Discipleship: Who Initiates? Ephesians 4:11-16

One of the most interesting discussions in the realm of discipleship is about who initiates the discipleship relationship. I have met many who fall on either side of thought. Some say that one knows a disciple is ready to take the next step in growing in their faith when they are ready to ask for closer help on the journey of faith. Others will say that the mature Christian needs to be actively looking for others to pour into. Someone else might point out the role of the Holy Spirit in bringing two individuals together for the sake of growing. I would like to reflect on this discussion from the angle of Ephesians 4:11-16:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

 We are bound to one another in the church, called to invest our special gifts and passions into one another. This bind is the special act of God. It is through this process that God protects us from the false teachings and perversions that pass through Christian ranks as well as raises us into who we were meant to become. Bonheoffer offers some relevant thoughts here when he spoke of how being a neighbor means that our gifts are demanded by the other. It is not the quality of the other who forces our hand, but instead out status as neighbor. Our very position demands that we act.

When we make the commitment to Christ, we are making the commitment to join a body of faith. I believe that we are bound on both sides of the equation, seeking out the discipleship relationship regardless of which side of the relationship we end up on. An example that would help clarify this idea is how we unintentionally disciple many of our friends just through daily interaction. Our little stories and encouragement breathe life and maturity into those that we spend time with. The bond that we share with those around us requires responsibility and stewardship. We are always growing. Whether we are growing into better or worse people is mostly up to us. In the same way, we are always discipling. Whether we disciple well or poorly depends on the intentionality and effort put into the relationship. While many discipleship relationships are best left informal, others require a concentrated, organized, and thoughtful interaction in a time specially set apart for formation.

Listen to where God is acting in your week. Who is He letting you influence? Discover if there are relationships that you need to own up to. See if the chance for formation and discipleship is presenting itself. Most importantly, listen to God and others with love, seeking their best and learning how your relationships can bring out full and complete maturity, rather than being satisfied with simply being comfortable.

The Lord's Prayer: Matthew 6:9-13

Before this season in life, I have paid little to no attention to the prayer known as the Lord's Prayer. It always seemed a bit superficial to me and there are many ways in which I wished it elaborated more on the human condition and reflected the variety of emotions shown in something like the book of Psalms. However, I have recently come to a better understanding of the text and wish to share with you what it has done in my life as of late. Here is the passage below:

Pray, then, in this way: Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

A better understanding of the kingdom of God is the key to getting a grip on this prayer from the Sermon on the Mount. When we see that Jesus died on the cross, not only for the sake of defeating sin but also of defeating death, we see that this prayer is the central concern of the Christian walk, summing up the struggle that we, as Christians, face daily and how that daily struggle fits into the larger schema of God's plan for earth.

We start with the Father, the creator of heaven and earth. His name is holy above all else and is the source of all comforts. In our prayer life, we need to start here, by acknowledging the holiness and lordship of the Father. When we begin in this way, all of our problems, goals, and visions are seen through a new filter. We understand how little our problems are in the hands of a caring and holy God. This section is also where I began to have my old problems with this prayer. When our problems are seen as small by God, He seemed to be uncaring and unfeeling. This problem continues into the next section, which is also where the bigger picture starts to make sense.

In the next section, we see the request for God's Kingdom to come and will to be done in earth as it is in heaven. Continuing the problem from the earlier passage, many have thought that, since our problems are so small in the eyes of God, our request for God's will to be done was a request for our problems to disappear and the later prayer for daily bread as just enough sustenance to keep our bodies moving in pursuit of higher, more spiritual purposes. Instead, a better theology understands that the Father's role as creator continues into the present. He is working through us to bring life into the world in anticipation of the real life that will arrive with the second coming. With this new understanding, we realize that our daily lives, with their little quirks and problems, are the plain within which the almighty and holy God acts. He arrives on the scene, not to trivialize all things, but to affirm their value and reorient their value within the larger picture of the Kingdom of God. He defeats death not just with justification and the atonement, but also with his call to deeper character, a renewed life, and a reassertion of creation's inherent value. Instead of coming as a ghastly apparition, Jesus arrives in a human body and lives a human life, bringing healing and wholeness wherever he goes. His life not only keeps the soul from the fires of hell, but also helps that new life enter into the physical plain.

Our call to sanctification is not a call to abandon our bodies and hopes. They are a call to enjoy them beyond our imagining through the Kingdom of God. This call is not a call to the health and wealth gospel. The world we live in lies to us by making us believe that we can preserve life by hoarding wealth, experiences, and pleasures. This pursuit is attempting to use death to find life. The health and wealth gospel is not much better. It seeks to use God to find the same instruments of death. Health and wealth become death when they steal the love reserved for God alone. True life comes from realizing that the beauty of the world points toward God, not the other way around. Moving forward, this theology means that the beauty of the world is revived and reconciled to the Kingdom of God. The old interpretation meant that the beauty of the world was killed and named as an evil distraction from the non-physical kingdom of God. However, the prayer itself denies this idea! God's will is done on earth because earth itself matters! We see this opposition of ideas in discussions of sex. Some Christian groups have denied the value of sex because they thought it pulled people away from worship of the true God. Instead, they should have seen that sex displays the glory, beauty, and power of God. Our enjoyment of married sex in this present time worships God and anticipates the coming beauty that will be fully restored to the earth, although it will come in a wildly different and more powerful form.

Thus, when we get to the portion about asking for daily bread, we see that we are humbly asking God to enter into our daily losses and victories, looking for God's presence in the mundane as well as the dramatic. Prayer hits the pause button on life, and opens the heart to see where God is around us and what He might be up to. With hope, we recognize the lordship of God, His love enacted through His invasion of the world, and the hope we should have that God is acting to restore beauty and holiness to our lives. The prayer shows the realism to know that God's will and kingdom, while having the victory in hand, have not taken full dominion of the world yet. God has asked us to anticipate his kingdom here while it is also on the way (otherwise known as the "already but not yet").

Moving on, we see that God's concern does not just stop with beauty in this world, but also comes in the formation of character. We ask God to forgive us of our shortcomings as we forgive the same failings of those around us. In a world where God's will has not come to full dominion yet, we see rebellious man (including ourselves) fighting to hold on to control. God's kingdom includes our daily fight to resist sin and forgive the sin which is committed against ourselves. This character is part of the beauty being restored to the world.

Finally, we see that this formation of character is not a matter of willpower (thank God!), but is a partnership between ourselves attempting to put on holiness and God helping us to avoid temptation. Our living testimonies are fights to bring the kingdom of God here and now.

In conclusion, we pray because our Father has fought his way into our world and defeated its master, death. Just like at the beginning, where life came out of nothing, with the coming of Christ, life comes out of death. Death is defeated and tossed aside, never to hold dominion ever again. In the meantime, there is a strange twist in time, where the victory of God has not arrived yet, like the Yankee soldiers who were still fighting battles in the South before news of their victory had yet to arrive. This prayer pauses our lives in the midst of the battle and recalls the story, the struggle, and the hope we have that this life does matter and that help is on its way.

The Ask: Matthew 7:1-6

I have really enjoyed the fresh perspective on the sermon on the mount that I have received from friends and some of the books I have been reading from. One part in particular that has received my attention has been the beginning of Matthew 7. If you have ever heard the phrase: "Judge not lest you be judged as well" or some similar thought, chances are that the quote or phrase was trying to reference this section. Here it is below:

"Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you wild be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces."

Traditionally taken by many to be forbidding judgment, this passage is often quoted as a way to avoid the stern judgment of those critical of one's own life. However, while this angle is true of the passage, we often fail to see the heart behind the passage. When we are reading this passage, we see that Jesus wants to avoid having people rush into judgment, but we often think this means that there will be no conversation had at all; no life-giving words exchanged between friends, neighbors, or others seeking to add value to another's life. Instead, we see that Jesus is asking us to slow down and pause. He speaks toward our need for introspection and silence. Often, we try to add to others' lives out of a sense of our own emptiness and death. We think that we can justify our own existence, prove our superiority to others, or gain a sense of maturity from giving advice to others.

On the one hand, we need to learn to slow down and sit with silence and solitude, learning what anxieties and pains are driving us. On the other hand, we are also being asked to be self-aware when we are tempted to give helpful advice to those around us.

I read a sage quote recently that said "Advice will be given to us whether we like it or not. Council is better. It is asked for from others because of the trust that has been established between the two parties." What I see in this quote can be best surmised as "The Ask". When we see a way to guide and help another soul, the way of the kingdom of God is to ask if the advice is welcome. One can see this in the tail end of the above passage, the famous Pearl Before Swine text. When we ask if our advice is welcome, we do two things. First, we learn to respect someone's boundaries and give love appropriately. This practice prevents us from living into our insecurities and points to a love for the other above a love for the self. Second, we prevent ourselves from giving love inappropriately, entering into relationships where either we harm through unwanted advice or codependant relationships where the recipient of advice finds increasing difficulty facing life without help from others.

"The Ask" also represents a larger spirit behind the law, one that does not force itself upon one's neighbors, but instead serves in love, taking the route of the gentle stranger, making progress only where it is welcome. The cavalier spirit of the age bids us to stride into contested waters, holding aloft the sword of righteousness, letting nothing stand in our way. We see resistance as ignorance and diversion as averting the inevitable confrontation. Instead, Jesus asks us to love and serve with gentleness, getting to know others personally before inserting ourselves into their personal affairs, and only doing so with their permission. Instead of striking down the desire to help and give advice, this passage opens the door for it by putting advice-giving way beneath several other virtues: love, patience, kindness, gentleness, joy, etc. As we grow in virtue, we will not only become capable of giving better advice, but we will also grow into discerning individuals who overflow their behavior out of a character of love rather than force progress through an attitude of fear and hate.

Saving Life: Matthew 16:25

In my readings this past week, I have gained a lot more perspective on life, death, and the meaning of the gospel. Before this week, I had never had the pleasure of reading N.T Wright. Well, quite to my surprise, instead of dense theological treatises, I found out that his writings were quite practical and close to the heart.

He spoke of how Christ's physical resurrection means our lives do, in fact, matter. We suffer from death in many ways besides the physical kind. We see death in the end of relationships, poverty, transitions, loneliness, and grief. Christ's defeat of death includes all of the above in addition the physical kind. In the end, Wright argues that there are remains of what we do here in the life after life after death. The details are a bit foggy, but living intentionally in this life is not like oiling the wheels of a cart that is headed towards a cliff.

This news is great to hear and gives us hope for this life. Also, it gives us the hope to stop using death as a means to get life. Whenever porn, drugs, or alcohol is used to dull the pain of different deaths we experience, we are serving death and trying to fight death with death. When we settle for bad relationships instead of meaningful solitude or theft and vanity over poverty and unpopularity, we do the same thing. We are trying to fight death with death. And, without the resurrection, death is the best tool that we have. When we see tyrannical governments, we see that they are immensely threatened by Christianity because it takes their only true weapon, death, and removes it from the picture entirely.

So, when we get to Matthew 16:24-25, we see Jesus saying to his disciples: "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." If we believe the mistaken gospel and say that Jesus came to save us for a disembodied heaven, we make Jesus out to be a liar here. We see members in our church who don't serve Christ and we are left to either sigh or threaten them with the loss of their salvation. And if the threat works, they ask how much sin is allowed and where the line is that salvation ends and live on the edge of the line. And if all we have to look forward to is a disembodied heaven with no remnant of this life, living on the edge is the best place to be! As one person says, "He who dies in debt, wins". Why plough through life when the easy life awaits and both work and sloth produce the same result? I used to try to answer this question through "fulfillment", with the concept that living in Christ is more "fulfilling" in the long run over the easy life. While this may be true for some, for others it is not. Not only so, but if this were the reason for sanctification, pastoral work would be like being an anesthesiologist, only there to take the pain away. If sanctification is just about pain management, sin does a better job of making us forget our pain than virtue does, even if morality has some greater long-run return on investment. We gain the hope that morality in this life matters. Yes, all Christians go to heaven, but some by the skin of their teeth (like in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15) while others get to enjoy some legacy of what came before. Again, the details are foggy, but this life matters. Poetry, fun, relationships, serving the poor, and virtue all matter!

I have often envied my friends who got to enjoy sin while I had to choose the hard road. Sometimes, this envy would result in actual sin. Most of the time, though, it grew and harbored bitterness in my heart, especially as I failed to see virtue result in blessings, better job positions, and relational bliss. Additionally, every time I have moved to a new city, I had despair from seeing how those who chose sin consistently walked away with connections, popularity, job positions, and financial security while I moved away to somewhat the opposite. The death of transition made them the victors. It would seem that their spiritual death had gained life while my spiritual life gained death. There is a way in which those memories become increasingly lonely, with me being the only person who can remember what really happened, with both the moments of pain and the moments of joy. But I see now that God is in every moment of life. I see that choosing life in Christ daily is actually saving life for the resurrection. Something is carried on. God is truly present in all things. Life matters and we have a chance to save it each day.