When our actions are not characterized by joy, it is usually because they are driven by false motives:
1. To prove ourselves to God
We obey so God will be impressed with us or bless us. We want to become our own saviours instead of looking to God for salvation.
2. To prove ourselves to other people
We want people to be impressed by us, to fit in or win approval. One result is other people set the standard. We live in obedience to people rather than to God.
3. To prove yourself to yourself
We want to feel good about ourselves. Sin becomes an offence against me, against my self-esteem rather than an offence against God.
What’s wrong with wanting to obey so we can prove ourselves to God or people or ourselves?
First, it makes obedience about me looking good. It is done for my glory. And that’s pretty much the definition of sin. Sin is living my way for me instead of living God’s way for God. Often that means rejecting God as Lord and wanting to be our own lord, but it can also involve rejecting God as Saviour and wanting to be our own saviour. Pharisees do good works and repent of bad works. But gospel repentance includes repenting of good works done for bad reasons. We repent of trying to be our own saviour.
Second, it denies the cross. Jesus died on the cross, separated from his Father, bearing the full weight of God’s wrath so that we can be accepted by God. When we try to prove ourselves by our good works we’re saying, in effect, that the cross wasn’t enough.
The justifying work of Christ on our behalf leads to:
humility (3:27) because we have all fallen short of God’s glory (3:23) and all depend completely on Christ
confidence (8:1, 31-39) because our hope is Christ’s finished work and not in us
Adapted from You Can Change.
Yesterday I posted a review Stanley Hauerwas commentary on Matthew in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series (Brazos, 2006) 
. Here are some highlights from the book …
For Matthew, Jesus has changed the world, requiring that our lives be changed if we are to live as people of the new creation. Accordingly, the gospel is not information that invites us to decide what we will take or leave. Our task is not to understand the story that Matthew tells in light of our understanding of the world. Rather, Matthew would have our understanding of the world be fully transformed as the result of our reading of his gospel. Matthew writes so that we might become followers, be disciples of Jesus. To be a Christian does not mean that we are to change the world, but rather that we must live as witnesses to the world that God has changed. We should not be surprised, therefore, if the way we live makes the change visible. (25)
The Sermon [on the Mount] is not a list of requirements, but rather a description of the life of a people gathered by and around Jesus. To be saved is to be so gathered. That is why the Beatitudes are the interpretive key to the whole sermon – precisely because they are not recommendations. No one is asked to go out and try to be poor in spirit or to mourn or to be meek. Rather, Jesus is indicating that given the reality of the kingdom we should not be surprised to find among those who follow him those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek. Moreover, Jesus does not suggest that everyone who follows him will possess all the Beatitudes, but we can be sure that some will be poor, some will mourn, and some will be meek.’ (61)
When he called his society together Jesus gave its members a new way of life to live. He gave them a new way to deal with offenders – by forgiving them. He gave them a new way to deal with violence – by suffering. He gave them a new way to deal with money – by sharing it. He gave them a new way to deal with problems of leadership – by drawing upon the gift of every member, even the most humble. He gave them a new way to deal with a corrupt society – by building a new order, not smashing the old. (67)
Jesus’ use of wisdom to help us understand the character of the kingdom made present in his ministry is sometimes mistakenly used as a general policy recommendation. Jesus is not suggesting that we should not plant crops or weave cloth, but rather if we plant crops of weave cloth to “store up treasures on earth” we can be sure that our lives will be insecure. We can perhaps know that the desire to be secure is a self-defeating project without being a disciple of Jesus. But that wisdom is transformed through the recognition of him who has come to call a people into existence capable of praying for their daily bread. They are able to do so because their lives have been transformed through the call to be a disciple, making it possible for them to live in recognition that God has given them all they need … Abundance, not scarcity, is the mark of God’s kingdom. But that abundance must be made manifest through the lives of a people who have discovered that they can trust God and one another. Such trust is not an irrational gesture against the chaos of life, but rather a witness to the very character of God’s care of creation. So it is no wonder that Jesus directs our attention to birds and lilies to help us see how it is possible to live in joyful recognition that God has given us more than we need. (82-83)
The parable of the sower is not often considered by those concerned with the loss of the church’s status and membership in Europe and America, but it is hard to imagine any text more relevant to the situation of churches in the West. Why we are dying seems very simple. It is hard to be a disciple and be rich. Surely, we may think, it cannot be that simple, but Jesus certainly seems to think that it is that simple. The lure of wealth and the cares of the world produced by wealth quite simply darken and choke our imaginations. As a result, the church falls prey to the deepest enemy of the gospel – sentimentality. The gospel becomes a formula for “giving our lives meaning” without judgment … This is a particular problem in America, where Christians cannot imagine how being a Christian might put them in tension with the American we of life … It may seem odd that wealth makes it impossible to grow the word. Wealth, we assume, should create the power necessary to do much good. But wealth stills the imagination because we are not forced, as the disciples of Jesus were forced, to be an alternative to the world that only necessity can create. Possessed by possessions, we desire to act in the world, often on behalf of the poor, without having to lose our possessions. (129-130)
In truth, it is not easy to know how to read “the signs of the times,” but such a reading is required of those who would follow Jesus. Too often, however, Christians believe that we know how to read the signs of the times by reading the New York Times. But to so read the signs of the times is to be captured by the assumption that the way things are is the way things have to be. Pharisees and Sadducees read the daily newspapers and adjust. Followers of Jesus must read the same papers to show why Jesus offers an alternative reading of the times than that offered by the New York Times. Faced with such a daunting task, followers of Jesus can begin to sympathize with the Pharisees and Sadducees … Rightly reading the signs of the times requires a church capable of standing against the legitimising stories of the day. (147)
If we do not fear God our lives will be possessed by fears produced by our possessions. Jesus will command the disciples not to be afraid, but not to be afraid requires that we see, as they saw, no one but Jesus. To see Jesus, to follow Jesus, means that they too will be clothes in the bright white of martyrdom. (155)
It is not for us to try to create risk in Jesus’s name in the hope that we may recover some sense of what it might be to be a disciple of Jesus. To do that would only further our temptation to “play” at being Christian. To try to create risk would be an attempt to be heroic rather than to be disciple. (221)
Jesus’s command that the sword be put away is not a conclusive text, committing his followers to some version of pacifism. Arguments for Christian non-violence, just as arguments for the Christian justification of violence, depend on how the story is told and the kind of community that exists to tell the story. Jesus’s command that the sword be put away is but one expression that testifies to his willingness to be given over to sinners and crucified so that we might be made part of the new age inaugurated by his birth, death, and resurrection. Therefore, Christian non-violence cannot be a position separable from what it means to be a disciple. Rather, Christian non-violence is, in the words of John Howard Yoder, the pacifism of the messianic community. Such pacifism would “lose its substance if Jesus were not Christ and would lose its foundation if Jesus Christ were not Lord”. (224)
Jesus must be killed because Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus must be killed because Jesus has called into existence a new people who constitute a challenge to the world order based on lies and deceit. Jesus must be killed because he is a threat to all who rule in the name of safety and comfort. Jesus must be killed because we do not desire to have our deepest desires exposed. Jesus must be killed because we do not believe in a God who creates us and who would come among us after our likeness. So we have learned from Matthew. (235)
A review of Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, Brazos, 2006.
First a word about this new commentary series. Or three words: I love it. It is different, refreshingly so. The contributors are not biblical scholars, but theologians from other disciplines – systematic theology, ethics, historical theology. And instead of detailed verse-by-verse comments, we have (roughly) a chapter on a chapter. Broadly speaking we move through the content of the chapters – and occasionally there are exegetical comments – but the main thrust is on the theological significance of the passage as a whole. This is not exegesis; it is theology. The result is that all the disciplines of theology are brought to bear to create a theological meditation on the passage and its contemporary significance. Unlike most commentaries I own, I read this one from cover to cover. Of course, I’m not going to throw out my exegetical commentaries – they’re still important. The point is if you are going to buy yet another commentary on Matthew then why not buy one that offer something slightly different.
The contributors come from a variety of theological backgrounds, not all evangelical, but (as far as I know) mostly adherents to the ecumenical creeds. Contributors so far include Jaroslav Pelikan on Acts, Peter Leithart on 1 & 2 Kings and Robert Jenson on Ezekiel. Future contributors include Kevin Vanhoozer (Jeremiah) and Timothy George (James). The breadth of contributors mean evangelicals may need to read some of the volumes with care, but I suspect they may also find them enriching.
And so to Stanley Hauerwas on Matthew . Hauerwas is Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University and author of The Peaceable Kingdom and Resident Aliens.
There are two answers to the question, Why was Jesus killed? Both legitimate answers. There is the answer from the human perspective. Jesus was killed because he and his message threatened the status and power of the religious and political establishment. And there is the answer from the divine perspective. Jesus was killed in fulfilment of the divine plan of salvation to redeem his people from sin and judgment through his atoning sacrifice in their place. I think both of these explanations are true (Acts 4:27-28). The religious and political authorities did not decide to kill Jesus because they wanted to fulfil the divine plan of salvation! And both explanations matter, but the latter matters more – not least because the divine plan rescues us from the sin that warps our societies.
As those who know his other books might expect, the focus on Hauerwas’ commentary is on the former answer. And herein lies both its strength and weakness. Hauerwas is very suggestive on the political and social implications of Jesus. Especially on the birth and death of Jesus, Hauerwas’ comments zip along with sparkle and insight. My version is full of marginal markings. (The central section of the Gospel lacks some of that energy and very occasionally the comments reduce to little more than a retelling of the story.)
The problem is that there is a huge gap. I agree with Hauerwas that Jesus has massive implications for politics, culture, economics. But Jesus said he came to save sinners and a full account of this is missing from Hauerwas’ version of Jesus.
Hauerwas helpfully critiques those who reduce Jesus to an ethic without seeing that ethic embedded in the new kingdom he inaugurates and embodies. Yet in practice this seems to be where Hauerwas ends up. A few examples:
Satisfaction theories of the atonement dominate accounts of Christ’s work, making it possible for the “saved” to avoid the radical character of the discipleship depicted in Jesus’s sermon. What is important, it seems, is that Jesus be accepted as one’s “personal saviour”, which is then though to make the possible the attempt to follow the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. The problem with this way of construing salvation is that the sermon becomes an ethic that is no longer constitutive of salvation. (60)
Therefore, Jesus commands his disciples to teach those whom they baptize to obey all that he has commanded. Jesus’s death and resurrection cannot be separated from the way he has taught us to live. The Sermon on the Mount, how we are to serve one another as brothers and sisters, the forgiveness required by our willingness to expose the sin of the church, is salvation. The teaching and the teacher are one. The salvation that Jesus entrusts to his disciples is the gospel of Matthew. (249)
Notice that the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is itself constitutive of salvation. ‘The Sermon on the Mount … is salvation.’
Why did Jesus have to die? Christians have developed explanations for why Jesus had to die called atonement theories. For example, some suggest that Jesus had to die as a satisfaction for our sin, to serve as a moral exemplar for us, or to defeat the devil and the powers that have revolted against their creator. There is scriptural warrant for each of these accounts of Jesus’s death, but these theories risk isolating Jesus’s crucifixion from his life … His death cannot be isolated from his life, because his death is the result of his life. He died because he had challenged the elites of Israel who used the law to protect themselves from the demands of God; he died because he challenged the pretentious power of Rome; and he died at the hands of the democratic will of the mob. He died because he at once challenged and offered an alternative to all forms of human polity based on the violence made inevitable by the denial of God. (238)
I nevertheless commend this commentary. But you need to realise what you’re getting – and what you’re not getting!
Happily for me I happened to read Hauerwas alongside Mark Driscoll and Gary Breshears’ great book, Death By Love – not I suspect a common pairing! Death By Love is written in the form of letters in which the implications of the cross are applied to people facing different pastoral situations. It’s a wonderfully fresh and powerful meditation on the soteriological implications of the cross. For me (perhaps somewhat perversely) Hauerwas and Driscoll made happy, if contrasting, companions: one meditating on the social implications of the cross, the other on its soteriological and pastoral implications.
Tomorrow I’ll post some highlights from Hauerwas on Matthew.
Think how you would summarise Ephesians 5:1 in your own words: ‘Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.’
I wonder if your summary focused on the call to imitate God or the description of Christians as ‘dearly loved children’?
It is all too easy for us to hear only the commands of Scripture and miss the descriptions out of which they arise. The prescription to behave like God only makes sense as the outworking of the description that we are God’s children. The imperatives (commands) of the New Testament always arise out of the indicatives (description). We are already God’s dearly loved children so let’s live as God’s dearly loved children by imitating our Father.
When we were in Kosova we met Gregor and Kela Menga, church planting in Gjilan. It was humbling to be with them. They have intermitant support so they live very simply, depending on God. Though Gregor is a pioneer in the region, he was very humble. He was a powerful example to us. He was converted while working as a migrant in Athens and converted his family through his letters. His mother then started showing them to friends – kind of as tracts!
Gregor was discipled by a man called Vaughan Golder. Vaughan felt God tell him Albania would open up. So he went to Kosova to learn Albanian so when, a few years later, communion in Albania collapsed he was ready. Many of the key leaders have been discipled by him.
Gregor himself planted a church in the north of Albania before moving on to Gjilan in Kosova.
We asked Gregor for his advice to us. Here’s what he said.
1. Invest in people not programmes.
2. What impacts people is not just what you say, but what you do.
3. Something that worked well for someone else may not work well for me. I am tired of people claiming ‘this is the way to success’. The lessons we should learn from them is this: they heard from God how they should work in their situation and we need, too, to hear from God how we should work in our situation.
4. We asked Gregor how he encourages people to be led by the Spirit in ministry. He said: ‘First, start each day with prayer. Don’t go anywhere without prayer. Second, ask yourself, ‘What would Jesus do in this situation?’
Later we visited a church planting team in Macedonia led by Arvid Gogaj. Again we asked what advice they had for us.
1. We must have an open heart. One of the team did not want to go at first, but God led him to mission in Macedonia.
2. ‘We should not love a style or technique, but the people, the culture, the ministry, the gospel.’
3. Find joy in the ordinary things.
4. ‘We need to live as Christians not just play at being Christians.’ Arvid said he found it difficult at first to relate to unbelievers in the city because he had grown used to performing in church.
If you would like to get involved in partnering with local churches to reach the Balkans then contact Brian Jose of Radstock: brian [at] radstock [dot] org, www.radstock.org.
[HT: Missional Church Network]
On our recent trip to the Balkans we spent time with a team in Gjilan in Kosova. The team there are church planting, but also have a vision to have people join with them, train with them, gain experience before being sent on to other parts of the Balkans. The team are mostly Albanians who’ve moved to Kosova which is also mainly ethnically Albanian (3.5 million people with perhaps 1,000 Christians). The team is led by Geni with his wife Soni.
There are a couple on the team called Fisnik and Manjola who are hoping to move on eventually to plant churches in Bosnia. It would be great to find people who join them! Fisnik and his family came to Gjilan with 150 euros in their pockets and no consistent means of support.
The team run various things for young people and also run a kindergarten (one of only four in the city). It was very encouraging to be with them. In the evening we joined in with their youth night. We watched a movie and then played cards and table tennis. They also have a youth service on Friday evenings.
It’s often said that English is the international language. But Guy (one of my gospel community leaders) and I concluded that football (soccer) is the true international language. It’s amazing how long you can sustain a conversation shouting out the names of football clubs and players and then gesticulating approval or disapproval!
If you would like to get involved in partnering with local churches to reach the Balkans then contact Brian Jose of Radstock: brian [at] radstock [dot] org, www.radstock.org.
Here’s a great article in this month’s Evangelicals Now from Marcus Honeysett on why churches stall.
Here are some highlights to whet your appetite …
1. The church forgets who we are and what we are for … When we forget that we are the community of disciples for declaring God’s greatness and making disciples, mission quickly becomes just one among many activities rather than the defining vision of who we are as a community.
2. The majority of believers are no longer thrilled with the Lord and what he is doing in their lives. When questions like ‘What is God doing with you at the moment?’ cease to be common currency, it is a sure sign of creeping spiritual mediocrity.
3. … In my view, the single biggest cause of stalled churches in the UK is the belief that material comfort can be normative for Christians. It is the opposite of radical commitment to Christ.
4. When [Christians] see church as one among many leisure activities, usually low down the priority list. They are unlikely to see the Christian community as God’s great hope for the world and unlikely to put commitment above self-interest.
5. … Where people take no personal responsibility for their own spiritual growth a stalled church becomes more likely.
6. … When preaching, teaching and Bible study become ends in themselves rather than means to an end, something is badly wrong.
7. A church becomes afraid to ask radical questions … The danger is that people start to equate serving the church with living out the gospel. Few churches regularly evaluate every aspect of church life against their core vision.
8. Confusing Christian activities with discipleship …
9. Not understanding how to release and encourage everyone in the church to use their spiritual gifts for the building up of the church … There are two types of DNA in churches. One type of church says ‘we exist to have our personal spiritual needs met’, the other ‘we exist to impact our locality and the world with the gospel of the grace of God in Christ’. The first type is a stalled church.
10. … No church was stalled at the point that it was founded. At the beginning all churches were adventures in faith and daring risk for God. No one actively decided for comfort over risk, but at some point the mindset shifted from uncomfortable faith and daring passion for the Lord to comfortable mediocrity … The mantra of the maintenance mindset is ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. But just like buying shoes for growing children, if structures don’t take account of future growth then fellowships end up stunted and deformed.
Marcus leads Living Leadership and the author Finding Joy and Meltdown .
A review of Tim Keller, The Prodigal God: Finding Your Place at the Table DVD and Discussion Guide , Zondervan, 2009.
I can’t praise this resource too much – it’s magnificent. The presentation of the DVD is beautiful and the content is dynamite. Even though I was familiar with the material from sermon mp3s and the book, I cried as I watched – twice!
The heart of this resource is a 40-minute DVD presentation. In effect it’s the movie version of Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God . Keller stands on a stage with an empty auditorium. His only props are a table and two chairs. The layout of the table and the location of the chairs change as the talks unfolds. It’s all very simple, but beautifully done. The production values are superb. Imagine the best of a Keller sermon combined with a Nooma video and you’ll have a good idea what it’s like.
The DVD works very well as a stand alone resource. But there’s also six-session discussion guide that accompanies the DVD and book. Session one is the 40-minute DVD with a few response questions. After that the discussion guide is based on the book supplemented by short extracts for the DVD. There are 6-10 questions in each session, many inviting people to comment on a quote from the book.
It’s a resource for everyone. The 40-minute presentation is as good a one-off evangelical presentation as any I know. I’m salivating at the prospect of using it with unbelievers. But the material is also of vital importance for Christians, especially those with a legalistic bent (and I suspect that’s all of us). And it is so powerfully presented. I would also recommend pastors to watch it. We shouldn’t try to copy Keller – we must be ourselves – but we can learn a huge amount from him for our preaching, both in terms of content and style.
I know many pastors who’ve been hugely impacted by Keller’s ministry. This is your chance to share Keller with the non-reading members of your congregation!
It’s my top resource from 2009.
Click on the appropriate flag to purchase the DVD , book or discussion guide .
Here’s a sample …
For more resources go to theprodigalgod.com.
Mission as identity
For many people mission has become an event. We have guest services. Evangelistic courses. Street preaching. Youth programmes. There’s nothing wrong with these things. But mission is more than a slot into our schedules. It is an identity and a lifestyle. Mission is about living all of life, ordinary life, with gospel intentionality.
Missional communities
We are called to be missional communities – not lone evangelists. The life of the covenant community is to be a light to the nations. ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ (John 13:35) Our love for one another reveals our gospel identity. The world will know that Jesus is the Son of God sent by God to be Saviour of the world through the community life of believers (John 17:20-23). This does not primarily mean inviting people to meetings. It is about shared life into which other people are welcomed.
Scattered communities of light
Imagine a globe in darkness with one point of light. That was Israel in the Old Testament, one point of light in a dark world, drawing the nations to God. And New Testament believers are still be communities of light, drawing people to God. We still draw people in towards the centre. But the centre is no longer one geographic location in Palestine, but a hundred, thousand communities of light scattered across the globe. We are not be like a lighthouse, occasionally sending a beam of light across the city. We are to be communities of light and hope and love in a dark and broken world at street level, on the street corner.
