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Tag: evangelism

6

Published on 6 Comments on The Lordship of Jesus and Evangelism [repost]

Jesus HoffmanWhat does the phrase "Jesus is Lord" mean? And how does it relate to evangelism?

Sometimes, when I hear about the Lordship of Jesus, I fear I could easily swap the phrase "Jesus is Lord" for "God is big" and there'd be no material change in the meaning.

So go and 'do evangelism' because God is big.  And He says so...  Remember Who's Boss!

Of course I caricature.

But what does 'Jesus is Lord' mean?  And how does His Lordship relate to evangelism.

Well first of all, "Jesus is Lord" literally means "'Yahweh-to-the-rescue' is Yahweh".  Which is a statement worth meditating on!  Yahweh-to-the-rescue is Yahweh!

And now meditate on its implications for evangelism!  To abbreviate the above (at the risk of causing misunderstanding): Our God is Jesus who is Rescuer.  Therefore the Lordship of Jesus and His saving passion are not two different things.  And obedience to this Lordship is not so much to be submissive to an edict as to be swept up into this passion.

Second of all, it means the true God of Israel and the true Lord of the universe is Jesus.

Therefore if you hadn't already seen it, you need to go back and read the Old Testament properly (ie in the way it was intended).  And also, if you haven't already, you need to revisit your notion of God.  He is entirely Jesus shaped.  That Nazarene who bled for me is Lord.  Not some ancient explosion or some foreign god.  Not even some familiar theistic god of popular understanding.  And certainly not little old me.  No if we're going to talk about God, let's talk about Jesus.  He is Lord.  This will mean very different gospel conversations to the regular "Let's first agree there's a Higher-Power" chats.

Thirdly it means that the universe I'm in and the universe my friend is in is Christ's universe.

Imagine you and your friend have been teleported into the tabernacle (and no-one's said "Oi, goy, get outta here!").  But you're surrounded by goats and bulls being slaughtered and priests with special clothes and holy spaces specially demarcated and furniture arranged just so.  Imagine you lived there.  Imagine you'd never lived anywhere else.

Your friend couldn't help but be fascinated by some aspect of the tabernacle.  Perhaps she's besotted by the 12 precious stones in the high priest's breastpiece.  Or the cherubim woven into the curtain.  Or the fire burning on the altar.  It'll be something.  And she'll no doubt have some ridiculous notions about what these things are all about.  But whatever you talk about with your friend you're actually in a gospel presentation.  And the very terms of your discussion and the raw materials of her values, hopes and fears are derived from that gospel.

If you didn't know how to "have a gospel conversation" in that environment it could only be because you yourself hadn't grasped the gospel meaning of the tabernacle.  You'd need to study the Scriptures more, understand the gospel more.  In short you'd need to see how the whole tabernacle proclaims "Jesus is Lord."

Well you know the application.  We do live in a gospel presentation (Psalm 19; Rom 10:17ff; Col 1:23).  And if we don't know how to bring a conversation about a bullying boss or a wayward teenager or ongoing depression or state education or economic inequality or marital troubles or politics or mid-life crises around to the gospel then we need to take the Lordship of Jesus more seriously.  We need to go back to the Scriptures and in His Light to see again.

I used to think evangelism was inserting trite presentations into trivial conversations.  But 'Jesus is Lord' changes all of that.  Jesus is not a foreign intruder into a conversation that's about something else.  He is the One who makes sense of it all.

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15

Published on 15 Comments on Mission, Theology and Grace

Reading Acts 14 and 15 this morning. The interplay of mission, theology and grace really struck me.

Paul and Barnabas go throughout Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Pisidia, Pamphylia and Perga, preaching "the word of God's grace" (14:3); "the gospel" (v7); "good news" (v15); "the gospel" (v21); "the word" (v25).  When they return to Antioch they call the church together for a mission report: "they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles." (v27)  Everyone's thrilled.

But... you knew the next chapter had to begin with a but... "But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved."  (Acts 15:1)

Familiar pattern eh?  Good news of great joy is preached to all the people.  But the people of God are the biggest obstacle to the good news.

Paul and Barnabas are incensed and trace the rot right back to Jerusalem.  When they get there some believers of the sect of the Pharisees repeat the heresy "It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses." (v5)

Here's my question: How long would these Judaizers have remained preaching their false gospel if it wasn't for the missionary activity of Paul and Barnabas?  The Gentiles come in and force the Jewish believers to rethink what it means to be saved and belong to God's people.  It stirs things up.

Now it's true that once the matter is raised in Jerusalem, the council is quick to denounce this theology as "a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear." (v10)  But before the agitation of missionary activity and new converts, it was a yoke they all seemed to be tolerating.  Legalism had become a comfortable yoke while-ever they remained 'at home.'

But once the disciples saw the good news spreading and giving life they saw their anti-gospel living in a new light.  When they saw the nations rejoicing in the Lord - even these unwashed Gentiles - they were forced to see the radical simplicity of the Lord's salvation.  In the light of a life-giving gospel their life-sapping theology was seen for the legalism it had always been.

Here's an application that springs to mind... the best way to fight slave-making legalism within the church is to preach the life-giving gospel outside the church.  When those who are far from God come in, only the true gospel can cope.  The law can never handle the mess of radical conversions.  Evangelistic churches need to be gracious churches.  In this way theology is refined in the fires of mission.

15

Published on 15 Comments on “God’s work and our work”?

division of laboutI was recently asked by a church to speak to the topic "Evangelism: God's work and our work."  They suggested I speak from 2 Corinthians 4.  This combination of title and passage has a great pedigree.  I first encountered it as part of the excellent evangelism training of Christianity Explored.  I think it can trace its roots back through John Chapman to JI Packer - all of these guys are heroes of mine.

I've learnt hugely about evangelism from all these sources.  And I don't know nothing about nothing... but if people are wanting to know foundationally about the evangelistic task, I wouldn't start with "God's work and our work".  And it's not because of the teaching of these men.  Far more it's because of how this idea might be understood and executed in our circles.  Let me explain.

Here's the passage:

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.2 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. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:1-6)

Here we're told of the spiritual battle involved in gospel preaching.  Satan - the god of this age - has veiled and blinded the world.  That's a fearful fact!  What should we do?  Preach!  How?  It should be persevering, honest, above-board, undistorted, plain, servant-hearted, truth-telling.  All those adjectives are vital and precious.  But I wonder what we think is the "truth" that needs plainly setting forth?

Verse 3 and 4 explicitly name this truth as the gospel.  And verse 5 describes it as preaching "Christ Jesus the LORD" (cf KJV).  It's about proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus.  In other words it's doing exactly what Paul says he does in chapter 5, namely: persuade people, proclaim the new creation in Jesus, be Christ's ambassador, make God's appeal, implore unbelievers, minister God's reconciliation.  Paul's whole ministry is to urgently deliver the good news of God's reconciliation.

Paul's idea of truth-telling is to proclaim the good news!  But it seems to me that Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4 can be taken out of context.  Where Paul urges us to plainly set forth the gospel, an out-of-context look at the passage might leave us with a different take-home message: "Just be plain."

At that point it's easy to imagine that "plain truth-speaking" is about being unpopular yet uncompromising.  This is no-one's fault, it's just the connotations that spring to mind in our day and age.  Truth = cold, hard and uncomfortable.  Those are the associations we bring to the word.  But if we divide the roles of evangelism into 'life-giving' (God's work) and 'non-life-giving' (our work), a preacher might feel justified in not offering "life", mightn't they?  They might see their role as purely laying down bible truths, mightn't they?  Is that a potential danger?  I think it is.

Having taught a division of labour, is it possible that a preacher hears this teaching and then sets about the business of (cold, hard) truth-telling, absolving themselves of the responsibility to offer life?  Is that possible?  I'm not saying that any evangelism trainer wants to give this impression, but might this be what's heard by the trainee?

But Paul is not saying: Preach truth in the abstract.  He's just been writing against that kind of preaching:

God has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant – not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:6)

Paul goes on to attack the ministry of condemnation he sees peddled by the super-apostles (3:7-18).  It's not just that these guys are boasters and getting rich, there's a deeper theological problem with them.  They're basically old covenant preachers, laying down the law.  Paul is very upset about preachers who merely give "truth" in an abstract sense.  The law is truth.  Yet simply preaching law kills your hearers.

So Paul says he's involved in a different kind of ministry: the ministry of justification (v7-18).  And Paul's ministry is life-giving.  He doesn't think he's treading on God's toes, getting into 'the life-giving game'.  No, God has invited him into 'the life-giving game' and so he's devoted to the ministry that God has entrusted to him (5:18).  True apostolic preaching, new covenant preaching, is that by which the Spirit turns people to Christ.  And in Him there is revelation, freedom and life. (3:6-18)

Therefore this is the relentless gospel truth which Paul will preach no matter what (4:1-6).  He's not telling us - "hurl truth at people and God may choose to make it life-giving!"  He's telling us "Preach the gospel of Jesus because that's where the powerful Spirit of God brings life!"  God shines His light (4:6) precisely in and through the preaching of Jesus.  Thus preachers should single-mindedly devote themselves to the plain proclamation of the gospel.

I'm really looking forward to speaking on evangelism at this church.  And I'm really looking forward to doing it from 2 Corinthians.  But I'm not going to use the title "God's work and our work."  Because even if this isn't the intention, I think it teaches an unhelpful division of labour: we do our bit - "be plain".  God does His bit - "shine His light".

This division of labour becomes even more unhelpful when it's thought of in terms of the 'natural' and the 'super-natural' elements of evangelism.  If it's spun like that, we're instantly thinking in Enlightenment categories.  We're down here doing the 'natural' business of speaking truth.  God's up there doing a different job: super-naturally zapping people with life (or not).  The zapping is kind of connected with the 'natural' truth telling: God only zaps when the truth-telling happens.  But apart from that, there's not much connection between 'what we do' and 'what God does.'  Not in our thinking anyway.

Let me be clear: None of the people I've mentioned teach these kinds of implications or want to teach them in a million years.  I'm just wondering aloud about how the concept of a "division of labour" plays out further down stream.  I wonder whether preachers in our tradition thereby feel freed from an obligation to preach gospel truth.  Instead we might feel justified in simply preaching "truth."  Safe in the knowledge that God will zap when and where he chooses, the urgency to preach the gospel fades.  Instead, many might 'lay down the law' and pray that God would save anyway.  That couldn't be further from Paul's intention and yet I wonder whether some look to 2 Corinthians 4 as justification to "be biblical" in some abstract sense. But if we're not careful, 'being biblical' in the abstract becomes "preaching the letter."  At that point we don't just have a division of labour - we're working at cross purposes!  We're killing but praying that God gives life through our death-dealing words.

In Paul's thinking there's a massive connection between our preaching and God's activity.  In fact I don't think Paul teaches a division of labour.  Right here in chapter 4 Paul says that it's the gospel that reveals Christ, the Image of God.  The gospel we preach is doing what God does - ie it reveals Christ.  Even here it would be very hard to draw a line between "God's job" and ours.  And when we turn the page to chapter 5... well our work is simply to be God's workers, and God's work is explicitly entrusted to us.

According to 2 Corinthians 5, God has committed to us His ministry of reconciliation!  We are Christ's ambassadors.  We implore on His behalf!  God actually makes His appeal through us! (The ESV of 2 Cor 5:20 is correct, not the obfuscating NIV translation which inserts "as though").  God is imploring the world through us.  Gospel preaching is the ministry of God's Spirit, spotlighting Christ, bringing life.  To think in Romans 1 terms - the gospel is not sometimes infused with the power of God for salvation. The gospel is the power of God for salvation.  Meditate on that "is" - it will change the way you think about preaching.

We must speak the truth: persistently, honestly, plainly, servant-heartedly, without dilution or distortion.  And this truth is God's radiant, life-giving gospel which reveals His glory in the face of Christ.  To a blinded world, God shines in no other way.  So don't compromise: preach the gospel.

39

Published on 39 Comments on What is sin? Falling short? Rebellion? Something else?

know_god_1What is the essence of sin?

In some evangelistic presentations it's all about falling short.  God demands perfection.  We do our best - some more so than others - but none of us reach God's standard.  And that's sin.  Essentially.

Within such a framework it seems that the effort to earn salvation is laudable.  What's sinful is precisely our failure to establish a righteousness of our own.  I hope I don't need to spell out the problem here!

Other presentations try to go a bit deeper and get to the attitude of the heart.  That's certainly preferable to a behaviouristic definition.  So in these presentations sin is the rebellious spirit we display towards God.

It's climbing onto the throne of your life

It's stealing the crown for yourself

It's shaking your puny fist in the face of God

It's saying "Shove off God, I'm in charge, No to your rule"

self throne

Here sin is basically self-rule as opposed to submission to God.

I'm not doubting for a second that these statements of rebellion describe sinful attitudes.  But are they describing the essence of sin?  Is this what sin is at its root?

Before we think about it theologically, just think of it practically.  Don't such definitions of sin strike you as quintessentially western?  Don't they seem particularly aimed at the children of the Enlightenment, rather than the children of Adam more generally?  I mean...

What do you say to the Iranian refugee working his fingers to the bone, sending back every penny to the family, seeking no identity of his own but in constant fear of what his community thinks?

And even in the West...

What do you say to the woman serially abused by the terrible men she invites into her life?

What do you say to the drug addict whose only remaining desire is the hell-bent drive to throw his life away?

What do you say to the down-trodden mother who's completely lost herself in her family?

What do you say to the self-harmer consumed by self-loathing?

All these people are sinners.  But is their sin best captured by a definition of "self-rule"?  Surely not.

If you want to convict people of sin, "rebellion" will speak to a good number of teens and to many confident, middle class go-getters.  But it completely misses the Muslim, the mother and the meth-head.

So practically "self-rule" doesn't work as a definition (unless you want to confine yourself to youth work and ministry among western, middle class professionals.  But no-one wants to limit their ministry so narrowly, right?  Right??)

But besides its practical failures, the position is theologically untenable.

To characterise our sin as basically self-rule is far too flattering a picture of human nature.  Biblically speaking we are dominated subjects in Satan's kingdom (Ephesians 2:1-3).  We are captives in the strong man's house (Mark 3:27).  We are helpless slaves to sin (John 8:34).  We are whores besotted with terrible lovers (Ezekiel 16).  We are sheep following after bad shepherds (Ezekiel 34).  We are thirsty beggars drinking from broken wells (Jeremiah 2:13-14).  We are lost and must be found (Luke 15). We are snake-bitten and need healing (John 3:14f).  We are dead and need raising (John 5:24f).  We are famished and need Bread (John 6).

Our problem is not that we are little kings and queens, ruling our miniature kingdoms!  Our problem is - as Luther has said - we are beasts ridden either by the devil or God.  We don't stand between Christ and Adam, sovereignly choosing who we will emulate.  We stand in Christ and/or in Adam.  Our destiny is determined by their choices not ours.  In other words we have not climbed onto the throne of our lives!  Someone is already on the throne - and it's not us!

It is of course foolish and blasphemous if someone declares themselves the captain of their soul and master of their fate.  But such a "declaration of independence" is not the essence of their sin.  Because in fact no such independence exists.

Our problem, most basically, is not that we are competing sovereigns with Christ.  Our problem is that we are subjects in the wrong kingdom.  Now obviously, some subjects have delusions of grandeur, fine.  But A) let's not agree with their delusions but unmask their true condition and B) let's realise that there are many, many subjects who make no pretence of self-rule.  But they share in the same problem and qualify for the same solution.  We are not rulers, we are ruled.  The only question is, By whom?

Think about the beginning and end of the bible: One powerful perspective on the fall is to see it as man's abdication!  I'm not saying this is my bedrock definition of sin but I can't help thinking that Adam should have ruled more in Genesis 3.  A kingly edict rather than an impotent silence might have saved us a lot of trouble!

And at the end of the bible, we're not looking forward to man getting off the throne.  Precisely the opposite.  Salvation involves being invited onto the throne, to rule with Christ (Revelation 3:21).

The "gospel" of submission ends with the challenge "Get off the throne".  Isn't it pause for thought that the bible finishes with "Get onto the throne"?

What's gone wrong with the "gospel" of submission?  Well it begins with a monadic doctrine of  God (more here).  And it continues with a definition of sin as rebellion against the Almighty.  Such a definition doesn't work practically and it doesn't work theologically.  Certainly we are rebels. But sin as rebellion will capture only some of our hearers and only part of the story.

In John 16, Jesus actually gives us a definition of sin.  He tells us why His Spirit will convict the world of sin.  What is the bottom line for humanity?

They do not believe in me.  (John 16:9)

The world has not received Jesus (believing = receiving cf. John 1:12).  This is the world's great evil, for which it is rightly condemned (John 3:18, 36). Humanity has refused the Fountain of Living Waters and, before it has dug any of its own broken wells, it has first refused to receive from the Giving God (Jeremiah 2:13-14).  For more on Jeremiah 2 see here but note that every instance of idolatry is in fact secondary. Originally we forsake Christ's Gift, then we "look for love in all the wrong places."

Our great treachery and our great tragedy is our disconnection from God.  In Him we live and move and have our being.  And yet we don't know Him!  Not naturally.  How can this be!?  How can we be estranged from Him who is our life?  But we are.  We don't want Him.  We're dying of thirst, drinking from every other poisonous well in the desert, but refusing His life and love.  This is our problem.  And therefore, having defined our problem thus, the solution should be obvious... We have refused Christ, we must receive Him.  This makes sense once we have defined sin properly.

But if sin is fundamentally "self-rule" then Christ becomes sidelined in salvation.  He may be important for taking the punishment which rebels deserve, but the real work of reversing the sin-problem remains in our hands.  If the problem is self-rule then the solution is submission.  And thus, in this kind of evangelism, the "business end" of proceedings is not Christ and His self-emptying but us and ours.

And the irony is this - when self-rule is defined as the problem we are thrust into the centre of the gospel.  Suddenly, we are not lost, enslaved, needy beggars.  We are bold, self-directed rulers who happen to be misusing our powers.  And so the evangelist treats the hearers as free sovereigns who need to rule wisely.  Now they need to choose salvation rather than damnation.  So the evangelist (maybe) speaks of a redemption by Christ, but it can never come across as the central act.  If the sinner is on the throne then Jesus might command, cajole, and "clear the path", but He can't actually do the saving.  It's all down to the sovereign chooser.  And if they decide to submit we can all praise... um... them.  We can praise them for avoiding the punishment due to rebels.  Of course now they no longer are rebels.  They have made themselves subjects and solved the whole self-rule problem.  All through the exercise of their... um... their self-rule.

The whole position is riddled with contradictions.  You'd think that a "gospel" of submission would attack pride wouldn't you?  Actually it fuels pride.  Horrifically.  The power of the sinner, their wisdom in choosing, their piety in submitting - all these things come centre-stage when sin is defined as rebellion.  In other words, such a gospel does not exclude but excites "boasting in the flesh".  And all the while it fails to reach the sinners who know that they are lost - the "sick" for whom the Doctor actually came!

For more on a true definition of sin, see Mike Reeves' two talks

6

Published on 6 Comments on Converting People

-- "Are you trying to convert me?" asks the unbeliever.

-- "Oh, no, no, no, no" replies the evangelist. "I can't convert anyone, only God can do that."

... Later on in that same conversation...

-- "Can I do anything to become a Christian?"

-- "Why yes.  Here are the three steps to getting saved."

Anyone see a problem here?

Interestingly Paul had no problem talking about "winning" and even "saving" people (1 Corinthians 9:19-22).  At the same time he never prays the sinners prayer with people.  What does this tell us?

Well I think it diagnoses a funny kind of "sovereignty when it suits us" thinking.  The evangelist can't convert the unbeliever but the unbeliever can convert themselves!

It also betrays a very enlightenment view of the interaction between "the natural" and "the supernatural."  We assume that "the natural" equals the mechanics of evangelism and "the supernatural" equals a capricious and arbitrary zapping from on high.

This is not the way the bible co-ordinates things.  There is the realm of the flesh, in which human reason and the basic principles of this world rule (Colossians 2:8a).  And there is the realm of the Spirit, in which Christ is offered in the word (Colossians 2:8a-9).

Paul wins (and even saves) people in that he points away from all the powers of the flesh and offers Christ in the word - all praise to the almighty Spirit.  And the unbeliever is saved quite apart from the steps they take to convert themselves - Christ in His word has conquered them - all praise to the almighty Spirit.

Don't be afraid to try to convert people.  Everyone's trying to convert everyone. All the time.  Just don't do it according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.  In other words: Preach the Word!

 

Published on Leave a comment on Evangelism and Pastoral Care

Just guest-blogged on A New Name.  Here's the opening...

Picture an evangelist.  What are you imagining?  Perhaps a motor-mouth with the enthusiasm of a labrador pup, the skin of a rhinoceros's hide, the social skills of a barge pole and the patter of a "Phones 4 U" sales rep.

Now picture a pastoral carer.  What are the images now?  Surely it's endless cups of tea, frowns of concern, shoulders squeezed and pained benedictions: "Aw bless" they say with an empathy perilously close to patronising.

In the popular Christian imagination, these are two different species.  One of them we're very happy to send off to "The Mission Field."  Then, with the wild-eyed enthusiasts out of the way, the pastoral people can settle down to their head-cocked expressions of condolence.  And never the twain shall meet, right?

Read the whole thing...

3

Published on 3 Comments on 321 and Christ’s Redemption
Click for source: Mormon Website

I've been thinking about the three doctrines of 321 and how they interact with the four events of more traditional gospel outlines.  Previously I've discussed Creation and Fall.  Now we'll look at Christ's work of redemption.

How does 3 shape our understanding of Christ's redemption

I don't think I know any gospel outlines that begin with the Trinity.  (If you know of any, please tell me).  But if a presentation does not have the Son of God "in the beginning" it's going to be awkward to crow-bar him in later.

How will Jesus be introduced as anything greater than a Prophet in a scheme that does not begin with His divine glory.  Instead, the introduction of Jesus into gospel explanations can only befuddle the non-Christian who is prone to ask "Who is this guy?  What's he got to do with this creation and fall business you've been speaking of?"

In so many schemes Jesus comes late to fix a problem he's not been involved with.  This has massive implications for the presentation of his Person - does he really come across as fully God?  And it hugely affects the presentation of his work - he looks for all the world like an innocent third party interposed into the God - man dilemma.

John Stott saw the desperate need for a trinitarian framing of the cross when he wrote:

At the root of every caricature of the cross there lies a distorted Christology…  In particular, it is essential to affirm that the love, the holiness and the will of the Father are identical to the love, the holiness and the will of the Son. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. (The Cross of Christ)

The doctrine of penal substitution - which I both affirm and love - has been attacked in recent years.  But the version of it that has aroused such scorn has often been the non-trinitarian caricature which Stott wrote against.  If we're going to uphold the glory of the cross we must put it in its proper trinitarian context.

How does 2 shape our understanding of Christ's work of redemption?

Why did Christ have to become a man?  Why couldn't the Son have incarnated as a literal Lamb?  Or why couldn't God have "zapped" the wooden cross, rather than his Son?  If redemption is simply about the just justification of sinners in the punishment of the Son - why does Jesus become our Brother?  Couldn't God's wrath have been poured out on a non-incarnate Son?

No, no, no!  The Son takes our flesh because he's entering into our plight and transforming it from the inside.  As many church fathers have put it: He became what we are, so that we might become what he is.  Redemption is not simply the balancing of the punishment books.  It's about our Maker summing up his creation in himself - taking responsibility for it.  His penal substitutionary death is absolutely vital.  On the cross he is "carrying the can" for his handiwork.  But that act is comprehended within a vast work of creation and redemption - moving humanity (and in humanity, the cosmos) through death and curse to life and glory.

Of course the Son had to become Man.  Man rules the world.  Adam - the pattern of the Coming One (Rom 5:14) - stood over creation, ruling and blessing it.  Through the fall, he failed and cursed it.  Christ comes to wrest humanity (and in humanity, the world) back to God.  In his resurrection, he takes us through death and into an immortal physical glory.  This is the cosmic dimension to salvation which will always be missed when we construe the gospel as, simply, the answer to 'my sin'.  'Adam and Christ' vitally connects Jesus' work to this flesh and this world.  Without it, as Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15, we have no gospel.

How does 1 shape our understanding of Christ's work of redemption?

So 3 assures me that Jesus is God. 2 assures me that Jesus is Man. But you might well think - so what?  I'm still left on the outside of all this.  And at this point two questions become vital to ask and answer:

1) How do I benefit from the Person and work of Jesus?

2) What do I do once I have appropriated Christ's salvation?

In answer to the first question, many gospel presentations put the task firmly into the sinner's hands.  Jesus has "cleared the path" through his death and resurrection, now the sinner must "take the step of faith" and come to God.  The appropriation of Christ's benefits happens through "the sinner's prayer" in which we ask for - and God zaps into our account - forgiveness, righteousness, the Spirit and eternal life.  Jesus does not really mediate these benefits, he only pays for them.  And this leads to a problem in answering that second question: What now?

Now that I've stepped across Jesus - "the bridge" - what is the Christian life?  I've got forgiveness and eternal life, so how will the evangelist tell me to continue?  Probably they'll tell me to go to church, read my bible, pray, try hard not to sin and hold on tight till heaven.  To which I'm liable to say "Why??!  What connection does any of that have to what you've described in your sales pitch?!"

But no.  We benefit from the Person and work of Christ because he is given to us in marriage union.  All that is mine is his - he takes my sin and shame and covers over it.  All that is his is mine - he gives me his status, his inheritance, his family connections.  Best of all he gives me himself.  And this is the Christian life: belonging to Jesus and he to me.

So of course the Christian now belongs to his body, of course they listen to him (in the bible) and speak to him (in prayer).  It's all organically related to Jesus himself.  That's a salvation - and a salvation message - that makes sense.

But without Trinity, Adam and Christ and union with Christ, the very heart of the gospel - Christ and his work - will be radically misunderstood.

 

 

9

Published on 9 Comments on 321 and the Fall

321 is a an explanation of the Christian faith in three parts.

3 focuses on Trinity.

2 focuses on Adam and Christ.

1 focuses on union (or one-ness) with Christ.

321 is not structured around the gospel events.  Instead it unfolds the doctrines that explain those gospel events.  Without these doctrines, the events will be misunderstood and the goodness of the good news will be lost.

Last time we considered how 321 interacts with the event of Creation.

Without trinity, creation will be considered as the needy manufacture of a unitarian (and therefore taking) God - not the overflow of a trinitarian (and therefore Giving) God.

Without Adam and Christ, creation won't be seen as part of the unified movement of creation-and-salvation, but a free-floating project.  Instead, with Adam and Christ, we see how very anchored the living God is to His handiwork.

Without union with Christ, we'll think of creation in terms of distance and separation, rather than as something destined to participate in God's own life.

Now we're going to consider the fall.

How does 3 shape our understanding of the fall

Imagine that God was not Three Persons.  Imagine instead that for all eternity there was a solitary Individual.  If this unitary being brings anything else into existence, his deity would only be preserved by maintaining his absolute supremacy.  For creatures to correspond rightly to this god can only mean their being infinitely "other than" and "less than" a god who is defined over against his world.  If such a being creates then the creation has only one way to relate - it must submit.

What, therefore, is sin?  With a unitarian god, sin is not submitting to the power of the Sovereign.  (Perhaps you're aware that "Islam" means "submission").

But with a trinitarian God, what is sin?  Well in eternity this God has not been defined by supremacy but by sharing.  Having others alongside is not a threat to this God - it's the very definition of His deity.  This God wants to share - to give us of Himself and to draw us in.

Therefore what is sin?  It's refusing to receive from the generous God.

With a unitarian god, being distant is almost the definition of godliness.  With the trinitarian God, refusing His fellowship is the essence of sin.  And that sets a trinitarian gospel on a very different footing.  The problem with humanity is not, fundamentally, lack of obedience but lack of dependence.

Think of Jesus' definition of sin in John 16:9: "that people do not believe in me."  Our great sin is not receiving Jesus (remember that to believe and to receive Jesus is parallel, John 1:12).

Think of Paul's definition of sin in Romans 14:23: "everything not of faith is sin."  Again, sin is about not trusting the generous God.  He has given us His Son to be received by faith.  Instead we mistrust Him.  We close ourselves off from the giving God and now must handle life out of our own resources.

Flowing from this mistrust, we may then become mutinous rebels "shaking our fist at God".  Sure, that might be one manifestation.  But we might also be meek self-haters, looking for love in all the wrong places.  We might be "trying to sit on the throne of our lives."  Or we might be abandoning rule of our lives to all sorts of cruel masters.  Whichever way we turn, our sin is, first and foremost, our mistrust of God.  And it's important to set up our gospel presentation in this way.  Because whatever we identify as the 'problem', it will decisively shape the 'solution' we offer.

If the 'problem' is "not obeying God" we have already implied the 'solution.  Surely the solution will be "to start obeying God again."  But no, the problem is that we don't receive the Gift of God (Jesus).  For that, we are "condemned already." (John 3:18).  But the solution is implied in the problem: "Believe in the name of God's One and Only Son" (John 3:18).

How does 2 and 1 shape our understanding of the fall

When Augustine and Pelagius went toe-to-toe on the issue of our gracious salvation, Adam and Christ was at the heart of the debate. For Pelagius, we are not born in sin, we are born neutral.  We just use our freedom badly.  We choose sinful things, copying Adam's bad example.

Now if this was the problem for Pelagius, you can guess what his 'solution' was.  Salvation was all about us using our freedom well.  We need to choose righteous things, copying Jesus' good example.

Augustine saw this as a foul error - it denigrates Christ and exalts ourselves.  No - look at Romans 5:12-21.  We are born in Adam apart from any of our bad choices.  We are born again in Jesus apart from any of our good choices.  Our works just do not come into the equation.  Our second Adam has done it all - reconstituting damned sinners in Himself.

But in evangelism, Pelagius forces his way right back into our preaching.  We are reticent to speak of our union with Adam - it sounds anti-science, anti-reason and unfair.  (It's none of those things by the way, I just don't have time to address those questions now).  But in modern evangelism we neglect the bondage of the will and put our choices right back at the heart of the gospel.  We tell people that their bad decisions and deeds have separated them from God.  We might then tell of the work of Christ on the cross, but what we'll really major on is the Decision which the sinner needs to make.  That's where all the emphasis will lie.

And the sinner will be addressed as a free agent - they are Hercules at the cross-roads (pictured above), virtue lies in one direction and vice in the other, but it's all down to them.  Whatever else we might have said about sinners being "lost" and "bound" and "blind" - we'll forget that now.  Whatever else we might have said about Christ and His work being decisive, we've now moved on to the business end of proceedings.  The spotlight is unmistakably on the sinner.  It's down to them.  They must refuse vice and choose virtue.  This is where salvation happens.

Does that kind of preaching sound familiar?

Why?  Why is there such a focus on decision-theology in modern evangelism?  Partly I think it's because of the way we've set up the "problem".  We've made the fall about behaviour (rather than being).  And we've located the problem within reach of the sinner.

But if it's about deeds and decisions and if it's about me then... how is Jesus the solution?  Perhaps Jesus can give me a really good talking to and perhaps He can persuade me to "Make a Decision".  But at the end of the day, that kind of salvation happens in me, not in Him.

The true gospel is so much better than that.  The problem is far deeper than my behaviour, it's about my very being.  It's also "above my pay grade".  The problem is out of my hands - it's in a humanity in which I am culpably complicit.  But I can't remake myself.  I can't solve human nature.  The problem is deeper than I can handle and it's also way over my head.

But then, so is the solution.  Just as I was caught up in something bigger than me, so now in Jesus I'm caught up in something bigger still.  The problem was out of my hands but so is the solution.  And that's good news, because if it was down to me I'd spoil it.

Hear the gospel according to Adam and Christ: In Adam, though you'd done nothing bad, you were disconnected from God and cursed.  In Jesus, though you've done nothing good, you are reconnected to God and blessed.

This is the gracious gospel according to Paul, according to Augustine, and according to centuries orthodox Christian theology of virtually every stripe (...except, I'm tempted to say, evangelists!)  But if we deny this teaching our understanding of ourselves becomes shallow, the human will becomes sovereign, Jesus and His work becomes incidental and the gospel becomes an ultimatum.

Let's get the problem right.  Only then will we have a solution that's truly good news.

Next time we'll consider the work of Christ according to 321...

9

Published on 9 Comments on Five minutes on the conquest of Canaan

I wasn't asked about the conquest of Canaan during Thursday's debate. But if I was, here  are 5 minutes worth of thoughts prepared in advance. (Quite a bit was taken from Paul Copan's Is God a Moral Monster?)

There’s not a Christian in the world who doesn’t read Scriptures like Deuteronomy 20:16-18 without a lump in their throat.  But this jarring sensation does not come in spite of their Christianity, but precisely because of it. Christians don’t need to step outside the bible to learn the infinite and intrinsic value of human life. We don’t need humanist ethicists to tell us how to treat our enemies.  Jesus Himself has taught us:

“Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you, bless and do not curse them, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, if your adversary sues you for your coat, give him the shirt off your back, don’t pick up the sword, those who live by the sword will die by the sword, my kingdom is not from this world otherwise my followers would fight for me but my kingdom is not from this world, the kingdom of heaven is within, etc, etc.”

Atheists haven’t taught Christians to be sensitive to the spilling of blood, Jesus has.  And, never forget, Jesus has taught both believers and unbelievers of the West exactly the sensibilities that make these ancient stories so difficult to our ears.  We look back at these three and a half thousand year old stories and find it almost impossible to think ourselves into their war-like worlds.  A massive reason for that is the advent of Christianity.

Nonetheless, the Christian is faced with Jesus who tells us both to put down our own swords and to take up His book - the Old Testament.  Jesus emphatically tells us that these Hebrew Scriptures are His Scriptures.  We cannot have Him and not His book.  So how then do we read it?

Well as we go back to the OT, what we see are Canaanite cultures involved in child-burning levels of evil.  For four hundred years they are engaged in repugnant spiritual and moral wickedness. And, having given them four hundred years to repent of it - considerably longer than any other "just war" ever launched! - God visits them with a one off, unrepeatable judgement.

And it has nothing to do with ethnicity.  This is not genocide, there is nothing racial about this.  It’s about spiritual and moral evil which, when the Israelites are guilty of it, they too are conquered by foreign nations.  What we see is a God who gives the Canaanites 400 years to repent.  Every Canaanite who ever sought mercy from the Israelites was granted mercy.  It's true that, prior to the conquest, there is language of total destruction and “giving over” whole cities to the LORD, actually the language of “driving out” the Canaanites precedes and predominates over language of “wiping out.”  Copan argues that this is militaristic hyperbole that, even within the Bible, is fulfilled in non-literal ways.  i.e. the Canaanites just weren't wiped out (nor were the Korahites).  The narrative of the wars does not describe non-combatants being killed (Copan argues that Jericho and Ai were fortresses - military installations if you like).  And when Joshua sums up his achievements he considers that he's done what Moses had commanded - this, in spite of the Canaanites not even being wholly driven out, let alone "wiped out."

Now there is still a bloody intensity in these stories that confronts our placid, peace-time sensibilities.  And there is a fearfulness to the judgement of God falling here in history.  But if we tell God he should do more about the evil of this world and then He gives us a one-off, unrepeatable pre-figurement of His righteous judgement – we can’t then complain at His intervention!  God can bring judgement.  God does bring judgement.  God will bring judgement.

If you read the OT you realise God is not a Rotarian.  He’s not an old softy.  There is blood and fire and justice to the Living God.  But when you read the NT you get the same.  Jesus is not Sweet.  But neither does He allow us to take justice into our own hands.  Jesus absorbs the fire and the justice on the cross.  He sheds His own blood for His enemies and as He does so He prays “Father forgive them.”  The Kingdom He brings is one of cheek-turning, enemy-forgiving, love. There is blood-shed in Christ's kingdom - but it's our own blood shed in place of our enemies.  There can be no Christian genocide.  That is a contradiction in terms.

On the other hand, what is it about atheism that absolutely rules out mass murder? What if it really achieved a greater goal for the species?  What if it would preserve more favoured races in the struggle for survival?  Is it at all possible that a mass murderer could justify their actions as consistent with a thorough-going atheism?   They wouldn't win humanist of the year, that's for sure.  Certainly, no atheist I know wants to do such things, nor do they want to provide any justification for it.  But can such evils be perpetrated consistently within atheism?  I contend that the answer is yes.  Therefore the problem of genocide does not lie in millennia old Hebrew wars.  It lies in the here and now.  And the answer is not to jettison Jesus or His book.  Instead we need to return again to the Crucified PeaceMaker.

 

14

Published on 14 Comments on Parasites!

 

It's apparently the death-knell for all theists: Parasites! Grotesque, painful, life-destroying Parasites!

Take this famous discussion of it by Stephen Fry. Parasites are  proof positive that a loving God does not exist.

I was part of a debate on Thursday discussing "Is God worthy of worship?"  One of our opponents, crowd-sourcing his material from eager Twitter followers, spent his talk listing some of nature's ugliest monstrosities.  Horrific diseases and deformities were rattled off in quick succession.  At points he played it for laughs, and he got them.

Which ought to make us think.  If this is really being raised as the "problem of evil" why are comfortable westerners, sipping red wine in an Oxford College, sniggering about such horrors?  Is this stuff really evil?  In which case let's treat it seriously as a challenge to belief in a good God, recognising that all of us face such wickedness.  Or is it not really evil?  Is it just a freak-show, an object of macabre fascination, or—God forbid—an exercise in apologetic points-scoring?  If it isn't actually evil, perhaps the lesson we should learn is 'Abandon all hope and adjust your expectations accordingly.'  Well, ok.  But a) drop the secret (or not so secret) glee regarding creation's monstrosities, b) realise you've solved the problem of evil but only by losing the right to call it "evil" and c) brace yourself for a much harder intellectual problem: the problem of good (of which, more shortly).

In all this, the greatest mis-step in the parasites conversation is to ignore (often times wilfully) the doctrine of the fall.  To imagine for a moment that we can simply read God from creation is to engage in the kind of paganism roundly condemned in Scripture.  As Francis Spufford says in Unapologetic: 

To anyone inclined to think that nature is God, nature replies: Have a cup of pus, Mystic Boy.

The world is fallen.  It is corrupted, cursed, 'knocked off its axis', disconnected from its true Life-source.  To speak of parasites in the world does not put the merest dint in the Christian world-view.  It only supports it.

Think about parasites.  We're dealing with creatures that are, well, parasitic. In fact 5 minutes' meditation on parasites will pretty much give you the Christian doctrine of creation and fall.

These things cause monstrous perversions, hellish corruptions, wicked deviations from what should be.  The disease and death they bring is not Right, it's wrong.  This is not Light, it's Darkness.  There is an original and ultimate life-giving source.  And there is a secondary distortion which takes life.

This is the Christian doctrine of creation and fall: an original good perverted into corruption and death.  Good is ultimate, Evil comes later to steal, kill and destroy. The Light is ultimate, the Darkness is a privation of the Light. First there is a straight line from which all crooked lines are corruptions.

But here’s the thing: to judge a line “crooked”, what exactly is “straight”?  And if you want to avoid the conclusion that there is an Original Straightness to things, you might say “Ok, these lines aren’t definitively crooked, it’s just that everything’s messy.” Well ok, fine, but at that point you’re not wrestling with the problem of evil any more.  You’re just saying “Things are messy.  Stuff happens.”

And then you have to face a much greater intellectual hurdle: the problem of good.  You see evil, as a secondary corruption of good, is not intellectually difficult to understand.  (It's horrifically unpleasant and evokes understandably emotive reactions, but intellectually it's origins are understandable).  On the other hand, Good—if it's not original and ultimate—becomes extremely difficult to explain.  This is because Good and Evil are not symmetrically opposite to each other. They are like light and darkness: Light can illuminate darkness, darkness cannot darken light.  Darkness is the absence or obscuring of Light in a way that is not true the other way around.

I'm speaking of light and darkness figuratively here, but they are powerful illustrations. When the Christian is asked "Where does the darkness come from?"  They answer: "From a turning away from the light."  When the atheist is asked "Where does the light come from?" the answer "From the darkness" seems absurdly improbable.  If light does exist then it needs to be there from the beginning.  But this is the Christian account of reality.

The atheists are right: parasites are powerful illustrations of the problem of evil.  But they're also a perfect analogy for how evil works.  It is derivative, privative, secondary.  But once you've said that, you've essentially told the Christian story of the world.  There's something Good and Life-giving and something came along to spoil it.

From Creation and Fall, the Christian can explain both good and evil.  But if our "creation story" is effectively: "slime + struggle + selfishness" with no injection of an original Good, it's quite a stretch to end up with "selves, sentience and symphonies."

Parasites are horrible.  As they work their way through the eye-ball of an 8 year old boy we are appalled. This is not simply painful, not simply ugly, not simply maladapted to life - it is wrong. 

But let's also remember, parasites are parasites!  There can't be parasites "all the way down".  No, there is an ultimate and original Good by which to judge these things evil.  And the Christian can hate this evil with a holy and almighty antipathy for we are seeing the work of God's enemy —an enemy Christ opposes with every drop of His own blood.  We do not shrug our shoulders or snigger or adapt ourselves to the inevitable.  We call evil evil and we fight it.

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