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Note: What follows is adapted from a paper submitted as part of my education under the Antioch School. The requirement for the paper was that I design "a set of guidelines for establishing local churches anywhere according to an advanced biblical understanding of Paul’s concept of establishing local churches, including instructions for 'house order' of local churches."
If our work is to be establishing churches, then we need to know how to establish churches in a way that is flexible enough to fit into contexts as widely different as first-century Jerusalem and modern New York, rigid enough to do the work Christ has intended for the church without straying from His intended model, and drawn from scripture as the normative expectations Christ and the apostles had for the church. The process we see Paul implement time and again essentially falls into three stages: assemble a body, impart solid teaching, and entrust to established leaders. This article will explore a definition and the necessary elements of each step.
We see more of this work in Acts than in Paul’s letters, largely because Paul was often writing letters to bodies he’d already assembled. There is limited exception to this, in that Paul occasionally gives instructions to his recipients on how to identify people who should not be in the body and thereby performs work related to, but not actually within, the assembly stage. Throughout Acts, however, we see the initial practice in more detail. Jesus assembles His followers and gives them instruction to wait as a body for the work He has for them to commence.(1) In response to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, those who believe are baptized into the body and begin sharing their lives with one another. Paul consistently goes to a gathering place (usually a synagogue), delivers the gospel message, and then sets apart those who believe into a new body.
Even when we see individuals become Christians, they do so in community. Cornelius and the Philippian jailer are both saved alongside their households, Apollos is familiar enough to the church of Ephesus after his conversion that they were willing to send a letter vouching for him when he traveled to Corinth in the very next verse. We tend to focus on Paul’s miraculous encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, but his conversion was not complete at that point; the Holy Spirit doesn’t descend on Paul, a repeated sign for the moment of true conversion in Acts, until Ananias comes to welcome Paul into the church body. There is, in fact, only one exception in all of Acts: the Ethiopian eunuch is not immediately brought into a local church body when he is baptized by Philip. Church history tells us that he brought the gospel back to his own country and a community of faith was immediately formed there, but we have no record of this in scripture. The oddity of this event is, itself, indicative of how the alternative is the accepted norm throughout scripture. I am of the belief that every valid(2) denomination and theological movement within Christianity is really good at highlighting at least one, but not more than a small handful, of truly important elements of the faith that other denominations or theological movements overlook or undervalue, and that we would benefit greatly by more deeply considering these pockets of truth we can learn best from outside our own traditions. Sometimes they become so absorbed by this truth that they let something else wither entirely or develop a wrong understanding of a related concept out of misplaced focus, but the foundation they are using for this is still worth understanding. This is one area that I would argue the Roman Catholic Church has us at a theological disadvantage: there really is no salvation outside of the church. The See has, in some times and in some ways, taken this to a questionable place, but the proper solution cannot be the rugged individualistic salvation we have accepted so long in Baptistic, Pentecostal, and other related environments. We are not, I would argue, saved as individuals; rather, we the church are saved together.(3) Upon adoption as children of God, we are brought into communion with the rest of His children. We are members of the body, indeed, we cannot be outside of the body of Christ without being apart from Christ. Salvation inherently gives us a body to which we belong, and our growth must happen within the context of that body. There are few places where this is more apparent than in a church plant. I have been a member of four church planting teams, one of which I led, and these have produced some of my closest relationships to date. The scope of the work, when faced with a small band of Christians, pushes people in a distinct way. I have heard much about how church planting work tests one’s faith and missional focus, quickly weeding out anyone not prepared for the work and any aspects of our lives that interfere with the work, and this is all true; but I have heard significantly less about how it connects the people involved. My wife and I have grown considerably in our relationship through the ups and downs of church planting. When we were working in Greenfield with one other couple, we became family. Our kids were constantly together and began to act like siblings, the mother of that family is still my wife’s best friend; a divorce and seven years later, and we make a trip to New Jersey every year to see her and her husband and the kids even when we don’t have the means to visit my biological family the next state over. We all grew together, we invested in one another, we hurt for one another, we rejoiced together, and although no lasting church was established in Greenfield from that work, I believe we have displayed the kingdom of God more accurately alongside them than we have in many churches with longstanding buildings and budgets. We have another family with a similar level of connection, and that grew out of working together on a church planting team in Fitchburg. The mistake we make too often is conflating the importance of unity with the styles we use in our gatherings. We are commanded not to forsake the assembly; we are nowhere commanded to sit facing a stage and listen to a half hour lecture. I don’t have much against our modern practice of gathered worship—other than the strict rigidity with which we practice it—but this structure is not essential and is, at times, detrimental to that which is essential. That is, getting everyone together at a specific time on Sunday morning, singing a set constant number of songs, praying at scheduled intervals, listening to a sermon, and receiving a benediction is not a bad model in and of itself, but our insistence on it as “what church looks like” diverts our attention from how the church is actually intended to function. It’s easy to view our unity as defined by how many of us are sitting in the same room at the same time hearing the same message, but that isn’t where the unity of the body is practiced, and having the room become too large makes it impossible to practice any real unity. The body, in order to look like the church as established by Christ, must be grounded on intimate relationship guided by solid teaching under the authority of established leaders. The guidelines for proper assembly, then, are that the body is gathered in an environment that facilitates and encourages intimate relationships, the body invests in the spiritual growth and practice of spiritual gifts by all members, the body puts structure as secondary to purpose, and the body is prepared to send out members to establish a new assembly before it grows too large to accomplish the previous guidelines. There are a few concrete ideas that arise from this—such as the need to have some offline connections and relationships and gatherings, the need to guide spiritual formation in the proper way of Christ, and the need to send out church plants rather than growing too large for deep community—but much of the practice of this will be contextual and must be flexible to be applied correctly in different environments and with different people. If the purpose of the church involves the healthy growth of Christ’s body, both by multiplication and by maturity, as this blog has argued it does, then the structures that accomplish that purpose must be curated to the place and time and people to which it ministers.(4) These guidelines direct the boundaries of that flexibility, but must remain broad.
The assembled body must be built upon and maintained by the truth of who Christ is and to what He has called us. The way we ensure this is through deep, consistent, and accurate teaching, delivered by some number of established leaders who are faithful to the truth of scripture. This teaching is broadly concerned with a right understanding of God, a right understanding of our relationship to God, and a right understanding of our relationships among ourselves.
A right understanding of God is the basis of all theology, and is concerned with the nature and works of God in all matters. Every other teaching flows from this; everything about the church is defined by who God is and what He has done and is actively doing and will yet do. Here is covered such topics as the nature of the Trinity,(5) the person of Christ, the work of salvation, and God’s ultimate victory at the end of the age. This topic is vast, and must be constantly revisited and expanded upon in order that its application in the other topics is held to the standard of truth. A right understanding of our relationship to God is focused on who God is to us and who we are to Him. This topic tells us about our need for salvation, how our salvation has changed our standing before God, and how we are to grow in the new life to which God has called us. Here we see how submission to God is imaged in our submission to church leadership and the submission of wives to husbands and children to parents, how the mission of Christ has been handed to the church and therefore what goals the church must seek to achieve, and what it means to become children of God and heirs of His promise, among others. This teaching must be delivered frequently to ensure the church is aligned with its role in God’s plan, but it must also be a source of guidance for all the church does as a body and how the church invests in individuals. The first topic tells us what God we serve; this topic tells us how we, as a body, best serve Him, and must be always on our mind and in our teaching to ensure we approach our mission properly. 
A right understanding of our relationships among ourselves guides our understanding of life within the family of God. This topic is about how we engage with one another, what authority and submission look like in daily practice, and how to live out the love that Christ has poured out so lavishly on us. Here we get into the nuts and bolts of the house order, describing the terms of our submission to authority within the church and within the home, detailing the practice of the nested dualities I covered in a previous post, applying the calls in scripture to view others above ourselves and love our neighbors as ourselves. This teaching is almost always an application of one of the other topics, but is important and must be included whenever application is being delivered. Our assembled body must be guided on how to be an assembled body, and this topic concerns itself with that more than any other.
When I was planting in Greenfield, I mapped out a sermon series that lasted one year as our very first study. Essentially, it worked through the Old Testament and sought to understand its themes through the lens of Christ, beginning with creation and ending, at the beginning of Advent, with Christ as the culmination of all the other things we’d discussed. The aim of this study was multifaceted; it revealed how the work of God and the heart of Christ was present throughout all scripture, it focused our attention on Christ in all matters, and it trained us to see Christ as the focus of every story and every theme throughout the Old Testament. The idea was that new people coming into the church would learn who God is through His dealings with mankind, and established Christians would be reminded of the role of Christ in redemptive history and the application of the Bible’s lessons. That the church would begin rooted in this understanding and what it means for us. I was not able to finish the series before the church folded, but have kept the basic outline just in case I have opportunity to explore it again. Because this is the nature of the guidelines for imparting solid teaching; that established leaders point to God through His word to reveal His nature, call the body to live in light of our role in His purposes, and guide the body to daily lives reflecting the truth and glory of God among us. That teaching plan I started to put into practice was aimed at these very objectives, but obviously it is not the only way to apply these guidelines. The objective is simple: teach often, teach faithfully, and apply the teaching to every aspect of the life of the church and the lives of its members.
Paul, having bound a body together and delivered the word of God faithfully to them, identified those who were gifted and growing in maturity in such a way that they could be trusted to continue the work after he was gone. These were drawn from the body itself and placed into the role of leadership, held to a higher standard to ensure they were fit for the duty, and taught the functions of a leader to properly guide the body. These people were expected to teach faithfully, to protect the body from false teaching, to maintain the house order of the church body, to carry out the work of church discipline, to identify and train new leaders, and to send out parts of the body to establish new bodies as appropriate.
Paul details the means for selecting these leaders in his letters to Timothy and Titus, but their work is constantly visible in all his letters. The leaders were the ones expected to impart the teaching Paul was including in his letters, they were the ones being called to oversee any acts of discipline Paul called for, and they were responsible for the daily application of the principles Paul explained. Peter directly addressed his letters to the leaders themselves because of these responsibilities. In the house order, the leaders were those who held the honor of leading and directing the church, and the responsibility to do so in a manner that glorifies God and serves His purposes. The leaders are those who impart the teaching, who guard the body, who constantly refocus the body on Christ to ensure He is the foundation of the body’s work and unity. The guidelines, then, are that the church has leaders in place who have been properly identified by an established church body and trained in service to Christ, who maintain the standards of leadership described by Paul, who are treated as authoritative by the body, who are able to teach and willing to correct, and who are able and willing to identify and train new leaders. These leaders should be placed within the biblical duality of elders and deacons, with the office of elder reserved for men. There must be a plurality of leadership; one man’s mistakes cannot be given enough power to damn the mission of the entire body.
The guidelines which must shape all churches in all places and times, then, are the broad ideas illustrated through these areas of concern. That the church must be an assembled body living in deep relationship that glorifies God, taught faithfully on the nature of God and the work He is doing in and through that body, under the authority of established leaders who center the body on the truth of God and guard it against distraction and alternative purposes. Establishing a church is the process of putting all these guidelines into place and fulfilling them, leading to the spiritual maturity of the body and its members. Our flexibility within them is necessary to engage with where God has us and who He has put into the body, and we should try to mold our systems to our context rather than being ruled by the systems we’ve inherited. But these guidelines are to be respected both as a direction to aim and as boundaries to what we cannot do; the body of Christ can no more tolerate a lack of leadership or the presence of bad leadership than our mortal bodies can tolerate cancer. We can bend within the principles described by Paul, but cannot break or try to escape them.
Footnotes
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Note: What follows is adapted from a message originally delivered to the Chapel Downtown in Winchendon, MA on August 13, 2022. This post is written from the outline of that message and may not be exactly what was said in person.
 Screenshot from "To Beep or Not to Beep," Warner Brothers, 1963. Sourced from Wikipedia.
My dad has, a few times, told me a story from when I was a kid, no older than 4. I was apparently laying on the floor watching Looney Tunes while he was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper, when something about watching Wile E. Coyote fail again to catch Road Runner stood out to me.
"Dad," I asked, turning to him, "if the coyote can buy all this stuff from Acme, why doesn't he just buy food?" Now, as my dad tells it, he'd never thought about that before, and wasn't sure what to tell me. So he simply replied, "I don't think you're supposed to think about that." I accepted that answer and went back to watching the cartoon with no further objections. Dad usually tells that story to highlight the way that I've always thought about the world in a different way than he does, but I want to highlight something else. Because in that moment, that word from my dad was all I needed. All of my concerns, about plot holes and the show's structure and whatever limited understanding I had of money at that time, were completely overshadowed by the trust I had in my dad and his explanation of the experience I was supposed to be having. This isn't a strictly personal thing; it's personal to each of us, of course, but it's fairly universal that kids tend to trust their parents simply because of who their parents are in relation to them, unless and until they are given sufficient reason not to. The default state of kids toward their parents is trust. For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, [as to] what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, [as to] what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and [yet] your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a [single] hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is [alive] today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, [will He] not much more [clothe] you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, "What will we eat?" or "What will we drink?" or "What will we wear for clothing?" For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
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Facing Death |
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John 10 ends with an account of Jesus narrowly avoiding death at the hands of the Pharisees on charges of blasphemy. It's the kind of encounter that would make most people lay low for a while, and sure enough, Jesus and the disciples leave Judea entirely. But they're not laying very low; chapter 11 finds them performing public ministry at the Jordan River and receiving word that a close friend, Lazarus, is sick. So Jesus assures the disciples this is all part of the plan, stays two days, then calls on them to head back to Judea with Him. The disciples, reasonably, point out that Jesus is talking about just walking right back into a place filled with people who want to kill Him. There's some confused discussion until Jesus outright tells them that Lazarus is dead and He has work to do, and then comes verse 16.
Therefore Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to [his] fellow disciples, "Let us also go, so that we may die with Him."
John 11:16 (NASB)
Now, this seems pretty worst-case-scenario thinking. Thomas seems to fully believe they're walking straight to the gallows, and he's not the only one with concerns (see verse 8). But he is the one who puts to words that this threat is not, in the end, his ultimate concern. He's expressing a concern, and may very well have worries about that concern, but it isn't his focus. His eyes are on Christ; and if Christ is leading him to the slaughter, then he's just going to walk right into the slaughter. And Jesus doesn't address that. We have no indication in scripture that Jesus told Thomas or the others that it wasn't quite time for His death. We have no records of Him assuring Thomas or the others that when He does die, they won't die beside Him. We have nothing to suggest that the danger they perceived was softened in any way. What we have is this statement that shows Thomas had his eyes fixed on Christ rather than the danger ahead, and that the disciples (including Thomas) walked with Jesus right back into Judea.
The Way |
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John 14 is part of the Upper Room discourse, in which Jesus talks to His disciples during and after the Last Supper, leaving them final instructions, clarifying issues He wants them to understand, and looking forward to the path ahead of Him and them. Jesus has, by this point, told the disciples that one of them would betray Him, watched Judas leave into the night, told them to love one another, and prophesied Peter's denial of Him. Chapter 14 opens with Jesus assuring the disciples that they don't need to be troubled, for Jesus was going ahead and they knew the way to follow. To which "Thomas said to Him, 'Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?'" which leads to Jesus' famous reply that He is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:5, NASB).
Verse six, which we repeatedly cite and point to as it applies to our understanding of salvation, was originally stated as a response to Thomas asking for clarity about the way forward. Jesus responds to Thomas' concern with Himself. "Look to Me. See who I am, see where I go. Look to Me, Thomas!" The statement that Christ is "the way, the truth, and the life" isn't just a statement on the nature of salvation; it is a call to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Verse six, which we repeatedly cite and point to as it applies to our understanding of salvation, was originally stated as a response to Thomas asking for clarity about the way forward. Jesus responds to Thomas' concern with Himself. "Look to Me. See who I am, see where I go. Look to Me, Thomas!" The statement that Christ is "the way, the truth, and the life" isn't just a statement on the nature of salvation; it is a call to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Doubting Thomas |
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As mentioned in the introduction, the most famous story of Thomas happens in John chapter 20. Jesus was resurrected in the morning of the third day after His death, and that evening, He shows up where the disciples are hiding. Jesus greets them, but before He continues the conversation, He does something I've too often overlooked. "And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side," that is, Jesus provided the evidence for them that He was really the Jesus they saw crucified, now risen from the dead, before saying anything else to them (John 20:20a NASB).
We don't know where Thomas was at this point, and we aren't even told he was absent until verse 24. But he was absent, and he returns to the other disciples to hear a fantastic account of their teacher and friend risen from the grave. This is an incredible claim! And while the Bible does later highlight the faith of those who did not see the risen Christ with our own eyes, at this point, Thomas is not only being told that Jesus is alive again but that He provided evidence to the other disciples while Thomas was away. And what does Thomas ask for? He gives his terms as "unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe" (John 20:25b, NASB). Thomas asks for the same evidence the other disciples received, with the addition that he would like to verify the wounds are real.
He has his chance eight days later. Eight days, and despite having nothing more to go on than the claims of the other disciples, Thomas is still there. He hasn't left them, he hasn't returned to his life; unlike the other disciples, Thomas doesn't know for a fact that Christ is risen, and he's still there. And then Jesus shows up, offers the same greeting, and turns to Thomas. In this moment, unique among all the other interactions recorded, He answers Thomas' concern with concrete evidence. He offers His hands and side to Thomas' scrutiny, and Thomas doesn't even take Him up on it. Seeing the risen Christ stand before him, hearing the voice of his friend and teacher, is enough for him. Thomas has, this whole time, been looking to Christ enough that he can recognize his Lord when faced with the wildest claim he's ever heard. He needs only to set his eyes on Christ once more to know everything he needs to know about the dangers and fear and doubts of the last week and a half.
We don't know where Thomas was at this point, and we aren't even told he was absent until verse 24. But he was absent, and he returns to the other disciples to hear a fantastic account of their teacher and friend risen from the grave. This is an incredible claim! And while the Bible does later highlight the faith of those who did not see the risen Christ with our own eyes, at this point, Thomas is not only being told that Jesus is alive again but that He provided evidence to the other disciples while Thomas was away. And what does Thomas ask for? He gives his terms as "unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe" (John 20:25b, NASB). Thomas asks for the same evidence the other disciples received, with the addition that he would like to verify the wounds are real.
He has his chance eight days later. Eight days, and despite having nothing more to go on than the claims of the other disciples, Thomas is still there. He hasn't left them, he hasn't returned to his life; unlike the other disciples, Thomas doesn't know for a fact that Christ is risen, and he's still there. And then Jesus shows up, offers the same greeting, and turns to Thomas. In this moment, unique among all the other interactions recorded, He answers Thomas' concern with concrete evidence. He offers His hands and side to Thomas' scrutiny, and Thomas doesn't even take Him up on it. Seeing the risen Christ stand before him, hearing the voice of his friend and teacher, is enough for him. Thomas has, this whole time, been looking to Christ enough that he can recognize his Lord when faced with the wildest claim he's ever heard. He needs only to set his eyes on Christ once more to know everything he needs to know about the dangers and fear and doubts of the last week and a half.
Fix Our Gaze |
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Every time Thomas wants to focus on the negative, every time Thomas doesn't see the way forward, every time Thomas is confronted with frightening or confusing information, he's offered Christ. Never platitudes, not even encouragements; always the person of Christ. Never more, and certainly never less. Which brings us back to Matthew 6. Jesus is not telling us to put on a brave face, to force the worries down, to power through or suck it up or anything of that sort. He isn't focused on comparing us to birds and grass. Jesus is, in Matthew 6:25-33, telling us to look beyond our circumstances to see Him. He's there, He's for us, and He knows what we need. We can bring our concerns to Him and trust that He not only can, but will, meet them. He's turning our attention away from our worries, even away from what we can do about our worries, to fix our eyes on Him. It's the 'who' in those examples that matter. Who feeds the birds? Who clothes the grass? Who lays out the length of your life? In answering these questions, we are turning our eyes to Him.
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Romans 8:32 (NASB)
This passage is not, fundamentally, about what we can or can't do. It's about who He is. It's a reminder of who God is and what He does. It's an encouragement to behold our God, to see the truth of His hand working in our circumstances. So don't take this passage as a demand to try and make yourself act like you aren't anxious. It isn't a condemnation calling you sinful for having worries. It isn't a platitude trying to convince you that everything will work out. It's a reminder of who God is, who He is to you, who you are to Him. It's a call to look to Him in all we do, to rest in the knowledge of who He is, and step forward in faith. Even when we're anxious, even when we're afraid, even when we don't have the answers. We go where He goes, we do what He has called us to do, and we do it all looking to Him for our strength and comfort.
A couple weeks before I first preached this passage, a young man was in attendance at our house church gathering after Sunday morning service who had written a song about Psalm 88 (below). This is a psalm of lament, and if I recall correctly, the only one that neither opens nor closes with a declaration of hope. But God put it in scripture anyway. Why? As he discussed why the psalm stood out to him, he noted that there was hope in the psalm; not in the words the psalmist wrote, but in the very fact that he was writing it. That is, the hope in the passage is inherent in the fact that, rather than bottling it up or pretending to be okay, the psalmist is crying out to God.
A couple weeks before I first preached this passage, a young man was in attendance at our house church gathering after Sunday morning service who had written a song about Psalm 88 (below). This is a psalm of lament, and if I recall correctly, the only one that neither opens nor closes with a declaration of hope. But God put it in scripture anyway. Why? As he discussed why the psalm stood out to him, he noted that there was hope in the psalm; not in the words the psalmist wrote, but in the very fact that he was writing it. That is, the hope in the passage is inherent in the fact that, rather than bottling it up or pretending to be okay, the psalmist is crying out to God.
That's what all this is about. It's all about going to Him. When God is calling us in a direction we fear, we look to Him. When we don't know what God is doing or where He's going, we look to Him. When we feel that God doesn't hear us, that we're being left out, that we aren't enjoying the blessings He has promised, we look to Him. Just like Thomas, just like the psalmist. And in looking to Him, we will find our rest.
Note: This post is adapted from a sermon I first delivered at Bethany Bible Chapel in Winchendon, MA on July 3, 2022. It follows the outline of the sermon on every point but is not verbatim what I said in the initial delivery; the message was also originally taught from the ESV but has been switched to NASB here.
Dramatic re-enactment. Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash
While some people who know me on Facebook may expect differently, it has been about 15 years since I was last punched in the face. That time, it was by my ex-fiancée; she had been led to believe by some people who didn't like me (admittedly, for good reason) that I had been cheating on her. I hadn't, but at the moment when that right hook connected, that didn't really matter. What mattered in that moment was that she really believed it, and through her actions, I was finally convinced that she really believed it. The reason for this is actually pretty simple: we act in accordance with our beliefs. That is, our behavior displays what we really believe, whether we intend to or not.
The epistle of James is heavily focused on this. James wrote his preserved letter to believers who already understood the gospel. This letter doesn't deal heavily with the basics of the faith or how to understand salvation; his concern is what they're doing about it. The passage we're looking at today is essentially a summary of the whole book in that it condenses a lot of these concerns into one neat little package.
The epistle of James is heavily focused on this. James wrote his preserved letter to believers who already understood the gospel. This letter doesn't deal heavily with the basics of the faith or how to understand salvation; his concern is what they're doing about it. The passage we're looking at today is essentially a summary of the whole book in that it condenses a lot of these concerns into one neat little package.
What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for [their] body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, [being] by itself. But someone may [well] say, "You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works." You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.
James 2:14-19 (NASB)
Faith That Saves
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What does it mean to say that this faith can't save? Every commentary I consulted in preparing this message had something to say on this matter, always addressing a stated concern that Paul taught a salvation of faith and James taught a salvation of works. How these commentaries addressed this was usually something along the lines of recognizing that Paul and James aren't contradicting each other because they aren't talking about the same thing. Where Paul in Romans is focused on the gospel as the basis of establishment in maturity, and therefore concerning himself with the means of salvation when talking about faith and works, James is presenting the results of establishing one's maturity on the gospel, and is therefore concerning himself with the effects of salvation when talking about faith and works. We have to understand this distinction when reading James; we read it through the lens of understanding what salvation looks like as it plays out in our lives, not how we enter into it in the first place. And James is very concerned with how it plays out in our relations to one another. In fact, the passage cited above is sort of the climax of James' condemnation of partiality. I summarized the section before it for time concerns when preaching this message, but I'll include the actual text here because I can:
If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF," you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin [and] are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one [point,] he has become guilty of all. For He who said, "DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," also said, "DO NOT COMMIT MURDER." Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by [the] law of liberty. For judgment [will be] merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
James 2:8-13 (NASB)
James has, for some time now in the letter, been calling out the practice of treating some people in the body better than others. This is especially focused on the treatment of the poor as compared to the rich; James expresses grave concern about the church treating the rich better simply because they are rich, and will go on later in the letter to attack accumulated wealth in one of the most inflamed condemnations of the entire Bible. We can tell from James' examples in today's passage, in which he primarily focuses on the treatment of those who lack as examples, that this is still part of that condemnation. James is declaring here that our behavior, especially toward one another, is a gospel issue.
Now, I've mentioned this before, but it bears reminder here: when I and others call something a gospel issue, we are not saying that this issue is the content of the gospel. That is, when someone says that our approach to racial reconciliation or sexual abuse is a gospel issue, they aren't saying that Christ came to save us primarily from inequality or assault, as it is sometimes framed by its critics. What we're saying when we reference something as a gospel issue is that it is an issue that reveals what we believe about the gospel. James is saying that in today's passage, that our treatment of others reveals what we believe about the gospel. And Jesus said the same in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. In the parable, people are sorted 'like sheep from goats,' and each is given their due reward and an explanation on why they're receiving what they are. For example,
Now, I've mentioned this before, but it bears reminder here: when I and others call something a gospel issue, we are not saying that this issue is the content of the gospel. That is, when someone says that our approach to racial reconciliation or sexual abuse is a gospel issue, they aren't saying that Christ came to save us primarily from inequality or assault, as it is sometimes framed by its critics. What we're saying when we reference something as a gospel issue is that it is an issue that reveals what we believe about the gospel. James is saying that in today's passage, that our treatment of others reveals what we believe about the gospel. And Jesus said the same in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. In the parable, people are sorted 'like sheep from goats,' and each is given their due reward and an explanation on why they're receiving what they are. For example,
"Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 'For I was hungry, and you gave Me [something] to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me [something] to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.'
Matthew 25:34-36 (NASB)
Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash
Jesus declares that the evidence of whether they belonged among the sheep or the goats wasn't in lofty words or fancy theological training or their volunteer hours at church. He is answering on their behalf a series of questions that he treats as pretty fundamental to the issue at hand:
He makes it very clear that the answers to these questions matter. In both cases, those receiving reward as well as those receiving punishment, the addressed parties express confusion. Both ask when they ever saw Jesus in these situations, when they ever had the opportunity to act in accordance with these questions. And Jesus tells both of them "to the extent that you did (or did not) do it to one of the least of these, you did (or did not) do it to me" (Matthew 25:40,45; NASB). By their actions, the people in the parable displayed whether or not they had love for one another, but that wasn't all. Jesus tells us, by delivering this parable, that this very same behavior reveals whether or not we have love for Him. The answer to those questions, as it concerns "even the least of these my brothers," is the very same answer as it concerns Him. But how does this work?
- When I was hungry, did you give me food?
- When I was thirsty, did you give me drink?
- When I was a stranger, did you welcome me?
- When I was naked, did you clothe me?
- When I was sick or in prison, did you visit me?
He makes it very clear that the answers to these questions matter. In both cases, those receiving reward as well as those receiving punishment, the addressed parties express confusion. Both ask when they ever saw Jesus in these situations, when they ever had the opportunity to act in accordance with these questions. And Jesus tells both of them "to the extent that you did (or did not) do it to one of the least of these, you did (or did not) do it to me" (Matthew 25:40,45; NASB). By their actions, the people in the parable displayed whether or not they had love for one another, but that wasn't all. Jesus tells us, by delivering this parable, that this very same behavior reveals whether or not we have love for Him. The answer to those questions, as it concerns "even the least of these my brothers," is the very same answer as it concerns Him. But how does this work?
Works Produce Evidence of Faith
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This may sound a bit controversial, but hear me out: our actions are determined by what we believe, not by what is true. For example, I can say with certainty that it is true that Jesus rose from the grave. The historical accounts for this event meet or surpass the standards to be taken as serious historical evidence, the nature of the accounts themselves have elements that lend them credibility, and the timing lines up with what we would expect for first-hand accounts. I could go into detail, but that isn't the point right now. The point right now is that people who don't believe it's true don't act like it's true. Maybe they deny the supernatural and their actions reflect a belief in naturalism. Maybe they deny that Christ is God, and their actions display that they are not fundamentally considering Christ in their decision-making processes. Whatever it is, the actions of those who do not believe in the resurrection are defined in some measure by the fact that they don't believe it. The fact that the claim is true isn't enough to change the behavior of everyone who comes in contact with that truth; the truth of the resurrection does not, by itself, change our behavior, but our belief in the resurrection does.
As such, our actions serve as evidence of what we believe. Our words are an inferior proof in this regard. After all, we can lie about what we believe. We can even lie to ourselves. Titus is warned by Paul about false teachers that "They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed" (Titus 1:16, NASB). James touches on this same idea in our passage, when he says "What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works;" note here that he doesn't say "what good is it that he has faith," but rather, "what use is it if he says he has faith" (James 2:14, NASB). James isn't even comparing faith and works, he's showing that an empty statement of faith is not sufficient evidence that said faith exists! Works serve as evidence of what faith exists, and I don't mean big showy works. My standing at the pulpit and preaching isn't the kind of evidence God is looking for, and Jesus goes so far as to say that even miracles aren't enough on their own.
As such, our actions serve as evidence of what we believe. Our words are an inferior proof in this regard. After all, we can lie about what we believe. We can even lie to ourselves. Titus is warned by Paul about false teachers that "They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed" (Titus 1:16, NASB). James touches on this same idea in our passage, when he says "What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works;" note here that he doesn't say "what good is it that he has faith," but rather, "what use is it if he says he has faith" (James 2:14, NASB). James isn't even comparing faith and works, he's showing that an empty statement of faith is not sufficient evidence that said faith exists! Works serve as evidence of what faith exists, and I don't mean big showy works. My standing at the pulpit and preaching isn't the kind of evidence God is looking for, and Jesus goes so far as to say that even miracles aren't enough on their own.
"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven [will enter.] "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'
Matthew 7:21-23 (NASB)
The will of the Father is not a matter of mighty works or big displays, but rather the daily knowing and being known. After all,
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have [the gift of] prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed [the poor,] and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NASB)
It's for this reason that I haven't historically liked Valentine's Day or the later addition, Sweetest's Day. I'm not anti-romance or anything, but I don't like the idea of being told I need to go big on the same day as everyone else. More so than that, though, I don't like the implication that a big showy practice on a scheduled interval is we show love. I firmly believe that if Carol and I relied on an annual ritual to prove our love, we'd be doomed. That stuff is nice, it's fine to do it, but if it exists in a vacuum it actually proves the opposite. If I can't muster up any energy to display my love outside of circumstances where I'm being pressured to do so, it sends the message that I don't actually have any love dwelling in me for her. It's the daily life, the love shown bit by bit, day by day, hour by hour; it's the life of love that proves love, not the holidays of love.
Similarly, it is the daily walking with God that displays our love for Him. In my previous Sunday morning message at this church, I referenced the then-current sermon series about the heart of Christ and said that the point of so much of what we were saying was to take the things we learn about the nature of Christ and behave as though they are fundamental truths of the universe. That all of creation, including us, is defined by the very heart of who Christ is. This happens by way of a growing relationship with Him, in which we make decisions in service to Him. Loving Him above all and loving others in that is essential to our walk as Christians, and it will be displayed in our actions toward one another. James warns, "If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,' and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?" because a faith that is fixed on God will draw us closer, not only to Him, but to those who bear His image (James 2:15-16, NASB).
It can go the other way, as well. Actions that do not glorify or serve God are evidence of faith that is not fixed on Him. One of the things we need to keep in mind here is that we each have some areas in which there is room to grow. None of us are perfect; even if our lives in general point to a faith fixed on God, we have some element in our lives that is still skewed, whether by holding onto it for ourselves or being just a little wrong about who God is in that matter. That which we believe can be our undoing just as easily as they can help us grow, and even one area of false faith in our lives will impact our general behavior. Jude warns about this, though he's mostly focused on false teachers and therefore on a pattern of behavior that displays a whole life rooted in something other than Christ, when he says that "...these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed" (Jude 1:10, NASB). Our actions are the means by which the immediate fruit of our beliefs are realized in our lives. But we need to discuss why that is.
Similarly, it is the daily walking with God that displays our love for Him. In my previous Sunday morning message at this church, I referenced the then-current sermon series about the heart of Christ and said that the point of so much of what we were saying was to take the things we learn about the nature of Christ and behave as though they are fundamental truths of the universe. That all of creation, including us, is defined by the very heart of who Christ is. This happens by way of a growing relationship with Him, in which we make decisions in service to Him. Loving Him above all and loving others in that is essential to our walk as Christians, and it will be displayed in our actions toward one another. James warns, "If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,' and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?" because a faith that is fixed on God will draw us closer, not only to Him, but to those who bear His image (James 2:15-16, NASB).
It can go the other way, as well. Actions that do not glorify or serve God are evidence of faith that is not fixed on Him. One of the things we need to keep in mind here is that we each have some areas in which there is room to grow. None of us are perfect; even if our lives in general point to a faith fixed on God, we have some element in our lives that is still skewed, whether by holding onto it for ourselves or being just a little wrong about who God is in that matter. That which we believe can be our undoing just as easily as they can help us grow, and even one area of false faith in our lives will impact our general behavior. Jude warns about this, though he's mostly focused on false teachers and therefore on a pattern of behavior that displays a whole life rooted in something other than Christ, when he says that "...these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed" (Jude 1:10, NASB). Our actions are the means by which the immediate fruit of our beliefs are realized in our lives. But we need to discuss why that is.
Faith Produces Work
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In my church, we do a communal scripture reading during a part of the service that happens before the sermon, and whoever is preaching that Sunday selects the passage to be read. On the Sunday when I first preached this message, I asked for the reading to be the entire third chapter of 1 John. John tends to follow more cyclical logical paths than Paul and James, so throughout the chapter (and the epistle) there's a degree to which he's saying the same thing over and over again in different ways; but what he's saying in this epistle strongly mirrors what James is saying in our text, and this message is highly apparent in chapter 3. Consider the parallels between the James passage and this from 1 John 3:
But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
1 John 3:17-18 (NASB)
I would encourage you to read that whole chapter as related to this concept, but for now I'd actually like to highlight a verse a couple chapters later.
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the [child] born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
1 John 5:1-5 (NASB)
If we have true faith, it will be made manifest in our lives. By submitting to Christ, we overcome the world; we are no longer bound by its sinful nature, we are no longer subject to its whims and passions, we are free in the way only the victorious can be free from that which they've defeated. This new state, this nature of being one who has overcome, is manifested in the keeping of God's commandments. But not as a burden! A heart aligned toward God will have a natural inclination to move toward Him and to act in a manner that pleases Him, and what pleases Him and makes up the bulk of His commandments is love for Him and love for His image-bearers, especially those of His family. This isn't a demand that we are struggling to meet, it isn't a weight we are being forced to carry. When our hearts change, our desires and drive will change, and that will shape our behavior. We can determine if a heart is oriented toward God by whether or not that heart is producing fruit that glorifies God. In contrast, James warns us in 2:17 that a dead faith cannot stir the heart to action. The warning is presented as a question, "can that faith save him?," but it's a very stern question. And John provides an equally stern answer:
If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
1 John 4:20 (NASB)
That is, if our 'faith' is so weak that it cannot stir our hearts to love the person next to us, the person we can see and touch, the person whose pain we can directly witness and understand, the person who struggles daily against the same sinful worldly systems as we do, how can it possible move us to love God? God knows our pain intimately, but we barely know His. How many of us sat with Jesus, ate with His disciples, heard His laugh and rested our heads against His shoulder? Will a heart be moved more strongly by stories about someone than by experiencing life with someone? James goes so far on this basis as to suggest that faith without works doesn't even deserve to be called faith. In verse 18, he challenges those who will not put their faith into practice to follow through; he asks for proof of faith without works. But there's no way to show faith if it isn't impacting anything! It's like asking someone to show you the wind without allowing the wind to push against anything. How can you possibly say there is wind when it affects nothing? By definition, if wind is not moving and pushing against anything (even the air itself), is it even wind? Categorically, no. And faith is the same way. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is, categorically, evidence and conviction. And these have real world results; if one will not act in accordance with their convictions, it stands as evidence that they do not hold those convictions. What James is doing here is highlighting the impossibility of faith being knowable, even the possibility of faith being real, if it has no works.
If our faith is not moving us along the path highlighted by John, that of growing in our service to God's commandments and manifesting His love ever more, then it simply is not faith. Or at least, it isn't faith in Christ Jesus. One can have faith in many things, but if that thing is the God of the Bible, these results being discussed by James and John will be the fruit of it. James is helpful here, in that he provides some examples, and these examples are expanded upon and added to by the writer of Hebrews. James highlights Abraham and Rahab; the former is discussed in more detail in Hebrews 11:8-10 and 11:18-29, while the latter is addressed in Hebrews 11:31. They are, in Hebrews, listed among a collection of examples, people who held great faith, and whose faith was proven by their works. The examples we have of faith throughout scripture are people whose faith drove them to action. In every case, they believed God was going to do something or had done something, and they acted in accordance with that belief. The chapter highlights not only great and major decisions made in faith, but consistent daily life spent in light of God's nature, God's works, and God's promises. This is boiled down in Matthew 8, where in verse 10 Jesus declares a centurion as having more faith than He had seen in all of Israel. But what showed Him that faith? Simply put, a man who recognized Christ's authority, understood who Christ was in daily terms that impacted his life, and acted in full confidence of what Jesus would do.
There's a process to this, so let's break down how it works with an example from my own life. The first step is that our beliefs about the truth of the world inform how we process information. We decide who and what we're going to trust, and how we will analyze new data, based on the beliefs we already have about the world and the bigger picture. I'm habitually anti-authority, and while God has softened my heart toward those in authority, my natural inclination still isn't exactly instant trust. This became glaringly relevant the first time I was arrested. I was 13, got attacked in art class over a misunderstanding paired with a bad day, was arrested for fighting in school, the details aren't important right now. What is important is that the police officer who sat across from my parents and me explained that he knew I hadn't actually broken the law, every witness' testimony lined up on that fact, but it had been determined that it was better to charge me anyway so ensure the department would not get accused of racism, seeing as the young man who attacked me was black and I wasn't. He assured us that this was a thing that happened from time to time and they therefore knew the court would throw out the charges and everything would be fine; he was right in that regard, the court did throw out my case and I was never in trouble, and the family of the young man who attacked me accused the court of racism for punishing their kid but not me.
So the idea was that I wouldn't get in trouble, the police would look squeaky-clean, the kid who attacked me gets punished, and everyone wins. Based on conversations with my parents since then, I'm under the impression they very much accepted that answer as the best way to navigate a complicated situation. As I said, they had ample evidence as the situation continued to unfold that the officer was right about how the situation would be seen and how best to offer some measure of satisfaction without putting me at undue risk. I, however, did not. What I heard in that explanation was that the police were, on a systemic level, putting their image as a higher priority than their actual job. That they were more concerned with looking like they were practicing justice than in actually practicing justice. As the officer's worldview made him think he was explaining a reasonable compromise for a broken world, and the worldview of my parents made them hear a reasonable compromise for a broken world, my worldview made me hear a confession of repeated offenses against my community. While my parents thought about how much pressure that officer must have been under and how complicated the situation was and worried whether or not the judge would follow through on the officer's promise, my head was elsewhere. How many people, I wondered, had been thrown under the bus before me? How many of them didn't get their cases thrown out like mine was? How many people were in prison, or had criminal records, or were now dead because it was easier and more important to maintain the image the police were after than to do right by them?
Now, I'm not actually advocating for my position in this post, and I wasn't in the sermon. I've done that elsewhere and certainly will again, but the point here isn't whether or you agree with me or my parents. It's why you agree with who you found yourself agreeing with. The point is that, as you were reading that story, some things stood out as more reasonable than others. Some things clicked easier, some people sounded like they were being more fair to the circumstances than others did. That's what I'm trying to highlight. That moment where your mind began to interpret the story through the lens of what you already believed, that's how this works. We process information based at least in part by a system of credibility we establish based on our existing beliefs about the world and how it works. And then, once we've processed the information, the information we have deemed as credible informs how we make decisions. That event (and others) formed a long-standing distrust of police in my mind, and that distrust manifests in how I handle encounters with police. But that's not limited to isolated encounters, because how we make decisions and the bulk of our decisions shape our daily lives. How I view cops is evident in how I drive, how I vote, how I talk to my kids about the law. There is a fair chance that my anti-authoritarian mindset, by shaping how I interpreted that one situation, will not only prove to shape my whole life, but the lives of generations after me. And this is true of all of us, and it is true of every belief we hold. They all impact our behavior in this way, and by doing so, they all shape every day of our lives. Even if we try to act differently without changing those beliefs, it will break down. The consequences of our beliefs will find a way to show through, even when we don't realize it. There will be cracks, and people who know how to recognize the beliefs at play will see them glowing bright and clear through those cracks.*
We would be wise to remember that God always knows how to recognize the beliefs at play and sees all our cracks.
If our faith is not moving us along the path highlighted by John, that of growing in our service to God's commandments and manifesting His love ever more, then it simply is not faith. Or at least, it isn't faith in Christ Jesus. One can have faith in many things, but if that thing is the God of the Bible, these results being discussed by James and John will be the fruit of it. James is helpful here, in that he provides some examples, and these examples are expanded upon and added to by the writer of Hebrews. James highlights Abraham and Rahab; the former is discussed in more detail in Hebrews 11:8-10 and 11:18-29, while the latter is addressed in Hebrews 11:31. They are, in Hebrews, listed among a collection of examples, people who held great faith, and whose faith was proven by their works. The examples we have of faith throughout scripture are people whose faith drove them to action. In every case, they believed God was going to do something or had done something, and they acted in accordance with that belief. The chapter highlights not only great and major decisions made in faith, but consistent daily life spent in light of God's nature, God's works, and God's promises. This is boiled down in Matthew 8, where in verse 10 Jesus declares a centurion as having more faith than He had seen in all of Israel. But what showed Him that faith? Simply put, a man who recognized Christ's authority, understood who Christ was in daily terms that impacted his life, and acted in full confidence of what Jesus would do.
There's a process to this, so let's break down how it works with an example from my own life. The first step is that our beliefs about the truth of the world inform how we process information. We decide who and what we're going to trust, and how we will analyze new data, based on the beliefs we already have about the world and the bigger picture. I'm habitually anti-authority, and while God has softened my heart toward those in authority, my natural inclination still isn't exactly instant trust. This became glaringly relevant the first time I was arrested. I was 13, got attacked in art class over a misunderstanding paired with a bad day, was arrested for fighting in school, the details aren't important right now. What is important is that the police officer who sat across from my parents and me explained that he knew I hadn't actually broken the law, every witness' testimony lined up on that fact, but it had been determined that it was better to charge me anyway so ensure the department would not get accused of racism, seeing as the young man who attacked me was black and I wasn't. He assured us that this was a thing that happened from time to time and they therefore knew the court would throw out the charges and everything would be fine; he was right in that regard, the court did throw out my case and I was never in trouble, and the family of the young man who attacked me accused the court of racism for punishing their kid but not me.
So the idea was that I wouldn't get in trouble, the police would look squeaky-clean, the kid who attacked me gets punished, and everyone wins. Based on conversations with my parents since then, I'm under the impression they very much accepted that answer as the best way to navigate a complicated situation. As I said, they had ample evidence as the situation continued to unfold that the officer was right about how the situation would be seen and how best to offer some measure of satisfaction without putting me at undue risk. I, however, did not. What I heard in that explanation was that the police were, on a systemic level, putting their image as a higher priority than their actual job. That they were more concerned with looking like they were practicing justice than in actually practicing justice. As the officer's worldview made him think he was explaining a reasonable compromise for a broken world, and the worldview of my parents made them hear a reasonable compromise for a broken world, my worldview made me hear a confession of repeated offenses against my community. While my parents thought about how much pressure that officer must have been under and how complicated the situation was and worried whether or not the judge would follow through on the officer's promise, my head was elsewhere. How many people, I wondered, had been thrown under the bus before me? How many of them didn't get their cases thrown out like mine was? How many people were in prison, or had criminal records, or were now dead because it was easier and more important to maintain the image the police were after than to do right by them?
Now, I'm not actually advocating for my position in this post, and I wasn't in the sermon. I've done that elsewhere and certainly will again, but the point here isn't whether or you agree with me or my parents. It's why you agree with who you found yourself agreeing with. The point is that, as you were reading that story, some things stood out as more reasonable than others. Some things clicked easier, some people sounded like they were being more fair to the circumstances than others did. That's what I'm trying to highlight. That moment where your mind began to interpret the story through the lens of what you already believed, that's how this works. We process information based at least in part by a system of credibility we establish based on our existing beliefs about the world and how it works. And then, once we've processed the information, the information we have deemed as credible informs how we make decisions. That event (and others) formed a long-standing distrust of police in my mind, and that distrust manifests in how I handle encounters with police. But that's not limited to isolated encounters, because how we make decisions and the bulk of our decisions shape our daily lives. How I view cops is evident in how I drive, how I vote, how I talk to my kids about the law. There is a fair chance that my anti-authoritarian mindset, by shaping how I interpreted that one situation, will not only prove to shape my whole life, but the lives of generations after me. And this is true of all of us, and it is true of every belief we hold. They all impact our behavior in this way, and by doing so, they all shape every day of our lives. Even if we try to act differently without changing those beliefs, it will break down. The consequences of our beliefs will find a way to show through, even when we don't realize it. There will be cracks, and people who know how to recognize the beliefs at play will see them glowing bright and clear through those cracks.*
We would be wise to remember that God always knows how to recognize the beliefs at play and sees all our cracks.
Examining Our Faith Adjusts Our Works
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The result of all of this is that we can't simply "fake it til we make it." We don't rely on our own strength or willpower to behave in a manner that glorifies Christ, and the goal of sermons and posts and books aiming to help us on our walk with Christ, if they are handled properly, never seek to put pressure on us to just do better. I told the church during this sermon that I, the lead pastor, and the other regular preacher at our church are concerned with helping the church, including ourselves, live our lives in a manner that more clearly displays God's love and glory, but none of us are under the impression we can push people to any sustainable actions that will accomplish that. Sermons there and posts here are fundamentally invitations for all of us to examine our beliefs. The fact is that the only way to produce a life that glorifies God is to constantly have God before us and examine ourselves for places where we are not believing rightly about Him. As we know Christ more clearly and seek after Him more fervently, change will happen in our lives. The more we align our hearts and minds with the truth of who God is, the more our lives will reflect Him. The goal here is to ensure that our instinctive means of interpretation is who Christ is, and submit to the process by which God changes our lives through that lens.
Having Christ as our interpretive lens is more than just knowing things about Him. James ends our passage with a warning to that effect, when he says "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder" (James 2:19, NASB). One commentary I consulted pointed out that the faith of demons is better than the faith of some of us, because they at least know God well enough to shudder. That is, they have enough awareness of who He is and who they are and what that means for them to recognize the end result of that interaction; but even that is not enough faith to bring about any change in them. But this shouldn't be so for us!
Having Christ as our interpretive lens is more than just knowing things about Him. James ends our passage with a warning to that effect, when he says "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder" (James 2:19, NASB). One commentary I consulted pointed out that the faith of demons is better than the faith of some of us, because they at least know God well enough to shudder. That is, they have enough awareness of who He is and who they are and what that means for them to recognize the end result of that interaction; but even that is not enough faith to bring about any change in them. But this shouldn't be so for us!
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16 (NASB)
We have the mind of Christ! By submitting to Him and becoming a new creation, we have available to us the true interpretive lens for all of reality, the very mind of the God who knows all and sees all, who dwells in us and leads us. And this perspective is alien to the world, the ways of Christ stand out against the ways of mankind. If we are living this out, truly living it out, we will begin to look strange in the sight of the natural world around us. So we need to ask ourselves some hard questions. How much of what drives our reactions to things are cultural pressures, put onto us by families, friends, our environment, our affiliations, and other social sources? How much are we actually trusting Christ to guide our minds and actions? Are we living like we have the mind of Christ? Do we look like little Christs in our contexts, or do we look like the natural product of our contexts? Our behavior is a relatively easy means of analysis, both self-analysis and the analysis we open ourselves to by entering into the family environment of the local church. Our behavior will always reveal the truth of what's happening inside us, eventually.
I used to have a Nissan Truck. It was old enough that that was its name on the title: Nissan Truck. I was delivering pizzas with it one day when I suddenly found myself sitting at an usual angle, facing significantly more upward than I was before. The truck was making a weird noise, as well, so I pulled over and checked it, and found that the frame had rusted through and snapped right where the cab met the bed. I pulled it all back together using zip ties, and used some electrical tape to close up the severed fuel line. And from the outside, for the rest of that delivery, it looked fine. But it was very apparent in the driving of it, and with even a cursory examination, that it was very broken. Sometimes we want to be like that, just make it look good and ride it out til glory, but that doesn't work. We can't prop up our lack of faith with empty works or even empty knowledge. Sin rusts us to our core, and we need a new frame. Too many of us are trying to drive around on zip ties and tape, and it's time we honestly face how little that helps us.
If you're reading this, and you've been treating the Christian life or social morality or ethics or even some other faith as a checklist that you think will save you, it's time to stop. You need to repent, recognize Christ for who He truly is, and place your trust fully in Him. Lay down whatever it is in your mind that tells you to interpret discussions like this as anything you can or should do to fix yourself, and lean on Him to change you on a fundamental level.
If you've already done that, if you've recognized your need of Christ and submitted to Him, then you need to take stock. have you fully given yourself over to Him, or are you still trying to hold on to rusty pieces? We need to always be looking to the person of Christ and our beliefs about Him, examining how well we reflect Him. And this side of eternity, there will always be something where we're lacking, where we're a bit off the mark. We need to identify those places where we don't quite look like Christ, where we don't have a natural draw to glorify Him more, and take things like this post as an invitation to ask why. What belief am I holding that doesn't align with the truth of who God is? Don't beat yourself up, don't try to force a new behavior; take a step back and examine your beliefs. Where are our hearts and habits leading us? Any place in our lives where we are not being drawn closer to God is a place that needs examined.
If you're reading this, and you've been treating the Christian life or social morality or ethics or even some other faith as a checklist that you think will save you, it's time to stop. You need to repent, recognize Christ for who He truly is, and place your trust fully in Him. Lay down whatever it is in your mind that tells you to interpret discussions like this as anything you can or should do to fix yourself, and lean on Him to change you on a fundamental level.
If you've already done that, if you've recognized your need of Christ and submitted to Him, then you need to take stock. have you fully given yourself over to Him, or are you still trying to hold on to rusty pieces? We need to always be looking to the person of Christ and our beliefs about Him, examining how well we reflect Him. And this side of eternity, there will always be something where we're lacking, where we're a bit off the mark. We need to identify those places where we don't quite look like Christ, where we don't have a natural draw to glorify Him more, and take things like this post as an invitation to ask why. What belief am I holding that doesn't align with the truth of who God is? Don't beat yourself up, don't try to force a new behavior; take a step back and examine your beliefs. Where are our hearts and habits leading us? Any place in our lives where we are not being drawn closer to God is a place that needs examined.
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, [it is] the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (NASB)
Our works cannot save us; they are, rather, a declaration of what has been done in the core of our being by God by His grace through our faith. We do not change ourselves, but we submit to His changing power. And the result of this is that we will practice the good works He has intended for us. So let us be a people who are trusting God enough to walk in His power down the strange paths he has for us, now and forevermore.
A Reminder
I made a point to note during the sermon that I'm not encouraging people to beat themselves up over mental illness. There are some conditions, like depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and many more, that do add strain to the work of walking with Christ. But those aren't who you are, and they don't have to be foundational interpretive lenses. They create an environment in which you are operating, and the question is about what you do in your environment, whatever that environment is. Do you seek to glorify God even when things are difficult? Do you long for Him even when your mind is screaming that you're alone? The questions being asked in this post are about the alignment of your heart relative to God, not about the obstacles you face along the way.
* - For the record, this is the essential claim behind things like microaggressions and casual racism/sexism/antisemitism/etc. The idea is that those who hold institutional power in some way are trained by their social structures themselves to view those who do not hold that same power as inferior, through various ideas that are embedded in one's worldviews. These ideas then filter through into individual words and actions across one's daily lives, and that the act of trying to resist the effects of those ideas (the stuff we quickly identify as racism, like lynch mobs) without changing those ideas themselves will still result in little signs of those ideas showing up in one's words and actions in ways the racist/sexist/etc. person does not recognize as wrong but the target of those ideas is intimately familiar with.
Note: What follows is adapted from a sermon I first delivered on June 18 at The Chapel Downtown, a Saturday night gathering in a storefront hosted by my church and our local network of churches, with the aim of providing a space for people to encounter the gospel in the heart of the city over dinner and in a more casual setting than Sunday morning services. The lesson series is on the Sermon on the Mount. The original message pulled from the ESV; this has been changed to NASB for the website.
Photo by Doug Kelley on Unsplash
There's a weird law still on the books in Pennsylvania, where I grew up. It was first written when cars were new and fairly simple machines, rare on the roads and disruptive to a culture that wasn't used to them. The law states that, when a driver sees a horse coming on the road, they are required to pull over to avoid disturbing the horse. If the horse still seems nervous, the driver must shut down the car; if that fails, the driver must dismantle the car enough that it can be hidden in the bushes and pose no further threat to the horse and its ability to do its job. Now, I've encountered a great many horses while driving around in Pennsylvania, and I've never had to do any of that. The law still stands, but it isn't enforced, and no one really seems bothered by that fact. The reason for this is actually pretty simple: the relationship between cars and horses has changed in the century or so since that law was passed, and as such, the expectations for how both parties address both each other and the law has shifted.
Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others [to do] the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches [them,] he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses [that] of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:17-20 (NASB)
Shall Not Abolish
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First things first: the Old Testament Law still stands. It hasn't gone anywhere, it hasn't been revoked. Jesus says in no uncertain terms that it's still on the books. The question for Christians is what this means for us.
Now, there are ways we try to work this out, and one of them is that modern Christians tend to recognize three main categories of the Law: the Civil Law, the Ceremonial Law, and the Moral Law. The Civil Law is a category we use to describe regulations that deal with the actual governing of the historic Kingdom of Israel (and, later, Judah) as a nation state. The Ceremonial Law is a category we use to describe regulations that deal with ritual cleansing and temple practice under the sacrificial system. The Moral Law is the category we use to describe that which is inherently sinful and not bound to any specific time, place, or system of practice. These categories are fine, and useful, and there are good reasons we recognize them, but it's important to note that Jesus isn't giving us room here to use that as an excuse to ignore any of those laws. He doesn't state that no stroke or letter shall pass from the Moral Law; He says the Law, the whole body of the Law, still stands. If the Law condemns something, it remains condemned. If the Law declared something as earning death, then that thing still warrants death. Nothing in this regard has changed.
Jesus doesn't even soften the Law. He actually holds people to a higher standard than the Law does! Note what He says about it in verse 20, "unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." That's a high standard! And it keeps coming up in the following verses, such as...
Now, there are ways we try to work this out, and one of them is that modern Christians tend to recognize three main categories of the Law: the Civil Law, the Ceremonial Law, and the Moral Law. The Civil Law is a category we use to describe regulations that deal with the actual governing of the historic Kingdom of Israel (and, later, Judah) as a nation state. The Ceremonial Law is a category we use to describe regulations that deal with ritual cleansing and temple practice under the sacrificial system. The Moral Law is the category we use to describe that which is inherently sinful and not bound to any specific time, place, or system of practice. These categories are fine, and useful, and there are good reasons we recognize them, but it's important to note that Jesus isn't giving us room here to use that as an excuse to ignore any of those laws. He doesn't state that no stroke or letter shall pass from the Moral Law; He says the Law, the whole body of the Law, still stands. If the Law condemns something, it remains condemned. If the Law declared something as earning death, then that thing still warrants death. Nothing in this regard has changed.
Jesus doesn't even soften the Law. He actually holds people to a higher standard than the Law does! Note what He says about it in verse 20, "unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." That's a high standard! And it keeps coming up in the following verses, such as...
You have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell
Matthew 5:21-22 (NASB)
You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY'; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matthew 5:27-28 (NASB)
Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.' But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' [or] 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil.
Matthew 5:33-37 (NASB)
Now, Paul goes on to talk about this, but he tends to do so in a different way. He talks about being under the Law up until his conversion, and he tells his readers that they were also under the Law. He talks about the world being under the Law, and how people who don't have the text of the Law but maintain moral standards serve as a Law unto themselves. But he very clearly talks about the Law as though it is past tense for the Christian, as though Christians are no longer under the Law. It's for this reason, in fact, that some people view Paul with suspicion. I had a Muslim once tell me I couldn't invoke Paul when answering his questions about the Law, specifically because he believed Paul had radically departed from the teachings of Christ and was therefore an invalid and untrustworthy source. Was this man wrong? If Christ did not allow for any relaxing of the Law, and Paul talked about the Law as though the Christian is no longer under its authority, are these two contradicting each other?
No. But how? The simple answer is that our relationship to the Law has changed.
No. But how? The simple answer is that our relationship to the Law has changed.
Come to Fulfill
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Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
Jesus declared that He came to fulfill the Law, and to understand what is happening here and how our relationship to the Law has changed, we need to understand what it means for Him to fulfill it. To do that, we need to understand what the Law's purpose is; by definition, in order to fulfill the Law, Christ must either remove the necessity for the Law's basic function, or He must Himself perform the Law's function in such a way that we no longer need the Law to perform it, or He must somehow do both. In neither case does the Law go away, but in both cases, Christ changes our relationship to it and need for it based on its essential purpose.
Consider meals. We, as humans, don't actually need meals as they presently exist. We need nourishment from food, and we need to eat at intervals that allow our bodies to process the nutritional value of the food without eating so much that we cause other problems. Meals are the means by which we, as a culture, meet that need and teach ourselves and our children about how to select foods and portions that best accomplish this purpose. But if someone, or a household, changes their relationship to the food in such a way that they can continue getting the food they need and practicing proper balancing of foods, without the structure of three square meals, then they would no longer need the socially normative meal structure. Their relationship to the food changed; meals did not get abolished, and their need for the basic function of meals still exists, but it is now being fulfilled through a different (and possibly better) way.
This is the essential nature of how Christ changes our relationship to the Law. The Law still stands, and our needs for its functions still stands, but those needs are being met in Christ and therefore we no longer find ourselves leaning on the Law for them. So, with that in mind, let's explore the functions of the Law and how Christ fulfills them. Because, for every function, Christ both removes the necessity of the Law's function and performs that function in such a way that we no longer need to lean on the Law.
Consider meals. We, as humans, don't actually need meals as they presently exist. We need nourishment from food, and we need to eat at intervals that allow our bodies to process the nutritional value of the food without eating so much that we cause other problems. Meals are the means by which we, as a culture, meet that need and teach ourselves and our children about how to select foods and portions that best accomplish this purpose. But if someone, or a household, changes their relationship to the food in such a way that they can continue getting the food they need and practicing proper balancing of foods, without the structure of three square meals, then they would no longer need the socially normative meal structure. Their relationship to the food changed; meals did not get abolished, and their need for the basic function of meals still exists, but it is now being fulfilled through a different (and possibly better) way.
This is the essential nature of how Christ changes our relationship to the Law. The Law still stands, and our needs for its functions still stands, but those needs are being met in Christ and therefore we no longer find ourselves leaning on the Law for them. So, with that in mind, let's explore the functions of the Law and how Christ fulfills them. Because, for every function, Christ both removes the necessity of the Law's function and performs that function in such a way that we no longer need to lean on the Law.
Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were [aroused] by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
Romans 7:4-6 (NASB)
Revelation of God's Perfection
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The Law reveals the perfection of God in its content. The ways described in the Law are the ways of God; the Law provides insight into what perfection looks like, and in doing so, tells us about the perfect nature of God. This was part of the function of the sacrificial system itself, as well. It provides opportunity to recalibrate our minds to fix them on God, and declares His perfection in the face of our imperfection. But by walking among us, Christ fully revealed the nature of God and put His perfection on display. We can see in the words and actions of Christ what perfection looks like, not merely conceptually, but lived out in the real world of daily practice and special circumstances. Christ not only displays perfection, He delivers perfection; by being perfection in flesh, He redeems flesh and introduces perfection to it.
When I first delivered this message, I got permission to change the way we did communion for that service. This was because I wanted to allow communion to serve its function as a sign in a robust way by incorporating it into the lesson itself. At this point, then, I called on the people to take up the bread of communion. I told them to remember, as we held the bread, that the ultimate revelation of God's perfection and love was given to and broken for us, and that we will one day enjoy the perfected flesh that Christ now bears in His resurrected body. That Christ took on the function the animals bore in the sacrificial system, and in doing so, fulfilled the function of the Law in revealing God's glory. We no longer need the broken bodies of animals to tell us of God's perfection; the glorified body of Christ is more than sufficient for the task.
At this point, we ate together.
When I first delivered this message, I got permission to change the way we did communion for that service. This was because I wanted to allow communion to serve its function as a sign in a robust way by incorporating it into the lesson itself. At this point, then, I called on the people to take up the bread of communion. I told them to remember, as we held the bread, that the ultimate revelation of God's perfection and love was given to and broken for us, and that we will one day enjoy the perfected flesh that Christ now bears in His resurrected body. That Christ took on the function the animals bore in the sacrificial system, and in doing so, fulfilled the function of the Law in revealing God's glory. We no longer need the broken bodies of animals to tell us of God's perfection; the glorified body of Christ is more than sufficient for the task.
At this point, we ate together.
Revelation of Our Need
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The Law serves to reveal our inability to achieve perfection. Paul points this out when he talks about the Law revealing sin to us and the world. Under the Law, it was made apparent by the level of purity needed to stand before God and the complete inability of people to meet that standard alone. The lofty demands of the Law and the detailed steps to become clean highlighted our constant failings to achieve the perfection of God and stand before Him whole. The Law, then, makes us aware of sin not only as a concept, but as a lived reality in our own personal experiences. Christ fulfills this purpose in our lives; in His death, we see the weight of our sin. His blood, therefore, serves the Law's function of revealing sin in us and in our world. By inviting us into His death, however, Christ goes beyond revelation of sin and brings us into His eternal life; a life lived outside the authority of sin, thereby ensuring that we do not need the Law to reveal the authority of sin in our lives any longer.
At this point, we drank together.
At this point, we drank together.
Setting God's People Apart
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The Law, finally, sets God's people apart. This was evident in the Law, as its practices ensured that the culture and behavior of the Israelites were distinct in their world and made their separation from it obvious. Consider this segment of Psalm 119, a song that celebrates the content and functions of the Law.
He. Teach me, O LORD, the way of Your statutes, And I shall observe it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may observe Your law And keep it with all [my] heart. Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, For I delight in it. Incline my heart to Your testimonies And not to [dishonest] gain. Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity, And revive me in Your ways. Establish Your word to Your servant, As that which produces reverence for You. Turn away my reproach which I dread, For Your ordinances are good. Behold, I long for Your precepts; Revive me through Your righteousness.
Psalm 119:33-40 (NASB)
This function is also fulfilled in Christ. By dying to sin, we are cut off from the world and set apart as God's people; the Law, therefore, is no longer the means by which our separation is apparent, but rather, our separation is apparent by Christ in us. In Christ, we are no longer under the domain of death, as the world is, but have been brought into the domain of life and given the work of displaying that life in the world. Through His death and resurrection, then, Christ fulfills the Law by doing more than it could ever it. Not only does He make us appear distinct, but He makes us utterly new creations, set apart and unique among creation. And this is not by our own efforts, not by keeping the Law, but by Christ living in and through us, changing us, making us ever more into people who display His work in us to a watching world.
At this point I reminded them that we are not merely set apart individually, but together; we are set apart as one body, and our sharing of communion declares our unity with Christ and with each other.
At this point I reminded them that we are not merely set apart individually, but together; we are set apart as one body, and our sharing of communion declares our unity with Christ and with each other.
Our Response
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For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY ALL THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF THE LAW, TO PERFORM THEM."
Galatians 3:10 (NASB)
If you are reading this, and you aren't in Christ, then you're still under the Law. That is, you remain in the domain of sin, subject to the Law which highlights salvation but cannot provide it. Remember Matthew 5:20 cited earlier, that your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, the chief law keepers and teachers of the day, in order to see salvation. But this is impossible for us! To rely on your own works is to remain damned. Have you never lied? Have you never coveted? Have you never raged against your fellow man? Please hear me, you cannot meet the demands of the Law yourself; you need to rely on Christ, who has done the work you cannot, and has waiting for you a perfection that you cannot achieve on your own power.
But for the rest of us, for anyone reading this who is in Christ, we have some questions to answer. Are you living like you are in Christ? Or are you, instead, still trying to trust in the Law? I don't only mean in terms of salvation. I'm asking if we're still looking to the Law to do work in us that only Christ can do. Are we being made perfect by Christ, or by the Law? Are we looking to Christ for how to live our lives, or the Law? Are we looking to the Law to tell us who God is, or are we looking to Christ? What is it that sets us apart from the world around us? Do we look any different from the world around us, and if we do, is it because of the radical shift in perspective, the perfect love, that comes by relying on Christ? Or is our own separation found in what we condemn, what we hold accountable to the Law? If we are not distinct, then something is wrong. And if we are distinct, but only in our desire to wield the Law against one another and against the world, then something is wrong. We must be a people who let Christ do what He has promised to do in our lives, and not people who return to faith in the Law for results.
But for the rest of us, for anyone reading this who is in Christ, we have some questions to answer. Are you living like you are in Christ? Or are you, instead, still trying to trust in the Law? I don't only mean in terms of salvation. I'm asking if we're still looking to the Law to do work in us that only Christ can do. Are we being made perfect by Christ, or by the Law? Are we looking to Christ for how to live our lives, or the Law? Are we looking to the Law to tell us who God is, or are we looking to Christ? What is it that sets us apart from the world around us? Do we look any different from the world around us, and if we do, is it because of the radical shift in perspective, the perfect love, that comes by relying on Christ? Or is our own separation found in what we condemn, what we hold accountable to the Law? If we are not distinct, then something is wrong. And if we are distinct, but only in our desire to wield the Law against one another and against the world, then something is wrong. We must be a people who let Christ do what He has promised to do in our lives, and not people who return to faith in the Law for results.
That is, things pertaining to the end, not the last things that will be addressed in this series. Today I'll be discussing the end of the world.
End Times Overture
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There are a few core things that we must establish right from the start when discussing the end of the world, that are universal to Christians. First, that the world will end. This earth is a temporary home, a place that will be destroyed and replaced in God's perfect timing. It is our responsibility (mankind has been placed in stewardship over it) but it is not our ultimate, perfect home. Second, that the end will include, at some point in the proceedings, the literal, physical return of Jesus Christ to consummate His direct and overt rule over creation, overthrow evil, judge the living and the dead, and initiate the perfected state of creation where He will live with His people for all eternity. Some views hold that He will do all of these things at once, others space them out, but the exact temporal relationship of these events is a secondary issue. The point is that His return will be real, physical, and undeniable. Views which hold to a purely spiritual or hidden return of Christ are, by definition, outside the bounds of historical orthodox Christian teaching. Third, that we will not know the time of the end of the world until it is happening. God has not given us information that can be used to accurately date the return of Christ or the events immediately surrounding His return, and we have assurances that He will not provide that information at a later date. Anyone who claims to have divine revelation indicating an accurate date when we can expect the return of Christ is a false teacher, even if by some statistical oddity they happen to pick the correct date.
The bulk of the dispute among Christians concerning the end of the world is about sequence, almost always centered on two events: The Millennium, and The Great Tribulation. Adherents to every view here draw sources from various places throughout the Bible, but both concepts are really given their identity in the Revelation or Apocalypse of John, the last book in the Bible. This is, ultimately, the reason these concepts are so hotly debated; Revelation is, itself, a book that faces a great deal of dispute over how to rightly interpret it. Without agreement on how to even read the book, we will not come to a consensus on how to understand it. Why this book in particular occupies such a contested place in Christian thought is that it is a different genre than the entire rest of scripture; it has parallels to prophetic books in the Old Testament, but unlike them it offers little, if any, context for most of its visions and no clear interpretations. This lack is shared with wisdom literature, like Proverbs or Job, but these tend to lack sweeping prophetic visions and are more concerned with a life spent well in God's world, which is very hard (if not impossible) to impose on the narrative of Revelation. The beginning is very much suited to study as part of the general epistles, but the exact relationship between the opening letters to the seven churches and the following prophetic visions isn't overtly given within the text; except that it suited the purposes of Christ, for whatever reason, to bundle them together into one delivery. It clearly isn't history or biography or law. It isn't alone in Greek or even Christian-adjacent writing, as there are other apocalyptic works from the first few centuries of Christianity and beyond, but the fact that Revelation is scripture and these others are not demands that it be held to a higher standard than they, but this is little help. Presumably it's doing what they are trying to do, in that it is an accurate and trustworthy form of the claims they are making, but the apocalyptic genre itself is fairly nebulous about whether it's even talking about the future or characterizing the present. What we are left with, then, is a book that cannot be easily placed in our standard boxes, and must be analyzed on its own terms; assuming we know what those terms are.
For the purposes of my theology and this article, we will be operating from the assumption that Revelation was written to inform people in the present how to trust, follow, and love God rightly in light of the future. As such, the prophetic elements are taken as things which are yet to come, that highlight the need for the warnings and affirmations found in the seven letters that preface those visions. The book of Revelation, then, is all of one piece; just like the other epistles, Revelation gives truth and application, and unlike most of the other epistles, this truth is new information about future events delivered in prophetic visions. So what are these two events that find their definition in Revelation?
The bulk of the dispute among Christians concerning the end of the world is about sequence, almost always centered on two events: The Millennium, and The Great Tribulation. Adherents to every view here draw sources from various places throughout the Bible, but both concepts are really given their identity in the Revelation or Apocalypse of John, the last book in the Bible. This is, ultimately, the reason these concepts are so hotly debated; Revelation is, itself, a book that faces a great deal of dispute over how to rightly interpret it. Without agreement on how to even read the book, we will not come to a consensus on how to understand it. Why this book in particular occupies such a contested place in Christian thought is that it is a different genre than the entire rest of scripture; it has parallels to prophetic books in the Old Testament, but unlike them it offers little, if any, context for most of its visions and no clear interpretations. This lack is shared with wisdom literature, like Proverbs or Job, but these tend to lack sweeping prophetic visions and are more concerned with a life spent well in God's world, which is very hard (if not impossible) to impose on the narrative of Revelation. The beginning is very much suited to study as part of the general epistles, but the exact relationship between the opening letters to the seven churches and the following prophetic visions isn't overtly given within the text; except that it suited the purposes of Christ, for whatever reason, to bundle them together into one delivery. It clearly isn't history or biography or law. It isn't alone in Greek or even Christian-adjacent writing, as there are other apocalyptic works from the first few centuries of Christianity and beyond, but the fact that Revelation is scripture and these others are not demands that it be held to a higher standard than they, but this is little help. Presumably it's doing what they are trying to do, in that it is an accurate and trustworthy form of the claims they are making, but the apocalyptic genre itself is fairly nebulous about whether it's even talking about the future or characterizing the present. What we are left with, then, is a book that cannot be easily placed in our standard boxes, and must be analyzed on its own terms; assuming we know what those terms are.
For the purposes of my theology and this article, we will be operating from the assumption that Revelation was written to inform people in the present how to trust, follow, and love God rightly in light of the future. As such, the prophetic elements are taken as things which are yet to come, that highlight the need for the warnings and affirmations found in the seven letters that preface those visions. The book of Revelation, then, is all of one piece; just like the other epistles, Revelation gives truth and application, and unlike most of the other epistles, this truth is new information about future events delivered in prophetic visions. So what are these two events that find their definition in Revelation?
The Millennium
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Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he threw him into the abyss, and shut [it] and sealed [it] over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time. Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I [saw] the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.
Revelation 20:1-6 (NASB)
When I was a kid, I often heard this time period called the Millennial Reign or the Millennial Kingdom, but I don't hear those names for it so much anymore; and now that I type it out, I find myself wondering if this change in language is related to the negative connotations so many older people have for the word 'millennial' due to their notions about my generation. But anyway, it's the least clumsy language I know here, so I'm going to use it.
The Millennial Reign is a period of one thousand years described in Revelation as that where evil is restrained on the Earth but the New Heavens and New Earth have not yet arrived. During this period, Christ assumes direct rule over the Earth, administered by Christians (or at least, those among the saints who have endured very specific and difficult times). The question is whether this is a literal event, and if so, when it happens in relation to other literal events. These questions result in three main views:
Views 1 & 2 lend themselves well to administrative views of the church, and are therefore common in traditions that view the church as having direct legal authority in the world. In these views, the church either can or must practice judicial authority in the world as above the authority of human governments, which can be seen in the way much of Europe still has religious structure embedded into its secular governments, whether through submission to the Vatican, clerical legal authority, or the direct merging of church and state. View 3 can be held by people with such a view of the church, but it doesn't lend itself naturally to that approach. The essential problem here is that, in a Pre-Mill view, the church is equipped to make disciples, but is not equipped to ultimately change the hearts or minds of anyone who does not become a disciple. That is, secular people can and should be expected to continue acting out of a secular mindset for as long as they remain separated from Christ, and therefore, the church does not have the position of authority over them necessary to establish the material rule of Christ in the current age beyond our own spheres of influence. This view tends to consider the responsibility of the Christian as one where we lend our influence where we can (and in countries where the population votes, that includes voting along Christian moral lines), but recognizes limits inherent to that, which is fine as it counters attempts at creating a hollow theocracy. This view also lends itself to the "hopes and prayers" approach to worldly problems, wherein Christians are encouraged to wash their hands of certain problems on the understanding that nothing will really change until Christ abolishes evil in the world; this result is, obviously, much less fruitful in its engagement with the world. Amillennialism can coexist with this worldview, as well, but it's a less natural fit.
As it stands now, this blog overall is written from a Pre-Millennial position. I believe that Christ will return and, only upon His return, establish direct and overt rule over the world. There are two basic types of Pre-Millennialism, though; those that teach that the Kingdom is not yet a reality at all (and therefore not a direct factor in our current decisions and views about the church) and those that teach that the Kingdom is already a reality waiting to be fully revealed (and therefore informative of our decisions and views about the church). The former tends to coincide with a Dispensational view of redemptive history, while the latter tends to coincide with a Covenant view of redemptive history. For reasons I will explain in the post about Dispensational and Covenant theologies, I'll explain my stance in more detail there; for now, it is enough to note that I hold the Kingdom as a present reality that informs our view of the church.
The Millennial Reign is a period of one thousand years described in Revelation as that where evil is restrained on the Earth but the New Heavens and New Earth have not yet arrived. During this period, Christ assumes direct rule over the Earth, administered by Christians (or at least, those among the saints who have endured very specific and difficult times). The question is whether this is a literal event, and if so, when it happens in relation to other literal events. These questions result in three main views:
- Amillennialism is the view that the Millennial Reign is not a literal event. That isn't to say nothing it describes happens, but that it doesn't happen the way other views describe it. Essentially, this view holds that the Millennial Reign is an allegorical description of the period of time in which the church is on the earth, administering the rule of Christ within its local contexts. The idea is that evil is currently restrained, that the church has already been given authority to judge and practice administrative duties on the earth, and the Millennial Reign is therefore describing nothing more or less than the full duration (which clearly is not exactly one thousand years) of the time between Pentecost and the return of Christ.
- Post-Millenialism is the view that the Millennial Reign is a literal period that must come to pass before Christ physically returns. The idea is that the church has been tasked with the responsibility of restraining evil and establishing the rule of Christ in a material way in the world today and, once the world is brought fully under the authority of Christ, He will return to claim the Kingdom that has been prepared for Him. This view includes a specific definition of the church itself, as the agency by which God has chosen to bring creation into final submission to Christ.
- Pre-Millennialism is the view that Christ will physically return and, as part of His return, restrain evil and establish the Millennial Reign. The idea is that it is the work of Christ that establishes the Kingdom on the earth, and that none of this can happen until He has returned. As such, it happens after the other end times events, followed only by the establishment of the New Heaven and New Earth.
Views 1 & 2 lend themselves well to administrative views of the church, and are therefore common in traditions that view the church as having direct legal authority in the world. In these views, the church either can or must practice judicial authority in the world as above the authority of human governments, which can be seen in the way much of Europe still has religious structure embedded into its secular governments, whether through submission to the Vatican, clerical legal authority, or the direct merging of church and state. View 3 can be held by people with such a view of the church, but it doesn't lend itself naturally to that approach. The essential problem here is that, in a Pre-Mill view, the church is equipped to make disciples, but is not equipped to ultimately change the hearts or minds of anyone who does not become a disciple. That is, secular people can and should be expected to continue acting out of a secular mindset for as long as they remain separated from Christ, and therefore, the church does not have the position of authority over them necessary to establish the material rule of Christ in the current age beyond our own spheres of influence. This view tends to consider the responsibility of the Christian as one where we lend our influence where we can (and in countries where the population votes, that includes voting along Christian moral lines), but recognizes limits inherent to that, which is fine as it counters attempts at creating a hollow theocracy. This view also lends itself to the "hopes and prayers" approach to worldly problems, wherein Christians are encouraged to wash their hands of certain problems on the understanding that nothing will really change until Christ abolishes evil in the world; this result is, obviously, much less fruitful in its engagement with the world. Amillennialism can coexist with this worldview, as well, but it's a less natural fit.
As it stands now, this blog overall is written from a Pre-Millennial position. I believe that Christ will return and, only upon His return, establish direct and overt rule over the world. There are two basic types of Pre-Millennialism, though; those that teach that the Kingdom is not yet a reality at all (and therefore not a direct factor in our current decisions and views about the church) and those that teach that the Kingdom is already a reality waiting to be fully revealed (and therefore informative of our decisions and views about the church). The former tends to coincide with a Dispensational view of redemptive history, while the latter tends to coincide with a Covenant view of redemptive history. For reasons I will explain in the post about Dispensational and Covenant theologies, I'll explain my stance in more detail there; for now, it is enough to note that I hold the Kingdom as a present reality that informs our view of the church.
The Great Tribulation
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Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, "These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and where have they come from?" I said to him, "My lord, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Revelation 7:13-14 (NASB)
For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.
Matthew 24:21-22 (NASB)
The Great Tribulation is a period of time in which, essentially, everything sucks and then people die. I would love to be more detailed than that, but scripture itself kind of isn't; while there are a lot of details people have claimed for this period, the Bible itself mostly just says what's cited above. The passage in Matthew is preceded by a description of a day when people will need to flee, and followed by talk of a time when people will falsely proclaim Christ's return, but the text makes clear that these are events that happen before and after the Tribulation (respectively). The passage in Revelation comes after the opening of six of the seven seals, but before the events generally associated with the Great Tribulation.
The sequence of events in Matthew, where the "Abomination of Desolation" is discussed and then people flee before the Great Tribulation, is sometimes associated with the idea of the Antichrist as a distinct character. This view was already established within Dispensational theology, but really hit the mainstream with the Left Behind books and movies. The basic idea is that there is a distinct person who will stand as a primary Antichrist world leader that will fulfill the evil desires of the world in rebellion against God and initiate a period of suffering by setting himself up as a divine, probably in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. This, of course, relies on a few things falling into place (like the re-establishment of Jewish temple worship in Jerusalem), and assumes much. For instance, the term 'antichrist' is used primarily as a class of spirit or false teacher in scripture, rather than a descriptor for a specific individual, and some of the things attributed to this Antichrist are more clearly described in Revelation as being the actions of someone bearing a different title (generally the Beast or the false prophet of the Beast).
But discussion about the Great Tribulation is incomplete without discussion of the rapture, since the two events are often tied together. The rapture is the belief that Christians, alive and dead, will be removed from the world and taken up to meet Christ in the sky, to return with Him when He arrives to establish His direct and absolute rule over the Earth. Their relationship is so bound together in modern theology, in fact, that the primary views of the rapture are named for their relationship to the Great Tribulation. They are:
I hold to a post-tribulation view and a belief that the Great Tribulation is more of a general descriptor of bad times than a specific time period. I believe that the Abomination of Desolation and the following need to flee as described in Matthew 24:15-20 is the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 ad, and the period Christ describes partly as the Great Tribulation and the age of false Christs is more or less just the current period of time beginning with the fall of Jerusalem and continuing until Christ returns. I am, admittedly, less certain on that idea at this time than I am of the claim that the rapture is post-trib. I am absolutely convinced the rapture is post-trib, for a few reasons. One is simply the nature of God toward His people; throughout scripture, God leaves His people to deal with trying times, offering them His presence through those times but not removing them from them. I do not see in the God of the Bible a tendency that would point to Him pulling His people out of the Great Tribulation. But, more importantly, the Bible tends to describe the rapture as happening after the Great Tribulation or in conjunction with Christ's return. Consider these two passages where we get a lot of our idea about the rapture:
The sequence of events in Matthew, where the "Abomination of Desolation" is discussed and then people flee before the Great Tribulation, is sometimes associated with the idea of the Antichrist as a distinct character. This view was already established within Dispensational theology, but really hit the mainstream with the Left Behind books and movies. The basic idea is that there is a distinct person who will stand as a primary Antichrist world leader that will fulfill the evil desires of the world in rebellion against God and initiate a period of suffering by setting himself up as a divine, probably in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. This, of course, relies on a few things falling into place (like the re-establishment of Jewish temple worship in Jerusalem), and assumes much. For instance, the term 'antichrist' is used primarily as a class of spirit or false teacher in scripture, rather than a descriptor for a specific individual, and some of the things attributed to this Antichrist are more clearly described in Revelation as being the actions of someone bearing a different title (generally the Beast or the false prophet of the Beast).
But discussion about the Great Tribulation is incomplete without discussion of the rapture, since the two events are often tied together. The rapture is the belief that Christians, alive and dead, will be removed from the world and taken up to meet Christ in the sky, to return with Him when He arrives to establish His direct and absolute rule over the Earth. Their relationship is so bound together in modern theology, in fact, that the primary views of the rapture are named for their relationship to the Great Tribulation. They are:
- Pre-Tribulation: This view holds that the rapture will occur before the Great Tribulation and is almost universally tied to the belief that the Great Tribulation will be a seven-year period initiated by the political rise of the Antichrist, in which the world enjoys roughly 3.5 years of peace and prosperity under his influence, at which point the Antichrist desecrates the Jewish temple in Jerusalem by declaring himself God there; this launches the remaining 3.5 years of global suffering under the tyrannical rule of the Antichrist. It is most commonly held as part of Dispensationalism, because it assumes that the Great Tribulation is a period of judgment which doesn't apply to Christians (some views hold, in fact, that it is specifically a time of judgment against the Jewish people for rejecting Christ; this view is not universal, but is fairly innate to Dispensational thought itself). Whatever the nature of the Great Tribulation, a pre-trib view holds that Christians will not be present for it aside from those who come to faith during it.
- Mid-Tribulation: This is the least common of the three views, and while it largely agrees with the timeline and purposes as stated by the pre-trib view, it holds that God will wait to withdraw His people until just before the worst bits happen; generally this means the rapture happens as part of the sequence of events in which the Antichrist declares himself to be God.
- Post-Tribulation: This view holds that the rapture will happen only after the Great Tribulation has passed, and does not require that the Great Tribulation even be a specific period of time. It is the belief that Christians meeting Christ in the air are not escaping anything, but rather welcoming Christ during His triumphal return. This view holds that the return of Christ and the rapture occur together, which means that Christians would rise up to meet Christ and then immediately accompany Him as He continues His descent to Earth. It allows for almost any view of the Great Tribulation itself, from the seven-year timeline held by the other two views to a belief that the Great Tribulation is just a way to describe the fact that Christians can become martyrs during this time, and any view in between. It is frequently paired with amillenialism, but that connection is more important to the amill view than to the post-trib view (that is, almost every amill is post-trib; a great many post-trib adherents are not amill).
I hold to a post-tribulation view and a belief that the Great Tribulation is more of a general descriptor of bad times than a specific time period. I believe that the Abomination of Desolation and the following need to flee as described in Matthew 24:15-20 is the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 ad, and the period Christ describes partly as the Great Tribulation and the age of false Christs is more or less just the current period of time beginning with the fall of Jerusalem and continuing until Christ returns. I am, admittedly, less certain on that idea at this time than I am of the claim that the rapture is post-trib. I am absolutely convinced the rapture is post-trib, for a few reasons. One is simply the nature of God toward His people; throughout scripture, God leaves His people to deal with trying times, offering them His presence through those times but not removing them from them. I do not see in the God of the Bible a tendency that would point to Him pulling His people out of the Great Tribulation. But, more importantly, the Bible tends to describe the rapture as happening after the Great Tribulation or in conjunction with Christ's return. Consider these two passages where we get a lot of our idea about the rapture:
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of [the] archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NASB)
But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.
Matthew 24:29-31 (NASB)
The passage in 1 Thessalonians states clearly that the promise of meeting Christ in the air is part of Christ's return, and not a preceding event. The passage in Matthew begins by stating that He is describing a period after the Great Tribulation, and during that period the people of Christ are gathered together. Note also that Jesus said in verse 22 that the Great Tribulation was cut short for the sake of the elect, which somewhat demands that the elect are present and threatened by the Great Tribulation itself. The arguments for an earlier rapture tend to come partly from later in Matthew 24:
But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women [will be] grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left.
Matthew 24:36-41 (NASB)
Because pre- and mid-trib views tend to hold that the Great Tribulation is a defined seven-year period which can be recognized during its run, at least during its latter half, then the event described in the last two verses above can't happen after the Great Tribulation, otherwise we would know the day and the hour by simple math. That is, if the two men/two women descriptors are talking about the rapture, and the rapture is the same time as the return of Christ, and we can know that they will happen 3.5 years after the Antichrist declares himself God, then we can know when Christ will return by tracking 3.5 years after the Antichrist declares himself God. I find this argument unconvincing, for a number of reasons. First, I don't agree that the Great Tribulation is a trackable seven-year period, and I'm not even convinced the Antichrist is a singular being that will ever arise and do much of anything. But also, we have no indication that the two men/two women statements are describing the rapture. The assumption is that the one who vanishes was taken up to Heaven, but Christ is talking about a period of judgment, and I believe the much more natural reading of this passage is that the one who is taken is dead. All told, this reading does not seem justified to me, and certainly not justified enough to overpower the direct statement of Christ a few verses earlier that the angels will be sent to gather the faithful during, and not before, the return of Christ after the Great Tribulation has ended.
All told, then, I believe that the Great Tribulation is already underway, and that the judgment of God is already being poured out on the world in some measure. This present age will end with the triumphant return of Christ, with His people (alive and dead) rising to meet Him and join His procession to Earth, at which point He will initiate the Millennium of direct, overt reign in an undeniable and unmistakable coronation. After the Millennium is over, the final judgment will come, followed by the institution of the New Heaven and New Earth, where we will live with Christ for eternity.
All told, then, I believe that the Great Tribulation is already underway, and that the judgment of God is already being poured out on the world in some measure. This present age will end with the triumphant return of Christ, with His people (alive and dead) rising to meet Him and join His procession to Earth, at which point He will initiate the Millennium of direct, overt reign in an undeniable and unmistakable coronation. After the Millennium is over, the final judgment will come, followed by the institution of the New Heaven and New Earth, where we will live with Christ for eternity.
Note: This is adapted from a paper written as part of my studies at the Antioch School. The objective of the assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed an advanced biblical understanding of the philosophy that is to drive the ministry of the church and the instructions (i.e. “house order”) by which each local church is to abide."
In my last post, I argued that submission to roles within the body, and allowing those roles to be defined by Christ rather than purely pragmatic or social demands, was a crucial element of aligning our churches with the design found in scripture. That our practices needed to be primarily defined in light of the community of faith Christ is building rather than personal interests or cultural norms. Here, we turn our attention to what that looks like in practice. This primarily arises in two categories; first, the specified roles that exist within the church, and second, how those roles interact in key circumstances as part of the life of the church.
The Divine Household
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The actual roles within the house order in scripture fall into a series of nested dualities that ultimately reflect the relationship between God the Father and God the Son to varying degrees. The Father is the supreme and perfect authority; all things are in subjection to Him, and He carries out His authority in pure love. The Son is the perfect agent of the Father’s will, doing all He does in submission to the Father and joyfully glorifying the Father through His every word and deed. In all of this, the Holy Spirit unites and glorifies, participating in and highlighting the love that exists within the Trinity and pointing to both the Father and the Son in all things.
The relationship that exists within the Trinity is fundamentally one of love, in which the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, and there is no partiality or brokenness in these loving bonds. The three are one, truly one, such that we worship but one God in three persons. No person of the Trinity is lacking in anything, not even honor or power. The Father is not more God than the Spirit or the Son; every person of the Trinity is fully God and, therefore, fully empowered and worthy of all praise. The roles within the Trinity define the interpersonal relationships within divinity, but do not elevate or denigrate any person to any position other than True God.
This is the defining nature of the roles of the church. Every role within the church is engaged in presenting an image of this Trinity relationship, and every interaction among the body of the church is to display the pure love and true bond found among the persons of the Trinity. We must have this understanding in place if we are to carry out these roles correctly; we cannot emulate that which we do not know. We must also recognize the limits of our understanding and of our roles. We cannot perfectly understand God, or at least, if we shall ever perfectly understand Him it will not be on this side of eternity. We cannot perfectly practice the love of the Trinity within our own bodies, as we are not perfect agents of love while yet in these bodies. No roles within the church are perfect images of the divine nature, for a multitude of reasons, but a key one that warrants mention before we continue is that there is no role in the church that has absolute authority the way the Father does. Every leader in the church is also a servant, as Christ noted when He said,
The relationship that exists within the Trinity is fundamentally one of love, in which the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, and there is no partiality or brokenness in these loving bonds. The three are one, truly one, such that we worship but one God in three persons. No person of the Trinity is lacking in anything, not even honor or power. The Father is not more God than the Spirit or the Son; every person of the Trinity is fully God and, therefore, fully empowered and worthy of all praise. The roles within the Trinity define the interpersonal relationships within divinity, but do not elevate or denigrate any person to any position other than True God.
This is the defining nature of the roles of the church. Every role within the church is engaged in presenting an image of this Trinity relationship, and every interaction among the body of the church is to display the pure love and true bond found among the persons of the Trinity. We must have this understanding in place if we are to carry out these roles correctly; we cannot emulate that which we do not know. We must also recognize the limits of our understanding and of our roles. We cannot perfectly understand God, or at least, if we shall ever perfectly understand Him it will not be on this side of eternity. We cannot perfectly practice the love of the Trinity within our own bodies, as we are not perfect agents of love while yet in these bodies. No roles within the church are perfect images of the divine nature, for a multitude of reasons, but a key one that warrants mention before we continue is that there is no role in the church that has absolute authority the way the Father does. Every leader in the church is also a servant, as Christ noted when He said,
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:25b-28 (NASB)
Yet, we are to strive to have our image of the Father and the Son, empowered by the Spirit, grow ever more perfect. The way we live out our roles should be growing in a manner that always looks a little more like the Divine Household than it did before, always makes the love of the Trinity more clear to each other and the watching world. So let us bear this perfect love that we strive to emulate in mind as we consider the images we have been given.
Dualities in the House Order
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I mentioned that this will be a study of nested dualities, so allow me to explain that before we examine the content of those dualities. First, note that our images are not trinities; there is no agent in our study here that emulates the Holy Spirit, but rather, the dualities discussed are empowered by that same Holy Spirit Himself. He is in all and through all that we do as believers in Christ, He is the One that binds us to Christ and each other, and He is the one who ultimately takes our dualities and uses them to point higher to the Father and the Son. As such, He will not be directly discussed through much of this article, as the rest of it will focus on the roles themselves, but it is vital to understand that nothing that follows this paragraph can exist in any true, holy, and workable form without His hand upon it. He is the vital role that makes all other roles exist, and it is His pleasure to avoid direct praise in favor of pointing beyond Himself to the Father and the Son in all things; so shall it be in this article.
Second, a note about terminology. I do not mean to describe a duality as a pagan may use the term; these are not sets of equal but opposite forces that find their purest expression in appropriate balance. Rather, they are two pictures that, taken together, present a larger picture. There are ways they are equal and ways they are not, but in a healthy church environment, they are never at odds. Fulfilling our roles well means that we are separate only so that we can be seen as united. A unity without parts is not a unity at all, but a single thing; for our images to work in a way that displays unity, then, there must be parts1. In God’s design, these parts are arranged in pairs that nest within and relate to one another.
While not every duality here will get equal weight of discussion in this paper, these are the essential ones for consideration as we move forward. The relationship between God the Father and God the Son is the template, and each will be listed in that order (that is, the member imaging the Father will be listed before the member imaging the Son). The primary dualities are the Son and the Church, the Church and the Home, and the Church and the World. Within the church is the duality of Leaders and Congregation, and within the leadership are the Elders and the Deacons. Within the home are the Family and the Servants, within the family are the Parents and the Children, and within the parents are the Husband and the Wife. Lacking some element here is not utterly devastating; a household without servants, for instance (which is most of them now), simply lacks that role. We are concerned here with how those roles work together to image God, not any debate about whether or not every role needs to exist in every place where it can exist2.
Second, a note about terminology. I do not mean to describe a duality as a pagan may use the term; these are not sets of equal but opposite forces that find their purest expression in appropriate balance. Rather, they are two pictures that, taken together, present a larger picture. There are ways they are equal and ways they are not, but in a healthy church environment, they are never at odds. Fulfilling our roles well means that we are separate only so that we can be seen as united. A unity without parts is not a unity at all, but a single thing; for our images to work in a way that displays unity, then, there must be parts1. In God’s design, these parts are arranged in pairs that nest within and relate to one another.
While not every duality here will get equal weight of discussion in this paper, these are the essential ones for consideration as we move forward. The relationship between God the Father and God the Son is the template, and each will be listed in that order (that is, the member imaging the Father will be listed before the member imaging the Son). The primary dualities are the Son and the Church, the Church and the Home, and the Church and the World. Within the church is the duality of Leaders and Congregation, and within the leadership are the Elders and the Deacons. Within the home are the Family and the Servants, within the family are the Parents and the Children, and within the parents are the Husband and the Wife. Lacking some element here is not utterly devastating; a household without servants, for instance (which is most of them now), simply lacks that role. We are concerned here with how those roles work together to image God, not any debate about whether or not every role needs to exist in every place where it can exist2.
The Son and the Church
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Christ is the head of the church, as the Father is the head of the Trinity. Christ’s relationship to the church images the Father’s relationship to the Son, in that Christ has supreme authority over the church, and carries out this authority in loving relationship. As the Trinity never operates in a manner in which the Father is not in authority, so the church is not designed to ever operate outside of the authority of Christ.
Likewise, the church is designed to operate with leadership in place that has the power to direct its operations and carry out church discipline. This leadership does not have ultimate authority; leaders of the church submit to Christ as Christ submits to the Father, and serves the body as Christ has served the church in His laying down His life for it. This was discussed in more detail elsewhere, but essentially, a church cannot be a church until it has leadership, specifically because it cannot perform its essential duties or maintain its adherence to Christ without trained leaders who point to Christ in their own deeds and in the relationship they have to the rest of the church body. Similarly, the church cannot be a church without a body that submits to the authority of the leadership as the church submits to Christ, since it is the body that carries out the work of the church in the world as the church carries out the work of Christ in the world and Christ carries out the work of the Father in the world.
Within the leadership are elders and deacons, the two offices defined in scripture for the governance of the church. Together, they are the leadership addressed in the paragraph above. But they have distinction between themselves, and within that distinction, the elders set direction as the Father sets direction for the Son (and as the Son sets direction for the church), and the deacons carry out the will of church leadership through service to the body as Christ carries out the will of the Father through His service rendered to the church (and as the church carries out the will of Christ).
Part of the work of church leaders is to direct the regular life of the church. This means that it is church leadership that ultimately calls and leads meetings of the assembled church body. The leadership keeps order at the assembled meetings, points all that happens to Christ, and carries out the essential functions of equipping and establishing the body. The congregation, then, follows the order as established by the leaders and submits to biblical teaching and direction as it is delivered during their times of assembly. Elders are described by Paul as having an ability to teach, because it is part of the fundamental nature of church leadership to pass on the knowledge and will of Christ to the body.
Relationships within the body are intended to showcase the patient love of Christ, as well as the importance of the church’s mission, at all times. As such, Christ gives us direction in Matthew to approach one another about sin and disputes in a manner that gives the offender multiple opportunities to repent and make things right, with increasing support from the church. When this process is not fruitful, however, Paul operates on the understanding that it is the leadership of the church that holds the authority to discipline the wayward member. Gilliland argues that this responsibility is a natural expression of the patient love expressed in the Matthew process when he says, “The Christian who lapses into unchristian behavior requires patience, much teaching, and genuine caring and love. The discipline of the Christian church must be the work of those who have a truly pastoral heart.”3 That is, the heart that qualifies one for church leadership is the same heart needed to practice discipline within the church in a manner that respects the offender and emphasizes the proper mindset of the church toward the offense.
Disruption of these relationships, then, not only alters the practices of the church, but corrupts the image the church is meant to be displaying. If the deacons operate as elders, or the body operates without leadership, or the elders fail to submit to Christ or serve the body, then the essential function of the church—as the manifested glory of God in the world tasked with carrying out the redemptive mission of Christ—falls apart.
Likewise, the church is designed to operate with leadership in place that has the power to direct its operations and carry out church discipline. This leadership does not have ultimate authority; leaders of the church submit to Christ as Christ submits to the Father, and serves the body as Christ has served the church in His laying down His life for it. This was discussed in more detail elsewhere, but essentially, a church cannot be a church until it has leadership, specifically because it cannot perform its essential duties or maintain its adherence to Christ without trained leaders who point to Christ in their own deeds and in the relationship they have to the rest of the church body. Similarly, the church cannot be a church without a body that submits to the authority of the leadership as the church submits to Christ, since it is the body that carries out the work of the church in the world as the church carries out the work of Christ in the world and Christ carries out the work of the Father in the world.
Within the leadership are elders and deacons, the two offices defined in scripture for the governance of the church. Together, they are the leadership addressed in the paragraph above. But they have distinction between themselves, and within that distinction, the elders set direction as the Father sets direction for the Son (and as the Son sets direction for the church), and the deacons carry out the will of church leadership through service to the body as Christ carries out the will of the Father through His service rendered to the church (and as the church carries out the will of Christ).
Part of the work of church leaders is to direct the regular life of the church. This means that it is church leadership that ultimately calls and leads meetings of the assembled church body. The leadership keeps order at the assembled meetings, points all that happens to Christ, and carries out the essential functions of equipping and establishing the body. The congregation, then, follows the order as established by the leaders and submits to biblical teaching and direction as it is delivered during their times of assembly. Elders are described by Paul as having an ability to teach, because it is part of the fundamental nature of church leadership to pass on the knowledge and will of Christ to the body.
Relationships within the body are intended to showcase the patient love of Christ, as well as the importance of the church’s mission, at all times. As such, Christ gives us direction in Matthew to approach one another about sin and disputes in a manner that gives the offender multiple opportunities to repent and make things right, with increasing support from the church. When this process is not fruitful, however, Paul operates on the understanding that it is the leadership of the church that holds the authority to discipline the wayward member. Gilliland argues that this responsibility is a natural expression of the patient love expressed in the Matthew process when he says, “The Christian who lapses into unchristian behavior requires patience, much teaching, and genuine caring and love. The discipline of the Christian church must be the work of those who have a truly pastoral heart.”3 That is, the heart that qualifies one for church leadership is the same heart needed to practice discipline within the church in a manner that respects the offender and emphasizes the proper mindset of the church toward the offense.
Disruption of these relationships, then, not only alters the practices of the church, but corrupts the image the church is meant to be displaying. If the deacons operate as elders, or the body operates without leadership, or the elders fail to submit to Christ or serve the body, then the essential function of the church—as the manifested glory of God in the world tasked with carrying out the redemptive mission of Christ—falls apart.
The Church and the Home
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Photo by Redd on Unsplash
The affairs of the Christian home are subject to the affairs of the Christian church. As God the Father sets the course of divine work and God the Son carries that work out in the world, so the church delivers its mission to the home, which then carries out that work. The home displays the same relationship within its neighborhood and direct connections that the church displays within its community. Thus, the structure of one informs the other; as Banks notes that “those who belong to [local church communities] should see one another primarily as members of a common family,” highlighting that the church operates in the same manner as a home, and the home operates in the same manner as the church.4
The home, similarly, has offices, and there are specific elements of church life that happen within the home. The finances of the church, for instance, come from the finances donated through the homes; if the homes within the church do not understand their responsibility to support the work of the church with their resources, and do not graciously and joyfully give of their resources to the God who provides for them, the church will find itself lacking and struggling to afford its basic tasks. This then cycles back into the homes, as the church is called to provide for any among them who are lacking. This is seen in the creation of the office of Deacons, whose first task was to oversee the support of widows, and James 1:27 reminds readers that concern for widows and orphans is a crucial element in the life of the church and the believer. As those homes with resources give those resources to the church, the church has the means to provide those resources to the homes that lack. In this way, the relationship between the church and the home is not only reflective of each other, but cyclical in practice, much like the love that flows eternally between the Father and the Son.
In Ephesians 6, Paul describes various relationships within the home and shows the image of the Father/Son relationship in them. Servants (or slaves in some renderings) submit to the authority of their masters as Christ submits to the Father, not merely in grudging action but in sincerity, while the masters are commanded to treat their servants with a sincere and respectful heart that mirrors the way the Father directs the Son. Children are called to honor their parents, while the parents (namely the fathers) are called to a mindfulness in how they raise up their children without unnecessary provocation.
But these are presented in light of the longer text (Ephesians 5:22-33) before it, which details the relationship of the husband to the wife. Paul explicitly states the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship repeatedly throughout this section, pointing husbands to the part of Christ and wives to the role of the church. He points to the self-sacrificing love of Christ for the church as a normative expectation for the love of a husband for his wife, framing the submission of the wife as a healthy response of a woman enjoying the grace and support her husband shows her rather than the fearful response of a woman under the command of an abusive or demanding husband. In this way, also, the marriage images the church, where the husband encourages the growth of the wife toward her full potential in faith in the same manner as Christ builds up the church and calls it to growth toward its full potential in faith.
Incidentally, it is the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship that sorts out a number of questions the church receives about other gender-related issues. By lacking the interplay between a man and a woman, a same-sex marriage is incapable of displaying the same image as a man married to a woman, and therefore the marriage displays a false (or at least incomplete) picture of the relationships it is meant to display. The role of elders within the church in their relationship to deacons, serving the same functional role in its image duality as husbands to wives, is sensibly limited to men, while the role of deacons is not.
Note, however, that this overall structure does dictate when and where the church has authority in the home. The relationship of the church and home is essentially big-picture; the church gives direction to the home, but the relationships within the home dictate how that direction is actually carried out. The elders do not have authority to replace the role of parents in the lives of children, but do have a requirement to hold the parents accountable to whether or not their parenting actually serves the greater mission of the church. The church cannot tell the wife whether or not she’s allowed to work out of the home, as this is a matter that falls within the means of the home governing itself; but must ask stern questions of the husband if the wife isn’t growing in her walk with Christ, as this would suggest a breakdown in his role to support her growth as Christ supports the growth of the church. Ultimately, each relationship being described falls under the broad direction of the relationship in which it is nested, but retains some autonomy in its actual practice. Which sets us up to discuss the final category of relationship relevant to our topic.
The home, similarly, has offices, and there are specific elements of church life that happen within the home. The finances of the church, for instance, come from the finances donated through the homes; if the homes within the church do not understand their responsibility to support the work of the church with their resources, and do not graciously and joyfully give of their resources to the God who provides for them, the church will find itself lacking and struggling to afford its basic tasks. This then cycles back into the homes, as the church is called to provide for any among them who are lacking. This is seen in the creation of the office of Deacons, whose first task was to oversee the support of widows, and James 1:27 reminds readers that concern for widows and orphans is a crucial element in the life of the church and the believer. As those homes with resources give those resources to the church, the church has the means to provide those resources to the homes that lack. In this way, the relationship between the church and the home is not only reflective of each other, but cyclical in practice, much like the love that flows eternally between the Father and the Son.
In Ephesians 6, Paul describes various relationships within the home and shows the image of the Father/Son relationship in them. Servants (or slaves in some renderings) submit to the authority of their masters as Christ submits to the Father, not merely in grudging action but in sincerity, while the masters are commanded to treat their servants with a sincere and respectful heart that mirrors the way the Father directs the Son. Children are called to honor their parents, while the parents (namely the fathers) are called to a mindfulness in how they raise up their children without unnecessary provocation.
But these are presented in light of the longer text (Ephesians 5:22-33) before it, which details the relationship of the husband to the wife. Paul explicitly states the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship repeatedly throughout this section, pointing husbands to the part of Christ and wives to the role of the church. He points to the self-sacrificing love of Christ for the church as a normative expectation for the love of a husband for his wife, framing the submission of the wife as a healthy response of a woman enjoying the grace and support her husband shows her rather than the fearful response of a woman under the command of an abusive or demanding husband. In this way, also, the marriage images the church, where the husband encourages the growth of the wife toward her full potential in faith in the same manner as Christ builds up the church and calls it to growth toward its full potential in faith.
Incidentally, it is the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship that sorts out a number of questions the church receives about other gender-related issues. By lacking the interplay between a man and a woman, a same-sex marriage is incapable of displaying the same image as a man married to a woman, and therefore the marriage displays a false (or at least incomplete) picture of the relationships it is meant to display. The role of elders within the church in their relationship to deacons, serving the same functional role in its image duality as husbands to wives, is sensibly limited to men, while the role of deacons is not.
Note, however, that this overall structure does dictate when and where the church has authority in the home. The relationship of the church and home is essentially big-picture; the church gives direction to the home, but the relationships within the home dictate how that direction is actually carried out. The elders do not have authority to replace the role of parents in the lives of children, but do have a requirement to hold the parents accountable to whether or not their parenting actually serves the greater mission of the church. The church cannot tell the wife whether or not she’s allowed to work out of the home, as this is a matter that falls within the means of the home governing itself; but must ask stern questions of the husband if the wife isn’t growing in her walk with Christ, as this would suggest a breakdown in his role to support her growth as Christ supports the growth of the church. Ultimately, each relationship being described falls under the broad direction of the relationship in which it is nested, but retains some autonomy in its actual practice. Which sets us up to discuss the final category of relationship relevant to our topic.
The Church and the World
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Photo by Louis Moncouyoux on Unsplash
If Christ has conquered the forces of this world and begun to establish His rule, and the church is His agent in the world the way Christ is the Father’s agent, then that implies a relationship between the church and the world that grants the church a certain amount of authority. However, since the world is not yet fully under the rule of Christ, it cannot be expected to operate as though it is. Note that the world does not have instructions in scripture regarding the church that mirror the instructions wives have regarding husbands or that the church body has regarding its leadership. This is at least a little bit practical; a world in rebellion against God is not going to submit to the commands of scripture simply because those commands come from God. So what does that mean for how we approach the relationship between the church and the world?
First, note that the church is called to be above reproach from the world; 1 Peter 3 and Romans 13, for instance, urge that the behavior of the church toward the world be pure and unblemished by evil, with the intention that the world sees the goodness of God and responds in faith. Compare this with the call of elders to be above reproach in 1 Timothy and the role of husbands as faithfully and lovingly guiding their wives to greater knowledge of and faith in Christ. In this way, the church leads the world toward God, even if only by example.
Second, our showing loving guidance toward the world is self-sacrificial, as Christ’s love for the church is. We are called repeatedly to lay down our rights or lives, if needed, in service to pointing the world around us to Christ. We are to rejoice in trials, accept any trouble brought to us for doing good (while striving to have no trouble brought to us for doing evil, that is, avoiding such trouble by avoiding doing evil), and recognize the authority of the world so far as it exists.
This last part is essential; there are areas where earthly authorities really do have authority, and we as the church show our submission to God through our submission in these areas. Where the laws of man call for taxes, or honor, or participation in civil engagement, to the degree that those things do not compromise the mission of the church, we are to render what is being demanded. Homes, essentially, have dual citizenship. They are subject to the church, and they are subject to earthly authority. Where these things clash, a Christian home must submit primarily to the church; where they do not, a Christian home must be faithful to both.
Every relationship within the church, then, is always engaging with the world. And in its engagements with the world, each must seek to point to Christ in all things, to glorify Him in their dealings with each other and the world, and to practice their relationships as images of the patient love that exists between the Father and the Son. By recognizing how each relationship in the life of a Christian reflects the other relationships, and looking at each as images of the divine love within the Trinity, we can more readily understand the nature of our roles and how to faithfully live them out.
First, note that the church is called to be above reproach from the world; 1 Peter 3 and Romans 13, for instance, urge that the behavior of the church toward the world be pure and unblemished by evil, with the intention that the world sees the goodness of God and responds in faith. Compare this with the call of elders to be above reproach in 1 Timothy and the role of husbands as faithfully and lovingly guiding their wives to greater knowledge of and faith in Christ. In this way, the church leads the world toward God, even if only by example.
Second, our showing loving guidance toward the world is self-sacrificial, as Christ’s love for the church is. We are called repeatedly to lay down our rights or lives, if needed, in service to pointing the world around us to Christ. We are to rejoice in trials, accept any trouble brought to us for doing good (while striving to have no trouble brought to us for doing evil, that is, avoiding such trouble by avoiding doing evil), and recognize the authority of the world so far as it exists.
This last part is essential; there are areas where earthly authorities really do have authority, and we as the church show our submission to God through our submission in these areas. Where the laws of man call for taxes, or honor, or participation in civil engagement, to the degree that those things do not compromise the mission of the church, we are to render what is being demanded. Homes, essentially, have dual citizenship. They are subject to the church, and they are subject to earthly authority. Where these things clash, a Christian home must submit primarily to the church; where they do not, a Christian home must be faithful to both.
Every relationship within the church, then, is always engaging with the world. And in its engagements with the world, each must seek to point to Christ in all things, to glorify Him in their dealings with each other and the world, and to practice their relationships as images of the patient love that exists between the Father and the Son. By recognizing how each relationship in the life of a Christian reflects the other relationships, and looking at each as images of the divine love within the Trinity, we can more readily understand the nature of our roles and how to faithfully live them out.
1 Not that God has parts, but He does have persons. These are not separate in the way that we as individuals are separate, but they are distinct in a way that allows them to have unity in relationship. We are, in all respects, imperfect images; this is merely one way in which our lacking points to His fullness.
2 Some roles are more necessary than others, but this is not a matter for this paper.
3 Gilliland, Dean S. “Growth & Care of the Community: Discipline and Finance.” From Pauline Theology & Mission Practice, 237–246. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983. 243.
4 Banks, Robert. “The Community as a Family.” From Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting, 52–61. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980. 54.
2 Some roles are more necessary than others, but this is not a matter for this paper.
3 Gilliland, Dean S. “Growth & Care of the Community: Discipline and Finance.” From Pauline Theology & Mission Practice, 237–246. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983. 243.
4 Banks, Robert. “The Community as a Family.” From Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting, 52–61. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980. 54.
Note: The following is adapted from a paper originally submitted as part of my coursework through the Antioch School. The assigned called for me to demonstrate that I had "developed a basic biblical understanding of the philosophy that is to drive the ministry of the Church and the instructions (i.e. “house order”) by which each local church is to abide."
Photo by Clotaire Folefack on Unsplash We cannot adequately define a biblical understanding of the philosophy that is to drive the ministry of the church without first untangling ourselves from the model we have inherited. We often take for granted that the elements of our church gatherings as we've always known them are innate to the nature of church--that these elements exist by virtue of it being a 'church,' and not as a conscious choice on our part or the part of our predecessors. We see this in practice across many spheres of Christian experience; it is the foundational assumption that drives missionaries to establish churches that look just like their home churches even when that model doesn't connect with the local culture, that caused so many in the United States to declare that the government was forbidding church when it was explicitly only forbidding a specific manner of gathering in crowds, that causes people to push back and ultimately malign pastors who attempt to update mundane practices or habits of their church with an eye toward greater gospel faithfulness and public witness. Church-as-we-know-it easily becomes enshrined in our minds as church-as-Christ-intended it, even if the thing we're fighting to maintain was only added to the life of the local church one generation earlier.
It is important to think critically about the things we've come to see as defining elements of the church, asking whether these elements actually arise from a Biblical model of the church structure and, if not, asking where they originate. Being extrabiblical does not mean that an element is wrong, simply that it is cultural; cultural elements have their place in the life of the church, it simply isn't a foundational place. As such, we have to identify the major areas in which we have allowed extrabiblical sources to define the ministry of the church, how those sources have drawn us away from a biblical understanding, how to correct that shift, and where possible, how to use those sources in service to the biblical philosophy rather than allowing them to serve as an alternative to it. In our class time, we identified three major extrabiblical philosophies that have replaced that philosophy described by Paul and the other apostles in whole or in part. These were individualism, egalitarianism, and theocratic systems.
It is important to think critically about the things we've come to see as defining elements of the church, asking whether these elements actually arise from a Biblical model of the church structure and, if not, asking where they originate. Being extrabiblical does not mean that an element is wrong, simply that it is cultural; cultural elements have their place in the life of the church, it simply isn't a foundational place. As such, we have to identify the major areas in which we have allowed extrabiblical sources to define the ministry of the church, how those sources have drawn us away from a biblical understanding, how to correct that shift, and where possible, how to use those sources in service to the biblical philosophy rather than allowing them to serve as an alternative to it. In our class time, we identified three major extrabiblical philosophies that have replaced that philosophy described by Paul and the other apostles in whole or in part. These were individualism, egalitarianism, and theocratic systems.
Individualism | |
At its core, individualism is a philosophical model that centers its view of the world on individual human beings as standalone units and arbiters of reality and experience. It is fundamentally a bottom-up ideology, in which the individual is the basis of all things and groups are valid only to, and must be continually redefined by, the extent that they serve the interests of individuals within them. There are benefits to it that should be acknowledged; for instance, it forces organizations and structures to consider the effect they are having on real people under their influence and take those effects into consideration. This is a good lens with which to examine these organizations and structures, as human beings are image-bearers of God and therefore deserving of the baseline respect of avoiding harm wherever possible.
The problem, however, is that it isn’t suitable as a foundational ideology. This is because, by design, allowing it to be foundational requires that the structure and practices of the church be fluid in ways that the Bible does not prescribe or condone. A church defined by individualism exists primarily to serve its members in a manner that is subject to their every whim. In fact, this goes even farther, in that an individualistic view ultimately attempts to stand in judgment of reality and its Creator. Consider what has come to be known as The Problem of Pain. Essentially, this argument claims that, because humans experience suffering, God must be imperfect either in His morality or His power. But this entire argument relies on the claim that individual humans are the chief end of existence, and therefore benefit to individual humans is the ultimate moral good that warrants the full application of God’s power in all instances. This is individualism not only redefining the church, but redefining mankind and God Himself in the process.
The biblical model, however, centers God as the focus and ultimate beneficiary of creation (including mankind) in general and the church in particular. The members are in the body to serve God; submitting to His structure, serving on His mission, practicing His methods, and aiming for the work He has determined, all for His glory. Paul says as much in his description of individual roles when he tells the Colossians, “whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve” (3:23-24, NASB95).
Christianity is, therefore, a top-down structure. God is ultimate, His will defines the structures that will serve His purposes, and individuals operate in submission to those structures in service to Him.1
The problem, however, is that it isn’t suitable as a foundational ideology. This is because, by design, allowing it to be foundational requires that the structure and practices of the church be fluid in ways that the Bible does not prescribe or condone. A church defined by individualism exists primarily to serve its members in a manner that is subject to their every whim. In fact, this goes even farther, in that an individualistic view ultimately attempts to stand in judgment of reality and its Creator. Consider what has come to be known as The Problem of Pain. Essentially, this argument claims that, because humans experience suffering, God must be imperfect either in His morality or His power. But this entire argument relies on the claim that individual humans are the chief end of existence, and therefore benefit to individual humans is the ultimate moral good that warrants the full application of God’s power in all instances. This is individualism not only redefining the church, but redefining mankind and God Himself in the process.
The biblical model, however, centers God as the focus and ultimate beneficiary of creation (including mankind) in general and the church in particular. The members are in the body to serve God; submitting to His structure, serving on His mission, practicing His methods, and aiming for the work He has determined, all for His glory. Paul says as much in his description of individual roles when he tells the Colossians, “whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve” (3:23-24, NASB95).
Christianity is, therefore, a top-down structure. God is ultimate, His will defines the structures that will serve His purposes, and individuals operate in submission to those structures in service to Him.1
Egalitarianism | |
At its core, egalitarianism is a view that considers roles and individuals as essentially interchangeable. Under an egalitarian mindset, there are no inherent limitations or criteria on who does what in a given system. There are often imposed limitations acknowledged within an egalitarian model, which we will get to briefly, but first a note is necessary. This is that ‘egalitarianism’ is not here being contrasted with complementarianism; this section will be focusing on the nature of roles within the church, rather than the content of those roles. That is, it is more important for the scope of this paper to understand how roles exist and interact than to understand who occupies those roles and what they individually do for the church. While part of the class reading included passages that discuss specific roles as divided by gender and age, it is my belief that these specific instructions are a result of the biblical philosophy of church ministry rather than the source of it, and are therefore not crucial to the question at hand.2
Egalitarianism is a fundamentally pragmatic ideology, and it isn’t necessarily bad at achieving pragmatic ends. This is evidenced by the way egalitarianism is argued for in most circumstances. The basic line of reasoning tends to be that acknowledging an inherent limitation or criteria to a role excludes people who can perform that work as well or better than the people who are actually in that role. And this isn’t false, but it also isn’t grounds for determination about a role within the biblical concept of church ministry. That is, if the sole determinant for roles within the church was its effectiveness at completing a task, then egalitarianism would be a valid way to understand those roles, but this isn’t true.
The reason for this is that the work of church ministry isn’t primarily about results, but about submission. As stated in the previous point, the whole work of the church is about God’s glory, will, and mission. Roles within the body, then, must be defined by how they serve that end. Roles are part of the structure that is defined by God, and God alone, in His ultimate wisdom, has the means to determine their criteria and limitations. As it happens, the design God has chosen as the means to best bring Him glory and serve His ends is one in which the church community and the household carry the same, or mirrored, roles.
This is, as Clark puts it, partly because “early Christians wanted family and community to support and reinforce one another.”3 He then goes on to argue that, due to this intended relationship, divorcing one from the other—the community roles and the family roles—would undermine them both. When Paul is defining the roles within a household, he is necessarily also defining the roles within the church. When he defines the roles within the church, he is by necessity defining the roles within the family. In both cases, he relates the matter back to how it stems from and reflects the truth of God, either by explicit statement of the connection as in Ephesians 5:32, or by a more implicit reminder that he is applying a truth as in 1 Corinthians 14:33. In all things, the roles must be defined and practiced in the manner God has chosen because each role, and their relationships to one another, fundamentally say something about God. It is more crucial, in the biblical model of church ministry, that this image be as accurate as possible than that the role is functioning at a high level of efficiency.
These roles, as described in scripture, create a community and family that operate from an interplay between leadership and submission that displays the relationship between the church and God as well as relationships within the Godhead. This is, fundamentally, the point; the roles serve not simply to achieve goals, as egalitarianism would view them, but to display truth. The role of husbands and how it engages within the household, with its authority and accountability, displays and applies the essential principles that define the elders and how they engage with the church, which in turn display and apply the principles that define how the Godhead engages with the church and God the Father engages with the Godhead. The wife, subject to the husband but in a position of authority within the household, images the role of a deacon as it leads and serves the church, which images the church as it sits subject to Christ but is the means of Christ’s authority manifesting in the world, which images Christ in perfect submission to the Father while holding authority to send the Spirit and lead the church. Children, in honoring and serving under the authority of parents, image the body of the church under the authority of its leaders, which images the church in full subjection to God, which is empowered by and images the Holy Spirit who operates in subjection to the Father and the Son and seeks the honor of both. It is natural for us to impose a hierarchy on these roles, due to the habits we’ve developed that will be explored in the next section, but this reading isn’t natural to the text. A husband serving as a deacon with living parents will find themselves needing to hold all these images in tension, with one shining through more clearly in different contexts. Being a husband does not mean one can shirk the submission inherent to being a member of the church body simply because he holds authority in the home.
Egalitarianism, then, would have us replace the intention of the roles with the utility of the roles, and by doing so, redefine not only the roles themselves but the statement those roles are making about who God is. It therefore cannot be treated as a definitive grounds for how we approach roles within the church or the family, but that isn’t the same as saying it can have no use to the church. Egalitarianism, appealed to in a limited fashion and always in service to the biblical model of ministry, does serve as a reminder to analyze whether a criteria and limitation we have come to expect is actually inherent to the role, or has been artificially placed there by mankind. It points us back to the actual definition of the role, and the will of its Definer, as the sole arbiter on whether or not a given person can serve in that role. Allow me to draw this out in an example.
A well-crafted and powerful sermon that stirs the hearts of people but brings glory to the speaker is, by definition, an inferior sermon to one delivered through stutters and awkward pauses that points the hearers to behold the glory of God. No one would doubt that the former is a more skilled orator than the latter, and for this reason, pure pragmatism and egalitarianism would put him in the pulpit on those grounds alone. There is no reason not to in that model, and a host of arguments for efficiency to support the move. However, the biblical model of ministry would undeniably demand that place be reserved for the latter, since he more faithfully serves the role with a heart that seeks to glorify God. Egalitarianism in service to the biblical model would remind us that the latter is preferable even if he has not attended seminary and the former speaker has. This does not mean the latter should avoid growing his skill in the craft of sermon delivery, it merely addresses whether or not he should occupy that role at all.
Egalitarianism is a fundamentally pragmatic ideology, and it isn’t necessarily bad at achieving pragmatic ends. This is evidenced by the way egalitarianism is argued for in most circumstances. The basic line of reasoning tends to be that acknowledging an inherent limitation or criteria to a role excludes people who can perform that work as well or better than the people who are actually in that role. And this isn’t false, but it also isn’t grounds for determination about a role within the biblical concept of church ministry. That is, if the sole determinant for roles within the church was its effectiveness at completing a task, then egalitarianism would be a valid way to understand those roles, but this isn’t true.
The reason for this is that the work of church ministry isn’t primarily about results, but about submission. As stated in the previous point, the whole work of the church is about God’s glory, will, and mission. Roles within the body, then, must be defined by how they serve that end. Roles are part of the structure that is defined by God, and God alone, in His ultimate wisdom, has the means to determine their criteria and limitations. As it happens, the design God has chosen as the means to best bring Him glory and serve His ends is one in which the church community and the household carry the same, or mirrored, roles.
This is, as Clark puts it, partly because “early Christians wanted family and community to support and reinforce one another.”3 He then goes on to argue that, due to this intended relationship, divorcing one from the other—the community roles and the family roles—would undermine them both. When Paul is defining the roles within a household, he is necessarily also defining the roles within the church. When he defines the roles within the church, he is by necessity defining the roles within the family. In both cases, he relates the matter back to how it stems from and reflects the truth of God, either by explicit statement of the connection as in Ephesians 5:32, or by a more implicit reminder that he is applying a truth as in 1 Corinthians 14:33. In all things, the roles must be defined and practiced in the manner God has chosen because each role, and their relationships to one another, fundamentally say something about God. It is more crucial, in the biblical model of church ministry, that this image be as accurate as possible than that the role is functioning at a high level of efficiency.
These roles, as described in scripture, create a community and family that operate from an interplay between leadership and submission that displays the relationship between the church and God as well as relationships within the Godhead. This is, fundamentally, the point; the roles serve not simply to achieve goals, as egalitarianism would view them, but to display truth. The role of husbands and how it engages within the household, with its authority and accountability, displays and applies the essential principles that define the elders and how they engage with the church, which in turn display and apply the principles that define how the Godhead engages with the church and God the Father engages with the Godhead. The wife, subject to the husband but in a position of authority within the household, images the role of a deacon as it leads and serves the church, which images the church as it sits subject to Christ but is the means of Christ’s authority manifesting in the world, which images Christ in perfect submission to the Father while holding authority to send the Spirit and lead the church. Children, in honoring and serving under the authority of parents, image the body of the church under the authority of its leaders, which images the church in full subjection to God, which is empowered by and images the Holy Spirit who operates in subjection to the Father and the Son and seeks the honor of both. It is natural for us to impose a hierarchy on these roles, due to the habits we’ve developed that will be explored in the next section, but this reading isn’t natural to the text. A husband serving as a deacon with living parents will find themselves needing to hold all these images in tension, with one shining through more clearly in different contexts. Being a husband does not mean one can shirk the submission inherent to being a member of the church body simply because he holds authority in the home.
Egalitarianism, then, would have us replace the intention of the roles with the utility of the roles, and by doing so, redefine not only the roles themselves but the statement those roles are making about who God is. It therefore cannot be treated as a definitive grounds for how we approach roles within the church or the family, but that isn’t the same as saying it can have no use to the church. Egalitarianism, appealed to in a limited fashion and always in service to the biblical model of ministry, does serve as a reminder to analyze whether a criteria and limitation we have come to expect is actually inherent to the role, or has been artificially placed there by mankind. It points us back to the actual definition of the role, and the will of its Definer, as the sole arbiter on whether or not a given person can serve in that role. Allow me to draw this out in an example.
A well-crafted and powerful sermon that stirs the hearts of people but brings glory to the speaker is, by definition, an inferior sermon to one delivered through stutters and awkward pauses that points the hearers to behold the glory of God. No one would doubt that the former is a more skilled orator than the latter, and for this reason, pure pragmatism and egalitarianism would put him in the pulpit on those grounds alone. There is no reason not to in that model, and a host of arguments for efficiency to support the move. However, the biblical model of ministry would undeniably demand that place be reserved for the latter, since he more faithfully serves the role with a heart that seeks to glorify God. Egalitarianism in service to the biblical model would remind us that the latter is preferable even if he has not attended seminary and the former speaker has. This does not mean the latter should avoid growing his skill in the craft of sermon delivery, it merely addresses whether or not he should occupy that role at all.
Theocratic Systems | |
A theocracy is, by definition, a term describing a government structure, and therefore not an intuitive element to discuss in a paper like this. However, I am convinced that the theocratic model has done widespread damage to the structure of the modern church, and that we cannot realign with the biblical model of ministry without addressing that damage.
Theocratic systems are those where the seat of government is tied to, and presumably defined by, a religious order. I say ‘presumably’ because I believe an honest review of history would show that the civil system has, in every instance, done some degree of redefining the religious system as part of the act of integrating it. It is this alteration and integration that has crept into our churches as a model of ministry alien to the teachings of scripture. For Christianity, this process began with Constantine and has carried on through the political weight of the Vatican, state churches such as Russian Orthodoxy and the Church of England, and attempted sanctification of secular bodies such as the workings of the Religious Right.
In every instance, the church has adapted itself to the workings of the civil structures it is attempting to command. These structures rely on bureaucratic systems, so the church adopts bureaucratic systems. These structures exist to justify the will of the government as a civil ordinance, so the church begins aligning itself to justify the will of the government as a divine ordinance. With these and other similar changes, the church structure shifts, and over time, we have come to expect that this is the normative, traditional structure for a church to have. To the point where, when I was at a previous Baptist college, I was taught a six-page list of church committees as though they were, every one, a necessary element to any true Christian church!
As we discussed in class, it may not be necessary to actually dismantle every element of the church that has arisen through this process. Some have proven helpful in certain places and times, and some have become so ingrained into our culture that we would sacrifice ability to connect with the culture around us if we abandoned it altogether. But aligning with the biblical model of ministry does require that we are willing to dismantle every theocratic element that has taken root in our church structures. That is, every element of our church structure, even (perhaps especially) those we have taken for granted as inherent to the nature of the church itself, must be open to examination and subject to removal if it is found lacking.
Theocratic systems are those where the seat of government is tied to, and presumably defined by, a religious order. I say ‘presumably’ because I believe an honest review of history would show that the civil system has, in every instance, done some degree of redefining the religious system as part of the act of integrating it. It is this alteration and integration that has crept into our churches as a model of ministry alien to the teachings of scripture. For Christianity, this process began with Constantine and has carried on through the political weight of the Vatican, state churches such as Russian Orthodoxy and the Church of England, and attempted sanctification of secular bodies such as the workings of the Religious Right.
In every instance, the church has adapted itself to the workings of the civil structures it is attempting to command. These structures rely on bureaucratic systems, so the church adopts bureaucratic systems. These structures exist to justify the will of the government as a civil ordinance, so the church begins aligning itself to justify the will of the government as a divine ordinance. With these and other similar changes, the church structure shifts, and over time, we have come to expect that this is the normative, traditional structure for a church to have. To the point where, when I was at a previous Baptist college, I was taught a six-page list of church committees as though they were, every one, a necessary element to any true Christian church!
As we discussed in class, it may not be necessary to actually dismantle every element of the church that has arisen through this process. Some have proven helpful in certain places and times, and some have become so ingrained into our culture that we would sacrifice ability to connect with the culture around us if we abandoned it altogether. But aligning with the biblical model of ministry does require that we are willing to dismantle every theocratic element that has taken root in our church structures. That is, every element of our church structure, even (perhaps especially) those we have taken for granted as inherent to the nature of the church itself, must be open to examination and subject to removal if it is found lacking.
A Biblical Model | |
The standard by which these structures are to be examined is that which has arisen through the process of this paper. Every element of our church structure, every line in the liturgy, every node on the organizational chart, every title, every piece of lingo, every expectation and requirement, every single aspect of our idea of the church must be held to a standard that looks to God. We must be willing to ask if this piece is ordained by God, whether it serves or detracts from His mission, whether it helps or hinders our growth in Him, whether it glorifies Him or ourselves, whether it is inherent to the roles God has ordained or attempts to redefine the roles to serve our ends, whether it maintains the unity of the church community and the family structures, and whether it is something that is actually necessary or something to which we have grown accustomed. The biblical model of ministry, then, is one in which we operate in service to God, for His glory, aimed at His mission, serving in the roles He has defined as He has defined them, without corruption from alternative goals.
Ultimately, all of these questions come down to one core: is this element of our ministry being done in service to God by His ordinance, or in service to anything else and/or by any other standard? In order to operate within the biblical model of ministry, we must be willing to take anything—no matter how important to us—that falls into the latter category, redeem what can be redeemed, and throw out whatever cannot.
Ultimately, all of these questions come down to one core: is this element of our ministry being done in service to God by His ordinance, or in service to anything else and/or by any other standard? In order to operate within the biblical model of ministry, we must be willing to take anything—no matter how important to us—that falls into the latter category, redeem what can be redeemed, and throw out whatever cannot.
1 Or in rebellion against those structures, as is the case for those who are not in Christ.
2 A proper understanding of how these roles are to be filled and what they are to do is necessary for the application of this philosophy, however—in fact, I would argue they exist in scripture specifically as direct application of it—and while this is a fact that warrants mention, it does not change the fundamental claims of this paper.
3 Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of the Scripture and the Social Sciences (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1980), 134.
2 A proper understanding of how these roles are to be filled and what they are to do is necessary for the application of this philosophy, however—in fact, I would argue they exist in scripture specifically as direct application of it—and while this is a fact that warrants mention, it does not change the fundamental claims of this paper.
3 Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of the Scripture and the Social Sciences (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1980), 134.
The reason my blog is called "The Worst Baptist" is because of the reception I have had in many Baptist spaces to some of my views, mostly on matters of application. I disagree broadly with Evangelical trends concerning political matters, I'm still a bit more Charismatic than many Baptists who don't have a background in Pentecostalism (and some that do), and I have an anti-authority streak you could land a plane on. These, and other (often related) matters, put me at odds with my Baptist brethren, and have raised suspicions about my true affiliations more than once. So the name of the blog is kind of a joking acknowledgement of that. I don't actually believe I'm the worst Baptist, I am simply comfortable knowing that there are those who would view me as certainly among the worst of the Baptists.
But the fact remains that, regardless of how good or bad I am at being a Baptist, I am a Baptist. And part of the reason I ended up among the Baptists in the first place is that I affirm the Baptist view of baptism. Which doesn't take very long to say, certainly not long enough for its own blog post. But I was asked a little while back by a Lutheran friend to explain the Baptist view of baptism, so I'm going to take this opportunity to do so.
But the fact remains that, regardless of how good or bad I am at being a Baptist, I am a Baptist. And part of the reason I ended up among the Baptists in the first place is that I affirm the Baptist view of baptism. Which doesn't take very long to say, certainly not long enough for its own blog post. But I was asked a little while back by a Lutheran friend to explain the Baptist view of baptism, so I'm going to take this opportunity to do so.
Mode | |
Baptists believe that baptism is done by immersion. That is, if you have not been dunked into the water and then brought back out of it, whatever else happened, you haven't been baptized. Now, this was not always the case; the first Baptists performed baptism the same way everyone else did at the time, by pouring water over the subject. This was something that had to be worked out, but if we're honest, it's one of the simplest aspects of our beliefs about baptism to explain: the word "baptize" most literally means "immerse."
Photo by Joel Mott on Unsplash. Used with permission. The English word baptize is just a transliteration of the Greek word βαπτιζω (baptizo), which means to immerse and wash. It is only used in the New Testament to signify a ritual immersion, so it may have taken on a certain connotation in the culture of first century Palestine, but even under these conditions the actual meaning of the word always found its root in immersion. The early church took an existing practice of ceremonial immersion and saw in it a picture of redemption and applied it as such. As far as we are concerned, the Baptist practice of baptism by immersion is little more than a return to this practice.
That is not to say there isn't some degree of wiggle room here. Technically speaking, one of the possible meanings for βαπτιζω is washing, and washing doesn't technically always include immersion. Nor does every form of Jewish ceremonial washing include immersion, at least not of the whole person; it is possible that the practice being described in scripture was more like non-immersive methods of ceremonial washing. However, given that it was not the only word used for washing, and that it is primarily used for immersion and has clear ties to βαπτω (bapto), which means to dip, I maintain the historical Baptist position that the scriptures which use the term are most easily read as involving immersion.
As will be discussed later, the Didache (the earliest known non-Bible writing of Christian teaching) also discusses baptism. In this instance, it demands immersion (in running water), and allows for the pouring of water over the head of the baptized only in the instance where absolutely no better method can be performed (1). It is not only the wording of scripture then, but also the practice of the early church, that baptism done properly relied on immersion or the closest one could come to immersion.
The result of this is that I, as a Baptist, not only insist on practicing baptism by immersion, but cannot accept a baptism delivered by another means. Baptist churches generally have a requirement that a person be baptized in order to be accepted as a member of the church; if someone is joining a Baptist church and points to their being sprinkled as a baby, I and the bulk of Baptists hold that they have not met that requirement and must be baptized. This isn't strictly because of mode, however. It also comes back to whether or not what was administered to them was even theirs to receive.
That is not to say there isn't some degree of wiggle room here. Technically speaking, one of the possible meanings for βαπτιζω is washing, and washing doesn't technically always include immersion. Nor does every form of Jewish ceremonial washing include immersion, at least not of the whole person; it is possible that the practice being described in scripture was more like non-immersive methods of ceremonial washing. However, given that it was not the only word used for washing, and that it is primarily used for immersion and has clear ties to βαπτω (bapto), which means to dip, I maintain the historical Baptist position that the scriptures which use the term are most easily read as involving immersion.
As will be discussed later, the Didache (the earliest known non-Bible writing of Christian teaching) also discusses baptism. In this instance, it demands immersion (in running water), and allows for the pouring of water over the head of the baptized only in the instance where absolutely no better method can be performed (1). It is not only the wording of scripture then, but also the practice of the early church, that baptism done properly relied on immersion or the closest one could come to immersion.
The result of this is that I, as a Baptist, not only insist on practicing baptism by immersion, but cannot accept a baptism delivered by another means. Baptist churches generally have a requirement that a person be baptized in order to be accepted as a member of the church; if someone is joining a Baptist church and points to their being sprinkled as a baby, I and the bulk of Baptists hold that they have not met that requirement and must be baptized. This isn't strictly because of mode, however. It also comes back to whether or not what was administered to them was even theirs to receive.
Recipients | |
Baptists believe that baptism should be reserved only for those who have made a confession of faith. As I've discussed before, this is related to our belief that the covenant community only includes those who have been redeemed, that is, those who have saving faith in Christ.
Ultimately, what this comes down to is the nature of the new covenant in Christ. You see, it is generally agreed upon by the various denominations within Christianity that baptism is a sign of entry into the covenant community of Christ (some hold it as more than a sign, but none hold it as not at least a sign; that is, they may hold it as a sign and as something greater, but it is always a sign, and as a sign it is always a sign of entry into the community). Therefore, the question of who gets baptized and who doesn't, and when baptism should be applied, ultimately comes down to the question of who is in the covenant community and when they enter it. Baptism should be applied to a person who is entering the covenant community at the time when they enter; defining one category will inherently define the other. The Baptist (and Baptist-adjacent) view is that the covenant community is composed only of those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ; there are other views which hold a different view of who belongs to the covenant community, and therefore who receives baptism.
Now, in my last post I argued for a definition for the church that is incompatible with a view that anyone not yet saved is part of the covenant community, but I want to lean a bit more into how that plays out here. Paul did baptize people into bodies that were not yet churches, see for instance the story of Philippi in Acts 16. Here, Lydia and her household are baptized on their reception of the gospel, and the jailer and his household are baptized on conversion, but the body was still not yet a church when Paul left the city. Which would suggest that the local church and the covenant community are not perfect synonyms, and usually the language used is that baptism is part of entry into the church. But I have used the phrasing 'covenant community' on purpose in the paragraph above; that is, we baptize into the body of Christ, of which the local church is an expression. Essentially, you can have a covenant community where there are believers gathered for the advance of the gospel in service to Christ, but it is not a church until it reaches a certain level of establishment. The definition of 'church' is a refinement of the definition of a 'covenant community,' in which all churches are covenant communities but not all covenant communities are churches. But the fact remains that the covenant community must be composed of those who are actually within the covenant.
Astute readers will note that I cited a passage often used to argue for the baptism of infants. The argument essentially goes that, since whole households were baptized, we can reasonably assume children were included, and therefore Paul baptized children. But assumptions cannot guide us here. The fact is that households are not ever guaranteed to have children in them, even in our modern day, and especially then. At the time of writing the Acts accounts, the concept of a household included everyone who participated in the life of the home, which included extended family and servants. Note also that the description of baptizing whole households happens in the context of people who were in certain stations of society. These are people like a rich woman, a jailer who was tasked with significant responsibility, a centurion (encountered by Peter) with a body of servants actively discussed in the text. Their households absolutely did include more than merely themselves and a possible spouse, but there is no reason to believe that this must have included children. There were, in all cases, enough people in the home to use a broad term such as 'household' without the addition of infants. We cannot, therefore, safely assume there were children being baptized in those instances, and the rest of the New Testament offers no support for the baptism of children. Even the statement that "the promise is for you and your children," as is sometimes cited by pedobaptists, is a statement of scope and perpetuity rather than a statement of infants as members of the body, as evidenced by the rest of the statement, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." (Acts 2:38-39, NASB). That is, the promise being tied to baptism here is for those who are brought to Christ, regardless of generation or location.
Where the Bible offers no direct support for the baptism of infants, it does consistently address churches as places where the members are assumed to be in Christ. In every letter of the New Testament, the recipients are held to the standard that they have already accepted the gospel of Christ, and at no point is there discussion of people being part of the church but not saved by Christ, unless it is an urging to remove them from the church. Further, the teachings of the early church did not align with the idea of infant baptism. Consider the way baptism is described in the Didache, where baptism happens "after first explaining all these points," that is, the preceding body of the Didache, and the command to "require the candidate to fast one or two days previously"(2). Both elements cited here operate only within an environment where the one being baptized has some ability to receive and respond to instruction.
All told, then, the Bible contains no stated baptism of infants and has no knowledge of a definition of the church which includes those not yet saved, and the known practices of the early church required a candidate for baptism to be capable of receiving instruction and following that instruction. "But," one may argue, "what about Jesus' command not to forbid the children from coming to Him?" And to this I would state simply that we don't. We point our children to Christ, we encourage them to rely on Him for salvation and rejoice in Him for His goodness, and we baptize children as soon as they make a confession of faith. The only way to read this behavior as keeping children from Christ is to operate on the understanding that baptism itself carries the power to bring people to Christ.
Ultimately, what this comes down to is the nature of the new covenant in Christ. You see, it is generally agreed upon by the various denominations within Christianity that baptism is a sign of entry into the covenant community of Christ (some hold it as more than a sign, but none hold it as not at least a sign; that is, they may hold it as a sign and as something greater, but it is always a sign, and as a sign it is always a sign of entry into the community). Therefore, the question of who gets baptized and who doesn't, and when baptism should be applied, ultimately comes down to the question of who is in the covenant community and when they enter it. Baptism should be applied to a person who is entering the covenant community at the time when they enter; defining one category will inherently define the other. The Baptist (and Baptist-adjacent) view is that the covenant community is composed only of those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ; there are other views which hold a different view of who belongs to the covenant community, and therefore who receives baptism.
Now, in my last post I argued for a definition for the church that is incompatible with a view that anyone not yet saved is part of the covenant community, but I want to lean a bit more into how that plays out here. Paul did baptize people into bodies that were not yet churches, see for instance the story of Philippi in Acts 16. Here, Lydia and her household are baptized on their reception of the gospel, and the jailer and his household are baptized on conversion, but the body was still not yet a church when Paul left the city. Which would suggest that the local church and the covenant community are not perfect synonyms, and usually the language used is that baptism is part of entry into the church. But I have used the phrasing 'covenant community' on purpose in the paragraph above; that is, we baptize into the body of Christ, of which the local church is an expression. Essentially, you can have a covenant community where there are believers gathered for the advance of the gospel in service to Christ, but it is not a church until it reaches a certain level of establishment. The definition of 'church' is a refinement of the definition of a 'covenant community,' in which all churches are covenant communities but not all covenant communities are churches. But the fact remains that the covenant community must be composed of those who are actually within the covenant.
Astute readers will note that I cited a passage often used to argue for the baptism of infants. The argument essentially goes that, since whole households were baptized, we can reasonably assume children were included, and therefore Paul baptized children. But assumptions cannot guide us here. The fact is that households are not ever guaranteed to have children in them, even in our modern day, and especially then. At the time of writing the Acts accounts, the concept of a household included everyone who participated in the life of the home, which included extended family and servants. Note also that the description of baptizing whole households happens in the context of people who were in certain stations of society. These are people like a rich woman, a jailer who was tasked with significant responsibility, a centurion (encountered by Peter) with a body of servants actively discussed in the text. Their households absolutely did include more than merely themselves and a possible spouse, but there is no reason to believe that this must have included children. There were, in all cases, enough people in the home to use a broad term such as 'household' without the addition of infants. We cannot, therefore, safely assume there were children being baptized in those instances, and the rest of the New Testament offers no support for the baptism of children. Even the statement that "the promise is for you and your children," as is sometimes cited by pedobaptists, is a statement of scope and perpetuity rather than a statement of infants as members of the body, as evidenced by the rest of the statement, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." (Acts 2:38-39, NASB). That is, the promise being tied to baptism here is for those who are brought to Christ, regardless of generation or location.
Where the Bible offers no direct support for the baptism of infants, it does consistently address churches as places where the members are assumed to be in Christ. In every letter of the New Testament, the recipients are held to the standard that they have already accepted the gospel of Christ, and at no point is there discussion of people being part of the church but not saved by Christ, unless it is an urging to remove them from the church. Further, the teachings of the early church did not align with the idea of infant baptism. Consider the way baptism is described in the Didache, where baptism happens "after first explaining all these points," that is, the preceding body of the Didache, and the command to "require the candidate to fast one or two days previously"(2). Both elements cited here operate only within an environment where the one being baptized has some ability to receive and respond to instruction.
All told, then, the Bible contains no stated baptism of infants and has no knowledge of a definition of the church which includes those not yet saved, and the known practices of the early church required a candidate for baptism to be capable of receiving instruction and following that instruction. "But," one may argue, "what about Jesus' command not to forbid the children from coming to Him?" And to this I would state simply that we don't. We point our children to Christ, we encourage them to rely on Him for salvation and rejoice in Him for His goodness, and we baptize children as soon as they make a confession of faith. The only way to read this behavior as keeping children from Christ is to operate on the understanding that baptism itself carries the power to bring people to Christ.
Saving Waters | |
In every instance of baptism in scripture, it occurs after the person has repented. This should, itself, be sufficient evidence that baptism affirms salvation but does not confer it, except for one statement in the Bible that requires a moment of discussion. This is the statement in 1 Peter 3:21 that "baptism now saves you." Let us begin by looking at the statement in context.
For Christ also died for sins once for all, [the] just for [the] unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits [now] in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through [the] water. Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you--not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience--through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him.
1 Peter 3:18-22 (NASB)
This is part of a lengthier section, which continues both before and after the quoted section, in which Peter is urging his readers to proper conduct in service to Christ, and the quoted verses immediately follow the example of Christ suffering for righteousness rather than for doing evil. This statement, then, exists within the argument for Christian living, and was written to support that call. The point here is the example of Christ and how that relates to our lives. So why does Peter state the saving power of baptism?
In short, he doesn't. Note the 'corresponding to that" bit in verse 21; he is making a direct connection with the thing he has just said, which was the aside about Noah. That is, he is saying that baptism saves you in the same way Noah was saved in the days of the flood. But Noah was not saved by the waters, nor by the passing through the waters, but by that which brought him safely through the water. The baptism itself, as Peter describes it, is an appeal to God, and it is the work of Christ bringing us safely through the waters of judgment that saves us. The claim that this supports baptism as itself saving is tenuous; it is, I would argue, more natural to the context to read this statement as a reminder of our salvation which was bought by Christ and displayed in baptism as we consider the call to Christian conduct.
Taken all together, then, I can find no argument for a baptism that does not align with Baptist teaching. Baptism is by immersion, administered to those who have already been saved, as a declaration of that grace rather than a delivery of said grace.
In short, he doesn't. Note the 'corresponding to that" bit in verse 21; he is making a direct connection with the thing he has just said, which was the aside about Noah. That is, he is saying that baptism saves you in the same way Noah was saved in the days of the flood. But Noah was not saved by the waters, nor by the passing through the waters, but by that which brought him safely through the water. The baptism itself, as Peter describes it, is an appeal to God, and it is the work of Christ bringing us safely through the waters of judgment that saves us. The claim that this supports baptism as itself saving is tenuous; it is, I would argue, more natural to the context to read this statement as a reminder of our salvation which was bought by Christ and displayed in baptism as we consider the call to Christian conduct.
Taken all together, then, I can find no argument for a baptism that does not align with Baptist teaching. Baptism is by immersion, administered to those who have already been saved, as a declaration of that grace rather than a delivery of said grace.
- Quasten, Johannes, and Joseph Plume, eds. “The Didache.” In 6. The Didache, translated by James A Kleist, 15–25. Ancient Christian Writers. Mahwah, NJ: The Newman Press, 1948. 17.
- Ibid.
Note: The following is adapted from a paper I wrote as part of my education through the Antioch School. The objective of the assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed a biblical understanding of Paul’s definition of a local church, including how a gathering of believers becomes a local church."
The title of ‘church’ is not a concept taken lightly by Paul, or for that matter by his student Luke in his description of church establishment in Acts. There are, in fact, only three ways in which either author ever uses the term we translate as ‘church’ to describe a body of believers as an institutional reality: conceptually, as the universal church, and as established local churches. Each of these three tell us something about the Pauline definition for the church, but for our purposes in this article the most attention will be paid to the third.
The Conceptual Church | |
There are few instances of this usage, but it bears mention because of how it impacts our understanding of Paul’s view of local churches. Some key examples come from 1 Timothy, in which Paul uses some form of ἐκκλησία three times1, two of which are relevant here. These are 3:5 and 5:16, in which Paul is describing the behavior of individuals and how that behavior impacts a church, rather than highlighting a specific existing church. This is, after all, what a conceptual usage of ‘church’ means: that the author is using the term ‘church’ in reference to a theoretical church body that is being used as an example, rather than discussing an actual church that exists at the time of the writing. In the case of 1 Timothy, the theoretical church could best be described as the church that Timothy was actively establishing in Ephesus, a future restored state of the church in Ephesus which was, at that time, dealing with some significant theological and practical issues.
But the point here is that, although the believers in Ephesus had already gone through the establishment process, they were now entertaining false theology and practices that necessitated a Pauline delegate to put them back on track and establish the proper order Paul had entrusted to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. In its present state, Paul never describes the body in Ephesus as a church in his letters to Timothy2; but this will be explored more later. Paul is using the term for a condition in which the church is operating well, but he isn’t using it for the body at that time. He has a goal in mind for Ephesus to reach, and it is the body having achieved that place that he refers to as a church. This indicates some awareness that a local body must be at a certain level of maturity, or at least have certain traits in place, in order to be properly called a church; but it is an incomplete argument if left to stand on this point alone.
But the point here is that, although the believers in Ephesus had already gone through the establishment process, they were now entertaining false theology and practices that necessitated a Pauline delegate to put them back on track and establish the proper order Paul had entrusted to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. In its present state, Paul never describes the body in Ephesus as a church in his letters to Timothy2; but this will be explored more later. Paul is using the term for a condition in which the church is operating well, but he isn’t using it for the body at that time. He has a goal in mind for Ephesus to reach, and it is the body having achieved that place that he refers to as a church. This indicates some awareness that a local body must be at a certain level of maturity, or at least have certain traits in place, in order to be properly called a church; but it is an incomplete argument if left to stand on this point alone.
The Church Universal | |
The uses of ἐκκλησία in Ephesians, on the other hand, are exclusively about the church as a non-local body. He is describing the church as the general body of Christ in the world, and then applying that image to his expectations for the local church in Ephesus. In 1:22 and 5:23 the church is the body over which Christ is the head; in 3:10, 3:21, 5:24, and 5:32 the church is the display of Christ’s wisdom, glory, and authority in the world; and in 5:25, 5:27, and 5:29 the church is the body for which Christ gives of Himself.
These uses do not show Paul directly defining the local church, but they do show him applying the expectations of the universal church to the local church. From these uses, then, we learn that Paul expected the local church to follow Christ as its head, display Christ’s wisdom, glory, and authority in the world, and to operate with the knowledge that Christ has purchased it with His blood. These are broad ideas, but the application of them defines the parameters for Paul’s expectation of local churches. A local church is not part of the universal church, and therefore not a church at all, if it doesn’t apply these broad principles to its structure and life.
These uses do not show Paul directly defining the local church, but they do show him applying the expectations of the universal church to the local church. From these uses, then, we learn that Paul expected the local church to follow Christ as its head, display Christ’s wisdom, glory, and authority in the world, and to operate with the knowledge that Christ has purchased it with His blood. These are broad ideas, but the application of them defines the parameters for Paul’s expectation of local churches. A local church is not part of the universal church, and therefore not a church at all, if it doesn’t apply these broad principles to its structure and life.
The Established Local Church | |
As noted above concerning 1 Timothy, Paul avoids calling the church in Ephesus a church in the letter. He continues that trend throughout his letters; he tells Titus to “appoint elders in every city” in Titus 1:5 (NASB) rather than in every church, he never refers to the church in Rome as a church in their epistle but does refer to two other established churches (and, in Romans 16:23, probably the universal church) as such. As noted above, he never uses the term ‘church’ to describe the local church to which he is writing in Ephesians. But he does refer to other churches, such as those at Corinth, Colossae, Philippi, and Thessalonika, as churches within their epistles. Likewise, in Luke’s descriptions in Acts, a church is only ever called a church after it has been established. The closest thing to an exception in Acts is 14:23, when Luke suddenly switches from calling the bodies in Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch (Pisidia) as ‘disciples’ to ‘churches’ in the same sentence in which he states that Paul had appointed elders there.
This is the crux, then. Paul would leave cities prematurely for a small assortment of reasons, but he never leaves a church when he does so. He gathers disciples early, but only after ensuring they have the word and mission in hand and have elders over them does he call them a church. That is, there is a clear point at which a group of gathered believers transitions from being a collection of disciples to being a church, and that point always has certain traits in place. This runs the danger of being an argument from silence, however, so let’s shift gears and look at it from a different angle.
This is, after all, the general idea Schaeffer is driving toward in “Form and Freedom in the Church” as presented in our reading. Schaeffer lists eight norms that must define a local church in order to be a church, and while he seems to argue for norms that are unnecessary within his list, the foundation of the list is solid: that there are criteria Paul used to determine the churchness of a body, if you will, and that we should be using the same criteria in our understanding of the church today.
The points that Schaeffer hits on well cannot be adequately discussed without separating them from those he does not, so allow a brief aside for that division to be drawn. Schaeffer’s eight norms are that a church is made up of Christians, that they meet together in a special way on the first day of the week, that there are elders responsible for leading the church, that there are deacons responsible for the material aspects of the church, that the church takes discipline seriously, that there are specific qualifications for elders and deacons, that there is “a place for form on a wider basis than the local church,3” and that baptism and the Lord’s supper are practiced. We can see the validity of each of these by comparing them to the text and to the broad principles laid out in the discussion of the Universal Church above. That the church is composed of Christians is at best alluded to in scripture, and indeed Schaeffer himself does not point to any specific passage as making that point, but it is a clear requirement in light of the understanding that the church operates with Christ as the head and that the church is the body for which Christ died; that is, in order for the local church to meet those criteria inherited from the universal church, the members of the local church must be Christians. There is no such logical connection, however, between the universal church criteria and Schaeffer’s statement that the church must meet in a special way on the first day of the week, and even the two passages he presents as supporting this claim do not actually speak to that claim at all; therefore this criteria will not be treated as valid here.
Three of his criteria can be composed into one assertion without losing any of its power of assessment. That the church has elders, that the church has deacons, and that there are specific requirements for those offices are all essentially pointing to one claim: that the church is only a church if it has leadership in place in accordance with the Bible’s definitions for elders and deacons. This leads directly to the claim that the church must take discipline seriously, as Paul urges churches multiple times in his epistles and which must be in place for the leadership so established to have any real authority in the operations of the church. What remains are the sacraments, which are generally assumed to be happening by Paul (although he occasionally sees need to clarify how they are to be happening) but draw directly from the giving of Christ for the body and the display of the glory of Christ, without even exploring the fact that Christ commanded them and they therefore point to His headship and authority; and the place for form beyond the local church. This one, we must be careful about. Applied in a way that says churches must be in network would rule out the church in Jerusalem as a true church until other churches were founded, but ignored entirely would rule out the discussion of the universal church as a means of assessment entirely. The Bible does not handle the issue in either manner, so neither should we. Therefore it will stay, but will not be discussed except to say that, for our purposes here, it has been sufficiently addressed in the section on the universal church.
The points that remain, then, are that the church is a collection of Christians that administers the sacraments as handed down by Christ under the authority of Biblically-defined leaders with the power to discipline members. By what criteria do the leaders discipline members? By the advancement of the gospel, the headship of Christ, the display of the glory of Christ, and to the standard of a body for which Christ gave Himself to establish a spotless bride. And indeed, Paul never describes a church as a church unless he knows for certain that it meets this definition. Ephesus was called a church when it did so, but was not called a church when it was no longer displaying the glory of Christ and had adopted teachings that showed them to be outside of the headship of Christ. Galatians and Romans, two epistles written to ensure the church had the basic teachings of Christianity down to bodies that may not have had elders in place to guide and discipline based on those teachings, do not refer to those bodies as churches. Titus was sent to cities, and not to churches, to appoint elders.
In every instance in which Paul or Luke describe a body as a church, it is an established church; that is, it is a church that meets the definition from the previous paragraph. In every place where Paul worked, he worked toward the aim of bringing a group of disciples to the place where they met that definition, even returning to hostile territory to ensure he didn’t leave the disciples with an incomplete job. Even when a great opportunity to establish a new church came his way, he turned aside from that opportunity to focus on finishing the work of establishment elsewhere. Paul sends Titus to finish work he could not finish himself, out of a desire to see that the work was fully and properly finished. Paul never considered his work complete in a place until a church was established by the criteria thus far described; and neither should we. If this is the goal Paul had in establishing churches, if the definition of a completed work was a body that could be rightly called a church because it was composed of Christians practicing the sacraments under the authority of Biblically-defined leaders with power to discipline the body under the headship of Christ and for His glory, then we cannot bandy the word around for anything less. This is Paul’s definition of an established local church, and it must also be ours.
This is the crux, then. Paul would leave cities prematurely for a small assortment of reasons, but he never leaves a church when he does so. He gathers disciples early, but only after ensuring they have the word and mission in hand and have elders over them does he call them a church. That is, there is a clear point at which a group of gathered believers transitions from being a collection of disciples to being a church, and that point always has certain traits in place. This runs the danger of being an argument from silence, however, so let’s shift gears and look at it from a different angle.
This is, after all, the general idea Schaeffer is driving toward in “Form and Freedom in the Church” as presented in our reading. Schaeffer lists eight norms that must define a local church in order to be a church, and while he seems to argue for norms that are unnecessary within his list, the foundation of the list is solid: that there are criteria Paul used to determine the churchness of a body, if you will, and that we should be using the same criteria in our understanding of the church today.
The points that Schaeffer hits on well cannot be adequately discussed without separating them from those he does not, so allow a brief aside for that division to be drawn. Schaeffer’s eight norms are that a church is made up of Christians, that they meet together in a special way on the first day of the week, that there are elders responsible for leading the church, that there are deacons responsible for the material aspects of the church, that the church takes discipline seriously, that there are specific qualifications for elders and deacons, that there is “a place for form on a wider basis than the local church,3” and that baptism and the Lord’s supper are practiced. We can see the validity of each of these by comparing them to the text and to the broad principles laid out in the discussion of the Universal Church above. That the church is composed of Christians is at best alluded to in scripture, and indeed Schaeffer himself does not point to any specific passage as making that point, but it is a clear requirement in light of the understanding that the church operates with Christ as the head and that the church is the body for which Christ died; that is, in order for the local church to meet those criteria inherited from the universal church, the members of the local church must be Christians. There is no such logical connection, however, between the universal church criteria and Schaeffer’s statement that the church must meet in a special way on the first day of the week, and even the two passages he presents as supporting this claim do not actually speak to that claim at all; therefore this criteria will not be treated as valid here.
Three of his criteria can be composed into one assertion without losing any of its power of assessment. That the church has elders, that the church has deacons, and that there are specific requirements for those offices are all essentially pointing to one claim: that the church is only a church if it has leadership in place in accordance with the Bible’s definitions for elders and deacons. This leads directly to the claim that the church must take discipline seriously, as Paul urges churches multiple times in his epistles and which must be in place for the leadership so established to have any real authority in the operations of the church. What remains are the sacraments, which are generally assumed to be happening by Paul (although he occasionally sees need to clarify how they are to be happening) but draw directly from the giving of Christ for the body and the display of the glory of Christ, without even exploring the fact that Christ commanded them and they therefore point to His headship and authority; and the place for form beyond the local church. This one, we must be careful about. Applied in a way that says churches must be in network would rule out the church in Jerusalem as a true church until other churches were founded, but ignored entirely would rule out the discussion of the universal church as a means of assessment entirely. The Bible does not handle the issue in either manner, so neither should we. Therefore it will stay, but will not be discussed except to say that, for our purposes here, it has been sufficiently addressed in the section on the universal church.
The points that remain, then, are that the church is a collection of Christians that administers the sacraments as handed down by Christ under the authority of Biblically-defined leaders with the power to discipline members. By what criteria do the leaders discipline members? By the advancement of the gospel, the headship of Christ, the display of the glory of Christ, and to the standard of a body for which Christ gave Himself to establish a spotless bride. And indeed, Paul never describes a church as a church unless he knows for certain that it meets this definition. Ephesus was called a church when it did so, but was not called a church when it was no longer displaying the glory of Christ and had adopted teachings that showed them to be outside of the headship of Christ. Galatians and Romans, two epistles written to ensure the church had the basic teachings of Christianity down to bodies that may not have had elders in place to guide and discipline based on those teachings, do not refer to those bodies as churches. Titus was sent to cities, and not to churches, to appoint elders.
In every instance in which Paul or Luke describe a body as a church, it is an established church; that is, it is a church that meets the definition from the previous paragraph. In every place where Paul worked, he worked toward the aim of bringing a group of disciples to the place where they met that definition, even returning to hostile territory to ensure he didn’t leave the disciples with an incomplete job. Even when a great opportunity to establish a new church came his way, he turned aside from that opportunity to focus on finishing the work of establishment elsewhere. Paul sends Titus to finish work he could not finish himself, out of a desire to see that the work was fully and properly finished. Paul never considered his work complete in a place until a church was established by the criteria thus far described; and neither should we. If this is the goal Paul had in establishing churches, if the definition of a completed work was a body that could be rightly called a church because it was composed of Christians practicing the sacraments under the authority of Biblically-defined leaders with power to discipline the body under the headship of Christ and for His glory, then we cannot bandy the word around for anything less. This is Paul’s definition of an established local church, and it must also be ours.
1A fourth use of ‘church’ is added in some modern translations, in 3:7, which could also be argued as a conceptual usage. I will not participate in that argument at this time, however, since Paul didn’t use or avoid the term in that phrase and therefore it does not help us much with Paul’s intended use of the term.
2Or, indeed, in his letter to the Ephesians themselves.
3Page 66
2Or, indeed, in his letter to the Ephesians themselves.
3Page 66
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Matthew 5:9 (NASB)
I don't remember what my experience of Pentecost is for most years. Between church planting activities and moving fairly often for my entire adult life, sometimes I'm in a church that acknowledges it and sometimes I'm not. But Pentecost 2015 stands out in my memory, because I distinctly remember it being the same weekend as Memorial Day. I had, at that point, only really considered myself to hold a view called Christian Nonviolence for a matter of months, so it was still a fairly raw concept in my head. The process had been going on for some time; I grew up in an environment steeped in Just War Theory, and had taken to heart that a just government could take lives if they did so in a just manner and for a just cause. But as I grew older and examined the question more carefully, I found myself in a sort of limbo space, in which I believed that the claims of Just War Theory were correct (that is, a just government could indeed kill people in a just manner for a just cause), but I also believed it was a practical impossibility as there were no truly just governments. This put me in a position where I conceptually believed in justified killing, but had to oppose it in every practical application. Really, by the time I read a case for Christian Nonviolence, I was primed to receive that case, if only to ease this tension. I found, however, that it did much more good for me than that.
And as I was considering what this view was all about and how it applied to the world today, I found myself sitting in a church service where we were splitting time between honoring the work of God in sending His people to reconcile His enemies to Himself, and honoring those Americans we send to kill the enemies of our nation. It seemed to me that we couldn't view both as equally valid pursuits. If we truly believe we are in the business of calling the enemies of God to restoration, how can we believe it a suitable exercise to also celebrate robbing people of their chance at restoration for something so minor as opposing a mortal nation? The problem in trying to frame this question, I've since found, is that there's a lack of understanding for what Christian Nonviolence actually is and how these things relate to one another.
And as I was considering what this view was all about and how it applied to the world today, I found myself sitting in a church service where we were splitting time between honoring the work of God in sending His people to reconcile His enemies to Himself, and honoring those Americans we send to kill the enemies of our nation. It seemed to me that we couldn't view both as equally valid pursuits. If we truly believe we are in the business of calling the enemies of God to restoration, how can we believe it a suitable exercise to also celebrate robbing people of their chance at restoration for something so minor as opposing a mortal nation? The problem in trying to frame this question, I've since found, is that there's a lack of understanding for what Christian Nonviolence actually is and how these things relate to one another.
Photo by Duncan Kidd on Unsplash
Not A Pacifist | |
I was sitting in my brother's office while he finished writing that week's sermon when he asked me to explain this nonviolence thing I was on about. He wanted to know how I could justify pacifism when the Bible clearly includes God carrying out violence and calling His people to do the same. It can't possibly be a sin if God does it, right? And if I'm saying it's wrong, it must be a sin?
"I'm not a pacifist," I said, for the first time. It has since become something of a refrain in my life, as I mostly circulate in spaces where I find myself needing to explain the concept fairly often. I told him that I don't believe killing is a sin, necessarily, just that we aren't allowed to do it. I define the difference as this:
Pacifism is the belief that violence, or at least violence against people, is inherently evil. The reasoning may vary on this. Perhaps it comes from a belief that all life is sacred, or the belief that humans are the highest known moral beings and therefore acts against us are naturally evil, or the inalienable right to life. Maybe it stems from an idea that violence against an image-bearer of God is in some way violence against God. Whatever the reasoning, the basic idea is that violence is evil simply because it is violent. That there is no acceptable or redeemable use for violence.
Christian Nonviolence is the belief that Christians, specifically, are not given license to endorse or participate in the taking of human lives for any reason. That is, it isn't a question of sin, but a question of mission. As Christians, we are tasked with serving in the mission of reconciliation, and we know that no one gets a chance at reconciliation after death. To look at someone you know or suspect is going to Hell, and then send them to the final judgement or encourage someone else to do so, is fundamentally opposed to the mission of offering salvation to them.
As my brother showed, raising a Biblical argument against pacifism is relatively easy. Results may vary, but you don't have to read far into the Bible to find something that seems to contradict it. I submit that Christian Nonviolence is not so easily dismissed; but I must admit there are some basic ideas that need to be understood to see why.
"I'm not a pacifist," I said, for the first time. It has since become something of a refrain in my life, as I mostly circulate in spaces where I find myself needing to explain the concept fairly often. I told him that I don't believe killing is a sin, necessarily, just that we aren't allowed to do it. I define the difference as this:
Pacifism is the belief that violence, or at least violence against people, is inherently evil. The reasoning may vary on this. Perhaps it comes from a belief that all life is sacred, or the belief that humans are the highest known moral beings and therefore acts against us are naturally evil, or the inalienable right to life. Maybe it stems from an idea that violence against an image-bearer of God is in some way violence against God. Whatever the reasoning, the basic idea is that violence is evil simply because it is violent. That there is no acceptable or redeemable use for violence.
Christian Nonviolence is the belief that Christians, specifically, are not given license to endorse or participate in the taking of human lives for any reason. That is, it isn't a question of sin, but a question of mission. As Christians, we are tasked with serving in the mission of reconciliation, and we know that no one gets a chance at reconciliation after death. To look at someone you know or suspect is going to Hell, and then send them to the final judgement or encourage someone else to do so, is fundamentally opposed to the mission of offering salvation to them.
As my brother showed, raising a Biblical argument against pacifism is relatively easy. Results may vary, but you don't have to read far into the Bible to find something that seems to contradict it. I submit that Christian Nonviolence is not so easily dismissed; but I must admit there are some basic ideas that need to be understood to see why.
Fundamentals of Nonviolence | |
1. Christians have no rights
Let's get this one out of the way first: when you submit to Christ, you give Him everything. Christ will not have half measures. It is one thing to recognize that we lay down our lives, our careers, our loved ones, our idols, and all kinds of other things at the foot of the cross; it is quite another to accept that we may not get some of them back. Christ is under no obligation to give us any of the rights our government promises. He is going to put us on the mission He has for us, and will give us everything we need to accomplish it. We can expect no less than that; but we can also ask no more than that.
Let's get this one out of the way first: when you submit to Christ, you give Him everything. Christ will not have half measures. It is one thing to recognize that we lay down our lives, our careers, our loved ones, our idols, and all kinds of other things at the foot of the cross; it is quite another to accept that we may not get some of them back. Christ is under no obligation to give us any of the rights our government promises. He is going to put us on the mission He has for us, and will give us everything we need to accomplish it. We can expect no less than that; but we can also ask no more than that.
But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.
Matthew 5:39-41 (NASB)
Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash Jesus calls us to extraordinary humility. It is not enough to give over what is demanded of us, but we must give over even that which no one has any right to take. Our rights to strike back, to build our identity on things like ethnicity or sexuality, to keep some minimum of worldly possessions, or to give only that labor which is required of us are all thrown out the window. We lay all that we are and all that we have at the feet of Jesus, and that includes any notions about who we ought to be and what we ought to have.
The fact is, Jefferson was wrong to claim that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are God-given rights. It is, of course, good for a government to behave on the understanding that they cannot strip these things from any person or meaningfully hinder them (though few, if any, actually do operate in that way; the United States certainly doesn't), and our call to defend the widow and the orphan (that is, the defenseless, which includes sets of people now that it may not have included at the time) certainly means that we demand a high standard of treatment on their behalf, but from a theological standpoint the claim for ourselves is nonsense. There are only two rights for humans spelled out in scripture as coming by the declaration of God. First, all mankind is born into sin and has only the right to die under the weight of that sin. Second, that "as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13, NASB), and this latter right supersedes the former. If we understand that everything else, including our earthly lives, is a gift rather than an entitlement, we would be far more prepared to experience joy in our trials and sacrifices than we now are.
2. Christians have a Kingdom mindset
Now, there is some dispute about the nature of the Kingdom of God and whether or not it is present on the Earth today. I have a post in the drafts that argues that it is initiated on the Earth and that Christians are already part of it, and I will not attempt to fully recreate that argument here. The shortest possible way to make that argument is that, as baptism and communion and marriage are material images meant to showcase a deeper and current but not-yet-complete reality, so the church is a material image meant to showcase the deeper and current but not-yet-complete reality of the Kingdom. Just as those other images point to something that is already in place and will be fully realized later, the Kingdom is already in place and will be fully realized later. As we enjoy and live out the truth of salvation now while recognizing that the full benefits of salvation are pending, so we enjoy and live out the truth of the Kingdom now while recognizing that the full benefits of the Kingdom are pending. It is necessary to our present topic, however, to say something of what it means to claim that we are already citizens of that Kingdom.
The fact is, Jefferson was wrong to claim that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are God-given rights. It is, of course, good for a government to behave on the understanding that they cannot strip these things from any person or meaningfully hinder them (though few, if any, actually do operate in that way; the United States certainly doesn't), and our call to defend the widow and the orphan (that is, the defenseless, which includes sets of people now that it may not have included at the time) certainly means that we demand a high standard of treatment on their behalf, but from a theological standpoint the claim for ourselves is nonsense. There are only two rights for humans spelled out in scripture as coming by the declaration of God. First, all mankind is born into sin and has only the right to die under the weight of that sin. Second, that "as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13, NASB), and this latter right supersedes the former. If we understand that everything else, including our earthly lives, is a gift rather than an entitlement, we would be far more prepared to experience joy in our trials and sacrifices than we now are.
2. Christians have a Kingdom mindset
Now, there is some dispute about the nature of the Kingdom of God and whether or not it is present on the Earth today. I have a post in the drafts that argues that it is initiated on the Earth and that Christians are already part of it, and I will not attempt to fully recreate that argument here. The shortest possible way to make that argument is that, as baptism and communion and marriage are material images meant to showcase a deeper and current but not-yet-complete reality, so the church is a material image meant to showcase the deeper and current but not-yet-complete reality of the Kingdom. Just as those other images point to something that is already in place and will be fully realized later, the Kingdom is already in place and will be fully realized later. As we enjoy and live out the truth of salvation now while recognizing that the full benefits of salvation are pending, so we enjoy and live out the truth of the Kingdom now while recognizing that the full benefits of the Kingdom are pending. It is necessary to our present topic, however, to say something of what it means to claim that we are already citizens of that Kingdom.
Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm." Therefore Pilate said to Him, "So You are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say [correctly] that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."
John 18:36-37 (NASB)
The belief that we are already citizens of the Kingdom in some way requires the belief that we are to act like citizens of the Kingdom. We are beholden to the dictates of that realm first; no offense against any other body demands more of our wrath than an offense against the Kingdom, and no ideology of this Earth can be elevated over the ideology of the Kingdom. As described by Christ, the Kingdom's issues are not fundamentally resolved through Earthly combat, but through the redemptive work of Christ, who submitted Himself even to death on a cross. This is reflected in the Southern Baptist Convention's doctrinal statement, which includes:
It is the duty of Christians to seek peace with all men on principles of righteousness. In accordance with the spirit and teachings of Christ they should do all in their power to put an end to war.
The true remedy for the war spirit is the gospel of our Lord. The supreme need of the world is the acceptance of His teachings in all the affairs of men and nations, and the practical application of His law of love. Christian people throughout the world should pray for the reign of the Prince of Peace.
Baptist Faith and Message (2000), XVI. "Peace and War"
Note that the idea that the true solution to war is the conversion of all men to the way of Christ, and praying for that result, comes after the statement of taking action. Those who seek to follow the teachings and example of Christ, and desire to see the world do the same, are here recognized as not having the freedom to sit back and say "well, this won't end until hearts are saved," nor are we described as having the freedom to toss up some prayers for a better future and then go about our day.
What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for [their] body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, [being] by itself.
James 2:14-17 (NASB)
Photo by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash We must have a practical involvement in the establishing of peace, and we cannot do that while endorsing or engaging in violence against our fellow man. We cannot live out the life of the Kingdom, whether you believe it already exists or not, without working to make that life a reality, and we absolutely cannot live out the life of the Kingdom while celebrating its exact opposite. The life we now live, in light of our new citizenship in Christ, requires laying down our weapons and being more willing to die than to kill.
3. Christians have a mission focus
I mentioned above that this is a mission issue, and that is really the core of the whole thing. The fact is, we as Christians are called to put the mission of Christ above all other pursuits, even at the cost of our lives. Nothing, no practical consideration, no rights, no threat, no ideal, nothing holds higher sway over our decisions than the mission to which we have been called. This mission is to live out the way of Christ in such a way that we invite others into a saving knowledge of and relationship with Him and together grow ever more as His disciples. As bearers of this mission, we cannot kill any human; we cannot kill those apart from Christ because doing so actively prevents us from calling them to Christ, and we cannot kill those in Christ out of love for His body. No one on this Earth falls beyond these two camps, and both can, in the name of our mission, expect to be safe from the grave in our dealings with them, even when they mean us, or our loved ones, or our nations, harm.
3. Christians have a mission focus
I mentioned above that this is a mission issue, and that is really the core of the whole thing. The fact is, we as Christians are called to put the mission of Christ above all other pursuits, even at the cost of our lives. Nothing, no practical consideration, no rights, no threat, no ideal, nothing holds higher sway over our decisions than the mission to which we have been called. This mission is to live out the way of Christ in such a way that we invite others into a saving knowledge of and relationship with Him and together grow ever more as His disciples. As bearers of this mission, we cannot kill any human; we cannot kill those apart from Christ because doing so actively prevents us from calling them to Christ, and we cannot kill those in Christ out of love for His body. No one on this Earth falls beyond these two camps, and both can, in the name of our mission, expect to be safe from the grave in our dealings with them, even when they mean us, or our loved ones, or our nations, harm.
All this is explicit. The evidence of the following fact is, however, yet more determinative and satisfactory. Some of the arguments which at the present day are brought against the advocates of peace, were then urged against these early Christians; and these arguments are examined and repelled. This indicates investigation and inquiry, and manifests that their belief of the unlawfulness of war was not a vague opinion hastily admitted and loosely floating among them, but that it was the result of deliberate examination, and a consequent firm conviction that Christ had forbidden it. The very same arguments which are brought in defence of war at the present day, were brought against the Christians sixteen hundred years ago; and, sixteen hundred years ago, they were repelled by these faithful contenders for the purity of our religion. It is remarkable, too, that Tertullian appeals to the precepts from the Mount, in proof of those principles on which we insist:--that the dispositions which the precepts inculcate are not compatible with war, and that war, therefore, is irreconcilable with Christianity.
Example and Testimony of the Early Christians on the Subject of War. Jonathan Dymond, 1821. Emphasis original.
Objections | |
A few objections tend to arise at this point that warrant consideration.
1. Do you honestly believe Christians cannot defend ourselves?
Christian, your life is forfeit. Even so, there are ways to defend yourself that do not involve taking the life of another. If, however, such options fail, then no. If we absolutely must choose whether we die or we kill, then in the name of Christ, we die.
2. Do you honestly believe Christians should not defend others?
I believe Christians should do everything in their power to remove others from danger, provided they do not take any lives in the process.
3. Didn't Christ tell His disciples to take up swords?
No. Luke 22:36 reads in the NASB, "And He said to them, 'But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one," and this is sometimes used as justification for Christians to arm ourselves. After all, Christ literally did say to sell your coat to buy a sword, didn't He? Well, no. Not to the disciples, anyway. Look more carefully at that first part of the verse. "But now, whoever has a money belt...likewise a bag" is a very strange statement here when divorced from the verse before it. What does Luke 22:35 say? "And He said to them, 'When I sent you out without money belt and bag and sandals, you did not lack anything, did you?' They said, 'No, nothing" (NASB, first emphasis mine, second emphasis is a translation artifact). That is, Christ recalls to their memory that they, in actively serving Him on mission, were sent out without money belt and bag, trusting in His provision, and then He directly contrasts that with those who do have a money belt and bag. In essence, Christ tells them, "let those who do not trust in my provision arm themselves." But that description should never be accurate of Christians. Christ is not telling the disciples to take up swords, He is contrasting them with those who have no hope but a sword.
4. But John the Baptist didn't tell soldiers to give up being soldiers!
John the Baptist is an Old Testament prophet, that is, he operated outside and before the establishment of the church. He also didn't tell people about the Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts 19. The fact is, John the Baptist was not laying down the expectations of the church, he was preparing people to receive Christ. The work of living in Christ is defined by Christ and the New Testament authors, and not one of them ever advocates for Christians to engage in or endorse the use of lethal violence; instead, they repeatedly call for us to be people of peace.
5. Doesn't Romans 13 give the government the option to use lethal force?
You are not the government.
5a. But what if I am?
Your call as a Christian is more important than your rights as a member of government.
1. Do you honestly believe Christians cannot defend ourselves?
Christian, your life is forfeit. Even so, there are ways to defend yourself that do not involve taking the life of another. If, however, such options fail, then no. If we absolutely must choose whether we die or we kill, then in the name of Christ, we die.
2. Do you honestly believe Christians should not defend others?
I believe Christians should do everything in their power to remove others from danger, provided they do not take any lives in the process.
3. Didn't Christ tell His disciples to take up swords?
No. Luke 22:36 reads in the NASB, "And He said to them, 'But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one," and this is sometimes used as justification for Christians to arm ourselves. After all, Christ literally did say to sell your coat to buy a sword, didn't He? Well, no. Not to the disciples, anyway. Look more carefully at that first part of the verse. "But now, whoever has a money belt...likewise a bag" is a very strange statement here when divorced from the verse before it. What does Luke 22:35 say? "And He said to them, 'When I sent you out without money belt and bag and sandals, you did not lack anything, did you?' They said, 'No, nothing" (NASB, first emphasis mine, second emphasis is a translation artifact). That is, Christ recalls to their memory that they, in actively serving Him on mission, were sent out without money belt and bag, trusting in His provision, and then He directly contrasts that with those who do have a money belt and bag. In essence, Christ tells them, "let those who do not trust in my provision arm themselves." But that description should never be accurate of Christians. Christ is not telling the disciples to take up swords, He is contrasting them with those who have no hope but a sword.
4. But John the Baptist didn't tell soldiers to give up being soldiers!
John the Baptist is an Old Testament prophet, that is, he operated outside and before the establishment of the church. He also didn't tell people about the Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts 19. The fact is, John the Baptist was not laying down the expectations of the church, he was preparing people to receive Christ. The work of living in Christ is defined by Christ and the New Testament authors, and not one of them ever advocates for Christians to engage in or endorse the use of lethal violence; instead, they repeatedly call for us to be people of peace.
5. Doesn't Romans 13 give the government the option to use lethal force?
You are not the government.
5a. But what if I am?
Your call as a Christian is more important than your rights as a member of government.
Let it always be borne in mind by those who are advocating war, that they are contending for a corruption which their forefathers abhorred; and that they are making Jesus Christ the sanctioner of crimes, which his primitive followers offered up their lives because they would not commit.
Example and Testimony of the Early Christians on the Subject of War. Jonathan Dymond, 1821.
Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation
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