Saturday, February 23, 2008

Gospel Journey #1: Help

The gospel first made it's impact on me in 1991. I was 16 years old. I had grown up Roman Catholic--I believed in God and knew that Jesus had died for sinners, but what I believed about God had very little impact on the way I lived my life.

I had hit a very low point in my life. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was that the girl I was dating dumped me. As far as I was concerned, my life was over. I didn't know what else to do. I knew that I needed help, and I didn't know where to turn.

The girl I had been dating had shared the gospel with me (she was a Christian, although I wasn't helping her much with her being a good Christian). She told me that to have a relationship with God meant that you ask Jesus into your heart and he forgives your sins. I thought it was interesting that she actually liked going to church (she wouldn't go out with me on Wednesday or Saturday nights because she didn't want to miss youth group), but I told her she was trying to sell fire insurance to someone who lives underwater. I thought God was proud of me. I knew I wasn't perfect, but I thought that God was pretty pleased with who I was.

The night she broke up with me, I was wondering how life would look for me going forward... and then I started thinking about God. I was realizing that I needed help. I wasn't doing such a great job at running my life. So I prayed:

"God, I'm not exactly sure what kind of commitment I can make to you right now, but I will do my best. I would like to go to church where Jenny goes, but that might be a little wierd considering the circumstances. Jesus, please come into my heart and help me to live a life that would please you."

That was it. That was the beginning of the journey for me. Amazingly, I actually felt pretty good about things after I prayed. I thought, "Well, as bad as the break up is, at least I have God in my life now." I was looking forward to telling Jenny the next day that I was happy that through this I had become a Christian.

Thinking over this experience, what made the biggest impact on me was the thought that I had begun a relationship with God. That really made me feel secure. I felt like I had a real sense of peace. There wasn't some watershed feeling of being forgiven, but I was convinced that at least I had a relationship with God and I was aiming in the right direction.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Is Our Good News Good News?

Strikes me as odd sometimes that what we have to share with people isn't really good news to them. Isn't that a problem? Maybe it's because people are so far from God that they wouldn't know REAL good news if it stared them in the face... maybe, but that seems like a cop-out to me. I think that we should be able to offer people good news that they would perceive as good news--even if they don't want it yet. But how? What is the good news? Here's one way to share it:

  1. There is a God who made everything, and he made you to know and experience incredible joy and happiness and lasting significance
  2. None of us live at the level of joy and bliss that God created us to experience
  3. The gap between where we live and where God intended us to live is because of sin. Your sin, because your faults and bad decisions bring misery and brokenness to life. Also the sins of others who bring pain and suffering into our lives.
  4. God's heart is to remove sin from the world, and to heal us from its effects
  5. We can’t fix the problem—we can’t fix ourselves or the world without help
  6. In light of our inability to fix things, God does what we can't do. He comes in Jesus to show us how to live, but also to deal with what's wrong with the world. He takes on the pain and misery of sin and suffers its penalty so that we can be forgiven and start again new.
  7. Jesus' life and death for us gives us a new start, but when we agree to follow him, we also receive his power and presence within our hearts, so that we are changed into new people from the inside out.
  8. Filled with his strengthening power, we are given a commission to actually begin to fix what's wrong with the world. We become God's tools to reduce the pain and suffering in the world caused by sin.
  9. A life that is lived to please God is infinitely better than a life we could live on our own. There is more happiness, more joy, more confidence of God's approval, more peace in our conscience, more sense of adventure, more feeling like we're part of something greater than ourselves.
Is this good news? Well, yes, sort of. But I don't think it does the gospel justice... not by a long shot.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Vision Isn't the Fuel?

VISION ISN’T FUEL??

“Vision isn't fuel." People need vision, but they also need a clear plan to participate in the vision. Most importantly, they need fuel to keep them encouraged and filled with strength to continue on the path to fulfill the vision.

What’s great about Christianity is that Jesus provides all three of these for Christians because he occupies three offices as our Savior. He is our Prophet, King, and Priest. As prophet, he casts a grand vision for the restoration and renewal of the entire heaven and earth. As king, he outlines the plan for accomplishing this restoration through the ministry of the church that will be consummated in his glorious return. As priest, he continually fills his people with grace by leading them through the process of repentance and faith.

This is wonderful, consistent with Scripture, and simple to understand and remember. But as I think about this, there is something that doesn’t quite connect...

Then it hit me. Years ago when I was teaching through the book of Ephesians, I realized something about the commands in Scripture. Here's a quote from a study on Ephesians 5:1-14:

"We have looked at this list of commands today, and I hope this hasn’t been discouraging for you. It’s vital to understand that Paul has two purposes in giving these imperatives (commands). First, they beseech you to walk worthy of your calling as a follower of Jesus. Second, in the commands themselves, Paul is showing us the power and reality of gospel transformation.

"If salvation did nothing but forgive sins, then it would be impossible for believers to obey God and His commands. But salvation does more than forgive sins. These imperatives are not the condemning law, they are a reflection of the gospel. In them Paul is describing the new self. They are snapshots of who God has made you to be in Christ. Don’t read these imperatives and get depressed because you are not measuring up to them and you can never obey them. This is not Paul’s intention! Paul wants you to know that this is what God has made you to be! You do not do the things that Paul prohibits because you are united to Christ! You are no longer the old self anymore. You are the new self because you are connected to Jesus.

"See these imperatives as revealing who you are when you walk by faith. Be encouraged by these imperatives! Be encouraged that this is your true identity in Christ, and live out your union with Him. If you believe that you are in Christ and that He is in you, then you must also believe that you are the new self. This means that you can obey these imperatives by the power of God's Spirit operating within you."

This study was from 8 years ago. Since that time, my whole perspective on the commands in Scripture has been revolutionized. Because the imperatives in Scripture are all based on the indicatives (the statements of fact about who we have become because we are connected to Jesus), we can have every assurance and confidence that if we are commanded to do or be something, then we have been transformed to be the kind of people who are or do whatever it is.

When I first came to grips with this, I took great joy in repeating the following process over and over again:

1. See a command to do or be something in Scripture.
2. Remind myself that apart from Jesus, I could not do or be this faithfully.
3. Remind myself that I am united to Jesus, whose ability to do or be this was and is perfect, and whose ability has been given to me.
4. Remind myself that I have been transformed into the kind of person who wants to, can, and does this with joy.

As I have walked in this truth over the years, I have reduced this into a shorter process where I simply believe now that the commandments in Scripture are possible for me to fulfill (not perfectly, but acceptably) because Jesus kept them perfectly and he is in me. So the commandments themselves have become a new way for me to be reminded of my union with Jesus. The commandments themselves now fill me afresh with strength and confidence and power that I can be what God wants me to be.

Conclusion: By understanding the commands in Scripture in this way, Jesus’ vision (revealed in the commands of Scripture) actually is a source of fuel, since the commands reveal who we are made to be with Jesus in us.

Application of "Disciples in the Gospel of Luke"

What's the point of the previous post? Understanding this provides powerful protection against two ways that the call to "sell all and follow me" has threatened to destroy the faith of many.

1. There are people who have felt guilty for saving money or for enjoying ANYTHING beyond a subsistence level of living. They have been taught that to really trust God, they should give up everything. The fact that Jesus doesn't issue this call to everyone, and that it was part of a historically unrepeatable era in the history of God's work in the world (namely the earthly ministry of Jesus establishing the kingdom of God) should free people today from feeling a burden that Scripture does not support.

2. Perhaps more prevalent is the notion that to be a "true disciple" requires the giving up of everything, or the leaving family and friends and inheritance and everything that this world offers. There are several instances where Jesus makes some incredibly lofty claims on people who would follow him (i.e. Luke 9:57-62; 14:26-33; 18:22-23). Many genuine Christians who are sensitive and honest about their own struggles and imperfections have been made to feel that they are not worthy to consider themselves disciples because they have not matched up to the requirements that Jesus lays out in these "call to discipleship" passages. The previous study should clear the way to understand that Jesus' call to his disciples to follow him had specific reference to the first century band that went with him to Jerusleam. It doesn't mean that these passages don't also apply to the church today, but we need to be careful to haphazardly apply these texts to ourselves today without making appropriate distinctions.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Disciples in the Gospel of Luke

So while finishing my sermon last Sunday on Jesus' encounter with the Rich Ruler, I re-read the entire gospel of Luke, trying to determine if the call to "sell everything and follow me" was universal to all the people Jesus talked to, or if it was something special just for the rich ruler.

I learned two things:
1. No, this was not the universal of Jesus to everyone. At least 29 times in the gospel, the call from Jesus was not to sell everything, or to leave everything, and in those times, it also wasn't a call to "follow him." Most of the time in Luke, Jesus was content to affirm people's faith and trust in him, and did not encourage people to give up everything to follow him.

In the 13 instances where people were either told or did leave everything and follow Jesus, it refers to one of three groups of people:
a. The 12
b. The 70
c. The rich ruler

What we have here is a window into understanding how to categorize the people of faith during the ministry of Jesus. You could think about it in terms of two concentric circles. The outer circle was comprised of those who had faith that Jesus was the savior and were living under his authority. The inner circle were those people who were committed to following Jesus to Jerusalem.

This is helpful because it explains the flow of the conversation between the Rich Ruler and Jesus. The Rich Ruler asks Jesus how he can inherit eternal life. After confronting his flattery, Jesus tells him that if he wants to inherit eternal life, he needs to be in the outer circle. You can tell who will inherit eternal life by looking at the fruit of their life. Those who keep covenant with God will inherit eternal life.

In his self-deception and self-righteousness, the Rich Ruler responds to Jesus by expressing his opinion that he's in the outer circle. So Jesus pushes him by inviting him into the inner circle so that the Rich Ruler would understand that he's not in either circle. This is why Jesus issues this unusual call to him.

2. The word disciple in Luke is not synonymous with person who believes in Jesus as the Messiah. In Luke, the disciples were those people who were traveling with Jesus and following him to Jerusalem. Revisiting the notion of the two concentric circles above, if you read through the gospel, the disciples were in the inner circle, the rest of the believers were in the outer circle.

Having said this, the word does take on a broader meaning after the resurrection of Jesus.

That's it for now.

Welcome

No promises here. Don't want to get in trouble, but would like to share some thoughts with people who care to follow along.