Being like Jesus!?

Sometimes it is important to state what you are not saying, prior to making your actual point, and this certainly is one of those issues.  I would never say that we should not strive to be like Christ in our love, our ethics, and our general discourse in this world.  Moreover I would never say that we should not serve the marginalized, oppressed, captive, and impoverished in this world.  We are commanded by both Christ and Moses to do that exact thing!  So because Jesus did those things perfectly, we too should strive to be like Jesus right?  Yes, in those ways, however to say that trying to be like Jesus is a universally acceptable rule of thumb is not wise.

We are called to obey all that Christ commanded us to do, we read that in the great commission.  Jesus never commands us to live by His example, but instead to live by His commands.  He certainly is a great example of what obedience to his own commands looks like, nonetheless it is His words we obey not his example.  Why is this important? or is it important?  It is incredibly important.

If you say you are trying to be like Jesus then you are trying to weep for my sin, trying to be a man of sorrows, trying to be despised, trying to be misunderstood, trying to end up on a roman cross, trying to sweat as it were drops of blood, trying to be a sacrifice for other's sins, trying to do a number of things which He has done, but never commanded you to do!  Am I splitting hairs?  It may seem that way at first, but this is more critical than we think.  When we look at Jesus' life as exemplary then we quickly lose sight of the work that He has done FOR US that could never be accomplished by us.  We gloss over His divinity while focusing entirely on His humanity.  When you encounter someone who is in sin if you ask yourself "What would Jesus Do?" the response should be weep and fear because you are going to die for that sin.  Yet if you ask "What has Jesus commanded?" you will be equipped to properly deal with sin.

The focus of being like Christ is a noble focus when properly framed.  However it quickly becomes a paradigm for life that doesn't take into account the things He has done for you and this world neither you nor anybody else could ever do.

So where do you focus when it comes to moral standards, ethics, and so on.  Jesus summed up the law for us, Jesus gave us a number of commands, He did not leave us without instruction.  Focus on His instruction, and then with regard to those instructions, see him as the example of how to carry them out, and never allow your sight of Him as an example to overshadow the sight of him as your righteousness, propitiation, and redemption.

Missing Link Monday - 01.17.2011

Missing link Monday is devoted to exposing Christ in the 2 Old Testament readings from the Revised Common Lectionary from the previous day.

The first text was Isaiah 49:1-7 follow the link to read the text.

The connection to Christ in this passage is a very direct one.  It is Christ speaking directly through the prophet.  Not much leg work needs done to make the connection.  Isaiah 49:2 connects directly to Revelation 1:16 which is a clear image of Christ.  Isaiah 49:7 makes clear that the speaker is "Redeemer of Israel" which we know is a title only Christ may bear.  The point is that these are the direct words of Christ through Isaiah.

The second text was Psalm 40:1-11

In Hebrews 10:5 we find the author loosely quoting Psalm 40:6-8 and he attributes the quote to Christ.  At the very least Christ quoted this text as his own words at some point.  This text is a celebration of news of deliverance and frankly the entire thing screams of Christ.  Psalm 40:9-11 speaks of the Gospel announcement.

Clearly in the case of both Isaiah 49 and Psalm 40, the text would be entirely missed if it was not preached thoroughly saturated with Christ.  It is only from a New Testament Christocentric approach that these two passages can be understood.

Salvation Experience!?

I am not a big fan of personal testimonies.  One of the big ideas in modern evangelism is to share your personal testimony with people.  Most of the time when you hear people tell their testimonies it is an embellishment to make them appear worse than they were before they were saved, and better than they are now, but that is beside the point.  When people want to talk about their moment of salvation it usually comes back to some time when they heard the word preached, were at a revival, in a conversation with another believer, in the backseat of a car, or whatever.  I have heard testimony after testimony like these, and I think that every one of them is wrong about their moment of salvation.  I can think of a few significant moments that I can remember when I became acutely aware of the work Christ did for me, but those were not the moments I was 'saved', and the reality is that memories change, and I probably do not even remember those moments exactly as they were.  Moreover, at my baptism I was inaugurated into the covenant community that professes belief in the work Christ did for us, so in some sense that was a salvific experience because in that moment I was identified with my salvation experience (please I am not saying baptismal regeneration here, but I most certainly am not rendering baptism a simple rite of passage either).  Nonetheless I was not 'saved' at my baptism.

There is a huge misunderstanding in Christian testimony, and the sharing of testimonies often misses the Gospel altogether.  I am not against the community of faith sharing various personal testimonies, but I am against the sharing of 'salvation testimonies', I will explain why, after I share my salvation testimony.

So here is my testimony:

Jesus, the son of God, 2000 years ago in real history lived a legally, ethically, morally perfect life which led Him eventually to a garden.  Jesus knelt in that garden called Gethsemane in prayer and agreed to the eternal plan of the Father to drink 'the cup'.  The cup was indeed the cup of wrath against all sin (Psalm 75:8).  After Jesus prayed he was led out of the garden, put on trial and sentenced to die on a Roman cross.  On the cross Jesus endured the punishment for the sin of the world and drank down that cup of wrath.  As he consumed the last of that cup the rocks tore into pieces (because the world is held together in Christ) and the veil temple was torn (because Christ is our protection/mediator in the holy of holies).  When done, he proclaimed 'It [the cup] is finished'.  Jesus died, the wrath of God was consumed by Him.  On the third day after his death Jesus rose again, validating that He is Son of God, and that He was victorious over sin.

The question that will be asked is "how can you share your testimony without mentioning yourself?"  I guess what I wonder is why other people's testimonies contain so much about themselves.  I only contributed one thing to my salvation, and that was the sin that necessitated it.

Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is my salvation experience.  It is my experience because my sin was in Christ as he was enduring the wrath of God.  It is my experience because Christ rose victoriously over sin on my behalf.  It is my experience, because his perfect righteousness has been given to me.  It is my story because it was His body, given FOR ME.  It was His blood, shed FOR ME.  That is my experience.

Here is why I do not like 'personal testimonies', because the historical salvation experience I shared above is the salvation experience of everyone who has ever believed whether they know it or not.  Personal testimony should give way to corporate testimony!  We all share the same testimony which is why we are united.  We have all been adopted by the same Father, through the same means.

Now, is there a place to celebrate the effects that the Gospel has had on our lives?  Absolutely!  If personal testimony is the sharing of Gospel fruit, the edifying of one another because of what Christ has done for us, and celebrating how that has affected our families, our lives, our peace, then great!  However when it comes to salvation experience, we all have the same one, that happened at the same time, through the same person.

If someone asks you to point to your moment of conversion, point them to the true historical narrative of your salvation.... which occurred nearly 2000 years ago.

Presupposing Good News

Matthew 4:21-22 is a great text to test yourself with if you are a pastor, teacher, parent, or anyone else who plans to share Christ with others.  So I would ask you as you read the text to take about 15 seconds before you read on, just to think about the critical point that should be shared from this text.  

And going on from there [Jesus] saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. (Matthew 4:21-22 ESV)

Seriously take a few seconds to consider what you would teach from this passage.

The common teaching on this text focuses on the immediate response of the disciples to Christ's call.  The teachings I am accustomed to hearing exhort us to hear the call and respond immediately like the disciples did.  We hear of the sacrifice that the disciples made to follow Jesus, and the amazing leap of faith they took to follow this preacher.  Most preaching I have heard is a very man centered, and man exalting view focusing not on the calling of Christ, but on the response of the disciples.  This approach takes this passage to be Law, a calling to immediate obedience, to be willing to lay it all down.  I hear preachers ask questions like "What is keeping you from dropping your nets", or "Are you willing like Zebedee to let your children drop all to follow Christ."  This type of preaching on this text is an utter failure to give the congregation anything.

Of course on the flip side the Calvinist is likely to take this text and lay out the case for irresistible grace, and use this text to speak of the effectual call of Christ.  I definitely think the Calvinist approach is better in that it puts Christ and His will front and center, but it still falls short in offering good news to anyone.  If you take this approach you will give your people wonderful evidence for the truth of your system of theology, and I do think this text makes a good case for irresistible grace but if it is preached this way it falls short of actually offering that irresistible grace to anyone.  Reducing this text to a diatribe about effectual call removes the fact that this story is news for you.  This is the place where the Calvinist preacher needs to be careful, the tendency is to explain the details of the Gospel, but failing to actually deliver that Gospel to the people as something done for them.

How I would approach this text to preach it?  First as I preach I am called to feed the sheep, and to give good news.  So I approach every text knowing that it is either directly proclaiming good news, or pointing to good news, and it is my job to make that connection and give it to the people God has entrusted to me.  Often times, especially if the text is a heavy law text, I must walk the people down a very dark road to bring them to grace, nonetheless I know approaching the text that the end goal is to arrive upon the good news of Christ who lived, died, and resurrected for us.  I know that is where I am going, but the text I preach determines the route I take.  So as I approach Matthew 4:21-22 I am looking for good news.

This approach almost immediately eliminates the possibility of preaching that "you better drop your net right now if you plan on ever being Jesus' disciple".  At the very least it eliminates the possibility of that being the main point. So begin to look at the text, find a few good commentaries and try to glean some historical context looking for good news.  Here is what you find.

It was always an honor to you and your family if you followed a prominent rabbi.  You would also note that Jesus had been gaining prominence in the Synagogue since as early as 12 years old.  Jesus was already rising in fame as a teacher and for a Jew to be asked by him to be a disciple would be a tremendous honor both to him and his family.  The word 'immediately' in our text speaks not to the greatness of the disciple, but to the greatness of the Christ whom they would immediately follow.  Moreover you would learn with a little study that the reputation of a rabbi was tightly related to the prominence of his disciples. The best rabbis would select the brightest and most promising of disciples because their students reflected them.  It is the same reason ivy league schools will court the most intelligent high school students for their university.

Put this together, Jesus a rabbi growing in prominence reaches the age where he is going to call his disciples.  He calls common fishermen.  He sacrifices his own reputation as a teacher to call those who would not likely ever be called by anyone.  What is the message here?  undeserved GRACE.  The greatest of all teachers stoops down to call the common men as His disciples.  That is the message here.  The point is not that God is so sovereign that his grace is irresistible, the point is that he is so good to me the lowliest of low that I cannot resist this good grace.  The point is not that the disciples were so obedient in the immediate response, the point was that they received an offer they never in a million years would have expected to receive.

Take it further, Jesus knew the people he was choosing.  He knew one would betray, he knew the others would run and hide, He knew the weakness of them.  Yet he still chose them.  Jesus condescended in so many ways on this earth, and this passage is a prime example of his condescension for people like us, yet we strip this passage of all of its goodness when we make it about OUR immediate response, or the irresistible effectual call.

If you are ever placed in a position where you are called on to preach or teach, make sure that you are presupposing that your text leads to good news.  Mine the text for precious gems of grace and deliver that grace to your people.  The sheep in America, and I imagine around the world, are starving for the good news of a good Christ that condescended for them.  When people hear this news, and it is impressed with reality upon their hearts, then they too will drop their nets and follow immediately, not because of their great courage, but because of his great offer.

The Gospel is Old News

The Gospel is not happening as we speak.  Nobody in this world is being the Gospel, living the Gospel, or anything of the sort.  The Gospel is by definition good news of past events as well as the announcement of a future return of Christ.  None of the Gospel is in the present tense.  Getting this right might be the most important challenge the Church faces in our day.  The implications of a wrong view of the Gospel as history are wide and varied. 

To the individual mistaking the Gospel as something we participate in leads to despair.  Eventually we come to a point when we look at our lives and what we have done as Christians and realize that our actions are not “good news” in fact often times we find ourselves in struggles we had long before we believed.  We look to ourselves as an example of the Gospel and realize there is little good news there to celebrate.

To the church it leads to all sorts of strange concepts.  If we are to live the Gospel, then spreading the Gospel means either to bring people to us, or take ourselves to people.  We end up (though we would never say it) believing that what the world needs is more of ‘us’.  It is highly narcissistic.  A lot of Church growth, attractional mentality is built on the premise that exposing people to ourselves will expose them to the Gospel as long as our people are ‘living the Gospel’.  It also leads to this idea that “we need to be Christ for someone” or “the only Jesus some people may ever see is you.”  Again, I understand the motive here and it is not all bad, but at its heart it is narcissistic.  This confusion of the Gospel as something we do, has driven much of the church’s mission, and largely has caused us to lose our theology that is foundational to our mission.  That theology being that Christ has already done and completed a work for you.

To the world the implications of believing that the Gospel must be lived is enormous.  The Gospel ceases to be good news for a perishing world if it includes a mandate.  The greatest hope for a dying humanity is that a work has been done in history for them and that they can look back with assurance knowing that work (Christ’s life, death, resurrection) was completed for them.  If the Gospel is a new lifestyle of good works and service it offers wonderful ethics to a perishing world, but it offers nothing by way of salvation.

When the Gospel becomes a present tense activity it becomes reduced to humanism.  Humanism includes self sacrifice, it involves the golden rule, it includes honor, it includes caring for the poor, in includes all sorts of wonderful things that the scriptures include in its laws.  You do not need Jesus to have solid ethics.  As far as that is concerned I am not really “anti-humanist”, in fact I am pretty much good with humanism.  It is an attempt to live out the law which is already written on the heart of man, and it benefits society when people do that.  However, humanism always fails at the personal level.  No person lives to the ethics they espouse, all people commit the injustice they abhor, the real problem is sin and it cannot be labored away, and ethics do not cure it.  Only the Gospel offers salvation, yet if the Gospel gets confused with the ethics and good deeds even that “Gospel” ceases to offer anything more than despair and condemnation.

Yet, if we recall that the Gospel indeed is a historical transaction occurring in real time with a real body, and real blood, real wood on a real cross, and real tomb that was empty because our real savior rose from the dead... if we can recall what has been done for us we no longer need to approach the Gospel as what we must do, we approach it with gratefulness knowing we are redeemed.  We are freed for joyful obedience to a law that no longer has the power to condemn.

Love -- Law or Gospel?

In Wesleyan theology there is a large emphasis placed on love, and many in the Methodist movement would go so far as to say “the Gospel in one word is love.”  I could agree with that statement if what is meant is that the Gospel is that God has so loved us that Christ had our sin imputed to him and his righteousness imputed to us that we would receive the benefit of righteousness while Christ endured the curse of the law for us, and that this actually took place in history as an actual event.  In other words, I can agree that our theology should be all about love if you are speaking of the love of God for us.  However if the Gospel is that we are to love God and love others because of what Jesus did then we are greatly confusing the Gospel and the Law.

Let me be clear, we should love others and love God, and in light of the Gospel we should be driven to love, I do not intend to negate that, nonetheless the Gospel has nothing to do with our love... in fact as far as action is concerned the Gospel has nothing to do with us.  The Gospel is news of a completed work, a work that was for us, but that was not carried out by us.  This is a very important post for this blog, because in Methodism as well as most of evangelicalism we are getting this confused.  As the veil has been pulled of my eyes regarding this tragic confusion of love being the Gospel instead of law I have been liberated and able to share this liberating Gospel others.  The reality that love is law not Gospel (in the sense that we are called to love) is a reality that we need desperately to discover in the UMC.

Just to get the terms right here, the Law is what we are commanded to do by God.  The Gospel is the work God did for us in Christ.  Law, our doing... Gospel, his doing.

Romans 3:19-20 ESV  Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.  (20)  For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Galatians 2:15-16 ESV  We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners;  (16)  yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

The scripture is crystal clear that we will not and cannot be justified by obedience to the Law, because we have already disobeyed it, and have the propensity to continue in disobedience toward it.  To attempt justification by the law is an uphill battle that produces a life of despair and leads to an afterlife of torment.  It is essential that we understand that we will not be justified by our obedience to the Law, period.  We also must understand that the Gospel is about Christ’s fulfillment of the Law for us, both the righteousness demanded by it, and the curses required for transgression of it... for us.

Which brings us to this:

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 ESV  "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  (5)  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

First off notice that the above quote is given from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy.  This is not a New Testament call to Gospel love, this is an old testament statement of Law.

Leviticus 19:17-18 ESV  "You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.  (18)  You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

Again, notice this is from the Old Testament book of Leviticus, this is not some New Testament paradigm introduced by Jesus.  This is the Law.  When you read the above verses from Romans and Galatians (and there are many more similar passages) which state we will not be justified by the Law they allude to these passages from Deuteronomy and Leviticus as well as any other passage from the Law.  Moreover we find Jesus quoting these passages directly when questioned what the greatest commandments are.  Jesus affirms that love of neighbor and love of God is the summation of the Law.  Jesus calls love the great LAW, not the Gospel.

The Law of God shows us our need for grace, it is a school master leading us to the foot of the cross.  When we take our call to love and put that call in the Gospel column instead of the Law column you create a huge problem, the very commandment which was meant to drive you to the cross instead becomes something altogether different.  It loses it’s power as love, yet gains nothing because it is not Gospel.  Our command to love is the Law, it is not the Gospel, and if you look at your own life, see the lack of love toward neighbor, and the lack of loving God with your entire heart soul strength and might you should be driven to see your need of Grace, and see that in Christ we have that grace given to us.  Yet if you refuse to see love as law, your lack of love will never drive you to grace.

Current trends in almost all of evangelicalism, and the long time trend in Methodism is to confuse love as Gospel instead of Law.  The surveys all tell us that if we focus on love we will grow our churches, and that what the world wants to see is love, and that is true.  If we make our entire focus on love than we will be the most excellent of all Law based religion, but we will cease to be Christianity.  The Jew, the Muslim, and every other major faith can claim its ethic to be love without any Gospel at all.  If we view Jesus only as example and not as sacrifice, if we see him as our best example of loving, and not as the one who fulfilled love for us, then we become no different than all other religion except that we have a better example to follow.  Yet if we see love as the law, and see the Gospel as something altogether different then and only then will we see the marvelous grace which has been given to us in Christ, and actually be freed to love from gratitude instead of loving because we are duty bound to do so.

There is a reason that even the most conservative Churches (Wesley and the Methodist church was ‘conservative’) eventually become liberal in the long run and it is because of this confusion.  With love as your Gospel you eventually end up with a religion that is entirely Law.  You can find common ground with every religious institution, every social service agency, every government, and every other humanistic endeavor because essentially they are all built on the same ethic... that is to love others and the to love the God of your understanding.  Christianity is altogether different, because Christianity alone knows that love is the summation of the law that we have been completely unable to keep, and that our lack of complete love necessitates a savior, and that Christ himself fulfilled the Law, that is fulfilled love, on our behalf and we stand on his merit, not our love.

I’d love to hear a few Methodist friends weigh in on this.