Tag: God

Disciplines of our hearts

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Disciplines of our hearts

[Bible references: Matthew 6:24; Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:12-19; 9:25-27; 1 Timothy 4:7-8,12; 2 Timothy 3:16–17; Hebrews 4:1-11; 5:14; 2 Peter 1:3-25]

Anyone who remembers learning … remembers choosing to engage in repeated practice over and over and over precisely so that the rhythms become practices.[1]

Spiritual disciplines are personal and interpersonal practices (habits or activities – not attitudes or character qualities) that are taught or modelled in Scripture which promote spiritual growth among believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The spiritual disciplines derive from the gospel and take us deeper into an understanding of the gospel and they are the sufficient means by which we can know and experience God so that we can become more like Him.

“Spiritual discipline, then, is developing soul reflexes so that we know how to live. We discipline ourselves to develop soul memory in normal times so that we’ll be equipped for the times of high demand or deep crisis.”[2]

A few words of caution: Although spiritual disciplines are the means to godliness that does not mean that we are godly just because we practice them. The great error of the Pharisees was that they felt by merely doing these things they were godly. The disciplines are meant to provide opportunities for Christ to transform us – they are not meant to be a burden or an end in themselves. Although we engage in the disciplines to pursue God we should not rely on our effort or our strength, but by resting in power of the Spirit.

Although God will grant Christlikeness to us when Jesus returns, until then He intends for us to grow toward it. We aren’t merely to wait for holiness; we’re to pursue it.”[3]

“The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us . . . The inner righteousness we seek is not something that is poured on our heads. God has ordained the Disciplines of the spiritual life as the means by which we place ourselves where he can bless us. In this regard it would be proper to speak of ‘the path of disciplined grace.’ It is ‘grace’ because it is free; it is ‘disciplined’ because there is something for us to do.” [4]

Maturity requires incremental growth, accumulation of experience

Before we begin to look at the specific disciplines available to us, we should consider their overall purpose. We are beings created in the image Christ, and although we are not Christ, we can become more like Him. Becoming like Christ is a process. We have examples all around us to show us that growth is a process. Plants start from a seed then, in time, grow and develop new parts until the plants become mature and can reproduce. The same with animals. These examples indicate to us that not only is growing a process but that there is an aspect to growth that is built in to automatically happen. Animals and plants, with proper nutrients and environment, will just naturally become mature.

Allowing intentional choices to become habits and the habits to shape our character

But image-bearers of Christ are not merely plants or animals. Our growth is dependent on the development of culture, which are aspects of our way of life that are not automatic but rather are chosen. We can make choices, moral choices, about what we think is important, to set priorities and values. Those choices started in a garden full of abundant food, but we had a choice to not eat the fruit from one particular tree, we had a choice to make based on love and obedience.

Allowing different disciplines to strengthen each other

The spiritual disciplines provide us with choices, to be intentional about how we want to grow. We will see that each discipline is dependent on the others, and each discipline can then weaken or strengthen the others. So, we may enter the disciplines at any point, but we should not neglect the others. We can choose to start from an area of strength or an area of weakness, but we should not neglect the other paths to growth.

The discipline of the soul is not disconnected from the discipline of the body

We are embodied creatures. As we engage in disciplines, we should consider the interplay of soul and body and how they affect each other. We see this effect when, on the one hand it is true that if we are feeling confident then our bodies tend to present a confident posture and on the other hand, it is also true that if we are not initially feeling confident then intentionally assuming a confident posture can produce the feeling of confidence. This leads us to the phrase, “fake it till you make it.” We should keep the interplay of spiritual and material, body, and soul, in mind as we engage in our spiritual disciplines.

Our bodies are the very temple of the Holy Spirit within us, and it is through our bodies that we exercise our faith – and through which we are capable of exercising immorality. To that end, the apostle Paul saw fit to discipline his body as part of his overall ministry.

Forming our virtues

Virtues are the qualities of Christ in our lives that are provided by Him: qualities such as compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness. These qualities help us escape “the corruption that is in the world through lust. (KJV)” But although these qualities are given by Him, we are exhorted to strengthen those virtues with spiritual disciplines. For example, we should add virtue to our faith and virtue to our knowledge for knowledge without virtue only makes someone a walking textbook. Virtue helps add to our faith, to our knowledge, to our self-control, to our perseverance, to our godliness, to our brotherly kindness and to our brotherly love. It all hinges on godly virtues being added to our faith.

As Christians, we all want to grow in spiritual maturity and Christlikeness. Elders should be models of Christian maturity, qualified to the office primarily based on their character. While the Bible provides one quality related to skill (the ability to teach) and one related to the amount of time a man has been a Christian (not a recent convert), all the other qualifications are related to character. Yet while these traits are demanded of elders, they are not unique to elders. Elders are to be exemplars of the Christian graces which all Christians should aspire to. Every congregation is meant to be full of men and women who are above reproach, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, sober, gentle, peacemaking, not lovers of money, mature, humble, and respected by outsiders.

[1] Smith, James K.A. “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit.” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

[2] Rumford, Douglas. SoulShaping. Tyndale House Publishers 1996

[3] Whitney, Donald S. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life Navpress 2014

[4] Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline Harper & Row Publishers ©1978

Observe

Read Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 9:25-27; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; Hebrews 4:9-11; 2 Peter 1:3-25. We are paradoxically called to both work and to rest. How do we do both at the same time?

Reforming our loves

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Reforming our Loves

[Bible references: Psalm 1; 42; 139:13-14; Proverbs 4:23; Matthew 5:3-12; 12:28; 13:1-22; Mark 4:11; 12:29-31; Luke 8:10, 10:8; 13:18-19; Ephesians 6:10-20; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Peter 5:8-9]

We are shaped every day, whether we know it or not, by practices – rituals and liturgies that make us who we are. We receive these practices – which are often rote – not only from the church or the Scriptures but from our culture, from the “air around us.”[1]

The Hebrew word for “hear,” “shema,” implies not just hearing, but obedience. Hearing with our mind should be connected to obeying with our body. God has made us with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Descartes had said, “I think therefore I am,” but that, in and of itself, leaves out the totality of who we are. We are not just brains on a stick,[2] we are creatures with embodied souls, creatures made in the image of a loving God, whose love is not just expressed in a sentiment, but by everyday choices expressed in what He does and in what we do. 1 Corinthians 13 makes clear that nothing is worthwhile if there is not love expressed through our actions.

Unfortunately, as we have expressed in a previous chapter, our choices seem to always be shrouded in sinful behavior. Time after time, history has shown us that simply filling our mind with the truth of God is a good start but is not sufficient to prevent us doing wrong things. Although our love will not be perfect until we are completely transformed during our resurrection, that does not leave us with no means to order our loves in our current lives. For the time that we are in, God has provided us with various disciplines which can be used to train our habits and therefore train our loves.

Our hope is not just in the future. Jesus proclaimed two thousand years ago that the kingdom of God has come. Jesus’ work of restoration may not be completed but is already underway. We may sometimes fret that the work of restoration, within us and around us, does not happen quickly, but as we observe God’s character as manifested in the natural and spiritual world around us, God seems to relentlessly accomplish his work through processes of growth. God had specified that all birds of the air, fish of the sea, animals and even humans were, through normal processes, to multiply and fill the earth. God’s own plan of redemption worked through generations from Adam, through Noah, Abraham, Moses, and finally to Christ. Jesus even particularly specified that the kingdom of God is like a seed that over time will grow into a plant or tree.

As creatures made in the image of God, we are given the free will to participate in our own growth. But we should keep in mind that if our goal is to become more like Jesus, then we should expect that growing into the likeness of Christ will take time … will take normal processes of growth. But we also need to keep in mind that God’s work of restoration is not unopposed; there are spiritual forces at work against God and against us.

Ultimately, it is Christ who transforms us. But we can humbly submit ourselves to God and prepare the soil of our lives to receive His grace. Our growth will be impacted by our loves and desires, by our yearnings, hungering and thirsting,[3] by where we choose to feed ourselves, by the habits and liturgies we allow to shape our lives,[4] by the disciplines we submit to,[5] by how we center our lives,[6] by how we have integrated the love we have toward ourselves, our families, our communities, and God. In the meanwhile, we will face resistance from within and from outside ourselves. In the normal course of events, it will be a common experience to have times when God seems absent, but we must know how to stay the course.

Holding to our center, keeping our loves ordered, holding on to our identity in the face of the pressures of the world will take conscious effort and discipline. Of course, our discipleship is not just a matter of paying attention to our inner life but also in the expression of our inner life in our walk with others, inside and outside the church. Hopefully, within the church, we can find healthy mutual support as we share our complementary spiritual gifts with one another.

Spiritual Disciplines are those practices which keep us centered on Christ. There are books with various lists of spiritual disciplines available to help guide us and you will find them with slightly different approaches. For instance, in Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline,[7] the disciplines are divided into three categories: The inward disciplines (meditation, prayer, fasting, study), the outward disciplines (simplicity, solitude, submission, service) and the corporate disciplines (confession, worship, guidance, celebration).

Another approach to spiritual disciplines is to focus on deliberative lifestyles such as were originally developed for use in monasteries but have application in the everyday lifestyle. One such example is the Rule of St. Benedict.[8] The Rule reminds us that we do not need to go about looking for God, for He is everywhere, including right where you are in your time and your place, in the humdrum everyday tasks of life. Freedom in Christ is achieved through the submission to three vows: obedience, stability and conversatio morum (conversion of life). These vows present us with paradoxes: our need to be in the desert so that we can be more fully present in the marketplace, our need to have prayer alone so that we can be more present in common worship, our need to commit ourselves to stability so that we can be more fully open to change, our need to detach ourselves from things so that we can fully enjoy them. The intent of all these practices is to help us more fully center ourselves in Christ so that we can more fully love our community.

Whether we are following an intentional plan or not, our everyday habits and practices do shape our spiritual lives. Even the normal, incidental routines we do, such as brushing our teeth, can shape us in ways we don’t think about. But if we take the time, we have the opportunity of using those same routines to help transform us in the ways we want to. But if we want to give our everyday routines a chance to transform us in the way we want, we will need to practice ways of waiting, hoping, slowing down, and preparing.

“When I brush my teeth I am pushing back, in the smallest of ways, the death and chaos that will inevitably overtake my body. I am dust polishing dust. And yet I am not only dust. When God formed people from the dust, he breathed into us—through our lips and teeth—his very breath. So I will fight against my body’s fallenness. I will care for it as best I can, knowing that my body is sacred and that caring for it (and for the other bodies around me) is a holy act. I’ll hold on to the truth that my body, in all its brokenness, is beloved, and that one day it will be, like the resurrected body of Christ, glorious. Brushing my teeth, therefore, is a nonverbal prayer, an act of worship that claims the hope to come.” [9]

We need to be mindful that changes in our life are never neutral. We need to be intentional about choosing practices and patterns in our life that will transform us to be more in the image of Christ.

“Take heed, consider your temptations, watch diligently; there is a treachery, a deceit in sin that tends to the hardening of your hearts from the fear of God.” [10]

We need to be aware of how much our sin is actively working against us, hardening our hearts, and turning us in ways, even very subtle ways, against Christ. To be diligent in following Christ, we need to be diligent in practicing spiritual disciplines in one form or another.

[1] Warren, Tish Harrison. “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred practices in everyday life.” InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

[2] Smith, K.A. James “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

[3] Smith, K.A. James. “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

[4] Warren, Tish Harrison. “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life” InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

[5] Foster, Richard J. “Celebration of Discipline” Harper & Row Publishers ©1978

[6] De Waal, Esther. Seeking God The Liturgical Press. 2001; Tozer, A.W. “The Pursuit of God” Christian Publications, Inc. 1948

[7] Foster, Richard. Celebration of Discipline. Harper & Row Publishers ©1978

[8] Foster, Richard. Celebration of Discipline. Harper & Row Publishers ©1978

[9] Warren, Tish Harrison. Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

[10] Owen, John. Mortification of Sin. In Believers The Necessity, Nature, And Means Of It: With A Resolution Of Sundry Cases Of Conscience Thereunto Belonging.” From The Works of John Owen Johnstone & Hunter Volume 6, 1850-3 www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/owen/Mortification%20of%20Sin%20-%20John%20Owen.pdf

Observe

Read Psalm 1; Matthew 13:1-22. How do you prepare the soil of your heart so that you can spiritually flourish?

Rejoicing in the hope of God

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 14 – Remembering our creation

Rejoicing in the hope of God

[Bible references: Psalm 42; Isaiah 40; Romans 5:1-11; 2 Corinthians 5:11-21]

The relationship between lament and hope is crucial. Reconciliation without lament cheapens hope. To be deeply bothered about the way things are is itself a sign of hope.[1] It is because of our great hope that we can face the brokenness around us and within us, knowing that God still rules over all things and above all things, knowing that He has not and will not cease working to bring his mercy and justice, and knowing that God will eventually restore all of creation to what He has intended from the beginning.

That is the hope we can remember each time we share communion. In the broken bread we remember: Christ broken for us; our sharing in His brokenness; the Body of Christ, that the church now broken will be made whole when our joy will be consummated at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. In the wine we remember: Christ’s blood shed for us; our sharing in His suffering; the Blood of Christ which cleanses and redeems us so that with pure hearts and with one heart, we may enjoy the glorious presence of our Lord. And so it is, after facing the reality of our brokenness, acknowledging it with our lament, looking forward to the reality of the hope we have in God and seeking His desire to restore all things to Himself, that we can face the reality of what we need to do, so that we can join Christ in his redemptive work. If we have truly faced the reality of our brokenness then we will not be deceived by the illusion of progress in our culture, which ultimately is unable to overcome evil.[2] Our hope is fixed solely in Christ who has defeated evil.

[1] Katongole, Emmanuel. Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace, and Healing  Intervarsity Press, 2009; Wright N.T. “Five Things to know about lament” NT Wright Online www.ntwrightonline.org/five-things-to-know-about-lament

[2] Wright, N.T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking, Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church  Harper Collins 2008. Kindle Edition (p.84-86)

Reflect

How can communion provide us hope within the brokenness that we live in?

Observe

Read 2 Corinthians 5:11-21. What do we need to experience before we can act a ambassadors of Christ?

Our limits

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 14 – Remembering our creation

Our Limits

[Bible References: Genesis 1-2; Deuteronomy 15:11; Psalm 40:17; 1 Corinthians 12]

As we seek to fulfill our cultural mandate, there are various constraints which control how we exercise our call.[1] First and foremost, as God’s image-bearers, we are to act in accordance with God’s character: holding to the balance and tension of acting with sovereignty and servitude, mercy and justice, playfulness, and orderliness, along with his attributes of overflowing goodness, generosity and peace, trustworthiness, faithfulness, self-sacrifice and forgiveness. Although we are not transcendent in the same way God is, as his image-bearers his character of transcendence can be reflected in the ways we manifest His other qualities: Our ability to creatively imagine the ways in which we establish dominion, live into our relationships, display fruitfulness, and fulfill our responsibilities as God’s image-bearers.

We also need to remember that there are limits with which we should exercise our responsibilities. God has given us finite resources of materials or time to work with along with the reminder of Sabbath to help us refocus, to remember that although we are designed to work that we are not designed solely for work. It is not work that gives us value, rather it is God who gives us value and our work only has value if it gives God the glory.

Part of our limits are tied to our embodiment. Our earthiness is a reminder of our dependance on the earth, each other, and God. Our earthiness should help us lean into the humility worthy of image-bearers of God. Our need to sleep is a constant reminder that we are not God who never sleeps.

The multi-faceted call God has given us, requires us as God’s stewards to weave together the call to glorify God, to bring to maturity God’s rule over the earth, to reflect God’s triunity within the community of his image-bearers. This call is not for us to fulfill individually, but rather together as the Body of Christ with whatever God provides.

[1] Theology of Work Commentary, “Genesis 1-11 and Work” Hendrickson Publishers Marketing 2015, 2016

Reflect

We have built-in limits to what we, in our bodies, can do. How do these limits remind us of our dependency on the earth where we live, on each other, and on God?

Observe

Read Deuteronomy 15:11; Ps 40:17; 1 Corinthians 12. Why do we need each other?

Our relationships

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 14 – Remembering our creation

Our Relationships

[Bible references: 1 Peter 4:7-11]

All of these activities are done in context of our relation to God, to each other, and to our land. God has created us in His image, in the image of a triune God in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit exist as three persons united into one. Within that framework, God created us as male and female, each created as creatures made in God’s image yet different from and interdependent upon each other. When God made a woman for Adam, He specified that the woman would be an ‘ezer kegnedo,’[1] a strength corresponding to him. God created us from the dust of the earth, so although we are stewards of the earth, we are also dependent on the earth. In the earth, God has provided for us the resources we need to do our tasks. In all these relationships, God has intended that we are to live in unity with Him, with one another and with our environment.

Over time, our unity in all these areas got more complicated as our numbers grew. We needed to create organizations which necessarily became more complex as our societies grew and as our collective impact on the earth became more substantial. We needed extra discipline to maintain our relationship with God. We also needed to develop more skills in diplomacy, administration, and hospitality as we deal with more and different people. We needed to pay closer attention to the effects of our culture on the earth and its creatures to minimize the damage from so many people using our physical resources.

All of our work, our stewardship, is intended to have a direction, to bring maturity, fruitfulness, and growth to God’s work. The work we were charged to begin in the Garden of Eden was designed to end in the filling and subduing of the earth, in the cultivation of the whole earth where heaven and earth overlap so that work and worship are the same thing.[2]

[1] God’s Word to Women. “Ezer Kenegdo” God’s Word to Women godswordtowomen.org/ezerkenegdo.htm; Francois, Mark Steven. “(Ezer Kenegdo) in Genesis 2:18” Between the Perfect and the Doomed markfrancois.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/%D7%A2%D6%B5%D7%96%D6%B6%D7%A8-%D7%9B%D6%B0%D6%BC%D7%A0%D6%B6%D7%92%D6%B0%D7%93%D6%B4%D6%BC%D7%95%D6%B9-ezer-kenegdo-in-genesis-218/

[2] Huber, Dave. “Avodah Word Study” EFCA Today Summer 2012 www.efcatoday.org/story/avodah-word-study

Observe

Read 1 Peter 4:7-11. What are we charged to do?

Our Mandate

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 14 – Remembering our creation

Our Mandate

[Bible references: Genesis 1:26-28; 2:18-25; 3:6; 39:22-23; Matthew 17:10-13; Acts 3:19-42; 1 Peter 5:10]

We have seen how our journey, the journey of God’s people, creatures made in God’s own image, began with our ordination in the Garden of Eden and we have seen what God has intended for our future. We have seen how that intention has not changed despite our rebellion which continues to this day, and how God has not ceased to work with us, His people, despite our persistent rebellion. We have seen God’s patience and tenderness in not totally abandoning us despite our rebellion and how He has called us generation after generation – from the patriarchs and prophets to the apostles and all who are called Christian – to join Him in His ongoing restoration of His Kingdom on earth.

As image-bearers, we still are charged with the work of stewarding His creation, However, we must be restored ourselves before we can fully join Him in His work. That work of restoration begins when the Holy Spirit comes within us to unite us to God and His community. That is the work God must do within us.

In the previous chapters, we have followed how God called his image-bearers to join in the work that he began and then how, through the years, his image-bearers have joined that work, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. In this chapter, as we prepare to consider how to move forward, we will revisit that multi-faceted call to rule over the earth, to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it” and to cultivate[1] and keep it, to create beauty. This call to act as God’s stewards of His creation is a call to use our gifts of intelligence and creativity, to cultivate the resources of the earth to establish a godly culture and civilization. This call is sometimes called the “cultural mandate,” where our culture includes all the things we discover and make and pass on from one generation to the next: our food, language, sports, arts, businesses and their products, civic organizations, and governments, etc.

The charge to “have dominion over” and “subdue” the earth and all its creatures includes physical, cultural, and intellectual activities such as farming, mining, manufacturing, government, arts, civic organizations, education, sciences, technology, and many other activities. But the primary place of God’s kingdom is to restore the souls of men. All would be well if all souls were in right relation to God, everything else would fall into place. Evangelization of the souls of all men is the ultimate goal. But if we think of the ways in which God, out of his overflowing abundance, finally managed to touch our hearts, there were many steps and many different ways in which we were individually touched by the hand of God.

As God’s image-bearers we are uniquely equipped to imagine and discover what kind of possibilities can be made of the overflowing abundance of  God, the physical resources He has provided for us: turning grain to bread, grapes to wine, oil to energy and plastics, iron ore to steel, limestone and shale and clay to cement, and many other things we have made from many types of resources. We are uniquely equipped to imagine and discover out of God’s overflowing abundance what kinds of ways we can organize ourselves to fulfill our responsibility to subdue and cultivate the earth by creating organizations such as businesses, civic and social organizations, political parties and non-profit organizations, governments and educational and religious institutions.[2] In all of these activities we can reflect God’s knowledge and wisdom by engaging in intellectual pursuits such as reading, writing, mathematics, sciences, philosophies, language arts, history, engineering, forensics, medicine, law, etc.  

[1] Huber, Dave. “Avodah Word Study” EFCA Today Summer 2012 www.efcatoday.org/story/avodah-word-study

[2] Manahan, Ronald E. “A Re-Examination of the Cultural Mandate: An Analysis and Evaluation of the Dominion Materials” Docsbay Grace Theological Seminary dissertation May 1982 docsbay.net/A-Re-Examination-Of-The-Cultural-Mandate

Reflect

We were assigned priestly duties in the Garden of Eden. As believers, we are to be kingdom of priests. As God’s care for His Creation continues, so does our mandate. What things can you do (and are equipped to do), with God, to fulfill His mandate?

Observe

Read Genesis 1:26-28; 2:15; 39:22-23. How would the world be different if we fulfilled our duties towards creation in the same way the Joseph fulfilled his duties?

Mystery of faith

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 13 – Distinctives within the body of Christ

Mystery of faith

[Bible references: Exodus 31:1-11; Isaiah 1:18; Romans 1; 3:24; 4:16; 5:2-21; 6:15; 11:5-6; 2 Corinthians 6:1; Galatians 5; Ephesians 1; 2 Hebrews 12:1-39]

Faith and grace

If we try to systemize grace and faith, we find some saying that God will only give some people a special grace that allows them (and only them) to have faith to receive God’s forgiveness and some will say everyone is given that grace. Fortunately, receiving God’s grace is not dependent on our understanding. We only need to acknowledge it is only by God’s grace that we can be forgiven, and it is by God’s grace that we can be saved through faith.

After we “make a decision” to receive grace through faith, some will have the attitude that, “I’m saved, there is nothing more to do.” This attitude is sometime characterized as getting “fire insurance” or a “get out of hell free” card or as “easy believism.” This puts emphasis on “making a decision to accept Christ as our Savior” as if that was the main point.

While acknowledging Jesus as our Savior is a good thing, we should not put to the side that our decision should also acknowledge that Jesus is also our Lord and therefore our decision includes following Him as a disciple.

Faith and reason

Scripture is full of exhortations for us to use our reasoning. In Isaiah 1:18, Yahweh invites us to reason together with Him. In Romans 1, Paul tells us that we can even discern the truth of God’s invisible qualities, that they are clearly seen in the world around us. The scriptures are full of examples of God pleading with us, appealing with us to do the right things.

Scripture also encourages us to walk and live by faith, to trust God by faith, to obey God by faith, that we need to come to him by faith, that our righteousness comes by faith – and that faith is having confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

To hold these in tension, we cannot go to either extreme of abandoning our intellect or abandoning faith, rather we must go trust God to act in the future based on what we have seen him do in the past or present.

Faith and Creeds

It would seem nice if we could make a simple statement like, “The Bible says it and I believe it,” and not be misunderstood. But it’s not so simple. That’s because the Bible is not a straightforward text of moralizing or instructions. It’s a collection of stories, poetry, bits of wisdom, letters written from one person to another or to a group, prophecy, etc.  So biblical interpretation is not a task to be done lightly. Instead, it requires that we look at every verse in the context of the passage that it’s in, who wrote it and to whom and in the context of the entirety of scripture.[1] 

To address that problem, many congregations have found it expedient to clarify what they believe by using certain creeds or statements of faith. But then we run into the problem of the creeds or statement are not saying enough about the entirety of the faith of the congregation. So other congregations avoid creedal statements altogether and simply say that the Bible as a whole describes their faith.[2]

Faith and expressions of the Gospel

Living out the Gospel can encompass all parts of our lives, but for various reasons, different parts of the church at different times have chosen to focus on different aspects of the Gospel, often creating an imbalance in how the Gospel is lived out. Overfocusing on the intellectual aspects of faith led to a movement to focus instead on internalizing one’s faith and personal walk with God. Overfocusing on one’s personal walk with God led to a movement to put more of a focus on the public aspect of faith and the need for social justice. A desire to “return” to the faith of the New Testament church led to a desire to live out the “whole Gospel,” emphasizing the power of the Spirit as expressed by miracles, healings and speaking in tongues. Of course, the “whole gospel” actually encompasses all aspects and loving God with all our hearts, minds, soul and spirit.

Faith and Art

[Bible references: Exodus 28:3; 31:1-11; 35:10-33; 1 Kings 7:13-14; Proverbs 8:30; 22:29; Isaiah 54:16; Zechariah 1:20]

Expressing our faith through art had been common since God instructed people gifted in arts and crafts to build the Tabernacle. During New Testament times, poverty and persecution limited the amount of artwork, and that artwork was largely symbolic. But after the legalization of Christianity, expressions of the faith blossomed in both art and architecture. The eastern church started to express its faith through special artwork called icons which were highly revered. However, when a volcano erupted in AD 726, superstitions within the empire created a movement to rejected artwork[3] which did not finally end until AD 834[4]. To this day, different segments of the church either accept or reject the use of artwork.

Faith and perceptions of God in the Old and New Testament

At first glance, it could seem like God in the Old Testament is different than God in the New Testament. In the Old Testament the stress seems to be on the holiness of God and his distance from us while in the New Testament the stress seems to be on the love of God and his closeness to us. God in the Old Testament seems to act violently while in the New Testament He seems to act humbly and peaceably. This apparent dichotomy has created much consternation, causing some people to reject or ignore the Old Testament and only focus on the New Testament. But God is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow. God never changes. More careful reading will show that the Old and New Testaments are not so different, and the characteristics we see of God in one testament can be found in the other testament.

[1] The discipline of “hermeneutics” or “bible interpretation” gives guidance on how to properly interpret the scriptures.

[2] These congregations are called noncreedal congregations.

[3] iconoclasm

[4] Art in Context, “Early Christian Art – Christian Artwork and Biblical Paintings” Artincontext artincontext.org/christian-art/ ; Joy of Museums “Christian Art and Biblical Paintings” Joy of Museums joyofmuseums.com/most-popular/popular-christian-art/

Mystery of God

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 13 – Distinctives within the body of Christ

Mystery of God

[Bible references: Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 55:8; Luke 3:21-22; John 10:30; 1 Corinthians 2:11-14; Philippians 2:5-11; 1 Timothy 3:15-16; 1 Peter 4:14; 1 John 1:6-8; 2:18-22]

How is it that there is only one God and yet Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and the Father is God?

The Bible reveals but doesn’t explain this paradox. From the beginning of the Old Testament there is an explicit teaching that “The Lord our God, the Lord is one,” a teaching that contrasted with all the other cultures around at the time. And yet, from the beginning of the Old Testament we have hints that this One God is complicated. The New Testament gets more explicit about the situation but still does not explain it. This paradox, that there was a person, God, and that there are three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) who are equally God, was given a name, Trinity.[1] The Greek side of the church uses a term, “perichoresis” to describe the interpenetration, etc. of the persons of the Trinity.

But just because a name was given to this paradox did not make it easy to accept. Various explanations were given to explain how this worked and how the three persons related to each other. Discussions involved how to define terms like person, substance and nature.

The following list shows a few of some different explanations that have been espoused but are considered to be heretical:

  • The three persons are three different modes of God expressing himself,[2]
  • The belief that God is only one person,[3]
  • Jesus was created and was less than the Father,[4]
  • God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are subordinate to God the Father not merely relationally, but also in nature and being.[5] This eventually led to the belief that neither Jesus nor the Holy Spirit are truly God.[6]

How can Jesus both be God and human?

There are two views held: 1) the one person Jesus has two natures, human and divine, combined in one person, or 2) the one person Jesus has one nature in which his divinity and humanity are combined, [7] In either case Jesus is made of the same substance as God[8].

There were controversies over whether that God could have suffered,[9] that Jesus only seemed to suffer,[10] or whether a human like Mary could have given birth to God.[11] 

So exactly what is the relation of the Holy Spirit to God the Father and God the Son?

There is a question about whether the Spirit proceeds from just the Father or the Father and the Son. This question was captured in a statement in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed which originally stated, “And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father ….” In disagreement with the Eastern Orthodox side of the church, the Roman Catholics felt the need to add the words “and the Son.” [12]

How does one develop knowledge of God?[13]

We need to distinguish that we are not trying to know about God as much as to know God, the person. We get to know a person by more than studying about a person, but rather spending time and doing things with that person. We are not a just a student, but a disciple.

When to comes to knowing about God, we find that He has revealed himself to all people through his creation and through our ability to reason.[14] That type of knowledge is not the same as knowing God as a person. To know God as a person, we need to be in his presence and allow him to reveal himself to us. We can do this through prayer, meditation, or scripture. Sometimes God will spiritually reveal himself to us or sometimes he will act through miracles. Other times we interact with God as we do things in His name.[15]

Whether we are learning through general or special revelation,[16] in either case, we are finite creatures trying to understand the infinite God, which is a task we can only do in part. But either way, the knowledge we seek is not an end itself but is for the sake of our relationship with God.

The following examples are some of the particular ways different parts of the church have practiced the pursuit of knowing God:

  • Eastern Orthodox traditions recognize our utter limits in knowing God through negative theology – that is, God’s infinite qualities are so far from our comprehension that it makes more sense to define what we know God is not, instead of trying to define what God is.[17]
  • Many traditions, including the Eastern Orthodox, posit the impossibility of our finite minds to be able to know God by intellectual means and we need to extend our knowledge of God through various spiritual practices such as fasting, prayer and meditation.
    • In the early church, an innovation introduced by Montanus[18] promoted revelations from the Holy Spirit. This caused the church to back away from any other innovations in theology.
    • Quakers have emphasized quieting oneself and waiting for God to reveal himself through the “inner light” that is available to all people.
  • The Eastern Orthodox tradition emphasizes the necessity of becoming transformed by God to become more like him to know God.[19]
  • In a reaction to an overemphasis on knowing God through intellectual means, a movement developed which emphasized spiritual disciplines such as Bible study and prayer.[20]
  • Some in the church over-emphasized knowing God by faith, leading to an anti-intellectual strain in the church. This despite the Christian heritage which did much to support the life of the mind. Christians founded universities, were some of the first to use science to investigate the natural world and have invested much towards loving God with “all our minds.”
  • Some in the church stressed the mysteries of God and the need to develop the more mystical disciplines of prayer, meditation, and contemplation.

[1] In AD 185, Irenaeus claimed that this concept was the teaching of the apostles, but it wasn’t until AD200 that Tertullian created the term, Trinity. Tertullian was responding to the teaching of modalism.

[2] Theopedia “Modalism” Theopedia theopedia.com/modalism

[3] Theopedia “Monarchianism” Theopedia theopedia.com/monarchism

[4] Arian (AD 256–336) was a presbyter in Alexandria. He did have some success in persuading people of his view and for a while it became quite a controversy in the church, but it was eventually denounced.

[5] Theopedia “Subordinationism” Theopedia theopedia.com/subordinationism”

[6] Theopedia “Unitarianism” Theopedia theopedia.com/Unitarianism

[7] Plante, Evan. “What is the difference between Dyophysitism and Miaphysitism?” Mainsail Ministries mainsailministries.org/index.php/q-a-a-god-bible-theology-culture/105-what-is-the-difference-between-dyophysitism-and-miaphysitism.html Dyophysitism (Christ has two natures, fully human and fully God) is the view of the Protestant, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. denominations. Miaphysitism (Christ has one nature that is both human and divine) is the view of the Oriental Orthodox denomination.

[8] Homoousios – In Greek, the argument looked even more subtle. Was Jesus made of the same substance (homoousios) as God or a similar substance (homoiousios).

[9] OrthodoxWiki “Nestorianism” OrthodoxWiki orthodoxwiki.org/Nestorianism

[10] OrthodoxWiki “Docetism” OrthodoxWiki orthodoxwiki.org/Docetism

[11] Theotokos means “God-bearer”

[12] This additional phrase, referred to as the “filioque” is held by the Roman Catholics and the Protestants but the original wording is held by the Eastern Orthodox.

[13] Epistemology is the study of how we can know things.

[14] This is sometimes called “general revelation.” Trying to understand God this way can be called “natural theology.”

[15] These different ways of knowing God by being with him in these activities is sometimes called “special” or ”divine revelation.”

[16] Got Questions “What is general revelation and special revelation?” Got Questions www.gotquestions.org/general-special-revelation.html

[17] OrthodoxWiki “Apophatic theology” OrthodoxWiki orthodoxwiki.org/Apophatictheology

[18] Early Christian History “Montanus” Early Christian History www.earlychristianhistory.info/montanus.html

[19] Theopedia “Theosis” Theopedia www.theopedia.com/theosis

[20] Theopedia “Pietism” Theopedia www.theopedia.com/pietism

Reflect

We truly have reached the limitations of our knowledge of God when we consider both the concept of the Trinity and the concept of Jesus being both fully God and fully human. How do you handle that limitation?

Observe

Read Philippians 2:5-11; 1 Timothy 3:15-16; 1 John 1:6-8; 2:18-22. What does it  mean to us that God came to us in human form as Jesus?

Historical issues affecting the church

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 13 – Distinctives within the body of Christ

Historical issues affecting the church

[Bible references: Matthew 5:14-16; 13; 24; 26:6-13; John 15; 17; Romans 12;  1 Corinthians 1:26-31; 3-7; Ephesians 6:10-20; Colossians 2; 1 John 4]

Overcurrents – Historical issues outside the church that impact the development of the church.

The development of the church doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it happens in the midst of governments rising and falling, conflicts within and between nations, in the culture of the people around the church influencing the culture within the church, in the plagues and catastrophes and other events that happen to society. Within those events, sometimes it’s the world that impacts the church and sometimes it is the church that impacts the culture around it.

The church initially developed during the time of Pax Romana in which a stable empire and its infrastructure enabled the missionary efforts of the apostles and others. That same empire was also responsible for various persecutions of the church. However, the response of the church to those persecutions sometimes profoundly impacted not only by those who became witnesses of God’s glory displayed by the courage of the martyrs, but also the courage of those who risked their own health and well-being to give aid to the helpless and sick.

Those persecutions unfortunately created tension within the church as it had to deal with those who succumbed to the pressure of the persecution and denied Christ (a problem that would occur in future persecutions in other places and times). Some persecutions almost totally eradicated Christian populations. This happened with the Church of the East which almost entirely disappeared in the 14th century. This happened even though the church, which was established in Persia in AD 410, grew to be the largest denomination in the world and whose influence extended to the east coast of China.

In the age of our hyper-individualism, it seems strange for us to imagine that it has been common throughout history for communities to identify themselves with a single religious identity. In the time of the early church, Christianity did not conform to the Roman religion which was cause for the persecution of the church. However, when Constantine became emperor of Rome (AD 306-337) and identified himself with Christianity, the church now found itself tied to the secular power of the government which changed dynamics within the church, with people now seeking identity with the church as a way of seeking power. Later on, as kings broke away from the empire and nation-states began to form (beginning in AD 1848), the religious ties to the state were often hijacked in order to accomplish the goals of the individual secular governments.

As the church spread, the different cultural environments and different languages spoken within the church created problems. Prominently, the Latin language and culture caused different developments than within the Greek language and culture. Emperor Constantine’s decision to create a separate capitol in Constantinople (AD 324) laid the groundwork for the creation of a bifurcated (Eastern and Western) Roman Empire. The Latin/Greek language problem worsened when the Western Roman Empire was overtaken by invaders from the north (AD 410), creating further isolation between East and West, and would eventually result in the formal East/West Schism in AD 1054.

Larger cultural events impacted the church as well. The contributions of Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle impacted the development of science and philosophy for many years. The contributions of Greece and Rome would be redeveloped during the Middle Ages in the development of sciences, although the church’s attachment to Aristotle’s geocentrism would hinder the development of astronomy for a while.

The invention of the printing press in 1439 supported the spread of ideas in science and humanism and would also be central to the Protestant revolution in the 1500s. During the same period, developments in shipbuilding and technology enabled the development of European empire and contributed to the age of Enlightenment (1714-1789) with the emphasis on reason having priority over theology, liberty, and progress[1].

Undercurrents – Issues within the church that have had a wide impact throughout the church

Christianity introduced new ways of thinking of the world, but those ideas did not change all patterns of thinking all at once. They needed a chance to develop and mature and then over time would challenge the older ways of thinking as the new patterns were gradually absorbed. In our current post-Christian era, new ways of thinking are developing, but the pattern continues. The now older Christian ideas are providing some of the framework for the current post-Christian ideas to build on, although the Christian contributions may not be recognized.

In that regard, as we examine the patterns of thought in Christian history, we find that there are various classic Greek ideas which have influenced the church. One of the classic Greek contributions, Platonism, developed into what has been termed Gnosticism. Within Gnosticism, one idea was that salvation is obtained through secret knowledge; this has led to the development of “secret” societies like the Freemason’s where only those within the society have that knowledge. Another gnostic idea is known as dualism, where spiritual things are considered to be good and material things are considered to be bad. The consequences of that thinking have led to heretical teachings about the nature of Jesus, severe asceticism, unhealthy thinking about sexuality, neglecting our stewardship of creation, rejection of the arts, etc.

Many disagreements have occurred through the years about the role of faith in respect to reason and revelation. When trying to balance these ideas with one another, some espoused fideism (in which faith is independent of and hostile to reason), some espoused special revelation (i.e., prophecies) over rationalism, and some espoused rationalism over faith or prophecies. These imbalances eventually fed into the conflict of faith vs. science in the 1800s highlighted by Darwin’s contribution to the evolution of species.[2]

There have been various moments in church life where there seems to have been a loss of focus on how Christianity is supposed to be lived out in our daily lives. When religious practices were perceived to be over-intellectualized, various pietistic movements were started where attention was paid to the spiritual aspects of the faith and on the transformation of our daily lives.

As the church grew it was natural that different personalities combined with different languages and cultures would result in differing ideas the nature of God and practice of Christianity. After all the apostles had died, the church had to learn how to determine which differences were acceptable and which differences were not. When someone’s practices seemed inappropriate the council would generate rules to address those practices. When ideas were taught that seemed to conflict with core beliefs of the church, the council created creedal statements, such as the Apostle’s Creed or Nicene Creed. The Creeds[3] were not designed to be all-inclusive statements of belief but were rather designed to address the emerging heresies of the moment.

Church developments outside the bounds of the Roman Empire, and eventually the fracturing of the Roman Empire itself, led to the fracturing of the church as well. The difficulty and sometimes outright inability of the church to hold a single large ecumenical council representing the whole church has contributed to the many branches of the church that can be seen today.

During the era of Enlightenment, reasoning and rationality were emphasized while the supernatural was rejected. In regard to the Bible, this meant that any miraculous events described in the Bible including miracles, healings, divine revelation, or God being active in any way in the world were rejected.

There was a view which postulated that God had created the world but then let it run according to natural laws without any further interference. This same viewpoint along with the acceptance of evolution, led to an evolutionary perception of historical and social development that led to the rejection of the traditional viewpoint of biblical development. One idea that became very popular in the 1800s (and is still popular today) was the idea that the Bible was created by piecing together various texts during Israel’s time of exile.[4]

Steering Currents

We should not assume that the church is dragged helplessly by overcurrents and undercurrents. Through all those influences, the Spirit of God is at work in the church. If the church sometimes behaves badly, it is a reminder that it is not the church that is the Savior of the world, that distinction belongs to God alone. Occasionally, even the church forgets that she is in daily need of a Savior as she brings the gospel to the world. Christ is the faithful one, not the church.

Those of us who are members of the visible church don’t even know with certainty which members of the visible church truly belong to Christ and who does not. Only God knows that. Only God knows whether we have the right balance of beliefs and practices,[5] and we most likely don’t. God’s ways are higher than the ways of those who are in the church as well as outside the church. This should call us to humility. But it should also call us to assurance that God is working His plan and His church even if we are broken and sometimes failing. The hope that we bring to the world is that God still works within us despite our weakness and failures.

In our unfaithfulness, we need to remember the words of Jeremiah. After many chapters of God accusing his chosen people, Israel, of prostituting herself to the love of other gods, at the end, God said, “Return, O virgin Israel …” Again, it is our faithful Yahweh who persists in seeking and holding onto us, despite our unfaithfulness – and yet He will cleanse us and put our unfaithful ways behind us. This is the good news that the church can receive and pass on to those not yet in the church. Our faithful Yahweh has not left us or abandoned us but leads us, able to redeem us even in our rebellion.

God loves His church, and He will restore us. We are therefore in no position to not love the church that God loves. He has not abandoned us but calls us by His Spirit. I have often said, “It is a miracle that the gospel has survived the church.” It is a miracle, and the miracle continues as it already has through the centuries. God will use the church and guide the church, despite herself. And there is the promise from Jesus to His followers, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

[1] Martin, Bruce. “Science and Faith: The Enlightenment;” Encyclopedia.com “Enlightenment and Empire” Explorations in Life, Theology, and Creation rossway.net/science-and-faith-the-enlightenment

[2] Darwin, Charles. “On the Origin of Species” John Murray 1859

[3] See Appendix I – Creeds of the Church

[4] Graf-Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis University of Maryland Department of Computer Science www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf

[5] orthodoxy and orthopraxy Learn Religion www.learnreligions.com/orthopraxy-vs-orthodoxy-95857

Observe

Read John 17:13-25. In His love towards us, God has created many things in the world for us to enjoy. However, the world’s hatred of the things of God is sometimes masked by the sweet enticements that lure us away the love of God towards the love of those things. How do we discern when we are being lured away from God?

Limits of theology

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 13 – Distinctives within the body of Christ

The limits of theology

[Bible references: Isaiah 55:1-13; John 8:43;21-30; 41-48; Acts 1:1-11]

The church is the body of the incomprehensible Christ, and this incomprehensibility creates tension because many of us who are in this body think we understand different aspects of God. Somehow, we end up disagreeing on issues that each of us thinks should be clear to everyone else, resulting in us taking sides and dividing because: not only can’t we understand everything about God, but we are also subject to our personal human frailties (e.g., sins, particular inclinations and weaknesses), the cultures we live in and the languages we speak (which inform the way we interpret scripture) and the events around us (e.g., wars, revolutions, politics, etc.). Those frailties have led to a rather mixed history of how the church has lived into what it knows about the gospel. Sometimes we seem like the Indian fable about six blind men and the elephant,[1] we end up seeing God from such different places that we seem to be describing a different God.

Language may not determine thought, but it focuses perception and attention on particular aspects of reality, structures and thereby enhances cognitive processes, and even to some extent regulates social relationships. Our language reflects and at the same time shapes our thoughts and, ultimately, our culture, which in turn shapes our thoughts and language.[2]

Our culture and our language are inseparably bound together, they affect how we think and how we perceive the world and, particularly, they tend to cause misunderstandings when people from two or more different language/cultural groups communicate with each other.[3] In the case of the church, there were four major languages involved at the beginning: Aramaic, the local language of the Jews in Israel and the region to its east; Greek, the international language of the Roman Empire; Latin, the legal language of the Roman Empire; and Hebrew, the language in which the Old Testament was written.

The majority of the church first developed in the Roman Empire. While the legal language of the empire was Latin, the international language of the empire was Greek, and it was Greek culture that had been strongly adopted within the empire. Even the cultural influences of Plato, Zeno, Aristotle, and Epicurus persisted affecting the development of the church and its values.

Aramaic was the language of the “Church of the East” which developed primarily outside the Roman Empire. In addition to some isolation because of the language differences, it was further isolated by being outside the Roman Empire.

Even within the same people group, misunderstandings occur when people from one time period are interpreting information from an earlier time period. All these factors were in play at the time the church was forming. For example

  • The scripture from the Old Testament was written over a 1400-year time period with different authors using different literary styles.
  • As the church grew across the world, different cultural issues arose.
  • and the New Testament documents written about them were high-context documents but were being interpreted with low-context.[4]

There are also other issues creating internal tensions within the church. We also have a natural propensity to segregate ourselves into different groups. All our communities also experience cultural changes.

The game plan for spreading the gospel throughout the world didn’t follow any typical conventions. The people Jesus selected to be apostles did not receive any training in building organizations, neither did he tell them to plan for the long-term survival of the church that they were charged to begin building. The key instruction that they did receive was “wait,” that is, wait for the Holy Spirit. Jesus may have a master plan, but he only let them know (just as he lets us know) one step at a time. Naturally then, we respond to his revealed plan only one broken step after another and, as we do, we discover our need to lean on him as we work through our frailties and sin. The plan is and was for us to follow the Great Commandment and the Great Commission and the Holy Spirit. Not much detail, no written instructions, sometimes confusing, but that was the plan. Some would characterize the apparent plan as “Love people and tell them about Jesus.”

[1] All About Philosophy “Blind Men and the Elephant” www.allaboutphilosophy.org/blind-men-and-the-elephant.htm ; Saxe, John Godfrey. “The Blind Men and the Elephant” Poetry.com www.poetry.com/poem/101535/the-blind-men-and-the-elephant

[2] Burton, Neel. “How the Language You Speak Influences the Way You Think” Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201808/how-the-language-you-speak-influences-the-way-you-think

[3] White, James Emery, “the Greek, the Latin and the Hebrew” Crosswalk.com 2 Sept 2008 www.crosswalk.com/blogs/dr-james-emery-white/the-greek-the-latin-and-the-hebrew-11581208.html; Leveridge, Aubrey Neil, “The Relationship between Language and Culture and the implications for language teaching” TEFL.net Sept 2008 www.tefl.net/elt/articles/teacher-technique/language-culture

[4] High context communication occurs when people are in a shared environment with common values, history, etc. where many things are not said because it is assumed that the other person already knows and assumes those things as well. In low context communication, there is much less assumed about what the other person knows and so many more details are included in the communication.

Observe

Read Acts 1:1-11. When it comes to leading the church, what are the strengths and weaknesses of relying on the Spirit?

The context of theology

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 13 – Distinctives within the body of Christ

The Context of Theology

[Bible references: Matthew 22:37-39; John 13:34-35; 15:1-17; Romans 12:3-8; 1 Corinthians 12; 13; Ephesians 4:11-16]

More than doctrine

Everybody has an opinion of some sort when it comes to ideas about God. That is, everybody practices theology. According to one classical definition, theology is “faith seeking understanding.”[1] The only question is. whether our theology is good or bad. That said, there are some who may question whether or not to make a big deal of theology because it seems to create such divisiveness and others think that we should just keep everything as simple as possible.

We were created by God with mind, body, and soul – and it is through all those means that we can come to know God. The formal field of study that we call “theology” has often been restricted to academia, focusing on the intellectual – the mind; but as beings created in the image of God it would be a mistake to restrict our theology to just our mind. It is through our whole being that we can come to know and be transformed by God. Jesus once said that this transformed people would be recognized not by their knowledge, but by their love. Although it is beneficial if our love is informed by our knowledge, love is expressed in its action. In fact, Jesus identified the greatest commandments as loving God and loving our neighbors. Therefore, the practice of following Jesus (aka discipleship) is something we practice in community.

Once we understand all this, that our understanding of God requires the effort of our whole being, then we can see that while theology may have an academic component, it is more than an intellectual exercise. In fact, our soul, or spirit, is the first place in our being to examine our theology. Our theology is lacking if our God’s love is not overflowing through us into the rest of our lives.

To evaluate what our overflowing love might look like, we can consider the descriptions we find for the “fruit of the spirit” as shown in Galatians 5 and in 1 Corinthians 13: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, does not envy or boast, is not proud, rude or self-seeking, is not easily angered, takes no account of wrongs, takes no pleasure in evil, rejoices in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. We can also consider how we express our love through the various gifts of God that He provides each one of us for the purpose of building each other up in the faith: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophets, discernments, tongues and their interpretation, leadership, serving, exhortation, giving, mercy, helps apostle, prophet, pastor, teacher.

It is interesting that many non-Christians, even those with limited knowledge of the Bible or of the church, are able to critique Christians by contrasting Christians with Christ. They may possibly misunderstand Christ, but because they have been designed as image-bearers of God, even they have some basis to compare the behavior of others to Christ.

The whole of faith

Meanwhile, in this in-between time, even disciples of Jesus are affected by sin and our theology is subject to corruption. We misuse theology in various ways: sometimes using it as a tool to achieve something else such as gaining power or justifying bad attitudes (e.g., arrogance or hatred), sometimes by focusing on just the academic side while neglecting the spiritual or practical aspects; or sometimes neglecting the academic side and try to avoid the truth or complexities of theology and simply stop asking questions, preferring instead to yield to fideism, which can be described as the “exclusive or basic reliance of faith alone” [2]

A robust faith is not a blind faith, but rather a thinking faith, a faith with eyes wide open to the realities of life’s circumstances and the reality of God’s providence,[3] a faith that seeks God with our whole self: body, mind, and spirit. So, we should not ignore the academic side of our faith or our theology. The process of taking all the knowledge we have gathered about God and then using that to “build up into an organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations between God and the universe” is called systematic theology.[4]

The all-encompassing nature of systematic theology requires care. Scientific models are helpful in understanding natural phenomena but are limited in predicting future behavior because the models are only approximations of the phenomena they describe. Similarly, our systematic theologies are helpful in understanding the infinite God and his works, but we need to be aware of its limitations. One of those limitations is how our perceptions are influenced by our particular personality, our particular environment/culture, our particular language, and our particular historical context.[5]

The problem of the other

Ever since the creation of humanity, we have continually chosen to idolize ourselves and to not love God, which also meant we have chosen to not love others. This mindset then causes us to blame whatever problems we have on others or even to blame God. It is this sort of mindset that would cause the New Testament church to disconnect itself from its Judaic heritage, setting the church up for continued divisiveness in the future. So it is worth exploring what led to the church to the severing its Judaic roots.

We know that Jesus spoke of how scriptures – and he could only be referring to what we call the Old Testament scriptures – pointed to him and his ministry, and how he was the fulfillment of those scriptures. That would mean that Jesus’ ministry was a continuation of God’s love and grace as set out in the Old Testament. Later on, as the ministry of the church strongly expanded to Gentiles, the apostle Paul spelled out that the Gentiles in the church were like the branch of a wild olive tree being grafted into nurtured tree; the tree being the Jews that were in the church and whose roots went back to the Old Testament people of faith. Paul then warned the Gentiles not to become arrogant about any of the other branches that were broken off because God is capable of grafting the original branches back onto the tree.

As the ministry to the Gentiles proceeded and expanded, Christian Jews still met in the temple and the synagogues with the non-Christian Jews, increasing their ministry there even as many of the non-Christian Jews strongly resisted. But there were two events that would change the trajectory of the church.

In AD 66 the zealots started to revolt against the Roman government. The Christians in Jerusalem want to avoid getting caught up in the rebellions and moved to Pella, causing tension between the zealots and the Christians. After the rebellion was defeated by the Romans in AD 70, the temple was destroyed and the Jews were scattered, but now there was increased tension between the Christian and non-Christian Jews.

Later on, in AD 132, a zealot nicknamed Bar Kokhba (meaning “son of the star”) arose to start another rebellion. He, with the support of a prominent rabbi, declared himself a messiah. Now, the Christian Jews not only did not want to participate in a rebellion, but they had to refuse to acknowledge a messiah other than Jesus. And the zealots, who supported Bar Kokhba, declared Bar Kokhba as messiah, thus rejecting Jesus as messiah, which quickly led to a hardening of those non-Christian Jews against the church, making them more resistant than before to the gospel. When the Romans defeated the zealots, Jews were now banned on penalty of death, from entering Jerusalem.

After this point, when leaders in the church tried to reach the Jews with the gospel, they encountered hardened hearts. However, instead of the recognizing that it had been foretold that Jews hearts would be hardened until the time of the Gentiles was over, the leaders in the church now arrogantly hardened their own hearts and became increasingly anti-Semitic. This resulted in the church increasingly turning away from their own roots and thus becoming susceptible to increasing influence of Greek philosophy. This would create dramatic effects in the development of theology in such areas as the rejection of the human body and sexuality as evil and sinful, and the conversion of asceticism from a form of spiritual discipline to a rejection of the pleasures God created as good things.[6]

The limits of language

Early on, in church history, there was an attempt to overcome the problem of the language barrier in the church. It was thought that the church could be united if theologians across the church world could use a common theological language. This attempt in the 5th century, when the languages included Aramaic, Greek, and Latin as well as all the local languages, did make it easier to find solutions to theological problems, but the negative consequence was that differences in theological views became heightened, leading to what may be the inevitable schisms in the church.

Theologians believed that one faith has to be expressed in one language … Distortion of language, they believed, inevitably leads to distortion of the common faith … ‘Byzantine scholasticism’ emerged in the post-Cyrillian era. This shift had both positive and negative consequences. The positive ones were that theologians started speaking one language. This helped them to easier find solutions to theological problems … The negative consequences of language-centrism were that when theologians disagreed on terms or categories, the regarded their disagreements about theological formulas as essential theological difference. This became one of the most important reasons of the church schism in the post-Cyrillian era.[7]

We cannot approach any field of study as a blank slate. All of our particular factors contribute to which particular theological method people may choose to use. Charles Hodge identified three general classes of methods used within the field of systematic theology: Speculative, Mystical, and Inductive.[8] Given all of that, we can see that there can be many approaches to even framing the questions we might ask about God, never mind the types of answers towards which we may lean. Engaging in the quest of trying to understand the current multi-faceted state of the current church can be overwhelming and most people don’t have the time to study a typical church history book of 800-1000 pages. To make this task more bearable, the approach here will not be to present a comprehensive study but to develop an overview of the church by focusing on 1) the internal and external issues that affected the development of the church, and 2) the main questions that the church has asked and briefly sharing the different answers formulated by different congregations.

[1] Migliore, Daniel L. “Faith Seeking Understanding”  William B. Eerdmans Publishing, third edition. 1991

[2] Amesbury, Richard. “Fideism” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ©2016 plato.stanford.edu/entries/fideism

[3] Migliore, Daniel L. “Faith Seeking Understanding” William B. Eerdmans Publishing, third edition. 1991 (pp. 3-5)

[4] Bible Study Tools “Chapter III – Method of Theology” Bible Study Tools www.biblestudytools.com/classics/strong-systematic-theology/part-i-prolegomena/chapter-iii-method-of-theology.html

[5] Migliore, Daniel L. “Faith Seeking Understanding” William B. Eerdmans Publishing, third edition. 1991 (p.205) Confession of Jesus Christ takes place in particular historical and cultural contexts … our response to questions of who we say Jesus Christ is and how he helps us will be s shaped in important ways by the particular contexts in which these questions arise … all theology is contextual

[6] Dualism rejects the physical world as evil or not desirable. “Mystery of Wisdom.” (p. 166)

[7] Hovorun, Cyril. Studia Patristica Vol. LVIII, Volume 6: Neoplatonism and Patristics, Peters 2013.  “Importance of Neoplatonism on Formation of Theological Language” (p. 17-28)

[8] Hodge, Charles, “Systematic Theology” (Chapter I: On Method) Eerdmans Publishing Company, (Chapter I: On Method) 1940

Reflect

How can love affect your ability to know someone?

Observe

Read John 15:1-17; Ephesians 4:11-16. How do these passages relate to each other?

Future of the faith

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

Future of the faith

[Bible references: Isaiah 65:17-25; 66:22-24; Luke 20:34-362 Corinthians 5:1-10; 2 Peter 3:10-15; Revelation 21:1-8]

As mentioned in the previous section, the war against evil has been won. Christ has won the battle over sin and death. We need to keep our minds fixed on that when the battles rage around us. We need to remember that we are the side of the victor and not get defensive – our God is not small! We need to remember that the forces of evil have reigned since the fall and so, when Jesus came in the flesh, it was the forces of good that have intruded on the forces of evil, not the other way around.

With the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Kingdom of God has entered onto the earth and Jesus continues to bring the Kingdom of God on earth through his church. Unfortunately, we need to wait until Jesus returns before he completely restores the Kingdom of God. But He will restore it!

One of the in-between time confusions centers around what happens in the day that Christ returns. In this time, when Christians die, we are not automatically resurrected, instead we leave earth to go to heaven to be with the Lord. But that is not our last destination! When Christ returns, He will unite heaven with earth, and it is then that we will then receive our resurrected bodies so that we can live on that new earth.

One of the other confusions around what happens what is the relation between the old earth and the new earth. The language in 2 Peter 3:10 can make it seem that the old earth will simply be annihilated and replaced with the new earth. However, that would seem to conflict with Acts 3:21 where God is said to “restore all things.”

“The times of the restitution of all things – The noun rendered restitution … does not elsewhere occur in the New Testament. The verb from which it is derived occurs eight times. It means properly “to restore a thing to its former situation,” as restoring a “strained” or “dislocated” limb to its former soundness. Hence, it is used to restore, or to heal, in the New Testament …”[1]

It so happens that “all but one of the oldest and most reliable Greek manuscripts do not have the final words “will be burned up” but instead have “will be found, …”[2] and that would be more in line with Acts 3:21.[3] What has been the more common rendering of “burning up the earth” has caused some to not care about our current earth, but if the earth is to be transformed rather than destroyed then we might, as the stewards of the earth, pay more attention to taking care of the earth.

[1] Biblehub “Acts 3:21” Biblehub biblehub.com/acts/3-21.htm

[2] Wolters, Albert M. “Creation Regained: Biblical Bases for a Reformational Worldview” William B. Eerdmans Publishing 1985, 2005. (Location 568 of 1582)

[3] Bible.org “A Brief Note on a Textual Problem in 2 Peter 3:10” the meaning of the term is virtually the equivalent of “will be disclosed,” “will be manifested.” Thus, the force of the clause would be that “the earth and the works [done by men] in it will be stripped bare [before God].” BAGD suggests a slight modification of this: be found as a “result of judicial investigation” (s.v. εὑρίσκω, p. 325. 2), citing Acts 13:28; 23:9; John 18:38; 19:4, 6; and Barnabas 21:6 as approximate parallels. Danker2 suggested a parallel between 2 Pet 3:10 and Ps Sol 17:10 (“Faithful is the Lord in all his judgments which he executes on the earth”; the link here is conceptual, though in v. 8 εὑρίσκω is used of the exposure of men’s sins before God). We might add that the unusualness of the expression is certainly in keeping with Peter’s style throughout this little book. Hence, what looks to be suspect because of its abnormalities, upon closer inspection is actually in keeping with the author’s stylistic idiosyncrasies. The meaning of the text then, is apparently that all but the earth and men’s works will be destroyed. Everything will be removed so that humanity will stand naked before God.

Observe

Read 1 Peter 3:10-15. What should our attitude be because we know that the new heavens and earth will be happening?

Doctrine and the knowledge of God

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

Doctrine and the knowledge of God

[Bible references: 1 Corinthians 1:10; 8:1-13; Romans 12:1-8; 15:5-6; Philippians 1:27; 2:2-5; 1 Peter 3:8]

We can see the apostle Paul tackling the issue of doctrine and the knowledge of God in the book of Romans, written in the context of much hostility between Jew and Gentile, where he explains in many different ways how the doctrine of the faith actually binds Jew and Gentile together. Then towards the end of that lengthy exposition he says to be of one mind and accept one another in the same way as Christ who came to serve us and has accepted us.

Unfortunately, in our attempts to become more knowledgeable about doctrine, we get off-balance, forgetting that “love builds up” and instead get caught in the trap of “knowledge puffs up,” starting to think of ourselves “more highly than we ought.” In those same passages that remind us of that trap, we are also reminded of our responsibility to remember God’s grace to us and to remember that we all belong to the same Body of Christ.

Our knowledge gets distorted when we focus on the knowledge of the Biblical text and not the knowledge of the God who gave us the text. Our knowledge of doctrine should not become an end to itself. Our habitual forgetfulness to seek our unity in Christ has led to the claim that “doctrine divides.”  However, doctrine, as the properly taught knowledge of God, should lead to unity.

Observe

Read Romans 12:1-8. How can this passage help us handle issues of doctrine?

Paradox of responsibility

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

Paradox of responsibility

[Bible references: Jeremiah 3:1-9; 31:1-4; Zechariah 8:16; Ephesians 4; Philippians 2:1-18]

This then is our paradox; we are given the responsibility of correctly handling the Truth of God even when we cannot completely understand what that Truth is. For instance, how can we understand that there is one person, God, and yet have God revealed in three personalities:  God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit? How can the God who exists outsides the confines of time and space, confine Himself to a particular space and time and come to be born and then to live and die as a normal human being? How can these things be?

As we look across the breadth of the history of the church, we see the church wrestling with these paradoxes and others. The result of that wrestling sometimes has gotten downright ugly with the church sometimes quite literally killing each other about it, not only with those outside the church but within it. In fact, if one were to look across the world at the state of Christianity, it might seem to one of the most fractious and divided groups ever.

How can it be that God would entrust this church with the task of bringing that His Truth to others and from one generation to the next, the church that has from time to time seemed to fail the apostle Paul’s challenge to be “one in the Spirit.”

Reflect

When children are not compliant as they grow up, do we just give up on them?

Observe

Read Zechariah 8:16; Ephesians 4; Philippians 2:1-18. What should the church look like as it handles its responsibility to presenting the truth of God to each other and to the world?

Guardians of the truth

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

Guardians of truth

[Bible references: Psalm 25:2; 45:4; 145:18; Proverbs 12:19; 22:21; Isaiah 45:19; 59:15; Jeremiah 5:1; Zechariah 8:16-19; John 1:14-17; 4:23-24; 8:44-45; 14:6; 16:13; Acts 20:30; Romans 1:18-25; 2:1-20; I Corinthians 11:18-19; 1 Timothy 4:6; 2 timothy 2:14-29; 1 John 2:20-21; 3 John 1:1-12]

God is always in part incomprehensible, mysterious, and paradoxical, which leads to an inevitable diversity of ideas about Him. And yet He has left us with a challenge, He has declared Himself to be the Truth and He has charged the church to be His instrument in making disciples, therefore making us the guardians of that truth. This means that when the church goes about its business of growing in the knowledge of God and developing doctrines about the One who always mysterious, there will be an inevitable tension of trying to discern when the developing diversity of ideas about the Truth will lead to ideas that oppose the gospel or lead to the revealed knowledge of God.

Observe

Read 2 Timothy 2:14-19. What lies are Timothy told to be concerned about?

Growth in the faith

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

Growth in the faith

[Bible references: Genesis 2:9; 1 Samuel 2:6; Isaiah 61:1-11; 1 Corinthians 3:7; Ephesians 4:15-16; Colossians 1:10]

In the book of creation, God has shown us that it is a normal process for living things, plants and animals, to grow from seed to maturity and to the production of new seeds. That gives us a template for the process of spiritual growth as well, not only for us as individuals but for the church as a whole. When Christ planted His church, it took time for the church to study the mysteries of the faith and then to develop its doctrines and teachings about things such as the mysteries of who God is, who we are as individuals and how we can grow in our knowledge of Christ. This process would happen in the context of changing situations and emerging challenges such as growing numbers of new members in the church and the expansion of the church into new territories which add growing numbers of new languages to think and communicate in. Adding new languages and cultures makes things more complex, but at the same time provides the church new opportunities for learning and growing in the faith.[1]

[1] Richards, Olly. “9 Surprising Health Benefits of Learning a Foreign Language” Story Learning storylearning.com/blog/9-health-benefits-of-learning-a-foreign-language

Observe

Read Isaiah 61:1-11. What seeds are being referred to in Isaiah 61:11?

Basics of the faith

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

Basics of the faith

[Bible references: Acts 1:12-26; 2:42-47; 4:32-37; 6:1-6; 8:14-17; 9:26-31; 11:1-18; 13:1-3; 15;1-29, 36-41; 1 Corinthians 1:10-17; 5:1-13; 6:1-11; 10:1-22; Galatians 2:1-14; 3:10-14. James 2:1-13; 3:1-12; 4:1-16; 2 Peter 2:1-22]

There are many aspects of the gospel, but it is nothing if it is not grounded in truth, about God and about us. But the truth is not the only thing, in fact, the whole truth of the gospel must be grounded in God’s character. The gospel is not just a set of facts that need an intellectual assent but good news that calls us to make an honest assessment of ourselves and to make a change of trust and allegiance.

The gospel is good news.

  • The gospel is the good news that God created us to pour his love into us.
  • The gospel is the good news that even though we are born in rebellion against God and are unable to keep doing things that separate us from him, that he has taken upon himself the punishment we deserve so that we don’t have to.
  • The gospel is the good news that when Jesus was resurrected and ascended into heaven, He went prepare a place for us there.
  • The gospel is the good news that if confess our sins then He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
  • The gospel is the good news that once we begin our journey of trusting Jesus, then we begin the process of becoming more like Jesus.
  • The gospel is the good news that all of that and more is true.

There are various reasons that we sometimes don’t want to accept the good news. One of the biggest reasons is that we don’t want to acknowledge how bad we are and how deeply sin affects us. When we feel that way, we can start to imagine that we can balance out the good things we do with the bad things we do, and we’ll end up all right and God will be happy with that. But the gospel message is that,

  • the bad news is that our very nature is in rebellion against God and no amount of good works can make us unrebellious.
  • the bad news is that we can’t earn our way to a right relationship with God.
  • the bad news is that if we are not made right before God then we will suffer God’s judgement and wrath.
  • the good news is that Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins, past, present, and future.
  • the good news is that we can be made righteous through faith.
  • the good news is that it is by God’s grace that we are saved through faith. It is a gift – in fact, it can’t be something we earn.
  • the good news is that we only need to repent and confess our sins and receive His forgiveness.
  • the good news is that we can allow God to transform our lives and enable us to live lives that are pleasing to him.
  • the good news is that once God imparts his righteousness to us, we become his heirs.

Once we put our trust in Him, he does not automatically make us sinless. That won’t happen until he returns; and we all are resurrected with new, transformed bodies. It is through our untransformed bodies that we inherit the sin nature.

  • The good news is that the day of resurrection will happen.
  • The good news is that, between now and then, we can offer ourselves to God and He will, over time, begin the transformation process here in this life.
  • The bad news is that until then we will continue to rebel against God.
  • The good news is that in this in-between life that God can use our current struggles to strengthen us.
  • The bad news is that unbelievers will regard us as foolish.
  • The good news is that our apparent foolishness in committing our lives to Jesus is actually wisdom.

There is a lot of good news for us, and it’s based upon the truth of Jesus. Truth is important for Jesus, and in fact, he claims that He himself is the truth. The gospel is based on the truth, so it matters that we get the facts straight. That is why, one of the concerns expressed in the New Testament is the need to hold onto sound doctrine.

Read Galatians 3:1-12. What part of the gospel were the Galatians struggling with?

Kingdom of God

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

Kingdom of God

[Bible references: Matthew 4:12-23; 5:43-48; 6:31-34; 13:1-9; Mark 1:15; 4:1-33; Luke 4:17-22; 17:20-21; 18:16-18; 1 John 5:3-5; Romans 14:17]

“The primary idea of the Kingdom of God in Scripture is that of the rule of God established and acknowledged in the hearts of sinners by the powerful regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit, insuring them of the inestimable blessings of salvation, — a rule that is realized in principle on earth, but will not reach its culmination until the visible and glorious return of Jesus Christ.”[1]

The Kingdom of God (Kingdom of Heaven) is broadly wherever the rule of God is in the universe[2] or spiritually in the hearts of those who do His will. Although the Kingdom of God has arrived already, it has not yet arrived in its fulness. That won’t happen until Christ returns. There are some who make the Kingdom of God synonymous with the institutional church, however, the church itself belongs to the Kingdom. When Christians do anything under the authority of God, then they are making manifest the Kingdom of God[3]. Believers belong to the Kingdom when they receive God as their ruler, and they belong to the church in the separateness from the world in devotion to God and in their union with one another. As a church they are called to be God’s instrument in bringing in the Kingdom.

The Kingdom then is not defined by any physical location, nor does it have physical boundaries, rather it exists wherever God’s rule is in heaven or in earth. At the beginning of his ministry Jesus declared that the Kingdom has come near and then he described it in terms of healing the sick, loving enemies as well as neighbors, righteousness, freedom for prisoners, giving sight to the blind, and setting the oppressed free, that it must be received as a child, that it requires repentance to receive it, that it’s like a seed on the ground that falls on various kinds of soil.

[1] Louis Berkoff. Systematic Theology William B. Eerdmans 1974 (Kindle Locations 14321-14324)

[2] Bible Study Tools “Kingdom of God” Biblestudytools www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/explore-the-bible/what-is-meant-by-the-kingdom-of-god-10-things-to-know.html

[3] Christianity.com “What is the Kingdom of God? Understanding its Meaning” Christianity.com www.christianity.com/wiki/god/what-is-the-kingdom-of-god-understanding-it-s-meaning.html

Observe

Read Luke 17:20-21. Where do you see the Kingdom of God?

The Spirit and the servant-leaders

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

The Spirit and the Servant-Leaders

[Bible references: Matthew 23:8-11; Acts 1:12-26; 2:42-47; 4:32-37; 6:1-6; 8:14-17; 9:26-31; 11:1-18; 13:1-3; 15;1-29, 36-41; Galatians 2:1-14]

God had created the church as a community: a community to share life and resources, to support one another, to share the gospel and send out missionaries, and to pray together and make decisions together. It was as a community, a council of apostles, that they:

  • Chose Mattias to replace Judas Iscariot
  • Chose seven men to oversee the daily distribution of resources among the church
  • Accepted Saul into their ranks as an apostle.
  • Decided that the gospel was to be shared among the Samaritans and the Gentiles
  • Decided that Gentiles did not have to become circumcised to become believers.

It is normal that within the community decision-making, disagreements were a part of the discussion and those disagreements needed to be worked out. For example, there was at least one occasion where Paul had to correct Peter’s concession to the circumcision group within the community who were denying grace of the gospel. In the end though, the apostles’ decision-making included God, so their decisions always included prayer.

Outside the venue of the council, there were other disagreements as well, including one where Paul and Barnabas disagreed about whether to take Mark along on a mission trip. That result ended up with Barnabas and Paul splitting up and with Barnabas taking Mark with him.

Observe

Read Matthew 23:8-11; Acts 1:12-26; 2:42-47; 6:1-6; 13:1-3. What do these passages say about church leadership?

The kingdom arrives

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 11 – The Kingdom Enters

The Kingdom Arrives

[Bible references: Isaiah 61:1-2; Matthew 8:16, 28-34; 9:6; 10:1; 28:18; Luke 4:14, 18-19, 32; 5:21; 6:6-7; 7:1-10, 29-30; 9:1-6; John 5:14; 10:11-18; 14:9; Acts 10:38; 1 Corinthians 15:24]

When Jesus broke into history, we no longer saw the kingdom of God overlapping the earth in a place as in the Garden of Eden or a place in the Holy of Holies. This time the kingdom of God had entered by a person, Jesus, who was anointed with the power of the Spirit. His next goal then was to invade the earth with his kingdom by that same Spirit entering our lives, by the overlapping of Heaven and Earth within each of us as Heaven and Earth overlapped within Jesus.

“God’s kingdom” in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming “on earth as it is in heaven.” [1]

When Jesus began his ministry, he quoted from the book of Isaiah to declare how he had come to fulfill that prophecy. Then there were many times throughout his ministry when he declared the reason he had come.

Left to our own resources, we cannot, on our own, correct our relationship to Yahweh; we cannot find our way back to a good relationship with him. We are lost to sin and unable to find our way back to Yahweh, the good shepherd.

Even though His power was evident in the teachings alone, His power was testified to by healing all sorts of diseases[2] including physical or spiritual blindness, casting out spirits (all these things that not only Jesus did but his disciples as well), proclaiming freedom for those in prisons, and setting the oppressed free. But even above providing hope and healing, Jesus offered forgiveness for sin and admonitions to turn away from sin. Jesus came to make us whole in body, mind, and spirit, to experience shalom. Sadly, even though some Gentiles recognized Jesus’ power and authority, some of the chief priests and elders did not want to recognize it themselves, remaining trapped and oppressed in their sin.

[1] Wright, N.T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church Harper Collins 2008. Kindle Edition (p 19.).

[2] Walk with the Wise “Every instance of Jesus Healing in the Bible: What they all had in common” Walk with the Wise walkwiththewise.org/every-instance-of-jesus-healing-in-the-bible-what-they-had-in-common

Reflect

How do we participate with Jesus in bringing His Kingdom to the earth?

Observe

Read Matthew 10:1; 28:18-20; Luke 9:1-6. How do we participate with Jesus in bringing His Kingdom to the earth?