We do appreciate comments and feedback, and even questions from our many subscribers. Sadly, we haven’t got the time or resources to be able to answer each question, however two of the comments that came in to us on the Acts 17 passage we thought would be very helpful to air in this episode of Two Ways News, before we look at the two wisdoms contrasted in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

Yours,

Phillip

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Is pride a virtue or a vice? Is it right or even wise to boast of oneself? Traditionally, modesty has long been commended and pride decried. But today, we encourage the young to be proud of themselves, and we hear celebrities of all kinds proclaiming pride in themselves and their achievements. What place, then, does pride have in the Christian life? Should we be proud to be Christians?

The ancient world, as with the modern, places great emphasis on learning, education and wisdom. The human ability to think deeply is one of the great distinctive characteristics of our species. But does God set limits on human wisdom? Can we judge God or even know him by our wisdom?

The gospel always undermines human pride in ways we never expect, and so I hope you enjoy our discussion in this episode. Thank you to those who have inspired conversations by contacting us and providing feedback; if you want to do the same, please write to us at respond@twm.email.

Yours,

Phillip

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Church division dishonours our Lord and creates great pain amongst his people. Sadly, it is all too frequent in our experience. But what is the nature of church unity, and what level of priority should we give to it? Clarity of thought and expression is very important when painful disagreements are being addressed; this is particularly true when we discuss the nature of unity and the church.

In Corinth was the disunited church of God. This is the issue that Paul discusses in his first letter to the Corinthians. However, we must remember that he not only addresses the particular situation of the Corinthian church, but also “all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Yours,

Phillip

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For more on this topic, listen to this talk…

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Today we start our year’s work by looking at the opening of 1 Corinthians. It’s such an exciting letter covering so many topics that we look forward to God using this podcast to challenge us all.

Yours,

Phillip

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Before we start our 2026 Two Ways News series on 1 Corinthians, we need to have an important discussion on Bondi and antisemitism. This is something that neither of us imagined would happen. Not all our listeners will agree with our views, but we hope the thinking and discussion is helpful grist to the mill.

Yours,

Phillip

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The climax of Paul’s great Athenian sermon is the call of God for all people to repent. But there are some strange elements in this call. One important element is its timing. Another is in the judgement “by a man”. Let’s listen afresh to Paul’s great gospel statement.

Yours,

Phillip

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Fathers are so important in life, even in this anti-patriarchal age. For fatherhood is derived from God the Father. He is the provider and protector of us all, who knows our needs before we even ask. He is not far from us, and he is open to our prayers.

This is an important point in Paul’s logic as he attacks the inconsistency and incoherence of Athenian idolatry.

Yours,

Phillip

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As we start off another year, we are still conscious of how troubled our world is. Wars and rumours of wars continue to fill our news media. When will mankind ever come to peace? … not until the Lord returns! It may look as if God has lost control of the world as nations war against each other, but that is a failure to understand God’s purpose in creating and appointing the nations. Paul, in his speech in Athens, speaks of God’s ongoing rule of the world through his rule of the nations.

Yours,

Phillip

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Our second episode of our summer series on Paul’s evangelism in Athens points to the enormously important doctrine of God’s sufficiency and our dependence. I hope during this holiday time, for our Southern Hemisphere subscribers, you are having a great time to reflect on God’s goodness. For our Northern Hemisphere subscribers, we wish you well as you lurch into winter.

Yours,

Phillip

Welcome to a New Year. We are commencing Two Ways News’ summer series today, looking at evangelism through the study of Paul’s famous sermon on the Areopagus of Athens in Acts 17.

Yours,

Phillip

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There are many Christmas traditions that I happily do not practise, from sentimental Christmas songs to reindeer, trees, and Santa Claus. However, I would never forgo the glory of eating a great feast at Christmas time, for eating food together is the God-given expression of fellowship, and Christian fellowship is derived from God sending his Son into the world to save sinners. Read on to see how Peter and I remember our Christmas festivities and have come to understand the importance of food at this season.

Yours,

Phillip

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Christmas is a great time for gifts, and Two Ways News comes to you free of charge and provided by generosity. If you would like to share in this generosity, please see the details of how to give at the end of this transcript. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this Christmas special.

Yours,

Phillip

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Christmas is a great time for gifts, and Two Ways News comes to you free of charge and provided by generosity. If you would like to share in this generosity, please see the details of how to give at the end of this transcript. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this Christmas special.

Yours,

Phillip

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We come to the last of our series in the opening chapters of Genesis. We have certainly enjoyed rethinking the great themes that these chapters contain and hope that you have similarly enjoyed our discussions. As we’re coming towards the end of the year, we are thinking about next year’s programmes. We would love to hear of any part of the Bible you would want us to work through, or any particular issues you would like us to address. Simply drop your suggestions to respond@twm.email.

Yours,

Phillip

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The Australian government glories in the development of multiculturalism. However, Australian society is now straining to maintain social harmony. Consequently, the government is trying to regulate freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion. For while migration can enrich a country, the concept of a nation celebrating and encouraging many cultures is a recipe for failure. In the Bible, the creation of multiculturalism was God’s judgement at the Tower of Babel. In this episode of Two Ways News, we turn back to that great event recorded in Genesis 11.

Yours,

Phillip

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Last week’s episode of Two Ways News was very dark and gloomy. This week, we are looking at the same passage, but turning our attention to the light of salvation that is caught in the rainbow covenant of God as we read of the saving of Noah and his family.

Yours,

Phillip

After the genealogy of Genesis 5, we have finally left Adam and Eve. But then as we merge into chapter 6, we find Adam’s baleful influence dominating the landscape. This week’s episode of Two Ways News does not seek to answer the many questions people ask about the flood, but to pay attention to the central message of sin and judgement. Your temptation may now be to skip this episode, but that is because of sin and judgement! So as the old hymn has it, “yield not to temptation”.

Yours,

Phillip

This week in Two Ways News, we continue the theme of family. Having dealt with the family of Cain in chapter 4, we turn to the new family of Adam. In this family, God’s word enables us to see the Lord’s plans for salvation, hinted at in Genesis 3:15 and worked out in Noah. We don’t often have sermons on genealogies, but hopefully this episode will help us see their importance.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Welcome again to Two Ways News.

Peter Jensen: Phillip, you never wore glasses growing up, but I can remember getting my first pair of glasses and realising that most people could see things that had, for me, only been a blurred vision.

Phillip: Spectacles are a very important part of life. The reformers, Tyndale and Calvin, saw glasses as a way of understanding the Bible. Here’s an excerpt from Calvin’s Institutes

For just as eyes, when dimmed with age or weakness or by some other defect, unless aided by spectacles, discern nothing distinctly; so, such is our feebleness, unless scripture guides us in seeking God.[1]

Without the scriptures, we may know there is a God, but we are confused about who he is. But with the glasses of the scriptures, we can see that which before was only a matter of confusion.

Peter: In last week’s episode, when we were talking about chapter 4 of Genesis and the family of Cain, you said something like this: that in the midst of the gloom of a fallen world, the grace of God was still discernible. How does chapter 5 throw any light on that? It is odd because when you read it, it seems to consist of a list of names and strangely long lifespans.

Phillip: The chapter is a genealogy, but why don’t we read it? Friends, this is part of God’s word. God has chosen to reveal himself in not just one genealogy, but in several. Genesis 4:25-5:32

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.

When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.

When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalalel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel 840 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.

When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died.

When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died.

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died.

When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.

After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Certain things stand out. Sons and daughters are mentioned each time. It’s not just the sons mentioned, nor all the sons; only the first-born sons are named. There’s also an incredible sense of life, that they live so long even before they have children, but then they go on living a long life. But there’s still that chorus that keeps coming, ‘And he died…and he died…and he died.’ Life is still within the family of Adam, yet the death sentence is still there. There are two particularly important characters mentioned: Enoch and Noah. There’s a prophecy about Noah: “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” There’s a hope for Noah that is different from all the others; there’s something special about to happen. What about Enoch?

Peter: What we see in Enoch is grace at work. God has been revealed as the great creator. Now, the other name we give him, ‘Saviour’, comes into play. The word is not there, but you can see the saviour at play, perhaps with the advent of Seth, who takes the place of Abel. Abel is the man of faith who, even in his death, foreshadows Christ. It is by the family of Seth that men begin to call on the name of the Lord. Presumably, the name of the Lord there is the name ‘Yahweh’, the name that people of faith call God as time goes on. Moses has his experience of hearing about the name of God at the burning bush. So, calling on the name of the Lord, perhaps even preaching the name of the Lord, occurs then. It’s a signal to us that something significant is happening, that God’s grace, his saving power, is at work. He’s not going to leave the family of Adam and Eve to perish.

Phillip: It’s interesting that having had the introduction at the end of chapter 4 about the firstborn son and then the grandson Seth, we have at the beginning of chapter 5 a recap of the story, so to speak, about man being created in the image. The image that man is created in, that Adam has, then passes on to his child Seth. There’s a sense in which the dominion to rule the world is passed on, particularly within this family rather than in the family of Cain. There’s a godly family here that is then outlined for us.

But those long ages testify to life that they have, in all its strength and vigour. Genesis is not telling us everything; it could refer to houses or dynasties. God in his power could have someone live this long, but it’s recorded because it is extraordinarily long. People are not going to continue to live that long. When Moses is writing this, he knows that that’s not how long people normally live. It may be like Sumerian kings who reigned over this period of time.

Peter: They were said to reign for a thousand years, meaning their house, their dynasty, their family, reigned for a thousand years.

Phillip: We’re not really sure, but it doesn’t matter how long they lived, because they died. In this way Enoch is so unique because he walked with God; he was not like the others. God chooses to take him.

“Calling on the name of God” is an interesting phrase about God at work in grace. It sounds like it’s referring to when people started praying. The phrase is used that way sometimes. The name of the Lord is important to pick up because it’s printed in upper case; they were calling on the name ‘Yahweh’. That means that they had personal knowledge of him. When I call God ‘God’, I’m talking about what he is, but when I call God ‘Yahweh’, I’m talking about who he is; it’s a personal relationship. But the phrase ‘calling on’ can mean ‘proclaiming’, so in Exodus 34, where God proclaims his name to Moses

Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”

God proclaimed the name of Yahweh, and so back in Genesis 4, the time of Enosh was the time when people began to proclaim the name ‘Yahweh’.

Peter: This fits with what we read about Enoch. We read that he walked with God, exactly what Adam and Eve used to do before they sinned in the garden. It displays the intimacy of faith, which you understand if you’re a Christian believer, where you walk with God.

Then this extraordinary phrase, in a chapter that says, ‘And then he died’, and we come to Enoch, “And he was not, for God took him.” The same happened later on with Elijah, which presumably means that God took him home to be with him. Hebrews 11:5

By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.

In other words, Elijah was walking with God. He had pleased God and so was taken up. So there was something extraordinary about this man, Enoch. The wonderful Matthew Henry, an 18th century commentator on these things, said

Enoch was the brightest star of the patriarchal age, distinguished by true religion and eminent religion. He did not only walk after God, as all good men do, but he walked with God, as if he were in heaven already. To walk with God was the business of Enoch’s life. It was the joy and support of his life. Whenever a good man dies, God takes him, fetches him hence, and receives him to himself. Those whose walk in the world is truly holy shall find their removal out of it truly happy.[2]

I’ll never forget John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace whom you mentioned last time, saying as he neared the end of his life, “I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great saviour.” Our trust in God, shown by our faith and our behaviour of the way in which we live for him, is what saves us.

Phillip: Within the genealogy, though, is the narrative of salvation being worked out.

Peter: When I looked at our genealogies in the DNA test that I did recently, I was checking up on our ancestry to give me a sense of who we are and where we’ve come from. It was to satisfy my curiosity about things. But this genealogy is different.

Phillip: This is telling us a story and showing us God’s grace at work. In the world of Cain and his great-great-grandson Lamech, where things are going so badly, we go back to Adam, and then we find some who are proclaiming the name of Yahweh. In chapter 3, we were told that the seed of the woman would actually crush the serpent. We’ve been looking for the serpent crusher ever since chapter 3. It wasn’t Cain. It couldn’t be Abel. It’s Seth’s son, Enosh. That’s when they start proclaiming the name of Yahweh. So we think, ‘Here it’s coming,’ and then it’s just another person who’s dead. There’s a long wait. God is very patient in his salvation.

Peter: But the genealogy is pointing forward; there’s someone coming.

Phillip: Enoch is someone who’s come, and Enoch is saved, but he doesn’t save anybody else. Then there’s Noah, and he’s coming as ‘the one that’s going to reverse the curse’. Now we have the name of the serpent crusher, Noah, and the salvation of the world is going to come with this man. I hope we all know something of the events of Noah’s life, which we’ll look at next time in terms of the flood, but we also know that Noah didn’t turn out to be the saviour of the world either.

In 2 Peter chapter 2 we read

If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly… then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

It’s a great passage that refers to Noah, and the fact that it’s not Noah who is the saviour, but that God is the saviour through Noah. It’s unfortunate because the Greek is actually saying something differently here, which I think is important to understand our genealogy. It talks about Noah as “a herald of righteousness with seven others.” Who are the seven? Most people will tell you who the seven are: Noah’s wife, their three sons, Ham, Shem and Japheth, and their three daughters-in-law who go nameless; that equals eight people. The trouble is, the Greek doesn’t even say eight; it says ‘eighth’. God preserved Noah, the eighth herald of righteousness. I can understand why our translators make it simple with the solution, he and seven others, but it’s not eight; it’s eighth.

What’s more, he’s a herald of righteousness, but when you read the events of Noah, he doesn’t say anything to anybody; he never preaches. But the word ‘herald’ means ‘to preach’. So here’s a man who doesn’t preach and is called ‘the eighth preacher of righteousness’. The answer is found in Genesis 5, because one of the characteristics of the New Testament quoting and alluding to the Old Testament is the accuracy and care with which they treat the Old Testament, and this is a good example. Back in Genesis 4, we’re told, ‘This is the time from which they proclaim the name of Yahweh.’ It started with Enosh. You then look at the numbers of people who were there: Enosh, then Kenan, Mahallalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and number eight, Noah. He’s the eighth proclaimer of the name of the Lord. So Peter is referring to that, not to the family numbers that were saved.

Peter: We’ve put on our spectacles, namely the word of God, and we’ve looked out at the world. We’ve come across a passage which seems so remote, so different from the way we think, talking about people who are just beyond imagining. But we see the wickedness and corruption of the world, of human culture, to this day: filled with wonderful achievements, but corrupted by human sin always. We’ve now seen God at work, that in and through human history, invisible to all but those who put on the spectacles of the Bible, God is there, and he’s showing his grace to them. But he’s also preparing for the ultimate hero of this genealogy, Jesus. Thus, we should have no fear, but every day, even in the midst of the difficulties of living in a world such as the one we’ve inherited, we should be filled with faith and hope.

[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1535

[2] Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary, 1706

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, listen to Phillip’s 1997 Campus Bible Study Talk on Genesis 5-11 entitled The Impossible Subject.

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Welcome again to Two Ways News. Working with my brother makes it a bit of a family concern. The last episode of the older brother killing the younger reminds us of the mixed blessing of family life. In this episode, we follow through the family of Cain. It’s not a pleasant story, though in the midst of evil there are great achievements. Don’t forget to tell others of Two Ways News.

Yours,

Phillip

We return this week to Genesis and chapter 4. It’s a passage that Peter and I should be able to empathetically deal with: Cain and Abel, brothers at war!

Thank you to those who have sent messages of encouragement to us and questions to push our thinking. Please continue to encourage others to subscribe to Two Ways News.

Yours,

Phillip

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One of the great themes of the early chapters of Genesis is the judgement of God. In our discussions of the New Testament use of the themes of Genesis, we come today to talk of judgement in the New Testament. While it sounds, and is in fact, an unpleasant topic, we will see that it brings us into the heart of the wonderful topic of God’s mercy and love. So I hope you enjoy our discussion on judgement in the New Testament.

Yours,

Phillip

We come back today to the subject of men and women, though this time not from Genesis, but looking at how the New Testament looks at this topic.

Yours,

Phillip

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Once again, we are looking at the New Testament’s treatment of Genesis 1-3; this time, on the subject of marriage. We had several episodes on this topic, but it is so central to the New Testament understanding that we thought it worth spending an episode thinking on it.

Yours,

Phillip

We come back today to the subject of men and women, though this time not from Genesis, but looking at how the New Testament looks at this topic.

Yours,

Phillip

One of the great statements of the Bible that is most often quoted or alluded to in public Christian debate is the ‘image of God’. But what does it refer to, and to whom does it refer? In this episode we continue to look at the New Testament understanding of the early chapters of Genesis. And here we find there are more references to the image of God than in the Old Testament. For there is a great surprise in store for those who read Genesis 1.

Yours,

Phillip

As you have no doubt noticed, Peter and I have had a great time pondering the early chapters of Genesis. But the best commentary and authentic understanding of Genesis is found in the New Testament. So for the next few weeks, we are turning there to see what the New Testament makes of the early chapters of Genesis.

Yours,

Phillip

As we come to the end of Genesis 3, we see the judgement of death brought upon the serpent, the woman, and the man. It is surprising in many ways, for it outlines the character of death while we, apparently, are alive. We have so limited death to that point of the end of life that we are not understanding our present life under the sentence of death.

Yours,

Phillip

Thank you, friends, for subscribing and for your emails giving advice or asking questions.

As we come to Genesis 3, we come to one of the most distinctive and controversial teachings of the Bible: namely, sin. It is surprising how deeply our society misunderstands and/or rejects the doctrine of sin. Surprising because we see sin all around us. I would like to say I hope you enjoy this episode, but the necessity of sin is not enjoyable, even though the Bible speaks of it’s fleeting pleasures.

Yours,

Phillip

Two Ways News is freely available and supported by generosity. We hope you freely enjoy this and every episode, and that you will recommend it to others. If in your generosity you wish to support this ministry, the details of how to do this are at the end of this transcript.

This particular episode is opening our eyes to what Adam and Eve saw when their eyes were opened through eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Yours,

Phillip

Two words commonly misunderstood today are ‘faith’ and ‘Satan’. In this week’s episode, Peter and I pursue our understanding of faith and Satan’s contribution in undermining it.

Once again, can we encourage you to mention the weekly podcast to friends, colleagues, and neighbours? I hope you will enjoy this episode.

Yours,

Phillip

One of the doctrines of the Bible that is easy to demonstrate and widely rejected is the universality of sin. Sin is not an optional extra choice of some degenerate people. Sin is the inbuilt character of humanity. But what is sin? How did sin come into the world? What temptation did Satan use? How do moralists sin, and why are they amongst the most sinful of people? In this episode of Two Ways News, Peter and I discuss the temptation that came to Eve and its implications for our temptation to sin.

Please remember to subscribe and encourage others to subscribe to this podcast, and if you want to respond, our email address is respond@twm.email.

Yours,

Phillip

Strangely, some people find it easier to believe in Satan than to believe in God. But what they think of Satan can be so different to the Bible as to not be recognisable. Moving to Genesis 3 has given us an opportunity to pause and think about Satan: his character, his nature, and his ways of operation. I don’t want you to enjoy a discussion on Satan, but I do hope you find it stimulating and informative.

Yours,

Phillip

One of the great points of conflict between Christians and the world is the topic of marriage. Though it is part of God’s creation of the world, seen in Genesis 1 and 2, the effect of sin makes it strangely foreign to today’s society. There’s nothing new in this, as Christians were called to be different or holy in this area of life in the New Testament itself. However, today’s discussion is about how different Christians are to be in an area of life where even non-Christian commentators are beginning to see the failure of Western civilisation.

Yours,

Phillip

As we continue to think about the creation of the man and the woman in the garden, we find marriage being introduced as the outcome of our sexual polarity. The woman is created to the joy of the man. Consequently, the man is to leave his parents to ‘cleave’ to his wife. The old-fashioned verb to cleave has been changed in most modern translations. But the concept of sex inside the marriage cannot be changed. So Peter and I wander into a discussion about sexual intimacy in and out of marriage.

Yours,

Phillip

In Australia, the birth rate has dropped to below 1.5 children per woman. This is the lowest birth rate we have ever had and is clearly below the 2.1 children per mother necessary to maintain the population. How important is it to have children? Does marriage necessitate children? Is marriage itself necessary? In the special creation of woman in Chapter 2 of Genesis, the subject of parenthood is immediately raised. Peter and I are canvassing some of the issues of parenthood in this episode of Two Ways News.

Yours,

Phillip

As we come to the end of Genesis Chapter 2, we open up some of the biggest topics for debate, happiness and unhappiness in humanity today. Re-thinking marriage has been part of our social dialogue since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. Re-thinking the reality and role of men and women, their sexual differences and similarities has caused great turmoil in society. I’m sure you will find our discussion in this episode as more food for thought and ammunition for debate.

Yours,

Phillip

Humans have always enjoyed living with the animals of God’s creation. But what is our relationship with the animals, and how should we care for them? Today we move from the abuse of animals to the worship of animals as we think about the Bible’s teaching on animals.

Yours,

Phillip

Apart from sleeping, we spend more of our life working than anything else we do. But what is God’s plan for our work? Indeed, what is work? And how does it differ from doing good works, or does it? After responding to a letter from one of our subscribers, Peter and I explore what Genesis means by our gardening. At the end of our transcript are details of a talk on the subject of work.

Yours,

Phillip

https://phillipjensen.com/resources/work-for-the-lord-2/

In the middle of the garden, full of beautiful trees, there are 2 trees in particular. What is the importance of the tree of life? What is it telling us about God’s plans for humanity? Why is it singled out for special mention?

The other, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, seems to be even more important in establishing the drama of life in the Garden of Eden and subsequently the storyline of the rest of the Bible. But what does it mean to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

I hope our discussion prompts more discussion among you and your friends.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter and I love gardens but hate gardening. However, all the good things about the garden are set out in Genesis 2. In today’s podcast, we explore God’s generous provision symbolised in the Garden of Eden. To what extent was the garden paradise that we need to regain? To what extent is the paradise promised to the thief on the cross something greater than the Garden of Eden?

Don’t forget to encourage your friends to subscribe.

Yours,

Phillip

One of the high points, if not the high point, of Genesis 1 is the creation of man, both male and female, in the image of God. There we are told of our responsibility to govern the earth, to multiply and to fill it. When we turn to chapter 2 of Genesis we are again told of the creation of man. This time it is in much more detail, and yet it still gives the same prominence and importance of man in God’s creation. Today’s podcast is a discussion of the movement of Genesis 1 to Gen 2 where we look at man in the garden.

If you want to respond you can email us at respond@twm.email. Please encourage friends to subscribe to Two Ways News.

Yours,

Phillip

The creation account of Genesis finishes in a most unexpected place – rest. The idea of God resting on the seventh day is so familiar to us that we sometimes miss how extraordinary it is. That God should rest and bless the seventh day, inviting us to share it with him is one of the wonders of the Bible. In a society dominated by and priding itself in ‘busyness’ and confused and conflicted over ‘work/life balance’, God’s teaching on the Sabbath day is a welcome relief for Christians. Yet it is not simply an individual issue, for the Sabbath is to be celebrated by all of creation.

Yours,

Phillip

You knew that we couldn’t undertake a series on Genesis 1-11 without dealing with science – and so here it is. Mind you, it may be different to what you are expecting as we explore the background to the warfare between science and religion (aka Christianity). We do not want to hold the Bible to ransom from the captivity of science, but science from the captivity of history. Where has science come from and how has it been derailed or helped by an understanding of the sinfulness of humanity? Neither Peter or I claim any expertise in the practice of science, but both of us have serious questions about the history of science, the understanding of Genesis in the light of science and the understanding of science in the light of Genesis. I hope you find it informative.

Yours,

Phillip

Motherhood and apple pie is no longer the foundation of Western civilisation. Apple pie is still pretty important, but motherhood has now been challenged. Peter and I had the privilege of the same mother, whom we loved and admire, and remember with great fondness. Yet the kind of family life in which we were raised has undergone considerable change during our lifetime. Mother’s Day brings us to reconsider family life.

Yours,

Phillip

For Australians, Anzac Day is the great national day. But what is it we’re remembering? And should we celebrate Anzac Day? In particular, should Christians be remembering or celebrating a military battle of the First World War? Does Anzac Day glorify war? Is it an alternative religion for Australians? I hope you will enjoy our discussion as Peter and I try and grapple with the history and purpose of Anzac Day observances.

Yours,

Phillip

In this episode of Two Ways News, we’re looking at the resurrection both from a historical and a theological point of view. History and argumentation have great merit, and yet a defective presupposition that leaves us unsatisfied. Yet prophetic history not only satisfies our knowledge of historical events but also explains their meaning and purpose. Jesus said that without Moses and the prophets, people will not believe even if someone rises from the dead. This has been demonstrated over the centuries and in our age today. I hope you enjoy this episode. You can email us at respond@twm.email and one of our team will get back to you.

Yours,

Phillip

I hope you enjoyed a great Easter break. Holidays are always marvellous opportunities to relax and catch up with friends, but the Easter holiday is even better because it gives us time to think about the greatest weekend in human history: when our Lord and Saviour died and rose again. The death of Jesus was so great that I would call Friday not just good, but the best Friday.

Yours,

Phillip

One of the most profound and widely quoted verses of the Bible is the creation of Man in the image of God. So, this week Peter and I went exploring some of its implications. It is such a fruitful concept by which to understand humanity, not the least because in the New Testament we find Jesus is “the image of the invisible God”. But before we get there, we need to understand how we are as individuals, male and female, in the image of God as well as how humanity, as a whole, is in his image. There’s so much fruitful discussion to be had on this passage, we hope our conversation will stimulate yours.

Yours,

Phillip

Thanks again for your feedback and encouragement. It’s great to hear that you are enjoying receiving the Two Ways News podcasts as much as we are in producing them.

As we look at Genesis 1, we come to a great climax in the creation of humans in God’s Image. More bottles of ink have been spilled over this phrase than possibly any phrase in the Bible. What is the image of God? In what way are we in the image of God? What are humans and who are we? The questions go on and on. Yet this teaching of Genesis 1 has stood the test of time in identifying God’s universal identity and value of humans.

Yours,

Phillip

‘Good’ is such a strange word. We all know what we mean by it, but it is so difficult to define. So when God declares his creation to be ‘good, very good’ what is he saying? Is the world itself good or simply pleasing? And if it is good, what is it good for?

In this week’s Two Ways News, Peter and I venture into the meaning of God calling the world good and the implications that has for living in this world and the next.

Yours,

Phillip

On Peter’s recovery, I thought it would be good to hear his views on the topic of words and power that Genesis 1 so importantly illustrates. So, we return to the topic of words and see how they create and operate in relationships. This brings us to how they are distorted and politicised by suspicious people. I’m sure you will appreciate coming back to the two voice podcast as Peter and I struggle through this important and highly contemporary issue of words.

Yours,

Phillip

Sadly Peter was sick when we recorded this episode of Two Ways News, so it is a solo effort for today’s topic. Thankfully, Peter has now recovered. From Genesis 1 we see the power of God’s word, which is part of God’s wisdom by which he created the world. Thus, the power of words is one of the joys and problems of life. The devil’s power is in his lying words. Yet it is God’s word that never returns to him empty but always achieves his purposes. Understandably but wrongly, this leads people in authority to censorship.

Yours,

Phillip

 So far, we have been struck by the opening words ‘In the beginning God created’, which take us to the idea of one God and one universe. But yet when we come to John chapter 1 we find that the word by which God created all became flesh in the person of Jesus. Furthermore, in Colossians 1, the world was created not only through God’s son but also for him.

 So, in this week’s TwoWaysNews we are exploring the place of Christ in creation. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did in making it.

 Phillip

Citizenship is a wonderful thing. To be part of something larger than yourself gives meaning purpose and identity. Peter and I grew up in the British Empire having been born before the granting of Australian citizenship. It was for the Empire that our parents and grandparents generation went to the world wars. Today that is almost unimaginable, for now people find their identity in being Australians.

However, when we read Genesis 1 we are confronted with a ruler who is over and above every empire and nation because he is the Creator of all things. In this episode of Two Ways News we look at the meaning and implications of the opening words of Genesis 1.

Yours,

Phillip

Welcome to Two Ways News for 2025. We have a great deal planned for this year which we hope you will find useful and encouraging for continuing to speak the truth in love to the world around you (see our About page for a reminder of why Two Ways News came into existence, in the beginning). Welcome also to Phillip‘s new co-host, his brother Peter. Welcome, finally, to the start of our series on Genesis.

We recorded this final episode for the year on November 5—a momentous day in world affairs, the day when Australia stopped for a horse race, and when the USA settled a presidential race.

We now know who won both races, but in this episode, Phillip and I discuss the nature of words and truth, especially in our politics and public discourse—because if the US election campaign exhibited anything, it was the seeming inability of both candidates to tell the unvarnished, straightforward truth. And it’s not as if Australian politics is much different.

Our political life is full of half truths, false promises, broken oaths and outright lies. The kingdom of God promises (and fulfils!) a very different way of speaking.

We hope you enjoy the discussion. But there’s one more thing to mention before we get into it.

Sadly, this is the final episode in which I will be co-hosting Two Ways News with Phillip. The Yes that I gave to joining the faculty at Moore College unfortunately entails a number of No’s—and being able to drive this weekly podcast with Phillip is one of them.

I will miss it! It’s been an enjoyable privilege to interact not just with Phillip but with you, our readers and listeners, over the past 100+ episodes (and more for many of you, who go back to the days of The Payneful Truth). But God has something new for me to do at Moore, including taking up the directorship of The Centre for Christian Living once again (so I will not be entirely done with podcasting).

My faithful assistant Jess Sutandar is also finishing up at the end of this year, and I would like to publicly thank her for all her hard and skilful work in producing the podcast and transcript.

The good news is that our replacements have already been found! Stay tuned for more on that when Two Ways News resumes in the new year.

Your brother

Tony

Can I humbly submit that it would be worth us talking about submission?

And before you say, ‘Oh no, not another go-around about men and women and church roles’, that’s not what I mean, nor is it what this episode is about. ‘Submission’ is a much bigger concept—and bigger problem—than that.

In fact, thinking about ‘submission’ and why we tend to recoil from it in most of its forms, takes our conversation in this episode to some massive subjects: to power, authority, politics, Marxism, capitalism, equality and singing. Yes, singing.

I hope you find it useful.

Your brother

Tony

We love getting your emails and questions, and recently one of our regular listeners, Hannah, wrote in with a follow-up question to our episode on ‘spiritual discipline’. She asked:

I've been wondering whether you might consider using a podcast episode to speak to the current trend towards formation as a major strand in Christian discipleship. I understand that it’s particularly prevalent among students and in the United States. But I’m also aware that there are more and more people in the UK and Australia reading and identifying with some of the big names in this new movement, of whom John Mark Comer and his ‘practicing the way’ is a prominent one. People seem especially enthusiastic about the idea of adopting a Rule of Life to guide discipleship. 

As it turns out, about a week before Hannah’s email arrived I had spotted Comer’s book in my local Christian bookshop, and picked it up. As to why I couldn’t resist buying it, and what I made of it, and what it all means for Hannah’s question, read on.

Your brother

Tony

Our long journey through the book of Romans is coming to an end. And after the theological glories of chapter 3 and chapter 5 and chapter 8—well, of all the chapters between 1 and 15 really—chapter 16 often feels like an anti-climax. We are tempted to read it as a hurried postscript with some personal greetings, and other bibs and bobs.

But if we take a closer look, the final chapter of Romans is extremely important. It helps explain why the whole letter was in fact written, and rounds off Paul’s whole argument in a manner that is both personal and deeply theological.

We hope you enjoy this final Romans instalment!

Your brother

Tony

As we near the end of the extraordinary letter to the Romans, we find the apostle returning to the purpose for which he was writing to them—which he had broached in chapter 1 but now comes back to, after explaining in such majestic terms the gospel that is the foundation of his missionary enterprise.

As Paul does so, he reiterates why the gospel he preaches is for all of humanity and brings hope to every culture, regardless of the differences and distinctive features that different human cultures have. There is hope for every different human culture, but (paradoxically) only by realising that there is in fact only one way to live in God’s world.

So in typically roundabout fashion—starting with hope, and then moving onto colonialism, anthroplogy and counselling—we dig into the hope-filled message of Romans 15.

Hope you enjoy it.

Your brother

Tony

While Tony is away at Evangelize 2024 in Denver, Colorado, USA, Phillip is joined by his brother Peter Jensen as they take a deep dive into Romans 14.

It seems that regardless of the century we live in, people always find something to fight about, unable to extract ourselves from the sinful temptations of pride and passing judgment on others. It is no different in this passage as food becomes the object of quarrel.

But it raises the question, how are certain foods clean to some believers and unclean to others? Are conscience and faith the same thing? What does it truly look like to honour the Lord and act in love?

We hope you find this episode encouraging.

Blessings,

Jessica (Two Ways News editor)

We are a nation in deep debt, both corporately and personally. But despite how much we owe, the debt of ‘love’ doesn’t figure on our balance sheets.

Romans 13 says that it should, and that ‘love’ is in fact the fulfilment of the Old Testament law.

How can this be? And what is ‘love’ anyway?

That’s our topic on this week’s episode of Two Ways News.

Your brother

Tony

I’m writing this introduction in an Airbnb in Denver, Colorado, with a ‘HARRIS-WALZ’ sign in the front yard. I’m not sure (nor am I going to say) whether I’d be happier with a TRUMP-VANCE sign. I think no sign at all would probably suit me best, and I imagine that there are many Americans who feel the same.

But it makes me think: is a studied non-involvement in politics, government and the affairs of state what the Bible calls us to? It’s certainly how many secularists would like Christians to respond—that is, to keep their religion well out of the public square.

In this week’s episode, we talk about church and state and government and secularism, through the clear and revealing lens of Romans 13.

Your brother

Tony

As we turn to the next part of Romans 12 this week (verses 3-13), we confront two ideas that our society finds it hard to hold together: individualism and communalism.

What’s the basic truth about us? Is it that we are unique, sovereign individuals who should have the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness in our own particular way? Or are necessarily and primarily herd animals, who can only exist and flourish when the needs of the community as a whole are prioritised?

And do we have to choose?

Romans 12 teaches us to think rightly about ourselves—as individuals and as members of a new community. Read (or listen) on to find out how.

Your brother

Tony

Well after several weeks bouncing from subject to subject, and answering your questions, it’s back to Romans!

This week, we come to a turning point in Paul’s monumental letter. At the beginning Romans 12, he turns from the deeply theological discussion of the nature of the gospel that has dominated the first eleven chapters to its practical outworking in Christian life and community.

Romans 12:1-2 are very well-known verses—about ‘living sacrifices’ and the ‘renewal of the mind’—but we hope you find something fresh and stimulating and encouraging in our discussion of them.

Your brother

Tony

Debates about real nature of ‘church’ have been around even longer than Phillip’s and my combined age. It’s a complicated and perennial topic, but we thought it was worth another outing in this week’s edition because it’s also very practical.

It’s practical not just because what you think a ‘church’ is will shape what you do in church. What you think about ‘church’ will also have big implications for all those other Christian activities or gatherings that aren’t ‘church’ (according to your definition).

If that sounds intriguing, read (or listen) on.

Your brother

Tony

PS

If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.

To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

* the free option (on the far right hand side)

* but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time. 

Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club. 

We continue to be enormously grateful for your fellowship, which (I suppose if we’re honest) largely consists in us talking and you listening!

But it’s especially nice when you speak back, which a very encouraging number of you do—either in person when we bump into you round the place, or by email as you comment and raise questions. Quite a few of you have said how much you’ve been enjoying our meanderings through Romans, and we’ll be back to Romans again in the near future.

But this week we’re catching up with three of the questions you’ve written in to ask:

* From Matt about whether it’s right to say that Jesus ‘raised himself from the dead’;

* From Barry about Sabbath-keeping in the New Testament, and whether Jesus really approved of it or not;

* From Ethan about the steps and motivations and factors that play into the decision to go into ‘full-time ministry’.

Hope you find the discussion stimulating!

Your brother

Tony

Today we belatedly answer a question that regular reader/listener Richard sent in some time ago, but which got lost in the bilge of my inbox—which is a shame, because it is an excellent question!

Richard asks about those voices today that are calling for a recovery of the ‘spiritual disciplines’—things such as contemplative prayer, solitude, fasting, sabbath-keeping, and so on. He writes:

What is the history of ‘spiritual discipline’ and, we could add, ascetic practices, within Christianity and evangelicalism? How do we integrate the different strands of biblical teaching and biblical examples on this topic (e.g. Mat  5:16-18; Luke 6:12; Col 2:15-23; Acts 14:23)?

Phillip and I had (as usual) a wide-ranging talk about this question, an edited summary of which appears below.

Your brother

Tony

There was a time, not all that long ago, when the Ten Commandments were a central part not just of church culture and Christian living, but of the cultural landscape of our community.

This no longer seems to be the case—certainly not in our very secularized society, but also not in our churches either.

A recent and somewhat surprising Sydney Morning Herald article got us talking about the Ten Commandments, how they are regarded by the non-Christian world, and indeed how they are seen by Christians these days.

I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Your brother

Tony

(For various reasons, this week’s transcript is even more truncated than usual—it’s a short summary of the main points of our conversation.)

PS

If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.

To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

* the free option (on the far right hand side)

* but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time. 

Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club. 

As the Paris Olympics slip down into the long feed of events below the screen horizon of our consciousness, what will stay with us? The hilarious, kangaroo-hopping breakdance of RayGun? The golden triumphs of the Fox sisters? The controversial tableau of the opening ceremony? What will we still remember and talk about in 12 months time?

Not much probably.

In fact, how long will it be before most of us forget that the Olympics of 2024 were even held in Paris? Tell me quickly—where were the Olympics held in 2004? In 1964? In 1924?

Well, I can tell you where they were in 1924—Paris!—because of an incident that took place at those games that was scandalous at the time, and which was immortalized in the award-winning movie, Chariots of Fire.

Chariots of Fire was a fascinating and enjoyable film—fascinating because of its largely sympathetic portrayal of a Christian man standing on a point of theological principle. Eric Liddell would not run on the Sabbath.

Was he right about the Sabbath?

We’ve been talking a bit about the ‘law’ and the Christian life recently—and that continues in this week’s Olympics-themed episode.

Your brother

Tony

Time for another Q&A episode, but with a twist this time. Regular Two Ways News contributor Marty Sweeney joins us from Ohio to pitch me a number of questions about the Bible, theology and ministry—questions that have come from his regular conversations and seminars with pastors and ministry people in the US.

The questions revolve around the Bible, theology, ministry and evangelism—all the good stuff. Questions like:

* Is the Bible the only tool we need for ministry and evangelism?

* What place should topical or systematic preaching or Bible study have?

* Can our theology end up hampering our Bible reading?

* What about courses or other study programs—do we really need them?

Hope you enjoy the to-and-fro!

Your brother

Tony

PS

If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.

To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

* the free option (on the far right hand side)

* but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time. 

Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club. 

Links

Evangelize 2024

Always two there are

by Tony Payne (when this podcast was called The Payneful Truth)

An article that discusses the way the Bible is full of pairs of ideas that you have to hold together.

Time to take a break from Romans for a few weeks, and deal with some other issues that have been on our minds.

This week we turn our attention to a moral question: How should we respond when our workplace or school wants us to take a stand about some social issue that we think differently about? What should we do, for example, when ‘Wear it Purple Day’ comes around in support of LGBTQ+ rights? Quietly wear a purple tie and keep our head down? Or just as quietly ‘forget’ to? Or make a more visible protest? And what biblical principles should inform our decision?

We hope you find our exploration of the ins-and-outs of this question illuminating not just for situations like this one, but as a model for thinking about moral questions generally.

Your brother

Tony

Well once again, I have to open with an apology for the lateness of this week’s edition, again due to sickness in the team. (Please bear with us as we try to get back on track and on schedule over the next couple of weeks.)

There are deep waters in Romans 9-11, which we’ve been discussing over the past couple of episodes. And today, we get to the deepest mysteries of all—how God’s plans for Israel and the nations involve the hardening of Israel, the grafting in of the Gentiles, and the salvation of Israel through jealousy.

It’s a passage that leaves us exclaiming with Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

We hope you find it enriching and humbling.

Your brother

Tony

Sermons by Phillip on Romans 11

* Israel’s Future (Romans 11:1-32)

* The Mind of God (Romans 11:33-12:2)

PS

If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.

To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

* the free option (on the far right hand side)

* but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time. 

Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club. 

Apologies for this week’s episode being a couple of days late — some unavoidable delays due to sickness in the team. And sincere apologies too that (for the same reason) we’re not able to bring you a transcript of the conversation this week.

For those of who you are readers rather than listeners, we’ve provided a few choice quotes below that might tempt you, just this once, to listen to the conversation rather than read it. (And we won’t blame you at all if do so at 1.25x speed!)

And let me encourage you that this week’s episode is full of fascinating stuff, including:

* answering a reader question about the difference between our human ‘spirit’ and the Holy Spirit;

* whether all cultures are equally valuable;

* the cultural arrogance of evangelism; and

* what happens to those who’ve never heard the gospel?

Your brother

Tony

Links to Talks

Phillip Jensen’s talk on Romans 10

It’s been a history making few weeks—a presidential debate in the US that seems likely to change the course of the election, elections in France and the UK that seem likely to change the direction of both countries, and so on.

But why do we choose some events and declare them to be the stuff of ‘history’ (as opposed to other events)? And is there any point or direction to history? Or is it just wave after wave of people and events, crashing upon the shore and then disappearing again?

Romans 9 brings us to the subject of history and God’s control over it—in particular, his control over the destiny of his people Israel.

It’s one of those humbling passages that challenges us to get back in our box and let God be God. I hope you find it both challenging and encouraging.

Your brother,

Tony

PS. At the beginning of our conversation, Phillip and I had quite a long chat about the nature of ‘history’, about how we view history in the West, and what it all has to do with Christianity. It was a bit long and a bit much to transcribe, but it’s very close to the beginning of the audio version above if you’d like to listen.

As we continue our meander through the riches of Romans, we begin this week’s episode by thinking again about mind and heart and emotion (following our episode a couple of weeks ago). Why does the Bible see our emotion as located in our ‘guts’?

And then it’s on into the majestic second half of Romans 8, one of the richest passages in the entire Bible.

It’s all to much, of course, for a 30-minute conversation, but we hope that you are stirred and encouraged all the same.

Your brother,

Tony

I’m currently deep in the drafting of my next book, which is all about the ‘one-another word’—what the Bible says about the mutual word ministry of Christians, and how that should play out in practice in our churches.

A question I keep coming back to is how the gospel-based conversation of Christians with each another relates to their conversations with outsiders or unbelievers. The two must surely be connected, but how exactly?

Marty Sweeney and I dig into this topic in today’s episode of Two Ways News.

Your brother

Tony

Just me this week, with Phillip away on holidays. And I’ve found myself thinking quite a lot in the past few days about … thinking.

In reading Romans 7 and 8 in recent weeks, I’ve been struck by how much Paul talks about the ‘mind’. The contrast in Romans 7 is between what we know with our mind to be good and true, and what the ‘fleshly’ part of us just goes ahead and does anyway. And in Romans 8, there’s a very clear dichotomy—between the new mind that is set on the Spirit (bringing life and peace) and the old mind which was set on the flesh (bringing death).

But all this talk of ‘mind’ is a bit counter-cultural for us. We tend to favour the importance of ‘hearts’ over minds. In fact, I think if I was paraphrasing Romans 8 for a modern person, I’d instinctively say that the ‘heart’ set on the Spirit is life and peace, not the mind.

So how should we think about the mind? Or feel about the mind for that matter?

That’s our topic for this week.

Your brother

Tony

Reading the book of Romans is like hiking in the mountains. You come to a high point, and think that it couldn’t get more grand or majestic than this, only to discover that there’s another glorious mountain peak to come. Romans 8 is one of those mountains, coming after the valley of Romans 7.

It’s a very ‘spiritual’ chapter—Paul has mentioned the Holy Spirit only three times so far in Romans, but there are more than 20 references in this chapter. But in speaking so much about the Spirit, and especially in contrast with the ‘flesh’, Paul lays out a vision of being a Spirit-person—being ‘spiritual’—that is vastly different and vastly better than the spirituality our world offers.

Your brother

Tony

One of the first resources I was given as a keen but confused young Christian in the early 1980s was a little book called The Fight. I can’t find my copy any more, and don’t remember a great deal about the book’s argument—apart from its main metaphor and message, which was pretty much summarized in the title. The Christian life is wonderful, joyous, liberating and ruled by the peace of God—but it is also a fight; a lifelong conflict with the world, the flesh and the devil.

In today’s discussion, we think about the nature of this ‘fight’ by looking closely at Paul’s argument in the seventh chapter of Romans. I hope it strengthens your arm for the battle.

Your brother

Tony

The Fight

Would you say that the modern Western world we live is a very open, permissive culture in which people are free to do whatever they want, without being judged for it? Or would you say that we’re a quite intolerant culture that scolds and criticises and cancels each another without mercy?

The strange thing is that we seem to be both. Perhaps it’s a case of mercy for me, but judgement for thee. But we can’t seem to cope with the need for law and justice on the one hand, and grace and forgiveness on the other.

In today’s episode, we begin to see how Paul’s argument in Romans holds together the important place of law and justice, alongside the necessity for forgiveness and a fresh start.

Your brother

Tony

On holidays recently I watched a harrowing but uplifting film called The Sound of Freedom.

It’s about child sex trafficking in Latin America, and the extraordinary efforts of one particular American agent to free some of these children. At one point in the movie, there are some scenes of rescued children starting to behave like kids again—talking, singing, laughing, playing games. One of the characters says, ‘You hear that? That’s the sound of freedom.’

It was the sound of kids doing what kids are meant to do.

And I thought of that film again as we prepared to talk about our passage today, on Romans 6. It’s also about being set free from slavery and what our new freedom is really like. Strangely, it’s the glorious freedom to be slaves to a new master.

I hope you find it … liberating!

Your brother

Tony

Every week or two the pattern seems to repeat itself. Some terrible thing happens in our world. Outraged or grieving victims cry out that something must be done, that the system has failed, that there’s a need for change, that enough is enough, that the government must do something.

What the government is supposed to do exactly isn’t always clear, but because being seen not to care about the issue would be politically fatal, they usually do promise to be fully focused on the issue, to be committed to it, to set up an enquiry, to fund some new programs, and in general to be ready to undertake whatever is necessary to ensure that the appropriate resources are devoted … and so on and so forth.

And around we go until the next calamity-driven campaign swings into action.

The world is full of tragedy, evil and heartbreak, and it touches all of our lives. We want the evil to change. We want ourselves to change.

But how can change ever really happen?

That’s our subject in this week’s episode as we ponder the first half of Romans 6.

Your brother

Tony

This week, Marty Sweeney (from the US branch of Matthias Media) joins Tony as they discuss the challenges of evangelism in our churches today–both in Australia and the US–as well as suggesting some ways to overcome these challenges. They also discuss what is truly at the heart of evangelism, and how doing it as a body is more crucial than we might realize. 

We hope this conversation is edifying and encouraging for you to take into your own churches and communities. We would love to hear your thoughts, questions and comments, which you can share with us by emailing tonyjpayne@me.com or by hitting ‘reply’ to this email.

Blessings,

Jessica

In light of Anzac Day last week, Phillip and Tony converse about how our current lives are not as far removed from our forefathers and those who have gone before us as we might think.

Through the lens of Romans 5:12-21, we see how all the more true this is in our spiritual lives, and how much more powerful is the one whose sacrifice can change the entire course of our lives.

We hope this conversation is edifying and encouraging as we remember the sacrifices of the people who has made our modern life possible.

We would love to hear your thoughts, comments and questions, which you can email to tonyjpayne@me.com or by hitting reply to this email.

Blessings,

Jessica

It has been marvelous to keep receiving your emails and bumping into people who have been listening to the podcast and say thank you for the encouraging discussions that Tony and I have had.

However I do find there are also a lot of people who say to me they don’t know about the podcast yet. So if you like this podcast, please do get the word out as word of mouth is the most powerful way of spreading it.

And the second thing is, if you like this podcast, please consider supporting financially as it costs money to produce this podcast. You can do so through this link to subscribe and join the supporter’s club for a certain amount each month.

Yours

Phillip

Tony is away on leave for the next few weeks, so I—Jessica Sutandar from the Two Ways News production team—will be introducing the episodes in his stead. The following weeks will feature some episodes that Tony and Phillip recorded before Tony went on leave.

Today, in this long-awaited letterbox episode, Tony has recorded his response to some of the questions that you have sent over the past few weeks, dear listeners.

Below is an edited transcript of select answers (in response to Paul Grimmond’s comment on theological application and to Sam’s question on how we interact with our homosexual friends.) If you would like to listen to the full episode, you can click the audio player above.

We hope this helps as you continue to consider the various aspects and challenges of living for the gospel.

Blessings,

Jessica

Easter is now in the rear-view mirror—and we hope you had a joyful and spiritually refreshing celebration.

For many Christian traditions, and indeed for many Christians, the centre of gravity of Easter is Good Friday, the day of death and atonement. Easter Day with its resurrection is a nice, happy ending to the story, but it’s not the main event.

But in a way that is deeply puzzling to many us, the preaching of the apostles in Acts is kind of the other way around—it focuses much more on the resurrection of Jesus than on the atonement. For them, the resurrection was a massively significant event, anchored in the Old Testament’s understanding of who the Christ would be and what he would do.

In this post-Easter episode, we talk about what the resurrection of Jesus really means, and why it can’t be an afterthought in our gospel.

Your brother

Tony

It’s hard to know how to introduce a discussion of ‘faith’. We speak about it all the time as Christians, often without really stopping to think about what we mean by the word. And when we hear it spoken of in by politicians (‘we value the contribution of faith communities’) or by secular critics (‘faith is a cop out for thinking’), we instinctively feel that they don’t understand ‘faith’ or those of us who ‘have’ it.

So in today’s episode, as we come to one of the Bible’s classic discussions of ‘faith’ in Romans 4, we have a bit of baggage handling to do—some clearing up of what we (and our society) really mean by the word. But what Romans then teaches us about this fundamental concept is life-changing and world-changing.

Your brother

Tony

Martin Luther described it as “the chief point, and the very central place of the Epistle, and of the whole Bible”. Australian biblical scholar Leon Morris went even further and called it “possibly the most important single paragraph ever written”.

It’s the paragraph we locate in our Bibles as Romans 3:21-26, and it’s where we’re up to in our podcast series walking through the opening chapters of this extraordinary book.

In Romans so far, Paul has been slowly building up to this point. He started by saying that his gospel is the ‘power of God for salvation’, and that it reveals the righteousness of God. But the only righteousness of God we have seen so far is his completely righteous and justified judgement against the universal rottenness of humanity. So if all of us—Jew, Greek, everybody—is under the power of sin, how can God be a righteous God and yet bring salvation to people like us?

It’s the age-old and very pressing question of how perfect justice can co-exist with grace and free forgiveness. And this world-changing paragraph has the answer.

I hope you find our discussion of these momentous ideas as encouraging as we did in the conversation that follows.

Your brother

Tony

This week in our journey through the book of Romans, we come to a summary of the argument thus far. Having introduced the idea that his gospel reveals a righteousness from God for both Jews and Greeks (back in ch 1:17), Paul has been unfolding why this ‘righteousness from God’ is needed—in fact, why it can only come from God in the way that he will soon explain.

And that’s because of the comprehensive and universal unrighteousness of humanity—of Jews, Greeks, barbarians, all of us.

In today’s passage (Rom 3:1-20), he dispatches any final excuses or objections to this idea, and draws this part of the argument to its conclusion. In doing so, he takes us to the very depths of the human predicament, and to the reality of evil.

It’s a sombre, sobering passage. But the night is darkest before the dawn.

Your brother,

Tony

Thanks for the positive feedback a number of you have sent in about our new series chatting our way through the book of Romans. It’s a slightly different way of driving a podcast conversation, and of exploring a Bible passage—so please keep letting us know how you think it’s working.

Today, we come to Romans 2, and its discussion of moralistic hypocrisy. This is something that Christians have often been accused of—of proclaiming great moral standards in public but grossly transgressing them in private. But in this passage, Paul attacks the failure of the superior, judgmental moralists of his day—the Greeks and the Jews—and holds out the possibility that true morality is indeed possible, if God writes his law on the heart.

Your brother,

Tony

We’re back with the our second excursion into the book of Romans, this time on the second half of chapter 1, with its very bracing discussion of human wickedness and God’s angry response to it.

When we were recording this episode, the internet was awash with people discussing the Super Bowl ad that featured foot-washing Christians accepting and loving the marginalized groups of our society, with punchline ‘He gets us’. I started our discussion by asking Phillip what he thought of it.

I hope you enjoying the conversation that followed.

Your brother

Tony

Quite often on Two Ways News, we start with some issue that’s current or that Phillip or I are particularly exercised by, and think through what the gospel and the Bible as a whole say about it. 

But it’s important to go in the other direction as well—to start with the Bible, and see what God is saying there, and let that set our agenda. In this week’s episode, we begin a little series where we’ll be doing just that, with the book of Romans as our point of departure, starting with Romans 1:1-16. 

It won’t be an exposition of all the verses, more of a discussion of the key ideas of the chapter and their implications.

I hope you find this new series encouraging, and very shareable with others.

Your brother

Tony

Links:

- A sermon by Phillip on Rom 1:1-17.

One of the most widely viewed editions ever of Two Ways News was our discussion of the morality of voting Yes or No in last year’s ‘Voice’ referendum here in Australia. 

That episode touched only very briefly on the problem that, for many people, was a key issue in the referendum—and that is the historical alienation, prejudice and disadvantage that Aboriginal and Torres St Islander people have suffered at the hands of white Australians over the past 200 years. 

The recent death of Aboriginal leader Lowitja O’Donoghue provides an occasion for us to revisit this issue, and in particular—for us as Christians—the uncomfortable reality that Christian churches and denominations played their own role in the sad history of the Stolen Generations. 

In today’s episode, Phillip and I talk about why and how Christians became involved in taking Aboriginal children from their parents, and what we can learn as we look back on it—not just in relation to that particular issue but more broadly.

Your brother

Tony

With Phillip away this week, I’ve taken the opportunity of chatting to our regular North American correspondent—Marty Sweeney, director of Matthias Media USA.

We talked in particular about a debate that’s broken out in recent months in the US over the ‘gospel-centred’ label—and we could even have a squabble about the spelling of ‘centred’ if we wanted to!

To be ‘gospel-centred’ is a kind of motherhood statement and aspiration, but some are questioning whether it has become a cover for having a minimalist view of Christian involvement in anything other than church and evangelism.

What’s the debate really about, and is it possible to be too ‘gospel-centred’?

Hope you enjoy our discussion.

Your brother

Tony

This week I’m hoping that you can help me prepare for a major talk that I’m giving in a few weeks time at the Nexus Conference (on March 11 here in Sydney). 

Nexus is an annual ministry conference for the evangelicals of greater Sydney to get together in person for the day, to encourage each other, and to stretch and challenge each other. (If you’re in Sydney and haven’t signed up yet, here’s where you can do that!) 

This year the conference is about how to move from theology to practice—because I think this is one of our weaknesses. As Reformed evangelicals, we tend to be very united on classic biblical doctrine, and very good at expounding the Scriptures. But we’re not as good, and certainly not as united, about how our theology filters down into the practical and moral issues of our ministries. 

Sometimes our differences will simply be differences in context, history and circumstance. We should expect practices to work themselves out differently in different places. But very often our differences reveal not so much that we read different passages differently, or even that we have different theological principles, but that we have different methods or approaches for applying theology to our practice. Or perhaps, we don’t really know how to apply our theology to our practice, and so we just kind of wing it. 

And so in today’s episode, Phillip and I have a chat about one of the angles I’m reading and thinking about in preparation for my talk at Nexus—the historical angle. We’ve faced these kinds of battles before, in the historic debates that took place between Protestant evangelicals, during and after the Reformation, about what their new Reformed doctrine should mean for practice. Those debates gave rise to two contrasting approaches to applying the Bible to our practice, often called the ‘Regulative Principle’ and the ‘Normative Principle’. In this week’s Two Ways News we explore these historic debates, and begin to suggest a better way forward. 

I hope you find it stimulating, and that you’ll get in touch and help me improve my thinking in advance of the conference! 

Your brother

Tony

It’s nice to be back for 2024 and chatting with Phillip again, although I can’t say I expected death and grieving to be our first conversation topic for the year.

But that’s the nature of suffering, sorrow and grief. You can’t plan around it, or avoid it when it comes. But we can be prepared to respond Christianly to it, which means bringing the gospel to bear.

That’s the nature of the Christian life, and the tagline of this podcast—‘Gospel thinking for today’—and that’s certainly true when ‘today’ is a day of grief.

I hope you find our conversation encouraging.

Your brother

Tony

Welcome back to a new year of Two Ways News.

Tony is not quite back yet—he’ll be with us on next week’s episode—but in the meantime I hope you enjoy this conversation with Talar about ‘first order’ and ‘second order’ issues in ministry. 

It’s a common way of talking about things we disagree about in ministry or in the Christian life—that there are ‘first order’ questions of prime importance that we must resolve and be unified about, and then there are ‘second order’ issues that we can afford to put to one side and agree to disagree about. 

But is that the best way to think about the various issues we have conflict or disagreement about? 

That’s what my conversation with Talar is about this week. I hope you find it encouraging. 

Phillip

In today’s episode we will be talking about different Bible translations and the various factors that we must consider when reading and choosing different translations.

We hope it is an edifying conversation.

Yours,

Phillip

PS. This will be our last episode of the year. Thank you for your partnership with Two Ways News and we will be back again in January. In the meantime, look out for reposts of some top favourite episodes on the Two Ways Ministries Instagram and Facebook.

Christmas is a great time to see how our society responds to the gospel, and how we can use the opportunities of Christmas to proclaim Jesus to the world.

I am once again joined by Talar Khatchoyan while Tony is away on long service leave.

Yours,

Phillip

A few episodes ago we broached the subject of work, and put forward an alternative view (which I’ll summarise briefly below). And we suggested that there were various implications of this view that we needed to return to. 

Well, your numerous questions and comments on the topic have provided the perfect opportunity and framework to do just that. In today’s episode, we—or should I say ‘I’, because it’s just me this week—tease out a number of important implications and applications of the biblical view of work. 

I hope it ‘works’. 

Your brother

Tony

PS.

This is the last episode I’ll be part of for 2023—I’m off on some long-service leave and holidays. Thanks so much for your partnership and kindness this year! I’m looking forward to chatting with you again in January. 

This week I am joined by a good mate and a lecturer in ethics at Moore College, Chase Kuhn. As we usually do whenever we get together, Chase and I end up chatting about ethics, but the main focus of our conversation is Chase’s new Advent-focused book, Waiting for the Christ, which is due out any day now.

I hope you find our conversation edifying.

Your brother

Tony

As we engage in the excitement and fun of these camps, how can we ensure that we're not just doing it for the sake of having them? And what are some dangers and risks of camps that we need to be mindful of and actively avoiding?

It’s an important subject for everyone, including Christians, and there are many questions that arise. The classic question, and especially if you're a younger, keen Christian is about ministry and work: Is full-time ministry for me, or should I go into the ‘workforce’, and what are the implications of that choice? Is one sort of work more meaningful than the other?

But there are lots of questions surrounding ‘career’ and jobs. Which job should I choose? Should I take this promotion? How do I think about advancement and ambition? And of course, there are questions about juggling family and work as well as the general issue of just how to be a Christian at work, and how to think about the significance of our work Christianly.

We hope this episode helps give you a framework of work that you can take and use to tackle some of these tricky questions.

Tony is down sick and so this week’s edition is me interviewing myself. 

However, this is not a week for jokes and humour as we are confronted once more with the horror of war. The news out of the Israel/Hamas conflict is quite frankly appalling. The frightful cruelty and savagery of the incursion of Hamas into Israel villages on 7 October has opened up a new chapter in the protracted conflict. At the time of writing, we await with trepidation Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. What are we to make of the ghastliness of human conflict and the inhumanity of war crimes?

God’s word speaks to every situation of life, not the least our sinfulness issuing forth in humanity’s inhumanity in warfare. So, in this edition we address the Bible’s horror verse – Psalm 137:9. 

Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones

and dashes them against the rock!

It certainly isn’t our most light-hearted edition but given the seriousness of the present situation it is one of the most important to think, discuss and pray about. We need answers for ourselves as well as for our discussion with other Christians and non-Christians. 

Yours

Phillip

This week’s edition touches on a subject that we’ve talked about before—or at least that I’ve talked about before in the old days when this site had a different name. Should we think of church mainly as a family which exists for its own sake and the building up of its members in Jesus Christ? Or is church more like a voluntary society with a mission—to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ? And what are the consequences of emphasizing one of these options more than the other?

We were prompted to have another crack at this subject by a recent speech by Simon Flinders, and in particular by a paragraph from that speech that kicks off our conversation (see below).

I hope you find it stimulating!

Your brother

Tony

(PS. Apologies for the late arrival of this week’s edition—a bit of sickness in our small team slowed us down.)

This week we welcome back Marty Sweeney to the podcast to talk about an old topic and that needs talking about afresh: ministry apprenticeship.

It’s fascinating—Marty and I have been running ‘Trellis and Vine’ workshops around the US for the past 15 years, talking to pastors and church leaders about the various ministry principles and practical issues that arise from The Trellis and the Vine. But in all that time, I could count on one hand the number of people who have wanted to know more about the subject that takes up the entire last third of the book: ministry apprenticeship.

For Col Marshall and I, it was a natural way to round off the book, as the logical endpoint to an emphasis on training every Christian as a disciple-maker. But it doesn’t seem like it works that way for many churches, judging by the relative lack of interest over the past 15 years. Why is that? And where do ministry apprenticeships (or traineeships) fit into a biblical philosophy of ministry?

That’s our topic in this week’s Two Ways News.

Your brother

Tony

In last week’s episode about modernization, we touched briefly on the constantly changing nature of language. Words often shift, drift or drop out of use. New words are invented, or new meanings attach themselves to old words. This is not right or wrong—it is just how language inevitably works.

Sometimes, this is just a bit funny, such as when we use the wrong word, or use an older word not realising that it has shifted in meaning. But sometimes it can be confusing and lead to problems—especially in reading important historical texts like the Book of Common Prayer (which we spoke about last week), or the Bible itself.

So this week, a bit more about words, and how being curious and diligent in figuring out what words mean can help our Bible reading and communication enormously.

Your brother

Tony

It’s been a pretty constant message for most of my lifetime—this call for the Christianity to ‘modernize’ or die—but a couple of recent instances have been notable.

In late August, The Times of London had a story about a survey of Anglican ministers, in which nearly half were in favour of same-sex weddings, and almost two thirds said that the Church should no longer teach that sex belonged only in marriage. It was a strange and probably misrepresentative survey, it must be said, but it led to the predictable refrain, along the lines of “If the Church doesn’t modernize its views on women and sexuality, it will continue to shrink into irrelevance”.

And then just a couple of weeks ago, Julia Baird hosted a discussion on the ABC (followed by an article in The Sydney Morning Herald), tearing into the familiar target of the outdated, misogynistic Sydney Diocese, with a similar kind of punch line—the Angicans need to change their appalling attitudes or be left behind.

In this week’s episode, we look at why modernization is good, necessary, unavoidable, dangerous and entirely the wrong way to think about it.

Hope that eventually makes sense!

Your brother

Tony

Over the past few months, I seem to have had a higher than usual number of conversations with friends about their feelings of unhappiness in the various churches they belong to—including email feedback from some of you. 

So in today’s episode, we thought it was time to explore this unhappy topic: what’s the best way to think about and respond to feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in church? 

Hope you find it useful, and shareable with struggling friends. 

Your brother

Tony

After catching up on some overdue Q&A about pastoring and singing in church (what else?), this week’s episode asks us stop and think about the way we use technology.

And we don’t mean just the usual sort of discussion about how our lives are becoming ruled by our phones. This week’s topic goes deeper, and talks about the powerful modern marriage of convenience between our technologically driven economy and our equally strong impulse towards individualism.

How can Christians adopt and adapt (or even reject) the technological advances that seem to spring upon us daily, given that what should matter most to us is not the satisfaction of individual wants but the building of loving relationships?

That’s our topic on this week’s edition of Two Ways News.

Your brother

Tony

If we don’t tell our stories, we lose our history. And if we lose our history, we lose part of who we are. 

In this week’s episode, we look back on an aspect of our recent history—or rather on a person of our recent history, who in his day was one of the most famous Christians in Australia. His name was Brian Booth. We’re glad to welcome his grandson, Nathan Anderson, to our conversation this week to tell us about Brian Booth’s life and ministry, and to reflect on the lessons that can be learned. 

Your brother 

Tony

Australia will soon be voting in a referendum to change our constitution. 

(Background for inattentive Aussies or overseas readers: the proposed change involves recognizing the place of Indigenous Australians in our nation’s history, as the original inhabitants of the land, and creating a new mechanism for the participation of Indigenous Australian in our nation’s government—a constitutionally guaranteed Voice to the federal parliament and executive government.)

As might be expected, the proposed constitutional change has generated lively debate, and Yes and No camps have quickly formed. 

One of the fascinating features of the debate is how the moral dimension of the question has come to the fore. A prominent Jewish leader recently said that he’d be voting Yes because “I know it’s the right thing to do. The moral thing to do.” 

If he’s right, then the argument is over. And Christians, like everyone else, should vote Yes. 

But is he right? What place does morality have in deciding questions like this? And how should Christians engage with the debate as citizens? 

That’s our topic in this edition of Two Ways News. 

Your brother

Tony 

Following our episode on the ‘Atmospheric Church’ a few weeks ago, quite a few of you have gotten in touch with questions and comments about the nature of our church gatherings, about singing and music, and about how we should think biblically and theologically about these things. 

In response, this week’s episode has another crack at these issues, by means of a quirky proposal: “Speaking as an Anglican, I’d like to bring back the church choir”. 

To listen to me try to persuade Phillip of this crackpot idea, just click on the player above. To read the finished piece which I wrote after our conversation, read on below. 

I hope you find it encouraging and stimulating. 

Your brother

Tony

One of the most enjoyable aspects of doing Two Ways News is interacting regularly with so many of you—through emails and casual conversations as we bump into each other. 

This week, I thought it was time to pause and deal with a couple of the interesting questions that have come in recently, both of them about gospel ministry in its different aspects: 

- One is about what makes gospel ministry grow, and whether we can learn from the success of other churches or ministries, or whether everything is too contextual; 

- The other is in response to our recent discussion about pastors and pastoring, and asks (quite reasonably) whether we have anything positive to say about the ‘office’ or ‘position’ of elder or pastor? 

I hope you find the answers stimulating. (As usual, the text below is an edited summary of the longer ramblier audio conversation.)

Your brother 

Tony

This episode Phillip and I chat about how the ‘gospel’ that we proclaim (such as in this new book, or via the Two Ways to Live framework) relates to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The former declares some news, along with its background and implications; the latter tells a story and introduces you to the person of Jesus. Many questions arise: 

- If there is only one ‘gospel’, how come the way the gospel is preached in Acts seems very different from the lengthy, story-filled narratives that we call ‘the Gospels’? 

- Is one approach better than the other, or more ‘gospelly’ than the other? 

- What of how the gospel is summarized and expounded in the Epistles, which is different again in style? 

- And what does it all mean for our everyday practice of evangelism? 

I hope you enjoy the conversation, and that it spurs you on to share the gospel of Jesus with those around you. 

Your brother

Tony

We received so much positive feedback about my conversation with Marty Sweeney (a few episodes ago) that I thought we should talk again. 

This time around I wanted to talk to Marty about a subject that we have discussed often over the past decade, especially during the ‘Trellis and Vine’ workshops we often run in across the States. The question is simple enough: if we want to have a church with ‘disciple-making’ as its heartbeat—and we’re aware that our current church culture isn’t really like that—where do we start? 

In this episode (as he has done many times in our workshops) Marty tells the simple but very encouraging story of how he went about this task at his church in Canfield, Ohio. 

I hope you enjoy hearing the story for the first time. I still enjoyed discussing it for the umpteenth time! 

Your brother 

Tony

It’s increasingly common these days to hear scholars and intellectuals acknowledge the benefits and even the necessity of the values of Christianity for our culture—people like Tom Holland, Louise Perry and Jordan Peterson. But it’s interesting how these kinds of commentators still resist the claims of Christianity itself for their own lives. And quite often, what they say they’re rejecting is ‘organized religion’. 

Have you had friends say something like that to you? “Look I’m not against spirituality, and I think Jesus was a really impressive man, but of course I don’t want anything to do with organized religion.” 

What is it about ‘organized religion’ that is so odious to people? And would they be happier with religion if it was disorganized? 

That’s our topic for this week. Hope you find it useful. 

Your brother

Tony

In a world wracked by wars and rumours of wars, by strife and conflict and international crises, you can trust your faithful correspondents at Two Ways News to tackle the truly weighty issues—like the stumping of Jonny Bairstow. 

Perhaps it’s a symptom of just how comfortable and prosperous we really are that the populations of England and Australia should be so outraged and obsessed about one incident in a five-day cricket match. 

For US and other listeners outside the Commonwealth who have not seen the blanket coverage associated with this incident, up to and including comments by our nations’ leaders, it is a little difficult to explain in a brief space what all the fuss was about. Let us just say that one of the batters was declared ‘out’ in controversial circumstances—that is, the Australians did something that was perfectly legal and within the laws of the game to get the batter out, but the English considered it to be a sneaky and unsportsmanlike crime against the spirit of the cricket. (And it turned out to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the game, which made the emotions run even higher.)

And so this week’s edition is about cricket—partly because we find it hard to pass up any opportunity to talk about cricket, but mainly because the whole incident was a fascinating case study in the idea of ‘law’ versus ‘spirit’, a subject that the Bible says a great deal about. 

Your brother

Tony

In this week’s edition, we talk about the confusing words of Christian leadership: ‘pastor’, ‘minister’, ‘elder’, ‘overseer’ and ‘deacon’. Christians often mean different things by them (in different denominations) and the world often attaches different meanings again. 

How can we make sense of what the Bible says about these roles? 

As always, we will no doubt provoke as many questions as we answer. Please get in touch by emailing tonyjpayne@me.com with your questions and comments. 

Your brother

Tony

Phillip and I are back together again this week, and tackling a curly but very important question. It’s the one that I promised we’d get back to, from Craig in the US, who wrote to ask about the creation of ‘atmosphere’ in church.

No doubt our answer will provoke even more questions, but we hope it’s a help to Craig, and to all of you, as you think through emotions, affections and ‘atmosphere’ in our church gatherings.

Your brother

Tony

It’s Tony’s turn to be sick this week, so you’ll have to put up with just me speaking to you—about the subject of statues and heroes. 

Phillip

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If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.

To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

* the free option (on the far right hand side)

* but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time. 

Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club. 

Great to see some of you at the King’s Birthday Conference this week in Sydney.

In the week leading up to the conference (with Phillip preparing his talk and struggling with a bout of covid), I had a chat with Ken Noakes about the subject of Christian maturity and its essential nature. Ken has written a unique and helpful book on the subject, and I started by asking him the basic question that I think all authors want to be asked.

TP

A wide-ranging episode this week that starts with an appreciation of the gospel generosity of Tim Keller and moves from there to the blessings of positive disagreement, the problem we have in keeping personal attacks out of our debates, why Donald Robinson and John (Chappo) Chapman were so good at having productive arguments, how we should vote on the Voice referendum, and (just to cap things off) a discussion of the increasingly forgotten concept of providence and what it has to do with God’s guidance. 

All in a bracing 33 minutes of conversation. Click on the player above to listen to the whole thing, or read an edited transcript below. 

Your brother 

Tony

I seem to be having trouble tracking Phillip down at the moment. As I write this, he’s travelling up to the UNSW Mid-Year Conference (I’ll be heading up there this week as well), so it’s me again in this week’s edition. 

And the subject of this week’s edition comes courtesy of an email from one of our subscribers. Craig from the US writes about two important and related issues he’d like us to address, and as I started to rough out some answers I realised that it was going to take a whole edition just to deal with the first of them. 

Both of Craig’s questions are about theology, but in different ways. The first is about theological understanding (or lack of it) among the members of his church, and I'll be addressing the problem and suggesting some solutions to it in this episode.

We hope you find it encouraging.

Your brother

Tony

A special guest for this week’s edition—freshly minted Moore College lecturer, Tom Habib.

Tom’s post-graduate study was in John’s Gospel, and in particular the themes of belief and unbelief that are so central to John’s message.

He joins us in this episode for a stimulating conversation about why and how people believe—or don’t believe—in Jesus.

Your brother

Tony

Just me this week, and therefore a shorter, punchier edition of Two Ways News in which I ponder one of the ongoing problems of the Christian life—other Christians.

I hope you find it encouraging.

Your brother

Tony

As I write this, we are now looking back on the pomp and circumstance of King Charles’s coronation. 

The media did their usual thing, mixing extraordinary images of pageantry and patriotism with a soundtrack of celebrity gossip, fashion notes and inane commentary. 

However, in this week’s episode (recorded in the days just before coronation), Phillip and I talk about why we have public events like coronations at all, why they are like weddings, and why the content and symbolism of this particular coronation reveals a lot about the Bible’s distinctive view of human government. 

Read on for an edited transcript, or click on play (above) to listen to the whole thing. 

Your brother

Tony

- Which aspects of the T&V approach to ministry still resonated most sharply with pastors and with Christians generally?

- What differences might there exist between how US and Australian churches are struggling to do more ‘vinework’?

- And if they were going to change anything about the book, what would it be?

Resources referred to:

The Course of Your Life

The Thing Is

Below are some snippets of the conversation. Listen to the full episode to glean more from the depth of their insights of our world today and to enjoy some good ol’ brotherly banter in between. 

(We’ll be taking a break from Two Ways News next week. God willing, we’ll be back with our next episode in the first week of May.)

It’s been great to receive so many feedback and emails from you, and in this episode we thought it would be great to answer some of these questions that you raised. We’ll catch up on a whole bunch of interesting questions about evangelism, about culture, about ministry, and the call to ministry.

We hope you enjoy this discussion.

Your brother

Tony

My subject connects with a number of themes we’ve been discussing over the past several episodes. Given the increasing marginalization of Christianity in our culture, is it going to get more difficult to preach the gospel? Or perhaps easier?

If God’s gospel is going to run free—unchained and powerful and changing people’s lives—how is that going to happen if we are increasingly being silenced?

PS

Thanks to those who’ve been sending in questions and comments, particularly about our recent discussion of the place of ‘desire’ in evangelism. To listen to an answer to a particularly thoughtful question on this subject, have a listen to the podcast audio above, starting at 14:45.

In the meantime, this week’s edition bounces off last week’s Nexus discussion about our recent history. Why is history important? And how can we make sense of it, especially when there are always competing claims and interpretations of what ‘history’ means? 

The answer (as always) is deeply theological, and therefore lost on most people today.  

Thus says the LORD:  “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool;  what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD.  But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isa 66:1-2)

In the afternoon session, I interviewed Phillip about some of the ways that ‘trembling at the word of God’ had played out in his own ministry, particularly about how a determination to be driven by the Word had brought him into conflict—with his own sinfulness, with the world, and with other Christians. 

* Off-colour jokes about Jesus, and how Christians should respond;

* Why ‘community standards’ is a fiction used to silence the community;

* How you can only flourish in the public square as a Christian by pretending to be someone else; and 

* Whether our God-given desires are a good basis for evangelism. 

Enjoy.

Links:

~ Same same but different - by Tony Payne - Two Ways News

~ Seven types of 'apologetics' - by Tony Payne (twoways.news)

~ Seven types of 'apologetics': Part 2 - by Tony Payne (twoways.news)

In these strange, upside times, it’s not Victorian moralists who are demanding that books be sanitised, but secular-progressive moralists. Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Ian Fleming’s James Bond—they have all recently felt the pain of the bowdleriser’s scalpel. 

What are we to make of this? More importantly, what does the return of bowdlerising tell us about the nature of modern morality, and how to preach the gospel to a culture that seems deeply sensitive to offence?

These days, both of these claims are controversial, and the common form of the pushback goes something like this: “How can you be so sure? We all bring our own preconceived ideas and contexts to our reading, after all. And nobody seems to be able to agree about what the Bible says. So when you so confidently declare that an outline like Two Ways to Live is a true and good summary of the one true biblical gospel … well, isn’t that just your interpretation?” 

I put this objection to Phillip to kick off a lively conversation about interpretation, the gospel and how to read the Bible. 

In this podcast version, Tony and Phillip chat through a first draft of the piece, and try to improve it.

How should we think about all this as gospel people? Do Christians have something unique and important to say about gambling?

(We’ll also answer one of your questions about the place and importance of historic Creeds and Confessions at the beginning of the conversation.)

Mark also lectures and writes in theology, and just last year, he published a more general book for Christians called The Doctrine of Scripture: An Introduction (through Crossway) which is not the most funtastic title in the world but does tell you exactly what the book is about. In this conversation, we'll be hearing from Mark how this book can help Christians build their understanding of what the Bible really is, and their confidence in its truth and clarity and power. 

The details of Mark’s book: 

The Doctrine of Scripture: An Introduction, by Mark D. Thompson, (Short studies in systematic theology series), Crossway, 2022.

As we discuss this topic, we hope to shed some light on some of the challenges that we face as Christian parents, and equip you with some encouragements as you seek to educate your children in the ways of the Lord in such a complex world.

* If you’d like to catch up with Phillip and Tony in person, they’ll both be at the Nexus Conference in Sydney on Monday, March 13. (Tony will be interviewing Phillip as part of the program.) Nexus is aimed mainly at pastors, gospel workers, ministry trainees, and so on, but it’s open to all. The venue is Village Church, Annandale. Find all the details here. 

* Matthias Media (Aus) is having a big January sale that ends TODAY (if you’re reading this on Tues, Jan 31). Get in quick!

But what should we say when the topic comes up in conversation? As evangelical Protestants, what contribution can we make to the assessment of a Catholic cardinal's legacy? And what opportunities does the conversation present for speaking about the gospel of Jesus?

Plus some book recommendations for summer reading:

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, by Louise Perry.

The Gospel of the Kingdom, by David Seccombe.

The Coming of the Holy Spirit, by Philip Jensen.

Busy: Tackling the Problem of an Overloaded Christian Life, by Ian Carmichael.

And what has all this got to do with the Federalist Society?

Listen to the full conversation, or read Tony's summarising article at twoways.news.

Resources referred to:

Student Witness and Christian Truth, by Robert M. Horn

The Limits of Fellowship, by Phillip Jensen (article with link to audio).

It’s a common accusation flung at religion generally but at Christianity in particular. And figuring out how to answer this kind of attack is a helpful case study in how to approach apologetic conversations generally.

That’s our subject in this episode’s wide ranging conversation.

In this week's edition, we talk about forgiveness: what it means, how it is at the heart of the kingdom that Jesus brings, and why the spirit of forgiveness and mercy must permeate our lives.

Plus we deal with some of your questions, including a curly one about tribalism and Sydney Anglicans.

To chase up our reference to Helen Pluckrose and what has become known as 'The Grievance Studies Hoax', this article on Wikipedia gives a decent summary.

Is it possible to avoid these problems? What’s the right way to challenge people to consider full-time Christian work without devaluing those who don’t pursue that path?

A conversation with Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen.

Links:

Ray Galea's new book on this very topic is now available to pre-order. Eager to Serve: Facing our fears, counting the cost, and stepping up in gospel ministry

Tony's little book for every Christian on seeing yourself as a disciple-making disciple is also worth a look: The Thing Is: God, you and your purpose in life.

But is tribalism necessarily bad? Is individualism (which is its most frequent alternative) any better?

And is there a gospel way of thinking about tribalism and individualism that saves us from the pitfalls of both?

Join Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen for a lively discussion of these questions.

Find out more, subscribe, and read or listen to past editions of Tony's newsletter 'The Payneful Truth', at the Two Ways News website.

To get in touch, make comments or ask questions, send an email to tonyjpayne@me.com.

And if you’d like to listen to the whole clip of Stephane Grappelli’s swing version of Bach’s Double Concerto, you can find it here!

A conversation on evangelism with John Lavender

One of the things I’ve loved most about doing The Payneful Truth over the past couple of years is the interaction with readers and listeners. Of all those who’ve sent in encouraging comments and questions, the prize for quantity with quality easily goes to John Lavender. John is a church planter and minister here in Sydney, who has been working over the last couple of years with Evangelism and New Churches (an organization within the Sydney Anglican diocese that promotes and resources evangelism). His main job over the past couple of years has been to visit churches and work with them to encourage and improve evangelism, and for a while now I’ve been wanting to talk with him about what he’s learned doing this. What’s the state of play around Sydney evangelistically?

Here’s an edited version of the conversation John and I recently had.

TP: John, in your work with ENC, you get quite a picture of what’s happening evangelistically in churches around Sydney. We keep being told in the media that Christianity is declining (as the Census data apparently tells us) and that all is doom and gloom. But where do you see good things happening?

JL:  I hear so many good news stories. Little things like a guy who meets a new neighbour, strikes up a conversation and boldly asks him to read the Bible with him. And the neighbour says yes, and so he works through the Bible with him, and invites him to church.

Or a group of ladies who meet new people who move into their street, provide meals for them, and then invite them to church.

I see lots of little things like that where people take the initiative to invite, to read the Bible—that’s wonderful.

In terms of the bigger picture, some of the churches I’ve visited are just so committed to helping people come to know Jesus. They have a really good structure: there’s good training, the church is welcoming, you arrive and are followed up, the vibe is good, people show interest in you, the sermon is engaging, and you’re invited into a follow-up course. It’s really good! 

There are churches where there are only one or two converted every now and then, but I’ve been in other contexts that are having 10 or 20 or 30 new people coming each week, where there are significant numbers of people hearing, responding, and wanting to hear more. It’s very encouraging.

TP: What about where it’s not working so well. What weaknesses have you seen?

JL: This can be a bit sad, because you see people who aren’t gripped by who Jesus is, or they don’t see they have a role to play in speaking about Jesus. There are churches that just haven’t connected at all with their suburb or the community around them, and that’s really sad. Some churches aren’t really sure how to actively reach the people around them. The people are reluctant or afraid or not sure how to bring Jesus into an everyday conversation.

But I’m encouraged because the ministers will say me to me, “John, can you help us? How can we raise the evangelistic temperature at our church? How can the congregation be better equipped? How can we connect with people, and follow them up?”  It’s encouraging that they see the problems, and want to give it a crack.  

TP: What do you think is the main problem?

JL: Before I point at others I want to think about myself.  Two passages I’m passionate about are 2 Cor 4 and 2 Cor 5.

In 2 Cor 4, the contrast is between the temporary things of this world and eternity, and I’m just so conscious how often I’ve got my eyes set on the things of this world rather than on eternity.

In 2 Cor 5, Paul talks about being compelled or convinced of Christ’s love—I want to be convinced and compelled by that every day! He talks about the urgency. As I think about myself and our churches, I’m conscious that we’re lured into chasing the things of this world. We’re not fully convinced of the need to be Christ’s ambassadors (as 2 Cor 5 says); we’re not gripped by the urgency of the whole thing. I want to work hard to change the focus; to help people see that eternity is at stake; to be convinced and compelled by what Christ has done for us.  That’s what I want to encourage people and churches to be on about.

I think the other issue is love. I’ve been reading Before you Share your Faith by Matt Smethurst, and reckons that one of the major reasons is simply that we don’t love people. What a slap in the face that is! If we loved people we’d be ready to talk to them about Jesus and about their future and about why Jesus is so good.

TP: How do you address this? How do you raise the temperature of evangelism and love and conviction?

JL:  Well, one way would be by working through chapters like 2 Cor 4 and 5! Another one is Matt 9, where Jesus sees the people harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. It’s encouraging them to look out, and to seek to have Jesus’ vision of the world. 

To go back to 2 Cor 4—I’ve heard Rico Tice talk about how Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the glory of Christ. He has this line, “We preach Christ, and God opens blind eyes”.  I want to help people see that we’re involved in this kind of spiritual battle. Will we pray for the people that God brings across our path, that we’d be bold enough to speak to them about Jesus? And to pray that as we speak to them, God would open their blind eyes, and unblock their deaf ears, and soften their hard hearts so that they would be able to see the glory of Christ.

That’s what I talk about with people. Will you be bold? Will you pray? Will you ‘cross the pain line’, as Rico Tice says, to bring Jesus into the conversation? And whether you get hostility or hunger, keep talking to people about Jesus.

TP: What about practical ideas? What sort of approaches do you recommend?

JL: Jesus calls people to ‘fish for people’. These days, we do a lot of our fishing on our own—we sit in a boat on our own, or go down to the rock ledge on our own. But a lot of 1st century fishing was done together.

I want to encourage churches to do more fishing together—to set up groups of 2, 5, or 10 people, to work together in evangelism. It means that as a group they are praying for connections and contacts; they can share their frustrations and disappointments; they can pray for people they’re having conversations with; they can do things together, like lunches and dinners to invite people to. To have groups and structures like that in place is really helpful I think. Fishing alone can be discouraging, but fishing in a group is a very helpful structure and strategy.

Over the years, I’ve also been a real fan of Christianity Explained. We adapted it into something that was done over four weeks. You bring a friend along to sit in with you. (We found it hard to get people to commit to longer than four weeks.)

Those sorts of evangelistic courses can be really helpful. But I’ve also become more aware recently of the power of the simple question: ‘Would you like to read the Bible with me?’.  There are some excellent resources for this, like The Word One to One. I know of churches that get people together for wine and cheese, and then everyone sits down one-to-one and works through the Gospel of John. I’ve heard terrific stories of people using The Word One to One to read the Bible with friends and workmates.

TP: As a variation on that, one of the structures a number of campus ministries are using these days is evangelistic Bible-reading triplets. So the question you ask is not ‘Would you like to read the Bible with me?’ but ‘I’m going to be reading the Bible with my friend, Geoff. Would you like to join us?’ Sometimes this is an easier invitation. And having a third person in the conversation can often help.

JL: Yes, there are so many good resources and approaches. All the work you’ve done on reworking the Two ways to live material, for example, is really useful. It helps people to have clarity about what the gospel really is, and what the different aspects of the gospel mean. It’s a framework to guide the conversation.

I also encourage people to develop their own 20-30 second testimony about the difference that Jesus has made to them, so that they can explain in just 30 seconds who Jesus is, what he’s done, and the difference he has made in my life.

In my observation, churches that are doing well have a good mix of ‘Go and tell’ and ‘Come and see’. They’re equipping their people to go out in the world and talk about Jesus, but also have good structures and opportunities for inviting people to events and courses and church and so on.

TP: John, all this has been your own life over many decades. You’ve planted and grown an evangelistically vibrant church in Sydney’s West. Looking back over all that work, what would you do differently?

JL: I’ve recently been reading the book of Acts. There were things that came up for the early church that could easily have distracted them—persecution from outside; opposition from within; problems with leadership. Those distractions could have distracted them from proclaiming Jesus.

I think this is what happens in real life. Looking back, I’d want to be more alert to the fact that distractions will come and derail things. They just do. I would have liked to be more conscious and aware of these, and to stay focused; to be like the apostles in Acts 6, who address the issue and remain devoted to their main ministry.

As a church grows, it’s also very easy to move from mission mode to maintenance mode. Maintaining the trellis takes a lot of time. So I’d say that one of the things I learned over time is the importance of maintaining the discipline to stay in mission mode; to not let distractions divert me.

Some exciting changes for The Payneful Truth

Over the past couple of months I’ve been thinking about this newsletter/podcast, and where to take it from here. I’ve had two main thoughts:

* I’d like to keep doing it! In God’s kindness, I think it’s been worthwhile.

* I’d like to find a partner in crime—someone to work with regularly, not just to share the load, but so that mine is not the only voice that you hear.

Well, it turns out that I’ve found a partner in crime—an old crim that I’ve done many jobs with in the past: Phillip Jensen.

Phillip has recently started a podcast and has been looking for ways to improve and grow it. It seemed a logical step for the two of us to join forces again, and see what we could do together. And given that Phillip has a nice, gospel-sounding name for his ministry (Two Ways Ministries), it also gave me a chance to change the name (I’ve never been totally happy with The Payneful Truth).

So, in few weeks time, The Payneful Truth will relaunch as Two Ways News. (The new site address will be twoways.news)

I’ll still be editing and driving the weekly newsletter, and will write the main article every second week. On the alternative week, Phillip will generate the main content. And each week we’ll have a podcast conversation together, in which we will talk through whatever the week’s topic happens to be.

We’re also planning to bring in other voices, and we have ideas for additional podcasts and content down the track. But all that will develop as we go along.

What will it mean for you?

Things will stay mostly the same. You don’t have to re-subscribe or change anything. I’ll basically just be changing the name of the newsletter/podcast and joining up with Phillip as a regular partner.

But there will be one practical change:

Every edition of Two Ways News will be available free, every week

We’ve decided to change things up a bit regarding who gets what, and how the paid subscription side of things will work. The weekly newsletter and podcast will be available free for anyone who wants it—either by signing up to receive the weekly email newsletter or by subscribing to the podcast in your app of choice.

Those who are currently paid subscribers will become members of a new Supporters Club. Supporters Club members will get some special benefits (like bonus content), but the main reason to become a Supporter is … that you want to support me in doing the work! It will be less of a paywall and more of a gospel partnership.

So if you’re currently a free subscriber or free podcast listener—you don’t need to do anything. When we relaunch, you’ll just be getting more content from us than before. And if you’d like to join the Supporters Club at some point, you’ll be able to do so at whatever amount you can afford.

The timeline

There’s still a bit of work to do in getting the new thing together, and I’m also due to be away on holidays for a couple of weeks in late September and early October. So the plan over the next few weeks is as follows:

* This will be the final edition of the newsletter/podcast under the ‘Payneful Truth’ name. I’ll be pressing pause while I do the work needed for the changeover and go on holidays for a couple of weeks.

* The first edition of Two Ways News will drop on Thursday, October 13.

I hope all that makes sense. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

Thanks again for reading and listening. I’m really looking forward to whatever God has in store for us next.

TP

Forming breakaway ‘churches’. Causing material harm and distress to LGBT people by blatantly refusing to agree with them. Engaging in schismatic actions that miscellaneous bishops sadly shake their heads at, and purport not to really understand (which would be hilarious if it weren’t so disingenuous). And so on.

When friends and family ask me what’s the story with this new ‘Diocese of the Southern Cross’, I tell them that they’ve got to understand the background. The Anglican denomination has been home to two different and incompatible belief systems for decades now.  

Some people limp between these two opinions; others try to find a way to live and let live. But allowing for all the variations of individual circumstances, and all the ways in which the world is a complex place, when it comes down to it, there are still two fundamentally opposed religions at work within Anglicanism, and the current disputes are just the latest manifestation of this fact.

JI Packer once summarized these two belief systems as ‘objectivist’ and ‘subjectivist’ like this:

[The objectivist position] is the historic Christian belief that through the prophets, the incarnate Son, the apostles, and the writers of canonical Scripture as a body, God has used human language to tell us definitively and transculturally about his ways, his works, his will, and his worship. Furthermore, this revealed truth is grasped by letting the Bible interpret itself to us from within, in the knowledge that the way into God’s mind is through that of the writers. Through them, the Holy Spirit who inspired them teaches the church.…

The second view applies to Christianity the Enlightenment’s trust in human reason, along with the fashionable evolutionary assumption that the present is wiser than the past. It concludes that the world has the wisdom, and the church must play intellectual catch-up in each generation in order to survive. From this standpoint, everything in the Bible becomes relative to the church’s evolving insights, which themselves are relative to society’s continuing development (nothing stands still), and the Holy Spirit’s teaching ministry is to help the faithful see where Bible doctrine shows the cultural limitations of the ancient world and needs adjustment in light of latter-day experience (encounters, interactions, perplexities, states of mind and emotion, and so on). Same-sex unions are one example. This view is scarcely 50 years old, though its antecedents go back much further. I call it the subjectivist position. (Briefing 204, March 2003, p. 17; reprinted from Christianity Today)

This is typical Packer. Thoughtful, careful, comprehensive, and crystal clear in highlighting the issues. But it’s very English and polite all the same.

I wonder if we could express it a bit more … vividly. If I were one of those old-time, African-American preachers, who liked to use the same rhythm and structure for an escalating series of comparisons, I might flesh out the differences between these two belief systems more like this:

There’s one religion based on an objective revelation; There’s another religion based on a subjective implication;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

There’s one religion in which the Bible changes human culture;There’s another religion in which human culture changes the Bible;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

There’s one religion that is inflexible about truth but flexible about human traditions;There’s another religion that is flexible about truth but clings to human traditions tenaciously;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

There’s one religion that puts the highest value on listening to God’s word;There’s another religion that puts the highest value on listening to each other;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

There’s one religion about God seeking the lost;There’s another religion about the lost seeking God;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

There’s one religion that calls me to repent from my sin;There’s another religion that tells me I can stay as I am;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.  

There’s one religion that believes that God knows the truth about men, women and marriage because he created all three;There’s another religion that believes that there’s no solid truth about men, women and marriage because all three can mean what we say they mean;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

There’s one religion that the mainstream media loathe and oppose;And there’s one religion that the mainstream media tolerate and occasionally support;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

There’s one religion that looks plain and unimpressive but trusts the power of God;There’s another religion that has the gawdy appearance of godliness but denies its power;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

There’s one religion that is seeing churches grow and lives transformed;There’s another religion that is seeing churches die and lives unchanged;And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.

Some of these comparisons are admittedly a bit fruity—but then again, that’s how preachers preach!

There are two religions within Anglicanism, although not everyone recognizes it. In fact, there are many good people, sitting in dying churches all around Australia run by proponents of the subjectivist version of Anglicanism, who don’t really know what’s going on or how much they are being misled.

But there are certainly subjectivist leaders who do know exactly what is going on, who occupy positions of power in various dioceses around Australia.

That’s the other piece of background to understand. Within Australian Anglicanism, there are 27 dioceses (each of which is a geographically based group of churches). Each one is independent in its governance, with representatives from the various dioceses getting together occasionally in a national synod. (The national body has very little decision making power.)

So if you’re an objectivist church or pastor in a largely subjectivist diocese, with subjectivist leadership, things can be tricky—and sometimes vice versa, although that is typically less of an issue.

This is why the new ‘Diocese of the Southern Cross’ has been formed. It’s like a virtual diocese for objectivist Anglicans who are finding it increasingly impossible to minister with integrity in dioceses run by subjectivists—especially given the determination of some of those dioceses to go their own way on issues of same-sex unions and human sexuality.

It’s not creating a split. The division has been there and operative for many decades, and this is but the latest expression of it.

In the end, we can’t avoid the reality that there will be alternative views and false teaching in these last days. But we can and should avoid fellowship with them (as 2 Tim 3:5 says). The two ultimately cannot mix or compromise. In fact, if they do, it ends up as a victory for subjectivism.

Hence, this new safe-haven diocese for objectivist Anglican churches. Like most central, denominational kind of things, this new diocese is unlikely to do much to grow the gospel or see real change in churches. But in providing support and encouragement for sometimes beleaguered ‘objectivist’ churches to persevere, it’s doing a good thing.

We should support it.

PS

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was about to announce some imminent changes to The Payneful Truth. I’m nearly ready to do that. Hopefully next week!

We’ve been studying and preaching our way through Ecclesiastes recently at church, and that old question has arisen more than once. Is its pessimistic view of the world limited in some way to its pre-Christian time? Or is its sobering message about the vacuousness of life just as relevant for us today, this side of the redeeming, revealing work of Christ?

The answer makes quite a bit of difference.

If the vanity of life under the sun is really a kind of pre-Christian despair that Christ comes to solve, then Ecclesiastes tells us more about what the Christian life is not than what it is. That would still make it a useful and challenging part of Scripture, but in a particular way. It would function as a kind of kategoria or critique of humanity's doomed attempt to find wisdom and meaning on our terms and by our own lights. And it would be a warning to the Christian not to fall into proud or worldly attitudes towards riches, work and pleasure.

But would Ecclesiastes then actually provide positive wisdom for our lives? Or not so much?

To take the most striking example, should we eat, drink and be merry, or not?

In 1 Corinthians 15:32, Paul says that this hedonistic, live-for-the-moment approach is the attitude of people who deny the resurrection. “If Christ is not raised, then what’s the point?” says Paul. We might as well live it up and enjoy each passing moment, because that’s all there is. Or, as James Taylor says, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time … Nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill; but since we’re on our way down, we might as well enjoy the ride”.

However, when we turn to Ecclesiastes, we find the Preacher giving his readers this James Taylor kind of advice—and often. For example, after describing the capriciousness, injustice and vanity of man’s constant striving for wealth and advantage, he says:

Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. (Eccl 5:18-20)

You might as well enjoy the moment, because that’s the best we can hope for in this confusing, confounding world. He says the same thing in 2:24-26, 3:9-13, 8:15-17, and in this classic from chapter 9, which I like to write out in nice cursive handwriting on a beautiful card and give to my wife on our anniversary:

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. (Eccl 9:9-10)

The constant conclusion of the Preacher is that life is an opaque mess. Not only do bad and unjust things happen, but we can never grasp why. We can’t see through our circumstances to decipher their meaning or end—apart from the fact that we’re all going to die. As he says in the famous chapter 3 verse 11:

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put the vast continuum of time into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

God has put into our hearts an awareness that we have come from somewhere and are going somewhere; that we exist at one point on vast time continuum stretching back and forward. We sense that life should therefore mean something, and indeed we constantly experience the beauty or fittingness of individual events and times. And yet, the larger picture is hidden from us. We can neither see what is coming next, nor comprehend the significance of what has just happened. Just when we think we understand what’s going on, and have things sorted and planned out, it all slips through our fingers. Life is hebel—vanity, absurdity, an airy nothing that we desperately try to pin down with a local habitation and a name, but fail to.

These God-given limitations are meant to humble us, says the Preacher. God did it this way to cut us down to size, and to help us realize that everything we work at and achieve and obtain is really a gift from him, to be enjoyed as it comes to us.

This is why the Preacher’s over-arching advice is to fear God, to do good and keep his commandments, and to enjoy whatever gifts come to you from his hand (including eating and drinking and enjoying the satisfaction and fruit of your work). God will bring everything into judgement, not us.

Looked at it this light, perhaps the Preacher’s teaching is not so different from Paul’s after all. The person who denies the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 is denying the reality of God’s judgement—that God will raise all, and judge all—as well as the reality of forgiveness of sins in that judgement. He plunges desperately into hedonism because that’s all there is.

The Christian knows that there is judgement coming, through the risen Christ. That’s why he is bold to face life’s struggles and disappointments—as Paul points out in the previous verses in 1 Corinthians 15. Why do we trust God in the face of danger, conflict, persecution and death? Because we stand fast in the gospel of Christ’s death for our sins and his resurrection from the dead.

Christians have an understanding of God’s eternal purposes in judgement and salvation that the authors of the Old Covenant could only dream of. Our gospel labour in the Lord is not in vain, because of the resurrection of Christ (1 Cor 15:58).

However, our life here and now continues to be opaque to us, in just the way that Ecclesiastes describes. The groaning frustration and futility of life in the fallen world remains our lot, as we wait patiently and in hope for the redemption of our bodies (Rom 8:18-25). We are still confounded by the unpredictability and injustice of life under the sun. Our life is still an elusive vapour that appears for a little while and vanishes, and in which all our plans are in the Lord’s hands and not our own (Jas 4:13-16).

All of which means that there is still a very Christian way to enjoy the moment, Ecclesiastes style.

We should by all means be prudent and plan for the future. But we shouldn’t for a moment think that the future is in our grasp—either in the plans we have for our lives and families, or in the ministry strategies that we organise ourselves around. Our eternal future is certain. But next week’s future is not.

Our response to this uncertainty should certainly be to pray, and to lay all our plans and anxieties before him.

However, Ecclesiastes reminds us that the godly response is also to enjoy the moment when we can. We should revel in all the good things that do come to us from God’s hand—whether food or drink or the fruits of our earthly labours or the fruits of our ministry labours.

When God gives us that kind of moment, let’s enjoy it.

PS

If you’d like to go for a bracing swim in Ecclesiastes yourself, let me recommend The Search for Meaning in the Matthias Media Interactive Bible Studies series. It’s great stuff (for personal or group study).

The very experience of 21st century living, with its utterly bewildering array of nearly limitless choice—in knowledge, information, entertainment, commodities, interests, lifestyles, and so on—has the psychological effect of fragmenting our lives, and destroying any illusion that there might be one overarching truth or ‘big story’. There is no fixed truth, no unifying story, no galvanizing purpose. There is nothing that explains me, or locates me in the world as part of a fixed tradition or community.  Everything is difference, diversity, plasticity, fluidity. It is up to the individual to try to fashion some satisfactory ‘self’, some thing that is uniquely and authentically ‘me’, by selecting from the google-sized cultural menu.

It’s from an article I wrote 15 years ago reviewing David Wells’s book Above all Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World, which I suspect many of you will never have heard of, but which was quite the thing in 2007. Books are like sermons in this regard. Even the best of them get forgotten; it just takes a little longer.

I came across this article because I was searching for background reading on truth and lies, in preparation for the CCL event on ‘Deception’ that’s coming up next week. (It’s not too late to register!) And Wells’s book casts a fascinating perspective on that subject. He charts the collapse of the modernist confidence of the Enlightenment, that humanity could find its own way to the truth about life and the universe.

The Enlightenment project failed, he suggests, for a number of reasons. At one level, it simply failed to deliver. The modernist dream was that humanity would craft its own destiny, and that science and education would lead us all into a unified bright new tomorrow. We were promised progress, enlightenment, knowledge and an inspiring humanist quest for truth. Instead we got the holocaust, propaganda, a nuclear arms race and environmental degradation.

But it also failed, he argues, because of the very structure of its thought, and all that followed from it. The Enlightenment ideal is profoundly individualistic. Human reason and experience is sovereign, which means that my reason and experience is sovereign—so who are you to tell me what to do? Or to tell me what constitutes ‘progress’? Or what ‘truth’ is?

In the end, Wells argues, the Enlightenment dream buckled, sagged and collapsed under the massive variety and weight of the consumer options that have opened before 21st century Westerners. We didn’t become ‘postmodern’ because we all started reading Derrida and Foucault but because contemporary culture is built on ‘you doing you’ and ‘me doing me’ (as we now say it), and we now have the financial and technological resources for us to try to do just that. Postmodern culture is an individualistic consumer culture in which I define meaning for myself by what I buy and choose and experience; by how I thus create the unique thing that is ‘me’.

So what does this mean for how we think about lying and deception in a postmodern world?

Disappointingly for my preparation, Wells doesn’t explore this angle, nor (therefore) did my review.

His interest lies elsewhere, in how the postmodern crisis of ‘truth’ relates to how Christians preach the gospel.

And so, as is so often the case when you rummage around in old books and articles, I found myself going down a completely different rabbit hole. But it was also one that very much relates to current events and issues.

The big issue for Wells—and it is still very much ours 15 years later—is how secular, postmodern people deal with the fracturing of truth and meaning, and how churches deal with it, as they reach out with the gospel in this environment.

He notes that while church-going and general trust in Christianity has declined in the West, interest in ‘spirituality’ and ‘spiritual experience’ has not. He cites a survey showing how in the same period in which church attendance in Britain fell from 28% to 8% of the population, the number of people who described themselves as ‘spiritual’ or having had ‘spiritual experiences’ rose from 48% to 76%.

There is a spiritual yearning there. Can Christians bring the gospel to that spiritual yearning?

Here is where Wells asks a crucial question that many others in the early 21st century weren’t asking, and are still not asking: Just what kind of spiritual yearning does the postmodern person typically have?

Here’s my summary and reflection on his answer (from the 2007 review):

As Wells describes it—and his analysis rings very true—the current spiritual quest is intensely personalized, individualized and eclectic. It is part of the postmodern person’s project to make their life happy, satisfying, fulfilled and meaningful. It is about finding something real and meaningful in my life, given that I have lost confidence in a big Answer coming from an outside God. It’s like another panel on my Facebook page: my spirituality. And I may draw on tidbits of whatever spiritual knowledge or technique will help with that search and that process.

Here Wells comes to one of the key insights of this very insightful book. He argues that while the postmodern spiritual yearning has unique features thrown up by the particular cultural forces of our time, in its core structure and nature it bears a striking resemblance to a kind of spirituality that Christians have done battle with long before in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD—the ancient form of primal spirituality that took the form of gnosticism. It too was a spirituality intensely distrustful of dogma and external revelation. It too was a deeply privatised spirituality where the sacred was approached through the self. And it too was a spirituality that reached from man to God, attempting to find salvation and blessing apart from the grace of Christ.

In other words, gnosticism was not a close cousin to Christian spirituality, a kind of fellow-traveller or precursor to Christian understanding. It was its diametric opposite and enemy. And when such a rival is on the field, adaptation, dialogue and tactical engagement are not viable strategies. The only appropriate response, argues Wells, is confrontation—otherwise known as “speaking the truth in love” (Eph 4:15).

The early church perceived this, vigorously opposed gnosticism, and was granted in God’s kindness a history-making victory.

The church at the end of the 20th century, on the other hand, has seen the self-focused, anti-revelational, lifestyle-oriented spirituality of our time as a phenomenon not to be confronted but to be accommodated. By seeing merely the surface attitude of ‘seeking’, and not the deep antipathy between the two kinds of spirituality, modern evangelicals have filled megachurches with people who don’t trust revelation, filter their experience of God through the self and its desires, and come along because the breezy, interactive, virtually contentless meetings make them feel good, and contribute to the project that is their lifestyle.

This is a vital point as we think about reaching our culture with the gospel. The desires, wants and spiritual yearnings of postmodernity are not a variation on Christian spirituality. They are as starkly opposite and as deadly to Christian thought and practice as was gnosticism …

Wells sharply criticises the ‘seeker-service’ movement for not perceiving this, and for offering a revelation-less, repentance-lite, therapeutic spirituality which gives unchurched baby boomers exactly the spiritual package they want—one that helps them to sustain relationships, handle stress, improve their life, and all without relinquishing their fundamental autonomy over their lives…

… This is the danger for evangelicals as we think about how Christ can be preached to a postmodern world … We see a particular demographic group before us—Generation X or Y or Z, or seniors or juniors or whoever it might be—and we begin to feel that if only we could find the key to their heart, the cultural pheromones that would attract them to us, then we would surely be able to win them over to Christ. If we can only craft our package in such a way as to show them Christ is the answer to their spiritual yearnings—for meaning, for relationships, for community—then to Christ they will turn.

So I started reading this old article thinking it might help me think about truth and lies. But instead it got me juiced up again about the gospel and truth and evangelistic strategy—which has also been much on my mind recently. The new Learn the Gospel resource is now officially launched and available, and just last Friday I submitted the final manuscript of an evangelistic book based on Two ways to live.

For both of those resources, one of the key convictions is that the gospel—in our knowledge of it and preaching of it—is a truth claim. It doesn’t seek to mould itself to the desires of its hearers but to call on them to repent of those desires in light of the truth about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It proclaims a true reality beyond myself that calls upon me to spurn my self-focus and personal gnosticism, and turn to God in Christ.

The alternative idea that ‘truth’ comes from within and is personal is not new (as Wells points out). No doubt the current, postmodern version of this has its own unique features, but it is a species of the age-old and ever-present human problem—which is to reject the real truth of God, and replace it with a ‘truth’ of our own making. And when confronted about this reality, we excuse ourselves and say, like Pilate, “What is truth?”

In reaching out to a post-truth or anti-truth culture, it’s easy to lose our nerve. I don’t know how many times in the past 15 years I’ve had someone say to me some variation of the following: “Yes, I know the gospel proclaims the truth, and I believe that. But is ‘truth’ something that resonates with people today? We’re not a ‘truth’ generation. We’re more interested in what works in our lives. We’re more likely to get evangelistic traction if we can show them that Christianity makes a difference to them personally, that it solves their deepest problems …” And so on and so forth. 

This is profoundly mistaken, and sends us down the road towards the kind of pop-culture liberalism that Wells warned us about in 2007.

The gospel can’t negotiate with the individualistic, secular gnosticism of the 21st century, any more than it could in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In proclaiming the victory and lordship of Jesus, we’re bringing news of liberation from our enslaving, self-focused desires, not the fulfilment of them.

The final sentence of my article in 2007 put it this way:

The world may seek a million ways to live, but we preach two ways to live.

PS

If you’d like to come along to the CCL event on Deception, or tune in via livestream (personally or in your small group), you’ll need to register post-haste. All the details are here.

As I mentioned above, the wait is also (finally) over for getting hold of the first of the new Two ways to liveresources. For those who haven’t caught up with this, the old Two ways to live training course has been divided in half and completely rewritten. It now comes in two parts:

* Learn the Gospel: a book/course to teach Christians what the gospel is (using the 2wtl framework).

* Share the Gospel: a book/course on how to share that gospel with others in everyday life and conversation.

It’s the first of those that is now available. It consists of a very nicely produced book, plus free online videos, and is designed to be very easily done in existing small groups. Check out all the details here.

You reminded me of when PFJ became Archbishop (when I’d been working at Anglican Media for just over a year), and the media picked up on the label ‘radical conservative’ that had been applied to him at some point. He said he liked the label and accepted it (I had to transcribe the press conference for work, so I still have it filed away!). PFJ said:

Only a conservative could be radical. A conservative, to my mind, is someone who takes matters through to the foundations and is convinced about the foundations. In a postmodern world, this is rare. And indeed some of the flack we get, as a Church—with complaints about the way we behave and the way we speak—are simply a misunderstanding. We are very serious people, with a serious intellectual and moral agenda in a world where these things are treated somewhat as though they don’t matter as much.

Now, we have certain base convictions which are terrifically important to us. Having those base convictions frees us to be extraordinarily flexible about things that are of secondary nature.

Precisely.

But onto this week’s post, which is about bananas and Christian books.

The road to spiritual health is paved with Christian books

As a writer arguing in favour of Christian books, I feel a bit like a banana-grower arguing in favour of bananas—like my family did when I was growing up.

My dad’s people grew bananas at Dunoon, outside Lismore. My grandfather was even the president at one time of the North Coast Banana Growers Federation (he was the Big Banana, you could say).

So it is hardly surprising that our family consumed bananas in impressive quantities and in every conceivable format. We had them mashed on bread, sliced onWeet-Bix and baked in the Queen of All Cakes (banana cake with lemon icing). We ate them raw, frittered and barbecued. They were our morning tea, our afternoon tea and our sneaky late-night snack.

We were banana people, and had the banana key rings and other banana-themed merchandise to prove it. This poster was on the wall on the back verandah:

It always struck me that having a road paved with banana peels was also quite possibly dangerous to health. But perhaps the banana lobby could be forgiven for overlooking this. What else would you expect them to be but blindly and joyously pro-banana?

I feel rather like this in arguing that the road to spiritual health is paved with Christian books. What else would I say, as a life-long Christian writer and publisher?

However, it’s a little different. I’m not sure that a conviction about the all-purpose benefits of bananas was the reason my grandfather spent his life growing and promoting them. Perhaps it was—maybe the banana passion came first, and then the desire to grow them. But it has certainly been that way with me. It’s precisely because of a strong conviction about the value of Christian books that I’ve spent my ministry life writing, editing and publishing them.

That conviction has three pillars.

The first is a theological belief in the power of the word. It’s a cliché to say that we live in a visual age where people prefer to watch rather than to read. This is true, but only in so far as it is a description of every age. People have always preferred the immediacy of the visual. This is why that little thing called idolatry—the worship of a visual representation of the divine—is condemned so widely and vigorously in the Bible. It has always been humanity’s besetting sin.

The ‘humiliation of the word’ (as Jacques Ellul described it) is a feature not just of modernity but of history. Our rejection of God is a rebellion against him who cannot be seen, and a turning to the worship of created things that can be seen. Rather than seeing in the creation evidence for the invisible God, and honouring and thanking and listening to him, we turn away and suppress that truth. We turn to what can be immediately seen and worship it instead.

The visual is immediate and uninterpreted. It has no words. It is ‘dumb’, as Isaiah describes the idol that we make out of a piece of wood. Five minutes ago we were barbecuing bananas over it; now we’ve fashioned it into a shape and are thinking that it provides the meaning for our lives. The visual suits us very well, because we simply experience it and decide for ourselves what it means.

A preference for seeing and watching over listening and reading is more than a difference in learning styles or personal taste (although of course it is partly that). It is also deeply rooted in our human unwillingness to learn the truth about ourselves and God by humbling listening to his word. The Christian, by contrast, lives by faith not by sight, and our faith is in the word of Christ that we hear (2 Cor 5:7; Rom 10:17).

However, if it is God’s powerful word that we should turn to and believe, why are Christian books important? Why is the Bible not the only book to be published and read?

This brings us to the second foundation for the importance of Christian books and reading, and it is also theological. The word of God is authoritatively revealed and inscripturated in the Bible, and the Bible remains the supreme and only source-book for our knowledge of him. But his word is communicated and does its powerful work as his people speak it. Whether in the teaching-preaching speech of pastor-teachers, or in the one-another speech of his people in multiple ways, God’s word is spoken and heard and grasped and understood through the mediation of human speech.

Christian books are vital because Christian speech is vital. We receive God’s word in Scripture, and then by his Spirit we preach it so that it can be heard and believed. We preach it and teach it, and explain and expound and admonish and encourage and exhort it. And we write and read it.

But this raises the third pillar of Christian reading. Why reading? Why not just hearing? Why bother with books if we have sermons and podcasts?

The answer is obvious to anyone who has enjoyed the benefits of not just listening to biblical sermons but of reading the Bible for yourself. Something different happens when we read the Bible ourselves, because reading is a different mode of receiving and hearing and engaging with words. Reading is more flexible, and offers different opportunities for learning. When we read, we can speed up or slow down. We can skim and gain an impression of the whole, and then go back and pore over words and sentences, and milk them for meaning. We can pause and ask mental questions, and then re-read for possible answers. When we read a particularly striking sentence or phrase or metaphor, we can stop to appreciate it and allow its power to penetrate our minds. This is why the Bible itself recommends reading and re-reading and meditating over the word so that its sweetness enters our soul (as in Joshua 1:8 and most of Psalm 119).

Reading, in other words, is deep and interactive. We are not simply receiving the words at the pace and direction of the speaker; we can engage with the words, and draw more from them.

This is why a book or an extended essay can mount a significant argument, or take us deep into the truth of some aspect of God’s word, in a way that a sermon or talk or conversation cannot. Reading helps us to think and to change our minds—again, in a different way from what hearing or listening can achieve.

If Christian growth includes the renewal of the mind, then the road to spiritual health is indeed paved with biblically faithful Christian books. In God’s providence, he has given us this powerful means of learning and growing in our knowledge of him. Why would we not take advantage of this blessing that God has provided? When our hearts and minds are so prone to spiritual ill-health, why would we turn up our nose at the rich nutrition that a diet of Christian reading supplies?

I guess because we’re human. We’re lazy and inattentive, even to our own detriment. We prefer things on our own terms.

Sometimes, in the end, we’d rather just eat bananas.

PS

So much else comes to mind on this topic, especially as a I look back over the past several decades. We promote books and reading in church far less than we did. We might say that this is because ‘people don’t read any more’, but this is a consequence of our inaction more than a cause. It was no different in the 1980s and 90s. Everyone then said that reading was dead because of television, just as everyone today blames the internet. But in the past, churches that promoted and sold and discussed books regularly unsurprisingly fostered a healthy culture of Christian reading. We could easily do so again.

I know many of you have been wondering and waiting for it to be available, and are keen to think how this resource could be used to teach the fundamentals of the gospel in your churches.

To this end, Matthias Media is encouraging churches to run a pilot program in Term 4 (say in two or three small groups) to see how Learn the Gospel fits and works in your context—and offering a friendly bulk price to help you have a go at this. If you’re in Australia, and would like to participate in this pilot, and test the waters for how your church could utilize Learn the Gospel, send an email to Gavin Shume (gshume@matthiasmedia.com.au).

(This is an invitation only pilot—just for Payneful Truth subscribers and a few other churches we’re asking.)

But onto this week’s subject … 

Who wants to be a conservative?

I’ve lost count how many times over the course of my life that ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’ have fought over different issues in my (Anglican) denomination.

Through the fog of time, different figures and controversies rise up and recede in my memory. I see Archbishop Peter Carnley (at that time the Primate of Australia), arguing that the resurrection was a spiritual experience rather than a physical event, and that Christ was not the only path to salvation—and then the godly, gracious Archbishop of Sydney, Harry Goodhew, copping a pounding in the secular press for daring to object (that was in around 2000 I think). I see the radically revisionist Bishop John Spong emerging from the mist, visiting Australia not long afterwards at the invitation of Carnley and the ‘Progressive Christian Network’. And once again the nasty ‘conservatives’ were the ones who criticised Spong’s denial of pretty much every tenet of orthodox Christian doctrine.

Then I think of the long-running skirmishes (starting back in the 80s) over multiple issues—women’s ordination, gay ordination, the blessing of same-sex unions, and more. In each case, the ‘progressives’ or ‘liberals’ sought to change or update the doctrine and morality of Christianity, and in the opposing corner were the ‘conservatives’. And given that on all these issues I found myself barracking for the conservatives, I guess that makes me one. And you too, quite possibly.

So how do you feel about being a ‘conservative’?

I can’t say that the label thrills me to the core.

What’s a ‘conservative’ after all? When we think ‘conservative’, we think of a stick in the mud; a reactionary; a stuffy, buttoned-down member of the establishment who wants things to stay the same. Conservatives are risk averse, change averse, and very likely excitement averse. They wear cream blazers over blue chinos. With their thin, cold and (invariably) white hands, they cling to the dogmas and traditions of the past, in a desperate and doomed attempt to forestall the new and better future that everyone else is longing for.

Just what I always wanted to be—a conservative.

Of course, like many such words in our culture, ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ are dependent on their predicate (or should be). It’s like being ‘narrow’ as opposed to ‘broad’. It entirely depends what you’re talking about. I would prefer my waist to be more narrow and my shoulders more broad. I’d like my fridge to be conservative of the food inside it, and my five-irons very progressive and if possible in the right direction.

It all depends on what you’re conserving.

Interestingly, this is also true in politics.

British and European political ‘conservatism’ is quite different from American ‘conservatism’, because they seek to conserve different things. I’ve recently been reading George F. Will’s book, The Conservative Sensibility, and he describes the difference like this:

 [The European tradition of throne-and-altar conservatism] has generally sought to conserve institutions and practices, such as social hierarchies and established churches, that were produced by the slow working of historical processes spanning many centuries. American conservatism seeks, as Alexander Hamilton did in the Republic’s infancy, to conserve or establish institutions and practices conducive to a social dynamism that dissolves impediments to social mobility and fluency. So American conservatism is not only different from, it is at bottom antagonistic to British and continental European conservatism. The latter emphasizes the traditional and dutiful, with duties defined by obligations to a settled collectivity, the community. Because American conservatism is about individual liberty, it cultivates spontaneous social order and hence encourages novelty.[1]

American political conservatism wants to preserve the norms and principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—which are documents largely designed to protect the freedom of the individual from the tyranny of a monarchical government. European conservatism (on the other hand) is much happier for the king to remain in place and to benevolently rule his subjects for their good, according to the ancient traditions. One of the ironies of history is that today, the enemies of American conservatism are not British monarchs but political progressives, whose ambition is to have the government exercise a greater more monarchical power over the individual and society.

(As for where Australian political conservatism fits into this schema, I’m not sure I can say. It hardly exists as an intellectual force. There’s no throne-and-altar tradition to protect, nor is there a libertarian Constitution to conserve. I suspect Australian political conservatism ends up being a more cautious and practical progressivism. Australians seem increasingly to believe that the government is the most important actor in society, that it is largely to blame for our problems and could solve them if only it had more power and money to spend. The ‘conservative’ side of Australian politics seems content to largely go along with these assumptions, offering an alternative that is supposed to be more cautious and sensible than the other guys.)

But I digress.

The point is: it all depends on what you’re conserving. And on the other side, what is it that you want to change or ‘progress’?

To come back to Christian debates, Anglican ‘progressives’ generally want to improve our doctrine to make it more attractive to the world, while keeping and conserving many of the cultural practices and traditions of historic Anglicanism. And so we have the strange spectacle of modernist Anglican Bishops, spouting ultra-progressive theology, while still clothed in the robes, liturgical practices and church buildings of a centuries-old tradition. Progressive content, conservative style.

The Anglican ‘conservatives’, at least in my part of the world, are the opposite. They have long since ditched robes, ancient liturgies, archaic language and ‘churchy’ architecture, while arguing vigorously for the unchanging, ancient truths of the Bible. Progressive style, conservative content.

To put it another way, Anglican progressives want to change the church’s doctrine to be more like the world. True Anglican conservatives want to change the world.

That’s why ‘conservative’ is never enough for me, as a label. It’s a bit like the American Constitution. It seeks to secure the rights of the citizenry for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’; and so to ‘conserve’ this Constitution is to promote the personal freedom to experiment and change. As George Will argues, American conservatism encourages novelty.

In a similar way, the biblical truth I want to conserve and pass on to the next generation is a charter for transformation. It proclaims a truth that is revolutionary; that transforms lives and cultures, and that is not bound by times or places or traditions. The ancient, unchanging biblical gospel speaks to every culture and language and tradition, because it speaks of the Christ who is Lord of every person and time and culture, and who calls on all people, everywhere, to turn back to him. It looks forward to the time that John saw in his vision, when “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev 11:7).

This is why true theological conservatives should be methodological and cultural progressives. The unchanging biblical truth we preserve and proclaim drives us constantly to change—to change our lives, to change our practices—because we want to change the world through the preaching of the gospel in the power of God’s Spirit. We want to see lives transformed through Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. We want to see our churches transformed, and to grow in love and faith and urgency for gospel mission.

So I guess I’m willing to be a conservative—just not in gospel ambition. Let’s not, for example, conserve ministry traditions and practices that are no longer fit for purpose, simply because we’ve always done them. If the trellis needs changing, let’s get to work with hammer and nail so that the vine has room to flourish. Let’s be constantly progressive in the way we proclaim the unchanging gospel truth that we conserve.

Maybe I’m not an unvarnished, unmodified conservative after all.

Perhaps I’m a conservative revolutionary.

Who wants to join me?

PS

George Will’s book is fascinating. If you’re interested in politics and political history (and especially US politics) it’s worth a read, even (or perhaps especially) if your political leanings are more progressive. For me, one of the more fascinating aspects of his argument was his attempt to find a rational basis for ‘natural rights’ that did not rely on their God-given nature. He argues (pretty persuasively) that the US Constitution is about securing and promoting existing natural rights—rights that we self-evidently have by virtue of simply being human. As the Declaration of Independence puts it: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

However, Will wants to argue that belief in the God who created all men equal and endowed them with these rights is entirely optional. If God is there, well and good; he also created us with the rational capacity to figure out what our natural rights are using our reason. But if God is not there (as Will himself believes), then we can still derive our self-evident natural rights purely from reason, using a version of what Will calls ‘rule utilitarianism’.

It’s all pretty tortuous and unconvincing (especially if you know anything about utilitarianism and its question-begging approach to the ‘good’). And sadly (for Will’s hopes at least) I think it explains why American conservatism as an intellectual movement is in decline, why its political influence is unlikely to grow, and why classical American republicanism is in real trouble. Our postmodern secular world has moved on from the Enlightenment confidence that we could establish morality and rights purely on the basis of reason. Nothing is self-evident any more in a society that does not share in basic Christian assumptions. The capital from a previously more Christian culture has been spent, and the (most Christian) moral virtues and assumptions that undergird American conservatism (individual responsibility, self-restraint, an acceptance of the hardness and unpredictability of life, and so on) are in major decline. And so the system is showing real cracks. The Congress has mostly given up writing laws. The Presidency is gathering more power to itself. There is genuine disagreement over the basic function of the Supreme Court. Both sides are increasingly declaring the other side illegitimate and evil. Populism is on the rise.

When you erode the foundations, eventually the structure starts to crumble.

Interestingly, the American figures today who are arguing for a return to Constitution-based freedom-loving conservatism (or ‘classical liberalism’) are nearly all Christians or Jews of some stripe or other, or at least fellow-travellers with those traditions. I suspect they are fighting a losing battle.

The Centre for Christian Living event on ‘Deception’ is coming up fast on August 24. Here’s a little video of me explaining what’s it about.

[1] George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility (New York: Hachete, 2019), xxvii-xxix.

Why is it that contemporary apologetics mostly focuses on the two approaches that enjoy the least biblical support and have the most risks attached?

To understand the question, some background.

My presentation had been based on the ‘Seven types of apologetics’ essay that I rolled out on The Payneful Truth last year (pt 1, pt 2). As a refresher (or to save you reading from scratch), I argued that in the varied world of contemporary apologetics and evangelistic persuasion, the word ‘apologetics’ gets thrown around pretty loosely—so much so that it’s possible to identify seven different kinds of persuasion or argument that might have the label ‘apologetics’ slapped on them these days.  They were:

* Gospel persuasion: the arguments and evidence and reasoning that we employ when actually explaining the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection (e.g. evidence that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead).

* Gospel objections: having explained the gospel, we answer the various questions and objections that people raise against it (e.g. “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?”; “I don’t believe that we are all sinners and rebels”; and so on).

* Pre-emptive objections: before we get to talking about the gospel itself, we might address the general objections people have to God and Christianity (e.g. “Why does God allow suffering?”; “Hasn’t science disproved Christianity?”; “Why is Christianity so anti-women and anti-gay?” etc.)  

* Building Christian confidence: one function or type of apologetics is bolstering the confidence of Christians by providing answers and reasons for their doubts, and for the common objections that society throws at us.

* God talk and life: way back at the ‘engage’ or pre-evangelistic end of the spectrum, the way we talk and behave in everyday life can open up and commend the subject of the gospel, in a Colossians 4:5-6 kind of way.

* Positive reasons: These are positive arguments we put forward for the truth or attractiveness of the Christian faith. They might be some version of the classic proofs of the existence of God; they might be arguments that start with the people’s inherent desires and aspirations and show that Christianity fulfills them; they might seek to present the positive goodness of Christianity in the most reasonable and attractive way, to get some traction with the modern, secular person.

* Critique (kategoria): Rather than provide a defense or ‘apologia’, this form of persuasion points out the inconsistencies and dysfunctions in the non-Christian worldview. It critiques the world, rather than answering the critiques of the world. (Paul’s speech in Acts 17 is a classic case in point.)

I argued that we find types 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 in the example and instructions of the apostles, and suggested that these were the ones we should also focus on in our own evangelism and persuasion. Types 3 and 6—‘Pre-emptive objections’ and ‘Positive reasons’—are not only difficult to find in the New Testament but have considerable risks attached. The ‘pre-emptive objections’ approach puts us on the backfoot, and often gives too much credence to the validity or genuineness of the objection; the ‘positive reasons’ strategy often seeks to frame Christianity in terms that are attractive to the prevailing secular mind, thereby risking a distortion of the counter-intuitive, offensive nature of the gospel.

Unfortunately, it is precisely these two latter types (3 and 6) that tend to dominate the field of contemporary apologetics and persuasion.

Hence the question I was asked: How has this come to be the case? Why do we end up focusing on the two apologetic approaches that have least to commend them?

In answer, I made a few vague, stuttering remarks about the trends of modern thought, and our temptation to give the world too much credit, and our lack of belief in the power of the gospel itself, and how everything had gone to pot since the Enlightenment, and so on. All no doubt true, but a bit incoherent.

But then a few days later, in the slow process of moving some books around at home—slow because I keep stopping to browse through old favourites—I came across Graeme Goldsworthy’s underappreciated Gospel-centred Hermeneutics. Not a light read but full of gold. And I remembered and found again this section on page 60:

Sinful thinking is ‘snake-think’, the kind of noetic rebellion proposed by the serpent in Eden. It is diametrically opposed to the mind renewed by the gospel … At this point we can say that the godless presuppositions underlying the temptation and fall in Genesis 3 include the following:

* If God is there, he does not communicate the truth.

* We do not need God to reveal the rational framework for understanding reality;

* Human reason is autonomous, and the ultimate arbiter of truth and falsity, right and wrong.

In essence, these presuppositions are those of the secular mind that were given such sophisticated expression in the philosophies of the Enlightenment.

‘Noetic rebellion’—there’s a phrase you would only hear spoken in the halls of academe. ‘Noetic’ means ‘to do with the mind’ (from the Greek word nous, ‘mind’, ‘understanding’, ‘intellectual perception’). Why we can’t just say ‘mental rebellion’ I’m not sure, but I digress.

At one level, Goldsworthy’s point is one that you’ve heard in a thousand sermons on Genesis 3—that the fall involved a false set of assumptions and beliefs about God: that even if he is there, we can’t trust him and don’t need him; that we can gain wisdom and truth on our own terms; that we can become like God ourselves, as self-legislating judges of what is true and good.

Goldsworthy’s insight, however, is that this primal ‘snake-think’ is precisely the program of the Enlightenment, and the foundation of modern thought. The Enlightenment was the humanistic project beginning in the late 17th century that sought to cast off the dark, dim understanding of our forebears, who relied on God and his revelation to understand the world. The Enlightenment thinkers wanted to see if we could figure it all out for ourselves, without an answer coming to us ‘from outside’. Could knowledge and truth and morality be found by following our own reason and instincts and experience? Surely yes, said the Enlightenment, and tried to do so.

Fast forward to today, and we are the inheritors of several centuries of what amounts to very sophisticated snake-think. The progress of the Enlightenment has been anything but smooth. In fact, the ‘post-modern’ movement was basically the realization that the assumptions of the Enlightenment were overly optimistic and self-defeating.

All the same, even if post-modern thinkers are a tad less confident about our ability to figure it all out ourselves, the basic serpentine assumption remains. It’s as old as Adam. If there is any rationality or truth or goodness or morality to be found, it will only be discovered or created by us, on our own terms, through our own reason and experience.

Any proposal, therefore, that is put forward—whether Christian or otherwise—needs to accept these ground rules. The truth or falsity of something, its rightness or wrongness, its goodness or badness, its usefulness or otherwise, can only be established on terms decided by us.

In our noetically rebellious world, human reason and experience occupy the bench as Judge. If Christianity wishes to argue for itself, it needs to take its place in the dock, like everything else, and defend itself. It needs to answer the Judge’s objections and questions. It needs to show itself good and reasonable according to our current, autonomous standards of reason and experience.

This is where Goldsworthy’s insight helps answer my student’s question about the focus of much contemporary apologetics.

We find it very easy to focus on apologetic strategy number 3 (pre-emptive objections) and number 6 (positive reasons) because they fit within the dominant thought-patterns of our whole culture, the gravitational pull of which is hard to escape. We’ve grown up with snake-think. It’s the air we breathe. We find it almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which human reason and experience are not the judge and arbiter of everything. By long habit, we assume that Christianity’s normal place is in the dock, cap in hand, seeking to fend off the secular world’s objections and allegations, and hoping to provide attractive, compelling reasons that might satisfy the Judge, or at least make him regard us less negatively.

But you can see the problem. By adopting these apologetic strategies, we choose to work within the framework of the noetic rebellion of our culture. We implicitly accept the ground rules of snake-think, and hope that we can somehow persuade the Judge to think better of us and the gospel, or even to accept the truth of our claim.

This has two real downsides.

Firstly, it doesn’t and can’t work. The Judge of human reason will never be satisfied by the arguments and claims of the genuine gospel, because to do so would require a total reversal of positions. To accept the gospel claim would require the Judge to lay down his gavel, take off his robe, humbly enter the dock, and plead guilty to rebelling against the true creator, lord and judge of the world. What human judge is going to do that?

Secondly, it leads us to change the message. We craft our arguments and persuasion to appeal to snake-think; that is, to a set of human standards, rationalities, aspirations and tastes that are shot-through with rebellion against God. The gospel is the opposite of this—it shames worldly wisdom and refuses to be known by it (see 1 Cor 1-2). It’s hard to see how we could dabble in approaches 3 and 6 at any depth, without it changing our gospel proclamation for the worse.

The great news, though, is that the gospel provides a profound critique of snake-think and a wonderful redemption from it. The simple old gospel is powerfully effective because it addresses the simple old problem—which also happens to be the simple modern problem: rebellion against God. Gospel persuasion is accusatory and liberating rather than defensive or apologetic, because it calls on all people everywhere to leave behind their noetic rebellion and turn back to the only wise God.

That’s how Paul approached the Athenian sophisticates in Acts 17. Rather than adopting a defensive stance—as if he and his message were on trial, and needing to be justified—he gives a quite devastating critique of their foolish idolatry and ignorance, and puts them in the dock before the God and judge of the world. “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).

Surely it can’t be as simple as that? Won’t people laugh at such a message?

Some will, as they did in Athens.

But by the grace and power of God, others will say “We will hear you again about this” (Acts 17:32).

PS

Goldsworthy’s point (in the passage quoted above) has relevance for so much else. He makes it in the context of how we read, interpret and apply the Bible today (‘hermeneutics’), arguing that Christ as the centre and key of the Scriptures is thus the centre and key for all human knowledge and interpretation.

This is in fact why his argument has relevance for how we think about nearly everything, because it diagnoses the problem that besets all human knowledge in every human culture of every age. The Christ-centred message of the Bible explains us to ourselves, no matter who we are or when or where we live. We don’t need sophisticated cultural analysis to understand the truly important problems of humanity and their solution. In fact, our cultural analysis is so compromised by snake-think that it always misunderstands the true nature of ourselves and the world (because it is predicated on a rejection of the God who created the world).

As I said, Gospel-centred Hermeneutics is no light read, but it’s very much worth it.

A reminder about The Centre for Christian Living event on ‘Deception’ that I’m speaking at on August 24. These events are great for small groups to take a week’s break from their normal Bible study and consider a topic—you can attend as a group in person, or watch it together on livestream. All the details are at the CCL website.

“Well”, says John Gielgud as the Master of Trinity College, “there goes your Semite, Hugh. A different God; a different mountaintop.”

It’s not often that the contrast between the two mountains in Hebrews 12 is alluded to in popular culture. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that this may be the one and only and final time.

Abrahams belongs to the God of Sinai, the Cambridge don is saying—to the smoking, terrifying, mountain of the law. We (he implies by way of contrast) have a different mountaintop, the heavenly Zion, the joyful assembly of the justified.

What’s going on here?

Are the two stuffy academics casting the professionalized pursuit of individual athletic glory (that they see in Abrahams) as a kind of works-based striving for acceptance? Or is it just the hide-bound prejudice of the self-satisfied Christian elite against the upstart pushy Jewish outsider? Or could it perhaps be a bit of both?

This complexity is one of the many layers of meaning that make Chariots of Fire such an entertaining and satisfying story.

At this point in the film, the British establishment (in the form of the dons) is arguing for the spirit of the amateur and against the win-at-all costs professionalism of the modern athlete. Sporting endeavours, they say, are about the creation of character: “They foster courage, honesty and leadership. But most of all, an unassailable spirit of loyalty... comradeship and mutual responsibility.”

Later in the movie, the British establishment (in the form of Lords Cadogan and Birkenhead, and the Prince of Wales) try to dissuade Eric Liddell from precisely these ideals. They try to talk him out of the courageous, loyal, honest expression of his Christian beliefs (about running on Sunday) so as to win Olympic glory for Britain. Which mountain do the British elites belong to now?

The compromised nature of the establishment is highlighted by Liddell’s character. He is also an outsider; a Scottish, non-conforming Christian. In many ways, he represents the calm assurance and joy of the heavenly Zion. He runs with a kind of liberated abandon and pleasure that his rival Abrahams can only dream of, and with a sense of commitment, courage and integrity that the Cambridge dons would surely approve of.

And yet, ironically, the climactic plot device of the movie—Liddell’s Sabbatarian refusal to run on Sundays—suggests that the old mountain of the Law still has some hold on him.

The movie closes (and opens) with another twist—the funeral of Harold Abrahams in the church of St Martin-in-the-fields, Abrahams having converted to Christianity around a decade after the events portrayed in the film.

Recalling all this is making me want to go and watch again for the umpteenth time, and if you haven’t ever done so (i.e. you’re probably under 40), let me highly recommend it.

But before I zip downstairs and fire up my steam-powered Panasonic VCR and rifle through my VHS collection, a word about why I’ve been thinking about Chariots of Fire again after all these years.

It’s because I’ve been reading Hebrews again, and thinking about how important and climactic the two mountains passage in chapter 12 is in the message of the whole book.

As you no doubt know, Hebrews sharply and constantly contrasts the old covenant and the new. For all its glory, the old covenant of Moses is a shadow and forerunner of the ‘things that were to be spoken later’. It testifies and points forward to the new and infinitely better covenant that has now been finally revealed and enacted by the Son. Israel set out on a journey to the promised land of rest, and most didn’t make it. We have set on a pilgrimage to a heavenly sabbath rest, under the leadership and ministry of “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God” (4:14).

The contrasts mount up as the book unfolds—the better and final revelation (1:1-4), the better servant-leader (3:1-6), the better sabbath rest, the better high priest and sacrificial atonement made in the better tabernacle (ch 5-10), the better city, the better country, the better resurrection (ch 11), and finally in chapter 12, the better mountain.

In all of these contrasts, the ‘betterness’ of Jesus’ ministry and the new covenant is heavenly. In particular, the sacrificial ministry of Jesus as the one, great and final high priest takes place not in an earthly tent or on an earthly mountain (Jerusalem, Mt Zion). His life is taken on the earthly hill of Calvary, but it is in heaven, in the heavenly tabernacle of God, that he appears and offers himself once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin (9:25-26).

On the basis of that eternal, heavenly redemption, the new covenant people of God arrive at their destination—the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly mountain of chapter 12. That’s what all the heroes of faith in chapter 11 were longing for, but never saw, not even those who entered the physical promised land (like David and Samuel and the prophets, in 11:32).

Interestingly, there are two mountains in Hebrews, not three. There’s the earthly Sinai and the heavenly Mt Zion, but the earthly Mt Zion doesn’t feature. As the book unfolds, Israel is redeemed under Moses, receives the law, journeys towards the land of promise, and has a temporary ineffective priestly ministry in the tabernacle to accompany them. But they never arrive. There is no earthly Jerusalem in Hebrews; no temple, only a tabernacle. There are only two mountains (Sinai and the heavenly Zion), because the promise to Israel was never about an earthly mountain but a better, heavenly one.

It is to that heavenly Mt Zion that we have now come through the blood of Christ, through his infinitely greater heavenly sacrifice and redemption. And our response? We must not refuse him who speaks, but fall down before him in submission (12:25-28).

This, of course, is the point of the book of Hebrews, and of the two mountains passage in chapter 12. As much as we love this passage as a key plank in our doctrine of the heavenly ‘church’ (or assembly), its main function is as the high point, so to speak, of the book’s exhortation. Consider what the eternal high priestly work of the Son has done for you; understand where you now stand through the work of Christ; and for heaven’s sake (quite literally) don’t give up now. Don’t drift, don’t droop, don’t shrink back, don’t let your hearts be hardened, don’t refuse him who speaks; but instead, draw near for help to the throne of grace that we now have open access to, lay aside every weight and sin that hinders us, and exhort and encourage one another to stand firm and grow in love.

The Master of Trinity was only half right. It is a different mountaintop, but not a different God.

The same God who spoke in darkness and fire on Sinai is the God who has now fulfilled all his promises through his Son, and brought his people to their heavenly home. Let us continue to serve him, with reverence and awe.

Before getting onto this week’s topic, another ‘uncommonly good’ prayer to share with you from The Book of Common Prayer. James wrote in to mention two of his favourites:

I do quite like the collect for peace, and especially the phrase ‘whose service is perfect freedom’. It’s a refreshing reminder of how God’s call to freedom and our world’s modern conception of freedom aren’t the same thing. Another favourite is the Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, and especially the line: ‘… God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray’. What a wonderful reminder, and rebuke, about our heavenly Father’s willingness to hear from his children! 

Here’s the full prayer of which that line is part:

Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen

Wonderful stuff.

Gospel clarity

There are many possible reasons for a lack of vitality in a church, which of course gives plenty of scope for experts to provide solutions. It could be your structures or programs or staffing mix or welcoming or preaching or lack of discipline or prayerlessness or who knows what combination of these things and many others. Plus there’s the small matter of God’s sovereign hand.

But being a so-called expert myself—on the basis of having helped Col Marshall write a little book about trellises and vines a few years ago—I’ve got another factor to throw into the mix.

It may sound ridiculous, but one simple reason that churches and ministries languish is that they don’t teach the gospel with clarity.

‘Well of course,’ I hear you say, ‘those liberal and heretical and other sub-orthodox kind of places don’t teach the gospel. That’s why most of them are declining and dying.’

True enough, but I’m talking about good solid Bible-teaching evangelical churches. Quite possibly your church.

‘Really?’ you respond. ‘That’s hard to believe. Every second sermon at our church mentions that Jesus died for our sins, that justification is by faith alone, and that salvation comes from God’s free grace not our works. We sing about it; we remember it in the Lord’s Supper. Surely if there’s one thing we all know back to front, it’s that!’

Like I said, a lack of gospel clarity.

It’s certainly true and of prime importance that Jesus died a substitutionary death for our sins, and that forgiveness and salvation and justification flow directly from that fount of every blessing. But to know these truths is not yet to know the gospel with clarity. Not the New Testament gospel anyway.

The big newsflash announcement (or ‘gospel’) of the New Testament is not that Jesus died on the cross for your sins. It’s that the Jesus who died on the cross for sins rose again as the Lord and Christ of the world, and now offers forgiveness and salvation and eternal life to all those who repent and submit to his rule in faith.

That’s what the apostles went around proclaiming. (Have a read of Acts and see for yourself.)

Their big announcement was that the crucified Jesus had been raised by God and thus proven and declared to be the ‘Christ’—God’s promised worldwide ruler and judge in the line of David, whom death could not defeat and who would reign forever over God’s kingdom. When we see the title ‘Christ’ given to Jesus, this is what is being claimed about him.

The gospel, then, is not ‘Jesus crucified’, but ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2). The One who was crucified has now risen as God’s worldwide-king-and-judge (‘Christ’). He now calls on everyone in the world to turn back to him in repentance and to receive forgiveness of sins on the basis of his atoning death.

Would you say that the members of your church have this understanding of the gospel clearly in their heads? That they could explain to you without hesitation how the death of Jesus for sins and the resurrection of Jesus as the Lord Christ fit together, and how this ‘gospel’ calls not just for faith but for repentance leading to obedience?

In my fairly long and wide experience of church life and ministry in evangelical churches in Australia and the US, I would say that disturbingly few everyday Christians grasp these truths with clarity. Whenever I run Two Ways to Live training or workshops, and ask people at the beginning to trot out their existing nutshell gospel, it hardly ever mentions the resurrection—and if it does, it’s with very little understanding of its significance in establishing Jesus as the living Lord and Christ of the world.

We need to teach our people this gospel, and clearly. We need to teach it and remind them of it because, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:1-5, this Scripture-fulfilling message about the atoning death and resurrection of the Christ is the word of first importance; it’s the word in which we stand and by which we are being saved. It’s the basis of everything.

When we grasp this gospel clearly, and it penetrates our hearts and wills and lives, the effects are life-changing. This gospel has a power to save and to transform, because it speaks not just of a forgiven past through an atoning death, but also of a new, joyous, constantly repentant future, lived under the lordship of the living Christ.

This gospel drives us to pursue holiness—we now live a completely new life under the lordship of the risen Christ. We are now raised with him, and so put off everything that belongs to our old earthly selves and put on the new life of the resurrection age (Col 3:1-17).

This gospel gives assurance and hope, because we know that the one who died to justify us by his blood now lives and reigns as God’s Christ, and will surely save us from God’s wrath on that last day (Rom 5:6-11).

This gospel motivates evangelism—because if the risen Christ is the lord and judge of every person in the world (Acts 17:30-31), then every person in the world needs to hear his offer of salvation and turn back to him in repentance and faith to live under his lordship.

This gospel changes our hearts to serve one another gladly in love. It brings us into fellowship and communion with all those others who have been saved by the living Christ and now serve and obey him. Our new life in him is one that follows his example—that lays down its life for others, knowing that this is the path to glory.

The gospel of the crucified Christ lights a fire under the Christian life. It ignites and fans into flame the various marks of a flourishing Christian disciple and of a healthy church—that we grow in godliness and holiness, that we persevere in joy and assurance, that we are driven to reach out to the world in mission and evangelism, and that we love and serve one another and all people, as God has served us in his Son.

Could it be true? Could the significant factor in the lack of spiritual heat in our lives and churches be a lack of clarity about this gospel?

I strongly suspect so.

It seems beyond obvious to me that we should be clearly and intentionally teaching this New Testament gospel to everyone in our churches.

I’m not saying this, I should add, because I’ve recently written a resource to help churches do just that. It’s the other way round—I wrote Learn the Gospel (and am excited about its potential) because I’m convinced of the power of gospel in all its clarity to penetrate and change and save human hearts.

But in whatever way we do it—through sermons, seminars, weekend conferences, books, small group material, training material, and so on—we need to teach the powerful New Testament gospel—with clarity.

PS

Like me, I know a number of you have been waiting patiently for the release of the new Two ways to live training material that I’ve mentioned often over the past eighteen months or so. The first part of it—Learn the Gospel—is now tantalizingly close. The books have been printed and are currently being shipped back to Matthias Media; the videos are undergoing final checks; as of this moment the official release date is August 1, but stock may be available sooner than that. I’ll let you know soon as I know! (You can pre-order here.)

I’m excited to see it finally coming to fruition, not just for the natural reasons (of seeing a long-running project approaching the finish line), but because of the topic explored in this week’s post. The more clearly and deeply the gospel is lodged in our hearts, the healthier and more productive is our discipleship and our church life. I’m praying that God will use this new resource to help with that!

As many of you know, I used to work at The Centre for Christian Living at Moore College, and I am still a keen supporter of their work. In fact, I’m speaking at the CCL event on August 24 on the topic of ‘Deception’. Come along to Moore College in person, or tune in to the livestream. Click here for all the details and to register online.

Here are three thoughts that I hope meet these requirements.

1. A reason to sing

Much of our discussion about church-singing in recent decades has revolved around the subjects of ‘praise’ and ‘worship’. It’s almost a cliché now to insist that worship and praise are much bigger categories than ‘singing’ (as all-of-life responses to God), and that ‘singing’ is much more than ‘praise’ and ‘worship’ (it’s a form of mutual encouragement as well).

These debates have been helpful in some ways and frustrating in others. Let’s not rehash them here.

It occurs to me, however, that there’s a prominent theological category for talking about singing that we rarely discuss, and which might help us think more clearly about it.

It’s very striking how often the Bible links singing with joy. The famous opening of Psalm 95 is one good example among many. Here it is in the Book of Common Prayer version I’ve been using recently:

O come let us sing unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our salvation;

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.

In the Hebrew poetry of these verses, singing is paralleled with rejoicing. Singing is how we demonstrate and express our gladness, our thanksgiving, our joy in the Lord who is the rock of our salvation (also see Ps 5:1; 9:2; 27:6; 47:1; 63:7; 65:13; 67:4; 71:23; 81:1; 84:2; 92:4; 100:2; and many others.)

One of the very few references to singing in the New Testament also makes this connection:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing. (Jas 5:13). 

Now, it’s not as if joy is the only mode of singing that exists, in the world or in the Bible. There are love songs and laments and ballads that tell a story.

But if we want to rejoice—and we are commanded to rejoice again and again, in all circumstances—one of the most significant ways to do it is to sing. When we sing, we ‘show ourselves glad’. We employ our whole body and soul not just to declare our gladness and joy, but to demonstrate and enact and celebrate it.

Joy is an affection—a sense of delight and gladness and happiness in what is good—but rejoicing is an action that springs from, expresses and stirs that affection.

Sometimes we feel very much like rejoicing, such as when the Swans come from behind to defeat the Magpies with a last-minute goal.  (For me, the best part of winning is joining 30,000 other fans in the stadium belting out, “Cheer, cheer, the red and the white!”) Sometimes we only start to feel the joy as we rejoice—perhaps as we stand together and sing a stirring song with our brothers and sisters. And at other times, we rejoice and show ourselves glad in the Lord even though our hearts are heavy with the troubles and hardships—because we know that we can and should give thanks and rejoice in him in all circumstances.

If we are looking for a biblical category to describe the ‘affective’ nature of singing in church, ‘rejoicing’ is an excellent biblical candidate. It’s our heartfelt response to what the ‘rock of our salvation’ has done for us. It’s something we actively do (by singing heartily together) that expresses our glad response to God’s grace.

And if we are looking for ways to diagnose what is lacking in church when the whole vibe of our meeting is stiff or listless or flat, the simplest biblical conclusion might be that we are not rejoicing as we could and should. This is a diagnosis I could get behind.

In other words, the thing that is sometimes missing is not an experience of God’s presence, or an exalted state of consciousness that brings me closer to him, or any of the other quasi-mystical foundations for the ‘praise-and-worship experience’ that the charismatic movement has pioneered and exported to so many of our churches.

Perhaps the ‘affect’ we’re missing is all-in, foot-stamping, fist-pumping joy.

2. Rejoicing is a spiritual response

Like all fruits of the Spirit, joy is both a divine and a human action. It can only come as the Spirit brings life. And yet we are called to keep in step with the Spirit, and commanded to rejoice. It’s something we do, as God works in us by his Spirit through his word.

We can’t artificially create or manufacture real joy—say, with a driving bass line or a key change. But we can grow in joy, and grow in our obedience to the command to rejoice. We do this in the usual way—that is, in the way that all spiritual growth happens:

* By preaching and teaching the gospel of God’s grace; by holding up Jesus before people’s eyes, and praying that the wonders of who he is and what he has done for us will ignite love and peace and joy and all the fruits of the Spirit in their hearts;

* By prayerfully teaching and reminding people about this particular subject (as the apostles often did)—teaching and urging them to rejoice and give thanks always, and how singing together is an important means of doing this;

* By the mature in the congregation exemplifying this joy (such as in their singing);

* By creating contexts and opportunities within which singing-for-joy can be practised, and can flourish.

This last point brings us to the practicalities of how thinking about singing as rejoicing might change the practice of singing in our churches. There is much to be said here, and of all the points I want to make in this brief article, this is the most contextual, the most subject to wisdom and genuine difference, and therefore the one most likely to get up your nose, dear reader! So with those caveats, let me suggest …

3. Don’t crowd out genuine rejoicing with too much sound

Rejoicing in song—to state the obvious—is verbal. It’s joyful speech, set to music. It expresses in words how glad we are; and it recounts what we’re so glad about. It communicates to God our joy in him and his works, and it communicates the same to each other. This is why our singing is simultaneously an act of responsive joy, a declaration of all the ways that God is great and for which we rejoice (i.e. ‘praise’), and an exercise in mutual teaching and encouragement.

The usual conclusion we draw from this is that our songs must have ‘good words’. This is certainly true, but three other equally important conclusions also follow.

The first is that the words of our songs must be heard on each others’ lips. The predominant sound we should hear is the sound of joyful voices—of God’s people singing out their joy in all God is and has done, and teaching each other as we do so.

This is where I fear that the rise of the ‘worship band’ has done us no favours, and I speak as one who has enjoyed playing in such bands for years. I’m not quite sure how we got here, but it’s now pretty standard in our churches for a congregation of (say) 150 or 200 to be led by a music team consisting of keys, drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and three singers, all amplified. This seems vastly more than is necessary to accompany that size group in song. In fact, the effect of the sheer scale and volume of this sort of band is that the ‘accompaniment’ is reversed. The dominant sound in the room is the sound of the band, with the congregation accompanying them—like the faint echo in a live rock concert, where you can just hear the crowd singing along in the chorus.

 Is this enjoyable and great to listen to and sing along with? If it’s done well, yes! But is it the sound of the congregation rejoicing? Well … I don’t think so, because the congregation can’t be heard. I can hear a few voices near me perhaps, but I can’t hear and be stirred by the wonderful sound of God’s people shouting for joy. The high-volume band that dominates the room makes the sound of voices secondary.

We need to create a singing culture in which the accompaniment is just that—a secondary, supportive sound that exists to enable the singing, and nothing more. Likewise, we need a song-leader (and perhaps just one) who shows us when to come in, and exemplifies what we’re all doing together (singing with joy), but whose voice isn’t dominant in the room. In fact, apart perhaps from the first words of each verse, I don’t really see why the song-leader’s voice should be amplified at all. The voices we want to hear are each others’.

Ah, you say, but we need to hear the leader loudly so that we can follow the tune.

This leads to a second point—we need songs that big groups of people can sing easily together. This is a genre issue. Many of the songs our ‘worship bands’ play are remarkably similar in genre to the songs that popular bands generally play in our culture (perhaps not surprisingly). These are songs designed more for performance and listening than for mass-group singing, because (for better or worse) that’s modern Western musical culture. We mainly listen to music; we don’t sing.

But this means that the songs we instinctively write (and play in our worship bands) are often poorly adapted for singing in unison—and so we need drums to establish the rhythm because otherwise it doesn’t hold together, and we need amplified singers because otherwise we can’t follow the complex, syncopated tune. This seems backwards. We’ve created a musical culture built on the performative genre of rock bands, and then feel that we need rock bands in order for our church musical culture to work.

I strongly suspect we need to do something very counter-cultural at this point—write and sing songs as people who love to sing together in large groups. This may mean developing our own genre, since community singing is no longer much of a thing in Western culture.

The third and final point is simply that all of this takes time. Building a culture of joyful singing dominated by voices will take patience, because it is very likely a shift from what we are currently doing. We’ll need to teach and preach and pray about it. We’ll need to model and practise it. We’ll need to create the audio-space for it to happen (in many cases by drastically reducing the scale and volume of the accompaniment). And we’ll need to prioritize songs that a big group of people can latch onto and sing heartily and joyfully together.

If those last paragraphs were starting to stray close to the rant-zone, please forgive me. And (as I know you will!), please send in your own thoughts and experiences about creating this kind of authentic, joyful culture of the word in song.

PS

There’s much else to say, but here’s one point that didn’t quite fit in anywhere above. As I visit different churches, and I do so reasonably often, I’m struck by how the architecture of the room and the space communicates culture, and expresses underlying assumptions. Our Reformed forebears knew this of course, and deliberately designed (or re-designed) buildings and spaces for a ‘word-centred church’—as opposed to the architecture of medieval Roman Catholicism and all that it stood for.

I sometimes think that if we were wanting to communicate to the congregation that they were attending a rock concert as listeners and consumers, we would design our church spaces exactly like a lot of churches I enter. Everything is centred around a raised stage, which is covered in musical instruments, amplifiers, a drum kit, leads, mic stands, and all the normal paraphernalia. The stage might be lit with banks of coloured spotlights, perhaps also with video screens to further convey all that’s happening. There may or may not be an unobtrusive lectern centre stage. Sometimes the house lights are dimmed (especially during the singing).

I don’t think any of this is intentional, or signifies a sinister drift towards mystical doctrine. All the same, as an architectural statement, it does seem very un-evangelical—almost as if we’re trying to create a modern cathedral in which all the colour and movement and theatre happens up the front in the special zone, where the mediators of God’s presence do their thing.

If we were designing a space in which the Scriptural word of Jesus was at the centre, and we were gathered around the word to hear him, and to respond to him and each other (including rejoicing together in song), would it look like this?

I’m sure you’ll get in touch and let me know!

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It’s been enriching and edifying in a number of ways, not least because of the power, precision and depth of so many of the prayers.

Here for the example is the special prayer set down for this week, the ‘collect’ for Whitsunday (Pentecost), and the days following:

God, who at this time taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit, grant us by this same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

Like so many of the BCP collects, there’s a simple request in the middle of the prayer—that by the Spirit we might have a right judgement in all things, and rejoice in the Spirit’s ministry to us—but this short request is surrounded and supported by a rich theological frame. In fact, there’s almost complete biblical theology in there: Jesus’ promise to send the Comforter to enlighten his people, the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost to do just that in the hearts of those who have faith, and the living reign of Jesus, the King and Saviour, who in the unity of the Spirit is the God of the eternal world to come.

What the prayer asks for is also echoed in the New Testament’s teaching about the Spirit. It connects the illumining, enlightening work of the Spirit promised by Jesus to Paul’s teaching that the gift of the Spirit enables us to know the truth of Christ and ‘make judgements about all things’ (1 Cor 2:6-16); and it asks for the joy that is so frequently seen as a fruit of the Spirit’s presence (Gal 5:22; Rom 14:17; 1 Thes 1:6 etc.).

All of it in one 70-word sentence.

It almost seems a shame that this extraordinary prayer would be prayed only once a year—or at least every day during the week following Whitsunday each year.

We don’t much use the traditional church calendar these days, and I’m not especially advocating that we do. However, it’s interesting and encouraging to see how the prayers for the different times of the year are shaped by the biblical events and theology that are being remembered and read about in the set readings.

On Ash Wednesday, for example, at the beginning of the 40-day period leading up to Easter Day, there’s this prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hates nothing you have made, and forgives the sins of all those who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, we may receive from you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I can’t help thinking that there is a corrective going on here for the works-based asceticism that was associated with Lent in traditional Catholicism. The things we must give up during Lent are not the good created things of the world (none of which God hates) but our sins; and in repenting of these with a new and contrite heart that God himself has created in us, we receive complete and utter forgiveness from the God of all mercy. (It is also a beautiful prayer for the person who feels worthless and hateful, and who can’t quite believe that God would show love and mercy even to them.)

Not all the BCP prayers are occasional like this. Many of them get repeated often, sometimes daily—like the famous collect for peace:

O God, who is the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom stands our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: defend us your humble servants in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The prayer is structured around a theological understanding of God’s character, what he has done through Jesus (the mighty and powerful risen Christ), and what our eschatological situation is in the world (given eternal life, liberated to serve God, but surrounded each day by enemies and adversaries). It’s a prayer that understands my situation, and explains it to me, even as I pray it. (I also smile to myself as I pray this prayer because, like me, God is a ‘lover of concord’—although perhaps it’s not Concord Golf Club that the prayer is referring to.)

The two other collects I come back to repeatedly are given at the conclusion of the Communion service, as prayers that may be used pretty much in any service or on any occasion. Here’s the first one:

Grant, we beseech you, Almighty God, that the words we have heard this day with our outward ears may through your grace be so grafted inwardly in our hearts, that they may bring forth in us the fruit of good living, to the honour and praise of your name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I often pray this one after I’ve read the Bible, and then go on to pray about specific things I have ‘heard with my outward ears’ in the passage, that God would graft them into my heart, and into the heart of others that I want to remember and pray for on that day.

And then this is the one I often conclude with before getting on with the business of the day:

Go before us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favour, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works, begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy name, and finally by your mercy obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I love this. It reorients me every day to what’s really going on as I go about my daily tasks. It casts a vision of God graciously going in front of us, like he did before the people of Israel (cloud by day, fire by night), and constantly leading us forward (‘furthering us’). The purpose of this is that by doing everything in the awareness of God’s constant presence and help (begun, continued and ended in him), the glory for our works might go to him (not us), and that by his mercy alone the final outcome might be everlasting life through Jesus Christ.

Again, so much theological depth in such a short prayer.

Like so many of the BCP prayers, praying this collect regularly not only (by God’s grace) calls forth the gracious divine help and supervision I need, but teaches me to trust him in everything.

The BCP keeps teaching me what prayer really is: a deep trust in God put into words.

PS

Some of you may know your way around the printed BCP well enough to use it for your own daily prayer and Bible reading, but if you’d like to give BCP daily devotions a try and want a guided way forward you can go to this site.

Choose the ‘traditional’ rather than ‘contemporary’ forms of the service. You’ll get the full thing each day, which may well be too long (in quantity of set Psalms and Bible readings especially). But the material is all there to pick your way through.

Many thanks for the encouraging feedback on last week’s post about teaching on topics and subjects in our ministries. Some of the suggestions that you sent in (as to how you create space for this kind of teaching in the midst of church life):

* have an all-in, any-subject question time as a regular feature of your Sunday gathering (people can contribute questions in advance on any topic);

* run the Moore College PTC course (or something similar) as a learning structure outside normal small groups (e.g. on Sunday afternoons);

* put one school term aside each year as a ‘training term’, where small groups work on a topic (of doctrine or practical ministry) rather than a Bible book—either by coming together for the term, or by using topical studies or courses in the groups;

* run ‘stretch nights’ or ‘hot topic’ nights at several points during the year (in which instead of going to small group that week, members come together at church to look in depth at a topic, perhaps with a visiting speaker). Some churches have made good use of Moore College’s Centre for Christian Living (CCL) as a resource for these nights—that is, encouraging small groups to go together to regular CCL events. (Some advance notice: I’ll be speaking at the CCL event that’s coming up on August 24 on the topic of ‘Deception’. More details to come.)

I am often struck by how meagrely and haphazardly we teach about such subjects in our churches. We do the essential work of expounding the Scriptures week by week, and we also study Bible passages in our small groups (often the same ones). But the integrative work of applied theology—that is, the task of drawing the Bible’s teaching on a subject together, and showing what it means for our lives … this is something we do much less often, and less effectively.

I promised some further thoughts, and here they are.

Has it ever occurred to you (as it occurred to me recently) that when we preach an expository sermon on, say, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, we are doing something different from what the passage itself is doing?

What I mean is that our process starts with the biblical text—with understanding it, expounding it, and then applying its truths to our lives. The content of our preaching is initiated by the authoritative Scriptural text and flows from there to the minds, hearts and lives of our listeners.

This is exactly how it should be, you say, and I entirely agree.

But it is interesting that this is not how 1 Corinthians 1 itself proceeds. Its point of departure is not a text being expounded but a subject being addressed. In whatever way we describe the issue or problem Paul is tackling at Corinth—factionalism, divisiveness, arrogance, worldly wisdom—Paul crafts this chapter as a response to this. He draws on a theology of the cross in order to teach the Corinthians that their arrogance and factionalism is ridiculously wrong and out of place.

I guess you could say that Paul is practising applied systematic theology. When we preach the passage, though, we are practising applied biblical theology—that is, we take the text as it is given to us in Scripture, expound and explain it in its own terms and according to its literary and biblical context, and apply its message to our hearers. The same is true for the small Bible study group that opens this passage, seeks to understand it together and apply it to one another’s lives. We start with the Bible, and let its message shape our discussion and mutual encouragement.

Again (in case you’re worried) let me re-assert that this is just as it should be.

In fact, as I look back on nearly four decades of Christian thinking and ministry, one of the features of the evangelical movement for which I am most thankful has been the consistent and vigorous effort to restore expository preaching and Bible study to the centre of our churches and ministries. God’s word is the lamp to our feet. We should humbly and contritely tremble before his speech in Scripture, and listen. This is what the ‘expository movement’ (if I can call it that) has sought to recover. And praise God that in many places it has succeeded.

This is especially so when we consider the alternative that we’ve been working to overcome—the kind of topical preaching that starts with a biblical text and then springboards off into the topic that the preacher wants to speak about; or the therapeutic preaching that starts with the felt need in our lives and tries to solve it; or the moralistic or political preaching that is always taking its subject from the latest social issue or moral outrage; or even the systematic theology kind of preaching that preaches an important (or favourite) doctrine but never actually pauses to listen to and expound the text.

Topicality is certainly dangerous. It not only runs the risk of replacing God’s agenda with ours, but frequently leads us to lift Bible verses and passages out of their context and apply them in ways that the authors (and Author) never intended.

But topicality is also unavoidable and necessary. This is because the worthy Christian walk takes place in human time and space. To state the obvious, daily discipleship constantly confronts us with circumstances and situations in which we are called to be godly and faithful. But as soon as we ask, “What does the Bible say about how I should be godly in this situation?” we are asking the topical question. We’re starting with an issue and going back to the Bible, to draw together, integrate and apply what it says.

So you might say that there are two ways in which God shapes and directs our thinking and our lives through the Scriptures. We start with the Bible, humbly reading and preaching and meditating upon it as it is given to us, having our minds and hearts transformed by the Spirit as we do so. And we also turn to it, and seek its truth and wisdom regarding the particular issue or challenge that we are facing today.

Both are important, and they are complementary. The more we start with the Bible and have our minds shaped by it, the better we will understand our circumstances and situations, and know where to turn in the Scriptures for guidance on particular topics. Conversely, the better we understand the key topics and subjects that the Bible addresses, and its entire teaching about these subjects, the better we’ll be equipped to read each individual part of the Scripture with an awareness of the theological truths that undergird it.

Just as in theology we need both biblical and systematic theology, so in church life we need both to teach and apply the Bible expositorily on its own terms and teach and apply the theology of the Bible to the issues and challenges of our lives.

Which brings me back to the question with which we started: where in our church life today do we teach about topics?

I am referring not just to the classical topics of theology—the person and work of Christ, the content of the gospel, the doctrine of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and so on. I’m also talking about the various topics of Christian living and ministry—the nature of faith and love and hope and thanksgiving and generosity and assurance and holiness and so much more. Where do we teach our people what membership and community mean, or what the Bible itself is and how to read it, or what evangelism is and how we can personally be involved in it, and so on?

Historically, evangelical churches have done this in various ways and at different levels. We preach the occasional topical sermon series. We run conferences or weekends that address topics. We might run a one-off seminar at church. However, most churches in my part of the world have few or no intentional ministry structures within which to do applied theology with our people.

I was struck (once again) during my recent trip to the US by their culture of adult Sunday schools. It’s common in many American evangelical churches for Sunday morning to consist of an hour of Sunday school (both for adults and children), followed by Sunday service. The adult Sunday school is essentially the vehicle for topical teaching in the church—whether on doctrinal subjects (‘Understanding Death and the Afterlife’) or on subjects of Christian living and ministry (‘Biblical parenting’; ‘One-to-one ministry’; ‘Sharing your faith’).

I know that adult Sunday schools have their issues, and I don’t remotely know how we could introduce that kind of structure into the churches in my part of the world. But I remain a little jealous of what the structure (or trellis) allows many US churches to do in an uncomplicated way—to regularly teach applied theology to their people on a range of important subjects.

As I think about my own history in all of this, I realise that what I’m talking about overlaps a great deal with what we have often called ‘training’—that is, starting with a particular subject of Christian living or ministry (evangelism, one-to-one encouragement, reading the Bible for yourself), working through what the Bible says about it, and then encouraging and helping each other put it into practice. It’s a variety of the applied theology we’re considering. I guess (as I think about it) many of the training programs and resources that I’ve developed over the years with Matthias Media have been directed to this area—to helping churches teach and train people on  key subjects of Christian living and ministry; to do applied theology in the context of church life.

But there’s a twofold complication to that history.

* As I look back, it’s clear that many churches have found it tricky to fit this kind of applied theology (‘teaching-training’) into their busy programs. Parish life is complicated, and people are busy. There’s less disposable time and space than (say) in university or young adult ministries. ‘There’s no time for training’ has been a common refrain.

* Where churches have made space for this kind of teaching-training, it often hasn’t been integrated into the overall ministry trellises of the church, and so often has not produced the hoped-for fruit. For example, we might have trained people in understanding evangelism, but have not harnessed that understanding, energy and ability in way that utilises what people have learned—like having a coherent, effective ‘evangelistic engine’ in the church that people work on together.

I’m dealing in very broad generalizations at this point!

But whatever the history, and whatever the reasons, I think the generalization with which I started this post is certainly true for many evangelical churches today—in the midst of all that we do, many of us lack contexts or spaces within which to effectively teach-and-train people in the vital subjects of Christian thought and living and ministry (such as the subject of membership and community that kicked this discussion off).

What’s the answer, practically speaking?

I’m very keen for your ideas! I don’t think there are simple answers, but we need to find some way forward.

I guess we could rethink our Sundays to incorporate something that approximated the ‘adult Sunday school’—but that would be a major logistical and cultural change for many Australian churches.

We could start a regular or occasional program that mimicked what adult Sunday school achieves, but at a different time or in a different way—a ‘school of Christian thought and living’. This could be something regular, or something we do once or twice a year for 8 weeks. It would also have its challenges—the thought of starting and maintaining an additional ministry structure like this would make many pastors think twice. But having thought twice, and considered how important the task is, we still might prioritise this teaching-training structure over some other things we currently do.

Perhaps the most obvious solution would be to utilise the most suitable existing ministry trellis we have—our network of small groups. We could devote a certain number of weeks each year (say 8-10) to working through topics in small groups rather than passages. This is also not without its challenges—in particular, we don’t want to load small group leaders with teaching-and-training expectations and responsibilities they aren’t equipped for. However, if we managed to find some high quality teaching resources that were simple and straightforward enough for group leaders to use easily, there’s no reason this couldn’t work very effectively. I can’t imagine where you’d find those kind of resources … maybe we should start a publishing ministry of some sort to produce them …

If this post has wound its way towards being a minor apologia for the role of Matthias Media in resourcing this kind of applied theology, I didn’t start out with that in mind! Nor is it the important point.

Whatever the structures, and whatever the resources we use, there is a real need here. We are quite right to think about teaching new members what membership means, and to come up with some regular framework or ministry structures within which that can happen. But the same is true for teaching our existing members what membership means—and what mutual service means, and what evangelism means, and what biblical sexuality means, and so much more. 

There are teachings and doctrines that we need to ‘set before the brothers’ (1 Tim 4:6).

How are we going to do that?

PS

I’d very much like your feedback and ideas on this important and practical question. What do you think? And what is your experience and wisdom? Hit reply to this email, or make a comment on the website.

Another angle to the issue this post addresses is the steady decline in reading Christian books that has occurred over the past four decades. This used to be a key and much-used medium for teaching Christians about important subjects. Faithful books on important subjects were recommended by pastors, sold at the back of churches, read and discussed in small groups (as an occasional break from regular Bible study), and so on. It was part of the Christian teaching-and-learning culture.

Times and technologies change. It’s not the book itself that’s important but what it offers—carefully constructed, biblically faithful (God-willing!) teaching about important subjects. As books have declined, have we replaced them with anything? I don’t think so. And our Christian learning culture is the poorer for it.

Mind you, I’m not the only one who thinks that the day of the book has not passed. Christians basically invented book culture in the West (as we know it), and founded schools to teach people to read, so that they could read the Bible and other Christian literature. We once built a culture of reading, and we can re-build it. But that’s a topic for another time!

As I look back over the teaching-training resources I’ve been involved in developing over the past couple of decades (either as writer or editor-publisher), I can see a definite trend towards making these more user-friendly and easy to use in an existing small group context. Recently I’ve been experimenting with a format that Matthias Media is calling ‘Learn Together’—a package that provides a mix of Bible study, discussion, exercises, text and video that almost runs itself in a small group context (i.e. that is easier in most respects than leading the usual inductive Bible study discussion). The new Learn the Gospel resource that is due out soon is in this format, and will be an interesting case study. I can’t help feeling that if we can’t find a way to use a resource like this to teach our people the gospel itself (surely the most central and basic topic that we’d want Christians to master) then something is wrong somewhere.

But we will see!

This is an adult Sunday school class from one of the churches I’ve visited in the US (not during this most recent trip). It’s pretty commonly like this—20-30 people in a room, with a guy out the front leading an interactive-style teaching time.

“Who me?” I lamely chuckled, but then immediately wished I’d said something more witty, like: “What would you prefer? An impurist?”

My talk at Reach was an expanded version of last week’s post, and majored on the same point—that Christian ‘community’ and ‘membership’ and ‘belonging’ is created and built by one thing only: the presence of Jesus Christ in our midst through his word.

It was a fun seminar, filled out very ably by Tim Clemens’s practical wisdom on what those theological themes mean for how churches can welcome and integrate new members, and disciple them to be part of a rich Christ-centred community.

When my friend expanded on his ‘purist’ comment, it was really to explore a question that had been raised in the seminar, as follows: granted that Jesus is the centre of our community, and the head of the body of which we’re members; granted also that this makes the word of Christ ‘dwelling richly amongst us’ the vital factor—how then do we think about the place of our actions in building Christian community? What about just going out to dinner with people, or playing board games, or painting the front room together? Don’t these sorts of things do anything for our ‘sense of community’? Would it be okay with the purist if we just hung out?

The first thing the purist would say is that human friendship, togetherness and relationship are good things in themselves. They don’t need any further justification or purpose. There’s no need to question our consciences about whether ‘hanging out’ is really okay if there are no Bible verses present.

This is especially so because many people today, sadly, are starved of the joys of human friendship and togetherness, particularly in the dislocated, isolating life of the modern city. To provide those simple pleasures (by hosting that dinner party or games night) is an act of real kindness—on the same level as helping an elderly neighbour with their lawns. In itself, it doesn’t create Christian community as such or build the body of Christ (as we’ve defined it), but it’s still an act of goodness and love.

However secondly, hanging out together in smaller informal settings creates a context in which Christian community can flourish. Tim Clemens fleshed this out very helpfully during our seminar. He pointed us to research that showed how people relate differently (and gain different things) in groupings of different size:

* In ‘public’ contexts (100+) we normally gather to engage together with something outside ourselves, like at a sports game or a concert or a church meeting;

* In ‘social’ contexts (20-70), we interact with an affinity group of some kind, sharing snapshots of ourselves—like at a party or at morning tea after church;

* In ‘personal’ contexts (4-12), we reveal more of ourselves, and likewise get to know others at a deeper level—as at a dinner party or a small Bible study group;

* In ‘transparent’ contexts (2-4), we can be open and vulnerable, and share our innermost thoughts and experiences—usually with our marriage partner or a close friend.

We can build the community of Jesus Christ in different ways in each of these contexts or social spaces, because we can share his word in various ways with different benefits at each level—from the sermon that challenges us all, to the series of conversations afterwards which teases it out, to the more personal conversations where we grapple with our own personal weaknesses.

So it’s not that hanging out with ten people automatically creates Christian community, and we shouldn’t confuse the joys of just being with other people with the unique thing that is Christian community. But unless we hang out with ten people, and create the trusting social space in which we can talk to each other, how can we have the opportunity to fellowship around the word of Jesus Christ at that more personal level? How can we have all the different kinds of conversations we need to have about understanding and believing the word, and living it out?

As I mentioned in last week’s post, we can facilitate community-in-Christ by creating “the optimum number and variety of contexts where people can be together as those who share Jesus Christ”.

Including just hanging out.

This leads to a second insightful question that was asked at the seminar about our actions in community: What are the benefits of people actually serving each other for building Christian community? Surely loving service and action for the sake of others is a genuine expression of our ‘community’ and ‘membership’, and increases our personal experience of it?

Hard to argue with that. In fact, on this basis, many churches work hard at getting as many people as possible involved in serving each other. The more people start to exercise the muscles of practical service, and take an active part in community life, the more they tend to experience a genuine sense of being part of that community. And this includes newcomers who are seeking to join that community.

However, there’s an important caveat. If my practical service is not framed, motivated and directed towards the word of Jesus Christ—if it is just doing a job that needs to be done, and which makes me feel good because I’m useful—then it won’t express or build genuine Christian community. In fact, it might even lead to false or ‘fleshly’ community (to use Bonhoeffer’s term), which is based on my longing to be needed and recognized.

Bonhoeffer explains this well in Life Together. He is very sharp about the poisonous possibilities of those who long for community but don’t long for Jesus Christ, including those who act from the need for self-justification rather than from the freedom of justification by faith.

However, he also says that while the mutual ministry of the word is the ‘highest’ form of Christian service, and the one to which the others lead and are directed, it is not the only form of mutual love in a Christian community. He identifies three other forms of service: ‘listening’ to each other, ‘forbearing’ with each other, and what he calls ‘active helpfulness’. This last form is what we are usually speaking of when we talk about ‘practical service’.

We mustn’t despise this form of service, he says, as if it is beneath us, or in some ways less worthy:

Nobody is too good for the lowest service. Those who worry about the loss of time entailed by such small, external acts of helpfulness are usually taking their own work too seriously. We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests. We can, then, pass them by, preoccupied with our more important daily tasks, just as the priest—perhaps reading the Bible—passed by the man who had fallen among robbers.

The one who is focused on the ministry of the word shouldn’t despise the opportunity to help others practically. Nor should the one who feels comfortable in practical service rest content in doing something ‘useful’, and leave the sharing of the word to others.

All Christian practical service is motivated by the word, directed by the word and has the speaking of the word in prospect. As the morning tea team serves coffee and washes dishes, those involved are not only motivated by the gospel, but are helping to create one of those social contexts in which the congregation can speak with each other. It’s a word-motivated and word-directed service, even though it is hands-on and menial in nature.

This leads to a final point. How can we ensure that this ‘practical service’ is indeed motivated by and directed towards the word of Jesus Christ?

By teaching and training. This was my mantra in answer to many of the questions that were raised during the seminar.

If we want our people to understand what Christian community and membership really is, and to live it and practise it, we need to teach them about it, just as the apostles themselves did on numerous occasions to their hearers in the New Testament (such as in Rom 12 and 1 Cor 12-14 and Eph 4-5).

This is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious if ever there was one, but I am often struck by how meagrely and haphazardly we teach about such subjects in our churches. We do the essential work of expounding the Scriptures week by week, and we also study Bible passages in our small groups (often the same ones). But the integrative work of applied theology—that is, the task of drawing the Bible’s teaching on a subject together, and showing what it means for our lives … this is something we do much less often, and less effectively.

How could we do it better?

I have thoughts. But given that this post is already quite long enough already, I’ll return to those thoughts next time.

PS

As always, please get in touch with your thoughts, observations and questions. Just hit reply to this email, or make a comment on the website.

Who doesn’t?

(Well, there are times when I don’t, and wish that everyone on the planet would just leave me alone, but let’s not get into my problems.)

How could we pursue or promote this kind of community?

The small contribution I want to make in this week’s post is to pause and ponder what we mean by ‘belonging’, ‘membership’ and ‘community’.

Like me, you probably have a range of different memberships. There are overlapping families I belong to (immediate and extended, on my side and Ali’s side). I belong to the Christian communities at St Paul’s Carlingford and at Campus Bible Study. But I’d also say that some part of my heart will always belong to Matthias Media, and the team that still pursues that vision. I’m a member of Concord Golf Club and of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program—one of them of far more importance than the other. I guess I’d also say that I’m part of the little community in my street here in West Ryde, and of the broader communities of Sydney, New South Wales and Australia.

So far I’ve been using the words ‘belong’ and ‘member’ and ‘community’ pretty much interchangeably, and in everyday speech we often do.

But these three words are also subtly different. They describe the same kind of thing from different angles, with different metaphors. It’s worth teasing out their nuances, even if we have room to do so only briefly.

Member

To be a ‘member’ of something is to be a part of a body; to be an arm or a nose or a spleen that derives its identity and function from the interconnected organism of which it is a part. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, being baptized into Christ means becoming one of his body parts, which should put an end to all arrogance, divisions, jealousy, partiality and selfishness in general. You make no sense and you’re of no use as a member of this body unless you realise that you’re part of an interconnected whole, with Christ as the head. Being a ‘member’ is about seeking the well-being and benefit of the whole body, according to the direction and rule of its head. The body strengthens and builds itself as all the individual parts speak the truth of Christ to one another in love (Eph 4:14-16).

I guess being a member of the body of Christ looks kind of like this … 

Community

To be in a ‘community’ is a different metaphor. A community is a group of people who love or participate in a common object or person. A community is not one organic whole, like a body. It’s a group of people who share something, who are united by their ‘fellowship’ or ‘partnership’ in something. As Oliver O’Donovan puts it, a community has a “common object of love”. (He gets this from Augustine, who distinguished the City of God from the Earthly City by their different objects of love.)

Now for Christians, that centre or common object of love is Jesus Christ. Our fellowship or communion is with God through Jesus Christ (1 John 1:1-4). Because we know him and love him and have him in common, we are a community or fellowship of Christ. This means that whatever else we might share—common demographics, language, interests, or even just a common desire for friendship and mutuality—Christian community is not about any of these. It is fellowship in Jesus Christ. He is what we have in common, and through him we love one another. To build our community, therefore, we need to encounter each other more often and more deeply through him (that is, through his word, which is how he is present with us).

We might picture it like this …

Belonging

What about ‘belonging’? To belong to something means that we fit there, most often because some person or organization has a claim on us. My iPhone belongs in my pocket because I own it and it is mine—although I often absent-mindedly leave it on the kitchen counter on silent (so good luck trying to get through to me).

In saying I belong to a family, I mean that I have responsibilities and ties of blood and affection that bind me to that group of people. It’s not just that they are mine; I am theirs. I can’t ever stop belonging to them.

I belong to something because I am of it—in the sense of it being my source or origin or master or place. My belonging is defined not by me but by that Other person or group who identifies me and claims me as theirs.

We see this in our English Bibles where they speak of us belonging to God or to Jesus Christ. There isn’t actually a word ‘belong’ in the Greek text. Instead, there’s a kind of relation set up in the grammar that is ‘of’ or ‘from’ or ‘unto’ God or Christ. For example, here are two verses that are often translated with ‘belong’, rendered very literally:

And those who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Galatians 5:24)

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are of the Lord. (Romans 14:8)

We belong to God in Christ because he claims us as our creator and redeemer. We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. I can’t really choose to belong to him any more than my iPhone can choose to belong to me.

I’m not sure if the New Testament ever says that we belong to each other. We are certainly members of one another (Rom 12:5; Eph 4:25), and we are in communion or fellowship with one another (1 John 1:7). Perhaps it is better to say that we belong to Jesus Christ, and therefore we belong with each other in that space where he keeps his belongings—that is, in the congregation of people that he purchased for himself with his own blood (Acts 20:28).

Perhaps we could visualise it like this … 

Some conclusions

It needs saying that in each of the three metaphors—member, community, belonging—God is the initiator by his grace through the gospel. He grafts us into Christ to be members of his body; he calls us into fellowship and communion with himself through Christ, and thus with each other; he claims us as his own, and thus gives us a place where we profoundly belong because we belong to him.

In each case, it is something that we gratefully receive, and joyfully participate in by faith. We need to recognize that these realities can’t be manufactured or massaged into existence through any human initiative or technique. Belonging and membership and community are spiritual joys, created by God through his Son by his Spirit.

All the same, God’s action incorporates our action—both as we preach the gospel and as the Spirit calls forth our response. As we hear the gospel, and the Spirit works, we leave behind our old master in the dominion of darkness to begin a new life belonging to our Lord; we repent of the inwardly-curved independence that shuts us off from others and joyfully become members of a new body in Christ; we blaspheme and reject the false gods and powers that we used to love and unite around, and instead share together in our love for the Christ who first loved us.

What does all this mean for our experience of belonging and membership and community in our congregations? If belonging-membership-community is something God creates by the gospel, what we can do to participate in it? To experience it and help others experience it?

First, some things we can do as a congregation:

* We can clearly and regularly teach and urge one another on (through sermons and other congregational teaching) in what it means to belong together, to fellowship together, to be members of one another.

* We can follow Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 12 and honour all parts of the body, not just the strongest or most spectacular. We should keep celebrating and honouring the weakest members—all are needed and valuable—because this is how God has composed and ordered the body. This also means teaching and training and helping everyone to become active in making their own contribution to the body.

* We can create the optimum number and variety of contexts where people can be together as those who share, belong to and are members together of Jesus Christ. These ‘contexts’ are different opportunities or spaces (large, medium, small and personal) where we can build each other as members according to the different parts of the body that we are, or where we can meet in community around Jesus himself (as we speak his word to each other).

And as individuals who want to contribute to this community-belonging-membership, and experience it more ourselves, what should we do?

* We should make sure we keep turning up to those gatherings where the people who belong to Jesus get together.

* We should take every opportunity we can (formal or informal) to love others through Jesus Christ: to serve them, speak to them, encourage them, suffer with them, comfort them, rejoice with them, pray for them, practically care for them. This is what it means to be a ‘fellowship’ of Jesus Christ—to share a love of him together, and to love each other through him and by his word.

* Likewise, we should take every opportunity open to us to make our particular contribution to the body, whether as an arm, a nose or a spleen.

In other words, when we feel a lack of community-membership-belonging—perhaps as someone who feels a bit on the outer at church—there are things that the congregation as a whole can do to facilitate our inclusion, but it will also unavoidably depend on how we ourselves respond and keep in step with the Spirit’s work within us.

We can only experience what it is like to really be a member of a body when we are active as contributing members of that body. We can only experience the ‘community’ of Christ when we put into practice the only thing that truly matters in our fellowship: faith in Jesus Christ that is active in love.

PS

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I never quite managed that second ‘Postcard from America’, reality having collided viciously with my optimism. This week’s post is the next best thing: a postcard from a weary but happy returned traveller, with some brief reflections on his sojourn in a strange land.

I don’t say ‘strange land’ in any pejorative sense. It’s just that America is different in so many ways, and sometimes disorienting for an Australian evangelical Christian. At one level, there’s so much that seems familiar and immediately recognizable—perhaps because of our shared British heritage or simply because we consume so much American culture (in its popular and Christian forms).

And yet the differences also keep slapping you in the face.

Some of them are negatives. They put sweet jam on chicken-and-salad sandwiches. The coffee is mostly terrible. They never put the handbrake on when they park the car.

But let’s try to be American about this, which is to say grateful and positive.

That’s the first thing that strikes me, every time I visit the US (which I’ve done perhaps 15 times over the past two decades). The positivity. American evangelical Christians have an easy thankfulness about them that I don’t tire of experiencing. There’s no embarrassment in thanking you for the good or helpful things you’ve done, nor any awkwardness about receiving such praise or affirmation with humility.

In fact, my US colleague Marty Sweeney is sure that I keep coming back to the States each year just so as I can get my annual dose of positive affirmation, to keep me going for the next 12 months. He’s probably right. I think I get nearly as much warm and genuine thanks, encouragement and general affirmation during my two-week American trips than in the other 11½ Australian months.

Now, any kind of thankful positivity (including the American variety) can become cloying or fake or unrealistic or even manipulative. But I think my Australian instinct is therefore to dial it down just in case.

Insofar as walking and growing in the truth of Christ Jesus the Lord means ‘abounding in thanksgiving’ (Col 2:6-7), I’m always rebuked and encouraged by my American brothers to abound a bit more.

The flipside of thankfulness is generosity. I’m grateful to have received; I’m glad to be able to give. Perhaps Americans and American churches are wealthier or better resourced than their Australian counterparts. I’m sure that’s true in some cases. But I’m always bowled over by the graciousness of their hosting, the thoughtful way they provide for guests, and the generosity of the honoraria that they give to visiting speakers. We’re not talking chocolates and $50 Coles vouchers. It has been common for me to have been given a thank you note with US$1000 enclosed, just for preaching one Sunday at a church, or for delivering a single talk at a conference. (And in case you think that’s the reason I keep going back to the US each year, the money all goes to defraying the costs of the trip!)

It’s interesting to think why cultures are different; how they get to be the way they are — whether we’re thinking of churches, families, communities, or even nations. Culture is ‘the whole way we do things around here’, and it’s formed over time by a thousand words, habits, decisions, actions, structures, traditions, and so on. How did American Christian culture get to be (in general) more thankful and generous than our culture? Why for that matter did the culture of Sydney-based evangelicalism develop in the way that it did, such that a book that fairly plainly described its ministry culture (The Trellis and the Vine) should become such a fresh and powerful statement for American evangelicalism about some of its shortcomings? Who can say?

But I’m sure that the gospel and the work of God’s Spirit over time in a particular place has a great deal to do with it. And so when I notice the strengths of other Christian cultures (as well as their weaknesses), it challenges me all over again to keep shifting our culture in a godly direction, through trusting and applying that same Word by that same Spirit.

I guess that’s why God gives us each other.

One final observation from this recent trip. One of the conference gatherings I attended met in a hotel. There was no overhead projection in the room; no piano or musical instruments; just a very plain, large, hotel conference room. On the basis of this, I assumed that there wouldn’t be any singing during our meetings.

How wrong I was. What ensued was in fact the most edifying and heart-warming Christian singing I’ve experienced in a very long time.

We pulled out some printed sheets containing music and words, and turned to a particular song. Someone at the front sang a note for us to start on and then off we went. Just voices, about 180 of us, raised together, singing to each other, singing with thankfulness and rejoicing to God.

We sang some classic old hymns (Jesus paid it all; What a friend we have in Jesus). We sang some more modern songs (All glory be to Christ; Christ is mine forevermore). We clapped our way through some traditional African-American songs (Gloryland; I cannot tell it all). All of it was unaccompanied, with some clever people singing harmonies at various points.

It was certainly minimalist. And yet it was maximally powerful and encouraging, because the sound was the sound of Christian voices addressing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

I couldn’t help thinking about how different this was from the singing I usually experience in Australian churches, where the sound is usually the sound of a well-amplified band, with 4-5 instruments and 2-3 singers. Underneath or above the wall of sound coming from the stage can be heard the echo of the congregation’s voices, like a live recording at a rock concert where you can hear the audience singing along in the chorus.

I have some theories about how we’ve ended up at this point (another time!), but the contrast between the two kinds of singing is striking. Have we been sleep-walking towards a style of church singing where the dominant sound in the room is the sound of the band? Has our singing culture become one where the congregation is swept along and emotionally moved by the power and volume of the music itself, rather than spoken to, edified and uplifted by the sound of brothers and sisters singing?To be quite clear, the majority of American evangelical church singing is also at the loud, amplified-band end of the spectrum (as far as I have observed). But this recent experience of a very different kind of singing—one where the voices of the congregation actually dominated—was both electrifying and unsettling.

Even as the hairs on the back of my neck started to resume their normal position, I couldn’t help thinking, “Is there any church I know back home that sings like this? And why not?”

PS

Who would have imagined that Americans had Australian jokes? My friend Marty has two good ones:

Q. What do you call an Australian in a suit and tie? A. The defendant.

Q. What’s the difference between Australia and a tub of yoghurt? A. If you leave them out in the sun for 200 years, only one will develop its own culture.

Ouch!

It’s also nice to come back to Australia and discover what’s being going on while you’re away—because unless you go out of your way to find out, you won’t hear much about Australian politics or sport or life in general while you’re travelling in the US.

The federal election campaign has ground on, and I was mercifully spared any mention of it for two weeks.

I also came back to media reports that the evil arch-conservatives of the Sydney Diocese are preparing to do their worst at the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia this week. Something to do with affirming what Christians have believed for 2000 years about marriage and sexuality.

If you’d like to pray for that General Synod gathering this week, you could do worse than use the collect that is set down for this week in the Book of Common Prayer (the third Sunday after Easter):

Almighty God, who shewest to them that be in error the light of thy truth, to the intent that they may return into the way of righteousness: Grant unto all them that are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, that they may eschew those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow such things as are agreeable to the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 

I’ve been here in Ohio for the last several days, working with Marty Sweeney (director of Matthias Media USA) and running a workshop for pastors on ‘Gospel Clarity and Growing the Vine’.

The workshop was hugely worthwhile—certainly for me, and I think for those who attended (if their positivity and thoughtful contributions weren’t just all American politeness). The conversation you can listen to above has Marty and I reprising some of the main topics of the day.

I hope you find it stimulating.

Looking ahead at the program of the next week or so (another conference in New Mexico) I think it might be a case of my over-active optimism to think that I will have time to send another episode before I return home. But I’ll see what I can do …

TP

The first question was asked by a couple of different people. In summary: What are the implications of this ‘tour guide’ approach for complementarian leadership in small groups?  How does ‘tour guide’ leading work in mixed groups with male and female leaders?

Some big issues here! I’ll outline the assumptions I’m operating with, and then offer some wisdom in application.

I’m assuming a complementarian approach to teaching—one which affirms both the partnership of men and women together in church and ministry life, and the differences in their roles and responsibilities. In other words:

* There are many contexts and relationships in which men and women teach and edify and encourage each other without much distinction (e.g. the instruction for the whole congregation to teach and admonish one another in Col 3:16; or the time when both Priscilla and Aquila took Apollos aside and explained the word of God more accurately to him in Acts 18:26).

* There are some contexts and relationships in which men have a particular role and responsibility to teach in a way that women don’t (e.g. 1 Tim 2:11-12).

* This authoritative teaching is related to responsibility. Because a group of suitably qualified men are given the responsibility to guard and oversee and pastor a congregation, then they are the ones given the responsibility of teaching—that is, of guarding, explaining and expounding the whole framework of gospel doctrine in that congregation. Their particular teaching role is a key part of how they exercise pastoral responsibility.

Where do small groups fit into this? The nature and occasion of the small group matters in answering that question. I could imagine coming up with different answers for:

* all-female groups and all-male groups (obviously enough)

* temporary breakout groups from a larger group or gathering

* a mixed youth group Bible study led by 16 year olds

* a group of uni students at a conference

* a regular mixed adult small group at a church.

I guess it’s really this last one that the question is being asked about. Is the tour guide of a mixed adult small group a sort of ‘teacher’ and a sort of ‘pastor’?

Well yes, but of a small-t and small-p variety. (I think that was the point of my article). The tour guide aims to lead his group to the main points of a passage but it’s a more circuitous and less predictable journey. We arrive there (God willing) and discover those truths together, but the leader is not authoritatively teaching or hammering them home as an elder or pastor would when addressing the whole congregation.

This means that mixed adult small groups should express complementarian principles in a small-c kind of way. The male leader of the group should still take final responsibility for what’s happening in the group, and for the faithfulness with which the group strives to get to the destination. But he doesn’t have a responsibility for the life and doctrine of the people in the group in the same way that congregational elders and overseers do. He is the tour guide of a discussion, not someone delivering an authoritative lesson.

As we noted last time, this still means that he needs to have a good idea of where he’s going—what the ‘destination’ is in the passage. However, it also means that he can (and should) encourage all members of the group, men and women, to contribute to the journey—to ask questions, make suggestions, offer insights and in effect ‘lead the discussion’ in various directions at various points along the way.

What does this mean for mixed leadership in practical terms? I’m loathe to get too detailed, but it could look something like this:

* Let’s start by saying that the male leader can and should involve other group members in leading aspects of the small group time—whether that’s the prayer time, the discussion of applications, a background discussion into the OT context, an exercise in nutting out the difficult logic of a dense paragraph, the drawing together of the main points, and so on. Remember: the small group is an opportunity for mutual learning and growth—it’s the scene for one-another edification through the word in a Colossians 3:16 sort of way. Having different group members (men and women) taking the lead at various points in the discussion is healthy for small groups.

* If this means that, on different occasions, a female co-leader does some more detailed preparation, and leads the group for much of their exegetical tour of the passage, that doesn’t mean she has taken over final responsibility for the group and its exploration of the word. The male leader remains responsible, and this can be made clear in the way things are framed and done. He’s the one who leads the discussion most often, and models what we’re doing together as a group. Even when he’s making room for others to lead, he’s the one who introduces the discussion, keeps an eye on it as it proceeds, steps in with a course correction occasionally, and affirms where it lands at the end. (This means that the male leader of the group needs to do some preparation on the passage every week, so that he has a sense of where things should be heading, even if he is not the most active ‘tour guide’ on this particular week.)

* In other words, I don’t think of it as male and female co-leaders taking it in turns to ‘be the leader’. The male leader has ongoing final responsibility for the group. But a male leader who encourages and makes room for all the men and women in the group to contribute, each in their own way, is being a good complementarian. Complementarianism is about complementary difference—about partnership as well as leadership.

* So I don’t have a problem with female members of a mixed small groups becoming the main active tour guide of a Bible discussion at different points, provided that it’s within the framework of male leadership of the group.

I have good and wise friends who manage these relational dynamics differently from me in their various contexts. But the principle is this: rejoice in the different ways God has made us, and the different responsibilities he assigns; and rejoice too in the freedom and benefits of working together as men and women.

The other helpful piece of feedback came in a nice chat with Andrew Heard, who suggested that it’s good to recognize different levels of small group leadership. We’d love every leader to be the experienced, wise, skilled, mini-pastor, tour guide and disciple-maker. But the reality is that the number of leaders who are the ‘full package’ is always limited in a church—and certainly to begin with. We need to allow, he suggests, some leaders to start as ‘facilitators’ with plenty of hand-holding and pre-prepared material, and to accept that not everyone will rise to the top level of what a small group leader can be. We need to beware of setting the bar too high at the outset, and making the perfect the enemy of the good.

In a follow-up email, Andrew noted that this is also related to how we think of the growth and support of small group leaders over time. He writes:

[Starting with leaders more at the facilitator end] also builds in the ability to grow the small group network (we can bring in more leaders), and enables a more intentional leadership pathway.

And this tends to force church leaders to be more deliberate in running their small group network. They can’t just appoint leaders and step away—something I think most of our reformed churches have done. We’re very often running small group ministries with no accountability, training or pastoral support. We’ve got the small group leaders in place (tick box) and we let them go, often for years.

These are accurate and wise insights it seems to me. Putting my ‘tour guide’ perspective on it, we should appoint and train beginner ‘tour guides’, and acknowledge they will need lots more help and resources at the outset. And then we need to provide ongoing training and support for leaders as they grow in their tour guide skills over time. It's not set and forget. I think Andrew is right to say that many of our churches—even churches who pride themselves on being Bible-centred—are weak in this area. Many groups are underperforming and ‘stuck’, and this is directly related to a lack of ongoing training and growth and support for leaders.

However, given that we should think of small group leadership as a continual process of development and growth—with lots of training and support along the way—I think the basic task of the leader remains the same, whether it’s done at a very basic beginner level, or at higher levels by more experienced and skilled leaders. It’s essentially twofold:

* a Bible related task: to read and think in advance (with whatever supplied helps and resources are necessary) so as to have an idea what the main message of the passage is—and to seek to nudge and guide your group discussion in that direction as best you can. Some may follow a printed map pretty closely, and only get to the point of seeing the landmark destination in the distance. Experienced guides will freewheel it and get right up close. But I think the task and goal is the same.

* a people-related task: to pray for the people in the group, to care about them and to do whatever you can to love them. Again, some will be better at this than others. And God willing we can all grow in this godly character over time.

Once again, thanks to all who got in touch. Keep it coming.

PS

I’m off on holidays for a little while, so there’s a Payneless couple of weeks coming up, which I’m sure you’ll cope with.

After the holiday, I’m travelling to the US for two weeks (starting Apr 22), and will send through some ‘letters from America’ while I’m on the road.

With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my newsletter and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never be cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s an upgrade to the reading experience I think.

The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.

Anyway, on to this week’s subject.

Facilitators or teachers?

Is a small group leader a facilitator? Or more of a teacher?

It’s funny how the answer to that question seems to go in cycles.

In the 1980s, most people in my part of the world would have leaned towards ‘facilitator’. The job of the small group leader was not to deliver a mini-sermon or be a ‘teacher’, but to stimulate some discussion around a Bible passage. Get things moving, try to keep it vaguely on track, but don’t feel it’s your responsibility to impose a conclusion or ‘lesson’ on the group.

In the 90s, there was a pendulum swing away from this thinking, as captured in Col Marshall’s classic book Growth Groups. Col argued explicitly against the concept of ‘facilitator’, and trained a generation of small group leaders to think of themselves more as teachers and leaders—as small-p ‘pastors’ who took a measure of responsibility for the spiritual health of the group members. The leader’s job was to help the group learn what the Bible was teaching, not just share opinions with each other. And this required the leader to do sufficient preparation to understand the passage, and to be able to lead a Bible discussion that revealed and applied the passage’s main points.

In the heyday of Growth Groups, it was assumed that most leaders would prepare and write their own Bible studies most of the time.

Was this a high bar for many leaders and churches? No doubt. And perhaps this is why the pendulum has swung back towards ‘facilitation’ in recent years.

The increasingly common pattern today is for small groups either to do some version of the Swedish method together, or to use pre-written studies, often prepared by the church staff in line with the current sermon series. Leaders see themselves more as a chairperson than a teacher. And if there is a conclusion or landing point to get to, it’s the one that’s been given to them by the pre-written study. Small group leaders writing their own Bible studies from scratch now seems to be a rarity.

I am tempted at this point to do a not-in-my-day rant about falling standards.

But perhaps there is something more helpful to say. Let’s think afresh about the pros and cons of each swing of this pendulum.

On the ‘teacher-leader’ side, the main weakness is simply the high expectations it places on the average group leader. This not only makes it harder to find suitable leaders willing and able to embrace the responsibility, but also means that their training takes longer, and that they are more likely to burn out after a few years. Many churches have found that trying to train all their leaders to this level is unrealistic, and places a cap on how many groups can actually be run. How many churches can find space in their program to run the full 10-week Growth Groups training course for their would-be leaders? Not very many.

Then again, the strength of the ‘teacher-leader’ model is its realism about the ineffectiveness of loosey-goosey, facilitator-type discussions run by inadequately trained leaders. If sermonettes produce Christianettes (as the old saying goes) then meandering group discussions without a landing point produce meandering Christians without a landing point.

The strength of the ‘teacher-leader’ approach is that it recognizes the weakness and potential danger of poorly led opinion sharing, and does something about it. The goal (after all) is not to have a discussion, but to ‘let the word dwell among us richly’ (as Col 3:16 says); to teach and encourage and edify one another in, with and by the Word. This is the goal of all Christian fellowship, of which the small group is one particular type. It’s hard to see why leadership and purposefulness wouldn’t be needed in this context as much as in any other. To think that it will all just happen without well-trained, good quality leadership is a touch naive.

Then again, a well-intended swing towards ‘teaching’ can prompt a teacher-leader to exert too much control over the group, and to squelch or crowd out another theologically vital facet of small group life—the opportunity for members to speak the word to each other for mutual instruction and encouragement. This is the key strength of a ‘facilitated’ group. The facilitator’s whole aim is to stimulate one-another speech, to let the conversation flow freely and go where it will. There is maximum opportunity for mutual encouragement, even if there is also maximum opportunity for missing what the passage is actually about.

So where does that all leave us?

Can we stop this pendulum swinging somehow? Is there a Goldilocks solution?

“Yes!” I hear you pastors say who write Bible studies for their leaders. “That’s why we write these studies. It allows us to exert some direction and quality control over the group discussions, but not place too heavy a burden on our leaders’ shoulders.”

Well, perhaps. Except that pre-written studies can be the worst of both worlds. There is not the freedom of undirected exploration and discovery—since there’s a list of seven questions we all know we have to get through. And unless the studies are very well done, and the leader is experienced, maintaining a natural flow and momentum to the discussion is difficult. It feels clunky, like we’re reading someone else’s lines (because we are). A question seems to be driving at something, but none of us can figure out what it is.

Leading a genuine discussion towards a conclusion is not an easy thing to do. You need to know where you’re going, and to have identified some key milestones along the way. This is impossible without training and preparation. The kind of leader who can make good use of pre-written studies is usually the kind of leader who doesn’t need pre-written studies.

So what is the solution?

Before I say anything else, I have a confession to make.

I reached this point in the first draft of this article, and began to outline a way to think about small group leadership that preserved the key strengths of the ‘teacher-leader’ model of Growth Groups but at a more achievable level for the average or beginner leader in most churches.

And it was only at that point that I remembered that I’d written and published a training course a few years ago that did precisely that. (That’s what comes of churning out too much stuff over too many years I suppose.)

So this nice little article that I was quite enjoying writing suddenly changed into a thinly-disguised promotional piece to get you to buy one of my training courses—which as an Australian is embarrassing.

If you’re prepared to believe me (thousands wouldn’t, as my mother used to say), I’ll leave further mention of the training course to the end, and continue with what I was about to say.

A useful way to think about the leader of a small group Bible study is that he is neither a full-on teacher, nor merely a chairperson or facilitator. He is a tour guide. His role is to lead the group into the Word so that they arrive at the major landmark that every Bible tourist needs to see—that is the main points of this passage, and what they mean for our lives. There is almost always more than one route that will get you there. There may be side-streets and other attractions to view along the way. And occasionally, you may spend so long stopping to look at something really interesting that you don’t get to the major landmark.

But the key point is this: the small group tour guide can only lead and nudge and direct his rag-tag group of easily distracted tourists to the destination if he knows the way. He can only lead them to the right spot if he’s been there himself already. He may have a printed map or a set of directions in his hand (a pre-written Bible study), but if he doesn’t actually know the way himself, the journey will be clunky and dissatisfying for the tour group, and they will wonder why he didn’t just give them the map and let them figure it out for themselves.

In other words, there is no avoiding the reality that a small group leader must personally understand the passage and its key points before he embarks on leading others in a discussion of that passage. This requires three things:

* a decent amount of experience as a Christian in reading the Bible (i.e. newish Christians don’t make good small group leaders);

* a decent amount of training in how to understand a passage and lead a group to that understanding (i.e. providing pre-written studies cannot replace the need for good quality training);

* a decent amount of prayerful preparation time each week (around two hours for most people); enough time to get to know the passage well, and to understand what God is saying in it. The leader needs to feel confident that whatever twists and turns the discussion might take, he knows the destination.

With this training and preparation under his belt, the tour guide leader can use a number of approaches in shepherding his group toward the destination, depending on his personality and experience. He might favour a fairly easy going approach—“let’s just start exploring and see what we find”—but this works because he’s very familiar with where he needs to get to. He might prefer to write down his own set of directions in detail—his own Bible study. Or if he’s a beginner tour guide, he might prefer to use someone else’s map, with some of his own notes scribbled on it—a pre-written Bible study.

Whatever the method that is finally used, the desired outcome is a genuine group exploration of God’s word, with enough freedom to enjoy the journey along the way, as well as enough direction to arrive at the destination—which is to hear the message that the living God is speaking to us through this passage of his life-giving word.

PS

Growth Groups is the Rolls Royce training program to equip leaders for this kind of tour guide leadership. (In fact, there’s a nice little section in Growth Groups about balancing ‘control’ and ‘freedom’ in small group Bible discussions, much along the lines of this article.) However, as I’ve already noted, for many people, Growth Groups functions these days more as a resource book than an actual 10-week leader training course (as it was originally written to be).

The new training framework that Marty Sweeney and I put together a few years ago is called The Small Group and the Vine. It’s a more achievable five-part program, with a workbook and videos. It could be done in a series of Saturday seminars, or over a weekend, or on five consecutive Monday nights—but whatever the format, the idea is to provide small group leaders with a clear understanding of their role, along with the basic tools to prepare a Bible passage for themselves so as to be a good ‘tour guide’ for their groups. (Follow the link above for a free sample chapter and video intro to what it is about.)

Whether or not you use this particular resource, the important question to consider is how we are training and equipping all our group leaders to be good ‘tour guides’ of the Word.

Some of you may have noticed a consistent use of ‘he’ and ‘his’ throughout this article. In case this comes across as chauvinism, rather than grammatical convenience (which is what it is), let me say that many of the best-prepared and most skilful small group tour guides I have known have been the female leaders of women’s Bible study groups.

For example, in 1 Cor 14, the question I immediately want answered is about prophecy. It’s the gift I should pursue, says Paul, because it is the best way to edify others in love. But what prophecy it exactly?

This is a big question. (And for those who are interested, I came up with a big, long answer to it during my PhD research a few years ago. Just drop me a line if you’d like a copy to send you off to sleep at night.)

But the big question of prophecy might lead us to miss the smaller but no less intriguing question in verse 26:

What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.

People turn up at church with various things to contribute to others for their edification. ‘Hymns’ and ‘lessons’ I can understand. ‘Tongues’ is another can of worms. But pretty casually and in passing Paul says that you also might bring a revelation with you.

This makes me kind of nervous.

I can see that strange guy with the intense eyes turning up to church with a new book of the Bible under his arm that God has told him to write. Or I see that overly confident woman with the matronly manner rolling up to me and telling me with divine authority that God knows exactly what I’m up to and that I should knock it off.

What are these ‘revelations’ that the Corinthians are having and bringing to church with them? It sounds a bit alarming.

Like all words, it’s possible to confuse what ‘revelation’ means as a word with how it is used or what it refers to. The word literally means to make something fully known or clear; to uncover or disclose some person or truth or knowledge.

In the NT, it can be the ‘making known’ of Jesus Christ when he comes again in glory (e.g. 1 Cor 1:7). He’ll be ‘revealed’ for all to see. Or it can be some special knowledge that is made to someone directly by God, such as when Paul says that he was not taught the gospel by any man but received it ‘through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (referring probably to the Damascus road experience where Jesus confronted him personally as his Lord in Gal 1:12).

So what is it that is becoming known or clear to someone here in 1 Cor 14, such that they can bring that ‘revelation’ with them to church to edify others? It doesn’t necessarily mean that they have had their own Damascus road vision, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they have received a whole new gospel because an angel has appeared and given it to them. (In fact, if that happens, we can be pretty sure it was certainly no angel of God! See Gal 1:8.)

Earlier in 1 Cor 14, the possibility of having a ‘revelation’ to share is also mentioned, and again it’s one of a list of similarly edifying words:

Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? (1 Cor 14:6)

How is a ‘revelation’ different from ‘teaching’ or ‘knowledge’ or ‘prophecy’?

There’s some overlap no doubt, but it’s not hard to see differences between them. A ‘teaching’ might be a specific nugget of truth that has been passed on to us, and that we bring with us in order to teach others. ‘Knowledge’ is a broader category of understanding that we’ve acquired over time, and that we can also share with others. ‘Prophecy’ is a particular application of the gospel to a particular context (to give you the shorthand answer to that big question).

But that again leaves ‘revelation’.

I think the way it’s being used in both instances in 1 Cor 14 is rather like the way the same word is used in Phil 3:15:

Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.

When things are unclear or partially known or misunderstood completely, the problem often lies not in receiving a new teaching or new piece of knowledge, but in what is already partially or poorly known becoming fully known, by the work of God in our minds.

This is a common Christian experience. For me, it often occurs over a number of days and conversations.

I find myself reading something interesting one evening, which then connects with a conversation I have the next day, which then reminds me of a sermon I heard two weeks ago, which then prompts me to chat to Ali about it over dinner, which then casts a whole new light on the conversation I had earlier, and which then incredibly lines up with the Bible reading I happen to look at the next morning. It all percolates in my slow-witted brain for a few days, and then seemingly from nowhere comes the Aha! moment. The clouds part, the pieces lock into place, and all of a sudden some fresh aspect of the truth of Christ becomes clear to me.

It might be something I once was taught but had forgotten, or never quite understood. It might be something I now understand in a new or clearer or fuller way.

Whatever it is, even though it may not have been through a Damascus road apocalypse, God has made something known to me that I didn’t know before. He has uncovered a new light in my understanding. And very often it is not by him inserting a brand new piece of information, but by clearing away all the intellectual junk that has been preventing me from seeing the truth and implications of what he has already told me many times through the Scriptures.

This kind of ‘revelation’ can creep up on you over time, or it can occur to you quite suddenly, or possibly both. Later in the chapter, we see it happening suddenly as people are sharing their words of prophecy and encouragement with each other:

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. (1 Cor 14:29-30)

The edifying words we bring with us to church don’t have the status of Scripture! They need to be tested and considered. In fact, as one speaks, another might suddenly have an insight (a ‘revelation’) that builds or improves what is being said.

1 Cor 14 paints a delightful and challenging picture of what should happen when we get together as Christ’s congregation. We all bring God-given words with us to the gathering—the gospel we’ve been taught, the Scriptural knowledge we have, the lessons we’ve learned, the prophetic applications we’ve discerned, the ‘revelations’ we’ve received—and we share them with each other, for mutual benefit.

What do you bring with you to church on Sunday?

A Bible perhaps, or these days a phone? A tired and disengaged mind? A set of grievances? A desire to be fed and cared for? Some grumbling kids?

The key things to bring with us, says 1 Cor 14, are God-given words with which to edify and encourage each other in love.

Is that a revelation for you?

PS

I was rather hoping to send out the sixth and final chapter of the Two ways to live evangelistic book in this week’s edition. But it’s been a crazy week, and it just wasn’t ready. God willing, next week!

I was warming to my theme, and explaining that as we speak the word to each other in love in a whole range of ways—encouraging, exhorting, teaching, admonishing, comforting, reminding, and so on—we “let the word of Christ dwell among us richly” to our immense benefit.

And then in a delightful instance of one-another speech, someone asked an insightful question: How does speaking the truth in love to each other relate to all the other ways we can love and serve one another? Is speaking the only or even the prime way we love one another? Can we love one another without speaking the truth to each other?

As I started to waffle out an answer, I realised that I had been dealing with this question in various forms for years.

Is word ministry the only ministry or the best ministry? What about the place of compassion and good deeds? Is ‘trellis’ work less valuable or important than ‘vine’ work? Surely some of us are good at speaking and ‘ministry’ stuff, and some of us are good at getting in and loving others practically. Why don’t we just let people play to their strengths?

Christian love and Christian words—how do they fit together?

Perhaps the most obvious answer to the question is the one that I started to give on the weekend.

The joyful obligation to love one another is surely bigger and broader than just speaking biblical words to each other. Love is expressed in a multitude of kind and beneficial actions. The many ‘one-another’ commands in the New Testament give numerous examples, such as serving, forgiving, accepting, bearing with, and generally ‘doing good’ to one another.

In fact, it’s very possible to be so focused on words as to fail to love others.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 Jn 3:16-18)

This is an important lesson. Words are sometimes easier than action (#IStandWithUkraine). Are kind words that don’t lead to loving action really love at all? No, says John.

So perhaps ‘speaking the truth’ in love is a subset of loving action. There are lots of ways to love one another, and sharing a biblical word with someone is just one of them. To be sure, it’s an important one, and one we should all strive to practise—because it is a command for us to obey just like all the others. But it’s no more or less important than all the other ways to love.

Is that the way to think about it?

I don’t think so. And in the process of rambling around in my answer to the question I’d been asked, I managed to remember and express why.

Christian love is love in the truth. Let us not love in words but in deed and in truth, says John. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth, says Paul (1 Cor 13:6). And it is this truth that we are to speak to one another in love in Ephesians 4:15.

Love is a kind of knowledge. Love is not a sentiment or a feeling, although it is often felt. Love is not just action, although it is often expressed in action. Love is a certain kind of knowledge of what is true and good—a knowledge that longs for and seeks that truth and goodness, not only for ourselves but for others. (If that sounds a familiar idea to some readers, it’s because I wrote about these ideas a few months ago in this article …)

The question is: If love is a kind of knowledge, where does this knowledge come from? How do we get to know it?

Some of it comes to us quite easily in everyday life. I know that you need food and warmth to survive—it’s a knowledge is that is acquired pretty quickly and instinctively by all of us. To wish you well but not give you those good things when you need them is a failure to love you in the truth. It may be a warm sentiment expressed with kind words, but it is not love, because it ignores the truth of your need.

This may be an everyday, common knowledge, but it is still a God-given knowledge. We know this about each other, not only because God created us to have these needs as humans, but because he gave us the capacity to perceive and know this about his world and each other. All love comes from God, because all truth and goodness come from him.

However, the ultimate truth that reveals the whole nature of the world and ourselves and where we’re going is found in only one place—in Jesus Christ, God’s final and complete revelation of himself and his purposes.

All Christian love and service, therefore—in all its forms and in all its expressions—is based on the truth that is revealed to us in Christ. In him, we no longer think about anything as we did before (2 Cor 5:16-17). Faith in him and his gospel is the foundation of love. Faith rolls up its sleeves and gets to work in love (Gal 5:6), because by faith we are set free to know the truth about the person God has given us to love.

This means that speaking the truth in love is not just one form of love. It’s the activity that defines and generates Christian love. We know what it means to love by hearing and knowing the truth of Christ. Every practical action of love or service that we undertake—in church or at home or anywhere—is founded in the God-given truth about ourselves and the world and Christ. The gospel word drives and shapes it all.

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer draws a contrast between ‘emotional’ or ‘self-centred love’, and the true ‘spiritual’ love of the Christian community.

Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus Christ; it serves him alone; it knows that it has no unmediated access to other people. Christ stands between me and others. I do not know in advance what love for others means on the basis of a general idea of love, growing out of my own emotional longing—all of which in the sight of Christ may instead be hatred and the worst kind of selfishness. What love is, only Christ in his word can tell me. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love for the brother truly looks like. Therefore, spiritual love is bound to the word of Jesus Christ alone.

The word of Christ tells us what God is doing in our world through his gospel, as we wait for the hope of glory. The word of Christ reveals the future of all of us, and commissions us to make disciples of all nations while we can. It urges us to persevere in gospel truth and to communicate it to others.

This is why speaking the truth to one another is not so much one kind of love, but the foundation and well-spring of all Christian love. By speaking the truth of Christ to each other in multiple different ways and contexts, we do the ultimate good for each other. We grow each other in the knowledge and love of God, and that knowledge teaches us how to love others.

Perhaps this is why the great hymn to love in 1 Cor 13 proceeds directly to an exhortation for us to pursue gospel speech with one another in 1 Cor 14. Knowledge on its own can puff up. But love builds up, because on the basis of true knowledge, it seeks the true good of those around us.

Every form of love and service and practical help in our churches is determined and framed by this truth, the truth of the gospel.

Do we want to grow in genuine Christian love? Then let us keep teaching and encouraging and spurring one another to love and good deeds, by sharing with each other the word of Christ.

PS

Pete Orr gave an excellent two-part talk on this subject at the recent Priscilla and Aquila Conference at Moore College—that is, on the ‘one-another’ commands of the New Testament, and how ‘loving one another’ and ‘speaking to one another’ fit into that. They are definitely worth a listen.

Thanks for the continued helpful feedback on the 2wtl book. I’m hard at work on the next (and final) instalment. Stay tuned for that next week, God willing.

I was amused at how many comments I received about the phrase ‘hotsy-totsy’ in chapter 4 pt 2. Some Brits got in touch to ask whether this was a strange piece of colonial slang, as did some Americans. And some Aussies wrote in to say they’d never heard the expression in their lives.

I picked up the phrase and threw it in (not really thinking about it) on account of listening to a lot of PG Wodehouse on Audible recently. (If you like that sort of thing, Stephen Fry’s reading of ‘The Jeeves Collection’ is side-splittingly brilliant.) ‘Hotsy-totsy’ is one of the many phrases that Wodehouse uses to excellent comic effect, but judging by your reactions, perhaps it belongs to that earlier era and should stay there.

I’m not sure whether it is yet, but I’m sure you’ll help me figure that out.

Just a quick recap: this chapter is based on Point 4 of the Two Ways to Live outline:

Because of his love, God sent his Son into the world: the man Jesus Christ.

Jesus always lived under God’s rule.

But Jesus took our punishment by dying in our place.

The first instalment dealt with the opening two statements, under headings of ‘His arrival’ and ‘His life’. This second part of the chapter is about ‘his death’.

You can read the text below, or listen via the audio player above, or you can also download a PDF of the chapter, which is easier for printing and for referring to specific lines and paragraphs.

His death

If you’ve never really read one of the Gospels, you might assume that they are mainly about Jesus’ teaching and parables and miracles. That it’s all good Samaritans and prodigal sons and walking on water.

There is certainly quite a bit of that.

But as biographies the four Gospels are strangely lopsided. They say very little about Jesus’ birth and early life (Mark and John don’t mention these subjects at all). They ignore his adolescence and young adulthood entirely. They recount in snapshot fashion the key events of his public ministry that took place over an approximately three year period—his teachings and parables, his healings and mighty works, his clashes with the religious authorities.

But then the narrative slows right down. Each of the Gospels spends chapter after chapter recounting in depth the final days of Jesus’ life, and in particular the details of his betrayal, trial and humiliating death. It’s as if the events of Jesus’ arrival and extraordinary life are an extended introduction. The real action of the story is the death of the hero.

If this seems strange to you, then join the party. It was also very confusing for Jesus’ disciples.

Throughout the Gospels, they become increasingly convinced that Jesus is the One—the Messiah-king or ‘Christ’ whom God had sent to save his people and rule the world. About half way through Mark’s Gospel, Jesus comes straight out and asks his disciples who they think he is.

Peter answers with a directness that is typical of him, “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29).

You would think this might be the climax of the story. After seven chapters of following him around and watching everything, and not always covering themselves in glory, the disciples have finally done something right. They have realised who Jesus is, and said so. Bells pealing. Fireworks going off.

But no.

Jesus responds in an unexpected way. He starts by strictly commanding them not to tell anyone else what they’ve come to know about him—which seems odd. Doesn’t he want people to know that God has sent his Christ into the world?

And then he explains to them that he must “suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).

This is even stranger. Jesus not only wants to be an anonymous, under-the-radar sort of Christ, but he insists that the Christ is going to rejected and killed by the key religious leaders of the Jewish people—the very people you would expect to welcome the Christ with fanfare and festivals.

Peter is incredulous and takes Jesus aside and starts telling him off. To which Jesus gives the famous reply, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Mark 8:33).

I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for Peter. He has, after all, just gotten something right for pretty much the first time in the Gospel story so far. He has recognized that Jesus is the long-promised Saviour-King. And understandably, he thinks that everything is on the up and up. All that remains is for Jesus to be anointed King, to defeat all Israel’s enemies (like the occupying Romans), to establish a new, glorious kingdom, and for everything generally to be hotsy-totsy.

This is what any of us would have expected a glorious Christ-Saviour-King to do. What’s the point of waiting centuries for the Messiah to turn up, only for him to say, “Oh and by the way, they’re all going to hate me and kill me”? It seems crazy.

And from a human point of view it is. This was Jesus’ rebuke to Peter: you’re thinking along human lines, not along God-type lines. God has a completely different plan for what his Christ will do, and how he will establish his kingdom.

That plan unfolds over the following eight chapters of Mark’s Gospel. As Jesus heads towards Jerusalem and towards the final week of his life, two things increase in intensity—the angry opposition of the religious authorities, and Jesus’ predictions about his impending death.

Twice more he takes his disciples aside and tells them that when they get to Jerusalem he is going to be humiliated, tortured and killed. The disciples remain dumbfounded, and continue to make stupid comments.

In chapter 10, for example, just after Jesus has again predicted his death, the brothers James and John take him aside and ask him a favour: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37). When you do become the glorious king, which we’re sure is still going to happen somehow, can we be your Deputy King 1 and Deputy King 2? What about it?

(A Jewish friend of mine once commented: “Talk about a pair of pushy Jews!”)

Jesus gently rebukes James and John by suggesting that they don’t really know what they’re asking for. There will be two spots available, as it turns out, one on his right and one on his left, when he is crucified a few short days later. Are those the positions they’re asking for?

But then he explains in the clearest words so far what he has been talking about all this time. His kingship, his Christ-hood, is not the kind of rule or lordship that we specialise in as humans—the kind that we know so well from history and from our current political leaders; the kind that is lordly and arrogant and obsessed with power. It’s quite different.

“You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42-45).

In the kingdom of Jesus, greatness is servitude. And this is from the king all the way down. For even the king himself, the Christ, the ‘Son of Man’ (as Jesus was fond of calling himself), “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

Jesus is the greatest, and he undertakes the greatest possible service—to give up his life as a payment or price or ransom for many others. The reason for his approaching death was not only going to be the growing hostility of the religious authorities. In some way, it was also going to be a ‘payment’. It was going to be a ransom that set people free.

If James and John and the other disciples were good readers of their Bibles—which at the time consisted of what we now call the Old Testament—they would have known exactly what Jesus was talking about.

Scattered in plain sight throughout the Old Testament are numerous events, laws and prophecies that foreshadow just such an idea. The Old Testament promised that when God finally fixed everything up, and established a new kingdom through his Messiah-Christ-King, he would need to deal with the fundamental human problem—the problem of humanity’s rebellion against him as our Creator and Ruler, with all its consequences.

This takes us back to chapters 1-3 of this book, and why they are such essential background for understanding the message of Christianity. The death of Jesus was God’s answer to problem of human rebellion against him.

Perhaps the most famous Old Testament passage about this is one we’ve already looked at. Back in chapter 2, we quoted the prophet Isaiah describing our basic rejection of God like this:

We all like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way … (Isaiah 53:6)

But those three dots at the end of that quote indicate that the sentence is not finished. The whole sentence reads:

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Iniquity is not the most common word these days. I’ve been known to describe the cost of toll roads in Sydney as ‘iniquitous’. And cheap, low-life, degenerate establishments are sometimes called ‘dens of iniquity’.

But the general idea is straightforward enough. It means something grossly wrong or guilty or wicked.

God has laid on ‘him’ (in this quote) the guilt and wrongdoing of us all.

We know all about the guilt and wrongdoing (see chapter 2). And we know that the rightful sentence against us is death (see chapter 3).

But who is the ‘him’ that all this iniquity is laid upon?

In the rest of the extraordinary prophecy of Isaiah, it becomes very plain who it is. It’s a prophecy about a ‘servant’ who will come to save God’s people. Here are some of the verses that lead up to the quote above, and then follow on from it:

See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.

Just as there were many who were appalled at him — his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness—so he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him.

…

He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

…

After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus says that he is a servant, who will be rejected by men and die as a ransom for many, and that after that he will ‘rise’ to glory. It could not be plainer that he sees himself fulfilling the words of this ancient promise.

God’s extraordinary plan was to send his own Son into the world as a servant, to die as a substitute for rebels like us. Jesus died so that our iniquity might be laid on him.

The logic of the whole thing is stunning and humbling. It goes like this:

* We all rebel against God as our Creator and Ruler. We all deserve his judgement. We all deserve death.

* Jesus was a man, but never rebelled against God. He didn’t deserve any judgement or any death.

* But Jesus did willingly and deliberately die at the hands of rebellious humanity.

* Jesus died not for his own rebellion but for ours.

* He died to take upon himself the punishment we deserved. He died as a ransom for many.

This is what happened when a man named Jesus died by crucifixion on a hill outside Jerusalem in 33AD, and it is no wonder that the day of his death became known as ‘Good Friday’. It’s no wonder that the cross became the centre and symbol of Christianity, and that as Christianity grew and shaped Western civilisation, the concept of humble, sacrificial service became a central value of our culture.

The death of Jesus on behalf of rebels is the glorious and confounding twist that dominates the Gospel narratives. His death was no accident, and no failure. It was the supreme act of love—God sending his Son to die as our substitute, to die the death that we deserved, so that we could be set free from death and judgement.

But what does this ‘freedom’ mean? What are the consequences and implications of Jesus’ death?

To answer this, and to arrive at the final climactic truth of the Christian message, we turn to the even more extraordinary event that comes three days after Jesus’ death.

PS

As usual, send your comments and feedback to tonyjpayne@me.com, or jot them in the comment section on the website.

Once again, a huge thank you to the many of you who’ve been sending in feedback and ideas as the instalments have rolled out. Apologies that I haven’t been able to respond individually to you all (as I normally do with the emails I get)—but there are just too many!

I remembered something from a management book that I once read in a moment of weakness. It was called Start With Why, and I can save you the trouble of wading through its 250 padded-out pages of case studies, personal stories and general fluff by summarizing its one, short, helpful point. It’s wisest to start by asking why you’re doing something, before moving on to ask how you’re going to do it, and then in turn think about what you’re going to do next.

An obvious but useful thought.

So rather than asking how to be a better small group member, let’s start with why.

Why belong to a small group at church?

Three common answers spring to mind.

* Because that’s what committed Christians do. Christians go to small groups like tradies go to the pub. It’s what we’ve always done—except that for most of the last two millennia of Christian history, we haven’t. Small groups (as we know them) weren’t really a thing before about 50 years ago.

* Because that’s the expectation set by your church. In many churches, to be a true-blue member you’re supposed to come regularly on Sunday, give money and go to a small group. This is actually not a bad rule of thumb by which to recognize committed church involvement, but is it really an adequate reason for going to small groups? Because I kind of have to in order to belong to the club?

* Because it’s a great way to get to know people and feel part of the church community. This feels better, and at least has a bit of relational zip to it. It is indeed hard in a church of even moderate size to really get to know people over a quick cuppa on Sunday morning. Small groups usually help with that.

Even so, I’m not sure any of these reasons are going to motivate us consistently to drag ourselves out the door every week at 7:30pm at the end of a long day to engage in chit-chat with a bunch of other tired people. Not to mention the fact we still haven’t said anything related to … you know, God.

Does God have a why for us to join a small group?

He does as it turns out.

The reason God gathers us together in Christian communities is not just so we get to know people or feel the warmth of being part of a group of like-minded people—it’s for a specific purpose.

Of the many places we find this purpose in the Bible, one of the clearest is in Colossians 3. This extraordinary chapter starts by summarizing the foundation and essence of the Christian life: “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (vv. 3-4).

Our new life is summed up in one word: ‘Christ’. We’re united with him in his death and resurrection. His life is our life.

The rest of the chapter is about living in light of that stunning truth—that is, killing off every vestige of our old fleshly life (anger, lies, malice, that sort of thing) and clothing ourselves instead in the new Christ-like life that we’ve been given, “which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (v. 10).  

The punchline is in verse 17. Since our life = Christ, then everything we do—every word and every deed—should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

What does this have to do with why God gathers us into Christian communities, including the little communities we call small groups?

Everything, and it is spelled out in verses 12-16. This new life in Christ is essentially and unavoidably a team life. It’s something we do together as God’s chosen and beloved people:

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Three things stand out in this paragraph:

* Our team life is complicated by the ongoing sinful vestiges of our old selves. There’s a constant need for humility and kindness and forbearance. We all have growing to do.

* The over-arching characteristic of our community life is love—which isn’t so surprising, given that it is a life lived in the name of Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us.

* Our task—in love, and with much patience and kindness—is to increase the rich presence of the word of Christ amongst each other by speaking it to each other. The word of Christ is what grows and changes us to be like Christ. The more it permeates our lives, the more each word and deed of our lives will be done in his name.

The reason God calls us together in community is so that the Word of Christ can dwell richly in our midst and grow us to be like him. This happens as we love each other by patiently, kindly and humbly speaking that word to each other in any way we can.

The passage mentions a number of ways we can do this—it speaks of teaching and admonishing and singing and giving thanks. We could easily flesh that list out with other speaking verbs like reminding, encouraging, exhorting, discussing, chewing over, and asking-the-kind-of-dumb-but-obvious-question-that-helps-everyone.

Whatever mode of speech is involved, the content is ‘the Word of Christ’ and the purpose is to help one another grow to be like Christ.

Now there’s a why to get us out the door on Wednesday nights.

Small groups aren’t about helping me feel part of things, or helping me to connect with people, or even expressing my commitment to church. In fact, they are not really about me at all. The reason to go to a small group is that God has called me to love you and be an agent of your growth in Christ. I go because you need me to speak the Word of Christ to you (and because I need to hear it from you).

The how of belonging to a small group flows straight out of this why, and is not very hard to figure out. It would include things like this:

* We should turn up every week, unless there is some important other reason—because is there really anything more important in your life than the job God has given us to do with each other in a small group?

* We should come ready to speak in love. Read and prepare the passage in advance if that helps, and take the initiative to speak in any way you can to help others understand and apply this part of God’s word. Ask questions. Answer questions. Grapple hard with the text in front of you. Share what you see. Look out for people who were just about to speak but got cut off, and invite them to contribute. Open up about your own struggles to put the word into practice. There are scads of opportunities to allow the ‘word to dwell richly’ in your group—and that’s your task.

* This why also generates a copious list of don’ts that I find very easy to compile (by thinking back over my own thoughtless, self-oriented behaviour in small groups over the years). Don’t sit on your hands during the discussion. Don’t try to save face or protect yourself. Don’t leave it to everyone else. Don’t jump on your hobby horses when they pass by. Don’t stick tenaciously to your point in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Don’t try to make yourself look good. Don’t give the lazy pat answer that you could have given without even looking at the text. Don’t take the group off to some other interesting passage that you like, unless it is vital for understanding the passage you’re actually reading. Don’t be afraid to open up and be honest about your struggles.

I’ll leave you to figure out your own specific list of how-to’s, because it will be a little different for each person in each different group and circumstance. But if you can grasp why God wants to you go to small group this Wednesday night, then how is not so difficult.

At least, it’s not difficult to understand. Doing it consistently and lovingly? Well that’s that the challenge the word of Christ brings us as we start a new of small group life together.

PS.

Feel free to share this article with your church or small group members. It might be a useful discussion-starter sometime early in the year as you talk about group norms and goals together.

And if you’d like to get The Payneful Truth every week, along with work in progress excerpts and other goodies, sign up as a Partner. You can try it free for 90-days (click the button for more details).

The chapter is based on Point 4 of Two ways to live, which in the latest revised version says:

Because of his love, God sent his Son into the world: the man Jesus Christ.

Jesus always lived under God’s rule.

But Jesus took our punishment by dying in our place.

Massive ideas, all of them.

You’ll see that this week’s instalment basically discusses the first two of the statements.

As I’m always I’m keen to hear from you, with critiques, suggestions and ideas. Don’t hold back! In particular, because there is just SO much to say about who Jesus is, about his coming into the world, his life, his atoning death—I’m especially keen to hear about anything vital you think I’ve missed out so far, and whether anything I have included could be sacrificed if necessary.

You can read the text below, or listen via the audio player above, or you can also download a PDF of the chapter, which is easier for printing and for referring to specific lines and paragraphs.

TP

Chapter 4: The life and death of Jesus

The backdrop is in place. The supporting actors are in position. The lights go up, and now the main act begins. The central character of the Christian message steps onto the stage of history.

Jesus himself.

The background we’ve traced so far—of God as creator and ruler of all, of human rebellion against God, and God’s justice against us—all of this prepares us for Jesus’ arrival.

This is how the Bible itself is structured. The first half (the Old Testament) sets up the great problem of God and us and the world; the second half (the New Testament) tells us what God himself does to redeem the situation through Jesus.

However, it would be wrong to think that the Old Testament is only about the doom and gloom of the human problem. Also running through the Old Testament like a scarlet thread is the patience and kindness and love of God for flawed, rebellious humans like us. God chooses a particular nation—Israel, the descendants of Abraham—to be his own special people. Time and again in the Old Testament, God kindly and lovingly rescues his people from the consequences of their own actions. He delivers them from their enemies, and provides for them in multiple ways, even though they continue to be stubborn and rebellious towards him.

In fact, God repeatedly promises in the Old Testament that because of his love, he will one day step in personally to fix all the mess that has erupted and spread because of human rebellion against him. Sometimes God promises that he himself will come and bring mercy and salvation (for example in Isaiah 40). At other points, he promises that he will send his anointed king, or ‘Messiah’, to set people free and defeat evil and reign victorious over all.

(A little footnote here that will be important later on. In the Old Testament, the way someone was made king was by anointing them with oil. So the Hebrew word for ‘anointed one’ came to mean essentially ‘the king God had appointed’. That word was ‘Messiah’. The word ‘Christ’ in the New Testament is the Greek language version of that same word. So a ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’ is a ‘king appointed by God’.)

Here’s what the prophet Isaiah predicted would happen when God sent his anointed Messiah to bring relief to his people:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me (i.e. made me a ‘Messiah-king’)

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God. (Isaiah 61:1-2)

At the time that Jesus was born, some 700 years after Isaiah’s prophecy, the Jewish people were still expecting this liberating Messiah-King to arrive.

But when Jesus did come, he didn’t fit their expectations at all. He still doesn’t meet our expectations today.

If God was going to send a ‘Messiah’ to fix everything up, to right all the wrongs, to bring restoration and liberty and salvation and all the rest, how would you write the script? What sort of person would he be? And what would he do to save the day and set everything straight?

You probably wouldn’t have him being born to a young unmarried girl in an out of the way place in the humblest of circumstances, with his first cradle being a ‘manger’ (which was either a stable for sheltering animals, or perhaps an animal food trough).

You probably wouldn’t have him live in obscurity as a tradesman until his 30th birthday, have a short three-year career as a teacher and wonder-worker, give him a support crew of nobodies and lowlifes, have the entire intellectual, religious and political establishment against him, and then cap it all off by having him executed in the most humiliating way possible.

In so many ways, Jesus wasn’t and isn’t what people expected. And there’s so much that could be said about him—who he was, what he taught, what he did, the impact he had on those around him, and so on. There are four accounts of Jesus’ life in the New Testament (the four ‘Gospels’, as they are called). It’s well worth reading one of them to fill out what I am going to summarize here only briefly. (Footnote here to The Essential Jesus).

There are four really significant things to know about Jesus. We’ll talk about the first three in this chapter and the fourth in the next: his arrival, his life, his death, his resurrection.

His arrival

Most of the time, we talk about babies being born not arriving. To ‘arrive’ means that you’ve come from somewhere else.

That’s how the New Testament authors constantly talk about Jesus. He wasn’t simply born. He arrived. He ‘came’ into the world. He was God’s own Son, sent into the world by God to be born as a man; sent to fulfil God’s ancient promise that he would one day come to his people and rescue them.

One of the most striking and beautiful passages in the New Testament, the opening of John’s Gospel, puts it like this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it …

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

With the birth of Jesus, John is saying here, God himself stepped into his creation. His own ‘word’—the very expression of his mind and person—became flesh and lived among us.

As the Gospel accounts unfold, we constantly see people trying to come to terms with this. On the one hand, Jesus is clearly a real, flesh-and-blood man like anyone else. He eats, he sleeps, he weeps, he gets angry, he suffers.

And yet he keeps speaking and acting as he if he is more than a man. He tells people that their sins are forgiven (Mark 2:5). He speaks and acts with an extraordinary authority, even over the creation itself. He heals diseases and stills storms with a word (Mark 2:1-12; Mark 4:35-41). He claims to be God’s Son, sent from God the Father, the only one who truly knows the Father, and whom the Father has appointed to be the judge of the world (John 5:19-29). It’s no wonder that the people of Jesus’ time were astonished and confounded by him, and wondered whether he might be the long-awaited Messiah-king.

As CS Lewis once famously wrote, someone who says the kinds of things that Jesus said about himself is not simply a noble moral teacher. He is either seriously deluded about himself, or else a charlatan making outrageous claims about himself, or else he is who he claims to be—God’s own Son, sent into the world. But a nice, safe, admirable, moral teacher? This is not really an option that Jesus himself leaves open to us.

His life

All the same, Jesus certainly lived an impeccably moral life, and was an extraordinary teacher.

For me personally, this is one of the reasons I find the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life so compelling. I’m a devoted reader of novels, and one of the hardest tasks in fiction is to create a genuinely good character. The more moral and good you try to make your character, the less believable they become. Perhaps this is because we know that humans are so flawed, and that even the best of us can’t escape the gravitational pull of our own weakness and self-interest.

In the Gospels, though, we constantly encounter someone who does what is right and good and loving and compassionate, and never seems to get it wrong. Jesus knows when to be indignantly angry at injustice and corruption, and when to weep over it. He knows when to rebuke religious hypocrites and when to offer them a path to forgiveness and change.

He is just … perfect on every occasion, and yet in a way that is utterly believable as you read it. I don’t see how you could make Jesus up.

The Bible’s own explanation for Jesus’ perfection of character is that he was the one human being in all of our history who didn’t reject God in any way, or rebel against his rule—as we all have done. Jesus always lived with God as king.

His teaching also constantly revolved around this theme. He spoke often of ‘the kingdom of God’—what it would mean to live under God’s rule instead of rebelling against him. He taught about living a ‘kingdom’ kind of life, a life of love, justice, mercy, kindness, and so on—that is, the kind of life we were created to live, but which we’ve all walked away from and messed up, by rebelling against God and his ways.

Jesus always lived under God’s kingship or rule, and taught others to do the same.

Of all the people who have ever lived, he was the only one not to come under the sentence of God’s judgement. He was the only human who didn’t deserve to die.

And yet he not only died; he died an agonising and humiliating death as a criminal.

You have to ask why.

His death

(Stay tuned …)

This is one of the ‘freelist’ editions of The Payneful Truth that goes out to everyone on the list. If you’d like to get every edition every week, sign up as a subscriber. Click this button to find out more and to get a 90-day free trial.

The audio version of the conversation goes for about 40 minutes. The edited text version below doesn’t cover the whole thing—but I figured that 3000 words of transcript was enough!

Enjoy.

TP

Tony: So there are all kinds of things I was going to talk you about today. But you just were mentioning before that you’ve started work on another book—on evangelism. Why do we need a book on evangelism?

Phillip: Well, the book that's been a great help to people was Chapman's Know and Tell The Gospel. But a generation has risen up that has never heard of Chappo, and people read books that are current rather than what is really best. So I think we just need another book that is currently teaching people about evangelism, encouraging them to do it.

TP: What’s the outline of it?

PJ: Part 1 is on the who, why, what, when kind of thing—who evangelises, why do you evangelise? Part 2 then works through the gospel itself (I'm going to use Two ways to live as the summary) showing the kategorics of it rather than the apologetics of it. Because I think in our evangelism, we are too defensive and not... What's the alternate word for defensive that's nice?

TP: Positive?

PJ: Well … we're not telling the world that the world is wrong. But if the end point is that want to ask people to repent, you’ve got to point out what's wrong with your life that you need to repent from. And so, it's showing the implications of creation and rebellion and judgment in terms of how the world is operating in blindness and ignorance. So it's the accusing of the world by the gospel.

And then, Part 3 of the book is about the spiritual nature of evangelism. Because it's about prayer. It's about the work of the Holy Spirit in changing people's lives. It's about our need to beg God for the mercy that is really required. We need to be more encouraged, I think, that this is not an impossible task because we have God doing the task. The Holy Spirit in the end is the evangelist.

TP: In talking about ‘kategorics’ in Part 2, are you saying—if repentance is a turning from and a turning to, what are you turning from? Like turning from idols to the true and living God?

PJ: Yes that’s right. Think how the Bible treats idolatry. It really says that it's foolishness; it's an absurdity. To worship things that are less than yourself as if they are God, is just an absurdity. And likewise, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. But we say, “All of the most educated, wise, sensible people in all the universe are saying there is no God. And so we've got to answer their accusations.” Now, the fool of Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 is a moral fool—but then that's the point.

TP: So ‘positive’ is not the right word. We’re not trying to be positive about the world, but expose the folly of the world through shining the light of the gospel on it. But I was going to ask you: how do we do that in a way that doesn't come across as the Nasty Party or as a negative, unattractive kind of presentation?

PJ: Well, personally, it’s simple. Because personally, it's so easy to love people. And in the context of your genuine care and concern and love for them, the negative things that you say are part of that expression of love. But media-wise and in a book, it's much harder to do.

What I am trying to emphasize is that the thing that connects us with people in the world is not culture studies, and so on. The thing that connects us is creation. We're humans, we have babies, we're in love, we live in a magnificent creation. And so, try and say the positive things that are part of the way in which God has made us and which work and which we enjoy.

But having said all that, no matter how hard you try, in a hyper-sensitive age, as soon as you say, "Yeah, but we're all liars" …  It’s offensive.

TP: Are you saying that if we get too apologetic or defensive about the gospel, we don't expose people to truth about themselves?

PJ: Yes, absolutely. And in fact, I looked at apologia in the New Testament. It's never used of intellectual defence. It's always used of what you say when you're dragged in front of the court.

TP: Like when Paul making his defence before...

PJ: Festus or Agrippa or people like that. That's when you use the word. There is the reference in 1 Peter 3 about giving the defence for the hope that lies within you. But that's in the context of being accused of being immoral and then being dragged off and persecuted. So it always seems to be in the persecution context.

And kategoria (to accuse, to convict) is used almost twice as often as apologia. But hardly anybody talks about that—about ‘kategorics’.

The other good word, which we don't know how to translate, is the one in John 16 about Holy Spirit convicting the world of sin and righteous and judgement. And in that sense, while I need to point out what's wrong with the world, it's the Holy Spirit who does that work of conviction.

I wonder if the best word is ‘exposé’. We’re trying to do an exposé of the world. A bit like how the ICAC in NSW ‘exposes’ corruption but doesn’t actually do the prosecuting. It’s the Holy Spirit who prosecutes.

TP: So as part of this book on evangelism, you're going to be talking about what the gospel actually is, the gospel that we preach, and you’re going to use Two Ways To Live as your summary or framework—which is a convenient segue to one of the things that I wanted to ask you about.

With this new version of Two Ways To Live—one of the things that it's managed to successfully convey is the centrality and importance of the resurrection of Jesus.

Most people don't think of it that way. In fact, most of us would probably say the cross is the centre or the nutshell or the climax of the gospel, and the resurrection is kind of the denouement, the wrapping up of the loose ends. So why do you say that the resurrection is the climax of the gospel?

PJ: When you analyse the New Testament and its gospel preaching, it nearly always features the resurrection. And I think in the Book of Acts, it always is on the resurrection. And what is interesting in the Book of Acts is that it's never on the atoning work of the cross. Luke knows about the atoning work of the cross, because Paul speaks about it in Acts 20 to the Ephesian elders. It's not as if it's a theologically unknown thing. But that’s not what they preached when they were speaking to the Jews in the synagogues, or the Gentiles in the synagogues, or the out and out Gentiles in Athens. But they always preached the resurrection.

It's slightly astonishing when you first see it, because most gospel preaching in my lifetime has been about Jesus dying on the cross for my sins—which I believe and the New Testament believes. But then the resurrection is, “Oh and by the way, he's not dead; he's alive.” It has no theological place. It's just a kind of an end point somehow.

But that's not how it was in the New Testament. As you explore the word ‘gospel’, it means ‘the great declaration’. And the great declaration is that Jesus is King. Which explains why in the Gospels, when Jesus preaches the gospel, it's all about the kingdom of God. It's not about the crucifixion there either. And so the opening gospel reference is Jesus in Mark 1:14-15: "The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel." It's about the coming of the Kingdom. And with the resurrection of Jesus, the kingdom of Jesus, the kingdom of our Lord has arrived. And so, that's the announcement, the King has come.

But when you come to the answer, “the King has come”, you find out that the way he came, was by conquering the enemy. And he conquered the enemy by his death and resurrection—not that I want toreplace Penal Substitutionary Atonement with Christus Victor. But Christus Victor is there. It's just not the alternative to Penal Sub. How did he conquer the enemy? Well, by paying the penalty for us and turning aside God's wrath—so that the outcome is you can preach to those who repent and acknowledge the King that you'll be forgiven, you'll be pardoned, because he became King by his atoning death and resurrection. But resurrection is a key element to it.

Once you notice this, you also begin to notice all the other NT gospel summaries in which the resurrection is central. For example, much of Romans is an exposition of the propitiatory redemption by Jesus, but it starts with Paul talking about the ‘gospel of God’, and summarizing it as: “concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 1:3-4).  2 Tim 2:8 is much the same: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel”.

Now, none of this means that the atoning work of the Lord, His death on the cross is an irrelevance! It is absolutely fundamental to his resurrection. Without it, there would be no resurrection. The two go hand-in-hand, but the thing you say to the outsider first is resurrection. The thing that you then say is forgiveness through the death. That would seem as the pattern in the New Testament uses.

TP: It's like that verse in Acts 2 when Peter gets to the climax of his sermon and he says, "Therefore let all Israel know that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

PJ: Yes, and then they're cut to the heart. And ask what can we do?

TP: Repent and be forgiven.

PJ: Yes.

TP: So, in Two Ways To Live you get to the resurrection at point five of the six points. It's the climax, and point six is the response. And in this new edition, we've put the offer of forgiveness of sins into point five, into the resurrection box for this reason—to capture the sense that we're at the climax and the offer of the gospel. Everything has now been said. We've understood the death of Jesus, because we've understood the judgment of God, because we've understood sin, because we've understood creation, and so then you get to the climax in the resurrection where the gospel declaration and offer is.

PJ: Yes. In Luke 24, in the upper room where he's speaking to the apostles in his resurrection, he says: "It was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead, and repentance and forgiveness of sins to be preached to all nations” and so on. I think most of the community's evangelism in my lifetime has been “Christ suffered for your sins … and repentance and forgiveness of sin should be all preached to all nations”. You leave out the resurrection phrase—whereas the resurrection is the effective solution, and the effective consequence, of him dying for our sins, which enables repentance and forgiveness now to be preached to all nations.

TP: And to go further, I'd say the gospel I've heard for most of my lifetime in evangelical churches is: he died for our sins so that you can be forgiven and receive eternal life through that atonement. Virtually full stop. ‘Repent’ is often not there.

PJ: Yes. And why is that so? It can be lots of reasons. One is we don't like to say anything negative to people about their lives. Another is that we're so committed to the idea that gospel is ‘good news’, rather than ‘great news’ that we don't want to say anything that has any negative element to it at all. We just want to tell the good news that you're forgiven, you're forgiven, you're forgiven.

TP: And if you don't talk about Jesus as the Risen King, then there's nobody really to repent before.

PJ: I spent many, many happy years at Katoomba Convention. And I was a young fellow when I was involved in the Council there. And there are a lot of really great old men of evangelicalism in Sydney, who shared with me lots of stories and episodes of life. I heard many times about the famous evangelists who came to Sydney in the 1930s and 40s and 50s.  Billy Graham (in 1959) was just the end one. There was Hiram Appleby, and all kinds of people. But they said that the one who had the smallest number of converts, but the highest rate of retention was WP Nicholson, the great Irish evangelist. Not many people got converted by his preaching, but the people who got converted were really converted. The jungle doctor, Paul White, was one of them. And one of the distinctive things of WP Nicholson's evangelism was that he used to ask for repentance and restitution. "If you really are repentant, well then go and pay back what you've done." He preached restitution, which limited the number of people who signed the decision cards! But those who did, really repented.

TP: As I've read about the gospel and controversies about the gospel over the last 25 or 30 years, there's been this fight between two groups—the forgiveness-cross-penal substitution people, and the resurrection-kingdom people; almost like there are two gospels. And the resurrection-kingdom gospel is often about the renovation and renewal of the world, and it becomes an atonement-less, cross-less kind of gospel.  And I can understand why many good brothers  don't want to go there, and so are a bit reluctant to give the resurrection too much play in case it becomes this kind of kingdom gospel.

PJ: Yes you have to keep the two together. It’s also like that gospel where you can supposedly have Jesus as your Saviour and then some other time have a second kind of blessing of his Lordship. But, the only way he saves you is by being your Lord. You have to keep the two things together.

TP: The other really unique thing about Two Ways To Live as a gospel outline is that it talks about creation, and hardly any other gospel presentations do that.

PJ: No, they don't. And hardly any in the New Testament do either. Adam is hardly mentioned in the Old Testament once you get past Gen 1-3. But creation is the backdrop to everything that happens in the selection of Abraham and the history of Israel. And it's a part that I think the Jews didn't quarrel about. The Sadducees and the Pharisees fought over the resurrection and over angels and over prophets. They didn't fight over creation; that was just a given. And so, there was no reason for Paul to particularly preach in the synagogues about creation or for Jesus to preach about creation.

However, it is striking that when Paul goes to Lystra and he's talking to pagans and when he goes to Athens and he's talking to idolaters, then he begins with the one God, who is the creator of all and to whom we are answerable—and so worshipping men in Lystra, and worshipping idols in Acts 17, is totally inappropriate. This is critical to understanding their situation and need of forgiveness and the need of the Christ.

And that I think is true in our context. In one sense, previous generations accepted creation. But we’ve now lived through this great fight over evolution and intelligent design, where atheists use evolution to argue against God's existence, and Christians use intelligent design to argue for God's existence, and neither are listening to each other at all.

The opposite of creation is not evolution. The opposite of creation is accidentalism; it's naturalistic materialism and atheism. That's why the Christians are right in feeling that evolution is on the side of the atheists because the atheists use evolution in that way. But we mustn't get ourselves hung up with the mechanisms. The issue is accidentalism, as opposed to purposeful personal creation. You get rid of creation and the creator, you then change the doctrine of sin, because sin is no longer humans’ rebellion against their creator; sin now becomes breaking rules and regulations. And so, instead of being people who place themselves outside the law, and people who make their own laws, as the essence of sin, we become law breakers as the essence of sin. And so, we then move to solve the problems by attending to the symptoms, rather than attending to the disease. And if you've got a wrong diagnosis, just attending to symptoms for example, you'll never solve the problem.

PJ: You've got to diagnose what the disease is. And the disease is our rebellion against God—which means you can be a highly moral person, and totally godless. Whereas the highly moral person doesn't feel like we are preaching to them because they are moral.

And so, without a proper doctrine of creation, I don't think you've get a proper doctrine of sin. And without a proper doctrine of sin, the reason for judgment seems weird. Because, I mean, why do you get sent to hell for eternity for telling lies or stealing from Woolworths. It seems disproportionate, somehow. But that's because you're thinking just of the symptoms; you're not thinking of how you have put yourself in total opposition to God.

And so you don't understand, "How did Jesus dying on the cross actually pay for my sin?" It all becomes de-personalized, de-relationalized and symptomatic, rather than disease-oriented. So we need to re-introduce creation into our understanding, so that people will understand what sin is, what God's judgment is, and how Jesus' death pays for it.

TP: I think that's very true. I think some of the other gospel presentations I've seen recently focus on the problems we have—our lack of meaning, our lack of purpose, the things that we desire and seek, and so on. These are symptoms. But if we don't penetrate further down to the underlying problem, which is a rebellion against God, it's very hard to see then why death is God's judgment against us, and why Jesus’ death is the answer.

PJ: And it lacks the eschatology too, doesn't it? It speaks of the damage that we do to ourselves, each other and the world (as our new version puts it), but doesn’t go further than offering to fix that damage. If I can fix the damage, then I’ve helped you. And so, Jesus loves you, and he's shown he loves you by his death, and has risen from the dead. And so now turn back to him, and you will have a fulfilled, happy, satisfied life. But the eschatology of the gospel has just completely gone.

So I think the creation background is an important one for our understanding.

Hope you enjoyed that. I’ll be back next week, God willing, with another instalment from the Two Ways to Live evangelistic book that I’m writing. I’m up to chapter 4 on the death of Jesus, and plan to send at least some of that chapter out to the whole list next week.

If you’d like to get every edition of The Payneful Truth every week, become a subscriber. Here’s a free trial link:

Here’s the next chapter in the ‘Two ways to live’ evangelistic book. It’s based on box 3 of the outline, and tries to do that difficult thing of speaking plainly, persuasively and winsomely about the most awful subject—that we’re all facing death and judgement because of our rebellion against God.

Three things I’ve been particularly aware of as I’ve been drafting:

* I don’t want to write in a mealy-mouth, backpedalling fashion about the subject, as if I’m embarrassed about it;

* And yet I’m aware it will be a topic that many readers will be unfamiliar with and potentially offended by—so no need to put them off unnecessarily by how I approach it;

* But most significantly, unless the reader understands why death (and eternal destruction/death) is the punishment for our rebellion, it’s impossible to understand why the death of Christ takes our punishment for us.

Looking forward to your feedback about it. (Send me an email at tonyjpayne@me.com)

A bit of housekeeping: some of you have been having difficulty downloading the PDF of the chapter. I’ve been back and forth with the substack platform about it, and we haven’t got a complete solution yet. In the meantime:

* If you log in to the substack website itself, you’ll be able to download the pdf from the website. That seems to be working for everyone.

* As a fall back, I’ve also pasted the text of the chapter below (something I maybe should have done from the outset).

The justice of God

One of the many strange decisions I have made in my life is to be an Arsenal supporter. I live on the other side of the world from England, and so could have really chosen any football team to go for. But Arsenal it is, and will remain.

It’s a burden, of course, Arsenal’s form in recent years being what it is.

But the worst of it is that Arsenal suffers the most blatant refereeing injustice in the entire Premier League. It’s unbelievable. I can’t remember ever seeing an Arsenal match in which the referee was not against us. When a referee arrives at Arsenal, a switch flips in what passes for his brain. Not only will he call every 50/50 decision against us, but he will perpetrate the most blatant howlers and inconsistencies. We are always getting robbed, and I am constantly left shouting at the TV about the injustice of it all.

Strange thing, though. My brother, the Liverpool supporter, says exactly the same thing about how the refs treat his team. And so does my Spurs mate, and the poor sap I know who goes for Watford.

Every football fan is a one-eyed judge. When a decision goes our way, it was absolutely reasonable and just. When a decision goes against us, it is an obvious injustice by a criminally biased referee.

It’s not just in sport, of course. When some idiot roars past me driving dangerously fast, and then I come across him a few minutes later, parked on the side of the road getting a speeding ticket, I give a little satisfied grunt. Serves him right.

When I am the idiot driving too fast in a hurry to get somewhere, and a police car looms up behind me and flashes its lights, I also make a noise, but not a satisfied grunt.

We are like this as humans. We have a profound sense that there is such a thing as ‘justice’—that certain things should be the case, and that when they are not, it’s just not right or fair, and there should be some kind of reckoning. And yet we are self-centred and inconsistent about it. Sometimes we rush to judgement in our anger and get it wrong. Very often, we want justice to apply to thee, but not to me.

It’s interesting, though, that we are so passionate about justice, and so outraged when something is ‘not fair’, especially when it is not fair to us. In a god-less, accidental world, with no created standards of right and wrong, where did we get the idea that there is some kind of universal court of rightness or justice that applies to everybody, and to which we can appeal when things don’t go our way? It is hard to see how this kind of ‘justice’ has any rational basis in a purely material, accidental universe. In fact, if evolutionary development entirely explains how things have come to be the way they are, then when Person A screws over Person B, what’s to complain about? Surely that’s just the survival of the fittest.

The kind of ‘justice’ we take for granted in Western society is (once again) a very biblical idea. It has its roots in the justice of God.

God is the perfectly just and good judge. The goodness with which he created the world is also the goodness with which he assesses and judges what he has made, including us. Unlike human judges, God is never corrupt or arbitrary or incompetent. He always administers justice rightly, patiently and impartially.

We see this in God’s reaction to Adam and Eve’s rebellion against him. After the fateful events of the serpent and the eating of the fruit, the next paragraph goes like this:

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

The way Adam and Eve hide from God’s presence tells us what sort of relationship they used to have—one in which the Lord would walk in the garden and talk with them. But now they are afraid of him, and flee his presence. God reacts with a series of steadily escalating questions.

—Where are you?

—Who told you that you were naked?

—Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

—What is this that you have done?

God looks for Adam and Eve, and for the truth of what they have done. He is disturbed at their absence, and steadily horrified by their disobedience. If we can picture the Lord God walking in the garden at the beginning of the paragraph, we can almost imagine him with his head in his hands by the end of it.

God then pronounces judgement on the serpent and the woman and the man, in a way that matches their wrongdoing.

The serpent is doomed to crawl on his belly and eat dust, because he rose up as one of God’s creatures and lured humanity into rebellion against him. Now he will be the lowest of the low.

Likewise with the woman. Because she saw fit to rebel against God’s ways, the unique part she plays in God’s plan for humanity (bearing children to ‘multiply and fill the earth’)’ will be marked by pain and suffering.

And because the man willingly joined his wife in disobedience, he will no longer have a beautiful and fruitful garden to work in. Instead, the ground is cursed, and becomes hard and resistant to his efforts. (For the details, read Genesis 3).

All of this correlates with what we looked at in the last chapter. Our rebellion against God has consequences. Nothing is the same anymore. On all sides, we experience difficulty, pain, suffering and hardship, not only in ourselves and in our relationships, but in the world itself. The Bible says that these dysfunctional consequences are part of God’s justice.

The goodness of our world is a created goodness, formed and fashioned by a good God. When we rebel against God and the way that he has created the world, we rebel against goodness. And to rebel against goodness is to be given over to badness.

This is the nature of God’s justice against humanity. He’s giving us what we deserve, and have asked for. We have decided that we don’t want to live under his rule, within the good and beautiful order that he has created. OK then, says God, you want to reject me, and the goodness that I have baked into this beautiful world? Go ahead and see how that works out for you.

The punishment fits the crime.

But we haven’t yet mentioned the worst aspect of God’s punishment for human rebellion.

God is not only the creator and source of all goodness; he is the creator and giver of life. To be cut off from God, is to be cut off from life.

We are talking about the great unmentionable, the subject we never want to talk about or even think about. Death. Death is the final and awful punishment for rebelling against God, because a rejection of God is a rejection of the life that God gives.

As Adam and Eve discovered.

When God commanded them not to eat from that one tree, he warned them that “in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). That is just what happened. When God ejected them from the Garden and from his presence, they became like cut flowers—dead from that point on, because they had been severed from the source of their life. They were made from dust, and to dust they would inevitably return.

Death is neither natural nor good. It is the judgement of God against us for our rebellion against him. In rejecting him, we reject the life that only he can give.

This is a hard truth, but we sense its truth whenever we encounter death. Both of my parents are now dead, and on both occasions I was able to view their bodies after their passing. It was a strange and sad experience. It wasn’t possible to stand there and look down at their corpses, and think that I was looking at something natural and good. It was all terribly wrong. The good and precious thing that had been their lives was gone forever.

That word ‘forever’ haunts us. Our loved ones are gone forever. One day, we all will be gone forever. But does ‘forever’ have any content? Is there something beyond death?

This is impossible for us to know by our own lights. In fact, it is difficult even to imagine what an existence beyond death might be. But God exists outside of time. He was there before the world came to be, and before human life began. And he is there after human life finishes. We will one day all stand before him, and give an account for all that we have done in our rebellion against him; for the people we have wronged and hurt; for all the damage we have done.

This both comforts and horrifies me. I am deeply glad that there will come a time when the evils and injustices of the world will be set to rights; when all those who have done terrible wrongs in the world will face justice from God for their crimes. I have a decently long list of people I am looking forward to God sorting out.

But I am less glad about the prospect of that justice being applied to me. I am a one-eyed judge when it comes to me, because I know that my rebellion against God has manifested itself in multiple ways that I would not be keen to answer for.

The ‘day of judgement’ that the Bible speaks of is hard for us to wrap our minds around, because we have no experience of any life beyond this one. We find an existence and time of reckoning beyond death difficult to visualise, and we find it equally hard to comprehend what sort of punishment or justice God might dispense beyond death. The Bible speaks on the one hand of being shut out from God’s presence forever, of experiencing an ‘eternal destruction’; on the other hand, it promises an ‘eternal life’ for those pass the test of judgement.

But who is going to pass that test?

The full nature of the human problem may now be apparent. If we have all rebelled against God, without exception, surely we are all doomed to fall on the wrong side of God’s judgement, without exception. We all die, and we will all face a negative judgement against us beyond death.

If the Christian gospel was a TV drama, this is the black moment—the time when everything seems dark and hopeless. The news seems as grim as it could be.

But understanding and appreciating the nature of this bad news is essential for understanding the extraordinary good news that is about to unfold.

Like a baby laid in a manger, you might say.

My favourite secular Christmas song captures this: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas”, originally sung by Judy Garland in Meet me in St Louis, and included on just about everyone’s Christmas album ever since.

It captures the bittersweet nature of Christmas so wistfully and longingly. It speaks of Christmas as a time of gathering and friends and even hope. And yet our lives never live up to that dream. In fact, we can only hope that maybe next year “our troubles will be far away”. Maybe next year, we will actually be able to gather with all our old friends as we once did. “Until then, we’ll just have to muddle through somehow.”

Here’s the James Taylor version:

Of course, the best Christmas carols reflect this even better—that is, the joy of God becoming man because man is in such a desperate state. Hark, the Herald is famous for speaking of “Peace on earth and mercy mild; God and sinners reconciled”. Joy to the world has an often-omitted third verse that speaks of Jesus coming to lift the curse.

But my favourite Christmas hymn, which is hardly ever sung these days, does it beautifully:

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,

All for love’s sake becamest poor;

Thrones for a manger didst surrender,

Sapphire paved courts for stable floor.

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,

All for love’s sake becamest poor.

Thou who art God beyond all praising,

All for love’s sake becamest man;

Stooping so low, but sinners raising,

Heavenward by Thine eternal plan.

Thou who art God beyond all praising,

All for love’s sake becamest man.

(Here’s the King’s College Cambridge version:)

The news of Jesus’ incarnation is good news, because of the lost and sinful world into which he was born, and which he came to save. He became poor to make the poor rich.

I’ve spent the last few days of this last pre-Christmas week finishing a draft of chapter 2 of the Two ways to live evangelistic book (that a number of you are helping me write). It’s the chapter all about our rejection of God, and all the damage we do to ourselves and each other and the world. I’ve pasted the final section of the chapter below (this is the part that those of you who are partner/subscribers have been waiting on).

It’s certainly not the happiest, tinsel-covered subject for an end of year meditation.

But then again, maybe it’s the perfect pre-Christmas reading; a picture of the black night of Christmas eve into which the light of the world was born.

The 2wtl Book: Chapter 2

The Human Problem

The first two thirds of the chapter sets out the nature of rebellion against God. This final part thinks about the consequences for our lives.

…

When we reject God, we attack the foundations of everything that is true and good and beautiful in the world. We embrace the first lie. And then all the other lies and follies and consequences start to compound.

We see this played out in so many ways, in our own lives and in our broader culture.

In our personal lives, perhaps the most significant consequence of our declaration of independence from God is how hard we find it to be interdependent with each other. Once I’ve decided that I’m the centre of my world (not God), that puts me in an odd position with respect to You. We’re no longer on the same level—both creatures of God, both in his image, both taking our cue from him as to how we are to treat each other as fellow creatures.

Now I’m the little god in charge of my own self and my own world, and when I encounter You, I find another little god who also thinks they are the most important person in their world. And then I find that there isn’t room in our relationship for two little gods. One of us has to prevail.

The self-interest that comes so naturally to us makes all relationships difficult. We’re alienated from each other.

We’re also alienated from the world itself. Because Western society is no longer confident that the world is a created place, with a good and beautiful shape given to it by its Creator, we don’t know what to do with the world. There are multiple examples. We don’t seem able to manage and develop the world’s resources without exploiting and destroying them. We aren’t able to find political leaders who don’t end up disillusioning us with their lies or folly or corruption. We even don’t seem able to figure out something as basic as what it means to be a man or a woman—in fact, a growing number of Westerners are now nervous to say that there even are such things as ‘men’ and ‘women’ (which is a rebellion against reality if ever there was one).

For me personally, one of the most interesting and striking consequences is simply how ugly the modern Western world is. We seem to have lost confidence in the possibility or desirability of beauty. Our cities are full of thrusting buildings of concrete and glass and steel, whose ugliness we hardly notice any more. When was the last time you saw a house or a set of apartments built in the last 50 years, and thought how pleasing it was to the eye?

It’s the same with the arts. Almost no-one listens to modern orchestral music these days, because it has become discordant and jarring. Modern art seems more interested in making political or transgressive statements than in expressing anything beautiful about the world. And whenever I see a poem printed in the review section of the Saturday paper, I valiantly try to read and make sense of it, but give up half way through.

This was not the case in a previous era. The arts were massively and widely appreciated, and we still enjoy and appreciate the artfulness and beauty of those works today. We look at the architecture of a century ago and wonder how they made buildings of such lasting character and beauty.

As a culture we find ourselves in the strange position. We’re like teenagers who can’t help being shaped and moulded by the family we were raised in, and yet whose hostility and rebellion against those values leaves us conflicted and confused. Our underlying cultural values are mostly Christian. And yet our rebellion against God and Christianity has clouded our minds and hearts. We can’t make sense of the world or of our lives. We still encounter the goodness and beauty of the world, and yet perversely we embrace ugliness and self-destructive behaviour.

This is true of our culture. But more importantly, it is true for each one of us. The human problem isn’t just out there in society. It’s in each of our hearts. We’re all personally in rebellion against the God who made us.

This is the human problem, and it’s grim news.

But this grim news is a vital part of the back story to the incredible news (or ‘gospel’) about Jesus. If the news about Jesus was a movie, we’re still in that middle part of the story where things are getting worse and more complicated.

Good news is coming. A resolution is coming. But to understand and appreciate it, there’s one more piece of sober news to wrap our minds and hearts around.

It’s about God. We’ve talked a lot in this chapter about our attitude to God, our rebellion against him, and all the consequences that flow from that.

But what is God’s attitude to our rebellion?

Well that’s the end of chapter 2. Would love your thoughts, as always.

Thanks again for your partnership and fellowship over this past 12 months. It’s been a joy to be able to write for you.

Time for a little break (for all of us). I’ll be back in touch in the second week of January.

TP

Three quick things before we dive in.

First off, does the book have a title? It’s way too early to worry about that. Let’s see what floats to the surface as we go along. For the time being, I’m just going to call it The 2WTL book.

Secondly, who are we writing for? We could simply say ‘the non-Christian reader’, but we have to be more specific. The gospel conversation we have will always be shaped by the person we are talking to—by how much they already know, by their hang-ups or questions, by the language they use, by the assumptions they bring to the table.

Books are the same. Every book has to have a clear idea of its readership. Who do we envisage holding this book in their hands and (God willing) being interested to read the whole thing?

As you’ll see from the introduction, my instinct is to aim this book at the largest category of non-Christian people we are likely come across among our friends and family: the person who has been raised in our culture (that is, Western culture) but who has little or no current interest or contact with Christianity. They may have varying degrees of hostility or apathy or interest or total ignorance towards the gospel, but what unites them is that they inhabit our post-Christian, Western society.

Is this the right target? It will make the book less effective for people who are still enmeshed in non-Western cultures (like Buddhism or Islam), even though they live in our street. And it will make the book a bit less sharp for ‘nominal Christians’ who go to church but aren’t converted.

But it does target the vast majority of people we come across day-to-day. I’m interested in what you think about this. For the kind of people you’d like to give a gospel book to, is this an introduction that motivates them to keep reading, with the right expectations as they do so?

Thirdly, what sort of feedback do I want from you? I don’t need comments on typos, grammar or spelling mistakes at this point. That’s for later. For the introduction, and for every chapter, what I’d love to hear from you is any of the following:

* Can you imagine your non-Christian friends and family reading this? Is there anything that would bore them, put them off or needlessly offend them?

* Is there something you think I could add—an idea or illustration or argument that would strengthen the chapter?

* Is there anything that could be cut, without making any real difference? Is the whole thing too long?

* Is any sentence or phrase or word unclear or obscure?

To make it easier for you to give this feedback, and for me to collate and integrate it, I’m going to send each chapter out as a PDF with line numbers. This will mean there’s a standard way for us all to refer to particular sentences or parts of the chapter, and it also makes it easy for those of you who’d prefer to print out the chapter for reading.

If you follow this link, it will take you to the post where you can download the PDF or listen to the chapter read out.

After this first intro chapter, the remaining chapters will get emailed out to subscribers as part of the normal weekly edition. This means that if you want to keep getting the chapters as they come out, you’ll have to subscribe to the The Payneful Truth. And you can do that via the 90-day free-trial I’m running at the moment:

When you’ve read the chapter, just send an email with your general comments and specific feedback to tonyjpayne@me.com. (Use those line numbers to refer to particular paragraphs or sentences.)

I hope all that makes sense. Thanks again for being willing to help out.

Looking at my schedule over the next few days, and where I’m up to with the next chapter (Chapter 1), I’m pretty sure it’s going to be later next week (or even early the week after) before I send that one out.

Anyway, let’s get started.

Here again is the link for the intro chapter:

TP

The book will be coming out each week (or so) over the next few months here at The Payneful Truth. For more info about this project, and why I’d like your help, see here and then here.

To receive each draft chapter as I write it, and to comment and give feedback, you’ll need to be a regular subscriber. To help you do that, here’s a free 90-day trial.

Each chapter (including this intro) will be in PDF form, with line numbers (see below). This is to make it easy for everyone to comment, and to be able to refer to particular sections or paragraphs or sentences. Send your comments and feedback to tonyjpayne@me.com.

(I’ll also record each chapter as a podcast, for those who prefer to listen.)

Happy reading.

TP

I often catch myself when I come across a book with my name on the cover. I pick it up and read a paragraph and think, “Did I write this? Surely it was someone else. Me, write books? Ridiculous.”

On the other hand, I also find myself regretting the books I never got around to writing.

For example, somehow, in over three decades of producing Christian resources for Matthias Media, I didn’t ever think to write an evangelistic book based on Two Ways to Live. Don’t ask me why. Like most things I regret in life, I think I got distracted. For 35 years.

It’s a book we undoubtedly need. We always need fresh evangelistic books, and one based on Two Ways to Live seems a blindingly obvious option. Perhaps that’s why I never thought to do it.

Well I think it’s time.

Over the next couple of months, I’m going to try to write a shortish, eight-part evangelistic book based around Two Ways to Live—an introduction, a conclusion, and a chapter for each of the six boxes.

And if you’re willing, I’d like you to help me write it—in three ways.

I’m going to send out each chapter as I write it here at The Payneful Truth, starting with the introduction later this week. That first one will go to everyone on the whole list, but after that I’ll keep sending out chapters most weeks as part of the regular weekly newsletter that partners/subscribers get. So your first job (if you’d like to help) is to become a partner and be part of the readership that forces me to write something every week and press ‘send’. You’ve no idea how valuable that is! (See below for how to sign up on a free trial.)

Secondly, and most significantly, your task would be to give me honest feedback and ideas on each of the chapters. These will be first drafts, and the whole purpose of a first draft is to generate the much-better second draft. So I won’t be at all bothered when you tear my first draft to shreds—quite pleased in fact—and I’ll be delighted by the fresh ideas you generate that help make this book as good as it can be. It would be wonderful if, in our collective wisdom, we could come up with a resource that we’d be confident to give to our non-Christian friends and family.

Thirdly, if in God’s kindness a good quality gospel book does emerge from this process, I’d love you to actually give it to all your non-Christian friends and family! (As I plan to do with mine.)

To join in on this project, you’ll need to become a weekly subscriber. That usually costs $7 a month (or $70 a year). But since you’ll be doing me a favour and helping write this book, there’s a 90-day free trial available. You can hang around for the duration of this project, and drop back onto the free list after that if you’d like to. (Or stay on!)

What do you think?

Shall we write a book?

So I lay there and listened to a chunk of the most recent episode of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, a podcast series from Christianity Today. It tells the story of the meteoric growth and tragic implosion of the ministry of Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

As a friend said to me, listening to this podcast series is like watching a slow-motion train wreck, and feeling a little guilty for wanting to see what happens next. And this penultimate episode, which runs for over two hours (!), is certainly like that. It lays out in well-documented detail the final awful unravelling between 2012 and 2014, featuring extended interviews with those involved, including heart-wrenching stories of people who had invested their lives in Mars Hill and were left strewn on the side of the road as collateral damage.

The podcast series itself is by no means perfect. It’s overly long and digressive at points, and has an agenda that peeps through more than once. But it does succeed in telling the story of an outrageously gifted preacher and leader with major character flaws, and the dysfunctional and doomed leadership culture that resulted.

Two things jumped out at me as I listened, along with a nagging question that still bothers me.

The first is perhaps the most obvious. The stakes are high in Christian ministry, and for Christian leaders. It’s a ‘noble work’, as Paul describes it in 1 Timothy 3. It requires a certain kind of person—someone who not only has the ability to teach and lead, but who has the character and personal maturity to exemplify in his life (as far as we sinful humans can) the reality of the truth he teaches.

It’s not as if this is obscure in the New Testament. The characteristics and qualifications for congregational leaders are laid out in multiple places (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, 1 Peter 5).

It’s worth noting, though, that not every Christian virtue is listed in these passages. There’s no mention of joy, for example, or hope, or prayerfulness, or patience, or even love.

The ones that are mentioned seem to correlate to the demands and pressures that godly leaders have to face—their public demeanour and reputation, their family life, their ability to deal constructively and helpfully with others in the church (humble rather than domineering), their approach to conflict (not quarrelsome or arrogant but gentle), the lure of money, and the danger of getting into all of it too young and falling into the condemnation of the devil (of becoming puffed up and conceited).

The tragedy of Mars Hill is that, from quite early on, it was apparent to numerous people that Mark Driscoll had deficiencies in several of these areas—particularly (it seems) in relation to quick temper, belligerence, arrogance and domineering behaviour. And he was young. He started Mars Hill on his own, at the age of 25, without formal theological education and without oversight.

It took 15 years for it all to come unstuck, in a way that almost seemed inevitable, looking back.

The podcast is an exploration of how and why this happened. In particular, how was Mark affirmed and supported in Christian ministry for so long—by his own congregation, by elders and fellow pastors, by other leaders he was in fellowship with—when according to the Bible he seemed patently unsuited to be a pastoral leader?

The podcast suggests many of the reasons we might first think of. Success has a way of blinding us, and leading us to compromise for the ‘sake of growth’. As the movement and institution grows, the pressure to cut corners and overlook bad behaviour intensifies. We become caught up in the culture of celebrity, and in the charisma of a powerful and compelling leader. Allowances are made. No-one wants to speak up, and those who do are quickly side-lined or removed. And so on.

However, it occurred to me, as I lay in bed this morning with a growing sense of sadness, that there was also a theological disaster burbling away underneath it all.

It was a catastrophic failure to believe and act upon the word of God. We implicitly believe that great leaders ought to possess rhetorical power, personal dynamism, and the ability to cast a vision. And many do. But without the godly character required by an elder or overseer, a leader with these gifts is not just unsuitable, but dangerous.

God’s word says this quite clearly. But as with many areas of church life and ministry, we don’t really believe it—or we don’t act upon it, which amounts to the same thing.

In the case of Mars Hill, this failure was compounded by an alternative theological vision of how God speaks. Mark often told the story of how God personally spoke to him as a young man, and told him to do four things: to preach the Bible, train men, plant a church and marry Grace (his then girlfriend).

This God-given calling was one of the theological foundations of the entire enterprise, and was spoken of repeatedly. It was part of the Mars Hills story. Mark was here doing this thing because God had told him to, the implication being that to oppose or inhibit his ministry was to oppose God’s stated purpose.

Ironically, or perhaps predictably, this charismatic theology of revelation was also part of its endgame. When Mark was finally confronted with the judgement of the church elders that he needed to step down and repent and seek help for his character flaws, his response was to claim that God had audibly spoken to him, releasing him from this path. Speaking later to Brian Houston in an interview, Mark tells it like this:

On that Monday night, I was in the bedroom, Grace was in the living room. He (God) spoke to me and he spoke to her in a supernatural way that neither of us anticipated or expected …

So Grace walked in and said, “I feel like the Lord just said what we are supposed to do”. And I said, “I feel like the Lord just spoke to me and said we … it's not what we wanted …”

…and so I asked her: “What did the Lord say to you?” Because I didn't want to influence her and she said …"

"We're released from Mars Hill," interjected Grace fighting back tears.

She said, “Well, what did he say to you?’

I said, “The Lord revealed to me a trap has been set, there's no way for us to return to leadership”. And I didn't know what that meant or what was going on at the time. He said we're released and we need to resign.”

He played the ‘God spoke to me’ card to justify his vision and leadership at Mars Hill, and then played it again to justify leaving this apparently God-given calling, and avoiding a process of accountability and repentance.

Faulty theology is dangerous and damaging. In this case, a bad theology of revelation and ‘ministry calling’ only added to the problems and the damage at Mars Hill.

But then there’s the nagging question that I will close with.

How much of all this did Mark Driscoll know and understand himself, along the way? How self-aware was he of what he was doing and what was happening? Was he knowingly and self-consciously an arrogant bully the whole time?Or was it a complex mix of real conviction about the gospel and the word, along with a flawed character that wasn’t suited for gospel ministry, all blended together in a twisted mess that eventually led to disaster?

In his interview with Brian Houston he candidly admits that he started too young, and without appropriate oversight, and that “my character was not caught up with my gifting”.

Is this all part of the act—the public show of contrition, the fallen celebrity pastor being interviewed on camera by another celebrity pastor? Or is it bound up with the conflicted, complicated mess that we humans are—knowing the sin and dysfunction in our hearts, but not being able to escape it, and perhaps not even wanting to escape it, because we can’t bring ourselves to?

I’ve often pondered this question regarding the wolves and false teachers the New Testament warns us about (just to be clear: I’m not wanting to put Mark in those categories). I’ve always wondered: do these people know that they are wolves and false teachers? Or do they kind of know, but suppress that knowledge in order to function and live with themselves?

Is it perhaps like Romans 1—do they believe the big lie that they know better than God, and become darkened and twisted in their thinking and behaviour, all the while persuading others and themselves that they are worthy of approval?

God save and protect us from this kind of blindness.

PS

There is a Sydney side to the Mars Hill story. Mark Driscoll came out here in 2008 to speak at Katoomba Convention and various other events. It’s interesting to read some accounts and reactions from that time—we published a few of them in The Briefing (here, here and here, for example). Many people were enthusiastic about him and his message; others were more cautious and even critical; none of us I think had any real idea of the problems that were already beginning to manifest themselves back in the States.

Perhaps that’s the lesson: beware the big name, international speaker whose personal life and ministry you don’t really know. In fact, thinking back over the past 25 years, Bill Hybels, Frank Tillapaugh and Ravi Zacharias all had their day as visiting international ministry gurus we were supposed to listen to. All are now in disgrace.

I kicked things off by asking Phil what he was preaching on at the moment.

Phil: As we're coming out of lockdown we thought we'd do something that's just really encouraging for people and it's proven that way. We’ve been preaching on the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. And I've found it an incredible joy, because I've been moved to think how I’ve seen the fruit of the Spirit growing in people over the 18 years I’ve been at St George North—seeing the way people have grown in love, have grown in gentleness, have grown in showing kindness to one another.

It’s been an incredible encouragement to reflect on the work of God's Spirit through the teaching of his word over the time of our ministry here. It's a challenge as well because Galatians 5 also has that verse 25 about walking in step with the Spirit or following the Spirit.

Tony: Is there a fruit of the Spirit that you felt challenged about as you were doing your prep? I always find when I'm prepping to teach or preach something, God sometimes slips a dagger into my own heart and convicts me from the passage I'm reading. Have you found that?

Phil: Well, it's funny. It has been the same couple of fruit of the Spirit that have challenged me every time I've read Galatians 5 since I've been a Christian, which is patience and gentleness. They are the two. And for some reason, whenever I think of patience, I can immediately have something I need to repent of within the last 24 hours.

Tony: Oh Lord, give me patience and do it quickly! Phil, you are a solid and well known part of the fellowship of Sydney Anglican evangelicals here. In fact, I'd probably regard you as my friend who is probably the best connected amongst Sydney Anglicans. We're all part of this fellowship but you just seem to be one of those people who knows people. You’re part of the central diocesan structures a bit, you get involved in the committee work, but you're also out and about and you know lots of ministers and seem to have your finger on the pulse.

And so I thought it would be a helpful question to ask for the sake not only of people who are listening here in Sydney and are interested, but many of our friends all around the world who know about Sydney and its Anglican evangelicalism—if you were going to do a little mini SWOT analysis of Sydney Anglicanism at the moment, what would you are our strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats?

Phil: Well, when you look for those opportunities and threats and that sort of thing, that's a helpful thing to do—though with something as wide and complex as a diocese I sometimes wonder if it is that helpful. Sometimes I think every church should be thinking about that in their local area, which is actually a distinctive of Sydney Anglicanism, isn't it (our congregational nature)?

But I think our opportunities, our threats—they tend to be the same at every point; they just vary by degrees. And for me at the moment, the opportunity in Sydney for ministry is the opportunity of evangelism. We have the most wonderful news in the world and millions of people that need saving. We have this incredible situation of an Anglican diocese with a couple of hundred churches that faithfully preach Jesus, thousands of lay people ready to serve.

I think that is a peculiar thing about Sydney in the Anglican world and that is our opportunity. But although some say, "Oh, the fields are dry and the fields are hard”, I actually think we are at a point where people are more open to the gospel than at any point in my Christian lifetime. Some are more antagonistic, but I think they're a small number who are represented in the media and so forth. In my part of Sydney, which is incredibly multicultural, I think people are just open to talking about Christian things. We're seeing loads of people connecting with us at the moment through our evangelistic efforts. And I think it's a great time.

Most Westerners now don't have the cultural baggage of cultural Anglicanism or cultural Roman Catholicism. They're not immune to the gospel. They haven't been vaccinated. And for me, that's a wonderful situation. I think we're entering a great time. So that's the opportunity and that's the challenge in Sydney I think—it’s not to lose sight of the main game. And to take that opportunity in the diocese of Sydney, the challenge is to mobilize our resources I think—to mobilize our lay people, be focused on training and equipping lay people, and challenge our lay people and our gospel workers to have the right view of this city: that it's a harvest field, and we are all missionaries and evangelists in the diocese in Sydney.

The other issue is property. Can we better use our property to reach the city? Can we have churches to plant out in these massive growth areas of Sydney?

But in the end, the challenge is: don't get distracted. Let’s keep the main game, the main game, and keep putting that in front of people. That to me is the opportunity.

Tony: What do you think we get distracted by?

Phil: I think one distraction is thinking that everything is really hard and that evangelism's hard—because that often means you switch from bold gospel proclamation to defensive posturing, which I think is a danger for conservative evangelicals. We get worried about protecting our rights and protecting ourselves and that sort of thing. Or we switch to thinking that we have to apologise for the gospel and so forth, rather than just getting on with that task of proclaiming Jesus.

Tony: Sydney's a big place. It’s about 5 million people or thereabouts. Andf we have a generous kind of definition, there might be... let's say there are 150,000 born again, evangelical Bible-believing Christians in Sydney. If that’s the case, by my calculations, we're kind of at the 2-3% mark, and then there's 97% of this vast, great city. I think of Nineveh, that great city in which there are 5 million people who don't know their right hand from their left (as it says in Jonah). Not to mention the many cattle of course in Nineveh, but not so many cattle in Sydney.

Phil: A lot of cavoodles after lockdown.

Tony: Yes, if it was being written today, Jonah would conclude with “And many cavoodles”! But it is a great challenge to think about just what a lost city Sydney is, and how much opportunity there is for the gospel. In terms of the threats to us or the weakness for us as Anglicans, do you have any reflections there?

Phil: If I was to put down one threat, I would say that it's to respond to that great need by conceding too much to our world in a desire to be relevant. I think that's always the threat. And at the moment I think that is a threat for us, and I feel that temptation every time I preach. God is sovereign, but in my weakness, I do fear for our next generation. I wonder—have we been and are we preparing them well enough to stand up and believe and love biblical truth in a world that's now calling it evil rather than irrelevant, whether it's the truth that Christ alone is the way of salvation and there is no other way; or whether it's the truth on human sexuality, or the truth on gender and all these other issues.

I see that as a threat. I fear sometimes that we haven't done a good enough job with that generation. And I think our real challenge is to just teach those truths boldly to help our young people (and our older people for that matter) to be proud of Jesus and his word. That's the word I use: to be proud of the gospel; to actually stand up and be proud of it rather than apologise for it. The gospel is the answer, even if our world mocks it.

Tony: It is in many ways a challenge of unbelief. It's losing your confidence and boldness in the truth of the gospel and the truth of Christ and thinking that in some way we have to soften it, accommodate it, refashion it. And look, I understand that instinct very well. And it's why in a sense I'm sympathetic—or empathetic perhaps is the better word—to liberalism, because liberalism is that impulse. It's that sense that we're not relevant; that the world is moving on and they don't believe what we believe anymore. And so we need to jettison some of the harder edge stuff; we need to conjure a message that's more respectable, more acceptable, more comfortable in a way, one that we don't feel uncomfortable to speak. Or one that when we do speak it, we don't feel like we're standing out and saying something radical or revolutionary. That's the impulse. And I think we all feel that impulse in our hearts. And while we might feel horrified about the liberal theology that jettisons the resurrection and so on, and think that we would never go that far, we still feel the impulse that you’re talking about—to accommodate and compromise in order to receive a better hearing; to be “all things to all men”.

Phil: Yes, but being all things to all men is about how you live. It's about your actions. It's not about what you preach.

Tony: Exactly. I think it was at the Nexus Conference a few years ago, David Williams had this wonderful one-liner. He pointed out that in 1 Corinthians 1-2, Paul was utterly and absolutely inflexible about his message. In fact, Paul says, I've got all these other people who want to hear this, the Jews want to hear that, the Greeks want to hear this. I don't tell them anything they want to hear—I tell them this instead: Christ crucified. And they think it's either weak or foolish, but that doesn't bother me, because God uses this supposedly weak and foolish method. That's his power and his wisdom. So I never change the message.

So Paul is utterly inflexible on his message, but in his person, in his behaviour, in the packaging of who he is, he's flexible as anything, because those things don't matter very much. And so David Williams said:

We contextualize the messenger; we don't contextualize the message.

Phil: I think that’s a wonderful way of putting it. And I think it actually captures the logical flow of 1 Corinthians.

Tony: I mentioned Nexus just now. You've taken over from me at Nexus—you've deposed me in a boardroom coup, and have shuffled me aside and you are now in charge of Nexus.

Phil: I am, I am. And actually we are doing a Nexus Refresh, coming out of lockdown, where Kanishka, the new Archbishop of Sydney, and I are speaking. It’s in early December and praise God, we can come together as people in ministry in Sydney and be refreshed by God's word. And what I'm going to try and speak on is actually that it's as we think of the task before us—that's the most refreshing thing to be reminded of what a great gospel we have to preach and what a privilege it is to do it. That refreshes me far more than any day off or any holiday..

Tony: Indeed. And that's really what Nexus is, for those of you who haven't heard of Nexus. It's basically a little fellowship of Sydney evangelicals, mostly Anglicans, but evangelicals in Sydney who are in gospel ministry—refreshing and pushing each other forward for this great task. So it's great that you are taking it on and pushing that forward. And I'll certainly look forward to seeing you there in December. When is it in December?

Phil: Friday, December 3.

Tony: If you just look up nexusconference.com.au you should be able to find the details there. Phil, every now and then, when I put out a Payneful Truth, you very kindly zip me a little email. And after I did that little series on apologetics a few weeks ago, you wrote in with some enthusiasm. We’ve kind of being dancing around that subject in what we’ve just talked about, but I know it’s a subject that you are exercised on. What's important about apologetics or what's wrong with apologetics in your view?

Phil: Well, yes. I loved what you said. And for those who haven't read it, I encourage you to read the two Payneful Truths that Tony put out on it (see here for part 1 and part 2), because you crystallized something for me I've been blundering around on for some time. I'm all for apologetics in some senses, but some modern apologetics makes me feel really uncomfortable. And I've been trying to work out why that is. And what you crystallized for me is that whatever apologetics is, and there are things that it is, it shouldn't be trying to make the gospel seem rational and reasonable to a person with a worldly worldview. That's the point I got out of it.

You've mentioned 1 Corinthians 1-2 already. The wisdom of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. That shows you that as you preach the gospel, if a person hasn't had their world view transformed by the word through the Spirit, they are going to think it's foolishness. So it should never be our intention to make a person who doesn't come to trust in Jesus think we are rational.

One of your categories of apologetics was what you call ‘positive apologetics’. And I found that a really helpful category. You said that there is some legitimate ‘positive apologetics’, as we how good the gospel is, and show how the gospel makes sense of the world.

But the thing is that the gospel will never be seen as good for you if you think this world is all there is, right? You can't make a person think the gospel is good for you if this world is the end and there is no God. It's only when you accept there is a God who is righteous, who created the world. It’s only when you accept that there is a heaven and a hell that the gospel is good—otherwise it's foolishness. So any apologetics that's trying to say the gospel is good for you even if you don't share our view, I think has missed the point.

All of this sent me back yet again to 1 Peter 2, which for me is the key passage of the scriptures on this question. And in particular 1 Peter 2:12. (I’ve got my Bible open on that page, you'll be pleased to know.) It says:

Conduct yourselves honourably among the Gentiles so that in a case where they speak against you as those who do what is evil, they will by observing your good works glorify God on the day of visitation.

And as you look at that, and then the flow of thought that goes through to being ready “to give a reason for your hope” in chapter 3, the argument is that the greatest apologetic is living a godly life. As you live out a godly life, you also set out the gospel plainly, as you give a reason for your hope. But what 1 Peter shows you is that they won't understand you. They will call you evil. And you'll reason with people (what you called, I think ‘responsive apologetics’ or something like that). You'll reason with people, and you'll then try to show the rationality of the gospel, the historical evidence, and so on. And you'll always do that with gentleness and with respect—1 Peter makes that very clear.

But someone who then doesn't repent and believe is unlikely to think you're rational and is unlikely to think you're reasonable. And that's where I want us to say that being Christian in our world should be a conundrum to people. On the one hand they go, "He's irrational. His logic doesn't seem to work. He believes in a guy who rose from the dead 2000 years ago and says he's the answer to everything. He's a bit crazy.” But they also say, “And yet he's so gracious. And he is so gentle and he is so loving. And he is so patient. I can’t help wanting to listen to him.”

But you see, when we try to remove the conundrum by trying to make it rational and reasonable in the world’s terms, it's actually as bad as removing the conundrum by not being gentle, by not being gracious!

Tony: That kind of dual way in which the world thinks about the behaviour of Christians and what they say, in the end it is only resolved on the “day of visitation”, isn't it?

Phil: Although we pray they resolve the conundrum prior to the day of visitation because we give them a reason for our hope and they come to know Christ.

Tony: Yes! In the whole discussion about apologetics and the gospel—which I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past 12 months—it has really come home to me how we've often we get it back to front. So often these days we spend ages on the ‘softening up period’, trying to connect with people, gain traction for ideas, present some metaphors that might connect with them, find some common ground, say ways in which the gospel is good—all kinds of things to try to ease them up towards the terrible moment when we give them the bad news that this is gospel about Jesus dying for your sins and rising from the dead.

It strikes me, we've got that the wrong way around. We'd be much better if we led with Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus (in light of our good behaviour and our reputation for being the kind of people who live differently). We then tease through their questions and answer their questions and respond and interact and explain, and do the responsive dialogue style of interaction—having told them what the gospel is that makes all the difference, rather than keeping that in reserve for some future point where we might eventually get to telling them.

Phil: I think what you're saying is absolutely right in what I'd call the personal sphere. I don't have the answers for the public sphere where you only get a sound bite. And sometimes the sound bite you want to give is just to commend the gospel. That's why I'm very slow to judge anyone who gets lauded or pilloried by the media or by the world in that sense.

Tony: It's a very artificial environment, isn't it?

Phil: Yes, but I think it really helps if we have that attitude of what is first and foremost important.

I had another thought about all this, and it's just a thought bubble for me at the moment. As you got to your final category of prosecution or ‘kategoria’ as you called it—I don't think we do enough of that in our preaching. I fear that if we do too much of the other types of apologetics in our preaching—if we do too much apologizing—then you actually create a church that's in constant need of being argued into its faith. I think our preaching should go more on the offensive, be more prosecutorial.

And that goes back to what I said before—we should be prouder of the gospel. And so I think more of our preaching should say, "Brothers and sisters, this is what you believe—isn't it wonderful? Look at how foolish our world is. Look at how much better our world view is than our world’s.” And I wonder if we did more of that, then we'd prepare our people better to be not apologizing for the gospel, but ready to express the power of the gospel—to sort of crack through to the world. Anyway, that’s just a thought bubble I've got. I've got to be careful though, it's not just about rationalizing my personality.

Tony: Your belligerent personality, Phil? I think we always have to be careful of rationalizing our proclivities towards particular kinds of approach.

Now, part of the format of this thing is that you also get to ask me questions. So have you got anything that you are wanting to throw at me at the moment?

Phil: Well, yes. As I thought about that, I thought, “Tony's my book guy; he's one of the few people I know who is a genuinely published author”. So I thought not including your own books (or perhaps you can!) is there a book you would want everyone to read? What would it be for pastors and then for people in our churches—what would be the one book you'd say, you must read this?

Tony: Oh, gee, that's a hard one. The one that's in my mind at the moment that I think everyone should read and come to terms with is David Seccombe’s new book, The Gospel of the Kingdom: Jesus’ Revolutionary Message—which as it happens is right in the ballpark of all the things we've just been talking about. It's David's attempt to try to summarize what the gospel is, and to connect together the gospel of the kingdom that is so prominent in the Gospels and the gospel of justification and Paul and all that kind of thing, the gospel of the cross and forgiveness. And the way he weaves them together using his research in Isaiah and in the Old Testament and in biblical theology—is just brilliant.

Like all good books it's got its angles and its things that you scratch your chin about every now and then—but on the whole, it’s excellent. He argues that the resurrection is the culmination of the gospel message—not just a denouement, or a kind of a footnote or a sort of wrapping up of loose ends. The resurrection is where it all comes together. In line with the kind of conversation we've been having, he argues that the resurrection is our message, the resurrection of the crucified saviour, who is now the Lord and rules all, and who calls on everyone everywhere to come to him for forgiveness of sins and to enter his kingdom and live with him as their Lord.

That's our proclamation. It's the proclamation of the risen Christ who is saviour. And the way he draws and ties all that together and challenges the way we often think about the gospel just really brilliantly done. It pulls together a lot of the thoughts that we've all been having over a number of years in a really helpful way. So I'd recommend The Gospel of the Kingdom by David Seccombe. It will shake up and clarify how you think about the gospel in the most helpful way. I would say for pastors, definitely that's the book to grab and read at the moment.

And for thoughtful lay readers? David’s book is not written in an overly technical or obscure way, so also go and grab it.

But if there was one book though that I was going to suggest that every Christian should read for their Christian growth—a book about the essence of the Christian life and how I can grow in it—I think I’d recommend Paul Grimmond's, Right Side Up. It's just a brilliant book about what the Christian life is and how it proceeds, and probably the most under-rated book I ever published in the time I was at Matthias Media. I think it's a book every Christian should read at some point—Right Side Up by Paul Grimmond.

Phil: I've always been amazed it didn't get more airplay. It has always seemed a perfect book to hand to a new Christian as part of a follow-up course or to do with young Christians.

One last question for you, Tony—what topic would you like to see a book written on at the moment? Is there something you wish either that you could have the time to write a book on, or that you wish someone else would write a book on?

Tony: Okay. I'll throw out a few, because I've got a long and large ideas file, and some of these are things that I'm going to do, God willing, in the future. But if someone wants to get to them first and do it, then please do. I'll mention three. Is that okay?

Phil: Well, it's your podcast.

Tony: Hey, so it is! Why I'm I asking you permission?

I have thought for a long time that it's funny that we've never really written an outstanding or widely used book that explains the gospel using Two ways to live. We've got tracts various things—courses and videos—but not a book. The closest we came was when Dominic Steele did his Introducing God course, and he turned the content into a little book that you could give away. But it didn't take off massively and didn’t become a go-to evangelistic book. That's a book I'd love to write sometime, or if someone wants to beat me to it—go for it.

The second book I'd really love to see written is one that I am going to target fairly soon. And that is all the research I did about one another ministry and the word ministry of every Christian. You mentioned before how important you think it is to train and equip every Christian? I think there is a significant book to be written about why that's important and what role every Christian has in not only the gospel, but in the word of mutual encouragement and teaching and helping one another within the Christian community. So that's a book I think desperately needs to be written. And that's is one that I'm hoping I'll be starting very soon based on all the research I did.

And the third book, I’d love to see some smart person write is I've thought about trying but I’m not sure I'll ever get to it. I'm really fascinated by the connection between Neoplatonism, Augustine, C.S. Lewis and John Piper. I have this theory that running through the Reformed tradition, and especially through Jonathan Edwards and then into our contemporary Christian milieu, is a stream of thinking that owes a bit more to Platonism and Neoplatonism than it does to the Bible—especially to do with how desire drives the Christian life and how the Christian life is is about us rising up to the joy of God, driven by our desire for joy (or happiness), and that this shapes what the Christian life and Christian theology is about.

That seems to have the smell of Neoplatonism about it. And I'd love to have time to tease out that connection. Because I think that while there's a truth there—as indeed there is truth in Platonism, and a truth in man things—when you make it your system, it subtly shifts the way you think about things. It changes the emphasis of your theology and then changes how you read the Bible. You see it lot in C.S. Lewis who was quite explicitly influenced by the Cambridge Platonists. And I think you also see it coming out in contemporary evangelicalism in different ways. And that's a book I'd love some clever person somewhere to write.

Phil: Hopefully that person might be listening …

Tony: You just never know.

Phil: Well, I would read all three of those books, but I do think your Two ways to live idea is so true. There hasn't really been a standard give away book since the Chappo books.

Tony: Since A Fresh Start. In fact, I had an idea—and maybe this conversation with you will spur me into action to actually do it. I was thinking of taking a little run of Payneful Truths between now and the end of the year, or maybe over summer, and using them to write six chapters of this Two ways to live evangelistic book, and send it round to everybody and to see what they think. Make it a community effort, and see if we can pull together a short evangelistic book that utilizes the strengths of Two ways to live, but in a way that works for now and is in today's language. Maybe we should make it a communal project.

Phil: I think it's a great idea.

Tony: All right. I'll see what I can do!

Phil, thanks a lot for talking today. It's been great to catch up with you. Thanks for encouraging us and stimulating us as you always do. And all the best for your ongoing preaching at St. George North and your involvement in all the other things you do.

Phil: Thanks, Tony.

PS

Hope you enjoyed that wide-ranging conversation as much as I did. To get every edition of The Payneful Truth every week, consider becoming a subscriber …

Some links you might like to chase up:

* Information about the Nexus Conference in Sydney on Dec 3

* David Seccombe’s book, The Gospel of the Kingdom

* Paul Grimmond’s book, Right Side Up

I was suggesting, you may remember, that we have a habit of overusing and misusing word studies. Given that meaning is made in sentences (and only in sentences), we need to prioritise reading the sentences in front of us, and not chase words all over the Bible to see what connections we can make to our passage.

Hang on, said some thoughtful correspondents, is that the crying of a baby I hear that has been thrown out with the bathwater? Surely word studies are of some use! Are you trying to make us feel guilty every time we chase up a cross reference, or look at how a word is used in other places, or do a word search on all the uses of that word in the Bible?

In the comment thread, Callan asked whether it was reasonable (for example) to think that Paul’s use of the word ‘minister’ (diakonos) to describe himself in Eph 3:17 had some relation to the saints being equipped for the work of ‘ministry’ (diakonia) in Eph 4:12. Is it OK for us to see that connection and make something of it?

Given it’s part of the same discourse, very likely yes. As I pointed out in the original post, the closer two repeated words are to one another in a discourse the more we are likely to notice the repetition as readers and ponder whether the author is referring to the same thing, or ‘saying’ something through the repetition. That’s the key point—whether or not there is a connection is determined by what the author is doing in the sentences and in the discourse that is made up of those sentences, not through the cleverness of our Bible software. In this case, Callan is right I think—the activity the saints are being equipped for in 4:12 is part of the same mission that Paul has been appointed to in 3:17, and the repetition of the root diakon– helps us to notice that, along with the unfolding logic of the whole discourse of which 3:17 and 4:12 are part.

All the same, the mere fact of repetition doesn’t necessarily have any significance. I used the word ‘point’ twice in that last paragraph (‘pointed out’ and ‘key point’), without meaning anything by it.

What about when words and connections are a little further apart? As a case study, Callan points out that the words ‘Lord’, ‘visitation’, ‘compassion’ and ‘death’ are used in Zechariah’s song in Luke 1. When we come to Luke 7, we find Jesus described as the ‘Lord’ acting from ‘compassion’ to rescue a boy from ‘death’, and the people declaring in response that ‘God is visiting his people’. Is Luke wanting us to remember the song of Zechariah as we come to Luke 7? And does the repetition of these words alert us to this?

Again, it is pretty plausible to think that Luke is weaving this theme through his narrative, not only because we’ve noticed this striking repetition of words, but because that’s how narrative discourses work. Narratives usually make meaning not by presenting a logical argument but by stitching a story together in various ways—for example, by placing incidents in relation to each other, or by characters carrying forward a plot and developing or changing in the course of the narrative.  One of the common devices of narrative is to raise themes and ideas in the opening incidents of the story, and then return to them repeatedly as the story unfolds (e.g. think of the way that the overture to John’s Gospel wheels out so many of the themes and ideas that John returns to as he unfolds his story).

Is this happening in Luke 1 and 7? Very likely. And can word searches and word studies help us spot this? Of course. But so can thoughtful, alert reading. In fact, this is my litmus test as to whether I’m overusing word searches to draw connections between passages. Is this connection something that the author might expect a thoughtful, alert reader (without Bible software) to spot and appreciate? If not, then I’m almost certainly drawing too long a bow.

Another good question came from my good mate (and boss) Carl, who asked me whether it’s useful to chase up how words are being used in other places in order to get a feel for what they might mean in this sentence.

My answer to this is Yes, so long as we remember the difference between usage, modifiers and referents. (Oh of course, I hear you say. I’d never get those mixed up!) Here’s what I mean.

The various ways a word is used in different sentences (it’s ‘usage’) shows us the range of its meaning or semantic field. This is what a dictionary does for us—it looks at all the ways in which a particular word is used in the language (at the time the dictionary is written), and summarizes the various meanings that the word can have. If you look up the word ‘love’ in the dictionary you’ll find a range of meanings like ‘deep affection, romantic attachment, a great interest or pleasure in something, a friendly form of address or for ending a letter’ and so on. This reflects the different ways that people use the word ‘love’ to say things in English today.

In one sense, as we read different texts and use language ourselves, we are compiling a dictionary in our heads. We develop a mental map of what a word can mean, and then when we read a particular sentence we discern from the context which part of that semantic field is being used in this instance.

And so if we want to keep building the dictionary in our heads (especially the Greek dictionary, which is more rudimentary for most of us) by chasing down how words are used in different sentences, that’s an excellent thing! (Mind you, we should also make good use of the much broader usage research that the authors of dictionaries have done for us.)

So that’s usage (or word-meaning or semantic field).

The problem arises when we get confused between the usage or meaning of words, and the various modifiers and referents that a word has in particular sentences.

Let’s take the sentence, “God loves us unconditionally”:

* There is the verb ‘to love’.

* Then there are two referents attached to love—that is, two actual beings that the author wants to talk about, one of whom is doing the loving and the other who is being loved. ‘Love’ is connected with (or ‘refers’ to) these specific individuals (‘God’ and ‘us’).

* We also have a modifier for ‘love’—the adverb ‘unconditionally’, which describes how the loving is being done.

Here is the obvious but vital point: neither the referents nor the modifier are part of the meaning of the word ‘love’. They don’t get attached to the word ‘love’, so that wherever love goes those referents or modifiers can go with it. That God is the subject of ‘love’ in this sentence, doesn’t mean that when I use the verb ‘love’ in another sentence somewhere else that God is still in the picture somehow. Ditto with ‘unconditionally’.

This is the blunder I was talking about in my post: using word searches and word studies to find referents or concepts from one passage and transfer them into another, simply because the two passages share a word—as if words are like wormholes in space through which meanings and implications can travel from one sentence to another.

There is one more helpful function of word studies worth mentioning. Word searches can obviously alert us to the various places in which the Bible talks about different subjects. When I was doing my PhD about the mutual word ministry (or ‘edifying speech’) of the Christian community, a word search was a good place to start in chasing down the various passages that might have something to say on that subject.

Here’s the interesting thing though—because we say things in sentences and not just with words, we are very capable of talking about the same subject using many different words. And this is the case with ‘edifying speech’ in the New Testament. There are more than 20 different key words used to talk about various kinds of one-another speech, utilized in all sorts of different ways to say valuable things about what that speech was like, what it was for, and so on.

A word search on ‘speech’ or ‘one-another’ or ‘encouragement’ was a good place to start my research, but not to finish. To really cover the cases, I needed to read the whole New Testament carefully and find all kinds of places where the phenomenon I was researching was discussed—sometimes using words I hadn’t expected or thought to search for.

Well, hopefully the baby has been rescued, and is now splashing in some nice, fresh, clean bathwater. Word studies can be useful and enlightening. But like all babies, they need to be handled with care.

PS

Good news. The new Two ways to live booklet edition is now officially available! Head over to Matthias Media to grab a bundle.

A confusing or confounding passage is an opportunity to learn. Sometimes knotty verses reveal our ignorance, or that we haven’t understood the passage—such as when we’re reading Hebrews 6 and the obscure figure of Melchizedek suddenly looms out of the mist and we wonder what’s he got to do with the price of fish.

But sometimes we come across Bible verses that are knotty and confounding not because they are obscure but because we find them objectionable. They tie us in knots. They cut across our assumptions or expectations about what God is like or we are like or the world is like. They expose our deepest, baseline attitudes and beliefs, and where they have gone astray.

We had one like this in church last Sunday. In Romans 9, after talking about how God will have mercy on some people and harden other people, and that it’s entirely up to him, Paul then asks the obvious rhetorical question:

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” (v 18)

Fair enough question, you might think. If God calls all the shots, then why are we to blame for finding ourselves on his bad side? And then comes this:

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is moulded say to its moulder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honourable use and another for dishonourable use? (vv 19-20)

Perhaps there are more objectionable verses in the Bible than these ones, but surely not by much.

Something deep within my Western soul rages against these ideas. Me, a lump of clay?! An object in the hands of a Supreme Being to do with what he wants? How utterly dehumanising and oppressive! Whatever happened to human dignity? Surely this is the poisonous spirit of primitive religion at its worst. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport” (King Lear, 4.1.36-37).

As the preacher on Sunday pointed out, these verses in Romans 9 are difficult for us because we are profoundly convinced that we are at the centre of the universe, not God. We can’t cope with the idea that we might be bit players in someone else’s drama, rather than the star of our own story.

This is old as Adam and Eve. But it’s a particularly virulent problem for modern, Western people like us. It’s part of what we used to call our ‘worldview’, and which some clever people these days call our ‘social imaginary’, and which (in the words of that philosophical treatise, The Castle) you could think of simply as ‘the Vibe’.  It’s the complex, often unstated web of beliefs and assumptions about ourselves and the world, which our culture constantly reinforces and transmits to us, which we absorb and come to accept, and upon which we operate day by day.

For nearly three centuries, our Western culture has been steadily constructing a Vibe in which God is excluded, and man is the centre and measure of all things. We don’t even notice or articulate this any more. We just live as if it’s the case. The debates we have with each other on any issue (political, social, ethical) proceed on this basis. The stories we tell each other—in movies and TV shows and books—assume it and reinforce it constantly.  It’s hard to imagine any Hollywood movie in which God is the potter and we are the clay, unless of course we are the plucky heroic figures of clay, who come to life, follow our hearts, destroy the evil oppressive potter, and go on to realise all our dreams.

It occurred to me again on Sunday how important the rejection of God as creator has been to our Vibe. The sovereignty of God over us is the sovereignty of a potter over his clay. To assert ourselves as the centre of all things, and to exclude him as sovereign, we must reject his claim over us as our Potter.

And of course, this is what we have done. It started in the 17th century with the semi-polite rejection called Deism, in which we decided that God had made us, once upon a time, but had since lost interest, and no longer really cared very much what we do. He was there (most likely) but he was not a factor, and certainly not knowable in any reliable sense. If we were going to figure out how to be and how to live, we would have to do so on our own terms, starting from scratch. This was essentially the program of the Enlightenment—to construct a worldview-vibe from the ground up, in which we could understand morality, the world and ourselves, without reference to an external divine authority or source of knowledge. It was a program that in most respects assumed that the Christian morality and worldview of the time was correct, but that we should be able to demonstrate and explore and explain it without reference to God.

And the sidelining of God as Creator was a critical aspect of this. This sidelining of course moved into overdrive in the late 19th century with the rise of Darwinism, particularly in the way that it was ideologically spun and argued by Thomas Huxley and others. Huxley was a militant atheist and wanted to deny the claim of any supreme God over our lives. He saw, with a clarity perhaps that Darwin didn’t, that if we could dispense with God as Creator we could dispense with any connection that God has with us and our world. His supremacy and authority would evaporate.

The consequences of all this have been cataclysmic, and many have traced them. I’m currently reading Carl Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which essentially tells the story of how in our current Western cultural Vibe (or social imaginary), we have come to think of ourselves as psychological self-creators. We are lumps of clay who are convinced that our inner feelings and thoughts determine who we really are, and the reality of the world outside us. If we think and feel that we really are a woman, even though we are biologically a man, then so much the worse for biology. I am a woman trapped in a man’s body. In fact, the whole category of ‘woman’ is now problematic and potentially offensive. Bring on the ‘birthing persons’.

Ditto with morality. If there is no Creator, then there is no objective moral order to the world. Morality and ethics emanate outwards from us as human subjects. We value certain things; we come to feel that certain things are right or wrong (for whatever reason); and that’s about it. Morality becomes a framework that we have come up with for our own purposes, or that evolution has thrown up for various advantageous reasons—which sounds great if you want to do exactly what you want, but which is in fact a recipe for moral absurdity and chaos.

We can’t even talk to each other properly any more about moral issues, because there is nothing objective beyond ourselves and our feelings to talk about (as ethicists like Alasdair Macintyre and Oliver O’Donovan have sharply pointed out). Coherent moral discussion becomes impossible, because all we have to fall back on is the blunt assertion of our own values—whether they are expressed as ‘rights’ that we assert, or as unassailable moral sentiments that we personally hold.

Once we exclude the idea that reality is created and formed and objectively ordered in all its aspects by the true and living God, we descend into confusion and perversity. Or in the words of an ancient cultural critic, “They became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools …”

This is why the doctrine of creation is so foundational to the gospel itself, and presumably why it keeps cropping up in New Testament gospel presentations or expositions (e.g. in Acts 14 and 17, and in Romans 1-8). Without it, sin makes no sense, nor judgement, nor (therefore) the atoning work of Christ and his bodily resurrection as the God-man who rules all of creation.

If we dig down into the foundations of the gospel and the whole Bible, we find God as the mighty sovereign creator of all things. And the constant rejection of this idea by the Vibe of our culture gives us all sorts of problems. It means that we struggle to explain why we have such a different moral viewpoint on some issues—because we believe, for example, that God made men and women and human sexuality in a certain way, and that this is an objective aspect of the order of our world for us to come to terms with.

It also means that we struggle to explain why God has any claim over our lives, and why rejecting and rebelling against him is not only so wrong, but also so damaging to us and the world.

Among Christians, in the various debates that we have had about creation, creationism, theistic evolution and the like, this key point has sometimes been lost. The exact mechanism and timeframe within which God created all things is something we can debate, and something that people of good biblical faith will have different views on. You can be a young-earth creationist or an old-earth creationist or a God-used-some-evolutionary-mechanisms-creationist or (like me) a not-entirely-sure-how-creationist. We may differ on the adjective at the front, but not on the noun. We must be creationists.

God is the Potter and we are the clay. This is a crucial truth to affirm and fight for and proclaim to one another and to the world. We need to keep doing this until Romans 9 is not a difficult passage for us to read, and to preach to our world.

PS

I thought it was very disciplined of me not to mention Two ways to live during this post, given that the new edition is due out any day. But I guess I’ve ruined that now! To find out more, here’s some info from Matthias Media on the new 2WTL. 

This is a partner post, but as always feel free to share it around with friends, people at church, and and so on. (And if at the same time you want to encourage people to sign up, at least on the free list, then that wouldn’t do any harm either.)

People were making various comments on MM’s Facebook post—about how they often add in this or that when they’re using 2WTL, or how they wished the wording was different on this or that point. And I did the almost unthinkable and typed a reply. Here’s (in part) what I said:

2WTL is by no means perfect, but one of the best things about it is that it’s essentially a framework for gospel conversation or presentation, not a prescribed form of words. So if the transition between points 4 and 5 seems naff to you, David, by all means make it better as you use it. Ditto with the place of God's promises to Israel, Justin, if that’s helpful to include for the people you’re talking to.

One of the quirky reasons I’m excited about the release of the new edition of 2WTL is that it gives me an excuse to make this important point all over again. The reason that 2WTL is so invaluable is that it provides something that no other resource currently does: a simple, clear, biblically faithful gospel framework for Christians to use in a multitude of ways. It reaffirms and teaches the one unchanging gospel announcement that we’ve been to proclaim and share; and then equips to talk about that gospel in million different ways. It’s not a form of words to be trotted out on cue. It’s a set of gospel bullet points to learn and take to heart, which we not only know and trust in, but are able to utilize and adapt in a multitude of different conversations and contexts.

The forthcoming new 2WTL tract or ‘booklet edition’ is a good example. It’s just one of those possible uses. It contains the revised bullet-point outline, but its main purpose is to explain the gospel to a non-Christian reader. It’s a giveaway booklet. That’s why the classic 2WTL statements (the bullet points) are not very prominent in this new design. The focus is on the explanatory text that fleshes out the statements and on the graphic elements that illustrate them. (We use the actual 2WTL statements as a little inset summary at the end of each page.)

The new booklet has a number of other design changes that I think really improve its appeal as a give-away resource—a ‘modern classic’ look-and-feel, new versions of the drawings in badge form, a reworking of how text and graphics interact on the page, and a revision of all the explanatory text.

What of the updates to the 2WTL framework itself? Apart from numerous small tweaks to the language here and there, these are the three main changes to the outline itself.

#1. Probably the most significant change is the shifting of the offer of forgiveness of sins from box 4 (the atonement) to box 5 (the resurrection). I think this is a genius move (and I wasn’t the one to think of it!), because it reinforces and strengthens the logic of the gospel.

2WTL really builds towards box 5. That’s where we get to the essence of the gospel proclamation—that the crucified Jesus has risen to be the ruler and judge of the world, and now offers forgiveness of sins and new life to everyone, in advance of his return. That’s as close to a summary of the NT gospel announcement as you can get, and box 5 is where that is proclaimed. If you work backwards from Box 5, you get the logic of boxes 1-4. In other words:

* How can the risen Lord Jesus bring forgiveness of sins and new life? By dying on the cross to take the punishment we deserve (atonement, box 4).

* Why do we deserve punishment and from whom? We’re in line for God’s punishment because of our rebellion against him (judgement, box 3).

* What rebellion? We all reject God as our ruler and rebel against him (sin, box 2). 

* Why is God our ruler? Because he is the Creator and Ruler of the world, including us (creation, box 1).

It starts at box 1 and creation, because that’s the first piece of background knowledge you need in order to proceed through boxes 2-4 and eventually get to 5, where the nub of the gospel proclamation occurs (with box 6 as the response).

#2. Speaking of box 1, the second significant content change to the outline happens there. We’ve added in the idea that God’s creation of us (and everything) calls for a response of thanks and honour towards him, in the way that Romans 1 and other places in Scripture suggest. This strengthens what then happens in box 2. Instead of responding to our Creator and Ruler as we should (in honour and thanksgiving), we reject him and ignore him and go our own way.

#3. The final shift that many people will notice is a change in the Bible verses used to support boxes 2 and 4. In the past, 2WTL used New Testament verses only, mainly because in the old days people often carried little New Testaments around with them, and so could easily look up those verses and passages with someone they were speaking with.

Given that those days are gone, we thought it was a good opportunity to use one of the great texts of Scripture in a way that not only better communicates the ideas of box 2, but ties together boxes 2 and 4 beautifully. In box 2, we quote the first half of Isaiah 53:6: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way”. And then in box 4, we quote the whole verse:

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

                   each of us has turned to our own way;

         and the Lord has laid on him

                   the iniquity of us all.

I’m pretty excited about the new 2WTL booklet edition because it makes it once again the go-to Swiss Army knife of evangelistic resources. Evangelism usually involves multiple conversations and touch points. This 2WTL booklet can be used at many different points along the way:

* to give to a friend to spark off a conversation

* to give to a friend to follow up on a conversation

* as a giveaway resource for evangelistic talks or events (“take this home and have a read; it fleshes out and summarizes what we’ve been talking about today”)

* to use at some point in the multi-week evangelistic course (as a summary that pulls it all together in one simple package)

* as a gift for newcomers and visitors at church

* as a tool for door-knocking or visiting

* and so on.

We’re not allowed to carry Swiss Army knives anymore, but I’m really looking forward to carrying a few copies of this 2WTL resource around in my backpack.

And we’ll all be able to do that as of November 1: the official worldwide release date.

PS

If you want to check out the new 2WTL booklet version before Nov 1, I’ve been able to snag a pdf review copy that you can evaluate. It’s only for Payneful Truth readers, so please don’t share it around at this point. You can find it here.

As I’ve been working on the new 2WTL outline over the past 12 months or so, I’ve written a few other posts on The Payneful Truth about the nature of the gospel, and about why 2WTL is still valuable (and therefore worth refreshing and relaunching). Here are three of them you might find interesting:

This is another free public edition—two in a row! To get every edition every week, you can … 

As I was just completing this edition, some advance copies of the new 2WTL booklet arrived in the letter box. Here’s a snap …

A lot of Christian pixels have been spilt over the past several weeks about vaccination, conscience, the weaker brother, civil obedience, the freedom to gather, the desirability of not excluding anyone, and more besides.

I wasn’t really planning to spill any more. However, there is one facet that I haven’t seen anything much written on, and which I think is important.

In dealing with differences opinion among Christians about how to handle various covid-related issues, the lens many people have used is conscience. Given that people have different views, we should be considerate with each other, not force people to go against their consciences, not cause one another to stumble, and so on. Bring on Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8-10.

However, I don’t think conscience is the main issue, at least in most cases.

Just to clarify—when I say ‘conscience’ I am talking about the inner grief or pain we experience when we transgress the moral standards that we hold. Those standards may be aligned with God’s standards or not (depending on how morally well-educated we are), but the experience of conscience is that awful sick feeling we get in our guts when our moral decisions part company with our moral compass. Conscience is like a moral geiger counter—it starts beeping louder and louder the closer we get to doing something morally toxic (according to whatever values we hold), and then administers a nasty shock if we go ahead and do it.

Conscience, then, relates to what we view as morally right or wrong, or good or evil. And this is why it’s so important (as passages like Rom 14 tell us) not to force one another to go against our conscience—because the conscience is tied to what we genuinely believe to be sin.

I know of some people on various sides of the covid debate, for whom there are questions of conscience—for example, who think that the covid vaccines were developed in morally reprehensible ways (e.g. by relying on stem-cell lines from aborted foetal tissue). If that is someone’s position, then ‘conscience’ may well be a primary category for talking about it.

For most others, however, conscience is not the issue.

The issue is more often fear, or its little brother, anxiety.

Fear is different from conscience, although there are also some similarities. Like conscience, fear doesn’t come up with its own content. It’s a reaction we have to something we perceive—not a moral standard, but an approaching threat or danger. Even if we are ill-informed or mistaken about the nature of the threat, we will still feel the fear in our guts, and react accordingly.

If conscience is a moral-hazard-meter, fear is a danger-meter. And just as some of us have more tender or sensitive conscience-meters than others, so some of us are more fearful than others. More anxious, more risk averse.

It’s possible to be too fearful—that is, for the level of our fear to be disproportionate to the actual threat, perhaps because we have over-estimated the threat or are misinformed about it, or because our fear-meter is on the sensitive side. A hyperchondriac is someone with a malfunctioning fear-meter—who gets anxious over every tiny symptom because it could possibly indicate a life-threatening disease.

And for the opposite reasons it is also possible to be too fearless—I’m thinking of you, adolescent boys, and of everyone who does not fear Him who can cast soul and body into hell (Matt 10:28).

Most of the debates I see around covid-19 relate to fear and anxiety, not conscience.

We are afraid of various things to differing degrees—that the vaccines aren’t really safe, that catching covid will be life-threatening for us or our children (or parents), that gathering with others increases our risk of catching it or passing it on, that mixing with the unvaccinated is a particular threat, that it would be a PR disaster if our church became a super-spreader, and so on.

How we work through these fears with individuals and as a Christian community will be similar in some ways to how we talk about issues of conscience—we should be considerate and kind to each other, and recognize that we will react differently.  But there will be differences too, because fear and conscience are different, and the gospel speaks to them in different ways.

How does the work of God in the gospel transform our experience of fear and anxiety?

Whole books could be written about this, and recently have! I know of two new titles about anxiety coming out from Matthias Media in the next couple of months. (See below in the PS for details).

Time and space allow me only the briefest of summaries.

Through the gospel of Jesus, God recalibrates our fear-meter by liberating us from our greatest fear—the fear of death and judgement (Heb 2:14-15; 1 Jn 4:17-19). Because we know that the sovereign God has loved us in his Son, and given us all things in him, we can face anything that life throws at us with rejoicing and hope (Rom 5:1-11; 8:28-39). We can cast our anxieties upon him, knowing that he cares for us (1 Pet 5:7), and has already won the victory that gives us peace (Phil 4:6-7).

Moreover, the gospel sets us free from the crushing burden of our pride and selfishness and inwardness. God gives us a new heart of love for others, such that we are willing to put ourselves in harm’s way for the sake of others. The natural fear and timidity we feel when we are threatened with suffering can be overcome by the power and love and self-control that God gives us by his Spirit (2 Tim 1:6-9).

As we grow in faith, love and hope, the kind of fear that belongs to our old lives begins to diminish—the fear of death, the fear of what others might do to us, the fear that protects ourselves and our wellbeing and our possessions at all costs. This is why Christians have always been the ones to care for the sick during plagues, to give away their possessions rather than hoard them, to treat lepers when no-one else would go near them.

The new eyes of faith also change our perception of risk and control. When we come to understand that God is sovereign, not us, we realise (if we didn’t know it already) that events aren’t within our control. The anxiety-producing illusion (bolstered by technology) that we can master our environment, and manage every aspect of our lives, and control our futures—that dissolves when we realise that God’s will determines the future, not ours. We are but a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (James 4:12-13).

The gospel changes our experience of anxiety and fear, but it doesn’t eliminate it.

For example, if there’s a genuine threat to our safety, our fear-meter alerts us to its presence, and allows us to take evasive action. We also don’t have to court danger foolishly in order to show our gospel fearlessness—like the Christian snake-handlers, or those who say that the ‘blood of Jesus’ protects from covid-19 infection.

Nor can we avoid our fallenness, and the fact that we will sometimes be afraid or anxious when we needn’t be, and vice versa—because we’re misinformed or aren’t thinking straight about the danger; or because our faith, love and hope are still works in progress (as they are for us all); or because our fear-and-anxiety-meter is wonky for some reason (sometimes we call this an ‘anxiety disorder’ or a ‘phobia’).

However, here is the key point, and the key difference between fear and conscience.

It is often right to act against fear; it is never right to act against conscience. We may need to exhort the fearful to overcome their fears through faith, love and hope (as the NT frequently does). But we would never exhort people to overcome their consciences.

This will play out in how we relate to one another about covid-19 and vaccinations. In some circumstances, it will lead us to encourage one another to overcome our fears; in others, to encourage one another not to downplay real threats, especially if our behaviour is a threat to others. In all things, it will mean to act in faith, love and hope.

Speaking about the current situation in the part of the world I inhabit (in Sydney), it seems that the actual dangers associated with covid-19 are receding greatly. With so many people vaccinated, the overall level of danger is now more what it would have been like during a bad flu season in the past. In other words, as with a bad flu season, there’s a slight chance of catching the disease (in a city of 5 million people); if you do and you’re unvaccinated, it can be nasty (and even life threatening); but if you’re vaccinated, the chances of serious illness or hospitalization (let alone death) are very small; if you’re very old or otherwise medically compromised, the risks are greater; the risk of experiencing a bad reaction to the vaccine is not zero, but is so close to zero as to not be a threat.

Please note: I’m not saying, as some overly fearless people did early in the pandemic, that covid-19 is ‘just like the flu’. It’s clearly a more virulent, transmissable and dangerous virus. However, the massive levels of vaccination in Sydney have changed the risk equation. From all that I’ve read, the level of actual risk we now experience is much diminished.

In a bad flu season, we acknowledge the various risks, and take some precautions, but we don’t over-react. I suspect that if our fear-meter is currently blipping significantly about coming to church or  mixing with people generally—much more than it would have during a bad flu season in the past—it may need some attention. Perhaps the level of anxiety has been stoked by the general craziness of the last several months, or by the opinions of others (expressed in the mainstream media or on the internet).

In these circumstances, with patience and kindness, let us help each other not to give in to fear. Let’s not give up meeting together, but keep encouraging one another, and all the more as the Day draws near.

PS

I confess to feeling a bit of anxiety in writing this piece, particularly on behalf of those of you who might suffer from various kinds of anxiety issues or disorders. I know about this well—three members of my immediate family have or are being treated for anxiety disorders.

There are multiple and complex reasons why our fear-and-anxiety response becomes dysfunctionally over-active. And dealing with that medically and professionally, not to mention coming to terms with it Christianly, is a real and complicated question.

Two new books from Matthias Media on this subject are due out early next year: Anxiety and me by Guan Un, and When the noise won’t stop by Paul Grimmond. Stay tuned for more details.

And as I was looking for images to accompany today’s post, I came across this one from one of my favourite TV shows growing up. Recognize it?

Like most of you, they already have a decent idea of how to do this. They know about the reading process of COMA—Context, Observation, Meaning, Application. And (again like most of you) they have also learned to read the Bible by doing it over many years, and by hearing the Bible taught and preached well over many years.

But I love a good clarifying definition, so I’ve put together this one to sharpen their understanding of what’s involved in reading the Bible (or ‘exegesis’, if we want to make it sound more impressive). I’m suggesting that:

The aim of good Bible reading is to listen and respond to what God is doing in this text—through these sentences addressed to their implied original readers within the larger biblical context of God’s saving revelation of his Son

There are all sorts of interesting things we could explore in this definition.

But the aspect I want to explore in today’s post is the seemingly innocuous phrase “through these sentences”. Our goal in Bible reading is to see and respond to what God is doing through the sentences and paragraphs that make up the passage that we’re reading.

A statement of the bleedin’ obvious if ever there was one.

But this obvious statement is necessary because of what it denies: we don’t say things or do things with words—only by arranging those words into sentences. Sentences are how we say something (or do something) through language.

Why am I teaching you to suck eggs like this? Because I think we have a problem in this area.

Perhaps it’s because we love the Bible and its words so much. But judging by the exegetical arguments I keep hearing us make, we sometimes seem to think that meaning is conveyed by words rather than sentences—as if words are little suitcases that carry around with them all kinds of meanings and concepts and ideas that can be unpacked into any given sentence. Or that what a word is doing in this sentence can be discovered by noting what it was doing in that sentence over there.

This is the blunder I keep seeing us make in our Bible reading and exegesis and preaching. (And I have done it myself more than once!)

Let me try to explain what I mean with a non-biblical example.

Let’s say that when the Moore College scholars of the future are poring over the 18 leather-bound volumes of the collected works of Tony Payne, they read these two sentences about boys, one in volume 3:

God blessed me with two boisterous, clever boys—Luke and Nick.

And another in volume 7:

I separated the two boys who were fighting, and told them to stop being so stupid.

In these sentences, the lexical sense or meaning of the word ‘boy’ is the one we’d find in the dictionary: a male child or young person, or possibly a slave or servant. This is the semantic range or field of the word ‘boy’. We discern which part of the semantic range applies in any particular sentence by … reading the sentence in its context—that is, whether the boys in question were are someone’s male children (as in the first sentence) or just young males generally (more likely in the second) or slaves (unlikely in either).

So far, so easy.

However, various concepts are also associated with boys in these two sentences—boisterousness, cleverness, fighting, the fact that they come as blessings from God. But these concepts aren’t super-glued to the word ‘boy’, as if they follow it around wherever it goes. This is one of the key mistakes we make in Bible reading and exegesis. We take concepts that are associated with a word in one sentence, and transfer them into another sentence in a completely different place.

We say things like this as we write our biblical commentary: “Payne often associates boys with cleverness (see vol. 3, p. 27). For Payne, ‘boy’ is cleverness language. It’s likely therefore that the two fighting boys in volume 7 were having an intellectual dispute, not merely a physical one, and that when Payne tells them not to be ‘stupid’ he is referring to a temporary lack of good sense, not impugning their innate cleverness.”

This is linguistic balderdash.

Boy is not ‘cleverness language’. Cleverness doesn’t ride around on the coat-tails of the word ‘boy’ waiting to jump into any given sentence that ‘boy’ appears in. ‘Boy’ means a ‘young male or male child’, and if you want to say that this or that boy is clever (or stupid), you do that by making a sentence. In everyday English, we know this, and would never make such a basic linguistic error. We know that you don’t say things by using a word and expecting your hearers or readers to know or remember how you might have used that word on some completely different occasion, and then read those associated concepts or referents into the sentence that is coming out of your mouth.

But somehow, when we come to read the Bible, we find ourselves doing strange things like this quite often (and I confess I have done so myself).

For example, have you ever read (or made) an argument like this one?

Many opinions of working women have been shaped by the word in Genesis 2:18, ‘helper’. This word therefore merits some greater attention. Was the woman to be merely a helpful assistant to the man? In our day we use the word ‘helper’ in the sense of a plumber's assistant, handing the boss the right wrench for the job. But that is far from the meaning of the Hebrew word used to describe the first woman.

God created the woman as an ‘ezer’ [the Hebrew word in Gen 2:18]. The word ‘ezer’ occurs twenty-one times in the Old Testament. In two cases it refers to the first woman, Eve, in Genesis 2. Three times it refers to powerful nations Israel called on for help when besieged. In the sixteen remaining cases the word refers to God as our help. He is the one who comes alongside us in our helplessness. That's the meaning of ‘ezer’. Because God is not subordinate to his creatures, any idea that an ezer-helper is inferior is untenable.

This author wants to counter the idea that because Eve is Adam’s helper, this renders Eve somehow inferior or subordinate to Adam. And the argument starts well by pointing out (quite rightly) that just because we often associate the word ‘helper’ with junior apprentices or assistants in our linguistic context, we can’t then read those concepts back into Genesis 2—as if the concepts of ‘inferior status’ are attached to the word ‘helper’, and can be unloaded into whichever sentence ‘helper’ appears in.

Unfortunately, however, the author then makes precisely the same mistake with the OT usage of the word. It’s quite true that the word ‘helper’ is used elsewhere in the OT to refer to God, with associated concepts of superiority or salvation or ‘coming alongside us in our helplessness’. But this doesn’t mean that these concepts are attached to the word ‘helper’, and can be applied in any other sentence that ‘helper’ appears in. The word ‘helper’ doesn’t mean ‘a superior or powerful person who comes alongside us in our helplessness’.   

The word ezer in Hebrew means almost exactly what the word ‘helper’ does in English: ‘someone who offers help or comfort or assistance’. Whether that ‘helper’ is superior or inferior or subordinate or divine or powerful or incompetent can only be determined by seeing what sort of helper they were—by reading what the author said about that helper through these sentences to their original implied readers (to go back to my definition of good reading).

The possible inferiority or superiority of the ‘helper’ in Genesis 2 can be determined in only one way—by reading the sentences of Genesis 2. And if those sentences don’t say anything much about inferiority or superiority (which they don’t), then we should accept that, and move on.

We seem to do this sort of thing too often. We go hunting through the cross references (or via our Bible software) for other passages that contain the same words that appear in the passage we’re reading.  And then we starting taking associated ideas, concepts, referents or events from the cross-referenced passage—often arbitrarily or conveniently—and slot them into the sentences we’re actually reading.

Now before you get defensive about your exegetical habits, let me point out three caveats or exceptions.

1. Sometimes concepts that are associated with a word can carry over into a subsequent use of that word in the same paragraph or passage; that is, when the context of the sentences that are being made makes it clear that the ‘boys’ the author is talking about in one sentence are the same clever, boisterous boys from the sentence before. It’s not always the case—because the author might deliberately use the same word in different ways for effect or contrast. And of course, the further apart the two usages are, the less likely that there is any connection—that is, that the author wants his implied original readers to make a conceptual connection in their minds through the repetition of a particular word. When the two usages are in two entirely different books or documents, the likelihood that the author wants his readers to make some conceptual connection is very remote.

2. Sometimes, an author does use a word or phrase to connect the sentence he is writing with concepts contained in a completely different sentence somewhere else by making a quotation or allusion. We come across this quite often in the Bible, especially because it is one long, sprawling, unified story, supervised and breathed out by one divine author. But caution is in order!

* First, we need to be confident that the author is actually making a quotation or allusion in a way that his implied original readers would have understood. The fact that a single word in a Pauline sentence was also used in the Septuagint of 2 Chronicles 7 doesn’t mean that Paul was wanting his readers to nod and tap the side of their noses and think, “Oh of course, this is 2 Chronicles 7 all over again!” The quotation or allusion needs to be part of what the author himself is doing in the sentence—not an obscure connection we have found by using Bible software.

* Secondly, we should make of the quotation or allusion what the sentence makes of it, and not think that anything and everything from the usage of a word or phrase in the original quoted context can be read into the sentence in which it is being quoted. For example, when the author of Hebrews keeps using the word ‘priest’ to describe Jesus, with all the rich OT history and connotations that his Hebrew readers would have shared, that doesn’t mean that any or every concept associated with the OT word ‘priest’ applies to Jesus—in fact, the whole point is that it does not (e.g. he is not from the tribe of Levi, and he does not have to make sacrifice for his own sin, etc.). When Matthew has Jesus refer back to the sign of Jonah in Matthew 12, that doesn’t mean that the concepts of cowardice and disobedience associated with Jonah also apply to Jesus. Nor does it mean that ‘fish’ is ‘resurrection language’, and that when Jesus feeds the 5000 two chapters later with fish he is foreshadowing his resurrection. (And yet somehow, we manage to fall into the trap of making these sorts of arguments.)

3. A final exception—sometimes a word is used so often to refer to a particular thing (in a particular linguistic community) that it comes to have a special attachment to it. It becomes a jargon word, or what biblical scholars call a ‘technical term’—so you only have to use that word and readers know that you are referring to a specific example of what that word could refer to. ‘Gospel’, for example, is an everyday word meaning ‘an announcement of great or significant news’. That’s what the word means. But by the time Paul uses it in 2 Tim 1:8 to urge Timothy to “share in suffering for the gospel”, he would have been confident that Timothy knew which ‘gospel’ he was talking about, and all the concepts and content associated with it. ‘Gospel’ has become a jargon word within the linguistic community that Paul shared with Timothy.  ‘Technical terms’ like this are not all that common, and you have to be very sure of your evidence before narrowing down a word in this way to a particular set of concepts or referents.

I started this post talking about the importance of reading sentences, and now I have found that I have asked you to read way too many of them!

But I have done so not only because all this requires a bit of explaining, but because it’s important. Understanding God’s word is vital, and therefore reading it well is vital—neither failing to listen carefully to what God is doing through sentences and paragraphs of Scripture, nor reading extraneous ideas or concepts into them, especially via the words that the sentences contain. God speaks to us through the sentences of Scripture, addressed to the original implied readers, within the larger context of the whole biblical revelation about his Son. So we read the sentences in the NT in light of the OT sentences that preceded them; and we read the OT sentences with an awareness that they foreshadow the Christ to come (because the NT sentences tell us so!).

My particular hope is that our antenna will quiver with caution whenever we hear phrases like these:

* ‘Fire’ is judgement language. ‘Fire’ is sometimes metaphorically associated with judgement; but that doesn’t make fire ‘the language of judgement’—as if wherever the word ‘fire’ appears, the concept of ‘judgement’ is not far behind.

* Paul often uses the word X to refer to Y, and so therefore … Failing the unlikely event that the word X has become a technical or jargon word, what Paul is using X to refer to in this sentence should be determined by what this sentence is saying, not other sentences he wrote elsewhere. The referent Y is not super-glued to the word X, so that when X is used in a sentence the characteristics or concepts of Y can be read in or implied.

* Let us look at all the instances of the word X in order to find out what the Bible teaches about X. Word studies are somewhat useful but often misleading. What the Bible teaches about the subject of X is not carried around in the word X, or constructed by adding together all the things or concepts that X is used to refer to in various places—not even if we start at the beginning of the Bible and do this biblical theology style! Discovering what the Bible teaches about the subject of X is done by reading the sentences and paragraphs in which that subject is discussed—whether or not the word X is used to discuss it—and seeing what those sentences say, within their immediate and larger biblical context.

Can we please stop making these linguistic blunders when we read the Bible? I will if you will!

PS

I’m going to run with my standard PS, which is to say “There’s so much more that could be said!”.

I will mention one other complication: we often use various Bible words to refer to whole subject areas or doctrines (e.g. ‘justification’, ‘sanctification’, ‘pastor’, ‘worship’, ‘church’). And so we can end up confusing the word with the subject, and get ourselves in a muddle. We can think that whenever we see the word ‘sanctification’ in the Bible it must have something to do with the subject of ‘growth in Christian godliness’ (interestingly, it quite often doesn’t). And vice versa, we can think that because the word ’sanctification’ quite often doesn’t refer to ‘growth in godliness’ in the Bible that the whole idea of sanctification as ‘growth in godliness’ is suspect (it isn’t; it’s just talked about in various sentences that often don’t use the word ‘sanctification’!).

One final note: the kind of blunder I’ve been talking about is sometimes referred to as either ‘illegitimate totality transfer’ (where you take the various concepts that are associated with a word and wrongly assume that they are carried around in the word, ready to be transferred into any context); or ‘illegitimate identity transfer’ (where you think that because a word refers to something in one context then characteristics of that identity or referent can be transferred to a completely different context in which the word is used). James Barr coined these terms in his 1961 book The Semantics of Biblical Language.

One of the particular targets of Barr’s critique was Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, which he criticized for its widespread ‘illegitimate totality transfer’—that is, for confusing the rich theological ideas of the Bible with words that are used to convey them; as if what the Bible says about the unconditional, free, gracious love of God is loaded into the Greek word agape.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders …

* why ‘these three’ are so important, and why we sometimes neglect them

* ‘faith’ as the foundation of Christian living

* the two kinds of love, and what Christian love really is

And now we come to hope …

Hope feels a bit like a third wheel in the Big Three Christian virtues.

We all appreciate the foundational importance of faith as trust in God and his Son and his promise. The Christian life starts with us gratefully grabbing hold of God and his promise in Christ. Faith is our trusting, outstretched hand that grabs hold of the Lifesaver’s hand, and is drawn out of the waters of death into a new life.

Love is the basic character of that new life. Faith sets free from the darkened mind of our inwardness and pride. The lights go on in our brain, and we see the goodness of God and through him the goodness of all that he’s given us to love—including most especially the people around us. Love summarizes not only our ongoing relationship with God, but our essential stance towards everyone and everything in our world.

But what about hope? Would we miss it, if it wasn’t in the Big Three?

I suspect many contemporary Christians wouldn’t particularly. And I suspect that this is because we under-appreciate just how future-focused the Christian gospel is. We tend to see the gospel as mainly about the forgiveness and salvation that we receive now by faith; and the blessed new life we start living now in love.

Which of course is true.

But it’s only half true—or should I say two-thirds true. What we receive by faith now and live out in love now is a guaranteed place in God’s future. It’s a faith and love that are exercised in hope.

Many Christians don’t grasp this. Nor did everyone in New Testament times.

When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, the thing he wanted them to really grasp—to have the eyes of their hearts opened up to see—was just how extraordinary their future was. He wanted them to understand the ‘hope’ that awaited them, and to live accordingly. If I can paraphrase the rather complicated paragraph in Eph 1:11-22, Paul says something like this:

By being ‘in Christ’, we Jewish believers (who were the first to believe in Jesus) have become what God destined us to be—his very own possession, the people whom he will gather around his Son for all eternity. And it’s even more extraordinary, because it’s now become clear that his eternal plan was always to include you Gentiles in this as well. That age-old plan of God has now come to fruition—because when you heard the gospel that came to you, and trusted in Jesus Christ, you too became united with him, and therefore with all of us as well. You too are now redeemed. You too are now part of the fellowship of love that we ‘saints’ all share in Christ. And you too have received the Holy Spirit as the guarantee and downpayment of the inheritance that is to come, when God finally makes us his own for all eternity.

But if there’s one thing that I would pray for you, it’s that you would come to appreciate just how massive and glorious and mind-blowing that future hope is—the one that you now share with all of us. I pray that God would open up your heart to see and know and grasp and long for what lies in store for all of us, because of our union with the majestic risen Lord of all, Jesus Christ.

Or words to that effect. He wants them to lean into their future—to grasp it, and understand it, and long for it, because that’s what the gospel is about. It’s the guaranteed promise of having a place in the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ.

The logic of the first chapter of Colossians is much the same (it’s funny how often Colossians and Ephesians line up). Col 1:3-5 speaks of a gospel that came to them, that spoke of a hope laid up for them in heaven—a gospel that they trusted and that gave them a new love for all ‘the saints’ (probably, again, the original Jewish believers that they have now joined up with in Christ). In 1:9f., Paul then prays that their spiritual wisdom and understanding would grow so that (among other things) they would endure with patience and joy until they receive the glorious inheritance that they have been qualified for—that inheritance being a place (with all the saints) in the eternal kingdom of the risen supreme Son, Jesus Christ.

Paul prays this way because the more they grasp and understand the glories of the coming kingdom of his beloved Son, and their place in it, the more they will endure now with patience, joy and godly living. When Paul gets down to what godly living means in chapter 3, he continues along the same line of thought. You’re already crucified and raised with Christ, he says. Your life is with him. Your future is with him, and that will one day be made clear to all. So set your hearts and minds there, on Jesus Christ and your eternal future with him, and as a consequence put to death everything that belongs to this current earthly age (3:1-5). In light of what is to come, get rid of the vices of the earthly now, and put on instead the virtues of the heavenly then—the ultimate of which is love (Col 3:14).

In other words, the gospel announces the extraordinary future of the crucified and risen King, Jesus Christ, and invites and calls everyone to enter his kingdom, and to live now as kingdom citizens. This is the sense in which the gospel offers a future ‘hope’—a ‘living hope’ as Peter calls it, because it is essentially the expectation of one day living and reigning with the living, reigning Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:3f.). It’s the ‘hope of righteousness’—of standing justified and blameless before God on that great future day, because we trust in Christ Jesus (Gal 5:5); it’s the ‘blessed hope’, the appearing of our great and Saviour Jesus Christ (Tit 2:13).

We can sometimes get confused about hope, because it has two senses—and perhaps you’ve already noticed this in some of the verses I’ve been quoting. ‘Hope’ sometimes describes the thing in the future that I’m waiting for—like the “blessed hope” of Jesus’ return (in Titus 2), or the “hope of righteousness” that we are waiting for (in Gal 5:5).

But the noun ‘hope’ also often describes my present experience of waiting for it (as does the verb ‘to hope’). Suffering breeds endurance which breeds character which breeds hope—a confident waiting for what will be ours, a hopeful waiting and expectation that won’t be disappointed because God has already demonstrated his love for us by justifying his enemies now by the blood of Christ (Rom 5:2-11).

It’s in this second sense that ‘hope’ is one of the cardinal virtues of the Christian life. Hope is something we do and experience in response to the gospel (like having faith, or loving others). In response to the gospel, we wait and expect and long to receive the inheritance that is stored up for us. We hope.

Hope flows out of faith. Faith grabs hold of the truths of the gospel and trusts them—Jesus is the crucified and risen Lord; we are justified now by his blood; we are raised up with him now in the heavenlies. Yes, I believe and trust in these things.

Hope is the necessary consequence of that trust or conviction. It is the patient, joyful longing and waiting for the promised inheritance in Christ to arrive.

Here’s one last NT example that illustrates the connection. It’s seen in the Thessalonian response to the gospel (recounted by Paul in 1 Thess 1). The Thessalonians heard the word of God about his Son, the saving, reigning Lord Jesus Christ. They trusted this word with full conviction and joy by the work of the Holy Spirit, so much so that their faith was famous everywhere. It was famous because everyone saw how they turned away from their idols and began a new life, of love and service of the true and living God. And how they waited, even in the midst of affliction, with a joyful steadfastness of hope, for Jesus to come from heaven, to rescue them from the wrath to come.

This experience of confidently waiting and longing for the glorious future that we are guaranteed to inherit—this is the sense in which ‘hope’ is one of the three great Christian virtues.

We enter the Christian life through the door of faith; it’s a new life of love for God and for others; but it is an inescapably future-oriented life of hope. It stretches out like a road before us, with a glorious inheritance at the end of it. That forward lean, that keeps its eye on the glorious future that the gospel promises, that strains towards it, that seeks to live now in light of it, that joyfully endures suffering in the meantime—that’s hope.

When our Christian lives lack hope, they stop leaning forward and become overpowered by the present.

The sufferings of the present dumbfound us and dismay us. We don’t see them as part of a future-oriented plan that builds endurance and character and hope, but as catastrophic interruptions to the blessed life of now. When hope is weak, we respond badly to suffering and trials—we either descend into bitterness, doubt and despair, or else we try to wish our troubles away by insisting that they should not be part of our experience now (which is what the prosperity gospel in all its forms essentially does).

But it’s not only suffering and troubles. When we lack hope, the goods and blessings of the present are also a problem for us. They dazzle and distract us. We forget who we are and where we’re going. We become obsessed with the comforts and possibilities of now, and lose sight of the infinitely greater joys and glories of then.

I suggested at the beginning that many people today don’t grasp how significant hope is as one of the three pillars of the Christian life. Our difficulties in dealing with both suffering and blessing are symptoms of this.

Let us keep teaching and reminding each other to hope in the glorious future that the gospel promises, and keep praying that God would open the eyes of our hearts to know it.

PS

I’ve finished each of these little pieces on the faith and love and hope with a strong sense of how brief and inadequate they are. In the case of hope, an excellent way to explore the ideas further would be via Bryson Smith’s fine little book, Hope (subtitled ‘The best is yet to come’). And in a useful coincidence—and yes it really is a coincidence!—the good people at Matthias Media are offering 20% off that book (and a bunch of others) at the moment. Grab a copy or three.

The text below is a shorter, edited transcript of our conversation. The attached audio version is considerably longer, with plenty of extra diversions and discussions.

Tony: Let me start with a simple one: what are you reading at the moment?

Marty: Well, my fun bedside book is the letters between two American founding fathers (as we call them): Thomas Jefferson, and our second president John Adams. They corresponded over the last 14 years of their life, and wrote these exquisite letters back and forth. Their dialogue is just amazing, and one of their big topics was analyzing what true Christianity is and where it’s been corrupted. Of course, they would say we’ve corrupted it! But anyway, that’s been a fun read.

On the more overtly Christian side, one of my jobs at Matthias Media is to read a lot of manuscripts for publication. And I’ve recently been reading one by Peter Jensen. We don’t know what we’re going to call the book (perhaps The Life of Faith), but it is basically a systematic theology. And I just was really encouraged by it. Unlike many of you over there, I never had the opportunity to sit under Peter’s teaching, lecturing or sermons. Just to sit for a week and be saturated in the way he threads together doctrine—boy, that was really good. Lord willing, Peter’s book will be out sometime in 2022.

I also just finished another manuscript—this one by our mutual friend, Ian Carmichael—on the topic of busyness. It’s based on some talks he did at his local church, and it’s a really helpful look at what busyness really is and how we should think about it in our lives.

Today I started on a new book by Craig Hamilton that has just been released by Matthias Media (one of the few I haven’t read). It’s a follow-up to his really, really helpful book, Wisdom in Leadership. This one’s called Wisdom in Leadership Development. I’m only three chapters in, but finding it very stimulating so far.

But Tony, let me turn it back on you on the subject of reading. I’m working with a young man at our church. He’s a lovely man of God, striving hard to grow, and he’s got a normal job that keeps him busy. He’s just had his first child.

But he recently said to me: “I’m not a reader. I hardly ever read. And I do most of my learning through podcasts or documentaries.”

So I’m curious: How much do we allow for that as we teach and train people? How much do we allow for the new technology, and the new way of people’s lives? Or should we insist on reading?

Tony: I think my first reaction would be that the new technologies and possibilities are enriching and are a bonus, but that they can’t replace what happens and how you learn when you engage in long-form reading. And that’s because of the way reading works, the way it unfolds an argument. It can unfold an argument at a length and depth that a podcast or a video just can’t do (or a sermon for that matter!).

They are complementary. Because if you think about it, that’s the way learning and growth works in our Christian lives.

We hear the word coming to us on the lips of other people—in sermons, in Bible studies, in discussion. But then there’s the time when you sit, and read, and reflect, and chew over the word of the Biblein a way that you can’t do in a conversation, or by listening to a sermon or a podcast or YouTube clip.

And so certainly with the guys and girls that we’re training at Campus Bible Study, we’re trying to help them learn to be readers and to learn by reading. I’m not a purist who thinks, “We’ve got to get back to books, and get rid of these ridiculous modern technologies”. It’s nothing like that. But to exclude reading, or to think that it can all be achieved without it, scrubs out a massive and irreplaceable medium for learning and growth.

Marty: You wrote a resource a couple of years ago, a kind of book-course hybrid called The Generosity Project. It has a book with the content in it, but also videos you can play in your small group (which mirror the content of the book). And I tried a little experiment. I would read through a section in the book and highlight and note the key points. And then I would watch the video—and it was interesting how different things stuck out to me in the video. So yes, I think there’s something really healthy about using both forms of communication, and getting the best out of both.

Tony: I think there’s a lot of potential in that kind of format. In fact (as you know!) we’re thinking that this sort of multi-faceted resource will become a regular thing. We’re thinking of calling them ‘learn together’books: a book or resource that is not so much for reading on your own but for helping you learn with others in a small group, using a blend of different inputs and activities. There’s the conversational, interactive, inductive process of working on the Bible together and talking about what it means for us; then there’s the video-based input that provides summaries, teaching and illustrative examples; and then there’s also slabs of text to read and reflect on (whether during the group time or afterwards). All part of ‘learning together’, and all in the one book (with the videos available free online).

So far, the feedback on The Generosity Project—which was kind of the prototype—has been very encouraging. We’re going to do a similar sort of thing with the new Two Ways to Live training resources that will be coming out next year.

Marty: I have a fun question to ask: what is the book you wish you’d written? I’ve heard authors say that that’s how they endorse a book: “This is the book I wish I’d written”. I’m curious what you would say.

Tony: Actually, I have a golf book here on my desk called The Elements of Scoring: a master’s guide to the art of scoring your best when you’re not playing your best by Raymond Floyd. I really wished I’d written that because that would mean I’d be as good a golfer as Raymond Floyd!

But the other book that’s on my desk at the moment that I’m really enjoying and learning from is David Seccombe’s book, The Gospel of the Kingdom: Jesus’ revolutionary message. I guess it’s not so much that I wish I’d written it, but that I’m really glad that David has!

There’s been a lot of debate recently about the gospel. In fact, in The Payneful Truth we’ve had a bunch of posts about that subject and where apologetics also fits in. And of course, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to summarize and convey the gospel (as part the new editions of the Two Ways to Live material).

I’m convinced more than ever about the need to integrate the atoning death of Christ, by which we are forgiven and justified, with the glorious resurrection of Christ as the Lord and King and Judge of all, who now offers forgiveness, to whom we now joyfully submit, and who will return in glory.

For many people, it seems like it has to be one or the other. A gospel of forgiveness of sins through the cross, or a ‘gospel of the kingdom’ that focuses on the resurrection and the hope of a new creation. The ‘gospel of the kingdom’ people often criticize traditional evangelicalism for being too individualistic and making it just about the salvation of souls. “It’s really about a whole new kingdom, and a new creation, and the restoration of all things, etc. etc.” And before you know it, the gospel is all about the renewal of the creation—and the idea that Jesus died as a substitute on the cross for your sins has become a footnote on page 27.

David has succeeded in showing how in the New Testament itself, these two aspects are not ‘competitors’ but part of the same gospel proclamation. It’s brilliantly done, and really important for thinking about evangelism here and now.

Marty: I just read it with the apprentices at our church. I would say it’s as paradigm-changing for me as reading Goldsworthy’s Gospel and Kingdom about 20 years ago. It’s a fantastic book.

Tony: Marty, can I swing it back to you? One of the things that’s encouraged me in working with you over many years is the work that you’re doing at Old North Church in Canfield, in Ohio—as a kind of laboratory of the ‘trellis and vine’ discipleship ministry we’ve been talking about for so long. You’ve been at Old North now for…?

Marty: Ten years next week.

Tony: As you look back, what have been the key things that you’ve learned about trying to actually implement this kind of ministry philosophy in a church?

Marty: God has been very kind. As I reflect back, I am grateful to have gained a little bit of wisdom. I remember hearing Don Carson once say (as a teacher): “Until people get tired of hearing you say the same thing and roll their eyes, you haven’t said it enough”. I think I’ve learned this over the years. You have to keep saying it again and again. So I’ve taught The Course of Your Life many times, and I keep being surprised (although I shouldn’t be) how much I need to keep saying it all again and again and again. I shouldn’t be surprised—God keeps having to say the same things to me again and again.

So one lesson has been: to spread a new culture of discipling, you have to keep saying the same thing—maybe in the same ways, sometimes in different ways—again and again. And this has meant that, over time, we’ve come to have a new shared language at Old North. This has been more important than I ever would have thought ten years ago.

The other thing I would say is that I’ve learned the value of breaking down the distinction between what we might call ‘personal Christian ethics’ and ‘training in ministry’. What we once might have said is, “You teach people to be godly Christians, to live ethically, and then later on you might train them to be involved in a ministry”.

But that’s separating two things that belong together. The ethical response to being a Christian is to make disciples. And (to go back to my first point), I’ve been saying that again and again and again.

And perhaps one last thing. I’ve learned about the need to be patient, to hold people’s hands a little more, to help and encourage them over time to implement or execute or whatever you want to say it. I have tended to think, “If I get the message right, and the shared language right, and we teach that repeatedly—then people will go and do it”. But that’s not often the case, even for the best of us. And I put myself in that camp! We need encouragement and help and support to put it into practice.

So someone who really ‘gets’ it still needs help. They still need someone to remind them, “Hey, Beau—why don’t you go over there? There’s a newcomer. Would you mind following him up?” Something as simple as that. “Could you meet up with this person who’s really struggling during this season of life, and read the Bible with them?”

Things like that. I think I have underestimated how much we need to do that.

Tony: That’s really helpful, Marty. It’s funny, isn’t it? We’ve heard it 47 times and know what we should do. And yet strangely, we don’t do it. We still need each other to keep reminding and encouraging and exhorting each other to love other people in the gospel.

And that’s what you’ve done for me (and hopefully our readers and listeners) over the past few minutes. Thank you.

PS

Hope you enjoyed that little chat. Next week (God willing) it’s back to finish the series on faith, love and hope as the essence of the Christian life. If you’d like to catch up on that series (and read its exciting conclusion!), you can become a partner/subscriber very easily (and very freely for the first 60 days) by clicking this button and signing up for the free trial:

We finished the first part our exploration of this surprisingly tricky question with more questions than answers. Perhaps Don Carson’s little book on The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God needs a counterpart: the difficult doctrine of the love of Christians.

But we did make some progress.

We figured out that love is deeply connected with goodness—with perceiving something to be good and reaching out to it, being inclined or attracted towards it, wanting to embrace it and enjoy it, and see it grow in its goodness or become the good thing it can be.

Love draws us out of ourselves to focus on some good beyond ourselves—whether that’s the good of a beautiful piece of music, or the good of seeing someone healed or fed or saved, or the ultimate good of the God who made all these goods. This is why love is the opposite not just of hate, but of selfishness and pride. Love rejoices in the truly good that we see beyond ourselves, for its own sake.

Good old St Augustine thought deeply about all this. He realised that love was really a kind of knowledge—an affective, heart-felt knowledge that not only understood intellectually that something was good but reached out towards it, yearned for it, and acted accordingly.

Love is of two kinds, he suggested: a rational (or affectionate) love that perceives and reaches for something good; and a benevolent love that acts upon that affection, that seeks the good for others rather than ourselves.

If this is the case, suggested Augustine, then true love depends on the true goodness of that which is loved. It depends on God’s own goodness, and on the good world that he has created, full of good things and good purposes. Love does not just arise within us as a sentiment or feeling; it relates to some real and good thing that we love. It requires an object or purpose that is truly good.

At a practical level we know this to be true. To be loving towards a person—to do something good or gracious or kind for them—requires us to know them and what would be good for them. The intention or motive to love, on its own, is not enough. To throw myself off a cliff to demonstrate ‘love’ for my wife is folly, not love. It seeks or achieves no good thing—quite the opposite. To throw myself in front of a bullet for her is indeed love, because it seeks to protect and prolong that good thing that I love so very much, which is her life.

For love to be real and true, it must constantly make judgements between good and evil. “Let love be genuine”, says Paul. “Abhor the evil, cleave to the good” (Rom 12:9). Without a true knowledge of what is good, it’s impossible to truly love.

This is why our world is so lost and confused about love. Our world has rejected the idea of something or someone being objectively good. Goodness now resides entirely in the eye and heart of the beholder. Whatever I love is good by definition because I have decided to love it, and who are you to tell me otherwise? Love is love.

But as Augustine famously pointed out, it’s impossible to truly love another person without understanding them as God’s creature, made in his image, made for his purposes, and made for fellowship with him.

“He truly loves his friend”, he wrote, “who loves God in his friend, either because God is in his friend, or that he may be so.”  (Confessions, 5.19)

Perhaps we are starting to see why faith is the foundation of love in the New Testament.

By faith, we receive in Jesus Christ a whole new understanding of reality. Our eyes are opened to comprehend what is truly good and evil, because we have left behind our nonsensical rejection of God, and the darkened mind that resulted from that. We come to see God and each other and the good (though fallen) order of the world all as they really are. We come to see God’s good purposes for the world in the kingdom of his Son, and to understand what we are for, and what other people are for, and what the world is for. We are released from our proud, selfish inwardness. We are set free to love—to love God and to love our neighbour.

Faith wakes us up to a new Christ-centred life that works itself out in love (as Gal 5:6 says). In Christ, God spreads a new table of true goodness in front of us, and invites us to love it.

Perhaps, after all this, we are getting closer to being able to say what love really is. How about this for a definition:

Based on and energised by faith in God’s revelation, love is the knowledgeable affection or admiration for a God-given good beyond ourselves, leading us to enjoy or participate in that good, and to act benevolently for its fulfilment.

You might want to chew over that definition at your leisure, and let me know how I could improve it. But here are some of its implications.

At the most basic level, it shows us what is happening when we love. We see someone lacking in some good thing—food, clothing, shelter, warmth, fellowship, encouragement—and because it would be for their good to receive that good thing, we gladly help them obtain it, even to our own cost. That is love. It sees a good, and acts to achieve it or fulfil.

In this basic example, the good we are seeking is a future possible good. It is something lacking or something in prospect. Benevolent love is like this—it acts to bring something good into being or to fruition.

This is why God’s love for the sinner in Jesus is the prime example of love for us to follow. God so loved the world not because we were already good but that we might become so through the atoning death of his Son. He was seeking a glorious good that he had planned since before the foundation of the world, when “in love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:5). As the classic Easter hymn puts it:

My song is love unknown, my Saviour’s love to me, love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.

Moreover, God’s love not only shows us what true love is like—it sets us on a new path of love by setting us free to love others, as he has loved us.

This understanding of love also clarifies why it is the capstone of Christian virtue, and why all the laws of the Old Testament and all the Spirit-given character traits of the New, are summed up by ‘love’. “Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:10).

For example, patience is that aspect of love that is prepared to pursue and wait for the good over time, knowing that in this fallen world, it is often elusive or slow to arrive. Gentleness is that aspect of love that restrains and directs my strength for the good of others who might be overpowered by it. And so on.

When I think of the words ‘godliness’ or even ‘holiness’, I sometimes think of them (quite wrongly) as an almost solitary pursuit—as if they relate solely to the quality of my quiet time, the purity of my thoughts, the integrity of my actions, the truthfulness of my words, and so on. The primacy of ‘love’ reminds us that the holy and godly life we now seek to live is outwardly-focused. It’s a loving pursuit of what is truly good for all those around me.

And finally, this understanding of love shows us that there can be no artificial distinction between ‘love’ as the basic shape of Christian character, and ‘ministry’ as the basic activity of Christian fellowship. The gospel reveals the ultimate good that is found in God and in the kingdom of his crucified and risen Son—and so we speak the truth in love to everyone around us in order to build Christ’s body. We want to see everyone around us come to know Christ, and to become strong in faith, love and hope in him, because that is the great ‘good’ of all our lives. It’s what we were all made for.

Love is “the more excellent way” that shapes all Christian activity. It’s the zealous pursuit of love, according to Paul in 1 Cor 14, which should drive all of us to seek and practise mutually encouraging word ministry (of which prophecy is the classic example).

But I can see my ‘one-another-edifying-speech’ hobby horse sidling up to me at this point, and begging me to go riding, which means it’s time to conclude.

Love—rightly understood—is a superb summary of the new life that arises from faith in Christ. Faith without love is dead. And true love without faith is impossible.

PS

Incidentally, I wonder if understanding ‘love’ more clearly in this way also helps us to understand hate—not simply as a visceral emotion but as a turning away from the good, seeking its opposite (harm or evil). To hate someone is not only to be repelled by them, but to act accordingly—to push them away from us (rather than try to embrace them), and to seek their harm. Like love, hatred is not just an emotion. It’s an ‘affection’ of the heart leading to malevolent rather than benevolent action.

Thanks for your ongoing support and encouragement. Please spread the love (so to speak) by sharing The Payneful Truth with others—maybe choose a post or two and forward it onto your Bible study group?

After last week’s post on faith, I had two of these moments—one I thought of myself and one pointed out by a friend. After a comment from a friend, I really wished I’d made more of the fact that ‘faith in a word of promise’ is the character of the Christian life because it is the character of the God we relate to. He is the covenant-making, promising, speaking God, and so the primary way we relate to him is by accepting and trusting his word. I kind of implied this at various points in last week’s post, but never actually came out and said it (which leaves me shaking my head on the staircase).

Making the connection between God as a speaker and our response of faith is important because it helps us discern false versions of how the Christian life unfolds. It helps us see, for example, that Christian experience is not mystical (where we feel our way towards a wordless force or power); nor is the Christian life lived by sight (neither in the need to see miraculous signs, nor in representing God visually); nor is it a prosperity cult (where God is a capricious non-communicative power that you have to please in order to be blessed). 

The God of the Bible is personal and verbal, and that’s why the primary way we relate to him is by trusting what he says. 

And by talking to him. 

That’s the second thing I wish I’d included in last week’s post—and thought of almost immediately after I pressed ‘Publish Now’. Possibly the most important implication of ‘faith’ as the foundational virtue of the Christian life is prayer. Prayer is faith put into words. It’s our trust in God verbalized in the midst of life—as we call on him, make our requests to him, cast our cares on him, and generally express the fact that we depend upon him for everything. And so faith is strengthened as we hear the word of God and as we exercise our faith in prayer. 

(I’m hoping to turn these posts into a little book about the Christian life in due course, and so these staircase thoughts won’t be completely wasted.) 

But enough apologies about last week. Time to think about the second virtue of the three—love. And because love is more complicated than it first appears, it’s going to take two Payneful Truths to cover it even moderately well. Here’s part 1.

The two loves

I’m lovin’ it. Love your work. Love what you’ve done to your hair. I love my wife. I love golf and lazy Saturday mornings. What’s love, but a second-hand emotion? 

If ‘faith’ is a saggy, middle-aged word that has put on too much weight around the middle,  what are we going to say about ‘love’? It’s so bloated with meanings, associations and cliched usages, we hardly recognise it any more.  

Perhaps this is why we don’t talk as much these days about ‘love’ as the summary and capstone of Christian living—even though the Bible does repeatedly. Maybe it just feels too vague and soppy, like a soft-focus picture of puppies on a 1 Corinthians 13 poster. 

In fact, even if we do want to be biblical and talk more about love, 1 Corinthians 13 illustrates our problem. Just what is ‘love’ in this passage? 

We’re given lots of adjectives—that love is patient and kind, and not arrogant or rude or resentful. We’re told what love does (rejoices with the truth, bears all things, and so on) and what it doesn’t do (boast or insist on its own way). 

But what sort of thing is love itself? 

We’re fond of saying that love is an action, not a feeling—and given the general romanticisation of love in our culture, that’s a fair enough corrective. But love is not really reducible to an ‘action’ in 1 Corinthians 13. Love is certain things, and does certain things. It drives action, and is seen in action, but it is not simply an action.

Then again, we also wouldn’t say from 1 Corinthians 13 that love was primarily a feeling or a sentiment, since feelings don’t act as such—they just are.  

So love seems to be something else. 

Perhaps it is a description of attitude or character. For example, when we say that someone is ‘laid back’, we’re describing something about that person that sums them up—their habitually relaxed way of acting, their easy-going orientation to life in general, their chilled way of responding to things. 

Is that what ‘love’ is—a cumulative description of someone’s habitual way of being and acting? Is it a description of ‘character’? 

That seems a bit closer, and to fit with 1 Corinthians 13 a bit better. But there are still problems. For example, a description of someone’s character is a summary seen from the outside and after the fact. It’s an evaluation of how we observe someone acting and behaving over time. I judge you to be laid-back because of certain things I’ve repeatedly seen you do. 

But what are those ‘certain things’ in relation to love? What sort of actions (repeated over time) would lead me to describe you as loving? What, in other words, is the defining characteristic of an action, the repeated performance of which might lead me to describe you as having a ‘loving’ character? 

Defining what ‘love’ actually means or requires turns out to be quite a bit trickier than first appears (as Love Actually itself illustrates, in the confused claptrap of its sentimentality). 

And we are hardly the first people ever to notice this. In the history of Christian thought and ethics, there has been considerable debate about the nature of love (both God’s love and ours). 

In particular, the debate has often been about the relationship between two kinds of love, captured in the two Greek words eros and agape. Is love fundamentally a desire or longing for something good (eros)? Or is love primarily an unconditional benevolence that acts for the sake of others, regardless of whether they are good (agape)? 

As gospel people, we are immediately drawn to the second alternative. True Christ-like love, we would say, loves the unlovable. God’s love for us is not drawn forth by our goodness or lovableness. In fact, quite the opposite—God’s love is spontaneous and uncaused by us. God’s love is seen in giving his Son to die for his enemies, for those who are dead in sin.

The Lutheran theologian Anders Nygren is well-known for having argued that this agape-love of God is true Christian love, and is the antithesis of eros-style love. Eros is a desire for something that I value. Eros sees something it regards as good, and is drawn to it, longs for it, desires it. Eros, argued Nygren, is inevitably self-centred. It is sub-Christian. 

True agape-love, according to Nygren, doesn’t correspond to the goodness or value of its object. It creates that goodness and value by loving it unconditionally—God’s love for sinners being the prime example.

So far, so good, we might think. But there are problems. 

What about our love for God—the great and first commandment? Does our love for God have no relation to the goodness of God? Do we just graciously decide to love God unconditionally, as if there is nothing good about God himself that calls forth our love? That can’t be right. 

Or for that matter, what of other good things we love in the world—a husband’s love for his wife, for example? Does my love for Ali have nothing to do with any qualities she possesses? I must of course seek to lay down my life for her, as Christ does for the church, regardless of whether she deserves it at any given moment. But when I tell Ali that I love her, should I add, “Of course, there is nothing at all objectively good or attractive about you that makes me say that—it’s just my gracious decision to love an otherwise unlovable object”? This doesn’t sound right either (and would very likely result in cold shoulder and burnt tongue for dinner for quite some time). 

We can see why Nygren wants to make love independent of wanting or desiring ‘the good’ (because that seems to be how God loves us), but his approach isn’t an adequate explanation of love as a whole. In fact, if we over-emphasize the spontaneous, unconditional nature of love, and say that love has nothing to do with the goodness of its object, then we find other problems emerging. 

‘Situation ethics’, for example. This approach to ethical thinking (propounded by Joseph Fletcher among others) suggests that a benevolent love for others should be the driving force of our morality, not rules or laws of behaviour. It’s a very modern and recognizable ethic—just do whatever love drives you to do in the situation. So if you judge that it would be more loving to leave your marriage (in which you are both unhappy), and shack up with someone else, with a net total increase in love and joy all round, then go for it. Don’t let an old-fashioned ‘thou shalt not’ stand in your way. 

The problem with ‘situation ethics’ is that making unconditional love the sole criteria for action just kicks the can down the road. My intention to love is all well and good, but how that is expressed depends on more than the intention alone. It requires me making judgements about the situation and what sort of action would be loving action here and now. It requires us, in other words, to think about what ‘the good’ would be in this situation, not just about my motivation to be loving.

Love, in other words, cannot entirely exist within me (within the subject), as an undifferentiated beam of kindness or affection that flows out onto everyone and everything around me. It must also have some reference to its object—to ‘a good’ that we’re perceiving or seeking in the thing or person that we’re loving. 

Love does have some connection with seeking ‘the good’, and therefore with ‘desire’.   

But then that throws us back on the problem of God’s love for un-good people like us, his gracious, self-sacrificial love for the undeserving. 

And how does all this talk about the nature of love relate to faith? Faith is the foundational virtue of the Christian life (as we’ve seen), and is ‘worked out’ in love (as Gal 5:6 says). How does that work? What is it about love that makes it dependent in some way on faith? 

Well, dear reader, so many questions. But having (hopefully) helped you see the problems, and cleared some of the ground, we might be ready for some answers … in next week’s Payneful Truth. 

PS

We’ve skated over some deep waters in today’s post, and missed out some interesting examples and byways. For example, the idea of love being more about desire has made a bit of a comeback in recent times. Writers like Charles Taylor and James KA Smith have argued that we are driven far more by our desires than by knowledge and rationality, and that (accordingly) people will come to love God not through preaching and rationality and arguments, but through a deep, sub-rational change in what they want. A new and growing love for God will be achieved (Smith suggests) not through rational persuasion or words but through being ‘schooled’ in a new set of desires, through the habits of Christian worship and liturgy. We’ll come to love new things (i.e. God) by practising wanting and loving them over time. 

There is some truth in this (as well as significant problems). It’s true that our desires and our knowledge or reason often work in different directions. We are much more than thinking machines. And we are fallen and complicated, and don’t always respond to rationality—in fact, we are often driven by desires or preferences that we can’t easily explain, or that run counter to what we know to be good and true. 

But what Romans 7 describes as a wretched state—of our desires and our knowledge working in different directions—Smith seems to accept as the unchangeable norm. The sword of the Spirit (the word of God) seems powerless to make any impression on the desire-dominated human heart. The best we can hope for is to train Christians like circus animals to want something different.   

And of course that ‘something different’ is not contentless, just as desire is never contentless. It is always and inevitably based on some perception, no matter how inarticulate, of something good and desirable. And if the thing desired is a person—who is only revealed or known as he speaks—then desire or longing for that person can never be separated from listening to him and knowing him as he really is. 

(Incidentally—how surprising that a liberal Catholic like Charles Taylor should come up with a theory of love and knowledge of God that looks like this, and that ends up with the practices of the church being the mediating power that really changes me. This is hardly shocking. What is more surprising is how many Reformation types have embraced him.)

But I get ahead of myself. More on love and knowledge and how the gospel is the foundation of love … next time. 

I was very tempted to use a Tina Turner image for this week’s post (‘What’s love got to do with it?’), but couldn’t find one that was suitable for a Christian newsletter. And then searched for images illustrating ‘two loves’ and found lots of LGBT pics. So I settled for this one, the Alan Rickman character in Love Actually, who gets into trouble because of ‘two loves’.

Over the next few posts, I’m planning to answer that question by exploring faith and love and hope as the basic virtues of the Christian life—starting this week with faith. 

Words, like middle-aged men, tend to sag and expand with time. 

Perhaps that’s one reason ‘faith’, ‘love’ and ‘hope’ have fallen a little out of favour in recent times as descriptions of the Christian life. All three of these words have put on quite a bit of weight and are barely recognizable in comparison to what they looked like in their New Testament youth. 

We’ve no doubt all heard sermons that have pointed this out, especially about ‘faith’: faith does not mean a blind leap in the dark; faith is not a mystical substance that some people have or don’t have (“I wish I had your faith”); faith is not a sentimental willingness to overlook the claims of evidence and reason, and so on. 

All the same, ‘faith’ does retain an air of mystery to many people, and its nature continues to be debated, not just in conversation with the world, but within the Christian academy. 

Matthew Bates, for example, has recently written a book called Salvation by Allegiance Alone, in which he contends that the traditional definitions of faith (which revolve around conviction or trust in something being true and reliable) are inadequate. He says ‘allegiance’ or ‘embodied loyalty’ is a much bigger and better way of translating the Greek words we normally translate as ‘faith’ or ‘faithful’ or ‘to believe’—and moreover that this important discovery will allow us to solve all those pesky debates between Protestants and Catholics about justification by faith alone, to secure the place of good works in the Christian life, and generally to save the church from various catastrophes. 

I’m not going to waste too much time engaging with Mr Bates’s proposal, having a high degree of faith in Will Timmins’s polite scholarly demolition of the whole idea. My favourite line in Will’s essay: “When taken together, along with the other problems noted above, it becomes apparent that Bates’s lexical argument… consists of little more than a pastiche of citation, inference, and assertion” (p. 609). That’s about as brutal as genteel academic talk gets. 

I mention Will’s essay because in it he highlights the importance of Romans 4 for understanding what sort of faith the NT is talking about. Along with Hebrews 10-11, and parts of Galatians, Romans (and in particular chapter 4) is one of the key sections of the NT to apprentice ourselves to if we are going to understand what sort of faith the Bible speaks of. 

I say “what sort of faith” because the word ‘faith’ itself is not at all mysterious or difficult to understand. The noun ‘faith’ (according to the standard BDAG Greek lexicon) means three things: “that which evokes trust and faith (faithfulness, reliability)”; “the state of believing on the basis of the reliability of the one trusted (trust, confidence)”; “that which is believed (body of faith/belief/teaching)”. 

‘Faith’ envisages the possibility that there is an object or statement or person that can be regarded as true or reliable. One becomes convinced that this is indeed the case. One trusts or relies on or has confidence in this person and their word. The Reformation had three Latin words for this: notitia (the matter or person worthy of trust); assensus (the mental conviction or belief that it or he is true); fiducia (the personal reliance or trust that follows from that conviction). 

In a sense, all faith is like this. It’s what the word means. 

But what sort faith is the NT talking about? Trust or reliance in whom or in what? And with what consequences?

Here (as Will Timmins points out) is where Romans 4 is so important, and so emblematic of what the NT repeatedly says. Paul holds Abraham up as the classic exemplar and father of the faith that all of us now have—both believing Jews and Gentiles:

In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be”. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:18-21)

As Timmins says:

… the phrase ‘hope against hope’, and the depiction of Abraham’s full conviction concerning God’s ability, implicitly reference the incapacity and the inability of Abraham as one whose body is dead (vv. 18–19), and, therefore, as one who contributes the grand total of nothing to God’s promised salvation… The believing Abraham brings nothing to God; he receives everything. (p. 613)

This is the extraordinary character of NT faith. Being in an utterly hopeless position through our own sin and rebellion—without capacity, without goodness, without life, without true knowledge of ourselves or God or the world, we hear a word. A promise comes to us from the true and living God. He promises that in his crucified and risen Son we will find forgiveness, redemption, righteousness and a new risen life. 

Whatever else might flow out of faith or be connected with it (and allegiance and loyalty to Jesus Christ would be one), the essence of Christian faith is a convictional trust and reliance in this promise of God that is proclaimed in the gospel.

But we trust in that word because we trust in the one who speaks it—the living, true and faithful God. To rely upon the gospel promise is to be fully convinced, like Abraham, that God is able to do what he has promised, and will do it. And because the promise itself is about the willingness and ability of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ to be our mediator, redeemer and Lord, then faith in the message is also faith in him—in the risen Jesus as the one who will save us, rule us and judge us. 

So in the NT, the object of faith is the gospel promise, the God who promises, and Jesus himself, who is the content of the promise.  

There is much, much more to say here. I would love, for example, to look further at the two classic OT verses about faith that the NT authors often refer to: 

* “the righteous (one) shall live by his faith” (Hab 2:4; quoted in Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; Heb 10:38); and

* “[Abraham] believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6; quoted in Rom 4:3,9,22; Gal 3:6; James 2:23).

And it would be good to spend some time exploring how trust in the gospel message relates to reasons and evidence—and particularly how important the apostles were as ‘witnesses’ of the resurrection, testifying to what they had seen and heard (cf. 1 Cor 15:1-11; Acts 2:32). 

But our purpose here is to think about faith as one of the foundational virtues or attributes of the Christian life, and of Christian growth and maturity. Here are four important implications for the Christian life that flow out of the understanding of faith outlined above. 

1. Faith is the character of the Christian life from start to finish because the Christian live is given to us from God, as a gift. It comes from outside, not from within. As Will Timmins says, “The believing Abraham brings nothing to God; he receives everything”. We hear the gospel promise and we trust it and cling onto it, because it is our only hope. Like a drowning man we desperately grasp the lifesaver’s outstretched hand, and gratefully receive the salvation he offers. This is why Luther spoke of an “alien righteousness”—a forgiveness and redemption and new life in God that comes from outside, from God, to people who are otherwise spiritually senseless and dead; a righteousness that can only be received in trust, never earned. This is what “faith alone”means, as one of the Reformation slogans. 

And this never stops being the case. To be a Christian is to put our whole trust and conviction in an alien life—a life that comes to us from beyond ourselves and our sinful world. Our whole Christian lives are lived trusting in the promise of God in Jesus Christ, and in him alone—that in him our old selves have already died, that we are raised up with him, and that we now live a completely new life as citizens of his kingdom, looking forward to the inheritance that is to come. 

2. Faith in Christ, then, is the energizing heart of Christian living. By trusting in the gospel of Christ, we are committing ourselves to a whole new existence as subjects of a new king and citizens of a new kingdom. As Paul puts it so beautifully:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Every day is a new day to believe the gospel all over again, to realize afresh that my old life is dead and gone, and to commit myself afresh to the new godly life I now live in Christ. 

3. However, faith in Christ also opens up for us a new vision of living in God’s world, while we await the inheritance to come. When we cease our rebellion and start trusting in Christ, we see everything with new eyes (2 Cor 5:14-17). We are placed ‘right-side up’ (to use the title of Paul Grimmond’s excellent book on the Christian life). We are given a new understanding not only of God in Christ, but of ourselves and of our world. We understand at last what we are for and what the world is for. We understand what it means to be and to live as a human, as one of God’s creatures, because we have come to see and know and trust that Jesus Christ is the exact image of God, the human who shows what it means to be human.

However, again, it is through faith, and faith alone, that we can arrive at this new knowledge of what is real and true and good. Even though it’s a knowledge of ourselves and of this good created world, it’s an ‘alien knowledge’—we were powerless to know it until God came to us in his Son and showed us the truth that makes sense of everything. 

4. The final point to make is that if all I’ve been saying is true, then growth in faith comes through hearing God’s word of promise again and again, understanding it more deeply, and grasping hold of it ever tighter. “Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). 

We therefore need to keep hearing the word of the gospel preached and taught. And we need to keep exhorting and reminding each other day by day to keep trusting the promise and the God who made it, and not to be deceived and hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Heb 3:12-13). 

In other words, if faith is the wellspring and energizer of love (and every other Christian virtue that can be summarized by ‘love’), then to see Christian maturity flourish, we need to see faith grow firmer, stronger and deeper. This happens as we speak the word of God—in multiple different ways—and pray that God by his Spirit would awaken and grow faith in our hearts to respond to it. 

Perhaps Paul’s prayer for these things is the right way to finish: 

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-19)

PS 

Bryson Smith’s little book Faith is about the only recent, popular-level treatment of this subject that I can think of (which is a bit extraordinary in itself). It’s well worth reading and passing around. 

This is a free public edition of The Payneful Truth. Feel very free to pass it around! And if you’d like to get every edition, every week, plus some regular bonus material, here’s a free trial to become a partner (or subscriber) to the regular weekly edition.

The funeral has been delayed until next week (for covid/lockdown reasons), and so I have a few extra days to do the job I’ve been given—of drawing together the memories and thoughts of her family and friends into a eulogy. 

As people send me their ideas and memories and appreciations of Mum’s life, three common themes keep emerging: her deep Christian conviction; her warm and energetic practical care for other people; and her indefatigable positivity in the face of life’s sorrows and disappointments. 

Or to use the Bible’s language: faith, love and hope. 

As much as I might be tempted (and she might approve), I don’t think Mum’s eulogy will be quite the place to undertake a deep exploration of the Bible’s teaching on faith, love and hope as the essence of the Christian life. But it is a topic that I’ve had in my ideas file for a while now.

It has often fascinated me that the New Testament’s most common and foundational language for Christian living doesn’t tend to be our most common language. We tend to speak of Christian growth in terms of ‘maturity’ or ‘godliness’ or ‘discipleship’ or perhaps even ‘personal holiness’. We talk quite a lot about the three C’s of conviction, character and competence. 

‘Faith, love and hope’ aren’t nearly as prominent—certainly not in my fairly wide experience of evangelical thinking, writing and teaching over the past four decades. 

Which is strange, because faith, hope and love are very prominent in the New Testament, not only as foundational concepts in their own right, but in combination as a summary of the Christian life. To take some examples (quickly paraphrased):  

* By faith we wait for the hope of righteousness, for in Christ Jesus the thing that really matters is faith active in love (Gal 5:5-6);

* Having heard of the Ephesians’ faith in the Lord Jesus and their love for all the saints, Paul prays that the eyes of their hearts would be opened to grasp the hope to which he has called them (Eph 1:15f);

* Because they are called by the Spirit to one faith and one hope in one Lord, the Ephesians are to maintain that bond by walking in love and peace (Eph 4:1-6);

* Paul is constantly grateful for the Colossians’ faith in Christ Jesus and their love for all the saints, because of their hope laid up in heaven (Col 1:3-5);

* Paul is thankful for the work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope that the Thessalonians have in our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thes 1:2-3); 

* The shorter Thessalonian version of the armour of God is the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation (1 Thes 5:8);

* Paul thanks God for the abundant growth in the Thessalonians’ faith, and in their love for one another, and in their steadfastness amidst persecution as they look forward to Jesus’ return (i.e. hope) (2 Thes 1:3f.). 

To this can be added the many other places that speak of the central importance of either faith (e.g. Rom 3-4; Gal 2:15-3:29; Heb 11), or hope (e.g. Rom 8:18-25; 1 Pet 1:3-9), or love (e.g. Jn 13:34-35; 1 Jn 3:11-18) as the theological virtues that should characterize our response to the gospel. Then there are the passages that link together faith and love (e.g. 2 Tim 1:13; 1 Thes 3:6), and faith and hope (e.g. Col 1:23; Heb 11:1f; 1 Pet 1:21).

Are there any more central or dominant concepts in the New Testament for characterising the Christian life than these three? (‘Repentance’ is the only other candidate that I think comes close.)

And of course I still haven’t mentioned the most well-known passage in which the three are combined and put forward as the epitome of Christian experience—in 1 Corinthians 13. Particular actions or gifts or ministries or achievements will come and go, says Paul, but underneath them all, and outlasting them all, “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). 

1 Corinthians 13 is a particularly important summary because it presents itself as a summary—as the nutshell of what really matters when all is said and done. The failure of the Corinthian church is their failure to live out these foundational and abiding Christian virtues in response to the gospel of Christ crucified.

What is it about ‘these three’ that encapsulates the response that the gospel calls forth? 

Why are they such an excellent summary not just of my mother’s life, but of every genuine Christian life?

And perhaps most pointedly, what are we missing or neglecting by failing to teach the essence of the Christian life as faith, love and hope? 

This connects with a subject that I’ve banged on about before, namely the importance of being faithful and obedient apprentices to Scripture. Scripture doesn’t give us disconnected principles or rules that we apply here and there. It teaches us an integrated way of thinking and living and being. When we find the thought-patterns and emphasis of our Master differing from our own (that is, the Lord Jesus speaking through Scripture), it should give us pause. Why aren’t we thinking and speaking about Christian maturity in the same categories and concepts as the Bible? Because I think we often don’t. 

If were were going to run a basic series about the Christian life (in Bible study or as a set of sermons) would we instinctively structure it around faith, love and hope? Perhaps more to the point these days, if we were going to have a discipleship pastor or a maturity pastor in our church, would we see the explicit function of their role as being to teach, promote, exemplify and see growth in faith, love and hope? 

I’m not sure we would. Why is that? 

Over the next little, I’ll be exploring faith, love and hope as the essence of Christian living and growth and maturity.

In the meantime, there’s a eulogy to write and deliver next Wednesday morning, August 25. I’d appreciate your prayers. 

PS

The other topic that is burbling along in my mind at present, and that I will return to, is the nature of pastoral leadership. I’ve done one post on it (‘Take heed’), but stay tuned for more on that issue as well over the next month or two. 

One of the characteristics I inherited from my mother (and if only there were more!) was a certain optimism (sometimes over-optimism) about what can be achieved. I’d like to think that I will be back with another post next week, but even my optimistic self wonders whether that will be realistic. If you don’t hear from me next week, you’ll understand why. 

All great stuff, and very much of a piece with the great stuff Steve wrote in his recent book on the subject (The Good Sporting Life: Loving and playing sport as a follower of Jesus). 

However, while not wanting to disagree with Steve, I’d like to push his idea a little further, and fly a theological kite. I wonder if we should think of Sport as a god, or at least as a lordly power that exerts control and authority in the world. 

I’ve been stewing on this and related ideas over the past little while.

What does it mean, for example, for Mammon to be a ‘lord’ that people serve (Matt 6:4; Lk 16:13)? Money is a good gift of God to be received with thanksgiving. It is a creaturely gift that humanity has developed and used in the world, and through which all manner of good things can be done. 

And yet under the name ‘Mammon’ in the Gospels, it is clearly no longer a gift that we can choose to use or misuse. It has become something more. It is a kurios, a lord, a centre of power that people subordinate themselves to.

This good gift, which is ours to utilise, which stems in part from our own powers and abilities, seems now to have an existence of its own outside of us. It is no longer a tool for us to use. It has become a rogue power, exerting influence and authority over us. It snaps its fingers, and we jump. 

In other words, it’s not just that we could mistakenly treat Money as a god or an idol. It’s worse than that. Mammon seems to really be a ‘lord’—a shadowy, non-material, inhuman power that we can’t control, and that in fact controls us. Those who come under its power “fall into a snare”, says Paul (1 Tim 6:9). 

I wonder if Mammon should be identified as being one of the impersonal ‘powers’ (dunameis Rom 8:38; Eph 1:21) or ‘authorities’ (exousiai 1 Cor 15:24; Col 2:10) or ‘lordships’ (kuriotetes Eph 1:21; Col 1:16) or ‘world-powers’ (kosmokratoras Eph 6:12) that exercise dominion in this present evil age. Like the devil himself, Mammon is a created thing that has cut loose from its created place, that has gathered power to itself, and that enslaves people in rebellion against God’s purposes. 

In fact, rebellion against God is the cause of it all. By cutting ourselves loose from God we also lose control of the good gifts and powers that were meant to belong to us; that we were meant to ‘subdue’ and ‘have dominion over’. They get away from us, and master us. Under God’s judgement we are handed into their power. 

In a brilliant and provocative discussion of all this, Karl Barth labels these forces as ‘lordless powers’, and suggests that Mammon is by no means the only one. We still live in a demon-possessed world, he writes, because our world is still …

possessed by the existence of similar or, at times, obviously the same lordless forces which the people of the NT knew and which have plainly not been broken or even affected, but in many ways intensified and strengthened by the fact that our view of world has become a rational and scientific one. Into this clear picture of the world which is ours they thrust themselves, palpable for all their impalpability in every morning newspaper in every corner of the globe, the great impersonal absolutes in their astonishing wilfulness and autonomy, in their dynamic, which with such alien superiority dominates not only the masses but also human personalities, and not just the small ones but also the great.

There are powers and authorities at work in our world, which are clearly above and beyond any human actor or actors, which no-one controls, but which shape human events and decisions. Barth points to ‘government’ or ‘the state’ or ‘political absolutism’ as one of these powers—the good gift of God in Romans 13 that becomes the inhuman power-hungry beast of Revelation 13, ever-growing in power and arrogance and authority, subjugating individuals and masses to its will and purposes. 

He adds other lordless forces to the list—such as the various -isms that come to have a powerful life of their own (e.g., Marxism, capitalism, socialism, liberalism, nationalism, feminism, etc.). These ideologies are usually based in some truth or human capacity, but they become distorted, domineering thought-patterns that ‘possess’ their devotees and require submission. Every thought must be subordinated to the ideology, and made to fit its dictates. Who is in charge at this point? The socialist (or capitalist) who cannot see any interpretation of the world outside of his own, and who forces all facts to fit his paradigm? Or is it socialism or capitalism itself, as a rogue ideological thought-spirit, that has captured people’s minds and now prevents them from thinking of anything else?

Fascinatingly, Barth also names Technology, Pleasure, Fashion and Sport as lordless powers of our age. It’s not just that we can misuse the good gift of technology or clothing or exercise. It’s that these human powers or capacities have gotten loose from our control and become monsters that exert control over us. Who or what is it exactly, for example, that snaps its fingers and makes the world change fashion every year? Who or what is it that pulls these strings, such that even the most sensible among us find it “an impossibility to be old-fashioned”?

Or what sort of power or authority is it that captivates millions of people, determining their actions, their desires, their lifestyle and their emotions—all on the basis of whether an arbitrary group of individuals with whom they happen to share a geographical proximity wins a sporting contest? 

We laughingly speak of worshipping at the temple of Sport, and how footy is our religion. But the power of Sport is real and malign. It is a ‘lordless power’ that comes to dominate people’s lives; that demands our financial, temporal and emotional investment; that promises significance and joy and the fulfilment of dreams, but never delivers; that twists and distorts our view of reality, such that our lives come to be lived in the dead space between Major Event and Major Event. 

None of this is to dispute the personal reality of Satan as the father of all these lies. But if we acknowledge the reality and danger that the impersonal rogue powers and authorities of our age possess—like Mammon and Fashion and Ideology and Sport—we will be better placed to put on the armour of God and fight them. If we reckon with the threat that they pose, we will be better placed to attack and defeat them, and bring every thought captive to Christ.

What do you think? 

Is it possible that Sport is one of the cosmic powers of this present darkness? 

I’d like to discuss this further, but my time is up—in fact, if I don’t finish now I won’t catch the Showdown between Titmus and Lidecky, on the outcome of which hangs my whole happiness for at least the next half hour. 

PS

I’m not 100% convinced about this way of thinking about the lordless powers of our age, but it has potential I think. It’s certainly better than the two most common alternatives in Christian circles—either to think like liberals and completely ignore the reality of evil spiritual forces, or else to go down the quasi-pentecostal, This Present Darkness kind of route, in which the Christian life becomes like an episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

Really interested in your thoughts and reactions—just hit reply to this email, or send me a note directly (at tonyjpayne@me.com) or post a comment on the website.

I confess I have always been a bit suss about people who quote Karl Barth too often, and I have quoted him more than once over the past 12 months! Barth certainly has his quirks and problems, and I wouldn’t recommend reading him until or unless you’re of a certain theological age and stage (if I can put it like that). But more than once recently, he has pushed me to go back to the Bible to rethink what I’m reading there, and to see theological connections and patterns that I hadn’t noticed. That’s a plus. 

Thanks to the many of you who have renewed your annual subscriptions recently. It’s a great encouragement (and helps to pay the bills!). Feel to keep forwarding these emails to friends or people at church or others in your team, and encourage them to sign up for themselves—using the free trial option if they’d like to. Here’s a button: 

I’m training a bunch of would-be, could-be pastors at Campus Bible Study, and it occured to me that I should figure out what it is exactly that I’m training them to become.

What does it mean to be a ‘pastor’ or an ‘overseer’ or a ‘gospel minister’? What is the purpose and nature of these roles? What makes for a good pastor?

Over the next little while in The Payneful Truth, I’m going to dig into these questions from a few different angles and see what we might unearth. In doing so, I won’t pretend for a minute that it will be a comprehensive (or even adequate) total picture of pastoral ministry and leadership. But I hope to achieve two things:

* to give pastors and pastors-to-be some fresh or clarified thoughts about the nature and purpose of their work;

* to help non-pastors in a number of ways: to encourage you to support, pray for and appreciate the work of your leaders; to have better expectations of what pastors are and do; and to understand more clearly how your own gospel ministry (and the gospel work of all Christians) relates to the work of pastors (hint: very closely!).

Where to begin?

I guess one way to start would be to look at the various titles that are given to ‘ministry leaders’ in the Bible and ask what those labels say about the role. We could look at ‘overseer’, ‘elder’, ‘shepherd’ (which is what ‘pastor’ means), ‘worker’ or ‘fellow-worker’ (a very common Pauline term for himself and his ministry colleagues), ‘leader’ (in Heb 13:7, 17), and possibly ‘man of God’ (in 1 Tim 3:17 and 6:11).

This word-study exercise would tell us something—for example that the role had something to do ‘watching over’ people (overseer), or that it related in some way to a shepherd looking after a ‘flock’ (pastor), or that it involved labour and toil (‘workman’), and so on. But as a way of understanding the nature of ‘pastoral leadership’ it would be a limiting and potentially misleading way to proceed. Which aspects of the ‘shepherd’ metaphor apply and which ones don’t and with what emphasis? Is ‘elder’ just about having authority as a mature person, or does the title require that the person is actually old?

Understanding pastoral leadership by focusing on the titles or labels would be like trying to understand doctoring by focusing on the words used to describe doctors—medico, general practitioner, surgeon, physician, clinician, quack, sawbones—and constructing a model of medical practice from the meaning and derivation and usage of those words.

In fact, I can see the journal article now:

The word ‘clinician’ comes from the Greek ‘kline’ meaning ‘bed’, and there are multiple instances in the literature of the ‘clinic’ word-group being associated with the practice of medicine as a ‘bed-side’ or ‘bed-ward’ or ‘bed-oriented’ activity. ‘Clinic’ is bed language. Clinical medicine is thus unavoidably bed-centric. To practice medicine is to ‘visit the bed’, and doctors today who see their patients at impersonal so-called ‘clinics’, far removed from the beds of their patients, have lost touch with the essential character of doctoring.

It would be funny if it wasn’t also a bit sad (because I have read many a theological article that argues in exactly this fashion).

Words are the building blocks of meaning, but they don’t convey meaning until they are assembled into sentences and paragraphs. We discover what ministry leadership is like—its nature and function and purpose—by looking at the sentences and paragraphs of the New Testament that describe its nature and purpose and function.

Like those in Acts 20, for example.

In this passage, Paul is giving the pastoral leaders of the Ephesian church an emotional pep talk before he leaves them for the final time. As he reminds them about what he has done in their midst, and what he now wants them to keep doing in his absence, we learn quite a bit about the role of these ‘elders’ and ‘overseers’ (both labels are used, seemingly interchangeably, in the passage).

In fact, one of the most famous books in Christian history about pastoring—Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor (1656)—is based on an exposition of this passage, and in particular verse 28:

Take heed therefore to yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. (KJV)

Baxter argues that the pastoral task basically consists of obeying the two commands in this verse: take heed to yourselves, and take heed to all the flock over which you have been made overseers.

If you’ve never read Baxter, or it’s been too long, it’s really worth the time (or if you’re short of time, see below for a cheat-sheet summary). His challenges about the essential need for the pastor to watch and ‘take heed’ of his own soul and character are bracing to say the least. (His section on ‘pride’ is a killer.)

But Baxter is famous for how seriously he took the second aspect of pastoral work, the ‘taking heed’ of the flock. In his view, this was impossible to do unless you took the time and labour to meet with parishioners personally and instruct them in the word. He regarded sermons as central and vital, but insisted that unless you also took the time to meet with each family in the parish, and instruct them, and answer their questions, and find out where they stood, and what their spiritual needs and dangers were, then there was no way you could fulfil your duty to ’take heed of all the flock’.

For Baxter, this was a matter of following Paul’s own example, which he was urging the Ephesians elders to follow: “I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house” (Acts 20:20; cf. v 31 “I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears”).

Baxter had a whole system for this. He would set aside all day Tuesday and Wednesday each week and meet with families by appointment, hour by hour, for spiritual instruction. Astonishingly (to us at least), this allowed him to get through 15 or so families per week, and thus spend individual time with all 800 families in the parish at least once a year.

Whenever I have discussed Baxter’s approach with pastors, the conversation has very quickly turned to the impossibility of implementing his approach today. And that’s very likely correct—it was a very different context and time and place.

But the principle that Baxter was expounding is not so easily dismissed. The task of overseers/elders in Acts 20 involves watching, paying attention, guarding and ‘shepherding’ all the individual people over which you have been appointed (by the Holy Spirit!). In the passage, this not only flows from Paul’s own example and the need for them to continue in this work after his departure—it also particularly relates to the threats and dangers that the flock will inevitably experience (the "fierce wolves" that will come, and even from within their own number, in vv 29-30).

This is also a very common theme in the Pastoral epistles (which we will need to come to in our investigation of pastoral leadership)—that one of the important roles of elders and overseers is to guard the gospel itself, and the people to whom we preach it, from the various threats and dangers that will continually come. As the Book of Common Prayer summarizes the job of the presbyter in the Ordinal: “to drive away all false and strange doctrines that are contrary to God’s word; and to this end both publicly and privately to warn and encourage all within your care”.

The Christian life is a dangerous journey. We’re all under threat. Pastors are given the vital responsibility to ‘take heed’ of all their flock in light of these threats.

However, it’s not just pastors. God has also given us each other, as fellow-travellers and fellow-strugglers, to watch and warn and encourage each other to keep going. As a community, we are to ‘take care’ (or ‘watch out’) in case of any of us develop an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God, and to exhort one another daily to resist the hardening effects of sin (Heb 3:12-13). This is a vigilance that we all share in, for each other’s sake. We should all ‘watch out’ or ‘take heed’ for each other (cf. Gal 6:1-2).

In other words, the responsibility that ministry leaders have to ‘take heed’ to the flock is a focused and intensified version of the responsibility we all have for each other. The Thessalonians are urged to “respect those who labour among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you”, but in the very next verse they are themselves urged to “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak” (1 Thess 5:12-14).

This seems to me to be a repeated pattern with respect to elders, overseers and pastoral leaders generally. They are not a different class of Christian, nor do they do anything that all Christians don’t also do in some respect. We all teach and instruct and admonish each other, and we all seek to grow a character that reflects and expresses the teaching of the gospel. Those who ‘labour among us’ and are ‘over us in the Lord’ lead the whole community in doing this. They provide the capital T ‘Teaching’ that guards the gospel and provides the basis and boundaries for the mutual ‘speaking the truth in love’ that we all engage in. They exemplify the gospel character and life that flows out of that teaching. They are responsible to ‘take heed’ for the whole flock, and make sure that each person is guarded, protected, fed and so on. This is why ‘oversight’ is such a necessary, noble and important work, requiring a person of exemplary Christian character, and particular gifts (1 Tim 3:1-7; Titus 2:5-9).

The weakness in Baxter’s presentation is the lack of any real sense that ‘watching out’ for each other, and instructing and exhorting each other, is a task for the whole community—not just the overseer or the pastor.

However, the strength of Baxter’s writing is his insistence that it is the responsibility of the pastor/overseer ‘to take heed of all the flock’—to ensure that the whole church community, and each and every person in it, is known and instructed and guarded in the gospel. He reminds us that ministry is always and invariably about people—and not people considered as a general target for our preaching, but each precious, individual person for whom Christ died. (The four Ps somehow come to mind: Proclamation, Prayer, People, Perseverance.)

There are many practical and systemic questions to think through. If elders/overseers are responsible to take heed of every individual member of their flock, how is this to be organized and done? Can the responsibility be shared with others? Which others? Does the nature of biblical ‘pastoral oversight’ mean (as Baxter thought it did) that pastoring is unavoidably congregational? What of all the other kinds of full-time ministry that happens in and around churches today that are not specifically congregational in scope? And so on.

Some of these questions are situational, and we will come up with different legitimate answers. Some are issues of principle—and if I am brave enough I will come back to them in due course!

However, here’s one practical reflection to conclude. In many of the ministries I’ve been involved in over the years, an outworking of the Baxter principle has been for every church member to have the initials of an elder/overseer next to their name on the church roll. And it was the responsibility of that ministry leader to ‘take heed’ for that person—to know them, to know their struggles and issues, to be praying for them, to be taking active steps to ‘move them to the right’ (through a mix of their own personal conversation/meeting with them, and through their involvement in the various ministries of the church).

Does something like this happen where you are? How does the leadership team in your congregation ‘take heed of all the flock over which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers’?

PS 

I put together a modern English, bullet-point summary of The Reformed Pastor for the trainees I’m working with. It’s a bit rough, but if you’d like to check it out you can.

You can also download a version of The Reformed Pastor if you’d like to read a lightly revised version of the text.

If you’d like to check out the partner edition of The Payneful Truth—the one that comes out every week—follow this link for a 60 day free trial.

* Persuasion: the reason and argument that takes place when we are actually presenting the gospel.

* Answering objections: responding to the questions, objections and accusations that arise in response to the gospel. 

* Pre-emptive objections: clearing away obstacles or objections before we get to actually explaining the gospel. 

* Building confidence in Christians by fortifying them against the attacks and objections of the world. 

Let’s get onto the final three, and some feisty concluding thoughts. 

5. God talk

Way down the left end of the process, there’s a kind of engagement and interaction with our non-Christian friends that deserves to be named and recognized. 

We might call it ‘pre-evangelistic engagement’ or ‘relationship building’. Ever since I first learned the term in the Two ways to live training course (back in the day), I’ve tended to think of it as ‘God talk’.

‘God talk’ is not really ‘apologetics’ in any meaningful sense, although it may be responsive to a particular question or idea that our friend raises in conversation. It’s simply the personal engagement and conversation that happens as we get to know non-Christian people, and begin to reveal our gospel beliefs in the course of everyday conversation:

* when we express a gospel-based opinion about a particular current topic;

* when our Monday morning office chat includes what we learned at church the previous day;

* when we talk about our own Christian experience in some way;

* when we explain our behaviour or choices or opinions in a Christian way;

* when we offer to pray for someone.

I think this is the kind of everyday opportunity that Colossians 4:5-6 assumes is taking place as Christians interact with the world, and of which we’re to make good use (by taking the conversation further ‘to the right’, towards the gracious, salty word of the gospel.) 

6. Positive reasons

This is another category of interaction which is difficult to label as ‘apologetics’, although it is often described in this way (as ‘positive apologetics’). 

It’s the process of offering positive reasons or arguments for Christianity and the gospel, based on the reasonableness or goodness of Christian belief. This kind of interaction commends the gospel as worthy of consideration on the basis of things like these: 

* the way that Christianity so satisfyingly explains the way the world is, and our experience of it (e.g. both the goodness and evil of man; the existence and nature of love, justice, hope, meaning, personhood, morality, and so on); 

* the famous ‘proofs’ of God’s existence, which seek to show that good logic demands we believe in the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful personal God; 

* studies or examples showing that Christians live deeply satisfying lives; 

* how the Christian gospel actually answers the deepest questions and aspirations we have as humans;

* historical studies that highlight the essential and positive contribution Christianity has made to our civilization. 

This is a best-foot-forward kind of approach. Let’s show the world how good and useful and reasonable and attractive Christian belief really can be (and therefore why they should give it a second look). 

I’m sure we’ve all employed this kind of argument in conversations or sermons, at least in passing (I certainly have). Some more thorough-going examples of this kind of engagement would be the work of The Centre for Public Christianity, or the argument of John Dickson’s book A Spectator’s Guide to World Religions (let’s think of the religions of the world as fine paintings in a gallery; let me show you why Christianity is the most beautiful). 

It’s much harder to find this kind of interaction in the New Testament. There’s the way that godly behaviour ‘adorns’ the gospel in Titus 2:10, and likewise the way that the mutual love of Christian disciples advertises that we are apprentices of Jesus (in Jn 13:34). But these are not attempts to argue for Christianity so much as the natural outcome or byproduct of godly living. Perhaps this is the place of this kind of interaction—to provide incidental confirmation or testimony to the gospel, as the good effects of repentance and faith are seen. In this sense, I’ve heard people speak of Christian community or church life as an ‘apologetic’ for the gospel—that is, as a positive testimony to the difference that the gospel makes. This seems fair enough. It’s quite common for people to become interested in hearing more about the gospel because they are impressed and intrigued by the life that Christians live.

However, as an apologetic strategy or tactic, I worry deeply about ‘positive apologetics’. Of all the kinds of interaction we’re considering, it has the gravest risks attached. 

For example—for something to be good or attractive, there must be a basis for evaluating it as such. Good or attractive according to whom, or according to which values? For positive apologetics to work, it has to meet the non-Christian world on its own ground, and seek to persuade it of the reasonableness or beauty of Christian belief based on what the non-Christian world already regards as reasonable or attractive. It has to adopt, to some significant extent, the worldview and assumptions of its audience, and shape the presentation of how Christianity is good or attractive in these terms. 

It’s hard to see how this does not lead to a human-centred message that ultimately saps the gospel of its offensive power—a power which is encapsulated in the cross and resurrection. The cross is neither attractive nor reasonable; certainly not by the standards of the world. In fact, it is weak and foolish by those standards (as 1 Cor 1-2 makes very clear). Likewise the proclamation of Jesus rising from the dead to be the Lord and judge of all is hardly the kind of message designed to appeal to the intelligentsia (see Acts 17:32; 26:23-24).

If you lead with how attractive and good and reasonable Christianity is, how do you follow that with a gospel that defies these categories—that critiques and judges human standards of wisdom and goodness? 

Positive apologetics also has a tendency to make Christianity the message rather than Christ. The pitch is for Christianity as an appealing or satisfying system of belief; or Christianity as an attractive lifestyle or community; or the church as a positive agent for good in our world. But the gospel is not Christianity. We do not proclaim ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord. 

You may be getting the impression that I’m a bit down on ‘positive apologetics’. I am. It worries me. In its defence, I can see how it sometimes functions as a useful form of ‘Pre-emptive objections’ (Type 3)—that is, if the accusation of the world is that Christianity is life-denying, negative and harmful, let’s remove that obstacle by showing how Christianity is life-affirming, positive and healthy. 

All the same, I fear that positive apologetics leans too hard on natural theology, and tries to build a bridge from the world to God (which can never be done). It often ends up replacing the public preaching of the cross and resurrection with a public pitch for reasonableness and attractiveness. I worry that it seems to put God in the dock and offer reasons why the jury of the world should judge him to be attractive. 

And that leads me to the final form of ‘apologetics’.

7. Prosecution (‘kategoria’)

If ‘apologia’ is the Greek word for making a defence in court, its counterpart is ‘kategoria’—to accuse, to prosecute. 

The word is almost always used to describe a negative practice in the New Testament—such as Paul’s opponents accusing him of wrong-doing, or Satan accusing believers. 

However the concept that ‘kategoria’ describes is central to evangelistic interaction, because we preach a message that puts the world in the dock (not the other way around). The gospel we’re commanded to preach is that Jesus “is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). 

We see this in action in Acts 17. Paul critiques the folly of Athenian idolatrous religion (partly using quotes from their own poets to do so), and then calls upon them to repent, because Jesus has risen from the dead and will return as judge. 

The message that we preach is good news—but it is so good because it honestly exposes and judges the folly and evil of our world and our hearts, and then proclaims God’s promise of forgiveness, reconciliation and new life in Christ. 

In other words, the gospel that we preach by the Holy Spirit does what Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do after his departure—convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgement (Jn 16:7-11). 

This ‘prosecution’ or critique can happen as we engage with people in conversation, and point out the inconsistencies and problems with the non-Christian position. It can happen as we unpick the illogical and dysfunctional patterns of non-Christian thinking or practice, or as we help someone understand that the mess their life is in has an underlying cause. 

But it happens chiefly when we preach the gospel itself, when we proclaim Jesus as the crucified and risen Lord, and call upon people to stop rejecting him, and instead turn to him in faith and repentance. Evangelism has this prosecutorial aspect—which is why the diagram has ‘prosecution’ occurring at a couple of points on the spectrum. 

To describe this kind of gospel interaction as ‘prosecution’ doesn’t at all mean that it is aggressive, hostile, angry or censorious. On the contrary, as Paul says of his own divisive ministry in 2 Cor 3-4, it is preached with a blameless straightforwardness and honesty that commends itself to everyone’s conscience. It is preached with fear and trembling and with tears (1 Cor 2:1-5; Acts 20:31). 

Conclusion

It’s interesting that we tend to use the word ‘apologetics’ so frequently these days—even for forms of interaction that don’t really warrant the label. I wonder if this is because our stance towards the world has become essentially apologetic. 

It would hardly be surprising if that were the case. Christianity has been on the defensive in our culture for 150 years. Could it be that we’re so used to being attacked and critiqued and marginalized that we have come to accept this as our fate and our role? 

I fear we have. We’ve internalized the Enlightenment paradigm that man is the measure of all things. We constantly feel the need to justify the Christian position as reasonable and acceptable in the face of the prosecution of our culture—a now-dominant humanist culture that has been steadily criticizing and rejecting the gospel for the better part of two centuries.

And so we find ourselves crouched in a permanently defensive stance. We’re reluctant to speak out (because you can only have your head bitten off so many times). When we do speak, we lead with ‘apologetics’ of various kinds, assuming that our task is to make Christianity more reasonable and acceptable before a sceptical, accusatory culture. We ask our hearers whether perhaps they might give Christianity a second look, given that, you know, we’re really not as terrible as you think we are.

(I speak here to the impulses of my heart.) 

Gospel proclamation by the Holy Spirit is not like this. 

It prosecutes the world for its rejection of Jesus. It implores people to repent and be reconciled to the God they have alienated themselves from. It is not angry or aggressive. But it speaks the plain and honest truth, in weakness and fear and trembling. 

We preach a gospel that critiques and confounds the world. But for those who have ears to hear, it is the sweet sound of salvation.

PS

This week’s post (and last week’s) started life as a discussion with the staff at CBS about these topics. One of the trainees piped up at one point and said, “Sounds like you’re saying that apologetics can be useful, but not as a replacement for evangelism”. Which pretty much captures it. The trend is for ‘apologetics’ to expand (in scope and importance), and to colonize the space where evangelism should be. 

Do you see this happening? In your own heart and approach? In the Christian circles you move in? 

Interested as always in your thoughts. 

This week’s image keeps the classical painting vibe going — it’s Paul on Mars Hill.

And so to clear the ground a little and clarify understanding, I put forward the following ‘seven kinds of apologetics’. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, ‘Seven kinds of Christian speech or interaction that are sometimes called apologetics’. 

See what you think. 

Seven types of ‘apologetics’

What is apologetics? 

Let’s start by saying that apologetics is not evangelism. Evangelism is the proclamation and explanation of the historical truth of the gospel—that God sent Jesus Christ to die for our sins, that he raised him from the dead to be the Lord and Judge of God’s eternal kingdom, and that he now calls on all people everywhere to submit to Christ in repentant faith (see Boxes 4-6 of Two ways to live!). 

But gospel proclamation, pure and simple, is not the only kind of interaction we have with people. There is also conversation and reasoning and debate—both pre- and post-evangelism—and we have come to label much of this ‘extra-evangelistic’ interaction as ‘apologetics’. 

I’m not sure how far the word ‘apologetics’ can actually stretch. In fact, strictly speaking, I think only two of the seven kinds of interaction I’m about to outline are really ‘apologetics’ per se. That doesn’t mean that the other five aren’t valid or useful. They mostly are. But some clarity will help—especially since a common tendency is for apologetics to expand and colonise the space where ‘evangelism’ should be. (But more on that below). 

To conceptualize these seven kinds of ‘apologetics’, I’m going to use the ‘moving to the right’ concept that we looked at a few editions ago—or at least the left half of that diagram which focuses on engaging and evangelizing non-Christian people to move them to the right, towards coming to know and trust and serve Christ. 

Like this:

The different kinds of ‘apologetic’ interactions we’re looking at occupy different points along this spectrum. Types 1-3 are in the ‘evangelize’ zone, and types 5-7 are more down the ‘engage’ end of things, and type 4 is over in the ‘Christian’ zone. It’s never as neat as that in actual conversation, or in the sermons we preach. But categorizing them in this way can help us understand what we’re doing when and why.

1. Persuasion

When we’re right in the middle of evangelism—of actually explaining the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ—we will provide various arguments and reasons to support our proclamation. Like Paul, in 1 Cor 15, we may argue that the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection is grounded in God’s age-long plans as revealed in the Scriptures, or we may support the truth of the resurrection by pointing to the witnesses who saw him. (Interestingly, Peter’s sermon at Pentecost covers much the same ground.) Or we may spend time persuading people of the nature and reality of their sin, and their plight before God, as a means of explaining why the death and resurrection of Christ is such wonderful news. 

Reason, argument, persuasion—these are natural aspects of explaining and commending the gospel. We see the apostles and evangelists doing this often and in different ways in Acts (e.g. Paul’s ‘reasoning’ and ‘persuading’ in Acts 18:4 and 19:8). 

Is this ‘apologetics’? Well perhaps not as such, although sometimes it comes close. That’s because ‘apologetics’, strictly speaking, is a defence of something or someone. An ‘apologia’ is your answer to someone’s objection or accusation (this is what the word means). 

If you’re explaining to someone why your message is true and trustworthy, are you ‘defending’ it? Well, sort of. It’s interesting that Paul’s ‘defence’ (apologia) of himself and his ministry in Acts 26 ends up being a gospel sermon. 

In any case, even if we think it might be a stretch to give it the label ‘apologetics’, let us agree that persuasive, well-argued gospel proclamation is a good thing!

2. Answering objections

Classically speaking, this is where ‘apologetics’ really lives. You preach or put forward your explanation of the gospel, an objection or accusation comes back, and you respond. You make a defence.

We see it in 1 Peter 3:15 where Christians are called to “to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you”. We see it in some of Paul’s speeches in Acts where he makes his defence against the accusations that have been levelled against him, and (by implication) against the gospel that he preaches (e.g. Acts 22:1f; 24:10f). 

Apologetics, in this sense, comes after evangelism. (This is why I’ve positioned it towards the right-hand side of the evangelism zone on the diagram.) It answers the questions, objections or accusations that are raised against the truth of the gospel—things like these:

* How do you know that the historical events you’re proclaiming actually happened? (This is where ‘evidential apologetics’ comes in, defending the historical reliability of Scripture, the truthfulness of the Gospel accounts, and so on.)

* Isn’t this message that you’re preaching socially or politically destructive? 

* If Jesus is Lord of all, what about those who’ve never heard of him? How will they be judged?

* If God is supposedly so powerful and loving in sending and raising Jesus, why is there so much suffering in the world? 

* If sinners are going to be judged, does that mean that all gay and trans people are headed for hell?

* And so on.

(Kel Richards’s under-appreciated little book Defending the Gospel is one of the best examples of classic ‘defensive apologetics’ of this kind that I know of. It works its way through the main points of the gospel, and shows how to answer the common questions and objections that arise at each point.) 

3. Pre-emptive objections

Sometimes, in practice, we try to deal with some of these common objections before we get to proclaiming the gospel itself. We assume that our hearers already have objections—because they have already heard some version of Christian teaching and already have reasons for rejecting it. 

Strong versions of these existing objections are sometimes called defeater beliefs— existing beliefs or objections that rule out the truth of the gospel before we’ve even started to explain it. “I don’t have to listen to you and your gospel; I’ve already dismissed them because of X.” And X could be objections like these: 

* Science has disproved God. I don’t need to listen any further.

* My life is quite fine without God and Christianity; I have absolutely no need of them, even if they were true. 

* No normal, rational, modern person can believe in the Christian gospel. We’ve outgrown it. 

* Jesus might be interesting, but ‘Christianity’ and ‘the church’ are so poisonous and horrible that I have no interest in listening to you. 

The first half of Tim Keller’s The Reason for God is a good example of this kind of apologetics. He begins by dealing with some common objections or ‘defeaters’ before turning to the gospel itself in the second half of the book. An even better example (because it does a better job of the ‘gospel’ bit in the second half), is Naked God, by Martin Ayers.

‘Pre-emptive apologetics’ of this kind is valuable, but it is also not without risk: 

* The person you’re speaking to may not in fact have the objection you’re answering—and all you have done is waste their time, and possibly put an objection in their mind that they hadn’t previously considered. 

* It puts you on the back foot from the outset. Rather than leading with the positive message that you love and are excited about (the gospel of Jesus), you lead with the negative reasons why this message isn’t believed by people.

* It can reframe how you preach the gospel itself. If you pre-emptively deal with the objection, for example, of whether Christianity has been a bad thing for humanity or not, it’s easy for Christianity and the church to become the focus of your message (rather than Christ himself). You can end up seeking to justify the truth of the gospel on the basis of whether it is a net good for human life and society or not.

However, the major risk with too much focus on pre-emptive apologetics is the one in our own heads—we start to believe that if we can first just clear away these objections, then voila! Our hearers will accept the truth of the gospel and believe.

We need to trust what the Bible tells us about the people we’re seeking to evangelize—that the underlying basis for unbelief is moral and spiritual corruption. Deep down, all people know very well that God is their good and powerful Creator. But we all suppress this truth and exchange it for a lie, with the result that our thinking and values become hopelessly compromised and distorted (Rom 1:18f.). When faced with the light, we prefer the darkness, because our deeds are evil (Jn 3:19). 

It’s in this sense that we should treat people’s objections respectfully and courteously but not seriously. The problem goes much deeper. (See my earlier post on ‘not taking unbelief seriously’ for more on this.)

We must still persuade and give good reasons for why our proclamation is true (because if Christ is not raised then our faith is futile). And we can’t continue in conversation and persuasion without addressing the questions that people raise along the way. 

But we mustn’t think that answering objections (pre-emptively or otherwise) is the key that will unlock the door of someone’s heart. Or that apologetics is the necessary bridge across which the gospel must walk. 

The gospel is the power of God for salvation, not apologetics.

4. Building confidence

This brings me to the final variety of ‘apologetics’ that I will cover in this post. 

A key function of classic defensive ‘apologetics’—the kind that answers questions and objections—is to build the confidence of Christians in their faith and proclamation. 

When the world throws stones at the gospel, Christians can be the ones who end up bruised. Doubts creep in. Confidence wanes. If all these smart people reject the gospel, and they have all these snappy one-liners and objections, then maybe I’m just naive to keep believing.

Answering these objections, and showing how shallow and insubstantial they usually are, brings real comfort and confidence to Christians. It bolsters their defences, and strengthens them not only to grasp even tighter to the gospel, but to be bold in sharing it. 

By defending the gospel, we defend those who have put their trust in it.

PS

Well, there’s a quick summary of types 1-4. I’ll get to numbers 5-7 in next week’s post. But feel very free to send in any thoughts or reactions in the meantime.

As always, feel very free to copy and use this article (and next week’s) to talk about apologetics in your small group or staff team.

Thanks for the continuing stream of emails and messages coming back. It’s great to keep hearing from you. One recent encouraging message (from Bek) came in response to ‘How to grow left-lookers’ (https://www.thepaynefultruth.online/p/how-to-grow-left-lookers). Here’s part of Bek’s email: 

Two lines from your article caught my attention.

The first—“people who are stuck in complacent, self-focused Christianity”—reminded me of the CBS catch phrase 'don't settle for middle-class Australian life'. This is so easy to do and I try to challenge myself on this often. But the thought that this isn't just about making sure that we don't allow our jobs or comforts to become idols, but that we also need to be actively pursuing the growth of God's kingdom—I think comes as more of a rebuke. 

Which ties in with the second line that struck me—“it is maturity in the lived practice of that knowledge”. As university-trained professionals who have come through CBS it can sometimes feel like having the head knowledge is good enough, but if we aren't living it out visibly in our day then are we truly mature? Or do we actually need some of that milk reminding us of the amazing gift of God's grace, to see the gravity of our sin and the beauty of the cross so that we honestly desire others to know Christ and glorify God?

Had to scratch around a bit for an image this week—this painting is allegedly Paul making his defence before Agrippa.

I suggested in last week’s post that perhaps the key moment in the growth of Christian disciples is when we start to look left:

I lift my head up, and open my eyes, and see the multitudes all around me that need to move to the right—to take steps towards knowing Christ or growing in Christ. And I realise that God has called me, in my own weak and faltering way, with my own particular relationships and opportunities, to help those people take one step in that rightward direction.

The more we move right, the more we look left, and long to see others take a step to the right. 

The question we left hanging was simple enough: How does this happen? How do I become that sort of ministry-hearted person?! And (as a leader) how do I see more of those sorts of left-looking people emerge in the congregation?

The answer is simple but not easy. 

If this looking-leftness is a function of moving-rightness, then we already know how God moves people to the right—it’s through what the Reformers called the means of grace and what we in our love of alliteration call the four Ps (Presenting the Word, Prayerfully, in and through People, Persevering in Practice over time). These are the means God gives us for spiritual growth. There are no others. 

So to see more people become left-lookers, just prescribe the four Ps, twice daily after food, and all will be well. 

To which you might say, “Well we’ve been doing that already, and the patient isn’t showing much improvement! We preach the word and pray and so on, but there still seem to be lots of people who are stuck in a complacent, self-focused Christianity. Isn’t there a special pill for those people?!” 

Well, yes and no. Two important further points need to be made. 

Firstly, while the treatment is never anything other than the four Ps, the four Ps aren’t uniform or one-dimensional. The ‘whole counsel of God’ is rich and multi-faceted, and we apply different aspects and implications of it to different people at different times. That’s what ‘moving each person one step to the right’ really means—meeting each person where they are, and applying the word of God to them in their particular circumstance, with its particular implications and outworkings. There is an order to the teaching—basic principles followed by meatier instruction. And this also intersects with the different levels of maturity and understanding that each person has. As Richard Baxter puts it (riffing on Hebrews 5:11-14): 

The ministerial work must be carried on prudently and orderly. Milk must go before strong meat; the foundation must be laid before we attempt to raise the superstructure. Children must not be dealt with as men of full stature. Men must be brought into a state of grace before we can expect the works of grace from them. (The Reformed Pastor, II.2.3)

At some point in the growth of every Christian it’s time to ‘move them to the right’ in this specific area—that is, to help them see that they are not just disciples but also disciple-makers; to teach them about the privilege and joy that every Christian has in seeking to move everyone around them to the right through the four Ps, within the amazing plan of God. How will Christians know and embrace this wonderful truth if they are not taught it?

This teaching can and should happen within the course of regular Sunday preaching, as we teach people of God’s extraordinary purposes in Christ, and as we expound those passages that particularly speak of our part in that plan. 

However, occasional references in sermons won’t be sufficient. We need to bring this particular word to the people who need to hear it, and take the time to help them hear it, understand it, learn it and embrace it. This might happen in a number of ways:

* at special seminars, weekends-away or teaching times that address this particular topic;

* in small groups (either occasional groups formed for this purpose or as part of the regular small group diet); 

* in one-to-one meetings;

* using books and other resources that bring together the Bible’s teaching on this subject. 

(Incidentally, this is why I wrote The Course of Your Life study material, and the little book that goes along with it, The Thing Is. I was struggling to find good study resources or material that taught about this particular area in a coherent and helpful way. See more on this in the PS below.)

The framework or method or context will vary—what’s important is that we intentionally teach, apply and work through this aspect of God’s Word, to our own hearts and to others. 

Secondly, however, we become this sort of left-looking person as we put the word into practice—as we learn the practicalities of how to move others to the right, and begin to actually do so. 

Hebrews 5 says something about this as well. “Solid food is for the mature”, it says, “for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb 5:14). As they implement and practise what they have learned, the mature develop muscles of discernment and understanding. It’s maturity not just in solid-food-knowledge—although it is certainly that. It’s also maturity in the lived practice of that knowledge. 

People learn to be left-lookers by beginning to exercise those muscles; by taking part in the action. This could be by beginning to read the Bible with someone else; or by taking some steps to pray for and talk with their neighbours; or by joining the welcoming team on Sunday mornings; or by door-knocking their street; or in a thousand other ways, both structured and informal. 

This is what ‘training’ really is—teaching a new way of thinking that generates a new practice or way of life, and then growing in that practice by doing it. And this is where ‘training courses’ can be extremely useful if they are used well—if they help us to prayerfully teach God’s word on a particular topic, and then provide opportunities to practise and grow in that knowledge by implementing it. 

In my experience, moving people to the right in this crucial area—that is, helping them become loving, ministry-hearted, left-lookers—often fails by neglecting one or both of the two facets above:

* We fail to teach clearly, compellingly and personally about the nature of the Christian life as a disciple-making life. We work hard at recruiting people to serve in different ways, to be part of ministry teams, to ‘get involved’—but we don’t prayerfully address the heart with the powerful and sharp word of God about why we should serve and what ‘service’ really is (it’s moving people to the right). 

* We do teach about ‘moving right and looking left’, but fail to provide practical training in how to do it, along with structured opportunities for people to learn by doing. 

The result of one or both of these failures is the landscape that many of us battle with in our churches. We constantly struggle to find people willing to lead or be involved in the various ministry structures or teams we run. And those who do get involved often suffer from a lack of joy, perseverance and right-moving intentionality in the work they are doing. 

The underlying issue is both spiritual and practical. We need to plant and water, and do the weeding and organize our farm activities—and pray that God would move more and more people to the right, so that they start to look left.

PS

As always, I’d be interested (and we would all benefit) from you sharing your own experiences and reflections about growing ‘left-lookers’ in your congregation. Drop a comment on the website or simply reply to this email with your thoughts and questions.

Sometimes you only really realise why you’ve done something after you’ve done it. Looking back, most of what I’ve done over the years at Matthias Media has been in service of the principles in this article—to provide biblical teaching and training resources to help Christians become left-lookers, and then to train and equip them for moving others to the right through the four Ps. 

The two resources I mentioned above have a special place in this. The Course of Your Life was my attempt at creating a training framework to revolutionize people’s view of their own life as ‘disciple-making disciples’—over time, in a group with others, with practical learn-by-doing elements as well. The Thing Is was the little book version to read alongside the course (or as a lead in or as revision). If you haven’t ever checked them out, here are some sample chapters to take a look at: 

I tried very hard to find an image of Richard Baxter looking left, but this was the closest I could find …

* 10,000 reasons our songs are changing: how should we think about the unmistakable trend towards slower, more emotionally intense congregational songs? 

* Singing and the affections: a follow-up post on emotions, affections and singing, including a re-reading of a well-known Jonathan Edwards quote. 

* You knitted me together: a fresh take on the value and personhood of unborn children, and how we might talk to our friends about this. 

* Is Christianity a locked room?: some thoughts on whether Christian truth is a circular argument. 

The good news is that you can access all these articles (and the whole archive) by coughing up a few measly dollars a month and becoming a paying member of The Payneful Truth. And that (as they say in the steak knives commercial) is not all. You also get:

* every future edition every week (in both text and podcast form)

* the monthly Q&A interview

* regular work-in-progress reports from my other writing (including draft and sample chapters)

* bonus book specials from Matthias Media 

* and the joy of supporting Christian writing!

If this seems irresistible, then just …

Or if you’d like to kick the tyres a little more first, then you can currently try all this out with a …

Anyway, on to today’s post …

Move right, look left

There’s a moment in Trellis-and-Vine related ministry workshops or talks when the same joke always seems to show up. Like an old friend approaching on the street, I see him coming, and give him a warm slap on the back as he arrives and passes by.

It’s when we get to discussing the ‘moving to the right’ diagram. I mean this one:

For those not familiar: the basic idea is that becoming a disciple of Christ and growing as his disciple is like ‘moving to the right’ on this diagram—being rescued out of the domain of darkness into his kingdom, and then being transformed into the likeness of Christ our king. And all Christian ministry, therefore, has the same essential character, whether it’s more down the ‘evangelistic’ end of the diagram or at the ‘transformational’ end, and whether it’s being practised by the most experienced pastor or the newest Christian disciple. All Christian ministry simply seeks to move every single person around us—in church, at home, in our neighbourhood, in our small groups—one step to the right.

The method for moving people to the right is also the same all across the diagram—it’s through the four Ps: Presenting or Proclaiming God’s gospel Word in some form; Praying in the Spirit that it would be effective; all this being done in and through God’s People; and continuing to Practice this, Perseveringly, with our lives serving as a lived example of the word we’re speaking.

Many of you will have read or heard this. (If you do want to explore the ‘move to the right’ thing further, pages 43-152 of The Vine Project lay it all out in detail.)

Anyway. The joke that always turns up in this discussion trades on the discomfort people feel about casting the Christian life as a relentless movement to the ‘right’.

“Don’t worry, friends”, I say. “This is not a journey away from CNN and towards Fox News. You don’t have to turn off the ABC news and turn on Paul Murray Live. It’s not a transfer of allegiance from (current left-wing Politician) to (current right-wing Politician).”

General tittering and laughter.

“No, the left-right language is not about politics; it’s for entirely Scriptural reasons”, I say with a solemn expression, “Ecclesiastes 10:2—A wise man’s heart inclines him to the right, but a fool’s heart to the left.”

More general tittering, and elbow-jabbing of each other.

And then I reassure them that if they’re still a bit uncomfortable not to worry—the ‘left’ is about to get its revenge.

That’s because one of the key moments—perhaps the key moment—in the growth of every Christian disciple is when he or she starts to look left.

The growth that God works in the hearts of Christians (through the four Ps) is a transformation into the character of Christ, and the single word that best describes that character is ‘love’. As I move to the right as a Christian, my faith becomes more active in love (as Galatians 5:6 puts it). I begin to realise with a dawning horror just how self-focused my life has been, even my Christian life. I start to see that my life—the Christian life—is not about me. It’s about all the people God has given me to love.

I begin, in other words, to look left.

I lift my head up, and open my eyes, and see the multitudes all around me that need to move to the right—to take steps towards knowing Christ or growing in Christ. And I realise that God has called me, in my own weak and faltering way, with my own particular relationships and opportunities, to help those people take one step in that rightward direction.

This penny-drop moment (and it can be a drawn-out moment for some) is a turning point in Christian growth. It can happen early in the Christian life, or sometimes after many decades of comfortable, slow-moving Christian existence.

It’s also the essential foundation for what we call ‘training’ or ‘equipping’ or ‘ministry’. Learning to be active in disciple-making or ministry (to help other people move to the right) is not primarily about acquiring particular skills, or becoming involved in particular teams or activities. Those things are important. But the essential thing is convictional. It’s a change of vision and heart. The more we fix our eyes on Christ, and love others in Christ, the more we will long and pray and work to see Christ formed also in them.

The more we move right, the more we look left.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself: “If only I was more like that!”

And (if you’re a ministry leader) you may also be thinking: “If only there were more people in my congregation like that!”

This is indeed a besetting problem for many churches—that perennial search for more people who are willing to step up and become active partners in ministry.

The underlying problem is a deficit in Christian maturity. We need more people who have moved sufficiently to the right that they start to look left.

Which leads to the next question: How does that happen?

How can we see more people reach that key moment in Christian maturity?

The answer might already be obvious. But in case it isn’t, I’ll turn to it in next week’s Payneful Truth.

PS

Feel very free to forward this email onto friends and family, and to encourage them to take up the free trial offer and give The Payneful Truth a spin around the block.

Also, thanks for the comments and encouragement that many of you have sent in recently. When I record the first Q&A interview shortly, there’ll be plenty to talk about!

And so Little Nick has become a someone in our family already. We talk about how well-defined his leg muscles are in the ultrasound (‘bound to be a good rugby player!’), and we joke about whether his personality will end up being like his name-sake (another Nick in our family). 

In a very real way, Little Nick is already part of the crew. We know him and love him, even though we haven’t yet met him.

This is perfectly normal, but also a bit strange when you think about it. Little Nick has none of the normal faculties or properties of a human being that we could relate to. Apart from the miracle of ultrasound he is entirely absent to us. We can’t see, hear, touch or speak to him. Nor he us. And yet we joke about him already, include him in the conversation, and make preparations for his arrival—as if he is a long-lost relative soon to arrive from overseas. 

God of course knows Little Nick far better than we do. He is knitting him together in his mother’s womb, in the famous words of Psalm 139. In fact, Psalm 139 goes quite some way further in its description of God’s knowledge of us before our birth. His eyes see us when we are hidden from everyone else, when our ‘substance’ is as yet ‘unformed’. Every one of our days is already written in his book, before any of them have to come to be. 

The conclusion that we often draw from Ps 139 is that the life of the unborn child is clearly a human life, and thus valuable, even sacred. It is hidden and still in formation, and yet it is a real life all the same—a life that God knows and loves, and that we should also love and protect.

All the same, when we talk about abortion with non-Christian friends or in social debates, we feel that quoting Psalm 139 might not cut much ice. And it probably won’t. 

Accordingly, we often find ourselves drawn into arguments about what constitutes pre-natal human life, and whether the unborn baby has enough of the required characteristics or properties to qualify. Does his possession of the complete human DNA package render Little Nick definitely a human being? Or is more required before we treat him as an independent life in his own right (and not simply part of his mother’s body)? Is it the point at which his heart begins to beat? Or the development of his brain stem? Or his ability to feel pain? 

At 38 weeks, when Little Nick is fully grown in the womb and ready for the short agonising journey down the birth canal, it seems absurd and arbitrary to suggest that he is not a human life worthy of all our protection. But at the other end of the process, when he is just a microscopic clump of cells, he looks much less like a human life and more like a piece of tissue. And many everyday people find it easy to persuade themselves that this clump of cells is not enough of a ‘human being’ to be worthy of protection. 

Arguments about what properties or faculties need to be present in order for a life to be recognized as ‘human’ don’t tend to get very far. Who gets to set the standard or draw the line? We want to be able to say that there is something essentially human about unborn Little Nick, regardless of whether he does or doesn’t yet possess certain abilities or properties. 

But that only gets us to another conundrum. What is that human ‘essence’? How would you define it? Is it a ‘soul’? 

Psalm 139 may help us get past this, even if we don’t always feel able to quote it in conversation.

When the psalmist refers to God’s knowledge of the unborn child, it is not unborn human life in general that he refers to, but his own. You knitted me together; you saw my frame when I was being made; your eyes saw my unformed substance; and so on. 

The unborn life in the womb is a Someone—the psalmist—whose identity and personal history stretches in an unbroken line from his hidden formation in the womb to the time many years later when he looks back, and reflects on God’s knowledge of him prior to birth (in Psalm 139). We discover that the life in the womb is a person—the same person who is writing the psalm. 

After Little Nick is born (God willing), we will one day say to him, “We used to talk about you, when you were still in your mummy’s tummy”. The ‘you’ that is Little Nick in that sentence is the same person that was in his mother’s womb. 

We all know this about ourselves, and each other. The ‘you’ that is ‘you’, and the ‘me’ that is ‘me’, started well before either of us were born. Our parents and relatives identified us and talked about us when we were in the womb; and we can look back and talk about our pre-birth selves now. 

The real question, then, is not whether unborn babies have sufficient human properties or not, but whether they are persons. Are they able to be identified and addressed as unique and irreplaceable Someones, who already are in personal relationship with others—like Little Nick is? Will they continue to have an unbroken personal identity and history within that web of personal relationships (if we don’t kill them first)? 

If so, then they are persons, and deserve to be loved. They are not things or objects to be disposed of at will.

When discussing abortion, I suspect we will do better to talk less about the sanctity of life, and more about the uniqueness and preciousness of persons. We don’t have to make an argument for treating people differently from things. In fact, as soon as we identify someone as a Someone—as a person rather than a thing—we experience the moral demand that they make upon us. 

If I encounter a person on the street, we’ll do that dance together where we figure out which of us is going to step this way or that to avoid a collision. If I encounter an empty cardboard box on the footpath, it’s not the same kind of interaction. I might casually push it to one side with my foot, or I might even pick it up and put it in the bin so that someone else doesn’t have to. But the very existence of a Person walking towards me makes me immediately aware that I have an obligation to relate to him or her differently. 

Everyone understands and accepts this. People are special, and worthy of respect and consideration and love. You can’t treat people like things. You can’t just kill people when their existence makes your life harder. Those people who don’t understand this we tend to call psychopaths.

The unborn child is a Someone that we can name and identify and relate to in love. That makes him (or her) a person, from the very beginning. And persons demand that we treat them as persons, not as objects. 

I wonder if this might be a more fruitful kind of conversation to have with our pro-choice friends. And if they are struggling to accept the point, perhaps just ask them this question: 

When you were in your mother’s womb, was that you in there? 

PS

Deep waters here. The philosophy of personhood is one of those complicated attempts to describe something we all implicitly understand. None of us need to be told what a ‘person’ is, or how to tell the difference in everyday life between a Someone and a Something. But trying to account for that difference philosophically is no easy task. ‘Personhood’ is not made up of any particular set of characteristics or properties. Take away any of your human abilities or characteristics (temporarily or permanently), and you would still be You. Who we are is not interchangeable with what we are. 

That last sentence is pretty much a direct quote from Robert Spaemann’s book, Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’  (Oxford studies in theological ethics; Oxford University Press, 2006). If you’d like to hurt your brain delving deeper into this issue, I’d recommend Spaemann.

The other indispensable resource for all these discussions is Megan Best’s Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: Ethics and the beginnings of human life (Matthias Media). 

This is a partner post. Thanks again for your support and encouragement, including the various bits of feedback I’m continuing to get about singing, music and the affections. When I record the first of the new Q&A interviews later this month, I’ll no doubt return to that subject! 

And if you happen to be reading this post because a subscriber shared it with you—welcome! Here’s how to get The Payneful Truth every week, and more besides …

This week’s image is of Little Nick himself, with his well-defined leg muscles. 

We can all agree that we don’t want theologically dodgy emotional manipulation in our singing. But what is the place of emotions in singing? 

The best form of the question came in an email from Jack:

You say: “Singing for us is a form of speech—to one another and to God. It’s a more emotionally-charged form of speech, but it’s one facet of the word-based personal relationship we have with God and with one another.” Sure. But what then do we make of the ‘more emotionally-charged’ nature of singing? Clearly song is more than just speech (not wanting to detract from its intrinsic wordy-ness). I'd be keen to hear how you would give an account of the purpose of that emotional charge if ‘atmosphere’ is the wrong category.

What is that ‘extra’, then, that singing or music adds? What’s the ‘charge’ in its ‘emotional charge’? 

The position that I’m arguing against sees singing as a way of creating an atmosphere or getting people into the right spiritual mood; of arousing certain feelings within them that open them up to experience God and his truth in a new way. 

But do I have Jonathan Edwards against me? 

In a famous paragraph (that I heard quoted again at the Reach Australia conference just last week), the great New England Puritan said this: 

And the duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections. (Religious Affections, I.II.9) 

Is Edwards arguing in favour of what I’m opposing? Is he saying that God has given us singing to get us in the mood, as it were; to excite our affections and warm us up to a certain kind of Christian feeling that we don’t get just from the Word? 

Well, no—not if I understand him correctly (which is no easy thing). In fact, I think Edwards’s argument may help us to answer our question about the emotional nature of singing. 

A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections was written in the context of the New England awakening, and the many dramatic and visible manifestations of emotion (or, as he would say, ‘affections’) that were evident at that time. Edwards wished to argue:

* that these religious affections could be quite appropriate and genuine—and that, indeed, true religion very much consisted in the affections;

* on the other hand, that the existence of ‘religious affections’, even high and intense ones, was no indication at all of true Christianity;

* and that true religious affections had various distinguishing characteristics by which they could be recognized.

The well-known quote (above) comes from the introductory section in which Edwards notes that a Christianity without the affections is hard to imagine or support. Why, he asks, did God give us singing if our affections have nothing to do it?

However, it’s not only singing. Edwards also lists prayer, the sacraments, and preaching as God-given spiritual activities that involve the whole person; that affect our hearts and move us to grasp hold of God in love and faith. If Christianity was purely a matter of intellectual understanding, and not of the affections (Edwards argues) why not just give everyone a commentary to read on Sundays, rather than preaching a sermon to them? The sermon does more than just convey information: 

God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion to their remembrance, and setting them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already. (I.II.9)

So it’s by no means just singing or music that God has given for this purpose, says Edwards. Much of what we do involves ‘the whole person’ (as we would say). It engages not just the intellect but the ‘affections’.

It is at this point that we have to understand what Edwards means by the ‘affections’. He doesn’t mean just ‘feelings’ or ‘emotions’ (as we would use those words). He defines the affections as ‘the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul’ (I.I.2). 

This needs some unpacking. An ‘affection’, Edwards says, occurs when my soul is inclined towards or attracted to something in a way that I feel (or am ‘sensible’ of). When I love or delight in or am ‘affectionate’ towards something, I’m not just agreeing intellectually that it is good or beautiful or right or morally excellent. My whole self or soul is attracted to it, leans towards it, and wants to choose and embrace it (or on the other hand shy away from it in hatred, revolt or disdain). When we say we ‘love BBQ pork ribs’, it’s more than an intellectual assessment of their taste or nutritional benefits. Our delight in them is a felt inclination towards their delectability that makes us immediately order them when we see them on the menu (as my wife always does). 

It’s on this basis that Edwards then proceeds to list all the things that are no sign whatsoever that a ‘religious affection’ is genuine or not. It doesn’t matter, he says, whether ‘affections’ are very great or high, or whether they have great effects on the body, or whether they cause people to be excited or enthusiastic to talk about God. It doesn’t matter whether they come upon us in an extraordinary way, or whether they make us feel comforted or joyful, or even whether they motivate us to greater involvement at church. We might add—it also doesn’t matter whether people have their eyes closed or not, or whether they sway or not, or whether they have their hands raised or not (warming them before the invisible heater). 

All of these may accompany a genuine inclination of the will of the soul towards the great things of God—or they may not. People may experience these sensations or affections or inclinations for all kinds of reasons, good and bad, genuine and counterfeit. They are ‘no sign’, says Edwards, that a particular affection is a true spiritual affection, or not. 

The genuineness of a religious affection, Edwards argues, lies in its object—in the thing that our soul inclines towards or loves. Genuine religious affections arise when God illumines our understanding to grasp how good and great and gracious and holy he is, and when he warms and moves our will to incline towards or delight in what we have understood. 

In other words, for Edwards, the expressing and exciting of the affections (by singing or preaching or prayer or the sacraments) can never be separated from the Word or the understanding. In fact, it’s only as God’s Spirit supernaturally moves us to grasp the truth about God through his Word that true Christian affections can arise. 

What does all of this mean for our singing in church, and for understanding the ‘emotional charge’ of singing?

I think it means at least five things: 

* The felt movement of our will towards God—the love or devotion or gratitude or joy we have in him—is an indispensable aspect of Christian experience. These ‘affections’ are expressed in and incited by preaching and prayer and singing and small group Bible study and no doubt much else besides. It’s not the sole domain or purpose of singing, although singing is a rich opportunity for it.

* In all of these ‘affection-related’ practices, genuine affections arise by an act of God’s Spirit, as our hard hearts are softened and inclined to perceive and love the goodness of God in Christ. Edwards is very insistent that genuine spiritual affections cannot be manufactured or generated by any ‘natural’ activity alone, whether deeply moving music or a deeply moving sermon illustration. We should not correlate the emotional power of certain forms of music with genuine Christian affections. 

* All the same, singing is a very helpful means for stirring and expressing our affections because it not only turns our minds to some aspect of the truth (i.e. it is an activity of speech and word), but allows us to enter into that truth with our whole bodies—to stand and ‘own’ the truth by putting our whole selves into it, in a way that music can do. This is the sense in which singing is ‘emotionally-charged speech’—it matches and amplifies the content and intent of the speech, and allows us to express our ‘affectionate’ commitment to these truths. It’s the difference between writing on the airline arrivals form that my citizenship is ‘Australian’, and standing to sing the national anthem with hand on heart. 

* In practical terms, I think this means that we should express different aspects of the truth of God and Christ in different musical forms that ‘fit’ what is being spoken of, and enable us to own and love those truths with our affections. The nature of God’s character and works is multifaceted, and so are the poetic and musical possibilities for declaring and appreciating them. 

* This in turn leads me to question the increasingly one-dimensional nature of contemporary congregational songs—one particular genre of slower, intense songs, seeking to incite one particular form of affection, often with little coherent content (to come back to my original point). Under the widespread influence of a more charismatic theology of worship, have we begun to think that a genuine ‘religious affection’ is seen in a particular kind of feeling, generated by a particular kind of song? I worry that this is where we’re getting to. And Edwards would not approve.

The other question that was asked by several people is well represented in Greg’s email: 

Re your PS on ‘songs about singing’. I liked what you said. But then I don't know what to do with things like: “I will thank the Lord for his righteousness; I will sing about the name of the Lord most high” (Ps 7:17); or “Sing to the Lord, you his faithful ones, and praise his holy name” (Ps 30:4). 

There are a lot of Psalms that refer to singing. Weren’t they singing about singing? 

Excellent point. It can hardly be wrong to sing about singing—or none of the Psalms would make the cut! 

Two quick comments:

* It’s obviously fine to mention ‘singing’ when singing, and even to call on one another to sing out loud! I was talking about frequency and emphasis—there are so many songs about singing now, and within those songs the singing is at the centre (in the chorus, as the climactic response to God). Hence why I don’t want to add any more songs about singing to our list. 

* Also, the psalms do it differently. The invitation to sing is almost always followed or amplified by the content of what we’re singing or giving thanks for. The ‘praise’ to be sung is a rehearsal or declaration of how great God is and what he has done, and this leads in turn to other responses (prayer, faithfulness, obedience, and so on). In our songs about ‘singing’, the singing is in the chorus; it’s the climax and centre; it’s where it all leads. Put simply, many contemporary songs move towards singing as the goal and supreme response (because they implicitly equate the act of singing with ‘worship’ and ‘praise’). Those psalms that do contain a call to sing tend move from that call to the real point of the singing—which is to declare to one another and to God all that he is and has done. 

Hope that helps. 

PS

It’s been just over a year now that I’ve been blathering away each week here on The Payneful Truth. I have to say that interactions (like the one above)—where you write in and we have a conversation—are just about the most enjoyable and encouraging aspects of the whole thing. Thanks again for your partnership in these discussions, and in supporting me through your subscriptions. 

I’ll be doing some tinkering over the next month or so, partly to The Payneful Truth website (because of some new options that are now available on the Substack platform), but also to the way I’m structuring things—including what goes out free to the whole list and what just goes out to you, my faithful partners. 

Here’s what I have in mind. I’d be really interested in your feedback before I finalize it. I’m thinking that for the next 12 months (at least), I’ll do it like this: 

* Paying partners will receive:

* My gratitude for generously supporting Christian writing! 

* The Payneful Truth newsletter and/or podcast every week; 

* A new Work-in-Progress Report every six weeks or so, where I let you know what else I’ve been writing, and send you draft chapters and samples. I figure that since you are generously supporting me in doing that work, I should make a more regular effort to share the fruit with you. 

* The ability to post questions or comments on the website or via email.

* A new monthly podcast interview that I’m calling Payneful Questions, where I’ll chat with a guest about the issues and questions that have come up in the last month on The Payneful Truth, plus anything else we want to shoot the breeze on. These guests will usually be one of you!

* Partner-only specials every two months from my good mates at Matthias Media.

* People on the free email list will receive: 

* One free edition of The Payneful Truth each month; 

* Access to listen to Payneful Questions (but not pose questions). 

Any comments or suggestions on any of that? Sound good? 

And here’s an image of Jonathan Edwards, going internally beserk with affections.

I remember a time—let’s call it 1985—when certain young music leaders (perhaps like me) could get a little frustrated with the tastes and sentiments of an older musical generation. 

Couldn’t they see that the rah-rah, British Empire vibe of ‘At the name of Jesus’ belonged to another time? Or that the ponderous, stately hymns of our heritage, with their neatly resolving cadences, and their third-rate Victorian poetry, were just not a suitable musical language for 1980s Australia?

Couldn’t we have some music that at least nodded in the general direction of contemporary conventions, even if they were the musical conventions of ten years ago—since that was about as close to contemporary that we Christians ever managed to get?

There was a gospel note to all of this. We wanted songs in church that weren’t musical stumbling blocks to the outsider and newcomer; songs that said to them, “We’re not an antiquated culture club; in fact, we quite like Culture Club”. 

In particular, we wanted to express our gospel joy in songs that had some drive and energy and tempo. Loud, enthusiastic Sunday nights come back to the memory. I can hear the rafters shaking as we belted out ‘Ancient of Days’, and ‘This, this is the day’ and a rocked-up version of ‘O for a thousand tongues’. 

It’s not as if we didn’t also sing slower, more contemplative songs, ones where the tempo notation on the sheet music said ‘Worshipfully’. 

But we were a generation raised on rock ’n’ roll, and for us joy and emotional authenticity in music almost always had a driving beat. Emotionally uplifting music was often fast.

(In fact, I still have a compilation playlist called ‘Happy songs’ that I whack on when I’m needing some emotional pepping up at the end of a long week, and they are all like this: Mr Blue Sky and Livin’ Thing (ELO), The Boys are Back in Town (Thin Lizzy), What is Life? (George Harrison), No Secrets (The Angels), The Power of Love  (Huey Lewis), and so on. All of them fast, with a driving beat.)

But the worm has turned. The biter has been bit. Now I’m the older generation with the outdated musical tastes. 

For the generation coming up, the energetic, upbeat songs I love are cheesy and lame. Their songs are slower, more contemplative, more intense. A song you can build and build, a song to close your eyes to. 

The slow, earnest power ballad is now king. 

Why has this happened? Lots of reasons (10,000 of them possibly). 

Is it a broader musical culture thing? Has music slowed down more generally over the past 30 years? Perhaps, but not decisively. The last three decades have seen an incredible proliferation of musical genres and sub-cultures. (I remember having a deep conversation with one of my teenage son’s friends about the differences between death metal, doom metal and thrash metal, all of which he’d left behind in favour of prog metal.)

In other words, it’s not as if the earnest power ballad is now the dominant musical genre of our society—because there is no one dominant genre. Certainly rock is not the factor that it once was. (“Rock is just not a thing”, says my very musically aware 26-year-old son.) And this could well have influenced a shift away from energetic, uptempo music. 

Perhaps it’s also a cultural mood thing. Is the generation coming through more bruised, more sensitive, more ironic, more emotionally expressive, or any or all of the above? Is life for them more in a minor key? Perhaps. (I find it hard to say, especially since I’m part of that generation that puts no trust in sweeping generational cliches.)

Whatever complex cultural and musical reasons lie behind it, there’s no avoiding generational changes in sensibility and vibe. And for the sake of the gospel, music in church will need to adapt accordingly—just as we needed to do in the 80s, and in every decade since, including that time when we went all Coldplay. 

The time is no doubt coming when there will be four songs on Sunday morning—three of them slow and earnest, and one of them happy and upbeat for the old people. And so it must be. 

But I do want to sound a note of theological unease.

The rise of the emotionally intense power ballad has also been driven by the slow invisible victory of a charismatic theology of music in many of our churches. It’s a victory won not by argument but by the music itself. 

This theology says, in essence, that the function of music (and it’s the music, not just the singing) is to help foster a certain experience, a heightened state of feeling and consciousness that serves as a connection point between God and us. Music can ‘tune my heart to sing thy praise’ as the old hymn goes; which we take to mean: ‘it warms me up emotionally, and gets me in the state of feeling where this all matters to me and feels authentic and real, and I can connect with God at a deeper level and worship him, which is one of the main reasons after all that I come to church’.

And the earnest power ballad—slow, building, emotionally intense—is the genre of choice for achieving this, preferably with the lights dimmed. It’s music designed to mediate a particular experience that is seen as ‘spiritual’ and ‘worshipful’. It’s music to sway to. 

I’m okay with some swaying. I occasionally sway myself (when standing up quickly). But I don’t want our theology to be swayed. 

As evangelicals, we think quite differently about church and spirituality and worship and singing. We think differently about how we come to know God and relate to him and connect with him (hint: it’s through the word of God). Singing for us is a form of speech—to one another and to God. It’s a more emotionally-charged form of speech, but it’s one facet of the word-based personal relationship we have with God and with one another. Singing is not there to create an atmosphere. It’s a way of addressing each other in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in our hearts to God (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16).

Generational changes in taste and vibe are good and necessary and unavoidable. They must increase, we must decrease. 

But I have this sinking feeling that the rise of slow, earnest congregational songs also marks the rise of a different understanding of church and worship and singing. 

Let’s be aware of this and actively resist. We don’t want to build our musical culture on theological sand. 

We want to build on the Rock. 

PS

Another fascinating and related trend I’ve noticed in congregational songs written over the past 15 years: many of them are about singing. In song after song, when you get to the chorus, the response to the theme of verses 1 and 2 is to sing. “So let us sing your praise forever more … We lift our voices to you … And so we come to you in wonder and praise to sing … Cry out, sing holy … ”, and so on. (These are mostly fictional examples.)

It’s as if the purpose of the song is to enable singing—to motivate it, to lift it, to call on each other to do it, to cast it as the classic response to the wonder of the gospel. The point of the song is to get me to sing, which is not only strangely self-referential, but seems a bit daft since … I’m already singing, aren’t I? Perhaps more significantly, I think the point is to keep putting praise-and-worship-as-singing at the centre of our response to God.

Why is this? Is it because the musicians who write the songs see ‘singing praise’ in this way—as the high point of our relationship with God? I rather suspect so. It reflects an unspoken and probably unconscious theology of church and the Christian life that is not evangelical. 

So I have developed a simple criterion for any new song that someone suggests we add to our congregational song list. I turn to the chorus. If the response it calls for is singing or praise or worship (all of which mean the same thing today for most people), it’s out. 

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Today’s image is not a self-portrait. But a prize for anyone who can identify it, and explain the obscure connection to today’s post. 

It will be a step or two down that road, but it’s unlikely I’ll get all the way to the destination in this short piece. All the same, I hope that it edges your own thinking along the path a little. 

We find ourselves at this point because I first observed that expressing opinions (especially in the way that many people do today on social media) can be a foolish and sinful thing to do (‘The Sin of Opinion’, Apr 28); and then I did my best to be more positive and lay some foundations about the nature of justice and judging and political authority (‘Doing Justice’, May 5). I’ll assume you’ve read those pieces.  (include links)

However, given that the role of political authority is to make judgements, do we have any role in respect to those judgements? When a dispute does break in aisle 12, and we find ourselves onlookers—when and how should we get involved? What are our positive obligations and opportunities as Christian citizens?

Romans 13 is a good place to start, since it addresses this very question. It begins like this:

1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

The key idea in these verses is conveyed in the recurring Greek word tassō, which means to bring about an order to things, to arrange or fix or institute things in a certain relation to one another. 

God has tassōed or instituted ‘authorities’, and these authorities are part of a larger order or arrangement of things that God has established. He has created a world in which there is right and wrong, and good and evil. It’s a morally ordered world in which there is such a thing called ‘justice’ (because of the existence of those standards of right and wrong), and in which there are ordered structures within human communities whereby justice can be done. God has ordered and established all this in place, including the authorities who administer that justice (ESV translates the tassō  word in v. 1 as ‘instituted’; ‘established’ says NIV).

Our right response is to submit or sit under this ordered structure of authority—to hupo-tassō ourselves to the authorities that God has established (v. 1). The wrong response is to anti-tassō (v. 2)—to fight against or resist the authority that God has set in place. 

In other words, to obey or submit to political authority is not just knuckling under to the big guy with the sword. It is humbly understanding ourselves and our actions within the whole order of rightness and justice that God has established. 

(There is a massive side-bar we could explore here regarding a foundational question of all political theory—namely, who gives the state its authority? Is it seized by the strong or the noble? Is it granted by divine right? Or is authority given by the people, and if so, how? In the absence of a God who created the world and us, with standards of righteousness and ordered structures of justice, and who delegates authority to human judges, these questions are difficult to anchor and to answer. But all this is too complicated for here and now.)

So our first response is to submit or sit under political authority. This hardly sits well with us. We don’t like submitting to anyone or anything, and the internet gives us the illusion that perhaps we don’t have to. We can click our way to some snippets of knowledge, argue back and forth with intensity, and then declare judgement on our leaders’ policies or actions—thinking that we have done something significant. But (as I’ve already said perhaps too many times), this online simulation of doing justice is shallow and ineffective. And it expresses a posture not of submission to the structures and agents of justice, but a kind of vacuous, superior independence that derides and dismisses them. 

It’s almost a national sport to sneer at our political leaders, to ridicule them, to sit in judgement of them, and to do all we can to avoid paying them tax—all of which is the complete opposite of what Rom 13:7 commands us to do. It tells us to hupo-tasso to what God has tassōed, which means giving to those in authority what is theirs: taxes, revenue, respect and honour. 

But (you might say) do we not sit in judgement of our political rulers? Don’t we elect them, and then kick them out next time? 

Well, yes. But we elect them to be our representatives, to make judgements on our behalf as a society. Submitting to this arrangement certainly means seeking to make good elective choices, or even possibly seeking to become a representative ourselves. But it also means that we should recognize that it is our representatives’ job to get on with the judgement-making, and we should honour and submit to them in this complicated task. 

This leads to a second obligation or response in our particular context—to seek to elect representatives whose demonstrated character and actions make them likely to be good judges; who have the capacity and faithfulness to discern between right and wrong and good and evil, and to do justice (tempered with mercy) according to those standards. 

We tend to be impressed by the policy announcements, economic plans and grand schemes that political parties promise in order to attract us at election time. These can be significant (especially if they promote injustice or wrong), but the fundamental thing we elect our political leaders to do is the ongoing task of making judgements—to perceive what is right or good (or wrong or evil), and to enact laws and judgements accordingly. We should focus on electing people with the knowledge, character and ability to do that consistently, in the unfolding, unpredictable flow of events and circumstances. 

The further implication of this is that we should try to inform ourselves about our representatives’ actions and record, so as to make a wise assessment of their wisdom and character. This is not always easy, and takes some discernment of its own (usually involving a survey of reporting from both ‘left’ and ‘right’ to build up some kind of accurate picture of the leader and their actions). 

The third response that Romans 13 commands goes beyond obeying the authorities and paying what we owe. It calls us to keep paying the never-ending social debt of love (vv. 8-14). And it’s a particular kind of love. It’s a love of neighbour that fulfils all that the law pointed forward to, and that also looks to the kingship and imminent coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a love that is wide awake to its situation—living in these last days, in which Jesus reigns but in which there is still plenty of darkness along with all its works (vv. 12-14). 

It’s hardly controversial to say that Christian citizens should be agents of love in our communities, and there are countless ways this can be expressed. 

One particular and often neglected way that Christians can love our neighbours in the political realm is to keep living and speaking as if Jesus is the Lord and Christ (which of course he is). We often fail at this. We partition Jesus off in the private Christian/church part of our lives, and don’t preach his saving Lordship in our public and political interactions. 

And this is our distinctive contribution. We’re no better or worse than anyone else in arguing about economic policy, or debating how different courses of action might turn out. The one truly extraordinary and loving thing we can do for our political authorities is to prophesy to them. We can keep reminding them that Jesus is the Lord and Christ, to whom they will answer; to keep directing them to his righteousness, his wisdom, his goodness, as they make their judgements; to keep calling them to serve him and his gospel in all their decisions.

In this sense, public Christianity is the same as private Christianity—it’s proclaiming and living out the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ. 

The authorities may not listen. Or they may. (But isn’t that the way with all gospel preaching?) They may well regard us as weird, strange or even dangerous. It has been ever thus. 

But in God’s power and kindness, and as we pray constantly for our rulers, they may listen to the gospel and be changed by it. And, as Paul says elsewhere, they may indeed make judgements that enable people to “live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (1 Tim 2:2). 

Even in aisle 12. 

PS

Well, that by no means answers everything but it hopefully keeps the ball rolling. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and responses. 

This is another freebie edition of the Payneful Truth. If you’d like to become a partner and receive every edition every week, here’s the button to click …

Surely we are called to seek Justice and Mercy, while walking humbly with our God, and that may lead to expressing opinions to influence those we relate to and our local MPs? 

One example is that the PM’s Christianity seems amazingly unresponsive to the asylum seekers, Australian IS wives, however unwise they were, now stranded in Northern Syria with their children, and even the 10,000 Australians in India who are increasingly at risk yet cannot come home. I do hope my concerns are motivated by love for others as a child of God. They reveal themselves in my opinions. How then should I go ahead, with the possible sin of opinion?

Is there a good or wise way to share opinions or influence others? Or in general to contribute in a constructive way to the to-and-fro of our democracy? Or should we just pipe down, and get on with something else more useful? 

This is not an easy question to answer, since it involves an understanding of ‘justice’, and of how Christians should be engaged in the political processes of our society. And sketching a theory of justice and political theology, and wise Christian involvement in these, in a breezy 1000 words … not so easy! 

Let me try to lay some building blocks, and see how far we get. 

A good foundation stone is the famous verse in Micah 6:8 that Michael alludes to. God tells disobedient Israel to stop seeking alternative ways to please him, and to focus on what he has already shown them is good: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”. 

Interestingly, the verse speaks of doing justice, and this tells us something very important about justice (and about our opinions). 

Justice is an action, not a viewpoint. It is something that is done when a legitimate right is honoured—that is, when someone gives or receives what is owed according to some righteous standard or law. 

Justice requires a judgement—that is, an assessment of what is ‘just’ (according to a standard or right or law) and a granting of that right to the relevant person. 

This can be relatively simple: if I sell a golf club on ebay (to reduce the growing stash of useless implements in the garage), the personal doing of justice requires an accurate description, a fair price, and a smooth exchange of golf club for cash with the buyer. 

But doing justice is often complicated. What if there is a dispute between the buyer and me about the sale? The facts of the situation would have to be established—and they are often contestable—and a decision must be made as to which rights or standards are relevant, and how they should be applied.

‘Doing justice’ requires investigation and thinking. It involves ‘judging’. It begins with an interrogation of reality—with the careful establishing of what really happened here. It then requires a deliberation as to which rights or standards are relevant to this particular situation, and what implementing them would involve. And it concludes with a resolution to act, and the subsequent granting of what justice requires. 

And to make it even more complicated, justice doesn’t stand alone. It is to be practised, Micah 6 suggests, alongside a loving concern for others (not merely with the abstract interests of ‘right’ and ‘justice’ in mind), and with an ongoing recognition of our lowly status before God (‘to walk humbly’ with him). 

So ‘doing justice’ really takes some doing. 

Very importantly, it is always done by a particular person or persons—by those who have been given the responsibility or authority to do the ‘judging’ in a situation (the investigating, the deliberating, the resolving, the outcome). 

When I’m with the kids in aisle 12 at Woollies and a dispute breaks out, that ‘judge’ is me. And it’s a tough gig. How on earth am I supposed to know who hit whom, who started it, what punishment or restitution is fair, and how to administer it—all while enduring the pitying and judgmental stares of the other shoppers? 

But it is my responsibility. I may receive input from the other shoppers in the aisle. One of them may have seen who started it. Another may pipe in with a piece of homely or encouraging advice. But if the shoppers of aisle 12 were to gather in a circle and start a heated debate about what I could do, or should do, or haven’t done, and what these events say about the whole culture of my family—well I think I’d leave all my kids with them, and finish my shopping in peace. (And imagine if one of them filmed the whole thing and instagrammed it. Before long, ‘Aisle 12 Dad’ would be a thing, and half the world would have a view about it, and … see my previous column on the ‘sin of opinion’.)

The point is: I’m the one who has to take responsibility for the ‘judging’ in aisle 12, not only because I actually know the kids and the situation (and can predict with some certainty which one started it), but because it is my responsibility and burden to ‘do justice’, and to live with the consequences. 

Doing justice is a difficult and weighty task, and is done by those with the position and authority to do so—whether domestically or communally or within a whole society. With some trepidation, and with a knowledge that they will frequently get it wrong, we set aside people within our society, and grant them authority to administer justice on our behalf—local, state and federal governments, and the various tribunals and courts that they appoint and administer. 

The task of judging, or doing justice, is the primary task of political and judicial authority. In fact, as Romans 13:1-7 says, God puts rulers and authorities in place for this very reason. 

This is why (to get back to Michael’s letter) Scott Morrison has the responsibility (along with the entire apparatus of government) to make judgements about asylum seekers, IS wives, and repatriating Australians from India. He (with the help of others in government) is the one who has to investigate and understand the various complex factors, deliberate as to which principles of justice and mercy apply, and make a judgement. 

Very often, our opinionating about government decisions (‘judgements’) has all the value of the shoppers in aisle 12 debating how I should discipline my kids, or of the instagram crowd piling on with their intensely held views. We are mostly or wholly ignorant of the details of the situation, and of the various complexities in play. We don’t have to consider the conflicting rights and interests of different parties, or the wider or longer-term consequences of different options for the whole society. And we don’t bear the burden of having to resolve upon a course of action, and to bear the consequences. 

The responsibility for judging, in other words, is not ours. And yet often we carry on as if it is. Or as if ‘doing justice’ was a simple matter that can be settled by watching a video clip or reading a newspaper article. (A low point in the commentary about the George Floyd trial was this tweet by TV host Chelsea Handler: “So pathetic that there is a trial to prove that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd when there is video of him doing so”.)

So then. 

We’ve slapped down some rough foundations about the nature of justice, judging and political authority. Justice and judging is something that is done, and to do it requires searching out the truth of what has happened, a thoughtful deliberation of what principles or standards apply, and a resolution to act. It’s a responsibility that we undertake personally and domestically and communally with each other; but at a broader social level we elect or appoint people to fulfil this responsibility—to ‘do justice’, to make judgements. This is the key function of political authority. 

But we haven’t yet answered Michael’s questions. What should be our involvement as citizens, and particularly as Christian citizens, in the judgements of the political authorities? Should we express an opinion, or seek to persuade the judge in some way? If so, how? What is our role as Christian citizens within our society? 

Many of the answers are in Romans 13, and in next week’s edition I’ll tease out what they are. 

But in the meantime (so as not to leave you entirely frustrated), we can certainly say this much: the extent of our appropriate involvement in any particular instance of ‘doing justice’ (to speak to it, to argue about it, to present our case to the judge), should be directly proportional to our ability to interrogate and understand the truth of the situation, and to deliberate about it thoughtfully. The further removed we are, and the less we know, the less we should say. 

Which means that, in a great many instances, we should say little or nothing. 

PS

This is one of the free public editions of The Payneful Truth, and normally next week’s post would be ‘partner only’. But since it would seem mean (or even unjust!) to leave you free-listers hanging, I’ll make next week’s post a freebie as well. 

Anyone seen the latest Star Wars?

 Nah. But I hear it stinks. 

 That’s what they’re saying. 

 I’ve seen the trailer. Terrible.

Whole series jumped the shark long ago. 

 Haha yes. Three words. Jar. Jar. Binks. 

 Haven’t and won’t. It will be even more cringeworthy than the last. 

Whose genius idea was it to give the movie to the director of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’?

I don’t understand how anyone in good conscience can even go to a Star Wars movie anymore. The way the Ewoks were exploited in the making of VI was disgusting. And no-one has ever apologised. And the racist way in which Darth Vader is dressed in ‘black’ is just one … (read more)

 I can’t even. #dontseeit

Since they sold out to Disney, it’s been sell out all the way down. 

 Yeah, they are no longer interested in the story arc. It’s only about one thing—profits. #dontseeit

Hey does anyone think we should wait until we see it? 

 You are disgusting. 

Social media parodies are not hard to write. We’ve seen this kind of conversation play itself out multiple times, over multiple subjects, on facebook or twitter or wherever. 

In fact, we could change the subject of the conversation to almost anything and the level of analysis and passion would be approximately the same. 

For example, the news stories that we discuss are as carefully manufactured as any Star Wars movie, and we debate them with about as much real knowledge and insight. It typically starts with a compressed, constructed narrative being presented to us in some form (as a news item or video clip), like this:

* X was promised to happen by the government, 

* But (says earnest reporter) some people say it’s not working, or has disadvantaged them;

* Queue Jim the Battler with tragic story to tell;

* Cut to reporter with ten seconds of selective factoids; 

* Cut to two-sentence grab from government spokesman looking awkward, saying that everything is on track;

* Back to reporter saying, “But try telling that to Jim the Battler”;

* Solemn-looking news anchor sums it up with rueful comment. 

The moral of the story, and what we’re supposed to think, is clear enough: the government is incompetent (as usual) and/or doesn’t care about the battlers (as usual).

All this is as stylised and crafted as any fiction. It may or may not represent the truth of the situation—we have so little to go on that it’s impossible to tell. What exactly did the government promise and in what context? Does Jim the Battler represent a broad trend or an anomaly? Are there other complexities that help explain both the plight of Jim and the broader situation? What alternative forms of action were available for the government? Is this the best that could be retrieved from difficult circumstances?

None of this can be conveyed in a short news story, nor is that the intention. What we get instead is a brief impressionistic narrative, usually based around the available footage, and presented to us as entertainment. 

And then we share it on social media and opinionate profusely about it, making value judgements, impugning motives, and generally joking and quipping and sniding with a kind of cool, gestural indignation. 

Most online discussion of contemporary issues is like this—whether it’s about George Floyd, the European Super League, climate change, the vaccine roll-out, or the latest political scandal. None of us knows much of anything; but this doesn’t stop us responding with our opinion.

And frequently that response is an aesthetic judgement (of what we favour or like), or a tribal reflex (based on what other people like me believe and think). Only in the rarest of instances do we penetrate to a level of knowledge or insight that might lead to real understanding or responsible action. 

All of which is to say that while this kind of opinionating passes the time divertingly, and may even raise our cache among friends, it has about as much connection with reality as a bunch of Star Wars fans discussing a movie they haven’t seen. 

But is this really such a problem, you might ask? 

What’s wrong with friends occasionally shooting the breeze about trivia? 

Well, perhaps not much, if it is indeed ‘trivia’ (my cat’s diarrhoea) and it is ‘occasional’ (as opposed to the 2 ¼ hours that the average user now spends on social media channels every day). 

But social media discussion of current issues goes well beyond trivial and occasional. It enables and supercharges a problem that we might call the sin of opinion. 

Loving real people is hard. To do it well, we have to confront the reality of the fallen, complicated person standing before us, to prayerfully ponder what faith and love and wisdom require of us in the actual circumstances they are experiencing, and then to take the costly step of doing something, saying something, sharing something. 

This kind of gospel wisdom asks a lot of me. It draws me out of myself. It demands my time and attention. It calls on me to see the problems of the world through the lens of the gospel rather than the lens of the news. It requires me to trust the knowledge of the world that God gives me, and to love others and speak the truth to them on that basis.

It goes against every sinful instinct I’ve got.

Much easier to say, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled” than to take responsibility to provide peace and warmth and filling for the suffering person before me (Jas 2:16). 

Much easier to exhaust my moral energies on doomscrolling through endless posts and articles and youtube clips, pausing only to make ill-informed judgements about the confected narratives that are presented to me there. 

All of it much easier than turning to the task at hand—which is to engage in the prayerful, costly action of being Christ’s ambassador in the real world I live in. 

Feeling yourself distracted and exhausted by the opinion-machine that has been constructed by big tech for your diversion (and their profit)? Take a break. Use the time to think about something worthwhile and in depth, or to do something loving for a real person.