followed – a wave of violent opposition broke out against the Jerusalem church, and everyone except the apostles was driven out of the city. As a direct consequence of this persecution, the gospel went out to Judea and Samaria. Philip, another one of the seven Hellenistic church leaders, was instrumental in the evangelization of Samaria (chapter 8). In a very ironic twist, it is Saul of Tarsus, the future Apostle Paul, who is a ringleader in the persecution effort. Even before Paul’s conversion, he was already being used as God’s a divinely elected instrument to drive the gospel toward the Gentiles.

When the Holy Spirit sent Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, they traveled to Cyprus and regions of modern-day Turkey (chapters 13-14). They intentionally focused their efforts on the Jewish community, preaching in synagogues on the Sabbath. Paul believed that it was God’s plan for the Jews, God’s chosen people, to receive the gospel first (Romans 1:16). A few Jews would respond favorably, but most would reject it. However, the message would be received with great enthusiasm by the God-fearing Gentiles who had not taken the step of conversion to Judaism by being circumcised. This became a recurrent pattern throughout Paul’s missionary journeys.

In hindsight, we can say that the rejection of the gospel by a majority of the Jews was necessary for the Church to develop, both sociologically and theologically. If large numbers of Jews had embraced the message, then Christianity could never have become divorced from Jewish custom and tradition, and a Torah-free gospel could not have been preached throughout the world. The schism in the Jewish community created by the gospel forced the leaders of the early Church to take stock of their theology and clarify what the gospel is truly about (chapter 15). But this rift caused a great deal of personal angst, heartache and pain among the Jewish believers. The rejection of the gospel by the Jewish majority, and the tension between Jewish and Gentile elements in forging the identity of the Church, is one of the most salient issues on the minds of the writers of the New Testament. It strongly colors all four of the gospels and many of the epistles. Given the overwhelming hardness of the Jews toward the gospel, and the rapid spread of the faith among the Gentiles, what was God doing, and what should the Church leaders now be doing? What would the Church look like after one, two, or three generations? Was the apostolic mission to the Jews now finished?

Nowhere is this struggle to understand what God was doing more evident than in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. It is the focus of chapters 9-11, which are difficult to understand but regarded by many scholars as the heart of the book. We will discuss that in the next installment.

The word elect simply means “chosen.” In the Old Testament, God chose the people of Israel and made a special relationship with them. If we examine how this choice is portrayed, two aspects are emphasized. First, the Israelites were not chosen because of their inherent goodness; election came to them by grace alone. Second, election did not confer on them any claim of superior status before God. On the contrary, their election placed them in a position of responsibility and servantship toward other nations. Their failure to live up to God’s covenant led to captivity and humiliation, and that should have further prepared them to receive the gospel of salvation by grace.

Election is also a powerful theme throughout the New Testament. We see it in the interaction between Jesus and his disciples. First-century Jewish society had a well developed culture of discipleship. Young men would gather around popular rabbis to learn the Torah with hopes of becoming rabbis themselves. It was always the disciple who chose the rabbi and initiated the relationship. But Jesus turned the tables completely around. He approached young men of his own choosing and commanded them to follow him. Of course, the disciples had to willingly respond. But they were not the initiators. Jesus called, they followed.

When Jesus appointed the Twelve apostles, he chose the ones he wanted (Mark 3:13). Jesus said to the Twelve, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit…” (John 15:16). When others tried to follow Jesus as the apostles did, Jesus sometimes discouraged them from doing so (Mark 5:19).

Why did Jesus choose these particular men? They had no special education, pedigree or obvious qualifications that set them apart from the rest. They were just regular people from Galilee. It seems that they were chosen specifically because of their ordinariness, to show the world that their election was by grace alone. Even after they were chosen, they did not demonstrate great virtue or faithfulness. Throughout the gospel accounts, their weaknesses are continually laid bare. They abandoned and betrayed Jesus in his hour of need. Their status as apostles was truly undeserved. From start to finish, it was Jesus who bore with them, forgave them and upheld them by grace.

Jesus chose them to be with him and to observe him, and to ultimately become the witnesses of his death and resurrection (Mark 1:14, Acts 1:8). They were to preach the gospel to the whole world (Mark 16:15). Yet Peter, despite his interaction with Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, continued to minister almost exclusively to the Jews (Gal 2:7-8). Peter and the other apostles had great difficulty associating with Gentiles. They had been taught from childhood that Gentile ways were inherently unclean. The idea of preaching a Torah-free gospel seemed alien to them; they just couldn’t envision an authentic Gentile Christian lifestyle.

When the gospel finally broke through to the Gentiles, it happened through the most unlikely person. Saul of Tarsus had distinguished himself among the Pharisees for his ultra-strict keeping of the law (Philippians 3:4-6). He had zealously persecuted the Church because he considered the Christians to be a threat to Jewish religious supremacy. But the risen Christ personally appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus. Jesus chose him to be his instrument to carry his name to the Gentiles, a mission that Saul would never have chosen for himself (Acts 9:15). The calling of Saul, and his transformation into the Apostle Paul, is another powerful picture of God’s election. Once again, it appears that God chose Paul for this task to demonstrate that his gospel comes to all purely by grace.

Examining the flow of God’s salvation history throughout the Old and New Testaments, it becomes unmistakably clear that his salvation comes to individuals and nations not because of the efforts and virtues of God’s human accomplices but despite them. From start to finish, the mission belongs to God, not to people.

The early Christians knew this principle. The Latin word missio, from which we derive mission, was a theological term for the Father sending the Son into the world, and for the Father and Son sending the Holy Spirit. Mission is an intrinsic part of God’s character. In modern times, however, mission has come to be understood as activity that individuals and churches undertake by their own choosing and initiative. All too often, mission is now seen as a human effort to carry the gospel to the lost people of the world.

In the highly acclaimed book Transforming Mission, David Bosch described how Protestant missionary efforts over the last two centuries have been characterized by a spirit of “voluntarism.” This is exactly what one would expect in a historical period marked by industrialization, free enterprise and scientific positivism. Christians spoke of “the evangelization of the world in this generation!” That phrase became the motto of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) of the late 19^th century. SVM leaders appeared to be self-confident, singleminded, and triumphant. With great enthusiasm, they recruited and sent out thousands of missionaries throughout the world. This era of missionary activity peaked around the year 1900, when a huge missions conference was held in New York City with over two hundred thousand participants. Speakers at that conference included several Presidents of the United States. Church leaders spoke of mission in militaristic terms. They confidently predicted that within their lifetimes the forces of darkness would be vanquished and the whole world conquered with the gospel, paving the way for Jesus to return.

In the early decades of the 20^th century, however, SVM and other missionary agencies rapidly declined. A proper analysis of why this happened is beyond the scope of this article. To characterize SVM as a failure would be an overstatement. But the organization was not able to fulfill its ambitious goals, and clearly it was not for lack of effort. The heroism, vision and hard work of SVM and similar organizations masked a great deal of organizational weakness. Bosch wrote (p. 333):

People were challenged to go without any financial guarantees, simply trusting that the Lord of mission would provide… No time was left for timorous or carefully prepared advances into pagan territory, nor for the laborious building up of ‘autonomous’ churches on the ‘mission field.’ The gospel had to be proclaimed to all with the greatest speed, and for this there could never be enough missionaries. It also meant that there was neither time nor need for drawn-out preparation for missionary service. Many who went out had very little education or training…

The movement also suffered from theological deficiencies that were not recognized or corrected. Bosch continues:

The weaknesses of the faith mission movement are obvious: the romantic notion of the freedom of the individual to make his or her own choices. And almost convulsive preoccupation with saving people’s souls before Judgment Day, a limited knowledge of the cultures and religions of the people to whom the missionaries went, virtually no interest in the societal dimension of the Christian gospel, almost exclusive dependence on the charismatic personality of the founder, a very low view of the church, etc.

When mission is seen to flow from the personal choice of the missionary who, of his own volition and charitable nature, decides to carry the gospel to lost people, it places the missionary on a moral high ground relative to those he is trying to evangelize. Bosch concludes:

It spawned an enterprise in which the one party would do all the giving and the other all the receiving. This was so because one group was, in its own eyes, evidently privileged and the other, equally evidently, disadvantaged.

The biblical principle of election, however, declares that the one who carries the gospel is in no way superior to the one who receives it. Arrogance, hubris, overconfidence, and a sense of entitlement before God have no place in mission because they are incompatible with the gospel of grace.

In a voluntaristic missionary movement, participation in the mission is regarded as obedience. Of course, the Great Commission was given to the apostles in Matthew 28:18-20 in the form of a command. Shouldn’t we be obeying that command? This reasoning of obedience to Matthew 28:18-20 was applied by William Carey in his famous 1792 tract An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen. Since that time, Matthew 28:18-20 has maintained a prominent place in the Protestant missionary thinking. It is difficult to argue with this kind of logic. Jesus bids us, “Go,” therefore we must go! If we are not going as missionaries to make disciples of all nations, then aren’t we clearly disobeying Christ?

Bosch points out, however, that the command “go and make disciples” can be properly understood only within the greater context of Matthew’s gospel (Chap. 2). The meaning and requirements of discipleship are laid out by Jesus throughout the book, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, progressing through many parables about the kingdom of heaven, and so on. If the Great Commission is lifted out of this context and made the sole motivation for missions, the movement that ensues becomes a reduction and distortion of what Jesus intended. Indeed, until the early part of the 19^th century, Protestant missionary literature never relied on obedience to Matthew 28:18-20 as the sole motivator; it was always connected to other biblical motifs. But movements of the SVM era applied the Great Commission with greater frequency and vigor, and by the 20^th century it was often presented as sufficient justification for everything that the movements were doing. “It became a kind of last line of defense, as if the protagonists of mission were saying, ‘How can you oppose mission to the heathen if Christ himself has commanded it?'” (pp. 340-341)

In addition to removing these verses from their proper context, Bosch (p. 341) notes two other problems with the Great Commission as the primary motivator for Christian missions. First, it is almost always used as a polemic. Individuals and churches who do not vigorously proselytize are denounced as watered-down, compromised and disobedient. Second, it takes mission out of the realm of gospel and places it in the realm of law. The Great Commission becomes a rule that must be obeyed if one is to be considered a faithful Christian. But mission in the New Testament did not begin with the apostles sitting down together and discussing how to obey the world mission command. Evangelism began with the “explosion of joy” (Newbigin’s term) emanating from the empty tomb. The apostles’ mission was sealed by their encounters with the risen Christ and empowered by the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Mission arrived as a gift, not a law. It came to the apostles by divine election through the grace of God alone.

God cares about relationships. When Jesus ascended to heaven, he didn’t leave behind a book of writings. He left behind a community of witnesses who were filled with the Holy Spirit and entrusted the preaching of the gospel to them (Acts 1:8). As members of this community proclaim the gospel, they invite others to become part of God’s family where their true personhood will be realized. That family is not equivalent to a church organization. It is the body of all people who belong to Christ, the “communion of saints” that is mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed. Evangelism that fails to call people to join this body is alien to the New Testament. Jesus never intended his disciples to be lone wolves. Nor did he intend them to live in small, isolated, parochial clans whose members remain suspicious of everyone on the outside (Mk 9:38-40). He prayed for all his followers to be one, to experience among themselves the loving oneness that has with his own Father in a highly visible way, so that the whole world would see that the gospel is true (John 17:20-23).

So the preaching of the gospel is not just passing a set of teachings from one person to another; it is knitting persons together in grace to heal them, their families, their communities, and the world of the relational brokenness caused by sin. The healing that we experience now through the work of the Holy Spirit is the downpayment, the foretaste, of the full restoration that will be enacted when Jesus returns in power and glory. The present signs of the kingdom, our miraculously restored relationships with God and with one another, are the evidence and the engine of true evangelism.

If God’s plan to restore relationships requires that the gospel be spread from one person to another, one community to another, and one nation to another, then someone has to begin that process. Certain persons, communities and nations must be chosen to receive the gospel and bear it to others. That is the key idea of election as described by Paul in Romans 9-11.

Election wasn’t invented by Paul. It is the storyline of the Old Testament. Out of all nations, God called one nation, the Israelites, for his special purpose. He shaped their history through divine intervention and revelation, preparing them to be the first ones to welcome the Messiah.

In chapter 7 of The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin starts his discussion of election by reminding us of how offensive it sounds to nonbelievers, especially today. The idea that certain individuals and cultures have received special, unique knowledge from the Creator — the one who is Maker of all, whose image is borne by every human being – seems ludicrous. It is especially hard to believe, given that the people who were chosen were not outstanding among the great civilizations of the world; they hardly distinguished themselves by their achievements, scholarship, or virtuous lives. If God cares for all, as we believers claim, then why would he heap special treatment on some, on a small minority of people who do not appear to deserve it?

Election is patently offensive to every generation and culture. If a stranger arrives from a foreign land claiming to have special knowledge of universal truth, that claim is enough to make natives cry, “Missionary, go home!” How do we handle with this thorny problem? First, we should openly acknowledge that it is a problem. Second, we must understand that God’s election was never intended to set one person above another, one group above another, one culture above another. Election does not confer any moral privilege or special standing before God. In fact, the manner in which election unfolds throughout history makes it absolutely clear that salvation comes by grace alone, not through the intrinsic goodness or special qualities of any person or group. Never at any point in God’s history do his elect have any claim to special treatment by him because of their obedience, effort or virtue. The blessings received by the elect never come to them because of their wonderful goodness, but only despite their horrible badness.

When God called Abraham, he said: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Gen 12:1-2). It is tempting to read this statement as conditional: “If you leave and go, then I will bless you. If you don’t, I will not bless you.” But the blessing is not conditioned on Abraham’s response. God simply announces that he will be blessed, and God invites him to go and see the evidence of that blessing. Abraham does not earn the promise; his obedience is the way that he receives the promise.

The author of Genesis makes it clear that Abraham had no intrinsic virtues that set him above other people. When he went down to Egypt, he acted dishonestly. He appears less honorable than Pharaoh, and yet God rescued and blessed him (Gen 12:10-20). Again, in chapter 20, Abraham is less righteous than Abimelech, but God chose to bless him anyway. This favoritism toward Abraham has a universal purpose: God intends to bless all nations on earth through him (Gen 12:3).

About 430 years later, God made a special agreement with the Israelites at Mount Sinai. This covenant is described in Exodus 19:5-6: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Unlike the covenant of promise that God made to Abraham, this covenant of law is very conditional. If the Israelites obeyed God fully, then they would receive his special blessings. This covenant of law did not amend, change or supersede the covenant of promise that God gave earlier (Gal 3:17). God’s declarations to Abraham stood regardless of what the Israelites chose to do.

In an article posted last month, David L. correctly noted that Exodus 19:5-6 is a promise made to Israel, not to the Church. Christians who apply these verses to themselves are taking the passage out of context. The covenant described in Exodus 19:5-6 is a failed covenant and was doomed to fail from the start. Even before Moses came down from the mountain, the Israelites had already broken the agreement by worshipping the golden calf (Ex 32). A literal application of Exodus 19:5-6 to ourselves would lead us to believe that if we obey God’s commands, then God will bless us and our nation. If so, then we must not ignore the word fully. The obedience required by this covenant is complete obedience to the law of Moses, all 600 commands, because anyone who places himself under the law is obligated to obey it in its entirety (Gal 5:3).

The covenant of law failed because the Israelites willfully disobeyed. But God, in his sovereign purpose, used their disobedience to demonstrate that, though they were the chosen people, they were no better than anyone else. The division of their kingdom, the destruction of their temple, and their captivity in Babylon should have produced in them a deep humiliation that paved the way for the message of salvation by grace alone. This humiliation of failure, combined with the knowledge of God’s saving grace through Jesus, should have given them an openminded and generous spirit required of missionaries. God was preparing them to go to other nations and say, “We are no better than you. We are not coming with superior strength, wisdom, or moral standards. We were and still are deeply sinful and broken, and in many ways you are better than us. But God, for reasons that we do not understand, walked among our people and revealed to us something about his great salvation plan. We witnessed God’s redemption firsthand through the death and resurrection of his Son. Now we are experiencing his work of restoration. God wants to repair our relationship with you. We are your brothers and sisters, not your elders. We are not attempting to rule over you or change you into Jews like us. We will respect you, accept you and love you as you are, because that is what God has done for us; that is the essence of the gospel. We believe that the Holy Spirit is already hovering over you, working in mysterious ways that we cannot yet understand, and we hope to learn from you what God has been doing among you. We encourage you to respond to the Spirit’s invitation and become equal partners with us in this glorious work of restoration.”

That is the character that God wanted to instill in his chosen people. And, to an extent, that is what happened in the generations leading up to Christ, especially among the Hellenistic Jews scattered across the Empire. While they kept their laws and traditions, they also spoke Greek, and they began to mingle and develop meaningful relationships with the Gentiles around them. Their synagogues began to attract God-fearing Greeks who, for good reason, did not submit to circumcision but nevertheless loved the Lord. Many Hellenistic Jews developed an open and tolerant spirit as exemplified by Stephen and Philip in Acts chapters 6-8.

But in and around Jerusalem, the opposite was happening. In the years leading up to Christ, the rabbinical schools heightened the distinctions between clean and unclean, narrowing the popular conceptions of who was going to be saved. God’s salvation was no longer for all Israel; those were seen as worldly and compromised, such as the tax collectors and public sinners, were excluded. As Pharisees trended toward rigid interpretations and practices of the law, those considered to be elect became fewer and more distant from the rest. And the Essenes, who became so strict in their practices that they considered the Pharisees to be impure, formed monastic communities and withdrew to the caves at Qumran. They labeled everyone outside of their community as “Breakers of the Covenant.”

As these groups increasingly staked their identity and self-worth on the keeping of their traditions and laws, their expectations for the coming Messiah turned toward validation and reward for the elect, combined with punishment for anyone who oppressed or opposed them in any way. The enemies of the Jews were seen as the enemies of God, destined for enslavement or destruction. The late missiologist David J. Bosch (Transforming Mission, p. 19-20) explained:

As the political and social conditions of the people of the old covenant deteriorate, there increasingly develops the expectation that, one day, the Messiah will come to conquer the Gentile nations and restore Israel. This expectation is usually linked with fantastic ideas of world domination by Israel, to whom all the nations will be subject. It reaches its peak in the apocalyptic beliefs and attitudes of the Essene communities along the shores of the Dead Sea. The horizons of apocalyptic belief are cosmic: God will destroy the entire present world and usher in a new world according to a detailed and predetermined plan The present world, with all its inhabitants, is radically evil. The faithful have to separate themselves from it, keep themselves pure as the holy remnant, and wait for God’s intervention. In such a climate even the idea of a missionary attitude toward the Gentile world would be preposterous… At best God would, without any involvement on the part of Israel, by means of a divine act, save those Gentiles he had elected in advance.

Ironically, the religion of the Jews hardened into keeping of laws and traditions which, although apparently based on the Old Testament, ignored the actual flow of OT history. Their faith became increasingly focused on right principles and practices rather than on right relationships with God and other people. Bosch continues (p. 20):

To a large extent Jewish apocalyptic spells the end of the earlier dynamic understanding of history. Past salvific events are no longer celebrated as guarantees and anticipations of God’s future involvement with his people; they have become sacred traditions which have to be preserved unchanged. The Law becomes an absolute entity which Israel has to serve and obey. Greek metaphysical categories gradually begin to replace historical thinking. Faith becomes a matter of timeless metahistorical and carefully systematized teaching.

When Jesus arrived on the scene around 27 A.D., he overturned the popular understanding of election by declaring God’s unconditional saving grace to all Israel, especially those who were marginalized and considered impure. He elected the Twelve to represent pillars of a new chosen people who would embody the gospel and convey it to the nations. But just as the rest of Israel had difficulty embracing the Gentiles, so did the apostles and the early Church. As much as Peter and his fellow church members had to evangelize the nations, they themselves had to be re-evangelized by the nations, by seeing and fully accepting the work of Christ in Gentile believers who were different from them. God’s election does not give anyone a superior status. His election is designed to show the world that, from first to last, salvation comes to all by grace alone.

Here I want to focus on some aspects of election found in Romans chapters 9-11. Paul didn’t write those chapters to settle modern theological debates. He was expounding on the relationship between the Gentiles and Jews. He was trying to explain why the nation of Israel, which had been created and chosen by God to receive the gospel and carry it to the world, rejected Christ and failed to carry out its mission. And he was relating that explanation to his teaching that righteousness must always come by faith alone, not by observing the law. I imagine that if we could ask the Apostle Paul about the merits of Calvinism versus Arminianism, he would respond with a very puzzled look, not because he never heard of Calvin or Arminius, but because to him this debate would sound very odd.

As modern evangelicals, we tend to think of salvation in terms of the rescue of individuals. We imagine humanity as an endless parade of souls marching along on a highway to hell, and our mission is to pluck as many souls as we can off that road and set them on the path to heaven. If we follow this thinking to its logical conclusion, the most faithful Christian is the one who asks everyone he meets, “If you were to die this afternoon, do you think you would go to heaven?” The most effective missionary is the one with the highest number of converts. And the overarching goal of discipleship is to change each person into a lean, mean, soul-saving machine. Other aspects of gospel work — feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the lonely, and so on — are just for the sake of good public relations, to open people’s hearts and prepare them for the “real” purpose of evangelism, which is to close the deal and get everyone converted and baptized before they die.

I am not saying that this individual-rescue idea of salvation is entirely wrong. I do believe that there is a great deal of truth in it. But this is not the way that the gospel is presented in the New Testament. It is the mindset of a 19^th-century tent revivalist, not the language of Jesus, Peter or Paul. One reason why the New Testament doesn’t present the gospel in those terms is that Hebrew people had radically different notions of what it means to be a person.

In our understanding, a person is an autonomous being, one who exercises independence in thought, decision and action. In debates about abortion, for example, one of the key questions is, “When should a fetus be considered a person?” Many have argued that a fetus should be considered a person when it becomes viable and has a reasonable chance of surviving outside the mother’s womb. This modernist notion of persons shows up in that famous statement by Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” His existence as a person is validated when he exercises his own rational thought.

But the Hebrews who wrote the Bible had different ideas about personhood. To the Jewish mind, a person was someone who was had significant relationships with others. At the beginning of Romans 9, Paul wishes that he could be cut off from Christ if only his fellow Israelites would be saved. To us, that desire seems very strange. Who among us would be willing to be condemned for all eternity to save other people, many of whom we have never met? But to Paul it made sense, because he never regarded himself as a lone wolf. He was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee among Pharisees (Acts 23:6, Php 3:5). His personal identity was so closely bound to his people that he couldn’t imagine himself being separated from them. If being with Christ was going to cut him off from his community, he almost didn’t want to be with Christ.

The other apostles had similar feelings. Before Jesus ascended to heaven, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) When we read this, we tend to scoff at the disciples: “How could they possibly think that way? Didn’t they realize that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom, not a political one?” But their question was perfectly legitimate. They couldn’t imagine a gospel message that would personally save them without also restoring their nation. Given all the promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament, and given what Paul says in Romans 9-11, their question is defensible and biblically sound. The Hebrew God cares about individuals, but he also cares about the nations and especially about his chosen people. How often do the Old Testament prophets speak God’s word not to individuals but to the nations and to Israel?

In chapter 7 of The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin argues that the idea of persons as relational beings is consistent with Scripture and with orthodox Christian belief. It is rooted in the understanding of God as Father, Son and Spirit – three persons in one God. Human beings created in his image share in his relational nature. The first mention of human beings appears in Genesis 1:26-27:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

The Trinitarian God spoke and created people as males and females, designed for relationships with one another. This longing for interpersonal relationship is expressed in sexuality. Sexual attraction, which is hardwired by God into our bodies, minds, emotions and personalities, is the magnetism and glue that creates families. The families produce children and become the building blocks of societies. In addition to these relationships with one another, we were also made to be in relationship with the rest of the created world. Our role in that relationship is to rule over the earth, serving as its stewards and managers (Gen 1:28).

When sin enters the world in Genesis chapter 3, it mars all the relationships that define us as persons. Man’s relationship with himself is broken and he experiences shame. He runs and hides, a sign of his broken relationship with God. Marital intimacy is cracked as the man blames his wife, and they cover themselves with fig leaves. Their relationship with the world is broken when the ground is cursed and rebels against them, producing thorns and thistles instead of food. When the destruction spreads through Adam’s family to his descendants and to all of society (chapters 4-6), God decides to scrub the world by a devastating flood. But the flood doesn’t solve the problem, because human beings remain evil from childhood (Gen 8:21). Human efforts to fix up the world are doomed to fail, as evidenced by the Tower of Babel, and the disunity, conflict and chaos continue (Gen 11:1-9).

If sin destroyed the relationships that make the world run as it should, then shouldn’t the gospel be about repairing relationships and restoring the world? Yes; that is how the Bible is structured. World history is a story with four great acts. Act 1 is creation: God made the world and everything in it; then he created people to love him, to love one another, and to take care of the earth. Act 2 is the Fall: sin entered the world and destroyed our relationships with God, with one another, and with the created world. Act 3 is redemption, which began with Abraham and ended at the cross. God paid the price for sin through the death of his son. Act 4 is restoration, when God remakes humanity and the earth. Restoration begins with the resurrection of Christ, his ascension to heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. In this post-Pentecostal era, the Holy Spirit is working to restore our relationships with God, with one another and with the world. Act 4 will continue until Jesus returns to completely destroy sin and death, to raise our bodies and establish the new heaven and the new earth.

If we see God’s purpose as holistic restoration of mankind and the world, then our understanding of our mission must be broader than saving individual souls so they can go to heaven. The Church must be involved in the healing of relationships at all levels: our relationship with God (evangelism and worship), our relationships to ourselves (physical and psychological healing), our relationships with our spouses and children (healing of families), our relationships with our neighbors and with all society (healing of communities and nations), and even our relationships to the created world (environmental stewardship). No single individual can do all these things effectively, but the Church as a whole can do them by allowing different parts of the Body of Christ to perform their specialized functions. These activities of the Church will not transform the whole earth and usher in the kingdom of God; that will happen when Jesus returns. But the working of the Holy Spirit through the Church serves as a witness, a sign, and a foretaste of the kingdom that is already breaking into the world.

So what does all this have to do with election? That’s a good question…

Sending missionaries is a laudable goal. But a church cannot measure its success, or its degree of obedience to God, solely by the number of missionaries it sends. If we say, “Our mission is to send missionaries,” then we are merely running in circles. We need to clarify what the missionaries are supposed to do. If we say that the missionaries are supposed to make disciples, and those disciples are supposed to make more disciples, then we are again running in circles. The church cannot exist only to replicate itself.

Jesus Christ says to us, “Behold, I make all things new!” (Rev 21:5) The church, through its missionary outreach, should be bringing new believers into the fold. And the fresh working of the Spirit in those new believers, especially those from new generations and cultures, should be breathing vitality and renewal into the church. That is part of God’s grand design. A concept of mission is incomplete if it does not include the church being re-evangelized by its converts. Unfortunately, the way that churches have conceived and carried out foreign missions over the years has often prevented this backflow from happening. Consider the well known missionary hymn We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations by H. Ernest Nichol (1862-1928). The verses of this hymn begin as follows:

1. We’ve a story to tell to the nations…
2. We’ve a song to be sung to the nations…
3. We’ve a message to give to the nations…
4. We’ve a Savior to show to the nations…

The pattern here is unmistakable. From this perspective, mission is about exporting a message but never about importing. It’s giving but not receiving, serving but not being served. In The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin explains how this type of missionary activity, although well intentioned, ultimately quenches the Spirit’s fire (p. 139):

In this case the sending church is insulated from the correction it needs to receive from the new converts. Mission, as I have insisted, is not just church extension. It is an action in which the Holy Spirit does new things, brings into being new obedience. But the new gifts are for the whole body and not just for the new members. Mission involves learning as well as teaching, receiving as well as giving.

During the 20^th century, the flow of evangelizing missionaries from mainline churches, particularly those in western Europe, slowed down or stopped entirely. This coincided with the decline of church attendance and overall secularization of European society. Clearly these two trends are linked. A church that is shrinking and fighting for its survival can hardly be expected to send large numbers of missionaries overseas. Over the years, however, I have heard Christians claim that those churches shrank because they neglected foreign missions: “European churches didn’t keep their mission; they stopped sending missionaries, and that’s the reason why they declined.” If I had a penny for every time someone told me that, I would have many pennies. Is that a sensible or reasonable analysis?

Here is a common metaphor: “Water flows into the Dead Sea, but not out; that’s why the Dead Sea is lifeless.” By implication, a person or church that lives selfishly, continually receiving but never giving, cannot survive for long. Perhaps that is so. But what happens to a body of water that has streams flowing out but none flowing in? Sooner or later, that lake will run dry.

The gospel was never intended to flow just from proselytizer to proselyte, from evangelist to evangelee. (Is that a word? It ought to be.) If we think that it does, we miss one of the huge themes of the New Testament, a theme that addresses some of the deepest mysteries of the Bible:

• Why God chose Israel and covenanted her to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5-6)
• Why Israel failed to keep this covenant and, in a sense, was destined to do so
• Why the Jewish nation as a whole rejected Christ and, in a sense, was destined to do so
• Why Jesus had to ascend to heaven and entrust the preaching of the gospel to his young disciples
• Why Jesus appeared to the most outrageously legalistic Jew and appointed him to carry the gospel to the Gentiles
• Why in the fullness of time the gospel will ultimately flow from Gentiles back to Jews

That theme is the doctrine of election. Stay tuned; there’s more to come.

McGavran noticed that some agencies were successful at making converts, but others were stagnant and barely growing. He set out to discover why. After careful observation, he found that the stagnant agencies exhibited some common features. He called their strategy a “mission station” approach. A mission station resembled a North American or European church. Western values and customs were on display, giving the church a decidedly non-Indian look and feel. Converts of these missionaries had powerful conversion experiences, but the converts were few and far between. In The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, missiologist Lesslie Newbigin explains why (p. 122):

In the “mission station” approach, as McGavran sees it, converts are detached from the natural communities to which they belong, attached to the foreign missions and institutions, and required to conform to ethical and cultural standards that belong to the Christianity of the foreign missionary. The effect of this policy is twofold. On the one hand the convert, having been transplanted into an alien culture, is no longer in a position to influence non-Christian relatives and neighbors; on the other hand, the energies of the mission are exhausted in the effort to bring the converts, or more often their children, into conformity with the standards supposed by the missionaries to be required by the gospel. Both factors have the effect of stopping the growth of the church.

I’ll bet that the leaders of the “mission station” agencies didn’t like McGavran’s analysis. I can almost hear them saying, “We focus on quality rather than quantity.” They may have justified their approach by noting that their converts, though few, looked like outstanding examples of Christian discipleship because they had been so thoroughly transformed. Indeed, in the way that they spoke, dressed, and acted, they resembled miniature versions of the missionaries themselves! I suppose that these missionaries had the best of intentions. They were sincere, sacrificial, loving and devout, never imagining that they were imposing western cultural values. From their perspective, their standards were matters of biblical principle, right versus wrong. They imagined they were reading the Bible straight, interpreting Scripture just as it is. Whatever they taught the converts to do was just what they had done when they were converted and discipled.

McGavran concluded that the “mission station” approach was based on a faulty reading of the Great Commission. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus said, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Based on those verses, McGavran said that the mission of the church has three aspects: discipling, baptizing, and perfecting. (Note that McGavran’s use of the term “discipling” is quite different from the way we use it in UBF. To us, “discipling” suggests discipleship training, helping converts to obey the teachings of the Bible. In McGavran’s terminology, that kind of training is called “perfecting”, and “discipling” means to help them make the initial commitment to identify themselves as followers of Christ.) McGavran believed that the order of the three activities in Matthew 28:19-20 is very significant, reflecting an order in time and priority. He thought that the missionary should focus on discipling and baptizing, and leave the task of perfecting to leaders of the indigenized church. The “mission station” agencies lose their effectiveness when they spend their time, resources and energy on perfecting rather than discipling and baptizing.

Personally, I disagree with some of McGavran’s conclusions. I am not convinced that Matthew 28:19-20 implies an order of priority, and the distinction between discipling and perfecting seems artificial. But McGavran’s basic observations are compelling. Lesslie Newbigin, who was also a missionary to India, agreed with McGavran’s assessment (p. 124):

The criticism of the “mission station” strategy has a great deal of force. It is also true that missions have, in McGavran’s phrase, tended to put perfecting before discipling and thereby fallen into the old legalist trap. They have become proponents of a new law rather than a liberating gospel. The church has been made to appear more like a school where examinations have to be passed than a place where the community meets to celebrate its freedom.

My purpose in writing this article is not to make hidden, indirect criticisms of UBF. To avoid any misunderstandings, I will tell you directly what I think. Speaking as a North American disciple of UBF missionaries, I have seen the missionaries’ dedication and sacrifice firsthand. I respect and love our missionaries. It is obvious that they have passed on many cultural influences to their converts. That is an inevitable result of cross-cultural witness, and it is not inherently bad. The fertilization of one culture with gospel seeds from another is, in my opinion, an essential part of God’s overall plan for the people and nations of the world. This cross-cultural aspect of UBF was very helpful in my own spiritual development.

Yet it is impossible to look at UBF chapters in North America and not see resemblances to the mission stations. Any North American who visits a UBF worship service for the first time instinctively feels that we are different, and we wear those differences as a badge of honor. Newcomers hear this message loud and clear: “You are very welcome here. But if you enter this fellowship, we expect you to become like us. Your standing in our community will rise and you will be rewarded as you accept and adopt our methods, manners, standards and traditions.” Of course, we never think of them as our traditions; we call them “God’s” mission,” “God’s” commands, and “Bible” principles. By the language that we use, we canonize and absolutize our ways of doing things. Use of that language is itself rewarded and taken as a sign of growing faith and commitment to Christ. But anyone who makes significant contact with Christ-loving people outside of UBF knows that many of the things that we hold dear are not absolutes but simply our own manners, methods and traditions.

When I came into UBF nearly three decades ago, I was, as McGavran observed, detached from my American Christian heritage and transplanted into an alien culture. I neglected and severed relationships with friends, family and neighbors. This detachment from my own people was a consequence of the way that Samuel Lee ran the ministry during the 1980’s and 1990’s. It drastically changed my life and brought me to Christ, but it left me emotionally isolated from people and confused about my identity, and it limited my influence and Christian witness to society outside of UBF. Now that I realize what has happened, I am trying to recover that lost identity and repair relationships with people whom I wrongly ignored.

And to me it seems undeniable that the factors cited by McGavran are stifling growth. It has just been reported that our average Sunday worship attendance in North America increased about 4% in 2010. I wonder what that figure would be if you remove the effect of inflow of missionaries from Korea and the natural increase from children born to UBF families coming of age. Regardless, we have not been seeing the growth that many had hoped for, and we have fallen far short of the target of doubling the ministry by 2010. To what do we attribute this slow growth? Reading through the yearly reports appearing on ubf.org, the top reasons cited by our missionaries for falling short are not praying enough, not studying the Bible enough, and so on. These ideas are reinforced by messages from leaders that exhort members to work harder, sacrifice more, recover zeal for the gospel, have an absolute attitude, etc. Everywhere I look, the assumption is that our mission strategy is impeccably sound, and all problems are due to individuals who did not get with the program and carry it out with enough intensity and sincerity. There is an elephant in the room, but no one seems willing to talk about it. That elephant is our overall mission strategy. This is the reason why I have been claiming that we lack a coherent theology of mission. We lack this theology because we trained ourselves not to discuss it, not even to think about it.

The mission station strategy is built on the assumption that the gospel message travels in just one direction, flowing from the missionaries to the converts. Sooner or later, as the community matures, there must be a backflow as the missionaries are re-evangelized by the converts. We see that happening in the early church beginning in Acts chapter 10. The passage that is often titled “The Conversion of Cornelius” could just as well be called “The Conversion of Peter.” The divinely arranged encounter between the centurion and the apostle shook Peter to the core. It challenged his lifelong assumptions about purity and righteousness and brought him to a new, deeper understanding of the gospel. Peter’s first reaction to the Holy Spirit’s vision was, “Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean” (Acts 10:14). That reaction reveals that, although he was a committed follower of Jesus, he still regarded his adherence to the law as a badge of honor, something that made him better than others in the sight of God. To see a non-law abiding Gentile be instantly accepted into God’s family made him realize that, even after being a Christian for many years, his own standing before God was still not based on anything he does but on what Christ has done for him. The gospel of Jesus Christ is, from first to last, a gospel of grace and faith alone.

The tensions in a cross-cultural ministry are inevitable. Eventually there must be a Jerusalem Council, an open dialogue between foreign missionaries and native converts, to inquire of God and enlarge their understanding of the gospel. I think we can all agree that the gospel must bring tangible, visible change to the lives of those who receive it. But what should the fruit of the gospel look like? Should the fruit of the gospel planted on Korean soil look just like the fruit on American soil? How different can they be?

The participants at the original Jerusalem Council thought hard about this and concluded that Jewish and Gentile Christians should look different. Yet they were also aware of the need for compromise to maintain friendships and spiritual unity. In the letter that James drafted to the Gentile Christians, he urged them “to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.” (Acts 15:29) That list of prohibitions includes behavior that we still regard as sinful (sexual immorality) and behavior that we now see as benign (eating of blood — Have you ever tried “black pudding”? It’s quite, um, interesting). So even the outcome of the Jerusalem Council was not an absolute ruling that could remain in place for all time. I take that as a meaningful principle. The ethical requirements of the gospel can never be fixed. Some aspects will remain constant over time, but other aspects will have to change.

And that raises another very important question. Who gets to decide what those ethical requirements are? That is not an easy one. So the series shall continue…

So what do we do when a Bible translation is significantly revised as in the case of the NIV? Should we upgrade or remain with the tried and true translation? Should we consider a newer and different translation altogether such as the ESV? Knowing that there is no perfect translation, should we all learn Hebrew and Greek?

I love the NIV 1984. I grew up with it. A friend of my father’s was in charge of marketing the NIV. My dad still has an old promotional copy of the book of John from the 70’s. So I gave UBF bonus points immediately when I discovered that everyone uses the NIV. We’ve all read it, studied it, memorized it. Does the NIV translation committee really expect us to change to the NIV 2011?

I’m amenable to this revised edition of the NIV for three reasons: language, audience and, for lack of a better term, freshness.

First, language. The English language evolves so quickly that revisions to Bible translations are necessary every few years. The English language is not the same as it was in 1984. The NIV 1984(I’ll call it the ONIV) was the NIV’s first attempt at the translation. After years of usage, i.e, preaching, Bible study, and scholarly input, surely the NIV can improve upon their first translation. For example, the committee has changed the word “Christ” in Acts and other places to “Messiah.” “Messiah” is more accurate since it is the term that the disciples would have been using, especially since their first audience was Jewish. For another example, take Luke 1:18. The ONIV says that Mary was “with child.” What does that mean in contemporary English? It means that she was pregnant, which is exactly how the NIV 2011 renders that verse. I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase “with child” to refer to a pregnancy.

Now, “with child” may be a literal translation, but literal is not always the clearest or most lucid. The word for word translations are generally the ESV, NRSV, and the favorite of all Greek students, the NASB. I’m in favor of using literal translations for my Bible study and personal readings to get a deeper sense of a particular passage. However, I’m not crazy about the more literal translations to use in a church service. But, you may object, UBF is a Bible study centered ministry, we can handle the more stilted language of the literal translation. Yes, but we are also focused on evangelism. For new Christians and even non-Christians, a dynamic equivalent translation of the Bible (e.g., the NIV), where meaning, lucidity and readability are all taken into consideration, is the necessary choice. That brings us to the next point.

Second, audience. Who is our audience? Our official evangelistic focus is college students. I was one of them. Generation X and younger generations have been raised in gender inclusive language environments. They’ve used gender inclusive language throughout their education. Ask a college student what would happen if he or she only used the male pronoun to refer to men and women. Since gender inclusive language is so normal to me and to college students, shouldn’t we use it in our sermons and Bible studies?

Take a look at John 14:23. The ONIV says, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.” The “he” makes me a little uncomfortable having been raised in a gender inclusive language environment. I much prefer the NIV 2011, which reads, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.”

I know some grammar mavens get vexed when plural pronouns are used in the same sentence as singular ones. Take a look at the entire verse, “²³ Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” We’ve got “anyone” and “them.” The translators say that this is a pragmatic or usage issue. This is an acceptable translation since this is the way that people talk. People will say “someone” and then say “they” referring back to “someone.” People talk like that all the time, even the grammar mavens.

Now, the issue of gender inclusive language isn’t about whether or not Generation X is comfortable with male only pronouns, the issue is whether or not gender inclusive language is biblically accurate. Mark Strauss, author of How to Choose a Translation for all it’s Worth, calls gender inclusive language in the NIV 2011 “gender accurate.” He writes,

“the Greek word anthropos can mean “person” (its primary meaning) or “man” (a secondary sense), depending on the context. While the NIV translated Romans 3:28, “For we maintain that a man (anthropos) is justified by faith,” the NIV 2011 more accurately renders, “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith.” Virtually everyone agrees that anthropos here means “person,” so the NIV 2011 translates it that way.
The NIV 2011 does not eliminate gender distinctions (as some critics claim) but rather clarifies them. References to females remain feminine. References to males remain masculine. But when the inspired authors are referring to both men and women, an inclusive term like person is used. This is just good translation policy—the kind of meaning-based translation practiced by Bible translators around the world.”

Gender accurate language is also nothing new in the biblical world. For more than twenty years translators have been using gender accurate language in their revised versions. These include the New Revised Standard Version, the Good News Bible, The Message, the Contemporary English Version, and the New Living Translation among many others.

Third, freshness. Switching to the NIV 2011 will knock us all out of the comfortable world of the ONIV. Many of us have memorized significant portions of the ONIV, not to mention the gospel key verses, yearly key verses, and life key verses. Some second gens have grown up memorizing the ONIV in CBF Bible memorization contests. We could settle down and be comfortable with the ONIV for the rest of our lives. However, the NIV 2011 gives us a unique opportunity to use a fresh and yet familiar translation. Some of the verses we’ve memorized will remain the same. Some revised verses will challenge us to look at them in a new light. A friend of mine told me that he prepared a thematic workshop on marriage. Since everyone uses the ONIV at his church, he decided to use other translations for some familiar verses he was using in his presentation. His plan worked—people read the verses as if they were reading them for the first time.

Making the switch to the NIV 2011 doesn’t mean we have to abandon the ONIV. Switching to the NIV 2011 will only make our Bible study that much richer and deeper. When the NIV 2011 renders a verse differently than the ONIV, we’ll be compelled to figure out the reason. Is the new rendering more literal? Was the old rendering confusing or convoluted?

Are you going to make the switch?

To feel the full impact of what happened at the Jerusalem Council, we need to read history forward, not backward. From our present vantage point, we already know how it turned out. With twenty centuries of church history and theology behind us, the “correct” course of action seems perfectly obvious. But at that meeting, the outcome was far from certain. Church members were genuinely confused, and faithful servants of God had staked out positions on both sides. Try to put aside what you already know and stand in the shoes of those who were there. Weigh the arguments as fairly as you can, and honestly ask yourself the question, “If I were at the Jerusalem Council, what would I have been thinking, and what decision would I have made?”

About five years earlier, Paul and Barnabas were sent out from Antioch to carry the gospel to other places (Acts 13:1-3). Whenever they entered a city, they looked for a Jewish community and went to the synagogue. For them, this was not a matter of practicality but of theology. Paul understood that the Jews were God’s chosen people, those whom God had specially prepared to receive the gospel and bear it to the world. So Paul made it a point to always preach to the Jews first (Ro 1:16).

Diaspora Jews had settled throughout the world, and Greek-speaking Gentiles took notice of them. Quite a few Greeks were attracted to Judaism. They could see that it bred sincerity, piety and virtue. But Greeks found it extremely difficult to convert, and for good reason. To convert meant, first of all, that a man had to be circumcised. Circumcision was the sign of entering God’s family, and it was considered non-negotiable. To refuse circumcision was to be cut off from God’s people (Gen 17:14). Second, the new convert had to commit to keeping the law of Moses. Faithful keeping of the law would radically change every aspect of one’s personal and public life. Law-abiding Jews could not freely associate with non-Jews. They could not entire a Gentile’s house without becoming unclean, and to eat with a Gentile would become unthinkable (Acts 11:3). If a Gentile actually converted to Judaism, it would effectively cut him off from his friends and his family (unless they converted too), and it would pull him out of the community he had known all his life. For this reason, there were many Gentiles who were “sitting on the fence.” They were attracted to Judaism and loved the teachings of the Bible. But they found it impossible to take that final step of conversion; the personal, social cost was just too high. These Gentiles were called “God fearers” (e.g., Acts 13:26). Nearly every synagogue had at least some Gentile God-fearers who came regularly and sat in a place that had been specially reserved for them.

When Paul and Barnabas would enter a synagogue and speak about Jesus, the response of the Jews would be tepid and mixed. But to the God-fearing Gentiles, the message was sweet music in their ears. They were amazed to learn that God would accept them as they were. By grace alone they could be welcomed into his kingdom if they put their trust in Jesus Christ. Coming to Jesus did not require them to sever their relationships or give up their cultural identity. This teaching created such a stir among God-fearers that enormous crowds of Gentiles would show up at the synagogue to hear the Apostle Paul. When the Jews saw great hordes of Gentiles pouring into the synagogue, they felt terrified and threatened (Acts 13:44-45). They realized that if what Paul was saying was true — that the door of salvation was now open to anyone by faith in Jesus Christ alone — then their faith community would be overrun by people with lifestyles radically different from theirs. These new believers, with their worldly customs and lenient attitudes, might cause community standards of holiness to slip. The synagogue leaders knew they would lose control. It would spell the end of the synagogue as they knew it.

The predictable result was that, when Paul preached in a synagogue, most of the Jews and especially the leaders would reject the gospel message. But large numbers of Gentiles would receive it with joy. The new believers in Christ would have to leave the synagogue and meet somewhere else, setting up their own faith community nearby. Very soon after the new church was established, Paul would appoint leaders and elders and leave the matter of running the church to them. He would hug them and say goodbye and go on to a new place. But he would continue to pray for them and stay in touch through occasional letters and visits.

After Paul’s departure, however, many questions would arise. At the heart of them all was one huge question: What were the ethical implications of the gospel? The gospel placed everyone under the Lordship of Christ. To follow Christ was to be called out from the old ways of sin to a new life of holiness and obedience in love. (The Greek word ekklesia, which we translate as “church,” literally means “called out.”) Everyone could agree on that in principle. But what was the new community supposed to look like? How were Christians actually supposed to live? The converts who knew the Scriptures best were the Jewish Christians who had studied the Bible all their lives. They had strong notions about what constituted a holy and pious life. With their strong cultural identity and superior knowledge of the Bible, it was inevitable that Jewish expressions of devotion and piety would begin to emerge as the multicultural church struggled to define itself. Those expressions would be reinforced by church leaders who visited from Jerusalem, the birthplace of the gospel and the center of Jewish Christianity.

So within just a few years, or even a few months, this idea began to take hold: The Gentile converts ought to be circumcised.

This idea was opposed by Paul from the beginning. But other leaders were not so sure. No one had worked out a coherent theology of how the gospel was supposed to interact with human culture. Friendships and loyalties were severely tested as different opinions swirled about. Even the Apostle Peter and Barnabas had been pressured and swayed by those who claimed that uncircumcised believers were not full members of the Christian fellowship (Gal 2:11-14).

As the tensions and tempers began to flare, I have no doubt that believers began to ask, “What does the Bible have to say?” Perhaps the wisest among them were saying, “Let’s go back to the Bible.” And others would have appealed to WWJD: “What would Jesus do?” Or better yet, “What would Jesus have us do?” Surely they were asking the apostles, “Did Jesus ever say anything about this?” It is likely that none of the gospels and none of the epistles, except possibly Paul’s letter to the Galatians, had been written by this time. Believers must have combed through the Old Testament and the oral traditions of Jesus with great sincerity, looking for clues and divine guidance. As they did so, what would they have found?

Try to put yourself in their shoes. Try to erase from your mind — and from your Bible — everything that comes after Acts chapter 14. Suppose you had been asked to render an opinion on what the biblically correct position is. Suppose that you were chosen for this task because you have extensive knowledge of the Scriptures. Therefore it is likely that you are a Jewish Christian, a circumcised male and keeper of the law. You place great value on spiritual disciplines such as daily prayer and Bible reading, because those disciplines have kept you grounded in faith since you were a child. Factor in your personality and how you have approached similar situations in your own life thus far. Factor in your beliefs about the authority of Scripture, how you feel about your own group’s religious traditions and spiritual heritage, your ideas about holiness (remember: holy can mean “separate”), the need to maintain ethical and moral principles and standards, and your understanding of the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20).

Be honest, and don’t peek at Acts chapter 15. What do you think you would have done?

The historical eye-witness account

My first example is John MacArthur, pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church. MacArthur is considered by many to be one of the greatest expository preachers of our time, and I agree. His approach to Genesis 1 is quite literal. He treats the chapter as an eyewitness account of creation and reads it as one would read a history text. In MacArthur’s interpretation, each day of Genesis 1 is a 24-hour period, and the universe is no older than a few thousand years. Following this approach, God created physical light on day one and sun, moon and stars on day four. Needless to say, at least half of his sermon on Genesis 1 is an argument against evolution and its implications. Against the possibility of theistic evolution he argues that evolution itself is impossible. The historical elements of Genesis 1 are, according to him, so overwhelmingly obvious that he dismisses every other approach as turning science into a hermeneutic.

Although I absolutely admire MacArthur’s seriousness toward the word of God and his zeal to defend God’s truth, I find his approach too one-sided. As I mentioned, he approaches Genesis 1 as historical account, but not as an ancient historical document. Modern historians write chronologically, but ancient historians often did not (see, for example, the synoptic gospels). MacArthur doesn’t provide much explanation for why he believes that Genesis 1 is historical narrative. And, unfortunately, he doesn’t give much attention to the putative intentions of the original author. No consideration is given to the putative first hearers and readers of Genesis 1 (the Israelites wandering between Egypt and Canaan) and how they would have understood it.

God, the prophet of creation

A less literal approach can be seen in the interpretation of Mark Driscoll. Driscoll is a relatively young pastor of Mars Hill, a thriving and growing megachurch in Seattle. For him, the entire creation of the universe, including sun, moon and stars, is completed in the sentence, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” He sees evidence for this interpretation in the fact that the word for “made” in verse 1 is bara,’whereas for the following days, the author uses the word asa. He explains these two Hebrew words with a simple illustration. To “make” a bed can have two meanings. It can mean to construct and build a bed from scratch with wood, nails, etc. Or it can mean to tidy it up in the morning. Thus, when the Bible says that God made light, expanse, plants, land, etc. it does not necessarily mean that God created something that did not exist before. For instance, Driscoll interprets the appearance of light on day one simply as sunrise. When God separates the land from the sea, he is thinking of the Israelites in the desert and interprets this as God bringing forth the Promised Land as his own special ‘real estate.’ He also doesn’t see the making of sun, moon and stars on Day 4 as creating something new, but as God narrating and prophesying that he did create sun, moon and stars as mentioned in verse 1. So God doesn’t create something new every day, but he speaks and prophesies in his creation every day. Driscoll sees God as a prophet who is lovingly involved with his creation and speaking to it. In Driscoll’s sermon, he argues against macroevolution but he personally believes in an old earth.

Purely functional creation

The next interpretation I would like to discuss is that of John Walton, Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. Walton recently published a book called The Lost World of Genesis 1. His conclusions are radical and provocative, significantly different from what has traditionally been taught about Genesis 1. He begins with the observation that Genesis 1 is a piece of Ancient Near-Eastern (ANE) literature. This implies that Genesis 1 is not a modern scientific text and should never be read as such. Furthermore, he identifies a number of parallels and similarities between the Genesis account and ANE worldviews. He attempts to understand Genesis 1 in light of ANE cosmology.

Analyzing the meaning of the Hebrew word bara, he concludes that Genesis 1 is not intended to describe the material origins of the universe. Walton is not saying that he doesn’t believe that God is the creator of matter. But he contends that Genesis 1 is not that story. Instead, he sees the chapter depicting God as a functional creator. The first three days are about the installment of basic functions. The light in the first day refers to the function of time; the expanse in day two refers to the function of weather; and day three deals with the function of food. Days four to six are about assignment of roles and spheres to those cosmic functionaries. In Walton’s interpretation, the account reaches its climax on the seventh day when God rests. His rest means that he enters his creation to rule over it. To illustrate, he compares God’s activity to the establishment of a new company or business. The functions of the company are first established (Days 1-3) and then the functionaries are assigned (Days 4-6). Then the only thing that remains is for the CEO to enter his office and begin running the company (Day 7). In Genesis 1, God is not creating a company; he is making the earth into a temple for himself. All of creation is God’s temple, and the days of creation are the inauguration of the temple, climaxing in God’s rest in his temple to rule over the earth.

Walton’s conclusions may seem too extreme. Many would disagree with his claim that Genesis 1 doesn’t have anything to say about material origins. Like MacArthur, he doesn’t seem open to accepting the possibility that there may be multiple valid interpretations and approaches to the text. Nevertheless, Walton’s analysis did give plausible answers to a couple of questions I had about Genesis 1. His desire to do excellent exegesis is unmistakable.

The song of creation

Last, but not least, I will mention Tim Keller’s take on this passage. Keller is founder and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. Keller wrote an excellent and easily readable white paper on the debate over creation versus evolution. On the question of literary genre, Keller points out that Genesis 1 does not make use of parallelism, the predominant feature of Hebrew poetry. Nevertheless, the many repetitions in the passage sound to him like refrains. Thus, Keller sees Genesis 1 as a creation song. He finds evidence for his view in the fact that there are some contradictions between Genesis 1 and 2. This he resolves by explaining that Genesis 1 and 2 share a ‘partnership’ similar to that seen in Exodus 14 and 15. One is the actual historical account, the other is a song paraphrasing the historical events utilizing metaphors and lyricism. In the case of Exodus 14-15, the event is the crossing of the Red Sea. That story is first told through the historical narrative, and then it is celebrated through the songs of Miriam and Moses. A similar thing is happening in Genesis 1-2, but the order is reversed; first comes the song, then somes the narrative.

In contrast to those who favor literal approaches to Genesis 1, Keller doesn’t think that Genesis 1 intends to say much about how God created the universe. Rather, he thinks that Genesis 1 is explaining why and for what. Keller does not argue at all against evolution. He does, however, strongly argue against a naturalistic view of the beginnings of the universe which claims that life came into existence only by impersonal, random and natural forces. He beautifully illustrates how Genesis 1 explains our longing for perfection and beauty and enjoyment. Most of all, he points to Jesus, the Word of God and the agent by which God created heaven and earth. Keller shows that on the cross, the opposite of creation occurs: Jesus was deconstructed, destroyed and unmade. All of this happened so that we, his fallen creation, could be remade and recreated for eternal joy.

I have presented four thoughtful and divergent views on Genesis 1 by contemporary Bible teachers. Which of these views sounds most plausible to you? What is your take on Genesis 1?

Let me finish with a few simple suggestions on how to deal with the difficulties of Genesis 1.

Suggestion 1: Before attempting to interpret this difficult first chapter of the Bible, invest some thought in how to do solid exegesis. Otherwise you may fall into the trap of arbitrarily of reading your own cultural biases into an Ancient Near-Eastern text.

Suggestion 2: Don’t treat Genesis 1 as a scientific or pseudo-scientific text. Genesis 1 was never meant to be a scientific treatise. (Example: When the author speaks about the creation of light, do not imagine he is talking about the phenomenon of electromagnetic waves or photons.) Because Genesis 1 deals with the origins of all things, and because the origin of the universe is a scientific pursuit, many people approach Genesis 1 with a desire to answer scientific questions. Well, don’t.

Suggestion 3: If you want to approach Genesis 1 more literally, consider the fact that the chapter does have a number of poetic elements, and one should be very cautious about applying literal interpretations to poetry. And vice versa: if you favor a less literal approach, consider the fact that Genesis 1 also contains elements of Hebrew narrative.

Suggestion 4: Don’t hesitate to consult the opinions of experts and scholars. So much is hidden to the untrained eye. For better or for worse, abundant resources are available.

Suggestion 5: Don’t be too quick to reach conclusions, and don’t be content with easy answers. Augustine of Hippo, the great bishop and philosopher, struggled extensively with Genesis 1 for many years. These honest struggles produced remarkable insights that are well worth reading even today.

Suggestion 6: Think hard, stay humble. All of us might be wrong and we should always be open to correction.

Alister McGrath put it well: “Evangelicals, after all, believe in the infallibility of Scripture, not the infallibility of its interpreters.”

Personally, I believe that statement. And I’ll venture to guess that you do as well.

But now consider this one: “The Holy Spirit is fully God. Refusing to follow the leading of the Spirit is an act of disobedience against God.”

That second statement is undoubtedly true; its logic is unassailable. But if you are like me, that second one makes you more nervous than the first. It makes me nervous because I know far less about the Spirit than I do about the Word. I can open a Bible anytime I want. The words of Scripture are always visible and accessible. If I don’t understand the meaning of a passage, I can ask knowledgeable people and see what commentaries have to say. But the Holy Spirit is invisible and mysterious. I know he is there, because the Bible says so, but my experience of him is far more tenuous. Over the years, I have acquired habits and methods for interacting with the Bible. But where are my methods for interacting with the Spirit? If the Spirit was leading me to go this way or that way, how could I test it to know that it was real? How could I avoid being deceived?

In a church that strongly emphasizes Bible study, it’s common to think of biblical teachings as objective, clear truth but to see the Spirit’s leading as subjective and ambiguous. The Word seems hard, a matter of fact, but the Spirit seems soft, a matter of opinion. If that is our perception, then we may think that disobeying the Bible is very serious, but disobeying the Spirit is not too bad. After all, who among us can really say when or how the Spirit is leading? Bible teachers are everywhere in UBF, but Spirit teachers are rather difficult to find.

Yet the logic of the second statement is still incontrovertible. To refuse to follow the Holy Spirit is a act of rebellion against God. If you need some Bible references on that, check out Mark 3:29, Acts 5:3-5 and Acts 7:51.

Now allow me to pose a tricky question. Suppose that the Bible is pointing you in one direction, but the Holy Spirit is pointing you in the opposite way. The Word says “Yes,” but the Spirit says, “No.” If there is a tension or discrepancy between the two, then which one should you follow, the Word or the Spirit?

“Impossible!” you say. “This question is a false choice. The Bible is the authoritative word of God, and its words were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will never contradict the Word, because God will never oppose himself.”

Yes, that is correct. In reality, the Spirit always agrees with the Word. But one may contradict our perception of the other. The Bible may contradict our understanding of what the Spirit is doing. And the Spirit may contradict our understanding of what the Bible teaches. Discrepancies like that do. And when they do, we are faced with a difficult choice: Should we stick to our present understanding of the Bible? Or should we bend our biblical convictions and follow the apparent lead of the Spirit?

Let me guess. You are inclined to say, “If there appears to be a contradiction between the two, then I will stand by what the Bible says.” I’m guessing this because, if you are in a church or ministry like mine, you tend to think of the Scripture as hard and the Spirit as soft. This is a common understanding of the principle of sola scriptura: The Bible is our final authority in matters of faith and practice.

Yet the Bible itself sheds light on how to answer this question. And the answer that the Bible gives might surprise you. There are examples in Scripture where the Spirit speaks loudly, and he is contradicting the community’s understanding of what Scripture says. It happens in both the Old and New Testaments. In the New Testament, there is a situation where faithful, exemplary Christians were convinced that the Bible was commanding them to do something. The biblical case for their opinion was airtight, or so it appeared at that time. But the Holy Spirit was pointing them in the opposite direction. If they made the choice that looked safe, sticking with what they believed the Bible said, they would have appeared to be God-fearing and righteous. But they would have begun to lose their mission as the Church and endangered their understanding of the gospel itself.

When Word and Spirit appear to conflict, it is not a given that Word must win. Spirit will occasionally have to trump Word. This realization can make us uncomfortable. But if the Holy Spirit is fully God as we profess, then he is a creative person who may lead us in directions that we do not expect. If we never allow the creative power of the Spirit to challenge our deeply held assumptions about what the Bible says and means, then we are not showing proper reverence to the Word or to the Spirit, and sooner or later we will become… disobedient.

I’ll say more about this in Part 2. Stay tuned.

To begin with, it is the first chapter of the first book of the first section (OT) of the Bible. Genesis has been called “the book of beginnings” and Genesis 1 is the beginning of the book of beginnings. Furthermore, it is one of the most frequently studied passages in UBF. It is impossible to count and document all the UBF conferences, Sunday worship services, Friday meetings and Bible academies where Genesis 1 has been discussed. Genesis 1 ranks among the most often read passages in UBF (along with our other favorite passages, such as Genesis 12, John 3 and 4).

Having witnessed and participated in Genesis 1 studies in several UBF chapters, I have seen that our approach to Genesis 1 has a common flavor. The study materials that were used in these chapters were similar if not identical. We began with the same questions, so we ended up with similar answers and conclusions every single time. An advantage of this is that it fosters agreement in our teachings about Genesis 1. But this uniformity also had a downside. As I repeated the same questions over and over, I discouraged myself from thinking outside of the box. Other questions that could be asked never even came to my mind. My understanding of this passage remained nearly constant for more than a decade. I had not trained myself to think more deeply about Genesis 1.

I had conveniently overlooked scores of mind-boggling issues related to this chapter, questions which were very difficult to answer. Here are a few examples: What does the author mean by the terms “heavens” and “earth”? When God creates light, why doesn’t He call it “light” but instead calls it “day”? Why does God create light on the first day and sun, moon and stars on the fourth day? What exactly is the expanse in Day 2? Do the days in the creation account refer to 24-hour periods? How do we know? The unsolved mysteries go on and on.

I had also overlooked the fact that the diversity of interpretations of Genesis 1, even amongst evangelical ministers and scholars, is tremendous. Many of these interpretations contradict one another. I would love to discuss some of them later to give you an idea about the diversity of opinions out there.

Then, of course, there is another issue that I cannot entirely neglect. I am a trained biologist. As a scientist and researcher, I am supposed to follow the evidence. Advances in molecular biology in recent decades provide robust evidence for ancient evolutionary processes. (Another article about this may follow). Analysis of genomic DNA sequences strongly suggests that life did in fact undergo a development from relatively primitive single cells to more complex life forms. I am well aware of the arguments made by proponents of Intelligent Design (ID), Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) and Old-Earth Creationism (OEC). To my knowledge, none of the proponents of ID, YEC or OEC have thus far been able to refute the evidence found in genetic sequences. I know that some evangelicals may regard this statement of mine to be highly controversial. But I cannot deny what I know and see. To purposefully ignore the evidence would be for me an act of dishonesty.

I understand why many evangelical Christians would object to allowing science to dictate how we study the Bible. It instinctively sounds wrong, But may we consider the possibility that science can occasionally correct some interpreters of the Bible when their interpretations have gone awry? We are told in the book of Joshua that he once, in the heat of battle, commanded the sun to stand still over Gibeon. Centuries ago, some Bible readers interpreted this verse as “proof” that the sun revolves around the earth and not vice versa. It was an accomplishment of science to show that these people had erred.

I believe that all truth is God’s truth. As we open our ears to the word of God revealed in Scripture, we ought not to shut our eyes entirely to God’s revelation in nature.

And so the question remains: Are there contradictions between what scientific evidence suggests and what Genesis apparently teaches? And if yes, how can we reconcile these discrepancies?

We are slowly approaching the heart of the problem. The Pentateuch is traditionally ascribed to Moses. Jesus, in referring to the Pentateuch, mentions Moses as the author. So the question arises: What did Moses intend to say? How did he want to be understood when he edited or wrote Genesis 1? Answering this question is the opposite of being trivial. For instance, let’s start with the literary features of Genesis 1. Let’s compare the style of Genesis 1 with the remaining chapters of this book. Wouldn’t you agree that there are significant stylistic differences, and these differences are obvious even to those who cannot read it in the original Hebrew? Most of Genesis is a Hebrew narrative. But what about Genesis 1?

Genesis 1 contains elements of historical narrative; it presents God creating the universe as a factual event. But then again we find repetitions all over chapter 1, which are rather atypical for narratives. The repetitions include “God said”, “And it was so”, “God saw”, “and there was evening, and there was morning”… And so the question arises: Doesn’t the first chapter of Genesis sound a bit like poetry? Doesn’t it remind us of a song? In light of these stylistic observations, must we interpret Genesis 1 as historical narrative? Or should be rather see it as an artistic, poetic song about God the creator and his creation? Bruce Waltke, a renowned evangelical OT scholar, points out in his commentary that assigning a literary genre to Genesis 1 is exceedingly difficult.

There are few passages in the Bible besides Genesis 1 that raise so many fundamental questions and controversies. I do not claim to have many answers. But I hope I have been able to demonstrate that Genesis 1 is a difficult chapter, to put it mildly.

In my next installment on Genesis 1, I will describe four different interpretative approaches, and then I will close with a couple of suggestions.

Counterfeit Gods has seven chapters. Each chapter deals with a particular counterfeit god, an idol, by retelling a familiar story from the Bible. The chapters and corresponding biblical passages are:

1. All You’re Ever Wanted (The story of Abraham offering Isaac – Gen 22:1-19)
2. Love Is Not All You Need (The love story of Jacob and Rachel – Gen 29:15-30)
3. Money Changes Everything (The story of Zacchaeus the chief tax collector – Luke 19:1-10)
4. The Seduction of Success (The story of Naaman the Syrian general – 2 Kings 5:1-19)
5. The Power and the Glory (The story of Nebuchadnezzer – Dan 2:1-4:37)
6. The Hidden Idols in Our Hearts (The story of Jonah – Jonah 1:1-4:21))
7. The End of Counterfeit Gods (The story of Jacob struggling with God – Gen 32:22-32)

The six idols that Keller identifies are our heart’s desire (Isaac), romantic love/sex (Rachel), money (Zacchaeus), success (Naaman), power (Nebuchadnezzer), and the deep hidden idols of religion, nationalism and culture (Jonah). The final chapter on Jacob struggling with God presents the solution to our perpetual, lifelong gravitation toward idolatry. (John Calvin says that our hearts are “idol factories.”) My favorite chapter is the one about Jonah’s hidden idols (Chapter 6), which is worth the price of the entire book.

Rather than addressing each counterfeit god and idol – which Keller does quite well – I will briefly share how this book challenged the way I had thought about and taught a particular passage to Bible students. And, in the process, it changed my whole approach to the Bible.

Consider the familiar story of Genesis chapter 22, in which Abraham offers Isaac to God. Whenever I studied this passage with someone, I would teach that each of us has our own personal Isaac: our romantic interest, our children, our ambition, our career, and so on. Isaac represents the utmost desire of the heart. It is an idol, and we should lay it down on an altar and offer it to God as Abraham did. This would be my emphasis, the main point that I wanted to get across. I would also teach that this was God’s test, that Abraham saw this as worship, and that the ram caught in the bush is a representation of Jesus. But my main point would always be, “Offer your Isaac to God, if you want to become free and become a blessing like Abraham.”

But is that really the point of this biblical story?

In my teaching, I made Abraham the main subject and the hero. This led me to teach that we are supposed to become like Abraham who offered Isaac. But is the Bible — the Old and New Testaments – a collection of stories about various heroes? Or is it fundamentally something else?

As for myself, this is how I have taught the Bible for decades: Build an ark of salvation like Noah. Be a father of faith like Abraham. Maintain God’s blessing like Isaac. Struggle with God like Jacob. Train your “wicked sheep” as Joseph trained his ungodly brothers. Be a man after God’s own heart like David. Be a man of mission like John the Baptist. Be a Bible scholar like Ezra, a missionary like the apostle Paul. And on and on. Of course, the stories about these characters do impart wisdom to instruct and guide us in our Christian lives. But is that the main point of these biblical accounts?

Jesus explicitly tells us what the Old Testament (OT) is about. In John 5:39, Jesus said, “These are the Scriptures that speak about me” (John 5:39). According to Luke 24:27, the risen Christ explained that the OT is concerned about him. When we approach an OT story about Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, etc. from this perspective, the story takes on a new flavor. Jesus is not merely being alluded to in a few minor details. The character, life and mission of Jesus are weaved into the fabric of each story.

For example, in regard to the story of Abraham, Keller asks, “Why had Isaac not been sacrificed? The sins of Abraham and his family were still there. How could a holy and just God overlook them? Well, a substitute was offered, a ram. But was it the ram’s blood that took away the debt of the firstborn?” As we ponder these questions, we understand that many years later another firstborn son was stretched out on the wood to die on that mountain called Calvary. As he died he cried out, “My God, my God — why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46, Mark 15:34) But there was no response from heaven. Although God spoke with a voice from heaven to stop Abraham from offering Isaac, God knew that one day he would have to remain silent and watch while his own Son was being butchered. God paid the price in unbearable agonizing silence. The true substitute for Abraham’s son was not a ram caught in the thicket, but God’s only Son, Jesus, who died to bear our punishment (1 Pet 3:18, 2:24; Isa 53:5). Paul understood this to be the true meaning of Isaac’s story when he deliberately applied its language to Jesus: “He (God) who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, freely give us all things?” (Rom 8:32).

When we look at Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac through the lens of Jesus, the emphasis can no longer be, “You have to repent, identify your Isaac and offer it to God, you idol worshipping sinner!” Rather, the emphasis becomes, “God gave you his Son Jesus Christ to pay the costly price and penalty for you when you were clinging to your Isaac.” This is the gospel, the message of first importance (1 Cor 15:3,4). The magnitude of what Jesus has done for us must dawn on us by the working of the Holy Spirit. When it does, we stop thinking, “Oh no! I don’t want to give up my dear, dear, lovely Isaac!” Instead, we are moved by Jesus and we respond in gratitude, “I want to give up my Isaac, because of all that Jesus has done for me on the cross.”

It is Jesus, and Jesus alone, who enables us to make sense of the story of Abraham offering Isaac. Without Jesus in the picture, the story becomes all about Abraham and all about me. But when Jesus is in full view, the story becomes all about the love of God who gave his One and Only Son for us. Then, and only then, do our hardened, idol-laden hearts become softened and transformed by the grace of God.

I could go through the other five idols and explain how Jesus replaces each one, but that would take too long. You can read Keller’s book, which I highly recommend. Or you can check out the six sermons on Counterfeit Gods that we did at West Loop UBF when we loosely followed the book in 2010.

Is this how you approach the Scriptures? Do you make Jesus the focal point of every Bible study and sermon?

We all know the importance of interpreting the Bible correctly. Our understanding of Scripture deeply influences our Christian lives, our families, our ministries, etc. To give you an example, I heard of a church in Germany where in which women are still required to cover their heads with scarves before coming to church, because Paul talks about a sign of authority on their heads (1 Co 11:10). In a similar vein, Paul forbade women to preach (1Tim 2:11-15). Some churches obey this command literally, forbidding women to preach or to teach men. We in UBF do not literally follow such verses; women are allowed to publicly speak in our congregations and teach and preach from time to time. This implies that we have understood these passages in a different way. If we adhere to a certain interpretation, we should have good and sound reasons why we understood a passage in one way and not another.

The basic hypothesis of How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth is that every reader is inevitably an interpreter of the Bible. We desire to try to unravel the mysteries of the Bible. We approach the Bible with a cultural mindset and a specific translation (which in itself represents an ‘interpretation’ of the original manuscripts). Knowingly or unknowingly, whenever we open our Bibles, we are already in the process of interpreting Scripture. We should, therefore, establish a set of basic ground rules for Scriptural interpretation.

And believe it or not, it can be as simple as this: Try to understand the Word of God as the original biblical authors meant it when they wrote it. This means that we can dismiss every scriptural interpretation that is foreign to the intentions of the original writers in an obvious way. Doesn’t this approach make a lot of sense? Isn’t it just common sense?

Stewart and Fee propose two steps in studying the Bible: First comes exegesis, and then comes hermeneutics. The authors define exegesis as trying to understand what the word of God meant to the original hearers Hermeneutics is defined as translating these findings into the Here and Now. The crucial point is that exegesis comes first. Only after understanding what the Word meant back then can we understand what the Word wants to tell us today. One of the very frequent mistakes that Christians commit in our days is that they either do no exegesis at all, or they do exegesis very poorly. Either way, they jump too quickly to application of the word, and soon begin proclaiming something that God had never intended to say.

Stewart and Fee apply this two-step approach to the entire Bible. In a very intelligent manner, they subdivide the Bible into literary genres. (Timothy Ha referred to a beautiful picture to illustrate this). The genres include narrative history, poetry, wisdom literature, letters, prophetic books, and so on. Sound exegesis must begin with a genuine appreciation of the literary format in which God chose to convey his message. There are many cases where we apply this correctly, even subconsciously. For example, when Job speaks about the arrows of the Almighty in him, we intuitively understand this to be a powerful literary device to express his horrendous pain and suffering. So we understand that the arrows in Job never intended to indicate that actual arrows entered Job’s body.

In contrast, when we read the beginning of Luke’s gospel, we understand that Luke is telling his audience that he is giving us a historical account of Jesus, which is meant to be taken literally.

These examples (Job and Luke) are somewhat obvious. But there are many passages where the genre is less obvious.

Stewart and Fee lead their readers from one biblical literary genre to the next, providing scores of helpful tips and advices for each category of biblical literature. From a scholarly perspective they supply many valuable guidelines dealing with how to approach the different literary genres and how to do good exegesis and sound hermeneutics. They provide lists of Do’s and Don’ts. (I readily admit that I have, at one time or another, committed each and every one of the don’ts.) At the end of the book, they recommend specific commentaries which provide solid exegesis.

One final remark: A common objection I have heard to this method of approaching the Bible goes like this: “This approach is so intellectually based! Aren’t you neglecting the role of the Holy Spirit? By promoting this kind of approach, aren’t you missing out on the power of the word of God?”

In response, here is a short story. A minister once announced that he would stop preparing his messages and skip all the tireless thinking and studying. Instead, he determined that he would just listen to the Holy Spirit and only preach what the Holy Spirit gave him to preach every Sunday. And that’s what he did. When the minister entered the pulpit he attentively listened to what the Holy Spirit told him. The Holy Spirit said, “You have been lazy. You have been really, really lazy…”

Jeannine Brown’s book Scripture as Communication offers the reader a communicative model for biblical interpretation. God communicates with us, and he uses the variegated genres of the Bible to accomplish this purpose. According to Brown, this understanding allows for cognitive and noncognitive interpretations of a text. A biblical author may write a propositional statement, but he may also be doing something as he writes: praising, exhorting, etc. In short, “a communication model allows for such a holistic approach” (pg. 16).

Brown beckons us to approach the Bible with a hermeneutic of communication. Before adopting this the communicative model, we ought to ask whether or not the theory can account for interpreting all of the genres of the Bible, and how well this theory can be applied in practical theology — in the pulpit, in Bible study, in evangelism, and on the mission field.

Brown gives an overview of her model: “Scripture’s meaning can be understood as the communicative act of the author that has been inscribed in the text and addressed to the intended audience for purposes of engagement” (p. 14). What does this actually mean?

First, the communicative act of the author is synonymous with communicative intention. Brown deliberately uses the term “communicative act of the author” rather than “authorial intention.” An author may wish to communicate something, but may actually communicate something else. “Authorial intention” may fail to capture the impact that the text actually has on the reader. Brown, therefore, eschews the term “authorial intention” for the more precise “communicative act of the author,” which has been “inscribed in the text.”

Second, we — the present-day readers of the Bible — are the intended audience that the author proposes to engage.

Brown claims that Christians are a part of the intended audience because we identify with the original intended audience. Brown writes, “Even as we seek the author’s communicative act, we will need to be aware of the importance of our stance and responses as readers” (p. 14). We atend to the culture and context to which the author wrote, yet we do not neglect to include our culture and context when understanding the author’s communicative intent.

Brown’s point about intended audience underscores the importance of the term “communicative act.” The author of James may have intended to address Jewish Christians familiar with wisdom literature, yet his epistle engages cultures and contexts far beyond the group of people he may have had in mind. When Brown writes of engagement, she is referring to perlocution, which is a speech-act theory term denoting communicative result. In order for the author’s communicative act to be complete, it must result in perlocutionary intention. The intent of James 1:22 to not only be hearers of the word but also doers first needs to be understood, then needs to be acted upon. Once the audience responds properly to James’ communicative intention by acting upon the word, then his full communicative act will have been successful.

Brown develops her thesis well. In the first part of the book, she explains the communication model in light of various theoretical perspectives, and in the second part she applies the model to the interpretive categories of genre, language, the social world of the Bible, literary context, canon, and contextualization. While dealing with each subtopic, she keeps a strong focus on the communication model throughout; she always brings the reader back to the thesis of her book, that Scripture’s meaning is a communicative act by an author.

This book is helpful for readers of a college level or above. The writing is clear, and the author makes difficult topics understandable. Part of this clarity is to take a complex theory and guide the reader through an application. Brown also keeps the reader’s attention focused on Scripture. She offers practical application of a particular theory to a biblical text, even in the first part of the book where she deals more with theory than practice. She provides helpful appendices which enable the reader to understand the Bible through multiple categories.

Central to Brown’s thesis is meaning. She deals with meaning in chapter four. She defines meaning as “the complex pattern of what an author intends to communicate with his or her audience for purposes of engagement, which is inscribed in the text and conveyed through use of both shareable language parameters and background-contextual assumptions” (pg. 48). Discovering the Bible’s meaning does not come easily. The reader has to do some digging before he or she can discover what God is communicating through language and background-contextual assumptions. Biblical interpretation will invariably turn up different meanings, but this does not the Bible a relative book open to any and every interpretation. As Fee says, “Unique interpretations are usually wrong” (KJV class notes lecture 1 page 1). Meaning is determinate but complex. Brown explains determinacy in relation to the communication model. “Determinacy means that interpretations can be weighed on the basis of their alignment and coherence with an author’s communicative intention” (pg. 87). Brown offers a balanced definition of determinacy here. She puts equal weight on the author and the reader. It is the author (or Author) who communicates to us, yet readers interpret the communicative intention and not the authorial intention. The text will always have a determinate meaning, but our experience and application of the text will bring out the complexity of its meaning.

The communication model of hermeneutics is readily applicable to one’s growth as a faithful Christian. The model encourages us to become doers of the word by recognizing that the text is communicating. Through the communication model, the reader can seek to understand God’s illocution and render the proper response. When this perlocutionary intention is actualized, the communicative act is complete.

The main drawback I found in Brown’s book was the absence of description of the triune God. She does mention that he is the Author, but mentioning the attributes of God would have greatly bolstered her case for the communication model. In order for God’s communicative act to be complete, we need to understand his illocution to us at a particular time and place, and respond properly. But how can we understand fully if we do not appreciate who God is? On the other hand, if we do appreciate God’s eternal power and divine nature, we can respond properly and willingly, even to the point of giving our lives in obedience to his illocution.

Absent also is an explanation about the role of the Holy Spirit in understanding the text. Brown gives the reader the impression that if he or she has the right tools and methods, then correct interpretation will follow. Understanding the Bible through the implementation of the right means does not supersede human being’s dependance on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, as Barth wrote, is the Lord of the hearing. Only by his help can we hear, understand, and respond to what God wants to communicate to us.

I used to think a testimony was what it says it is: to testify about the work of God in my life. That made a testimony a pretty stressful thing. On a weekly basis, I tried to find what God was saying in a passage, apply it to my life, make a decision based on application and then, because it’s a “testimony,” testify to the fruit of that application. Doing that every week, I found, was stressful, counterproductive and just impossible.

A pastor in our ministry recently told me “I’m lucky if I can testify to two or three things God has done in my life in a year.” A testimony may be something we can write and share on occasion, but it’s simply impossible to do it every week.

So maybe “testimony” in our ministry is a misnomer. Maybe what we’re writing on a week-by-week basis is more of a reflection. A reflection not like a personal ranting or journaling. A reflection like a mirror.

I tend to avoid mirrors, especially full body mirrors or well-lit vanities. I don’t like to see what I truly look like — every hair and mole and crooked tooth and excessive flab. I don’t like mirrors because they force me to be honest.

If God’s word is meant to show us who we are and who he is, then maybe we can think of Bible study as looking into a mirror and our personal writing about it as a reflection. We definitely look at the Bible, the mirror, carefully. We study it inductively and metaphorically, looking for what God is saying. In that process of looking we begin to see God, we begin to see ourselves, our reflections, who God wants us to be.

It may have relieved some misconceived self-expectations, but using the word “reflection” doesn’t change the fact that writing about who God is and who I am is a struggle. A rose is still a rose.

If I’ve learned anything about writing, it’s that it’s not about grammar or correctness or sounding good. Successful writing is honest. And I’ve learned the same goes for writing a reflection. Writing about who God is and struggling to hear what he’s saying to me weekly is painful, but it’s proven necessary. I lie to myself too often, tend to even ignore God’s presence, ignore what’s in my heart, and could go on for a while not thinking anything is wrong. It’s as they say, “the truth hurts.”

But maybe, by struggling with what God is saying, struggling with the truth of who I am, I can begin to see, when turning to look at my reflection, more of God and less of me.

This book is about practitioners – architects, engineers, psychotherapists, and others – and how they perform their work. Schön’s main assertion is about a new type of thinking, what he calls reflection-in-action. It is this type of thinking that I believe will help Bible teachers become much more effective, and reflective, in our effort to help others find Christ.

Schön begins by explaining a vast change in the professions beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “The professions are in the midst of a crisis of confidence and legitimacy…the professions themselves, the long-standing professional claim to a monopoly of knowledge and social control is challenged.” Put bluntly, once doctors, lawyers and professionals were seen as all knowing. But now, with the increase in knowledge for common people and growing arguments in the field, they have lost this status. Schön stated that the age of “technical rationality,” or the thinking that professional activity consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique, is ending. In other words, the notion that every problem is a neat package that can be solved through equations, research, and an existing body of knowledge is over.

Let me give an example of the end of “technical rationality.” During the 70s and before, you may remember going to a doctor, and him (usually a him, at that point in history) giving you medication for this illness or that. It didn’t matter what he gave you or how much, you took it. We trusted their opinion and advice without question. Now, however, most of us will go into the doctor’s office with some theory about what we have (we looked it up on the internet according to our symptoms), we have some idea what medications we are willing to take, and for the most part we can tell our doctors what we want and don’t want. And this is not just limited to medicine. This end to technical rationality can also be seen in law, construction, architecture, and so on. For good or ill, practitioners have lost their stranglehold on the world and power is much more evenly divided.

Schön explains that with every practice, there is a high ground and a swampy lowland. The high ground is “where practitioners can make effective use of research based theory and technique.” Those who dwell here are devoted to an image of solid professional competence and are fearful of entering a world in which do not know. This high ground, Schön asserts, often contains problems of little importance. The swampy lowland, on the other hand, is “where situations are confusing messes incapable of a technical solution.” Professionals who dwell in the swampy lowlands face the crucially important problems of the world. They are willing to forsake their places of importance, and often describe their methods of inquiry as “experience, trials and error, intuition, and muddling through.”

The training that many practitioners receive in college is no longer adequate if they wish to get to the swampy lowlands of practice. Schön speaks about a new kind of knowledge professionals need, a reflection-in-action. A kind of thinking that is “implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict.” Much like a good jazz musician manifests a feel for the music as they make on the spot adjustments to the sounds they hear, practitioners who use this type of thinking make judgments about the best course of action second by second. “As a practitioner experiences many variations of a small number of types of cases… He develops a repertoire of expectations, images, and techniques. He learns what to look for and how to respond to what he finds…thereby conferring upon him and his clients the benefits of specialization.” Reflection-in-action is central to the art through which practitioners sometimes cope with the troublesome “divergent” situations of practice.

So what does this have to do with teaching the Bible? Are we practitioners? In a sense, we are. We have a practice to teach others the Word of God and do so in ways that they can best learn, accept, and thrive in. The easiest way of teaching the Bible is to get a question sheet, write down the answers we learn, and then transfer our knowledge about the passage to those who are willing to listen. “Good” Bible students listen and take notes and then write a testimony. “Not so good” (never bad) Bible students question the answers, won’t write notes, won’t write testimonies, and so on. This is, in essence, a form of technical rationality. We know the answers, we have a beeline to God through His word and through our ready-made question sheets. We tell them the answers and as soon as they respond to the answers we give them, they are growing. This is truly the “high ground” of Bible study. The Bible students of yore looked forward to earning their titles, loved attention by senior leaders, and could look forward to a life of leadership as defined in the past.

But, in the famous words of Bob Dylan, “The times they are a’ changing.” From what I have seen, the old ways are wearing thin and we can no longer rely on the high ground to help most people grow into Christian leaders. Many young people don’t want to earn a title, let alone use them. Many want little – or no – contact with leaders, and are much happier in the ministry if they have none. Moving into the swampy lowlands seems an integral part of helping the new generation. The new generation wants to be heard, and it takes time and effort to understand them and the way they think. It takes careful listening on the part of both the teacher and the student in every Bible study. Gone are the days of telling people to write a testimony, and them doing it without question. Guilt rarely works, and telling people they need to repent eventually turns into a “white noise.” Now, more then ever, Bible students need to understand the explicit value in everything they do, or they will not want to do it.

I don’t claim that this is a positive change, nor a negative one. Nor am I making any judgments about what is done by anyone currently, or what was done in the past. I know for a fact that some Bible teachers have taught in this “reflection-in-action” way for many years, as I have been cared for by some of them. I am also not calling for comprehensive changes in the way things are done, simply a call to discuss this new view toward the work we are doing. I am calling for us to understand the complexity of each person, and their life situation, and their emotional and intellectual state, and to love and serve them accordingly.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.” The kingdom strikes back. The season of God has come! By choice, humans joined the enemy’s camp. At first, it seemed as though the enemy was winning. But God had a plan to take back the world from the enemy. The author of Mark’s gospel saw God’s redemptive story unfolding before his very eyes. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus destroyed the power of sin and death and restored God’s rule.

The kingdom of God is at hand. But it is not quite here yet. Until God completes this restoration of his kingdom, we have an errand to run.

The gospel of Jesus Christ brings a new global perspective to God’s work in the world. Jesus could not have evangelized the entire world by himself. As the Father had sent him, he was now sending the disciples. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). The word translated as disciple stems from the Greek word mathetis. That word, mathetis, is derived from tthe word mathe with the inflection on tis. Mathe means to learn. (We have the English word mathematics which is believed to have come from mathe.) Thus disciple means learner. The gospel writers had this nuance in mind when they used the term mathetis in their writings. The NIV translators applied their best judgment from the context and inserted a preposition “therefore” at the beginning of Matthew 28: 19. The literal translation goes something like this: “As you are going make disciples…”

John 20:21 is John’s version of the Great Commission. John used the Greek word apostello which means “send.” This second meaning of apostle applies to all believers. In the same way that God sent Jesus into the world, Jesus was sending his disciples and us into the world to make disciples of all nations. Some of us think that we think that we can be a high school teacher or computer programmer or medical doctor and be a disciple at the same time, and that we need to balance our commitments between these two callings. But the truth of the matter is that we are all disciples from first to last. The very purpose of our lives is to learn from Jesus and grow in his image, becoming like him in his perfect humanity. We emulate the beauty of Jesus in real life, so that this world becomes a better place because of us. Discipleship is a gift and a privilege and what we do in every aspect and corner of life.

In the book of Acts, the gospel ministry gained momentum and spread like wildfire, crossing the boundary into Gentile territory. Jewish believers did not know what to do with the Gentile believers. The Jewish Christians had a hard time accepting Gentile believers into their synagogue-like fellowship meetings. The issues were cultural. Peter and the other apostles sought to settle this matter in the light of the gospel. They convened the Jerusalem conference to hear out the case under the leadership of James, the brother of Jesus. After prayerful deliberation, they understood that both Gentiles and Jews believed the same Christ and received the same Spirit; there was no difference (Acts 15). This was the turning point in world mission. The apostle Paul was vindicated and found new impetus for his personal ministry among the Gentiles. The apostles served their generation and proclaimed the gospel to the ends of the known world.

In this two-part series, we have been discussing the topic, “How can we read the Bible through the lens of God’s mission?” We can read the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, as one single unit with the theme of God’s redemptive mission. The people involved in the Bible stories were were ordinary women and men. But God called them and worked through them to revealed his redemptive plan. Did God’s mission fail because his workers failed? As long as God lives, his world mission will not fail. The degree of godlessness in the world seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. I asked a number of students at Yale about their spirituality. By my assessment, the level of spirituality — the percentage of students deeply interested in spiritual matters — stands at about 10%. In 1724, when Jonathan Edwards was a tutor at Yale, that percentage was about 60%. Over the years, spirituality at Yale has sharply declined. Obviously, we have been failing to reach Yale students with the gospel. Yet God’s work is going strong and he will restore his rule at Yale.

Every company or organization today has a mission statement. Their mission statement reflects the company’s or organization’s goals and commitment to maximize their potential. God’s mission statement is to redeem our earth. UBF International is dedicated specifically to campus mission; our guiding principle to serve campus mission more effectively. But if we are aligned with God’s mission, we cannot limit ourselves to campus students. We should be ready to welcome anyone, and not exclude anyone who does not happen to be a student. We cannot exclude ministries who are not specifically engaged in campus mission. If we emphasize UBF’s unique mission to the exclusion of others, God’s mission will be tainted. Our mission is not the mission of any person or organization. Our mission, the true mission of the church, is God’s mission.

The ultimate purpose of God’s mission is to establish the worship of God. Look at the composition of worshipers described in Revelation 21. It includes all ethnic groups. In the New Jerusalem, there will be people who are yellow, red, black, chocolate, white and every other color. Our God is the God of the universe. He is the God of love and justice.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” speaks about two aspects of God’s character: love and justice. God loves to show off his love. At the same time, he is the God of justice. His rule on earth as it is in heaven was interrupted by human failure. The enemy’s deception and the fall of man were the catalysts for God’s world mission.

God’s mission is to restore his rule on earth. Very soon he will destroy Satan’s counterfeit kingdom and establish his own kingdom. Since the beginning of time, God has been moving forward with this world-mission task. We are called to to participate and accomplish God’s world mission purpose in our own generation.

Let’s briefly examine what God has been doing in biblical human history. At the exact time that humans failed, God chose to love humans. Think about this: God does not stop loving us every time we make a mistake. As human culture and civilization flourished, unbridled human behavior spread unabashed. Noah’s ark of judgment and salvation did not solve the human problem. Humans found a way to live on their own. They were smart, resourceful, and technologically innovative. When God confused their language at the Tower of Babel, it was not a punishment; it was to show his love for them.

Out of a chaotic world, God called one man, Abraham to bless him to be a great nation and a blessing to others (Genesis 12:1-3). Here God’s salvation story took a different turn. Through this one man and his descendants, God had a plan to bless the whole world.

Through Abraham’s descendants, God’s world-mission purpose was being worked out in Egypt. A serious question arises: “Why would God allow his people to suffer slavery in Egypt?” Firstly, God was building a nation of people who would bear his name among the nations. God’s people were well trained by the yoke of slavery. Secondly, and more importantly, God wanted to reveal his glory through stubborn Pharaoh. God was able to wipe out Pharaoh of Egypt, but God allowed Pharaoh to be stubborn for his own glory (Exodus 9:15ff).

Beyond the Exodus, the story of God’s chosen people continued to unfold. We owe our biblical history to the story of the chosen people, Israel. The position and status of these chosen people was such that another question arises: “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles too?”

God is the God of the universe. Before he was the God of Moses, he was the God of Abraham. Before he was the God of Abraham, he was the God of Adam. And before he was the God of Adam, he was the God of the universe. He is the God of all people of all nations. Thus, the idea that the Jews were inherently special, and that all people on earth would come to God only through them, is simply not biblical.

The temple in Jerusalem was not merely for Jews. Solomon’s temple was to bear the name of the Lord “so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you” (1 Kings 8:41). Later, when referring to the temple, Jesus said: “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17). God’s mission extended beyond Jews to the Gentiles.

God was with people of other religions. It was unfortunate that his chosen people failed to accomplish his world mission purpose. As a father disciplines his son, God chastised his chosen people. The Babylonian captivity was God’s “left hand” in action. The Jews of the Diaspora became salt and light to the world. They proclaimed the name of God wherever they went, intentionally or otherwise. The book of Esther occupies a unique position in the middle of the Bible, even though it does not explicitly mention God’s name. This book gives us some idea of what God was doing with the people of other world religions. Esther, a Persian name, means “Star”; her Hebrew name was Hadassah, meaning “myrtle.” Should uncle Mordecai have counseled her to proclaim her Jewish identity and keep her Jewish name? For whatever reason, Mordecai told Esther to hide her Jewish identity, at least for a while. By doing so, Mordecai was immersing himself, contextualizing himself, into the local Persian culture for the sake of survival in this foreign land. But uncle Mordecai also knew how to stand up and pull the trigger when the call came. At the critical moment, he called on Esther and said, “And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) Esther realized that God had a plan and vision for her life. She took a risk with her life and said, “If I perish, I perish,” in order to save her people from annihilation. The implication is that God sent Esther to the royal court of the Persian Empire because he loved Persians. As she went, she revealed the name of the God of Israel to the Gentiles so that they too would fear him.

The world and its dwellers are the focus of God’s mission. The justice of God demanded that all people of all nations be given an opportunity to hear the gospel.

I have posed this question to several longtime members of UBF, and without exception, they immediately answered, “No.” Many committed evangelical Christians in other churches will instinctively react in the same way. We have always regarded Bible study as a good thing, and more of a good thing is always better. Or is it?

Before asking for your reaction, I will provide some background and explain why, in certain respects, I think the answer could be: Yes, it is possible for Christians to emphasize the Bible — or a particular approach to the Bible — too much.

During the Protestant Reformation of the 16^th century, Martin Luther and other Reformers taught that final authority in all matters of faith should rest in Scripture. In modern times, this principle of sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) is still proclaimed, but it is also widely misunderstood. Luther’s concept of sola scriptura led him to reject the authority of church leaders in his day. But it was not a blanket rejection of all tradition and authority outside of the Bible. For example, he did not reject the authority of the early church fathers and the ancient councils and creeds.

In reality, none of us can approach the Scripture as a blank slate and build our faith upon our own personal reading of the text with no external influences. John Wesley, who stood solidly in the Protestant tradition, taught that Christians actually build their faith on Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. These four authorities – which theologians now call the Wesleyan quadrilateral – do not have equal weight. Among the four, Scripture should have a position of preeminence. But trying to rest your faith solely on the Bible is like trying to sit on a chair with one leg. (You can sit on a chair with one leg, at least for a while. But the only way you can do it is by exerting a great deal of your own effort, keeping both feet firmly planted on the floor and using your legs as a substitute for the missing chair legs.)

Here are two specific ways in which I think it is possible to emphasize the Bible too much.

First, we can emphasize the Bible too much in the way that we talk about ourselves. Although many of us claim to be following the Bible alone, we read the Bible through lenses colored by our own culture, history and tradition. Everyone does that; it is inevitable. And I think we should openly admit it. N.T. Wright, a renowned New Testament scholar, says it very well:

Most heirs of the Reformation, not least evangelicals, take it for granted that we are to give scripture the primary place and that everything else has to be lined up in relation to scripture. There is, indeed, an evangelical assumption, common in some circles, that evangelicals do not have any tradition. We simply open the scripture, read what it says, and take it as applying to ourselves: there the matter ends, and we do not have any ‘tradition’… But I still find two things to be the case, both of which give me some cause for concern. First, there is an implied, and quite unwarranted, positivism: we imagine that we are ‘reading the text, straight’, and that if somebody disagrees with us it must be because they, unlike we ourselves, are secretly using ‘presuppositions’ of this or that sort. This is simply naïve, and actually astonishingly arrogant and dangerous. It fuels the second point, which is that evangelicals often use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ when they mean the authority of evangelical, or Protestant, theology, since the assumption is made that we (evangelicals, or Protestants) are the ones who know and believe what the Bible is saying. And, though there is more than a grain of truth in such claims, they are by no means the whole truth, and to imagine that they are is to move from theology to ideology. If we are not careful, the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ can, by such routes, come to mean simply ‘the authority of evangelical tradition, as opposed to Catholic or rationalist ones.’

(from Wright, 1989, How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?)

Second, I think we can emphasize the Bible too much in how we use our time together. The first UBF conference that I attended was the 1982 Niagara Falls Summer Bible Conference held at at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. Since then I have attended numerous (maybe 100?) conferences of various types and sizes. The main activities at these conferences were group Bible study, expository messages and testimony writing. Although these conferences have been helpful to me, I have also felt that many of our programs were too heavily laden with pre-organized, highly scripted activities and staged presentations, leaving too little time for honest personal interaction. If the primary goal of a group Bible study is get through all of the written questions in time to move on to the next activity, discussion is going to be stifled. There are many questions on people’s minds that simply cannot be raised in these contexts without being seen as going off-topic. There are many other things that Christians need to learn and do, things that have a solid scriptural basis, which cannot easily fit into the paradigm of a group Bible study, expository message and testimony writing/sharing. The Scriptures themselves testify to this. For example, Acts 2:42 states that in the days and weeks after Pentecost, the early Christians devoted themselves to four activities: the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer. I believe it is possible to emphasize the study of Scripture – or one particular method or approach to studying the Scripture – so much that our faith becomes provincial and abstract, and we become disconnected from real community life and from God himself. Jesus himself hinted at this when he said, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40). And here is a saying that I recently heard which often rings true: “The last thing that most Christians need is another Bible study.”

What do you think? Is it possible for Christians to emphasize the Bible, or their particular way of approaching the Bible, to an extent that it becomes a hindrance to spiritual growth?