Today I would like to share with you the most impressive example of empathy I’ve yet come across. If I am blessed with empathy, then my new friend Timothy Kurek is doubly blessed. Timothy Kurek is the author of The Cross in the Closet. Recently he did a TedTalk. Please listen to his story of empathy as it is highly applicable to our UBF situation. Can you walk in the shoes of a former member?

TedTalk: Walking in the Shoes of the Other

You simply have to listen to what Timothy says at 9:55.

Timothy shares about the commonality of humanity. We are all born oblivious to social labels and lived as babies without fear. He asks: Can we re-learn intentional empathy? Timothy thinks so. He shares his own story of intentional empathy, and his amazing experiences with social labels.

How did the Christians in Timothy’s life respond to his intentional empathy? Silence. The silence was overwhelming. The Christians in his life treated him as if he did not exist.

Former member of ubf ought to be able to relate to this. After we left, we became dead to the ministry and had to endure madding silence.

So I ask again. Can you walk in the shoes of the other?

Our Purpose

I am not going to hide or filter my purpose in having these conversations. I and many others are working to develop a Bible-based, gospel-centered approach to gender and sexual minority inclusion in the Christian church. I realize this puts me outside the gates of the visible church, Christendom. My claim is that I am not outside the Christian faith by welcoming and including LGBTQIA people. I am referring specifically to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersexual and asexual people. Our inclusiveness however does not stop there. We believe our theology is a gospel-centered approach toward any and every oppressed people, especially those oppressed or outcast by the white, male-dominated hierarchy that has existed around the world for eons.

What I Affirm

In the LGBTQIA world, there are “affirmers”, those who affirm and welcome same-sex marriage and the genuine self-narratives of LGBTQIA people. And there are “non-affirmers”, those who do not affirm such things. We believe these terms are neutral, meaning these terms do not necessarily imply rightness or wrongness of either side. The terms merely acknowledge our differences and give us a starting, civil framework.

I think it is important to notice that both affirmers and non-affirmers can have some common Christian ground. For example, I affirm the following:

• Authority of Scripture
• Desire to please and obey God
• Value of moral fortitude
• Gratitude toward the church
• Love for all people

Where do we begin?

For me, the conversation about any social issue or human condition begins and ends with the gospel. The gospel is Jesus the Messiah. This is the best starting point, and really the only starting point I can find that has any chance of bringing about the unity Jesus expects from His followers. We know many facts about Jesus: His birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension and return. The good news is an announcement and proclamation that God has entered our world and is eager to live among us, both in bodily form 2,000 years ago and in the form of the Spirit now. When we read the Bible we see five key messages or results of this gospel: grace, glory, salvation, peace and the kingdom. We see the themes of the gospel at work: forgiveness, freedom, fulfillment, Love, reformation, reconciliation, repentance, justice and so forth. Any conversation about society, for Christians, centers around these gospel topics.

Meet some of the Reform Leaders

One of my goals in the presentation is to introduce people to some leading reformers who have some remarkable visions for the church. One of the most dynamic and effective leaders is Kathy Baldock. She lives in Nevada and created a wonderful “hiking ministry”, where she goes on hikes through the mountains.

I was fortunate to talk with Kathy during the cohort (and get a signed copy of her book!) What Kathy’s book brings to the table is the historical, medical and non-religious perspectives. This is so very important for the church to consider, in light of Galileo, left-handed people and interracial families. Her book is a great place to begin the conversation.

Book to begin with: “Walking the Bridgeless Canyon”

“If you read only one book on the history of LGBT rights, the culture, psychotherapy, religious reactions, and what the Bible really says about being gay, Walking the Bridgeless Canyon should be it. It is well-researched, compelling, and eye opening. If this book had existed when I became an anti-gay Christian activist, I would have questioned if what I was doing was truly Gods will or if it was nothing more than a man-made construct meant to maintain white heterosexual male dominance on the backs of gay people and women.”

–Yvette Cantu Schneider, former policy analyst at
Family Research Council, former director of women’s
ministry at Exodus International

Respect for Conscience

Can we make a deal? Those who do not affirm samesex marriage are not bigots or full of hatred automatically. Can we agree that those who do affirm samesex marriage are not going to hell automatically?

My hope is that starting with this handshake (no hatred/no hell), the church can be healed and move forward in a God-honoring manner. The next three parts of my presentation are the following:

Part 2: The non-affirming conscience rightly concerns about the holiness of God. Are we disobeying God? What is God up to?

Part 3: The non-affirming conscience rightly concerns about our children. Are we setting a bad example? How do we break through the hostility?

Part 4: The non-affirming conscience rightly concerns about immorality. Are we on a slippery slope? What restraint do we have?

How would you answer these questions? What thoughts do you have about this topic? I am sharing these presentations publicly in order to give some time for critical feedback and challenge to my thoughts.

In this passage our Lord is brought a man who is paralyzed. After proclaiming his sins are healed Jewish leaders accuse him of blasphemy. At this Jesus heals the man and sends him away. The second part is on the calling of Matthew.

The Paralyzed Man healed

What can be said about this passage? First and foremost Jesus has authority to forgive sins. Jesus has authority to forgive sins because it was given to him by the father. Beyond this his death and sacrifice for our sins allow us to live. When Jesus forgives the man the religious leaders become indignant. The religious leaders understood that only God could forgive sins, and they also understood this was done though the law, which they were the sole interpreters and keepers thereof. God would forgive them, they reasoned, but only through the means that have been given to them through the covenant of Abraham. Jesus knew all of this, yet he says “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?”. This means that there was something beyond them just being mistaken and not knowing the plan of the father for this is no sin. No, Jesus calls their thoughts evil because they were more concerned about someone stepping on their toes than their offense to God. This is a common theme in all of the gospels. Jesus goes on to challenge them with “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”- pointing out that they should know how to act but are not acting in the way God desires and commands after he is mocked by the leaders while eating with known sinners. How many of us are sinners? All of us, and so Jesus comes to all, but he is least accepted by those who are least without excuse. When Jesus heals the man he says “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?” This is an example of a Jewish qal wahomer (“how much more”) argument: if God gives Jesus authority to heal the visible effects of humanity’s fallenness, why would he not send him to combat that cause of that fall? This is why social justice, mercy, and alms giving is so important for the Christian life. It proclaims the gospel.

The Calling of Matthew

Matthew’s calling displays that Jesus loves us in spite of us. I have often wondered why tax collector is such a “sinful” job. After all the entire bible gives a high view of taxes. Historically the tax levied to Rome was an occupier’s fee. The Jews were being charged for their occupation, and since their nation was seen as instituted under and by God; since it was a “kingdom of priests and holy nation”- being a Jewish tax collector would have been seen as traitorous and against God. Being a tax collector would have been seen as a betrayer of his culture, God, and people. So Jesus coming to the tax collector is a bold statement. Our sin is betrayal of God and yet this is who Jesus comes to. He comes to those who have betrayed him, “rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction.” His action suggests that if God is willing to come to worst, is his not willing to come to all? And this is what he says “For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” The Pharisees self-righteousness he seeks to correct, but at this time they are unreceptive of him, as are all people who think they are so good as to be free from any sin. I often suspect that one can be so proud that they are beyond all save divine intervention. God must often break people like the Pharisees with painful trials so they can understand their condition.

These are my thoughts on the passage. If anyone has anything else to add please leave it in the comments.

Our ubfriends discussions about the gospel

Here are some excellent articles that we have discussed each year:

http://www.ubfriends.org/2011/12/17/gospel-no-condemnation-really/

http://www.ubfriends.org/2012/01/17/the-gospel-in-the-descendants/

http://www.ubfriends.org/2012/02/22/the-gospel-and-linsanity/

http://www.ubfriends.org/2012/09/22/what-is-the-gospel/

http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/07/18/the-gospel-of-christ-vs-the-gospel-of-mission/

http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/12/02/amazon-com-and-the-gospel/

http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/09/15/the-theology-of-gross-what-modern-psychology-can-teach-us-about-purity-disgust-love-and-the-gospel/

http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/09/26/my-gospel-story-of-gods-grace/

http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/11/10/glimpses-of-the-gospel/

Some explicit quotes

I’ve been reading many more books these days. One that stirred a lot of thoughts and interest in the gospel for me is Matt Chandler’s “The Explicit Gospel“. I recommend reading many sources to get a range of perspectives on this important subject. I don’t agree with some of what Chandler presents, but over all this is a solid starting point for a deeper grasp of the Christian message we should be embodying.

Here are some choice quotes I love:

“More often than not, we want him to have fairy wings and spread fairy dust and shine like a precious little star, dispensing nothing but good times on everyone, like some kind of hybrid of Tinker Bell and Aladdin’s Genie. But the God of the Bible, this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is a pillar of fire and a column of smoke.” (pg 29)

“Heaven is not a place for those who are afraid of hell; it’s a place for those who love God. You can scare people into coming to your church, you can scare people into trying to be good, you can scare people into giving money, you can even scare them into walking down an aisle and praying a certain prayer, but you cannot scare people into loving God. You just can’t do it.” (pg 49)

“If we confuse the gospel with response to the gospel, we will drift from what keeps the gospel on the ground, what makes it clear and personal, and the next thing you know, we will be doing a bunch of different things that actually obscure the gospel, not reveal it.” (pg 83)

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/20-quotes-from-the-explicit-gospel

Digging deeper: whose wrath?

One of my transformations lately is to know God who is love. God is capable of wrath, but God is not wrath. Instead of seeing the cross as God’s wrath I now see the cross as God’s response to human wrath.

So this is the main area of disagreement I have with Chandler. He writes:

“Once we remove the bloody atonement as satisfaction of God’s wrath for sin, the wheels really come off. Where the substitutionary atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross is preached and proclaimed, missions will not spin off to a liberal shell of a lifeless message but will stay true to what God has commanded the church to be in the Scriptures.” (pg 198)

His concern is valid: If we remove the wrath of God punishing sin, what restraint do we have? My answer is that we have three restraints: The Holy Spirit, our individual conscience and our communal justice structures.

Many gospels

As I discuss many issues online and in person, I always strive to bring the conversation back to some element of the gospel. By doing this, I have uncovered an array of gospels that are shaky and non-fulfilling at best. Most of the time people confuse our response to the gospel with the gospel message itself.

Here are some “gospels” I have heard preached and how they relate to the five explicit “gospel of” messages in Scripture.

• Deathbed gospel – this message places primary importance on the day of death. The message says that the good news is that if on the day you die, you have repented of all grave or gross sins, you get into Heaven. This is based on the 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Revelations lists. I see this as a distortion of the gospel of salvation.

• Hamster Wheel gospel – this message places primary importance on getting rid of sin in the present. The message says that the good news is that you have power through the cross to make your self and your life more and more sin-free. I see this as a distortion of the gospel of grace.

• Prosperity gospel – this message places primary importance on blessing. The message says that the good news is that God will bless you, if you obey. This message is rooted in the Old Covenant way of blessing and curse for obedience and disobedience. I see this as a distortion of the gospel of peace.

• Mission gospel – This message places primary importance on evangelization. The message says that the good news is that  you get to be a missionary. If you are not preaching or teaching someone then you are not a true or good Christian. I see this as a distortion of the gospel of the kingdom.

• Glory gospel – This message places primary importance on self-gain. The message says that the more glory and honor and fame you seek, the more God is glorified. It says we should do big things for God and gather many possessions for the glory of God. This may be rooted in Abraham’s lifestyle or other figures in the Bible. I see this as a distortion of the gospel of God’s glory.

Tough challenge

Are you prepared to die for the gospel?

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

Mark 8:34-35 ESV

Making it simple

The gospel is Jesus Himself. To know the truth of a person, we must dialogue. To know the gospel more and more, we must learn to listen to God’s voice more and more, and grow into the mystery that is Christ in us. In this sense we can know the gospel messages more and more deeply.

But that is often complex and nebulous. So to me, the simple gospel is this: love everyone. Learn how to love your enemy, “those people”, the “gross”, the “icky”, and everyone you encounter.

Love. That is my gospel. And I am willing to die for it. What is your gospel?

This sermon was delivered on April 26th, 2015 at West Loop UBF.

Introduction

A bit of disclosure is in order here: Since September of last year, I haven’t been attending church on a weekly basis. I’ve attended Catholic Mass a few times and have taken communion and have also had ongoing conversations about the Bible and life with others and have done my own personal study on biblical topics, but nothing like being plugged into a faith community on a regular basis. To some this may be disconcerting or off-putting, like who takes a half a year off of church and then preaches a sermon? But I thank Rhoel for reaching out to me and befriending and simply talking to me on a human-to-human level. One thing that I really appreciate about the West Loop community is you all’s desire to understand and practice the gospel in a loving manner. So I thank you all for accepting me and giving me the privilege to speak here today. I don’t take this lightly and I don’t want to waste your time, but instead I want to hopefully communicate an important point about the gospel that I think we, including myself, often miss. I’ll attempt to make my point in thirty minutes or less and end with a nice cherry on top which is an example from my own life.

What Does it Mean to be “Spiritual” Anyway?

I mentioned how I’ve been taking some time away from organized religion. I felt as though I needed to do this because I was growing increasingly weary of experiencing this disconnect, that I observed, which exists between the concepts of spirituality or “otherness”, that is something beyond our physical world, and the very material reality that we live in today. To put it bluntly (and with an example to follow), I got tired of sitting in church week after week and hearing things that sounded lofty and spiritual, but were not portable to my everyday life. And believe you me; this was not the fault of the church per se, because if anyone knows me, I love lofty ideas. This is more of an internal battle or beef within me.

At some point last year, the big question that I asked myself was what impact does spirituality have on us on a daily basis, that is, how does this line up with our present-day, physical reality in an impactful way? The form of Christianity that I was largely familiar with was one in which that aforementioned disconnect reached a tipping point on some key issues for me. For instance, in Western Evangelicalism, we are often taught as of first importance, that Jesus has forgiven us of our sins once and for all. Now, I don’t dispute this at all and it’s something that I certainly rejoice in. But a type of thought pattern which was pervasive in my own life was this idea that as believers, we are forgiven largely as individuals and as long as we individually are forgiven, then we are right with God and all is well with the universe. The problem with this is that we don’t sin in a vacuum; often times, we wound each other through our sins and if we are honest with ourselves it’s not enough, that when we sin against someone, to say “you know what, Jesus has forgiven me of my sins, so let’s leave it at that and move on”. On one level that’s true, but on another don’t we actually need to seek reconciliation with the other person; isn’t forgiveness at the cross meant to be an entryway into new relationships built on honesty and repentance? Or on the flip side, if I or someone else is wounded by another, we may often think to ourselves, “Jesus alone will heal me of my wounds by way of his sacrifice on the cross”. We tend to both diagnose and treat our wounds in this way; we overly-spiritualize and try to superstitiously wish away our real hurt and pain. And some wounds are spiritual, but there is also the very real, nitty-gritty task of processing our human emotions.  And still the task of reconciliation, and in some cases seeking restitution from the one that wounded us, remains. Don’t you think? But like I said, there is often this disconnect in Christianity where we are encouraged to see ourselves as these spiritual beings who only need spiritual solutions to our very real problems.

I also thought about what David said in Psalm 51:4, where he says “Against you, you only, have I sinned…” While it is true that all sin is, in a sense, against God there is a very real human dimension to what David did. After all, Nathan spells out what he did very bluntly: He killed Uriah the Hittite with sword and stole his wife. Furthermore, David wasn’t even man enough to murder Uriah himself, but indirectly used the Ammonites to do so. Nathan doesn’t pull any punches in regard to the very real people that David hurt; he doesn’t put a spiritual spin on the situation in any way, shape or form.

I’ll tell you what’s also an even bigger problem with this over-spiritualization: Jesus never advocated this. Look at what he says (right after the Lord’s Prayer, which is largely seen as a “spiritual” exercise between a believer and God):

“14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” – Matt 6:14, 15

Very interesting that Jesus would say this; in the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness does not appear to be the primary thrust of the prayer, yet Jesus deems it important enough to add a sternly worded epilogue specifically about forgiveness between God and others.*

And consider Jesus’ words here:

22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

It seems to me that Jesus is connecting these “spiritual” acts of forgiveness and worship between God and man to the human relationships that exist in our everyday lives. It’s as if he’s saying that no matter what our relationship is like with God, if we aren’t treating the real human beings in our everyday lives with integrity and compassion, our spirituality doesn’t really amount to much.  And this makes sense because think about who Jesus is; he is God incarnate or God made flesh. He is the very intersection between this spiritual otherness that we define as God and human beings just like ourselves. It’s as if God is saying in Jesus that our spirituality is inherently tied to our physical world, our own humanity and the communities that we are involved in.

Incarnational Ministry vis a vis Empathetic Communication

This incarnational aspect of God is what I want to “flesh” out through Acts 17. This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible for in this we are given a vivid example of God’s desire to communicate spiritual truths to us on our human level.

This was during Paul’s second missionary journey, which transpired between the years 50-52 A.D., (he did three in total) and before he arrived at Athens, he was driven from first Thessalonica and then Berea (where he famously met the “Noble Bereans”).  He was driven out of those regions by Jews who wanted to destroy his gospel-preaching efforts. For the sake of Paul’s safety, he was escorted to Athens with the hope that Timothy and Silas, his traveling companions, would join him there at a later time.

Upon arriving in Athens, Paul is deeply bothered by all of the idolatrous statues in the city. Surely Paul understood that it was Rome’s practice to subsume the religions of those that they subjugated. It was to keep the idea of Pax Romana (which was really not peace) intact. But in Athens it was overkill; one ancient is quoted as saying that Athens had over 30,000 idols [1]. I’m sure that Paul was alarmed by the fact that the Jews in Athens could possibly be syncretizing with the culture around them and thus missing the message of the gospel contained in the Holy Scriptures. Think about how many times that Isaiah denounces idol-worship. In fact, this is one of the key points of his sermon to the philosophers later on. So Paul takes the initiative to engage the Jews and the Greek converts to Judaism (called God-fearing Greeks) in discussions namely concerning the Messiah using the OT. From what Luke records, the idea of the resurrection of Jesus particularly piqued the interest of some of the Greek philosophers and so they begin debating with him. They probably regard him as some unsophisticated, primitive Jew (because remember, Greek culture at the time was hot and Athens in particular was seen as an intellectual bastion of sorts.) They probably argued, “Hey, we have all sorts of gods who are immortal, but an obscure Jewish guy from Palestine sure ain’t one of ‘em.” But nonetheless some of the people were interested in what Paul had to say (Luke notes that a lot of people were content to simply pontificate about the latest ideas at the time). So they took him to a place called the Areopagus, which functioned as a place of settling matters of jurisprudence.

Paul seizes this opportunity, taking the floor and launching into his gospel message. Notice how he begins his dialogue. “People of Athens! I see that in every way are very religious.” This was actually a commendation, because he affirmed the fact that they were somehow seeking to worship or reach out to God. And also notice the fact that he addressed them as Athenians. He didn’t open up his sermon by saying, “Non-descript people group who I’m preaching to, repent or burn in hell!” Rather he started with a positive affirmation which was actually quite true.

Next, Paul exploits one of their idols, using it as an entry point to introduce his God to them. He says, hey you guys have this inscription to an unknown God, and wouldn’t you know I happen to know something about a God that you guys don’t know about so take a listen to this:

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

This is such a profound message of God’s initiative to reach out to us. He corrects the idea of man’s tendency to make God in his own image, thus fashioning idols and temples and so forth; he turns this notion completely on its head by saying that no, we are in fact made in God’s image. And he’s not dependent on us, endlessly requiring our servitude so that he may be both appeased and sustained. Furthermore, he’s not a vending machine that only blesses us when we do something for him. Rather, out of his own loving initiative, he is the one that ultimately serves us and gives life and provision to us. And look at what Paul is doing; he’s essentially giving the message of the entire OT without using OT quotes or references. He understands that his audience doesn’t have the OT as a reference point, so he communicates biblical truths in a way that they can understand. In fact, he intersperses quotes from their own poets and philosophers. Aratus, a Cilician Stoic philosopher and poet remarked that we are God’s offspring. And the Cretan philosopher Epiminedes wrote that “in him we live and move and have our being.” These are beautiful statements which completely undermine the sentiment that we have come about by happenstance; indeed, God was intimately involved in everything from choosing our skin color and ethnicity to determining where we would be born; God infuses his own image into us so that through interacting with each other, we would come to know him in his fullness (theologically, this is called the variegated or multi-faceted nature of God). So it is no mistake that we are who we are, rather it is God’s perfect wisdom to put us in the optimal position where we could reach out to him and know him.

Finally, Paul closes with the revelation of God’s appointed judge, Jesus Christ. He will rule the earth with justice and judge every act; he will put everything in its proper place. A foreshadow of this kind of perfect adjudication is found in the resurrection and thus vindication of his Son; he was unjustly put to death, but God rose him from the dead in effect reversing the edict of guilt showing that he had power over such definitive decrees. Not even the stark reality of death can overcome God’s desire to mete out justice. In fact, Christ is justice personified and that is why he prevails even over death. This is a massive comfort to those who long for justice in this world; those who are involved in combating sex trafficking and tackling civil rights and equality issues. In the person of Christ, we see that mankind’s ultimate trajectory is toward becoming a perfectly just and loving being like him.

Through a comparison of the tenets of Epicureanism and Stoicism (link to ppt slide), we can see specifically how Paul contextualized the gospel to his audience. (The red and blue circled items are tenets which line up with Christianity while the strike-throughs do not) Note a few things here: 1) Paul affirms some of the positive aspects found in each philosophy (namely, free will and determinism). And he corrects some things which are vital to understanding Christianity and knowing the incarnational nature of God. For instance, God is theistic rather than deistic and understanding our existence does not come from abstract wisdom (logos) but rather through knowing God the person in Christ (Logos). Paul has a keen understanding of his audience and out of love, he can empathize with some of their beliefs and make a meaningful connection with them.

How God has Contextualized the Gospel to Me

Several years back I developed something called the Evil Survey, where I simply ask students about the problem of evil. After all, this is an issue that the gospel seeks to rectify and it hits home with everyone, religious or not. So the method is to simply ask questions and understand people’s world views. It doesn’t use any biblical language and avoids asking both leading and loaded questions. Through this, I’ve had many eye-opening conversations with people from all kinds of backgrounds including believers, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, former believers and so forth. Notably, what I’ve come to learn through this process of listening and asking questions is that 1) people genuinely long for someone to listen to and either challenge or affirm their worldviews and 2) I have to respect where people are at in a given moment in their lives. It’s as if God has been evangelizing me or teaching me the gospel through this, making me more human in the process. And this comports with a statement made by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear.

So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.” [2]

Though he’s speaking about the Christian community here, I believe full and well that we should apply this to those outside of the church. Additionally, I work in a multi-cultural environment where rather than preaching to my colleagues, I have taken the approach of simply seeking to understand where they are coming from. What are their life narratives? For instance, as someone who has migrated from the Middle East, what is it like to now live in America? What are the challenges, what do you like and dislike about it? What do you think about life and spirituality? Again, this process has served to humanize me and it has made me realize that as human beings, we all stand together in a sort of solidarity in that we are trying to make sense of life and seek some kind of meaningful purpose.

Counter-intuitive, Unconditional Love

But the main way that I have come to know the gospel in a contextual manner is through my wife. My wife and I are almost complete opposites. She’s always on time, has a schedule for everything and is detailed oriented to the tee. She doesn’t like to talk much either; she’s a doer. I couldn’t be more annoying to her. I’m always late, I take my time and I’m a lofty thinker and my head is usually stuck in the clouds. Plus, I like to talk. A. Lot. I always ask her, “What’s on your mind?” and I want to engage her in some kind of theological discussion, to which I receive the proverbial eye roll and sigh from her.

All this said, over the years, I’ve come to find out that my wife is one of the most loving people I have ever known. She puts up with so much of my stuff. If marriage teaches you anything, it’s that yes, you’re a jerk. See, mom will never admit this to you, though she knows it’s true. She’ll love you till the day you die but your wife loves you enough to tell it like it is. But my wife loves this jerk. She accepts me as I am and affirms the good things she sees in me on a daily basis. I’m simply floored and smitten by this kind of love. I’ve come to the conclusion that her unconditional love is God’s incarnate love to me. It’s fascinating how counter-intuitive his love can be. I thought that love would be putting me with someone who is the same as me, but in fact, it has come through two seemingly opposites. But this is wonderful, because through her I’m able to view an intriguing and captivating side of God that I would have otherwise never known. And now we have these beautiful children who are a product of this incarnate love. When I look into their faces, I’m amazed and taken aback at what God has done. We’re all vastly different in our little family unit and thus we’re put in a position where we can each grow in our humanity, that is, in Christ’s image together. So my family has sort of been the church to me over this past half year or so.

My Hope for the Church

In closing, I want to remark on a saying that I used to hear in ministry. It’s that you don’t have to necessarily like your fellow church members but you do have to love them. This is one of the most misguided sentiments I have ever heard. How are you going to love someone that you don’t like anything about? The gospel affirms each of us as individual and unique human beings. While the cross reveals the ugliness of our sin, it also helps us to look past this in order to see the beautiful images of God in one another and simply appreciate, learn from and behold that beauty. When we look at one another, we are looking into the face of Christ, I believe. Wouldn’t it be great to simply relate to one another in the church in this way? This is my prayer and hope. I’m starting first in midst of my family members. And who knows, I may someday again commit myself to a particular church fellowship. Thank you all for listening and God bless you all abundantly.

[1] Kayser, Phillip G., “Ruins of Athens – The Curse of the Athenian Model of Education”. Biblical Blueprints. 2009. Pg. 4 [http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/RuinsOfAthens.pdf]

[2] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “Life Together”. 1954.

*[Author’s note] This originally said, “Very interesting that Jesus would say this; there is nothing about forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer, yet this is right at the end of it making a seemingly important point.” This is of course wrong. I’ve both read and written about the Lord’s Prayer many times, so I might chalk that glaring error up to confirmation bias; I felt strongly about making a point about forgiveness and so I viewed the prayer a certain way. Good lesson in objectivity or the lack thereof we sometimes display. This could also indicate that I simply need someone to proofread my material beforehand :)

Gary Webb broke the news in a series of articles that won him a Pulitzer Prize. But the stories he published made many people uncomfortable. Government agents retaliated against him, and major newspapers tried to discredit his work. Eventually the people closest to him, who had supported his efforts, succumbed to peer pressure and threw Webb under the bus.

As I watched this film, it brought up vivid memories of how an organization to which I belonged for many years treated members who brought up issues that the group found inconvenient. Someone wrote on a Facebook page, “Stop making UBF the scapegoat for your own problems and failures.” The person who wrote that took the accepted definition of a scapegoat and turned it upside down. Scapegoating is not something that a disgruntled individual does to a community; it is how a group treats a wayward member whom it perceives as a threat.

Scapegoating happens when a community senses shame and guilt that rightfully belongs to the group, a pattern of sin for which they are collectively responsible, and decides to take the easy way out. Instead of doing the self-examination and soul-searching that would lead to corporate repentance, they find a person who seems disposable, make that individual the problem, and throw him under the bus. The convenient choice for a scapegoat is a witness, a whistleblower, who sees wrongdoing and begins to call it out. His message would embarrass the powers-that-be, so a decision is made to isolate the messenger, to blame him for everything and drive him out of the camp. As the high priest and his attendants carry out the sentence, the rest of the community stands by and watches. Some heap criticism on the scapegoat. Others keep quiet, trembling in fear that someday they will suffer the same fate. The rest say, “This has nothing to do with me; it’s not my job to get involved.” Once the sacrifice has been made, the group stands in awkward silence. An unspoken pact is made to forget what happened and wipe the incident and the victim from memory. A moment later, life returns to normal, and everyone goes on with business as usual.

Scapegoating  happens in every tribe,  but it is most troubling and ironic when a group of Christians, those who proclaim that “Christ died for our sins,” gather up their guilt and shame and pile it on a brother or sister or son or daughter.  One example that is fresh in my mind is this testimony  of a young man who discovered sexual abuse happening in his UBF chapter, along with other unpleasantries such as drug dealing, racist remarks and ethnocentricism. He brought these things to the attention of leaders and pastors, trusting that they would take corrective action. Instead, this young man was criticized, marginalized, accused and blamed; the “loving environment” of this gospel community became so toxic that he had no choice but to leave.

That story hit close to home, because the people who apparently engaged in scapegoating included some whom I have known for decades, for whom I retain a degree of love and respect. People who scapegoat never do it consciously.  By definition, they cannot.  If they knew that they were doing it, they would be admitting that the blame they placed on the victim was rightfully theirs, and that admission would make the guilt-transfer impossible. Scapegoating requires the group to keep telling itself a story of its own innocence and goodness. The community must maintain a code of silence, never allowing sensitive and embarrassing issues that led to scapegoating to be talked about openly, because once these things are acknowledged, all the guilt that was heaped upon every scapegoat in the past comes rushing back like a torrent, engulfing the community in a flood of shame, and they can no longer maintain the collective lie.

Another heartbreaking story was recently told to me by someone who played in the Chicago UBF orchestra in the 1990’s. During one of their practices, Samuel Lee walked in. The room fell silent and everyone was on edge. Lee walked up to one of the orchestra members, a young man who was probably thought to be rebellious, and Lee repeatedly slapped him and punched him in the head. The young man wanted to leave, but the orchestra conductor urged him not to go. Then Lee told some members of the orchestra to stand up and punch one another. If they didn’t punch hard enough, he urged them to punch harder. The young man who had been assaulted by Lee was thoroughly disgusted and decided to walk out, and as he went, Lee followed him and said, “Thank me. Before you leave, you should thank me.”

My youngest son is now in 8th grade, about the same age of the orchestra members who witnessed these things. I am trying to imagine what it would be like for my son if I sent him to a church activity, believing that it would help him to grow in faith and experience the love of God, and instead he would be sitting in a room filled with terrified teenagers and college students as a pastor walked around the room and verbally and physically abused them. And then to have every authority figure in his life — his parents, the orchestra conductor, and all the adults in his church — praising this pastor and urging him to submit to this guy no matter what he does because he is “God’s servant,” and because everything he did was done with good intentions and love. I shudder to think about the long-lasting psychological damage this would do to a young man. That damage has been done. It is very real. It has not been acknowledged. Many of us experienced it, in varying ways and degrees. But the UBF community refuses to speak of it, except in whispers behind closed doors. A long list of people who had the clarity and courage to identify this behavior as what it was – physical, psychological, and spiritual abuse – was  tarred as rebellious, unthankful, unspiritual, a bad influence, full of ulterior motives, etc. and driven out of the camp, so that everyone could go on with business as usual and keep telling the story of how beautiful and glorious the community was.

What troubles me most about these stories is that they are about me. Yes, I have been scapegoated for breaking the code of silence and telling these stories in a public space. The scapegoating I experienced was painful, but not nearly as bad as what others have endured. The troubling part is that, for nearly three decades, I participated in the scapegoating. As brave individuals identified wrongdoing and spoke out, I was one of those who remained silent as the community labeled them as troublemakers, deflecting the corporate shame and guilt and heaping it on those who spoke up. I never stood by anyone who was being blamed or marginalized for simply telling the truth. If I had been in the orchestra that day, I am quite sure that I would have sat there in silence as that young man was slapped and punched. I would have thought that surely Samuel Lee had a reason to treat him that way, and it was not my place to get involved or to question the wisdom of God’s servant. Again and again, I swallowed and repeated tales of UBF-uprightness and scapegoat-sinfulness, not because I was completely unaware of the truth, but because I didn’t want to pay the price and become another scapegoat. And, to be honest, I benefitted a great deal from the indulgent praise that UBF heaped upon itself. Those stories gave me the illusion that I was a better person, better than all those halfhearted nominal Christians, because I belonged a better church than they, one that did not compromise in its message or mission. As one of a select few highly educated white Americans in the ministry, I got tons of attention, plenty of speaking roles, management perks, a place at the head table, invitations to travel. It was a good gig, and I didn’t want to mess it up by getting involved in matters that I reasoned were none of my business. So I stood by as one scapegoat after another was blamed for the corporate sin and driven away from the flock. When I finally decided to stand up and say “No more,” it was not because I suddenly became courageous and was willing to pay the unbearable price. No, it was only after I had the moral support of a loving wife and many godly and loyal friends willing to stand beside me so that, if the rest of UBF would throw me under the bus, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as bad. That is my story, a story of corporate guilt and shame that I deflected and channeled onto one scapegoat after another.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, encouraged his followers to meditate on scripture by using their powers of imagination. Evangelical Christians tend to approach Bible passages quasi-scientifically, as subject to be dissected and examined with tools of reason. In contrast, a well known Ignatian practice is to insert oneself into a story from Scripture, first as an observer, then as a participant. For example, with the birth of Jesus from Luke chapter 2, you could paint a mental picture of the manger, conjuring up its sights, sounds, and smells, and then imagine yourself to be one of the shepherds who has come to see Jesus, trying to think what he thinks and feel what he feels. Any good student of the Bible will tend to do this, but Ignatian spiritual practice takes it to a much higher level.

In the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, Palm Sunday is sometimes called Passion Sunday. Worshipers at the Eucharistic liturgy are given palms to recall the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. However, the main passage of Scripture that day is the whole passion narrative from Matthew’s or Mark’s gospel covering the Last Supper, the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane, his arrest, trial, crucifixion, death and burial.  Most Sundays, the gospel reading is done by a single priest or deacon. On Passion Sunday, however, it becomes a dramatic presentation with multiple readers taking the roles the narrator, Jesus, the chief priests, and so on. A few lines are given to the congregation. A similar pattern is followed on Good Friday, and at that solemn service the passion narrative always comes from John.  Standing among the worshipers and listening can evoke powerful emotions, but at those few moments when the congregation reads its lines, the experience can be downright disturbing.

As you recall the story of the Passion, where do you insert yourself? If you come from an evangelical background, you might see yourself as an apostle. Maybe you are Peter, who loved Jesus but denied him in a moment of weakness.  You probably identify with Barabbas, who deserved to die for his sins, but by an act of divine mercy was set free as the innocent Jesus went to Calvary his place. Standing in the shoes of Barabbas encapsulates what many believe the gospel is all about. When we hear “Christ died for our sins” (1Co 15:3), we think of all the bad things we did as individuals, especially back in the days before we got saved, when we were monstrous men and wayward women, drinking and fornicating and never going to church. We thank God and breathe a sigh of relief that Jesus was nailed to the cross instead of us. Good Friday is when divine wrath was poured out on the Son of God so that we could get off scot-free. Many Christians understand the Passion that way, and I won’t claim that they are entirely wrong. But that is not how the story was told by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. In the four canonical accounts, the suffering and death of Jesus is never presented as the punishment of an angry God against people who were lustful and lazy, who drank too much, or who denied God’s existence. Last time I checked, Jesus wasn’t crucified by the Association of Atheists, the Federation of Fornicators, or the Society of Scofflaws. Many of those public sinners felt deeply loved and accepted by Jesus. In every account, the proximate cause of the crucifixion was the ire of a religious community upset by what Jesus said and did. Jesus was sent to his death by group that by all accounts was the most devout and Biblically literate society in the world, the very people who saw themselves as the champions of biblical values, who spent endless hours immersed in Scripture, memorizing Scripture, and teaching people to live by Scripture.

The Passion Sunday and Good Friday liturgies do not shy away from this fact. The lines assigned to the congregation are the shouts of the crowd, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Am I the only one who finds this strange? After all, the people in church on those occasions are precisely the ones who have gathered in the name of Christ to bear witness to his kingship. They are the ones who have supposedly gotten the gospel right, who have accepted Jesus’ message and who love him the most. And yet, on Passion Sunday and Good Friday, they are made to rise up with one voice, not to defend Jesus’ innocence, but to gather their collective shame and guilt and pile it all on top of him. These so-called people of God are to pat themselves on the back, extolling their own faith and piety, as they send their innocent scapegoat to a horrible and excruciating death.

As a lifelong churchgoer, I find this participation in the Passion liturgy to be poignant, subversive and profoundly unsettling. It probes my soul at a far deeper level than the standard and well trodden “I-am- Barabbas” way of presenting the gospel. I don’t find it hard to place my individual sins on the shoulders of Jesus, especially those sins that I committed in the distant past and which I have long ago disavowed. It is not costly to imagine the cross as solving an equation that balances out the principles of God’s justice and mercy. Those transactions happen somewhere else, in a spiritualized, abstract realm of theory that has little to do with here and now. It is much harder to accept my part in sending Jesus to the cross in the way portrayed in the four gospels, as part of a community that scapegoats and rejects God who is truly present in the flesh. But that is precisely what every community does.

Some of us imagine that if Jesus were to suddenly show up at church, we would wholeheartedly welcome him. If so, then we are not thinking hard, or we are hardly thinking. The Jesus of the gospels is a man who would sooner or later get kicked out of any Christian community. For example, suppose you had never heard the parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25). Imagine Jesus showing up and preaching that story from the pulpit. I can imagine someone from The Gospel Coalition writing an article denouncing that story as carrying a dangerous doctrine of salvation by works. Although I am not particularly fond of TGC, I am using them only as an example; I do not want to single them out, because the Jesus presented in the four gospels says and does things that, if we had not already known of them, would deeply offend any Christian of any denomination or tribe. No matter what church you attend, if Jesus Christ were to show up at your church, I have no doubt that eventually he would be scapegoated and kicked out.

In fact, this is not a hypothetical. Jesus Christ has shown up and your church, and Jesus Christ has been kicked out. In the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus has made his home among us, living right here in this messy, sinful, creaturely world. Whenever we have met a believer in Christ, we have seen the face of Jesus. Whenever we have encountered someone in need, we have seen the face of Jesus. Whenever we have looked upon any man, woman or child, any person alive who is indelibly stamped with his divine image, we have seen the face of Jesus. We have encountered him again and again and failed to recognize him when he walked among us. We treated him badly because he made us uncomfortable, because he failed to show proper respect for our traditions, because he pointed out our hypocrisy, because he cleansed our temples and smashed our idols and disputed the fanciful stories that our group tells about itself.  It is hard for me to accept that my Christian community, where I dedicated so many years of my life, believing that we were the ones who had gotten the gospel right, is the same community that actually did stand up and shout, “Crucify!” To admit that would be to accept my culpability for the sins of the community, which I really don’t want to do. It’s so much easier to sit back and profess that Jesus died for my sins, but those horrible things that we did together, those things that I imagined were none of my business, they were not my responsibility, because I personally never abused anyone, and because it wasn’t my place to judge anyone, and besides we are better now and don’t do those things anymore…

An Open Letter to Jesus of Nazareth

Holy Thursday Evening 2015

Dear Jesus:

I am writing to let you know that I can no longer support you or your ministry. For a long time, I listened to you because I believed you were a man of God. Your words about God’s kingdom were music to my ears, balm to my wounds, chicken soup for my soul. I loved the way that you made the Scriptures so exciting, and the way you cared for the sick and served the needy. You were always the best speaker at our Bible conferences. Your messages made us laugh and moved our hearts.

But lately you have gone too far, doing things that a true servant of God would never do. When you criticize the teachers of the law, you sound so bitter. What has gotten into you? Your motives must be wrong, because no one with right motives would ever speak that way. Of course, there is some truth in what you say, but you did not say it correctly; you did not have the right tone of voice, so we cannot listen to you. No church is perfect, and our leaders always admit that they are not perfect. You should respect them for their dedication and sacrifice. But you embarrassed them and criticized them in front of young people who should not hear such things because it might damage their faith. You made yourself a bad influence and that bad influence is spreading. You are so young, just 33 years old, and yet you talk and act like you are so wise. If you know better than us how to do ministry, then you should stop criticizing and talking and do something constructive. Go off on your own and build a chapter and when you have raised many mature disciples you can come back and show us how it’s done and of course we will listen to you then. But your criticism of God’s servants now is beyond the pale. If everyone did as you do, all authority would break down and the next generation will lose their identity and become like worldly people.

For me, the last straw was when you entered the Bible house this week and became violent, turning over our tables and shouting “Get out of here!” Who do you think you are? Does that Bible house belong to you? Did you build it? Of course our ministry is not perfect. But there is no excuse for becoming angry and destructive. Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater! Your angry behavior demonstrates that your heart cannot be right with God. You need to go back to the Bible to solve your spiritual problem so that you will no longer be an angry and rebellious and impatient young man but have true wisdom and joy in your heart.

You have exceeded your position and broken spiritual order. Whatever happens to you, you should accept it as God’s discipline and training. I will pray for you. Please remember all the good things that God’s servants have done and all the people who have been blessed by their ministry and stop tearing down the community that God has built up.  Don’t tell lies or spread false rumors about anyone. Give thanks to God always so that no bitter root takes hold in your heart. Many of us still love you and we remember your hard work and service to the Lord.

I seal this letter with a holy kiss.

The closing testimonies at Campus night last Friday were given by Moses Noah, Jim Rabchuk, and Ron Ward. The title on the program was “Campus mission, my family, and my profession.” The slide presented was the above. I was slightly irritated by this slide, since it ignored family and excluded any mention of Christ. And that was also their point.

Moses Noah gave his testimony about how he had been married and sent to pioneer Atlanta by Samuel Lee in about a month. He said as a recently married graduate student who was committed to pioneering he rarely had time for his wife. Later he shared that he struggled as a professional, trying to juggle a family, a ministry, and a demanding job. Because of his commitment to give everything to God and his mission, he failed to give adequate time for his wife. He said that in the last few years he read Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage and learned from Ephesians 5 that married couples present their spouses to the Lord. He said “She is my life long project.” And how after 16 years of marriage they had went on a honey moon to Hawaii with their children where they had wedding photos taken. He said that he had been growing as a husband. He never realized how unkind he had been to his own wife and it grieved him greatly looking back. Additionally he shared that God had been so great to him in profession. He nearly lost his job due to his lack of grants, but suddenly God helped him to gain more grants than he could have asked for.

Jim Rabchuk gave the second testimony. He said he had three main goals in his life. His first goal was to be a missionary to Russia. He said he went to Russia shortly after the end of the Cold War and somehow ended up with a wife. I had heard this story from Mark Yang’s book on Discipleship. But in that version of the story all the blame rested on the woman. Here Dr. Rabchuk says he was not ready to marry and did so hastily on the basis of her appearance (although he used the term “seduced”). He said after 4 years his marriage fell apart along with the dream to be a Russian missionary. He went on to describe that his second goal in his life had been to form a large fellowship in Macomb. I have visited Macomb three times in my life, for IMEA competition. When I asked my mother where all the life went I remember her saying “This is Macomb. No man’s land.” He said he watched as pretty much everyone left his ministry. He learned that his dream would not become a reality, and he had to humble himself. His last goal was to be a part of UBF leadership. He said this presented an enormous strain on his family. He said that one Thanksgiving in the middle of dinner he left for a conference. For readers who are not from the states, in America you are more or less required and expected to see your family on Thanksgiving and at Christmas. Failure to do either can result in extreme breakdown of relations. This aspect of the story is telling. It means he was risking huge conflicts with his family, or his family had long since became jaded and just expected that kind of treatment. After leaving he realized he didn’t have enough money in gas to get to the leadership conference. As he said “I began thinking of many ‘by faith ways’ I could come up with the money. But then I realized that at that moment the most important thing in the universe to me was getting to that conference, and I had left my family to do so.” He said that he returned home so that he could finish dinner with his family. He had been working on making do with what God has given him. His testimony was inspiring to me because it did not ring of false humility but of honest to God truthfulness. It is hard to convey this through an article but you could hear the pain in his voice. He went so far as to state “I turned UBF into an idol.” These sentiments that family something to be taken with world mission, and not at its expense are in contrast to what was written in 2007 about family
“Another challenge is the American dream to live a family-centered life, with no mission from God.“- Kevin Albright, Founders Day report

The last speaker was Ron Ward. I met Ron Ward last year when I attended Ben West’s wedding. I remember telling him that at my wedding I wanted to give people silly string and air horns. He said “That would certainly be interesting.” I was so blessed to hear Ron Ward speak. His smooth voice was like a river chocolate. I thought I was going to be taken away by his baby soft voice. He said that current college students want a real message. In the postmodern world the message is increasingly relative and because of the concreteness of the gospel we have a real chance to reach students. But, he added

“We should be deeply concerned with the actions of our leaders. When we are unkind to each other, students won’t take us seriously. Of course we don’t see violence. I don’t see people fist fight. Instead it’s a kind of cold war- gossiping and thinking ‘this is my sheep, don’t come near my sheep’…we cannot expect them to remain in that environment. They should not remain in that environment.”

Honestly I don’t recall the most of the rest of what he said. When I came back several minutes later he was saying “Jesus is saying ‘They are dying. My children are dying you have to help them.’” But I was so stunned by the previous comment and how unbelievable that sounded to me. It is unbelievable because it seemed directed not at students, but at leaders. That is more or less a compete summary of Campus Night.

A few other things of interest
I caught up to a few different people about the recent open letter to the president of UBF. Nobody had heard of it. But when I briefly explained the letter I was told that the voting is different this time around. This time two people are put on a ballot and a simple majority is required, then they are confirmed with a 2/3 vote. I was told that Dr. Abraham T. Kim did not want to run, but was going to anyways. At the Sunday worship service this was also made clear. There is also works to create a membership category and class. This was taking a longer amount of time than usual for various reasons. In speaking about sexual misconduct and abuse I was told that pastors and missionaries are obligated to call the police.

I experienced a lot of other amazing things and caught up to a lot of great people. I enjoyed my time and hope to visit some other time again. I had one of the best bible studies I have ever had with Dr. Augustine Suh, which I hope to write about soon.

Monster Energy drink: evil?

This week I watched a video of a Christian pointing out how drinking the Monster energy drink means supporting the antichrist. This made me think: What happened to Christianity? There was a time when Christians affirmed the good they found in society. But today the self-appointed Christian role seems to be to discover hidden messages and point out what they think is not inline with Christian behavoir.

Dr. Who and the Gospel

Pointing out hidden 666 messages (which could actually be seen as Hebrew 777 messages :) may be needed. But I find it more edifying to affirm the gospel messages I come across. For example, I’m a huge Dr. Who fan. And the latest Dr. Who series has shown me some glimpses of the gospel.

Cybermen: Example of religious zealots

The Cybermen in Dr.Who are essentially living robots, built from uniform suits of steel and remnants of human beings. They have two main goals:

1) to recruit new humans to be upgraded to a better person
2) to delete anyone who resists being upgraded.

The Cybermen also used emotional inhibitors. An emotional inhibitor was a device placed into all Cybermen. The device allowed a human brain to exist without suffering a meltdown of overwhelming emotions. This inhibitor allowed the Cybermen to carry out its two goals more efficiently.

Love resists conversion

When people fight back and resist being converted, it is love that provides the resistence. In one TV episode, a man used love for his son to resist, which overloaded the emotional inhibitors of the six Cybermen trying to convert him, resulting in their destruction.

Gospel Love

Some examples of gospel love can be seen in the Doctor himself. For example, this recent TV conversation was stunning to watch.

The Doctor: You betrayed me. You betrayed our trust, you betrayed our friendship, you betrayed everything that I’ve ever stood for. You let me down!

Clara: Then why are you helping me?

The Doctor: Why? Do you think that I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?

Cyber tears

I know of at least three examples of Cybermen doing good actions. One episode showed a Cyberman crying while sacrificing himself to help the Doctor. Two more examples are in the latest Dr.Who episode. One Cyberman used his love for his daughter to motivate him to protect the world. Another Cyberman used his love for his girlfriend to rescue a boy from the Nethersphere.

Monday questions

Are there glimpses of the gospel among ubf chapters? If so, what have you seen? Who are the leaders with “cyber tears” who will step forward and take action for the good of the ubf organization? What good changes can we affirm among ubf leaders? What gospel messages have you seen displayed, such as peace, forgiveness and repentance?

Did I miscommunicate biblical faith? I used to make such statements 100s of times to countless Bible students for over a quarter of a century….especially to those who are single and in (restrained desire and) need of a spouse! I am so sorry for all those I did this too… I realize that inherent in such seemingly “innocent” and “cute” statements is that it could be provocative and possibly misleading and miscommunicating biblical faith.

What’s so wrong about making such statements? On the surface, and without much thought or critical reflection, they do sound biblical, don’t they? For Jesus said, “Have faith in God” (Mk 11:22). Also, we Christians absolutely need faith to please God (Heb 11:6), and “the righteous will live by faith” (Rom 1:17c, Hab 2:4). In the OT, when Abram believed God, his faith was credited to him as righteousness (Gen 15:6). Therefore, when we have faith and pray with believing faith (Mk 11:24), we can move immovable mountains (Mk 11:23). We can marry the person of our wildest dreams and raise many disciples for the kingdom of God! Wow…all I need and the only thing I need is faith. This is surely all true, correct and biblical, isn’t it?

The problem is… and there are several potential problems with making such unqualified statements and other related statements regarding faith, such as “With faith you can be a great man, and a Ph.D professor shepherd, and a successful businessman.” So what’s the problem?

It’s up to you and your faith. It presents faith as though it is entirely up to you and to the quality and purity and correctness and soundness of your faith. It puts the burden and pressure on you to have and to exercise the proper kind of faith. Then you, through your faith, will please God and move God’s heart to bless you abundantly according to your faith. It is basically having faith in your faith, rather than in God.

It takes emphasis away from the primacy of God. I am not denying that each Christian is fully responsible for exercising their faith. But to place the burden of faith primarily on the Christian denies or obscures the primacy of God in our faith (Phil 1:6; 2:12-13). It is as though God is not sovereign but that I am sovereign to fulfill God’s will, since God is dependent on my faith before he can or will act to bless me.

It can cause self-centeredness and excessive unhealthy introspection. It causes you to think primarily about yourself (what’s wrong with me or with my faith?), rather than to think or focus primarily on God.

It can be a form of control and guilt-tripping. It gives the church leader and the Bible teacher the control by putting pressure on the Bible student as the one who needs to prove themselves through the exercise of their faith expressed by their performance.

God’s Not Dead misrepresents faith. In the movie God’s Not Dead, a college professor is a staunch atheist. When he was young his mother became ill. Growing up in the church, he believed and prayed that God would heal her. But she died. He became bitter and concluded that God is dead. His idea of faith is that God would answer his prayers if he sincerely and genuinely prays to God by faith. His idea of faith is that he is in the driver’s seat and that God is the one who should do what he prays for. I shared this extemporaneously in my sermon Gospel Faith to express the fallacy of such faith.

Does your faith make you righteous? Interestingly, Rom 1:17 can also be translated “the righteous by faith will live” (Rom 1:17, NET), or “And the righteous one by faith shall live” (Rom 1:17, YLT). This perhaps conveys the essence of faith more clearly by emphasizing what God has done. We Christians do not live by faith to become righteous (or to get what we want or to have our prayers answered). Rather, it is precisely because of our faith in Christ who saves us by his grace that we live! This is the emphasis in my sermon Gospel Power.

What are your experiences with faith? How was faith taught or communicated to you?

“What makes a good Christian?”

The room was quiet, after all that was a hard question. The students waited with the expectation that he would answer the question, but he stayed quiet. Finally the boy with glasses said aloud “They give to poor and help people.” He nodded but did not affirm the answer. It seemed he was waiting for a different answer. Finally one of the sisters, Sarah, gave the answer he was looking for “A good Christian reads the bible a lot.” The room seemed to nod in agreement. Travis then went on to make his point:

“A lot of people think that a good Christian memorizes a lot of bible verses, or goes to church to every Sunday, etc. They think these things make you good. But the bible does not say this, the bible says that we have all fallen short and only God can make you good. Those are all good things to do, but they do not make you good. This is called legalism and a lot of people in your life will try to sell you this lie.”

One of the African American students, Kenny, responded “But if you don’t do anything then why does it matter?” Travis responded “The Christian does not believe being good will make God love him, he believes because God loves him he will be made good.”

The Promises of the Gospel

This was perhaps the most important lesson I learned from Travis, and it stuck with me. I can recall a UBF member openly telling me he was “more mature” than me on the basis that he had been in UBF. This man had no idea how God had worked in my life, and I found his hubris a result of the failure to apply this teaching. I think we can be pleased with ourselves, if God can be pleased with his servant than his servant can be pleased with himself. But there is a moment, and in that moment if we do not recall God it quickly turns to pride. Taken with this idea a particularly popular idea in UBF idea some Christians are disciples and others are mere followers. It will be discussed at the next UBF leadership conference, and I suspect Acts 11:26 won’t be mentioned. Entire books could be written on the mistakes in such a conclusion and the problems it presents. As for this lesson I will just remark that a lot of anxiety and pressure is removed when the promises of the gospel are divorced from our efforts alone.

For those unfamiliar with this article series, here is my introduction:

http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/10/03/an-introduction-to-lessons-from-travis/

Paul says emphatically, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” This is the explicit reason why he had Gospel Enthusiasm and excitement and energy and eagerness to preach the gospel to the Romans (Rom 1:15).

I wondered to myself, “What am I NOT ashamed of?”

Two things immediately come to mind: my wife and my cats! I simply love to talk about them at every opportunity. I can hardly get through any sermon, or Bible study, or a casual conversation, or even a UBFriends post or comment, without talking about either my wife or my cats or both!

I also love to talk about food, which seems to interest me more and more as I get older. That’s why I love the analogy of the kingdom of God being like a great banquet feast (Mt 22:2; Lk 14:15; Rev 19:9, 17), which I assume will have tons of gourmet food that I have not tasted this side of the eschaton! Last week I enjoyed my first Kobe Beef steak at Gibson’s Steakhouse. I am somewhat embarrassed that it cost $100. But I did share it with my wife… I also love movies and I can’t wait to take my wife to go watch Gone Girl, which is getting rave reviews. With my friends and relatives back home in Malaysia and Singapore I love talking about whisky, about how single malt whisky tastes so much more refined than blended whisky.

Basically, I love to talk about what I love and am not ashamed of.

The converse is also true. I do not like to talk about what I am ashamed of. After the Chicago Bear’s humiliating loss to the Green Bay Packers last week, I refused to talk about the Bears, being ashamed at how poorly the defense played and at how Jay Cutler still throws horrible errant picks at the worst times, despite getting paid $17.5 million per year.

Yes, I have tons of “worldly desires,” as some might characterize it. But I also love to talk about Jesus (who IS my life), the gospel, the Bible, theology, good books, life, who God is, who we (sinful and loved) human beings are, the church, the manifold and often shameful problems in the church. This is surely nothing but the grace of Jesus and the power of God working in me.

Perhaps, most people are ashamed to talk about their sins (as much as some might inadvertently love to brag about their achievements, deeds and works). Surprisingly, Paul was not ashamed to speak about his sins. He spoke candidly and explicitly about how he, the great apostle, was the worst of the apostles (1 Cor 15:9), the worst of all Christians (Eph 3:8), and close to his death even the worst of all men (1 Tim 1:15). Paul always connected all aspects of his life to Christ, including his sins. So when Paul spoke about his sins, he was in effect testifying to the marvelous and matchless grace of Jesus (1 Cor 15:10).

I know that I am not ashamed of the gospel and would love most to share Jesus with others. This does not mean that I should impose myself on others, or be intrusive and inconsiderate toward others, even if I often tend to be because of my doggedness. I do love most to speak about Jesus and the gospel, even if I might often talk too much, or listen too little, or be more heady and cerebral and theological than practical, or be more forceful than gentle, or am seemingly too distracted negatively by problems and injustice.

What are you not ashamed of? Feel free to critique my sermon write up in the above links, or my rambling reflection on not being ashamed.

Forgiveness

Everlasting love. I understood the gospel again in 2005 when I lost over $1,000,000 because of my greed, arrogance, a desire to retire ASAP, and sheer stupidity and imbecility. I regarded this as my “worst” sin. I loathed myself with all my heart because of what I did. But at this miserably low point of my life Jer 31:3 came to my heart: “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” I was stunned that God could love me and still loves me, when I couldn’t love myself nor bear with myself. To my surprise I understood again that the gospel or good news was entirely because of God’s unconditional love and grace, and NOT dependent on me in any way. I felt as though I was born again…again. Though I felt sick with myself, I was completely renewed, refreshed and restored. The surprising unchanging gospel and good news of God’s grace had nothing to do with my sin, shame, dishonor and disgrace.

Wow, she still loves me. Though my heart was warmed and greatly comforted by the grace of God, I nonetheless did expect my marriage to deteriorate and sour significantly. I know how much I had hurt my wife Christy and my four children. I was in massive debt, having lost in a few months far more than what Christy had painstakingly saved up for over 20 years of our marriage. She is the least extravagant, most thrifty and most frugal person I know. She buys virtually everything that is either on sale, with coupons or with rebates. But I blew all of our life’s savings and more virtually overnight. I thought to myself, “If Christy leaves me or stops loving me, I really can’t blame her.” But she still loved me. I was shocked that she could still love me. This is good news. This is the gospel expressed to me through her. Her unchanging love and gospel expression touched and transformed my heart. To this day, a decade later I am still humbled, grateful and overwhelmed. Because of her love for me, she has me hook, line and sinker. Because of her gospel love for me, I’m far crazier about her than she is about me, which is quite fine with me.

Without a doubt, the gospel is entirely what God has done, and not dependent in any way on me or my sins.

Do you have a gospel story to share? Feel free to also critique my first of many sermons on Romans, either the written manuscript or the extemporaneous preaching, where I shared the above account to conclude my sermon.

As a follow up to an article I didn’t write I think it only apt to say that Galatians Set Me Free From Legalism was the best article I never wrote. That aside, I brought this up with my friend Steven, a seminary graduate. We had a long conversation about my time in UBF and I discussed how I believed that my chapter supported a legalism that was not in line with Paul’s letter to the Galatians. I did not expect him to disagree with me.

The primary message of the gospel

Steven first mentioned that since the 1960s American evangelicalism has phrased the primary message of the gospel as “Jesus saves you from legalism.” He said it’s a major topic and on a whole different page from Paul’s intended meaning in Galatians, but he said there is a very real question we have to ask as a missionary “What do we first communicate to new believers?” He said in China saying “Jesus saves you from legalism” does not really mean anything, and so organizations like Cru have struggled. He said the message of gospel is phrased as “Jesus saves you from sin and death.” He goes onto say that this is usually how the message of Galatians is given. This sounded very familiar. In fact I can quote:

“I read Galatians dozens of times since 1980. I knew it was about freedom. I assumed it proclaimed freedom from sin.”

This is primarily the eastern approach to the gospel. I am not qualified to say which one is “right”, or even if one is “right” and one is “wrong”. But what I will say is that this explains to me immediately why UBF is mostly unsuccessful. They are preaching a gospel message that to anyone who has grown up in an evangelical church (such as me) appears contradictory at best and heretical at worst. I am not sure how exactly to solve this problem, I think writing articles for fine websites such as this one is a start.

The new perspective on Paul

Steven said that there was a current movement called “The new perspective on Paul” and it challenges the modern evangelical view, and beyond that Protestantism itself. The old perspective, as a more wizened man than I said:

“The freedom Paul spoke of was freedom from legalism–the idea that you must add or do something else in addition to believing in Jesus in order to be saved and to be regarded and welcomed as a complete Christian of good standing in the church.”

This view traces back to Martin Luther, who looked at the Catholic Church in the 15th century and saw a list of indulgences and said that this was clearly legalism. But the New Perspective asked an interesting question “Is what Martin Luther saw in the 15th century as legalism the same as what a 1st century Paul saw in the Judaizers? What was the problem with the Judaizers?” The thesis was that the problem with Judaizers was not that works justified them, but that works made them Jewish, and being Jewish justified them. Paul saw the law as a badge of the covenant. Luther understood Galatians 3:24 to illustrate the second use of the law. The new perspective says Paul envisioned the law as a custodian for the Jews until the birth of Christ but Luther reversed the argument to assert that the law is a disciplinarian for everyone.

Luther holds, as most Protestants do, that the law crushes our self righteousness and leads to Christ. Therefore, the law becomes God’s moral imperative having been written on our hearts. Stendhal, the author of the new perspective, accuses western thought of adding a level of introspection and self guilt onto Paul’s message. It seems that this introspection is largely a byproduct of St. Augustine’s Platonic roots. We might go so far to accuse western Christianity to be “Platonic Christianity”. Protestant reformers read Paul’s statements about faith and works, law and gospel, Jews and Gentiles “in the framework of late medieval piety” and the law became associated with legalism. “Where Paul was concerned about the possibility for Gentiles to be included in the messianic community, his statements are now read as answers to the quest for assurance about man’s salvation out of a common human predicament”.

What about UBF?

So does UBF (or at least its leadership) stand condemned under Galatians? Would Paul have opposed top UBF leaders to their face? Under the traditional perspective of Paul it seems as though it certainly does. Ubf may not actually believe they are being justified by their works, but they are communicating it their actions by defining spiritual growth as the list of things Ben Toh presented.

The question that follows is this- Does UBF stand condemned under the message of Galatians under the New Perspective? This idea that being Jewish saves you and the idea that you need to be Korean, or at least Koreanized, came to mind. Does UBF inadvertently teach in its actions that you need to be like a Korean to be saved? Certainly.

Native people are encouraged to marry by faith native Koreans. Second generation Koreans are encouraged to marry by faith other second generation Koreans. This would not be evidence to my claim if marriage wasn’t orchestrated and facilitated by UBF. When someone is married by faith the church teaches that the person introduced is “godly” so by always introducing someone to a Korean they are implying that Koreans are “godly”. Other examples I can cite include Korean chapters being unwilling to work with the native ministry and a high level of unwillingness to allow native leaders to lead. There is also explicitly taught ideas such as American Christians are “lukewarm” and “Sunday only”, Americans being “selfish”, and that America needs to become a “Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation” despite the fact that there are more Christians in America than Koreans in the world.

I doubt that anything related to either perspective of Paul will be discussed at the staff conference on Galatians. It is most likely that I am just not trained enough to see their wisdom. Whatever the case I hope that UBF can learn to present the message of the gospel in such a way that it does not clash with American evangelicalism. My time in UBF recently can be summarized as such:

“When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?”

Breaking the yoke of guilt

“We never taught that!”… words I’ve heard often after leaving my former religious organization. One of my most impactful and life-changing discoveries I made after resigning from my leadership position in a fundamentalist, fringe Korean religious group was that my theology was deeply flawed because we were holding onto implied gospel messages that were filled with holes and superficial, un-Christ-like ideologies. Of course the group leaders could claim they never taught the things I was renouncing and criticizing them for on my blog. Our flawed gospel messages were not normally taught explicitly. Most of the time, our shallow gospel was taught implicitly, taught underhandedly through a praise/shame system. We knew exactly what we were teaching, what kind of behavior we expected in ourselves and in new recruits, but we rarely documented such things explicitly. That way all those “R-Group people” (our term for former members) would not be able to prove anything.

I found that I had the facts of the gospel correct—the gospel is about Jesus, his birth, life, ministry, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension and future reign—but I had come to accept some very non-gospel messages. I accepted, for example, that I must remain loyal to my personal spiritual supervisor the rest of my life, checking with him for major life decisions to see if my decisions were “God’s will”. We called this “spiritual order”. I also accepted that it was not possible to leave the group I was in, or at least not if I wanted to be in Heaven one day. In fact we created an entire heritage system of implied beliefs—beliefs that are not taught by the bible text directly but that seem to be implied from the text. It was a grand biblical proof-texted ideology. Sometimes this heritage was then explicitly taught. Looking back, I see that I didn’t actually believe such teachings, but I accepted them. I overlooked the built-in contradictions and did my best to apologize for and to perpetuate the flawed theology.

Five Explicit Gospel Messages

In “The Explicit Gospel”, Matt Chandler eloquently articulates the content of the gospel, brilliantly describing the gospel as what he rightly calls “the gospel on the ground and the gospel in the air”. In “Your Church is too Small”, John H. Armstrong earnestly and magnificently expresses the result of the gospel, as an exhortation to see the Church holistically, comprehensively, historically and missionally, and yet in a fresh, new light based on Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17. In “Eyes That See, Ears That Hear”, James Danaher repaints the theological framework of Christianity, expressing the fabric of the gospel so that we can perceive the gospel as we continue the epic transition from modernity to post-modernity and beyond. In “Fundamorphosis”, Robb Ryerse brings to life his amazing journey of transformation, renewal and regeneration that reveals the power of the gospel to change and transform in a personal and approachable way. And in “What We Believe and Why”, George Koch presents a masterpiece of theological constructs that connect ancient thoughts on faith with current discoveries in a grand panorama of the faith of the gospel, meticulously documenting the essentials and the basics, the origins and the foundational truths of what Christians believe in an accessible manner few have accomplished. These five books have profoundly shaped my narrative about the gospel, and ought to be collected in some sort of “modern to post-modern transition library” as five classic books that capture the Christian faith in our generation.

I have found these gospel messages to be immensely helpful in guiding my conversations on religious or philosophical discussions. And then suddenly the gospel began to come alive, unleashed from the yoke of my shallow, misguided, guilt-laden, proof-texted notions.

• The gospel is about the kingdom. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

• The gospel is about God’s grace. “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me–the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24).

• The gospel is about the glory of Christ. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

• The gospel is about salvation. “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit…” (Ephesians 1:13).

• The gospel is about peace. “…and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15).

Communal Salvation

It’s a small world after all. Our world today is smaller in that we are more inter-connected and inter-dependent than at any time in world history. Instant, global communication and rapid world-wide travel is commonplace. The worldwide Christian church is starting to realize that there is only one faith, one hope, one Lord and one body. Our theologies and gospel messages must now pass the test of global criticism. Perhaps we are on the verge of a new kind of uniting by the Holy Spirit that does not define boundaries? Clearly church communities have been ripped to shreds in recent years. Could the Spirit now be uniting entirely new communities, reforming the shattered body of Christ into a vastly more healthy and loving world-wide community?

Personal Liberation

Jesus did not come to bind believers to an upgraded law or to yoke us with a heavy mask to hide our real identities. 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. 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 believed the gospel Jesus taught, 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 became weary in all I did. Everything became meaningless.

If we see the Sermon on the Mount and walk away sad or burdened with guilt or heavy laden with anxiety, we’re hearing implied messages that are not of the explicit gospel messages Jesus taught. Jesus’ yoke is not a new way to be tethered to the law. Jesus’ yoke is grace. Jesus’ invitation to find rest for your soul still stands open today.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My parents have supported me far more than necessary. My mother and step-father, Linda and Joseph A. Yenser, along with my grandparents, Louie and Simone, and my wife’s parents, Tibor and Sandra, and all my family especially my two brothers Darrin and Donny have been a bedrock of goodness and an ocean of love for me. I was both grateful and excited to receive the raven artwork from my stepfather, Joseph A. Yenser.

My friend John H. Armstrong, who spoke the six words that inspired this book, “I will not bind your conscience.”, has been a model of love and unity to me. My friend Ben Toh, a pastor in the Chicago West Loop area, has been a great sounding board, and a friend who is not afraid to disagree with me. Ben is truly a raven among ravens.

My friends in University Bible Fellowship (UBF), the community who exerted undue religious influence on my life and thus ironically shaped the narratives in this book, have hope to be redeemed into a healthy community when the stories of former members are narrated, processed and acted upon with love, grace and truth.

My friend Chris Z, who I once considered my enemy, has become my friend and has been a continual reality check for my thinking, as have all my encounters with former members of UBF.

My friend and author Andrew Martin was instrumental in shaping this book because of his book, “The Year the World Ended”. His journey parallels mine and he has become a good friend in the midst of much turmoil.

Our four children, Ruth, Anna, Noah and John have made my life rich, exciting and far more happy than I could ever have experienced myself. My life is filled with joy because of them.

My wife of 20 years, Mary, deserves much credit for this book, for it is she who is a writer, who has an English Literature PhD and who understands what I intend to say. Her endless love for me has made anything I do possible. Thank you and I love you.

Father, Forgive Them

The story of Jacob and Esau is a grand narrative of blessing, deception, hatred and division. And a narrative that occupies a large part of biblical text, not only in quantity of chapters but in importance of teaching. Apostle Paul’s symphonic text called Romans weaves the story of Jacob and Esau into a masterpiece. In my studies of Genesis, always the perspective of Jacob was presented. The thought occurred to me, however, to take a look at the perspective of Esau. Why would I do that? Esau is the patriarch of God’s enemies. Esau is an ungodly man. God hates Esau. All this is true, I admit. But Jesus said, “consider the ravens” in Luke 12:24. Look at the ravens. Who is more of a raven than Esau, the patriarch of God’s enemies and the Edomites, the community of God’s enemies? Is there something to be learned from Esau beyond “hate your enemy”?

What if God forgives his enemies?

Will God do this? Will God answer Jesus’ cross-originated prayer to forgive his enemies, God’s enemies? Could there be forgiveness beyond the judgment of God? How might the enemies of God find the forgiveness of God? As I searched the bible feverishly and prayed for answers to such questions, I didn’t find all the answers. But I did find someone who wrestled with these kinds of questions. And he wrestled with these questions in light of the Jacob and Esau narrative. His name was Paul the Apostle. In Romans chapter 9, he wrestles with such questions: What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath–prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory– even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? (Romans 9:22-24)

Who is this coming from Edom?

If the way for human beings to see Christ-likeness is forgiveness of enemies, how would we see any Christ-likeness in the God of Abraham if we don’t observe God forgiving the enemies of God? Could it be that the angry, sadistic-like God of the Old Testament “repented” on the cross? Might it be possible that people of faith are not to follow the God who kills enemies but the God who loves enemies?

I believe Isaiah saw just such a vision recorded in Isaiah 63:1-6.

Could we not see Isaiah’s vision with eyes of the cross? Now that we have the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we surely can see a glimpse of the world through Jesus’ eyes. Might we now see the love of God and the cosmic redemption story in Isaiah’s vision? In light of the cross, I see “their blood” as becoming the “blood of the lamb” and “anger” being transformed into “love and forgiveness”. Just as swords will be one day beaten into plowshares (Micah 4:3), might the wrath of God be changed into the love of God? Might we be changed from identifying and killing our enemies into forgiving and loving our enemies without condition on the basis of the cross of Jesus alone? Who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson? Who is this, robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of his strength? It is Jesus.

Matthew’s Purpose

This book was written to directly address one question: How does the bible applly to same-sex relationships? The book is dedicated to “To all those who have suffered in silence for so long.” The premise is clear from the first chapter: The bible cannot be set aside in the discussion about same-sex relationships, based on John 10:35.

Matthew’s Case

With brilliant calmness, Matthew synthesizes every debate, discussion and argument I’ve heard in regard to LGBT people. Matthew exposes and examines arguments from both sides, and shows how some of the arguments from each side fall short of the biblical mandate. Here is an overview of the case he makes.

Good fruit/bad fruit

The foundational argument made in this book is a sort of end-game. What is the fruit of how LGBT people have been treated? Is such fruit good or bad?

“First is the harmful impact on gay Christians. Based on Jesus’s teaching that good trees bear good fruit, we need to take a new look at the traditional interpretation of biblical passages that refer to same-sex behavior.” Loc. 998-1004

Historical Examples

Next Matthew takes us on a journey of some examples from history where long-standing, multi-century teachings of the Christian church have been wrong, and re-adjusted based on new discoveries. Matthew shows how each time, the authority of Scripture was not compromised by the new scientific discoveries, but rather, enhanced. Matthew cites recent history too, such as the 2013 closure and apology of the ex-gay ministry, Exodus International.

Celibacy as a gift

One of the contradictions expressed by the church has been to re-define celibacy from being a gift for some to a mandatory lifestyle choice for many in their attempt to “save marriage”. Matthew expounds on the gift of celibacy amazingly well, and shows proper, but not undue, respect for the gift of celibacy.

The traditional clobber verses

About half of the book is devoted to painstakingly examining the passages of Genesis 19, Leviticus, Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 1. Matthew does this with many questions, references to multiple interpretations and excellent logic– all without coming across as a bully. Nowhere does Matthew forcefully exhort the reader to adopt his logic. Instead, Matthew gently and methodically presents his case, inviting the reader to journey along side him.

“Of the thirteen references to Sodom in the Old Testament following Genesis 19, Ezekiel 16:49–50 offers the most detailed description of the city’s sins. In that passage, God stated, “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore, I did away with them as you have seen.” Sexuality goes unmentioned, both in the Ezekiel passage and in every other Old Testament reference to Sodom following Genesis 19. If Sodom’s sin had indeed been same-sex behavior, it’s highly unlikely that every written discussion of the city for centuries following its destruction would fail to mention that.” Loc. 1188-90

Matthew makes a real attempt to move the gay-Christian debate beyond the typical conundrum.

“Sad to say, though, that’s been the extent of many debates about the Bible and homosexuality in recent years. One side starts by quoting Leviticus 18:22 (or 20:13, which prescribes the death penalty for males who engage in same-sex relations), and the other side counters with verses about dietary laws and bans on certain combinations of clothing. We really do need to go deeper.” Loc. 1194-97

Brilliant Gospel Exposition

As with any book, I care deeply about how the gospel is presented. Matthew’s book shines brightly with the explicit gospel messages and was a joy to read.

“First, I’d like us to consider the reason why Christians don’t follow all the laws we see in the Old Testament, from its restrictions on food to its rules about clothing—and many more, including the death sentence for rebellious children. And then I’d like to look at the Old Testament prohibitions of male same-sex intercourse, as we seek to discern whether and why Christians should follow them today.” Loc. 1210-16

“Our freedom from the law, I should be clear, is about much more than one decision made by one church council nearly two thousand years ago. It is rooted in the saving, reconciling work of Jesus Christ. The New Testament teaches that Christ fulfilled the law. Colossians 2:13–14 says that God “forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” Christ’s death made it possible for us to be permanently reconciled to God. Before then, only temporary atonement was possible through the sacrifices of the Jewish priests. But as Hebrews 8:6 explains, “The ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises.” Loc. 1231-34

“I am far from the only gay Christian who has heard the claim that gay people will not inherit the kingdom of God. That message is plastered on protest signs at gay-pride parades. It’s shouted by roaming street preachers at busy intersections and on college campuses. The result is that, for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, all they’ve heard about the kingdom of God is that they won’t be in it.” Loc. 1955-58

Same-sex Marriage

Matthew concludes with a humble examination of marriage. He admits that since he is single and young, he has little to offer and cannot teach about marriage. But he shares some incredible insight nonetheless. Matthew continues to ask profoundly good questions, as he does throughout the book.

“Granted, the Bible’s silence on committed same-sex relationships doesn’t necessarily mean those relationships are blessed. Even if you agree with my analysis so far, you may still wonder: Can loving, committed same-sex unions fulfill the Bible’s understanding of marriage?” Loc. 1982-86

“Perhaps the dominant message about marriage in modern society is that it’s primarily about being happy, being in love, and being fulfilled. Nearly everyone desires these things, of course. But what happens to the marriage bond if one spouse stops feeling fulfilled? What if one partner falls out of love, or they both do? For many in our society, the answer seems obvious: The couple should seek a divorce. Why should two people who no longer love each other stay together? But that is not the Christian message. For Christians, marriage is not just about us. It’s also about Christ. If Christ had kept open the option to leave us behind when he grew frustrated with us or felt like we were not living up to his standards, he may have abandoned us long ago. But the story of the gospel is that, although we don’t deserve it, God lavishes his sacrificial love upon us anyway.” Loc. 2132-38

Conclusion: Hope and joy

This book left me with tremendous hope and joy, and also with a somber and deep commitment to be a straight, Christian ally to all LGBT people. The three concluding personal narratives are beyond amazing and simply must be read for yourself. I conclude with one of Matthew’s concluding statements.

“Tragically, I hear from many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians whose churches also are convinced that they cannot take an affirming approach to same-sex relationships while remaining faithful to Scripture. I wrote this book to show that there is a third way. The message of Scripture for gay Christians is not what non-affirming Christians assume it to be.” Loc. 2415

Are you free from legalism?

How to make the apostle Paul very angry. All Christians say that faith in Jesus and the gospel is all we need for life and salvation. But practically some Christians and churches communicate–explicitly or implicitly–that faith in Christ is not quite enough. In Paul’s day, Jewish Christians (the Judaizers) taught the Gentile Christians that in addition to believing in Christ they must keep Jewish traditions–circumcision, dietary laws, special days–in order to become “fully Christian.” This so outraged Paul that he did not express any pleasantries or thanksgiving after his introduction (Gal 1:1-5), as he did in his other 12 epistles. Instead he immediately launched into them (Gal 1:6ff) by directly confronting and accusing them of deserting Christ and distorting, changing and perverting the gospel (Gal 1:6b-7). To those who taught that additions to the gospel were needed (which is no gospel at all), Paul cursed them with God’s curse…twice in two verses (Gal 1:8-9). Boy was he mad!

A junior rebuking a senior publicly. Compared to Peter, Paul was a “junior” apostle. Yet, in that orderly structured hierarchical Jewish culture, Paul rebuked Peter publicly (not privately). Then he openly shared and circulated this embarrassing and shameful account in a letter to be read in all the churches (Gal 2:11-14). Today it is like sending out a mass email to everyone in the church! Imagine Peter, the rock of the church (Mt 16:18), committing such a basic sin and getting publicly rebuked by a junior! Peter’s sin was “deviating from the truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:14) when he withdrew from eating together with Gentile Christians. By his behavior he was saying that Jewish Christians were better than Gentile Christians because they kept the tradition of Jewish dietary laws. By making this distinction Peter communicated that the gospel of God’s grace was insufficient for salvation and good standing as a Christian. He was stating by his action that justification was not just by faith, but also by the works of the law (Gal 2:16).

For over 25 years, without realizing it, I added to the gospel whenever I taught the Bible. Basically, I added (strictly enforced!) all the activities of the church to the gospel: marrying by faith, no dating without permission, writing out answers to Bible study questions, preparing Bible study binders, writing testimonies, going fishing, feeding sheep 1:1, never ever missing any church meetings (don’t you dare!), always wearing a tie in church, addressing other Christians with titles, etc. None of these “additions” were necessarily bad or wrong. In fact, I thought I was a “cut-above” Christian, not a nominal Christian. But I inadvertently communicated that Christ alone or the gospel alone was insufficient and inadequate to be regarded as a good Christian. So today, I’m done writing testimonies along with being done with…

• fishing,
• going on campus,
• preparing Bible study binders,
• having 1:1 Bible studies,
• restricting dating among singles,
• teaching “marriage by faith,”
• giving “message training”,
• “training” people,
• attending “mandatory” church meetings,
• attending all Bible conferences,
• addressing fellow Christians with titles,
• “copying” messages and manuscripts, etc.

I’m not opposed to any of the above and would encourage some people to seriously consider them, if they are so inclined. But I am convinced that putting any undue emphasis or pressure to conform to any church practices and traditions would invariably teach what Paul calls “a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all” (Gal 1:6-7). To Paul, such “Bible teachers” should castrate or emasculate themselves (Gal 5:12). Worse yet, it invites an eternal curse from God (Gal 1:8-9).

Are you free from legalism? Or do you feel that something else is required from you in addition to your faith in the gospel?

There are countless good commentaries on Galatians. The books I have read and do not hesitate recommending are:

1. John R.W. Stott, The Message of Galatians: Only One Way, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1968).
2. Timothy Keller, Galatians For You, God’s Word For You (Epsom, Surrey, England: The Good Book Company, 2013).
3. Philip Graham Ryken, Galatians, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing Company, 2005).

The 9th Beatitude

The poverty was something I don’t think I ever got used to. There were dozens of people walking everywhere. The city was not zoned so every spot that was vacant was turned into a makeshift house. Electrical wiring hung precariously. The Philippines reminded me of that scene from Going to America; the city looked like 1980’s metro Africa. Nothing could have prepared me for the state of their bible house. Their bible house was essentially two half houses connected with a board and covered with an open roof. This meant no amount of air conditioning would cool this place. There were no washers or dryers. Coworkers slept on a sheet on the ground. I was shocked at this place, but what shocked me more was that everyone was happier than I have ever seen. It is true, “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” They would have seen redder roses than I would have seen, and greener grass- had there been any grass to see. All the areas that could have grass were just dirt. I was astonished at their attitude towards life. Most of the people there wore clothing that appeared to have been fashionable several years ago in America. It seemed cross training shoes were absent. Shoes there seemed to be a thin and most comparable to slippers. Despite it all I never once heard anyone complain.

More Fun

The tagline for tourism in the Philippines is the titular “It’s more fun in the Philippines.” The students there would use it sarcastically. When we arrived at the resort there was a man urinating on the side wall of the resort in board daylight with several people all walking around him. I was shocked and laughed at this, when someone said “It’s more fun in the Philippines.” A day later I was walking to my room and a lizard crawled up the wall besides me. I asked if this was normal and the girl said “It’s more fun in the Philippines.” The whole tone of the conference itself could be described in this way “It’s more fun in the Philippines.” Nothing was mandatory. The schedule was set but you could have done nothing and nobody would have mentioned it to you. Friday’s schedule included a message after breakfast, then bible study. After bible study was socialization for a few hours until lunch. After lunch was music practice and free time. After dinner there was dance night. Different groups preformed dances and skits. Some of these were Christian and others were not. I saw a traditional Filipino dance. Saturday’s schedule was dance cardio before breakfast, a message after breakfast, group bible study, socialization and free time until lunch, after lunch there was music practice until dinner, after dinner there was life testimony sharing and music. The two presiders could not in any culture be said to have taken their role seriously. They joked the whole time in introducing people and everyone loved them. When they said “God is good.” You could see them glowing. It was an abrupt change from anything I have ever seen in American UBF, and “It was very good.”

The purpose of Bible study

The bible studies were very different from my home chapter, or even the chapter of the second gen I started under. When I sat down with her to study the bible I was confused. I asked her where the questionnaire was. She said there was no questionnaire. I asked her what we were going to study. She asked me what I wanted to study. The bible study was very 1 to 1, in the sense that we were on equal grounds. Although the students there seemed shy and in some cases differential to me, in bible study they spoke confidently about the gospel that gave them life.

We jumped around the bible as I explained how Christian virtues are only virtues when held under unfavorable conditions. I said that Christ can be said to love us because he loved us when he had every reason not to. Because there was no questionnaire to steer the direction of the conversation the bible study felt more organic and more real. I was not constantly on guard against questions that desired answers out of context.

Another thing I learned from the bible study is that the Shepherdess was very unfamiliar with the Old Testament. This struck me as odd at first. Later that night I had a different student leading bible study question me about what John had meant when he called us “Children of God” in 1 John. I spoke with Dr. William Altobar regarding this. It seemed to me that unqualified students were leading bible studies. He said that “Bible studies are there to build relationships between students so they can experience God.” I realized from this that I had taken up unknowingly that the purpose of bible studies was to learn about God. But in the Philippines, it was to experience God. It is important to note, but hard to see that if we have any good about us it come from God, we are like mirrors reflecting his glory.

Students are led to Christ in the Philippines by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit though students facilitated God’s word. In some sense I wonder what is best. I think that traditional UBF chapters led by native Koreans use the bible study to pass on teaching of obedience and loyalty though bible study. Traditionally it seems American protestant bible study try to pass on knowledge of the scripture though bible study. But the bible studies with Hope seemed as though she wanted to testify about Christ. No matter what we started talking about the conversation would end talking about Christ and his work in her life. Sometimes it became irritating to me. I wanted to talk about theology and she wanted to talk about Christ. The correct choice seems obvious.

In part 3 I will discuss what I learned though the messages, and the success of UBF in the Philippines.

Look!

1. Is There No Other Way?
2. Why Have You Forsaken Me?
3. Where, O Death, Is Your Victory?
4. Why Do You Seek the Living among the Dead?
5. Do You Not Know These Things?

These probing questions drive to consider the mystery of Easter.

1. In anguish of soul and with sweat like drops of blood (Lk 22:44), Jesus asks that the cup of God’s wrath pass from him (Mt 26:42). Why does the Father remain silent?
2. How do we understand Jesus’ mysterious cry of dereliction from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46)
3. What does Paul mean by asking rhetorically, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55)
4. What do the angels mean when they ask the women at the tomb “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”? (Lk 24:5)
5. What might we know about epistemology (knowing), when the two travelers to Emmaus asked the risen Christ, “Do you not know these things?” (Lk 24:18)

Why did the Father say No to Jesus? Chap. 1 explains. It was not because of neglect or indifference or that God was a “divine deadbeat dad,” but so that he could say yes to us on legitimate grounds–no legal fiction, no injustice to threaten or question the exchange of our sin for Jesus’ righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). The Father had to say no to present Jesus as a “propitiation” or sacrifice of atonement (Rom 3:25). This saves sinners. But it also proves his justice–to demonstrate his righteousness for sins committed beforehand. Because the Father said no, we will forever–through faith in the Son–enjoy and share the glory of the Father and Son in the unending, timeless age to come.

How can the Father turn his face away from Jesus? Chap. 2 begins with the sacred creed of soldiers–Leave no man behind–in order to express the horror of God abandoning his Son to die on the cross (Mt 27:46). A theologian calls Jesus’ cry “one of the most impenetrable mysteries of the entire Gospel narratives.” Yet God records this mystery for us to consider. There are at least three ways Jesus experienced suffering from being abandoned: Social abandonment, emotional desertion, and spiritual separation. To be face-to-face with God the Father is the Bible’s idea of the highest possible blessing and happiness. Conversely, to have God turn his face away would be the worst condemnation. Jesus experienced the latter from the depth of his being. On the cross Jesus was cursed (Gal 3:13), made sin for us (2 Cor 5:21) and “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet 2:24). In the unspeakable terror and agony of being abandoned by the Father, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34) Calvin said that in his soul, Jesus endured the punishments due to us. But because Jesus was abandoned socially, we become children in the household of God. Because he was deserted emotionally, we become whole again–renewed in the image of God. Because he suffered spiritual separation, we are now spiritually united to him through faith, never to be separated from God’s love. Because he was forsaken, we are forgiven.

How can we truly know what we know? Chap. 5 explains epistemology–a fancy word for any theory of how we know things. Everyone has their own theory of what they know. We say, “I just know it’s true” (subjective feeling), “It’s a proven scientific fact” (confidence in observable facts), “Let’s be reasonable” (insisting on rules of logic), or “I know because someone told me,” which is an epistemological claim based on knowing things by someone else’s testimony. But is there a way of knowing that is more reliable than feeling, facts, emotion, perception, science and testimony.

One way to know what we know. Luke 24 shows three insufficient ways and one infallible way of knowing the truth about Jesus and the resurrection. The three insufficient ways are physical senses alone, facts alone (even if they are firsthand eyewitness testimonies) and Bible study alone (surprise!). In contrast, the one infallible way of knowing the truth about who Jesus is and the power of his resurrection is that we must have our eyes opened by God (Lk 24:31, 16; Mt 11:25-27; 13:10-11; 16:17).

I recommend this book for being fresh, experiential and practical. Please do share other views of the atonement.

(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 literal meaning of decadent is “a state of decline or decay.” It seems to me that, if we strip away all the mental baggage of hedonism and go back to that simple definition, then it’s accurate to say that American evangelicalism is a decadent culture.

One of the books we have been reading lately is The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything by Fred Sanders. Sanders claims that American evangelicalism is in a state of malaise because it has largely forgotten its Trinitarian roots. After a few generations of distilling the glorious and incomprehensible gospel of cosmic redemption to a revivalist sales pitch about what individuals must do to be saved, evangelical church leaders and members can no longer see how the pieces of the Christian-faith puzzle fit together.

Sanders writes:

All cultures and subcultures move through stages, and evangelicalism is, among other things, a distinct subculture of Christianity. In cultural terms, a classical period is a time when all the parts of a community’s life seem to hang together, mutually reinforce each other, and make intuitive sense. By contrast, a decadent period is marked by dissolution of all the most important unities, a sense that whatever initial force gave impetus and meaningful form to the culture has pretty much spent its power. Decadence is a falling off, a falling apart from a previous unity.

 

Inhabitants of a decadent culture feel themselves to be living among the scraps and fragments of something that must have made sense to a previous generation but which now seem more like a pile of unrelated items. Decadent cultures feel unable to articulate the reasons for connecting things to each other. They spend a lot of time staring at isolated fragments, unable to combine them into meaningful wholes. They start all their important speeches by quoting Yeats’s overused line, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Decadents either fetishize their tribal and party distinctions or mix absolutely everything together in one sloppy combination. Not everybody in a decadent culture even feels a need to work toward articulating unities, but those who do make the attempt face a baffling challenge. At best, the experience is somewhat like working a jigsaw puzzle without the guidance of the finished image from the box top; at worst, it is like undertaking that task while fighting back the slow horror of realization that what you have in front of you are pieces that come from several different puzzles, none of them complete or related. Evangelicalism in our lifetime seems to be in a decadent period. In some sectors of the evangelical subculture, there is not even a living cultural memory of a classical period or golden age; what we experience is decadence all the way back.

Under conditions of decadence, two types of reaction typically occur. Conservative temperaments tend to grab up all the fragments and insist on keeping them as they were found. They may be totally inert lumps that nobody knows how to make use of, but the conservative will faithfully preserve them as museum pieces. Liberal temperaments, on the other hand, tend to toss the fragments aside as rapidly as they stop proving useful. Imagine a conservative and a liberal in some future dark age, pondering an antique internal combustion engine that either can operate but neither could build. Bolted to the side of the engine is an inscrutable gadget that is not clearly adding anything to the function of the vehicle. The liberal would reason that since it cannot be shown to do anything for the motor’s function, it should be removed and discarded. The conservative would reason that since it cannot be shown to do anything, it must remain precisely where it is forever. Perhaps if we knew what it did, it could be removed, but as long as we do not understand it, it stays. Whatever the merits of their temperaments (and neither can be right in this case), under the condition of decadence liberals become streamliners and conservatives become pack rats. Evangelicals have long tended toward the pack rat temperament, even though there are some signs that we may currently be exchanging that temperament for its relatively less happy alternative. What it leaves us with is an impressive stock of soteriological bric-a-brac that we don’t know what to do with or how it originally went together.The inability to grasp the wholeness of salvation is actually one of the primary manifestations of our decadent theological culture.

 

Is Christian salvation forgiveness, a personal relationship with Jesus, power for moral transformation, or going to heaven? It is all of those and more, but a true account of the thing itself will have to start with the living whole if we ever hope to make sense of the parts. Just think how tricky it is to combine free forgiveness and moral transformation in an organic way if what you are starting with is the individual parts. A dreary back-and-forth between cheap grace and works-righteousness is one of the bedeviling distractions of evangelical experience under the conditions of decadence.

In my days of youthful arrogance, I used to imagine, “Yeah, those American churches are in a state of decline. But UBF has really got it together.” Does anyone out there still believe that? Seriously?

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/2014/01/01/francis-chans-anointed-sermon/ http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/01/01/francis-chans-anointed-sermon/#comments Wed, 01 Jan 2014 19:06:32 +0000 http://www.ubfriends.org/?p=7361 Francis Chan preached in Kansas City at the One Thing 2013 IHOP conference on Dec 30, 2013. A friend who attended sent me the link to Chan’s sermon. I was moved to tears by Chan’s passion. This is my recollection and my brief reflections of his sermon after watching it once.

Gospel. Chan presented the gospel clearly and passionately by explaining God, Sin, Redemption and Consummation. He presented a God who is holy such that if we saw him in his holiness we would die. He explained how sin distorts, disfigures and destroys us. He expressed how through Christ God loves us in spite of our rebellion against him. He expressed our glorious hope of one day being in the presence of God. I learned that I must always present the gospel clearly, passionately and meaningfully in every sermon and Bible study.

Bible. Chan earnestly pleaded with the audience to read the Bible. He said that if we just read the Bible for 10 min a day, we could read the entire Bible in a year at the normal reading speed. I was so moved by his plea that I woke up at 4 am and read 22 chapters of the Bible today on Jan 1, 2014 (Hosea, Joel, and half of Amos)!

Believing lies. Chan read 2 Tim 4:1-4 and said that our sin causes us to listen to and believe lies (2 Tim 4:3-4). He told the story an old prophet lying to a younger prophet and caused him to be killed by a lion (1 Ki 13:15-24). Then he told the story of how 400 false prophets all lied, while only Micaiah told the truth as a prophet of the Lord (1 Ki 22:6-9, 15-23). Chan said that our own desires to sin causes us to disobey God by committing immoral acts, engaging in premarital sex, marrying uncommitted Christians and justifying divorce. I was moved by Chan telling stories from the Bible in such a real, contemporary, contextualized and applicable way.

Loving Jesus or loving revival. Chan shared how much he wanted to see a revival. He witnessed to others frequently but people were rejecting the gospel. He prayed fervently that God would rain down fire from heaven to move the hearts of people, just as Elijah prayed and God consumed his offering before 400 prophets of Baal (1 Ki 18:36-39; Jas 5:17-18). He agonized why God does not do the same when he preaches–just as God did with Elijah. His answer from God was that Elijah was about to be killed by 400 godless prophets, while he is preaching at a Christian conference! He repented that he wanted a revival more than he wanted Jesus. Though on a miniscule scale I cannot but confess and repent how much I want to see results from my preaching and teaching more than I want to simply see and delight in and know Jesus (Phil 3:10).

Reputation. Finally, Chan read Rev 3:1. He shared how much we Christians live based on our reputation, rather than based on the truth of who we are. He asked what our 10 best friends and family would say about our faith, our prayer, our purity and the authenticity of our Christian lives. Next, what would God say about our prayer life and our purity. He asked if we are more concerned about our reputation and about what people think of us, or about what God really thinks of us. This is the clincher. Do I care more about what people think of me, or about what God thinks of me?

May God bless you to watch this sermon–which will help you check your own heart–and share your reflections as you begin 2014.

“ 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.)

Why do UBF members often feel so burdened?

I have been examining my time in ubf for several years now, including time while I was a ubf Director. I have identified 8 layers of burden that are stacked onto you in ubf as the years go by. These burdens add up. The picture to the right is my visualization of the layers. My recovery from the ubf system has taken me through each of these layers. I had to navigate my way through each layer without losing my faith in Jesus and my hope in God.

What does UBF look like for a member?

When you are on the bottom of the stack, looking up, you first see your own personal challenges. You do this because the ubf system is an “incurvatus in se” set of beliefs and practices. Your problems are always in front of you weekly and daily. You may sense the other layers and you certainly feel their weight, but you never quite see them clearly. Note that the Confucian values layer is hidden from sight.

Why do some observers see a Korean Christian organization?

From the outside however, looking in, people typically see just some combination of Evangelical Christianity, Bible study and Korean culture. They can’t usually see the other layers, but often can sense the layers are there. It is easy then to attribute any “oddities” in ubf as part of the Korean culture. Korean culture might seem to be a major influence but in reality it is just a thin layer. The thick layers of ubf behavior and ideology are hidden from view until one digs deeper.

Thoughts, questions, reactions?

This article is intentionally brief. Thinking through these things has helped my recovery immensely. I am now set free through the grace of Jesus found at the cross and the living hope found at the empty tomb. The burden is gone. The gospel Jesus preached has liberated me from this system. I would love to hear your honest thoughts and questions.

The Summit

The summit was, in simplistic terms, 16 hours of sitting and listening to 13 speakers. My wife and I attended (for the first time) from our church in Detroit, which is a satellite host for the summit. However, I can’t remember even 1 minute of boredom or of wanting to fall asleep or of wishing I was somewhere else. I soaked up every speaker like a sponge. The summit was exactly where God wanted me to be for those two days.

In addition to the highlighted speakers, there were several others who made appearances in between. Comedian Michael Jr.  shared some of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard. He might just be the funniest man on planet earth right now. David Garibaldi shared an amazing painting experience, preaching the gospel with no words.  William Close played the “earth harp”, an astounding instrument set up inside the Willow Creek auditorium.

The nature of the leadership talks seemed to me to blend academia, business and religious backgrounds, with the explicit Christian gospel themes woven through each one. The official summit link is here: http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/schedule.asp

It is difficult for me to express my “take-away’s” from this summit. Breathtaking. Exhilarating. Amazing. Astounding. Life-changing. Christ-centering. It will take some time to process, and I plan on ordering the DVD’s.

The Speakers

Bill Hybels. Founder and senior pastor, Willow Creek Community Church. Bill’s church has 24,000 weekly attendees. His opening talk set the tone for the summit. I was surprised by one of his opening statements: “This leadership summit will be unashamedly Christian. We will pray. We will quote from the bible. And we will sing. But this summit is not for Christians only. We welcome anyone of any faith and anyone who has not made faith part of their life story yet.” I had not expected this. And since Willow Creek has more than 24,000 weekly worshippers, I was surprised to hear Bill talk about how the leadership team overcame a time of being a toxic environment in recent years. Bill’s team reached out to an external party to gauge how they were doing. The external survey showed they scored in the toxic range of organizational health. So he sounded the alarm and they made the tough decisions to get back on track. This year they scored a rare high-mark in organization health. I learned that leaders have to sometimes say goodbye to other leaders in order to make the organization healthy. And leaders must define the core values of their organization.

General Colin Powell. Speech title: “It worked for me.” Former U.S. Secretary of State, senior level advisor to four Presidents, served U.S. Army for 35 years. Colin was surprisingly human and open. I expected an army general to be stiff and cold. He is nothing like that. One story he told was how he once complained a long time to President Reagan. Reagan said nothing until Colin was finished. Finally Reagan said “Look there’s a squirrel outside the window!”. Later Reagan taught him the lesson. You can sit there and tell me all day about your problem, but until I have a problem, don’t get me involved. I hired you to do a job. Now go solve your problem and let me know when I have a problem.”

Patrick Lencioni. Speech title: “How to lose your best people.” Founder and President of The Table Group, best-selling author. Patrick shared a high-energy, hilarious talk about a serious subject. He noticed over the years that people left jobs and churches for one or more of three primary reasons, regardless of culture: irrelevance, immeasurement or anonymity. He admitted that “immeasurement” is not a word. But it fits what he called a lack of feedback or sometimes improper feedback. People want to know how they are doing, and be able to tell for themselves. Human beings don’t want to wait around for “how their boss feels” or wait for the numbers to come in. Human beings want the gratification of knowing they did a good job. In other words, people are looking for fulfillment. And leaders want to know right away if they failed. He told of how leaders who are afraid of failure or think failure is not an option are bad leaders. For example, several successful companies actually measure how many times you fail, as a measurement for success. If you are not failing enough, you aren’t learning how to succeed. Some venture capitalists won’t fund you unless you failed at least 3 times for at least $1 million.

Liz Wiseman. Speech title: “The Multiplier Effect”. President of the Wiseman Group, best-selling author. Liz’ talk was not flashy but was perhaps the most thought-provoking. She shared with compassion and a genuine love for humanity. She talked about leaders who are multipliers and leaders who are diminishers. A diminisher is someone who gets very little effort or talent out of people around them. They are the empire builders, the tyrants, the know-it-alls, the decision makers and the micro managers. A multiplier gets double and triple effort and talent. They are the talent magnets, the liberators, the challengers, the debate-makers and the investors. Diminishers will kill off their organizations while multipliers will always eventually find their way to success.

Chris Brown. Speech title: “Right title…wrong kingdom”. Co-Senior Pastor and Teaching Pastor at North Coast Church. This was tied for my favorite talk of the conference (Andy Stanley’s being the other one). Really, Chris Brown gave a sermon, not a talk or a speech. I cried the most during his sermon because he spoke so powerfully and every word he spoke rang so true. Based on Mark 10:42-25, he obliterated the Moses or Elijah style leadership models. Jesus said “Not so with you”. Jesus turned leadership upside-down. If you model Moses, you model the world’s way of leading now that Jesus has demonstrated His style of leadership. Even a Pharaoh who didn’t know the Lord knew Jesus’ style of leadership (in dealing with Joseph) better than Saul, the anointed king of Israel. You just have to listen to this one.

Bob Goff. Speech title: “Love Takes Action”. Founder and CEO of Restore International, attorney. Bob Goff gets the prize for the most energetic and fanatical speech! He told humorous stories about his life on an island (yes he lives on an island). And he also spoke with passion and compassion about one of the most heart-wrenching events I’ve ever heard in a long while. He was the attorney for Charlie, the child attacked by the infamous Koby. Bob told of amazing acts of kindness, as well as unimaginable forgiveness. Bob’s point is that “love does stuff”. Love demands action. Love requires us to get involved in the terrible evils of the world. His talk was similar to an earlier talk he gave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo1jHeIn3TE

Mark Burnett. Speech title: “Unscripted Leadership”. Four-time Emmy Award winner, Executive Producer of Survivor, The Voice and The Bible TV shows. Mark’s time was not a speech but an interview with Bill Hybels. I enjoyed the dialogue-style speaking between them. This style was used several times during the Summit. Mark talked about how he courageously took his fame and fortune and poured it into the Bible series project recently.

Joseph Grenny. Speech title: “Mastering the skill of influence”. Co-founder of VitalSmarts, best-selling business author. Joseph gave a detailed talk about influence, one of the key abilities leaders need to understand. He talked about how leaders tend to focus on motivating people instead of influencing them. Motivating is important, but teaching skills is the primary influencer. He used God’s preparing of Moses in the palace and God’s preparing of Joshua learning from Moses as examples that God’s ways are about teaching skills first and then motivating people at the right time. Joseph taught from both a “heavy” example of behavior change involving changing the behavior of third-world prostitution and a “light” example of influencing the behavior of traffic laws. One amazing example he gave was about a traffic law enacted in some state in the U.S. A lot of people ignored the law until the officials posted a sign that said “Report violators, call 1-800-be-a-hero” (or something to that effect). The point was when people know other people are watching them, their behavior is influenced.

Vijay Govindarahan (“VG”). Speech title: “The Innovation Challenge: Getting it right”. Top 50 Management Thinker, Professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. Vijay gets the top award for the most complex talk. He talked a lot about ways leaders can sustain an organization. He used a “three box” model. He taught that leaders need to manage the present, selectively abandon the past, and create the future.  He talked about how organizational leaders must create separate (but loosely connected) team that plays by different rules than the “box 1” (or performance engine) part of the organization. Leaders need to create innovation teams. Leaders and organizations must re-invent themselves regularly in order to stay alive.

Dr. Brene Brown. Speech title: “Daring Greatly”. Research Professor at University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Brene is a ground-breaking researcher into the topics of shame, worthiness and courage. She talked about how she once was invited to speek to a group of C-Level people. At first she was comfortable with this because she thought the term was “sea-level” people, meaning ordinary, down-to-earth people. She shared how she overcame fear when she realized “C” actually meant CEO, CIO, CTO, etc. She shared how leaders are human, how vulnerability is essential for any leader and how courage is so needed among leaders. She had a life-changing moment after reading the famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt about daring greatly.

Oscar Muriu. Speech title: “Viral Leadership: Multiplying your impact exponentially”. Senior Pastor of Nairobi Chapel, Kenya. Under his leadership, Nairobi Chapel grew from a 40 person local church to a network of 30 churches with 14,000 weekly worshippers. Oscar shared based on 5 life-changing principles. They sounded very familiar to me and were based on the command to “go into all the world and preach the good news.” He talked of sending African missionaries to all parts of the world, including America and Asia. He told the story of how he would pray for leaders without telling them he was praying for them to be leaders. One by one, people would come to him saying “I feel compelled to be a missionary”. He told of one couple who asked if they could devote the next 25 years of their life to being a Christian missionary in Oscar’s church network. He talked of how their missionaries train for 1 or 2 years. They stay in a country for 5 years to plant a church and then leave to plant another church, following Apostle Paul’s example.

Dr. Henry Cloud. Speech  title: “Reversing the Death Spiral of a Leader”. Acclaimed leadership expert, best-selling author, Clinical Psychologist and Businessman.  Dr. Cloud has experience in executive coaching of CEO’s. He has been a frequent contributor to CNN and Fox News Channel. Once Henry asked a CEO about culture problems in a company. As the CEO mentioned reason after reason about why the problems existed, Henry kept asking “Why?”. Finally the CEO concluded that he was in charge of the problems, whether he created them or not. Here are some quotes from Dr. Cloud: “In the end, as a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: What you create and what you allow”. Leaders are “ridiculously in charge” according to Dr. Cloud, and so they are prone to being burned out and depressed. He talked about examples from Wall Street when the financial markets crashed around 2008. He talked about why the culture of an organization exists the way it is. He says it is because of the way the leaders behave. Dr.Cloud gave some behavior research examples, which I think made the audience a bit uncomfortable, because the research was from many years ago when animals were used. One example was of a monkey alone in a cage subjected to lights and sounds meant to induce stress. The monkey’s stress level was very high when he was alone. But when a second, familiar monkey was in the cage with him, their stress decreased by 50%. Dr.Clouds’ point was that people need a friend to get out of the downward spiral. He talked about principles to get out of the death spiral.

Andy Stanley. Speech title: [Andy gave a closing sermon just entitled “closing session”]. Founder and Senior Pastor at North Point Ministries. Andy pastors one of the largest churches in America, with over 33,000 worshippers each Sunday in his network of church campuses in the Atlanta area. Andy’s sermon was based on Matthew 16:18 “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” It was a sermon of sermons, a sermon so inspiring that I believe he just re-ignited Christianity in North America.

• Can certain aspects of the “gospel of mission” be good? Why or why not?
• How has the “gospel of mission” influenced your Christian walk? Your church?

Instead they are taught that “the disciples of Jesus are not born they are made through training by UBF shepherds” (and they are destined to be UBF shepherds all their lives and be forever thankful to their UBF missionaries even in the life everlasting). The young Christians are not encouraged to learn the will of God and to follow that will, to actually have Jesus as Lord. They are encouraged to obey or even to “just obey” their UBF shepherds “by faith” in hope that this way they will “grow spiritually” and become mature Christians, “good disciples” of Jesus and even the Green Berets of Christianity.

 So while in UBF any member can hear about “Jesus is our Lord” but can he/she experience that and understand what it actually means and live up to it without hindrance? Often the so called “former UBF members” testify that they could hear the voice of the Lord without any hindrance only after they obtained freedom from the many human (authority) voices of UBF missionaries and the very “busy” life in UBF activities. Often it is only then he/she makes the first step to being obedient to the Lord.

They say that an interpreter is good when nobody notice he is there. (The translation comes smoothly and nice). The interpreter is bad when he makes mistakes and/or makes everybody notice him. The Bible teaches us that the same is with God’s servants (pastors/shepherds/angels, etc). True servants of God serve the Lord. They make themselves unnoticeable to people, they never rob the Lord of His lordship and power and glory, they are very meek and humble and fearing the Lord. They just serve the Lord and do their best to bring people to the Lord and they speak the word of God, not their own inventions. They don’t want praise and worship, they want people praise and worship the Lord only. They are like good interpreters. But there are also bad interpreters and bad “servants of God” who actually are the servants of the Devil. The servants of the Devil want praise and worship from people and continually rob the Lord of his lordship and power and glory.

Let’s take some biblical examples. Once Peter the apostle came to a Roman officer Cornelius. “And as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him, and fell down at his feet, and worshipped him. But Peter took him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also am a man” (Acts 10:25,26). Another similar event is described in Revelation 19:10. “And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”. On the other side, the Devil said to Jesus, “All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine” (Lk.4:6,7).

Augustine wrote much on what is the difference between the servants of God and the servants of Devil, between the prophets and the false prophets, between the true angels of God and evil spirits. And he calls this attitude toward praise and worship the main difference by which we are able to know who is before us. So it doesn’t matter how “the servants” call themselves. What matters is how they serve the Lord.

Who is your Lord? Whom are you personally serving? Have you ever been deceived by a false “servant of God” in your life? Have you heard mostly what a servant of God would say or a servant of the Devil? Whom are you thankful for your salvation and the new life?

Evidence of Godly Sorrow

I seek evidence of godly sorrow. And yes, I have sought this in myself for many years. Here is part 1 of a 3-part series in which I present some thoughts on this sermon from the Prince of Preachers. Spurgeon has done much to correct my highly flawed theology, and this sermon in particular fills a gaping hole in the fabric of my mind.

Scripture

I highly recommend reading the Scripture text first: 2 Corinthians 7:5-13.

Spurgeon’s Introduction

Many years ago, and indeed in some measure to a later date, preachers of the Word seemed mainly to dwell upon the inner experience of men. They both preached sermons and wrote books in which they set forth the condition of convinced sinners, describing what they usually felt before they found peace with God. They were very strict in their search for the genuine tokens of true repentance, and the internal evidences of regeneration. They preached continually upon the work of the Spirit of God in convincing sinners of their lost condition; but they were not accustomed to say to them so baldly and so boldly as we do now, “Believe, and live;” and the consequence was, that a large number of truly awakened persons were kept in bondage, and did not come into the liberty wherewith Christ makes believers free, – at least, not so soon as they do nowadays. I believe that, under God’s blessing, those experimental preachers were the means of producing very sturdy Christians. They did a great deal of deep plowing, with a very sharp plowshare, before they began to sow the good seed of the kingdom. They took care to use the pointed needle of the law to make a way for the silken thread of the gospel, so that what they did sew was well sewn, and the garments which they made did not rend and tear quite so easily as much of the spiritual raiment does which is made in these days of more showy, but less substantial, labor.

Still, there was this defect about that style of preaching, it led men to look too much within instead of looking away from self to Christ. No matter how faithfully they proclaimed the grace of God, they preached some sort of preparation for the reception of that grace; and, therefore, sinners often looked to themselves to see whether they had that preparation rather than to the grace which it was most desirable that they should seek. I believe you may say so much about the disease of sin that, instead of leading the sinner in despair to turn his gaze to Christ, as the bitten Israelites looked to the brazen serpent as the only remedy, – you may merely make him sit down, and study the disease, and look, and look, and look again for the various symptoms you have described; and though he will be well acquainted with the disease, he will not in that way find a cure for it. You may dive as far as you like into the sea, but you will not find any fire there; you may rake as long as you please in the burning fiery furnace, but you will never reach any cooling blocks of ice; you may hunt, for many a day, in the human heart’s natural death, but you will not there discover any signs of life; and, within the charnel-house of man’s corruption, you shall never be able to discern any remedy for a sin-sick soul. It was in that particular that the experimental preaching lacked an important element.

But, now, times have changed, and very many of us, who are ministers of the gospel, do very plainly proclaim to sinners the message, “Believe, and live.” This plain declaration rings out from almost every part of our land, – not yet quite in every place, I would that it were so; but, still, there is a large company of Evangelical preachers continually repeating the apostolic message, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” I am sure that much good must result from this proclamation of the truth, for this is God’s ordained way of blessing the souls of men; and yet, – and yet, – I sometimes fear lest there should be all sowing and no plowing; – lest there should be the preaching only of the remedy, with almost an entire ignoring of the disease; – and lest the message “Believe, and live,” should take the place of that other great truth, “Ye must be born again.” It will never do for men to be led to think that they are healed before they know that they are sick unto death, or to imagine that they are clothed before they see themselves to be naked, or to be taught to trust Christ before they are aware that they have anything for which they have need to trust him. It would be a happy circumstance if, in our preaching, we could have a blending of these two elements, so that we could have somewhat of our forefathers’ deep experimental teaching, and with it, and growing out of it, a plain, unfettered delivery of the gospel declaration, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

“How are the two things to be reconciled?” someone asks. My dear brother, I have long ago given up trying to reconcile friends who never fell out. These two truths are both taught in Scripture, and therefore they cannot be at variance with one another. You would be as much puzzled to prove where they differ as I should be to show that they agree. I am confident that they do agree, because I find them both in the Book. Therefore, let them both be preached. Somehow, we are constantly coming across truths that lie side by side, like the metals on which the railway carriages run. If we only preach one of them, it will be like trying to run the train on a single rail. You know that there are often two truths, if not three, closely connected with one another. I am frequently led to see that there is a trinity of truths as there is a Trinity in the Godhead; and if they are all preached, in due proportion, they will balance one another, and prevent any one truth from being too prominent. Luther, with his free justification, by faith, is apt to go too far unless there shall come in Calvin and Zwingle, with their balancing truths, to set him right. Even Paul’s inspired words might have been the means of leading some men astray unless James had also been inspired to write on the practical side of truth so that Paul’s meaning should be the better understood. There is nothing wrong in the teaching of either Paul or James; they are both right, the two together bring out both aspects of truth.

(Source: Godly Sorrow and Sorrow, a sermon by Charles H. Spurgeon delivered on 9/9/1900)

1. Godly sorrow is not fear-driven. A certain amount of fear is healthy for us. But fear does not produce godly sorrow. In fact, the opposite is true: godly sorrow produces fear. Spurgeon speaks well to this in his first point: “Many are sorry for sin because of its temporal consequences; and many more because of its eternal consequences. They are afraid of hell. If there were no hell, they would like to continue to live in sin. They would be delighted if it could be proved that there is no God. Nothing would please them better than to have the law of the Lord and all its penal consequences abolished. They are as fond of sin as ever they were, but they sorrow because they see that it is bringing them down to the gulf of perdition. Now, that kind of sorrow is not repentance. A moth may burn its wings in the candle, and then, full of pain, fly back to the flame. There is no repentance in the moth, though there is pain; and so, there is no repentance in some men, though there is in them a measure of sorrow on account of their sin. Do not, therefore, make a mistake in this matter, and think that sorrow for sin is, or even necessarily leads to, repentance.”

2. Godly sorrow is not void of human sorrow. Repentance does indeed mean simply “a change of mind”. But what a total, complete change of mind! Godly sorrow is not the opposite of human sorrow and certainly not the absence of emotion. Here again Spurgeon shines: “Here is a man who says, “I repent.” But are you really sorry that you sinned? “No,” he replies. Then, my dear sir, you cannot have truly repented; for a man, who has not got even so far as repentance, is often sorry for having done wrong. When a man is convinced that he has transgressed against God he ought to be sorry; and if you tell me that there can be such a thing as Spiritual repentance, and yet no sorrow for having broken the law of God, I tell you that you do not know what you are talking about.”

3. Godly sorrow is not self-loathing. Some take godly sorrow too far, saying we must see ourselves the “worst of sinners”. But is this what God intended for his “new wine” creations? A realistic review of history, filled with tyrants and mass killers should quickly enlighten us that we are not the worst of sinners. Spurgeon corrects this thinking well: “There are some persons who seem to think that we must reach a certain point of wretchedness, or else we are not truly penitent. They imagine that we must grieve up to a certain point of temperature, or we cannot be saved; and they watch the convicted sinner to see when he gets near to what they consider to be a sufficient measure of brokenness of heart….   ….I will not waste time by dwelling upon it, because it is altogether a baseless supposition. We admit that many, who come to Christ, have passed through very great terror and agony before doing so; but a large part of their suffering was the work of the devil, and not the work of the Spirit of God at all. A great part of it might have been spared if they had not been so ignorant, and a still larger part of it they might never have suffered if they had heard the gospel preached with greater simplicity, and had not been muddled and handled so roughly by some who put their own experience into the place of the Savior After all, we are not saved by any feelings or alarms that we may have.”

4. Godly sorrow is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Some may get the meaning of godly sorrow, but err on the side of experience, claiming you only experience godly sorrow once. Scripture upon Scripture, and life itself, should readily expose the fallacy of this thinking. Spurgeon dismissed this idea: “Then, again, there is another mistake made by many, – that this sorrow for sin only happens once, – as a sort of squall, or a hurricane, or thunderstorm, that breaks over a man once, and then he is converted, and he talks about that experience all the rest of his life, but he has nothing more to do with it. Why, dear friends, there is nothing more erroneous than that.”

5. Godly sorrow is not a miserable feeling. When we hear the word sorrow, we are often turned off immediately. Is it more godly to walk around with a sour face all the time? Spurgeon corrects this too: “I want also to correct another mistake, namely, that sorrow for sin is a miserable feeling. The moment the word “sorrow” is mentioned, many people suppose that it must necessarily be grief of a bitter kind. Ah! but there is a sweet sorrow, a healthy sorrow. In honey, there is a sweetness that cloys after awhile. We may eat too much of it, and make ourselves ill; but in repentance there is a bitter sweetness, or a sweet bitterness, – which shall I call it? – of which, the more you have, the better it is for you.”

Spurgeon’s Questions

In this first part, I leave you with Spurgeon’s own questions which convict and pierce the soul:

“What have you been doing that is wrong, brother? Are the consolations of God small with thee? Is there any secret sin that is keeping thee sad and sorrowful? Shall I help you to find out the source of the evil? Have you been neglecting the reading of the Word? Have you been lax in private prayer of late? Have you been getting covetous? As you have grown richer, have you grown tighter in the fist? Have you been getting more worldly? Do you speak less about Christ than you used to do, and more about vanity? Have you been mixing up in bad company? Have you been entangled by a so-called friend who is no help to you, but who really hinders you greatly in spiritual things? Have you been forming some associations that you know Christ does not approve of? Have you been letting things go a little amiss in your business, – only a little amiss?”

I have added my concerns to the list. Let’s do a reset and try to stay on target this time. What do you think about these concerns? Why or why not are they valid? Why and how will you do things differently in order to prevent the concerns Ben raises?

1. UBF’s glory may be overstated and overemphasized again.
2. Human elements may influence the environment such as pride and competition.
3. The prayer topic for bringing 3,500 people may be burdensome.
4. Mandatory attendance may invade people’s boundaries in an unhealthy manner.
5. The theme and emphasis of every UBF conference is predictably the same: mission.
6. The UBF conference schedule is too hectic for any actual rest.
7. The quality and cost ratio may be out of balance.
8. Conference workers work like slaves and are not appreciated but taken for granted.
9. The message content skips John 17 and may not express the gospel clearly.
10. The conference neglects families by telling families to avoid family registration.
11. All participants will be asked to take the “UBF missionary pledge”.

In what I believe was an answer to this prayer, God led me to 1:1 Bible study in UBF. My Bible teacher helped me to confront my sin in repentance and receive forgiveness. I entered a very in-depth program of Bible study, testimony writing, evangelism, outreach, prayer, attending meetings, and so on. It kept me busy so that I had no time to sin. Testimony writing gave me opportunities to examine myself and see where I had sinned.

Bible teachers trained me in various ways to help me grow. When I exhibited pride, I was given the name “Humble.” When I struggled with lust, I was given a purity ring and encouraged to wear it as a reminder to be pure. These things are not bad necessarily, but the result was bad: I began to assess my spiritual condition according to how well-managed my sin was. Once I was told that my connection to God is like a pipe through which His love flows, and sin blocks up the pipe. I became so preoccupied with unblocking the pipe, I never stopped to realize that there was no water flowing through it anyway.

Nowadays, the Holy Spirit is leading me to realize that my Christian life is more than just overcoming my brokenness. It is about Jesus, who bore my brokenness on the cross and rose again to set me free to love him and others. All the training, repentance testimonies, and self-inspection couldn’t bring real freedom. It could only manage my sin—ensuring it didn’t get out of control. But Jesus, beautiful Jesus, and His precious holy blood transfuses my heart with a rich and eternal flow that emancipates, enlivens, empowers, enriches, and establishes me secure in His love forever! (That alliteration is for you, Ben!)

How about you? Has your focus been on managing sin or receiving real freedom in Jesus to love God and others?

In Christ alone we live and move. He alone is our Head. We are the Body. The parts of the body have different function but shared value. The Holy Spirit guides and grows. Fruit of the Spirit blesses and enables. God the Father alone is worthy to be praised. He alone may be worshiped and glorified. To do otherwise is to our own detriment.

The father of the prodigal son is an exact representation of God. We proudly demand our inheritance early and squander it quickly on wild living. But God loves us more than money, so he not only accepts us back, he welcomes us. All we have to do is come to our senses and return to God.

We are not (and never were) worthy of God’s forgiving love; however, God is full of loving concern. When he sees us, he runs to hug us. He robes us and declares a feast to celebrate our return. We were led astray by the enemy, but then rescued by God. The older brother doesn’t understand the father’s love.

The enemy is sin, especially self-righteousness. The prodigal son sought pleasure, possessions, and especially position in a faraway place.

God planted a vineyard and let us cultivate it. But we want to own the vineyard and use it for our own purpose/benefit. We are not worthy/able to rightfully manage anything without God’s help. Servants/prophets come to collect God’s fruit, but we abuse/kill them. God sends his son thinking surely we will respect him. However, we do not, for we desire worldly benefits instead.

Regardless, God marvelously makes Jesus, the rejected stone, the living cornerstone of his building. By grace he helps us repent and believe so we can be built into his spiritual house. Let’s produce fruit for God through his Holy Spirit working in and among us! Let’s be part of God’s vineyard.

True righteousness and holiness

Look at what Paul wrote to the Ephesians. Eph 4:22-24 “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, (23) and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, (24) and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Notice the phrase true righteousness and holiness. In order for Paul to speak of true righteousness and holiness… he must have been aware of false righteousness and holiness.

If there is anything lacking in Christianity today, it is real… true… transformation. Real, true transformation is genuine spiritual transformation brought about by a deep abiding faith in redemption. Current evangelical doctrine causes this transformation to be still born before it can ever take a hold. The reason is that most evangelical assemblies demand “read and do” obedience. “Read and do” obedience is fleshly obedience. The current way that evangelicals are taught about transformation motivates fleshly reformation rather than spiritual transformation. Look at the two words and compare and contrast them. Reformation is the act of one reforming themselves and is primarily a fleshly endeavor. Transformation happens as the result of an outside force. In the disciple of Christ, the outside transforming force, is the radical love of God manifested in the gospel of grace. The gospel is the only thing that will bring about true transformation.

When Paul penned the words “and be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” what did he mean? Renew the mind to what? The answer… renew the mind to the gospel! Renew the mind to the mercies of God. How then does this work? How is it transformative? Well, quite frankly it is simple when you think about it. When one focuses on God’s mercy, love and grace… especially in view of humanities great need… it actually causes one to love God very deeply. It produces peace from the realization and experience of forgiveness. This love and peace operates to cause us to feel closer to God. We acknowledge our connection to God via the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is precisely the way that we begin to participate in the divine nature. Participation in the divine nature is the source of transformation… real transformation.

Unfortunately, far too many saints are caught up in reformation… trying desperately to meet the standards set up by other saints and their particular denomination and leaders. This effort is 99% fleshly and this causes spiritual burn out and anger. It seems to me that so many saints end up being judgmental and very angry. They lack the life of Jesus in their day to day demeanor. Again, the reason is that they can only be *truly transformed* by their faith in the gospel. It never changes. We cannot outgrow this. It is not a one time thing. We did not get saved spiritually and then begin to reform ourselves by self effort after reading the scripture over and over again. Instead, we must realize God’s mercy and grace… really experience it over and over to have love consistently produced in us. God’s love for us is the transformer. It transforms us into loving people.

Here is where the body of Christ becomes important. When we meet it should be to reinforce the knowledge of God’s love and grace. That’s why Paul was determined to not do anything except preach the gospel. Yes, “Jesus Christ and him crucified” is another way of Paul saying I determine to teach and preach nothing but the gospel. We will look deeper into this transformation process over the next few posts.

Exploring the righteousness of God

Take another look at Ephesians 4:22-24 “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, (23) and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, (24) and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Notice the phrase true righteousness and holiness. In order for Paul to speak of true righteousness and holiness… he must have been aware of false righteousness and holiness.

True righteousness is the righteousness of God or, more accurately stated, it is imputed or accredited righteousness. One of the interpretative rules for understanding the scripture is called the rule of first mention. This rule is especially instructive with the term righteousness. The first mention of the word righteousness in the bible is found in Gen 15:6 “And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.” Here we see that God accredits, accounts, imputes righteousness to people who believe what he tells them. God made a promise to Abraham. Abraham believed God’s promise. God then, accredited righteousness to Abraham based upon his faith in God. Imputed righteousness is very important in true transformation and true holiness. Imputed righteousness is the foundation of our trust in God.

Paul said this about Israel; Romans 10:1-4 Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. (2) For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. (3) For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. (4) For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Israel was ignorant of the way God declared Abraham righteous. Being ignorant of God’s righteousness is in reality, not understanding imputed righteousness. Seeking to establish one’s own righteousness is practicing self-righteousness.

I could say what Paul said about his fellow Jews today about most of evangelical Christianity. I wish that they could be saved; I wish they could rest in God’s righteousness… His righteous provision. I wish that they would rest in the righteousness of God. If they would trust in imputed righteousness it would make them truly love God with an incredible, indescribable love. This love would then be spread abroad to others. Any obedience, any good works, any brotherly love would be the result of spiritual transformation brought about by believing in God’s love. The saint, resting in imputed righteousness is set free, given peace that translates into love works that are the result of faith.

The world needs to see Jesus

It is not that God does not desire transformation in his children. He most definitely does and, he has provided for that transformation in the gospel. One must believe the gospel no matter what…. no matter what one sees in fleshly behavior on any given day or at any give period of time. Transformation is a process that *will* happen over time if faith in the gospel remains all the time. Resting in and trusting in imputed righteousness is the foundation of transformation. If the world needs to see anything in these times it is the love of Jesus being manifested in transformed saints that exhibit true righteousness and holiness.

Check out Joe’s blog for many more insightful articles: www.paradigmshift-jmac.blogspot.com

Usually dreams are totally irrelevant of present realities. So we don’t put too much stock in them. But there are people who adhere to them. Joseph was one of them. His dreams were blessing and curse to him at the same time. They partly caused his brothers to hate him and sell him as a slave in Egypt. Trudging the desert road to Egypt in chain he might have blamed the dreams for his predicament. “Did my dreams lie to me and put me in this?” Months and years went by in Egypt and the role of his dreams changed. It was only his dreams that gave him strength and courage to go on with his life.

We sometimes find ourselves feel like giving up on everything being unable to cope with realities. But we force ourselves to move on often with the strength of dreams which look like nothing but lies. In that sense the value of dream can be very high. It can even move a nation to tears. I am thinking of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. One of UBF’s Genesis 39 questions is “Why did his brothers not have dreams unlike Joseph?” I am not going to tell you what I wrote in my answer notes. But the fact is we don’t all have dreams like Joseph or MLK. Hollywood took advantage of this and made tons of money by means of manufacturing pseudo dreams, by which I mean movies. I could almost call movie the curse on mankind in the modern time. (I am not only talking about pornographic movies, and pornographic videos flooding in Internet. Much more harm has been done.)

But I should relax a little bit and admit there is some good in movies. And that’s what movies do—help me relax and forget what went on all day in my working place. I don’t think it is only coincidence that the film “Gone with wind,” one of the greatest films that have been made, was made in 1939, during the era of Great Depression. It was made in an unprecedented spectacular style against the common sense that they should spend less money on such a frivolous thing as movie in time of poor economy. But it was so successful that it garnered box office revenue ten times greater than the cost of making the movie. In general movie industry flourished during Great Depression. Beside US one of the countries that make great movies is India. By the way Indian movie industry is popularly called Bollywood. Droves of Indians are drawn to movie theatres for the benefit of being able to forget their hard lives even for a short time. For those two hours or so they live in a fantasy world.

Here I must confess that I have recently created a fantasy world where I am living with a 26 year-old-beautiful woman. I have that woman’s picture in every room of my house I spend most time– my bedroom, living room, and a room I may call drawing room. Because of these photos of the beautiful woman I am much less attracted to scantly clothed women on movies or magazines. Some may have already guessed that woman on the picture is my wife. It was taken soon after our marriage. I am being almost absolutely honest when I say that the woman on that picture is prettier than any woman in the whole world even Hollywood. (My son once said his wife is the bestest in the whole wide world. He is right. And his mom on that picture is the mostest beautiful woman in the whole wide world. Some may say like father like son. That’s okay. My father was just like me too.) There are several other reasons that sometimes I lie to myself that I am living with a 26-year-old beautiful woman than overcoming temptation for lust. I hope that readers will be a little easy on me and not accuse me of seeing my wife only physically. She has far more beauties than physical one which I am not going to list here. One of the reasons I sometimes pretend I am living with a 26-year-old woman is my thanksgiving that God entrusted me with such a beautiful woman and my promise to Him and myself that I will cherish her just as I did on the day the picture was taken. But here you see I am playing trick on me and not being absolutely honest with myself. She is older than twice the age of her marriage. She is almost twice bigger than she was then. (Not quite there yet!) Nonetheless I give myself a pat on the back for my ability not to see things exactly as they are.

Our Lord Jesus, while teaching his disciples about faith, told them to believe that they had already received whatever they asked in prayer. (Mark 11:24). Note the tense of the verb. Is it called past perfect? It has something to do with the past–already done. The truth is that it was not done yet. According to Paul, God calls things that are not as though they were. (Romans 4:17) I have noticed that some people get confused with realities and dream. They may do it on purpose sometimes and other times they may do it unwittingly. Those people must not become journalists. A demagogue misleads people by doing in on purpose. A person who has better qualities than a demagogue may do it on purpose to encourage himself and others.

While living on earth I can only dream of absolute honesty. But when time comes I will not only dream of it but possess it. My shameful past has been erased from everybody’s memory, including God’s and mine. I don’t have to struggle hours to muster courage to be truthful about my shameful past or wicked things that I am thinking because they just do not exist. Until then may God give me strength and courage and knowledge to be as close as possible to absolute honesty. I need good knowledge of myself to be absolutely honest. The fact that I don’t know some parts of myself deprives me of the ability to be absolutely honest. It is not good because I am lying albeit unwittingly. And what pity is it that I do not know who I am completely?  But this was revealed to Paul, which gives me hope of absolute honesty:

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. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

I dream of the day when absolute honesty is not a dream but a reality. On that day I will see others exactly as they are and myself exactly as I am. No less, no more, and no distortion. I will see Dr. Lee as he is. And I will find him being far more than what he was when he was telling us stories that some allege exaggerated and even distorted. I personally loved all his stories with some probable spins to them. Dr. Lee would not have made a great journalist. But I loved all his stories because he spoke like a dreamer. He spoke as if he had received what he prayed for and what he asked us to pray for. He spoke of things that were not as if they were.  I loved his stories because they pictured things to look sweeter than what I could see with my physical eyes. His stories gave me hope. They made me dream dreams. When he doctored a photo of a Bible conference to make the number of attendants look bigger, I would have tried to stop him if he was going to submit it to a newspaper editor.  But he was not. He was only dreaming and wanted us to dream with him.

While living on earth we need dreams. When time comes, our dreaming will not be necessary because what we see with our own eyes will be greater than anybody would have dreamed. If Dr. Lee’s stories had spins to them that I did not know about, on that day I will know the exact versions of the stories. Yet I will thank him for his stories with spins. I am sure many others will do too. His stories made us think that there was far more to our lives than met our eyes. He made us forget we did not have money to buy airplane tickets but believe that we could go to the ends of the earth with the gospel as if we were William Careys and Hudson Taylors of our time.

If I was trudging desert road in chains, I would love to have someone tell me dreams instead of my chains and the desert road. I think we need many dreamers in our time. Of course we need people who see things exactly as they are and speak of things exactly as they are. But we also need people who see things and speak of them as they should be and as they can be. I would call them dreamers. But there will be a time when we don’t need dreamers because what we see with our own eyes will be far greater than any dreamer’s wildest dreams. At that time I will see others and myself as face to face but will not be ashamed of what I see. It is the time God’s promise has been fulfilled that we will bear the image of our Lord Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:49). There is nothing to hide but everything to be exposed. It will be such joy for me to be who I am. Until then may God help me to be as close to absolute honesty as humanly possible.

Saved by Grace; Function by Law

Asking the Law to do what only Grace can do. It is quite interesting what Paul Tripp said in Extend The Same Grace You Preach: “I knew (grace) well and could articulate them clearly, but at ground level something else was going on. In the duties, processes, and relationships of pastoral ministry I actively devalued the same grace I theologically defended. My ministry lacked rest in grace. So I attempted to do in people what only God can do, and I consistently asked the law to do what only divine grace will ever accomplish.”

We think we keep the Law; we correct others by the Law. Why do we do this? “The heart of every believer, still being delivered from sin, (gravitates toward) some form of legalism. Even after we’ve been saved by grace, we think ourselves to be keeping the law. So we bring the law to law breakers, hoping they will see the error of their ways and (improve). No one preaches the law more than one who thinks he’s keeping it. The temptation to revert to legalism greets us all.”

We control and manage others. “When you devalue this grace, you think it is your job as a pastor to manage people’s lives. You simply become too present in their lives and too controlling of their thinking and decisions. Your ministry begins to migrate from being focused on telling people what God has done for them to being dominated by telling people what to do.”

We expect behavioral and cultural uniformity and conformity. “Maturity in the body of Christ is never the fruit of such (Law based) pastoring. No, the fruit is behavioral and cultural uniformity masquerading as maturity. Only when a pastor rests in the grace of the indwelling Holy Spirit is he freed from managing people’s lives.”

Law emphasizes church programs that others are expected to participate in. “You emphasize formal programmatic ministry while neglecting the call to informal member-to-member ministry. The fruit of this is a passive (dependent) congregation, who thinks ministry is never official unless a pastor (announces it), who thinks of ministry as a weekly schedule of meetings led by the pastoral staff. When a pastor holds a theology of grace but functionally devalues God’s grace in the life of the believer, he will be too present and controlling in ministry, and the fruit of his ministry will be uniformity and passivity (dependency) in the body of Christ. Again and again our self-righteous hearts migrate toward ministry legalism and control.”

Do you functionally operate by the Law? Do you extend Grace or Law to others?

These days I have been increasing my reading to help answer such questions. I took a friend’s suggestion to read “What We Believe And Why” by George Byron Koch. The first point in the book is that we should differentiate between essentials and non-essentials of our Christian faith.

I would hope all Christians would agree that the gospel of Jesus is an essential. I believe the gospel is the one great, unifying rally cry that should permeate our lives. In my mind, the gospel is so essential that over the past three years I have been rebuilding my entire theology, bibliology, christology, pneumatology, cosmology, hamartiology, soteriology, ecclesiology and eschatology all on the gospel. I have thrown out all my beliefs and will accept no belief unless it stems from the gospel. I am defining my faith based on an articulated defense of the gospel of Jesus.

Remember Jesus Christ. From a Biblical standpoint, we don’t have to look very far in the text to find the clear definition of the gospel: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained”  (2 Tim 2:8-9).

A more common, more detailed version is 1 Cor 15:1-5: “1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. ”

Clearly the gospel of Jesus stands on two pillars: 1. Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. 2. Jesus died but came back to life. So in my mind, the basic articulation of the gospel (the “good news”) of Jesus Christ is this: Jesus is the promised Christ who fulfilled the Law and the Prophets through his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension.

Forgiveness, not condemnation. I love the titles of Koch’s sections in his book. In the one entitled “Being Sanctified is not Forcing Correct Behavior on Others”, he writes (Kindle edition, location 1796, Chapter 7: Living With Unbelievers):

“I have seen people brought to tears by the forgiveness of God, who came to the altar in surrender, and who shared there the struggles that had brought them to the church and to the altar. Instead of being welcomed, they were told how terrible their sin was. The accuser had his theology straight but lacked love. The point of the Gospel is forgiveness, not condemnation. It is out of the soil of forgiveness that holiness grows, not out of the venom of condemnation.”

The “gospel of” statements. If the Bible declares the gospel, then certainly the Bible must define the gospel? Yes, I believe it does. I found numerous verses that explain the meaning of the gospel. What does it mean that Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, died and rose to life according to the Scriptures?

Here is what Scripture says the gospel is about…

• It’s about Jesus

“The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1).

• It’s about the kingdom

“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14).

• It’s about God’s grace

“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me–the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24).

• It’s about the glory of Christ

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4).

• It’s about salvation

“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit…” (Eph 1:13).

• It’s about peace

“…and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15).

Questions to initiate the dialog:

1. How would you articulate the gospel in 7 words or less?
2. What is essential to understanding the gospel?
3. What are the effects of the gospel on a person or community?

Sandwitched between 2 staggering sorrows. I arrived in Manila at 1 am on Fri July 20. I didn’t sleep because of jet lag. I received an email about the horrific Colorado shootings, which killed 12 and wounded 58. The next day I received another staggering news of a close friend having a stillborn birth. My heart has been aching and thrown into a tailspin ever since I arrived in Manila. Sandwitched between these 2 sorrows, I attended Antipolo UBF on Fri evening, a 2 year old church plant. The lead church planter is Dr. John Talavera, a professor of Anatomy and Physiology and his lovely wife Hannah.

50 students came; 3 student leaders established. Last year, when I visited Antipolo UBF, I expected a few students to show up for a weekly group Bible study since it was a new church plant. But 30 students showed up which stunned me. Now a year later, 50 students attended on Fri. It was as exhilarating as the 2 events were staggering. In 1 year, 3 student leaders have been established who now lead 3 weekly group Bible studies.

Jesus slept during the storm. The students welcomed me with a song and gave me an Ignite T-shirt, the name of their Christian fellowship on the campus. Based on Hannah’s recommendation, I led an impromptu Bible study on Mk 4:35-41. I emphasized that Jesus slept peacefully during a storm because he trusted God, while the disciples were frantic and fearful of losing their life because they trusted themselves and their own abilities. Since they will have their preliminary exams next week, I asked, “Do you sleep well?”

The gospel. Mainly, I explained the gospel to them. Though Jesus slept in peace in the storm, one day, on the cross, he would not be able to sleep. He had to die awake and in full consciousness because of my sins, so that I, who should be restless and sleepless forever, would be able to sleep in peace all my days. During this storm, Jesus could trust God and sleep. But during the ultimate storm of his life on the cross, Jesus could not sleep, because of his love for me. He who should live would willingly and voluntarily die, so that I, who should die, might live.

Teary testimonies. After my exposition of the text, several students shared with tears how they were moved by Jesus who loved them and died for them in spite of their sins. While some cried, others laughed with joy.

Thank God for the work of the Holy Spirit in Antipolo. It was my first day of a 2 month trip. But it felt like the highlight and climax of my trip on the first day. Pray for me and for my friends in the Philippines.

Scary

I trust God. MBF means “I trust God (by faith) for my marriage.” I do not trust myself, nor the person I am marrying, nor the one arranging it.  It means, “I trust God, and not just my hormones.” I don’t marry just based on “Something in the way she moves;” someday the song may change to “You’re lost that lovin’ feeling.”

Marry a Christian. MBF also implies that you only marry a Christian (2 Cor 6:14), and that God is the One who ordains marriage (Gen 2:24). I marry based on the Lordship of Christ, and not just my own personal choice or preference. God must be intricately and intimately involved in my marriage. This is all good, godly and biblical.

The problem. MBF has come to mean that you should marry a person who is introduced to you. If you refuse, you may be regarded as less spiritual, less mature, more physical, worldly, lustful or  proud,  “not ready,” picky, uncommitted, etc.

No dating policy. Perhaps, a reason this happened is because of an “unspoken” or implicit, (or openly expressed) NO DATING policy, unless officially sanctioned, approved, recommended, initiated by,  and blessed  by the powers that be, usually the Bible teacher, chapter director, parents.

Of course, it is absolutely crucial that if and when a young Christian couple marries, they need the blessing, approval, counseling and advice  of their parents, Bible teachers, shepherds, mentors, elders, spiritual leaders. But a “no dating policy” until initiated by the church may not be good. Why? Some implications:

1) Dating and marriage is determined/controlled by someone else.

2) A Christian who doesn’t date is better, more mature, spiritual, self-controlled than a Christian who dates.

3) A Christian who dates sins more than a Christian who doesn’t date.

4) A non-UBF Christian you choose to marry is “inferior” to a  UBF Christian who is introduced to you.

Purity. In the Bible, the problem repeatedly addressed is not whether or not one dates, but whether or not one is sexually pure, regardless of whether one is single or married (1 Cor 6:18; Eph 5:3). A “no dating” policy assumes that one who complies is purer.

Play by the rules. This may tempt a Christian to “play the game” to please the powers that be by not dating and behaving well, so that they can “get the one” they want to marry (by faith) by keeping the rules and regulations expected of them.

Rethink (the Gospel)? As a church should we re-think a “no dating policy”? Any “rule” inclines toward legalism, and does not necessarily promote gospel faith. The gospel must always be central to our life and faith (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2, 15:1-4). The gospel  gives freedom (Gal 5:1), including the freedom to date as a God-fearing, honorable Christian.  But adding a rule, law or expectation, such as “no dating” (or any other rule), implies that keeping the rule or law or pleasing certain people in the church is what brings God’s blessing. This takes away from the glory of grace that comes only from the mystery of the gospel of grace (Acts 20:24). The issue of “no dating” is complex. It needs to be individualized.

Should MBF continue? Should we have a “No Dating” policy in UBF? (This was written in Nov 2010. This is a personal reflection and NOT a generalization to all UBF chapters.)

Emphasizing mission. Since 1961, UBF’s strength has been our emphasis on mission. When I studied Genesis 1 three decades ago, I loved the catchphrase “Man = Mission.” I taught this in Genesis 1:1 Bible study repeatedly for a quarter of a century as my mission until a few years ago. I still treasure my life of mission and Bible teaching. I am as driven and passionate to teach the Bible today as I was when I became a Christian in 1980. The only subtle change is that I now wish to primarily “testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24), and to proclaim/preach “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2) as my primary emphasis, rather than emphasizing mission imperatives. So, my point of Genesis is no longer mission, but Jesus (Jn 5:39,46).

A mission focus avoids Christ. When I emphasized mission (though it is biblical), I focused on verses that compelled me and others to strive for mission. “Deny myself and take up my cross” (Mt 16:24; Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23) was my favorite for 2 decades. So were “make disciples” (Mt 28:19) and “feed sheep” (Jn 21:15-17). Though I “denied myself, made disciples and fed sheep,” I failed to draw closer to Christ and felt burdened and stuck. Why?

A mission focus led to legalism, traditionalism and phariseeism. Emphasizing mission made me legalistic by emphasizing our UBF traditions, such as singing certain hymns, having a fixed format for worship service, emphasizing duty and faithfulness in methodologies, meetings and prayer topics and announcements, etc. In short, I became rigidly inflexible, sectarian and very intolerant of anything done in a “non-UBF way.” I so despised “mega-churches,” “non-discipling churches,” “nominal Christians,” “non-missional Christians,” etc, that I would trash them at every opportunity. I became a Pharisee of Pharisees.

Mission burdens; the gospel gives freedom and rest. From my experience, a repeated (over) emphasis on mission (while assuming the gospel) burdens and wears out Christians. I suffered from CFS: Christian Fatigue Syndrome, while pushing myself to “try harder!” and “don’t be lazy!” It also hinders spiritual growth and maturity. I had to rethink my Christian life. God helped me to find freedom (Gal 5:1) and rest (Mt 11:29) in the gospel after 25 years of Christian life. When I experience freedom and rest in the transforming power of the gospel, God energizes and empowers me to work harder and happier with passion and zeal. This is nothing but the grace of Jesus to me.

With all my heart, I still value and treasure my life of mission of making disciples. But Jesus is greater than my mission. Do you enjoy Jesus more than your mission?

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?

But I have to admit that something in my heart went against it. It was my past experience. I distinctly remember making the decision several times to be like Daniel and to pray three times a day. But I can probably count on one hand the number of times I actually managed to do so. Failure upon embarrassing failure. Couple years ago, I would have preached to myself: “overcome your past experience and obey.” But I cannot anymore.

Andrew Murray, in one of his books on prayer, points out that prayerlessness is a sin just as stealing or lust is a sin. After all, a person who doesn’t pray is practically expressing his unbelief and distrust in a loving and caring God. And as we cannot simply break with sin, especially habitual sins, we cannot easily break with the sin of prayerlessness. It takes God’s power to change.

What I therefore realized is that change is not just about doing the right thing (i.e. praying three times a day). Rather, I first have to become the person who does the right thing: a person who loves to pray, who loves to spend time with his heavenly father and who has the necessary grace-driven discipline to seek God’s face in times when the desire to do so reaches a low. And this makes a huge difference.

Here is why I personally would refrain from applications such as “Be like Daniel and pray three times!” If this is done mechanically and done for the wrong motives, we have become merely religious people, not Christ-centered people. In addition, if we are able to bring up the discipline to obey (which is a crushingly hard thing to do) and consequently become the people who are able to pray three times by our own effort, we have an identity problem: we are back to defining who we are by what we accomplish and are thus no different from how the world defines people.

As Tim Keller pointed out, the gospel narrative tells us that we stop defining ourselves by what we do. Rather our identity stems from what Christ has done for us. Defining ourselves by our accomplishments leads to self-righteousness and pride if we are successful in achieving our aims by our own efforts. Or we’ll end up with inferiority complexes and deep frustrations if we fail. We either beat up others or we beat up ourselves or we go back and forth. (I thank Tim Keller for the words). Conversely, the gospel narrative is the only way that can make us truly humble because every good thing happening in and through us is by God’s grace. And it can make us truly bold because God’s grace elevates us and gives us a status of worth, which truly is beyond this world: to be called God’s children.

The story of Daniel is that he prayed, that he was put into the lion’s den and miraculously saved by an angel of God. He escaped the lions unharmed. But Daniel’s story points to a much greater and even more marvelous story. Years later, there was another man greatly beloved who prayed three times, with tears, sweating and blood. Like Daniel, he was thrown into a lion’s den as Psalm 22 says: “Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me.” But this time, there was no angel to save. On the cross, Jesus was literally overpowered and his bones were crushed. This, in fact, is how Jesus bore my sin of disinterest in God, my vain confidence in myself, and my lack of spirituality and discipline, all expressed in prayerlessness.

I am back to the question of how I can become the person who loves to pray and who is unceasing in prayer. Only when I look at the Lamb of God and when I realize that the person whose prayer life was faultless went into the lion’s den to pay for my failures. He is the Lord who has always loved me now lives in me through his Holy Spirit. This is the starting point for my sanctification process towards a life of unceasing communion with God.

May God help me.

Bowing to alternative views that appeal to us has always been a temptation. We refuse to believe there is only one way of salvation, only one way to the Father. We choose to believe there are many paths to God.

Why? Because if there are many paths to God instead of just one, then we can willfully and selfishly choose the path we want. We can live the way we want, and never be held accountable by God. We can choose a religion that appeals to our own pride and vanity.

This quotation by evangelist Michael Youssef recently appeared in a friend’s Facebook post, and when I saw it, I instinctively felt a negative reaction. I hope you don’t mind humoring me as I try to explain myself, because this matters to me. I am not objecting to the content of Dr. Youssef’s words, but to the tone and attitude behind them as they are likely to be perceived in our present historical context. I think that his words are unlikely to accomplish what he hopes they will, which is to bring sinners to repentance.

Perhaps I seem arrogant to challenge a man who is, I am sure, very great and genuine. But I am bothered by his words and want to tell you why.

I do not deny that sinners are selfish, willfully disobedient and given over to Satan’s temptation. But as followers of Jesus, we ought to be willing to apply those rebukes to ourselves first. And God is using this postmodern generation to help us do just that.

A few years ago, Rick Richardson spoke at a UBF Staff Conference. One of his major points was that we are now living and evangelizing in a context where the church has a bad name. There is a deep breach of trust between Christians and non-Christians which we ignore at our own peril. I’ve spent years speaking to students on campus and have seen this firsthand. Over the last two centuries, the Church has damaged its witness by assuming a position of privilege and power. Christians’ overconfidence in their own positions, dogma, and practice has left many people hurt and wounded (even dead!) and deeply disillusioned by the Christian faith. In this historical context, shouldn’t our stance be one of humility and openness to criticism? But I don’t hear this in the quote by Mr. Youssef.

I recently read The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission by Leslie Newbigin (Revised edition, 1995). The meaning of the book’s title is this. As Christians, we have been brought into God’s kingdom. That kingdom in all its glory is already fully present and realized in Jesus. But among his followers in this world, that kingdom is still a well hidden secret, not yet apparent to the human eye. Jesus has died and risen and been bodily glorified, but we as yet have not. Until we have been glorified with Jesus, our relationship to this world must resemble the relationship that Jesus had when he physically walked among us: a relationship characterized by openness and meekness.

Newbigin bases his argument on the principle of election. Election has been widely misunderstood and misapplied. God’s elect are people chosen and called by God. But because they are sinners, they all too easily mistake their election for a kind of special status that makes them superior to the non-elect. This happened among Israelites in the Old Testament, and it happens within the Church today. All too easily, election morphs into a position of privilege and power. But the biblically accurate picture of election is a position not of privilege but of humility and suffering.

God’s elect are called to the way of the cross. Here we need to be very careful, because this too is often misunderstood. What is the way of the cross? Is it to obey a life of “mission,” of obedience to church practices, dogmas or even to Bible verses? At times it may include these, but the way of the cross is much more than these. To follow the way of the cross it to live with a deep sense of responsibility toward our fellow human beings. It is to live as a witness to the salvation we have been given in Jesus. This responsibility goes far beyond verbally stating certain uncompromising truths which are commonly used in evangelistic presentations. No, it is much, much harder than that. To follow the way of the cross, we have to actually live out and embody the uncompromising truths of the gospel.

The way of the cross, according to Newbigin, requires that we enter into mutual relationships of love with God and with the Other (the non-Christian). This relationship with the Other may be hard and long-suffering. It may take enormous investments of time, humility and love to lay the foundations of trust. Trust develops through open, reciprocal dialogue where privilege, power and position have no place. This is the nature of missionary encounter. It involves listening to, entering into the reality of, and even accepting the rebuke of the Other. You can’t enter into this kind of mutual dialogue with Other as anything but equals before the cross, as a living witness to Jesus who is there seeking the sinner.

Missionary encounter doesn’t happen when you hone your argument skills, puff up your chest, and boldly declare your uncompromising convictions, letting the chips fall where they may. That doesn’t resemble Jesus. Nor, for that matter, Peter or Paul.

This is how Newbigin (p. 182) describes the purpose of dialogue with people who do not share our faith:

This purpose can only be obedient witness to Jesus Christ. Any other purpose, any goal that subordinates the honor of Jesus Christ to some purpose derived from another source, is impossible for Christians. To accept such another purpose would involve a denial of the total Lordship of Jesus Christ. A Christian cannot try to evade the accusation that, for him or her, dialogue is part of obedient witness to Jesus Christ. But this does not mean that the purpose of dialogue is to persuade the non-Christian partner to accept the Christianity of the Christian partner. Its purpose is not that Christianity would acquire one more recruit. On the contrary, obedient witness to Christ means that whenever we with another person (Christian or not) enter into the presence of the cross, we are prepared to receive judgment and correction, to find that our Christianity hides within its appearance of obedience the reality of disobedience. Each meeting with a non-Christian partner in dialogue therefore puts my own Christianity at risk

(emphasis mine).

In other words, my own beliefs and practices of Christianity are never the same thing as Jesus himself. In a true missionary encounter, it is Jesus, not our proclamations of Jesus or anything else, who is at work. Evangelists are always in danger of talking about Jesus as if he is not there, reducing him to a belief system or a few Bible verses. Doctrinal positions may communicate certain things about Jesus, but they are not the same thing as Jesus. Jesus is a person. Sharing the gospel, his personhood, does not resemble a one-way transmission. It is not a monologue in which one party merely issues declarative statements and the other party merely receives them. True communication among persons always involves dialogue.

In another excellent book, Missional Church in Perspective by Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile (2011), the authors put it this way (p. 134):

The gospel is not merely a possession to be passed from one person to another, a kernel that exists in whatever cultural husk is at hand, but rather a living event in, between, and beyond us that changes both parties involved in the encounter.

The words of Michael Youssef which I quoted at the beginning of this article may be true in a certain propositional sense, but in our current historical context they fall far short of reflecting The Truth. I cannot imagine that Jesus himself would approach the Other who is reluctant, (yes, proud, but also) skeptical, disillusioned, and possibly hurt by Christians or the Church with what appears to be flippant disregard, labeling them as selfish, willfully disobedient and given to lies simply because they do not yet believe as he does. Jesus wants far more from us. Jesus requires us to let him love them through us, the forgiven ones, by listening carefully to them, hearing and healing the lack of trust which often lies at the root of their objections, and not assuming that we are the sole possessors of the truth whose job is to defend it all costs. Jesus would never be satisfied with an uncompromising proclamation of doctrines which makes dialogue impossible and drives the nonbeliever away. If Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, then he will be alive and present and active in our encounter with the Other if we allow it.

Near the end of Newbigin’s book (p. 181), he portrays the missionary encounter with a simple yet profound diagram.

The ascending staircases are all the various ways by which human beings have tried to better themselves and reach God. They represent “all the ethical and religious achievements that so richly adorn the cultures of humankind.” But in the center, at the bottom of every staircase, stands a symbol of a different kind. It is not a cultural or belief system but an historic event. This event involved a double exposure. God “exposed himself in total vulnerability” to human beings, allowing us to do to him whatever we pleased. And at the same time, he “exposed us as the beloved of God who are, even in our highest religion, the enemies of God.” This diagram conveys the paradoxical truth that God meets us at the bottom of our staircases, not at the top. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17).

This same paradoxical truth applies in the missionary encounter. My system of Christianity as it has developed through history is one of the staircases. If I want to have an evangelistic meeting with a person of another faith, I need to come down from my staircase to the very bottom, to the base of the cross, where the two of us may stand on equal footing. There must be a self-emptying. “Christians do not meet their partners in dialogue as those who possess the truth and holiness of God but as those who bear witness to a truth and holiness that are God’s judgment on them and who are ready to hear the judgment spoken through the lips and life of their partner of another faith” (emphases mine).

Linsanity happened because a most unlikely person literally came out of nowhere to become the “savior” for a Knicks team that was rapidly going down the gutter. Linsanity gave such an uplifting hope to Knick’s fans and to countless Asian and non-Asian sports fans through out the world (except Floyd Mayweather).

Is this not what the gospel is and does?

The gospel gave us an unlikely Savior who looked weak and pathetic and who had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him (Isa 53:2). We have no hope because of our sins that never entirely goes away even after we become Christians. Yet we have a bright and glorious hope when we see Jesus bleeding on that Cross for me.

Sorry for my forced analogies between Lin and Christ. I hope no one mistakes this for blasphemy.

Sports Illustrated’s cover has the same person in 2 successive weeks for just the 3rd time in NBA history. UBFriends can surely do the same and match them by having 2 successive Linteresting articles! (For the record, I will always root for Jeremy except when he plays against the Bulls on March 12. Rose is still my boy!)

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?

Greatness and Shame. Joe Paterno (1926-2012) died yesterday. No one can take away his greatness as a head football coach of Penn State for 46 years. No one is likely to ever surpass what he achieved at one university. Yet, 2 months before he died, he was “dishonorably” fired, because of an ongoing sex scandal involving one of his assistant coaches who is presently being investigated for sexually abusing at least 8 boys over 15 years. As a result, Paterno’s name will be forever associated not just with “great coach,” but also with “being fired” and “sex scandal.” As a result, though Paterno died of lung cancer, some say that he died of a broken heart. In Paterno’s own words, he acknowledged that with hindsight he did not do enough.

God’s Heart and Adultery. This reminds me of King David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam 13:14; Acts 13:22). But who ever recounts the story of David without associating him with the steamy adultery after watching a naked Bathsheba bathing? Then he covered up his sin by having her husband Uriah killed “in the line of duty.” Don’t we good Christians all cover up our sins?

Be Like David. Really? I’ve found that we Christians might study the Bible regarding David by saying, “Be like David, a man after God’s own heart,” and then justify it by saying that David humbly repented of his sin, which of course he did. Or we might teach, “Be like David (in 2 Samuel), but not like Saul (in 1 Samuel).” Others might look at David with skepticism and cynicism and say, “How can David be regarded as a man after God’s own heart, when he committed both adultery and murder? Even I don’t do that!”

Should One Mistake Define One’s Life and Legacy? Yes. God is truth, and God created us to live in the truth. Peterno’s name will always be associated with greatness and with shame. So, will David. For that matter, so will every memorable character in the Bible: Abraham (liar), Isaac (favoritism), Jacob (deceiver), Joseph (arrogant dreamer), Moses (murderer), Peter (coward), James and John (political hegemony), Paul (murderer). Historically, John Calvin will always be associated with being one of the greatest theologians and Bible teachers in history. But his detractors will always point out that he approved of the execution/beheading of Michael Sevetus for denying the Trinity. Jonathan Edwards is America’s greatest Christian. But he kept slaves. The list of the sins of Christians, even great ones, is endless.

Sin is Serious. Paterno’s legacy teaches us that sin is serious. He did not sin like his assistant coach who sexually abused many young boys. But he sinned by not doing more. He sinned by not really thinking of the boys who were being sexually abused and scarred for life irreparably. Because of Paterno’s sin, the alleged sexual abuses by his assistant coach continued for many more years unreported. It is inexcusable. To many, his firing was justified. Sin, no matter how “minor” or “venial” is always serious.

God is Gracious. We ALL sin (Rom 3:10-12,23). We might minimize our sin, even subconsciously, since we all sin. If I get upset with someone in my heart, while controlling myself outwardly, I may not think that it is that big of a deal. But Jesus regards that as being equivalent to murder (Matt 5:21-22). What hope do we have? Only by the grace of Jesus alone, God does not count our sins against us (Ps 32:2; Rom 4:8). God sent his Son who had no sin to die as a Substitute in our place, for our sins (2 Cor 5:21). This is man’s only hope.

No One Really Forgets Your Sin Except… No one ever truly or completely forgets someone else’s sins against them. No one will forget Paterno as one who did not do enough. No one will forget that David enjoyed Bathsheba sexually. No one forgets what President Clinton did in the White House. If you had sinned against someone, that person is not likely to ever forget it. If someone had sinned against you, you are not likely to forget it. Only God, because of Christ, remembers our sins no more (Jer 31:34; Heb 8:12; 10:17)! Thank God for His grace.

What could Joe Peterno have done differently? How do we deal with our own sins? The sins of others?

The movie set in Hawaii is about a rich man played by George Clooney, whose wife is dying and on life support following a boating accident. He is left to care for his 2 problematic daughters, 17 and 10 years old. Before the accident, Clooney had been an indifferent husband and an uninvolved father. He finds out from his older daughter that his wife was having an affair before the accident, and that she was planning on divorcing him. As a result, he now has to deal with his highly conflicted emotions of a betrayed husband while his wife is dying.

It is a humorous and tragic movie that is engaging and captivating because it captures the emotions of the major characters quite realistically. The older daughter is very angry with her dying mother because of her affair. His father-in-law bluntly and accusingly blames Clooney for his daughter’s accident and for him being unworthy of his daughter. The man who had the affair with his wife pleads with Clooney not to tell his own wife when Clooney finally finds and confronts him. The wife of the man nonetheless finds out and in an angry and tearful scene cries in anger and sorrow while attempting to forgive the dying woman for trying to destroy her family. The final dramatic scene is when Clooney confesses his love for his dying wife in the hospital with heart felt tears, despite all that she had put him through. A poignant line is when he says through tears before her dying body that you are “my pain” and “my joy.”

I’ve often expressed that movies that capture the hearts of audiences generally have a gospel theme in the movie. We are all like the dying woman who has been unfaithful to her husband, yet the husband loves her. His love for her was not based on her love for him. Though he was angry and conflicted because of her betrayal, he professed his heart felt love for her as she died. In this movie, the gospel theme is the love of Clooney for his wife, though she was clearly not worthy of his love. Nonetheless he loved her (Jer 31:3). This is the gospel of our salvation. This is the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24).

Perhaps, I am reading too much into this movie. But movies like this (and other movies too) may be an excellent opportunity to show and point to the gospel of God’s grace that is greater than all our sins, betrayal and unfaithfulness.

Be prepared: At Ellerslie, the gospel is presented with a lion heart, in the style of the thunder-gospel preaching of old. Eric Ludy is a poet and writer who was extremely low-key and gentle. But recently he felt pushed by God to be a lamb who speaks with the voice of a lion.

Eric Ludy – The Ellerslie Experiment from Ellerslie Mission Society on Vimeo.

What are your initial reactions to Eric’s messages? Is there room for someone like this in today’s world? Does he go too far? Are there dangers his ministry should watch out for?

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?

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) understood the difference between Religion and the Gospel when he told the Tale of the King, the Carrot, and the Horse:

Once upon a time there was a gardener who grew an enormous carrot. He took it to his king and said, “My lord, this is the greatest carrot I’ve ever grown or ever will grow; therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.” The king was touched and discerned the man’s heart, so as he turned to go, the king said, “Wait! You are clearly a good steward of the earth. I own a plot of land right next to yours. I want to give it to you freely as a gift, so you can garden it all.” The gardener was amazed and delighted and went home rejoicing.

But there was a nobleman at the king’s court who overheard all this, and he said, “My! If that is what you get for a carrot, what if you gave the king something better?” The next day the nobleman came before the king, and he was leading a handsome black stallion. He bowed low and said, “My lord, I breed horses, and this is the greatest horse I’ve ever bred or ever will; therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.” But the king discerned his heart and said, “Thank you,” and took the horse and simply dismissed him. The nobleman was perplexed, so the king said, “Let me explain. That gardener was giving me the carrot, but you were giving yourself the horse.

I first heard this story a few years ago, which I love, for it intrigued me. It seemed to have some profound point and deep meaning. But it took me quite awhile to “get it.” Still, I often need to be refreshed. Do you see what this teaches? If you know that God offers you his salvation freely, and there is nothing to do but to accept the perfect righteousness of his Son, then you can serve God just for the love of God and for the love of people (Matt 22:37-39). But if you think you are getting salvation and “other blessings” in return for serving God, then it is yourself you are serving and yourself you are benefiting.

Why do we serve our king, Jesus? Do we serve Him because we love Him, or because we love ourselves? Do we serve Him because we delight in the Giver, or because we want His gifts? There is a big difference. So, as a Christian, why do you ever do what you do? Be honest now.

“Ah,” the neighbor says. “I hear you are religious! Great! Religion is a good thing. Where is your temple or holy place?”

“We don’t have a temple,” replies the Christian. “Jesus is our temple.”

“No temple? But where do your priests work and do their ritual?”

“We don’t have priests to mediate the presence of God,” replies the Christian. “Jesus is our priest.”

“No priests? But where do you offer your sacrifices to acquire the favor of your God?”

“We don’t need a sacrifice,” replies the Christian. “Jesus is our sacrifice.”

“What kind of religion is this?” sputters the pagan neighbor.

And the answer is, it’s no kind of religion at all.

In its very essence the Gospel or Christianity signifies the end of religion. The above imaginary conversation expresses how the Gospel is different from and the very opposite of how people perceive Religion to be, including Christianity that is inadequately understood and communicated.  (The differences in the table between Religion and the Gospel is explained further in the link). Briefly, Religion is man’s effort to reach God, while the Gospel is the good news that God reaches out to man through Jesus Christ. Interestingly, it was the most religious people of Jesus’ day that schemed to kill Jesus and they did. To give mankind peace and rest, Jesus put an end to religion, while the religious elite put an end to Jesus. Religion is always threatened by and opposed by the Gospel of Jesus.

Do you understand Christianity to be the Gospel (good news) of God saving you through Christ? Or might you think of Christianity as your efforts of trying to get to God?

Camp #1: Begin with God’s holiness and hatred of sin. Members of this camp will say that we need to focus, especially at the outset, on the fact that human beings are sinners under the wrath of God. We need to make people aware of their sinfulness so that they can repent and turn to God to and save themselves from judgment and hell. An example of this kind of preaching can be seen in the 8-minute video clip below by Mark Driscoll. At one point, starting about 4:30, he says, “Some of you — God hates you… God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think you’re funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is meritous. He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you; he hates them too. God hates, right now, objectively, personally, hates some of you.” This may be a very extreme example. And, in fairness, you ought to watch the whole clip in order to hear the context of those words. But Mark Driscoll does say it. He claims that, if you haven’t yet made a decision for Christ, God hates you, and he will continue to hate you until you repent.

Camp #2: Begin with God’s unconditional love for sinners. These people say that focusing on God’s hatred of sin is unnecessary, counterproductive, even inconsistent with the kind of gospeling done by Jesus, the apostles and the early church fathers. For an example of this perspective, watch the video presentation of The Gospel in Two Chairs by Pastor Brian Zahnd.

Interestingly, if you listen carefully to what these two pastors are saying, you will find that they have based their gospel presentations on different views regarding the character of God. 

I’m not interested in hearing arguments which of these two perspectives is more correct or biblically supported. It is easy for members of either camp to quote Bible passages to argue that their side is correct, and from experience I have found that proof-texting rarely changes anyone’s mind.

Nor do I want to hear arguments over which of these two methods is more effective among the various groups of people in today’s culture. That would be a very interesting topic, but let’s please save it for another day.

Today I want to approach this on a very personal level. So, Dear Reader, I am posing three personal questions for you. Feel free to answer any or all.

1. What style of gospel preaching, if any, initially helped you to put your faith in Christ? Why do you think it helped you at that time?

2. What style of gospel preaching resonates with you today? Why?

3. If you have a strong negative reaction toward one of these two styles of gospel preaching, why do you react negatively? How does it make you feel? When you hear someone preaching in that style, why do you think they are doing it that way? What do you suppose about their knowledge, background, character, motives, and so on?

And with that he breathed his last,
But yet I heard one last gasp
“Think not your condition grave.
It is finished; the Lord will save.”

The important question then, is what are the marks of a work that is done by the Spirit?

How should we could judge any activity and determine if it is produced by God’s Spirit or not? Edwards provides the answers from 1 John 4.

1. When Biblical Jesus is lifted up.

This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. (2,3)

When people are interested in Jesus, respect him, seek for him and love him more then they did before – it is a true mark that the action is produced by Holy Spirit. Biblical Jesus means Jesus who was described in Bible. Jesus who came as the man, which was born from the Spirit and the virgin. Jesus who is the Son of God and the Christ. Jesus who became the only Savior for mankind, without whom we have no hope. Just Holy Spirit could lead human to this Jesus. And any false spirit could not and never will not do it. The spirit of antichrist can just draw and preach some another, mystical Jesus, who is not the Biblical Savior from sins.

2. When the Spirit acts against Satan’s kingdom.

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. (4,5)

The one who is in you (Holy Spirit) is opposite to the one in the world. By “the world” the Apostle means human’s lust and corruption (1 Jn. 2:15, 16). So the Spirit which reduced people’s desire toward world sinful pleasures and honors, and instead makes them to sincere seek the God’s kingdom and righteousness is the Spirit from God. This Spirit shows to people the horror of sin and hell, waking up their conscience and compels them to look for the salvation. Satan will not drive out Satan (Mk 3:23). So Satan will never wake up the conscience, which is a God’s representative in one’s soul and will never inspire the sincere fear for sin to the person.

3. When the Bible is respected as true and inspired by God.

We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood. (6)

Here “us” means Apostles and Prophets who were inspired by Holy Spirit to bring God’s message and will in the world. The Holy Spirit will move people to have a greater regard for Scripture, moving people to regard the Bible as true, moving people to regard the Bible as divinely written. Satan will never motivate people to respect the Bible and to apply to it for guidance for their lives and salvation. He will not let them to ask answers from God’s lips. Satan does not speak like Abraham did, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them” (Luke 16:29). Neither will Satan speak like the voice from heaven concerning Christ, “Listen to him.” (Luke 9:35). The Spirit of Truth always leads us back to the written text of the Bible.

4. When people see the world and themselves like they really are.

This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood (6b)

Here the Spirit of God is described as the Spirit of truth who is imitated by false spirits. If the Spirit convinces person it the things which are true – this is the Spirit of truth. So if the Spirit convinces the person that there is God, who is holy and hates sin, that life is short, that there is another world, and there will be God’s judgment – this could not be a false spirit. The Holy Spirit does not ignore or gloss over or try to change the facts of our life. The Holy Spirit leads people into the light and truth, while Satan is the king of darkness and lies.

5. When people love God and love their neighbor more.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (7, 8)

Almost all following verses of the chapter talks of love. He talks of love like it was the very nature of God’s Spirit. He talks of love like it’s presence in the person is the same as God’s Spirit presence. So the true love toward God and God’s people, which is based on God’s love revealed in Gospel, is really true mark of God’s Spirit work.

Yes it is true that among those who is led by false spirit could be some kind of false love as well. For example if they are hated by all other people because of some particular qualities, sure they will love and welcomed those who are similar to them in this point. But this love is based on their love toward themselves. And then it will make them even more proud of these qualities. This love is very similar to love between pirates. But Christian love always comes from God’s wonderful grace and follows along with our humbleness.

Formulaic presentations of the gospel — for example, the much celebrated and maligned Four Spiritual Laws — have never appealed to me. Not because they are wrong (they aren’t) but because they seem so reductionistic. The gospel is a living Word. It is like a beautiful multifaceted jewel that deserves to be examined and reexamined from every possible angle. When preaching of the gospel becomes stale, simplistic, habitual and tired, the spiritual life of a community is sapped and discipleship (if it exists at all) degenerates to rules, principles and practices that no longer capture the essence of what it means to follow a risen Savior.

Dallas Willard is a distinguished Professor of Philosophy at USC and one of the most influential Christian thinkers of our day. In the video clips below, he shares some of his insights into the gospel, the relationship between grace and works/human effort, the role of spiritual disciplines, and so on. Please take the time to watch these clips; you won’t be disappointed.

My question for you is: Has your understanding of the gospel recently been challenged, renewed or refreshed in any significant way? If so, how? If not, why not? And a related question: How does one get truly fresh insight into the gospel? Please don’t say, “Just go back to the Bible” or “Just pray.” We’ve heard those things before. Be more specific.

In recent days, there has been a great deal of discussion on this website about difficult issues and problems within UBF. Although these are important to all of us, it is easy to get so wrapped up in church matters that we lose sight of the big picture of what God has done. If possible, let’s put aside discussions of the rightness or wrongness of UBF teachings and practices for now and focus on the meaning and implications of the gospel message itself.

• absolute attitude
• absolute faith
• absolute commitment
• absolute obedience
• absolute command

If you use one of these phrases in a meeting, and you speak it with a loud and emphatic voice, you are almost guaranteed to evoke from your audience a hearty “Amen!”

But I cannot recall a single instance where I heard anyone talk about “absolute kindness” or “absolute love.” Nor can I recall ever hearing an exhortation to

• absolute honesty,
• absolute integrity, or
• absolute truthfulness.

Why not? To put it bluntly, it is because honesty, integrity and truthfulness have not been terribly important to us. We recognize them as virtues, of course, but we just don’t emphasize them enough to place them after that coveted modifier absolute.

Throughout our history, we have tended to wink at dishonesty and overlook those little white lies told by our members and leaders, especially when they seemed expedient for advancing our mission. This tendency can be traced directly back to our founding director, Samuel Lee. He exemplified an “absolute attitude” in many areas, but he did not display absolute truthfulness.

Lee was an imaginative storyteller. When he would give announcements at meetings, he would spin colorful tales about people and events that stretched and distorted the facts. I know that he did this because, from time to time, those stories were about me, and his version of what happened often differed markedly from what I had actually experienced. (I can give specific examples of this, but I won’t bother.) We can speculate about why he did this, but everyone who knew Dr. Lee knows that the details of his stories often stretched the boundaries of truth.

And, on at least a few occasions, he doctored photographs from our international summer Bible conferences and mission reports to make the audience look bigger than it was. Eyewitnesses saw him do this, and the physical evidence of these doctored photographs still exists in our old calendars and newsletters. It is common knowledge that he did this. Some of us thought it was humorous or cute. We didn’t make a big deal out of it. But some of our members and leaders were bothered by it.

As Lee continued to spin white lies and tell tall tales, those of us who were around him got used to it. We instinctively began to cover for him, apologize for him, and reinterpret all of his words and actions in the best possible light: “What he said was… but what he meant was…” (I know because I did this on many, many occasions.) We bore with his quirks and weaknesses because he was “God’s servant.” Putting up with his shortcomings, we thought, was a small price to pay for having such a wonderful leader. Perhaps it was.

My point here is not to denigrate Dr. Lee nor to apologize for him. I have mentioned him only to make a broader point about our ministry as a whole. He was a very influential figure among us, and part of the legacy that he passed on to us is a tendency to fall short of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That tendency persists in how we speak about ourselves and present ourselves to the outside world.

The statistics that we present about UBF’s achievements do not paint an unbiased picture of the state of our ministry. We tout the large number of missionaries that UBF has sent out during the last fifty years. But when we present that number, we offer no definitions or qualifications. Included in that count a significant number of persons who left Korea and went to other nations primarily to study or because they married a spouse living abroad. Members of UBF who leave Korea for almost any reason have been given missionary training and counted as missionaries. (I’m not saying that it’s wrong to call them missionaries. But it is different from what other mission organizations do, and that deserves to be noted.) And when we speak of the number of missionaries sent, we omit the fact that a significant number of them are longer serving as missionaries under the auspices of UBF. So even though the statistic may be technically correct, the picture conjured up in the mind of the one who hears it is not entirely accurate.

Nor do our news items and mission reports give an unbiased picture of what is going on. To us, every message is “powerful”; every life testimony is “heart-moving”; every conference is “historic”; and every wedding is “beautiful.” Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. Every one of those statements is highly subjective. But if we speak of every single event in superlative language, it cannot possibly be true. This is a clear example of what psychologists call cognitive bias or the Lake Wobegon effect. (Lake Wobegon is the imaginary childhood town of storyteller Garrison Keillor where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”) Over the years, we have taught ourselves to speak about ourselves in superlatives, believing that it glorifies God and promotes his work. But to outsiders it sounds very odd and self-aggrandizing

And we have taught one another by example to maintain a code of silence about negative events. When something good happens, it is considered virtuous to talk about it in public meetings and gatherings. But negative happenings (e.g., people leaving the ministry) are whispered in secret or never mentioned at all. One obvious example of this is the recent set of events in India, when longtime members and leaders left the ministry. This received no mention in public and, as far as I know, was not even openly acknowledged at the Asian continental director’s meeting shortly thereafter. Many of us only learned of it after Abraham Nial, one of the Indian leaders who left the ministry, wrote about it obliquely in a comment on UBFriends.

Our tendencies to hype all things positive and bury all things negative is more than a habit; it has become a de facto theology. We tell one another, “Be encouraging.” “Don’t complain.” “Talk about what God has done.” “Give a report that glorifies God.” “Don’t look at the situation not from a human point of view; see it from God’s point of view.” “Don’t become a bad influence.”

Recently, a missionary chided me for saying something candid and (only very slightly) unflattering about UBF in the presence of some Bible students. She pulled me aside and told me, “Don’t ever say that UBF is wrong. Young sheep need to be taken care of very preciously.” I believe she meant that, until disciples are fully and deeply committed to UBF, they should hear only 100% positive statements about UBF, because they are too immature and weak to handle anything else. I was taken aback and told her that, as a pastor and longtime member of this ministry, I found her attitude to be condescending. These “young sheep” of whom she was speaking were not preschool children. They were extremely intelligent, well spoken and mature 25-30 year olds attending a world class medical school! Moreover, those “young sheep” were not shaken by what I said. In fact, they were encouraged by my words and told me that my honesty was refreshing.

Young people, especially today, are seekers of truth. They are tired of fake images, deceptiveness, propaganda and spin. They long to hear a message that is honest. They want to be part of a community that is authentic. They want to see truthfulness modeled by the community, especially its leaders.

Many of us appear to hold this implicit belief: Any report that promotes our church or its members glorifies God, and anything that draws attention to our collective failure or weakness dishonors God. Presenting our church in a flattering light will ultimately advance the gospel.

I used to believe that, but I no longer do. This is what I now believe: Any report that glorifies God will be completely honest and utterly truthful, because our God is the God of truth. White lies, tall tales, exaggeration, spin and omission of embarassing facts inhibits the preaching of the gospel. The gospel is advanced whenever Christians tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Why do I believe this? Because unflattering truths, tragic events and apparent failures are deeply embedded in the gospel message itself. When we share the gospel, do we skip over Jesus’ betrayal, suffering and death and talk only about the resurrection? Of course not. If we did, the message would be robbed of its power. Nor do we gloss over the failures of Jesus’ disciples, such as Peter’s denial of Christ. The Bible is noteworthy for showing God’s people in an utterly realistic fashion, openly revealing their sins and weaknesses. Establishing the guilt and failure of all people, especially Christians, is prerequisite to the proclaiming the gospel of salvation by grace.

Proclaiming the gospel is telling the truth. On the day of Pentecost and thereafter, the apostles stood in the public square and testified to the facts of what happened: that their esteemed Teacher was arrested, condemned, nailed to a tree and died in the most horrible way, and then he rose from the dead and personally appeared to them. They didn’t need to embellish the story by exaggerating the number of miracles or post-resurrection appearances. If the risen Jesus didn’t appear to them on any given day, they didn’t pretend that he did. The apostles needed to be utterly honest in their testimony about Christ. Any exaggeration or distortion of any of these facts would have irreparably harmed the apostolic witness.

And the New Testament does not hide any of the problems or failings in the first-century Christians. In the book of Acts and the letters of Paul, Peter, James and John, the sins and internal problems of the church are on full display. Just glance at 1 Corinthians and you will see what I mean. These divinely inspired accounts of church life are painfully realistic. Despite all the apparent problems in the church, she is still Christ’s Body and Bride, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

When I see television coverage of Christian faith healers and ministers who preach a message of health and wealth, I instinctively question their credibility. God does sometimes bless people with health and wealth. Miraculous healing sometimes happens. But God doesn’t do it all the time, and he has his own reasons for not doing it. We don’t need to embellish the gospel with fantastic language or exaggerated stories of miracles, joy, blessing, etc. God doesn’t need our embellishment, nor does he want it. The gospel is fact, not spin.

If a Christian shares a selective testimony of God’s work in his life, reporting things that seem positive and omitting things that sound negative, does that testimony honor God? Can that testimony be effective? I don’t believe so, for the following reason. Everything that God chooses to do in our lives is significant. And everything that he chooses not to do is equally significant. God is the sovereign ruler over everything, including all our successes and all our failures. Jesus Christ will be ultimately glorified in exposing the problems, failures and sins of his people just as much as he is glorified in advertising their virtues, successes and victories. Positives and negatives both glorify him, as long as they are presented truthfully.

In Christ there is never a hint of dishonesty. God is light; in him there is no darkness at all (1Jn 1:5).

Many embarrassing things have happened in the history of our church. I was an eyewitness to some of them. Perhaps you were too. Unpleasant events lie hidden and buried. I understand the desire to hide these things from people in order to uphold the image of our ministry and protect our members, especially young disciples, from discouragement and doubt. But do disciples of Jesus ever need to be protected from the truth? No. Disciples do not ever need to be protected from the truth, because Jesus is the truth (Jn 14:6). They need to be protected from the bad influence of dishonesty, the spirit of the devil who is a liar and the father of lies (Jn 8:44). Lying and hiding will enslave, but the truth will set us free (Jn 8:32).

At the end of this month, there will be a big celebration in Korea to mark the 50^th anniversary of UBF. I imagine that there will be a lot of specific talk about the wonderful things that God has done, but only the most indirect and vague mention of our sins, shortcomings and failures. We are going to present what God has done. But are we going to paint a picture of our ministry that is utterly honest and truthful? Are we going to apply the high standards of accuracy and full disclosure that the writers of the New Testament followed when they reported on the early church? Many will say that the 50^th anniversary celebration is not the proper time or place to speak about negative things. Perhaps so. But then please tell me: When and where is the proper time and place?

No one ought to be casting himself as a conduit of God’s truth – a Bible teacher, a pastor, or a minister of the gospel — if he is not ready to face the truth about himself and those around him and confess his sins to those he is seeking to teach.

Confession cannot be general or vague. If it is not specific, then it is evasion. In an excellent book titled Dare to be True, author Mark D. Roberts writes (p. 66):

…sometimes we confess our sins so generally that miss the benefits that result from true confession. A rushed ‘Forgive me, Lord’ may reflect our desire to say the right words without honestly dealing with our behavior or the condition of our hearts… [Our] unwillingness to be specific in confession is a common failing that stands in direct opposition to the requirements of Scripture.

Effective confession requires full disclosure, not partial admissions of guilt. Roberts continues (p. 67):

Confession of sin also is a key component in helping us overcome deception so that we can live truthful lives. When examining our lives, many of us need to be specific in confessing our sins of deception. Some of these may be so common in our behavior and in our culture that we need the Spirit’s help to recognize them as sin. But we also may be fully aware of our dishonesty and perhaps have even resolved not to perpetuate it, yet we have never confessed it. Choosing not to confess recognized sin is the same as saying we aren’t yet fully committed to repenting of it. Jumping immediately into attempting to resolve sin neglects the biblical call to confess and keeps us from tapping into the very strength that helps us act on our resolve. Full disclosure in confessing sin is the truth that helps set us free from those sins.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:1-2: “Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.”

And in Ephesians 4:25: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”

As a pastor and leader in this ministry, I want to personally commit myself to the following course of action.

1. To report the happenings in our ministry in a realistic way with no exaggeration, embellishment or spin, and to encourage others to do the same.

2. To no longer hide, gloss over, or minimize the problems and failures of myself and those around me. To face uncomfortable happenings of the present and past in a factual way, without any hint of defensiveness or spin, and encourage others to do the same. I will not defend wrongdoing by arguing that it was unintentional, done with noble intentions or rooted in misunderstanding. God is the one who will judge intentions. Our role is to ascertain and disclose the facts.

3. To confess my sins to friends and members of my community and to encourage others, especially our leaders, to do the same. Confession lies at the heart of the gospel and is necessary for forgiveness, reconciliation and healing. It cannot be limited to sins that are easy to admit, such as “I haven’t been faithful in studying the Bible and praying for my sheep.” It must include the events that are truly embarrassing, such as the times that I lied to save my own skin. The times I have engaged in ugly behavior in secret. The times that I have hurt people with angry words and actions. The times I have gossiped about people and undermined their reputation.

This doesn’t mean that I will air other people’s dirty laundry on the Internet. If is not my role to confess the sins of others, nor to cover them up. Each person needs to take responsibility for what he or she has done, not for the wrongdoings of others.

This is not going to be easy. Dear friends: Pease pray for me and hold me accountable.

Now I want to ask you a question. Are you willing to join me by placing your hand on the Bible and swear this same commitment “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God”? If so, I’d love to hear about it. If not, I’d love to hear why.

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)

5. When people are stongly influenced by the personal example of others. Personal example plays an important role in human life and in all interactions among people whether or not the Spirit is moving. If many people begin to take action after being influenced by someone’s personal example, and if many people or many groups begin to exhibit similar thoughts and behaviors, it means nothing.

6. When the behavior of people affected by a movement seems irrational or incoherent. Edwards writes, “We are to consider that the end for which God pours out his Spirit, is to make men holy, and not to make them politicians.” The Spirit works to draw people to God and is not much concerned about appearances or outward behaviors. During outpourings of the Spirit, all kinds of people may be affected, including those who may be young, inexperienced, or unbalanced. It is very natural that some could behave unreasonably and irationally. They may break rules about behavior and act in ways that are unscriptural while being under the influence of the Holy Spirit. People remain sinners all their lives, and the corrupted nature still lives in them and affects them. The church in Corinth provides a good example of this. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he points out many problems and sins in the congregation, and yet there was still powerful evidence of the Holy Spirit in their midst. God does not want us to be lukewarm. Spiritual enthusiasm is a wonderful thing. But when Spirit-driven enthusiasm comes, human corruption — the pride and passions of the flesh — may be invisibly mixed in with it. The time of enthusiasm may also be a time of dangerous, unbiblical extremes, and movements of the Spirit can bring forth good fruits in the presence of these corrupt fruits.

7. When mistakes in thinking and even satanic deceptions are present. The Spirit does not wait until people have pure, infallible doctrine in order to work in them. Many godly, Spirit-led people have exhibited incorrect teachings and practices. All saints live in a state of corruption, and until Jesus comes, the kingdom of God will coexist with evil.

8. If some people who were involved in a movement later left or even became great heretics. The presence of false teachings does not rule out the presence of truth. Great movements of the Spirit are often accompanied or followed by great errors. For example, the heresy of Gnosticism arose during the age of the Apostles. Edwards, who was unabashedly Protestant, noted that, “How great was the number of those who for a while seemed to join with the reformers, yet fell away into the grossest and most absurd errors, and abominable practices.” Even in the ministry of Jesus, among the twelve apostles there was a Judas.

I want to stop here for a moment and say that Points 6, 7, 8 were very interesting and challenging to me. I learned two important principles here. First, I learned that when mistakes, sins and heresies are present, that is not conclusive evidence that a whole movement is not inspired by the Holy Spirit. This makes me want to be very careful in making judgments and jumping to fast conclusions. As long as we are living in this present world, we cannot expect everthing to appear just black or white.

The second thing I learned is that even when the work of the Holy Spirit is clearly present, we should expect human mistakes and sins to be intermingled with the Spirit’s work. People who are moved by the Spirit may be seriously sinful, mistaken and deceived on some points. So, even in the presence of great evidence of the Spirit’s work, no one can be sure that he is above reproach. Even when God is using someone greatly, he must always be ready to repent and correct his ways.

9. When hell and God’s holy law are strongly emphasized. Jonathan Edwards is remembered for preaching on God’s wrath, judgment and hell, and some of his critics thought that he over-emphasized these things. Edwards argues that the holiness and wrath of God may be preached in order to lead people to the gospel. Preaching God’s holy law is useless without Gospel, but apart from the law the gospel makes no sense. It is perfectly reasonable for Spirit-led preachers to speak of God’s holiness and wrath to prepare the way for the gospel. But they must never do so in a cold, insincere, uncaring or flippant manner. And Edwards acknowledges that some ministers emphasize law and wrath too much and preach on other topics too little.

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world

Jonathan Edwards was a witness to and one of key figures in the Great Awakening (c. 1730-1745). During this great revival, the Holy Spirit came and worked in new and unexpected ways. This revival touched many lives and had many followers, but it had many strong opponents as well. The opponents pointed to unusual phenomena within this movement, claiming it was not the true work of the Spirit, and because of it questioned the validity of whole movement.

Very often (if not always), a great work of the God’s Spirit will be accompanied by false imitations. Phenomena which are not produced by Holy Spirit, even though they may appear to be acts of the Holy Spirit, can be dangerous and ruinous. This happened even in the earliest days of the church.

In his short book The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, Edwards defended the Great Awakening as an authentic work of the Holy Spirit. He described phenomena which were wrongly used as evidence against the movement, and he showed how the authentic works of the Holy Spirit could be recognized according to 1 John chapter 4 which the Apostle John devoted to this very question.

In Part 1 of the book, Edwards mentions nine “negative signs,” characteristics which do not provide conclusive evidence one way or the other of whether a movement is a true work of the Spirit. Edwards talks very specifically here, because he wanted to defend what had happened locally during the Great Awakening, but his observations are interesting and seem broadly applicable to other times and places.

Here are the first four of the negative signs mentioned by Edwards. Once again, by calling them “negative signs,” Edwards is not saying that these marks prove that the Holy Spirit is not at work. He is saying that these signs may accompany a true movement of the Spirit, but they may be found in counterfeit movements as well.

1. When people experience a dramatic change of mind and are influenced in extraordinary ways. God is very creative and powerful. He has done unexpected, marvelous things in the past and surely he will do them again. His own word in the Bible does not limit his activity, so we should not limit his activity either. An activity may be inspired by Holy Spirit even if we don’t like it and have not seen anything like it before. Quite the opposite, it is in line with God’s character to amaze people and angels. So even if people behave in ways that we have never encountered, we cannot not use their unusual behavior as evidence against the presence of the Holy Spirit.

2. Tears, trembling, groans, loud outcries, agonies of body, or the failing of bodily strength. The human soul is confined by space and time within a physical body. If someone’s soul is significantly affected by the work of the Holy Spirit, it is clear that his body may be affected as well. Realization of the truths of God’s judgment and hell, of God’s holiness, forgiveness and love are powerful enough to affect people’s physical bodies, but they are not required to do so. Edwards pleads for an open mind on this part. The presence or absence of physical side-effects does not prove that the Spirit is or is not working.

3. When the activity is accompanied by a great deal of noise about religion. When there is a lot of talk about Christianity the Bible, it doesn’t mean that the work of the Holy Spirit is going on. Edwards points out that even the Pharisees talked a great deal about religion.

4. Vivid imagination, ecstatic experiences and visions. Even without any supernatural interference, a strongly affected mind can conjure up images of Christ, of heaven or hell. Intense dreams and visions may be the work of God, but they are not necessarily so.

If we take the Bible seriously, none of these marks mentioned so far should surprise us. These signs were regarded as unusual in Edwards’ day, and when bystanders saw them during the Great Awakening — for example, what they saw highly emotional outbursts in church settings that were normally staid — some claimed it was evidence that the Holy Spirit could not be at work. But it should not surprise us if the Spirit produces dramatic reactions in people, because the Holy Spirit is powerful and creative.

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.

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.

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.

Here I am using the terms “evangelized” and “conversion” in a broad sense. Peter was not receiving the gospel for the first time. He already was a genuine Christian in a personal relationship with Christ. But through his encounter with Cornelius, his character and faith were transformed again as he came to a new and deeper awareness of the gospel.

Before then, Peter had always assumed that belief in Christ should be accompanied by visible changes in lifestyle, changes that would turn people into devout, observant Jews like him. He had assumed that God’s mission was the same as bringing lost sheep into the church that he knew and loved, the merry band of Jewish disciples founded a decade earlier by Jesus himself. What Peter did not realize was that, as God was bringing sheep into the fold, he was also working powerfully to recreate the church. Peter’s previous knowledge of the gospel wasn’t wrong, but it was woefully incomplete.

In The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, missiologist Lesslie Newbigin writes about the meeting between Peter and Cornelius (pp. 59-60):

It is not as though the church opened its gates to admit a new person into its company, and then closed them again, remaining unchanged except for the addition of a name to its roll of members. Mission is not just church extension. It is something more costly and more revolutionary. It is the action of the Holy Spirit, who in his sovereign freedom both convicts the world (John 16:8-11) and leads the church toward the fullness of the truth that it has not yet grasped (John 16:12-15). Mission is not essentially an action by which the church puts forth its own power and wisdom to conquer the world around it; it is, rather, an action of God, putting forth the power of his Spirit to bring the universal work of Christ for the salvation of the world nearer to its completion. At the end of the story, which runs from Acts 10:1 to 11:18, the church itself became a kind of society different from what it was before Peter and Cornelius met. It had been a society enclosed within the cultural world of Israel; it became something radically different, a society that spanned the enormous gulf between Jew and pagan and was open to embrace all the nations that had been outside the covenant by which Israel lived.

This distinction between God’s mission and church extension is not a small matter. It has enormous implications for how we see and talk about ourselves and how we act toward others in a pluralistic and multicultural world. Before talking about that, however, we ought to first ask whether this view of mission is biblically supported. Do missionaries and converts truly evangelize one another? Or does the gospel flow in one direction as believers go out and make disciples, then those disciples go out and make more disciples, and the process continues ad infinitum until every nation has been reached and Jesus returns in power and glory?

In Acts 1:8, Jesus says 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.” This verse is a mini-outline of the whole book of Acts. The apostolic witness began in Jerusalem (chapter 2), then it spread to Judea and Samaria (chapter 8), and eventually it went out to other nations (chapter 13). We see a linear progression as Jesus’ disciples made more disciples. But if we don’t pay close attention to how it actually happened, we will miss a key point that Luke is making throughout the book.

Many evangelicals think of Acts 1:8 as “the world mission command.” Indeed, in Matthew 28:18-20 and Mark 16:15, the Great Commission is given as a command. But Acts 1:8 presents it as a promise. Jesus states as a fact that it is going to happen, not by the volition of the apostles, but by the sovereign will and power of the Holy Spirit. And as we read through the book, that’s exactly how it happens. The apostles do not adopt Acts 1:8 as their mission statement and then formulate a strategy to carry the gospel to the nations. Rather, the entire movement is orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, it is the rushing wind-song of the Spirit that causes a great crowd to gather and makes them ask, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:1-12) The spread of the gospel to Judea and Samaria is precipitated not by an intentional decision by the apostles, but by persecution that broke out after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:1). And the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries was a direct response to the command of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:2).

The church portrayed in the book of Acts is not an army of well trained soldiers executing a military-style campaign to conquer unbelieving nations with the gospel. Nor is it a board of corporate executives launching an advertising blitz to market the gospel to consumers. The church in Acts never fully takes hold of the mission, nor does it ever really grasp the mission, because the mission is not theirs. Moment by moment, the apostles respond in obedience as the Holy Spirit leads. But they are never qualified to direct the mission because they do not understand everything it entails. What they fail to realize that the mission is not just about discipling the nations; it is also about transforming them. As the Spirit is bringing new sheep into the fold, he is also prying open the minds and hearts of church leaders and members to welcome newcomers unconditionally as Jesus welcomed them. This process of assimilation is painful and awkward. It tests the limits of their faith and dependence on God. But through these birthpains, the Spirit brings forth an amazing new community the likes of which the world had never before seen. It is a community of genuine unity-in-diversity. A place where Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, truly connect with one another and become one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). A place of genuine, radical freedom, where ethical standards, laws and commands are replaced by love (Gal 5:14).

The mission is never the property of the church; it is always missio Dei, God’s mission. Newbigin writes (p. 61):

At this point the church has to keep silence. It is not in control of the mission. Another is in control, and his fresh works will repeatedly surprise the church, compelling it to stop talking and to listen. Because the Spirit himself is sovereign over the mission, the church can only be the attentive servant. In sober truth the Spirit is himself the witness who goes before the church in its missionary journey. The church’s witness is secondary and derivative. The church is witness insofar as it follows obediently where the Spirit leads.

That is exactly what happens in Acts chapter 10. Peter didn’t approach the home of Cornelius with the intention of giving him the gospel. The Spirit carried a hesitant Peter there to show him what he had already been doing, something which Peter never imagined. Peter’s job was to obediently share what he knew, to observe what the Spirit did, and to welcome the new Gentile believers as they were.

The distinction between church expansion and God’s mission is not a small matter. It is fundamental to grasping the nature of the gospel. The distinction is especially important as we reach out to the next generation. Young people have been taught to frame history, politics and religion in terms of power struggles between groups. They believe that racism, bigotry, and war result whenever one group believes it is superior to other groups. So if you approach a young person and talk about your faith, she does not see you as an individual person talking to her. She sees you as a member of one group – say, a religious conservative Christian – trying to bring her into your group in order to expand your group’s membership rolls to increase its prestige and power. That is why so many have grown skeptical and weary of all evangelists and of all “organized religion.”

And who can blame them? Throughout the centuries, Christians of many stripes have tried to carry the gospel throughout the world. And so often, those efforts were confounded with military campaigns, colonialism, economic opportunism and cultural imperialism. They were tainted by the desire to build up one church, organization or denomination at the expense of other groups while violating the dignity of individual persons (e.g., through conversion and baptism by force). When today’s young people hear us equate God’s mission with the expansion of our own church, they react against it strongly and viscerally. When they hear us speak of God’s mission in paramilitary terms as conquering the nations and religions of the world (e.g., Muslims) they will have none of it. When they hear us speak of evangelism and discipleship in terms of saving those who are poor, ignorant, blind and disobedient by transforming them into Christians who so conveniently happen to resemble ourselves, they will have none of it. They instinctively feel that it is not the gospel. And they are correct; it is not the gospel.

The gospel does not elevate Jew over Gentile or Gentile over Jew. It does not elevate a denomination that is better, purer or more faithful over another denomination that is liberal, worldly or compromised. It does not elevate a Christian over a Muslim, Hindu or atheist. The gospel brings everyone to the foot of the cross where the ground is absolutely level, where salvation comes to all by the grace of God alone.

What today’s postmoderns instinctively know is something that the church has too often forgotten: that God’s mission is not equivalent to church expansion. Yes, the mission does involve welcoming new sheep into the fold. But it is also about continually reforming and recreating the church into something new and more beautiful, a preview of God’s rule and of the glorious world to come. None of us knows exactly how that ought to look. If we try to invent that new community by ourselves, we build something that too closely resembles us, the creatures that we are right now rather than the creatures that Christ wants us to be. That is why we can never fully set the course of our own mission. Yes, we must remember what God has done and faithfully build upon the foundations laid in the past. But we must also be willing to put aside our current ideas and follow the Spirit wherever he leads, because the mission always belongs to him.

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…

First, circumcision of males was the definitive sign of being counted among God’s people. Hebrews who refused to be circumcised were no longer Hebrew (Gen 17:4). And throughout the Old Testament, the term “uncircumcised” is used as a synonym for ungodly (see, for example, 1Sa 17:16). Uncircumcised men could not enter the temple, nor could they eat the Passover (Ex 12:48). The Passover depicts salvation and deliverance. The fact that the Passover lamb – a powerful symbol of the crucified Jesus – could not be eaten by uncircumcised men suggests that circumcision may still be applicable under the New Covenant.

Now some of you might be saying, “Circumcision is just a ceremony and an outward symbol; what God really wants is for people to circumcise their hearts.” Yes, that is true; the physical sign of circumcision should point to an inner reality. But the fact that circumcision has a deeper meaning does not mean that the physical sign should be abandoned. (The fact that baptism and the Lord’s Supper have deeper meaning does not mean that they are useless or unnecessary. On the contrary, it is precisely because these signs are deeply meaningful that Christians have practiced them from the beginning.) Although the Old Testament repeatedly mentions circumcision of the heart, the physical sign is still always present. For example, in Ezekiel 44:9, God commands, “No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh is to enter my sanctuary.”

Others may say, “Christians are not bound by the law, because Jesus has fulfilled the law.” Perhaps. But let’s put aside the writings of Paul, because his letters had not yet been written at the time of the Jerusalem Council. (Galatians could have been written about that time. But even if it was, it would not yet have been accepted as authoritative, because the purpose of that Council was to decide whether Paul’s view of circumcision was correct.) What did Jesus say? Did Jesus overturn the law? In Matthew 5:17, he said, “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.” Does the fact that we live under a gospel of grace mean that we should ignore the law? Many Christians would say that we are bound to keep the Ten Commandments. The context of Matthew 5:17 is the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus actually strengthens the requirements of the law, holding Christians to an even higher standard.

In certain cases, Jesus did overturn laws. He nullified the dietary laws, declaring that all foods are clean (Mk 7:19). He modified our understanding of the Sabbath by declaring, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27-28). But he didn’t say anything against circumcision. Even if we claim that Jesus overturned the whole law of Moses, that would still not settle the matter, because circumcision predates Moses by about 500 years.

And we cannot ignore the most obvious piece of evidence: Jesus was circumcised! His parents circumcised him in accordance with the law (Lk 2:21). If Jesus submitted himself to this requirement, shouldn’t his disciples follow his example?

The stance that some Christians adopt toward the Bible is reflected in the saying: “God says it, I believe it, that settles it!” They think it is best to approach the Bible without thinking too hard, without getting too complicated or too intellectual. If we read the text plainly and literally, just as it is, then shouldn’t the meaning and implications be obvious? If only it were that simple! The Bible is the inspired word of God, and it has an amazing capacity to speak to people of all ages and backgrounds. One does not need a Ph.D. in theology to receive understanding from the Bible and be transformed by it. But there is a flipside to that reality. If one does happen to have formal education, a background in theology, or a long history of personal experience and interaction with the Bible, then a plain, simple, uncomplicated reading of Scripture may not settle the matter at all; it may only raise deeper questions that should not be ignored, because they are the very questions that the Holy Spirit wants us to consider. The simple understanding that inspires and empowers early in our spiritual journey may be woefully inadequate later in life. That principle applies both to individuals and to communities. It is the very reason why we have to keep going back to the Bible, not just to reinforce what we already have learned, but to question it, to refresh and deepen our understanding and wrestle with the fundamental issues of faith.

Fortunately for us, the matter of circumcision was decided in Acts chapter 15 and was thoroughly explained by the apostle Paul, and those writings are now part of the Scripture record. At the Jerusalem Council, the widespread understanding of the Bible was overturned by the witness of the Spirit. The Apostle Peter stood up and recalled how, several years earlier, the Holy Spirit led him to Cornelius, a God-fearing uncircumcised Gentile. Against all of his Jewish sensibilities, he entered the home of Cornelius and explained the gospel. The Holy Spirit came upon Cornelius and his household, and they began to speak in tongues. Peter ordered that they be baptized, and Peter stayed with them for several days, eating Gentile food which was decidedly unclean (Acts 10:1-48). Peter’s mind was changed when he saw the undeniable work of the Holy Spirit among the uncircumcised. When Peter finished speaking, Paul and Barnabas told of “signs and wonders,” further evidence of the working of the Spirit among the uncircumcised (Acts 15:12). The decision was sealed when James, the brother of Jesus and highly respected leader of the church in Jerusalem, lent his support, drawing upon the prophetic words of Amos 9:11-12.

The Jerusalem Council is the high-water mark, the theological crescendo of the book of Acts. If the apostles’ decision had gone the opposite way, Christianity would never have broken out of the Jewish mold; it would have remained a sect of Judaism and could not have spread across the globe.

In a comment on Part 2 of this series, Henoch wondered if these situations still arise today. We now have the writings of Paul and the other apostles; the New Testament is complete, and the canon of Scripture is closed. Given what we now see in the whole Bible, is it still possible for the witness of the Holy Spirit to overturn the prevailing understanding of what Scripture means?

The answer to this clearly yes. The creative ministry of the Holy Spirit continues to breathe fresh understanding into the Church, sometimes contradicting the assumptions of the past. A great example of this is human slavery. For eighteen centuries, Christians persisted in believing that slavery was acceptable, or at least allowable. A plain reading of Scripture can easily support that view. Through the prophetic witness of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and many others, the church finally came to believe that slavery is fundamentally incompatible with the gospel of Christ and the God-given dignity of human beings.

I am not arguing that we should throw away our Bibles and assume that whatever pops into our heads, or whatever seems to be happening in the church today, is a movement of the Holy Spirit. That is not what I mean, not by a long shot. We should never throw away our Bibles. What we should throw away is the notion that understanding and interpreting the Bible is easy. What we desperately need today is deeper, more thoughtful Bible study combined with greater sensitivity to the witness of the Spirit. We need this not merely as individuals, but as a community. Scripture was given to the Church as a whole, and the Holy Spirit was given to the Church as a whole. Interpreting the Bible and discerning the work of the Spirit are tasks to be undertaken by the Christian community. And that Christian community is not static. It expands and changes over time as the kingdom of God grows and spreads.

Which brings me to my next point. The early Christians would never have had to deal with circumcision if Paul and Barnabas had not obeyed the calling of the Holy Spirit to carry the gospel to the nations. It was not until the Church engaged in cross-cultural witness that it had to consider these fundamental issues of how the gospel relates to law. If Christians remain in isolated in sectarian, monocultural ghettos, they are easily lulled into thinking that they already know everything, and that their present understanding of the Bible is ultimate truth. But when they leave their ghettos and get out in the world – when they enter into relationships with sincere believers who look, act, speak and behave very differently from them – then the work of the Holy Spirit that they encounter begins to challenge their assumptions and their theology. When they encounter converts whose doctrines seem questionable, and whose lifestyles appear to be worldly, compromised, unholy, and wrong, and yet see that these people really love Jesus, the encounter can be deeply unsettling. It may lead to a Wall, a crisis of faith. But out of that crisis something beautiful can grow.

It is at the treacherous three-way intersection of hermeneutics, pneumatology and missiology — Word, Spirit and Mission — that the gospel really comes alive. This is where we begin to see how outrageous and scandalous are the teachings of Jesus, and how shocking are the implications of the gospel, both for the unconverted world and for the Church. This is why I think it is exciting to be in UBF today. The problems and tensions that we are experiencing should, in light of Acts chapter 15, be a prelude to exciting developments in our ministry and in the greater Body of Christ. But to allow those developments to come, we will need to carefully watch and listen to the witness of the Spirit. We must be openminded enough to see how the Spirit is working among young converts and disciples, the next generation whose experiences and perspectives are very different from the first.

In case you are wondering, I am not just making this stuff up in my head. This series of articles on Word, Spirit, Gospel and Mission is loosely based the insights of the missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, especially those in his book The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission.

In the next installments of this series, we will travel (virtually, of course) to India and to Africa and see what the triumphs and mistakes of western missionaries reveals about the nature of the gospel. Stay tuned…

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?

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.

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?

But what about other theories of the atonement? Aren’t they more plausible and less offensive to the dignity of man? Here we review two other theories of the atonement to see if they are better suited to explain what happened on the cross. These two other theories are called the Ransom Theory and the Christus Victor Theory.

Tradition

The first alternative theory of the atonement is called the “Ransom Theory”. This is “the view, developed by (the theologian) Origen, that Christ’s death was a ransom paid to Satan since he held mankind in bondage.”^[12] In other words, God sent Jesus Christ as a ransom to pay to Satan in order that Satan would release human beings from his grasp. The blood of the Lamb of God therefore was the “currency” that was paid out to the devil for us.

At first glance, this might seem somewhat plausible. Jesus did say in Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And in the last days the heavenly host is even going to sing about how Jesus ransomed people, “And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…” (Rev. 5:9). However, there are a few problems with Origen’s view.

R. C. Sproul explains why this theory in its original phrasing is not widely held today, “If the ransom is paid to Satan, Satan laughs all the way to the bank…But when the Bible speaks of ransom, the ransom is paid not to a criminal but to the One who is owed the price for redemption-the One who is the offended party…it is God the Father. Jesus as the Servant, offers Himself in payment to the Father for us.[13] If we view the Ransom Theory in this light it makes much more sense. While it does not displace the Penal Substitution theory, it may supplement it and even add to its validity because if God is the one who is still the offended party and God is the one to whom the ransom is paid, then Christ as our penal substitute, and Christ as our ransom are two sides to the same gem.

The second theory is called the “Christus Victor” theory of the atonement. This view was made popular in the 20^th century by Gustav Aulen.[14] It states that one of the main reasons Jesus went to the cross is to obtain victory over sin and Satan. There is also scriptural support for this view. In Genesis 3:15, God promises to send the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent. And many times, the gospels and new testament letters state that Jesus has victory over the devil as well (See John 16:11; Matthew 4:1-11, 12:29; 1Corinthians 15:54-57).

This theory of the atonement has many merits, and one can see how it is legitimately held, however it does not negate the fact that penal substitution is still a main component of what occurred at Calvary. Even though there are many who would currently like to see the Christus Victor theory displace penal substation, the Bible, tradition and reason do not give grounds for it. In fact, there are many great Christians throughout history that have proudly held the doctrine of Penal Substitution as a precious truth, even though there are people today who would make the claim that this doctrine is a recent development. From as far back as Justin Martyr (c. 100-165), the authors of the book “Pierced For Our Transgressions” cite a plethora of famous Godly theologians who believed in penal substitution. People like Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, John Bunyan, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and many others.[15] So it is not for lack of scripture or lack of history that some deny this crucial doctrine, instead it could stem from the scandalous nature of the cross itself. In the next section we shall see the reason behind the necessity of penal substitution.

Reason

In discovering why penal substitution is needed in the first place, we must delve deeply into both the character of sinful man and the character of the Holy God. Part of the reason why penal substitution is rejected by some people is the offense that it necessarily brings to the pride of man. In other words, penal substitution says that man’s sin is so bad that Jesus Christ had to leave the courts of heaven and come down to earth to bear the punishment that everyone of us deserves from the Holy God. This doctrine crushes the pride of the man who wants to think that he has some meritorious goodness within himself, that his sins are not so bad, and that God is not Holy. Only penal substitution displays how heinous sin really is and also how holy and gracious God really is!

There is therefore a close relationship between the concept of propitiation and penal substitution. Leon Morris says, “The wrath of God is real and…we must reckon with that wrath. Unpalatable though it may be, our sins, my sins, are the object of that wrath. If we are taking our Bible seriously we must realize that every sin is displeasing to God and that unless something is done about the evil we have committed we face ultimately nothing less than the divine anger.”[16]

In this light, we see that Jesus is our substitute who takes the righteous wrath of God on our behalf as our propitiation. This is what God has done about the evil we have committed! Wiersbe continues this thought, “In His holiness, (God) must judge sinners; but in His love, He desires to forgive them. God cannot ignore sin or compromise with it, for that would be contrary to His own nature and Law. How did God solve the problem? The Judge took the place of the criminals and met the just demands of His own holy Law!”^[17] Reasonably, the question begs to be asked, “why does God consider sin to be so bad that He would need to send his Son to die on a cross as a penal substitute?

Jonathan Edwards illustrates four propositions about why sin is so sinful: First, that every sin or crime deserves a punishment in proportion to the heinousness of the sin/crime. Second, A sin/crime is more or less heinous according as we are under greater or less obligation to the contrary. Third, Sin against God, being a violation against infinite obligation, is infinitely heinous. Fourth, Persons who sin against God are infinitely guilty and worthy of infinite punishment.[18]

Perhaps this could be stated in a simpler way with an analogy. A man is sitting around a table with some of his personal acquaintances and one of them says something that offends him, so the man hauls off and slaps his acquaintance. It might be that nothing would happen, the acquaintance simply shrugs it off. The man is so angry when he leaves that he speeds in his car on the way home and when the police pull him over he slaps one of them, now he will definitely go to jail. While he is in jail he keeps thinking about his court date when the judge will see his point and let him go, but when that day comes, the judge sentences him to another year. The man is even more angry than before, so he walks up to the judge and slaps him. The next time he is sentenced, it is for 10 years instead of 1. Finally, after stewing in jail for 10 years, the man thinks that it is the president’s fault that jail sentences are so harsh so he finds the president at a rally and slaps him! If the Secret Service does not kill the man, he will probably spend the better part of his life in prison. The penalty is incrementally greater, and the sin worse for the same act because as Edwards says, “sins committed against anyone must be proportionately heinous to the dignity of the being offended.” God is infinitely worthy of our love, worship, devotion, honor and obedience, and the natural man does the opposite of these things. It is no wonder that he stands infinitely guilty and thus deserves the infinite punishment which is eternal hell. It is here that the doctrine of Penal Substitution becomes all the more glorious in our sight! Jesus took the infinite punishment for our sins that we deserve, and in return, he imputed his righteousness to us!

Christian Experience and Application

Penal substitution has had a great impact in the history of the church. What other doctrine more forcefully proclaims the Love of God for sinners than that He sent his Son Jesus to take the penalty for our sins as our substitute? The evangelical gospel preacher must have this doctrine in his heart and on his tongue every time he preaches the gospel. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “Is there anything greater than this, that God should take your sins and mine and put them on this own Son and punish his own Son, not sparing him anything, causing him to suffer all that, that you and I might be forgiven? Can you tell me any greater exhibition of the love of God than that?”[19] Oh how wonderful is the Love of God! The doctrine of penal substitution should lead all Christians to say with Horatio Spafford, “My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”[20]

[12]Enns, Paul. The Moody Handbook of Theology. Revised ed. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2008. 626.

[13] Sproul, R. C.. Saved from What? . Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008. 66-67.

[14] Hebert, Gustaf; A.G., and trans. Aulen. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement. New York: Macmillan, 1972.

[15] Jeffery, Steve, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach. Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution. Leicester, England: Crossway Books, 2007.

[16] Morris, Leon. The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984. 176.

[17]Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Comforted. Wheaton, Ill. : Victor Books, 1996, c1992 (An Old Testament Study), S. Is 53:10

[18] Jonathan Edwards, “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners,” in Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, 2nd ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005)

[19] Lloyd-Jones, Martyn. Great Doctrines of the Bible: God the Father, God the Son; God the Holy Spirit; The Church and the Last Things. Leicester, England: Crossway Books, 2003. 335.

[20] Spafford, Horatio. It Is Well With My Soul. Celebration Hymnal. orchestration ed. Nashville, TN: Word Entertainment Music, 1997.

In contemporary culture, there are so many opposing responses to this question that it is hard for many to get to the heart of the answer. For some, the death of Jesus was a tragedy that should have been avoided. For others, it was the most loving act of self sacrifice in history, and an example that we should follow. There are those who believe that the death of Jesus was a necessary ransom to pay to the devil in order to free mankind from his grasp. Still others believe that, “Calvary may be an episode in God’s government of the world…as the argument goes, God, being holy, deemed it necessary to show to the world His hatred of sin, and so His wrath fell on Christ.”^[2] And yet, there is also a current “reclaiming” by many in the Christian faith of the most wonderful doctrine of the cross, called Penal Substitution.

The great reformer Martin Luther described Penal Substitution like this, “Christ took all our sins upon him and for them died upon the cross. Therefore, it was right for him to be ‘numbered with the transgressors’…Christ bears all the sins of all people in his body. It was not that he himself committed these sins, but he received the sins that we had committed; they were laid on his own body, that he might make satisfaction for them with his own blood.”[3] This is the glorious doctrine of Penal Substitution. As another hymn writer named Isaac Watts once wrote: “Was it for crimes that I have done he groaned up on the tree? Amazing pity, grace unknown and love beyond degree!”[4]

The doctrine of Penal Substitution is at the heart of the Cross itself. Of course, penal substitution is not the only way to look at the death of Christ; in fact the Bible employs many different pictures of what occurred at Calvary. However, the overall picture would not be complete without it. In order to perceive how necessary this doctrine is, one must understand its relevance in scripture, tradition, reason, the Christian experience, and how it is personally applicable to all followers of Christ.

Scripture

There are many biblical passages from both the Old and New Testaments which proclaim the doctrine of Penal Substitution very clearly, even though this doctrine has many detractors. In his book, “Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross” Mark Baker writes, “In the end, a penal satisfaction presentation of the atonement can too easily lead to a situation in which we might conclude that Jesus came to save us from God.”[5] This same book also features an author who is on record as saying that the concept of penal substitution is nothing less than Divine child abuse! This is certainly a straw-man argument against the theory of penal substitutionary atonement for reasons we shall henceforth see.

As early as Exodus chapter 12, we see penal substitution imagery displayed in the Passover, where a lamb was to be slain and its blood smeared on the door posts of the Israelites for their deliverance. About this event, Mark Dever writes, “God does not say that the Israelites were exempt from judgment just because they were Israelites… If they would be saved, it would not be because God’s justice had no claim against them; it would be because when God saw the blood on the doorframes, the blood of the sacrificial substitute, he would in grace pass over that house as he judged”[6] (emphasis mine). It is an interesting correlation that when John the Baptist first saw Jesus in John 1:29 he proclaimed, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” This is a clear reference to the substitutionary work of Christ which came to fulfillment on the cross when he “…was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people.”[7]

Indeed, throughout the whole Old Testament we see type after type, and shadow after shadow and even prophesy after prophesy about the substitutionary nature of the Messiah of Israel. In Leviticus 16 the “Day of Atonement”, or Yom Kippur is described. This was the day when the sins of Israel were atoned for and in order for that to happen, there had to be a blood sacrifice. Verses 11, 15-16, and 21-22 give the basic summary of what occurred:

“Aaron shall bring the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household…He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bulls blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been…He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites…and put them on the goat’s head…the goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert.”

Here is basic penal substitution illustrated. The bulls and goats had not intrinsic guilt of their own but they were appointed to carry the guilt of the sins of the nation on themselves. In particular, verse 22 explicitly says that the “scape goat” is the one who carries the sins on its own head. In our vernacular the term “scape goat” is usually used to describe a person who is blamed for something that someone else did. In Leviticus 16 the scape goat is “blamed” for the sins of the people and he is released into the wilderness to die as the penalty for those sins vicariously. In the same way Jesus Christ is like our scape-goat, he is legally blamed for our sins, and in return we are pardoned! The Tyndale Bible Dictionary says, “Israel understood that to bear sin meant enduring the consequences, or penalty, for sin (cf. Nm 14:33). The same penal substitution is evident in the working principle of the Messiah’s atoning sacrifice. He is the victim’s substitute to whom is transferred the suffering due the sinner. The penalty having been thus borne vicariously, the suppliant is fully pardoned.”^[8]

In Leviticus 17, God is busy giving his Law to Moses, when a most important statement is made about how He is to be reconciled to man in verse 11, “…the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the alter; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” That word “atonement” is similar to the word “reconciliation.” In fact, the word “atonement” can be divided by its syllables to understand its meaning, “at-one-ment.” In other words, when atonement is made, reconciliation is made. The two become one again. “Objectively and once for all, Christ achieved reconciliation for us through penal substitution. On the cross he took our place, carried our identity as it were, bore the curse due to us.”[9] As Galatians 3:13 explicitly says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” The curse of the Law was laid on Christ who Paul says, became a “curse for us.” The apple of God’s eye became a rotten apple so to speak, so that other rotten apples could be made whole again.

Perhaps the most graphic and prominent portrayal of this concept of Penal Substitution is in Isaiah 53:5-6, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (emphasis mine). These verses could not be more evident about the fact that the Messiah’s role would be one of bearing the punishment that others deserve!

The Apostle Peter would later write about Jesus Christ that, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” And also…”For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit…”[10] These verses emphasize “the substitutionary nature of Christ’s death. He “sufferedonce for all concerning sins, the just for the unjust.” Again the note of innocent suffering is sounded: He was righteous and thus suffered not for any misdeeds of His own but as a substitute for those who were unrighteous, who justly deserved punishment for sin.”^[11]

[1] Bliss, Philip. Hallelujah! What a Savior. Celebration Hymnal. orchestration ed. Nashville, TN: Word Entertainment Music, 1997.

[2]Evans, William ; Coder, S. Maxwell: The Great Doctrines of the Bible. Enl. ed. Chicago : Moody Press, 1998, c1974, S. 73

[3] Luther, Martin. Galatians (Crossway Classic Commentaries) (Crossway Classic Commentaries). 1st British ed ed. Leicester, England: Crossway Books, 1998.151.

[4] Watts, Isaac. At The Cross. Celebration Hymnal. orchestration ed. Nashville, TN: Word Entertainment Music, 1997.

[5] Baker, Mark. Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of the Atonement. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006. 22.

[6] Dever, Mark. It Is Well: Expositions on Substitutionary Atonement. Leicester, England: Crossway Books, 2010. 19-20.

[7] Hebrews 9:28

[8]Elwell, Walter A. Tyndale Bible Dictionary (Tyndale Reference Library). Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008. 888.

[9] Packer, J. I.. Concise Theology (sc). Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001.

[10] 1Peter 2:24, 3:18

[11]Zuck, Roy B. A Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1994. 443.

We studied the parable of the lost sons. Hearing the doctrine of forgiveness of sins didn’t shock them at all. It made no particular impression on them. It was something they had heard before. (Perhaps it was also the result of my poor gospel presentation.) However, when I mentioned Jesus’ teaching that good works done with bad intentions are evil, they were dumbstruck. How on earth could it be possible that good deeds become evil?

I was glad to see that Jesus’ teachings can still be breathtaking even in our day.

Here are some good deeds: Attending worship service on Sundays. Actively being engaged in church activities, such as choir, band, or youth group. Participating in outreach. Talking to new students. Teaching the Bible. Praying, fasting, and giving offerings. If Jesus told you that all of those things could be heinous, would you believe him? If this isn’t a radical teaching, then there is no such thing. And yet this is clearly taught in the Bible.

I cannot think of any better illustration of this than the older son in the parable of the lost sons. (By the way, Tim Keller’s sermon on this parable is a real eye-opener, and I strongly recommend it: The Prodigal Sons)

Whenever we have studied the parable of the lost sons, I have observed that many lovely, born-again Christians in UBF try to identify themselves with the younger son. In my opinion, many of them do not qualify! Many of these people are “too good” to be the younger son. After becoming part of the Father’s family, most of us did not openly rebel against him. We didn’t squander his wealth, waste his property, sleep with prostitutes, become addicted to drugs, or end up lying on the street in a gutter.

But consider the older son. Doesn’t his profile fit us much better? The older son did none of those dirty things. He was absolutely faithful. He worked hard. He didn’t miss a single church meeting. He even came to early-morning prayer. He wrote long and detailed testimonies. He fed his Father’s sheep. And yet, there is no doubt that he was just as lost as his younger brother.

Look at the messed-up vertical relationship with his Father. He didn’t truly love the Father. The Father’s possessions (the squandered property, the fattened calf) were more important to him than the Father himself. For him, the Father was a means to an end, to help him get what he really wanted. He didn’t care about his Father’s heart. Can you see the pride in his heart when he talks to his Father?

And notice the messed-up horizontal relationship with his younger brother. He wouldn’t even call him his brother. He disdained him. He looked down on him. He rejected him and abhorred him.

Keep in mind the people to whom Jesus was talking. It was the public sinners on the one hand (younger son-types) and the Pharisees and Scribes on the other hand (older brother-types). Jesus’ audience included people across the full spectrum or religiosity. And it was the religious who despised the irreligious and who couldn’t possibly understand the merciful, compassionate heart of the Father.

What I find most striking is this: The older son was not lost despite his goodness. It was not the case that he did not have enough good works to show his father. Rather, it was precisely his good works which alienated him from his father. It was his own righteousness which kept him away from the Father’s heart. It was by his own faithfulness and his own achievements which he tried to become his own savior and lord. It was his own (otherwise admirable) accomplishments which destroyed his relationships with his father and brother.

God is the embodiment of everything that is good. Therefore, anything that alienates us from God is evil. Every turning away from God towards self, every rejection of God as the only Savior and Lord, is pure evil. And if good deeds lead to that, then those good deeds have become evil.

True children of God do not only repent of the wrong things they have done and the good things they have failed to do. They also repent for the good deeds they have done with wrong motives. They repent of every evil, which has kept them away from God.

The consequences and applications of this principle for the church are astounding. We should never just promote a business-oriented or performance-oriented atmosphere, an attitude that “the show must go on.” A ministry should never just be about the number of people who attend the worship service, the number of Bible studies per week, and the number of missionaries that have been sent out. In my opinion, we need to promote and spread the flagrant, radical grace that is in God. The grace of Christ, an overflowing joy in Christ, a deeply-felt love for Christ and the desire to give glory to Christ must be the driving force and motivation behind every good deed of the saints. Any church that fails to endorse this principle has crossed the invisible line that separates the true gospel from mere religion.