Paul's Passing Thoughts

It couldn’t be clearer, after all, we can assume Christ is the master communicator. He created us; obviously, He knows how to communicate with us. If you really want to know God’s intentions for communicating to His people, it can be observed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Christ didn’t preach that sermon at some institution of higher religious learning; He preached it to the blue collar class of that day on a hill in the countryside. The key hermeneutic, or how Jesus expected the crowd to hear His sermon is in Matthew 5: 2; “And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying….” It can be said of the particular verb here “taught” (didasko) that it means, “to cause learning.” To suggest that this crowd was already up to speed on a redemptive historical hermeneutic is of course preposterous.

New Calvinists point to the writings of Paul and the road to Emmaus in an attempt to establish this, but somehow, Jesus didn’t think this crowd needed to get that memo. It is also clear that the term “gospel,” or simply “good news,” can include more than contemplating the works of Christ and what he accomplished (hence, when Paul said he wanted to preach the gospel at Rome [supposedly speaking strictly of believers], many things are implied). Just prior to Matthew 5:1, we read this in Matthew 4:23;

And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

The Sermon on the Mount is the prime example of what that message was exactly, and by the way, doesn’t include the gospel of His death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus preached another gospel in addition to that one: if you do what I say, your house will be built on a rock. That’s good news, no? The Sermon on the Mount is instruction on kingdom living from beginning to end. It is a sermon about discarding bad information and replacing it with God’s wisdom, for “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” which by the way includes the law. Jesus stated the following in His summation of the Sermon on the Mount:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

And what was the gospel that Jesus was preaching prior to the Sermon on the Mount?

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).

Nothing is possible without God. Obviously. Even the unbeliever depends on God for everything whether he knows it or not. But the Bible reveals a character trait of God: He desires that His creatures colabor with him. Sometimes simplicity is utterly profound because of familiarity. While attending a K-12 school seminar with my son Phillip, an instructor that didn’t even seem to be a Christian said the following while holding out her hands as an illustration: “We were created to work.” No kidding? Look at our bodies. They are designed for work. But it makes one wonder what we would look like according to many of the Reformed theologies propagated in our day. Think of a legless and armless SpongeBob.  Let’s use our brains here; is there really any danger of God not getting all the glory when he is the one who powers the atoms that hold matter together? As long as we know that, there is no danger of stealing God’s glory by using the brain, hands, and feet that He has given us.  Jesus’ very mandate to the church is:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

For sure, we are saved by faith alone, but unless we exercise that faith, we will not have a house built on a rock, and the message of gospel life will not be displayed to others. To not exercise our will according to our faith is to hide the light of the gospel:

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16).

We often like to say that “Jesus is the light of the world.” And though that is true, the following is also true; that is not what Jesus is saying here; He is saying that YOU are the light of the world. “But Paul, the Apostle Paul said that God gives us the will to do what is His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). So, it’s a gift, right? When you have been given a gift, it’s yours to use, right? This isn’t a call to let God do it all for fear that we will rob Him of His glory, this is telling us we have no excuse! “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). “I CAN DO….” I like the Jay Adams adage often used by biblical counselors that are of his school of thought when told by a counselee that they “can’t” do something that God wants them to do: “You can’t, or you won’t?” No doubt, the just live by faith; you have to believe that God has really given you everything you need to obey Him, but let there be no doubt, kingdom living is not by faith alone.

A life built on a rock is by faith and doing (Matthew 7:24), shows forth the gospel (Matthew 5:14-18), results in happiness (James 1:25, Luke 11: 27,28), and gives assurance of salvation (1John 3:17, 2Peter 1:10). Bottom line: faith is a gift (Ephesians 2:8), but that faith cannot be shown to ourselves and others unless a decision is made to mix that faith with an exercise of the will according to God’s word (James 2:26). When Christ fed the 5,000, He didn’t do everything. The feeding was not possible without the Lord, no meal is, not even the ones that feed unbelievers, but the disciples helped. They instructed the crowd to sit, they distributed the food, and cleaned up afterwards. Did the Lord need their help? No. Did He want their help? Yes. This isn’t really rocket science. God has designed salvation and kingdom living for our participation while preserving all of the glory for Himself. To colabor with His creation is one of His attributes. The fact that Adam did not create the world is a no-brainer, but God’s desire to involve him in the maintenance thereof is rather obvious.

And let’s talk about this whole fear of putting to work what God has given us because of some misunderstanding about who He is. In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus tells of a Master who goes away on a journey and entrusts his various servants with his property, and this is interesting, “according to their ability.” So, each servant is entrusted with a sum of the master’s property in proportion to what he is able to bear. In other words, the master is fair and doesn’t expect too much. Note: the servants could not do anything without that which is granted by the master.

You know the rest of the story; the servants that received the five and two talents produced double what they were originally given responsibility of. Apparently, the masters business was one of investment, and the servants that had received the five and two talents began trading soon after the master left for his journey. But because of fear, the servant of whom the least was expected played it safe and made sure he didn’t lose any of the master’s money in risky investments. The goal was not to lose anything, so he buried the one talent and gave it back to the master when he returned.

This is eerily similar to what I hear from New Calvinists. They seem to fear that doing the wrong thing in sanctification could cause them to lose their salvation or whatever it is that they perceive the Lord has given them. A young New Calvinist told me in no uncertain terms that she was certain that the Lord wouldn’t fault her at the judgment for not trying too hard so that He would get all of the glory. By not trying too hard, she was playing it safe. Making little effort in sanctification or not doing anything “in her OWN strength” is supposedly erring on the side of caution. But wait a minute. To begin with, Christians will not stand at a future judgment to determine their justification by what they have done in sanctification/kingdom living.

Christians don’t have to play it safe, they can live the kingdom life full throttle, and whatever the Lord has granted them according to talent will come to bear on what happens. But the Lord called the servant who had been given the one talent, “lazy.” He should have at least done the minimum. If he had deposited the money in a savings account, it would have at least gained a little interest. The fear that he couldn’t measure up to God’s harsh expectations was just an excuse for laziness, and a misrepresentation of who God is. One might also note that the master said to the other two servants who had worked hard at investing his talents, “Well DONE faithful servant.” Obviously, the servant did something and was even rewarded for it. And the purpose of this parable seems to be a motivation for us as well.

Moreover, the proof is in the pudding. On a website that promotes a gospel perspective on every verse of Scripture, an article was posted concerning a “gospel-centered” perspective on Matthew 18:15-20. The author states the following:

If there is one thing my students might get weary of hearing me say, it is this: “You have not rightly handled or interpreted a text unless ultimately you can clearly identify its relationship to the Gospel.”

As an aside, it is amazing how this approach to interpretation is blatant Gnosticism. How can one see the larger scope of the gospel in every verse of the Bible? The author further explains:

Every text has two contexts in which it must be interpreted, namely, its micro (i.e. the immediate context) and macro contexts (i.e. the larger context of the particular book and of Scripture as a whole). It is not enough merely to interpret a text in its relationship to its micro-context. As important as it is to understand a text in its immediate context, to do so does not mean that you have identified its relationship to the Gospel, that is, its relationship to what God has done in Christ to accomplish salvation. The failure to understand a text in its macro or redemptive-context is tantamount to the failure of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus to understand that the entire OT testifies to Christ in his suffering and subsequent glory (Luke 24:21).

The dualist method of interpreting the cosmos through the macro/micro is a Gnostic concept that came from Platonism:

Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek Neo-Platonic schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos, from the largest scale (macrocosm or universe-level) all the way down to the smallest scale (microcosm or sub-sub-atomic or even metaphysical-level). In the system the mid-point is Man, who summarizes the cosmos.

The Greeks were philosophically concerned with a rational explanation of everything and saw the repetition of the golden ratio throughout the world and all levels of reality as a step towards this unifying theory. In short, it is the recognition that the same traits appear in entities of many different sizes, from one man to the entire human population.

Macrocosm/microcosm is a Greek compound of μακρο- “Macro-” and μικρο- “Micro-“, which are Greek respectively for “large” and “small”, and the word κόσμος kósmos which means “order” as well as “world” or “ordered world.”

Today, the concept of microcosm has been dominated by sociology to mean a small group of individuals whose behavior is typical of a larger social body encompassing it. A microcosm can be seen as a special kind of epitome. Conversely, a macrocosm is a social body made of smaller compounds (Online source: http://goo.gl/7m4Ds).

In this approach, the person is only excommunicated as a way to show forth the gospel in the text. Getting the person to see the gospel context will transform him/her. Hence, when confronted by others, they are only to remind him/her of how church discipline shows forth the gospel. The author explains:

Question Three: What must we do with the individual who has been expelled in order that we might see him restored?

Answer: Keep lovingly facing him (1) with what it means to be cut off from the community of faith, namely, you are cut off from the presence of God; and (2) with what Christ has done in his place that he might be restored. The cross is the one place where both of these truths are seen most clearly. Why must we bring this two-fold message of the cross to bear upon the expelled individual? (1) That he might be awakened to the sinfulness of his sin and its terrible consequences. (2) Because it is this very message of what Christ has done in his place that is the very power of God unto his restoration. (Online source: http://goo.gl/nm8uv).

Therefore, instruction from the Bible regarding the specifics for kingdom living is not the focused use of the Bible, regardless of what passages like 2Timothy 3:16,17 state:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God  may be complete, equipped for every good work.

I have a good example of how God honors obedience and attention to His word with displays of power. My son in law is a missionary in Puerto Rico but he oversees church plants in Kenya. He recently returned from there after leading several Bible conferences. After he returned home, he received the following letter from a pastor who attended one of the conferences:

Greeting in the great name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I thank God so much for this New day that He has given unto me and all of us. I thank Him and give Him all the glory

I also want to thank God for the conference. It was powerful. I was so much blessed especially by the message about the Christian Liberty. Just as I said when we were in Kisii that I learned a lot from you brother David the message blessed me so much that when I reached Mombasa first Sunday after conference I shared this message with my church members and people were so amazed. This is powerful message after the service people wanted to know more and to learn. We decided to start a follow up to go and visit those who were out of our church because we chased them away.

We thank God we restored many of them back to Christ and now there is a lot of Joy in the house of God. The Bible says you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, we were set free by the truth that you brought us in that conference . May Almighty God Bless you so Much. ~Sammy Mayienga ~ N.D.C.M Shanzu Mombasa

Indeed, no wonder the great commission is a charge by Christ to make disciples, teaching them to observe all that He has commanded. God’s power is in the doing. He desires obedience more than sacrifice, and the blessing is IN the doing, not contemplationism that does not mix doing with faith.

paul