SOLA SCRIPTURA
(This blogpost contains seven chapters and about 69
A4-pages. The whole document is available for download here. Your sincerely,
Ted Sjovall, admin)
Chapters:
1. The Bible alone
2. Sola scriptura. A biblical term?
3. The Word and The Spirit
4. Quench not The Holy Spirit
5. The spirit of the Lord and liberty
6. When you come together
7. Post scriptum
CHAPTER ONE: THE BIBLE ALONE
“The Bible alone”
Some phrases and expressions become so entrenched in
the life of every association of people that virtually nobody dares questions
them. They become ’axiomatic’ i e, things that need not be defined or
understood but belong to the very basics and are to be taken at face value. In
deed to question them is to be hair-raisingly close to being a ”heretick”. And
what could be worse than that?
The phrase ’Sola
Scriptura’ is one of those sacrosanct catch phrases which must
not be dragged out into the light unless who ever does it wants to get into
serious trouble. And that is itself a warning sign: here lies a dead dog
buried. The phrase as originally coined has long left those moorings against
which it ought to be understood and has become a banner for all manner of usage
to defend many different positions relative to theology. The origins are very
clear.
Martin Luther lived and struggled with his
relationship to God in a Church that had placed virtually every ecclesiastical
authority above the Bible. Rulings of Counsels and Synods, Church Father’s
opinions, Pope’s Ex Cathedra proclamations and emendations and changes of the
written words of the Bible, were the reality in which Luther lived. So solid
was this superstructure that the Bible itself had been submerged under the
”Church” and the word was not commonly accessible or encouraged, in fact it was
forbidden for the laymen to read, on pain of death.
Then the monk Martin Luther discovered the Bible,
first 1 Samuel, then eventually Galatians and Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Laying aside all other authorities, indeed even denying that they had any authority
over the word, he allowed the Word of God to be interpreted to himself by the
Holy Spirit. Immediately the glaring discrepancy between the practice of the
Church and the teaching of the Word became painfully apparent to this feisty
German. The rest is reformation history.
Returning to the Bible alone was succinctly caught in
the latin phrase: ”Sola Scriptura” variously rendered ”Only the Bible,
Scripture Alone” etc. In protest to the fiendish idea that the truth was the
sole property of the Church and it’s doctors, Martin Luther cried ’Murder’
against the entire Church. He saw that the Bible was like the man robbed and
bleeding on the road to Samaria and he saw how the official church tiptoed past
the wounded body. Especially the priests. So a ’good samaritan’ deed was sorely
needed. A Bible Translation in the German vernacular was his most important
contribution to the healing of the wounds.
But that complete bible translation was not ready for
the public until 1534 which is many years after he first set eyes on a copy of
the Latin Bible. His own words: ”I was 20 years old before I had ever seen a
Bible, I had no notion that there existed any other gospels or epistles except
those used in the service. He was amazed at how small a proportion of it ever
came to the ears of the people.” He was ordained a priest in 1507 and then
became doctor of divinity in Wittenberg by 1517. All Saints day that year saw
his thesis on the issue of the indulgencies nailed to the Church Door, in 95
statements he opposed the entire business of selling forgiveness of sins in
exchange for cash. Cash which was then to be used for the Church of St Peter in
Rome. That set an avalanche in motion which we now call the Reformation.
But the core of it all was the restoration of the Word
of God to the people and for the people, and if Rome disagreed, then Rome was
left behind. No Pope, No Bulla, No Church doctrine.. nothing must be put on par
with the word of God, not to speak of becoming a measuring stick against which
the Word was to be censored. The sole rule of the church, said Luther, was the
Word and this Word was manifest and made alive by the Spirit of God. Without
the Word there was no Spirit and without the Spirit the Word was void.
”The Holy Ghost goes first and before what pertains to
teaching; but in what concerns hearing, the Word goes first and before, and
then the Holy Ghost follows after. For we must first hear the Word, and then
afterwards the Holy Ghost works in our hearts. He works in the hearts of whom
he will and how he will, but never without the Word.” M L Tabletalk 241
So the phrase ”Sola Scriptura” is the result of this
return to the Bible as being the sole arbiter and rule for the Church. In the
constitutions of many many church fellowships an opening statement to the
effect that this Church believes in the supremacy of the Bible is readily
found. Few are without such a statement on their websites and membership
documents.
However: this phrase is essentially meaningless on
it’s own and needs qualifying since it can be readily shown that neither Luther
nor the lutheran churches abide by that rule. Luther’s take on the ’Sola
Scriptura’ left us with paedobaptism, which cannot be upheld from the totality
of the testimony of the scriptures, it left us a hierarchic church structure
which is impossible to defend scripturally, it left us with an ecclesiology in
direct contradiction to the New Testament, it wavered on the brink of stupidity
in being unable to cast off the notion of catholic ”transubstantialism” in favor
of the utterly muddled concept of ”consubstantialism”, he left us a church that
chops up the bible according to extrabiblical imaginations about a ”church
year” with prescribed texts for every Sunday instead of showing the whole truth
on every vital topic, irrespective of where the various bits are found in the
WHOLE WORD, Luther himself provides the core of the false ”Replacement
theology” saying that the Church has now been substituted for the nation of
Israel and the Jews are of no further account, Luther himself is the root of
lutheran antisemitism etc etc etc.. If that is what the terms means then ”Sola
Scriptura” needs a lot of qualifying and modifying according to the scriptures.
Still we owe great gratitude to him.
What he did dig out was that Salvation is by faith
alone, not by works or purchased merits. A monumentally important rediscovery
of what the Word has always said but what the very theologians had hidden from
sight. Not bad, but far from the end of what the Bible teaches. And truly: only
if the Bible is allowed to stand on it’s own can we declare that Justification
is by faith in the grace of God alone. But Luther also only saw in part, and
dragged much of his catholic luggage into what much later became the lutheran
Church, removing what he saw being wrong, but missing many of the marks which
later generations now see for what they are: a halfbaked reformation. (Luther
is no more to be blamed for the Lutheran church of today than Wesley for what
became of Methodism.)
Filters galore
Lutherans filter the bible through the eyes of Luther
and subsequent synods of that Church body. Calvinists and Zwinglians, Moravian
and Plymouth brethren do the same through variously ”reformed” theologies.
Weslyans do the same filtering as does every other body of believers. Anglicans
and Baptists do it, Pentecostals and Unitarians do it. We are all easy preys to
it and all have eloquent reasons for maintaining it that way. That is no excuse
but a fact. As we all see in part only, not being close enough to each other in
the Church to share our parts with all, leaves us making majors out of
minors.
On a historical note: the puritans, whose theology
still has an impact on many churches today were from the start adverse to
conforming to the Church of the nation. But if we think that they among
themselves held the peace, we are sadly mistaken. After 1640 they were
disbanded and within decades they had split up into the forebears of a number
of denominations. Thereby effectively causing what Paul decried when he said
’Is Christ divided”. And they split along their theology, effectively
slaughtering the Bible on the altar of ungodliness.
Faith in the sufficiency of
Scripture and the Holy Spirit alone is the rarest bird in the theological
jungle. When modern day
preachers only feel safe in an exposition of a passage of scripture while
heavily leaning on some other voice from the past, they unwittingly pass on to
the listeners that the Bible is not selfsufficient, not selfinterpreting nor
reliable, without the accreditation from whatever theology is at the roots
of that church. Faith in the Word alone and in His Holy Spirit it is not. The
message is clear: you ordinary believer dare not trust your own
understanding.
The Spirit and the Word
Listening to the scriptures on their own is seemingly
the most difficult thing of all. But what Christ left to the Church was exactly
only that: his Word and His Spirit. To each generation this is His gift to the
Church. And moreover: he left that to the entire body of the Church, not merely
to a handful of speaking professionals. He never said that subsequent
revelations of truth would be different than what has been given once and for
all. The truth is not evolving through theology, the church is not emerging as
we forsake that which is written. Understanding of the truth, a deepening of
appreciation of it, grows by practicing it. He did not place the truth into
fallible human hands for them to embellish, add or subtract what they wanted.
He did not ever foresee an ’infallible’ church taking over the explanation of
the truth. He sent the Spirit of Truth. He sends what must be received afresh
in each generation. Traditions and theologies are merely supporting trellises
if the plant is too weak to stand on it’s own as yet. Nobody races to the
Chelsea Flower show to show forth his trellises. The church in many places
prides itself of them. But where is the rose of Sharon?
”And they said to the woman,
It is no longer becauseof what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves
and know that this One is indeed the Saviour of the World” John 4:42
The fundamental fact is that unless the Word becomes
flesh it is but more words.
”No other testing has come
your way..”
The Church of Christ is always in crisis somewhere in
the world. We should not expect to be exempt. We struggle with lots of
challenges as they are now called, although some of them are merely the old
sins with new names. A glib saying of almost cliché character is the idea that
every crisis is an opportunity for growth. But to my mind it goes further than
that. It can be a turning point of huge importance. Let me explain.
The Church and it’s building
Applying then the ”Sola Scriptura principle”, the
entire church should get together and a printout of every relevant passage in
the bible (Starting at Genesis and ending in Revelation) about the church as a
spiritual temple and the various physical temples in which it met should be
given to all. Then the church should get together and digest the Scriptures alone.
Aided by nothing but the Spirit whom all members must have received, or they
would not be members of the Body of Christ. To exercise faith in the revelation
of truth in the Bible goes hand in hand with a submission to the Head of the
Church. He exercises that headship sublimely and solely by the Spirit and the
Word.
Let the Church speak and ponder the scriptures on this
issue. It may take weeks to do so. But a crisis cannot be ignored, it does
afford an opportunity to go back to basics and actually do what is there in
plain print in the Church constitution. Faith in the Word is so important that
it is presented to every visitor to some churches as they enter the porch. It
is a good confession only as long as it fits the life of the Church. So why not
do it?Halting the regular flow of the set program and taking stock would bring
a fresh view of what we mean by our statement of faith in the Scriptures. And
it may be the end of the crisis and a beginning of a solution. Nobody thinks of
shoving such a major issue under the carpet. So get it up on the table. It is a
matter for the whole church, not just for the oversight, so the whole church
should be involved in finding the many individual aspects as they will present
themselves to us if we submit to the Word and the Spirit. There may be nothing
wrong with our theology, but unless it is practiced it is merely print on a
paper.
If the principle of ”Sola Scriptura” has any meaning
at all, it must have a meaning for today, not for something in the distant past.
To maintain it as an ideal only is to ignore it really. Only what can be put
into practice shows that the Church is obedient to the Lord.
Did the Lord maintain the Sola Scriptura principle?
”You search the scriptures,
because you think that in the you have eternal life; and it is these that bear
witness of Me, and you are unwilling to come to Me that you may have the life” John 5:39-40
Did the Apostles maintain the Sola Scriptura
principle?
”And such is the confidence we
have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to
consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is of God, who
also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of
the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” 2 Cor 3:4-6
Revival has always had the same basic mark: back to
the basics. What they are? The reformers put it the way the illustration on top
of page one says. And they would have been shocked to find that we dare not
trust those declarations as they are expressed by the Spirit in the Scriptures
and applied by the Spirit on the Church of the Born again.
CHAPTER 2: SOLA SCRIPTURA. A BIBLICAL TERM?
Is ”Sola Scriptura” even a biblical term?
The question falls squarely in the category of ’rhetorical’
questions. One that either need not or cannot be replied to. Much akin to
similar questions as ’Is the Pope a Catholic’? But whereas the latter will be
assumed to be answered by ”yes” the former will have an unspoken but
unequivocal ”No” as a silent response. The Bible speaks no more of ’Sola
Scriptura’ than of toothpaste or church buildings as ”Church”. Nor does it
speak of any doctrine of ”the Trinity” or of ”Eternal Security”.
Because we are all more or less tinctured in
theological jargon we easily read into the Bible texts what we have been
accustomed to believe about it from sources very often outside the written
text.
It is in the nature of the case that the Bible does
not speak of itself as if it stood aside from itself and looked at itself from
the outside. What the Bible clearly speaks of is the ”Truth” contained within
it. A library speaks not of itself but allows the writers speak through the
books in it. I have tried to make the point that ”Sola Scriptura” must be
understood in it’s historical context and that it stands for a vital return to
the entire Bible for the whole Church in all times and all circumstances.
Excluding all other books from being authorized along side in order to know the
Truth about God and Man. ”But
even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary
to that which we have preaced to you, let him be accursed.”
Gal 1:8
The Scriptures are the sole source of knowledge about
the Truth, and one of the major truths about the truth is the statement made in
various ways that it is the Spirit of Truth that safeguards the truth as it is
written. Without the application of the Holy Spirit the Word is without power.
The meaning of Eph 6:17 goes a long way to emphasize this: ”And take the
Helmet of Salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” Separate
the Word from the Spirit and you have effectively removed yourself from any
access to the Truth.
”How can I understand..?”
If we are agreed on this pivotal point then the next
question is on the agenda. How do we understand what is written? The real key
to any faithful interpretation will be found in the scriptures themselves. It
is another catch phrase well known to all who have ever grappled with the
issue.
”Scripture is explained by scripture”
It takes no genius to see that this is inextricably
enforced right through the life of the early church as seen in the writings of
all the Apostles. But it has it’s first anchor in the way Our Lord and Saviour
demonstrated the principle when, as the heavenly accepted Son of God was
tempted by Satan after 40 days of fasting. He met every temptation with a
direct qoute from Deuteronomy. When challenged by a direct qoute from Psalm 91
the same principle applies. ”On the
other hand, it is also written” Matt 4:7 The history of the
divisions within the church is written with the bloodied ink of ignoring this
basic understanding of Truth. ”The
sum of thy word is truth” Psa 119:160
On a historical note: Martin Luther’s view of the
Lords Supper was challenged by the Swiss Reformer Huldreich Zwingli. A major
disputation was arranged at Marburg in Germany 1-4th October 1529 by Philip I
of Hessen. He tried to unite the reformation by getting all important people to
this meeting. The two main personae in the fray were Luther and Zwingli. They
agreed on 14 points out of 15. But on the last one about the presence of the
literal body of Christ in the bread of communion they disagreed. And what could
have been a united battle front against Rome was divided for ever. The reason?
Luther had written with white chalk on his black velvet pulpit cloth ’Scripsit:
Hoc est Corpus meum.” Meaning in latin: It is written: this is my body.”
For four days Luther kept repeating this one line of
the scripture into the face of the swiss Doctor irrespective of what other
scriptures Zwingli brought to bear on the issue. How could it be rationally
defended that Jesus held his own body in his hands? Did Christ literally mean
that he was Bread and fruit from the Vine? Did he like other gates swing from a
doorpost? And so on and so on.. But to no avail at all. The bulldog from
Wittenberg had bitten into the bread and could not let it go. The scriptures
forbid the drinking of blood. They forbid cannibalism. To defend his theology
Luther ignored virtually all other scripture for that one morsel. It is the
downside of theology and has caused the shipwreck of a thousand church
efforts.
You may pursue the
event at your leisure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_Colloquy
“When the two sides departed, Zwingli cried out in
tears, “There are no people on earth with whom I would rather be at one than
the [Lutheran] Wittenbergers.”Because of the differences, Luther initially
refused to acknowledge Zwingli and his followers as Christians, though
following the colloquy the two Reformers showed relatively more mutual respect
in their writings."
But the damage was done and the two forces never
joined, not even to this day.
If this principle is taken into account then it
follows that no exposition of one single passage can ever claim to be the truth
about any topic in the Word. All the more so since it repeatedly is emphasized
that no matter in the Church is determined by one voice only: Two
or three witnesses must agree on any matter of importance. Only when
all that pertains to a matter has been laid open to scrutiny and careful study
can a matter be declared to be ’According to scripture’.
How many times are the live words of Christ
corroborated by scripture? Well 72 times in the New Testament we are referred
to an OT saying relevant to the fulfiment of Prophesy about Christ or things to
be watched for in the Church of Christ. How do the apostles teach? Look in Romans
9 as one example: Standing up for his own people Paul explains why they cannot
be ignored or given up. Threading into his defense he uses Genesis 21, 18, 25,
Malachi 1, Exodus 33, 9, Hosea 1, Isaiah 22, 10, 1, 8.. That is just one
example of many. They taught the truth by using the whole Word of God. They
taught topically and hardly ever did they expound one text only. (I know of not
one example.) Because it is simply impossible to lock the truth into one text,
or to unlock the meaning of that truth from one passage. Heresies thrive on
small plots. On the small plot only one plant can grow at any one time.
Read Romans 15: 3 ”as it is written”, verse 9 ”as it
is written”, v 10 ”and again he says”, v 11 ” and again”, and v 12: ”and again
Isaiah says”. Again and again the written word stated, related to the present
situation and sealed by more of the Word. And then confirmed: ”For I will not presume to speak of
anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the
obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders,
in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as
Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.” Rom
15:18-19
Demonstration in Spirit and power comes into full force
again in 1 Corinthians 2:4 Resulting in obedience! And Paul shows also how the
word and the Spirit interact. And further more he expresses the very process by
which the written word becomes part of that which is delivered to the listener.
1 Cor 2:9-13
”..but just as it is written,
“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not
entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.”
For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things,
even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except
the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows
except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world,
but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to
us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but
in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual
words.” The meaning of
that passage of the scripture is made known to the believer directly by the
Holy Spirit.
Sola scriptura? No way if that means ’only what is
written’. But Oh yes if it is taken in the sense: The Word given through the
Spirit operative in the teacher by the Holy Spirit to bring truth, and
spiritually discerned thoughts based on the Truth, to bear on the Church or
assembly. The members of which are expected to be walking by faith in the
Spirit.
The importance of a general and broad store of Bible
knowledge in every believer cannot be overstated. Only believers who know the
Word can be filled with goodness and knowledge so that they are able to
admonish and encourage and build one another up, (Rom 15:14) on that most holy
faith based on the teaching of the prophets and the apostles. And to clinch the
deal: to be so noble in mind and able to listen, receive and independently test
and try the words spoken from the pulpit. The Berean issue is impossibly out of
reach if the hearers are intimidated and limited by their ignorance. Or if they
have a misplaced faith in the superiority of the leadership leading them away
from personal understanding of the Truth and nothing but the truth.
Many years ago a friend of mine asked a congregation
to turn with him to a passage of scripture. Not a leaf was turned. They had no
habit of reading the scripture in church. He chided them for it and a voice
from the ’floor’ said:” We trust our pastor to always tell the truth so we
don’t need to check his message or read the Bible.” (sic)
When the preaching and teaching of the church remains
inactive and never manages to produce what the Word promises there is a serious
issue to be raised. The remaining two verses of 1 Cor 2 say it loud and
clear.
”But a natural man does not
accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he
cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is
spiritual appraises all things, yet he is appraised by no man. ”For who has
known the Mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind
of Christ.”
When the natural,
once-only-born man or woman tries to understand the scriptures without the
Spirit of truth then neither Spirit nor Truth remain. Bible bashing frequently
follows in the wake.”
The words may reach us on an intellectual level. But
that is only the husk of the seed. That husk will never germinate if that is
all that is sown. Only the good seed can germinate, and then not even that
guarantees growth to 60 or 100 fold return on investment. Because there is also
the matter of the quality of the soil. Only one fourth of the soils, although
all equally seeded with the words of God, produce fruit with perseverance. Luke
8:11
There ought to be little
discussion about wether we should have teaching and preaching to the whole
Church by the chosen leadership as well as continual personal and small group
bible study. We should attend to both. The significant statement
about the practice of the early church must not be shoved unto the back shelf
of Church history. ”They were
continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to
the breaking of bread and to prayer. .. Day by day continuing with one mind in
the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their
meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having
favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day
those who were being saved.” Acts 2:42, 46-47 .. how I did not shrink from
declaring to you anything that was profitable, teaching you publicly and from
house to house, solemnly testifying to both jews and greeks..” Acts
20:20-21
A matter of body knowledge to
support and build the body
We are bricks in the building. But if the bricks are
unbaked? Even a rain of blessing will dissolve them. Can there be any hope of
the Church being a building of living stones? If we only have heard by the
hearing of the ear but never seen the glory of the Lord? If all we have is so
many loose and disjointed snippets of Bible and lack the wider view. How can we
then stand in the coming trials and tribulation?
”Listen to me, you who pursue
righteousness, Who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which
you were hewn
And to the quarry from which
you were dug.
Listen to me, you who pursue
righteousness,
“Look to Abraham your father
And to Sarah who gave birth to
you in pain;
When he was but one I called
him,
Then I blessed him and
multiplied him.”
Indeed, the Lord will comfort
Zion;
He will comfort all her waste
places.
And her wilderness He will
make like Eden,
And her desert like the garden
of the Lord;
Joy and gladness will be found
in her,
Thanksgiving and sound of a
melody. Isaiah 51:1f
The quarry we were hewn from was one where the word of
God richly dwelled in every member of the Church, where the Bible was given
full credit and the Holy Spirit was obeyed. Was! I fear that if what is left is
in the past tense only then we are a dying breed. A hunger to hear the word of
the Lord must needs come while it is still to be found. (Heeding the
sinister warning in Amos 8:11-12) Not next year, next year.. but soon,
actually already yesterday.
I ask myself why I have this urgency in my heart about
this matter. And the answer is awesome and simple in itself. The difficulties
that many churches are facing today are a foreboding of what will come. Our
Lord expressed the same concern when he said: “And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will
not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and
will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for
them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the
earth?” Luke 18:6f
If faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of
Christ as Paul declared in Romans 10:17 then there will be a direct
relationship between the expected lack of faith at His coming and the fragile
knowledge of the word among the believers. If only the word of Christ is valid
then the church needs to weed out the words of men from the words of Christ.
Only the latter bring salvation. Only the word itself feeds faith. That is the meaning of ”Sola
Scriptura”.
As I was coming to the end of this consideration on
the topic something else filled my field of inner vision. It seemed that I was
being asked a set of questions about what we as the Church really believe. I
have no answers but will put the questions down. They have a haunting
urgency.
· ”Can it be that your
dependance on all kinds of human authorities is mistrust of Me?”
· ”Can it be that the lack of
searching the scriptures is mistrust in My word?”
· ”Can it be that your
reluctance to allow all believers to partake in the ministry of the Word also
shows a mistrust of the members of the body?”
· ”Can it be that your low
esteem of the communal study of the Word is mistrust of my Spirit?”
Each of these questions came on the wings of a dove as
it were.
“Do not let your heart be
troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.” John 14:1
”Now He said to them, “These
are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things
which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms
must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,
and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise
again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins
would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” Luke 24:44-46
...but this is what was spoken
of through the prophet Joel:
‘And it shall be in the last
days,’ God says,
‘That I will pour forth of My
Spirit on all mankind;
And your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy,
And your young men shall see
visions,
And your old men shall dream
dreams;
Even on My bondslaves, both
men and women,
I will in those days pour
forth of My Spirit
And they shall prophesy.” Acts 2:16-18
”But you have an anointing
from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do
not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the
truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is
the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the
Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father
also. As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If
what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son
and in the Father.” 1 John 2:20-24
I for one dare not leave these questions unanswered.
Lord have mercy on us.
The Days ahead
The Church of tomorrow is being produced today. I fear that tomorrow there
will be no church buildings, no ’one person leaderships’, no single shepherds
whose removal will cause the shutdown of the church. There will be no ’consumer
of sermons’ style organisation left alive when the hunger after the word of
God, unmet, has left the church dead. What is not an organic Church in ful
recognition of the Headship of Christ will not exist when all the other Church
organisations have become slaves to the dictates of a godless anti-Christian
society.
It will again be as in the beginning. A Church of
Christ suffering, but victorious because she believes every word that comes out
of the Mouth of God. Is that a prediction? Is it a prophecy? Is it an appraisal
of the way things are going? Yes, all of that and, no not only. It is an echo
of the Lord’s own question: Will
there be faith on earth when I come?
”Sola Fide” was another of the five Solas coined by
the reformers. By Faith alone! But faith has until now never existed without
the Word. Even a false faith was until now always based on at least a
misapprehension of the Scripture. But now we have faith without any bonds to
the Word. Today faith in faith itself has usurped the place of the ”Faith once and for all delivered to the
saints.” Jude 3.
That, if nothing else, raises a clarion call to take
stock and act accordingly.
If we only want tomorrow what
we already have today, then let us just go on in exactly the same footsteps as
today. But let us also realize that it is what we do today that creates what we
will see tomorrow.
Who was it that said that the time is short?
CHAPTER 3: THE WORD AND THE SPIRIT
The Word and the Spirit, eternally the same.
This is my third consideration concerning ’Scripture
alone’. I have spent a few days reading up on the events in Europe between 1400
and 1650. I have re-aquainted myself with lots of important names from Wycliffe
to Luther to Tyndale to John Calvin and with the battle for the reformation and
against it. Some impressions are indelible: firstly, politics had much more to
say and conditioned much of what the reformers did. Secondly the manifest lack
of the Fruit of the Spirit in the Reformers and their opposite numbers screams
out from every page of the books. Both from the pages of the historians and
from their own writings. If the language used by Luther about Thomas More and
that of Thomas More against Luther was used in any context today we would have
written them both off as unregenerate.
Thirdly it is an unavoidable conclusion that neither
one of the major branches of the reformation should be raised to the rafters as
pure and wholesome fare for the Church in our time. The horrendous reality is
that none of the reformations ever reformed much if by reformation we look for
the reclaiming of the Spiritual man. They rewrote theology for sure. But did
they curb sin in sinners? Martin Luther condoned the bigamous marriage of his Protector.
John Calvin not only acceded to the murder of His Opponents Michael Servetus
and other likeminded, but he virtually skirted round the New Covenant and
delivered more of the old and Abrahamic and therefore redundant old covenant to
the swiss theocracy of Geneva. Zwingly died on the battlefield but not before
he had ’purged’ the church of anabaptists by drowning them in the river under
the battle cry,”By water they sin, by water they shall pay for their sins’.
While Luther translated the Bible into a vernacular german, ”so german that the
reader would never suspect that Moses was a jew”, Tyndale wrote and created the
foundations of modern English as well as giving us his translation efforts of
holy Scripture. For which he was brutally martyred in Brussels at the
instigation of men like Thomas More and Bishop Fisher. (Who in turn were killed
by other political abusers of ”divine right”.)
The much hailed ’return to scripture’ which is often
brandished as a banner over the reformation period, has to be taken with a
monumental pinch of Salt. They returned to some very important truths
pertaining to salvation, but they also ”rediscovered” or recreated those
doctrines that were needed to bring approval for their worldy and political
ends. Doctrines of the most unscriptural kind did not only survive the
reformation but have become inextricably imbedded in what is left of the Church
of Christ to this day. Calvinism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Roman Catholic
Church (In itself a creation of the Council of Trent from the middle of 1600)
as well as the Anabaptists are the edifices of church politics far more than
the result of a spiritual rediscovery of the Truth that sets men free.
Calvinism for instance, is essentially a humanistic watering down of the Bible
to suit an unholy mixing of earthly authority with the Sovereignty of God. It
can be argued that each of those systems have widely missed the marks of the
New Testament and the content of the New Covenant. To claim that those
reformations were true moves of The Holy Ghost is not only questionable, it can
be shown to be most unscriptural in many parts.
The Legacy of Christ to the Church
We need to return to the Scriptures to see what Christ
equipped the church with in order to understand the issue at large. There are
to my understanding four major trains of thought here. They cannot all be
right, but it is possible that a combination of two might be useful. But it
cannot be any two of these as they are somewhat mutually exclusive.
1 Evolving truth.
In various shapes and with varying strength the idea
that what Christ has done was only a commencement and that therefore the church
must allow and indeed embrace the natural evolution of religion as it keeps
step with the times in which it lives. The Bible describes the beginnings only
but has no say on the direction into which those starting ripples will point.
Scripture is only as authoritative as a rivulet in the high mountain defines
the Amazon River in full flow, i. e. not at all, because equal attention must
be given to every tributary along the way and although the original trickle was
water in motion, as a river it was as yet in its infancy and incomplete and
needs the confluence of every generation to understand the river as it
eventually meets the universal sea of truth. Unless it merges with the sea of
limitless truth it will have failed as a river. Scripture is not then
authoritative for anything but the way it stays between it’s banks while it
inexorably flows to the widening in the sea. Only when it has converged with
all other truth will it be fulfilled. This view is a theological byproduct of
the evolutionary hypothesis as applied to the natural world. Faith in the
inevitability of development, improvement and advancement lies at the bottom of
it. The upward evolution of the Church is considered to be an immutable law. As
the river must forsake the banks of the rivulet so the church must grow out of
the limitations of the Bible. If she wants to be relevant she must go with the
flow.
2 ”Hark back to some distant past, but not to the
beginning”
This is by far the most common denominator of many
churches, irrespective of denominational colour or self designation. It is an”eyes
fixed on rear view mirror” moving forward as little and as reluctantly as
possible. (”Forward” is the moot point here. If we don’t know where we are
heading any road is the right one, or indeed, none at all.) The defining
reference point is either the founding gremium of the church or some ’great
name’ or some cataclysmic event which has defined the movement for it’s future.
Staying within the safe limitations posed by the beginning of the organisation
effectively defines whatever roads it dare take. ”What we have never done
before, we will not do tomorrow.”
That is the defining battle cry. In these settings
there are immutable foundations that must not ever be questioned. Not even if
they prove to have grown firmly and solidly away from any other authority than
that given by the Movement to whichever source arbitrarily chosen. The names of
Luther, Calvin, Wesley etc etc appear to safeguard the truth by their very
venerable standing. But if truth were told Luther and Calvin and Wesley would
be most embarrassed to be used in that manner. They have to carry the dead
albatross of ossified religion rather than be the beacons of light in the prow
of the ship called Church, sailing very dark waters. They were only men, and,
more or less, men of the world and men of God at the same time. Their followers
set out to major on their godward sides but often find themselves majoring on
their all too human failings.
The interesting thing is that although they are all
conservative and even pride themselves of a most honourable stability, they
hardly ever go back to the beginning. And if they go back to the beginning, it
is only to find support for their position now, oftimes ignoring what else the
scriptures say on that topic. They go back, back, back to this or other point
but ignore all that was before that point. They pick a raisin or two out of the
cake of revelation but ignore the cake as a whole.
In view of the absolute fact that nothing ever comes
out of nothing (barring the creation of God) it remains an oddity that the
choice of a starting point becomes so holy that whatever preceeds it is rarely
analysed. Every move of God happens in time and is a product of it’s time
because it addresses specific situations in time. How can it be said that a
theology created in very specific circumstances 500 years ago should be
relevant and useful today? (Scripture is not theology until it has been
filtered through some human mind.) If a tool is used for the wrong purpose
a good result is not guaranteed. You would not use a trowel to dry yourself
after a bath. Unless the issues addressed are the same, the tool of the past is
part of the museum. ”You need not act as fossils just because you will live
for ever.” The number of churches that have left empty buildings behind
testify to the problems of this method of forward motion. The gospel must not
be thought of as something that can be inherited from the past. It must be
rediscovered by each successive generation. The insights of the past are useful
but not essential. As I said in a previous writing: ”Yesterday’s manna
breeds worms.”
Synods, Church Fathers, Puritans, Reformers,
Evangelists, and so on, are chosen to verify the status quo. But do they hold
water? Does God empower this with the power of the Holy Spirit? I mentioned the
rather frekvent and blatant lack of the Fruit of the Spirit in many of the
’great’ men of the distant past. How would we know of the Power of the Holy
Spirit if such fruit is missing?
3 ”The restitutionist”
The battle cry here is simple. ”We must go back to
the New Testament Church” and we must live as if we were in that same time
frame and frame of mind. We must copy as closely as possible what they did and
went through or else the power of God will not manifest in our time. It
involves a lot of reading into the story of Acts what wishfully ought to be
there in order for us to recreate those similar outward conditions. The call to
this sort of ’go back to the beginnings’ is very alluring and has seen whole
Church movements exist and remain in a sort of frozen tableau of those things.
The Mennonite and Amish communities base their communal lifestyles on such
frozen templates. But these also can readily be shown to pick and chose what
they want to be seen as paramount.
In the Hutterite wake of Zinzendorf we have the
Bruderhof community spirit. Reading into the events of Acts a mandate for
communism of the most fundamental kind they claim that this is the communion
proper. No private ownership, all things in common, therefore no economical
inequality among the believers etc etc. Blithely ignoring that the rest of the
New Testament breathes not a single word of approval or teaching on this
matter, on the contrary: every time there is a collection made for the poor it
is always and only the poor in Judea and Jerusalem that are the recipients.
Nothing impoverishes the Church as rapidly as persecution. The only church
openly persecuted was the one in Jerusalem. Their leader James was killed and
the communal coffer most likely confiscated. The entire church was dispersed
except the apostles, who while they were with Christ had forsaken all and
followed Him, but had been promised a hundredfold already in this life.
The Pentecostals have variously claimed to have the
only correct mode of Baptism based on Acts ch 2, ignoring that in subsequent
chapters various modes of Baptism are also exemplified with no individual form
praised or elevated over the others. The order of the elements of Baptism is
fluid, but the elements are always there. Personal Faith, Repentance and the
washing off of the old man and the reception of the risen Life of Christ by the
Baptism of Christ, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Where the latter was not in
evidence the waterbaptism was held to be void. The only Baptism Jesus Christ
came to bring to pass was a Baptism with The Holy Spirit. Without it there is
neither Fruit of the Spirit nor the gifts for ministry by the Spirit.
The idea sounds good but it is lacking in several
ways. Nobody in the rest of the NT has a single word to say in that direction.
Growth towards and a possible stature of maturity is indicated in a manner that
goes way beyond the first flailing and faltering steps. The manifold witness to
the very variety of the individual churches shows that no single pattern
existed. In fact not one Apostle planted a Jerusalem Church any where. They
planted Churches of Christ in every place, fully cognizant of the fact that
local, social and personal and cultural elements would by necessity shape the
church where it was born and lived. Not one church is a copy of any other. This
is borne out tremendously in the Pauline correspondance. It is also
astonishingly clear from the letters from Christ to the seven churches in
Revelation. Different situations, challenges and confrontations called for
different teaching even when the churches were only a few miles apart in the
geography.
The NT does not begin by laying down a simple template
to then tell us: ”Repeat this or be found guilty.” However it does indicate
what foundations have been laid for any Spiritual house called the ”Ecclesia”.
The legacy of Christ to the Church is not an outward visible structure. Not a
mould into which all must be poured to set.
4 ”Not by might, nor by power but by my Spirit says
the Lord.”
The living head of the Church left a double legacy for
every generation. The Word and the Spirit. Neither He Himself nor any of His
Apostles pointed the church towards either of the three previously mentioned
modes of being Church. The Scripture over and over again points to the total
sufficiency of the living word and the Spirit of Truth in cooperation. It
points to the Body of the Church and tells of His equipment for that body. And
there is every indicator that this was to safeguard the Church throughout the
ages to come ”Until I come”.
Jesus himself and his apostles stood against the idea
of an evolution of the church by firmly raising the alarm of false Messiahs, or
ravenous Wolves, of societal changes that would make the life of faith very
much more difficult than it always was. No such thing as a glorious future
where the Church would rule the world was ever once indicated. ”My Kingdom is
not of this world”. The entire politic theology of Augustinus, Luther, Calvin
etc has no real foundation in the understanding and prophecy of anybody in the
NT. The dependance on Church Father’s is a broken reed. They were not even in
their own time universally heeded voices. Luther found them bland and often
appalingly colorless. Many of them were accused of heresy by the others. Some
of the most wellknown names are only known because they twisted scripture and
produced new doctrines that were way beyond what scripture witness
allows.
Not only did He give us that legacy, he also declared
how it was to be established in terms of flesh and blood, generation by
generation. He told his people that He would apply his own resurrection power
in the life of the Church. He let us know through his appointed teacher that
inherited traditions were of irrelevant nature. He did not expect them to be
harking back into the distant past but promised His personal presence in every
age. Hear this: He promised his presence in the life of the Church by the
presence of Himself in the believer. He is Himself the Living Word given to the
entire church and He, the indwelling Lord is by the Spirit his own interpreter
of that Word to the world through that body of believers.
Will He, when He comes, find faith on the Earth?
Large swathes of the Church speaks about Him ”in
absentia”. Whistfully perhaps, longingly, perhaps, but not in the faith that is
that of the New Covenant people. They do not know the head. The people of
Israel once lost the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines. They mourned it
for 20 years. But could not be bothered to go and find it.
But they continued their religious exercises as if
nothing had happened.
It is remarkable that the Church of 2020 is ready to
repeat and affirm that Jesus is the greatest Teacher that ever lived while
digging around for any snippets of half hearted insight from any but the Lord
Himself. He who finished being with them in body and sent His Spirit to glorify
Him in His bodily absence, promised His presence whenever they met together in
His name. The whole Counsel of God available through the entire scriptures were
given to them all. And from each one the same Spirit can and will draw out
sustaining support for them all. To leave the sharing of the Word into the
hands of the few will empowerish the whole body. Let the word of Christ dwell
in you richly.
”I have many things to say to
you, but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth comes he
will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak of his own initiative but
whatever he hears, He will speak, and he will disclose what is to come. He
shall glorify me.”
Everything written in the Bible up to the day of Pentecost
paves the way and prepares for the New Covenant. This covenant is expressed
through the Church born on that Harvest day, and all that the Spirit gives to
this People under the new covenant is what is given from Acts ch 2 onwards. The
Spirit expressly explaining the words of the Lord to the Church.
Not then a going back to some arbitrary point in the
past, or to a part of the History of the Church and it’s dogmas, or bowing to
some great names, but a laying hold of the presence of Christ the Rabbi through
the ministry of the Spirit of Truth in us and among us. It is not taught in the
seminaries nor in the Churches. Until it is, we will continue to be baffled by
the distance between what the Word says and what the Church does.
For saying things like this Tynedale and many others
were burnt at the stake. Lord have mercy! Everything that the Spirit told men
and women in the past He can and will speak to us. ”He that has an ear let
Him hear what the Spirit says to the Churches.”
CHAPTER 4: QUENCH NOT THE HOLY SPIRIT
”Quench not the Holy Spirit”
This is the fourth portion of considerations about the
”Sola Scriptura” and deals largely with the conspicuos silence about the work
of the Holy Spirit in the Church Body after the day of Pentecost. It has been
said, not only by me, but by the reformers themselves, that the principle of
’Sola Scriptura’ must needs give credit to what scripture says about everything
before any other voice is considered on any matter of faith and life in the
Church. This chapter will show that this principle is not applied to the New
Testament witness about the vital role of the Holy Spirit in the Body, and the
evidence of that fundamental omission is there for all to see.
Firstly: the creeds of the
Church
The creeds of the Church of Christ are matters of
expediency and often urgency and they are nearly always a response to
aberations from the teaching of the Bible. They all have a polemic target. To
defend the faith against voices who deny this or other part of what the Church
taught. Because of their very nature they never claim to be ’ the full monty’
but a spearhead against the opposition of the time. This is true of the Nicean
and Athanasian and every other creed or Confession of faith ever written. It is
also true of the Apostles creed of which the earliest forms were produced
middle of 3rd Century but in the present day form was not finalized until about
750.
About the Holy Spirit we are told no more than this: ”I
believe in Christ Jesus, the only Son, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the
Virgin Mary,...And I believe in the Holy Ghost” In a sixth Century
Roman creed we learn no more. ”I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy
Catholic Church..” The Church council at Nicea was called together to
deal with what is known as the Arian heresy. A long text about the inner
relationships within the Trinity deal mostly with Father and Son and then, as
an afterthought adds: ”And in the Holy Spirit.” The so
called Nicene Creed was approved in Chalcedon 451 reads ”And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord
and the Life Giver that proceedeth from the Father..”
Irrespective of where you look in the various
statements of the church and/or council decisions, there is precious little
understanding or evidene of the work of the Spirit in the life of the church.
There is a lot about the Work of the Spirit in bringing people to salvation and
His work in conversion and sanctification of the individual. But very little,
if any, evidence of His work in and through the collective body of the
Church.
The Reformation writings
”But surely this is adressed by the reformers and has
been rectified by them?” You wish! But having dug through the major texts of
the Westminster confession, Luther’s Catechism, Calvins Institutes and the
Literature around the English Church documents I can confidently say that they
afford less than minimal insight into what the New Testament shows.
A few voices: ” ..yet not withstanding, our full
persuasion and assurance of infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is
from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in
our hearts” WC ch 2 §5
Again: ” ”The whole counsel of God concerning all
things... may be deduced from the scriptures, unto which nothing at any times
is to be added, wether by new Revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of
men... Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God
to be neccessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in
the Word...” WC ch 2 §6
And what about the teaching about the Spirit in the
chapter about ”The Church”? Well the entire chapter 25 has one sentence about the Spirit.
One.. Ӥ3. Unto this catholic visible Church Christ hath given the ministry,
oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints
in this life, to the end of the world; and doth by his own presence and Spirit,
according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto.”
What about Martin Luther and the Holy Ghost? Does He
know anything about the work of the Spirit in the body of the Church? In his
Table Talks he allows a twofold ministry of the Spirit. ”First, He is a Spirit
of Grace, that makes God gracious to us, and receives us as acceptable
children, for Christ’s sake. Secondly, He is a Spirit of prayer, that prays for
us, and for the whole world, to the end that all evil may be turned from us,
and that all good may happen to us...It is one thing to have the Holy Spirit as
the spirit of prophecy, and another to have the revealing of the same; for many
have had the Spirit before the Birth of Christ, and yet he was not revealed to
them.”
What about Luther in the Catechism? There is not
one word about the work of the Spirit in the body collective in either the
smaller or larger Catechism. That is the more remarkable in that the
Catechisms are the mainstay of lutheran Church membership. What is written and
proclaimed there are the ”Ten commandments, The Apostolic Creed, The Lord’s
Prayer, The Sacraments, Prayers and blessings and household rules for the
family.”
What about Calvin and his Institutes? This is an
exerpt and summary:
So what does Calvin have to say about the Holy Spirit?
Here are four things that come from book 3, chapter 1 of his magnum opus The
Institutes of the Christian Religion:
1. The Holy Spirit is the bond that unites us to
Christ
Calvin points out where Paul and Peter agree about the
role of the Spirit. He speaks about the “testimony of the Spirit” being a seal
engraved on our hearts “with the result that it seals the cleansing sacrifice
of Christ. Go to 1 Peter 1:2 and 1 Corinthians 6:11 to see how the Spirit is
involved in our union with Christ.
2. Christ came with the Spirit for two reasons
Calvin points out two things Christ sends the Holy
Spirit to accomplish. One is to separate his people from the world. The other
is to gather them into the hope of an eternal inheritance. Those are broad
categories that define the work of the Spirit sent by Jesus.
3. The Bible gives several titles to the Spirit
One of my favorite titles that Calvin mentions is
“guarantee and seal.” The Holy Spirit is called this “because from heaven he so
gives life to us, on pilgrimage in the world and resembling dead men, as to
assure us that our salvation is safe in God’s unfailing care.” He is also
called “water” and “fire.”
4. Faith is the principal work of the Spirit
In Ephesians 1:3 Paul tells us that we are “sealed
with the Holy Spirit of promise.” Most Christians believe that faith is the
gift of God as the Bible teaches. Calvin puts together several Scriptures that
show this. He also has this to say: Paul shows the Spirit to be the inner
teacher by whose effort the promise of salvation penetrates into our minds, a
promise that would otherwise only strike the air or beat upon our ears.”
But what about the role of the Spirit in the
collective body? Mostly silence from all of the reformation heroes. What about
the Puritans? Here is a link that summarizes a lot about that. https://www.apuritansmind.com/the-christian-walk/a-summary-of-the-doctrine-of-the-holy-
spirit-by-dr-c-matthew-mcmahon/
Well they follow the same track. Lots of writings
about the work of the Spirit in the individual believer, but very little about
the collective reality of the work of the Spirit in the Body of the Church. In
fact the topic is so seldom taught to the ordinary members of the church that
few have more than the vaguest idea. Those expositions of the topic found in
Systematic Theology books or in Commentaries on individual books of the Bible
are well and truly filtered out before the laiety are preached to.
What are the predictable
consequences of this vacuum?
Now looking at all the church traditions that have
arisen from the teaching across the board a few things follow. First: they all
have a view of the church that allows a distinct class of lay people who are
not expected to know more than they need to be a good supporting cast of the
leadership of the church. The ”Clerics and the laiety” are a product of the
ignorance about the Bible Teaching on the indwelling Spirit in the whole
Church.
Secondly the matter of the one Baptism that Christ
came to give: the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is glossed over or ignored. The
confusions over Baptism is a dark chapter in the History of the Church. Made
none the easier by a slew of doctrines about the purported evidence of that
Baptism in the charismatic or maybe better said, charismaniac circles.
It has created a view of the Church that deviates from
everything the New Testament plainly says about it. It allows ”priesthoods” in
opposition to the laiety, it accepts the ”20-80” divison between those
’initiated’ and the ’rest”. It allows use and abuse of power over the church
and it’s member of the rankest kind. It claims ’anointed’ ministers three feet
above scrutiny and reprimand. The anointing of Christ is not exclusive to the
appointed leaders. The priesthood is the business of all believers. (Who would
think so from the way we act Church?) It allows orthodoxy without orthopraxy.
It allows the dismissal of virtually every supernatural presence by the Spirit
in the Church. It knows nothing of spiritual discernment as distinct from
rational reasoning. And it does so on the strength of the ignorance of the
ordinary believer. They believe only what they have been taught! If a church in
forty years has never had a faithful presentation of the Doctrine of the Life
of the Spirit in the Church Body, then there is every reason to expect that
this Church knows nothing of the reality .
But ”Sola Scriptura”
it is not!
It is ’Sola scriptura’ filtered through a finemeshed
sieve created by something in the past, or by ’spiritual robbers’ of the
present age. But true faith arises only out of a humble faith in the Spirit of
Christ and the guidance of the Word of Christ. A faith fed by and active in all
those born again who together form the Church proper. A faith that grows as
each member is empowered and taught by the Spirit and the Word through other
parts of the body and through the leadership appointed by Christ in the
Church.
So I have spent days rereading every passage in the
New Testament about the work of the Spirit in the Body of believers. I have so
to speak loaded my guns and am taking aim at the ignorance of centuries by
delivering a volley of insights from the Word. My selection is of course not
particularly inspired, but it is true all the same. After all I believe in the
”sola Scriptura” as it is qualified by scripture itself by making every
approach to an understanding of the Word impossible without the Spirit of the
Living God.
The legacy of Christ to the church is His own Presence
by the word and the Spirit.
The Spirit in the New
Testament
There are 377 references to the spirit in the NT. A
portion of them, about 35-40% refer to the spirit in man. The first man Adam
was made a living soul. The Second Adam was a Lifegiving Spirit. We first share
the natural life of the living soul and by regeneration we become Spiritual
beings. That spirit is the receptacle of the Spirit of God and the operative
base from within which the Spirit operates within us.
The remaining 60 to 65% speak of The Holy Spirit, the
third person of the trinity, the Teacher, the Comforter, The Life Giver, the
guardian of truth, the worker of miracles, the giver of Gifts to whom he will,
the one who will reject that which is unholy from the Church, the one who takes
the words of Christ and makes them available to our understanding and
obedience.
Even before there is a single line of the New
Testament is written the Word of God was upheld, and maintained and protected.
That is: before there was a consciously ’scripture preserving’ organisation the
Holy Spirit kept the faith vibrant and consistent. It was off course maintained
by the same Spirit who inspired every word of the Tanahk, the Old Testament, as
we know it. All Scripture was given by the breath of God. The Church councils
did not create the Bible, they ratified what was accepted by the majority of
the Churches in existence.
The earliest written gospel is thought to be
Matthew’s. It must have been written down by the latest AD 70 when Jerusalem
was destroyed. (A fragment of Marks gospel has been dated as early as ca 65 AD)
From the year 30 or thereabouts, the content of all the gospels was kept alive
for at least one life span, 30 years, in the believers and their leadership
without the aid of anything written. The Church depends on the Scriptures, not
the other way round, and the scriptures are safeguarded as to their content by
the Spirit of truth. That is how the Church in generation after generation has
rediscovered the word of God and been given revelation insights which have
given new impetus to the gospel work. The Church (read into that various still
existing Churches) has made it all but impossible to read the scriptures for
many of it’s members for hundreds of years. They read on pain of death!
Today the same is done by elevating formal theological
learning so high above the ordinary people so as to solidly undermine the
ordinary believer’s faith in them being able to understand the Word of God. The
end is the same, only the methods differ. There is but a small step from ”you
must not read” to ”you may read, but don’t think that you can understand”! Then
the pulpit no longer instructs but intimidates.
Church structures have never been able to prevent one
form or other of corruption and defection from the Truth once and for all given
to the Saints. Thereunto the Reformations testify with unbattened eyelids. I
note that Revivals rarely do much Reformation work. And because they do not,
the happy fugitives from the oppressive church are soon roped back into the
fold. And as with the house cleared of one demon, seven worse demons take up
the house left by the first. (What are the remaining effects of the Welsh
Revival in Wales? Where is the Toronto blessing? Where did the Cambuslang wark
go after the departure of Whitfield? What happened to the folks from Azusa
Street?) Every form of life creates it’s own form. But form is no more than the
byproduct of life, and life can have fled while the form remains. That is the
ultimate testimony of every fossil.
The Lord Jesus Christ will Baptize in the Spirit Mark 1:8, John 1:25, Acts
1:5, Acts 2:28, Acts 11:16, 19:3-4 It is possible to have been baptized in
water for the remission of sin, but the new life is given consciously to them
that will receive. It is evidently possible to be properly baptised in water
but not know the Life of Christ within.
The Fruit and outcome of the Spiritual Baptism is
manifold. You know that God is your father and that you have inheritance in the
Kingdom. You know that your sins are forgiven and that you cannot add to the
saving work of Christ. You have the love of God poured out in your heart. You
avoid, detest and hate the sins of the flesh and you pursue that which is from
above, no longer fulfilling the lust of the flesh. Romans 5, 6, 8, Gal 5. You
”walk as you have received”, you allow the regular infilling of the Spirit and
you never quench the Spirit on whom your christian life depends entirely. To
call the work of the Spirit the work of Satan is the one and only unpardonable
sin.
The law within
The most significant effect of the Baptism in the
Spirit is the change over from an outward set of dos and don’ts to an inward
presence of the Spiritual law. Both the Prophet and the Apostle are totally
agreed on this issue. It is remarkable that the teaching is so clear but the
follow through of those scriptures are all but invisible in the history of the
actual churches, all dogmas and systematic theology set aside. Morality of an
outward manner can be enjoined, demanded and conformed to. Conformation in the
inner man can never be accomplished by external coersion. It begins with his or
her regeneration and is maintained by walking in the Spirit. Being sanctified
by the Spirit and the Word.
Hear the Prophet’s words first: “Behold, days are coming,” declares the
Lord, “when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed
of man and with the seed of beast. As I have watched over them to pluck up, to
break down, to overthrow, to destroy and to bring disaster, so I will watch
over them to build and to plant,” declares the Lord.
“In those days they will not say again,
‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
And the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man
who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge.
“Behold,
days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made
with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the
land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house
of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them
and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be
My people. They will not teach again,
each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for
they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,”
declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will
remember no more.”Jer 31:27-34
The Apostle knows full well that this is the paramount
difference between the covenants. The old was based on laws externally written
on tables of stone. The new is internally written on tablets of flesh in the
inner man.
” Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do
we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you? You are our
letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that
you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the
Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human
hearts.
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not
that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from
ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants
of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills,
but the Spirit gives life.” 2 Cor 3:1-6
And the entire 7th chapter of Romans is the high and
crystal clear declaration of the relationship between the old law aimed at the
flesh and the new law within as it feeds the spirit in me. ”For I joyfully
concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the
members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a
prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.” Rom 7:22-23
In Galatians the entire letter deals with that very
conflict between the law written inside us and the struggle resulting from the
war between flesh and Spirit. ” But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will
not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against
the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to
one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are
led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident,
which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities,
strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying,
drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as
I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the
kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things
there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh
with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the
Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one
another. Gal 5:16-26
This life is the resurrection life of Christ in the
born again who at their Baptism shed off the old man and buried it with Christ
in His death and now have been given the Holy Spirit of God the Father and
Christ the Son to become like the Son by that inward presence. Theology splits
these things into different things often dealt with as if they did not belong
together. Life is not given on an instalment plan but as a whole. The only
thing that is added from birth to glorious passing into eternity is spiritual
food. (In church also, you become what you eat.)
”Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a
mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from
glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Holy Spirit.” Such transformation is not
incidental or accidental, it is what goes on in the Body of Christ as each
member is fitted into the whole building and receives the benefit of the
contribution of all members to the whole. It
is the very aim of spiritual fellowship.
Dismembered limbs do not grow
nor do they go on in ’works beforehand prepared’. Ignoring the work of the
Spirit in the Church is to first quench the Spirit, secondly to extinguish it,
and lastly to lose it. Begin now from the back end: what is happening in the
Church that must needs have only the Spirit of God as explanation, cause and
origin for it’s life and work?
The Spirit speaks to the
Church, words that were never written in the Bible, says the Bible. When the ”sola scriptura”
tune is sung in the wrong way then we will deny that the Spirit speaks to the
church after the end of the New Testament except in biblical statements. This
idea cannot be found in the New Testament Church life. And in reality the
history of the church is full of spiritual events for which there is no
biblical precedent while still being recognized by all as a work of the Spirit.
A few examples...
In Acts ch 5 we are given to understand the very
powerful presence of the Spirit in monitoring righteousness and actually
calling back the life from the sinner, resulting in imediate death of the one
attempting to lie to the Spirit of truth.
Deacons/servers in the Church were not merely created
by the ordination to the task, but were first equipped by the Spirit for the
task. Gifts of the Spirit for ministry are given by the Spirit and then
recognized by the Church. That these serving gifts are not static is seen in
the life of Philip who begins as a deacon to serve Greek widows but soon find himself
being an evangelist in Samaria before hastily becoming a teacher of the Word to
a man seeking God. The ministering gifts are given relative to the task at
hand. Not on the basis of merit or desire by the servant. The sovereignty of
the Spirit over the gifts must not be lost sight of. Given the need, any gift
can operate through any person at any time, and even anywhere.
At the execution of Stephen, the Comforter, the Holy
Spirit, comes to the man and shows him a heavenly vision. ”He saw the glory
of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” Many martyrs since
have similarily been strengthened by such extraordinary events. But there are
those who deny that the Spirit still works that way today. I suppose they say
that because they have not yet been stoned. Then again, the vapid testimony of
the spiritless simply does not qualify them for such witnessing. (’Martus’,
from which we derive the English ”martyr” means ’witness’ in greek.)
The Deacon Philip was remarkably snatched away and
transported miles from his point of takeoff to be forced to pass through lands
as yet unreached by the gospel. Modern transportation cannot hold a candle to
that luminous carriage. (Similarily transported was the apostle John during the
Revelation on Patmos.)
Peter the apostle has an encounter with the Holy
Spirit in Acts ch 10. The hungry apostle sees a vision and hears a voice which
he identifies as the Lord. (As the Holy Spirit will only always take the words
of Christ and give them to us there is no difficulty in this.) While reflecting
on the vision the Holy Spirit told him to get off the roof and meet the
deputation. A deputation sent by the Spirit himself.
The visit to Cornelius is a visit to the first non
Jewish believer. And while Peter is speaking, the Spirit is poured out over the
hearers. And a repetition of the events ”as on us in the beginning”, referring
to the day of Pentecost ocurs. Prophetic ministry occurred in the city of
Antioch where the prophet Agabus ”by the Spirit” presented the preview of a
famine to come. The Church rallied in making a contribution to Jerusalem,
hardest hit congregation. Specific, situationrelated applications of revelation
knowledge guided the Church. Then and at many many occasions since then.
Paul goes up to Jerusalem after years of ministry in
order to have his ministry confirmed. He did not go to be licensed for doing
what he had done so faithfully for most of fourteen years, but ”because of a
revelation I went up”. Christ speaking to him again as on the road to Damascus?
As Christ had given him private tuition in the matter of the Lord’s supper
according to 1 Corintians 11?
Some of the theologies to which I have referred deny
that the Spirit of God will still be doing things like that today. When and why
that castration or self-isolation of the Spirit is supposed to have happened
and why is not shown to be according to ’Sola Scriptura’. The cessationist
position on the supernatural work of the Spirit is based on the seriously
misinterpreted portion in 1 Cor 13. I may return to that.
The Spirit continued to work long past the supposed
martyrdom of Paul. The first three chapters in the Revelation of John adress
the Churches with the same sort of phraseology as when the Church in Antioch in
Acts ch 13 was told by the Spirit:”separate unto me Paul and Barnabas for
the work to which I have called them”. I note that this was an experience
of a Church that spent time in prayer and fasting. ”Hear what the Spirit
says to the churches..” Almost the last phrase of the Bible says ”The
Spirit and the Bride say ”come”. And let the one who hears it say ”come”. And
let the one who is thirsty come, let the one who wishes take the water of life
without cost.”
John was alive at least 40 years later than
Paul.
Let us be absolutely clear on this: wether the Spirit
has stopped all such activities or not has been one of the sharpest dividers
within the Church. The suppression of the Active Presence of the Spirit is
theological hardware. Whole denominations adhere to it, defend it and are
willing to die for it. On the other hand that very suppression of what the word
still proclaims has led to the growth of whole other denominations in wilder or
milder pursuit of the very things which have been ejected by theology from the
written Word. This counter-movement has been given the most vile abuse over the
centuries, and has in part deserved those epitets because of it’s equally blind
refusal to pursue the whole truth about the gifts and ministries. The pendulum
swings, and like a game of table skittles will not stop until all skittles have
been knocked down.
But at what cost? A deeply divided Church actively
denying the Unity of the Church, vilifieng Christ and trampling the gospel of
Grace underfoot. And the world does not see Christ because it does not see the
one thing Christ said would prove His coming to the world. ” As You sent Me
into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I
sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. “I do
not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through
their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in
You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent
Me.”John 17:20-21
Or: by ignoring the Holy Spirit’s teaching about the
Body of Christ . I suggest, on good Scriptural evidence, that where the Holy
Spirit is absent from the Body, there the Spirit has been quenched. But well
may you ask: What is the evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit?
Sola scriptura answers: ”Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a
manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility
and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being
diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one
body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and
through all and in all.
But to each one of us grace
was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”
Theology ought to be ”Word of God” to the people, but
it is in a Babylonian captivity to it’s opposite: ”The people’s words about
God”. And the Holy Spirit does not now, nor ever, stand behind the words of
man. Frozen in dead theologies it cannot be mistaken for ”the living word”,
because the living word produces life, not theology. The Apostles and the
Prophets made it plain that the Christian faith is faith in Christ alone, the
cornerstone. Ah, says the Church universal, in one form or the other: but
Christ cannot be understood outside the church and /or it’s theology.
Christ himself did not think so. Nor did his apostles.
Right and sound doctrine is not in words only but in the power of the Life that
Christ gives to them who by the Scriptures have come to Him. Doctrine is the
greek word ”didaskalia”, meaning ”teaching”. Teaching is never accomplished
until it has produced the life of which the teaching speaks. It is not the
information given in the teaching, but the life produced by it that is sound
doctrine.
”Therefore do not let what is
for you a good thing be spoken of as evil; for the kingdom of God is not eating
and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he
who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.” Rom 14:16-18
Until we have as great a yearning for doing right in
the Lord as being correct in the words we say about Him, we do not need the Spirit
ministering among us at all. The obverse side of that coin is this: if we do
not do what we see in the Word, then the Spirit, the executive member of the
Trinity, is effectively silenced and quenched.
I wish I was wrong.
CHAPTER 5: THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD AND LIBERTY
”Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty”
Having spent a few pages on a discussion about the
much applauded but also rather complex concept of ”Sola Scriptura”, this last
chapter must needs attempt a redressing of some balance by stating and
declaring what we could be doing in the Churches at the end of the ages. For
surely we must be close to the end of the ”Times of the Gentiles”.
”How should we then
live?”
”But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in
which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed
with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
Since all these things are to be destroyed in this
way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking
for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens
will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But
according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in
which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things,
be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the
patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul,
according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters,
speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand,
which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the
Scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this
beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of
unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both
now and to the day of eternity. Amen. 2 Peter 3:10-18
The thoughts about the imminent return of the Lord
caused many Christians to bow out from the ordinary world and from all
responsibility in both social and spiritual life. This is the reason why Paul
in Thessalonians gives serious reprimands to those who squander their time in a
chiliastic frenzy of being busybodies and sloths and being useful to neither
fellow man nor God. The right attitude to any understanding of the end times is
not panic, not a surrender to speculation or fear or any of the machinations of
religious manipulations. The attitude of Martin Luther seems eminently
recommendable: ”If I was told that the World would end tomorrow, then today
I would plant an apple tree.” (I am not even sure that Luther actually said
that, but he can have credit for it. He was very astute in so many ways.)
So in one sense: when you see the signs, be ready, and
in the other sense: business as usual. And so what is business as usual in the
Body of Christ?
Understanding the relationship
between the Head and the Body
Eph 1:15-23 is the drawer to be opened and it’s
content unpacked. Paul addresses those who have faith in the Lord Jesus. He
asumes their love for one another. ”Agapatä allelous”, (John 13:34,
twice) love one another is the indicator for that which equals the
ligaments in the ordinary body. Church history shows that assumption to be
rather unfounded. According to Romans 5:10 the evidence of the Holy Spirit at
home in the Church is ”.. and hope does not disappoint because the love of
God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given
to us.” Rom 5:5 If that love is not present then the outpouring of the
Spirit may not as yet have happened. ”Seek ye the Lord While He may be found.” What
was given by God may however not have been received by us. We certainly cannot
claim to have it if it is not present. And should anyone doubt what Love looks
like then Paul also provides the meaning and content of Love, of ”Agapä”, in
that famous chapter 13 in 1 Cor.
The Love of God does not look for something in us to
love based on our value to Him. But He creates value in the one whom He loves.
Moses stumbled into that mystery and shared his understanding with us: ”For
you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to
be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face
of the earth.
“The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you
because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the
fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which
He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and
redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
Deuteronomy 7:6-7 He loves you because He loves You, for no other
reason. That is the depth of mercy and depository of God’s Grace. We will never
be able to thank Him enough.
It is always easy to love those who do us a good turn.
That is also a kind of fraternal love, but the Love of God goes beyond that. ”But
God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us.” If the love on show in any Church is only for the likeminded and
acceptable, then it is not yet the love of God. What comes natural is not the
Love of God by the Spirit.
The importance of the phrase in Eph ch 1:19-23 is
another real eye opener about the Church life.
”These are in accordance with the working of the
strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from
the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all
rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not
only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in
subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. ”
What does it mean to agree to the Sovereign headship
of Christ in all things in the whole universe, and most certainly in the
Congregation of the saints? By Baptism the individual is raised from the dead
by the same power that raised Christ from the dead. That is where the real
proof stone is. Not merely in the saving work of the individual but in the building
up of the body of which Christ is the sovereign Head. To ignore what the Bible
teaches about the life of the body while teaching the sovereignty of God is to
deny the Head a body at all. Election and predestination are not ends in
themselves, but they select the building blocks for the Spiritual temple, they
produce the individual limbs of the body. And these are predestined to
conformity with Christ!
As in the human body every cell is the bearer of the
image of the whole body, so in Christ every believer carries the image of
Christ and is perfected in that development until the conformity with Christ is
fully matured. There is no difference in kind between believers, only
difference in their role in the Body. And certainly in their growth to spiritual
maturity. ” Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as
yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because
we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him
purifies himself, just as He is pure. I John 3:2-3
It may be unkind, but will be very true all the same,
to speak of the headless body called ”church”. Not that the universal Church is
Headless, but many local ones perform as if they were. Wether there is a
meaningful distinction to made between the Universal Church and the local has
always been a debated topic. But as local churches are formed and then
eventually disappear into historical oblivion, the Universal Church never dies.
God Himself safeguards the presence of His name on earth whatever Church
politics say. ”Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not
bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him.” 1 Ki 19:18 If a Rapture removes the universal Church
from earth, Churches may continue to exist as powerless and as devoid of the
Cross of Christ as they already are today.
There has been a considerable struggle in the history
of Christianity as to the role of the visible Church. From ”Nullam ecclesiam,
nullam salus” (no church, no salvation) to ”we don’t need the Church at all’
and everything in between. To my understanding the confusion arises from the
inability to understand that the only legitimate ”Ecclesia” is the living body
of Christ, not the local ecclesiastical organisation. (For an ingenius attempt
to soften the claim of the Church of Rome regarding the matter see: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/what-no-
salvation-outside-the-church-means )
But having said that, no real life is ever without
form. So the question about the outer church organisation cannot be waved
aside. Any fellowship of believers (all the way down to the ’two or three
gathered in my Name,’) is part of the Universal Church. There is not one
Church blue print that is recreated in every place where the Church is planted.
Church life consists of real human bodies present in a certain location and
therefore it cannot be without form. The Word became flesh, was it not so? How
that form is organised depends on the life of the Spirit within it. Two or
three witnesses are needed for any matter to be settled in both Church life and
in the matter of interpretation of the scriptures, and what two or three agree
on in prayer stands better before God than that of the individual prayer.
The most prevalent form of many Churches is one that
can be expressed by the letters P P P, meaning, Pulpet, Preacher, Program. Hold
that up to the teaching in Pauls letters and it is ’mene, mene tekel’. ”Reckoned
and come to an end, weighed and found deficit” (Dan 5:25) It is not
entirely wrong, but too little. It is akin to manning a Cambridge Eight with
only two oars. The progress will be considerably less than that of the Oxford
Eight. Any bets on Cambridge winning? What would the odds be? 1000 to 1?
The Head has given to the Body a set of working
ministries. Is it not so? Ephesians 4:11-13 ”And He gave some as apostles,
and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and
teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the
building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure
of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” In fact there is
no example of a Church built on the foundations of the Prophets and Apostles
that does not have a multitude of ministries and therefore ministers. As
servants of the manifold gifts of the Spirit the Church is a body where some
parts will receive greater honor by their work in the Church, but they are not
a different or higher class. Church History is a splendid exposition of a class
society where the few are elevated above the many.
The defining factor of any minister is found in the
last verse cited above. ”To the building
up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the Unity of the Faith, and of
the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature
which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” How does anyone imagine that a
one voice leadership can do that alone? It was impossible in the early church,
it is impossible today. But two thousand years after the start ”two oar” eights
are still drifting down the stream. (The coxswain is left on shore.) And the
seminaries continue to turn out soloists when choristers are needed.
The elders, pastors, missionaries, prophets are not
there to be employed by the Church to be paid to do a myriad of jobs in lieu of
the membership. They are there to train the saints to do their work. That means
that every minister is in the process of raising up more ministers, teaches
others so that when the work is done, the teacher can move on to a new place
where the daisy chain of five generation leadership can restart. This is what
the Bible shows. Teaching is the task: skilled workers the result. Teachers are
one fifth of the gifts of Christ to the Church. Where are they today? For an
explanation of what I mean by daisy chain teaching see 2 Tim 2:2. Do not
confuse Preacher with Teacher. Preach is either ”euangelizo”, ”kerusso” et al,
meaning proclaim, exhort, herald forth, et al. The Preacher is the ”kerux” who
does the work of ”kerygma”. The Holy Spirit who inspired every word of the
whole Bible never made the mistake of mixing or mistaking the preacher for the
teacher, neither does He pretend that they are the same.
Teacher is something totally other than preacher but
they are equally important in the life of the body. The preacher mans one pair
of oars. The Teacher another. Teach is ”didasko”, give instruction, ”paideuo”,
instruct and train, ”katecheo” to inform. For discipling another word is used:
”mathetuo” and it is used in Matthew 28, ”make disciples of all nations by
teaching”. Preaching does not make disciples, it makes listeners and hearers.
Disciples are instructed to do. The single most grevious mistake is to equate
membership with discipleship. The Preacher proclaims the gospel so that the
Holy Spirit can begin the work of conviction of sin and therefore leads to the
need for salvation. The teacher teaches the saved how to walk in the Salvation.
The Church is the fellowship of those who are being saved and so the teacher is
essential for growth.
The Spirit of Christ appoints Elders in every church.
Elders/presbyters is a collective term for leaders of the Church. A multiple
and spiritually gifted leadership is evidence of the presence of the Spirit of
Christ. The Head rules the Church by the many, not by the one. Why? Because ”we
all see in part, in many matters we all fail”. Each minister in the Church is
held accountable before Christ by the others, no dictators can grow in the
Church of Christ. No man or woman is ever gifted for the whole. However skilled
the person is by comparison to the rest of the Church, the Spirit gives His
gifts to whomever He will. There is not one example of any minister in the
Church over two thousand years who had been given more than a smattering of the
gifts needed for the needs of the entire Church. The Whole Body needs all the
Gifts, and they are never given to one man only. Never.
Holding fast to the Head.
The body is never quicker, more lively, more effective
it it’s work than the hold it has on the Head. All that Christ is and has flows
from the head out into the body. This Paul also adressed in no uncertain terms,
and he did so in the power of insight and discernment given by the Holy Spirit.
Col 2:18-20
”Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by
delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on
visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom
the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments,
grows with a growth which is from God.”
If you have died with Christ to the elementary
principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit
yourself to decrees, such as, do not touch, do not handle...”Growth is expected but can be
thwarted.
The true ministry of the shepherd is to see to it that
every sheep in the flock is close to the Chief Shepherd of the Sheep. The Sheep
are to be taught to hear the voice of the Shepherd who calls them by name. The
shepherd can only do the work if himself close to the Shepherd, and not simply
a hireling concerned more with his wages than the Sheep, which belong to
another to whom the pastor is only a servant. Hence the dire warning to the
leadership in both Acts ch 20 and 1 Peter 5.
”Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock,
among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of
God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure
savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; ”
”Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your
fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of
the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you,
exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the
will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it
over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the
flock.
Does anything seem unclear? What is the evidence of
the presence of the Spirit in the Church? Would not the answer be obvious? A
plural leadership appointed by and energized by the Chief Shepherd through the
Holy Spirit.
Your Body and mine
The major NT image is that of the living body which is
also a living temple, and Paul has set out the way we ought to think of
ourselves very clearly in his letter to the Corinthians. The first and totally
game changing insight is that the believer never ceases to be ”Church”. And
therefore the believers are the Church on the road, not to ”Church” as in
”building” but towards the Kingdom of God of which the Church is a harbinger. (How
far from home can the garden snail go?)
This insight is the opposite to ”Sunday Christianity”.
And it challenges every notion of ’going to church’ if what that means is that
we are something else when in congregation than when in our home within our
smaller circle. As a Christian never ceases to be that so the Church is never
less than the invisible reality of the Body of which Christ is the head. To
identify the Church only with the visible congregation is as false as seeing
mushrooms in the forest and believing the above ground bodies to be the actual
mushroom. They are not, they are the fruit of the invisble organism.
As no member of the physical body can survive one hour
if detached so the church body cannot be divided up into it’s components unless
also the whole Body suffers. This teaching is so central to what the Holy
Spirit taught through the apostle that it is virtually inconceivable how Church
organisation has largely replaced the Body consciousness. It never becomes more
evident than when you consider that Church meetings deal 99.99% with earthly
matters but hardly at all with the need of the Spiritual body of the
believers.
Not so the New Testament church. The division into
clergy and laiety has been the most harmful and unscriptural ’cutting asunder
of the Body’ and the practice has far-reaching consequences. The ”priesthood of
all believers” is primarily expressed by the most unlikely person of all: The
Apostle Peter, on whom the Roman Church and to a lesser but equally pernicious
extent, the major reformed Churches, base everything from Popery to the Single
Pastor leadership.
I reprint the key concept from 1 Peter 2:1-9 The
quenching of the Spirit of truth is never seen more clearly than when one
compares what ”Churches” do and what the Word of God says that Church is.
”Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit
and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies, long for the pure
milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you
have tasted the kindness of the Lord.
And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been
rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as
living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood,
to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For
this is contained in Scripture:
“Behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious
corner stone, And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.”
This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but
for those who disbelieve,
“The stone which the builders rejected,
This became the very corner stone,”
and,
“A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense”;
for they stumble because they are disobedient to the
word, and to this doom they were also appointed.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the
excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous
light; for you once were not a people, but now you are a people of God, you had
not received mercy but now you have received mercy.”
The passage warrants a deep exegesis for which there
is no space here. But enough is visible and should be noted by all. The
indvidual’s trust in the Salvation and faith in the completed work of the Saviour
cannot be separated from the concept of what that salvation must lead to: the
priesthood of all believers. The upbuilding of the Body into a holy temple
whithin which the same status is accorded to the smallest member as to the most
prominent. It is a most unscriptural thing to spend most of the work and energy
to get people to come to Christ and then ignoring what they come to Christ for.
It is not a matter of either or, but of both and.
Nota bene: the priesthood of
believers in no way does away with leadership within the Church. But it
drastically changes the way that leadership operates.
In stark opposition to the pyramidal hierarchy of the
most common Churches the Church of Christ stands that Pyramid on it’s head. The
servant ministry has very little attraction for the ambition of the flesh to
lead. ”Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird
yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch
out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not
wish to go.”
Historically the empowering of the people has always
been seen by the clergy as a threat to them. Having travelled through a few
hundred pages of reformation history and listened to them all from Luther to
Zwingly to More to Tunstall and dozens of other actors I know how fiercely the
likes of those who maintain the insights from every one in the entire New
Testament, from the day of Pentecost forwards have been shunned, cursed and
vilified. While most revivals have come back to those insights, once the
revival Spirit was shut down for one reason or other, official clerkdom and
clergy has taken over again. The statistics of ”one man pastor dropouts” from
Churches and one person leaderships that lead whole Churches into fallacy and
error are rarely spoken of.
The very reality of Pentecost was the outpouring
without respecting of persons on all flesh. They have all received the
anointing. Whereas the Old Covenant is clear on the anoiting of Priest, Prophet
and King, the only anoited one in the New Covenant is he who is the King of
Kings, The High Priest over all, and the Prophet of Prophets. Those who are in
him are partakers of His anointing, again with no exceptions. The ”HaMeshiach”
is Christ the ”Anointed”, and by their spiritual union those who are in Him
share in a common anointing.
2 Corinthians 1:20-24
”For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they
are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us.
Now He who establishes us with you in
Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in
our hearts as a pledge.
But I call God as witness to my soul, that to spare
you I did not come again to Corinth. Not that we lord it over your faith, but
are workers with you for your joy; for in your faith you are standing firm.”
Who are the ’us’ anointed in God? The very same who
where sealed by the same spirit. The only other passage in the entire NT about
the anointing is from 1 John 2:20, 27-29
”But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you
all know!
”As for you, the anointing which you received from Him
abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His
anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just
as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He
appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His
coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who
practices righteousness is born of Him.”
Those who are in Christ and in
whom Christ lives are the anointed ones. All of them. So says ”sola
Scriptura”.
I remarked in the previous text about the major
difference between the Old and the New Covenant being that the new places the
law inside of the believer. And that therefore much of the teaching of the
believer comes by the indwelling Spirit and allows the believer to be confident
that the Spirit will take the Words of Christ and give them to those who
believe in Christ. The author of the Scripture is also the inward interpreter
of it. In the same vein and train of thought Paul writes to the Church in Rome,
which he only knows by hearsay, and unashamedly confirms what the Spirit spoke
to Jeremiah. It is expected by the Lord and His Spirit that the word of Christ
will dwell richly in all believers. It is expected that all questions arising
from their individual reading would be answered by the teachers, and pastors of
the Church. The leadership being there for a major and most critical role: that
of equipping the saints!
”I for myself, am absolutely convinced that you are
all filled with goodness and knowledge and are well able to admonish one
another.” Rom 15:14 Paul had no other understanding about the ordinary
believers when writing about the way the Spirit gave gifts to the entire
collective of the Church in Romans 12 and most defintely in 1 Corinthians ch
12-14. In deed Church assembly is the business of what each member comes to
contribute to the upbuilding of the whole body. As part of the content of the
Early Church as shown in acts 2:42 there were four essential elements. Some
involved the leadership: following the apostles teaching, some were the
collective ministering to each other both practically and spiritually, and the
summarizing elements of the Breaking of bread and the prayers.
A scenario where the people come to sit for a goodly
hour to be merely spoken to has no likeness to anything produced by the Holy
Spirit. And if what is said from the pulpit never touches on what the Church
could be, it is most unlikely that it ever will become what it should.
Emergency rations cause little growth or hope for a different future.
The evidence of the Church endowed by the gifts of the
Spirit is in the multitude of the working gifts and in the conscious and
deliberate teaching of the entire counsel/purpose of God. Acts 20:26-28. The
curtailing of the gifts is also the limitation of the Spirit: a
quenching.
”Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am
innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink from declaring to you
the whole purpose of God. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock,
among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of
God which He purchased with His own blood. ”
What was the one and decisive task of the Disciples?
You have all heard it so often that it is almost an embarrassment to have to
repeat it. But what other way is there except to repeat what is not done but in
part. Matthew 28:18-20 ”And Jesus
came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in
heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you
always, even to the end of the age.”
Making disciples, (not merely members) preaching and
proclaiming the coming Kingdom. His Authority backs up His purpose. Submitting
the world to the operation of the Holy Spirit by the proclamation of the Truth.
Making men miserable before making them blessed. Making sure that they die from
the life of Sin and rise to newness of life in Christ which is the effect of
the Spirit indwelling all believers and equipping them with gifts for ministry,
not for their indvidual glory. That is what Baptism is for. And then teaching
them everything that Christ commanded. And the Presence of Christ Himself by
the Holy Spirit is the prerequisite for any of those tasks.
Why are these things not on the lips of every
believer? Because by and large their preachers do not teach it. But here is one of the real offensive abuses of the
living word evident. While denying the Church an understanding of what the
Church is in the eyes of God, preachers will chide those who stop going to
their ”Church” by citing Hebrews 10:25 but almost always ignoring the context
and other content of v19-25.
”Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is,
His flesh, and since we have a great
priest over the house of God, let us
draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our
hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure
water. Let us hold fast the confession
of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one
another to love and good deeds, not
forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the
more as you see the day drawing near.”
What about Sola Scriptura?
I began by questioning the phrase ”Sola Scriptura”.
What I have written in every section of this thesis is squarely backed up by
what the Scripture actually says. But it could not have been said unless we
accept that ’Sola Scriptura’ cannot stand alone, not even in the light of
Scripture. Unless the Holy Spirit uses the written word it will not accomplish
much more than satisfying theological curiosity.
Unless the word is received by active faith in the
indvidual the word remains ineffective
Unless the whole word of God is give to the whole
church in all times it will not be what it was called into existence for.
Unless the Word in all parts is honestly allowed to be
what it claims to be, there is little reason to believe that the presence of
Christ will be evident. The Word of God does not stand behind the mere words of
men.
There is no holiness without the Holy Spirit. There is
no efficacy of the spoken Word without the full support of the Holy Spirit. But
if the Word is arbitrarily truncated in any way, then the Spirit is quenched,
and there is no liberty, no ministry, and no evidence of the coming of Christ
into the world.
Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide,
Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, Solus Spiritu Santo, Soli Deo Gloria, that is the message of the
Scriptures. ”Scripture, alone, Faith alone, Grace alone, Christ alone, The
Spirit alone, The Glory of God alone.” But
only if seen together. Just like the living assembly of the Firstborn: the
Church of Christ. Alone in repentance, conversion, new birth and Baptism,
together in the life of Faith. ”For you are all sons of God through faith in
Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed
yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave
nor free man, there is neither male nor female; (Not male and female actually)
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Kyrie Eleison!
CHAPTER 6: WHEN YOU COME TOGETHER
”When you come together”
What could the Church in 2020 be when it has
understood what has been written in the the whole Scripture? How would the Body of believers interact and be built
up? If we understand that the Church is the physical body that Christ has taken
up as his new Humanity instead of the body that was crucified, what would that
mean for our seeing ourselves as a Body? We know that he left his own human
frame behind at the death on the cross. But then the resurrection from the dead
raised Him up to a new and different quality of life, a life which He then
imparts to his earthly body so that ”as I am in the world so are you”! You
are the light of the world as I was that light while I was with you. But now
you all with unveiled faces are looking towards me constantly and my glory will
be reflected from you to the world that is shivering in the darkness of anxious
fear, waiting for the morning.” ”Fear not little flock, it has pleased the
Father to give the kingdom to you.”
The church includes all those who are born again in
every locality. But the visible church cannot be all together in one place or
express the whole life of the body in large numbers. Only certain things can be
done by the many, many things must be done by and among the few. The biblical
organisation of the ”church in the wilderness” was set up, with ”leaders of
thousands, of hundreds, and of fifties and of tens”. That is a division of
responsiblity and the basis of accountability by the ”select and able men
who fear God, men of truth who hate dishonest gain.” The new testament
church changes nothing in that eminent advise by Jethro to Moses. Nay rather,
it upholds it entirely by the plurality of elders.
Elders do not as such grow on apple trees but must be
trained and encouraged. As in the book of Daniel men were chosen with an
aptitude to learn and to lead, so Timothy in his time was set to appoint and
train the needed leadership. Leaders of the Church grew up in the Church, were
recognized as leadership material and trained in the Church. The principle
being that locally grown leadership knows the sheep, being on of them. Paul and
Barnabas were one year in Antioch and in that time they made themselves
superfluous by raising up ”Teachers and prophets”. The normal church is
constantly working on multiplying it’s leadership because it anticipates growth
numerically, but only mature christians attract to the church, only trained and
mature christians will at every moment be ready to give a reason for the hope
that is in them.
”Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that
you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above
reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the
world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will
have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.”
”But even if you should suffer for the sake of
righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not
be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone
who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with
gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which
you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to
shame. ”
These things are not automatic, nor accidental, they
must deliberately be taught in the Church, by example, by preaching and by
teaching and by practicing. The teaching is formal and informal, in the whole
church and in the smaller subdivisions down to the home. This is the nitty
gritty business of the whole church, not just some officers in it. (Every
section of the smaller Catechism of Luther starts: ”As the head of the
family should teach them in a simple way to his household ”).
As previously mentioned the church is it’s living
membership and wherever it meets there the Head of the Church blesses every
member of the body, within the body, for the body and through the body to the
world. So we find that nobody ever mistakes the meeting place for the meeting,
no body thinks less of a small house group meeting than of the whole church
gathered together. Different needs are met in appropriate places. Prayergroups
by the river, the church in your house, the assembled believers in the
synagoges of the jews, (until they were thrown out), in the temples of the
time, but irrespective of where they met or how many they were, they were the
Church of Christ. The building never defines, limits or qualifies the Church.
But it is fitted to specific tasks. The ultimate insight of the Church is that it is itself a holy temple. Entirely
dependant on the Holy One of God.
”Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also
raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of
Christ? [....] Or do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who
is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you
have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. ”
”So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but
you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having
been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself
being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is
growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built
together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
”Onward Christian soldiers”
One of the major streaks of teaching about the Church
is in the terminology of an army. As much as all of the peace of God which
passes understanding is the inherited right if the Church, this peace is not
available in the absence of struggle but a condition for success in it. From Monday
to Saturday every single member of the church is out there in the world facing
the schemes and viles and ruses and attacks of the Evil One. Not one of them
sails through those onslaughts unscathed and unharmed. ”In many matters we
all fail”.
We may ask: where are we equipped for that battle? And
the answer ought to be unanimous and irrefutable. At the feet of Him who is the
Commander of the armies of the Lord, The Yahweh Sabaoth! The armory of the
army-Church is also the field hospital of the Church-army. A chilling reality
which has been the deepest chagrin of many is the fact that the indvidual is
often seen going alone into battle with ofttime unsuitable armor (such as when
king Saul tried to dress up David in his own xxxl gear), only to be forsaken at
the critical moment by the rest of the army. The fate of Uriah the Hittite in
the army of David is well known in the Church. No other army sends it’s
soldiers alone into the battle and then punishes them for being struck down by
the enemy.
The meeting together is both for ’debriefing’ after
battle, and preparation for the next round. It is for sharing of victory and
defeat. It is for binding up the wounds and replenishing munition. It is
resting place and refurbishing and rearming and sending again after failure
with renemed faith in the meaningfulness of the strife. How badly Paul must
have felt: ”At my first defense no one stood by me.” It cannot be an
accident that Christ never sent anyone on their own. But the truth is that when
we are left alone He will stand by, and have us sing, even with tears in our
eyes. ”In Christ alone...”
But that is his expeditionary force, not the well
trained army of the Church. The teaching of Paul in Ephesians chapter 6:10-19
is not a subdivision of the extreme life of some church, it is the base and
boot camp of every division of the army of the Lord. Facing the enemy without
the armour is not what God allows. So the Church must make room for this
constant need of re-armament and preparation for battle, for every member,
however young in the battle. If it does not, then it might as well open the
next page in the book of casualties.
Courage to fight and perseverance to stand firm are
fruit of the Spirit. The armour is always lacking in protection for those who
turn from the battle and are ’shot in a cinch in the armour’ like king Ahab.
Paul himself severely castigated the young Mark for folding under pressure and
would have nothing to do with a coward. However Barnabas picked Mark and and
picked him up. Leave no soldier alone. Least of all if he is wounded..
But how can the Church support unless it knows what
enemies are gathered on my battle front? It is rather hard to see how the
teaching and prayer ministry of the Leadership of the Church can adress and
meet the needs of the people when it does not give a space for the voice of the
people to make your needs known’. (One pastor to know all sixtyfive
sheep?)
The Church is sometimes accused of ’answering
questions nobody asks any longer” and that happens when the ministry of the
word is disconnected from the life in and of the Body. Here is a serious
problem. On the one hand the Church must teach the whole Purpose of God which
does not depend on what people are facing in real life, but rather lays the
foundation of the Prophets and the Apostles under the edifice of the spiritual
temple. On the other hand it has a prophetic ministry to adress the actual
issues faced by the Church when they are not in ”the church building”.
”Prophecy” means ’to speak before, in front of”, and
is the software application of the eternal word of God to real situations, it
is the ’cutting edge’ where the Church meets the world. It is where the word
comes to expression to the world through the Church. The interface between the
Church, which is not of the world but still in it, needs the prophetic ministry
to apply the Word over against what the world is doing. The best NT example is
how Paul meets and speaks to the Athenians. To them he cannot present the
scriptures as such, which is easy when he is among the Jews, so here the Word
steps into the actual mental and intellectual milieu and cuts through the
waffle of philosophy and religion and brings home the central message with not
a word of reference to the written word.
But every word of what he said was prophetic, in that
it said what is true from the Bible in front of the Athenians. So he needed not
to justify what he said by referring to chapter and verse, for the truth
contained therein can be said in other words if the needs of the public are
such. It is part and parcel of the removing of stumbling blocks other than the
cross.
”So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said,
“Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For
while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also
found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you
worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and
all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in
temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed
anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;
and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the
earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their
habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and
find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move
and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His
children.’ Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the
Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and
thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now
declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed
a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He
has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the
dead.”
”Preaching” that is relevant adresses real life issues
with which people grapple. Too often it is simply a rambling homily on anything
and everything leaving nothing to remember or do something with or even
something that elicits anything in the way of a response. I was most deeply
impressed and embarrassed recently when a speaker in Norway came to a huge
gathering of people for a second time and was expected to bring another
’rousing and cheering’ sermon. The Speaker sat along while in the chair after
the nod was given for the ’preaching slot on the program’. When finally
standing at the pulpit, more silence. The auditorium filled with the rustling
of uneasy shiftings in the comfortable chairs. Then the speaker raised the head
and said: ”I have been much challenged by what I should say today. I have been
appealing to the Lord to give me something for you. But all He has said to me
is this: ”Why should I again give this people of my precious word when they
have not done anything with what I gave them last time.” Curtain call...
All the five ministering gifts given by Christ to the
Church have a ’ministry of the Word and prayer.” To discern what the ”apostles,
prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers do is to see that they are
word-workers in different ways and on different levels within the Body.
Basically they correspond to the various targets that the ”godbreathed
scriptures” have in the life of the Body.
”You, however, continue in the things you have
learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and
that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give
you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate,
equipped for every good work.” Rare indeed is the one worker who is
equipped with all those gifts. But many, because they are employed by those who
do not see the difference between these giftings, demand all of them while
paying for only one.
When the Church no longer sees it’s task as equipping
the saints then of course there is no need for all of the voices of this
panoply. Then mere emergency ration preaching is what is left. The variety of
ministries of the Word are directly proportional to the aim of the Church Body.
”Where there is no vision/revelation, the people are unrestrained/perish.” The
unwanted gifts are not given, and if given and not recognized they will be
withdrawn, and those who have that calling and equipment will leave that local
fellowship. Or God will give them another field to plow.
One Body of believers?
If the word of God be true, there is one church in
every city. In every city of our experince there are many churches. All of them
have mostly only one pastor. Go listen to them and you may hear that each of
them has a distinct emphasis along the lines of ’apostle, prophet, evangelist,
pastor and teacher. So this person is one fifth of the gifts of Christ to His
Church in our town. But the other four fifths are only available to each their
own fold. And so no part of the Church has more than a fifth of all that Christ
gave. A church planting apostle is not much use without an evangelist to win
souls, an evangelist who knows how to bring them in but not how to feed them to
stay and grow is of little use, since those who walk away disgruntled give the
church a bad name. A teacher is left high and dry if he has too few to teach
unless he is also an evangelist, and what can a pastor do who has no other than
a small flock full of sores and wounds that are never healed? What can a
prophet accomplish if the Church does not live what it believes? To proclaim
the word to the world demands that there is a church that lives what it
speaks.
All these things are experiential, not merely
theoretical. What would happen if the Church in any location saw that is was
but a part of a whole! And that it’s poverty was due to its individuality and
separateness from the rest of the Body of Christ? The single most painful
passage in Scripture outside of the actual crucifixion of our Lord is the
lament of Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:10-13
”Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but
that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have
been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe’s people, that there are
quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, “I am of
Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.” Has Christ
been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in
the name of Paul?”
I ask you, as gently as I can, does not shame blossom
on our faces when we are asked if Christ is divided? And would not our shame
deepen if we found out that we are keeping busy maintaining those
divisions?
When you come together
This is the hottest potatoe of them all. There is
truly very little room in the normal evangelical church program for the very
important aspect of the Body building itself up by the contributions of each
member to the whole. The ”program” is so limited that only a few ever ”perform”
on the ”platform”. What does the scripture say?
”For just as we have many members in one body and
all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one
body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Since we have gifts
that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them
accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service,
in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; 8 or he who exhorts, in his
exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he
who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. ”
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.
And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties
of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each
one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is
given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of
knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit,
and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting
of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of
spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation
of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to
each one individually just as He wills.
For even as the body is one and yet has many members,
and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is
Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or
Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
For the body is not one member, but many.”
What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a
psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.
If anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be by two or at the most three, and
each in turn, and one must interpret; but if there is no interpreter, he must keep
silent in the church; and let him speak to himself and to God. Let two or three
prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment. But if a revelation is made
to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may
be exhorted; and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets; for God
is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.
As we all know nothing has broken the peace among
brothers, all claiming to be in the Lord, more effectively that the
”charismatic gifts”. Large tracts of the Church deny them and consequently
these gifts are not allowed in their assemblies. They insist that the Holy
Spirit, whose gifts they are, distributed them for a while, but then, without
telling the Church anything about it, closed his gift bag and what we have
today is all that he now liberally gives to the Church. Which is what anybody
can see and hear for themselves. But apart from the missing gifts there is another
serious issue: the missing growth of the Church to it’s proper spiritual
maturity. There could reasonably be a connection between these two.
But here is the obverse side of the coin: few things
have shown up so much immaturity as the matter of ’charismata’ either. What
passes for ’the work of the Spirit’ in some parts of the world is so
embarrasingly inane, so childish and even so down right blasphemous as to leave
no doubt: this must be of the Devil. Aye there’s the rub.
Why does Satan expend so much energy on imitating and
disfiguring and invalidating the gifts that belong to the Spirit? Now, where
would you hide a precious diamond if not in a sea of cut glass baubles? Where
would you hide a precious tree of healing properties for the nations but in a
wood of poison Ivy? Satan has copy-catted every good and godly thing God ever
made and counterfeited it. Every single thing. There is only one thing that He
cannot copy. The Cross of Christ. I am convinced today that both those who deny
the gifts and those who abuse them serve Satan’s purposes. They would be
shocked to realize it. But these extremes aside, they do not invalidate the
originals nor can it be brought out of Scripture that the gifts have ceased.
The unchanging character of God goes for all the members in the Trinity. Why
would the Holy Spirit suddenly cast away two thirds of his gifts to the church?
Why would the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh suddenly cease? Is there
not an endless new stream of ’all flesh’ that needs a life in the fullness of
the Spirit?
There was never a ’best before date’ stamped on them.
To use the text about the ”perfect to come” as a proof that the gifts therefore
must have ceased is to play into the hands of the enemy. The perfect can by no
means be said to have come. Because it is neither perfect nor even a little
like what God gave to the Church through us in the Scripture. Hold up the
plumbline of the word against what is called Church today and try not to
stutter when you declare that what You see is all you’re going to get.
Those whose only experience of some of the gifts of
the Spirit are purely negative, never have any such reactions to some of the
other gifts. By what criteria this selection is made is rather woolly. I would
not discount the gift of teaching because I did not like this or that message.
But when it comes to these gifts the axt falls fast. They never deny that the
gifts for service are gone, or the gift of teaching or whatever it is. But the
gifts specifically speaking of that which ’builds up the church’ they are no
more, so they claim. But that can only mean one of two things: one: the church
does not need building up, or two: It is already so built up that it is
perfect. But if the perfect has come, then the superior gift of love would
be what defines the Church. Sandwiched between 1 Cor 12 and 14 is ch 13. Do
not tell me that the outpouring of love has taken over from the prophesying,
from all mysteries and knowledge of them. If the perfect has come we would no
longer see in part, we would all be full of all truth. We are manifestly not.
If the perfect has come, then I dont know what the perfect is. And the world is
in absolute agreement with me. The perfect has not come by a far stretch.
”Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts,
but especially that you may prophesy.” ” One who prophesies speaks to men for
edification and exhortation and consolation.” He does not babble futuristic
fear scenarios, does not serve self interests by disguising greed in ’prophetic
utterances’. His prophesy is subject to him and to others for evaluation and
scrutiny. If that is not allowed, it is not the prophetic gift of the Spirit.
It is not so hard to see how the Spirit not only gives the gifts to whom he
will, but also how the Spirit has built in checks against abuse. Ignore them
and things go haywire. Pentecostalism as well as ”charismania” largely majors
on the gifts but ignores the checks.
But the Church suffers heavily from allowing the
counterfeit to tarnish and shame the real. Many a baby has been thrown out with
the proverbial bath water. And by that trickery of soiling the ”good and
perfect gifts from on high” suspicion of them have empoverished the Body. The
gifts must be used according to scripture. Where they are not there the work of
the Spirit in the Church has been and is diminished and perverted. But only
what is good and right ever needs perverting.
Starvation rations keep a man or a Church alive. But
both will forever suspect that someone has deprived them of that which would have
made all the difference. Without revelation the Church knows not a way ahead.
And if you do not know where you are going, any road is right. The ministry within
the Church is for the work of the Church. It has an interface with
the dying world outside it’s stainglass windows.
A normal christian Church is characterized by the
clauses of ”the four selves”
1. It is Self governing, after inital coming to life
through the work of the missionary apostle it quickly develops it’s own
leadership. It is led by the Spirit because it walks in the Spirit. It will
accept help where help is needed, but it will not for long be beholden to
external authorities.
2. It is Self supporting, it finds the means within
it’s ranks to support what is needed in the ways of finances within it self.
For a while it may need help in various times, but as it grows to a healthy
size it never takes on more expenses than the faith and labour of the Church
can carry.
3. It is Self propagating. It builds up a rapport with
the community within which it lives so that there is always some area of the
life of the Church in direct contact with the world for which Christ died. It
is always on the button to share what it believes. And to serve where it
can.
4. It is Self perpetuating in it’s leadership training.
The daisy chain starts when one who knows a little passes it on to someone
else. In basic paedagogics we are told that one learns as one teaches. Who in
turn does the same with another who then tags on another daisy to the chain.
This church will not collapse if one link in the chain is removed.
I have a dream
“It will come about after this
That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind;
And your sons and daughters will prophesy,
Your old men will dream dreams,
Your young men will see visions.
“Even on the male and female servants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days.
No not like Martin Luther King, although his dream may
have been inspired by the Spirit of God too. My dream is to be alive to see the
Church being what it could be in the wake of the promise made by God the
Almighty to his people. What Joel prophesied was , as you all know, fulfilled
on the day of Pentecost. Everything that happened at the Birth of the Church
was there in essense in the beginning.
A holy convocation where the Church once again held a
day (not just an hour or what is allowed by the strictures of the old habits)
holy for congregating around the four pillars of body life. Where the first
part of the convocation, the calling together, was to give voice to the church
members in smaller groups around a cuppa or drink, to share ’the blessings’ and
the ’trials’ of the past week. Issues raised in each group, issues which each
group felt needed to be brought to the attention of the leadership for input
and further teaching, noted down by whom the group had appointed as their
speaker and by them passed on to the elders. As each group has an overseeing
elder present it would be held to what the church knows about the good order
that is present where the Lord Himself reign is present. God is not a God of
Chaos but or order. And the church is the fellowship of self control and of a
sound mind.
After this time of fellowship and interaction where
admonishing and comforting and encouraging was done, giving each member the opportunity
to partake either as receiver or contributor, the whole church convenes to the
apostles’ teaching. The teaching begins with that worship which consists of ”Through
him, then let us continually offer up a sacrfice to God, that is, the fruit of
lips that give thanks to his name. To the Lord, always giving thanks for
all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ will be within the scope of and
freedom of ”Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalems
and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the
Lord, always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
to God, even the Father, and be subject to one another in the reverential and
respectful fear of the Lord.”
Then the teaching can commence in which the broad
issues raised in past small group meetings had been prepared by the teaching
elders and will now be taught from the Word of God. That may be done by one of
the elders/pastors/teachers or by someone else appointed by the leadership.
The teaching will be set forth to facilitate doing and
responding to those issues that are close to those who come for worship. This
is communication based on the one authority that the Church has recognized: the
whole word of God. The communion of the saints is always invited to respond to
the teaching along the noble mindset of the Berean church. What is taught is
the basis for the smaller midweek groups for prayer and fellowship into which
every member of the church has a lead. The leadership of the church anticipates
and welcomes the feedback either in oral reporting or in written form.
The meeting now may convene to the breaking of bread
and prayers. During the communion time may be given for individual testimony
and prayer and praise. Co-related to the needs of the Church in each moment of
time. If a fellowship meal is prepared for the church that may well be the last
part of the ’holy convocation’.
Different and depending on the need of the Church, the
evening assembly may be for topical teaching and conversation in preparation
for the week ahead. This is also when the teachings of the Apostles and
Prophets are held up side by side and the Church continually be diving deeper
and deeper into the whole purpose of God. This is maybe when the public reading
of scripture can be done as well as the praying according to scripture, or a
time of more reverent worship based on the wonders seen in the word.
During the week then the church will follow through on
the teaching and challenges to the Church, gathering fire wood for the next
holy convocation.
The people of Israel left Egypt and came to a place
called ”Mara”. It means and was ’bitter’. Undrinkable water and a thirsty
nation did not bode well for the ’shepherd’. God found that of all the people
who had praised God for one deed a while before, not one of them knew how to
give thanks in all things, nor any who held to the content of their worship in
times of trouble. They could sing what the believed but not walk the talk. They
were taught a lesson there and the sovereignty of the Lord in his ability to
heal was firmly established. So they moved along to Elim. They found an oasis
in their wilderness consisting of 12 wells of water and a happy 70 trees
lapping it up. It was yet another mirror to them. ”You can chose to be a
society where the few will constantly serve the many or you can become my
church in the wilderness which counts on all of you to do your part.”
They stayed there only long enough to be refreshed for
a time. Then they left Elim.
I have a dream of an exodus from Elim for every
fellowship of believers..
There is a long and winding road ahead. And every
journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.
What must be the first and next step?
CHAPTER 7: POST SCRIPTUM
A postscript to ”sola Scriptura”
Well then, what should we do first? I suggest that we
should take a collective look at what is written in the following.
”God speaks to the One who cares”
Some Notes on the vexed matter of listening to the
Voice of God in our day and age.
”Speak Lord for your servant
hears.” 1 Sam 3:10
Setting out on a quest for what it may mean to ’hear the voice of God” brings
to light several seemingly independant issues. Until you begin to see how they
must needs converge into the one major statement made by the very Word of God.
Hebrews 1:1-3
”God, after He spoke long ago
to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last
days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through
whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact
representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.
When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the
Majesty on high, ..”
Several hot points to be noticed:
1. The certainty that God wants
to communicate with those who want to know God.
2. The assurance that it will be
done in many ways and in various portions.
3. The core reality of this
communication being related to the Son and through the Son.
4. The assurance that this
communication is not merely local nor limited in time.
5. The ability to hear God is
related to a moral purification in the listener.
The ”Sh’muel” of 1 Sam 3 is the illustration of the
basic requirements for any man to hear the voice of God. The name itself means ”God
has heard my prayer concerning him”. And thus the very existence of the
boy is a testimony to God speaking. And the answer to Hannah’s prayer is an ”incarnation”.
In turn forshadowing the Word of God which in the beginning was with God and
was God. In the Acts of the Apostles we see that principle repeated. ”You
shall be my witnesses” Acts 1:8. The power of the christian message is that
it is neither information nor knowledge alone, but knowledge and communication
turned into living beings. ”The word became flesh and tabernacled among
us.”John 1:14 And again as the Spirit gave utterance to the same thought
through the apostle. ”See 2 Cor 5:17-21 The ambassadors for Christ have become
new creatures in Christ before they can say anything about Christ.
It is written
All we know of Samuel, Jesus, Paul and the life of the
people eager to hear the voice of God is written down for us. But unless all
this had left the bondage of the print we would not know it on any meaningful
level. Until the story leaves the page and is transported into us, it is of no
real importance. Mere text on the paper has no saving power. Merely learning
the text and being able to recite it in our sleep is of no other avail than
accolades for having a good memory.
That raises the very infected question about our view
of the Bible. Where we position ourselves along a line between two extremities
will determine how we think about God’s voice to us today.
The one end of the scale is this: The Bible is the
Word of God and is to be literally obeyed in everything it says. In other
words: the very words of it are always the voice of God. In this very ultra
fundamentalist view the written text equals the revealed will of God so all we
need to do is know and obey that which is written.
And the corollary to that is often that God will not
say anything more because the Bible is seen as comprehensive and self
explanatory. On this end of the spectrum it is really a matter of ’bibliolatry’,
i e: the worship of the Bible as such (and for sure it is mostly the 1611 KJV
version of it, although I think that an updated version of Tyndales would have
been better and sufficient).
The other end of that scale is utterly different. ”We
may hear the voice of God in parts of the bible, but not exclusively so.” What
I ’receive’ privately from the Word is God speaking. If the first and
”bibliolatrist” extreme makes the written word the sole arbiter of truth then
this other existentialist extreme makes the listener the sole arbiter of what
God can say. God is reduced to saying only what man says. An unwavering faith
in one’s own ability to determine what is divine is paramount. Truth is what
you perceive as truth. There is no universal truth, no binding understanding of
anything just because it was written. Truth is only found in small flecks, each
seeker finds his or her own, and the bible is just one of many rocks that bear
the flecks of gold.
Between these two ulterior extremes, indeed between an
impregnable Rock and a quicksand like Swamp, all other positions will be
found.
What is the testimony of the Scriptures
themselves?
There is an abundance of evidence that ”the word of
the Lord came unto..” various people at different times. And that they came
both inwardly in dreams and visions of the night and in response to them having
observed a natural event in creation and then been given a spiritual
interpretation of the seen object. Every prophet is like a moth brought to the
flame by the light and must speak what he or she has heard God say in one way
or other. And dare not say anything else, even at the cost of his or her life.
Their convictions are so strong that to dismiss them is to run a very dangerous
race. ”These things were written as a warning to us who have the end times
upon us, so that we should not do what they did and so provoke the Lord to
anger.” 1 Cor 10 in summary.
Suffice to say: that which is written down came nearly
always first as a God to man
communication. It was first told before it was written. How was that
communication done? But it seems an inescapable conclusion that those who later
read the written were impressed by the same urgency as that which caused the
writing in the first place. See how often the written document of the words of
God were rediscovred by later generations and brought the readers to heel and
repentance. Daniel being a case in point as he discovers what God had told
Jeremiah. Or Esra as he discovered the content of the law and strictly adhered
to it at great cost and lament from the people.
Every spiritual reformation in the world has begun by
taking the written word at it’s full value. But the unseen corollary to that
is the work of the Holy Spirit in interpretation and application of that which
is written. The printed page of the Bible accomplishes nothing as such. It
may give various forms of information, add to basic knowledge but it does not
produce what it promises unless the second dimension is effectuated by God
himself.
The power of John 5:38-39 is inescapable: ”You read in
the scriptures words that are pointing at the life eternal. But it is not the
written word that gives that life on its own, not even the knowing of it and
ability to recite it from memory.” ”But
you will not come to me to get that life!” This is the true meaning of ”The letter kills but the spirit gives
life.” 2 Cor 3:5-7 ”Not that we are adequate in ourselves to
consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who
also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of
the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. ”
Even the words of God as given in writing are
powerless to do anything more than inform the mind, quite irrelevant wether
that mind knows God or not. But if the word is not to return void to God it
must be received by faith in them that hear it. That is the punchline of
Hebrews 4:2. ” ”Therefore, let us
fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem
to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just
as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not
united by faith in those who heard. ” Connect that to a later statement
in Hebrews 11:6 ”Without faith it is
impossible to please God.”
”God tells the man who cares.” That is a phrase which
is born out right through the Bible. ”Shall I do something and not tell my
servants”? Or as Amos succinctly phrases this insight: ”Surely the Lord God
does nothing, unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the
prophets. A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken! Who
can but prophesy?” Amos 3:6-8
There can be no doubt that God has spoken. All agree
on that. The question that concerns us however is another: ”Does God still
speak to those who care today?” And if so then how?
The major outstanding statement about the words of God
is made by the Word of God, that is Jesus the Christ himself. ”What then if you see the Son of Man
ascending to where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh
profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the
beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray
Him.” John 6:62-64
Against unwillingness to believe even the Holy Spirit
is powerless. The work of the Spirit with the word is not a matter of
intellectual assent but of spiritual faith. My words, says the Word of God,
are spirit and life and cannot bring life unless recieved as such. Unbelief
in Him closes the book. (Unbelief was the root cause of Christ himself
becoming limited in his own work. Matt 13:57-58.)
This means that an understanding of the written words
follows on from a relationship to the living Word by faith. Christ is not only
the key to an understanding of the word of God (Bible) He himself is also the
guarded entry, the gate to the Word of Life. If man will not come by Him then
angels with flaming swords protect the garden from the re-entry of the fallen
nature.
Right through both covenants we are faced with ”God
speaking”. And men and women hearing and chosing to obey God on the basis of
what they understood from those meetings with God. (Hardly ever based on the
approval of their surrounding environment, nor ever based on a majority vote.)
The rather significant arrival of the new birth changes the means of
communication in a dramatic fashion. Whereas the OT shows God speaking
instructively and mostly externally the new birth brings about a new mode of
interaction. Intuitive and internal presence of Christ in the believer takes
precedence for those ”in Christ”.
·
How did the Holy Spirit tell Peter that Ananias and
Sapphira were lying?
·
How did Paul perceive the Holy Spirit forbidding his
entrance to this or that country?
·
How did the Spirit warn and signify to Paul his
imminent imprisonment in Jerusalem?
·
How did the Holy Spirit speak to the Church in Antioch
about their next mission enterprise?
·
How did the Holy Spirit allow Paul to be present at
church meetings hundreds of miles from where Paul was holed out in prison
cells?
I venture to claim that none of those instructions
came out of a study of the OT (the only bible they as yet had) but of revealed
knowledge to either the individual or to the collected body of Christ.
Significant revelations are given to Peter when he
understood who Jesus was, and Jesus revealed himself to Paul and gave the same
instructions that the other apostles had received at the ’Last supper’
privately later on. It was on account of a direct revelation that Paul went up
to Jerusalem to square his teaching with that of the other apostles. The church
is divided on the issue of wether such revelations occur today.
God speaking and man hearing are not the same thing. A
not uncommon phrase in the scriptures deals with the possibility of hearing but
not hearing at the same time. ”With hearing ears they hear not”. God Himself
struggles with man’s selective deafness, and even when He speaks His voice ay
be mistaken for some earthly phenomenon which is then brushed aside. John
12:28-29 ”Father, glorify Your name.”
Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it
again.” So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it
had thundered; others were saying, “An angel has spoken to Him.” Jesus answered
and said, “This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes.”
It is apparent that even when God speaks directly in the language of the
people, some hear some don’t. What their disposition is of the heart determines
the result of the communication. The manner in which God speaks appears to be
very different with different individuals. It cannot be assumed that all shall
hear the same way.
So how should we approach the issue of hearing God
speak?
We have by biblical definition become partakers of the
mind of Christ. 1 Cor 2:16. Coupling that with obedience to the word of the
apostles saying: ”let the words of Christ dwell in your richly”, Col 3:16 we
may well be aware that given those two vast resources recognizing ”what the
good and perfect will of God is” Rom 12:2, cannot be limited to a select
class of people among the born again, but pertains to all. But the proviso is
the new birth and the deliberate appropriation of the written words of God. And
it is furthermore not up to the individual understanding of one member of the
body, but to the body collective.
The uniqe properties of the body of Christ allow the
full impact of selfless individuality alongside the utter dependance on and
recognition of our own limited understanding, and following on from that comes
the insight of our need of the rest of the body. To this collective body we
bring ourselves minus our sinful quest for independance. A comittment to Christ
is also a comittment to the body of Christ. ”In many matters we all
stumble”James 3:2 , ”We all see in part” 1 Cor 13:12. The body will only be
built up by the individual contributions made by all the various members.
Carefully read: Rom 12:5, 1 Cor 10:16, 12:12, Eph 3:6,
4:12 Col 3:15
The Father- Son relationship is the crucial nerve of
the christian life. The Father sends the Son and the they send the Spirit and
through the Spirit the Son takes upon Himself a new humanity called the
’church’ or ’called out ones’ or ’body of Christ’. What do the children
inherit? The characteristics of their Father? Does not the will of the father
become known to the children as they communicate with the father by the Spirit?
” Jesus answered and said to them, “This
is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” ” I do nothing
by myself but only what I see the Father doing, the words are speak are not
mine but His who sent me.”
What was the reason for the
mission of the Holy Spirit? “I have many more things to say to you, but you
cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide
you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but
whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.
He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All
things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and
will disclose it to you.” The matter in plain view is that God does not stop
speaking at the bookend of the Bible. The Spirit will go on declaring the
meaning of the words of Christ to each successive generation of the born again,
age after age. “I do not ask on
behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word;
that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that
they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”
John 17:20-21
At the Crossroads
This is where there is a definite watershed in the body
of Christ universal. Various and very divergent positions are take up by
different traditions and theologies.
The Rocky road
Some who trust this view would claim that the Bible is
a closed book and that nothing can be claimed to be the word of God outside
what is in plain writing. The assumption is made that every issue that we face
is adequately answered by that which is written. We only need to know the exact
and well researched words and by proper handling of the teaching we shall know
the perfect will of God. God is now silent, for God has spoken his final word
in the Bible. ”Don’t expect to hear God unless it is written.” And as a
corollary: if God appears to be silent it is because you do not know the Bible.
It is easy to see how defendants of that position will
have no truck with anything to do with God speaking to us by dreams, visions,
revelations or whatever means. The word of God bears real bonds in that field
of Christianity. The written word is in bondage to any number of theological schools,
scholars, reformers past or present. One thing is always certain: it never
stands alone with nothing but the Living Spirit as it’s interpreter. And it
is highly dependant on human authorities who validify the Word. (If in
doubt, consult John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Matthew Henry or C H
Spurgeon, ad inf.) It often follows from this view of the issue that the
spiritual gifts given by the Spirit and the Lord to the church have all ceased
at the time of the apostles.
The slippery road
A seemingly absolute opposite is found in the
”charismatic end” of the spectrum. The claim is that the written words of God
are subservient to the spoken words apart from the Bible. The written letters
kill, but the spoken words to us now are the truth. It is claimed that we must
distinguish between the ”logos” words and the ”rhema” words. The latter are
God’s individually spoken words given to us apart from what is written. In
those circles you will frequently hear things like:’The Lord spoke to me and
said’. (Less kindly expressed: If you do not do what I say I will prophesy. And
to go against me is going against God Himself!)
Revelation is not finished, the bible is still being
written and we will be right in setting the original Bible aside because what
it said then is of little use to us now. We must have new revelations for the
new age. Sentences like: ”The Bible says..” will frequently be met by: ”Yes
I know the Bible says so, but God has not given that word to me yet.”
In contrast to the previous position there are no
discernible limits to what can be claimed to be ’God speaking’, but neither is
there any means to distinguish between what men want, think and say and why
they say it, and what God actually said, nor can we ascertain what may be
irrevocable truth. Truth is no longer our common understanding, but ultimately
rests only on who has the loudest voice and the heftiest clout. Might becomes
right once again. A brief study of the use of ”Rhema” and ”Logos” does simply
not bear out the distinction made by this ideology. It cannot be called
theology at all, because it makes the ’logos’ of God a matter for individual
interpretation, not by ’theos’ wiz God himself, but by man. It is merely
godless anthropology when drawn to it’s logical conclusion. So it is but a man
centered variant of the above view.
And sure enough: this end of the Church majors on
signs, miracles and all the overtly spectacular gifts of the Spirit. That is
what is most eagerly pursued in these circles. Whereas the explicit promise to
the church was ”greater things than these you will do in my name” this move has
gone the whole gamut to the end and claims miracles as a matter of
course.
A middle road
There is always a middle road between extremes. But we
know from human experience that the pendulum must swing and seems to have great
difficulty in resting still between the outer reaches of the pendulum. There is
an obvious hatred for the middle mean in theological circles. The reason
becomes clear when you look at the issue from this angle: What God has left for
us in every age and in every place in the world are two things. He has created
the written word which is the sum of truth and needs no future embellishments,
addenda or modifications. And the very means by which it was created, i e The
third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, is given to be the sole arbiter
and interpreter of the word in every age at all times. The word must become
flesh in each generation. Each generation faces a different world. The word,
the hardware as it were, remains the same, but the software, the mode of
application of the word is not the same in every place in every time. What God
used to create in the great reformers then is exactly what God can use in us
today.
But God does no ask us to resuscitate them.
Every spiritual awakening has begun with a return to
the Word and to submission to the Spirit of God. Every revival has produced
theology, in vast voluminous quantity, but it was not the theology that begat
the revival. It was a hunger for God that created the life of prayer and
obedience out of which the awakening came. And it was hardly a hunger that
awoke in the most erudite or scholarly, but rather often in weak vessels with
limited schooling.
Untrammeled by the bondage to the past the Spirit
broke through into the now. Every revival has also seen extraordinary events
and supernatural happenings beyond the expectations of common man. In deed ’enthusiasm’
is one acccusation made against every revival movement. None have happened
without a resurgence of those things that also happened in the First church. ”Enthusiasm” is another
word for when the events are no longer controllable by the ecclesiastical
authorities. Revival breaks out from the predictable and conformed. Mission
history tells another story also: every time the Gospel breaks into a new
people, nation, tribe or tongue, similar outbreaks of charismatic fervor
accompany the breach from darkness to light.
From a recent visit to Epworth I carry the reminder of
John Wesley being forbidden to speak in his Father’s church, so he stood on his
fathers grave stone and preached. He was barred from the church because he was
an ’Enthusiast”. (Sic)
No generation has ever managed to repeat the
pre-revival conditions and neither has any generation repeated a revival. They
were all heavily limited by a ’best before buy date’. Leave yesterday’s manna alone, it only breeds
worms.
How then do we listen to God?
Many years ago I wrote a book in Swedish called ’I
believe therefore I speak’. In it I listed the above mentioned outer extremes
in bible interpretation and gave a third, middle of the road, alternative. I
called it Pneumatic orthodoxy in
contrast to the ”traditional orthodoxy”
and the ”emotional non-orthodoxy”.
Orthodoxy is a catch word meaning ’straight teaching’ or ’sound doctrine’
depending on how reformed your views are. The discovery in the very words of
Jesus that many will call him Lord Lord, based on their view of orthodoxy, but
will not meet with his approval, jolted my life into a realization that if we
do not do what we teach then our theology, our orthodoxy, is of less value than
the drop of oil absorbed by the desert sand. ”I knew you not”.
A truer concept of the theology of the New Testament
than ”Orthodoxy” is ”Orthopraxy”. James 3:22-25 ”But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who
delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is
like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at
himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.
But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides
by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man
will be blessed in what he does.” And in the words of Christ himself:
Matt 12:49-50 ”And stretching out His
hand toward His disciples, He said, “Behold My mother and My brothers! For
whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and
sister and mother.” Where there is no orthopraxy, there is
neither any orthodoxy. Matthew 24:31-46 is a loud and warning
bell.
Pneumatic orthodoxy
The Lutheran reformation of the Church went along the
lines of the ’sola scriptura’, so did the Calvinian, the Zwinglian and many
other less known. Because it was always a return to the whole Word of God that
was the driving power behind the reformative work. The word made available to
all believers was the gigantic task of Luther in Germany and the Tyndale in
England. And once the cat was out of the bag authoritarian Churches shivered.
Empowering the people is dangerous only for those who rule without the consent
of the people. Still today the blissful ignorance of the people is what allows
abyssmal abuse of the Church by false leaders.
But what few ever write about is the absolute
necessary work of the Spirit through the word. ”We do not separate the Holy
Ghost from faith; neither do we teach that he is against faith; for he is the
certainty itself in the world, that makes us sure and certain of the Word; so
that without all wavering or doubting, we certainly believe that it is even so
and no otherwise than as God’s word says and is delivered to us. But the Holy
Ghost is given to none without the Word.” Martin
Luther. Table Talks.
Scripture needs careful handling. It demands careful
interpretation. But neither can be done except by the operation of the Spirit.
In other words: listening to the voice of God is listening to both the written
word and the Living Spirit. Because the living Spirit will always and only
present Christ and work for the glory of Christ and never allows the church to
take it’s eyes of the cross of Christ. Every interpretation of the scriptures
claiming to be in the Spirit must absolutely bring glory to Him alone. Not ever to the Holy
Ghost himself.
But here is the knot. When the voice of the Spirit
speaking today is made subservient to what the Spirit spoke in the past, rather
than on what the Word speaks of irrespective of time, then the Spirit is
quenched and fettered by tradition. If it is an interpretation that in no way
agrees with what Christ is and was and did and does then it is neither the
Truth nor the Spirit.
That is why the image of the plumb line which Amos saw
is so relevant for today. ”Thus He
showed me, and behold, the Lord was standing by a vertical wall with a plumb
line in His hand. The Lord said to me, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A
plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “Behold I am about to put a plumb line in the
midst of My people Israel. I will spare them no longer.” Amos 7:7-8 The
ultimate arbiter is the Word of God, the written as declared and expressed by
the Spirit through the living body of the church in unity. Whoever attempts to
set the speaking of the Spirit in the Church of today in opposition to the
Word, which we are assured was in every word ’theopneustos’ i e God breathed,
has left the field of truth.
They are then not playing Soccer on a Rugby field, but
rather are playing Tennis in a Swiming pool. The Sprit that gave the written
word will not contradict Himself by giving revelation that nullifies the
written word. There is one major obstacle to unity in the church. The rampant
disobedience against what is written exists in all camps. We stand guilty all of us.
No private interpretation
2 Pet 1:19-21”So
we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay
attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the
morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy
of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever
made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from
God.
Who would now claim that the
ministry of the Word in the Church today is any less than that done by ”men
moved by the Holy Spirit to speak the word of God.”? And not this time in order
to write down the word of God on parchments and vellum, because that is
finished, but to write it into the hearts of all men by the same Spirit. Faith
will be paper thin when the words of God are left on the printed page.
Interpreting the voice of God is a collective
business. It is not the solo-voiced prophet who has the truth. Speaking forth
the word of God into the present time is never seen as a megaphone of one man
or woman in the Scripture. Paul expresses his desire that all should be able to
admonish the rest, because Paul knows of them that they are filled with
goodness and knowledge. Rom 15:14 He instructs that prophecy should be enjoined
and that if possible all in the church should do that, for the edification of
all needs the input from all. But even then everything that is spoken is to be
tested by the written words. If the church after decades of being in existence
still has very little either goodness or knowledge then something is very very
wrong, and if people are not empowered to partake in the ministry of all the
saints then the leadership fails to be up to the Apostolic standard in Eph
4:10-15.
Many situations around which the church may have to
come to consideration and conclusion have no actual precedent in the scriptures
and must then be determined on the consensus of the church as it ’walks and
talks’ in the Spirit. The evidence for being in the Spirit is unity in faith,
hope and purpose. Therefore the church, even when it has no direct word in
scripture to fall back on may be safe in being guided in it’s decisions by the
Spirit, and therefore being guided by the Word itself. So the church at Antioch
was serving the Lord and the Spirit spoke explicitly: ”Separate unto me Paul and Barnabas to do the work to which I have
called them.”Acts 13:2
· I notice an assembly gathered
together for an explicit purpose. ”To minister to God.”
· I notice their preparation for
this ministry. ”In prayer and fasting.”
· I notice the obvious awareness
of the clear communication of the Spirit to the church. ”Separate unto me.”
· I notice the unambiguity of
the identity of the speaker. ”I, says he, am the Spirit.”
The church did not vote. It agreed unanimously to the
distinct communication of God by the Spirit.
On yet another occasion the express statement goes
even further in showing the faith of the church in it’s ability to listen to
the voice of God. Again a most certain collective expression was put on
parchment for all the other churches to receive and hear and affirm. The matter
was absolutly a core issue for the church. Paul and Barnabas had been
minstering for years starting Church after Church but felt constrained to find
out if they were on the right track. So they journey to Jerusalem. They step
into the venerated circle of the remaining original apostles and first
believers from the day of Pentecost and present their case to the ”mother
Church” as it were.
Acts 15:6 ”And
the apostles and the elders came together to look into this matter.”
Acts 15:7 ”And
after there had been much debate, Peter stood up...”
Free discussion, open debate in front of the whole
multitude of the church. Acts 15:12 But then time to make a decision. Again, no
recourse to any OT precepts or instructions but a consensus in the Spirit.
James speaks up after Peter, Paul and Barnabas: ”Therefore it is my judgment that...” Acts 15:19 and
in summary Acts 15:22 ”And it seemed good to the apostles and the elders
with the whole Church...” They wrote a letter to be brought by hand of four
men to the Churches in Asia Minor and they dared be so positive about how the
entire collective process of hearing the voice of God had happened, even
without OT precendent, that they could declare: ”It seemed good to the Holy
Spirit and to us to lay no further burden on you..”Acts 15:28 It seemed
good because it did not conflict with what is written nor was outside the scope
of ”Christ and him crucified.” If held up to the plumb line it proved to be
straight.
Unity in entirety
Unity in the decision was not there before their
deliberation was done. They started with lack of initial unity and only became
united when as many as would and could speak had had their say. But no decision
was made before the Unity of the body was established. It is the unanimous
voice of the body that echoes the One head where Father, Son and Holy Ghost
speak to the church that cares to listen. The democratic 51-49 vote is a
spiritual monstrosity. Nothing shows how far the church is from the unity in
one faith than the way it acts in these matters.
”I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed
on me”
”I will guide you with mine eye.”
”For such is God,our God forever and ever; He will
guide us until death.”
God is not far off unless we have moved out of His
grace by deafening our ears through sin. God has not stopped speaking, we have
become hard of hearing. If we deny that God speaks through us then Yahweh has
been muted. Not by himself but by our traditions and our limitations put on Him
and His Spirit. We extinguish the Spirit, we quench the Spirit when we
proscribe to God how He may speak. As if the eternal God only wrote a book and
then laid his hand on his mouth and said, I will speak no more.
The balance
When we strike the balance between what is eternally
true and firmly written, and the hearing of the voice of the Spirit today, then
the active voice of God in and through the church is again heard in it’s
fullness. His gifts to the church are gifts of passing on what is heard by
individuals in the church, for the express purpose of the building up of the
church. But in the normal Christian church the one is never heard without the
other. Public reading of the scriptures is enjoined, spending time in it at all
times is commanded. Using all of it for teaching and instruction and warning
and correction is not done much. But if we are neither walking in the fullness
of the Word of Christ dwelling in us richly, nor trusting ourselves to be
guided by Him as we listen to him speaking to all of the church on every matter
of importance, we are therefore empoverished and meagerly fed. And spiritual
growth is directly proportionate to ’hearing as a disciple does’.
Listening to God is not either ’the Bible’ or ’The Spirit’.
But eternally both, because the written cannot be understood without the
Spirit. ”Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the word of Christ.” Rom
10:17 ”Many other signs therefore Jesus performed in the presence of his
disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are have been written
that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that
believing you may have life in his name.” John 20:30-31
The proof of the pudding has always been found in the
eating of it. When the word of God does not produce the life of God as seen in
the scriptures, then it is neither the word of God nor life. The things God has
put together no man should put asunder. This is primarily aimed at the male-
female union in marriage. But it is no less vital in the matter of the Written
and the Applied word where that which is written is only half the truth,
becoming the full truth only when ’eaten’ and producing the life of which it
speaks. It is not the hearers of the word but the doers that are counted as
righteous.
”The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” ”When
you come together, each one of you has something to bring.”
That is ’body talk’ in a living church where each
member is holding fast to the head individually and communally there for the
other members. That is what the Spirit speaks to the church. Hear hear... But
only those who truly affirm the extended meaning of ’Sola Scriptura’ will
bother to give heed.
Teddy Donobauer March 2020
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