arlington

For Memorial Day ... Arlington by Trace Adkins ...

social justice continues

I love giving and I love giving generously - but I don't love some of the reasons people use as Biblical support of social justice. Kevin DeYoung continues in his series on Social Justice and does a fine job of analyzing what God really is and is not calling for. In his latest post, DeYoung looks at Micah 6.8 and rightly concludes:

So what does Micah, and the Lord through him, mean by “doing justice”? He means we should not steal, bribe, or cheat. Conversely, we should, when we are in the position to do so, render fair and impartial judgments. And at all times in whatever calling, we should do good, not evil.

DeYoung's full post is here.

kicking and screaming

RC Sproul in Chosen By God:

Calvinism does not teach and never has taught that God bring people kicking and screaming into the kingdom or has ever excluded anyone who wanted to be there. Remember that the cardinal point of the Reformed doctrine of predestination rests on the biblical teaching of man's spiritual death. Natural man does not want Christ. He will only want Christ if God plants a desire for Christ in his heart. Once that desire is planted, those who come to Christ do not come kicking and screaming against their wills. They come because they want to come. They now desire Jesus. They rush to the Saviour. The whole point of irresistible grace is that rebirth quickens someone to spiritual life in such a way that Jesus is now seen in his irresistible sweetness. Jesus is irresistible to those who have been made alive to the things of God. Every soul whose heart beats with the life of God within it longs for the living Christ. All whom the Father gives to Christ come to Christ (John 6:37).

christian socialism

I am not supportive of the new US health-care program. I do not like many government programs. Yet I'm not against all programs. In fact, part of me is open to some form of government health-care, just not the one that recently became law. But this isn't about that. This is about Christians claiming government programs are Christian. That I do not understand.

I recently had a short dialog with a friend who concluded "benevolence is benevolence." I don't agree and I look forward to grabbing some time with him to further explore his thinking (and vice-versa). To me, what some call benevolence I call socialism (among other things). John Aman writes on this topic.

Friedrich Engels [on] collectivism's clash with Christianity, "...if some few passages of the Bible may be favourable to Communism, the general spirit of its doctrines is, nevertheless, totally opposed to it ...."

 
Despite Engels and Marx (who dismissed religion as the "opium of the people"), ... many ... still manage to see socialism in the Bible. They point to the early church which, at first glance, seems like a model socialist community. The New Testament reports that these first believers "had all things in common" (Acts 4:32) and "all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need" (Acts 4:34-35).

But unlike socialism, the sharing was voluntary, not coerced, and the money was given not to the state, but the church. As Southern Baptist leader Richard Land puts it ..., "It's one thing for you to give out of compassion to someone who's less fortunate. It's an entirely different thing for the government to confiscate your property and give it to someone else." ...

While the Bible asserts property rights and the rights of inheritance, socialism assaults them. Marx and Engels put the "abolition of property" first in a ten-step program for implementing communism. That's not exactly a Christian thing to do. The eighth commandment, "You shall not steal" (Exodus 20:15) applies every bit as much to the men and women who hold the reins of political power as it does to everyone else.

So does the 10th commandment, "You shall not covet" (Exodus 20:17). Coveting, or envy, is a powerful driver of socialism, which is in a perpetual snit that some people have more than others. So when President Obama castigates "Fats Cats" on Wall Street, decries "economic inequality," and warns, as he did in his 2009 budget statement that a "disproportionate share of the nation's wealth has been accumulated by the very wealthy," he stokes a destructive impulse that is condemned by Scripture.

Socialism also runs afoul of the first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3). Socialist governments seek to play God — to take His place as the ultimate sovereign. Consider the veneration that Russians once gave to the embalmed remains of Lenin and Stalin, the Nazi-prescribed prayer to Hitler ("Thy Reich [kingdom] comes, thy will alone is law upon the earth"), and the personality cult surrounding North Korea's "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il.

The sixth commandment, "You shall not murder," is also widely ignored by Marxist regimes. Marx and Engels proclaimed that their aims could be "attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions." Their disciples, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other communist henchmen, killed 100-million people, a "tragedy of planetary dimensions," as the French publisher of The Black Book of Communism put it.

Barack Obama may say that the Bible tells him to be his brother's keeper (his youngest half-brother reportedly lived in a shack in Kenya on $1 a day at the time he said this), but he ought to go back and reread what God's Word actually says. Engels was right. Socialism has nothing in common with Scripture.

come and see to come and die

One of the catch phrases I love from Vineyard history is "come as you are." Rick Warren recently posted Discipleship: moving from ‘come and see’ to ‘come and die’ which I find consistent with that timeless Vineyard value. Warren writes:

Not too long after John the Baptist baptized Jesus, he saw the Lord walking by and said to a couple of his disciples, “There goes the lamb of God. You need to follow him.”
Andrew and John started following Jesus and they asked, “Where are you going, Lord?” Jesus answered — “Come and see.”

You can’t ask for an easier commitment than that -- just come and see.

That’s where you and I need to start in our churches as we offer an open door to the people throughout our communities. That’s what you tell people about your weekend service – Check us out. Come and see. Listen to our music. Hear the message. You don’t have to sing anything, sign anything, or say anything. No significant commitment required.

We offer an open door for people to “come and see,” one that is easy to understand and participate in.

But we can’t leave them there at that simple commitment level. Jesus didn’t. Over three-and-a-half years, Jesus required more and more of his disciples.

He kept turning up the heat by defining what it means to follow him. He said you are his disciple if you:

• Obey his word (John 8:31)
• Love each other (John 13:31)
• Bear much fruit (John 15:8)

Finally, Jesus told his disciples that they must carry their cross—in other words they must be willing to die—to be true disciples (Luke 14:27). Jesus moved his followers from “come and see” to “come and die.” That’s the discipleship process of Jesus. That’s what we need to do, too.

We must focus our efforts on this Jesus model -- moving people from “come and see” to “come and die.” If you do not have a structure for doing this -- if you do not have a deliberate plan for moving visitors toward a commitment to Jesus and then into deeper discipleship with Jesus – you’ll find a lot of people stalled at the “come and see” stage.

Jason Clark has written The scandal of invitation into The Church in an effort as part of his re-imagining Vineyard values series. In this he claims the phrase we held was, "Come as you are, but don't stay as you are." I didn't learn it that way. I grew up in the Vineyard in the midwest and we said, "Come as you are, you'll be loved." At least that's what our bumper stickers claimed. Either way, I think we valued and intended both. We wanted people to come experience God among us. We didn't expect people to get "cleaned up" first or to have all of their theology right or whatever. And certainly we wanted to be known as a people reflecting the supernatural love of God to all of His creation. And then of course we wanted to be a people that were true to holiness and righteousness. We knew that to obey was to show our love of God and to spur each other on toward righteousness was to show our love toward each other.

Clark writes regarding the word come:

Christians are called to invite others into a new story, and new imagination for life, and to physically, emotionally, economically, and psychologically explore, resource and inhabit that way of life with others. So many other communities capture our imaginations and make demands with regular involvement and practices. Football, dance, a choir, an orchestra, a motorbike club, basketball, chess or knitting community. All involve a way of life with others. And they demand commitments, obligations and orientations of our time, resources and our diaries with no apology. They involve learning the grammar, traditions, and practices of those communities, and require re-enactment and the performance of those things with others.

... I believe the Church is a centripetal movement, a confession of Christ that is a movement out of all and any other community. To enter into the Church is to make a final decision, for the ultimate community. A community that doesn’t remove us from our other communities, but orders all other allegiances. Of course that presupposes a view of the church that is more than just a self interest group, club and society.

So for our vineyard church community, that invitation is something we intend to keep extending to others, in the belief that within it is something far great than any club and society, and hobby. ‘Come’ is the invitation of the people of God to all the world to enter into the ordering of a way of life together that will continue into eternity. The future age has a social presence, a community under the authority of Jesus Christ, that we are to invite people into now.




Then in regard to as you are:



The idea of acceptance, that the heart of the Gospel is that God welcomes us where and how we are, needs no updating. Anyone, in any location, in any situation is to be given the invitation, and told they are welcome to take part in the future age with God’s people now.

And yes so often church has become a place of exclusion, people whose life location and orientation means they aren’t welcome and accepted. Also the rampant individualism of consumer society means we are so quick to read all and any invitation as an act of exclusion. The consumer self finds it’s strongest orientation in alienation, and the desire to seek signs of exclusion and offense. Put those together and no wonder we have problems.

The above needs more words to avoid being a problem (at least for me) but Clark redeems any misunderstanding one might have with above with the following on the second half of the expression, but don’t stay as you are:


And perhaps the most scandalous part of this value. The call to change and transformation in christ with others. Again we are trained into isolation in western liberal consumer society. ‘It’s my life and I’ll dam well do what I want with it’. Who is any one to tell me that I need to change?

The church should be the place to confess our sins, that we are broken, and in need of transformation, all of us. A community to practice accountability around our decisions, and life investments. A community that would hold a mirror up to us, and help us see ourselves in Jesus better.

It’s too easy to read ‘don’t stay as you are’ as something other than acceptance. The post-modern self that claims, ‘here I am, I can be no other’. Yet the gospel and the invitation into the Church as the public of the Holy Spirit, the Body of Jesus, is the call to become like Jesus, something other than what we can make of ourselves.

Reality TV, and celebrity seems to so often set the agenda for who and what we should be like. To become what people need us to be so we can then try and find out who we are, a cycle of endless self creation and promotion.

Christianity is the scandal and loving reminder to others that we are not free to be who we want to be. That we will only find out who we are in Jesus, and that no human has ever found the ends of the depths of identity in Him.

gospel v. religion

Here's a simple chart contrasting religion and gospel. This is from Justin Buzzard as taken from Tim Keller's Gospel in Life curriculum. Buzzard has made a pdf available here.

plodding is good

"What we need are fewer revolutionaries and a few more plodding visionaries. That’s my dream for the church — a multitude of faithful, risktaking plodders. The best churches are full of gospel-saturated people holding tenaciously to a vision of godly obedience and God’s glory, and pursuing that godliness and glory with relentless, often unnoticed, plodding consistency." ~ Kevin DeYoung

HT:DP

confrontation

In The Reason for God, Tim Keller writes (emphasis mine):

We should confront wrongdoers - to wake them up to their real character, to move them to repair their relationships, or to at least constrain them and protect others from being harmed by them in the future. Notice, however, that all those reasons for confrontation are reasons of love. The best way to love them and the potential victims around them is to confront them in the hope that they will repent, change, and make things right. The desire for vengeance, however, is motivated not by goodwill but by ill will. ...

Only if you first seek inner forgiveness will your confrontation be temperate, wise, and gracious. Only when you have lost the need to see the other person hurt will you have any chance of actually bringing about change, reconciliation, and healing. You have to submit to the costly suffering and death of forgiveness if there is going to be any resurrection.

I like that Keller points out that it is the "you" that must submit not first the person requiring the confrontation. Keller then quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Cost of Discipleship.

"My brother’s burden which I must bear is not only his outward lot [and circumstance], … but quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross of Christ in which [we] now share. Thus the call to follow Christ always means a call to share [in] the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian’s duty to bear."

Technorati Tags: community, forgiveness, love, sin

the essence of sin

The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We…put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God…puts himself where we deserve to be. - John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p.160

Technorati Tags: sin

death of sola

I do not think we are on the verge of the death of sola Scriptura nor should we be. I'd like to tease out the following written by a prolific emerg* voice.

The end of Sola Scriptura actually means that we are coming to terms with our limitations to get it right. It means we’re realizing that we have to listen to community, science, imagination, history AND the Bible to create a more robust picture. Because as broken human beings we sometimes get it wrong.

Aside from misunderstanding what sola Scriptura is, the author makes some errors is simple logic and himself demonstrates fallenness. The emerg* feels enlightened because he realizes that our ability to reason is somehow limited. Of course in an effort to be cutting edge and new, it is missed that this is an old concept - even a key tenant of the dreaded Calvinism, i.e., Total Depravity or better said, Radical Depravity. Even our minds are affected by the fall. We didn't need the emerg* to teach us that. With that said, rather than turn more toward Scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit, the emerg* author turns us toward "community, science, imagination, history" as equal. This is only possible in the emerg* mind because of the failure to understand the real problem with man, that is, sin. So it's interesting on one hand the emerg* sees a problem with our limited minds but on the other hand sees the answer in sources that do not deal with sin. In addition, if our mind is unable to see and conclude clearly, what is it that "community, science, imagination, history" has to offer that Scripture does not? How will we be better informed by considering these? The bottom line is that emerg* thinking itself exemplifies the problem of fallen man. They reason their way away from the God of the Bible.

Where does some of this errant thinking come from? It has recently been popularized by Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence. A different emerg* author writes proudly of her book:

The erosion of the authority of sola scriptura will have been in 4 stages: the end of slavery as a biblically justified practice, the acknowledgement of the reality of divorce and that those who suffer it might find total restitution in the eyes of God, the ascendancy of woman to ministry, and finally (and as yet incomplete), an acceptance of homosexuals into the Church. Added to this she includes the Pentecostal and Charismatic renewals (the Vineyard movement getting special mention) in which the Holy Spirit played an increased role in questions of Authority.

Speaking of muddled thinking! This paragraph makes no sense, it mixes apples with oranges with chairs ... and, because something (i.e., slavery) was wrongly defended using Scripture (and by the way, many were also against slavery because of Scripture) doesn't make everything one wants to list ok. On the contrary, this paragraph reads as the sad story of God giving one over to a depraved mind (Rom 1.18ff).

It also saddens me to see the tradition I'm proud to be as part of (The Vineyard) as misconstrued to involved in this fallen thinking. To set the record straight, we do not equate revelation by the Holy Spirit to individuals to be authoritative as Scripture is. Scripture are all the words of God that He has given for the entire human race and as such are sola Scriptura, i.e., our final authority.

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church, Scripture

the atonement of jesus christ

From the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:

All the symbols, doctrine and examples of atonement in the Old Testament among the Hebrews find their counterpart, fulfillment and complete explanation in the new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ (Matthew 26:28; Hebrews 12:24). By interpreting the inner spirit of the sacrificial system, by insisting on the unity and holiness of God, by passionate pleas for purity in the people, and especially by teaching the principle of vicarious suffering for sin, the Prophets laid the foundation in thought-forms and in religious atmosphere for such a doctrine of atonement as is presented in the life and teaching of Jesus and as is unfolded in the teaching of His apostles.

The personal, parabolic sufferings of Hosea, the remarkable elaboration of the redemption of spiritual Israel through a Suffering Servant of Yahweh and the extension of that redemption to all mankind as presented in Isaiah 40 through 66, and the same element in such psalms as Psalm 22, constitute a key to the understanding of the work of the Christ that unifies the entire revelation of God’s righteousness in passing over human sins (Romans 3:24 f). Yet it is remarkable that such a conception of the way of atonement was as far as possible from the general and average Jewish mind when Jesus came. In no sense can the New Testament doctrine of the Atonement be said to be the product of the thought and spirit of the times.

However much theologians may disagree as to the rationale of the Atonement, there is, as there can be, no question that Jesus and all His interpreters in the New Testament represent the Atonement between God and men as somehow accomplished through Jesus Christ. It is also an agreed fact in exegesis that Jesus and His apostles understood His death to be radically connected with this Atonement.

1. Jesus Himself teaches that He has come to reveal the Father (John 14:9), to recover the lost (Luke 19:10), to give life to men (John 6:33; 10:10), to disclose and establish the kingdom of heaven (or of God), gathering a few faithful followers through whom His work will be perpetuated (John 17:2 ff; Matthew 16:13 ff); that salvation, personal and social, is dependent upon His person (John 6:53 ff; 14:6). He cannot give full teaching concerning His death but He does clearly connect His sufferings with the salvation He seeks to give. He shows in Luke 4:16 ff and 22:37 that He understands Isaiah 52 through 53 as realized in Himself; He is giving Himself (and His blood) a ransom for men (Matthew 20:28; 26:26 ff; compare 1 Corinthians 11:23 ff). He was not a mere martyr but gave Himself up willingly, and voluntarily (John 10:17 f; Galatians 2:20), in accordance with the purpose of God (Acts 2:23), as the Redeemer of the world, and expected that by His lifting up all men would be drawn to Him (John 12:31-33). It is possible to explain the attention which the Evangelists give to the death of Jesus only by supposing that they are reflecting the importance which they recall Jesus Himself to have attached to His death.

2. All the New Testament writers agree in making Jesus the center of their idea of the way of salvation and that His death is an essential element in His saving power. This they do by combining Old Testament teaching with the facts of the life and death of the Lord, confirming their conclusion by appeal to the Resurrection. Paul represents himself as holding the common doctrine of Christianity at the time, and from the beginning, when in 1 Corinthians 15:3 f he sums up his teaching that salvation is secured through the death and re surrection of Jesus according to the Scriptures. Elsewhere (Ephesians 2:16, 18; 1 Timothy 2:5; compare Acts 4:12) in all his writings he emphasizes his belief that Jesus Christ is the one Mediator between God and man, by the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20; 1 Corinthians 2:2), removing the sin barrier between God and men. Peter, during the life of Jesus so full of the current Jewish notion that God accepted the Jews de facto, in his later ministry makes Jesus in His death the one way to God (Acts 4:12; 1 Peter 1:2, 18, 19; 2:21, 24; 3:18).

John has this element so prominent in his Gospel that radical critical opinion questions its authorship partly on that account, while the epistles of John and the Revelation are, on the same ground, attributed to later Greek thought (compare 1 John 1:7; 2:2; 3:5; 4:10; Revelation 1:5; 5:9). The Epistle to the Hebrews finds in Jesus the fulfillment and extension of all the sacrificial system of Judaism and holds that the shedding of blood seems essential to the very idea of remission of sins (9:22; compare 2:17; 7:26 f; 9:24-28).

what shape to be saved

Often when I read NakePastor's cartoons I'm often left (1) unsure what his perspective is and (2) thinking. I suppose the former is not bad and the latter can be good. Today's offering was no exception.



From the perspective of the person trying to enter "heaven", they can often feel as though they are the wrong shape and can't get in. This feeling doesn't always come from external sources. Our fallen nature desires to keep us bound in guilt and a sense of unworthiness. On the other hand, from the perspective of those believing they have already entered, there may be some notion that all have to match their shape to get in. These create artificial barriers and become like the Pharisees.

So my take on the image is that inappropriate barriers are created on both sides of this issue. On the other hand, there are many today who would like to say that no shape at all is required - these would be wrong. Kevin DeYoung wrote a post today also on Confidence or Condemnation in which he explores signs that we can look for as assurance of salvation.

The first sign is theological. You should have confidence if you believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God (5:11-13). John doesn’t want people to be doubting. God wants you to have assurance, to know that you have eternal life. And this is the first sign, that you believe in Jesus. You believe he is the Christ or the Messiah (2:22). You believe he is the Son of God (5:10). And you believe that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (4:2). So if you get your theology wrong about Jesus you will not have eternal life. But one of the signs that should give you confidence before God is that you believe in his only Son Jesus Christ our Lord (4:14-16; 5:1, 5).

The second sign is moral. You should have confidence if you live a righteous life (3:6-9). Those who practice wickedness, who plunge headlong into sin, who not only stumble, but habitually walk in wickedness–should not be confident. This is no different than what Paul tells us in Romans 6 that we are no longer slaves to sin but slaves to righteousness and in Galatians 5 that those who walk in the flesh will not inherit the kingdom. This is no different than what Jesus tells us in John 15 that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. So if you live a morally righteous life you should have confidence (3:24). And lest this standard make you despair, keep in mind that part of living a righteous life is refusing to claim that you live without sin and coming to Christ for cleansing when you do sin (1:9-10).

The third sign is social. You should have confidence if you love other Christians (3:14). If you hate like Cain you do not have life. But if your heart and your wallet are open to your brothers and sisters eternal life abides in you. One necessary sign of true spiritual life is that we love one another (4:7-12, 21).

These are John’s three signposts to assure us that we are on the road that leads to eternal life: we believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God; we live a righteous life; and we love other Christians. Or we can put it this way: we know we have eternal life if we love Jesus, we love his commands, and we love his people. No one of the three is optional. All must be present for our assurance (see 2:4, 6; 4:20; 5:2). John belabors the same points again and again. Do you love God? Do you love his commands? Do you love his people? If you don’t, it’s a sign you have death. If you do, it’s sign that you have life. And that means confidence instead of condemnation.

So the bottom-line, it is not so much that a shape is needed, but one certainly results and that can be evaluated and used to build confidence.

small groups leaders are not ...

Sam O'Neal lists 4 things a small-group leader is not:

• A teacher. We all understand that small-group leaders should not be lecturers who monopolize the group's time by spewing out facts and opinions. But I use the wordteacher here intentionally in order to highlight an important misconception: many group leaders believe that the focus of their group's study time should be the transfer of information. They feel that a study is successful if their group members have learned something. But that is not the case, as we will see later in the article.
• Just another group member. This is the opposite of the "group leader as professor" approach, but it's just as harmful. Many churches like to teach that their group leaders are no different than group members because they want to communicate that group members are just as important and valuable as group leaders—which is true. But being equal in terms of worth and value does not mean that people have to adopt the same roles and functions. The reality is that a small group with no leader will rarely move forward.
• A host. This has become a popular re-definition of what it means to be a small-group leader in recent years, primarily due to the influence of video curriculum. The idea is that a person or couple can host a small group in their home, pop in a DVD, and let a "professional" handle the task of leading the group into meaningful experiences with truth. But there is one major flaw inherent in this method of "leading" a small group: a DVD cannot respond to the movement of the Holy Spirit. What happens when a group members is convicted of sin during the discussion and begins weeping? Who calls the group to prayer when group members confess to being in danger of losing their house or their marriage? These situations require a leader who can take control and help the group follow the Spirit.
• A facilitator. Many churches want their group leaders to think of themselves as facilitators, rather than leaders. This is done to combat the "small-group leader as professor" problem referred to earlier, but it creates several problems of its own. Just as viewing group leaders primarily as teachers elevates learning over transformation, viewing them as facilitators elevates discussion over transformation. A study session is deemed successful if the group had a good conversation and a high level of participation, rather than basing the criteria for success on interaction with the Holy Spirit and seeing lives changed.

O'Neal concludes, "I'm not saying that small-group leaders should not demonstrate these qualities. Quite the opposite—group leaders should be able to facilitate discussion, host a gathering, and teach when necessary. But I think that churches go wrong when they make any of these skills the primary focus of a group leader's role."

HT:DR

Technorati Tags: small groups

naturally supernatural

On being naturally supernatural, Steve Hamilton posts the following description of "brokenness, brokenness, brokenness" by Dr. Terry Wardle:

• congenital brokenness (from the fall);
• communal brokenness (we are wounded and broken and we all go about wounding others and breaking others – Al-Anon has a saying resonating with this: “Hurt people hurt people.”);
• but the third one is sacramental brokenness: we minister healing from a posture and place of humility and weakness as Christ lives and heals and moves through us via His Spirit.

Hamilton sums up with the following:

This keeps me humble, and I think it seems to position all of us in a mutually transforming posture. It is not I who live, but Christ lives through me. It also seems to me that in a culture of self-promotion humility becomes a primary spiritual discipline and a naturally supernatural lifestyle of following Jesus while embracing all that it entails becomes utterly counter-cultural. ... Thus, in this way, I think our distinctive of ‘naturally supernatural’ can be embraced as non-hyped but significantly life-changing via Christ Jesus with unlimited possibility and hope as we humbly submit and surrender to His Reign impacting us, moving through and on to others. We’re merely broken vessels that leak, and in seizing the authenticity inherent in brokenness, and acting on the wisdom of AA – that ‘alcoholics need other alcoholics’, i.e., the broken need others who are broken - we need to always endeavour to be mature, humble ‘pray-ers’ and as those receiving ministry to give good feedback and communication so that we move together in mutuality. In this mutuality, we give ourselves over to Jesus to move and have His Being in and through us, trusting that the subsequent transparency and humility will affect mutual transformation and mysteriously – as Colossians 1:24 hints at – bring the sorrows and sufferings of Christ to wholeness.

I love it!

leaky canon - not

Has God's revelation stopped? I think not - and I like how Wayne Grudem articulates that. Here is Wayne Grudem responding to Adrian Warnock's question on that topic.

Wayne Grudem on whether God's revelation has really stopped or not from Adrian Warnock on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: Kingdom of God, spiritual gifts

theology without a comma

I've been involved in the Vineyard since the late '80s. I am very thankful for the wonderful training and experiences this community has provided me over the years. Today I read a post, The Grammar of Equipping, by Steve Burnhope and it brought back some good memories. Burnhope's post was on Ephesians 4.11-14. Some versions have a comma in the middle of verse 12.

The KJV renders verse 12, "For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ."

I'm no Greek scholar but us Vineyard types prefer other translations here. The ESV for example reads, "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ," the NIV has, "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up" and the NKJV reads, "for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ".

Dropping that little comma changes the who is doing the work of the ministry. Without the comma, it's not necessarily the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers - it's God's people themselves. And it provides a special why. That is, these people are prepared so that they can do ministry and in them doing ministry the body of Christ is built up.

Bottom line, if you're a Vineyard guy (whatever that is), you don't like the comma.

Technorati Tags: community, discipleship

substitutionary atonement

"The substitutionary atonement is the heart of the gospel, and it is so because it gives the answer to the problem of guilt, bondage and alienation from God. The earlier this answer can be spelled out in the process of evangelism and nurture, the better. Persons come to Christ initially for a variety of reasons, some of which are eccentric to their principal need for redemption: loneliness, a sense of meaninglessness in the godless life, suffering, fear and so on. Only those are lastingly converted, however, whose eventual motivation is to turn from their sin to God and receive the answer to sin in the work of Jesus Christ: “For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.” (Jn. 3:20-21). Spiritual life results from fellowship with God. But walking in light is essential to fellowship with the Father and the Son. Believers who are truly established in Christ have experienced the shattering of their spheres of of ignorance and darkness by a growing understanding of the nature of God, their sin and God’s provision of grace in Jesus Christ. This darkness can only be destroyed by the presentation of the preconditions of renewal and by the proclamation of the heart of the gospel in depth." ~ Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, quoted by Kevin DeYoung

grace is a threat

"Grace is only a threat to the illusion that we are free, autonomous selves, living life as we choose." ~ Tim Keller, The Reason For God


On a related note, John Piper, in Reason #30 Why Jesus Came to Die:

But there is another sense in which we die precisely because Christ died in our place and for our sins. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die . . .” (1 Peter 2:24). He died that we might live; and he died that we might die. When Christ died, I, as a believer in Christ, died with him. The Bible is clear: “We have been united with him in a death like his” (Romans 6:5). “One has died for all, therefore all have died” (2 Corinthians 5:14).

spiritual pride

Spiritual pride is the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those who are zealous for the advancement of Christianity. It is the chief inlet of smoke from the bottomless pit, to darken the mind and mislead the judgment. It is the main source of all the mischief the devil introduces, to clog and hinder a work of God." ~ Jonathan Edwards as quoted in this post by Ray Ortlund.

walk with a limp

Years ago we would often say never trust a man who didn't walk with a limp. Steve Burnhope does a nice job unpacking the intended meaning of that. A leader who limps of course is a reference to Jacob's wrestling in Genesis 32.23-32. Burnhope concludes this is about "leaders whose character has been changed, who have utterly surrendered to God, letting go of self-reliance as their primary resource, and repenting of all scheming and manipulation in the work of the Kingdom." Burnhope continues:

It might be said that overall, scripture has far more to say about people’s character than their gifting. In the wilderness temptations of Jesus, one might say that the issues and choices he faced were to do with character (this would be unsurprising, given his humanity, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the story appears at the outset of his ministry).

This, then, is the message of Jacob and his wrestling with the angel of God, and it is a wrestling that each of us must go through, if we wish to contribute to God’s mission in God’s ways. The battleground is personal character. It is not a fight that God can win, though, not a victory he can impose on us, however long the fight goes on; it can only happen through our willing surrender.

Jason Clark adds how we might spot these limps.

1. Doubts: Leaders don’t have all the answers, and don’t act like they do. Leaders are learners, and learning takes questions and doubts.

2. Apologising: Man is this the rarest of limps. Leaders get so caught up in mission and their identity in that. In the face of mistakes they are unable to acknowledge those and apologise.

And more importantly they are unable to call some mistakes what they are, sin. I don’t mean just the obvious ones, of blowing your top, and bad decisions. I mean the more invidious issues of character.

3. Brokeness: How on earth did we equate leadership with success? A short read of the New Testament should reveal that even Paul was quick to place his brokeness before Jesus and need of others, front and centre. Those who inspire me the most live a life where their weaknesses are on their sleeves, and the need for Jesus close to their actions and life story.

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