Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (43/50) – How RU CU L8R Love Paul: The Church Tackles Problems Within and Without

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the forty-third of the fifty emails, this one written by Helen Parry.

It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.
Philippians 3:1

No Royal Mail, no telephones, no email, no text messaging. How were the apostles to communicate with the numerous churches that sprang up in the years after Jesus’ resurrection?

The New Testament letters are a priceless resource for us, 2000 years later, containing the bulk of the doctrinal and ethical teaching that have defined the Christian life and informed the church through the ages. But what were they to their original recipients? If not their lifeblood (that, surely, was the Spirit of Jesus himself), then their sustenance, their diet, their nutrition.

The letters give us astonishing insight into the life of these early churches, and a unique body of teaching. Writing to the Romans, Paul establishes the essential principle of justification by faith in Christ (3:21-5:1); to the Galatians, who were being pressed to observe the Jewish law in addition to their faith (2:11-3:25), he becomes passionate about it: ’Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?’ (3:3); while James, recognising that some Christians were beginning to presume too much on their faith, argues that genuine faith has to express itself in action: ‘faith in itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead’ (2:17).

All the writers underpin their moral and ethical teaching with theological principles, though the letters differ in style, and in the situations that they address. While Paul’s letters to the Galatians and the Colossians, for example, seek to correct false teaching from outside the church, others, particularly the Corinthian correspondence, highlight problems and dilemmas that were causing trouble within the church.

His approach to these particular issues establishes broader principles, from which we can extrapolate principles relevant to our own day. ‘Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?’ he demands, ‘Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!’ (1 Corinthians 6:15). Other examples include the Corinthians’ question about eating food sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 8:4-13). Again, he tells the Corinthians, ‘You are the body of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 12:27), and on this fact he builds his teaching about the church.

Above all else, however, the epistles interpret Christ, revealing him in his glory and his sacrificial love, and giving hope to his people in every age.

Helen Parry

For further reflection and action:

1. Reflect on the significance that the New Testament contains several letters addressed to the particular situations and needs of different churches. How might this help in our application of them to today?

2. How far are we willing to subject our own churches and denominations to the probing light of the epistles? Do we personally allow ourselves to be challenged, in our thinking and behaviour, by the great truths they expound?

3. Can we seek, in our generation, to revive or maintain the art of letter-writing, to bring truth, encouragement and hope to others? How might we do so?

American Theological Inquiry 3, 1 (2010)

American Theological Inquiry is a biannual journal of theology, culture and history, formed in 2007. Its purpose is ‘to provide an inter-tradition forum for scholars who affirm the historic Ecumenical Creeds of Christendom to constructively communicate contemporary theologies, developments, ideas, commentaries, and insights pertaining to theology, culture, and history toward reforming and elevating Western Christianity’.

The issues are free to download as pdfs, and they typically contain an interesting mix of biblical, theological, and historical reflection, along with a good section of book reviews.

The contents of the most recent volume – 3, 1 (2010) – are as follows:

Editorial

Gannon Murphy
On Nepsis and the Spirit of the Age

Patristical Reading

St. Ignatius of Antioch
Epistolary Selections

Articles

W. Berry Norwood
The Church Fathers and the Deity of Christ

J.V. Fesko
Preaching as a Means of Grace and the Doctrine of Sanctification: A Reformed Perspective

Michael A. G. Haykin
‘He Went About Doing Good’: Eighteenth-Century Particular Baptists on the Necessity of Good Works

Robert Wood
The Catholic Philosopher and Metaphysics

Glenn B. Siniscalchi
In Defense of Christian Theistic Metaethics

J. Lyle Story
The Dynamic, Relational, and Loving Purpose of God

Ken Deusterman
Stephen Charnock’s Doctrine of God: An Anthology of the Existence and Attributes of God

In Honor of the Rev. Dr. John McKenzie

Editor’s Note

Tony Campbell
God and Suffering—’It Happens’: Job’s Silent Solution

Jean-Marie de la Trinité
The Reverend John L. McKenzie (1910-1991): A Personal Memoir

Book Reviews

John Stott on the Radical Disciple

[This review has been written for eg 25 (March 2010), a publication of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.]

John Stott, The Radical Disciple: Wholehearted Christian Living (Nottingham: IVP, 2010), 144pp., ISBN 9781844744213.

Following in the wake of the recent biography of John Stott (Roger Steer, Inside Story: The Life of John Stott, Nottingham: IVP, 2009) comes the final book – his 51st – from the man himself. That this is a ‘farewell’ to his readers should make us pause. What, we ought to wonder, is on his heart? In a word, discipleship – of the radical sort. In fact, Stott considers eight ‘often neglected’ characteristics of discipleship, the kind of discipleship which is – as the subtitle makes clear – wholehearted, the whole heart affecting the whole of life.

The first mark is non-conformity, with radical discipleship involving ‘a call to develop a Christian counterculture, a call to engagement without compromise’, rejecting the pluralism, materialism, ethical relativism, and narcissism so prevalent in contemporary culture. Such a path also involves a call to Christlikeness, being like Christ in his incarnation, service, love, patient endurance, and mission. Then there is maturity – of the kind described in Colossians 1:28-29, rooted in ‘a fresh and true vision of Jesus Christ’ as Lord of creation and Lord of the church – so that we might grow to maturity ourselves and present others mature as well.

Not least since God’s plan for reconciliation embraces all things, creation-care will be a distinguishing mark of the radical disciple. Avoiding both the deification of nature as well as the exploitation of nature, our care for creation will reflect our love for the Creator. Alongside this is the characteristic of simplicity – rooted theologically in creation, stewardship, the new community and the Lord’s return, with implications for everything from personal lifestyle to international development, justice and politics, and evangelism, since ‘the call to a responsible lifestyle must not be divorced from the call to responsible witness’.

The characteristic of balance is shown in an engaging and illuminating treatment of 1 Peter 2:1-17 – the highlight of the book for me – showing how Peter unpacks a series of metaphors, each of which carries an obligation: as newborn babies we are called to growth, as living stones called to fellowship, as holy priests called to worship, as God’s own people called to witness, as aliens and strangers called to holiness, and as servants of God called to citizenship. Our ‘comprehensive identity’ as followers of Christ is found in the balance between individual discipleship and corporate fellowship, being called to both worship and work, and to pilgrimage and citizenship.

A chapter on dependence offers some insight into the man himself, with a moving personal testimony of his own sense of weakness as well as dependence on the love and care of others, and an encouragement to carry one another’s burdens. All of which serves as a prelude to the final characteristic of death, recognising that the ‘paradoxical principle of life through death’ operates in relation to our salvation and discipleship, in mission, persecution and martyrdom, and as we face mortality and the death of our physical body with the promise of resurrection life.

Stott himself acknowledges that it is a selective portrait, but it is no less rich for that. Beyond the wisdom of the individual chapters are the threads that run through the whole book. What emerges is a portrayal of discipleship that is rooted in Scripture, focused on Jesus, and earthed in the desire to see Christ formed in the lives of fellow followers. Written with clarity, humility, and an obvious love for God and others, it seems fitting that this modest offering should be his last book. It is striking, but seems wholly appropriate, that the farewell highlights the needs of others – eloquent testimony not just to the integrity of the man himself, but to the Christ he serves. Those who would seek to live as whole-life disciples today will draw much encouragement and inspiration from these pages and from the example of a life lived well.

Peter Meadows on Being Busy

A friend and former colleague has drawn my attention (via a Facebook link) to this blog entry by Peter Meadows:

Could it be my fault I’m ‘this’ busy?

His three helpful points are:

(1) We foolishly believe our value is based on what we do or achieve rather than who we are.

(2) We fail to recognise that saying ‘yes’ to ‘this’ means saying ‘no’ to ‘that’.

(3) We don’t say ‘no’ because we are not clear enough about what we have said ‘yes’ to.

Unusual personal reflection coming up…

Unless I am completely lacking in self-awareness, I don’t have a personal problem with point 1. (As in, I don’t do things or say ‘yes’ to things out of some system that attaches value to what I do or achieve… although nor do I want to diminish the importance of taking into account what people do ‘do’ or ‘achieve’, as if that has no significance whatsoever.)

Points 2 and 3, however, are much more interesting to me…

IVP Academic Alert 19, 2 (2010)

The Spring 2010 issue of Academic Alert from IVP is available here, profiling new and recent publications, including a book (published by SPCK in the UK) by Anthony Thiselton on the apostle Paul, and a book by Mark Shaw on 20th-century revivals, arguing that – from a global perspective – revivals ‘are at the epicenter of the phenomenal growth of Christianity in the twentieth century’.

Exploring Biblical Themes (4): Sin

[This is a lightly edited transcript of an LICC podcast segment, first uploaded to the website of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity on 1 February 2010.]

In 1973, the American psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, published a book called Whatever Became of Sin? Menninger was voicing a widespread suspicion that the idea of ‘sin’ was slowly evaporating from everyday life. Over a generation later, there’s very little evidence that that trend has reversed.

Interestingly, we’re acutely aware of evil in the world – brutal regimes, harsh dictatorships, extensive famine, social injustices – but there appears to be much less talk about personal morality. We see it mostly in the headlines of the tabloids as the course of the latest celebrity affair is tracked, or we see it in something like the sense of outrage expressed over MPs’ expenses – someone else’s failings, not mine.

But, almost from the very first page, the Bible everywhere assumes the reality of sin, and that it is not only real but also pervasive, affecting every part of life. Men and women whose worldview is formed by Scripture know that something is broken in the universe – us, apart from anything else – so that everything is marred, cracked, damaged, and distorted in some way. So yes, it is seen in the examples of evil we’ve just mentioned. But it’s also seen in the way our bodies get diseased and eventually give way to death. And it’s seen in the way we relate to each other – from the petty squabbles between kids in the playground to the emotional manipulations in the bedroom to the snide innuendoes around the water cooler to the power politics of massive nations.

Beyond all these, most importantly of all, is our relationship with God…

Sin is described in various ways in Scripture – as rebellion, infidelity, disloyalty, ingratitude, getting dirty, wandering, trespass, transgression, failure, and more besides. And the Bible also provides many examples of specific sins. Writing about men and women in Romans 1, Paul says that ‘they have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity’, that ‘they are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice’, that ‘they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy’ (1:29-31). Like other biblical writers, Paul is aware that sin is seen not just in particular acts, but in our very being, with the whole of life tainted. So, as much as these acts are often directed against fellow human beings, they are fundamentally a mark of our ruptured and rebellious relationship with God.

And sin leads to judgment. At the end of that catalogue of acts in Romans 1, Paul says that ‘although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them’ (1:32). Paul makes it clear several times, not just in Romans 6:23, that ‘the wages of sin is death’.

That’s completely of a piece with the rest of the Bible – whether we immerse ourselves in the stories told in Genesis or Judges or Samuel, or wrestle with the laws in Leviticus, or reflect on the folly of living without God in Proverbs, or listen to the preaching of the prophets, or pray with David, ‘Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge’ (Psalm 51:4).

It’s perhaps seen most clearly of all in Genesis 3, which nicely describes the dynamics of sin, the move from temptation to disobedience to consequences.

We have the crafty serpent who begins by questioning God’s word – ‘Did God really say…?’ (Genesis 3:1) – before contradicting God’s word – ‘You will not surely die’ (3:4). Not only does he remove the threat of judgment, but puts something positive in its place: ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ (3:5).

It’s not easy to say exactly what is meant by that phrase, ‘knowing good and evil’. The best guess is that it means not merely knowing, but deciding what is good and evil. God made things and pronounced them good. But now, humans make their choice as to what will be good and evil, and so take on themselves the prerogatives of God. They are tempted to be like God, to put themselves in the place where they decide what is good and evil, so that they can follow their own direction rather than God’s direction. Adam and Eve were created to be God’s vice-regents, to exercise rule over creation on God’s behalf. But now they rebel against that commission, asserting their own authority to rule as they see fit.

And there are consequences to that as the passage goes on to show. With their objective guilt before God comes the subjective sense or consequence of guilt – shame (3:7). There is broken relationship with God (3:8-10), and they adopt a victim mentality, trying to duck responsibility for what’s happened (3:11-13).

God curses the serpent (3:14), but not Adam and Eve – although they do suffer the judgment and consequences of sin, including death itself (3:15-19).

Of course, on the whole biblical landscape, their sin was not an isolated act; it carried consequences for the rest of humanity. Romans 5:12-21 shows that Adam has passed on his sin to his posterity, bringing death not just on himself but on the entire human race. Romans 5:19 seems quite clear, where Paul says that ‘through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners’.

We see that even in the stories that follow Genesis 3 – in sibling rivalry, murder, warfare, and the wickedness that leads to the judgment of the flood, the pride of the builders of Babel.

That’s why Christians have said that sin is not merely this or that bad thing we do, which perhaps can be removed by more knowledge or moral effort; rather, it is the whole orientation of human existence. Sinful men and women are hopelessly lost, incapable of doing anything to save themselves. We are ‘enemies’ of God, as Romans 5:8 says, and so grace comes completely from the outside, and is done for us, not by us.

But there is grace!

There is grace from the garden of Eden onwards as God promises that the serpent will be destroyed, as he supplies Adam and Eve with clothes, puts a protective mark on Cain, establishes a covenant with the whole of creation after the flood, begins his plan of salvation with Abraham, liberates his people and provides a system of sacrifices so that he might dwell with them, shows himself determined throughout the history of Israel to keep his promise to bless all nations, a plan which comes to its culmination in Jesus, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19, ‘that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them’.

Repentance and faith are necessary, of course, but these too are only possible because of God’s grace. We come to our senses, turn around and make the journey home, to discover the lavishly rich welcome of a loving father, along with the promise of Jesus that there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents (Luke 15).

So, God does not leave humans or the world in sin. He promises to restore them and it, and he acts to restore them and it. And it’s a restoration which extends to the whole of creation. As Paul says in Romans 8:21, ‘the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God’.

Where sin pollutes and distorts and destroys our relationships with God, with others, and with the created world, God will – on the basis of Christ’s work on the cross – make all things new (cf. Revelation 21:5). Meanwhile, we look forward to that new heaven and new earth where there will be ‘no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ (Revelation 21:4).

Further Reading
Most books on Christian doctrine will contain a chapter or section on the doctrine of sin, and these could be worth checking out. In addition, the following books, written at different levels, will allow those interested to explore a biblical theology of sin in more detail.

G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008).
A full and focused study of idolatry in Scripture, arguing that we take on the characteristics of what we worship.

Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Leicester: Apollos, 1997).
Densely argued, but a significant work.

James E. Davison and Sara Covin Juengst, Journey Through the Word: Exploring Biblical Themes (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 29-36.
A brief treatment.

John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology Volume 2: Israel’s Faith (Downers Grove: IVP, 2006), 254-349.
A lengthy chapter (under the title of ‘The Nightmare’) in a lengthy book by a significant Old Testament scholar.

Alistair McFadyen, Bound to Sin: Abuse, the Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
An academic work and a demanding read, which takes up the task of showing how a theology of sin can help explain the reality of contemporary society and the self-understanding of Christians in ways that secular analyses of social relationships cannot manage.

Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology: A Thematic Approach (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008), 147-58.
A mid-level treatment from an Old Testament perspective.

W. Eugene March, Great Themes of the Bible Volume 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 34-44.
A brief overview at an accessible level.

Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008), 509-45.
A helpful discussion of what the New Testament says about ‘the problem of sin’.

Mike Starkey, What’s Wrong? Understanding Sin Today (Oxford: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2001).
Probably the best overall introduction to the area; light, but well written and closely argued.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (42/50) – Acts of God: The Church Continues God’s Mission to the World

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the forty-second of the fifty emails.

Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord… The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.
Acts 11:19-21, 26

Luke makes it clear that the account he tells in Acts is a continuation of the same story he began in his gospel (1:1-2). In fact, it is the next phase of the story that goes back to God’s promise to Abraham and the vocation of Israel to be a light to the nations. That calling, embodied supremely in Jesus, is now passed on to his followers as they continue God’s mission, bearing witness – across cultural and racial and geographical boundaries – that his salvation will extend to ‘the ends of the earth’ (1:8).

The biggest personality, of course, is Paul, who makes three separate journeys, travelling throughout the Roman Empire, proclaiming Jesus, establishing churches, returning to instruct them or writing to them.

But it is equally apparent that the work was carried out by ‘ordinary’ believers, who spread the word wherever they went (8:4). We don’t know the names of those who established the church in Antioch; but we do know that it was this multi-cultural mix of Jewish and Gentile believers who were first given the designation ‘Christian’. And it is this church that becomes the base for sending out others – Barnabas and Paul, no less (13:1-3) – launching a mission into the wider Roman world. Rightly the church carries out God’s work in its own place, and rightly it keeps in mind that the gospel is for all nations.

Beyond numerical growth, it’s also apparent that the work of the Spirit is embodied in the lives of the new communities formed – in prayer and worship, in distinct patterns of life together, in following teaching, in economic practices – such that the church is not just one more social organisation within Roman society, but a community which by its very nature is a witness that God’s kingdom is present. Faith, then, is not merely private or interior, but lived on the public stage, engaged in the world.

Throughout, the centre of gravity is God himself – where mission is not what the church does, but what God does through the church. The same gracious God, the same exalted Christ, the same powerful Spirit, and the same amazing plan means we too play a part in the continual unfolding of this story – witnessing to a renewed relationship with God and the restoration of the whole of life under the lordship of Christ.

For further reflection and action:

1. How would you describe the influence and role played by the book of Acts in (a) your own life as a Christian, and (b) the life and ministry of the church to which you belong?

2. Read some passages in Acts (e.g., 2:42-47; 11:19-21; 13:1-3) which describe the early Christian communities. What are the recurring characteristics, and what picture of the church is built up from passages like these?

3. What might be some of the problems with using Acts as a ‘blueprint’ for churches today? How do we decide what applies and does not apply in our own time and place?