If the response is really this predictable, it is worth taking the time to give it a sound answer. Let me start by saying that I am so grateful for this country and that I am committed to standing in prayer for the church to be filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:21). Yet the reason I have to start with that affirmation actually exposes the problem with asking the question. In most facets of life, we understand that affirming one thing does not mean negating another. To say that you like pizza doesn’t mean you hate Thai food. If someone blurts out how much they like football, no one automatically thinks they don’t care about basketball.

Yet somehow, almost inexplicably, clarion calls for the desperate need for some to leave these amber waves of grain and go preach the gospel to the unreached is met with the assumption that you disdain America on some level. This visceral reaction is so odd when you translate it into other contexts that it should at least make us wonder whether something else is actually going on.

Let’s consider another analogy to highlight why this way of thinking is so groundless. Imagine two groups of people – one small and one enormous – standing side by side. The first group, though very small, possesses 95 units of food. The second group, altough it is over 100 times larger than the other, only has access to 5 units of food. Now imagine that upon seeing this gross disparity, a fraction of the first group decided that they should go to Group 2 and take along some of the abundance of the resource that they are privy to. Such a response is just a natural, sensible reaction when confronted with such an alarming imbalance. No one would look at this scenario and reasonably conclude that the people trying to help Group 2 are doing so because they don’t care about Group 1.

If the response is so illogical in the analogy, then how does it ever pass as a credible reply when related to missions? In most cases, the real truth behind those three words is actually “what about me?” The prospect of frontier missions is noble and commendable as long as it remains abstract enough to never bother you. When we realize that missions is far more about Jesus and His word than it is about me and my calling, when our arguments for why we don’t have to consider the unreached are found to be baseless, and when we realize we were never actually ‘called’ to America, then we fall back on the smokescreen of America and the virtue of nationalism to shield us from what threatens to disrupt our pursuit of self-fulfillment.

Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple…“So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” Luke 14:25-27, 33

A sincere burden for the spiritual condition of our nation is a virtuous thing, but selfishness is not. Our lives are not our own, and upon seeing the glaring imbalance of access to the gospel that characterizes our world, the most natural response should be to arise and do something about it. Obedience to the Great Commission poses no threat whatsoever to the spiritual well-being of the church in America or those faithfully serving here. It does, however, prove to be fatal to a false version of the Christian life where our comfort, our norms, our notoriety, and our desires remain the paramount consideration.

Before even reading the words that follow here, take a few minutes and ponder that special moment in your journey when God called you to America. You can close your eyes if that helps you. If you are like the overwhelming majority of other Christians in the United States, that moment doesn’t exist. There are no memories, no feelings, no clarity – just an awkwardly silent void where should be certainty. While you come to terms with the fact that God has never ‘called’ you to America, consider the reality of the world around you.

An unreached people group is simply a linguistically or culturally distinct population suffering from a dire lack of access to the gospel. That concept is easy enough to wrap our mind around. The facts about unreached people groups and who is trying to reach them are, on the other hand, mind-boggling. The words of Jesus echo so painfully true in our day: the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

There are approximately 7,000 unreached people groups, consisting of roughly 2.8 billion people. This is around 1000 times the entire population of America, and represents over 40% of the total population of the earth.

There are about 2.2 billion Christians worldwide (Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Protestant, etc.).

There are 5.5 million full-time people in full-time ministry, and there are an estimated 400,000 missionaries. Approximately 13,000 missionaries (3% of 400,000) and 20,000 local workers in full-time ministry (.37 % of the 5.5 million) currently labor among the unreached.

Therefore, add these together, and we realize that of the nearly 6 million in vocational ministry world-wide, only 33,000 (.6 %) are focused on the 40% of the earth’s population that is considered unreached.

That number – 33,000 – is just .0015 % of the total Christian population in the world. Truly, the laborers are few.

What does this mean? If everyone is obeying God’s ‘calling’, then God is ‘calling’ 99.9985 % of His people on the earth to either stay exactly where they are or to minister to the 60% of the earth’s population with dramatically greater access to the gospel. When we compare this to the final words of Jesus before His ascension and the witness of the apostles, we come to the realization that we are not talking about God’s calling at all. Instead, we are staring at an almost incomprehensible issue of disobedience on the part of the Church.

“And Jesus…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.” Matthew 28:18–20

There are some who the Lord has clearly directed to remain in the United States and shepherd His people or serve His body. This is a noble thing, and faithfulness to serve in America is just as commendable as faithfulness to frontier missions when we are truly obeying the leading of Jesus. Yet unless you are among these, it is time to stop propping up your comfort with a fabricated version of the will of God for your life and seriously grapple with the billions who languish with little or no access to the saving truth of Jesus. How should you respond? These are not just statisitics. It’s real. Real places, real people, and a real King on the throne in the heights of the heavens who desires an inheritance from every tribe and tongue. It is time to behold the Lord of Glory who redeemed you with His blood and try to explain to Him why the affluence of American life and popularity contest of Western ministry is more important than billions giving Him the worship that He is rightly due.

And don’t placate your conscience with the hollow argument that because you were born in America, that must be where God wants you. If the early Christians had followed that logic, you would not be saved right now. The only reason you are a Christian today is because throughout the history of the church, the Great Commission has been obeyed by people just like you who were compelled to leave their homeland and go share the gospel with those living in regions where poeple had not yet heard.

If you have been living contently for twenty or thirty years in America without any special calling from God to do so, then you don’t need a special calling to go serve among the unreached for two years, or five years, or ten years, or for all your days. You don’t need a dream, you don’t need a prophetic word. There is nothing to ‘discern’. The estimated 66 thousand who will die today without knowing Jesus are enough. The biblical imperative of a witness to all nations is enough. Most of all, Jesus is enough!

Actually talk to the Lord of the Harvest, and see if you can convince Him that this is extreme or irresponsible. If you can’t, then it is time to set your eyes upon the nations and change the conversation. Instead of telling Jesus He has to commission you to go, ask Him to make it clear if you need to stay.

Of course there are needs in America. There are many people in this land who need to hear the truth of the gospel and be saved. Yet there is simply no comparison whatsoever with the spiritual condition of the United States and the plight of billions living in countries where there are no Christians to share with them, where it is impossible to get a Bible, where there is no access to gospel truth on the internet, and thousands of people are dying every day without ever hearing the name of Jesus once in their entire life.

We have no right to dilute the horrific nature of that reality in order to soften the biting sting of our callousness toward the worth of Jesus and real souls going to the lake of fire. And we have absolutely no justification in comparing the need in America where there are dozens of Bibles in every bookstore and a church on every corner to the work of frontier missions. It’s not the same. Obedience is obedience no matter where you are, but woe to us if we drown out the alarm of this crisis with the chatter of our self-importance or cheapen the sacrifice of those who have left all to make Jesus known in the hardest and darkest places.

If your hearts burns within you as you read these words, if you can no longer bear to make endless excuses, perhaps it is time to join the story of His fame that Jesus yearns to write in the nations.

For more information on the ACTS School of Frontier Missions, visit www.actsschool.com

*The statistics used in this article were based on those provided at http://www.thetravelingteam.org/stats/

The dusk of the day closes around a solitary figure on the rooftop of a faraway city in a remote land. There she sings, alone and unknown. There is a dying in this hiding. There is a death when they forget. Jesus bids us to choose loss, and being remembered is the cost.

We have arrived at a point in the long march of time when day or night we can reach into our pocket and with a few strikes on a screen we can grope for the world to remember us. For most under 25 years old, not a day goes by without numerous appeals for someone to take notice of what they are wearing, what they are eating, what they are doing, and what they are thinking. The alternative – the prospect of being unknown and forgotten – is becoming incomprehensible.

In Revelation 12:7 we are told of those who will not love their lives even unto death. The horizon of the final frontier of missions is filled with the blood of martyrdom. Yet long before this climactic display of sacrificial love for Jesus, there lies a long path filled with a crucible that may even be more difficult for the next generation to embrace. It is the crucible of hiddenness.

Labor among the unreached unfolds upon the shadowy plains of obscurity. To be His friend in the fields of the pioneer means a slow death to notoriety and agonizing acceptance of ignominy. Days spent plodding on foreign soil seem to crawl forward while life at ‘home’ hurls ahead with dizzying rapidity. Seasons change, holidays are celebrated without you, and milestones are missed. Acquaintances post pictures of their wedding, your older sister has another baby who won’t grow up knowing you, and your best friend from college just took the job as associate pastor at that big church. All of this while you stammer like a child in a language only strangers will ever understand in a place your cousin doesn’t even know where to find a map. The world that defined your existence until the moment you stepped on that plane with a one way ticket begins to pass you by.

In the nations where the gospel is most desperately needed, a social media presence is more dangerous than advantageous. Most of the details of your life can’t be shared outside of the small team of comrades who serve alongside you. You no longer have the freedom to espouse your political views and offer your commentary on the issues of the day. There is no ministry platform to ascend to, there is no applause for your supposedly edgy insights to garner, and being gifted means hostility rather than popularity.

Who would sign up for this life? What do we say to a generation for whom self-expression and constant attention is the very air they breathe? Why would a young, promising worship leader choose to forego conference invitations and iTunes to write songs in a strange tongue for small bands of believers huddled in apartments? How could we ever convince a gifted preacher to forsake the impact of speaking to an audience of thousands so that a few dozen might know that precious Name for the first time? What would compel someone to choose the dying in the hiding of life in the nations?

The answer is not to gently massage the culture of narcissism and pretend like this crucible should not be part of missionary life. The Lord of the Harvest doesn’t need us to apologize for the cost of obedience by erecting a facade of romanticism in front of the enlistment office for the Great Commission.

So how do we recruit volunteers for a life of hiddenness? We can at least begin by proclaiming the truth that no one actually has a choice. For those of us in the West, when a time of searching for employment, awaiting marriage, or being overlooked in ministry comes upon us, it might lead us to say we are in “a season of hiddenness”. What is implied in this language is that there is going to be a point in the near future when our full potential is realized, the truth of our identity recognized, and we step into the ‘destiny’ of our ‘calling’ in the Lord. This is a fantasy. And it is keeping people off the mission field.

“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” Colossians 3:1-4

According to Paul, our “season of hiddenness” is the entirety of our life in this present evil age. We have died with Christ and been raised up with Him. Jesus has been exalted to the heights of the heavens and right now we can only behold Him by faith. Since our very life and being are bound up in Him, the only way we can discern the truth about who we are is also by faith. The reality of our existence will never be evident to our own observation or the perception of others. No matter how close we are to our family, no matter how much our ministry flourishes, or how many godly people might applaud our accomplishments, we will never be truly understood in this age.

Jesus was and is the most misunderstood Man who has ever lived. The fullness of who He is will not be known or understood until every eye sees Him and every tongue confesses the truth of His matchless identity (Phil. 2:6-11, Rev. 1:7). Even the most mature saints only perceive the majesty of Christ dimly. He has a name that no one even knows yet (Rev. 19:12). John the Beloved had spent over two years walking closely with Jesus on a daily basis, but when that aged apostle saw a glimpse of Christ unveiled he fell down like a dead man (Rev. 1:9-20). If this contrast of recognition is true of Jesus, then why would we expect it to be different with us? Is a servant greater than their Master?

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” 1 John 3:1-2

Our path to being known and seen in the way we yearn for is through the lonely corridors of hiddenness. The deepest things of our heart will never be fully realized, and some of our most precious dreams will go with us to the grave (cf. Heb. 11:13). The true meaning of our lives, the everlasting significance of our decisions for love, and the greatness of our identity in Christ will not be manifested until our Beloved appears in His glory and makes all things new. Then, and only then, will we shine like the stars and receive the reward for the treasures forged in the secret chambers of our souls (Matt. 13:43, 1 Cor. 4:4-5).

Missionaries are not to be pitied. They are indeed the hidden ones, but they are simply living out vocationally and circumstantially what is true of every Christian spiritually. If we are all destined to remain hidden throughout this pilgrimage, then why not just stop running? Instead of pretending, just shatter the illusion of self-actualization and embrace the truth about your life. Pioneers are simply those who have seen the wisdom of this path and embarked on it.

What if those songs you are writing could be the first anthems of love ever sung to Jesus by a people group that is currently unengaged? What if losing your life meant finding it in the age to come? What if your choice to be hidden meant that others would find Jesus? And what if your decision to be forgotten will be remembered forever? Go find out.

As one author has said, “It is important to begin by clarifying the question.  When people ask “Was Jesus God?” they usually think they know what the word “God” means, and are asking whether we can fit Jesus into that.  I regard this as deeply misleading.”

This is the most foundational of Christian questions – what does “God” mean? – and the answer to the boundary lines of meaning need to be blazing and not blurry in our hearts.

The typical answer to this question, found in theological works both ancient and modern, comes in the form of incommunicable attributes. This phrase simply refers to the concept that God has characteristics (attributes) and that cannot be shared (incommunicable). They are easy to spot because nearly all of the major attributes of this category begin with the prefix omni-, im-, or in-. Examples include ingenerate, incorruptible, immutable, impassible, infinite, incomprehensible, incorporeal, indivisible, omnipresent, etc.

Most people recognize that these exact terms are not in the Bible. What is almost completely unknown, however, is that they are not even Christian in their origin. The majority of these adjectives originated within the Greek philosophical tradition and were in use prior to the writing of the New Testament. As the gospel spread throughout the Roman empire in the first several centuries after the apostolic era, later church fathers increasingly began to use these preexisting categories of thought to explain God to their audience. While some of these (e.g. the eternity of God) may have biblical connotations, defining deity in this way makes it very difficult to understand the New Testament teaching about the divinity of Jesus. To take an unbiblical definition of God and attempt to find biblical language confirming it proves to be a very frustrating and confusing quest.

The apostles, of course, would not have used Greek philosophical language to communicate the truth about their Lord and Messiah. If Peter or Paul desired to proclaim that Jesus was divine, they would have drawn upon the way the Old Testament describes the uniqueness of God. They would have used the biblical boundary lines for God and not philosophical ones.

To understand the identity of Jesus we must, therefore, start with gaining the right perspective on the theology of the Old Testament. What you find when you do so is a remarkably simple, and yet devastatingly holy, portrait of the Holy One of Israel and what it is that makes Him different than everything else in the heavens and the earth.

the view from Kadikoy – a vibrant district of modern-day Istanbul  on the site of ancient Chalcedon

How did a group of Jewish men in the 1^st century go from following their rabbi to worshiping Him as their Creator? How could belief in the divinity of Jesus and the actual practice of devotion to Him take root among the early believers without any breach of their rigid, defiant monotheism? In the previous post we considered why we must not hurry past these questions. The confessions that would come forth from the church centuries later in Nicaea (AD 325) and Chalcedon (AD 451) were important, but they will not suffice. The creeds provided the conclusions of orthodoxy rather than the reasons for it. And in passing over the obscurity of Jerusalem in favor of the familiarity of Rome, we have actually missed the hermeneutical key for New Testament Christology.

The first step in our journey toward clarity is to scrutinize what would appear relatively straightforward – the definition of monotheism. Of course, monotheism in any context means a belief in only one God.  Yet the real issue is related to what God actually means. To say that the Jews believed in one God is a very important beginning point, but does not actually address the crux of the issue. We must understand the view of God presented by the Old Testament, and how He was differentiated from all other reality.

If we can discern the way in which God and the unique monotheistic faith were understood and spoken about by the people of Israel, then we can locate the ways the apostles incorporated Jesus into that definition through the inspired texts of the New Testament. This is opposed to beginning with our own varied conceptions of what “God” means and then evaluating the evidence of the New Testament based on the degree to which the description of Jesus aligns with our paradigm of divinity. Through the answer to the Judeo-monotheistic riddle we will acquire the full, rich, beautiful picture of the deity of Christ that the Holy Spirit bestowed upon the early Church and intends for us to possess in our day as well.

Instead we must force ourselves to fix our gaze upon a small band of Jewish men reclining around the Paschal supper and grapple with the question of how faith in the divinity of Christ took root within the rigid monotheism of those in view.

“What became Christianity began as a movement within the Jewish religious traditions of the Roman period, and the chief characteristic of Jewish religion in this period was its defiantly monotheistic stance.  I contend that any consideration of early Christ-devotion must set it in the context of this central feature of the religious matrix out of which the Christian movement sprang.” (L. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, p. 29)

We may hurl words like “Trinity” and “mystery” at the problem but that will do no more for the questions that lurk in the caverns of our mind than it does for a liberal scholar or an unbelieving alcoholic who needs salvation. If this confession of the divinity of Christ is in fact as central as we have claimed then the question is paramount, for upon the answer to this riddle rests the tenability of orthodoxy if in fact we are to uphold the essential continuity of the apostolic faith with its Jewish background. Yet the purpose is not merely apologetic, for unless we understand the deity of Christ in the historical and theological context of Judaism we will be ill-prepared to recognize the ways that the apostles would express their conviction, which is ultimately the goal of these posts on the divinity of Jesus.

Often this truth is surrounded with a measure of ambiguity, lying in the background of the heart of the believer rather than always standing in the forefront of our consciousness because it has been embraced with burning, lucid vision. Some of the Jews of Jesus’ era recognized Him as a prophet, and they are joined today by liberal denominations and by Islam. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses confess Jesus as the Son of God and the way of salvation. Yet the thing that distinguishes true, apostolic Christianity from other world religions and cults is the belief that the man from Nazareth is the Holy One of Israel, the living God, incarnate. This is not the only thing one must believe to be a Christian, but it is the central and defining issue of our faith. There is no regeneration apart from the clear belief and confession of the unqualified, undiluted divinity of Jesus.

Even among Christians, sincerity of belief can be accompanied by much latent uncertainty about this doctrine. Questions and confusion are often suppressed because of shame or the sense that no one has the answers they are looking for. Over the last 150 years the leadership of the Church has not sufficiently strengthened this conviction in the hearts of the people through the ministry of teaching, and thus in the hearts of most people this belief is one they hold sincerely but one they cannot articulate clearly or synthesize from biblical evidence. Through a series of short posts in the weeks ahead I will explore this theme and try to point to the unrelenting testimony of the divinity of Jesus found in the scriptures.

For the last two years we have had the privilege of serving on the leadership team of ACTS (the Antioch Center for Training and Sending) – the missionary training and sending organization that has been based out of IHOPKC. ACTS came into being in 2010 around the vision to send “the best and the brightest to the hardest and darkest.” Through a number of very clear and powerful ways, the Lord has knit us deeply into this vision, and it has been our joy to work with dozens of amazing young people as they seek to be sent forth to parts of the world where very few missionaries currently labor. There are billions of people in the Middle East and South Asia who have never once heard the truth of the good news of the Lord Jesus, and the ACTS student missionaries are choosing to go into these difficult regions in order to make Him known.

When they go they carry with them the heartbeat of the prayer room in Kansas City, where they have spent multitudes of hours in prayer and worship during their training. Not only do these teams begin to learn the language and build relationships in order to share the truth of Jesus, but also from their first days on the field, they spend hours a day ministering to the Lord together. The fragrance of intercession and songs of adoration ascend to Jesus from places where His name has scarcely been whispered over the course of centuries. This is why ACTS is truly just an extension of the 24/7 prayer and worship that has been going on for 15 years at IHOPKC. Recently I wrote a short article trying to capture the beauty of their choices. You can hear also hear some of their voices directly articulate this in a video that was recently released by ACTS. It is a beautiful testimony to the worth of Jesus and His compassion for the unreached.

In March of this year the decision was made for ACTS to relocate to Colorado Springs (I encourage you to read the statement from ACTS explaining the move here). Beginning September 1st, ACTS will be working in partnership with Every Home for Christ alongside a vibrant prayer room that will continue to grow in the months and years ahead.

After months of praying and seeking the Lord, Karli and I made the decision to move to Colorado Springs in order to invest even more deeply in the vision of ACTS. It is difficult because we love IHOPKC so much! We are so excited for what is ahead but nothing has changed in our affection for this amazing place that has been our home for over a decade. We are so profoundly grateful for biblical teaching, a culture of faith and spiritual depth, a standard of humility in leadership, a community of servanthood, and the 24/7 ministry to the Lord that stands at the center of it all. As I write this we have about a month remaining until we relocate to Colorado Springs. During my time in the prayer room this week my heart has been filled with thankfulness. There are truly no words to adequately express my gratitude for that room where the lights are always on, the doors are always open, and the sound of corporate prayer never ceases to rise to the Lord.

Yet before us stands an invitation from the Lord to contend for His worth in a new way – laboring for the proliferation of His glory among the unreached with ACTS and building the house of prayer in Colorado Springs. We are so grateful that our new home will be in the shadow of the grandeur of the mountains that we love. We feel like this will be a wonderful place for our boys to grow up, and another huge blessing for our family will be the benefits of a more arid climate and higher altitude on Karli’s spine and joints.

STAYING CONNECTED

In many ways my focus in ministry will narrow more than it will change in the season ahead. I will continue to minister to the Lord in the prayer room and serve in a more focused way on the leadership team of ACTS – primarily through teaching and writing. We also really enjoy getting to know the ACTS students on a personal level. Karli is very gifted at mentoring and discipling and she is excited about working more closely with the young women in the training program. I will continue to travel with ACTS and also to minister at various events domestically and abroad as the Lord opens doors. After our family gets through this time of transition I will resume regularly posting resources on this site.

Pray for Us

Every moment of our lives, we are desperately in need of the Lord’s help, but we really feel this right now. The next month is going to be so challenging in so many ways, as we are sure many of you might understand and know well. We really covet your prayers during this transition. Please pray that our house in Kansas City would sell quickly and for the full amount we are asking. Pray for continued and miraculous financial provision. Pray for Karli’s health and her body during all the physical demands of moving to another state. Pray for us as we have to say good-bye to so many beloved friends and family at IHOPKC and in Kansas City. And pray especially for our boys during this transition and as we settle into live in the Springs.

Partner With Us

As part of a missions organization, a significant portion of our monthly income will still come from monthly supporters and/or one-time givers. Donations through ACTS are as simple as going to the ACTS support website and selecting our personal donor ID number of 55544 from the drop down menu. Donations can given as a one-time gift or set up automatically on a recurring basis.

We have a special need right now for one-time gifts to help with moving and housing expenses. The housing markets in KC and the Springs are very different. The Lord has been extravagant toward us through the generosity of His people and we have already received the majority of what we need.  Please pray about helping us get the total through a one-time gift. You can give via ACTS or through the PayPal link for gifts that are not tax-deductible. We are so grateful for your consideration.

They could have stayed, but they didn’t. They didn’t have to go, but they left anyway. Jesus must be interested in more than convenience and the path of least resistance. Yes, He is. And their leaving means a fragrance ascending.

We stand on the eve of the day when the church throughout the world remembers this holy death that would end with a door being flung open into the newness of life. In just a few hours we will commemorate that awful moment when the sinless hands of the Man who is our Maker were chained in metal mined from the earth He fashioned. The agony in the garden, drops of blood, slumbering disciples, a sinister kiss, and then Jesus stands arrested by the guilty ones He came to pardon.

You may have thought nothing of Holy Week up until this afternoon. I know I certainly have not thought nearly as much of it as I wish. Yet there is still time to turn your attention to the details of the almost unthinkable events that unfolded in Jerusalem during a Passover many centuries ago. You don’t need the right Lenten devotional book. I love good resources, but all you need is time, desire, and the inspired scriptures that tell us of our beloved Friend. Our love is weak, but you can resolve to know His story better than any other. Tonight, you can make a deep determination in your soul that when you stand before Him you will know the details.

The extent to which this passage offers such a grand, sweeping view of the matchless existence of Christ so concisely is unique in all of Scripture. In a mere seven verses we are taken back to the mysterious solitary life of the Godhead and then rushed along through the currents of history all the way until the end of all things.

Though it may not be apparent initially, through this window we behold a dramatic story – it is the story of God.  We are confronted with the breathtaking epic of Love Himself. With each successive movement He is writing a tale of unthinkable tragedy and ecstatic triumph played out on the pages of time.

In this saga we find the history of redemption, but even more importantly we see displayed before us the chronicle of our Maker and Husband.  It is absolutely staggering that He would even share this with us and we do well to treasure it within our soul.

It also provides a path for exploring the unsearchable depths of Jesus in a way that is personally (and therefore relationally) grounded. When we follow the course that Paul charts, we are beholding Someone and not merely pondering concepts. The essential progression of divinity, humanity, incarnation, redemption, and exaltation found in these verses offers a sound, biblical methodology for growing in the knowledge of Jesus.

What would happen if someone went into the office of a thousand different pastors in America and asked the simple question, “who is Jesus and what is He really all about?” How many different answers – overtly or subtly – do you think that person would hear? In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul warned against the peril of being led astray from the simplicity of devotion to Jesus. The point here is singularity, and thus the danger is duplicity or confusion. The contrast is not between simplicity and complexity. Paul was jealous that the hearts and minds of the Corinthians be wholly devoted to the truth of the One to whom they had been betrothed.

There may be many different battles, but at the center of the spiritual war raging in this age is the truth about Jesus. I don’t know the real answer to the question posed above, but could it be that we are at risk of entertaining different versions of Jesus just as the ancient church in Corinth was? Is there a clear, unified witness about Jesus that defines us as Christians and unites His body in its diverse expressions? Or has diversity of form and function led to a diversity of doctrine? It does seem that in many cases Jesus can become a malleable concept in Western church that conforms to the context rather a devastatingly real Person who we are being conformed to.

Christ is ubiquitous in this subculture, but more as an adjective (Christian) than as a proper name. While we swim in a sea of “Christian” things, Christ is increasingly reduced to a mascot or symbol of a subculture and the industries that feed it. Just as you don’t really need Jesus Christ in order to have T-shirts and coffee mugs, it is unclear to me why he is necessary for most of the things I hear a lot pastors and Christians talking about in church these days… Jesus has been dressed up as a corporate CEO, life coach, culture-warrior, political revolutionary, philosopher, copilot, cosufferer, moral example, and partner in fulfilling our personal and social dreams. But in all of these ways, are we reducing the central character in the drama of redemption to a prop for our own play? (Michael Horton)

The real issue is not the exact degree to which this is happening. The real issue is that we don’t see that this is the real issue. The smoke from the battles being fought on the edges is obscuring the ultimate crisis at the center of the conflict. For example, many mainline Protestant denominations have begun ordaining homosexual ministers in the last several years. For those churches who rightly object to this practice, and for the evangelical church looking on from this a distance, the response has been outrage. Yet the bigger problem is that decades ago these same denominations officially undermined the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus and there was no uproar or movement to leave the denomination. The message of this is clear: we think the identity of our pastor is more important than the identity of our Jesus. The church has much zeal over social, moral, and political issues but can often demonstrate little resolve over the sweeping neglect of what is most precious and holy – the knowledge of who Jesus is. This is the apex of spiritual warfare, but has it become an invisible war?

“In such an ethos, the humanness of Jesus becomes not only an axiom but a limiting factor: we can assert nothing of Christ which we cannot assert of man. Not surprisingly, many theologians are finding it impossible to move from this starting-point to belief in the deity of Christ.” (D. Macleod)

The greatest deficiency in this methodology is that it is simply unbiblical. Nearly all of the writings of the New Testament open with explicit statements of the divine, miraculous character of Jesus. Far beyond John’s breathtaking prologue, all four of the gospels use the ministry of John the Baptist to clearly place Jesus in the position of Yahweh Himself coming to confront the nation of Israel. Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost presents Jesus as the divine Lord exalted to the heights of the heavens alongside the Father. Paul’s letters to the church at Thessalonica were probably the earliest writings of the New Testament. Penned just over twenty years after the ascension, this introduction to the Pauline corpus offers an astonishing witness to the divinity of Jesus. The Man from Nazareth is included within the unique monotheistic identity of God and described as the One who will fulfill the long-awaited Day of Yahweh promised in the Old Testament. Similar observations – just as potent – could be made concerning the remainder of Paul’s epistles, Hebrews, Revelation, and other New Testament writings.

What can be learned from this? Apart from the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, the mind of man is hostile to God (Eph 4:16-17, Col 1:21). The Holy Spirit did not make room for rationalism in His pattern of inspiration. Our minds must be highly engaged in our reading of Scripture, but the journey toward depth in our knowledge of Jesus must begin with faith in what our minds cannot fully comprehend. With every step of progress on the path there should be an accompanying plea for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Belief in the divinity of Jesus becomes the inception of the search for Him rather than triumphant summit. Where do we start? We start at the top – with Jesus from above.

The forerunner stands as an emissary of the jealous heart of Jesus and fights to apprehend the distracted affections of His people that He alone is worthy of. The day of His wedding is in Christ’s heart and He demands wholehearted devotion to Himself (Rev 2:4). The severity and urgency of this plea to the body of Christ is rooted in His jealous love and not anger or harshness.

God has orchestrated a global scenario that will completely eliminate the possibility of neutrality.  The unprecedented pressure will cause the lukewarm to either fall away or become radically given over to loving Him with totality. Though the forerunner ministry does exist to plead with those who are caught in this snare and suddenly dangle between apostasy and fidelity (Luke 21:34), it primarily serves as an appeal prior to the hour when all that now challenges the preeminence of Christ for the allegiance of the human heart falls prey to the devastation of His wrath (Is 2:17).

Forerunners vie for Jesus to be supremely treasured by His people now in order that their hearts would not be crushed when all they treasured outside of Him is ground to dust by the Day of the LORD.  How does one wage war in this all-important conflict? The battle line falls upon the affections of the soul and it is to the affections that messengers must appeal.  Through groans of intercession and tear-soaked proclamation of the enthralling beauty of Christ, forerunners seek to conquer the deepest sentiments of the heart for surpassing worth of the Lamb.

We must have a fierce desire for the vision of the preeminence of Christ in all things to conquer all other motivations in ministry. When the seduction of self-exaltation is exposed and shattered, we are left only with a burning desire to see others love and extol Jesus above all else.

Please pray for me, that I may have both spiritual and physical strength to perform my duties; that I may not only speak the truth but become the truth; that I may not only be called a Christian, but also live like a Christian.  Yet I do not want people to look to me as an example, for at best I can only be a pale reflection of Christ Jesus; let people look away from the reflection and turn to the reality.  Christianity is not a matter of persuading people of particular ideas, but of inviting them to share in the greatness of Christ.  So pray that I may never fall into the trap of impressing people with clever speech, but instead I may learn to speak with humility, desiring only to impress people with Christ himself.  Ignatius of Antioch

To make much of Him while we recede into obscurity is the heart of the friend of the bridegroom. Such selflessness is only possible if an authentic interior captivation compels the soul of the bondservant. Only those who have gazed long upon the splendor of Jesus can turn and tell others of His worth. Only His friends can be the heralds of the majestic Bridegroom to His people.

For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves bondservants for Jesus’ sake.  For it is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:5-6

Though glorious and necessary, the examination of His work must be accompanied by a living understanding of His person. Increasingly men and women are seeking to define soteriological truths for a modern audience and coming to wrong conclusions because of a vague conception of who Jesus is. Identity determines the parameters for action and defines the significance of it. This truth extends to all times, all places, and all people but nowhere is it more important to recognize than when reckoning with God Himself. It is impossible to rightly interpret what the Bible says about the things that Jesus did without first being established in what the Bible says about who He is. One of the most important premises for growing in the knowledge of Jesus is very intentionally binding His person and work together to form an integrated approach to beholding Him.

We commence with a consideration of CHRIST’S PERSONAL PRECIOUSNESS—His preciousness in Himself. It is the conviction of Christ’s personal dignity and worth that gives to faith such a substantial realization of the greatness and preciousness of His work. We have need, beloved, to be cautioned against an error into which some have fallen—of exalting the work of Christ above the person of Christ—in other words, not tracing the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice to the essential dignity of Christ’s person. The Godhead of the Savior admitted—His atoning death becomes a fact of easy belief. Once concede that He who died upon the cross was “GOD manifest in the flesh,” and the mind will experience no difficulty in admitting that that death was sacrificial and expiatory. (Octavius Winslow)

It would have been easier if they had left too…but they stayed. It would have been more comfortable if they had never gone in the first place…but they left anyway. Jesus must be interested in more than convenience and the path of least resistance. Yes, He is. Jesus wants friends who are not ashamed to bear a cross, or afraid to count the cost. They decided to become the answer to His desire, so they stayed. And their remaining is a fragrance ascending.

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.” (2 Corinthians 2:14–17, NASB95)

This morning I look around the prayer room and for the first time in almost three months I see the ACTS students. Their feet are pacing the aisles again. Their voices are singing again. Their arms are raised toward the ceiling of this little room again. As my eyes slowly find their faces scattered across the room, my heart is so full. For ten weeks they have been in nations where Christ is scarcely known. All of their praying and praising has been happening in parts of the world where worship to Jesus is tragically rare. They went to try to fill this void and tell anyone who would listen about the true and living God who is worthy of all glory. They have returned, but leave behind ten weeks of love poured forth as a memorial to the beauty of Jesus.

As joyful as the scene is, something is missing. There are many faces that used to fill this room that weren’t part of the glad reunion this morning. These walls once heard their whispers and the floor caught their tears. Yet they are not here, because they stayed. While the ACTS students were boarding planes to begin the long journey back to America just in time for Christmas, they awoke to another day in a strange land that gives no heed to this Christ. I speak of the beautiful souls we said goodbye to last May. They were once students, but then they made a decision and became ambassadors. Jesus said “go”, and they said “yes”. That word “yes” changed everything, and they went from being participants in a program to being laborers in a harvest.

Right now they are about 9 months into a two year commitment to serve Jesus among the unreached. Things are still really hard for most of them. Missionary life feels more like a grueling monotony than an epic journey. It will get easier, but they can’t feel that right now. The food is still foreign. Language learning is unspeakably arduous. Cultural norms are not normal at all. Tangible fruit from their labor is almost non-existent. Every day they do the miraculous and offer hours of worship to the Lamb of God in cities where He is blasphemed, but there are no churches planted yet. There is nothing outward to point to, and there are no grand stories to include in the newsletter to the supporters at home. Part of them would rather be here. Part of them wishes that they were at the end of their ten weeks again and could leave.

It would have been easier if they had left…but they stayed. It would have been more comfortable if they had never gone in the first place…but they left anyway.  Jesus must be interested in more than convenience and the path of least resistance. Yes, He is. Jesus wants friends who are not ashamed to bear a cross, or afraid to count the cost. They decided to become the answer to His desire, so they stayed. And their remaining is a fragrance ascending.

Well done, friends. May the incense ever arise. He is worth the waste, and He sees. With a heart full of love and with eyes filled with fire Jesus looks upon you today and says, “they stayed”.

The first week of advent was focused on the theme of hope. The second week focuses on preparation. How often do we think about the resurrection of our body? How concrete is the biblical description of the kingdom to come in our hearts and minds? If the answers to those questions are “hardly ever” and “not very”, as it often is for me, then there is little possibility of that hope figuring prominently in our lives. Without it we lack the proper vantage point for interpreting both the blessings and trials of today. Nor will we have the capacity to live in sober watchfulness. A vague concept of the future will always be eclipsed by the pressing demands of circumstance in the present. Only a real, concrete hope will provide the impetus for preparation in the midst of the mundane.

There is a title of Jesus that points to this hope and relates powerfully to the focus of advent. Just before the closing words of scripture Jesus says “…I am the bright morning star.” (Rev. 22:16). What does this mean? The idea of Jesus as a star might lead us to remember the prophecy of Balaam in Numbers 24:17 where he says “a star shall come forth from Jacob.” Jewish tradition looked upon this passage as a promise of the messianic warrior king who would arise in the times of the end, and we are right to do so as well.

Yet more meaning emerges when we realize what the morning star actually is. It is the bright luminary that becomes visible in the eastern sky just before sunrise. The morning star is the herald that assures the final watchman of the night that dawn is nigh. What does Jesus mean when He describes Himself in this way, or reveals Himself to someone in this way? (Rev. 2:28) I’m sure that I don’t see the fullness of the answer to that question, but I think the primary meaning is clear.

When Jesus arises from His throne in the heavenly sanctuary and descends to the earth once more it will be like lightning from one end of the sky to the other (Mic. 1:2, Luke 17:24). His appearing will be in flaming fire and brilliant, shining radiance (2 Thess. 1:7). This light piercing the deep darkness at the end of this evil age will be like the morning star which signals that the dawning of a new age of everlasting righteousness is near. Though Jesus must first wage war against His enemies and trample down all resistance from the nations, the glorious kingdom prepared for the righteous will now be established at last.

There is only one other place in the New Testament where the language of “morning star” is used. The perspective at hand offers clarity on what might otherwise seem like a perplexing passage.

“For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased”— and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. 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…” (2 Peter 1:16–19)

Peter has just finished admonishing his readers to exercise all diligence in their faith so that they may be assured of their entrance into His everlasting kingdom (2 Pet. 1:5-11) He was an eyewitness of bright splendor of Jesus unveiled atop the Mount of Transfiguration and implored his readers to remember this as a pledge of the certainty of the prophetic word. What prophetic word? In context it is clearly that Jesus is indeed the Son of God to whom the nations will be given as an inheritance (i.e. His kingdom, cf. Psalm 2). It is not just one promise, but the promise of the “restoration of all things” declared by all the prophets since the beginning (cf. Acts 3:21). This sure hope is to be like a lamp illumining the path of our sojourn through this dark age as we await the rising of the morning star which will signal the dawning of the Day of the LORD.

There is no punctuation in Greek, and most translations place the phrase “in your hearts” within the same sentence as the rising of the morning star. This is unfortunate because it really obscures the meaning of the passage. Peter is looking toward something more dramatic than the Mount of Transfiguration which will happen in the heavens, not something hidden in the heart of the believer. The latter belongs as an emphatic beginning to the the next sentence. It would read, “In your hearts, know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.”

If we think of advent primarily in terms of the first coming of Jesus, it might seem that we have strayed too far down this trail of thought to find any point of convergence. Not so. There is an utterance in song of Zarachias that draws us toward the same truth. With longing hearts we stand in the darkness and fix our eyes toward the east for some sign that night will soon relent.

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; For you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways; to give to His people the knowledge of salvation By the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, To shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, To guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:76–79, NASB95)

The Sunrise from on high. Zacharias declares by the Spirit that the One who his newborn son would prepare for would one day be like the dawn breaking over Israel. There is no explicit reference to the morning star here, but the word translated “Sunrise” actually doesn’t have the word “sun” in it at all. It comes from a Greek verb “to rise” and refers to the region in the East where the light first springs up. This is why the NKJV chooses the more poetic “Dayspring”. The continuity of meaning is stunning.

The One born in the manger will one day return. His name is the Dawn, and He will rise like the morning star and put an end to this long, weary night. Maranatha!

While there are legitimate exegetical questions involved, the real question is theological. What is God really like?  Can we can accept a Jesus who is going to personally execute the leaders of the earth and give their flesh as a feast for the birds of the air (Rev. 19:11-21). He looks upon the sons of men with His eyes of fire and asks, “who do you say that I am?” Will we grapple with a glorious and terrible Creator who has every right to execute fierce retribution for sin? Or will we tame and domesticate the truth in order make Him more palatable to our understanding and more unconditionally accepting of humanity?

As you study the scriptures, engage your mind with rigor. This is a righteous and wise thing. Yet do not allow intellectual abstractions like “hermeneutics” and “literary genre” to obscure the plain intent of the text. If God had clearly detailed ahead of time the events of the exodus and Mt. Sinai, nearly every biblical scholar today would have called it “apocalyptic literature”. The language of destruction, death, and deliverance would be interpreted as a literary device. The sound of the trumpet, the thunder of God’s voice, and the fire of His descent to the top of the mountain would all be considered symbolic of “spiritual” realities the prophet was trying to communicate through understood categories of hyperbole. The problem is that is it all actually happened, as narrated in a genre academia terms “historical narrative”. There is no question of hermeneutic at Mt. Sinai, only one of unbelief or faith. Is Scripture myth or fact? Is God really like that or not? Faith is above all else a matter of the heart, and when it comes to eschatology we must not miss the heart of the matter.

Two very remarkable things happened to the landscape of Christianity in the West during the last two decades.  It experienced a tremendous boom of growth, and at the same time became quite homogeneous in outward appearance. Relative to what characterized the 20th century, the widespread commonality reached in the three primary features of form was astonishing. The three qualities I refer to are communication, style of worship, and corporate activity. Multitudes of churches and ministries arrived at a point where they were saying very similar things through similar mediums, expressing devotion in very similar ways, and demonstrating concern for very similar issues.

A few years ago someone could have walked into a Baptist church on the East Coast and non-denominational, store-front church on the West coast and likely heard a sermon of similar length about similar topics, sung some of the very same worship songs played in the same basic style, and then discovered on their strikingly similar websites that they could sign up to follow the churches on twitter for updates about what they are doing to stop abortion in their city. There were and are scores of exceptions, but the scenario just described seemed to be the majority.

This strange conformity of form posed a challenge. When everything looked the same, and felt the same, there was the temptation to believe that it was the same. Of course all the growth was never the same, and now that is beginning to show. All”worship” is not the same, regardless of what the music sounds like. The swelling interest in social justice is not all equal and is actually being pursued out of very different motivations. An uplifting feeling alone can’t measure preaching – it must actually be founded upon sound doctrine rather than the imaginations of men.

Enough time has elapsed to allow for a small margin of separation to be observed in these areas and many others. Today the divergence remains minimal, but enough to see that two very distinct currents are flowing. The line that separates these opposite paths, however faint it may be right now, is slowly becoming discernible as certain moral and doctrinal issues have started to exert a polarizing effect upon the Christian world.

What is this great divide of our generation? What is the most fundamental question that lies at the heart of the subjects that are beginning to create to a fissure in the foundation of the Western Church? I will offer an attempt at an answer in the follow up post tomorrow.

This post is part of the series titled Jesus at the Crossroads.  If you would like to support this website and Stephen’s ministry, simply give via the Paypal link on the right or click here for more information on specific needs and different ways to partner with Stephen financially.

The endless plains of the Midwest eventually give way to a breathtaking range of mountains that rise almost miraculously out of the flat expanse. Within this chain of towering peaks blanketed with snow and sweeping slopes adorned with wildflowers, there winds a remarkable line. It runs along the uppermost heights, cutting the earth in two, all while remaining hidden from the eyes of men. Yet anyone fortunate enough to explore the high country has surely crossed its path and will not soon forget the moments when they did.

It is called the Great Divide, and it severs the watershed of the entire continent. All the water on one side eventually flows to the Pacific. Everything on the other side ultimately empties into the Atlantic. This means that snow which literally falls only a few feet apart will end up separated by thousands of miles. There is something instructive – even prophetic – which God seems to have placed in this feature of His handiwork. Those lofty heights hold within them a message of great relevance to our day. Will there be a comparable line of demarcation that cuts through the landscape of Christianity in this generation? Are ideas, movements, and lives that appear so similar right now actually on a course toward opposite destinations? Check out part 2 tomorrow for more.

This post is part of the series titled Jesus at the Crossroads.  If you would like to support this website and Stephen’s ministry, simply give via the Paypal link on the right or click here for more information on specific needs and different ways to partner with Stephen financially.

In our earliest and most formative years within this culture, a very potent message was communicated to us. It has continued to to be instilled in our souls from virtually every point of contact we have with society. Unless something quite drastic occurs, this message actually becomes the axiom for our entire existence: Self-fulfillment is the pinnacle of existence, and there fore self-gratification is the apex of freedom. If we pursue a path where we can be unencumbered relationally, financially, and circumstantially, then we can do as we wish and our contentment will know no bounds. Decisions are made based on this goal, and life becomes focused on removing any resistance to our gratification so that we might eventually find fulfillment. If we can look the way we want, eat what we want, do what we want, feel the way we want, have the spouse we want, with the kids we want, and buy what we want then we would finally want for nothing.

The tragic irony is that what is elevated as the height of freedom by our culture is in fact the darkest of dungeons, and the supposed path to self-fulfillment leads to utter destruction. When one lives to gratify themselves, the contours of reality collapse and become synonymous with the dreadful smallness of their frail existence. The limitations of sensory and emotional experience become the cold, stone walls that imprison them. They cannot enjoy anything in the world around us unless it somehow affirms them or brings them pleasure. By choosing to make themselves the center of the universe, they walk into the cell of their own fractured soul and throw away the key.

True freedom and fulfillment are found not just in living for others, but for Another. All things – including you and me – are by Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus (Col 1:15-18). He died for us so that we could be free to no longer live for ourselves but  to live for Him (2 Cor 5:16). The grave threat posed by the consuming quest for self-fulfillment driving modern culture in the West is that we will subtly adopt of false version of Christianity that caters to its demands. Instead of confronting and overthrowing the pursuit of self-fulfillment through self-gratification, within this distorted schema Jesus would simply become the means to it. Christ would be portrayed as the one who secures our ability to gratify ourselves by removing financial, relational, and circumstantial barriers, while at the same time offering the height of fulfillment through transcendent affirmation and pleasure.

We must all seek to discern the extent to which our own view of biblical truth has been skewed by the powerful ideological currents within our culture. No one can do that for us. We should do it with sobriety, knowing that though it may be framed within Christian language, the end result of subverting God’s design and putting ourselves at the center of the universe is the same as its secular counterpart. It holds out a euphoric promise of liberty that only leads to slavery. It places us in a desolate misery of solitary confinement – the confinement of self-absorption.

How do we love Jesus in the waiting? Beyond the importance of asking for His healing power, how can we engage our heart with Jesus in the midst of the pain and discomfort when the answer doesn’t come immediately? How can we love Jesus and glorify Him when while the bone is still healing in the cast, or before our fever breaks, when the food still won’t stay down, or while everything inside our nose won’t stay up? A directly biblical way of asking these questions might be, “How can our inner man be strengthened and renewed in fellowship with Jesus while our outward man is decaying?  (Eph 3:16, 2 Cor. 4:16)

Every experience of sickness or frailty can produce three main “reaches” of the heart (there are probably a number of other good ones). First,we can realize that health is a gift and not a right. Having a healthy body that works” normally” actually isn’t a norm that we are entitled to. It is, instead, a remarkable gift given to us by a Faithful Creator who upholds us every single day (Dan. 5:23, Is. 42:5, 1 Pet. 4:19, Heb. 1:3). This realization causes thanksgiving and praise instead of confusion and offense when our bodies are stricken with illness. We can genuinely find gratitude for every moment that we don’t feel as miserable as we do in the midst of sickness.

Secondly, when sickness comes to our house, we can remember that the day will come when we will all go to  the house of mourning. Death is the end of all men, and those who are wise among the living take it to heart (Eccl. 7:2). This absolute certainty is founded upon the divine decree that men will return to the dust from which they came (Gen. 3:19, Ps. 90:3). There will be surely be an hour when we will contract a sickness that we will not recover from, an injury that will not heal, or an accident that will we will not survive. No one dies of “natural causes”. This is a cultural way of referring to someone who dies around the age when most people die. To Adam, who lived to be 930-years-old (Gen. 5:5), there would be nothing “natural” at all about a man dying at 90. All men perish because sickness or diseases eventually overtakes them, or because something happens to them that is too much for their body to compensate for.

This is unstoppable and unavoidable, and according to Scripture it is simply disastrous to live as though this fate does not await us all. Organic, gluten-free, non-GMO, kefir, super foods, detoxing, and exercising are all great, but they can only delay and never evade. No one can escape God’s word to Adam and all after him: “Return, O children of men!”. It will hunt each one of us down and reduce our strength to nothing. Thus, while sickness and suffering are not our friends, they can be our tutors. While we remain in their grasp, we can be schooled by their witness and gain a heart of wisdom so that we might number our days aright (Ps. 90:12). Infirmity can teach us the difficult lesson that at our very best, we are but a vapor (Ps 39:5, Jas. 4:14). All flesh is grass, like a beautiful flower that appears for moment only to wither and be blown into forgetfulness (Ps. 103:15-16, Is. 40:6).

Finally, we can – and must – be drawn into hope. Jesus did not escape death, He defeated it. For those who are in Christ, just as surely as we will return to the dust, we will not stay there. It has been appointed to all men to die once, but we do not have to die twice (Heb 9:27, Rev 20:14-15). If we are conquered by the worth of Jesus and united to Him by faith, our bodies will be raised up in glory on the last Day – His Day. Sickness can help to subvert the misplacement of our hope on unreliable things and draw us into the centrality of the resurrection of our body in the New Testament hope. Paul was saved in this hope (Rom 8:23), the Holy Spirit is a down payment that guarantees this hope (Eph 1:13-14, 2 Cor 5:5), this hope is the anchor or of souls (Heb. 6:19), and we are to possess a living hope set entirely on the glorious Day when Jesus is revealed and our lowly bodies conformed to His glorious body (1 Pet 1:3, 1 Pet 1:13, Phil 3:20-21).

 “And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”” (Rev. 21:3–5)    

This morning I am very thankful that my son seems to be well once more. Yet I know that he will be sick again, and so will I. I pray that when that day comes my inner man would be renewed in the hope of another Day – a Day when all things will be made new and the house of mourning will be no more.

The implications far transcend the domain of “apologetics”. The deeper issue related to this or any other truth about Jesus is that when it remains a general affirmation with no depth, a real knowing of Him hasn’t taken place. A doctrinal label may have been accepted, but the riches of the glory of a Person were never found, treasured, and believed. If this condition persists uncorrected, a host of problems ensue that need not be enumerated here.

Yet a good way to gauge our need (and we are all in great need), is to choose some facet of the Person or work of Jesus and simply ask “how long could I talk about this?” If we were asked to describe the significance of Jesus as the great high priest (or fill in the blank with your own example), how long would it be before we ran out of things to say? The answer is a good indication of whether we truly know that facet of Jesus or have simply become well-versed in Christian vernacular about Him. As I outlined earlier in this series, by saying this I am not reducing knowing Jesus to facts (even biblical facts). It is in prayer that truth and experience collide to forge authentic relational knowledge of Christ. Yet this process begins with availing ourselves to revelation and gathering up every crumb of knowledge found in Scripture to form a cohesive understanding of who He is.

The remedy for our lack lies before us all. We need only to close distractions and open the Bible and get very specific about what it tells us about Jesus. Scripture contains many marvelous words about us. We should delight in knowing all of these. However, if this remains our preoccupation when reading the Bible we will not get very far in the journey of knowing Jesus. It is essential that we come first and foremost seeking Him and allow the personal bearing of the truth to become subordinate to this chief aim. In doing so, it will no longer be enough to pass over references to Jesus without the pivotal question emerging from within: “what does this actually mean?” This simple question has the potential to transform your understanding of Jesus. It is the door the leads from the lobby of platitudes into the deep chambers of real knowledge.

What does it mean that Jesus is called the Servant so frequently in the early sermons in Acts? Why do the New Testament authors quote Psalm 118 in reference to Jesus so often? The gospels are filled with references to the Son of God – do the epistles use the phrase in the same way? Psalm 110 is quoted or alluded to in the New Testament more than any other passage from the Old Testament – what is the context and meaning of all those references? What does it mean that Jesus preached “the gospel of the kingdom” over two years before His death and resurrection (Mt 4:23)? Why does Jesus call Himself “the first and the last” when He appears to John in the book of Revelation (Rev 1:17)?

Asking simple questions like these when we come across references to Jesus propel us into so many important practices. We are drawn into a conversation with Jesus about who He is (i.e. prayer). We are forced to look closely at the context in order to understand what is being said. First, we have to see how the specific book of the Bible informs it, then the rest of the New Testament, and finally (but essentially) see what background of meaning the Old Testament offers. Journal it, meditate upon it, and sing it at every step along the way.

The important thing is to just to actually begin the journey of beholding Jesus in Scripture with loving, adoring specificity. There will be bouts of confusion to wade through and seasons of boredom to press through, but unsearchable treasure awaits the persevering soul. “…I count all things loss compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them rubbish so that I may gain Christ…” (Phil 3:8, emphasis added). Amen.

These are both very true and do describe the heart of what I am trying to focus on here. Yet I chose the adjective specifically in order to draw attention to the details. Every detail concerning Jesus contained in Scripture is exceedingly precious, and our greatest joy must be to tirelessly mine the pages to uncover all we can about Him. One does not need academic achievements or intellectual prowess to access the riches of His glory. Only time, hunger, and love are required. In order to worship Jesus rightly and love Him supremely – in order to be a Christian – it is necessary to press beyond a collection of general statements about Christ and actually plunge into the minutia of what the Bible says about Him.

General affirmations about Jesus are valuable, but insufficient if they are not the product of thousands of pieces of truth that have been assembled into a summary. In other words, when it comes to Jesus, the only kind of good generality is one that represents a great deal of specificity. If general statements move from being a threshold to a destination, they are unhelpful at best. Consider, for example, the statement “Jesus is divine”. For every Christian heart this should be a joyful proclamation that stands as the culmination of scouring hundreds of passages from the Old and New Testament. The confession should be just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. What if, instead, this confession doesn’t have anything beneath the surface? What if it is a concept that floats about in one’s mind with no mountain of knowledge beneath it? I will explore the answer to this question and elaborate on the importance of having a specific knowledge of Jesus in the next post on this theme.

This post is part of the series titled Jesus at the Crossroads.  If you would like to support this website and Stephen’s ministry, simply give via the Paypal link on the right or click here for more information on specific needs and different ways to partner with Stephen financially.

In our talk of Jesus, in our prayers to Jesus, in our study about Jesus we must exert much effort to keep Him before the eyes of our heart. For a number of years now I have had the privilege of teaching on themes related to the identity and the life of Christ. Yet quite frequently I experience a stinging moment of awakening when I will suddenly realize that a day or a week has passed and I have treating Jesus more like a concept than a Person.

The most normal thing to do when we come into contact with a person is to talk to them. The same is true with Christ, and in His case we simply call this prayer. Having our study of Jesus saturated in prayer ever stands as the remedy for countering the tendency for Him to degenerate into a concept in our subjective experience. This is so much the case that the post could have been titled Beholding Jesus Prayerfully. The two ideas are so tightly bound together that they are utterly inseparable. We see Him as a Person in Scripture and this causes us to pray (i.e. talk) to Him, and it is in praying that the sense of His identity is fostered.

This post is part of the series titled Jesus at the Crossroads.  If you would like to support this website and Stephen’s ministry, simply give via the paypal link on the right or click here for more information on specific needs and different ways to partner with Stephen financially.

Yet what happens if I steer those drifting thoughts to another Man who was once in His thirties? How does that shape my expectations? The result is somewhat jarring. Even a few moments of real reflection lead me to the conclusion that I often ask the wrong questions about my days on this earth.

When taken with the general socio-historical information about the time in which He chose to be born, the way the Bible describes Jesus’ life leaves no doubt that I eat more food on any given day than Jesus did. This makes me uncomfortable. My possessions exceed His so dramatically that there can be no comparison between the two. Between what I own in a modest, quasi-suburban existence in 21st century America and what Jesus owned in His 1st century Jewish existence lies a chasm so wide that it simply overwhelms me. In the last twelve months I have traveled far more than Jesus ever did prior to His ascension into the heights of the heavens. Apart from His journey to Egypt as an infant, there is no reason to believe Jesus ever left the immediate vicinity of Israel before His death. During this very local life, He was the object of many more insults and cruel words than I ever been. Harsh, scathing mistreatment fell upon Him even long before the hour of His Passion had come. I have known nothing of this, and unlike Him I am more than deserving of it. Mistreatment is, indeed, somewhat of a misnomer when it comes to the fallen sons of Adam.

SUFFERING

The mention of His suffering leads to the most piercing level of comparison. John the Baptist, the slightly elder relative of Jesus, died in his early thirties. Jesus followed shortly after. As I celebrate my thirty-fifth birthday I have already outlived the greatest man born of a woman and the only Man conceived by the Holy Spirit through the mystery of the incarnation. Yahweh in the flesh died a young man…younger than me.

For most of church history the apex of sanctification as defined by Scripture remained unquestioned. We are to be like Jesus. His example is what we are called to imitate and His character is what we are conformed to by the working of grace within us. Only in an era when humanism has flourished so wildly that it grew into outright narcissism could this actually come under assault from those who claim to follow Him. And yet here we are. It is astonishingly common for the cross of Christ to be presented as a means of alleviating any form of human adversity rather than something that we are to embrace and choose for the sake of His name (Luke 9:22-24, 1 Cor 15:31). Instead of being called to imitate Jesus, millions are being told from pulpits that they are to free to sit idly by and simply reap the many benefits of Jesus’ unthinkable poverty. God did not become a man and die in His thirty-third year so those who were called by His name could live indulgent, opulent lives devoid of any sacrifice until they die at ninety. The lives of all of the prominent figures in the New Testament and everything they said militate against this.

Is a servant greater than His master? This is the question that echoes through my soul as I think about what to expect in the decades to come (cf. Jn 13:16). How could a longer life-expectancy, greater comfort, and kinder treatment than Jesus possibly be something that I view as normal? How could I actually expect that to such a degree that I would be surprised if it didn’t turn out to be true? I am called to walk as Jesus walked and relate to the world in same manner He did (John 17:18, 1 John 2:6). I am to put on Christ and I am to have Him formed in me (Rom 13:14, Gal 4:9). I am to follow the example of His suffering (1 Pet 2:21). Not only did Jesus command discipleship to be based on the imitation of His suffering, He guaranteed that it would happen to those who belonged to Him:

“If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. “But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me.” (Jn 15:19–21)

Paul said that all who desired to live a godly life in Christ Jesus would suffer persecution, and that we would be fellow heirs of the glory of Christ only if we partook of the fellowship of His suffering (2 Tim 3:12, Rom 8:16-17, Phil 3: 10-11). If we were to hear of a young man in his early thirties dying a horrendous death on foreign soil because He preached the Lord Jesus Christ, immediately we think of words like “senseless” and “extreme”. We  would wonder what incompetent missions agency would possibly send someone in the prime of their life into such blatant risk. We never think “normal“. We never think “Christian”.

When loss happens, when affliction comes, we wonder what went wrong. The great challenge is that when we stare at Jesus and the apostles the question is almost entirely reversed! It is when no one is persecuting us or mistreating us, it is when comfort and ease have become our constant companions, that we should start to ask “what am I doing wrong?” Prosperity and popularity are what should strike our souls with a deep disquiet because those things were so utterly foreign to our God and Savior when His feet trod the earth. Scripture doesn’t ask us to seek persecution. Paul was lowered in a basket from the walls of Damascus to avoid it. The Bible calls us to seek to be like Jesus, which will (inevitably) result in persecution if truly carried through. It is in this relationship where the problems come. The widespread lack of persecution in the West should not cause us to extol the virtues of democracy, but rather to examine our lives to see if the life of Jesus truly finds expression (Gal 2:19-20).

I don’t what the next decade might hold. Jesus didn’t have a family, and I do. God loves families, and families need houses. Jesus didn’t live in America, and I do. I know the specifics will be different. We are called to be transformed into the likeness of a real Person, not just plug our lives into a formula. Yet I’m pleading with God to help me glorify His Son and love Him well – to love Him in truth. I’m crying out for Jesus to help me be a Christian.

The religious history of America alone is an astonishing case study of how the conception of Jesus held by the church has undergone drastic changes based on cultural and political trends. The thoughts about Jesus which we entertain, the words we write or preach about Him, and the songs we sing to Him must all be fastened closely to Scripture or they will always drift into a form of our own making. Our challenge is like that of children splashing in the breakers at the sea. Unaware of the current pushing them down the coast, they turn from their play to suddenly find the lifeguard tower is two hundred yards away.

No one realizes they have a wrong view of Jesus. The problem is precisely that no one thinks they have a problem. That includes me, and that includes you. Messages, experiences, feelings, and ideas have all brought us to a point of being convinced that Jesus is a certain way. Yet this ‘convincing’ didn’t happen over the pages of Scripture, and this fabricated vision of what Jesus is like remains unquestioned in our hearts and minds until something challenges it.  It is only by constantly turning to the Bible that we can experience this epiphany where we are able to see that a current has indeed caused us to drift. We are challenged, corrected, and ultimately aligned with truth. Our worship and our discipleship are tethered once more to reality and therefore grounded in authenticity.

Over the years I have been asked the same question many, many times. “How can I go deep in Christology – is there a book I can get?”  I really wish there were more books on Christology that I could recommend with enthusiasm. Perhaps it is actually better that they I don’t know of them. The answer is “no”. There is no “book”. I am profoundly grateful for resources that help shed light on the truth about Jesus. I am personally indebted to many. However, our eyes must first fasten themselves upon the sacred words of the inspired text and only then move outward to glean from resources.

Our propensity is to do the opposite, as the question above betrays. We want the process of growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Pet 3:18) to last only as long as the line at the cash register on the way out of the bookstore. For the less patient and more technologically savvy, the delay can be reduced to the seconds it takes to download an eBook onto our tablet. This is fantasy of modernity, and Jesus will never be acquired in this way. The result, inevitably, is that an incomplete or erroneous picture of Jesus is then projected upon our partial knowledge of what the Bible says about Him. Verses taken out of context become the centerpiece for another spin on what Jesus was really all about on the earth and what He most cares about now. We dress the concept of Jesus up in whatever way is convenient, and that name is used as the tagline for another exploit of Christian consumerism or the mascot for the latest cause.

No one is immune from this, but so much of it could be avoided by the simplicity of immersion in Scripture. The different versions of ‘Jesus’ in our day do not exist because the Bible fails to offer a clear, consistent, and cohesive presentation of His identity. It is true that there are different interpretations of certain facets of His life, person, and work. Yet for those who believe in the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture, this spectrum of divergence is narrow. The cause of the vast majority of the dissonance related to Jesus is a just a failure to carefully and lovingly consult the Bible. All else is in vain if this is not our starting point. And from this point of inception until we see His face, Scripture must hem us in on the right and the left during every step of the journey of beholding Jesus by faith.

This post is part of the series titled Jesus at the Crossroads.  If you would like to support this website and Stephen’s ministry, simply give via the paypal link on the right or click here for more information on specific needs and different ways to partner with Stephen financially.

That last phrase is daunting. It brings us back to the questions posed at the start. How do you even begin to consider the entirety of the biblical revelation of Jesus? The discipline of Christology is typically divided into the general categories of person and work. These designations would answer the questions of who is Jesus? and what did He accomplish? Within each of these two major divisions there are many possible subcategories. The traditional breakdown of the study of the person of Christ would be His divinity and His humanity, and then how they relate in His identity through the incarnation. A classic way of approaching the work of Christ within the Protestant tradition is through the ancient mediatorial roles of prophet, priest, and king.

This approach has value, but it also has some limitations. As I result, I will attempt to chart a different course throughout these series of blogs. It must be stressed that there is no perfect way. Methodology always has shortcomings. The most important thing is just that Jesus is beheld and adored. We are all desperately in need of the help of the Holy Spirit as we grope for light in this present evil age. In the next post I will give a brief preview of the path I will aim to take and a few general principles about searching out the “true knowledge of our Lord  Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:8) that we all desire to grow in.

“Christianity is a relation to a person.  It is not essentially an idea or institution.  It has defined itself in canon and tradition as a relation to Christ.  He is the one to whom faith relates and in whom faith trusts.  Gustavo Gutierrez writes: ‘Being a Christian does not mean, first and foremost, believing a message.  It means believing in a person.’  Christian teaching is therefore personally grounded.  It lives in response to a personal life yet alive.  Christian teaching only serves to show the way that leads to faith in this person.” (Thomas Oden*)

Although many words, deeds, and common interests will characterize this relating, these things are not the defining features of Christianity. We may legitimately refer to Christian beliefs, Christian behavior, and Christian fellowship but to be a Christian is to be in a living, vital relationship with Jesus. Evangelicalism popularized the question, “do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” This is positive for how it underscores the centrality of the truth in view, yet perilous because it lends itself to becoming trite. Everything about authentic Christianity is profoundly relational, but it is not just another “relationship” like we are accustomed to.

Surely, and beautifully, we are beckoned to relate to Jesus in love and friendship.  Yet this relating also includes trembling before our Judge, bowing before our Creator, obeying our King, praising our Savior, and worshiping our God. He is a Person and not a concept, so the entire Christian life is one of relationship. Yet this Person is unlike any other, and therefore the relationship is altogether unique as well.

When it is recognized that all relationship, including this one, finds both its foundation and its growth in knowledge, the necessity of Christology becomes clear. Christology is not a subject among other doctrines of the Christian faith. It is everything. Christianity is a relationship to a Person, relationship is sustained through the fostering of adoring knowledge, and thus Christology is virtually synonymous with Christianity. The depth and accuracy of our knowledge will consequently determine whether we relate to Jesus rightly.

No one is to be exempt from this consuming obsession with knowing Him. If the church were students, we would all have one major and then many different minors. Minors are wonderful things. Problems arise only when minors begins to usurp the attention due our Major, who is our Master and our Maker.

(*quote taken from Thomas Oden, Systematic Theology Volume II: The Word of Life (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishing Inc, 2006), p 2-3.)

This picture is one I very much relate to. I am no stranger to distraction and competing interests. This challenge is heightened by the hour in which we live. My conviction that people alive on the earth today will see the bodily return of Jesus to the earth with their eyes has only deepened since it first took root over ten years ago. Presently there are a number of really positive trends in the body of Christ in the West, as well as some dire threats that need to be addressed and overcome. I believe the church is drawing near to a decisive crossroads that has no parallel in the last century. The decisions made in the days to come by pastors, missionaries, theologians, and congregations will set  their course for decades to come and have profound ramifications for the great turmoil and great glory that lies on the horizon.

Where is hope to be found? What is the path of wisdom? The only answer I can muster is a very simple one. Jesus deeply loves His people and He does have a word for His body at this crucial juncture. It is Himself. Jesus is the answer and He is the Word. And so as I stand before the dizzying spectacle of issues, arguments, questions, interests, trends, and debates that face the church and fill social media I know the path I must choose. I appreciate those who enter into that fray and speak the truth with humility and genuine concern for the glory of Jesus and the vitality of His people. This is a commendable labor, but I know it is not mine to embrace.

I am persuaded that there is simply nothing more important than knowing everything I possibly can about this glorious Person named Jesus. From that “simplicity of devotion” (cf. 2 Cor 11:3) all other passions must overflow, and all other subjects can be viewed with right perspective. My two great passions in ministry – incessant ministry to the Lord and missions among unreached people groups – are both utterly hollow if sundered from a living, burning vision of the majesty of Jesus. Thus, I feel constrained to use my weak words to point directly to the substance of  Him in whatever way I can.

Lord willing, over the next months (and perhaps years) I will be striving toward this end with short posts specifically on the person and work of Jesus several times a week. My hope is that Jesus will be pleased to use this to enlighten the eyes of my own heart and guide a few others toward the brightness of His splendor. May He have preeminence in all things.

There is a sense in which all of the revelation found in the Prophets is God speaking through the dark sayings of riddles and parables. On one level the meaning is quite plain, but it is always partial. Through the prophets God is not speaking to us face to face as we might wish. We are given glimpses and whispers. Why?  “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” (Proverbs 25:2, NASB95)  God intentionally veils knowledge in order to expose the human heart.

Prophetic utterance was always intended to be a sword that divided between those who would humble themselves and seek the LORD, and those who would continue in their own paths and do what was wise in their own eyes. It is only in the process of seeking Him that understanding of the meaning truly comes. Correct interpretation always required discernment, even in the historical context when the words were first spoken.

This is why it is simply disastrous for the words of the prophets to relegated only to the interpretive prerogatives of the  academic guild. The reason why no one believed what Jeremiah said about the events in his generation was not a wrong “hermeneutic”. Inventing such terms may be helpful for communication but it does not change the reason why people won’t believe what Jeremiah said about days still to come either.  I am a thankful recipient for the benefits of thorough scholarship and an outspoken advocate of rigorous study. Yet in recognizing that rays of light do at times stream into the halls of the university, we must never fall into the error of thinking they originate there.

The light of revelation comes from on high, and there is no soundness in the wisdom of man. Oracles and utterances of men of old moved by the Spirit were always intended to be a stumbling block. They were meant to be problematic. And it is first and foremost in prayer that those problems may be resolved and riddles unraveled. The common sentiment that clarity concerning what the prophets describe about the latter days (i.e. eschatology) is for the erudite is deeply ironic. In biblical logic it is nearly the opposite that is actually the case.

In this post I will try to give a summary of what happened between these two moments.  We are now two days into Holy Week as it is remembered on the  calendar, and with just a few key details you can have the framework needed to meditate on the path that Jesus trod before the infamous entrance on Palm Sunday. John 10:40-41 describes how Jesus departed to Bethany beyond the Jordan after the events at the Feast of Dedication. This was to the east of the Jordan River, north of where it ran into the Dead Sea. This was the most prominent location where John the Baptist had ministered and where Jesus Himself had gone to be baptized (see John 1:28). It seems very likely that Luke 14:25-35 occurred after Jesus had left the city and was traveling toward this region beyond the border of Judea. If this is the case, the startling severity of the charge Jesus gives to the multitudes is quite fitting in context to what had just happened.

Luke 15:1-17:10 summarizes teaching of Jesus all spoken while “staying” in Bethany beyond the Jordan to the many who were coming out to Him. While there He received word from Mary and Martha that Lazarus was sick. John 11:1-53 gives the account of how Jesus ventured back into Judea to raise Lazarus from the dead and the renewed zeal to kill Jesus that came in the wake of such a dramatic miracle so close to Jerusalem. John 11:54 is a crucial bridge connecting this period with the final journey to Jerusalem. Jesus left Judea once more, but this time to the north. Together with only the twelve, He remained in a town called Ephraim until it was time for the final journey to Jerusalem and all that awaited Him there. It is at this point that Luke resumes his narrative, saying in Luke 17:11 that Jesus was passing along the borders of Samaria and Galilee. Going further north to the border of Galilee, Jesus and the disciples joined their families and the larger group of disciples for the customary pilgrimage to Passover. 

At this point the synoptic gospels all converge once again. There are minor variances of what is included and the level of detail offered, but it is easy to follow Jesus’ final journey. The only thing to note relates to Jericho and Bethany. Luke alone offers the account of Zaccheus and the time Jesus spent in Jericho (Luke 19:27). All the synoptic gospels are offering radically truncated versions of the events in view and collapse the journey into a linear progression that leads straight to Jerusalem. Anyone familiar with the geography of the real places being referred to and with the mode of traveling in large bands of people ranging from children to the elderly (see Luke 2:41-44 for example) would have readily understood that many stops were omitted from the description offered in the gospels. Jericho was approximately fifteen miles from Bethany. Jesus would have had to spend the night with Zaccheus in order to have the entire day on Friday to travel so as to arrive before the beginning of the Sabbath at sunset. Thus, this night in Jericho was exactly one week before the Paschal supper and His betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. This brings us to John 12:1-9 and the beautiful story of the feast in Bethany which occurred on the eve of Holy Week.

In each of the posts thus far I have referenced the fact that Jesus was in Jerusalem three times in the final six months before the Cross.  Jerusalem was where Jesus was crucified and its leaders were those who sought to put Him to death. To begin meditating on the Passion of Christ when He rides towards the city with shouts of “Hosanna!” is wonderful. When the larger context and chronology is considered we can also see why it may lead to a very incomplete understanding of the final events that took place. In order to fully appreciate the drama of the third visit, we must fix our eyes on Jesus during the two visits  that had just preceded it.

A great deal of continuity becomes evident when we do this. The story of each feast climaxes with Jesus surrounded by enraged faces and hands ready to hurl stones at Him (see John 8:59, John 10:31). No one could take the life of Jesus (John 10:18). It was His sovereign prerogative to lay it down, and thus these threats were in vain. Outwardly, however, He was coming to the brink of death by coming to Jerusalem on these two occasions. It was overt claims of divinity that precipitated these outbursts of rage in both instances. It is true that Jesus was crucified for His claim to be Messiah. The leadership of the nation coveted the power and wealth their status brought them. For the people to actually believe Jesus was the promised Messiah would mean they would be stripped of their authority and their lives emptied of luxury. Yet it must also be very clear that they were knowingly trying to kill One who had repeatedly claimed to be Yahweh. In fact, Jesus made direct and unambiguous statements of His Divine Identity to the leaders of Israel in each of His five visits to Jerusalem. From the first day of His public ministry to the last, God was confronting the nation through the Incarnation.

The external facts of this portion in Luke are sparse. The question of the disciples that opens the eleventh chapter hints that they were in the desolate regions John the Baptist had frequented several years earlier. Luke 13:22 says that Jesus was on His way back to Jerusalem from the places He had traveled at that point. Only nine verses later, in Luke 13:31, Jesus is warned to depart from His location at the time because of the threat of Herod Antipas. Judea was not part of Herod’s jurisdiction, so Jesus must have still been in Perea. Finally, Luke 14:1 introduces the scene where Jesus has a meal with “one of the rulers of the Pharisees”. This language is very specific and could only refer to one of the Pharisaic members of the Sanhedrin. Such a man would have resided, of course, in Jerusalem. Thus, it is clear Jesus had arrived in the city once more. Yet it is nearly impossible to imagine Jesus having such a meal after the controversy that erupts at the Feast of the Dedication. And indeed, John’s narrative doesn’t seem to leave any room for the possibility. This must have occurred on the eve of Jesus’ public attendance at the feast.

Beyond these four details, little is offered to tether our meditation to  specific places or events. Only a couple of miracles are recorded. It is extended discourses of teaching and frequent conflict with escalating opposition that instead characterized these weeks that spanned between the two visits to Jerusalem. Undoubtedly many dramatic things happened during this time that are not recorded. Yet the absence of these in the inspired text has the effect of further accentuating what simply cannot be escaped in this section. Words. Penetrating, devastating, cutting words pour forth from the lips of Jesus in these chapters. Luke 12:1 says there were so many thousands of people that they risked trampling one another. We need only to join them, pressing as close as we can to the matchless One they all clamored for, and allow ourselves to be overtaken by the intensity and severity of what He said.

Pronunciation of Judgment Upon Galilee – After being vehemently rejected twice at the beginning of His public ministry by the  leadership of the nation in Jerusalem, Jesus had shifted His focus to Galilee. The response of the people there was enthusiastic, but Jesus was not seeking popularity. He was searching for a remnant of Israel who evidenced the  fruits of repentance and real faith in His identity. This He had not found in Galilee either, and thus as departs for Jerusalem He pronounces judgment upon the cities that had squandered the privilege of His presence.

Sending of the Seventy –  With the formal end of His Galilean ministry, Jesus now commissions seventy of the larger circle of disciples which followed Him to be His ambassadors in the regions of Judea and Perea. They were to go before Him into “every city and place where He Himself was about to come”, in order to prepare for what would be His final appeal to the people of Israel before His death (Luke 10:1-2). As I noted in the previous post, Matthew and Mark omit this entire period, and therefore do not record the sending of the seventy. Yet it is clear that Matthew incorporates some of content of the charge Jesus gave to them in the discourse unit paired with his account of the commissioning of the twelve. This likely explains the perplexing passage in Matthew 10:23. Jesus is simply saying that these emissaries would not finish going through the cities of Israel before He came to those locations in the final stage of His public ministry.

Mary of Bethany – Luke does not give many overt geographic details in this section, but it is very clear that Jesus was indeed making progress as He traveled. The most natural explanation for His choice in the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:30-37) is that He was actually in Jericho at the time. Jesus would soon cross the fords of the Jordan and set His feet on the road to Jerusalem to which He referred. The next event takes place in Bethany, which sat on the opposite side of the Mount of Olives just two miles from Jerusalem. It was here that Jesus was welcomed by Mary and Martha, who had likely been told of His coming by one of the pairs of the seventy. It seems probable that the infamous scene that follows took place during one of the initial days of the Feast of Tabernacles. John makes clear that it was not until after the celebration was well under way that Jesus finally entered the temple. Placing this story at the correct point chronologically makes the significance of this family during the final week before the crucifixion all the more remarkable. In less than six months Jesus would be doubled over on the cold earth of the Garden of Gethsemane, just  a short distance from where Mary of Bethany now sat listening to His words.

The starting point for meditating on the crucifixion of Jesus in the narrow sense would be when He arrives in Bethany six days before the Passover (John 12:1). In the broad sense, however, the starting point must be reckoned here in Luke 9:51.  There are several major turning points, or thresholds of great transition, within the narrative of the gospels as a whole. This is the final one and arguably the most dramatic. On the Mount of Transfiguration a couple of months before, Moses and Elijah had spoken with Jesus of His departure (Luke 9:31). The latter does not refer to His death, but rather to His ascension, as verse 51 makes clear. Jesus knew where He came from and He knew where He was going (John 8:14). As Jesus was taking the first steps toward His crucifixion, the certainty of His glorious return to the heavenly temple was before Him (cf. John 6:62, Heb 8:1-2)

The moment now in view occurred approximately six months before the death of Jesus. He had not been to Jerusalem for over a year, having chosen not to attend the Passover that occurred in proximity to the feeding of the five thousand. Yet from here in late September to early April the following Spring He would visit the city three times. Matthew and Mark provide a brief account of the days Jesus spent in Capernuam following the Mount of Transfiguration which preceded this scene, but then fall silent until Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem when He would lay down His life. Luke, on the other hand, devotes an enormous section of his gospel (approx. 9:51- 18:17) to describing what occurred during these precious months. And while three times Luke says that Jesus went to Jerusalem (9:51, 13:22, 17:12), only the gospel of John records what actually happened during the first two visits for the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of Dedication.

It was for the Feast of Tabernacles that Jesus now set out from Capernaum to attend. From this point forward, Jesus would never again minister in Galilee. His focus would be exclusively on the regions of Judea and Perea to the south. Jesus set His face and He set His course, and nothing would ever be the same…

…That is why the saints have always taken up meditation on the sorrows of Jesus Christ:  it was by this means that Saint Francis of Assisi became a seraph.  One day a gentleman found him weeping and crying out with a loud voice.  On being asked why he did so, he answered, “I weep for the sorrows and ignominies of my Lord:  and what makes me weep the most is that we, for whom he suffered so much, live in forgetfulness of Him.”  And on saying this he redoubled his tears, so that this man too began to weep.  Whenever the saint heard the bleating of a lamb, or saw anything else that reawakened the memory of Jesus’ Passion, he immediately fell aweeping.  Another time, when he was sick, someone told him that he should have a book of devotion read to him.   “My book,” he replied, “is Jesus crucified.”  Hence he did nothing but exhort his brethren to think of the Passion of Jesus Christ at all times. St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, p 10-11

Twelve years have passed since this verse first began to disrupt my life. Through all the changing seasons of circumstances, ministry, and family its devastating comprehensiveness has continued to pursue me. The deep, defining hope of our lives as those in Christ is to be fixed entirely upon His return. Entirely. The word leaves no options or alternatives. All thoughts of diversifying our portfolio of hope must be abandoned.  

Taking this verse (and the many verses in the New Testament that echo its truth) seriously has profound implications both theologically and practically. Not only does it necessitate that we actually care desperately about eschatology, it can often challenge deeply embedded assumptions about the form and mission of the Church in this age. We are beckoned to uproot the anchor of our soul from the passing shadow of our days and throw it unreservedly into the glorious, everlasting light of His Day. (cf. Heb 6:19) At times the charge has been raised that such a consolidation of hope somehow undermines the significance of the first coming of Jesus and produces a disparaging view of the present. This is a very strange objection when one considers it for a moment.

The language of “first coming” implies, of course, that this coming was followed by a going. Jesus ascended. He has gone away, but still we remain. The Lord Jesus is our very life – to Him we are joined and in Him we are hidden – and yet He is not here. How are we to live on the earth in the midst of this “present evil age” (Gal 1:14) when our entire identity and all of our affections are bound up in One from whom we are separated? The glorious bond of communion forged by the indwelling Spirit does not heal the bittersweet pain of this question. It only drives the wound deeper and makes the need for an answer more dire.

There are a handful of pictures that the New Testament gives to help shape how we should understand this paradox and dilemma inherent to our existence after regeneration.  All of them are alike in that there is a dynamic relationship between the present and the future, where the former becomes incomprehensible apart from the latter. One of the most prominent is that of marriage. With this is mind, let’s return to the claim that the marvelous blessings and unspeakable import of the first advent of Christ are being overlooked when His people long vehemently for His second advent.

During the time of my own engagement , it would have brought me no comfort if sometime in the weeks leading up the wedding one of my friends had come to me and cried, “Fret not! I have spoken with your beloved! She has warm feelings toward you and looks forward to the day of marriage, but rest assured that she is not at all dishonoring your proposal or the precious gift of your ring through earnest pining or discontentment. She is quite content and would like you to know she very much enjoys her betrothal and is occupying herself with many constructive pursuits. Her hope is both temperate and diverse.”

The theological equivalent of this can be spared from having its faults exposed only if Christianity is removed from the relational context in which it truly subsists. This is one of a multitude of reasons why Jesus must be preeminent in our thought and practice in an overtly personal way. When He is subtly reduced to a noble concept, all sorts of skewed perspectives can be given credence. What the analogy above makes so plain is that the only reason there can be a consuming expectation for a wedding is because there was first an engagement. Furthermore, it is actually in the act of pained yearning and absorbed hoping for the marriage that the proposal and the One who made it is valued. It is precisely in setting our hope completely on His Day (cf. Luke 17:24) that we demonstrate just how precious His first coming is to us.

His breathtaking incarnation, His matchless life, His unthinkable death, His triumphant resurrection and His glorious ascension are the reason we  so deeply love the One we have not seen (1 Pet 1.8), and have our hope fixed entirely on the Day our eyes will meet at last.  No one would ever accuse a maiden consumed with preparations for her wedding of being unbalanced or having a negative view of her engagement. Quite to the contrary, she would be called wise and faithful.  As those betrothed as a chaste virgin to Christ Jesus (2 Cor 11:2), let us press on in singularity of devotion to Him and be found blameless as His appearing.

The nature of the future defines the reality of the present. This is inescapable. The only question is whether our vision of the future is true or false.

If authentic adoration, praise, and thanksgiving arises, then Onething 2012 will be wildly successful. And there is something about all of those people being together in worship that is more magnifying of the glory of Jesus and more pleasing to Him than if we all did it separately in our rooms. This exponential dynamic is a facet of God’s design for humanity, part of why He commanded the entire nation of Israel to convene in Jerusalem three times a year, and why people are so drawn to counterfeit versions of holy convocations.

Whether it is for a music festival or a political protest, humanity demonstrates  a magnetism to multitudes. Week after week there are stadiums filled with upwards of 50,000 screaming people in dozens of cities across the United States just to watch a game of football.  The fact that it is commonplace for so many people to repeatedly expend so much time and money to spectate sport and so exceedingly rare to find Jesus receiving such attention and sacrifice should be far more troubling to us than divorce rates, crime rates, or laws defining marriage. America has a profound morality problem, but that is just a symptom of its much graver idolatry problem.

Assuming from the sparse details offered in the narrative that the shepherds did, in fact, visit Jesus on the very night of His birth, all is silent until the eighth day when the rite of circumcision was performed. Silence is so often our portion in reading the Gospels that it is easy to simply advance our meditation with the inspired words and not take up our abode in the space of seven days that yawns mysteriously before us. It is as though the brilliant flash of glory on Christmas Day is so luminous that we forget that it indeed wane (at least in its outward manifestation). The angels had left to return to the heavens, the shepherds had left to tell of what they had seen, and Mary and Joseph were left a alone with a newborn.

Doubtless all eyes above were fixed upon those three beating hearts in Bethlehem and their lowly estate, yet no hand reach out to assist, no angels were there to minister to the Babe. How did that first night pass? The hymn tells, “no crying He made”, yet this can hardly be true. As Mary sought some measure of rest next to the manger, she was roused again and again by the voice of her little One as He hungered for nourishment no longer received in the womb. And then the sunrise came…

Though Mary and Joseph would later relocate to Bethlehem for a time, it was not yet their home and now they were new parents in an unfamiliar place. Most pressing was the need for more permanent accommodations. What filled their minds as their tired bodies sought a place of refuge where they could rest and care for their boy? The only answer Scripture offers is the notice of Mary pondering ‘these things’ within her heart. The enormity of the events they had experienced, stretching all the way back to the initial visit from Gabriel, surely provided some comfort. Yet likely it did not shield Mary’s muscles from the weariness of labor or prevent fatigue from hanging heavy upon their eyes any more than the magnitude of the identity of Jesus rendered Him immune to the need for sustenance and sleep felt by a newborn. As the three made their way through the narrow alleys of the town, they all felt it fully and completely.

Still there He lay, cradled in His mother’s arms, the Word made flesh and now dwelling among us. Not just in the climactic moment of His birth when the melodies of angels filled the valley below, but in the obscurity of His second day of life outside the womb as His parents roamed through Bethlehem seeking of a place of refuge. God Himself searched for a place of rest in David’s town, and may He find it in our souls in the quietness and normalcy of the days after Christmas.

The mark of a shepherd that cares for the flock according to God’s heart is feeding His people with knowledge and understanding. Apart from the testimony of Scripture, we might be inclined to complete that sentence with inspiration and encouragement.  This is the danger of defining success in leadership from the perspective of pleasing men. As vital as inspiration and encouragement truly are (I certainly want more of both), positive effects upon human sentiment cannot serve as the standard for faithfulness. It is the knowledge of God and  understanding of His ways that a shepherd must desire to impart above all else. Often this will be profoundly encouraging, but it will also be deeply convicting and disruptive.

If clear proclamation of the truth ceases to be the plumb line, then the diet offered to the people will increasingly be defined by human appetite rather than Divine revelation. In Jeremiah’s day the result was shepherds who were making the people worthless by speaking smooth words of peace (cf. Jer. 8:11, 12:6, 23:1, 23:17). None of the voices in the land were willing to declare the calamity that was coming to Jerusalem. In the New Testament Paul warns Timothy not to succumb to the temptation of having his preaching shaped by what people wanted to hear:

“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:1–4, NASB95)  

In Gal. 1:10, Paul said that if he were seeking to please men he would not be a bond-servant of Christ. Jesus condemned the Pharisaic leadership of the nation of Israel of seeking the praise of men rather than the praise of God (cf. Jn. 5:44).  The  state of the shepherds in our day and in our land is too vast and diverse to make anything but the most generalized conclusions. Yet there is no question that ministry in the Western world is often driven by a lust for growth and impact, and we should be very sober about the threat of popularity and promotion. May the  Lord raise up shepherds who will be faithful to feed  this generation with knowledge and understanding for the sake of His name.

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“In the Middle Ages, the life-long devotion of St Bernard of Clarivaux to the Christmas mystery began one Christmas Eve when, as a sleepy little boy, he was given a vision of ‘the infant Word…being born of the Virgin His Mother, fairer in form than all the sons of men’.  One Christmas Day, four centuries later, St John of the Cross, while at ease with his brethren at recreation, took the image of the Holy Infant from the Crib and danced round the room, singing all the while:  ‘My sweet and tender Jesus/If thy dear love can slay/it is today’…Francis [of Assisi] could not even utter the name ‘Bethlehem’ without stammering with emotion, ‘like the bleating of a sheep’.  Three years before his death…he obtained the Pope’s permission for the making of a replica of the Manger, in order to arouse devotion to the Child Jesus and His birth.  ‘He has a crib made ready, hay brought in, and an ox and an ass led to their places.  The friars are summoned, the people arrive, the forest resounds with voices, and the venerable night is rendered solemn and radiant by a multitude of bright lights and by resonant and harmonious hymns of praise.  The man of God stands before the crib, filled with devotion, bathed in tears and overflowing with joy.  Solemn Mass is celebrated over the crib, with Francis, the levite of Christ, chanting the Holy Gospel.  Then he preaches to the people standing about concerning the birth of the Pauper King, whom, when he wished to name Him, he called, out of tender love, the ‘Babe of Bethlehem’.”

Unfortunately through the passing centuries the birth of Christ has figured so prominently in both Christian and secular celebration that what was breathtaking to saints of old has become the familiar and quaint story revisited each winter in church pageants. We must rediscover that which has slain the hearts of men with love and caused them to dance in bygone generations, when wonder at the nativity waxed strong in the hearts of the faithful.

NOTE: Quotes are taken from John Saward, Cradle of Redeeming Love: The Theology of the Christmas Mystery (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), p 30, 35-36

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I can say without any thought or hesitation that over the course of the last decade there has been nothing more impacting and formative for me than prayerfully searching out the knowledge of Jesus in a very specific and intentional way. His life as revealed in the four gospels stands at the very center of this and continues to be my favorite of the courses that I have the privilege to teach. All of the portions of the life of Jesus are so rich and pregnant with meaning, but most are treated with a shocking degree of  brevity considering the character in view. There are, however, two segments which receive a vastly disproportionate amount of attention.  His birth and His death – the bookends of the first advent of Jesus – command a gloriously detailed treatment. Consider, for instance, that the gospel of Luke devotes close to 150 verses to narrating events or giving information about the entrance of Jesus into the world and summarizes an entire year of His public ministry filled with astonishing teaching and breathtaking miracles with just under 250 verses.

Why such an imbalance? The birth of Jesus is the story of when the Maker of all things taking on flesh and plunging forever into the tale of men. It is not merely cute, or touching, it is a storehouse of the riches of the knowledge of God (cf. Col 2:2). Each scene, every detail, is like the infamous magic wardrobe for those would take the time to lovingly ponder it. What is observable opens into a world of revelation and wonder through the mystery of the Incarnation. Christmas is a gift in that it invites us to remember the manger, but if we can press through the familiarity and see that newborn rightly, it will cause us to return and marvel at Him there throughout the entire year. As for me, His birth remains on my short list of things to preach on, regardless of the season.

“If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness…” (1 Timothy 6:3, NASB95)

Paul goes on to describe the vices of such an advocate, but from this three things are clear: 1) there is something rightly called sound doctrine/sound words which Timothy was to advocate 2) this doctrine causes conformity to godliness 3) this doctrine is grounded in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Himself. What words of Jesus does Paul have in mind here? All of them. Peter and the twelve were eyewitnesses of the events in the public ministry of Jesus and it is their authoritative witness that forms the substance of the gospels. Before it was written, however, this tradition was delivered orally to Paul and he faithfully made it known to all the churches which he established.

Throughout 1 & 2 Timothy Paul frequently refers to the importance of maintaining “my doctrine”, “sound teaching”, or similar variants (cf. 2 Tim 1:13). What the passage above demonstrates is what we would expect from one who saw himself as a bondservant of Jesus who sought to do all for His sake. Paul viewed his own teaching merely an extension of the words uttered by the God-man before He ascended on high. For instance, in 1 Tim. 6:17-19 Paul makes several explicit allusions to language from the Sermon on the Mount in his commands to Timothy concerning those with wealth. Just fourteen verses after articulating the foundation of sound doctrine, Paul offers a clear example of just how formative the words of Jesus were in his own instruction.

What conclusions can be drawn from seeing this relationship? Far too many to enumerate here. Yet they can be summarized by noting that any dissonance we might perceive (as 21st century readers) between the teaching of Jesus and the words of Paul must be attributed to a deficiency in our understanding and not an actual disparity. There is no tension whatsoever between Paul’s doctrine of grace and the severe demands Jesus places on those who would seek to follow Him. Proper exegesis of Paul’s epistles leads to this conclusion, but there is also another witness. Whatever understanding we reach from Paul’s letters must find symmetry with Paul’s life.

We look through the windows Scripture offers into the ministry of the apostle and behold frequent fasting, ardent prayer, radiant holiness, tireless labor, intense suffering, and extravagant sacrifice. Perhaps more than any other figure in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit sets Paul forth precisely as a premier picture of  the way love answers the severity of the call Jesus gives those who would seek to be His disciple (Lk. 9:23-26). Paul’s revelation of grace was not the means by which he could evade the narrow (lit. afflicted, crushed) path prescribed by Jesus (Mt. 7:14) but the means by which he could run on it with joy. Paul’s revelation of “freedom” was not the absence of restraints but the power to not be mastered by anything (including lawful things) so that he might be mastered by Jesus alone (1 Cor. 6:11). Paul’s liberty caused him to beat his body and make it his slave for righteousness (1 Cor. 9:27).

It should not be surprising to find echoes of this cruciform anthem of love as he speaks to Titus, another beloved disciple, on how to respond to the grace of God:

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” (Titus 2:11–15, NASB95)

Amen.

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“But who may abide the day of his coming?”
— Malachi 3:2

“His first coming was without external pomp or show of power, and yet in truth there were few who could abide its testing might. Herod and all Jerusalem with him were stirred at the news of the wondrous birth. Those who supposed themselves to be waiting for him, showed the fallacy of their professions by rejecting him when he came. His life on earth was a winnowing fan, which tried the great heap of religious profession, and few enough could abide the process. But what will his second advent be? What sinner can endure to think of it? “He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” When in his humiliation he did but say to the soldiers, “I am he,” they fell backward; what will be the terror of his enemies when he shall more fully reveal himself as the “I am?” His death shook earth and darkened heaven, what shall be the dreadful splendour of that day in which as the living Saviour, he shall summon the quick and dead before him? O that the terrors of the Lord would persuade men to forsake their sins and kiss the Son lest he be angry! Though a lamb, he is yet the lion of the tribe of Judah, rending the prey in pieces; and though he breaks not the bruised reed, yet will he break his enemies with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. None of his foes shall bear up before the tempest of his wrath, or hide themselves from the sweeping hail of his indignation; but his beloved blood washed people look for his appearing with joy, and hope to abide it without fear: to them he sits as a refiner even now, and when he has tried them they shall come forth as gold. Let us search ourselves this morning and make our calling and election sure, so that the coming of the Lord may cause no dark forebodings in our mind. O for grace to cast away all hypocrisy, and to be found of him sincere and without rebuke in the day of his appearing.”

 
Charles H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings, Complete and unabridged; New modern edition. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006).

Upon discovering the  final exam had been failed miserably, what respectable father could have his disappointment absolved simply by hearing that his son had not bothered to look in the syllabus to find out the date of the test? If a laborer was two hours late for the first day of work, what responsible supervisor would have their frustration put to flight  when they were told that the employee hadn’t thought about a means of transportation until the moment it was time to leave for their shift?

These  examples, minor as they may be, are sufficient to shatter the notion that our beliefs about the end only matter at the end. All of us know this to be ludicrous when applied to real life. When the realities of tomorrow do not shape the course of one’s actions today, it is only because of ignorance or negligence.  In the case of the former, a false (or empty) view of the future has led to a foolish relationship to the present. In the case of the latter a myopic view of the present has eclipsed the consequences of the future.

With this in mind, how is it that we can so easily entertain the common idea that eschatology has little relevance for the identity and functioning of the Church in the present? Regardless of when “the end” is, however one views it is radically shaping “the now”. On the corporate level, the way that the age to come is understood defines the conception of this age and how the Church relates to it. On the individual level, the way an individual understands the fate that awaits them at the end of their life defines how they behave in all the days leading up to it.

Everyone has a view of eschatology and no one is immune from the potency of its impact on them. A person with the vague hope of a perpetual existence in an inert, wispy place they call “heaven” that doesn’t actually exist and is no more real to them than a fairy tale displays this every day as they spill themselves out on every pleasure of the world within their reach. Their eschatology demands that their reward be in this life, and that is precisely what they seek so ravenously.

What we believe about the future defines what we believe about the present and shapes how we live. All of this has merely been conceptual. In a follow-up post I will offer a brief look at how prevalent this truth is in the New Testament and why it can be a great source of strength to our hearts.

The insurmountable problem with these statements that should be be so glaringly obvious is that if you apply those standards of effectiveness to God, He is a failing miserably at communication.  In His inscrutable wisdom God ordained that a very, very long book would be the authoritative source of truth for His people. While it contains many individual books, each one is part of a narrative progression that makes it impossible to fully understand them independent from one another. Furthermore, within those books there are many chapters. These chapters were never meant to be read apart from those before them and after them. It is impossible to grasp the meaning of Romans 10 without having read Romans 1-9. Am I doubting the power of the Holy Spirit? No. He is the One who inspired the Bible and made it this way.

While being sensitive to where people are coming from, I believe it is our modern standards that need to be questioned and not God’s chosen means of communicating. Let’s use Twitter, Facebook, and 30 second videos. Let’s use them to call a generation  languishing from a famine of the knowledge of God to militate against the stupor that entertainment is placing upon them and actually read large portions of the Bible with clarity. Let’s not try to reduce the ocean of the glorious truths of Jesus to the dripping faucet of social media. Instead, let’s use social media to wet their parched tongues and call them to something vast in its grandeur.

Perhaps it would be helpful to recall that God made people. He made their brains, He made their eyes, and I am not convinced that the current arguments for the limitations of this generation are very impressive to Him. If scrolling through your news feed on Facebook for hours every day renders you unable to read a weighty book about Jesus that is over 250 pages, I promise the problem is with Facebook. And if thumbing through thousands upon thousands of tweets on your iPhone over the course of a week makes it so you can’t focus long enough to read through one of the gospels, the issue is Twitter. For most people under 25, just deleting one social media app from their smartphone would give them easily enough time to read through the entire Bible in a year. So why would we entertain for a moment the suggestion that sermons addressing high school or college students just can’t assume a real working knowledge of the  biblical story? Let’s challenge the appalling waste of time and mental atrophy that  is robbing Jesus of receiving the attention and affection of the people who He created with astonishing capacities for both. Let’s use social media to fight the the effects of social media and call a generation to magnify Jesus with their minds and their eyes.

The GOP presidential ticket brazenly declared on Monday that it would not oppose abortion in certain circumstances. This is not surprising, but it should be appalling.  Furthermore, it should settle once and for all that  the living God – the God of the spirits of all flesh – is not on the side of any candidate in this election. He is for Himself, He is for His glory, and He is not for the man who confesses the faith of a cult that perverts the truth of His majestic Son and who would not oppose murdering a human life if certain conditions were met.  When will this lesson be learned? The last republican president was touted as the quintessential Christian candidate, and then he publicly and unabashedly denied the uniqueness of Jesus on multiple occasions.

I respect an individual Christian feeling the civic (and even moral) responsibility to cast a vote toward what they feel is the lesser of two evils in order to curb abortion to whatever degree possible through those channels. Yet it must be soberly stated in precisely these terms – as a choice to lessen evil rather than a choice for righteousness. With what has now been so clearly stated by the candidate himself, it is simply inexcusable to still try to use God or religious sentiment  to bolster a political agenda.

Our hope for change in this nation is not found in the government and the political processes that shape it. We are to honor the government, submit to authority, and pray for those who rule. There is, however, no biblical basis for these structures being the aim of our hope as believers or the vehicle of true justice. The historical precedents of attaining this misplaced ambition are disastrous. Any time in its history that the Church, Protestant or Catholic, has possessed the capacity to wield political force the results have been abysmal. I appreciate Christians who have a desire to serve within local or federal government in order to be a witness of Jesus and labor for positive things in society. Just as in the fields of business or education, this is a commendable thing. It is also a different thing altogether from the body of Christ corporately seeking to garner political influence or forge political alliances in order to promote its values.

The response to the current situation from the political machine will be to continue to grope for some way to bait Christian voters and use them for their cause. I am hoping the response from Christians voters will be to at last sever their alliances with the power-bases of this world and turn to Jesus with a renewed commitment to prayer. I speak of prayer not only for the ending of abortion, but prayer that the sojourning character of the Church would no longer be obscured through affluence and influence; prayer that the Church would boldly, sacrificially, and compassionately declare the surpassing worth of Jesus over and above whatever else it might say; prayer that the Church would herald  the Day when He will come and take over all of the nations of the earth (including America) and establish a kingdom of everlasting righteousness.

Has the primary focus of what is now called “the gospel” shifted from being about Jesus to being about what Jesus will do for people? Has the basis of conversion shifted from believing truths about  who Jesus is to merely believing things that He will do for someone?   How can you avoid this in your preaching/sharing?

In all of your Christian experience, how many times have you heard a sermon where over 90% of the time is devoted to beholding some facet of who Jesus is? If you are like many, that number could be totaled using your fingers on one hand. How does this make you feel? Why do you think Jesus is so rarely talked about?

At most evangelical seminaries, potential pastors are exposed to roughly double the volume of Christology you will receive this week [roughly 12 hours] in their entire three years of training. How do you think this is possible?

When people leave the church or convert to another faith, their testimonies reveal that it almost never has anything to do with a reconsidering of the identity of Jesus. What does this reveal about how they were converted to Christianity? Were they ever actually saved? How can you avoid this in future converts through your ministry?

If a conference was advertised as focusing exclusively on various truths about Jesus, few would attend. If a conference was advertised releasing people into spiritual gifts and miracles it would be full. Why is this so?

If you were in your destination country and a Muslim man or woman asked you to have tea with them and tell them about Jesus’ life, how long do you think you could actually talk to them about it? If after ten minutes you ran out of things to say about the story of His life, would they be right to question your sincerity and the power of your message about Jesus?

A number of years ago a European newspaper columnist drew a cartoon depicting the prophet of Islam in a somewhat negative light. This caused the entire Muslim world to explode with violent anger and seek to kill the man. When that world observes Christians watching movies for entertainment that use the name of Jesus as an expletive, are they not right to question our claim of His worthiness to be worshipped and our loyalty to His name?

Do you think the way you have witnessed Jesus presented in the Western Church would cause people to sacrifice their lives for His name on foreign soil with no recognition or applause? What do you know about Him that will sustain you in Your commitment to do this? 

I did marvel. And as I did a question surfaced: “What kind of person is going to penetrate those borders?” How is a wide and effective door going to be opened there, even among many adversaries (1 Cor. 16:9)? Who will even have the courage to go there? Who will have the grit to stay there? And who will have the grace to prevail there?  At least as it stands right now, I am pained that it doesn’t seem like the answer is found anywhere in America. If a new missions movement is indeed going emerge from the West, I believe a sweeping theological reformation must come first. While of course there are always wonderful exceptions, in general I do not see how the shallow theological soil so common in our day can produce the burning sacrificial love for Jesus requisite for a successful confrontation with the core of the Islamic world. Towering oaks do not emerge from flower pots, and oaks of righteousness (Is. 61:3) are not going to come forth from the fields of faith that presently characterize the landscape of Western Christianity.

Coming to terms with this does not equate to holding a negative view of the Church.  The point is not to  quibble about  what grade the American Church should get on its report card, and to frame the question in this light totally obscures the problem and will never lead to a solution. What must remain in our sights is the roughly one billion people in that part of the world who are failing to give Jesus the worship that He alone is due, the real lake of fire that awaits such treasonous blasphemy of their Creator, and His precious blood shed so they could be forgiven and freed to laud Him . The only reason “we” (i.e. the Church in America) have to talk about “us” is because we are evidencing neither the desire nor the capacity to be used of God  to effectively address that crisis of idolatry. Why does this observation lead back to theology?

If you drop a seed of genuine faith into the soil of Western belief and practice, does it grow into an immovable trunk of the revelation of the glory of Jesus, a mighty hope in the resurrection of the body in coming kingdom, and a readiness to suffer for the sake of His name? This alone could be transplanted and flourish in Yemen or Eritrea, but this isn’t just a  “missional” question. It is a theological question. These qualities are the foundational beliefs of normal, apostolic (i.e. New Testament) Christianity.  The apostles did what they did because they believed what they did. The fact that one can so rarely answer “yes” to the question above means that a reformation of theology is needed. Not one that goes back to Augustine, but one that goes back to the Bible. We are in danger of reaching a place where it is acceptable for someone to consider themselves a “radical” follower of Jesus even though they know very little about His life or what the epistles say about His identity and work. In other words, depth and discipleship have been quantified by things other than knowledge of  the Lord Jesus and loving conformity to Him. And if the bulk of these peripheral passions that often define Christian commitment for many Americans would have zero relevance in the Middle East, our problem is not that we aren’t ‘missional’ enough but that we aren’t biblical enough.

Deep changes on the level of the praxis of the Church are also needed. The latter, however, is always just an outworking of its beliefs and thus to talk on this level is important but also limited. An impassioned call to domestic and foreign mission may engender fervor, but that zeal will wither in the heat of persecution unless there is a deep root system of informed, adoring convictions about the glory of a real Person and the hope of His return. I truly don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the vast majority of Christians in the West have never heard even one sermon devoted in its entirety to magnifying the excellencies of the divinity of Jesus.  This unspeakably precious, colossal  truth is the defining feature of the Christian faith and the defining controversy with the Muslim world. Yet in stark terms, how can someone go from a context where that truth sits collecting dust on an informational flyer in the lobby to the moment when their neck is poised to take the blow from the machete rather than deny  the divine, matchless supremacy of the Jewish man they love? That isn’t going to miraculously happen on the plane over the Atlantic, even if we are able to preach someone into buying the ticket.

A week ago the nation remembered the day in 1776 when the colonies arose to cast off the fetters of the Crown and begin their march toward the establishment of a new and free country. It seemed appropriate to reflect a bit on a subject of renewed relevance in our day: the Christian roots of America. One of the dominant features of the last several decades in America has been the drastic change in the norms of cultural morality. It is important to clarify the significance of that last phrase. It is very difficult to determine the extent to which individuals within a population as large as the United States have undergone a fundamental shift in virtue. Even pointing to the generational divide between the baby-boomers and Generation X, Y, or Z quickly becomes an over-simplification of a remarkably diverse demographic. What can be said quite objectively, however, is that the boundary lines of acceptable content for the public arena have been almost completely redrawn. While you could point to politics, education, and other cultural forums, all roads really lead back to media. The industry of entertainment and information has been given, and has forged, new parameters for moral norms. Anyone in their 30’s who watched television in the 80’s can appreciate just how dramatic and swift this change has been. For older generations, of course, the difference is even more jarring.

The relevance of all this to Jesus is fairly straightforward. It’s pertinence to the year 1776 lies in the sentiment that the moral decline has produced. For some of a more conservative persuasion, the condition of 21st century America has caused them to look toward 18th century America as the idyllic vision for our country. The argument generally takes the shape of something like this: America was founded as a Christian nation and it must return to its roots. The distinction between the Republican party and the Church on this subject is so blurred that it is nearly impossible to assess the motivation driving this hope for the future. Undoubtedly there are many who have no political agenda and simply want to see people in this land honor Jesus. Yet I intend to avoid the fray entirely and simply offer some perspective on the historical assumption it is based upon.

In my opinion, the only time it would be appropriate to term a nation (as understood in the post WWI geo-political world) as “Christian” is after Jesus returns and He has established His global government from Jerusalem. However, could it still be said that America has Christian roots, or a Christian foundation? I believe it is accurate historically to say both “yes” and “no”, depending on where one begins. The permanent colonization of Virginia began in 1607. The infamous landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock took place in November of 1620. If the latter was reckoned as the founding of the United States, the case for the Christian roots of this nation would be undeniable. The Pilgrims were of the Puritan tradition – a remarkably deep and orthodox expression of the faith from that period. Yet there were no states to unite at that point. Two fledgling colonies simply do not constitute the constitutional democracy that America would one day be. Abraham Lincoln would establish a day of thanksgiving to mark the historic date, but that is not the celebration of our independence.

Instead, it was when the colonies banded together to declare their identity as a sovereign nation on July 4th, 1776 that America was truly born. If the question of the roots of the United States focuses on this day, as it must, then it becomes very clear that they were not set in Christian soil. Those who look the “founding fathers” and  claim otherwise are likely not intending to misrepresent them. The confusion arises from the modern ignorance of the grandfather of modern secularism that existed in Europe and the new world in those days. Termed Deism, it retained the language of religion but none of its theological substance. It should be obvious, but just because someone uses the word “God” does not mean they are a Christian. The writings of those who signed the Declaration of Independence and framed the Constitution are littered with references to a supreme deity, but it was the god fabricated by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and not the Bible. A careful look at the lives and writings of Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the other icons of liberty reveal men who faltered disastrously on the most important question:

The founders were deeply religious but, with an exception here or there, not Christian in any orthodox sense – precisely because they answered the question of the identity of Jesus of Nazareth wrongly. Further, as many have argued, they not establish a Christian nation but a religious one imbued with a great deal of Christian principles, what scholars refer to as America’s ‘civil religion.’ [Stephen Nichols, Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to the Passion of the Christ (IVP Academic, 2008), p51]

While most would not have gone so far as to tear out large sections of the gospels as Thomas Jefferson did, the founding fathers found the divinity of Jesus to be quite intolerable. The underlying worldview driving their labor was not merely evidenced in what they denied but in what they affirmed. The document that declared the sovereignty of the United States in the face of British rule  may also be the most potent declaration of the sovereignty of man in the face of Divine rule from that period. It was, for all intents and purposes, the single most significant statement penned for solidifying humanism  as the foundation of the Western world for the next two centuries. The following excerpt from renowned missiologist Lesslie Newbigen is tremendously important for understanding not just our nation, but the way we view reality:

 The thinkers of the Enlightenment spoke of their age as the age of reason, and by reason they meant essentially those analytical and mathematical powers by which human beings could attain (at least in principle) to a complete understanding of, and thus a full mastery of, nature – of reality and all its forms. Reason, so understood, is sovereign in this enterprise. It cannot bow before any authority other than what it calls the facts. No alleged divine revelation, no tradition however ancient, and no dogma however hallowed has the right to veto its exercise…[this] implies that the individual has the potential and therefore also the right freely to exercise his reason in the search for reality. This right can only be exercised if other rights are also acknowledged, especially the right to hold private property, since some such property, even if it is only the body and food and shelter to sustain it, is the precondition of any human activity. If no alleged dogma can stand in the way of the right to know, equally no alleged authority can negate the right to life, liberty, and property. The new concept of the “rights of man” comes into the center of the stage. Medieval society was held together by a complex network of reciprocal rights and duties, and the “human rights” in general, apart from this actual web of reciprocal duties and rights, would have been unintelligible…there is no way in which the idea of human rights could have been expressed in classical or medieval Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or Arabic. The idea would have been incomprehensible. In its earliest form the concept of human rights referred to life, liberty, and property. The most famous and influential statement of the rights of man, however, defines them as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Lesslie Newbigen, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), p 25-6]

In Scripture, the sons and daughters of Adam are presented as the  object of astonishingly tender concern and faithful care by their Maker. As precious as this truth should be to us, we must never equate it with affirming the concept of “human rights”. God alone is due something, we do not have a right to anything, and deserve only wrath (Jn 3: 18-20, 36; Eph. 2:1-3).  If men truly have “inalienable rights” then no one can be tolerated who infringes upon them – not even God. In  fact, it would only seem right that  He should use whatever power He has to make sure that people do have them. This is precisely the relationship established by the Declaration. Not only does it demand what what we have no business insisting upon, it identifies “God” as the basis of the audacious claim. The ideological cornerstone of our nation has nothing to do with the glorious Christ of the Bible. Instead, the false god of Deism is used as the means to establish the entitlement of man over and above the sovereign claims of the true and living God. Prior to the Renaissance this would have been incomprehensible, but by the time the Enlightenment would run its full course  it would be seen as undeniable.

What lesson does this hold? It is certainly no cause for abstaining from fireworks next July. We have much to be grateful for about this country. It may, however, be instructive in tempering our hopes for how change will come about among its citizens. The first Great Awakening was in direct ideological opposition to the univeralism and Deism that was sweeping the colonies and infecting its leaders. Whether called an awakening or a revival, all of the significant movements in the history of this country have happened not through the government but in spite of it. As Christians our gratitude should not be for the false ideal of a Christian nation or a Christian government, but in the fact that we have a government that allowed those awakening and revivals to happen unrestricted.

The wonderful thing about the second Great Awakening, as it pertains to the government, was not that James Munroe or John Quincy Adams attended Charles Finney’s meetings. Instead, it was that Finney never had to worry about them showing up with a battalion of soldiers and forcing him to stop preaching. Yet it is precisely this very virtue that it undermined when we overtly, or subtly, seek to find a way for the government to legislate Christianity. The guarantee of our freedom to build a church on the corner of our neighborhood in the decades to come is actually found in the fact that a synagogue or mosque could be built at the same location. To have a government that imposes Christian prayer in public schools or allows the ten commandments to be posted is to have a government that could also impose the Islamic hours of prayer in public schools should the power-base change. We say we want a government “small” enough to leave our money and our individual freedoms alone. Is it not double-talk to then turn around and want a government big enough and powerful enough to enforce Christian ideals on the masses? Politicians have no qualms about using people’s religious convictions to garner votes, but we should be deeply wary of trying to use politicians to express our religious convictions.

This November, when presidential elections are held, it will mark 392 years since the landing of the Pilgrims. I am thankful for the Christian heritage they represent, but I’m also thankful that even though the men who would later establish this country did not share their faith, they had the wisdom to create a place where their faith could be shared.  Though many profound and grievous flaws exist in all three branches of the federal government, this foundation is the reason why a third Great Awakening would not be suppressed by force if it were to happen. And yes, I believe this is true regardless of which party happens to control Congress or who happens to sit in the Oval Office at the time. Is this not the very reason Paul offers for why we should follow the sole command in the Bible to pray for the government – so that we might lead a life undisturbed by those authorities as we bear witness the man Christ Jesus?

Paul turned the known world upside down (Acts 17:6) while there was a man in power who claimed he was a divine being worthy of worship (i.e. Caesar). My guess is that neither candidate will attempt this during their presidency. Conversely, the citizens of Jerusalem and its leaders in in the first-century had the most righteous laws that have ever existed (they were directly from God) and they murdered God-Incarnate when He came to them. I believe our time would far better spent trying to imitate Paul as he imitated Jesus rather than concerning ourselves with who gets elected. The results will certainly have civic implications worthy of our interest, but let us never aspire to find a leader of a renewed civil religion to try to carry America back to a golden age of morality. Nero was horrific, but Constantine proved worse. Somewhere in the middle, it would seem, lies the best answer until Jesus returns.

The dynamic this creates is that theological disagreement is largely galvanizing instead of edifying. Differing positions tend only to harden each other toward greater degrees of polarity as both sides dig their heels more deeply into the ideological ground they have chosen to defend. To actually be convinced of another view does not simply  mean a change in personal convictions. It means being ostracized from your niche within academia, it means your next book may not be published, and it means you may be forced to resign from your teaching position. Few, if any, have the courage to face these consequences.  There is much good fruit to be gleaned from biblical scholarship, but there is no question that in many cases money and prestige are influencing conclusions. Some beliefs – beliefs clearly held by the early church – militate so strongly against the rationalism of the academic world that to espouse them would effectively end one’s career. Although this is the extreme scenario, it should be enough to arm us with caution as interact with interpretive possibilities.

While most of us do not find ourselves in a position like this, there are still lessons to be learned. As we purse the truth with ardor, we must always try to be open to truly hearing perspectives that we do not share. Not only can this help us to refine the accuracy of our own beliefs, it may help us to see our own error. If our love for truth cannot triumph over the threat of prosperity and popularity, it is difficult to see how it will one day endure the test of persecution.

What is true of us as believers is true for all humanity: our actions spring forth from what we believe. Though it may not be the case if looking  for a day or a week, observe what a man does over the course of a year and all of his actions can be eventually be traced back to the deep-seated system of beliefs he holds. This basic matrix of faith is often unperceived but it is always present and defined by very simple questions: Who is God? Who is man? What is the truth about the world in which we exist? What does the future hold? Every human soul has answered these primal questions in one way or another, and those beliefs ultimately enslave their lifestyle.

Moving from general to specific, the implication on the subject at hand is simple. In thinking about prayer, for example, we must realize that our prayer life is determined much more by what we believe about Jesus than what we know about prayer. Like all of the disciplines named at the outset, every believer knows they should pray. Why, then, does it seem so rare at times to find a man or woman with a deep prayer life? The vast gap between instruction and authentic obedience simply can’t be explained by claiming the path was vague. The call of the Bible is clarion. The explanation, instead, is found in vagueness shrouding  the Person calling us to pray to begin with.

This week began with Father’s Day, and I found myself thinking about what I would tell my two sons if for whatever reason I was only able to tell them a few things. What witness would I leave them with and want them to cherish? It did not take long to compose an informal list in my mind. As I tried to narrow it down to five simple statements, all of them were things to believe rather than things to do. I know that if my boys truly believe that which is most important and defining, they will inevitably do what is most important. Perhaps the most common objection to this would be pointing out that there are many people who know a lot about the Bible but do not have vibrant lives. I would certainly  agree with this observation, but say that it misunderstands what Scripture means by the concept of faith. The biblical/Hebraic concept of “believing” was never so abstract and cognitive to allow for the possibility of a life unchanged. The latter is an application of philosophical categories of knowledge applied to biblical truth, which is the sad fruit of the cultural conditioning with which we  often read Scripture.

There is a very practical application to all of this as one thinks about the setting of a house of prayer, or corporate prayer. How can we most effectively encourage people to fast and pray? Should we talk to them about Jesus, or about prayer? The biblical answer is, of course, both. Preaching focused intercession and meditation, together with the beautiful catalyst of fasting, is absolutely vital. Yet with all of my heart I believe that the greatest inspiration for fervent prayer is beholding the unsearchable riches of glory found in the face Jesus (Eph. 3:8, 2 Cor. 4:6). Nothing will cause our hearts to persevere in talking to the King and beseeching Him like seeing His splendor and knowing His heart.

In this light it may be possible to conclude that the symptom of prayerlessness, wherever it may be found, can be traced back to the malady of a low, obscure vision of the truth concerning Jesus. By all accounts, from all perspectives, the general trend in preaching in America over the last century has unquestionably been a sweeping move away from doctrine and theology to a more pragmatic emphasis on so-called “normal” life. I believe we must seriously consider whether any gains that have been made in convincing people to do certain things or care about certain issues will be fleeting if not deeply anchored in a revelation of the glory of Christ that makes long-term  obedience, and even costly obedience, seem wise and joyful. With every year that passes it seems that the landscape of Western Christianity is at risk of becoming more theologically shallow. The idea that authentic personal discipleship, corporate community, or cultural revival can be achieved within such a milieu is, I believe, tragically mistaken.

In September of 1997 the Lord spoke very powerfully to Mike Bickle from this passage in Isaiah, asking him repeatedly if he would truly agree with His judgments. God confirmed the encounter prophetically and the necessity of preaching “the Jesus in red” (see Mike personally describe this here). More than a decade has passed since I first heard this dramatic testimony, and I appreciate so much more now than then the sobering difficulty of obeying its charge. It is one thing to actually believe that Jesus will do this, but it is quite another to preach it. And not to just preach it one time to that one group, but to preach it consistently and uncompromisingly.

Who will truly proclaim the fullness of Jesus – all of the riches of the glory of who He is (Eph. 3:8)? In the midst of a landscape of religious tolerance we struggle to unflinchingly declare that His precious blood is the sole means of the salvation of all the nations of the earth. Who, then, will faithfully stand as a herald that the slain One will return and slaughter the nations of the earth and personally execute the rulers who resist Him (Ps. 110:5-6, Rev. 19:21)? The glorious garments and majestic apparel of Jesus will be drenched in real blood that comes from the bodies of His enemies when He kills them in His wrath.

Jesus is a fierce King who is going to arise from His throne in the heights of the heavens and descend as a warrior to  judge the nations (Is. 42:13-15, Mic. 1:2-4). It is going to happen over the course of real days, on this earth, in a future which is just as concrete and vivid as the historical events of His first advent. If this does not strike us as profoundly disruptive and cause us to tremble, we are not actually considering it. Yet Jesus is our life, our Lord, and He has conquered our hearts. Love leaves us with no alternative to an undying loyalty that compels us to testify of the terrifying splendor of who He is, even if that loyalty means dying for Love. May Jesus find lovesick friends and faithful witnesses who will prepare the way for His return…

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Understanding this brings us into the ‘logic’ of New Testament thought. Our hope is to be set fully on the day of the Lord when He alone is exalted in the earth (Is. 2:17, Rom. 5:2, Titus 2:13, 1 Pet. 1:13). Jesus is the promised Seed of Abraham, and the consequences of His coming as they pertain to the earth and its inhabitants are summed up in the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant (Gal. 3:16). It is this hope that is to be the anchor of our souls (Heb. 6:13-20). Before allowing the implications of this to unfold, it is important to see how this differs from where our hope typically lies. Biblical hope is focused primarily (not exclusively) on what happens to Jesus (i.e. His glorification) in the future (i.e. His return and kingdom). I find that my hope, on the other hand, is primarily oriented around what happens to me (i.e. my fulfillment) in the present (i.e. the next month and year).

Seeing this beautiful foundation of biblical hope unravels the staggering enigma of apostolic joy. If the soul has fixed its hope on seeing Jesus exalted, then rejoicing can thrive even in affliction as long it is bringing that Man pleasure and honor. And if the heart has hurled its anchor of hope beyond what it can see and into the age to come, then the suffering of this present evil age cannot choke the springs of its joy. The faint glimmer of the dawn of that Day can cast its pale glow across the soul even in the darkest prisons of this life. The certainty of one day being conformed to the glorious body of Jesus can weigh so heavily upon us that the inescapable wasting away of our bodies through weakness and infirmity can seem light and momentary in comparison (2 Cor. 4:16-18, Phil. 3:21).

In 1 Corinthians 15:19 Paul says, “If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.” Modern preaching is often guilty of inverting the entire statement to instead read, “If in this life you only hope in Christ, you will be the most blessed of men.” This shift of hope away from Jesus and His day and toward me and my day renders us incapable of finding real, deep joy in the midst of pain. As much as I desperately want to “consider it all joy” when I encounter trials (Jas. 1:2) and “rejoice in [my] tribulations” (Rom. 5:3), my affections are paralyzed because my hope has been chronically misplaced. The root system, so to speak, of my joy has been decades in the making and its countless tendrils have become deeply entrenched in the wrong place as they have burrowed for sources to nourish self-gratification.

As I read the New Testament, I can’t escape the feeling that instead of meeting Jesus and having my ‘tree’ of hope uprooted and planted in entirely new soil watered by different streams altogether, Jesus was presented in a way where He was just the river that my root system of self-fulfillment could never find. In other words, the basis of my joy was still ultimately what happened to me, and Jesus just became the best thing that ever happened to me. In fact, it is enormously difficult – even as Christians – to conceive of joy in a way not based on us, because that is how it has been unrelentingly defined in the depths of our soul by everything around us.

Trite rhetoric about the glory of God and a fairy-tale eschatology will never produce the upheaval in our interior landscape necessary to change this. Our hope will never actually be bound up in the beauty of Jesus and His return until it becomes devastatingly real to us. Such reality can only be fashioned by availing ourselves to the work of the Spirit through prolonged and adoring attention to what Scripture reveals about Christ and His glorious Day. Apart from this, the process will breakdown and all good intentions will end in ruinous sentimentality.

Even once our hope has actually been realigned, a long process still remains. To return to the analogy of a tree, uprooted and replanted, it may take months and years for the root system to be strong enough to allow the branches to flower and bear the fruit of joy. Yet these barren, vacuous seasons are not in vain. So much is happening under the surface, beyond even our own observation, and the result will be a well-watered tree that does not wither in hardship and drought (Ps. 1:3, Ps. 92:12-15, Jer. 17:7-8).

The reason I care so much about remedying this, and writing about it, is not merely so my emotions can fare better on difficult days. This motivation only leads back to the root of the problem (don’t worry – that was the last use of the arboreal metaphor). When we can joyfully face (and even choose) profound loss in this life, it demonstrates how unspeakably precious and exceedingly worthy Jesus truly is (Phil. 3:7-8). In this age, trials of many kinds are simply unavoidable (Jn. 16:33). I don’t want to just survive these. I want to overcome them by magnifying Jesus in the midst of them. He is worthy of that, and that is His design for suffering.

Yet there is another reason why this is important – a more specific context. It has been ten years since the conviction first settled in my soul, but I still believe that there are people on this earth right now whose ears will hear a deafening trumpet blast and whose eyes will see Jesus in the sky. This means that at some point in the next decade or two, the world (including the Western world) is going to topple from the precipice of mercy upon which which it stands and descend into an abyss of tribulation. Describing those days, Isaiah 24:11 says “…all joy has grown dark; the gladness of the earth is banished.” God is going to banish all joy from the inhabitants of the nations. Why? The way the earth presently finds gladness is by inordinately exalting and esteeming things that are not God – namely ourselves. God is going to reduce everything and everyone to nothing – shaking all that can be shaken – so that He alone will be exalted (Is. 2:11-12). There will be absolutely nothing to rejoice in unless our joy is in Jesus and His exaltation. Every song of mirth will be quieted as the entire earth wails and rages. What would it be like if in that hour, those betrothed to Lamb are the only ones singing? What a stunning testimony to the glory of Jesus if His people have a song of joyous worship in their mouths, even as their eyes shed tears and their body sheds blood? May we truly set our hope in Jesus and His Day, so that the earth may see the miracle of joyful suffering for the sake of His name.

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The first of these is the way in which devotion to the story of Jesus’ suffering anchors salvation to a vividly real event  and prevents it from drifting into the realm of abstract concepts. Often when considering the subject of salvation our first association is with a body of ideas and doctrines that we have heard throughout our Christian experience. We must resist this with vehemence and turn our eyes to a hill outside of Jerusalem two-thousand years ago. Doctrinal ideas are both necessary and valuable but must not be detached from the real historical event of the cross. Fastening the theology of salvation to a historical event steers our focus to a Person, and thus to relationship.

The cross was not an abstract occurrence to be dissected and evaluated in order to produce cohesive dogmatic statements in thick books. There is a mystery that prevails over the reconciliation of God and man and our eyes need to be fixed upon a real person – a real life – named Jesus. We are saved by throwing our faith upon the man Christ Jesus and what He did, not by merely ascribing to a formula of justification by faith found in a piece of literature. At a real time, in a real place on earth that still exists, a Man suffered the agony of having His hands and feet pierced and pinned to wooden beams. To those present that day, the subject of modern sterile theological musings and hostile debate was a scene unforgettable in its horror and yet somehow unthinkably beautiful. Memories of skin torn asunder, heaving sweat, dripping blood, and tear-stained eyes filled their minds at the mention of the cross of Christ. Through meditating on the testimony of Scripture and the ministry of the Holy Spirit we, like them, should also know the feeling of this graphic scene bearing down upon our souls until we are crushed.

If one’s preoccupation is linguistic metaphors and ideas found in “the text”, it is possible to walk away from study of the cross unmoved. Yet if we join John at the foot of the cross and behold the chest we leaned upon the night before now covered in blood and straining to be filled with breath, indifference is not plausible. If we kneel beside Mary and look up to see the One who entered her womb by the Holy Spirit, the One who grew before her eyes through the passing years, the One promised to sit upon the throne of David, now marred and reviled, our heart is flung into a torrent of emotion. There is so much recorded in the gospels concerning those final days, and as we give careful attention to those details the cross will actually be real to our souls.

TOP TWO BOOKS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST

Books on the Life of Christ are very different than commentaries on the individual gospels themselves. While the latter are valuable, for reasons I cannot enumerate here I would strongly recommend beginning with books that approach the Gospels in this way (i.e. with the person of Jesus and His story as the starting point):

The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah – Alfred Edersheim
The Life of Christ – F.W. Farrar

TOP TWO BOOKS ON AN INTRODUCTION TO GOSPEL STUDIES

Jesus and the Gospels – Craig Blomberg
Four Portraits One Jesus – Mark Strauss

TOP TWO BOOKS ON GOSPEL STUDIES

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses – Richard Bauckham
The Gospels for All Christians – Richard Bauckham (Editor)

TOP TWO BOOKS ON APPROACHING THE LIFE OF CHRIST DEVOTIONALLY

Prayer – Hans Urs Von Balthasar
Christian Meditation – Hans Urs Von Balthasar

It is very important to clarify that I am not attempting to evaluate the importance of politics or the extent to which Christians should seek to influence the political arena as it exists in our nation. My concern is simply to emphasize that God’s consuming plan and purpose for Jesus to have preeminence in all things (Col. 1:18) is not an abstract affair. On the personal level of “all things”, it means that Jesus is actually chief in our time, our thoughts, our strength, our food, our affections, our finances, our loyalty, our speech, our relationships, and everything that comprises our existence. This entails stewarding each of these areas of our life in a manner that is pleasing to Jesus and that indicates He is of supreme worth to us. This is so devastatingly radical and so utterly impossible apart from the miracle of regeneration, but it is the reason we were saved – to live for Him (2 Cor. 5:15).

The implication that follows is not complex. If concern for politics, regardless of its potential value, outweighs Jesus in the attention it is given and the emotion that it arouses in the lives of Christians then the degree of concern is deeply wrong. Whatever is tangibly captivating us is that which is being most magnified by our lives. Though presently politics is in view, other things could just as easily be compared in this way. Entertainment, recreation, social media, sports, fitness, and ministry activity are all things which may stand in competition with the supremacy of Christ in the life of a believer. If anything comes to be esteemed more highly than Jesus, it is an abomination in the sight of God (Lk. 16:15). This is not necessarily because it is inherently evil at all, but simply because it has come to hold a position in the concrete ways that love is expressed which the Jealous God reserves exclusively for Himself. To say Jesus is more important than anything else but turn and pour out the precious oil of our time and affection on something else is fundamentally inconsistent. Let us suppose, hypothetically, that I spent a mere five hours in all of 2012 in prayerful study of Jesus in the Bible, but five hours every week in 2012 reading articles on politics and voicing heated opinions on social media about my political views. I would still sincerely love Jesus, but clearly Jesus would not have been preeminent in this season of my life. I would have felt more, thought more, devoted more, and spoken more of politics than Jesus.

Can the supremacy of Jesus really be translated into such practical terms? What of the things that demand far more time than we could ever realistically give to a focused pursuit of the knowledge of Christ every day? Here we must distinguish between how Jesus can be glorified by our preoccupation versus our occupation. God has designed life in this age in such a way that for all but the smallest percentage of adults, the majority of our time and energy will be spent on work and family. This is good and right, for the Lord has ordained it. We glorify Jesus not by avoiding this but by being preoccupied with Him in the midst of it. Whether working with our hands, typing on a computer, changing a diaper, or making a meal, we can honor Jesus by ever directing the eyes of our heart to Him and serving others with joy and excellence. We are to do all things as “unto to the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23), and “do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). As important as this is, it should be very obvious that the question at hand does not relate to this noble aim.

In contrasting our preoccupation with our occupation, I am not referring to our career, but rather to what we choose to occupy ourselves with. Unless someone is a civil servant by vocation then attention to political matters falls within this discretionary portion of our life. The latter will be a different percentage of the day for each person, but for all of us it is defined by concrete choices we make.  Imagine, for example, a single mother of three. After all the kids are asleep, the house straightened, and the lunches made she only has an hour before she has to go to bed so she can rise to do it all over again. Exhausted, she sits down beneath the light hanging over the kitchen table and opens to the gospel of Mark. Her commodity of “free time” and energy is so small, and yet her stunning decision to waste it at the feet of Jesus shows both what is most valuable to her and screams of how beautiful He is. In other words, the movements of our volition reveal what we actually treasure and adore.

In this treasuring and adoring we make a declaration to God and to men concerning what we consider precious and esteem as glorious. Regardless of our own unique circumstances, I believe it is biblical to say that God is zealous for a holy obsession to compel His people to aim this declaration toward the majesty of Jesus above everything else – including politics. I am praying that this year the second number would be bigger.

My point at present is not to attempt to demonstrate how Scripture relentlessly sets forth the exaltation of His own magnificence as God’s supreme mission in creation and redemption. Nor will I seek to show how my subjective experience of this correlation is confirmed biblically. All I wish to point out is the momentous question that should be raised when one observes joy attending exposure to this truth. Even a moment of musing causes me to realize that it utterly defies virtually everything I have ever been told about the origins of gladness. To affirm that there is no purpose God is more passionate about and no outcome He is more pleased with than the magnification of His own worth is to flatly deny that my existence and my salvation hold that place. I am not the point. Everything about my life is intended to be a means to another end. How could such a sober, self-negating realization result in my happiness?

I have the somewhat unique experience of having spent time in a number of expressions of Christianity that differ greatly from one another. I have been exposed to a spectrum of theology from ultra-liberal to staunch fundamentalist, worshiped with reserved evangelicals and wild charismatics, and attended services rangin from high liturgy in old buildings to no liturgy in a school cafeteria. Yet as I reflect back, there is a sense in which they all seem like merchants in a bazaar trying to entice the bustling masses by peddling a product called “God”. They were tremendously diverse in their emphasis of what God would do for me, but uniformly silent on what I was created to do for God. Whether it was promising mercy, money, miracles, or mirth, in each setting I was set forth as the end and God was the means to procure my satisfaction. In the Bible, on the other hand, I stand alongside the rest of creation as the means and God’s glory is the all-consuming end.

Though at times it can feel a bit like a tsunami in the way it levels all our presuppositions about reality, when this God-centered vision crashes over our lives it leaves joy in its wake because we have finally beheld the purpose for which we were both born and born again. Conformity to our design brings with it a pleasure of unmatched sweetness. This is not because we finally discover our worth and our meaning in life, but because we have finally caught a glimpse of Someone so precious, breathtaking, and majestically free that He is worthy of our entire existence being devoted to reveling in His grandeur and making His greatness known. The paradox is this: if we use God to seek our joy for our sake it will always elude us, but if we seek to extol the glory of God for His sake we will find deep and lasting joy. It would be difficult to improve upon the way this excerpt summarizes the crux of the matter:

Our fatal error is believing that wanting to be happy means wanting to be made much of…This path to happiness is an illusion. And there are clues. There are clues in every human heart even before conversion to Christ. One of those clues is that no one goes to the Grand Canyon or to the Alps to increase his self-esteem. That is not what happens in front of massive deeps and majestic heights. But we do go there, and we go for joy. How can that be, if being made much of is the center of our health and happiness?…In wonderful moments of illumination there is a witness in our hearts: soul-health and great happiness come not from beholding a great self but a great splendor. (John Piper, God is the Gospel, p 11-12)

Many important truths are tied, some inseparably, to the theme at hand. Yet this must not muddle the simplicity and severity of God’s ultimate purpose in all things. At stake is not at all whether we are loved, cherished, and deeply blessed as His people. Such confusion only arises in this context because of how we have been conditioned to view love through a lens of narcissism. Do we exist for God, or does God exist for us? That is the question, and it is one which Scripture answers with unfailing consistency. God, indeed, satisfies like no other, but does He really exist in order to satisfy the longing of our souls, or does the joy of our satisfaction exist to point to the supremacy of His worth? Getting that question right makes all the difference. All things were made by Him, all things exist through Him, and all things exist for Him. All things are His possession, all things are for His pleasure, and all is for His glory.

In other words, when Paul commanded his epistles to be read to the entire church in a city, he did so believing it was necessary for them to understand it and expecting that they could understand it. Romans, for example, was not written for an erudite niche of converted rabbis who would be the only ones in the city who could really apprehend what Paul meant. If we laugh at such a suggestion related to the historical milieu, why do we so readily accept the idea that diligent study of Romans is for seminary students and not for every single believer? Certainly, not everyone is called to be a teacher of Scripture. Yet the very reason God has set apart teachers is so that the entire body of Christ may have a clear conviction of the truth. Teachers are not intended to store up the revelation they are given, but rather disseminate it so that all may partake of that knowledge. I would suggest that teachers are just as rare as prophets and apostles in the Church today. Those who have this calling are steered toward a path of research where they are almost invariably shipwrecked in the rationalistic sea of the Christian academic world. For those who survive, they find almost no place in a culture of ministry where cheap pragmatism and charismatic personalities dominate the pulpits.

The widespread despondency toward doctrine and its perceived irrelevance were foreign to those who gave leadership to Early Church in the era following the death of the apostles. While searching for something else, I recently came across a couple of excerpts where the zeal for truth possessed by the Early Church Fathers shines forth. Every time I read similar things from them I am provoked by the intensity with which they address these subjects. When fighting to stave off heresies, they were not merely trying to win an argument. They were keenly aware that the eternal fate of real souls were at stake. Beyond apologetics, however, they talk about truth with such passion because that is what defined them as Christians. Their very lives were wrapped up in what they believed about Jesus. It was from this burning core of faith that their sacrificial obedience naturally issued forth. Christians today define themselves by stances on social issues, by adherence to certain moral standards, ministry involvement, and many other things. Yet rarely to modern believers define themselves by deep theological convictions. These convictions are the furthest thing from sterile intellectual assertions. Our beliefs about who Jesus is, what He has done, and what He will do – beliefs we should be willing to die for – are the foundation and fuel of our love for Him.

The first excerpt is from Ignatius (c. 35-107) in his letter to the church in Antioch. We know very little about his life historically apart from the well-attested story of his martyrdom. Taken from Antioch to be executed in Rome, Ignatius begged the church there not to attempt to intervene and keep him from the fate that awaited him. Such was his ardor for the crucified One on whom he had believed.

Whosoever, therefore, declares that there is but one God, only so as to take away the divinity of Christ, is a devil, and an enemy of all righteousness. He also that confesseth Christ, yet not as the Son of the Maker of the world, but of some other unknownbeing, different from Him whom the law and the prophets have proclaimed, this man is an instrument of the devil. And he that rejects the incarnation, and is ashamed of the cross for which I am in bonds, this man is antichrist. Moreover, he who affirms Christ to be a mere man is accursed, according to the [declaration of the] prophet, since he puts not his trust in God, but in man.

The second is from Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) in the eightieth chapter of his Dialogue with Trypho. Like Ignatius, Justin would also later be martyred for his confession. Notice the strength of his zeal over the resurrection of the body, something that is held with such apathy in our day.

Before briefly arguing for the viability of a chronological understanding of Jesus’ life and explaining why it is so important, let me first state three points of common ground that I readily acknowledge must temper conclusions on this subject:

1. An exact chronology is impossible with the information the Holy Spirit chose to include in the canonical gospels. We cannot project onto the gospels a modern concept of reporting of events that was foreign to antiquity or pretend there aren’t significant gaps in what has been revealed.
2. A chronological arrangement is not the only way to view the life of Jesus. The bulk of the gospel of Matthew is clearly not arranged chronologically. Instead, it evidences an oscillating pattern of discourse and narrative. This must be valued and appreciated as a reflection of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
3. Chronological does not mean comprehensively chronological. The gospel of John is arguably the most rigidly chronological of the four, and yet it skips vast portions of Jesus’ public ministry.

The great mistake comes when these limitations are inordinately emphasized and allowed to quench the hope of discovering the general chronology of Jesus’ ministry that clearly emerges upon careful observation. The result is all too often a sloppy reading of the text which misses a host of chronological markers because it is assumed that they couldn’t be there to begin with. Once these presuppositions are done away with, several obvious features of the gospels become compelling. First, the gospel of John is structured around three consecutive annual Passover feasts (John 2:13, 6:4, 13:1) with events that transpire in between them. Secondly, Luke begins with an overtly chronological claim:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. Luke 1:1–4, NASB95, emphasis added)

This is difficult to ignore or marginalize if seriously grappled with. Finally, the progression of the gospel of Mark almost exactly parallels that of Luke. The latter includes much more information than Mark, but only minor variations in order exist between the overlapping content. This allows for a high degree of confidence in the basic chronological orientation of Mark, something that is very rarely given any merit. If these features are recognized, and the unjustified premise of Matthean priority done away with, then the reconstruction of a general chronology becomes more than feasible. With this framework in place, the hard (but joyous) work of scrutinizing details to form a more cohesive narrative can begin. It will quite likely take months, if not years, before this very real story becomes the stage, so to speak, where the individual events in the gospels are acted out. Why expend such time and energy to acquire this perspective?

The reason for this “waste” is, first and foremost, His worth. God took on flesh and the life He lived is matchless in its beauty. All beauty, but most certainly the matchless kind, deserves to be valued to the fullest extent possible within the limits of the beholder. The human life of our Maker is intrinsically worth searching out. Whatever other reasons we might be able to muster for why to prayerfully study the chronology of the life of Jesus, that has to be paramount. It is a travesty that as Christians today we seem to have an insatiable appetite for hearing what Jesus will do for our lives but demonstrate almost no hunger to discover the details of His life. Right now, enthroned in the highest heavens, Jesus remembers the details. When His people – His friends – allow love to compel them to scour the gospel record for every crumb of clarity they can find, it moves His heart and bears witness of His splendor.

Magnifying Him and ministering to Him is the primary motivation, but it is not the only one. Apart from the theological foundations of His divinity and humanity, nothing has caused the life of Christ to grip my heart more than understanding its chronological progression. The reason for this is quite simple. Our hearts were created to be deeply moved by stories. No one who has ever come under the sway of a good book or been entranced by a good movie needs to be convinced of this. Yet most attempt to read the gospels as if they were a collection of disjointed episodes haphazardly strewn together between a manger and a cross. It is little wonder that our affections remain placid when the life of our Beloved is approached in this way. In reality, a powerful drama is unfolding on those pages. It is a story so portentous that the Holy Spirit used four different books to tell it. God took on flesh with a mission in mind, and it was not to randomly wander about Galilee doing good and biding time until He could be crucified for the forgiveness of our sins. When we take the time and stare long enough for pieces of time to start falling into place, our souls can at last feel the force of what was actually happening in the first coming of Jesus.

Above all else, as this narrative becomes real to us, its chief character does so as well. Chronology allows for a thirty year-old Man with fire in His eyes to emerge from behind the curtains of our ignorance and take center-stage in His story. Through the Spirit within us and the Bible before us, we are slowly drawn into concrete encounters with Jesus akin to those who brushed up against Him as He walked through their streets. When this begins to happen, everything changes.

As I ponder this, the question forced upon me is, “What did they believe that produced such a radically different form and expression of Christianity than we have today?” I do not claim to have a definitive answer . And particularly in this context, I will not endeavor to even offer a thorough one. Yet one thing, I believe, is clear. In a way so much more real and penetrating than what we know today, early believers viewed themselves as sojourners in this age. As wayfarers looking for the kingdom to which their citizenship corresponded, they felt no compulsion to invest the huge commodities  of time and money necessary to have a structure that tied them to specific geographic locale. After all, if you are on a journey and the prospect of your destination is what consumes you, you don’t stop to build a house – even if you have the resources to. Those set on a pilgrimage aren’t looking to procure permanent dwellings as they travel.

My point is not to argue that we should no longer make use of buildings. Clearly they can be very functional and serve valuable purposes. I just desire to possess a biblical perspective on life in this age.  I want to have my hope so wholly anchored in the return of Jesus (1 Peter 1:13) that the way of discipleship that was normal to the early Church begins to make sense to me. Apparently it did not make sense to them have buildings. And I believe this one fact may point toward a much more fundamental disparity between their understanding of the mission of the Church prior to the return of Christ and that which is common today.

Driving around a major metropolitan area one finds on almost every corner a property called a “church” that sits empty ninety-five percent of the time. These nearly-vacant buildings demand an enormous percentage of the budget generated from the tithes and offerings of the people who go there once or twice a week. This, as scores of missionaries struggle to find funding to be able to go and preach the gospel. How did this come to make sense to the body of Christ in modernity? I would suggest the answer, like two-thousand years ago, is also overtly theological in nature.

It is before those pages that I must sit and linger until my dim eyes can discern His form again. I begin to faintly make out eyebrows, knees, a chin, and toes. I see a real mouth with lips and teeth speaking those matchless words. This is God in the flesh – the One who came and who is coming again. I can’t contort Him to be whoever I want Him to be. Nor can I just throw His name around to justify agendas and pursuits that find no home in His heart – a heart that beat and bled beneath hard ribs and soft skin. I have to reckon and relate to the very concrete, eminently tangible Life before me now. And in so doing, a startling thing begins to happen. In a way so different than colorful language or fleeting emotion, I actually begin to love who He is.

What should be so foundational and obvious has become almost novel in our day. The reason the first four books of the New Testament are called the Gospels is because the early Church viewed their content as the substance of the gospel. The idea of someone “knowing Jesus” because they said a prayer in response to a four-step plan of salvation when they don’t actually know anything about Jesus Himself is utterly foreign to the New Testament. The gospel is first and foremost a Person – God in the flesh – and only secondly a message about what He has done. The truth of Jesus’ life and teachings was transmitted through authoritative oral tradition for the first four decades after the ascension (cf. 1 Cor. 15:1-3), after which it was recorded through the inspired text of the canonical gospels we know today. Yet whether one was present with Jesus or absent, and whether this truth was heard or read, the path to the true knowledge of Jesus remains the same.

What does this look like practically? It means actually setting out to know all that we possibly can about who Jesus is, what Jesus did, and what Jesus said. So simple, yet so profoundly neglected by the modern Church. This includes the places He traveled, the characters in the story, and the order of events. In other words, the details. Yahweh’s life lived in the flesh is the bread of knowledge offered to us, and Love bids us come and gather up every crumb. While it may begin with the life of Christ, the pursuit by no means stops there. Moving out in both directions, we scour the Old Testament to find all the traces we can of the One who has no beginning and scrutinize the rest of the New Testament in order to have all that was revealed about Jesus through the apostles written upon our hearts. At times we may be staring at a map of Galilee, have our nose in a commentary on Isaiah, or be soberly reading the book of Revelation. Wherever we may go, however, it is crucial that prayer and adoration ever be our companions along the way. This ensures that facts become knowledge, and knowledge becomes love. Another way of saying this is that we meditate upon the truth of Jesus so that He is a real Person to us and not merely a moving concept or collection of data. We behold Him. We listen to the Word made flesh.

The journey will certainly be unique to each individual, but seeing the knowledge of Jesus this concretely eliminates the option that studying the Gospels is only reserved for a few. Could love ever be content to know only scattered bits and pieces about the life of the Beloved? Nor is Christology merely one subject among many in the Christian faith, as though another person might legitimately opt for another theme that is “their message”. All of us have one major, with many different minors, to use an analogy from the academic world. Our worship, our obedience, our discipleship, our preaching, and our affections must all be thoroughly grounded in the foundation of the glory of who Jesus is. Let us press on to know Him truly, for the sake of His renown.

Through meals and miracles, traveling and teaching, Peter was an eyewitness to it all. It was in these very real, raw contours of life and experience that Peter’s knowledge of Jesus consisted. This is not to say that it was merely an accumulation of observations, like a first-hand biography. All of the events that Peter was privy to were revealing something about the Person who was doing them. Action, identity, and meaning are all bound inextricably together. What we might term “apostolic doctrine” was simply the proclamation and application of what they come to know about a real man named Jesus: that He was both the Lord (Yahweh in the flesh) and the promised Christ (the king anointed to sit on David’s throne).

Though decades had passed and Peter was no longer talking with Jesus through the dim light of a fire, or sitting in a boat next to Him, the way he related to Jesus had full continuity with the historic Person who he had known and loved. His praying, hoping, ministering, and preaching as an apostle could never be severed from the memory of a real face that flooded his mind when he closed his eyes. This context has such simple, but stunning, implications as we think about what it means for us to have a true knowledge of Jesus.

Though it causes me great grief, I cannot evade the conviction that the vast majority of the Church in America is presently on a collision course with that dreadful moment. “Knowing Jesus” in contemporary rhetoric has somehow come to often mean ascribing to a very anemic body of doctrine, conforming to a certain moral protocol, and possessing a measure of zeal for a handful of socio-political issues. The specifics may vary across denominational lines, but the formula is virtually the same. When we very tritely say, “do you know Jesus?”, we are really asking something akin to, “do you want to accept our values and join our organization?” In fact, in order to join this club and ascend its ranks it would seem that someone hardly needs to know anything at all about Jesus as revealed in the New Testament. Such a statement is not based on a vague impression. Extensive studies on the movement of evangelicalism in the United States have demonstrated that the majority of those who would identify themselves as “born again” Christians lack even the most rudimentary knowledge of the Bible and spend almost no time trying to read it.

If such is the case with basic familiarity with Scripture, how much more grave is the situation with things pertaining specifically to Jesus? How many sermons or books are actually devoted to expounding upon some aspect of who Jesus is and what He has done? Over the course of a year, what does an ‘average’ Christian who is faithful in church attendance hear of the marvel of His sinlessness, the splendor of His deity, or the wonder of the Incarnation? What place does Christology hold in Christian training and leadership development? How often are His perfections spoken of in our fellowship? How many of us could talk for more than ten continuous minutes about the details of the life and teaching of Jesus found in the Gospels? What answer would we have if a challenge was posed against the divinity or humanity of Christ? How often do we think of His return?

This hollow, gaping center of ignorance remains thinly veiled by a surface of religious culture where the name of Jesus is nearly ubiquitous. It is found at the end of prayers, in the middle of songs, on the back of cars, on the cover of books, at the top of soup-kitchen banners and on the front of T-shirts. We have even gone so far as to peddle His name on the political platform in the hopes of garnering some long-overdue power and prestige. Yet all this does not change the simple fact that multitudes of people who call themselves His followers know almost nothing about who Jesus is and what He is actually like. Therefore, He simply cannot be – in truth – the object of our affection, the focus of our worship, the substance of our witness, or the model of our discipleship.

The purpose of briefly addressing this modern crisis of Christology is not to launch criticism or breed negativity toward the Church. Jesus deeply loves His people and has such astonishing patience with us in our immaturity. Much of what makes this crisis so threatening is how common and indistinguishable it has become. An expression of Christianity where Christ Himself is scarcely known and rarely treasured has become normative rather than outrageous. It is challenging, at times, to even discern the way in which Jesus is subtly used to justify a host of different goals and trajectories instead of being the supreme End for which His people spend themselves in love and labor. My own soul knows all too well the pain of suddenly realizing in the midst the fray of life that Jesus has drifted to the fringes of my thoughts and my affections. The purpose, therefore, of naming the problem is to give context for the dire necessity of the answer. We desperately need to see how concrete the true knowledge of Jesus is, and understand how we might grow in it.

The wisdom of a purposeful, cyclical returning underlies the tradition of the historic Church calendar. Throughout the year one is taken back to all of the events that form the basis of our faith, both corporately and individually, and pointed toward the promises that form the substance of our hope. So the objection that Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25th misses the point entirely. Advent and Christmas are not intended to answer the question, “when was Jesus’ birthday?” Are our hearts prone to astonishing dullness and do we need to force them to bow again at the breathtaking wonder of the Incarnation and break again with mourning for Jesus’ return? Advent, instead, stands before these questions that loom over our existence and screams, “yes! hasten to the manger and gaze toward the heavens.” If celebrating Advent might hold the possibility of liberating me from the tyrannical inertia of life that draws me away from beholding Jesus, then I am excited about Advent. If you would like to learn more about celebrating Advent for the first time, or perhaps deepen your own traditions, I encourage you to follow the posts from Karli (my wife) on our family blog in the weeks leading up to Christmas.