Becoming A Christ Follower

Though at times it may seem in my writing that I rant on and on against what I see as a rampant individualism in western culture as well as western Christianity, and I try, sometimes though I’m sure it may be in a very unbalanced way, to insist over and over for a biblically rooted, spiritually healthy corporate community in the body of Christ as a solution to it. I want you to know that this in no way reduces what I feel is the immense importance of every individual dealing personally with the powerful gospel, and then of course the critical need for each one to turn from sin to God and from death to life.

I agree with N. T. Wright that the ‘call’ is the central event, the point at which the sinner turns to God. At the ‘call’, the individual who hasn’t before believed the gospel is gripped by the word and the Spirit and comes to believe it, to submit to Jesus as the risen Lord. Faith is the first fruit of the Spirit’s call. Now I think Mike wants me to discuss what comes before and after the call? I believe we should look to Romans 8.29–30 for the answer. Here the Apostle Paul gives us two steps prior to God’s ‘call’ through the gospel: God’s foreknowledge, and God’s predestination, the destiny in question being the mark of the image of the Son. This demonstrates the sovereignty of God in the call itself, though Paul never really answers the questions I want to ask about how precisely these things work out. As a Pastor I served with early in my ministry said, “This is just something I praise God for. It is to the praise of His glorious grace.”

What matters next is the question of what comes after the ‘call’. ‘Those he called, he also justified’. Reformed doctrinal tradition has used ‘justify’ and its cognates to denote conversion, or at least the initial moment of the Christian life, and has then debated broader and narrower definitions of what counts. N. T. Wrights believes that for Paul, ‘justification’ is something that follows on from the ‘call’. He believes it is God’s declaration that a person is in the right; that is, (a) that their sins have been forgiven, and (b) that they are part of the single covenant family promised to Abraham. Justification occurs in the future on the basis of the entire life a person has led in the power of the Spirit and it occurs in the present as an anticipation of that future verdict, when someone, responding in believing obedience to the ‘call’ of the gospel, believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.

I think it is important to see that the final verb Paul uses in Romans 8 30 is ‘glorified’. What about ‘sanctification’? Paul does not refer to it here. Paul regards that those who belong to the Messiah by faith already share his glorious life, his rule over the world, and that this rule, this glory, will one day be evident. I will leave ‘sanctification’ to another blog. Maybe.

Thoughts on Evangelism

Evangelism can be preaching the Gospel or it can be doing good works of New Creation, which would be a form of communicating the Gospel. As I shared with our community group last night, we do good works so that people can ask why. Then we explain the Biblical story. St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary use words”. I believe there are as many ways of leading someone to a living, saving relationship with God through Jesus the Messiah and in the power of the Holy Spirit as there are people. As far back as the Acts of the Apostles we can see people being converted in a variety of ways, from the gentle opening of the heart of Lydia to the earthquake of the Philippian jailor.
There are three elements that all evangelistic conversations would include:
a. that God is God, the creator and he is calling all to worship, love and adoration;
b. that the crucified and risen Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, is the world’s Lord, and hence is my Lord, calling all of us to gratitude (‘the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me’) and submission (‘the obedience of faith’);
c. that this God, and this Jesus, promise to send the Holy Spirit to live within us to enable faith, hope and love.
Of course I would share that our humanness has been broken by sin and that leaves all of us unready, unprepared, and, worse than that, in a state of idolatry and rebellion. This is opposite of the genuine humanness the Spirit longs to create in us. Our response to the good news about God, Jesus and the Spirit is recognition of our brokenness, repentance with the intention of Spirit empowered transformation and alteration of life, in gratitude for the full dealing with sin and death which has been effected through Jesus’ death.
As far as practical ways in which this conversation might take place, one way of doing it might be to read a gospel with them, perhaps Mark. In exploring (a), (b) and (c) above, I would stress that all our ideas about who ‘God’ actually is need to be brought into line with who we discover Jesus to be through reading the gospels and through prayer. At some point, there would need to be a gentle exploration to see what repentance might mean in this person’s case.
In the Messiah and by the Spirit God has created and is creating a worldwide community of those now commissioned to shine his light in the world. This community, defined by the faith is the true home of all who share this faith and who together take forward God’s mission to and in the world. I would also want to discuss what appropriate church context this person could make their own, with a view to sharing the life of a community dedicated to the worship of God in Jesus and to following God in His mission in the world.
All of this needs to be bathed in prayer, the prayer of love which will give these people into the care of God himself, who is a far, far better evangelist and pastor than I could ever be.

Salvation Communication

Most Christians who speak about ‘being saved’ mean ‘I’m going to heaven when I die’. Heaven is important, and so is discussing our immediate destiny after death but as N. T. Wright says “it is not the end of the world.” In the New Testament, our final destination as followers of Christ is the ‘new heavens and new earth’ we are promised in Revelation 21, the renewed, redeemed creation we are promised in Romans 8, the ’summing up of all things in heaven and earth’ we are promised in Ephesians 1.10. For this we will need re-embodied, resurrected whole selves. I call them “new heaven and earth suits” and that, of course, is what God promises. This final destination, not the intermediate ‘heavenly’ state, is ’salvation’.
If ’salvation’ simply means ‘”goodbye world goodbye” and leaving forever this world of space, time and matter’, then this is not really ’salvation’ from the ultimate enemies, sin and death, which destroy God’s good creation, but colluding with them. So, ’salvation’ in the New Testament is all about God rescuing humans AND CREATION AS WELL from sin and death. This will be the redemption and renewal of creation, and of human beings within that, into a newly embodied world of which the present world is simply at times a foretaste.
So Brian asks “If that is ‘being saved’, what about ‘good works’?” (Isn’t it amazing I can hear him all the way from Riverside to Salinas) From Ephesians 1.10 to Ephesians 2.10, we are saved by grace through faith FOR GOOD WORKS WHICH GOD PREPARED BEFOREHAND for us to walk in. Trying to separate the two might be like saying ‘which is more important, breathing or eating?’ Obviously if you stop breathing you won’t do much eating, but equally if you never eat you will find your breathing eventually in trouble. I know this is not a perfect analogy but I hope it helps. The ‘salvation’, which is ‘by grace through faith’, is precisely the rescue of our humanness from all that corrupts it, including ultimately death, and sin that anticipates death. Since we are to be rescued from sin and death then it makes no sense whatever to say ‘well, I’m saved, so I won’t bother about good works’. We aren’t saved BY good works but we are saved FOR good works, which are empowered by the Spirit, that people may see them and glorify our Father who is in heaven.

The Fifth Element

Fifthly, we come to the subject of justification. Wright suggests that the Greek word DIKAIOO be translated as “vindicate” and the noun form as “vindication.” For Paul, vindication is not what happens at conversion, but subsequent to conversion. DIKAIOO is “a declarative word, declaring that something is the case, rather than a word for making something happen or changing the way something is.” It is “law court language,” and this is appropriate since “God is the God of justice, who is bound to put the world to rights, has promised to do so, and intends to keep his promises.” Wright insists that God does this “through the covenant.” Thus, God’s faithfulness and his justice are “closely interlinked,” and are both indicated in the phrase “righteousness of God.”
Justification is “the declaration (a) that someone is in the right (his or her sins having been forgiven through the death of Jesus) and (b) that this person is a member of the true covenant family, the family that God originally promised to Abraham and has now created through Christ and the Spirit – the single family that consists equally of believing Jews and believing Gentiles.” Justification is “God’s declaration” that these things are true; not His “bringing it about that.” “Call” brings it about; justification is the declaration that it has happened. It is not about getting in the family; it’s the assurance that we are in.
As Wright has already emphasized, justification anticipates the future verdict that will be rendered at the final judgment. Further, it is “God’s declaration about the person who has just become a Christ follower.” It is not, in fact, quite accurate to call it a declaration; like the final verdict, the present verdict is an event. In the future, it will be “the resurrection of the person concerned into a glorious body like that of the risen Jesus,” and so the present declaration “consists not so much in words, though words there may be, but in an event, the event in which one dies with the Messiah and rises to new life with him.”

FOUR!!!!!

Wright, fourthly, writes that when Paul talks about what happens at conversion, he describes it with the word “call.” Prior to the call, God has foreknown and “marked out ahead of time” (predestined) the one to be called. In Wright’s view, “God takes the initiative, on the basis of his foreknowledge; the preached word, through which the Spirit is at work, is the effective agent; belief in the gospel, that is, believing submission to Jesus as the risen Lord, is the direct result.” He attempts to clarify the place of faith in this by adding that “faith is not something someone does as a result of which God decides to grant him or her a new status or privilege,” since conversion “in its initial moment, is not based on anything that a person has acquired by birth or achieved by merit.” Faith is “the first fruit of the Spirit’s call.”

The 3rd Wright

A third essential in Wright’s understanding of Paul is the reality of a final judgment according to works. Wright is often accused of believing in a salvation by works but this is not the case. Wright believes Paul writes about the final judgment in Romans 2:1-16. Wright insists that “the ‘works’ in accordance with which the Christian will be vindicated on the last day are not the unaided works of the self-help moralist, but “the things that show that one is in Christ; the things that are produced in one’s life as a result of the Spirit’s indwelling and operation.” Paul, Wright says, believes that he can have a confident assurance in God’s favorable verdict at the last day. Wright says that Paul believes this verdict will not be based on the merits of what Christ has done but because of his own apostolic works accomplished in the power of the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 2:19-20). Paul knows that he doesn’t do anything by “his own energy” but only can do “what God gives and inspires him to do.” We are now justified by faith. This means we will be justified at the final judgment but we already know this final “just” verdict has already been settled now in the present.

I Second This Wright Essential

Our second Wright essential has to do with the interpretation of the phrase, “the righteousness of God,” used by Paul, for instance, in Romans 1:16-17 and many other places throughout the book of Romans. People are always accusing Wright of not believing in believers having a righteousness status. Paul, Wright insists, does talk about a “righteousness” that describes a person’s right standing or position before God, but that is not what this particular phrase means. Instead, the “righteousness of God” refers to “the aspect of God’s character because of which, despite Israel’s infidelity and consequent banishment, God will remain true to the covenant with Abraham and rescue Israel nonetheless.” This righteousness is not identical to salvation; this righteousness is “the reason he saves Israel.” Wright describes it as “covenant fidelity,” but he emphasizes that it also includes justice toward “covenant-breaking Israel” and a message of future judgment according to works. This last statement can open a whole other can of worms. But God’s righteousness is never “an attribute that is passed on to, reckoned to, or imputed to God’s people.” The question that “righteousness of God” answers is whether God has been faithful to keep His covenant. Wright says: “the covenant with Israel was always designed to be God’s means of saving and blessing the entire cosmos.”
Wright says that when Paul talks about imputed righteousness, he uses a different phrasing, as found in Philippians 3:9, where he talks not about the “righteousness of God” but about “righteousness from God.” Here Paul is evoking the “context of the Jewish law court,” and the word is a forensic term. There, in the Jewish law court “when the case has been heard, the judge finds in favor of one party and against the other. Once this has happened, the indicated party possesses the status of ‘righteous’ – not itself a moral statement, we note, but a statement of how things stand in terms of the now completed lawsuit.” The guiltless status of this person before the judge is not the result of the imputation of the judge’s own righteousness; the righteousness of the judge is instead evident in his conduct of the case, whether he has tried the case fairly or not. Wright says that, within this context, it’s quite proper to say that the judge has “made” the person righteous by his verdict “because ‘righteous’ at this point is not a word denoting moral character but only the gracious status that you have when the court has found in your favor.”
In the case of Christ followers, we have been found to be “covenant members” and/or “justified sinners.” We have been accredited by grace to be “in Christ” because we have heard the gospel and responded with “the obedience of faith.”

I’ve Been Reading Some Wright Books

I have not blogged in a month. I think I needed a break. After my time of N. T. Wright sermon saturation, I have been re-reading Wright’s massive 3 volume series (NTPG, JVG, RSG).

National Pastor’s Convention #3

What a day! I met N. T. Wright. We didn’t have lunch or anything but I got to thank him for his immense influence on my life.

He taught the whole book of Acts in 45 minutes. It was amazing. Some thoughts… Acts 1 is the Heaven and Earth show with the Risen Jesus as fully at home in both. Acts 1-12 - Jesus is King of the Jews - and Herod dies after colluding with Pagans. Acts 13-28 - Jesus is Lord of the World - Caesar is not! We are not being saved from the world. We are saved in the world where God’s kingdom is coming on earth as it is in heaven.

In the afternoon, N. T. and Bishop John (Rwanda) did an interview and question time together. HIV/AIDS - Americans, do not try to solve the problem. Assist an African Church to solve the problem. Number 1 killer in Africa is Water born disease(60%). Number 2 is Malaria. Number 3 is HIV/AIDS. Poverty is spreading the AIDS pandemic. Women have to sell themselves to survive. They believe they cannot do any better. Africa is not allowed in the global economy to produce any finished materials just raw materials. It keeps them poor and does not allow them to compete economically.

In the evening N. T. Wright spoke on Tomorrow’s Church for Tomorrow’s World.

He spoke of the signs of the times that are Tomorrow’s challenges of society (empire, terror, global debt), the planet (global warming, destruction of species, population) and what it means to be human (what is a flourishing human being, image of God, problems of gender, sexuality, roles). Around these is astand off between fundamentalism and secularism and the negativity caused by post-modernism.

He said he praises the Lord that the Kingdom of God is back on the agenda of the Western church. John 20:19ff - “receive the Spirit” who will through the followers prove to the world is in the wrong. Ephesians 1:10, 2:10, 3:10 - imagine what could be done in our world in the power of Christ. Rev 4, 5 - Worship of the victorious Lamb is the taproot of hope, which is the tap root of the Kingdom, and which defeats the Powers opposed to God.

It was an awesome day! Gonna here N. T. twice more tomorrow and then drive home.

P.S. Oh and John Ortberg spoke about how to “Thrive in Ministry”. It was good, too. I’ll share it with you sometime.

National Pastor’s Convention #2

Chuck Colson spoke at the National Pastor’s Convention here in San Diego today. He has written a new book called “The Faith” about the call to doctrinal solidity in reforming the church and in transforming America. We all got a copy of it. “Creeds before deeds,” he remarked. “If I had not come to believe what I did, there would never have been a prison fellowship.”
Rwandan Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana spoke this afternoon about Reconciliation and his experiences during the genocide in Rwanda. He taught from Romans 15 of a reconciliation journey that is begun when the offender repents and the offended forgives. He said that now there is a restorative justice system in place in Rwanda where the offender meets with the families that were offended and they decide on a restitution journey together. “The ability to forgive is not magic but it is powerful.”
Shane Claiborne’s session this afternoon was titled “Jesus for President,” and he discussed many of the ideas about faith and politics in his new book with the same title. Shane and co-author Chris Haw will be touring several cities this summer beginning June 23rd. You can see if Shane and Chris will be coming to your city by visiting www.jesusforpresident.org.

And now I am going to sleep because N.T. Wright speaks at 7:30 am tomorrow. It is the first of five talks and I will be there!