finding-yourself-in-gods-story-jan-feb-2017

MODERN REFORMATION CELEBRATING

25 YEARS

VOL.26 | NO.1 | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2017 | $6.95

FINDING YOURSELF IN GOD’S STORY

CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES 2017 marks 25 years of Modern Reformation! Since 1992, we have helped Christians know what they believe and why they believe it, and we couldn’t have done it without you. Take a look at our issues through the years in our online archive, available to all subscribers.

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FEATURES 16

Discipleship in the Local Church: Spiritual Burden or Spiritual Safety?

BY BRIAN CROFT

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Why Doctrine Matters Now More Than Ever

BY WHITNEY GAMBLE

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Face-to-face Discipleship in a Facebook World B Y J O H N J. B O M B A R O

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“All People to Myself”: The Church as the Goal of History B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ADAM SIMPSON

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HERE’S TO 25 MORE YEARS As part of our 25th Anniversary celebration, we have partnered with Hendrickson Publishers to release a new book in January 2017, The Reformation Then and Now: 25 Years of Modern Reformation Articles Celebrating 500 Years of the Reformation. We’re grateful to God for sustaining us for the last quarter century. We’re also grateful to you for the opportunity to spread our work through your gifts and subscriptions.

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DEPARTMENTS

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BOOK REVIEWS

GEEK SQUAD

You Are What You Love

Key Concepts in Reformed Spirituality

T H E O LO GY

A Brief Comparison of Charismatic and Reformed Views of Church Music B Y PAU L M U N S O N

REVIEWED BY TIMOTHY M. MASSARO

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Why Bother with Church?

REVIEWED BY N I C H O L A S DAV I S

C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

The Dividing Wall: Encouragement for My White Ally

BY NANA DOLCE

BY MR EDITORS

The Grand Design REVIEWED BY S I LV E R I O G O N Z A L E Z

72 B A C K PA G E

Pray for the City B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

Music, Modernity, and God REVIEWED BY MICAH EVERETT

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Associate Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick

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Design Director José Reyes for Metaleap Creative Review Editor Ryan Glomsrud Designers Ashley Shugart, Harold Velarde Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith Modern Reformation © 2017. All rights reserved.

ISSN-1076-7169

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US Student 1 YR $26. 2YR $40. Canada add $10 per year for postage. Foreign add $9 per year for postage.

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LETTER from the EDITOR

With ar ticles from Reformed theologians Michael Horton and Whitney Gamble, Lutheran pastor John Bombaro, and Baptist pastor Brian Croft, we continue to reflect the unique offering of Modern Reformation and our sister radio broadcast, White Horse Inn: men and women representing reformational traditions speaking into areas of common concern (although not always common agreement), in service to the church. We believe this kind of conversation, sorely lacking in many areas of civil society, is a key ingredient of Christian health and the advancement of the cause of ith this issue, Modern Reformation Reformation here in the United States and begins celebrating twenty-five years around the world. of continuous publication. While Along with a history of these conversations other periodicals have come and that our subscribers can access in our online gone, while other parachurch ministries have archives, we are pleased to feature a selecflamed out because of scandal or loss of focus, tion of some of our best content from the past while other forms and mediums of communitwenty-five years in a new book just published cation have destabilized the publication sphere,

by Hendrickson Publishers, The Reformation we have remained constant. It is all by the grace Then and Now: 25 Years of Modern Reformation of God, particularly as he has brought Articles Celebrating 500 Years donors alongside our team with all of the Reformation. Edited by sorts of gifts, large and small, to our editor-in-chief and me, our “ WHILE OTHER enable us to fulfill our calling. We are hope with this new volume is also grateful that for twenty-five years that the rich resources of the PERIODICALS our team has embraced our simple Reformation will be rediscovHAVE COME mission of bringing together repreered by the modern church.

AND GONE… sentatives of the major Protestant While we don’t believe this will WE HAVE confessional traditions to speak about lead to a return to some fabled God, this world, and our lives in it. “golden age” of the church, we REMAINED In this, our anniversary year, we are are convinced that the same CONSTANT.” asking questions weightier than we joy, hope, and confidence that have recently considered. We begin took hold of Christians as they this issue by returning to basic catrediscovered the gospel in the egories of doctrine: the who, what, where, when, sixteenth century can be experienced today in and how of God’s activity in the world. To do so, our churches and around the world as we, like we’re borrowing a construct from our editorthe Reformers, return to the central message in-chief, Michael Horton, that he explores in of the Bible. his new book Core Christianity: the four “D’s” of “Drama,” “Doctrine,” “Discipleship,” and “Doxology. We believe this construct goes far in connecting deep theological truths to the real lives of God’s creatures.

ERIC LANDRY exec utive editor

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L E F T: I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y A R T H U R M O U N T; R I G H T: I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O

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A Brief Comparison of Charismatic and Reformed Views of Church Music

by Paul Munson

n Christmas Day some years ago, a dear saint in her eighties sat at our fireplace and regaled us with stories of what it was like to be a Christian in twentieth-century America. The conversation took a melancholic turn as she described the problems in the Reformed communions of which she had been a part. Her lament culminated with words that made me uncomfortable, partly because I wasn’t sure what they meant and partly because I heard in them a note of belligerence I did not expect from one so sanctified. “The charismatics have

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won,” she said. “We are all charismatics now.”

We are all charismatics? It reminded me of Shelley’s famous claim that “we are all Greeks.”

Sociologists do report that the Pentecostal and charismatic segment of the church has been the fastest growing (globally speaking) for many decades, but surely its influence has not been so pervasive as to affect the identity of us all? I don’t think anyone in this woman’s congregation spoke in tongues or performed miraculous healings. What was she talking about?

Sometime later, a conversation with a young relative helped me to understand. After

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attending our service, she said she needed a more “emotional worship” than ours. I was surprised because I think of myself as an emotional person and am never more emotional than in the Lord’s Day services of my church. As I pressed her to explain, it became apparent she was referring to music. Now, it’s true: the emotions I feel in corporate worship are not usually a response to the music as music. Music is a tool we use to say certain things to God and to one another, and my emotions are a response to what’s being said. I’m unmoved by the songs our niece likes to sing because their substance isn’t of a kind to stimulate an emotional response in me. But clearly the music of these songs was itself an emotional stimulant for her.

Even more perplexing to me than her statements about music were her statements about emotion. She seemed to be saying that corporate worship is a matter of how we feel in the assembly—not just that God requires worship to be sincere, or that joy and peace often result from worship, but that worship is essentially a feeling.

She knows that God is real and that he is present and blessing her when she feels a certain way.

As a music historian, I know that the contemporary worship music in the Evangelical Free Church where she grew up originated not with the Swedish immigrants who founded it but with the charismatic movements of the late twentieth century. Now I was discovering that its theology of worship, too, was largely charismatic.

THE WAYS OF WORSHIP IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Through most of the last century, traditional evangelicals resisted Pentecostal theology. Some still do, while others have come to accept the idea that miraculous gifts can be practiced today.

Even more dramatic, however, has been the musical influence. Late in the twentieth century, the two great wellsprings of praise-and-worship music, with its overhead projectors and worship teams, were the neo-charismatic Maranatha!

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“Music is a tool we use to say certain things to God and to one another, and my emotions are a response to what’s being said.”

Music of Calvary Chapel and the Association of Vineyard Churches. Their influence is hard to overstate. It’s my perception that most ordinary practitioners of contemporary worship music are charismatic in their theology of worship.

They believe the point of corporate worship is to affect human hearts with an experiential awareness of God, and they design it to that end.

Writing in Christianity Today back in 1989, Charles H. Kraft said, While I have always enjoyed singing in the church, it wasn’t until I freed myself from the exclusive use of the hymnal that I experienced what praise and worship can be. And it is the new music, sung with eyes closed for 10, 15, or 20 minutes at a time, that makes that experience possible. These short, repetitious songs with memorable choruses help me focus on God.1 The music gave Kraft a new experience of God—one that was direct, personal, and uncluttered by facts about God as normally found in hymnals. Twenty years later, Bob Kauflin’s Worship Matters made the point that worship leaders combine God’s word with music to motivate the gathered church.2 Listen to just about

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any Christian today—even yourself—and you may unearth this assumption: the purpose of music in corporate worship is to generate authenticity; to kindle love, sincerity, and a more immediate experience of God. This is why songs in the church sound the way they do today. The most popular avoid saying much—there’s a biblical image here and a biblical title there, but these aren’t connected into a biblical train of thought. The verbal emptiness leaves room for a musical experience that touches the heart. Repetition, coercive rhythm, and a climactic use of loudness generate happiness (even ecstasy) like a rock concert. Contemporary Christians identify these musically driven emotions as worship, and they associate them with the presence and blessing of God.

ALL THE (BIBLICAL) FEELS In the Bible, intense emotions are often a product of motivation to corporate worship, but never are they its essence. When we study the Hebrew and Greek words translated in the English Bible as “worship,” and identify the contexts in which they occur, it’s clear that worship is the reverence and service due to God. We pay homage and kneel before him; we attend to his majesty; as priests, we “offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5).

According to Paul, the purpose of singing in the assembly is to communicate. We use songs to teach and admonish one another and to convey thankfulness to God, as the word of Christ dwells in us richly (Col. 3:16). This is confirmed by the parallel passage in Ephesians and by the rest of Scripture. The salient point in almost all biblical allusions to music in corporate worship is that someone is saying something to someone.

We sing to communicate, not to feel a certain way. This isn’t to say that biblical worship is necessarily devoid of experiential depth or emotion—quite the contrary. When we follow the biblical model, our church music will in fact be the most beautiful and astonishingly emotional.

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The music will be beautiful precisely for the way it helps to convey the Bible’s message of who God is and what he has done, and the emotions will be all the more robust for being a response to the reality of that message.

Such was the belief and practice of the Reformers. They, too, were surrounded by Christians itching to experience God in extraordinary ways beyond what he revealed. “Let the man who would hear God speak, read Holy Scripture,” said Luther.3 The songs he wrote and promoted for congregational use were saturated with the substance, language, and aesthetic values of Scripture. They were also pedagogical, enabling his congregants to teach and admonish one another with spiritual songs. Early on, he echoed Colossians 3: “I intend to make vernacular psalms for the people, that is, spiritual songs so that the Word of God even by means of song may live among the people.”4 As for Calvin, behind his famous injunction against letting our ears be “more attentive to the melody than our minds to the spiritual meaning of the words” lies a recognition that the biblical purpose for church music competes with other purposes, which are legitimate in other contexts.5 A Reformed understanding of worship teaches us that we don’t have to produce an encounter with God. It’s right there in word and sacrament—in its own way as beautiful and effectual as when “the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exod.

40:34). All we have to do is respond by faith.

PAUL MUNSON is a professor of music at Grove City College

and a ruling elder at Rocky Springs Church (PCA) in Harrisville, Pennsylvania. He is the coauthor with Joshua Farris Drake of Art and Music: A Student’s Guide (Crossway) and www.CongSing.org.

1 Charles H. Kraft, “The Hymnbook Is Not Enough,” Christianity Today, 7 April 1989.

2 Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 55.

3 Wider das Papsttum zu Rom, vom Teufel gestiftet (1545), Weimarer Ausgabe 54, 263.

4 Luther to Georg Spalatin, 1523.

5 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 3.20.32.

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The Dividing Wall: Encouragement for My White Ally n July 6, 2016, Colleen Mitchell wrote a telling blog post, “10 Reasons I Don’t Want to Be Your White Ally.”1 Her words came a day after the death of Alton Sterling, a black man killed by a white officer of the Baton Rouge Police Department. Mitchell admits meeting the news of Sterling’s shooting with a “sickening feeling” that soon became a burden, which later morphed into fear as she read a Facebook comment by a black friend: “When animals are abused, you’re outraged….When your personal ‘hobbies’ are compromised because of

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local legislation you’re in a tizzy! Even when people across the globe are killed by militarized police force or terrorists, you share share share articles and memes because your ‘compassion’ just runs over—in Jesus’ name. But today (and most days when these things happen) you’re silent. We see you. We notice. We will not forget.”

I appreciate Colleen Mitchell’s response to these strong words. She doesn’t rush to her own defense, or attempt to exonerate herself from the accusation of “selective silence.” She tells the truth: “Oh friend, I don’t want to be your [white] ally.”

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I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O

by Nana Dolce

In some ways, Mrs. Mitchell’s candor is refreshing. She clearly articulates a message that African Americans are often left to decode—without using words, many of our white friends have said the same. Addressing the Gospel Coalition Council in May 2016, Mika Edmondson, pastor of New City Fellowship OPC, said this: We have a natural tendency to actively resist dealing with racial sin. How else can you explain a theology that comfortably coexisted with chattel slavery, the lynching tree, Jim Crow, segregation, and myriad ways black folks suffer today? How else could Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield have had such great theology but think that it had nothing to say to the black suffering they saw all around them?

(Edwards wrote copious notes on the duty of Christian charity to the poor on the one hand, while callously purchasing trembling little African girls off the auction block on the other.)…Evangelicals have a social ethic, but it’s a strangely selective social ethic.2 But perhaps, in a gradual way, the selective silence is beginning to budge in some corners.

There appears to be a finger pointing the attention of white evangelicalism to the issue of race in America. National conversations on policing and the value of black lives have awakened some congregations, leaders, and denominations to admit the stench of racism in American society.3 My prayer, as a black Christian, is that all sinful selectivity and partiality would surrender to the gospel of truth. In its own small way, Mrs. Mitchell’s blog post moves toward this direction.

She begins with a candid confession and reasons for not wanting to be a white ally and concludes in repentance. She repudiates her reasons as sinful selfishness and writes: I am coming to realize there is no way to be a friend without being an ally at this point in our history. Love doesn’t win in private if

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“My prayer, as a black Christian, is that all sinful selectivity and partiality would surrender to the gospel of truth.”

I am silent publicly. Reconciliation doesn’t happen behind closed doors and not affect how I respond publicly. When a black [man’s] death shows up on my social media newsfeed, I have a responsibility to respond.

This is a commendable start, and I’m “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” by supporting my sister in her good resolve (Eph. 4:3), so I have seven points of encouragement to this newly declared “White Ally.”

1. See your decision as a matter of your personal sanctification. A desire to empathize and ally with black friends in a racially discriminating America is good. But many worthy resolutions have succumbed to the strength of opposition and the weakness of willpower. The Christian who desires to grow in racial understanding must first see that decision as Spirit empowered. Christ calls his people to unity—he has broken down in his own flesh the dividing lines, making one body where there were many.

Christ has purchased our unity, so we pursue ethnic conciliation to display the work of Christ already accomplished on our behalf (Eph. 2:14–19). The Father predestined the unity of his diverse children, Christ has secured it, and the Spirit enables us to live it out. White Christians seeking to ally with black brothers and sisters must base their conviction squarely

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on the gospel so that their decision proves fundamental and not reactionary.

2. Enter the racial conversation as a student, not as a teacher. Your reasons for selective silence began with the fear of not knowing enough and the fear of not “getting it.” You write this: “I am afraid I don’t really ‘get’ what is happening and its societal implications. I am afraid I’ll make a comment that leaves my [ignorance] showing.”

My encouragement to you is this: enter racial dialogues as a learner and not as a knower. As it is, you are an outsider to the conversation, so you do well to confess your ignorance—it frees you from pretension and allows you to learn from minorities and others in the field. A wise ally will seek to learn above speaking, so that their speech becomes the natural byproduct of an informed and honest concern and not a mere obligation to contribute. So stick to the humble road—acknowledge what you don’t and can’t know and strive to learn, make allowances for your blind spots, receive correction, and put on compassion, meekness, and above all, love (Col. 3:12–14).

“ Stick to the humble road—acknowledge what you don’t and can’t know and strive to learn, make allowances for your blind spots, receive correction, and put on compassion, meekness, and above all, love (Col. 3:12–14).”

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3. You very well might do it wrong. Your third and fourth reasons for silence were these: “I’m afraid I’ll do it wrong,” and “I’m afraid I’ll be more offensive than I am helpful.” I can understand the caution. Reasonable people don’t enter interracial conversations with an intention to offend. But the subject is packed with tender spots and frustrations—landmines built over treacherous times. You might be surprised to hear that, as a black woman, I too struggle with the fear of doing more harm than good with my words on race. Yet we are fallen creatures who see in a mirror dimly (1 Cor. 13:12).

Who speaks without some flaws on this issue?

A well-intentioned approach might prove blind and offensive in the end. So admit that you’re still learning. Put on humility and resist the temptation to appear as a “savior” with the right answers. Center the voices of minorities and listen.

4. Suffer for doing good. You mention the fear of costs—particularly, the cost of Internet criticism. But posting an online perspective on race these days means the possibility of detractors.

Still, not all critiques are equal. Jemar Tisby, founder of the Reformed African American Network, writes that “it is frequently the case that when white Christians first start to talk about race they get a lot wrong.”4 Knowing this, anticipate your false assumptions and welcome the gracious constructive criticisms of minority friends. Hard conversations are necessary for honest allies, so don’t avoid these opportunities to learn. Other types of critiques might be what Peter calls “suffering for righteousness’ sake.”

You might find sections of the Internet (or even your own circle) who disapprove of your support for racial justice in America. In these cases: Make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to

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“Our culture teaches narratives against the character and personhood of black and brown people. You must strive to identify these messages, examine them in your own heart, and defeat them.”

suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. (1 Pet. 3:14–17) 5. Undo your own prejudices. You write of “slowly undoing the [racial] thoughts and associations [you] grew up with.” You say that “it is hard soul work and sometimes [you] want to get tired and give up.” Yet if that work is part of your personal sanctification, then there is no end to that journey on this side of eternity. Writing on slavery, Dr. Karen Swallow Prior said this: Nothing reflects the slowness of sanctification more poignantly than the issue of slavery….It strains the 21st-century imagination to understand how someone who claimed faith in Christ could continue in such horrific behavior. Part of the puzzle is that along with individual fallenness, corporate sin and cultural mindsets play great parts in our individual recognition and rejection of sin—and, conversely, our failure of the same….Like individual sanctification, cultural change, too, usually requires a painfully long time and the sometimes-heavy hand of a sovereign God.5 Cultural mind-sets are skillful schoolmasters—even the most theologically minded

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among us can be swayed by them. Our culture teaches narratives against the character and personhood of black and brown people. You must strive to identify these messages, examine them in your own heart, and defeat them.

Individual fallenness, corporate sin, and cultural mind-sets are powerful enemies in your work to “undo” your own prejudices. Praise God, then, for the unfailing hand that commands and enables your sanctification (Phil. 2:12–13).

6. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Your reasons for not wanting to be a white ally included this: “The history of race in America and where your pain comes from involves in some way or another where I came from. I do not know how to face that well. I do not [know] how to move forward with you given that.” The history of race in America is disconcerting. It began in 1619 when a Dutch ship brought twenty kidnapped Africans to Jamestown, Virginia. By the end of the eighteenth century, some 7 million Africans had been freighted to the New World. When England abolished the Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1807, America began its own internal trading. Families were separated as black men, women, and children were herded across the states. Chattel slavery was a self-reproducing

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“ May Christ have the prize for which he died—an inheritance of diverse nations, a pure bride without the spot of prejudice or the blemish of racial superiority (Rev. 7:9–12).”

labor force, controlled by legalized violence. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, but it couldn’t repeal the residual cycles of racism against minorities.6 My encouragement to you in this area is twofold. The first is to face the ugliness of America’s racial sins. I’m reminded of Daniel who confesses the wickedness of his forefathers and pleads to God to act—not according to their righteousness but according to his great mercy (Dan. 9:1–19). Reconciliation (with God and fellow humans) includes the confession of sin. White allies, whether the descendants of slave owners or later European immigrants, have inherited a land built at the expense of blacks. You do well to concede that point. It means something to African Americans to hear it granted. Having done so (with a commitment for justice), my second encouragement is to remember and believe that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin [and guilt]” (Rom. 8:2).

7. Christ will have the prize for which he died. I leave you with these words: I’m told that “the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander.”7 I agree with that. Black people are not obligated to ease white discomfort over the treachery of racism in America. Yet there was a brutalized man who paused amid his suffering

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to pray for his abusive bystanders. Through him, you and I are no longer strangers but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Eph. 2:19). For the honor of that God-Man, I write for your encouragement.

May Christ have the prize for which he died— an inheritance of diverse nations, a pure bride without the spot of prejudice or the blemish of racial superiority (Rev. 7:9–12).

NANA DOLCE was born in Ghana, West Africa. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband Eric and two daughters.

She homeschools her children, is on staff at a local church, and holds a Master of Arts in theological studies. She blogs at motherhoodandsanctity.com.

1 Colleen Mitchell, “Ten Reasons I Don’t Want to Be Your White Ally,” July 6, 2016, http://www.blessedarethefeet. com/10-reasons-i-dont-want-to-be-your-white-ally.

2 Mika Edmondson, “Is Black Lives Matter the New Civil Rights Movement?” June 24, 2016, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/ article/is-black-lives-matter-the-new-civil-rights-movement.

3 See article on the Southern Baptist repudiation of the confederate flag: http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/june/southern-baptists-racial-reconciliation-sbc-civilitas-pca.html.

4 Jemar Tisby, “Supporting White Christians When They Attempt to Work for Social Justice,” May 9, 2016, https://www.raanetwork.org/ supporting-christians-attempt-work-racial-justice.

5 Karen Swallow Prior, “Amazing Grace, How Slow the Work: Why We Still Have Slaves,” May 8, 2012, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ women/2012/may/amazing-grace-how-slow-work-why-we-still-haveslaves.html?paging=off.

6 A&E History Education, “Slavery in America,” 2016, http://www. history.com/topics/black-history/slavery.

7 Jesse Williams, Acceptance Speech for Humanitarian Award, presented at BET Awards in Los Angeles, California, June 2 6 , 2 0 1 6 , h tt p ://w w w.v o x .c o m / 2 0 1 6 / 6 / 2 7 / 1 2 0 3 8 8 1 0 / jesse-williams-bet-awards-2016-black-lives-matter.

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STILL HUNGRY? What are the stories we tell ourselves? How do these stories shape us and our habits?

Join the WHI hosts in January and February for our eight-part series, “Finding Yourself in God’s Story.”

We’ll explore these questions and more as we unpack God’s unfolding story of redemption, along with the truths and doctrines that emerge from that great drama. Then the hosts will explore the implications of those truths on the way we worship and live out a life of discipleship.

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GETTING TO THE CORE The Campaign for Core Christianity is a media-based initiative to challenge the growing influence of Christless Christianity. This media campaign focuses on a biblical response to the most fundamental questions about the Christian faith.

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FEATURES

One of the most beautiful things about the God we worship is that he has not only revealed himself in his word but also in history; not only does he speak to us, but he also acts for us in space and time, where we can see his mighty hand.”

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DISCIPLESHIP IN THE LOCAL CHURCH: SPIRITUAL BURDEN OR SPIRITUAL SAFETY?

WHY DOCTRINE MATTERS NOW MORE THAN EVER

FACE-TO-FACE DISCIPLESHIP IN A FACEBOOK WORLD

“ALL PEOPLE TO MYSELF”: THE CHURCH AS THE GOAL OF HISTORY

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BRIAN CROFT

Discipleship in the Local Church Spiritual Burden or Spiritual Safety?

illustration by

YASMINE GATEAU

Cody is confident in his walk with the Lord. He reads his Bible at home, prays every day, and regularly shares his faith with others. He listens to a John Piper sermon on the commute to work and various Reformed podcasts on the way home, and he attends no less than two conferences a year.

Yet the greatest source of Cody’s confidence is rooted not in his private devotion or in edifying instruction, but in his close accountability relationship with his friend and coworker, Steve.

Cody and Steve meet every week for lunch and talk about all kinds of struggles they both are facing—they ask each other the hard questions and discuss the next chapter in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. They sharpen each other when needed and lift each other up with encouragement. Cody is certain that all the pieces for him to grow spiritually and flourish as a Christian are in place: Scripture, fellowship, and accountability—just not in church.

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W When asked, Cody said he used to go to church but stopped because the service style wasn’t what he wanted. He quit attending because he struggled to connect with elderly members and those different from him. He disagreed with some decisions of the church leaders, pastors appeared to meddle in his life at times, and he felt like the less mature Christians in the church were holding him back. In fact, he boasts that he is spiritually flourishing because he is no longer tied down to a church—free to live for Jesus however he sees fit. He sees the church as a spiritual burden.

Cody is one of many examples in the modern evangelical movement that reveal this conviction that the local church is an unnecessary spiritual burden, evidenced by a couple of realities. First, it is a broken place full of sinners.

There is no perfect church, of course, but the harsh reality is that the dysfunction and lack of biblically minded shepherds of many local churches have harmed God’s people to such a degree that wounded sheep generally grow disenchanted with the church as a whole and conclude that church life is not worth it.

Second, the convenience of immediate access to information through the Internet and social

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media has tempted many evangelicals to think they can have their cake and eat it too. They can listen to preaching from some of the best preachers alive, attend conferences led by the best worship leaders and mingle, and interact through the Internet with other Christians just like them—all without the hassle of dealing with the nonsense of church life and those in it. These two realities have made the task of convincing Christians of the necessity of the local church an even greater uphill battle.

Nevertheless, the church in all its messiness is still God’s idea and is a necessity in the life of every Christian.

All followers of Jesus need to integrate themselves in the life of the local church. God’s plan for creation concludes when he gathers and redeems his people in his presence. The local and global church, despite all her brokenness, reflects this plan and displays God acting upon it in love now. Only a powerful God could take something as messy and dysfunctional as sinners in a fallen world and still make them in their union with Christ the centerpiece to his redemptive plan. Only God in his infinite wisdom could take that which seems to be an unnecessary burden to zealous Christians wanting spiritual growth and make it his template from which all Christians are meant to flourish. Only a glorious God could take something so broken and yet design it to be that powerful light to display his glory. Only a compassionate God would take what appears to be a spiritual burden and design it to be needed safety for our souls.

The local church is messy and broken, but it is still the centerpiece of God’s glory in redemption—and thus is necessary not just for all Christians’ spiritual growth and discipleship, but for the spiritual safety of their redeemed souls.

WHAT IS GOD’S DESIGN FOR THE LOCAL CHURCH? Despite the attempts of some to make it seem so, the biblical paradigm for church health is not

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about numbers and money. Rather, it is about a group of people who, despite their dissimilarities, love Jesus and one another. Spiritual life and health come in the unity of diversity. The New Testament assumes diversity in the local church, and the union of people of different sexes, backgrounds, and opinions displays the power of the gospel. The clearest example of this biblical reality is captured when Paul writes to Titus on how these new churches established in Crete should look: But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine. Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love, in perseverance.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. Likewise urge the young men to be sensible; in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us. Urge bondslaves to be subject to their own masters in everything, to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith so that they will adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.

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

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IT IS THEIR LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER THAT DISPLAYS THE GOSPEL TO THE WORLD THROUGH AFFECTIONATE, DIVERSE, MULTIGENERATIONAL, MULTIETHNIC RELATIONSHIPS AS CHRIST’S BODY. 19

Walking with Jesus in our daily life must not be done alone—we need one another, and we need to be responsible for one another.

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and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

(Titus 2:1–15) Paul’s central message in this letter is that the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms minds and hearts, and thus changes how we live. Paul’s blueprint for establishing healthy churches first identifies those qualified (pastors/elders) to lead the church (1:5–9), and then exposes the false teachers in their midst—the gospel imposters who “profess to know God, but deny Him by their deeds” (1:16). In chapter 2, Paul instructs Titus to teach followers of Jesus to live out the gospel. Paul gives a countercultural and even counterintuitive design of older, younger, ethnically diverse believers in covenant together.

It is their love for one another that displays the gospel to the world through affectionate, diverse, multigenerational, multiethnic relationships as Christ’s body.

This design is specifically highlighted in Titus 2 in the twofold division of this chapter: verses 1–10 describe the different kinds of people assumed to be in these new churches in Crete, their roles, and how they display the gospel in the local church; and verses 11–15 explain the kind of gospel that transforms and empowers these different groups to be united. It is important to note that Paul is not instructing different churches; each type of people is represented in each of these newer local churches that Titus is establishing.

Paul addresses three different kinds of people, covering a wide spectrum of diversity to create this design that should be present in every local church. There is the presence of the old and the young (vv. 2–8), men and women (vv. 2–8), and slaves and masters (vv. 9–10). It is in the unity of these different groups of people that the transforming power of the gospel is displayed (vv.11–15).

Therefore, it is God’s design for the local church to be full of redeemed followers of Jesus who are different from us: older or younger people who look different, talk different, have different interests, and who come from different places. God’s beautiful design for his church

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is the combination of the moteliest crew made possible by the blood of Jesus so that the world would see the undeniable unifying power of the gospel. God has specific, intentional purposes for our spiritual growth and discipleship that cannot be experienced outside the context of his unique design.

FIVE REASONS CHRISTIANS NEED A LOCAL CHURCH FOR DISCIPLESHIP

M Membership in a local church is essential in the life of any Christian. It is only through the solemn commitment of membership that the discipleship of believers can be effective.

Walking with Jesus in our daily life must not be done alone—we need one another, and we need to be responsible for one another.

Examples abound in the New Testament of how membership enables discipleship. A clear understanding of how the members of a church are called to relate to one another is essential for Christian spiritual growth—the framework of meaningful covenant membership provides the crucial context for the five reasons why every Christian should be joined to the local church.

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1. Every Christian Needs a Shepherd

IT IS GOD’S WILL THAT WE BEAR THE BURDENS OF OTHERS AS ONE OF THE MEANS OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH AND DISCIPLESHIP. 22

I recently had a conversation with a couple who had been attending church regularly for several months. They are enjoying the public gatherings, building new relationships, and even attending other church events. But when asked why they haven’t become members of the church yet, they replied, “Well, we got burned at our last church so we don’t want to think about joining another church. Besides, we feel like we are getting many of the benefits of membership without joining.” There are several troubling things that accompany this sort of response, but the most glaring was the fact that they believed the flock of Christ has no real need of a shepherd. Although this couple had received many benefits of the church through their attendance, they had yet to place themselves willingly under the authority and care of a group of shepherds who have publicly bound themselves to the solemn task of ministering to Christ’s sheep. The biblical paradigm for pastoral ministry is captured best in the following two passages: Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. (1 Pet. 5:1–4) Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you. (Heb. 13:17) Within these profound words from the apostle Peter and the writer of Hebrews lie the sobering,

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unique calling of a pastor and the main reason why every Christian needs the local church— soul care under the oversight of an ordained minister. God’s design is for every Christian to be cared for by a qualified under-shepherd who will give an account for their souls to the Chief Shepherd. Just as sheep without a shepherd are left exposed, vulnerable, and in danger of being devoured by predators, so Christians who refuse the oversight and care of elders and pastors expose themselves to the attacks and tricks of the enemy who prowls about, seeking someone to devour.

demands that the members of the Corinthian church remove those in the church who commit gross sexual immorality. He encourages the church in Thessalonica to confront those taking advantage of the generosity of the church (2 Thess. 3:6–15). Members of a local church are to watch their own lives as well as the lives of one another, for the name of Christ and the purity of his church are at stake. A Christian without the security of the divine authority given to a covenant community treads dangerously, exposed to the powerfully deceptive allure of sin.

2. Every Christian Needs the Warning Presence of Church Discipline

3. Every Christian Needs to Help Bear the Burdens of Others

To return to my earlier examples, Cody and Steve, it is good that these two men have a close, open relationship and are able to walk through life together. It is profitable for them to share the ways in which they struggle and to confess those struggles to each other. But what compelling safeguard is in place to keep Cody from committing a grievous, life-altering sin? What would happen if Cody told Steve he just hired a prostitute and is determined to do it again?

What leverage does Cody have to confront Steve if he someday becomes convinced that Jesus is just one of several ways to gain eternal life?

Their relationship is the only potential casualty at stake in each of these scenarios. This is why every Christian needs the warning presence of a greater consequence, a weightier discipline to keep our conscience from grievous sins and our souls from abandoning our faith.

One of the most important (and clearly biblical) roles that members play is holding each other accountable for how they carry the name of Jesus. This is known as church discipline and is seen in several passages where members are to confront unrepentant sin in the lives of each other. In Matthew 18:15–18, Jesus describes in detail a four-step process that a Christian takes with another Christian who has sinned against him, which ends with the exclusion of the offending member by the church if no resolution is found. In 1 Corinthians 5:2, Paul

The Christian life was never designed to be lived alone. This is most clearly demonstrated when suffering enters into the lives of believers—the fallen world in which we live assures us we will suffer, and God has given us the church so that we might be sustained in our faith and comforted in our minds and bodies during those times. This suffering together is most clearly and concisely stated in Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia, in which he exhorts them to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2). Christians are called not just to comfort one another during seasons of grief and sorrow; the command is that we actually take on one another’s burdens as if they were our own. This mutual burden-bearing is intended to take place within the covenant community of a local church. This command to bear one another’s burdens cannot be accomplished in isolation or in the comforts of your break room at work with a single accountability partner. There is a corporate call to this command, and obedience requires that it take place within a group of people committed to walking through life together in Christian community.

Few experiences compare to that of suffering saints watching their local congregation coming together to love, support, and serve them in the midst of hardship. It is God’s will that we bear the burdens of others as one of the means of spiritual growth and discipleship.

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God’s all-wise design for the church is not just that we grow, but that we grow through helping the bruised reeds stay intact and the smoldering wicks keep burning.

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4. All Christians Need People to Love and to Serve Those Who Aren’t Like Them Tribes exist for a reason—we are naturally drawn to those who are like us. Although Steve is a close friend and confidant, his similar tastes, experiences, and opinions somewhat limit his ability to help Cody spiritually grow. They are both single white males in their late twenties who appreciate John Piper and soccer. There is, however, an aspect of discipleship in a Christian’s life that must come from those who are different from us. The multiethnic, multigenerational reality of the local church, which is God’s design (Titus 2:1–10), provides the environment in which that growth takes place.

There is unique growth that happens in Christians’ lives when they are pressed to love and serve someone older, who grew up on the other side of the tracks, who looks or talks differently, and/or has a different cultural background.

The dissimilarities that exist in the local church push us to unite around the gospel of Jesus Christ, press us to be charitable to others, and challenge us to acquaint ourselves with those who are different from us. The power of the gospel is on display as we learn to love and serve one another through (not in spite of) our differences.

5. All Christians Need to Realize That Their Discipleship Is Bigger Than They Are Cody is like many others seeking to grow in their faith—he is so worried about people in the church hindering his spiritual growth, he has missed God’s design: that a key to his own spiritual maturing comes when he helps others grow. This is best captured when Paul writes to arguably the most faithful and mature church we find in Paul’s letters—the church in Thessalonica: We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but

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always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people. (1 Thess. 5:13–14) The implication here is that the Christian life is not a race you sprint to see how far ahead of everyone else you can finish. The Christian life is a race where you lock arms with your fellow brothers and sisters to get everyone to cross the finish line. The goal is not to finish first but to finish together. A Christian’s own personal discipleship is important, but it is not the only thing at stake. The covenant community of a local church strives to help everyone—including the fainthearted and weak (v. 13)—to cross the finish line. God’s all-wise design for the church is not just that we grow, but that we grow through helping the bruised reeds stay intact and the smoldering wicks keep burning. Discipleship in the local church doesn’t merely provide spiritual safety for us but spiritual safety for the whole congregation, as we realize that our sanctification is bigger than our personal discipleship.

CONCLUSION If a Christian sees the local church and the discipleship within it as an unnecessary spiritual burden that holds back the most zealous, doesn’t allow for like-minded fellowship, and is more of a burden than a blessing, then not only is God’s design disregarded but the means of grace that is discipleship in the church is sadly squandered. Sanctification in the local church comes with struggles and burdens, and it comes with difficulties and conflicts as we deal with broken sinners stumbling their way to the Celestial City.

But it’s often those burdens that somehow, in God’s providence, help us mature in our faith and consequently provide the spiritual safety that we who are in Christ long for as we await his glorious return.

BRIAN CROFT is senior pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and founder of Practical Shepherding.

He is also senior fellow for the Mathena Center for Church Revitalization at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and has written over a dozen books on pastoral ministry.

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WHY DOCTRINE

M A T T E R S

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illustration by

WHITNEY GAMBLE

JOE CAVAZOS

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American Christians are standing at a crossroads.

Our society is becoming more hostile to Christianity in general and believers individually. In the face of rapid secularization, political uncertainty, economic instability, and ideological confusion, we must decide whether or not we will stand for the truth, or capitulate to the pressure. American society does not want to hear what Christians have to say regarding #loveislove hashtags, the rights of the unborn, extending the draft to women, transgender bathroom use, or LGBT rights in general—unless it corroborates the “Christian” doctrines of “love” and “tolerance.”

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Tragically, many Christians are not just sideline participants in our culture’s march away from truth; they are organizing the marches.

In many evangelical circles, pleas for “just the simple gospel” can be heard ringing from the steeples. Doctrine is abandoned in the interest of unity, because “doctrine divides.” Many argue that we must focus on banding together and simply preach the gospel, not study doctrine. We can pray together, work together, and evangelize together, but we cannot have doctrinal depth.

This is a common position, but it is fundamentally mistaken. Scripture is unambiguously clear in its insistence on rich, strong doctrine that reflects the beautiful, powerful, and complex God who created it. Sound doctrine is a systematic explanation of biblical truths, without which we cannot have true unity. It’s not sound doctrine, but the departure from doctrine that causes division and strife. Ignoring or perverting its beauty denies the reality of our identity as Christ’s people and remains Satan’s explicit goal. His aim is and always has been to deceive and devour God’s people, and he does so by convincing them to abandon truth. Today more than ever, we must do the hard work of becoming trained in the godliness of doctrine through growth in our knowledge of Christ. We must fight for the whole truth—the complex, rich articulation that reflects the beautiful and intricate story of redemption.

WHY DOCTRINE MATTERS: WHO WE WERE

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hose who call for a movement away from doctrine to promote unity have a fundamental misunderstanding of our identity as humans—who we once were, who we are now, and the battle in which we are engaged. Growing in the knowledge of Christ—learning doctrine—is intimately and necessarily connected to who we once were “in Adam” and who we are now “in Christ.”

Paul explains this in Romans 5:12. He forthrightly states that “all sinned” when Adam sinned. The words are simple, but this little

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phrase has caused extended debate throughout church history. Theologians have disputed and split over the question of what it actually means that “all sinned” when Adam sinned. Does it mean that men and women inherit Adam’s sinful nature because they are biologically human? Was all humanity somehow present in the garden with Adam when he sinned? Did everyone commit Adam’s exact sin, or are they merely guilty because sin is hereditary? After centuries of debate, the Westminster Confession of Faith VI:III clarified that men and women are guilty of the exact sin that Adam committed. It states: “They [Adam and Eve] being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.”

So what is the big deal? What are the implications of understanding Paul this way? The text does not say that human beings are condemned merely because of their own sinful actions committed in this life, but that they enter the world guilty before God because of Adam’s sin. Paul does not defend or apologize for such a notion; he just states it as a categorical fact. What this means is that everyone is born already programmed with a certain way of being in the world; men and women stand condemned for Adam’s sin before they even come out of the womb.

What should Adam have done in the garden when he was tempted to sin? He knew Satan was lying to him, but he bought it—Adam, the one man on earth who walked with God in a perfect sinless world. You can imagine Adam receiving that first breath of life, opening his eyes to the knowledge that God, the Creator of the universe, was his creator as well. God was his friend, companion, sustainer, even matchmaker—he brought him his wife, Eve, and provided for every possible need. And yet, when faced with the promise of assuming his Creator’s power, what did Adam do? He rebelled against his Father—in following Satan, he hated his God, his Creator, his friend, his love. He allowed his knowledge of God to be perverted and trusted Satan instead.

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Christian or not, we all know God. We can’t escape knowing him; he is our Creator! We know the truth, but we pervert that truth, just like Adam. Paul describes this in Romans 1 as humanity’s “natural” way of understanding the world. He states that all men and women know God, but they “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18). This denial is characterized by a unilateral rejection of the revealed truth about God—Paul refers to it as our “darkened understanding.” He says that we naturally live “in the futility of [our] thinking” (Eph. 4:17). This means that our natural way of perceiving the world is corrupt and warped because, in this state, we are separated from the source of our identity, our Creator. The corruption of the natural mind means that there are no “objective” or “neutral” categories of thinking. There is no point of mental inquiry men and women can derive from nature that is unadulterated by sin or by the guilt of rebellion.

WHY DOCTRINE MATTERS: WHO WE ARE

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n Romans 5, Paul makes the ultimate contrast. He states that all men and women fell when Adam fell: “one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people” (Rom. 5:18). But he then contrasts Adam’s one act of rebellion (which resulted in death) with Christ’s one righteous act (which resulted in life). Through Adam’s disobedience, sin and guilt are accounted, but through Christ’s obedience, righteousness is imputed. In the same way that Adam’s guiltiness becomes the guilt of all men and women, so Christ’s righteousness becomes the righteousness of his people when they are united to him through the power of the Holy Spirit.

When Paul describes those who are united to Christ, he says that we have received a new way of understanding the world. We’re no longer bound by the sinful perceptions given to us by our father Adam—our old life is gone and with it our old patterns of thinking. It has been “put off” and we are “made new” in the attitude of our minds (Eph. 4:22–23). Paul frames the

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shift in identity from Adam to Christ in terms of a mental change—we now have the mind of Christ and are to think according to his mind.

Everything has changed; our understanding of reality has been transformed so that we now understand politics, education, history, science, technology, family, relationships, and society differently.

What is the nature of this new mind? The mind of Christ is revealed in the word of Christ—the two are inseparable—so we cannot neglect the study of his word, since this is how we come to understand who we are as new creatures. Paul illustrates this principle in his letter to the Ephesians. Writing to his beloved congregation from prison in Rome, he tells the members that he continually prays that the “eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you” (Eph. 1:17–18; italics added).

Paul “keeps asking” that God would give them the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you might know him better.” Of all the things Paul could pray for this congregation, it was that they would know God better—the beauty of the hope to which they had been called—that they are God’s treasured and holy people, God’s own inheritance, and that the same power which brought them into God’s family was the same power that raised the very Son of God from the dead and set him on his throne at God’s right hand (Eph. 1:18–20).

As we read through the list of what Paul wants the Ephesians to know, it becomes clear that Paul simply wants them to know and remember who they are! They are redeemed; they are made to be God’s inheritance by the power of the Holy Spirit. He describes the Ephesians’ identity with a summary of essential truths of the Christian faith—i.e., doctrines! Paul states that the Ephesians are God’s treasured and holy people, which is the doctrine of election.

He prays that the Ephesians would know that they were brought into God’s family through the same power that raised Christ from the dead, which is a doctrine about the power and work of the Holy Spirit. Knowing doctrine—the truths of Scripture—simply means knowing who we

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are as a people redeemed out of our identity “in Adam” as rebels against God, now united to Christ and conforming our hearts and minds to his own.

A refusal to study and become competent in doctrine is ultimately a refusal to know who we are. It’s a sort of functional denial of your own identity. It’s like choosing to live and act as a wild animal: eating grass and living outside, instead of consuming proper nourishment and living indoors. The refusal to learn and study doctrine does not promote unity; it fosters division, as people decide for themselves what the Bible says and what it doesn’t.

WHY DOCTRINE MATTERS: STRENGTH FOR OUR FIGHT!

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he stark contrast between Adam and Christ in Romans 5 is intended to demarcate two positions: we are either in active rebellion against our Creator as we operate out of the guilt of our father Adam, or we have been reconciled to God through the work of Christ and the power of the Spirit with a new mind continually conforming to the word of Christ. Everyone operates out of a theology—either a theology of rebellion according to the flesh or a theology in subjection to the Creator. Those who discourage growing in the knowledge of Christ and scorn the study of doctrine encourage believers to return to their old patterns of thought that are in bondage to Satan.

Paul’s knowledge of Satan’s goal motivated him to sharply warn the elders in Ephesus against the “savage wolves” circling the fold.

Like twenty-first century America, firstcentury Ephesus was not an easy place for Christians. Its status as a prominent city in the Roman Empire brought ideological, social, and religious pressures to the small congregation that struggled to grow in an area shaped by the worship of the goddess Diana. Paul spent three years ministering there, devoting more time to the Ephesian church than any other congregation. Before he departed for

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EVERYONE OPERATES OUT OF A THEOLOGY—EITHER A THEOLOGY OF REBELLION ACCORDING TO THE FLESH OR A THEOLOGY IN SUBJECTION TO THE CREATOR.

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Jerusalem, he called the elders to meet with him one last time. In one of the most tender scenes in the Bible, Paul reminds the elders that when he lived among them, he warned them “day and night” about false teachers.

These men would rise from their midst with the sole purpose of drawing men and women away through the distortion of the truth.

These men would know what the truth is—they would even be members of the church—yet they would take that knowledge and twist it to deceive God’s people. Just like Satan in the garden, the wolves take the truth and pervert it for their own purposes.

In light of this danger, Paul warned the elders to “be on your guard!” (Acts 20:30). They were to “keep watch over themselves and all the flock” and shepherd the church of God, “which he bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). But how were they to do this? Paul did not simply warn the Ephesians that “savage wolves” were present, but he also gave them a powerful tool against these troublemakers. He admonished them to “preach anything that would be helpful,” declaring to them the “whole counsel of God… night and day” (Acts 20:20). Paul equipped the Ephesians with the “whole counsel of God”—he taught them doctrine! Doctrine is simply the clear presentation of the “will” or “counsel” of God, and Paul knew that this—the clear, careful articulation of the whole truth in God’s revealed word—would protect the Ephesian church after he left.

As time went on, the Ephesian church was plagued by controversy and torn by false doctrines. At the end of Paul’s life, he sent Timothy to the church, giving him the same charge that he gave its elders prior to his departure for Jerusalem. In the face of false teaching, Timothy was to train himself in truth and pursue godliness and the knowledge of Christ (1 Tim. 4:7).

Paul told him to flee from those who “do not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching,” commanding him to “fight the good fight” of the faith, to “take hold” of the eternal life to which he was called (1 Tim. 6:3–5). How did Timothy know what “the faith” was? How could he discern the true from

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the false? By being trained in the “whole counsel of God” and the “sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Training is hard work—ask any athlete. It involves discipline, diligence, and hard work.

Paul worked “day and night” with the Ephesians, teaching them truth. Learning doctrine can be hard—there must be a continual and careful study of the Scriptures, new words to learn, and a bit of historical work. It’s much easier to sit back and allow others to tell us what is right and wrong, to be content with 140-character theology statements.

For Timothy and the Ephesian church, as well as for us, becoming trained in sound doctrine wasn’t something they could choose to ignore. There is no neutral position. If we are not transformed in the renewal of our minds through the power of the Holy Spirit, then our minds will degenerate further in the futility of our thinking. The “savage wolves” against which the Ephesians (and we) are warned will come and take our thoughts captive. The sin we inherited from Adam is powerful and strong, and our enemy the devil is prowling, scheming, and seeking to devour God’s people (Eph. 6:10).

He uses the same tactics he used in the garden as well as Ephesus—our knowledge of the truth must answer his schemes with more strength.

If not, we will be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning” (Eph. 4:14). Many modern evangelicals have failed to realize that we are still in a battle against Satan! If we don’t know, study, and stand for the truth, then we run the risk of being taken captive.

One of the most beautiful things about the God we worship is that he has not only revealed himself in his word but also in history; not only does he speak to us, but he also acts for us in space and time, where we can see his mighty hand. We have the inerrant testimony of the godly men and women who have gone before us contained in the pages of Scripture, assuring us that we do in fact worship the one, true, and living God, and it is through their testimony that the doctrines of the orthodox, historic faith are codified. Theologians throughout history knew

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what Paul taught—that sound doctrine is not only an essential component of our identity as followers of Christ, but it is also a necessary weapon for the battle against falsehood. The Reformers wrote their confessions and catechisms in order to articulate clear, concise, and theologically rich presentations of the “whole counsel of God” as a way to refute the various false teachings that had arisen. They were revolutionary in the sense that they firmly believed everyone must be trained in doctrine in order to glorify God and withstand the temptations of the world. For the first time since the apostles, theology was to be studied not just by priests and students, but by merchants, field laborers, women, and children as well.

One of the great triumphs of Satan’s campaign against the contemporary church is the neglect of and (in some cases) disdain for the confessions and catechisms of the Reformation. Many Christians today operate in a vacuum, not bothering to consult or learn from the historic church. Doctrines that godly men and women fought and died for are either ignored or cast off as irrelevant and divisive.

There’s a well-known proverb about refusing to learn history and being doomed to repeat its mistakes. We have a vast amount of resources available to us as we face cultural and theological confusion. We don’t have to start at square one in our study of doctrine; in fact, it would be foolish to do so.

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aul and the Reformers knew that there is a higher purpose to the study of doctrine than the acquisition of knowledge per se: it is the putting on of the new self, which is “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24). Learning doctrine produces men and women who walk before God in holiness, which is the whole purpose of humankind!

Adam was created to walk before God in holiness, and that requirement remained in effect even after the entrance of sin. Enoch walked

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with God faithfully and was spared death (Gen. 5:24); when God established his covenant with Abraham, God commanded him to “walk before [him] faithfully and be blameless” (Gen. 17:1).

In the same way, Israel was supposed to “walk in obedience” to God (Deut. 26:17). God declared that his people, whom he called out of darkness to walk before him, were his “treasured possession…a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:5–6). His plan to redeem a holy people for his own possession was what drove the Old Testament—a plan accomplished in the New Testament era, which continues today.

This is who we are in Christ: “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Pet. 2:9).

Walking before God in holiness is always connected to knowing and keeping the commands revealed in his word. Learning doctrine is not simply a safeguard against false teaching; it is one of our key weapons in our struggle against the enemy and foundational to who we are as human beings. We engage in the hard work of growing in our knowledge of Christ because it is who we are. Walking in holiness through the power of the Spirit brings us to our identity as God’s creatures.

In his letter to Titus, Paul reflected that the result of the appearing of God’s grace is not simply our redemption from sin through the death of Christ. It’s so that we are trained to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age as we wait for the blessed hope of Christ’s return (Titus 2:14). How do we as God’s people respond to the troubling events going on in this “present age”? We don’t capitulate to our Ephesian or American societal and cultural trends. Instead, we become trained in the “whole counsel of God” as our mind and lives are transformed by the word of Christ, and we become thoroughly equipped by the power of the Spirit to live upright and godly lives in the present age.

WHITNEY GAMBLE (PhD, University of Edinburgh, Scotland) is assistant professor of biblical and theological studies at Providence Christian College in Pasadena.

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by

JOHN J. B OMBARO

FACE-TO-FACE DISCIPLESHIP IN A FACEBOOK WORLD

illustrations by

THOMAS HED GER

Three decades of data have revealed a near-systemic evangelical ignorance of the Scriptures, theology, church history, Christian art, architecture, and iconography and, correspondingly, of Christian deportment, both social and practical.1 Somehow, despite the information superhighway literally at our fingertips and Kindles glutted with books, ignorance abounds.

This ignorance has little to do with intelligence or ability, and everything to do with literacy—the kind of literacy that results from interpersonal catechesis; that is, discipleship. Our evangelical churches are illiterate because catechesis rarely takes place, and when it does it is usually unremarkable and undemanding, thanks to our seeker-sensitivity complex. It is only interpersonal, challenging catechesis—face-to-face discipleship between the catechist and catechumen—that can dispel such illiteracy, so that the baptized may not only recognize the biblical drama in its various manifestations (the contents, confessional articles, liturgical appointments and rites, and so forth), but also own it as their integrated worldview and lifestyle.

It was this kind of discipling that Jesus expected from his ministerium (Matt. 28:19; John 21:15–18).

Interpersonal discipleship fortifies the church against flaccid nominalism. Modern technologies, for all their usefulness and genius, have not and cannot fill the gap between Christian initiation and catechetical confirmation; only face-to-face discipleship can.

After decades of unbridled optimism, catechists were beginning to make a U-turn on the necessity of employing modern technologies as the principal means of discipling. To be sure, cautionary statements have been issued since the 1980s—by the

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likes of Neil Postman, C. John Sommerville, D. G. Hart, and Neal Gabler—that modern technology was not all it was cracked up to be, particularly in connection with religious learning.2 Biblical literacy rates are down, learning is increasingly a passive activity, the line of demarcation between educating and entertaining has been blurred, and—for all the time spent in front of electronic media devices (averaging nine hours a day for high school students)— American pupils are scoring lower than their Eastern and Sub-Continent counterparts in the fields of mathematics, science, language acquisition and proficiency, to say nothing of catechetical retention.3 As one Sudanese pastor said, “I’ll take any one of my catechumens over a dozen of yours in America.” This Anglican priest was making the point that discipleship is about quality, not quantity. It is baptism that gives us quantity, and face-to-face discipleship gives us quality. But then came Facebook as the latest Christian-consumer expectation within the church, where face-to-face discipleship now competes with Facebook discipleship.

OLD SCHOOL DISCIPLING THROUGH PERSONAL PRESENCE Biblical models of discipleship entail corporate settings (cf. Acts 2:42; Heb. 10:25) and more intimate contexts for mentoring (cf.

Acts 8:26ff.; 10:27–48; the Pastoral Epistles).

Jesus’ ministry to the assembled masses and pedagogical retreats with his disciples provide paradigmatic case studies for intentional catechetical ministry that has been replicated by the apostles and succeeding generations within the church. Indeed, when Jesus commissioned his disciples as apostles in John 20:21–23, he intended a personal, intimate, and present ministry. The Father “sent” the Son in human flesh to “be with us” (John 1:14), to minister grace and truth. In the same way, the Son sends his personal representatives (the apostoloi) to minister the grace and truth of God—anything otherwise would yield Docetism, impinging upon God’s incarnational purposes and presence.4 Personal,

present representation is therefore the essence of Christian ministry—the ministry of disciplemaking through holy baptism and the formation of the disciple through catechetical instruction (Matt. 28:19–20).

Given this biblical precedence and two millennia of ecclesial emulation of the discipling process, is it possible to take a digital approach to, say, the Lenten form of Christian discipleship? I don’t think so. Cyber-social networks such as Facebook facilitate neither the corporate setting nor the context for mentoring as intended by the Father and the Son. The tradition of Lent is the liturgical calendar season of forty weekdays before Easter, observed by many Reformation traditions and consisting of penitence and fasting, stretching from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday. Despite attempts to spin the significance of the biblical number “40” into something wonderfully transformative (à la Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life), forty-day periods in the Bible always are associated with trials of temptation, affliction, fasting, repentance, and suffering while entreating God for grace (one thinks of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus himself fasting in the wilderness). One thinks of global judgment for forty days in Noah’s lifetime, as well as the first generation of Hebrews who experienced the Exodus, who spent forty years wandering and never entering the Promised Land. Lenten seasons—with Moses and the Hebrews, Elijah and the Israelites, or Jesus and his “last Adam” representation of humanity—were never exclusively about individual self-discovery. They have always been corporate disciplines of repentance and entreaty. These experiences necessitated challenging encounters with familial (head of household) and communal spiritual shepherds (prophets and priests).

Maintaining continuity with the Old Testament and holding Jesus’ wilderness trial as the paragon, the church enters the season of Lent. Since the third century, entire congregations have embraced and participated in this drama that reaches its apogee on Good Friday when the Messiah was crucified “for us and for our salvation,” only to give way to corporate relief on Easter morning. Lent was a church affair, and

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it was bound up with the formation of disciples by way of catechetical preaching, instructing baptismal candidates and confirmands, and shaping Christian character through the rigors of spiritual disciplines—praying, fasting, meditating, self-denying, serving, and studying. It was all very corporate and interpersonal—we repented together, mourned together, and celebrated together. Moreover, it was decidedly low tech: personal presence, word, sacraments, brotherly consolation, and encouragement. Christians touched and ate together in 3-D. To day, Lent seems to have suffered from the encroachment of our Facebook society. I say this because, like so much else in American evangelicalism, even Lent seems to have been reduced to an exercise in isolation, militating against biblical categories of discipleship. What was once a parish exercise is now more frequently referred to as an individual experience enjoyed from the comforts of home or wherever one can access a Wi-Fi or LTE network. Evidencing this trend are not only sparsely attended Lenten services (in the evershrinking sphere in which they remain), but the way we as evangelicals think about the world. A Facebook instant message (IM) exchange shared by a friend may be typical: A: Doing lent?

B: You mean giving up something?

A: N o u know the whole lent thing— church and all.

B: Not really. How about you?

A: M e neither tho I was thinking I’d renew my new years resolutions.

B: Cool. I’ll pray for you.

This exchange came from a West Coast evangelical church’s Facebook forum titled “The Fellowship Wall.” For this and other churches, posting, texting, and blogging sometimes

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constitutes Christian fellowship and the substance of discipleship. Where once catechisms were employed and midweek Lenten services pocked calendars, now it is good enough simply to have connected electronically. Clip, paste, send. And we all say “Amen.”

NEW SCHOOL DISCIPLESHIP THROUGH FACEBOOK There can be no doubt that Facebook and social networks such as Twitter and YouTube are displacing interpersonal mediums of discipling.

In a broader sense, they are filling a socialization vacuum about which Robert D. Putnam so ably wrote in his groundbreaking book, Bowling Alone.5 Putnam’s data showed how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, our democratic structures, and church. He concluded that radical individualism, narcissism, consumerism, moral relativism, and a profound sense of entitlement fragment communities and organizations that, by their very nature and existence, operate on a fundamentally different principle than autonomy. With the loss of this social capital through civil engagement, new, more convenient, and personally defined civic forms have arisen, but have done so by accommodating an America that is radically individualistic, narcissistic, consumerist, morally relative, and entitled. Facebook is the most successful new civil forum, and it is finding a welcome home in the church—the very entity designed by God to provide a totally different solution to communal disengagement from Docetic enterprises like Facebook.

The gravitation toward employing cybersocial networks for activities once understood to require personal presence is seen in every corner of evangelicalism. Church Facebook pages abound. A decade ago a common query was, “Does this church have a website?” Now the question is, “Is this church on Facebook?” That is because Facebook provides unique features, carries a certain status, and facilitates particular expectations for its nearly 650 million

patrons. It is an innovative cultural force shaping societal expectations about identity and a sense of belonging, which is why churches are enlisting its novel methodology. Per usual, evangelicalism is eager to give people what they want (convenience and low commitment) instead of what disciples need (challenging and engaging discipleship).

The contents on church Facebook pages range from posting intimations to sermon podcasting to forums for discipleship. Subscribers say that the need to employ Facebook-type interfaces is natural and fitting: it’s just another tool for marketing, conveniently connecting believers, evangelistic endeavors, and Christian education. After all, the church has a history of technological employments—the printing press, Christian radio, television, theater. Evangelicals expect that the utilization of technology will terminate in enriching humanity with the word of God or, synonymously, increasing catechetical literacy. At the same time, we would do well to remember the observations of Marshall McLuhan: “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”6 If the ideas of McLuhan have any traction, and the medium of social networking is really a message about virtuosity or unreality (corresponding to McLuhan’s aphorism, “The medium is the message”), then church-via-Facebook will have the opposite effect upon discipleship and enriching Christian communities because it is not, by design, a conducive forum for the biblical discipleship of believers. It promotes tweets, not tomes. It is not demanding, but user friendly. It does not foster spiritual disciplines, as there’s no accountability. How then can we expect a tool that truncates our sensory engagement with reality (limiting it to an LCD panel) to play a role in reversing catechetical illiteracy?

A related conversation emerged in my University of San Diego class, “Protestantism in the USA.” My students confirmed a suspicion I held. They believe that old “brick and mortar” churches are becoming increasingly redundant because evangelicalism is leading the way toward a fully personalized spirituality—done at home online. They reasoned: “You choose your

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The church has a history of technological employments—the printing press, Christian radio, television, theater.

Evangelicals expect that the utilization of technology will terminate in enriching humanity with the word of God or, synonymously, increasing catechetical literacy.

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friends online. Why not choose your church?”

By this they did not mean utilizing a search engine to ascertain which church you would like to attend, but rather choosing whom you would like to have in your self-determined cyber-congregation, something quite different from the body of Christ where those you might otherwise decline an invitation to view your page sit down next to you, hold your hand during the Lord’s Prayer, and may even share the chalice with you during Holy Communion.

They were saying that there will be no need to attend church because there is even now the possibility of forming your own virtu-church in the same way one customizes an iTunes collection. In good keeping with the evangelical accommodation of individualism through self-application Bibles and a flattened ecclesiological topography, virtu-church provides the ideal setting for self-feeding where, when, how, and with whom you like. It’s the next logical step in consumerist Christianity. They reported that this was not only a possibility but a present reality. “I hardly ever go to church,” confessed one student. “I stay connected through Facebook and I can do it from anywhere.” The class nodded in universal agreement—assembling with believers is superfluous when Facebook is omnipresent. There was no perceived need to improve their catechetical literacy: they knew how to navigate the site.

FACEBOOKED After class, however, a student told me how her Emergent church went belly-up through Facebook, confirming another suspicion I held. This particular fellowship did all of its intimations, connecting, and correspondence through the online social network. Before long, the homilies and prayers were simply posted, and assembling took place online, with the discipling of new believers being facilitated by way of the IM tool. “It was so exciting,” she said.

The Facebook app on your phone allowed you to carry the church in your pocket and contribute through PayPal.

Then, of course, the social networking within the church became more exclusive. Facebook is, after all, a gateway or filter; consequently, undesirables were precluded or excluded (so much for evangelism). The IM walls became forums for gossip (so much for fellowship), and mentors and neophytes never actually met for discipleship because the gateway fixed a buffer between catechist and catechumen. The church emerged and disbanded within four years. Facebook’s exclusivity principle cut them off from the wider Christian world and, in fact, one another—the medium mangled the message. In the end, they were still “bowling alone.” Facebook changed their church dynamics, because there was no need to leave the house for the lanes of corporate or catechetical discipleship. They were taught that it was enough that they were bowling on Wii. In this case, the cyber-solution to civic engagement resulted in greater exclusion and isolation, proving once again that disciples cannot be made or discipled online: there’s no water, no bread and wine, no living thing transmitted through 1s and 0s. It was never intended to be so in a church that requires its catechumens to “take, eat” (Matt. 26:26). Facebook’s methodology cannot establish a mentoring context where interpersonal engagement entails the entire person in the discipling process, addressing issues of character, disposition, emotions, and body language.

This only happens when someone is there, really there in time and space. To give one’s time writing an e-mail is one thing, but to give of the self through personal presence sets discipleship on an entirely different and elevated plane. Personal presence is the essence of gift giving (John 3:16).

For all the “friendships” being made online, there are still no hugs, handshakes, or looking in the eye. And that’s the irony of online social networks: the medium of Facebook is the message of the unreal; Myspace is no place; “friends” are files; chat is voiceless; templates establish individuation. What is more, when the whole world is denying that God is real, for churches or catechists to resort to the domain of virtuosity sends the wrong theological message. If the sheep are suspended in the Ethernet, then what of the Shepherd?

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The domain of virtuosity cannot convert ecclesial settings where catechist/catechumen relationships envelop the totality of our humanity—mind, will, emotions, and physicality.

Discipleship therefore must take place face-toface, since the church curates the substance of Christian faith and practice through embodied transmission. Stated differently, authentic discipleship requires personal presence because the living medium emanates the living message to living recipients.

As an ordained minister, it is one thing for me to text, e-mail, or phone a parishioner, and another thing for me to be present. Pastoral visitations hold significantly different weight from electronic communications, and the effect they have is likewise dissimilar. That’s because disciples who have cut their teeth on old-school catechesis expect their pastor to be there instead of stockpiling e-messages. The Son of God showed up to take away the sins of the world. In like manner, the pastor needs to show up to baptize, absolve, commune, commiserate, counsel, and catechize if Christ’s apostolic commissioning is to be accomplished. Being a disciple of Jesus (whether catechist or catechumen) means that loving others comes at the price of sacrifice.

There is something real, urgent, and authenticating for our humanity about having to be there in person. The physics of voice and sound, the force of human emotion and passions, and indeed touching are effective tools in the ministry of the Holy Spirit through earthen vessels. This is the high expectation of Christ and discipleship in the real world. Conversely, the expectations of Christians who live in a Facebook world are low.

The pastor is a flatscreen image, like a celebrity pastor whose multi-campus sermon broadcasts are streamed to smartphones. You may never meet your pastor in person, let alone receive catechesis or a hospital visit from him: hence, discipleship happens on your time, when you want to log in. The convenience of cyber-socializing in a risk-free domain devoid of self-giving love perpetuates evangelical ignorance precisely because one is not being a disciple, which takes place in the context of where two or more are gathered—really gathered.

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PRINCIPLES OF FACEBOOK As far as discipleship is concerned, Facebook must be placed in the same category of brilliant technologies that when misappropriated “bite back.” Edward Tenner has convincingly argued in his well-researched book Why Things Bite Back: New Technology and the Revenge Effect that technologies in fact do have their appropriate sphere of utility that when transgressed results in unforeseen and unintended consequences. 7 Christian discipleship and fellowship are at least two planes that when transected with Facebook have the opposite effect. That’s because (as far as compatibility with Christian community building and discipleship is concerned) the fundamental premises upon which Facebook rests (viz., exclusivity, self-identification, and convenience) are antithetical to the kingdom Christ created. Just ask the Galatians to whom Paul wrote. The fundamental premises behind Facebook are the concepts of adolescent clique, exclusivity, and reliving (in a virtual way) high school and college popularity and posturing. Individually and collectively, these principles are ill-suited for Christian discipleship.

“Clique” is antithetical to the building of Christian communities, expanding conversation, and communion in both its vertical and horizontal dimensions. Jesus, Paul explains, broke down walls of separation (Eph. 2:16), and so the revolutionary social network of the church was sexless, ageless, raceless, and without socioeconomic status (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11).

The Facebook principle of clique erects walls of separation by way of “friendship” segregation.

It dissolves fellowshipping into Facebooking among those we discriminate as worthy brethren. While biblical discipleship advances maturation, America’s prevailing social network promotes a return to adolescence—the period of life where our self-identity is most confused and unfounded, indeed, self-referential. No wonder we’re attracted to Facebook: it facilitates opportunities to go back and remake ourselves in an ideally self-determined fashion. You can upload your independent spiritual profile by tweeting

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We need God’s word to save us from the tools we’ve misappropriated that have us sinking deeper into ourselves.

It is for the sake of the gospel that we need faceto-face discipleship in a Facebook world.

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the new you. This attraction will persist so long as no event-oriented, identity-making fixtures such as holy baptism, Holy Communion, holy confirmation, and holy matrimony (the things of face-to-face discipleship) persevere with us.

And since God-given means of disciple making and discipling cannot be experienced in the twodimensional realm, then identity makers default to pop-culture rites of passage such as driving age, drinking age, launching your Facebook profile, and sexual encounters. Ask a teen or collegian or, better yet, any “real housewife.”

British author A. S. Byatt, an avowed atheist who openly describes herself as “anti-Christian,” has seen this quite clearly.8 Byatt laments the loss of the Christian metanarrative that once provided her Western culture with its existential orientation manifested through conversation, communities, and communion.9 Now, she says, with the grand biblical story effectively purged from public discourse, all we have are autobiographies, anonymity, and autonomy. It was this Christian metanarrative—passed on through the catechetical process—she explains, that told us who we are, where we are going, and what it all means.10 Without that picture of reality, observes Byatt, we Facebook. Facebook is synonymous with “Selfbook” (my term) where living takes place before the cyber-mirror through which the virtual self-legitimates the spatiotemporal self (if the spatiotemporal matters anymore).

“It is a mirror,” she explains, “because there’s no picture.” By “picture” Byatt means an objective world in which we live and move and have our being, the external referent to the real. To sustain that picture requires work: storytelling, rituals, contextualizing, the discipline of self-sacrifice, and deference to the governing story. To sustain existence in a Facebook world, however, one must blog, upload, or tweet. I tweet, therefore I am.

One’s identity is forged and altered and altered again to sustain self-actualization.

It doesn’t matter that no one is listening, because you are engaging a mirror—the projection of your ideal self, however conceived (regardless, none of it happens in real time in a real community anyway). This, I believe, is why Byatt says that Facebook and Twitter are gods.

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Life lived not only through but literally in front of the digital portal to the unreal world is life lived coram Deo, before the face of God—God being, in this case, yourself. In this sense, Byatt intimates that we confirm McLuhan’s prophecy: “We become what we behold.” Without a comprehensive picture of reality to either embrace or discuss in dispute, all we are left with is ourselves or, more accurately, the ideal of ourselves. It naturally follows that we are self-obsessed, though now it is an obsession not with our incarnational existence but with a dehumanized virtual one.

That’s a scary prospect: detachment from reality to retreat into the pseudo-self, where one projects a hologram to those deemed worthy of “friendship.” No wonder Byatt worries about the loss of conversation, communities, and communion. Discipleship is impossible when the catechist and catechumen are the same person.

In the 1980s and ’90s one was remade or, better, rebranded by way of consumption of phenomenological goods, be it clothing, cars, or house. Matter mattered, even if it was too much. Personal presentation and personality were inseparable from you. Today, however, one need only tweet the new you—personal presentation and personality edited and photoshopped before posting. Before, Madonna was the paragon of change, but that took time, even if it was only two years between album releases.

Facebook has retired her “material girl” paradigm for an immediate ethereal one. We don’t need her example of postmodern transformation that, one could argue, was tethered to her vocation, because one can be instantly born again by way of texting. Texting or blogging about yourself is the new revelation—a fresh word from you about you. Unlike God’s real-world elocution, in a Facebook world the word is ours. We are the sovereign speakers, and therein lies our evangelical ignorance: news about me is never the good news. It has to come from outside of me to save me from me.

We need God’s word to save us from the tools we’ve misappropriated that have us sinking deeper into ourselves. It is for the sake of the gospel that we need face-to-face discipleship in a Facebook world.

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SELF-GIVING IN DISCIPLESHIP Virtual living reflects negatively upon the incarnation and our own “enfleshment.” It must—just like the Roman Catholic Church’s “Confession App” (where there is no real person, no real voice, behind that “Confession App”; no one is present in persona Christi),11 so too with the imago Dei: there need not be a real person behind my Facebook page. There is no image of God in us when what we are is a digitized self-projection, a two-dimensional facade.

We’re right back to the First Commandment. It’s just about the image of me and the idea of you. It is fantasy living; a kind of voyeurism, because through this nonreality we project ideas of idyllic perfection. Perhaps it is a way to deal with sin, a form of self-justification. But I suspect that we know better because our expectations for friendship are low on Facebook, and that tells me our expectations of God and ourselves are equally low. With no living encounters there can be no accountability or responsibility for oneself, let alone another. It should come as no surprise that Facebook is now the preferred forum for posting suicide notes.

We have to get in touch with reality again. When banking can be done online, filling the tank happens at the pump, self-checkout eliminates human interaction, and social networking is two dimensional (like the image of ourselves), then perhaps now more than ever the church must reestablish face-to-face discipleship to recover our humanity.

Perhaps an unimpressed utilitarian approach toward this Internet tool might be the church’s best approach to the social networking phenomenon since, at least in this case, the adage “We make the tools and then the tools make us” seems to obtain. Don’t get me wrong; I’m no Luddite. There’s some usefulness to

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Facebook. It’s just that I am still working on what that may be, since a good deal of my time is spent counseling couples whose marriages have been obliterated by affairs started on social networks. When the premise of what is now a global institution divides, distorts, and dilutes, then at least within the church we have to recognize that this medium (in which the spatiotemporal self is suspended for the hologram life) is perfectly ill-suited for virtually everything that pertains to Christian life and faith, except for maybe the intimations.

The Facebook blog is no substitute for the fellowship hall, to say nothing of the Communion rail. For all of their admirable qualities, social network technologies simply cannot facilitate corporate repentance or the interpersonal bond between catechumen and catechist. They were never intended to do so. Their genius has other applications; thank God for that. I never want to go back to the days without modern plumbing, dentistry, or computers. But given the way Christ built the church, we have to acknowledge that there is no “spiritual discipline” app.

The art of discipleship requires work with difficulty, which is why the church meets together.

The catechist “sounds down” to where the catechumen is at so that in turn the catechumen may “sound again” the catechism.

All of it presupposes being present with one another, having personal relationships in time and space. There is therefore no hiding or anonymity in biblical discipleship. It comes with risk—someone may see your secondhand couch, the dishes in the sink, or the pimple on your nose. But that is what God’s household is like: all are called out of the blogosphere to their Father’s table to break bread. We’re not supposed to stay in our rooms texting or tweeting or Facebooking. The church is a social network with real beings, real warmth, real self-giving, real challenges—challenges to love the “other,” the “different,” the not-your-demographic, and to do so as an expression of our baptismal identity. The ethos of baptism leads the disciple to Communion—the “with union” meal. Jesus made us “friends” in the church;

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and as members of the body of Christ, our lives are intertwined. We need the mutual support and encouragement we offer to one another as we reflect on our sin and seek God’s mercy in Jesus the Son for relief, sounding again the catechism that dispels ignorance and liberates us from the bondage of contemporary Zeitgeists like dehumanizing social networks.

JOHN J. BOMBARO is parish minister at Grace Lutheran Church in San Diego, California, and a lecturer in theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego. This article originally appeared in the July/August 2011 issue of Modern Reformation.

1 The abiding mass media and academic depiction of the average evangelical as an emotive, anti-intellectual fundamentalist given to cult of personality groupthink, in fact does have a basis in credible research.

While we may sense misrepresentations on South Park and The Simpsons, data evidences that popular opinions about evangelicals may be more stereotype than unfair caricature. See, e.g., David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993); Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); and Michael S. Horton, Made in America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991).

2 See Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1984) and Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1993); Sommerville’s How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society (Downers Grove: IVP, 1999); Bruce Kuklick and D. G. Hart, eds., Religious Advocacy and American History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); and Gabler’s Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New York: Vintage, 2000).

3 See Gary M. Burge, “The Greatest Story Never Read: Recovering Biblical Literacy in the Church,” Christianity Today 43, no. 9 (1999): 45–49; E. Christian Kopff, The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1999); and Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008).

4 Docetism (from the Greek dokeo, “to seem”) refers to a heretical Gnostic doctrine in the early church that held that Jesus only appeared (seemed) to have a human body, and so his incarnate representation, suffering, and death on the cross were merely apparent (virtual), not real.

5 Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). I thank Brian Thomas, vicar at Grace Lutheran Church, San Diego, for this insight and his conversation on much that follows.

6 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), xi.

7 Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: New Technology and the Revenge Effect (London: Fourth Estate, 1996).

8 S e e h t t p : // w w w. g u a r d i a n . c o . u k / b o o k s / 2 0 0 9 /a p r / 2 5 / as-byatt-interview.

9 See http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2010/aug/25/ as-byatt-facebook.

10 Hence the definition of catecheo: “to sound again,” i.e., the catechumen repeats or reproduces the catechism. Cf. Bombaro, “A Catechetical Imitation of Christ,” Modern Reformation 18, no. 2 (March/April 2009): 31–35.

11 See http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Latest-News-Wires/ 2011/0208/Confession-app-for-iPhone-approved-by-Catholic-Church.

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ince the Council of Trent, theologians have argued that the Roman Catholic Church is the realized kingdom of God on earth, the reunification of the human race, the mediator and manager of the treasury of merits, and Christ’s continuing incarnation. Reacting against the inflated ecclesial ego of Roman Catholic and “high church” traditions, generations of Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians have bent over backwards to reduce the church to a footnote in God’s unfolding historical drama.

There are various ways of diminishing the role of the church in redemptive history. Pietistic Protestantism tends to make the church subordinate to the believer. Wary of “Churchianity,” this tradition has frequently pressed false choices between a “personal relationship with Jesus” and “joining a church.” According to the dispensationalist scheme of many conservative evangelicals over the past century, the “church age” is just a parenthesis in a story focused on the nation of Israel.

In more recent times, the church has become a footnote to the kingdom of God. It is this move I’m particularly concerned about. According to this perspective, the church exists as an advance team or rallying point for those who want to build the kingdom. It’s a means to something greater. As the modernist Roman Catholic theologian Alfred Loisy complains, “Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom, and what arrived was the Church.”1 There are “church people” and “kingdom people,” the Spirit being identified especially with the latter.

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The Church as the Goal of History

KINGDOM LIFE VERSUS THE KINGDOM ITSELF Much of contemporary theology has moved in the direction of “big kingdom, little church,” notes Scot McKnight.2 From this perspective, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and churches of the Reformation are characterized as being focused on ecclesiastical machinery, more in line with the apostles (especially Paul), while kingdom-oriented Christians (such as the

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Anabaptists) are more interested in Jesus and the kingdom-living he lays out in the Sermon on the Mount.

In liberal theologies, the kingdom is assimilated to the ethical idea of a gradual progress of humanity toward justice, peace, and righteousness. Presenting Jesus as a prophet, rather than the divine Savior and substitute for sinners, Walter Rauschenbusch (founder of the Social Gospel movement) writes: Jesus always spoke of the Kingdom of God….Only two of his reported sayings contain the word “Church,” and both passages are of questionable authenticity. It is safe to say that he never thought of founding the kind of institution which afterward claimed to be acting for him.3 With the subordination of the kingdom to the church, Rauschenbusch argues, came the eclipse of social ethics by an ingrown focus on doctrine, worship, preaching, and sacraments—hence, the corruptions of the medieval church and the failure also of Protestantism to reform the str uctures of society. 4 In Rauschenbusch’s thinking, the death of Jesus is subordinated to his life of experiential solidarity with suffering humanity:

The church doesn’t merely aid in the advance of the kingdom; it is the kingdom as it expands throughout the earth.

If [Jesus] had lived for thirty years longer, he would have formed a great society of those who shared his conception and religious realization of God, and this would have been that nucleus of a new humanity which would change the relation of God to humanity.5 We can either be saved by non-ethical sacramental methods, or by absorbing the moral character of Jesus into our own character. Let every man judge which is the salvation he wants.6 In various ways, what these movements display is a common tendency to identify the Spirit with the kingdom as something different from the visible church. In the most recent versions, history, nature, and the body are celebrated; indeed,

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everything is “sacramental.” It is the particularity of the incarnation of the Son and this church and these sacraments he instituted that cause offense.

Yet the opposition of kingdom and church is not limited to radical Protestantism. Fr. Richard McBrien writes in Do We Need the Church?: The church is no longer to be conceived as the center of God’s plan of salvation. Not all men are called to membership in the Church, nor is such membership a sign of present salvation or a guarantee of future salvation. Salvation comes through participation in the Kingdom of God rather than through affiliation with the Christian Church.7 All men are called to the kingdom, because all men are called to live the gospel. But the living of the gospel is not necessarily allied to membership in the visible, structured Christian community.8 Thomas Sheehan’s The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (Random House, 1986) is yet another example of the opposition between the kingdom and the church in Roman Catholic circles today.

As Matthew Levering points out, even Gerald O’Collins, S.J., suggests that the church serves the kingdom.9 According to Levering, This disjunctive language, which presents the church as a servant of the kingdom and thus as something that will not be needed when the kingdom fully arrives, construes the church in a merely juridical fashion.10 Since God offers grace to everyone, revelation must be universal, according to this perspective.11 Do we really need the church or special revelation in Scripture? Indeed, do we even need God to become flesh and rescue us? In the thinking of many today, Jesus is simply an example of an ideal we would have even if he had never been born. Separated from the church, the kingdom of God becomes just another human program for saving the world.

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THE FATHERS, THE REFORMERS, AND THE CHURCH owever, for Luther and Calvin—and for Cyprian, Augustine, and all of the church fathers—the church is the mother of the faithful and “beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for.”12 The church is not merely a means to the greater end of something else, even the kingdom. It lies at the heart of history because it has been on God’s heart from eternity. The church doesn’t merely aid in the advance of the kingdom; it is the kingdom as it expands throughout the earth.

Throughout John’s Gospel (6:37, 39, 65; 10:29; 17:2, 6, 9, 24), Jesus refers to “those whom the Father gave me.” When he comes to his high priestly prayer in John 17, he says (sometimes referring to himself in the second person),

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“You have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” (v. 2) “[They are] the people whom you gave me out of the world.” (v. 6) “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.” (v. 9) “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” (v. 11) “The world does not know him or the Father, but these do—as will the rest of those who belong to him.” (vv. 14–18) “And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” (v. 19) “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the

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The promise Abraham—not descendants and a in the Middle East, family redeemed scendant in par

plot of the en

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God made to merely of ethnic piece of real estate but of a worldwide through one deticular—is the tire Bible.

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world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (vv. 22–23) “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (v. 24) The church was founded not at Pentecost, nor even when God established his covenant with Abraham. Indeed, its origins are more ancient than Adam and Eve after the fall, when God promised a redeemer (Gen. 3:15) and when Seth and his descendants “began to call on the name of the Lord” (Gen. 4:26). The church was founded in eternity, “set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time,” when the Father gave a people to the Son, and the Spirit pledged to unite them to the Son through faith, “even as he chose us in [the Son] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph. 1:4). It is the mystery of the church, the bride of Christ—the union of Jews and Gentiles in one body so that Christ is everything for everyone—that Paul says has been revealed in these last days. The rest of the Epistle unpacks this amazing mystery: the revelation of the ultimate purpose of all history. The promise God made to Abraham—not merely of ethnic descendants and a piece of real estate in the Middle East, but of a worldwide family redeemed through one descendant in particular—is the plot of the entire Bible.

THE CHURCH AS THE KINGDOM IN THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT he Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’

And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’

And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Rev. 22:17). Together, the Spirit and the church invite the world to the wedding feast of the Lamb. The church is not merely the messenger, but the beloved who is in fact the bride of that feast. The church is therefore not only an agent of the kingdom but the goal of the

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kingdom itself. It is that part of the world Christ calls his own body. The kingdom call of “Come!” is inseparable from both the ministry and participation in the visible church.

If the Spirit worked only immediately in the hearts of individuals, then the church would have been dissolved at the outset into nothing more than an affinity group with shared private experiences. Yet, if the Spirit works through creaturely means that are inherently social, then the church is indeed “a kingdom of priests” (Rev. 5:9), “one body with many members” (1 Cor. 12:2), branches connected to one another because they share the same Vine (John 15:1–4). They are one in Christ because the Spirit has united them to Christ together through the word and the sacraments. Each member is chosen in Christ, redeemed, justified, regenerated, indwelled by the Spirit, and eventually glorified. Yet, because each member is in Christ, the Head of the body, the Spirit indwells the whole church, even as he indwelled the typological temple in Jerusalem.

Similarly, if the kingdom were merely a community of Spirit-filled agents bringing liberation within the kingdoms of this age, then it would no longer be the gift of the Triune God, but rather another sociopolitical movement in the history of this fading age. What makes the communion of saints more than just another special interest group, ideological camp, or political action committee? Surely it exhibits common characteristics of human society and organization.

Nevertheless, the church is the human creature the Triune God has brought into being and united to the glorified humanity of God the Son. It is descending from heaven as a bride prepared for her husband, not rising from its own foundations with its own inherent possibilities, like other organizations and associations. The church is adopted by God the Father, with the Son as its Head and the Spirit as its regenerating and energizing Lord. For this reason alone it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. It is a bride descending from heaven, not a voluntary association or political action committee evolving on earth.

At the same time, if the church were to be defined apart from (much less over against) the kingdom, then it would lose its missional

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identity, becoming a self-enclosed and selfserving institution alongside other clubs and voluntary organizations. In both instances, the church is seen less in eschatological terms as the creation of the Spirit (the bride descending from heaven for her bridegroom) than as a human society evolving through the energies of sinners with similar outlooks, moral visions, and rites.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT AND THE LETTERS TO THE CHURCH here is simply no basis for pitting Jesus and the Gospels against Paul and the Epistles. In Jesus’ teaching, the kingdom and the church were interchangeable terms. According to the Gospels, what is the chief purpose of the Spirit’s mission in equipping believers for the kingdom’s advance?

They will be made witnesses throughout the world, proclaiming “repentance and forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:45–49). Is this not the message of Paul? Repeatedly, Jesus and the apostles describe the kingdom as a gift we receive. Jesus tells his disciples that the world will persecute the church. Nevertheless, he says, “Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). “I will build my church,” Jesus promised, “and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:15–18).

All other empires we build in history can and will pass away, but “we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28). Christ himself is the gift, along with his Spirit; and because the church-kingdom is brought into being, sustained, and growing to the ends of the earth through the preaching of the gospel, baptism, and Eucharist, it is a thoroughly divine work of grace through creaturely means of grace. There is a place for our agency, for actively following Christ’s example of humility and generous love as well as righteousness. However, there is something far richer, far deeper than our “willing and running.” It is the Holy Spirit who moves us beyond the imitation of Christ into union with Christ. The church does not repeat or extend Christ’s incarnation or his redeeming and

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It is the Holy Spirit who moves us beyond the imitation of Christ into union with Christ.

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reconciling work; rather, it is called—in all of its difference from Christ—to be the creaturely and sinful entity it is by testifying to Christ.

As Jesus taught it, what is the kingdom, and is this kingdom substantially different from what the apostles describe as the church?

• Jesus describes the kingdom as a great feast where “many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 8:11).

• “The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad” (Matt. 13:47).

• The kingdom is “the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38; 13:38; 22:16; 26:18), and the authority to forgive sins in the king’s name was nuclear to the apostolic identity (Matt. 16:19; 18:18).

• The close connection between the Spirit and forgiveness of sins is evident in what Jesus decrees when he breathes on his disciples in preparation for their kingdom work. He says, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” adding immediately, “Whoever’s sins you forgive are forgiven” (John 20:23).

• The kingdom adorns outcasts in the wedding garment (Matt. 22:1–14).

• It is the regime in which the same Spirit who was upon Jesus without measure indwells his people as “living stones” being built into a holy sanctuary (1 Pet. 2:5).

In the early church, the pilgrims gathered from east and west were baptized with the Spirit—John the Baptist’s chief indicator of the kingdom’s arrival. They gathered regularly to share in a meal that is a foretaste of the wedding banquet in the kingdom, submitting to the

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discipline and doctrine of the apostles and the prayers (Acts 2:42). The charter of the kingdom, known as the Great Commission, then sent the apostles out to proclaim the gospel, to baptize, and to teach in his name (Matt. 28:19; cf. Mark 16:15–16). Indeed, our Lord asked Peter to feed and tend his sheep (John 21:15–17); and the chief purpose in sending the Spirit, according to Jesus, was that his disciples would be made his gospel witnesses to the ends of the earth until he returns (Acts 1:8). Are these not precisely the emphases of the apostles, including (even especially) Paul?

Far from opposing a charismatic community led by the Spirit on a kingdom mission in favor of an institutional church weighed down by doctrines, Scripture, offices, and rituals, the Gospels record the drama unpacked in the apostolic letters. Far from a freelance source of spontaneous revelation, the Spirit binds his ministry to Christ’s mission, as we have seen from the farewell discourse. It is the Spirit who inspires the apostolic canon that will be foundational for all times and places, and who calls and equips officers and the whole body for mutual love and mission. And when Jesus promises to build his church (Matt. 16:18), he knows it will be by his word and Spirit that this is accomplished.

When one compares the identification of the kingdom in the Gospels with the description of the church in the Epistles, any difference between a charismatic and dynamic kingdom of the saints and the church as an institution across all times and places vanishes. Consistent with his farewell discourse in John 13–16, Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ last question “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

(Acts 1:6) is to wait for the Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost. This is the conquest, the fulfillment of the event Jesus promised in answer to their question about the kingdom’s restoration. It is this restoration of the kingdom that the apostles identify with the growth and expansion of the church in these last days.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus redefines the qahal (assembly) of Israel and redraws its boundaries around himself, as does the apostle Paul (e.g., Eph. 2:11–22). Jesus will gather “other sheep” into the fold of the true Israel and will be

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When one compares the identification of the kingdom in the Gospels with the description of the church in the Epistles, any difference between a charismatic and dynamic kingdom of the saints and the church as an institution across all times and places vanishes.

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one Shepherd over one flock (John 10 as the fulfillment of Ezek. 34). For the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, the kingdom is no longer a geopolitical nation but a worldwide family of Abraham that flourishes and conquers through the word and Spirit. This is the basic structure of Paul’s message as he traces the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant with the fulfillment of the law in Christ’s advent. And isn’t his understanding of the cosmic battle—“we wrestle not with flesh and blood” or with “this world’s weapons,” but armed only with the gospel and the Spirit (e.g., Eph. 6)—precisely the same as Jesus’ sermon? Is Paul’s exhortation here so different from the report of the astonished seventy-two in Luke 10:17–20?

Christ’s followers are beneficiaries of his conquest of the evil powers, but the principal matter for rejoicing is that they are enrolled among the elect.

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The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

In both instances, Christ’s followers are beneficiaries of his conquest of the evil powers, but the principal matter for rejoicing is that they are enrolled among the elect. The church will tread upon serpents (the demonic hosts), triumphing over them by “the word of their testimony” concerning Jesus (Rev. 12:11).

The nation-state of Israel is dismantled in order to expand the borders of the kingdom to the ends of the earth. Yahweh will at last be acknowledged as Israel’s only King. The Father’s benediction rests on its heirs—not as the reward for their faithfulness in the land, but at the outset, as a gift to the spiritually destitute (Matt.

5:1–12). As a “city set on a hill,” the church is to be characterized in its sacrificial fellowship by a higher ethic in terms of anger, lust, divorce, and lawsuits than society at large (vv. 21–37).

Possessing the security of a heavenly homeland and every good gift in Christ, they endure persecution, and, instead of driving out the nation,

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they pray for their oppressors and respond with foolish generosity (vv. 38–48). Shockingly, Jesus issues the imperative: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21). In the church, the leaders are not to jockey for power like the Gentile rulers but are to imitate the king who “came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28).

Are not all of these imperatives carried over by the apostles, as they enjoin obedience even to the wicked rulers as God’s servants (Rom. 13:1– 7; 1 Pet. 2:13–17)? They are to exhibit patient and nonviolent reaction to persecutors, mutual submission in love, and the settling of differences even over temporal affairs by the church.

Jesus breathes on the disciples, and they receive the Holy Spirit. He gives the apostles the keys of the kingdom, which are nothing other than the marks of the church. By preaching the gospel, baptizing, and teaching them to obey his commands, they will open and shut the kingdom’s gates (Matt. 16:17–19; 18:18–20; John 20:22–23). In view of these episodes in the Gospels, what is the apostle Paul’s message and ministry other than the triumph of Jesus over Satan, death, hell, and the curse of the law?

The worldwide family of Abraham that reaches even the salons and courts of Rome itself? The nations streaming to Zion in willing submission to Israel’s king—in various ways is this not the vision the Epistles explore in great detail?

Therefore, far from setting the church and the kingdom in oppositional terms—or even from making the church little more than a base for advancing the kingdom—the New Testament treats the church as the kingdom in this present age. As Scot McKnight argues, “The kingdom is a people governed by a king,” and this describes the church. “Jesus connects the present church (a people) to the future kingdom (a people). He connects what Peter does now in the church to what God will do then in the kingdom…church and kingdom are indissolubly connected.…The church, then, is what is present and peopled in the realization of the kingdom now.”13 An understandable objection to identifying church and kingdom is the assumption

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that it restricts the kingdom (and the Spirit’s saving operations) to the official ministry of the assembled church. Are we really to believe that the kingdom of God means nothing more than the gathering of professing Christians for worship on Sunday? Yet this objection rests on a misunderstanding.

Even if the kingdom is visible today in the world in and as the church, the term may be understood in two ways. The church is first and foremost the people, the professing believers with their children. This congregation is gathered officially by its Covenant Lord to receive his good gifts, including his instruction but especially his promise and its visible seals in the sacraments, to pledge their loyalty and recount with thanksgiving his mighty acts, to confess their sins and their common faith, to receive his absolution, to seek his protection, and to embrace one another in the fellowship of a family.

Thus bathed and fed, the church is then scattered into the world as witnesses to Christ as salt and light, loving and serving their neighbors through their callings. This too is the work of the church, but it is the work of the church as scattered into the world as God’s secret agents who are pilgrims seeking a better homeland.

MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

1 Alfred Loisy, The Gospel and the Church (1902; repr., New York: Prometheus Books, 1988), 152.

2 Scot McKnight, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2014).

3 Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 132.

4 Rauschenbusch, 133–34.

5 Rauschenbusch, 266.

6 Rauschenbusch, 273.

7 Richard P. McBrien, Do We Need the Church? (London: Collins, 1969), 228.

8 McBrien, 161.

9 See Gerald O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 195.

10 Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2016), 14.

11 Levering, 15, referring to O’Collins, xi.

12 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.1.4.; cf. Westminster Confession of Faith 25.2.

13 McKnight, 87.

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SEEK, DISCOVER, SHARE We realize that White Horse Inn podcasts and Modern Reformation articles may not be easily understood by new Christians. CCC Discover is a place where you can find and share articles that help people see God in the everyday. We pray that this will be a useful tool to help you share your faith with others.

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BOOK REVIEWS

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O

Book Reviews 62

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You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

Why Bother with Church?

And Other Questions about Why You Need It and Why It Needs You

The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them

Music, Modernity, and God: Essays in Listening

by Owen Strachan and Gavin Peacock

by Jeremy Begbie

by James K. A. Smith

by Sam Allberry REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

Timothy W. Massaro

Nicholas Davis

Silverio Gonzalez

Micah Everett

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BOOK REVIEWS

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

by James K. A. Smith Brazos Press, 2016 224 pages (hardcover), $19.99 ost learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being ‘with it,’ yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation,” observes Ivan Illich in his Deschooling Society ([New York: Harper & Row, 1971], 39). Illich perceived the great decoupling of habits, liturgies, and meaning from learning that had fallen upon Western society. Education today has become nothing more than technical vocation training that fails to instruct the soul.

Participation in a story, a narrative, a life that has others in a web of relationships that create, sustain, and enlighten meaning and pur p ose is the great unspoken desire of people today. And yet we live in a culture that has torn apart the unity of life with lightning-speed technological advancement. When any society has lost the ability to converse and meditate upon this ethical dilemma, education as propaganda is the sad result. This reality is something that perceptive philosophers decried in the postwar era. To such a lineage, James K. A. Smith’s You Are What You Love belongs. And yet Smith prescribes a “way out” specifically for Christians.

In continuing his work on cultural liturgics and the re-formation of Christian worship, You Are What You Love is the newest in his series.

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For many people, this book will be an odyssey of discovery. For those just engaging the discussion, this book is an excellent gateway to a vital discussion about the nature of a true education of body and soul.

Smith begins his work by describing the landscape of what it means to be human—namely, that we are worshipping beings who worship what they love. In the West, an overly cognitive approach to learning has dominated the conversation and set the terms of the debate. Late modern Christian education has particularly failed to understand the problem that Illich described in the midcentury and that Smith exposes today. Humans are already enveloped in worship, whether secular or not. Overtly religious liturgies of ultimate significance and meaning already immerse our bodies in a learning process of heart formation. The modern dichotomy of heart and head has led Christians to form people’s minds without looking to the heart’s way of knowing. The task of reintegrating liturgy, formation, and imagination within the context of truly countercultural formation drives this work.

Desire drives our hearts and imaginations, and eventually what we think. “You are what you desire or love” is the repeated mantra of this work.

Nevertheless, Smith reminds us that what our hearts love might not be what we are thinking. We may know all the right answers to the theological exam, but do our hearts love what God loves? Are our bodies engaged in the world in a way that depicts and displays God’s love?

Does the grace of Christ that we have received in the liturgy of word and sacrament form our habits and lifestyles in a unique way? These kinds of questions seemed to have reached a zenith in the West where the group of “nones” (those

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“ Desire drives our hearts and imaginations, and eventually what we think. ‘You are what you desire or love’ is the repeated mantra of this work.”

uncommitted to any religion) continues to rise.

The de-churched, unchurched, and orphaned continue to rise. The secular liturgies appear to be winning the imaginative (and spiritual) battle.

How should we understand the compelling nature of these secular liturgies? This is the next question Smith unpacks. In a similar way to his Desiring the Kingdom (Baker Academic, 2009), he makes the familiar very strange by showing how things like the shopping mall function. What are they doing to us? What good life do they incarnate and embody? How should we relate to them? How does the Spirit actually meet us and counteract these powerfully evocative postures and movements?

Smith then unveils how a Trinitarian theology of participation in Christian worship can become the controlling metaphor, or story, in which our desires and loves are reordered in a truly biblical (i.e., Augustinian) way. How worship can actually counteract the liturgies of the day is really where Smith shines as he rekindles the power of worship’s form. The meaning inherent in the liturgy can seem dull and repetitive.

Yet if we see how the Spirit counteracts the narratives of consumerism and false desire, then the heart can once again be tuned to sing God’s grace. In the liturgy we come to a deeper faith in him in whom we find our heart’s end.

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The effectual power of forgiveness and confession in the church—above us, among us, between us—provides the spell-breaking word of Christ that smashes the idols of each age, whether it is the age of consumerism or ancient paganism. The Lord is merciful in unveiling the idols of the heart and gracious in giving us the true joy we can find only in him. Smith unpacks the liturgy’s meaning in a way I found much more satisfying and compelling than in Desiring the Kingdom.

The book ends by describing how these vital truths form and shape the home, school, and workplace. In writing such a work, Smith has truly done the church a service in reconnecting God to our everyday lives. He has made the familiar strange in unveiling what our culture would rather not see—the slavery and death of decadent consumption that leaves desire scattered and unfulfilled. Like a good teacher and guide, Smith does not leave us there. He points us to still a more excellent way—the way of grace.

Through the countercultural formation of the church, we can once again participate in the life of the Triune God. We can breathe the free air again and live as servants of the king.

TIMOTHY W. MASSARO is a graduate of Westminster Semi-

nary California and a staff writer for Modern Reformation.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Why Bother with Church? And Other Questions about Why You Need It and Why It Needs You

by Sam Allberry The Good Book Company 2016 95 pages (paperback), $7.99 am Allberry’s Why Bother with Church? is a good, short read that addresses one of the greatest problems of our secular age: floundering church attendance. A new study by the Pew Research Center suggests that worship services are not as important as the other events Americans have on the weekly agenda (see http://www.pewforum.org/2016/08/23/ choosing-a-new-church-orhouse-of-worship). Why should I make time for church when I can be sleeping in, cooking, shopping, relaxing, podcasting, or watching sports? Does it really matter all that much?

This is where Pastor Allberry comes in with a much needed remedy: “Why on earth would I not bother with church?”

The book begins with an honest acknowledgement that, yes, sometimes even Christians think the local park (or in my case, watching Manchester United beat Manchester City) sounds like a whole lot more fun than sitting through another boring church service. Allberry reminds us that even though there are many reasons why we may try to avoid church (“church has done more harm than good,” “church is boring,” “church has hurt me,” and “church has exhausted me”), there are more compelling reasons to rediscover the beauty of church and the abundant blessings it brings.

When we understand what the church is, why we need the church, and why it needs us, we will have a hard time skipping out on it or avoiding it.

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Allberry doesn’t merely tell us what church is or why it matters, only to leave the skeptic, seeker, or attender wanting. He fields numerous practical questions that address everyday concerns and real-life objections. In chapter 3, Allberry offers advice on how to pick a good church. In chapter 4, he exposes common errors in thinking—such as “Can’t I view my small group as my church?” and “Why are there so many denominations?”—offering biblically saturated responses with pastoral wisdom and guidance. Chapter 5, “How Do I Survive Church?,” alone is worth purchasing the book. Pastors would do well listening to Allberry’s answers to these questions, and everyone—church member or outlaw—will find comfort in the words he shares.

The only weakness I found is actually its greatest strength: the book is too short; I wanted him to keep going! And this is exactly why such a book should be widely read and shared with all of our friends and family who describe themselves as “Nones” or “Dones.” Why Bother with Church? is written for them, and for you. It’s a great reminder as to why we should marvel at the miracle of the local church.

Sam Allberry is a gifted communicator. What impressed me the most was his pastorally sensitive tone that permeates the book. He handles biblical texts well and delicately encourages the unchurched and de-churched to consider (or reconsider) church—no matter what has happened in the past or might happen in the future. The church is worth it, so don’t give up on it just yet. Bother with church.

NICHOLAS DAVIS is assistant pastor at Christ Church Presbyterian in Irvine, California, and assistant producer of White Horse Inn.

VOL.26 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2017

The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them

by Owen Strachan and Gavin Peacock Christian Focus, 2016 176 pages (paperback), $9.99 n The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them, Owen Strachan and Gavin Peacock attempt to lay out a biblical understanding of male and female relationships. The authors strive to promote a vision for the sexes where men are dignified gentlemen and women are ladies to be honored and respected. Opposing egalitarianism, feminism, gay, lesbian, queer, and transgenderism, Strachan and Peacock offer complementarianism as an alternative. But that is not all they offer, unfortunately.

In “What Is Biblical Complementarity?” (chapter 1), Strachan and Peacock give an extended exposition of Genesis 1–3 relative to male and female relationships. They argue that man and woman were made for each other; they complement each other: “This is the essence of complementarity: one suited to us, who fits with us, but is not precisely the same as us” (29).

In “What Is Biblical Manhood?” (chapter 2), Strachan and Peacock explain the following verse: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:13–14). There, Strachan and Peacock defend a biblical man as a protector, provider, and servant-leader.

In “What Is Biblical Womanhood?” (chapter 3), Strachan and Peacock argue that the relationship between Adam and Eve prior to the fall

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is a model for the husband and wife relationship: “There was no rivalry, no chafing or challenging for position or power, but a complementary relationship, which mirrors the very relationship of authority and submission. Love and harmony, in the Trinity” (75).

Citing books such as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles and Relevance (by Bruce Ware) and One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life (Bruce Ware and John Starke), Strachan and Peacock make the following theological claim: “The Father as Father has authority; the Son as Son obeys His Father” (75). The application of this claim is then stated: “Just as there is equality of value but difference in authority and roles in the Trinity, so it is with husband and wife” (75). The authors use this line of provocative reasoning to ground a major point in their understanding of biblical womanhood: “A wife is to be a helper, not a hindrance, to her husband. This means her primary task is to help him accomplish his plans for the family” (75). As a good leader, the man is supposed to form “his vision,” and the woman at most is to help him to discover that vision through providing wise counsel.

In “Complementarity in the Family, Church and Culture” (chapter 4), Strachan and Peacock develop their vision of male leadership and female submission in the family, church, and culture. In “What Does the Church Have to Say About Our Sexualized Age?” (chapter 5), they take a strong stance against the current sexual identity crisis, addressing homosexuality and transgender practice.

In “Is Complementarianism a ‘Take It or Leave It’ Doctrine?” (chapter 6), the authors make a case that complementarianism is a

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“ Noting that musicologists have been rather open to considering theological questions as they pursue their work, he suggests that musical considerations can also help in formulating theological ideas.”

crucial doctrine, showing that “humanity is brimming with purpose” (146); it “helps us understand our sinful instincts” (148); it “provides us with a script for our lives” (150); and it reveals that the differences between men and women are “for our good and God’s glory” (154).

There is much to admire about Strachan and Peacock’s attempt: they deal with an important, challenging issue; they are concise; and they care to give a grand vision of human relations based on a grand vision of God. On even the most charitable read, however, the book doesn’t seriously engage opposing views (which seems to be more than a function of the size of the book). More troubling, they make a number of innovative and controversial theological claims about submission and authority within the Holy Trinity, and then draw analogies for husband-wife relationships. There is much debate in evangelical circles today about the authors’ articulation of a view called “eternal subordinationism” (also held by Bruce Ware).

Reformation-minded Christians will want to beware of the novelty of this position. For this reason, at least, I cannot recommend The Grand Design.

SILVERIO GONZALEZ is a husband, father, aspiring luchador,

and member of Christ PCA in Temecula, California. He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of California Santa Barbara and an MDiv from Westminster Seminary California.

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Music, Modernity, and God: Essays in Listening

by Jeremy Begbie Oxford University Press, 2013 272 pages (paperback), $30.00 eremy Begbie, the Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, is perhaps the foremost Christian thinker on the interactions between the arts, theology, and philosophy.

Having trained extensively as both musician and theologian, he is uniquely qualified to discuss these interactions in a serious and fulsome way. Instead of addressing surface-level theological and practical concerns, Begbie digs into historical and philosophical considerations, presenting music as not only a human activity but as a tool for engaging in theological reflection. Those approaching Begbie from a Reformed perspective will find that he sometimes suggests conclusions with which their confessional commitments will not allow agreement, but there is much here that is worth consideration, and the seriousness with which he approaches the subject is refreshing.

The present volume is a collection of essays in which, after a brief introductory chapter, the author proceeds in a historically sequential

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fashion before presenting larger conclusions in his final essays. In the introduction, Begbie notes music’s major role in the shaping of modern sensibilities since the Renaissance and Reformation, while lamenting that in scholarly works on history and philosophy music is often considered to be “no more than a gloss, a trivial, diversionary froth thrown to the surface of cultural streams whose ideological currents operate at much deeper levels” (2). Noting that musicologists have been rather open to considering theological questions as they pursue their work, he suggests that musical considerations can also help in formulating theological ideas.

Begbie begins these considerations with a chapter on John Calvin (1509–1564).

Musicologists are frequently unfair to Calvin, criticizing his views on music as excessively austere. Begbie avoids this pitfall, instead presenting Calvin as one whose thoughts on music and worship and whose approach to setting the Psalter to music were in keeping with contemporary trends in music theory. He further states that the differences between Martin Luther (1483–1546) and Calvin regarding music, while significant, are overplayed and have to do with Luther’s standing in the late medieval way of thinking about music, while Calvin’s approach is more modern. Still, Begbie faults Calvin for insisting that in worship, music must be subservient to the text rather than “locating music clearly within a theological ontology of creation” (39) as earlier thinkers did.

Moving ahead a couple of centuries, Begbie considers the music of J. S. Bach (1685–1750) as presented in works by the musicologists John Butt and Karol Berger. Again discussing the divergence between premodern and modern

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ways of thinking, Bach is seen as combining a medieval view of a divinely ordered cosmos with a modern view of vocation, which he applied to his work by striving for superior craftsmanship and perhaps even a redemptive aim in his compositions. While Bach’s works are faulted by Berger for being too temporally static when compared with the inexorable linearity of the works of W. A. Mozart (1756–1791) and his contemporaries, Butt sees an energy and movement in Bach’s works even as there is on a larger level a sense of God’s transcendence of linear time. Once again, a contrast is drawn between a medieval outlook and a modern outlook: the former presenting music as a means of reflecting upon God’s orderly creation, and the latter taking a mechanical approach that ultimately takes music less seriously.

A similar contrast is presented in the next chapter, this time between Bach’s French contemporary Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). In this pairing, Rameau is the “modern” man, demonstrating in his Treatise on Harmony (1722) and other writings a desire to gain for music theory a respectable place in the scientific community of his day. The older cosmologies and theological perspectives found no place in Rameau’s attempts to construct an “empirical” approach to music. Rousseau lamented this abandonment of music’s passionate nature, declaring that the subjugation of melody to harmony and of vocal music to instrumental is unnatural, and detrimental to both music and language.

Once again, Begbie seems to side with the comparably premodern viewpoint of Rousseau, but he stops short of agreement with those who would propound a “natural theology” as a way of knowing, independent of God’s revelation of

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himself to us in Jesus Christ. As this chapter draws to a conclusion, Begbie jumps ahead a couple of centuries, contrasting the intensely ordered music of Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) with the intentionally random works of John Cage (1912–1992) in a way that is analogous to his earlier pairing of Rameau and Rousseau. Here the ultimate unworkability of the two extremes becomes even more evident. Somehow the cerebral and the emotional have to come together in the best music, and Begbie is by this point trying to craft a way of thinking of music, theology, and philosophy that allows for music’s expressive powers to be brought to bear, while nevertheless retaining some scriptural grounding.

Philosophical consideration of music reached its zenith in German Romanticism of the nineteenth century, which Begbie has labeled a “Musical Apotheosis.” Christians will rightly view much Romantic writing about music as idolatrous or even pantheistic (109), but Begbie asks his readers not to dismiss these writers too hastily. The newfound emphasis on instrumental music during this period brought new perspectives on the relationship of music and language, including Friedrich Schleiermacher’s

“ Instead of addressing surface-level theological and practical concerns, Begbie digs into historical and philosophical considerations, presenting music as not only a human activity but as a tool for engaging in theological reflection.”

(1768–1834) concept of the early Romantic: “The notion of music tapping into a level of reality sensed only through immediate selfconsciousness,” and further described as “an awareness that is pre-conceptual, prelinguistic, and precognitive” (114). This concept of music informing or enabling theological reflection divorced from language will raise “red flags” to the reader who is committed to the primacy of God’s written revelation, and Begbie again appears to stop just short of fully embracing this way of thinking.

In the historical periods and figures considered thus far, Begbie has contrasted those representative of an older view of music—one that is thoroughly emotive on the individual level, while also serving as a means of observing and even participating in larger cosmic realities—with those presenting a more modern, mechanical view, of which the author is generally critical. The final three chapters leave behind this historical progression, instead offering synthesis and application of the ideas presented throughout the book. Departing from the sometimes convoluted presentation of the previous chapters, Begbie succinctly presents one of his key points: My proposal is fairly modest, but I hope not thereby insignificant: that in modernity, an unwarranted reliance on conceptual frameworks that favour spatial visualization and its associated language have likely aggravated, and in some places perhaps generated, a range of problems that have repeatedly frustrated and distorted Christian theology in its attempt to explicate the New Testament’s rendering of the character of freedom, divine and human.

If we move from the visible to the audible, however, a rather different world unfolds.

(154–55) This is a fascinating proposal. Even as attempts to explain (or that begin to explain)

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“ Somehow the cerebral and the emotional have to come together in the best music, and Begbie is by this point trying to craft a way of thinking of music, theology, and philosophy that allows for music’s expressive powers to be brought to bear, while nevertheless retaining some scriptural grounding.”

certain doctrines (the Trinity, the dual natures of Christ, God’s interaction with the world while remaining distinct from it, and even the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility) often fail when presented in terms of spatial visualization, Begbie contends that musical perception (particularly that of harmony) offers a way of considering these things that can bring clarity. Citing the work of Austrian musicologist Victor Zuckerkandl, Begbie employs the “interpenetration” of musical tones when sounding in harmony as a metaphorical tool for considering theological concepts that appear especially paradoxical when viewed in spatial terms. Later the term “resonant order” is introduced in further discussing God’s interacting with the world in a way that invests the choices of human agents with meaning and freedom without impinging upon the prerogatives of divine action. Here, as always, Begbie presents his ideas with caution, admitting that such metaphorical application of musical categories to theological concepts is not without limitations and must be undertaken with care. With that caveat in mind, this

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and other conclusions in the final chapters are worthy of thoughtful consideration, though few readers will advocate their wholesale adoption.

Once again, Jeremy Begbie has demonstrated what serious consideration of the interactions between music and theology can look like, and the result is a challenging and worthy read. This volume should be read with caution, however, particularly as the author comes close to subverting the primacy of the word in favor of musical, social, or even emotional considerations, though he never quite steps over the line, at least not overtly. The concept of using sonic metaphors as a way of engaging with difficult doctrines is novel in the present milieu, but it seems promising and will hopefully be further developed in the future by Begbie or other authors. Indeed, one can only hope that in the coming years more theologians—including those of a more Reformed or evangelical stripe—will engage the arts with this same energy and integrity.

MICAH EVERETT is associate professor of music at the University of Mississippi. He and his family are members of Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Oxford, Mississippi.

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GEEK SQUAD

Key Concepts in Reformed Spirituality When our associate editor was in seminary, one of her professors used an illustration (seen to the right) to explain the popular perception of both Reformational and mainline Christians.

It was meant to be a joke, and like all jokes, it was funny because there is a sense in which the caricature is true (on the reformational side at least). Confessional Christianity has a penchant for theological discourse (that is, hardcore nerdiness), but that doesn’t mean that the conversation is only for the chosen few (that was another joke‌). This is our pocket guide to some of the jargon.

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1

UNION WITH CHRIST

Every doctrine related to salvation and the Christian life must be oriented around this touchstone of faith. No theory of Christian growth or development can obscure or ignore this central fact. In Reformation spirituality, the objective and subjective, external and internal, are linked inseparably by this reality. “In Christ” we are justified and are being sanctified.

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JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ALONE

“To declare righteous,” this courtroom term is the core of the good news. If we seek to attain divine favor by our own willing and running, we will quickly end up in either self-righteousness or despair. Progress in obedience comes only as we acknowledge Christ to be our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.

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CALLING/VOCATION

Also related to the “priesthood of all believers,” this Reformation doctrine emphasized the fact that everything we do honors God if done in faith. A ditch-digger is no less spiritual than a missionary. God has created each of us with certain gifts, and we are meant to find meaning and fulfillment not only in church-related things, but in our work and leisure as well. This doctrine, more than any other, was responsible for what has come to be identified as “the Protestant Work Ethic.”

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SACRAMENTS

Baptism and Holy Communion, in Reformation spirituality, figure prominently as “means of grace.” Baptism is the beginning of our life in Christ, and in Communion we feed on Christ— the Bread of Life—throughout our wilderness journey.

SANCTIFICATION

Here is another essential biblical word. Once declared righteous by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, we now grow in personal righteousness in union with Christ and his righteousness. In our salvation we contribute absolutely nothing except sin. But once regenerated by God’s grace (apart from our cooperation), we are free to cooperate with the Holy Spirit for the first time. Sanctification therefore—unlike regeneration, justification, and so on—requires our energies and participation. We grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, actively animated by the gospel. Both justification and sanctification are the gift of God by virtue of our union with Christ.

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Excerpt from The Reformation Then and Now: 25 Years of Modern Reformation Articles Celebrating 500 Years of the Reformation, edited by Eric Landry and Michael S. Horton, forthcoming from Hendrickson Publishers January 2017.

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B AC K PAG E

Pray for the City xiled from the land, the Israelites were exhorted by the Lord to use their days wisely. God gave the prophet Jeremiah a letter to read to them (Jer. 29): Babylon was not their home, but they were not to spend these years lamenting for the “good ole days,” as they had been. According to Jeremiah’s letter, there never were any—Israel had adopted an idolatrous and sexually immoral way of life, oppressing the poor and the exile, and cheerfully embracing the false doctrines of the “lying prophets” who pretended to have revelations of prosperity over against Jeremiah’s calls to repentance. The “good ole days” turned out to be nothing but the calm before the storm of God’s judgment as they were carted off to Babylon in chains. Yet the Lord was still with them, promising a new day when he would turn their sorrow to joy. He exhorted them to: (1) go about their daily lives, planting vineyards and sharing the common ups and downs with their pagan neighbors; (2) grow in numbers, both through covenant families and by witnessing to their neighbors through their hope in Yahweh’s promise; (3) ignore the false prophets; and (4) pray for the city and its rulers (v. 10).

The New Testament locates our existence on a similar position on this map of history. Placed at the intersection between the “two ages”—“this present evil age” in bondage to sin and death, and “the age to come” under the reign of righteousness and life—our lives are marked by tension.

We are baptized into Christ: we are justified and are being renewed, gradually conforming

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to Christ’s image. Through his enduring word and sacraments, the age to come breaks into this present age that is fading away. “We are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28), which frees us to take our temporary citizenship seriously, but not too seriously.

As Rome was sacked, Jerome asked, “What will become of the church now that Rome has fallen?”

Augustine realized that the real question wasn’t whether Rome would continue but whether the church would remain faithful to the word. Would it, like Judah, corrupt that word with false doctrine and worship? Would the lives of Christians be noticeably different from the preoccupations and loves driven by a nihilistic worldview? Christians still have an obligation to plant vineyards, raise families, and grow in depth and in numbers as the gospel is proclaimed to the ends of the earth.

Your enemies now may actually be among the elect whom the Father will call to his Son by his Spirit.

That’s the call God gave to Judah through Jeremiah and to the apostles in their letters to Christ’s people. It was Augustine’s exhortation to Christians under a revived paganism, and it’s the sane and biblical approach to our discipleship now. It isn’t triumphalism or despair, but a strategy of thanksgiving to fuel our patience as we await our coming King, and to encourage us in our responsibilities to love and serve our neighbors—even our enemies—as those who, for all we know, have also been chosen by God to inherit the everlasting city in Christ.

MICHAEL S. HORTON is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

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by Michael S. Horton

REGAIN YOUR FOCUS It’s easy to find ourselves neglecting the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In Rediscovering the Holy Spirit, Michael Horton reintroduces readers to the Spirit, unpacks why we shouldn’t take the Spirit for granted, and helps us see the Spirit with fresh eyes.

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