Every Spiritual Blessing: Ephesians 1:3

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3 ESV).

Before Paul begins to narrate descriptively the spiritual blessings of God, he first points us to the God of particularity in Jesus Christ. Before we know that God is the Father of all, we need to first know that he is the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is through his beloved Son we have been adopted into his family.  The Christian God is not a Greek god who is transcendent to a point where he does not get involved with human affair; He is not a divine force above our heads. Rather, “He is the God who made the world, and who has now made himself known in and through Jesus. As far as Paul is concerned, any picture of God which doesn’t now have Jesus in the middle of it is a distortion or a downright fabrication.”[1]

The word euvloghto,j can be understood as “blessed” or “praised.” “Praised be to the God…” is preferable. God does not need to be blessed; we need to be blessed. Rather, we don’t need to be praised, but God is worthy of our praise. God is the object of our praise; we are the object of his blessing. We praise for God’s blessings in Christ.

Paul introduces two of his letters with an introductory blessing (Eph. 1:3-14; 2 Cor. 1:3-7).[2] Ephesians 1:3-14 is considered as a “declarative praise” that is formed in one long, single sentence (in Greek) in which God’s blessings, such as election, adoption, forgiveness of sin, etc… are vividly described by Paul. This eulogy is Paul’s doxological introduction to the entire letter. At the end of the so-called “doctrinal section” (Ephesians 1-3), Paul concludes with another doxology: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Eph. 3:20-21).

As John Piper says, “God gets the glory; we get the mercy.”

The term “spiritual” (pneumatiko,j) is an adjective for the Spirit, that is, “pertaining to or belonging to the Spirit.”[3] In this vein, spiritual blessings mean blessings that pertain to the Spirit. God has blessed us in Jesus Christ with every spiritual blessing. The role of the Spirit is not out of the picture. The rest of the sentence shows that this whole business of praising God for his blessings toward us is trinitarian through and through (God the Father, 1:4-6; God the Son, 1:7-12; God the Spirit, 1:13-14). Gordon Fee points out that “the use of this adjective…indicates that the emphasis is on the nature of the blessings, rather than their source.”[4] Either these blessings are spiritual or the Spirit is the source of them, the Spirit is at work. As Fee rightly puts, “The Spirit is the present means whereby God appropriates to the believing community the ‘blessings’ that flow from the redemptive work of Christ.”[5]

This eulogy is formed as an inclusio and bracketed by the Spirit.[6] At the end of the section, God the Spirit is the Spirit of the promise, who is “a deposit on our inheritance.” He serves as the guarantee of our future salvation (1:13-14). Our receiving of God’s blessings in Jesus Christ can only become a reality through the Spirit. The Spirit actualizes the blessings of God in us. J. I. Packer writes:

The Christian life in all its aspects—intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness—is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it. So apart from him, not only will there be no lively believers and no lively congregations, there will be no believers and no congregations at all. But in fact the church continues to live and grow, for the Spirit’s ministry has not failed, nor ever will, with the passage of time.[7]

We keep in step with the Spirit in ministry. We listen to him, worship him, and obey him.

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[1] N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 5.

[2] Peter T. O’Brien points out the difference between an introductory thanksgiving and an introductory blessing or eulogy. He writes, “While his [Paul] introductory thanksgivings focus on God’s work in the lives of others, his eulogies praise god for blessings in which he himself participates.” “Benediction, Blessing, Doxology, Thanksgiving,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, edited by Gerald F. Hawthorne, et. al. (Leicester: InterVarsity Press; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 68.

[3] Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), p. 666.

[4] Ibid., p. 666.

[5] Ibid., p. 667.

[6] Clinton E. Arnold, Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), p. 78.

[7] J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in our Walk with God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), p. 15.

Peterson on Spirituality 2

Taken from http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/march/26.42.html

 

Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons 2

 

 

So how should we visualize the Christian life?

In church last Sunday, there was a couple in front of us with two bratty kids. Two pews behind us there was another couple with their two bratty kids making a lot of noise. This is mostly an older congregation. So these people are set in their ways. Their kids have been gone a long time. And so it wasn't a very nice service; it was just not very good worship. But afterwards I saw half a dozen of these elderly people come up and put their arms around the mother, touch the kids, sympathize with her. They could have been irritated.

Now why do people go to a church like that when they can go to a church that has a nursery, is air conditioned, and all the rest? Well, because they're Lutherans. They don't mind being miserable! Norwegian Lutherans!

And this same church recently welcomed a young woman with a baby and a three-year-old boy. The children were baptized a few weeks ago. But there was no man with her. She's never married; each of the kids has a different father. She shows up at church and wants her children baptized. She's a Christian and wants to follow in the Christian way. So a couple from the church acted as godparents. Now there are three or four couples in the church who every Sunday try to get together with her.

Now, where is the "joy" in that church? These are dour Norwegians! But there's a lot of joy. There's an abundant life going, but it's not abundant in the way a non-Christian would think. I think there's a lot more going on in churches like this; they're just totally anticultural. They're full of joy and faithfulness and obedience and care. But you sure wouldn't know it by reading the literature of church growth, would you?

 

But many Christians would look at this church and say it's dead, merely an institutional expression of the faith.

What other church is there besides institutional? There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church. There's sin in the local bank. There's sin in the grocery stores. I really don't understand this naïve criticism of the institution. I really don't get it.

Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There's no life in the bark. It's dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it's prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn't last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it's prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.

In my writing, I hope to recover a sense of the reality of congregation—what it is. It's a gift of the Holy Spirit. Why are we always idealizing what the Holy Spirit doesn't idealize? There's no idealization of the church in the Bible—none. We've got two thousand years of history now. Why are we so dumb?

Since the Reformation, though, we've championed the idea that the church can be reformed.

Hasn't happened. I'm for always reforming, but to think that we can get a church that's reformed is just silliness.

I think the besetting sin of pastors, maybe especially evangelical pastors, is impatience. We have a goal. We have a mission. We're going to save the world. We're going to evangelize everybody, and we're going to do all this good stuff and fill our churches. This is wonderful. All the goals are right. But this is slow, slow work, this soul work, this bringing people into a life of obedience and love and joy before God.

And we get impatient and start taking shortcuts and use any means available. We talk about benefits. We manipulate people. We bully them. We use language that is just incredibly impersonal—bullying language, manipulative language.

 

One doesn't normally think of churches as bullying.

Whenever guilt is used as a tool to get people to do anything—good, bad, indifferent—it's bullying. And then there's manipulative language—to talk people into programs, to get them involved, usually by promising them something.

I have a friend who is an expert at this sort of thing. He's always saying, "You've got to identify people's felt needs. Then you construct a program to meet the felt needs." It's pretty easy to manipulate people. We're so used to being manipulated by the image industry, the publicity industry, and the politicians that we hardly know we're being manipulated.

This impatience to leave the methods of Jesus in order to get the work of Jesus done is what destroys spirituality, because we're using a non-biblical, non-Jesus way to do what Jesus did. That's why spirituality is in such a mess as it is today.

 

But many pastors see people suffering in bad marriages, with drug addiction, with greed. And so they rightly want to help them now, by whatever method will work.

Yes, except something backfires on you when you're impatient. How do we meet the need? Do we do it in Jesus' way or do we do it the Wal-Mart way?

Spirituality is not about ends or benefits or things; it's about means. It's about how you do this. How do you live in reality?

So, how do you help all these people? The needs are huge. Well, you do it the way Jesus did it. You do it one at a time. You can't do gospel work, kingdom work in an impersonal way.

We live in the Trinity. Everything we do has to be in the context of the Trinity, which means personally, relationally. The minute you start doing things impersonally, functionally, mass oriented, you deny the gospel. Yet that's all we do.

Jesus is the Truth and the Life, but first he's the Way. We can't do Jesus' work in the Devil's way.

I get exercised about this because many pastors are getting castrated by these methodologies, which are impersonal. There's no relationship to them. And so they become performance oriented and successful. It's pretty easy in our culture, at least if you're tall and have a big smile. And they lose their soul. There's nothing to them after 20 years. Or they crash. They try all this stuff and it doesn't work, and they quit, or quit and start doing something else. Probably 90 percent of the affairs that pastors have are not due to lust, but boredom with not having this romantic kind of life they thought they'd get.

 

What if we were to frame this not in terms of needs but relevance? Many Christians hope to speak to generation X or Y or postmoderns, or some subgroup, like cowboys or bikers—people for whom the typical church seems irrelevant.

When you start tailoring the gospel to the culture, whether it's a youth culture, a generation culture or any other kind of culture, you have taken the guts out of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not the kingdom of this world. It's a different kingdom.

My son Eric organized a new church six years ago. The Presbyterians have kind of a boot camp for new church pastors where you learn what you're supposed to do. So Eric went. One of the teachers there said he shouldn't put on a robe and a stole: "You get out there and you meet this generation where they are."

So Eric, being a good student and wanting to please his peers, didn't wear a robe. His church started meeting in a high-school auditorium. He started out by wearing a business suit every Sunday. But when the first Sunday of Advent rolled around, and they were going to have Communion, he told me, "Dad, I just couldn't do it. So I put my robe on."

Their neighbors, Joel and his wife, attended his church. Joel was the stereotype of the person the new church development was designed for—suburban, middle management, never been to church, totally secular. Eric figured he was coming because they were neighbors, or because he liked him. After that Advent service, he asked Joel what he thought of his wearing a robe.

He said, "It made an impression. My wife and I talked about it. I think what we're really looking for is sacred space. We both think we found it."

I think relevance is a crock. I don't think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they're taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or their consumer needs.

Why did we get captured by this advertising, publicity mindset? I think it's destroying our church.

 

But someone else might walk into Eric's church, see him with his robe, and walk out, thinking the whole place was too religious, too churchy.

So why are they going if it's not going to be religious? What do they go to church for?

Of course, there's another aspect to this. If you're going to a church where everybody's playing a religious role, that's going to be off putting. But that performance mentality, role mentality can be seen in the cowboy church or whatever—everybody is performing a role there, too.

But we're involved with something that has a huge mystery to it. Are we going to wipe out all the mystery so we can be in control of it? Isn't reverence at the very heart of the worship of God?

And if we present a rendition of the faith in which all the mystery is removed, and there's no reverence, how are people ever going to know there's something more than just their own emotions, their own needs? There's something a lot bigger than my needs that's going on. How do I ever get to that if the church service and worship program is all centered on my needs?

Some people would argue that it's important to have a worship service in which people feel comfortable so they can hear the gospel.

I think they're wrong. Take the story I told you about this family in front of us on Sunday. Nobody was comfortable. The whole church was miserable.

And yet, they might have experienced more gospel in going up and putting their arms around that poor mother, who was embarrassed to death.

 

How do we know when they have moved from merely adapting ministry to the culture to sacrificing the gospel?

One test I think is this: Am I working out of the Jesus story, the Jesus methods, the Jesus way? Am I sacrificing relationship, personal attention, personal relationship for a shortcut, a program so I can get stuff done? You can't do Jesus' work in a non-Jesus way and get by with it—although you can be very "successful."

One thing that I think is characteristic of me is I stay local. I'm rooted in a pastoral life, which is an ordinary life. So while all this glitter and image of spirituality is going around, I feel quite indifferent to it, to tell you the truth. And I'm somewhat suspicious of it because it seems to be uprooted, not grounded in local conditions, which are the only conditions in which you can live a Christian life.

 

 

Peterson on Spirituality 1

Taken from http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/march/26.42.html

 

Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons 1

 

What is the most misunderstood aspect of spirituality?

That it's a kind of specialized form of being a Christian, that you have to have some kind of in. It's elitist. Many people are attracted to it for the wrong reasons. Others are put off by it: I'm not spiritual. I like to go to football games or parties or pursue my career. In fact, I try to avoid the word.

 

Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God.

That's a naïve view of spirituality. What we're talking about is the Christian life. It's following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we've been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It's just ordinary stuff.

This promise of intimacy is both right and wrong. There is an intimacy with God, but it's like any other intimacy; it's part of the fabric of your life. In marriage you don't feel intimate most of the time. Nor with a friend. Intimacy isn't primarily a mystical emotion. It's a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency.

 

Doesn't the mystical tradition suggest otherwise?

One of my favorite stories is of Teresa of Avila. She's sitting in the kitchen with a roasted chicken. And she's got it with both hands, and she's gnawing on it, just devouring this chicken. One of the nuns comes in shocked that she's doing this, behaving this way. She said, "When I eat chicken, I eat chicken; when I pray, I pray."

If you read the saints, they're pretty ordinary people. There are moments of rapture and ecstasy, but once every 10 years. And even then it's a surprise to them. They didn't do anything. We've got to disabuse people of these illusions of what the Christian life is. It's a wonderful life, but it's not wonderful in the way a lot of people want it to be.

 

Yet evangelicals rightly tell people they can have a "personal relationship with God." That suggests a certain type of spiritual intimacy.

All these words get so screwed up in our society. If intimacy means being open and honest and authentic, so I don't have veils, or I don't have to be defensive or in denial of who I am, that's wonderful. But in our culture, intimacy usually has sexual connotations, with some kind of completion. So I want intimacy because I want more out of life. Very seldom does it have the sense of sacrifice or giving or being vulnerable. Those are two different ways of being intimate. And in our American vocabulary intimacy usually has to do with getting something from the other. That just screws the whole thing up.

It's very dangerous to use the language of the culture to interpret the gospel. Our vocabulary has to be chastened and tested by revelation, by the Scriptures. We've got a pretty good vocabulary and syntax, and we'd better start paying attention to it because the way we grab words here and there to appeal to unbelievers is not very good.

 

This corruption of the word spirituality even in Christian circles—does it have something to do with the New Age movement?

The New Age stuff is old age. It's been around for a long time. It's a cheap shortcut to—I guess we have to use the word—spirituality. It avoids the ordinary, the everyday, the physical, the material. It's a form of Gnosticism, and it has a terrific appeal because it's a spirituality that doesn't have anything to do with doing the dishes or changing diapers or going to work. There's not much integration with work, people, sin, trouble, inconvenience.

I've been a pastor most of my life, for some 45 years. I love doing this. But to tell you the truth, the people who give me the most distress are those who come asking, "Pastor, how can I be spiritual?" Forget about being spiritual. How about loving your husband? Now that's a good place to start. But that's not what they're interested in. How about learning to love your kids, accept them the way they are?

My name shouldn't even be connected with spirituality.

 

But it very much is.

I know. Then a few years ago I got this embarrassing position of being a professor of "spiritual theology" at Regent. Now what do you do?

You make spirituality sound so mundane.

I don't want to suggest that those of us who are following Jesus don't have any fun, that there's no joy, no exuberance, no ecstasy. They're just not what the consumer thinks they are. When we advertise the gospel in terms of the world's values, we lie to people. We lie to them, because this is a new life. It involves following Jesus. It involves the Cross. It involves death, an acceptable sacrifice. We give up our lives.

The Gospel of Mark is so graphic this way. The first half of the Gospel is Jesus showing people how to live. He's healing everybody. Then right in the middle, he shifts. He starts showing people how to die: "Now that you've got a life, I'm going to show you how to give it up." That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.

It involves a kind of learned passivity, so that our primary mode of relationship is receiving, submitting, instead of giving and getting and doing. We don't do that very well. We're trained to be assertive, to get, to apply, or to consume and to perform.

 

Repentance, dying to self, submission—these are not very attractive hooks to draw people into the faith.

I think the minute you put the issue that way you're in trouble. Because then we join the consumer world, and everything then becomes product designed to give you something. We don't need something more. We don't need something better. We're after life. We're learning how to live.

I think people are fed up with consumer approaches, even though they're addicted to them. But if we cast the evangel in terms of benefits, we're setting people up for disappointment. We're telling them lies.

This is not the way our Scriptures are written. This is not the way Jesus came among us. It's not the way Paul preached. Where do we get all this stuff? We have a textbook. We have these Scriptures and most of the time they're saying, "You're going the wrong way. Turn around. The culture is poisoning."

Do we realize how almost exactly the Baal culture of Canaan is reproduced in American church culture? Baal religion is about what makes you feel good. Baal worship is a total immersion in what I can get out of it. And of course, it was incredibly successful. The Baal priests could gather crowds that outnumbered followers of Yahweh 20 to 1. There was sex, there was excitement, there was music, there was ecstasy, there was dance. "We got girls over here, friends. We got statues, girls, and festivals." This was great stuff. And what did the Hebrews have to offer in response? The Word. What's the Word? Well, Hebrews had festivals, at least!

 

Still, the one big hook or benefit to Christian faith is salvation, no? "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." Is this not something we can use to legitimately attract listeners?

It's the biggest word we have—salvation, being saved. We are saved from a way of life in which there was no resurrection. And we're being saved from ourselves. One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which is following Jesus.

But the minute we start advertising the faith in terms of benefits, we're just exacerbating the self problem. "With Christ, you're better, stronger, more likeable, you enjoy some ecstasy." But it's just more self. Instead, we want to get people bored with themselves so they can start looking at Jesus.

We've all met a certain type of spiritual person. She's a wonderful person. She loves the Lord. She prays and reads the Bible all the time. But all she thinks about is herself. She's not a selfish person. But she's always at the center of everything she's doing. "How can I witness better? How can I do this better? How can I take care of this person's problem better?" It's me, me, me disguised in a way that is difficult to see because her spiritual talk disarms us.

 

Not to Speak is to Speak

What kind of message does the world need from the church? What kind of problem does the modern church face in the world? I have been thinking about the phrase, Speak openly and clearly about what God is for. Speak openly and clearly about what God is against. One of the problems of being a Christian in our pluralistic society is that we do not speak up for almost anything. This Sunday, I heard something intriguing. The pastor said, “We are tolerant to beliefs. But we are judgmental to shoes.” We are judgmental to small matters. We speak openly and clearly about our views on fashion, music, food, etc…But we are silent on serious matters, such as morality, religion, lifestyle, etc... Where is our moral courage? Where is our message? Can we speak openly and clearly about what God is for and against?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” I think the world needs this kind of message from the church. Or I should say, the church must openly and clearly preach this kind of message to the world. So many silent Christians live in the world and are only judgmental to what people wear. But they are not “judgmental” to secular morality like friends with benefits, gay marriage, abortion, injustice in the world as well as in the church, etc… What are we for and against? If we are for honesty, we are against any form of deceitfulness in the church and the world. If we are against domination and oppression, we are for equality and stand in solidarity with the oppressed.

In the church, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that we have been telling people to live a life of spirituality that is very self-centered and society-decentered. I feel like most of the time we live our Christian life in a churchly way: We read the Bible and pray regularly. We practice spiritual disciplines on top of different life responsibilities.  We keep a sense of calmness in all matters. Don’t speak too much. Don’t raise our voice when we speak. Don’t get mad in all circumstances. Don’t look at women in a lustful way. Don’t debate with others because when you debate, you may get mad or go crazy in disagreement. We listen to a sermon with submission. In collaboration with others, we ought to focus on relationship, not relationship, efficiency, effectiveness, and goals/objectives altogether.

Sometimes I wonder, “Is this how Jesus lived? Is this a kind of spirituality that Jesus expected from us? Do we miss anything in our Christian living?”

Dialectical Tension

Matthew’s gospel concludes with the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. It is not new that the command of Jesus in the Great Commission is the hermeneutical key to interpret Matthew’s gospel. Jesus called the disciples in Galilee, and he gave them the Great Commission in Galilee. From Galilee to Galilee, how did Jesus call and make disciples in Matthew’s narrative? Matthew’s Gospel became the discipleship blueprint for Matthew’s community in the first century.

In discipleship, there is no fairy-tale or magic. The ups and downs of discipleship path are real and inevitable. We grow along the way with the guidance and power of the Spirit. I find it interesting to realize that some disciples still doubted when they saw the resurrected Jesus on the mountain in Galilee. “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.” (Matt. 28:16-17, ESV) At the end of the gospel, after Jesus had done and proved everything he said through the cross and resurrection, they worshipped. However, some doubted.

In commenting on the Great Commission, David J. Bosch notes:

Clearly these references to the weakness of the disciples have an important meaning for Matthew’s readers. Being a disciple of Jesus does not signify that one has, as it were, arrived…The weaknesses of the disciples in Matthew’s gospel do not, however, have a dark side only. In Matthew 28:17 the disciples’ doubt is strangely juxtaposed to their worship: “They (all!) worshiped him; but some doubted”…[Matthew] wishes him community to know that mission never takes place in self-confidence but in the knowledge of our own weakness, at a point of crisis where danger and opportunity come together. Matthew’s Christians like the first disciples, stand in the dialectical tension between worship and doubt, between faith and fear.[1]

There is always a dialectical tension between trusting and following. Matthew’s gospel recognizes it in the path of discipleship. It seems to imply that there is a place for disciples to worship and doubt God at the same time even though Matthew does not promote it as a norm for the life of discipleship (see Matt. 8:23-27). We worship with doubt; we doubt in worship. How true it is in real life.

I wish I can say that we worship wholeheartedly and trust in His authority all the time. I wish I can teach something like that. But I am glad that Matthew put the weaknesses of the disciples toward the end. And Jesus did not rebuke them. Rather, Jesus gave them a mission and a promise: I will continue to be with you at the end of age as you continue to make disciples of all nations in the name of the triune God. The life of discipleship is grounded in the promise of God in Christ as we continue to fulfill His mission commissioned to us. In the midst of fulfilling this great task, we grapple with the dialectical tension with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

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[1] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), p. 76.

Discipleship Letters 97-98

Discipleship Letter 97                                                August 01^st, 2010

“It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction. Put more simply, there is within us a fundamental dis-ease…” [Ronald Rolheiser, Seeking Spirituality: Guidelines for a Christian Spirituality for the Twenty-First Century (London: Hodder & Stoughton), p. 3.].

What do we do with our unrest? Our longings? Our desire? The way we deal with our unrest is our Christian living. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” We are not at ease because we have a dis-ease within us as creatures. Only the Creator can fulfill our total needs.

Christian growth has something to do with how we handle our longings. The practice of solitude creates space for us to detect the source of our unrest and for God to say to us, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

Don’t quench our longings by staying busy or ignorant, for our longings point us to the transcendent One and help us more attentive to the “still, small voice” of God (1 Kgs. 19:13).

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Discipleship Letter 98                                                August 08^th, 2010

This is what I usually feel in my pastorate:

“Most of our people have no idea what two or three new messages a week cost us in terms of intellectual and spiritual drain. Not to mention the depletions of family pain, church decisions, and imponderable theological and moral dilemmas. I, for one, am not a self-replenishing spring. My bucket leaks, even when it is not pouring. My spirit does not revive on the run. Without time of unhurried reading and reflection, beyond the press of sermon preparation, my soul shrinks, and the specter of ministerial death rises.”

And this is the vision that I’ve been pursuing in my pastorate:

“The great pressure on us today is to be productive managers. But the need of the church is for prayerful, spiritual poets…I mean pastors who feel the weight and glory of eternal reality even in the midst of a business meeting; who carry in their soul such a sense of God that they provide…a constant life-giving reorientation on the infinite God. For your own soul and for the life of your church, fight for time to feed your soul with rich reading. Almost all the forces in our culture are trivializing. If you want to stay alive to what is great and glorious and beautiful and eternal, you will have to fight for time to look through the eyes of others who were in touch with God.”

[Taken from John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2002), p. 66.]

走來走去

「耶穌教導人的時候，說：你們要提防經學家，他們喜歡穿長袍走來走去，喜歡人在市中心向他們問安，又喜歡會堂裡的高位，筵席上的首座。 他們吞沒了寡婦的房產，又假裝作冗長的禱告。這些人必受更重的刑罰。」（馬可福音 12:38-40）

在《馬可福音：福音之始》（香港：明道，2011）的註釋書裏，孫寶玲寫到：

門徒以至讀者要提防的，並非長衣、座位或處境等，而是文士的心態「喜愛」及其背後的價值。最重要的指斥是文士濫用其身分、弱者對他們的信心，並以信仰形式扭曲他們受託的責任，侵呑寡婦的家產。...因為在古代寡婦除了神，再無別的依靠，是必須靠群體保障過活的脆弱族群。信仰制度和宗教領袖，是彰顯神眷顧弱者的代表，因此要肩負和接受更大的責任和審判（瑪3：5）。（頁392-393）

這是一段很好的解讀。文士的心態是喜愛被人喜愛，喜愛被視為「屬靈」。這種心態是吊詭的：它很吸引，但同時有很大破壞力，特別對於教會領袖而言。當領袖一不留神，甚至不理會這種「喜愛被人喜愛」的心態，便慢慢地假裝自己成為群眾心目中的自己。失去了自己，便失去了對人與事的角度。失去了角度，這個「自己」便成為一個典型的平面人。平面人聽不到世界的聲音，對周圍的人或事也沒有信息，沒有自己的獨特語言。用楊牧谷的講法，平面人是過期的人（expired)。

日復日，年復年，這些平面人跟隆胸沒有分別。好看，但一眼就知是假貨。想深一層，這種「裝假狗，假大胸」的心態其實是人的驕傲。

曾經聽到一位舊約學者說：「謙卑是指人真誠面對自己的本相」。我覺得這個定義很實在，一點也不抽象。謙卑不是「認叻」的相反，更不是「明明識，又話唔多識」的態度。誠實地面對本我，我們來到上帝的施恩座前亦是這個本我，基督救贖這個罪我，聖靈引導的也是這個真我。保羅在羅馬書七章提到「我」的困惑和衝突，正因為他謙卑。試問，那有基督徒不能認同保羅對「我」的真實描述？保羅對「我」的實況有透徹的認識，反映了他的謙卑。作為一位年長，滿有經驗的僕人，他能對年輕的提摩太說：「在罪人中我是個罪魁」（提前1：15），他的謙遜可見一班。很明顯保羅這份謙遜來自他和上帝直向的關係，不是橫向的關係。保羅希不曾說：「按着律法上的義來說，我是無可指摘的」（腓3：6）。若他與人比較，怎會被比下去？

梁家麟在《追求成長》，初版二刷（香港：學生福音圑契，2005）一書𥚃說得好：

發現上帝是一個兩面的歷程，我們在發現上帝更多恩典的同時，也發現自身更多的罪惡。我們不是從自身的「是」（我有甚麼，我為了上帝做了甚麼），來推斷自己可以從上帝那裡獲取甚麼回報、預期得著甚麼恩典。我們若誠實地審視自己，便根本不能期望上帝會賜下任何恩典。...我們若不從自身的「是」，來推測上帝的恩典，就會倒過來，從上帝的恩典回證自身的「不是」。我們承認自己不配得著上帝的鴻恩，領恩愈多，欠債感覺愈强，便愈有罪孽深重的歎息。這裡説的罪是關係性的，而不是律法性的。... [因著這份鴻恩]，我們沒有做好應盡的本分，沒有逹到上帝愛裡的期望，辜負了衪的選召和恩典。我們發現上帝的恩典愈多，便愈發現自己是個罪人這事實，我們同時是蒙恩的人及罪人。（頁125-126）

保羅發現恩典；因著恩典，他發現更多自己。律法叫他知罪；恩典叫他知「己」。律法指出他外在的行為；恩典指向他內在的生命。在恩典底下，一切自身的「是」都成為「不是」。保羅看到自己的「不是」，他看到恩典。

這些文士是解經家，神學家，非常認識律法，但他們就是不太認識賜下律法的上帝。他們喜愛群眾看到他們，不幸地他們看不到自己。他們不能在群眾中見到上帝，因為他們看不見切實的（寡婦的）需要。他們喜歡走來走去，忙過不停，穿梭於人羣中，但只限於走來走去，未能找着群體的刻心價值。

Jesus and Judas

“And Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him” (Mk. 3:19).

In the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in Galilee, Jesus chooses the twelve apostles and sets them apart for Himself as king and the kingdom work. They are chosen to share Jesus’ identity (to be with him) and mission (to preach and cast our demons). Among all the disciples, Judas is mentioned last on the list. He is identified as the betrayer. From a post-resurrection perspective, Mark explicitly lets readers know who Judas is: a chosen disciple and a faithless betrayer.

It is interesting to see that Mark (Matthew and Luke also) identifies Judas as the betrayer in the early narrative. Does it imply that Jesus does not really care who we are at the moment we are called as long as we will be formed and transformed into what He wants us to be? Does it mean that the choosing of Jesus has nothing to do with our perfection but everything to do with His boundless grace?

The primary purpose of choosing the twelve is to be with Jesus. The life of Jesus is the antidote to the lives of the twelve. The fact that Judas does betray Jesus at the end implies that Jesus Himself has no guarantee that He can spiritually form each disciple. I know that it sounds so not orthodox. But in any disciplining process, who can guarantee the end product, especially we are dealing with the life of people?

The choosing of the twelve is Jesus’ gracious invitation. It is gracious because no one deserves to be called. It is an invitation because we are too sinful to take the initiative to invite Jesus and see that Jesus is the Lord whom we want to follow wholeheartedly. By invitation only! We are invited to follow, repent, commit, re-commit… The calling of Judas is an invitation to repent. We don’t have to be perfect when we are called. We will never be perfect in the journey of being called. Jesus can accept our imperfection and bear with our iniquities. Nevertheless, He cannot tolerate with an unrepentant heart. God looks for a broken spirit and a contrite heart. God will not despise (Ps. 51:17); Jesus looks for the same condition among the disciples.

Once a betrayer; always a betrayer. Such a statement has no place in Jesus’ mindset, for there is always a new possibility in the kingdom of God. Judas, however, continues to live in the way in which he feels safe and comfortable. Judas stays with Jesus all the time but never allows Jesus to enter into his core being. Judas’ inner life has no Jesus—no Life. He comes to Jesus but never commits; he follows but never dedicates. From a spiritual standpoint, Judas stays where he is at. He is close to Jesus and yet far from Him. Because Judas is so close to Jesus, he succeeds to betray Him. However, he is too far from Jesus. He hangs himself after betraying Jesus. For me, his hanging indicates that he is too far from being redeemed. It is too late for Judas to repent.

In Singleness of Heart: Restoring the Divided Soul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), Clifford Williams notes:

The Christian heart is a strange paradox. Though it clings to God tenaciously, it forgets him and flees from him. Though it humbly receives God’s forgiveness, it feels that it does not need forgiveness. Sometimes it acts from motives that are alien to its God-commitment; sometimes it pretends, both to others and to itself, to be better than it knows itself to be.

On occasion it is acutely aware of these contradictions and struggles with them. More often, though, it has only a partial awareness or no awareness of them. (p. xi)

Jesus' Plan

Jesus’ plan of evangelism is not the type of evangelism that we have in mind. The way we understand evangelism is that we share the good news of Jesus Christ and invite people to accept Jesus as their personal Savior and Lord. It’s certainly part of Jesus’ plan of evangelism. But it fails to present the full picture.

“And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast our demons” (Mk. 3:13-15, ESV).

After going up and inquiring of the Father, Jesus calls the Twelve. In Mark 1:16-20, we know that when Jesus calls Simon, Andrew, John, and James, they immediately respond to his calling and follow him. Jesus calls; disciples convert. Thus, when Jesus calls and appoints them as apostles, some sort of converted experience is involved. They don’t just believe. They follow. In the calling of the Twelve, the purposes of calling are as follows: to be with Him, to preach, and to cast out demons with His authority. (In the West, can we replace “casting out demons” with healing?) In priority, the primary purpose of Jesus’ calling is to be with Jesus. Jesus’ plan of evangelism is more than mere conversion. It is an invitation to enter into a deep relationship with Him. In other words, being with Jesus is the primary purpose of being called. Being precedes doing (preaching, casting out demons, etc…).

In the 20^th century, the evangelical church in particular focused on the task of evangelism. Billy Graham and his crusades brought new credibility to evangelism as well as drawing large numbers of men and women to faith in Jesus. Furthermore, new methods of outreach were developed with an emphasis on finding ways to make it easy for people to come to faith. Commitment to Jesus became a matter of affirming belief in a few core doctrines and asking Jesus into one’s life. Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of this simplification was that while many converts were produced, far fewer disciples were made…It can be argued that the unlinking of evangelism from spiritual formation in the 20^th century resulted in a church with little depth. In the 21^st century, new attention has been given to evangelism that contains a call to discipleship.[1]

The deepness of faith draws deeply from the deep well of Jesus. Christians are not called to believe Jesus. We are called to be with Him so that we know what it means to follow Him by doing what he asks us to. Jesus’ plan of evangelism always entails solid, lifelong discipleship. Ministry or mission is the fruit of this discipling relationship.

In my previous discipleship group, a small group of us studied the book, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010) by N. T. Wright. He notes:

Jesus’ call to follow him, to discover in the present time the habits of life which point forward to the coming kingdom and already, in a measure, share in its life, only makes sense when it is couched in the terms made famous by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Come and die.” Jesus didn’t say, as do some modern evangelists, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Nor did he say, “I accept you as you are, so you can now happily do whatever comes naturally.” He said, “If you want to become my followers, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). He spoke of losing one’s life in order to gain it, as opposed to clinging to it and so losing it. He spoke of this in direct relation to himself and his own forthcoming humiliation and death, followed by resurrection and exaltation. (p. 115)

Jesus’ plan of evangelism is about growing in number as well as caring for its spiritual maturity:  to believe Christ, to follow Christ, to grow in Christ, and to proclaim Christ.

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[1] Richard V. Peace, “Evangelism,” in Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. Edited by Glen G. Scorgie (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), p. 435.