Discipleship Letters 101-102

Discipleship Letter 101                                              August 29^th, 2010

“His greatest quality as a commentator was his self-disciplined subordination to the text. The technical studies were merely a means to this end. But he did not simply listen to the voice of the Bible. As he listened to the context he questioned the immediate text; as he listened to the immediate context he questioned the context. It was by this continual process of hearing and of asking on the basis of what he had heard that Calvin was able to arrive in the remarkable way that he did at the ‘mind’ of the author” [T.H.L. Parker, John Calvin: A Biography (Louisville: Westminster, 2007), pp. 101-102.].

This is John Calvin’s conviction as a reformer. His self-disciplined subordination to the Scriptures is what we ought to pursue after. In modern church, God’s word is trivialized, marginalized, and decentralized. As a result, modern Christians are spiritually malnourished, morally degenerated, and mentally weakened.

Subordination to the Scriptures requires us to study God’s word diligently. We labor to get something out of it. I believe that if we make effort to know Him and His word, He and His word can be known, for He is not only a hidden God (Isa. 45:15), but also a revealed One (Jn. 1:18). “There are secret things that belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our descendants forever, so that we may obey these words of the law” (Deut. 29:29).

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Discipleship Letter 102                                              Sept. 05, 2010

I was reading The Message on the train. Eugene Peterson is a pastor. The main reason why he translated the Bible into down-to-earth language is not for his own profit, but for the profit of the congregation he pastured. Every pastor handles both worlds: the biblical world and the world of the congregation. The biblical world is not that difficult to understand in comparison with the world of the congregation. Biblical interpretation assists a pastor handle the text better. As times goes by, interpretive skill can be developed and sharpened.

Nevertheless, no present knowledge out there assists the pastor handle the context of the congregation. Only the pastor knows the congregation. No outside expert can give him insight. Big truth can be preached. But only small works, done in daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, make a difference: these small works must be done in silence, discernment, wisdom, and hard working.

The more I pastor a church, the more I understand the Bible, or vice versa. On the train, I was reading Romans 8. It said, “All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within…That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging in us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy” (vv. 22-25).