Without This There Is No Church

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church, church planting, conversion, crucifixion, gospel, jesus, new testament, old testament, paul, salvation, theology

In the last post we highlighted the importance of defining the church properly by exploring the claim that what we believe about the church determines how we coordinate its life together. Today we’re going to dig further into the definition of the church rooted in teachings by the fine folks at Missio: The church is a networked family of gospel communities on mission. 

This definition requires further definition if it’s going to be helpful. What is the gospel? What is community? What is mission? Today we start with the gospel.

Contours of Paul’s Ministry

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church, colossians, conversion, discipleship, gospel, jesus, ministry, paul

I’ll flesh this out further in a future post as part of an upcoming series on Colossians, but I wanted to share a few things from Colossians 1.24-29. In this passage Paul cracks a window and gives us a glimpse of how he understood his own calling and ministry. I see eight contours of Paul’s (co)mission. It is:

• Thoroughly centered on Christ. In keeping with the rest of the letter, nothing derails Paul from his singular focus on Christ. Here he is the word of God in its fulness, the content of God’s now-revealed-mystery and therefore of Paul’s proclamation, the hope of glory, and both the context and definition of maturity.

• Marked by a willingness to suffer for others. Whatever else we can say about Paul’s strange words about filling up what is lacking of Christ’s afflictions, this much is clear: Paul has no problem suffering on behalf of the people he’s serving. He may even believe that his suffering somehow lessens the chance that they’ll experience their own. This extreme selflessness puts me to shame!

• Accomplished by teaching and admonishing. Teaching is clearly articulating the truth about Jesus, and admonishing is the followup task of straightening out fuzzy thinking and setting things in proper order. Both are crucial.

• Oriented by apocalyptic imagination. This section drips with apocalyptic hints and clues, which (among other things) means that in Christ God has revealed the meaning of history and brought his story to its dramatic climactic moment. Speaking of which…

• Grounded in the (hi)story of God. Paul never loses sight of the ways in which Christ is the one in whom God has brought all his past action and promises to fulfillment. Yes this story has entered its universal stage where all of us are invited to become a part, but this must be intentionally remembered for us to know what becoming a part actually means and looks like.

• Aimed toward full maturity. Paul here shows no contentment for mere conversion, and while no one would doubt his “evangelistic passion,” here we see that Paul rises above our silly debates about evangelism vs discipleship. Paul wants everyone to come to maturity, and he won’t rest until he’s done everything he can to that end.

• Attentive to every individual. Paul is communal to the core, but his passion for community does not hinder his commitment to the individual parts that make up the body. No person gets forgotten or let off the hook; all are intended and expected to grow into maturity.

• Fueled by the energy of Christ. Paul works his tail off (that’s a loose translation), not by his own power but by the energy of Christ at work in him.

Does it need to be stated that these markers provide a wonderful grid for thinking about our own ministries? This may not be a definitive guide, but it’s a pretty good start!

Ephesians 1.3 – Blessed be the God…

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ephesians, eschatology, jesus, new testmanet, paul, prayer, spirit, trinity, worship

Here is the TNIV translation of Ephesians 1.3: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

And here is mine: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the King, the one who has blessed us in the King with every Spirit-blessing in the heavenly realms.

With this verse we start the longest single sentence in the New Testament, one that begins here and doesn’t stop until the end of verse 14. Although in our English translations it is broken up into four or five sentences at least, in Greek it is all one. Which is crazy. It’s as if Paul wants to begin by overwhelming us with all that God has done in Jesus. As a matter of fact, Paul may be employing a literary tactic Aristotle called oratio perpetua or “perpetual speech,” the aim of which is just as we suspected: to overwhelm us with the ginormousness of the subject. Or maybe he’s just going off.

Today I want to make an observation about what Paul is doing and offer three thoughts about how he does it.

Ephesians 1.1 – Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus…

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church, discipleship, ephesians, jesus, new testament, paul, politics

Okay, so I’m not making any promises but I’m going to start blogging through the book of Ephesians verse-by-verse. I’ve actually been thinking about doing this for over a year now and started studying Ephesians in depth earlier this year. Then in his Wheaton Chapel Message, N. T. Wright challenged the students to memorize Ephesians by studying and committing to memory one verse a day. The idea is that if you learn what a verse means it will be easier to memorize, and if you memorize and meditate on it, what it means will actually take root in your life. Well, I’m going for it and we’ll see. Each day I’ll provide the TNIV translation of the verse, walk through it bit-by-bit (with moderate attention to detail), and then I’ll offer my own translation (which is meant to work alongside, never to replace, other translations).

Ephesians 1.1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (TNIV)

There is so much packed into this little verse. A year ago I decided to start blogging through Ephesians but when I approached this verse and saw how much would need to be said, I gave up!

The Solution to Our Problems

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crucifixion, discipleship, gospel, grace, jesus, new testament, old testament, paul, romans, salvation, sin, theology

I know this sounds cheesy, but I believe it’s Jesus. I think Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection saves us completely, and I know of nothing else adequate to the task. Yesterday I talked about how sin works – the process of corruption that results in our world of broken families, political instability, a crisis of spirituality, and injustice all around. Read that one first because without it this won’t make full sense. There I described this process as having five essential steps: we reject God (rebellion) and replace him with something else (idolatry), with the result that we come to increasingly reflect our new idols and thereby lose our full humanness (corruption); we set ourselves a trap from which we cannot escape (bondage), eventually giving in totally to sin or at least resigning ourselves to a “realism” that is actually hopelessness or nihilism (depravity or despair). Here I want to show how Jesus’ death and resurrection save us from this fivefold curse.

1. Jesus reveals to us that God is truly Love and as such can be trusted safely. Remember the root problem of sin is that we doubt God’s love, we fear that he’s holding out on us, so we rebel against him and take our fate into our own hands. If God is love, this rebellion is altogether unnecessary.

Life Journal 005 // Joel and the New Testament

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America, church, heaven, jesus, joel, life journal, new testament, old testament, paul, politics, romans

Last week I posted on the message of Joel the prophet here, and I promised to add some thoughts about how Joel impacts our understanding of the New Testament. I have three texts / topics in mind.

First, I think Joel’s understanding of pagan armies helps us understand Romans 13, where Paul tells the Jesus-followers in Rome to “submit to the governing authorities because they have been put in their place by God,” etc, etc. People have read this as indicating God’s support of this or that nation or government, with the implication that what nations do is good and godly. Today I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with the application points, but what we often miss is that for Paul, Romans 13 has everything to do with the way God works through pagan nations in the prophets. According to them, especially in texts like Isaiah 10 and here in Joel, pagan armies are both (a) tools accomplishing God’s purposes, and (b) enemies of God awaiting eventual judgment. The key thing is that God can use nations for his purposes, and he can call his people to submit to their rule, without them having his approval or blessing. This was certainly true of the Roman Empire of Paul’s day.

Life Journal 002 // “son of God” in Romans 1

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jesus, life journal, new testament, paul, politics, romans, son of God, trinity

Yesterday I posted on the word “gospel” as it is used in Paul, specifically in Romans 1. I talked about how we need to let this word what it means rather than forcing it to say so much more (and thus, so much less). I want to reflect similarly on the word “son of God.” When most of us hear this word, we automatically think it refers to Jesus’ divinity. And indeed, this is what the word has come to mean. It actually came to mean this late in the first century. But I would argue that in Romans 1 (and in the Gospels) it mostly meant something different from “divine being” or “God in the flesh” or “second person of the Trinity.” It meant, most centrally, King of Israel.

Life Journal 001 // “gospel” in Romans 1

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gospel, isaiah, life journal, new testament, paul, politics, romans, salvation

Recently our church took up the task of “feeding ourselves” by reading the Bible regularly using the same reading plan and journaling format. You can read about it here. I won’t post regularly on this because I don’t want to ruin my own devotions by going public with them, but I’ll throw out some thoughts as I see fit. Part of yesterday’s reading was Romans 1. The first few verses are jam-packed with goodness. But there’s a lot in there that has been caked over with dust through the centuries, so it’s important for us to be clear on what some of the key terms originally meant.

“gospel” – I can’t stress enough how important it is that we get a clear grasp of what this word meant and means. It’s one of the most loved words in the Christian world, but sadly one of the most misunderstood.