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Month: September 2013

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Published on 1 Comment on The Image of the Invisible Omnibeing?

christ-the-redeemerA repost

The average Christian testimony goes something like this:  I’d always believed in God and then I came to see that Jesus was this god-I-always-believed-in.

Average Christian evangelism really hopes that people believe in “God”.  We are relieved to hear that a person believes in "God."  Phew, we think, that's half the job done!

If they don’t believe in "God" we draw a deep breath and rummage around for some arguments to convince them of "God":

  • There’s order in the world, there must be an Orderer.
  • Everything is caused, there must be a Cause at the top of the chain.
  • There’s morality – there must be a Moral Lawgiver.
  • You have a sense of something more, there must be Something more.

And we argue towards some kind of OmniBeing.  You know the omnis – maybe you learnt them in religious studies at school.  God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnivorous, ambidextrous, double-joined, tri-focal, etc, etc, etc.

And if our arguments are clever enough, maybe they’ll agree to our philosophy.  Hallelujah, they believe in the Omnibeing!  This is surely a step in the right direction, we imagine.

After all, didn't Elijah use similar tactics on the Baal worshippers.  I don't have my bible to hand but I seem to remember some very powerful arguments on Mount Carmel.  All that stuff about "Yahweh is a bit like Baal.  But bigger.  And less despotic."  Brilliant stuff.

Well, now that we've used philosophical theism as a stepping stone to Jesus, we come to the business end of proceedings:  it's time to unveil Jesus Himself.  And so we hand over a Gospel to our unbeliever and try to convince them that Jesus is the Omnibeing made flesh.

The unbeliever goes away and reads the Gospel.  And what do they find?  A laughing, crying, shouting, serving, healing, loving Human Sacrifice.  And the non-Christian says – “Wow, that stuff’s interesting.  But it doesn’t sound like the Omnibeing.”

At this stage we must remain firm.  It would be easy to sell out the OmniBeing. But no. We must be faithful to our bedrock theism, right? So here's how we proceed:

-- “Hmm, tricky" we say, "all that passionate, self-sacrificial blood and suffering - that's just on the surface.  That’s not the real God-stuff. That's His human nature.  But don’t worry, deep down Jesus is really the Omnibeing."

-- "Really?" says the enquirer, "Cos all that Jesus-stuff is very attract..."

-- ..."No, no, it's a gloss.  Nothing to see here.  The OmniBeing rules!"

And we pray that the non-Christian agrees.  For if they do, then surely we have brought them to see that Jesus is Lord.  Right?

Wrong.  This is not the conversion of an unbeliever to Christ.  This is the conversion of Jesus to the Omnibeing.  And we’ve taken people away from the real God – the Father who Jesus actually reveals.

You see Colossians 1:15 turns our natural assumptions on their head. We reckon that God is obvious and Jesus is not. We survey the religious beliefs of the land and we're told that most people believe in God, but they're not sure about Jesus. (People tick the "Belief in God" box but they're uncertain of Jesus - maybe He's a prophet or a myth, etc). But the bottom line is, most of the world thinks God is obvious but Jesus is obscure. Colossians 1:15 says the exact opposite:

The Son is the Image of the invisible God.

God is the invisible One. He is the unknown entity. But the Son is His Image. Jesus is the One on display. Therefore evangelism is not about working from the invisible to the visible. It's starting with the Image and then inferring what God is like.

As Lord Byron said "If God isn't like Jesus Christ, he ought to be." That's the direction of travel - from Christ to the Father who He reveals.

In evangelism we often use the phrase "Jesus is God." But when we say that we don't mean that "Jesus (weirdly enough) is the god you'd always believed in." Instead we proclaim "Jesus (yes, that's right, Jesus the One who bled for sinners!) He reveals the true God - a God so good you never dared imagine Him!"

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Published on 5 Comments on Ten Thoughts On Salvation

salvation1) We are saved by God. (Jonah 2:9)

God does it all. He does not simply 'blaze a trail' or 'clear a path' or 'make it possible' to be saved. He saves. It's His work entirely.

2) We are saved from God. (Romans 3:25)

Our problem is not merely our disobedience, our problem is God's anger at our disobedience. We're not just saved from sin but from wrath. If our problem was "our sin" then "our righteousness" would be the (implied) solution. But no, the problem is out of our hands - just as the solution is.

3) We are saved for God. (Ephesians 2:18) 

Who cares if we simply receive a "not guilty verdict"? The good news is not that we escape hell. It's that we are reconciled to the Father, in the Son and by the Spirit.

4) Salvation is about our being. (2 Peter 1:4)

Our problem is not simply our behaviour but our being in Adam. God's solution is not simply "a clean slate" but a whole new nature in Christ. Atonement is not simply about scapegoats and blood sacrifices (though they are crucial). It's about our High Priest carrying His people into God's presence.

5) Jesus is God's salvation and perfectly reveals His saving will. (John 3:14-17)

Jesus means "The LORD is salvation." If we want to know God's will for salvation there is nowhere else to look. God is the God of Jesus - the God of the gospel.

6) God's love for Christ is primary. (John 3:35-36)

It's easy to get lost in debates about "God's love for the church" versus "God's love for the world." We might ask ourselves whether / how these loves might differ from each other. But we ought to begin further upstream. God loves His Son and He gives His Son to the world. Where Christ is received, that is the church. But the point is not so much about the church or the world (or the church versus the world). It's about Jesus.

7) Every blessing is in Jesus. (Ephesians 1:3-14)

As we've just noted, God saves by committing everything into the hands of Jesus and then offering Jesus to the world (John 3:35-36). All of salvation happens in Christ (i.e. forgiveness, new life, adoption, election, justification, etc, etc). God doesn't do any of these things to us outside of Christ - He works them all in His Son and offers them only in Him.

8) Judgement and Salvation are not parallel tracks. (1 Peter 4:17)

It's not really a matter of either curses or blessings. The world goes through 'paradise lost' to a new Jerusalem. Israel goes through exile and then returns. Christ goes through the cross to the resurrection.  We're baptised into His death and, through our co-crucifixion with Christ, we enter into salvation.

9) Saving faith is not a thing. (John 1:10-13)

Some think of faith as a thing and then argue about whether it belongs to man or to God. But faith is not a thing. Christ is the one saving thing, given to the world. Where He is received - that is called faith. But faith isn't the saving thing, Christ is.

10) The gospel is the power of salvation. (Romans 1:15-16)

The power of salvation - the Almighty Spirit of Christ - works in and through the word. We must not divorce word and Spirit. We must not imagine that the preaching of the gospel is one thing and saving power is something else - sometimes active, sometimes not. That would be to locate the power of salvation outside the gospel. But no, the gospel is God's power to save. Most discussions about salvation would be improved if we had a stronger theology of the word.

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Published on 1 Comment on Porterbrook Learning

Porterbrook courses teach Christians to live in the light of the bible story

at the heart level

in the context of community

on mission to the world.

Sounds good to me!

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Here's the video, website and the Facebook page

The modules look great. Check it out!

Published on Leave a comment on Forum Talks

bible-headphones-800-x-325Last week I was at UCCF's Forum. I loved catching up with students and staff and was especially blessed by Terry Virgo's talks on Romans.

Jo Larcombe and I did a track called "On Mission with the Good God" (it's basically 321 in 4.5 hours).

I hear great things about Angus Moyes and Hamish Sneddon's track: "On Mission with the Hearing God" (all about prayer). I look forward to listening to this very soon.

And, for old times sakes, here's Mike Reeves' and Angus Moyes' track from last year: "On Mission with the Saving God."

Enjoy!

 

Published on Leave a comment on Podcast: What’s Stopping Us? part two

TEP-PodcastCover-1024x1024In our last episode we began looking at Problems of the Head. We tried to establish the proper place of reason in evangelism. Reason is not the ladder reaching up to heaven, revelation is the rescue that comes down.

In this episode we work through some of the implications for reason. We think about how we should address enquirer's intellectual objections. In particular we try to:

  • Reframe the question
  • Reflect to the questioner, and
  • Reveal Christ

The true nature of evangelism is not offering Cool, Credibility, Creeds or Courses. It's offering Christ.

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Published on 3 Comments on How to be transformed – the missionary context of 2 Corinthians 3:18

Outgoing GodWhat's this verse about?

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory...  (2 Cor 3:18)

Is it about enjoying private devotional experiences with Jesus so that we become like Him?   That's a popular interpretation.  And it's half right.  But it's really not the full story.

The NIV footnote says that 'reflect' can be translated 'contemplate'.  But I think 'reflect' is a better translation.  It's a word that means 'showing like a mirror shows'.  The question is this - Is the mirror-like-ness telling us about how the beholder looks at the mirror?  Or is the mirror-like-ness telling us about how the mirror itself reflects outwardly?

My guess is the latter.  Our faces are like mirrors reflecting outwardly to the world the glory of Jesus.

This fits the context.  Paul has been reminding us about Moses's face-to-face encounters with the Lord (2 Cor 3:7,13).  He put a veil on to stop the Israelites seeing this fading glory.  But we (as v18 says) have unveiled faces.  And so what happens?   Others see the glory of Christ as we reflect it out to the world.

So this verse does indeed depend on our having devotional experiences with Jesus - just as Moses did (e.g. Exodus 33:7-11).  But that in itself will not transform us into Christ's likeness.  Reflecting Christ's glory out into the world - that will transform us.

Which is what the next two chapters of 2 Corinthians are all about.

Too often we think of holiness as one thing and mission as another.  Really they are mutually defining and mutually achieved.  Just as God's own being is a being in outreach, so our Christian character is a character in outreach.  To divorce the two is disastrous.

Holiness-in-mission is parallel to God's being-in-becoming. Just as God is who He is in His mission, so are we. Reflecting the Lord's glory is not a private activity - or at least it must not end there.  It's not essentially pietistic but proclamatory.  It's not about locking ourselves in a "prayer closet" - it's outgoing witness (to believers and unbelievers).

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Published on 2 Comments on Why has the Church caused so much pain?

all-souls-sign-3I've been asked to write brief answers to six thorny questions:

Hasn't science disproved God?

Is God homophobic?

Why does God appear so violent in the Old Testament?

Are the gospel accounts trustworthy?

Why isn't God more obvious?

Why has the Church caused so much pain?

I've got to keep these under 600 words. I'd love if you could help. What have I missed? What have I got wrong?

...........................

Why has the Church caused so much pain?

Not a Liability!

The church is not a liability in mission. The church is God’s mission strategy for the world (Psalm 14:5; Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 2:41-47; Ephesians 3:10-11; 1 Timothy 3:15). Certainly, we can denounce many of the church’s actions, but only because they betray her true nature as Jesus’ bride.

In evangelism training I encourage Christians to consider the statement “That’s what I love about my church...” We need to be able to finish that sentence with genuine enthusiasm and drop it into conversation. We need to invite people into communities that don’t just have the answer to this complaint but who are the answer.

Macro or Micro?

People ask this question in two ways. On the macro level, it’s about crusades, inquisitions and conquistadors. On the micro level, it’s personal: “those people hurt me and they call themselves Christians.” We must figure out which version of the question is being asked.

Macro

David Bentley-Hart’s book “Atheist Delusions” does a wonderful job of outlining the Christian revolution from the first century onwards. Church, the world’s largest sociological phenomenon, has also been the champion of the greatest social improvements (e.g. equality, human rights, philanthropy, hospitals, hospices, schools, science, etc). Its failures (e.g. the crusades) occurred precisely when it forsook the teaching of its Lord (Matthew 5:38-48; 26:52-54; John 18:36).

Against this, atheist claims – like Christopher Hitchens’ – that “religion poisons everything” are lazy caricatures. For Hitchens to make his case he had to place Stalin into the religious (and therefore evil) category and Martin Luther King into the non-religious (and therefore benevolent) category. Such intellectual dishonesty is rife in these debates. It surfaces often as the charge that “religion is the cause of all wars”. The briefest glance at 20th century history tells you that God is not the common denominator in war – man is.

Micro

When the complaint is closer to home, we, and our local church, should be an exception that disproves their rule. Alongside that, we must point them to the true nature of church...

The Father and His adopted children

Evangelist, Michael Ots tells the story of meeting a family with a very unruly child. Michael was tempted to think poorly of the parents until he learnt the boy was adopted from a difficult background. That one fact transformed his outlook. When you realise God the Father is adopting children out of the most difficult environments you expect different things from the children and you infer different things about the Father.

The Doctor and His Hospital

Many think of Jesus as the Rewarder of the moral, therefore they expect His church to be a society of the superior. Actually Jesus is the Doctor for the spiritually sick (Mark 2:13-17) and His church is a hospital for sinners. No-one criticizes a hospital for attracting the sick!

The Spirit and His ‘works in progress’

Of course the faults of Christians are more evident, the Spirit leads us into a unity and transparency where sins are exposed. Of course our hopes for Christians are dashed more frequently, we expect more from them. But Christians do not claim moral superiority, which is why Christians are not “hypocrites” when we fail. Admission of failure is the very atmosphere of Christianity.

On the other hand, Jesus tells his most famous story about an elder brother who was too good to sit next to his younger brother at the family feast (Luke 15). If we find ourselves unable to join a church with those kinds of people in it – it’s not the church that’s being judgemental.

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