In the past, I have found most treatments of the love chapter in 1 Corinthians a little light hearted.  I think in many people’s minds, my own included, love seems to be this affectionate feeling for someone, even romantic feelings, that directs our words to build that relationship.  Sometimes it also translates into action, but regardless, the idea that love is a feeling has always killed me.

Today, at our weekly gathering, the Church discussed this very topic and I found it quite engaging.

We started by briefly recapping the significance of love as described at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 13.  How the motivation and even goal of actions has to be love for the actions (not necessarily bad in and of themselves) are worthless.  I think we would tend to agree in Christian circles that this is true, but what I really enjoyed was the thinking through how it works out that followed that preliminary discussion.

We flipped over to Matthew 5:43-48:

You have heard that it was said ‘you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons[and daughters] of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers[and sisters], what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

It says, obviously, to love your enemies: first step is to pray for them.  Why? So that you may be children of the Father.  Wait, we are children of the Father, through Christ.  We are being called to be who God has made us to be, not the false selves we once were.  Then at the end: be perfect as He is. How on earth will we be perfect? We won’t until He returns, but we are to strive for that.  How? Be like Christ.

This is where I got particularly interested.  I am reading The Deeper Journey by M. Robert Mulholland and in the first chapter, he talks about the goal of the book, which is the goal of our Christian existence is to be like Christ in order to display Him to those who don’t know him.  Here’s a quote:

The world will believe when it sees Christlikeness manifested in our life. The world will know that God has sent Christ not simply because we pronounce it to be so but when they see Christlikeness lived out in their midst in our lives in the world.

A bunch just to say that we are the vehicles God uses to display himself to the world in word and deed.  John 17 seems to acknowledge this, 1 John 4:17 mimics the idea, 2 Peter 1:4, 2 Cor. 3:18, 1 Peter 4:14 and more all seem to point to this idea.  So I formulated this to help myself understand:

God is love—>We love because he loved us first—>He loved us first by being Christ(who is God) for us—>We love by being Christ to others—> This flushes out in prayer, laying down our lives, sacrificial loving, considering others’ needs before our own, serving people, and dying to ourselves (among countless other things.)

So yea, be encouraged.  Love people.  Not feeling love, but being love, being Christ to them in all ways.

So, I just started my Sophomore year at Long Beach City College and I happen to be taking Intercultural Communication: not what I thought it would be at all, but that’s ok.  It turns out that the class is basically about race, class, gender, and how those all play out in the world.

It has been striking to me how many issues there still are in the world, let alone right here in our own back yards… People hating people, and for what? Skin tone? Country of origin? Come on.  I seriously don’t understand how people could hate with little to no reason at all, oh wait, yes I do: it’s sin.

But beyond that, the real conundrum for me is how people who intellectually get it, don’t do anything about it.  Logically it just doesn’t make sense to believe something and not act on it.  Why would people who understand why racism, classism, and sexism is bad (moreover still, why they happen) not do anything about it?

I think it is time that we believers begin speaking truth into this aspect of earthly life.  I think we need to stand up for the weak, the oppressed, the poor, and the marginalized.  I don’t know where that starts, or how far it goes, but it needs to happen.

Begin telling people that there is no such thing as actual stratification of worth.  There is no better ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status; there is no better human.  We all suck enough that we need help and we can’t help ourselves or each other fully.  We are all equal.  We are all in need of the reality of God, of the realization and actualization of the Kingdom of God in our lives. 

As C.S. Lewis said, “If we could only see our fellow persons as they truly are, in all their glory, we would be tempted to fall down at their feet and worship them.

It has been a long held belief that academia, intellectualism, reason, and the like are completely at odds with religion, faith, spirituality, and especially Christianity. As a bible believing, God fearing Christian in academia, this presents a major problem. Imagine a job or community where everything that is communicated calls every idea you have into question. We are not talking about random ideas about how the sky became blue, we are talking about the answers to the questions about life that define you, your very self. This is a community you are committed to being in for at least 4 years, probably more, and you value the information as observable science, that is, information acquired by creations of God with the gift God gave them, regardless of their faith. Certainly there are motives to be taken into account and personal bias that must be weeded out of some of the information, but it is information about the reality God created none-the-less. What is a thinking Christian supposed to do with that?

The main conflicts I am facing right now is evolution, big bang theory, archeology (and it’s extensive fossil findings), the development of culture (early on when the kings were made to be Gods to control people), and how all of that interacts with Scripture.

With evolution, things are tricky because of all the various findings and intricacies of the theory. No doubt, there are human-like fossils that seem to gradually change over an extensive length of time. No doubt, there are micro-evolutionary changes occurring within various species… but macro evolution on the whole seems impossible with irreducible complexities and the statistical probability of things (which is just as valid as someone talking about the “culture of humans 200,000 years ago). It just doesn’t seem consistent. However, let us say it is true, is Christianity and evolution mutually exclusive? Maybe through personal bias but I don’t think they have to be… But then we must deal with those people on both sides that refuse to accept the possibility… These issues are really tough.

With the archeological findings, I have a very hard time. How do we know that our dating techniques are legitimate? every century or so we undergo a drastic change in scientific theory and evaluation, how do we know that our technique doesn’t have a hidden factor causing error? Moreover, what if God created the land like he created man? Is it impossible that he created a mature earth with marks of age and fossils in the same way he created Adam and Eve with age? Or what if to God, the days in Genesis are thousands or millions or billions of years? This too causes strife in my heart, and in my life…

The development of culture is a particularly juicy pain. How is it that man became dominant over women? How, historically, has the idea of God developed, and where did it come from. How do these answers in extra-biblical cultures differ from the nation of Israel in the OT, and Gods greater revelation of himself? How could it be that Scripture and the Judeo-Christian God could have been a man-made concoction and yet be so internally consistent, so philosophically reliable? I suppose the end of that last question would be debated by some and I would point you to William Lane Craig.

I realize I am rambling here but that is the very state of my soul right now. As a Jesus following man (kid more like), I want to see his name KNOWN in this place. I do not want to go through the motions to get a degree so I can go on with my life. 1 Corinthians 7 encourages us to REMAIN and I want to remain with him in this place, be a light, and beacon of hope to a dying and suffering world. GOD PLEASE HELP ME AND US ALL TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO PROPERLY INTERPRET AND UNDERSTAND THESE THINGS, that we might honor you in the dark, predominantly atheistic (or otherwise compartmentally inconsistent) world of academia.

To be a true believer in academia and not wrestle with these things in order to communicate with and be a light to your peers is to drop the proverbial ball in a big way. And trust me, these topics presented here are not an exhaustive list of all the seemingly anti-Christian ideas to be grappled with.

Our God is, and all of reality owes itself to him, reality is not inconsistent with God, true reality is subject to God and when man begins to shape reality without God, there are gaps to be bridged.

“Faith is trust or commitment to what you think is true.”

“More often than not, it is what you are rather than what you say that will bring an unbeliever to Christ. This, then, is the ultimate apologetic. For the ultimate apologetic is: your life.”

“Part of the broader task of Christian scholarship is to help create and sustain a cultural milieu in which the gospel can be heard as an intellectually viable option for thinking men and women.”
All 3 quotes are William Lane Craig

Before I start, understand that you may or may not agree with what I say, the reality I speak from, and the One whom I advocate for and am a representative of. If you don’t, you may read this or you may change the page you are viewing now, for I am not here to defend the faith against its opponents, but to clarify truth to those who already claim to believe it. If discussing the validity of the foundation I work from is your aim, feel free to message me.

Now, Individualism has been defined many ways, but for the purpose of this essay, individualism can be defined as the mode of thinking in which the individual is of primary importance in the pursuit if liberty. My specific emphasis I would like to focus on is the ‘immediacy’ we select for ourselves, or claim devotion to. As individuals, surely as a matter of being human, we have immediacies or direct relations to people, places and things. Many times these immediacies are merely a product of our enviroment, outside of our control, such as the family we are born into, or the place in which we are forced to live as children, but there are many immediacies we choose for ourselves, of our own self intrest, choices we make as individuals. Before understanding the reality of God in Christ, we often place hope, confidence, our happiness, and even our purpose in many of these people, places, and things. Examples would be careers, friendships, romantic relationships, and objects of faith. When we do finally realize the reality of God in Christ (or better, it is realized in us by him), we often take the important characteristics of ourselves (purpose, worth, future hope, etc.) and we place them in Him. In doing so God is pleased and it is surely right for us to do so, but consider this: the whole world was created by him and for him. If this is true, and we certainly believe it is, we often live inconsistently by selecting immediacies in the world. Out of our individualism, we place hope and confidence in things, people, or places, or even statuses in this world, depending upon them for one fulfillment or another. Without a doubt, our salvation is through Christ alone, and our hope after this world is in him, and perhaps many other things as well, but not everything.

Luke 14:26,30

‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes even his own life, he cannot be my disciple… So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.’

“Christ has delivered them[and us] from immediacy with the world, and brought them into immediacy with himself. We cannot follow Christ unless we are prepared to accept and affirm that breach.” -Bonhoeffer

Once we begin to understand that the whole of ourselves, our self interest, and in fact every aspect of our lives is both dependant on and centered around Christ, we can truly answer the call of Christ. We can then follow him, leaving our dead to bury our dead, put our hand to the proverbial plow and not look back(Luke 9:57-62). We can leave our old life into the new, we can not only understand but also live like we are new creations, the old being dead and gone and us being new raised with Christ(2 Corinthians 5:14-17). Our focus in EVERYTHING we do is on Christ, we can truly pick up our cross and follow him.

“By calling us he has cut us off from all immediacy with the things of the world. He wants to be the centre through him alone all things shall come to pass. He stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the coming of Christ his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships, nor in the ties with their nation, nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and their nation, stands Christ the Mediator. We can not establish direct contact outside of ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following him.” -Bonhoeffer

In this we can rejoice, for we are free from the necessity of making direct ties with the world, and we rejoice because those ties were not true to begin with, for all things were made by him and for him, thus any functioning without that reality is a false reality by the very fact that it is trying to function without submitting to Christ. The failures of our individually selected immediacies(or things with which we ‘directly’ interface and are connected with) in the world are no longer tied to us, and we no longer bound to them, for we are bound to the one true immediacy, the one true reality, the one true direct connection, that is Christ himself. Just as all things are made by him and for him, so interactions between things he has made are both through him and for him.

Thus we come to true individualism which is attained only through the call of Jesus. We are compelled to decide to respond, and that decision can only be made by ourselves. But it is no choice of our own that makes us individuals, it is Christ who makes us individuals by calling us. Every man is called separately, and is called to the one true direct interaction, the one true relationship with Christ, through whom we may have every other relationship and by doing so through him, those relationships become true for they are true to the reality in which they are conceived, and they have the purpose for which they were created in the first place. Not only that but those relationships are not required to fulfill anything and thus have true freedom in existing. There can be no failure, there can be no disappointment, because everything is centered around Christ who does not fail, and does not disappoint. True individualism then, is standing alone before Jesus and deciding to fix our eyes on him alone. By doing so, we begin operating uninhibited, being both consistent with our beliefs and being true to reality, with direct interactions (immediacies) with people in the truest sense. Though we have the Mediator, it is the most direct relationship we could possibly have, the most real.

“This is certain: in one way or the other we shall have to leave the immediacy of the world and become individuals… But the same Mediator who makes us individuals is also the founder of a new fellowship. He stands in the centre between my neighbour and myself. He divides, but he also unites. Thus although the direct way to our neighbour is barred, we now find the new and only real way to him – the way which passes through the Mediator.

‘Peter began to say to him, ‘See, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘truly i say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many that are first shall be last, and the last first.’ (Mark 10:28-31)” -Bonhoeffer

As we respond to his call to become true individuals, we simultaneously enter into the fellowship of the Church, the people of God. We are now members of the community of the cross, the People of the Mediator, the People under the cross, with true purpose, true connection in and through Christ, breeding true unity. It is here that we find the beginning of real community and real life in general, facing Christ with all we are. As we individually are consumed with Christ, we find ourselves both true to reality and true to each other, being truly connected as we, together, are obediently facing Christ, for his glory and his mission. As far as individualism goes, to really look out for ourselves, we must understand the reality we are operating in, and if we do that, then we understand that to look out for our own interests is both fake and futile. But also, if we understand the reality we are operating in, we are also given hope in Christ, in the call of Christ to follow him. To surrender ourselves wholly to Jesus Christ is the only answer the only response to reality, for it is his call to us. Praise God.

It has been like 5 months?  Man time flies when you… have a lot going on.   As of late, I have had very little to say but many, many things going on, so, in an effort to write more, here is a list.

• Two people I lived with moved out, one new person moved in.
• I got married and moved out.
• My wife and I moved towards Downtown Long Beach (about 5 min out)
• The local Body I am a part of has diversified a little bit, while also thinning out, establishing a ‘core group’.
• We have learned many things together, one of which being the support system the Body provides.
• We have grown in serving one another, loving one another, and reaching out.
• My wife and I have learned by experience a couple things about spiritual warfare.
• Our Body as a whole has been bombarded pretty heavily by spiritual warfare.
• Jobs are scarce and a few people might have to leave.
• In line with the last one, lots of expectations about provision and peoples roles in the Body and many other things have been totally shot.

• God is good, great, and glorious. He will build his church.

There is most of what is on my mind. Pray for my wife and I, our Body, and the city of Long Beach and all the lost that need our savior, who need to know their creator and Lord.

Recently  i have been trying to look at Scripture in the meta-narrative that God places it in.  Trying, as it were, to see things in the context of the grander story of God.  With this there has been a bit of a paradigm shift from the individual to the plural, from me to us, from a bunch of Christians to the Body of Christ.   In doing this things seem to make more sense, our Christian lives seem to correspond to reality a bit more when we look at them in the context of the People of God.  The truth of the gospel (it’s corresponding to reality) seems to be more evident when the focus is taken off of me and placed on us.  This idea is not one of my own, nor is it a new idea that people are just beginning to grasp, but has been around since the beginning.

If we look at the story of God, we see that he created man, that it was not good for man to be alone so he created woman, and they all lived in communion, in community with each other in the garden.  Next we see a deviantion from the path of good, a deviation from the standard set by the nature of God, where man went against His word and chose to live in rebellion.  Sin/evil/deviation from His perfect standard, then ran rampant throughout humanity.  God decided to punish that grevious rebellion with the flood but he chose Noah and his family to continue his plan.  Out of Noah, God brought a people into existance, he chose that people to display his glory on earth, Israel, but they too lived in rebellion.  God stayed faithful and continued to work out that plan of his through that people.  Ultimately he sent his people into exile, promising that he would send a messiah, a savior, to gather that people once again.  Then Jesus came.  At this point we often tend to forget that plan.  God made parts of his plan known, that he wanted his glory and that he would get it through his people, but in Christ he makes the mystery of his plan known and that is that God’s people are a people from all nations, Jews and gentiles.  That is the context we forget but as Steve Timmis has helped me to see, Christ is fulfilling that purpose that God the Father gave him.  Jesus is gathering a people, and in the sermon on the mount, we see that at the beginning of Christ’s ministry, he is gathering his body and he is creating, or describing the culture of that community.   This created culture of the community of the people of God is very counter cultural to the culture of the day, and even now, stands set apart, holy, as a counter culture in the people of God through His Spirit (or at least it should).  Now, as we read the beatitudes and even Ephesians in that context, we can see that people and that culture that Christ came to call into existance.

When God pulled his people out of Egypt, he had them pass through the red sea, into the wilderness, and later  into the promised land.  He led them through the wilderness, testing them among other things, and he then gave them a book to explain the kind of people he was making them and calling them to be so that they would be a holy, set apart people bringing glory and praise to God.  That book was Dueteronomy, the law of the land, their culture.   In Matthew, God fulfills these pictures of Christ in various ways, showing Christ as God himself, showing Christ as the true way of salvation.  Christ was baptised in the Jordan, led into the wilderness, tested there, and then Jesus began his ministry, calling his disciples to follow him, be missional with him, and as crowds flocked to him, he went to a mountain, similar to Moses, the disciples came to him and he taught them.  He laid out for his disciples the culture of his people, of the disciples themselves, just as Dueteronomy did.  It is this culture that God’s people living out God’s purposes ought to have and it is only accomplishable in the context of community.

We are to be a people poor in spirit, mournful, and meek.  That is so wrong to the way we often think, as we often attribute power, authority, and truth to those bold, strong, and sorrowless.  But what would a missional people characterized by these qualities look like?  The power of God for salvation, a humble people, who love and always consider eachother over themselves, and who have no hope or value placed here but put it all in Him.  That is a glorfying picture of God that we can’t do ourselves, and don’t often do anyways.   God’s people are to be a missional people characterized by commitment, and other-centeredness.  A people who don’t anger against their brother, but instead will even put aside their worship time and gift offerings to seek out reconciliation with people that they have wronged(5:23-24).  How different is that?  We often think that if someone has a problem with us, it’s their deal, but Jesus says his people live a different way.

In Ephesians,  we see this contrast laid out even more clearly.  After Paul lays out our corporate identity (blessed us, chose us, predestined us, lavished upon us, etc.), he then prays that it would be applied to our minds and hearts.  After Paul lays out our salvation at the beginning of chapter 2, he continues, explaining that corporate identity again, praying that we would have that.  Then in 4:17-32, he lays out the contrast of community. It is the communities of darkness that are darkened, alienated, ignorant, callous, given up to idolotry, etc.  It is us as recreated beings in Christ, missional communities of light with a corporate identity, that are members of one another, that don’t steal but instead work with our hands so that we can give away, that don’t speak with corrupting talk because we desire to give grace to those who hear us, a people characterized by complete other-centeredness, a love for God and a love for others.  A people where it is never about them individually but always about others.  It’s not about me, it’s about you brother, and as we both live that way together we can fulfill that calling by the power of the Spirit that we were given in our missional roots, Israel, to bless and glorify God, as we are now that missional people, the people of God.

It is not until we realize our corporate identity in Christ and our other-centered culture we are reborn into,  that we will fulfill the calling God has given us, to make his name known, to glorify him, and love him fully.  A great passage of Scripture which displays that over-arching plan with it’s purpose is Ezekiel 36:16-38.  In that passage you can see over the timeline that is given how we as new testament believers in Christ fit into that missional people, nation of Israel.  God called a people to be his people, that he would be their God, that they would make his name known among the nations, that they would missionally do that.  They failed.  But as you read that passage, God will vindicate his holiness, he will make his name known, and it is through the gathering of his people once more.  We are that missional people and WE ought to live TOGETHER as such.

 

Again, merely an introduction, open for discussion, comment if you like.  But really, each one of you individuals, need to live like the corporate people you are.  Your identity is not in you, it is in Christ and his Body, and your salvation rests there also, in Christ and his Body.

Though this might have caught your eye as some controversial and deeply offensive article, don’t prepare yourself for controversy, don’t board up your mind with walls and other equally defensive barriers.  Just read, and pray, knowing that although the title might be slightly over dramatic, it is in part true, though truth still seems to be upheld.

Eisegesis  is simply the act of reading meaning into a text (most often Scripture) and this act is possibly one of the easiest things to do when we read because it can happen quite easily under the surface.  Often we don’t even see it until someone else brings it up, but other times people do it purposefully with ill-intent to prove something right or wrong.  At a base level though, eisegesis does take some inward motivation which is most often the benefits from the argument a person is trying to argue.   Now, as Christians, we can easily see some quick examples just by looking at American Christian culture, whether it be Joel Osteen proof-texting something for ‘Your Best Life Now’, or even just a young believer reading the Old Testament outside of it’s historical context.  But what if I told you that most American Christians (even you and I) have eisegeted the work of Christ?  You, at first, would say that is ridiculous, but what if it is true?  It would be, and in fact is, the worst act of eisegesis in history, one that robs us from a full understanding of Christ’s work, one that effectively robs the resurrection of it’s transformative power.

Let me just put this claim into perspective for you.  What is the context of Christ’s work?  Seemingly simple question answered simply (and incompletely) by saying, ‘the gospels’, or even 1st century Judaism.  While these two statements are true, what is the full context of Christ’s work?  It is smack dab in the middle of history, in the middle of God’s happenings in the world, and it is not an individual work set apart from the rest of God’s works in the whole of history.   Christ’s work is revealed to us in the context of God’s ultimate plan of redemption in which God created the world, man fell, and ever since, God has been in a work of renewal and he has chosen to do it through a people, that is Israel.  Israel failed over and over again, and what did God do? He remained faithful to them.  He continued to work out this plan of redemption that he had.  He sent prophets telling of a coming kingdom, he sent kings and priests to be a picture of he who would usher in the new kingdom.  Then what happened?  God exiled his people.  God sent the very people through whom he said he would save the world with out into the world, out of the promised land, out of his kingdom effectively, and he cut communication with them.  Times looked bleak for the Jews but they had hope.  Their prophets of old had told them of a coming messiah, they had a promise that God would come and gather his people, that he would bring with him a new kingdom, knowledge of himself, joy, love, and justice.  And so they waited.  After 400 years of exile a man came on the seen proclaiming the kingdom of God was at hand, John the baptist.  Then Christ came and that is the context of Christ’s work.

Here’s the question, what does that mean if we are going to exegete Christ’s work? If we are to fully understand Christ’s work, we must take it in it’s own context, see the original intended meaning of the gospel accounts.  But first, this is how we have understood it for years:

Jesus Christ, son of God, God himself, came down from heaven, lived a sinless life, so that he could take on my sin, and even the sin of the world, and then he died, on the cross, to pay the penalty of my rebellion to God, that I might have a relationship with him, as was intended in the garden, through his resurrection.  He paid my debt, reconciling me to God, and he then invites me to relationship with him by his resurrection.

If you didn’t praise God and say amen to that, then you might not be believing truth, my question to you is, is it the whole truth and nothing but the truth?  I would propose, that if we were to read Christ’s work for it’s original intended meaning in it’s original context, then no, it is not the whole truth, and in fact is a misrepresentation of it.   It isn’t that this profession is wrong, in fact it is very true.  However, it is not the whole truth, it is incomplete, and if this is our primary understanding of the purpose and effect of Christ’s work, then I would argue we have made one of the biggest mistakes in biblical interpretation, robbing His work of it’s power.

If we look at the context of Christ’s work in the whole of history, in God’s revelation, we will see a different and more primary focus of Christ’s work.  First, we will see that Christ’s work comes as a fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel.    As such, we must understand that God’s promises to Israel were promises of a new kingdom, one filled with renewal of the earth, renewal of God’s reign, and renewal of God’s people.  Joy, justice, love, forgiveness, new life were all parts of this new kingdom.  When we see Christ’s work as this partial fulfillment (as he is coming back to finish it) we see that the primary understanding of Christ’s work is that Christ is a moving forward of God’s plan of renewal, and we see it’s immediate implication as a gathering of His people to live under His reign.  It is only here that we can find our individual identity.  It is only as part of the whole that we can see ourselves, part of the Body.

This stands in stark contrast to the previous understanding of Christ’s work that we had.   The previous understanding starts with us as individuals, it starts with our individual salvation.  Why is this?  This perspective and eisegesis of Christ’s work is in part from a lack of understanding of the context of Christ’s work but is mostly a result of our western worldview.  It is profoundly individualistic that we would look to the most significant event in all of history and say that it’s primary purpose is for me.  That is our mindset though, our western culture has made our whole lives centered around the ‘me’ and it pervades our every thought and action.  We fail to understand that my salvation is only within the context of the body, and that without having my priorities in the same order that God does, it leads to a failure to live the way Scripture call us.

This is merely an introduction to this way of thinking and I didn’t unpack all of the ideas I presented, but please feel free to discuss this in the comments below. If you wanted to study this you can continue to work through it by studying the Old Testament, it’s promises, Christ’s fulfillment of them, how God has presented his plan of salvation (individual, corporate, or cosmic), the full story of Scripture (overviews and things like that), and maybe even just prayer, but be weary, for as I study, I find my own rampant, sinful individualism bursting forth like sin itself did after the fall. Be weary, in awe of God, placing him first in priority, and ourselves last.  For we are to be lovers of God, in heart, mind, soul, and strength, and lovers of others.   Love your neighbor as(or in place of) yourself.  It’s not about you, it’s always about others.

If I were a potter (clay potter) 1000, 2000, or even 3000 years ago (a likely  profession I would choose), I have a feeling that I would look at life a little differently than I do now.  A silly postulate for such an ‘advanced’ era that we live in now, but I think there is significance in it.  Back then I would have filtered everything that happened to me through a much more spiritual mindset.  This could be attributed to the “primitive” mind, as the local 640AM radio talkshow host said today, but I would argue that a spiritual understanding of the world is more legitimate and logical than the material one we often default to now.  Back then, if I was educated, then I would have been taught Plato and Aristotle, as well as all the other greek and roman philosophers.  That would have given me a twofold understanding of reality, the physical and ‘spiritual’; I would have understood that there was a relationship there and I would have sought out the link between them.  Sickness, health, poverty, wealth, and everything else would have had both physical and spiritual implications and causes.  Even if i were uneducated, I still would have been taught this way of thinking. There was nothing else.  In the western world, the God of the bible was personally interacting in the world, stories of Israel and Egypt still permeated society.  In the eastern world, similar philosophical work had been done, and the material and immaterial world was understood as such.  Life was understood through a very different lense.

Unfortunately for us, in the 14th century, philosophers began rejecting the special revelation of God, and all thought as we knew it began to change.  Though most of the consequences did not come to flurition until the 17th and 18th centuries, the downward spiral had already been set in place.  Man shifted from believing in a personal God, to an impersonal God, to no God, to man itself being ‘god’.  Our priorities shifted from God 1st, to man 1st, and everything began to revolve around man.   There was a period during the ‘no God’ when we had no priorities because nothing mattered at all, not even us, but with philosophers like Hegel, reality, truth, purpose, and everything else became means to the end of personal happiness and fulfillment.   These very serious intellectual shifts altered our understanding of truth.  Truth went from wholly absolute, to absolute with some subjectiveness, to no truth, to all truth being subjective.  Truth as well, became a means to the end of man’s happiness.  This intellectual shift results in an absolute eternal genocide.  Man, in this postmodern era, can’t know truth, believes it is relative, and doesn’t care about ultimate reality because it doesn’t really matter when it is all relative because the only thing that does matter is one’s own happiness.

The point to this is twofold.  First, we need to be aware of our own postmodern handicaps, and second, we need to be aware of them in others so that when we communicate verbally with them about reality (God, the bible, salvation, damnation, and everything else) we can remove the blinders from their eyes by the Spirit and power of God.  Of course none of this is possible without God doing the work, but I believe he wants to do the work, and as his workmanship created to do the good works he has prepared for us, we should be equipped to do it.  Study, question, think, read, and pray.  God WILL work through us by his Spirit.

Though detailing out our handicaps in a postmodern world is necessary, it will have to wait, but I do have a couple examples of life situations where being equiped has helped me in the gospel intentionality that God has worked through me.

I have been hanging out with this guy that lives just down the street from me for about 2 weeks.  He is a rad guy who has gone through some rough stuff but is trying to get his life back on track (the worlds track).  A few days ago, I went to a hookah lounge with him and his girl.  We had an awesome time smoking, blowing smoke bubbles, talking, and dancing, but after a couple hours, I wanted to make the conversation a little deeper.  I started by asking them if they ever thought about reality, truth, life purpose, and other equally large topics.  The four hours that followed were great, relationship developing, worldview (the lens we percieve reality through) challenging conversation.  We talked about reality first and how the world seems to tell us it is only physical but how in experience it seems to be a dual reality both physical and immaterial.  We continued in our discussion and as I tried to keep it in one line of thought instead of chasing rabbits all night, we talked about how we know things, what truth is, the difference between what 2 hours of thought gave us from what the world seems to tell us, and what that means for us as we do what we are naturally made to do (seek ultimate reality).  This brought in religion and philosophy of life and its purposes.  At the end of the night, we just sat on a couch and talked about poetry and video games.   The conversation did not lead to division as I continued to reiterate that we were thinking together, processing together as humans should (a conclusion from our discussion).  We grew together that night, and I am thankful I had legitimate things to bring to the table because if I didn’t, his worldview would still sit unchallenged, and his receptiveness to a future gospel could be hindered more than it might be now.

Another encounter I had recently was at work.  A coworker was challenging me after I objected to him saying that we are all gods.  Truth was called into question, reality, religion, and our own lives as well.   These are just some examples from my life and although it might be unnecessary for you to bring these things up in conversation, it might not always be that way.

Jesus used rabbinical sayings and generally accepted philosophies of life to teach, Paul even quotes pagan philosophers in scripture, and for the more educated of our non-believing friends, it could be extremely beneficial for us to at least recognize why we think the things we think.

God will build his Church, God will accomplish his work, and it is not dependent on us, but we have partnered with him in his redemptive plan and the history of intellectual thought is a part of that time line.

 

God, we love you not because we can, but because you loved us and revealed yourself to us.  May you reveal yourself more daily giving us opportunity to do the works you prepared for us and the life in the Spirit we require to see those opportunities.  Equip us Lord, by your word, by your Spirit, and by your Church, that we may proclaim you more clearly in action and word.  To you be all the glory in all the parts of our life.  Amen

Many times and in many ways, we have been taught the “one anothers” of Scripture.  Every time we focus on one or two and their biblical passages and seek to understand how that might apply to our lives.  Whether it be to love each other, be at peace with one another, or to bear one anothers burdens, we listen, we read, and we try to apply the principle to our daily interactions.  My question is this:

Are we applying the one anothers to our lives and living them out with people (a common question asked), or are we, as the body, applying them with each other for the purpose of displaying God, glorifying him, and making his name known?

Me to you, and you to me, together; seeking to fill the purpose Scripture calls us to obey for.   That is, to make God’s name known, to bring glory to him, and to display him to the world.   I think more often than not, we apply these things to our individual lives, and there is good in that, but we are missing the point.  They are called one anothers for a reason.

I was talking with a friend of mine, Kyle, the other night about life and our need for guidance in it.  We agreed that most Christians do try to seek God’s guidance in their lives, and even do this in the most powerful way, prayer.  But as we discussed the different aspects of a Christian’s search for guidance, we noticed that more often than not, we pray for guidance in the things we are already doing or seeking after.  Our prayers go something like this: “God, money is tight right now but you seem to have given me an opportunity to do this or that (read, ‘you have shown me personally something to do that has not been shown to everyone else yet). God I need your guidance, whether I should go here or here, and I need your provision to do so. Please allow me to listen to your Spirit’s guidance.”  Kyle and I mused for a second at how selfish we pray this, with our own ends in mind, our own plans to fulfill our lives and do it in a God glorifying way.  It is as though we tack God on the side of our lives.  We realized that there is already a purpose we are here for, there is already a direction we are to head. That direction is the mission.  The mission of God to display his glory, to make his name known, bringing salvation and eternal hope by the Gospel, the Story of God.   Kyle and I both prayed, noting the difference between praying with ourselves in mind, and praying with mission in mind.  Our pursuit of guidance will never, and ought never be the same.

With the one anothers, it is a similar story.  We turn them into a checklist to make sure we are ‘good’ Christians.  We lose sight of the fact that there is not only a purpose we do them for, and an extremely specific way we ought to go about doing them.

John 13:31-35 is the ‘New Commandment’ passage.  This is the one that says we should love one another as he loved us, and by that all people will know that we are his disciples.  What we normally don’t notice is the beginning of the passage. “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.”  Jesus goes on to say that we can’t follow him to where he is going, but he gives us the commandment as a means of fulfilling the end that he established in the first two verses. We love one another, as Christ loved us (which is deep in and of itself) and all the people will know that Christ was legitimate, and that we are his disciples, and that by fellowship with us, together, we have fellowship with God, bringing glory to him.  1 John 1:1-3, 4:7-21 aids in this understanding, explaining that as we love one another, we abide in God and him in us (corporately) thereby bring him glory.  By loving one another, not only do we display him but he abides in us, and we glorify him, making his name known by displaying his love.

A common response to this that I have had is one of obligation.  I tend to think that my obligation as a Christian is to love my brothers and by that, God does his own thing. I proceed to apply the principle by making sure I am giving a genuine concern to the people I talk to as I leave the service, I go home and try to make sure I am loving everyone.  I believe and firmly commit to you, that this application is a few  marks lower than complete.  We are not to individually and superficially love our Christian brothers and sisters, not allowing for intimate relationship because of fear of confrontation by keeping our relationships on the surface.
Even still, were I to develop a deeper relationship with a few and confess to them my sins, I have only made my ’12′,  neglecting the fact that I am supposed to live life daily, all day as a part of the body.  We want to be like Christ and we forget that he lived his life on earth 24 hours a day with his disciples, and we give the Body a measly 3 hours Sunday morning, with an optional extra credit lunch session.  The commandment is not a submission to make ourselves a little vulnerable and then to pat ourselves on the back. The commandment is for us to leave our ‘thrones’ and descend to the earth below and live life together.  To live daily life together daily, to share not only the deepest part of ourselves with each other but to wrap our lives around the Body, not the Body around our lives.

Time for a little story.  Over a year ago, I went to Vietnam with a team of 8 others to teach English to High School kids.  We spent two weeks in training, spending all day together, learning how to teach, communicate, and love one another as a team.  When we got to Vietnam we started teaching almost immediately and were teaching 6 days a week.  We were 9 American college students in a very foreign country and we had to rely on each other to survive, encouraging each other in our mission, our work, reminding each other of the importance of our work and that as we suffered from not being in our home, we would be home one day and for now, had work to do.  We ate together, we prayed together, we studied together, we worshiped together, we went everywhere, together.  One day, I had made plans to go meet with a student for breakfast.  I forgot to let 6 of my team members know and when breakfast came around, the flow of their day was altered, they missed me, they were a little worried, and did not know what to do.  This would have been the case if any one of us were to do the same. The reason was that we were functioning as the body, and part of the body seemed to be momentarily cut off.  This is how we ought to be everywhere, we are in a foreign world, we are supposed to be living as intimately as this, where our seemingly trivial decisions actually affect one another.  That is crazy, and hard, and so… Anti-American, but it is what the bible calls us to, everywhere, all the time, on mission overseas or on mission in our neighborhoods.

We, as Christians, need to realize that we are no longer our own (nor have we really ever been), we are God’s, and not as individuals but as His Body, His temple.  We are a Body, and I am a part.  I am the finger. The finger does not say to the hand, “I am touching here, here and here, and you need to bless me in that.”  The finger is absolutely incapable of moving without the hand moving first.  That is how we ought to live our lives, and as we take a deeper look at the one anothers of Scripture, we ought to recognize the big picture.
Everything is for God’s glory.  As an individual, I have a personal relationship with Jesus, God, but I can only function as a part of the body.  Jesus is where we find our identity, and that identity is a corporate identity.  As we live our lives, WE are living

After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of the Almighty God, God himself said to the disciples, those that followed Christ, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

In Ephesians, Paul writes that God be blessed, the same God who blessed us, who chose us before the foundations of the world, the one who predestined us for adoption as sons, according to the purpose of his will.  He writes that it is in Christ that he lavished that forgiveness on us and while he did it, he made his will clear to us according to his purpose in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things to him.   Paul continues by explaining that we have an inheritance now, one that is by and from his will.  He says that the Ephesians believed, were given the Spirit, and that the Spirit guarantees their inheritance until they acquire it.   Later, Paul writes that we were dead, but God saved us, making us alive, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ.

Romans 1:16-17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘the righteous shall live by faith.”

This sounds a little different to me than it used to.  I remember a time when I would read all of this and thank God that he saved me from the penalty of my excessive drinking, or thank him that he saved me from the penalty of my promiscuity.  I would legitimately sit down the day after I did something absolutely in rebellion to God, and I would thank him for forgiving me, and the next day, I was back at work at my ‘cosmic treason’.  These passages lead me to a different hope, a truer, stronger, more powerful hope.

If you look at the familiar great commission, you will see that there are three different realities there.  First, all authority has  been given to Christ.  Second, there is the command to go, make, teach, baptize.  Third, he is with us always until the end of the age.  The first part of the commission is a past reality so confounding in it’s depth and yet, like the Gospel, enlightening in it’s simplicity.  On one hand, his authority is so vast and encompassing, that we really can’t understand it.  We fail just trying to control our lives, let alone the universe and everything in it.  On the other hand,  every stress, every struggle, and every need that we could even think of, Christ has the authority to do something about.  Our guilt, our shame, and our sins all fall into this category. A comforting thought indeed and for him to command us to go, to teach, to baptize, to spread his name and his glory knowing that He has all authority makes it that much better, that much more exciting.  That now, his past accomplishments now have a present reality that we get to be a part of.  That second point, where God tells us to go, that present reality is only possible by his authority and in that present reality, we have a hope, a pointing towards a future reality that is also guaranteed by His authority.

In Ephesians, Paul elaborates even more.  We have been saved from our trespasses, and that is finished, that is a concrete past reality that is a gift of God, given to us in Christ.  Not only that, but he made us alive by giving that forgiveness to us, he raised us up with him.  If he made us alive, it can only be so that we live and if he seated us up in the heavenly places in Christ, it can only be so that we are still with him that we a functioning in that life by Christ, in Christ, for Christ.  And continuing the thought, all of this is only so that in the coming ages God might show the immeasurable riches of his grace.   We are saved in the past from the penalty of our sins, making us no longer dead, but alive, living in the present by the Spirit of God inside of us being saved from the power of sin in our lives, and we will be saved from the presence of sin in the future.  We have a hope in the gospel for the future and that future is his future, his purpose, his will, that all things be united to him.  He has been working out this plan of restoration since before the beginning of time, when he chose us, and he created man, man fell as part of the plan, and God chose a people.   He changed the dynamic of that people in Christ, and now we are that people, all who follow Christ, and he has given us the very Spirit of God, that raised Christ from the dead, making us partners with Him in his plan of restoration. He is working out that plan all day, every day, all over the world using his people by his Spirit, preparing us and the world for his return when he will make everything right.

We are His workmanship, created (as well as recreated) in Christ Jesus for the purpose of doing good works that He prepared beforehand for us to walk in.   We are the Body of Christ, the Church, God’s people that he set apart before the world, covenanted in Abraham, through David, in Christ.  He gives us his Spirit to live now as that body, to do the things he has for us to do, for the end of uniting things to himself, to spread his name and his glory, making him known to the world.

We are no longer imperfect Christians that are just forgiven, but we are being made new as well, by the power of God, for his purposes, for his works that he has for us to do.   God made the world, humans not only rebelled against him but are responsible for the ruining of the world.  God loves us though, and he is making us right again, as well as the world, in his plan for restoration.  God is restoring the world. That is the good news, God is, God is restoring the world, God is restoring us, God is forgiving, recreating, growing, loving, blessing, and renewing everyone and His perfect world is coming.  If you have heard this before, good, if you haven’t, good,  if I don’t make any sense because there is so much more, good; as the title indicates, this is part 1 of infinite.  I am not sure the story of God restoring the world and making his glory known can be fully elaborated upon.  God is infinite, his glory is infinite, and his perfect plan is not fully known to us, you try to explain it.

Just remember, saved from the penalty, being saved from the power of sin in your life right now, and will, one day, be saved from the presence of sin, all by the power of God, and all for the purposes of God.   It is the power of God for salvation, from faith for faith, by way of living by faith.  To God be all the glory, for he is the only one worthy. Worship him, trust him, he loves.