Ray Galea is an Anglican minister who leads the pastoral team at St Alban's Multicultural Bible Ministry at Rooty Hill in western Sydney. His special brief is to work cross-culturally among second-generation Mediterranean and Middle Eastern people in the region.

Ray grew up as a member of a devout Roman Catholic family, and played an active role as a boy in his local parish church. Prior to training for the ministry, Ray worked as a social worker in Wollongong for three years where he specialized in marriage and family counselling. He is a graduate from Moore Theological College. He is married to Sandy and they have has three children: James, Amy and Madeleine. He has recently authored the book Nothing in My Hand I Bring (Matthias Media, 2008) which has become a focus of interest in the lead-up to Pope Benedict's visit to Sydney in July for Catholic World Youth Day.

Ray, what was it like to grow up as young Maltese Catholic boy in Sydney's west? Did you have a positive experience of Catholicism during your early years?

Yes, I had a positive experience within the Catholic Church as a young boy. I came from a loving Maltese Catholic family where religion was certainly an integral part of our lives. We went to mass three times a week: Friday nights, Sundays and Tuesday night Novenas. It was a loving home. Of course, no-one is perfect but my mother had a genuine desire to be a good Catholic and so did my dad. We said the rosary every night, and that was often lead by my mother. I wasn't particularly aware of any lack of integrity on the part of priests or nuns. The teachers and the nuns at school were quite kind and loving. I recall only one sister who taught me in third grade who was a bit unpleasant. All the other sisters were gracious ladies.

I had a warm relationship with our parish priest, Father John Morreau. He was a kind and honourable man. He certainly didn't molest me and he was never harsh to me. He used to tolerate me asking questions like, “If the Pope died while visiting Australia, would he be buried here or back in Rome?” These were the sort of questions that interested me as an altar boy of eight years' standing. There were a couple of teaching brothers in the high school who generated some fear through wielding the strap. However, for the most part, my experiences in the Catholic Church were overwhelmingly positive.

So you served Father Morreau for eight years, assisting him with the mass?

Yes, I was a long-standing altar boy. And I didn't drink the altar wine on the side, either! I used to ring the bells at mass, and I would pour the water over the priest's hands as he washed before consecrating the host. My job was mainly to help him in the administration of the mass, but obviously in a very simple role. I wasn't a priest. A friend of mine once said to me, “You know, Ray, every altar boy has to become a priest”. Actually, that scared the daylights out of me. I never thought that when I said ‘yes’ to serving as an altar boy, I was saying ‘yes’ to celibacy. Thankfully, my mother clarified that for me.

What did it mean to be a Catholic as a young boy?

I had a sense that I was part of something that was really large and international. It's funny that until about 15 or 20 years ago, I always thought that the Catholics were the majority within Australia. I was quite surprised when I discovered that they were only 25-30% (nominally) of the population. So there was a deep sense that I was a part of something quite big and large, with the Pope as the head of a famous, international organization. As far as I was aware, there were Catholic churches everywhere, and they were the biggest ones.

Did that make you feel secure?

Yes, I certainly felt secure in being a Catholic, especially a Maltese one. I had a strong sense of ethnic and religious identity. All my cousins were Maltese and Catholic as well. I went to a Catholic school, so I actually knew very few Protestants. The only Protestant I knew was in high school. His name is Grant Sutcliffe. He's still a friend of mine today. He was a nominal Methodist back then.

So what did you think of the local Protestant church on the corner?

Well, not much, really. I thought of the Protestants as being part of a Mickey Mouse outfit. How could they be right when they always seemed to have smaller buildings? I don't think I had a negative view of Protestants as such; it's just that they seemed to be irrelevant to my way of thinking. I had no real sense of their presence. It's as though they didn't exist.

You grew up during the tumultuous times of Vatican II. Where you aware of any big changes that were taking place in the Catholic Church at the time?

I had a sense that there were some significant changes happening at an official level because there were changes happening in the parish in the celebration of the mass. For example, I noticed that we now had a Greeting of Peace. There was more of an attempt at a communal approach to the mass, rather than the priest doing it all for us. There was a sense that the congregation now had a role to play in the service. The whole approach to worship became more friendly and inclusive. I remember that, as an altar boy, I didn't have to learn Latin like my brother, who was older. Vatican II had introduced a number of changes to do with the mass—one of which was to drop the Latin version and put it into the vernacular. It was relief to know that after 400 years, we could be like the Protestants and actually understand what was going on. I know about some of the changes, although I didn't experience them myself. I have no memory of the Latin mass, for example. I am the fruit of some of those changes in the sense that, as an altar boy, I didn't have to learn Latin, which is what my brother was forced to do. The other thing I remember was that ecumenism was really high on the church's agenda.

So there was a more friendly approach taking place in the way Catholicism presented itself to the world.

Yes, and for me as a young boy, it was captured in a number of symbolic ways. One of them took place in my school. The order of nuns who taught us in our first years at school changed from the Josephites to the Sisters of Charity. With the change of order, there was a change in uniform. The nuns wore a habit—you know, their outer garment—which went from a dark brown to a white. I know it probably sounds a little funny but it seemed to symbolize the fact that we went from having a God who was terrifying to be around to one who was your friend in heaven. It was typified for me in that famous Catholic TV advertisement about 30 years ago which said, “When ya get to heaven, whaddya think you'll say? G'day!” So Catholicism was trying to be very inclusive. It was a major shift in direction at the ground level. We went from being a very exclusive church to one that was a lot more open to the outside world.

Do you think there were substantial changes taking place at a level of belief?

Not really, in terms of ordinary Catholics. The changes in our church were more about the form of liturgy and church organization than about doctrinal content. The liturgy changed slightly, becoming more corporate than individualistic. It was now in the vernacular. However, the Vatican made it clear that the essential doctrines of the church hadn't changed. There were always suggestions that Catholic understanding might be a little more nuanced now than it was before, but no-one ever admitted that fundamental doctrines were changing. It was exactly the same horse as before; it just had a newer saddle.

I think one of the things that Vatican II initiated was a new emphasis on certain aspects of God's character. Whereas pre-Vatican Catholicism had emphasized the severity of God, Vatican II encouraged Catholics to think of God's love. I remember my father went to a mission run by a Catholic order about 10 years ago, and he heard a monk preach about the Prodigal Son. He said to me with tears in his eyes, “You know, Ray, I never knew that God loved me”. He went on: “I have always been taught that God was angry”. So there was a real sense that there was a change of emphasis, even if the essentials remained the same.

What are some of the things that you most admire about Catholicism?

I admire the Catholic Church's ethical concerns. They have a great passion for protecting unborn life which puts nearly everyone else to shame. Protestants, especially, have a lot to learn from Catholics on that score. Catholics also have a more corporate sense of the church, whereas Protestants are sometimes far too individualistic in their understanding of salvation and the body of Christ. I know some Protestants talk a lot about being saved as individuals and having a personal faith, but they have no sense of belonging to the church and playing a responsible role in God's family. For some of them, it's like, “Who needs the church?” It's almost as though they need a second conversion so they can appreciate the church as the body of Christ. A lot of Protestants are just too individualistic and don't see the importance of the family of God.

How do Catholics think of God? Do they tend to fear him more than Protestants?

It varies. I guess it depends on the kind of Catholic you are speaking to. There's a whole range of views in the Catholic Church. For instance, there are nominal Catholics and really hardcore ones. If you speak to a member of the Opus Dei order, you will discover a view that's very affirmative of traditional Catholic theology. On the other hand, if you talk to a liberal Catholic, you'll probably find someone who doesn't believe that Vatican II went anywhere near far enough. Liberals think the Catholic Church should be ordaining gays as well as women priests. So, within the Catholic Church, you have the full spectrum.

I came from conservative Catholicism. We took our religion seriously. However, many of my family today are quite liberal in their approach. Nevertheless, they are still involved in the church at the moment.

However, despite all the variety amongst individuals in the Catholic Church today, there is a certain stability that is imposed by the Catholic liturgy. There is something substantial about having an expression of worship that is consistent everywhere you go. Of course, such rigidity has its dangers and downside. But there's a certain psychological appeal in being able to go to mass anywhere in the world, and fitting in. There's a commonality about the Catholic mass. It's familiar to everyone everywhere. In that sense, it's pretty much like McDonalds: there will always be a few local tweaks, but basically you know what you are going to get. You don't even need to know the local language because you know the meaning of the liturgy at every point.

Actually, one of the things that I have most appreciated about the ancient prayers in the Catholic liturgy (some of which are still in the Anglican Prayer Book) is the fact that they are so God-centred and uplifting. Take the Gloria, for instance: I love that prayer and its rich theology. Again, I was first introduced to the wonder of the Trinity in the Catholic Church. I am grateful for that too. On this doctrine, at least, both Catholics and Protestants share similar views.

What did you understand by the term ‘Christian’ as a young Catholic?

It's hard to remember exactly what I thought, but I am reasonably sure I thought of ‘Christian’ as a sort of generic term that encompassed Catholics and Protestants. Actually, I thought of Australia as a Christian country, which obviously included Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists and probably even Jehovah's Witnesses. I guess I thought that anyone who believed in Jesus, who was upright and moral, and who went to a church was a Christian. I thought of being Christian in a very general sort of way, as I best recall. It was a very loose term that was non-exclusive. I probably would have said that anyone who was a good person was a Christian. I was actually quite liberal in my thinking between the ages of 15 to 20.

Were you reacting at that time to Catholic conservatism?

No, I was actually going with the flow of Vatican II. The type of Catholicism I experienced at high school was heavily influenced by Vatican II. Following Vatican II, Catholic theologians became a lot more open to theological liberalism. This filtered down into our religious instruction at school. I remember being taught some liberal notions about the Bible in particular. We were taught to question the historicity of the Exodus and the parting of the Red Sea. We were told that the historical events of the Old Testament were nothing but myths. Slowly this dumbing down of the Bible began to seep in, and I found myself taking a more open view of things. It wasn't as if I was reacting against anything in the church because I was being taught by a Catholic institution that was following the trajectory of at least one strand within Vatican II. Sydney now has a very conservative spiritual leader in Cardinal George Pell, but he presides over a rather a liberal diocese. This is a problem Catholicism faces: it may have conservative leaders, but it still has a lot of liberal theologians and teachers.

How do most young Catholics understand Jesus?

I'm not sure that many of them really understand that he is fully God, even though it's clearly stated in the mass. I think a large number would think of him more as a wise, moral teacher—an exemplar, someone you follow. He's thought of more as a heroic teacher who gives his life for us—but not someone you would necessarily pray to. I grew up in a Maltese culture where my parents literally referred to him as ‘Il Bambin’, the baby. It wasn't just the statues that portrayed him as a baby; the Maltese language did as well. He wasn't just ‘Christo’, which is a way that Maltese people sometimes refer to Jesus (although rarely). Certainly, in my family, he was always ‘Il Bambin’, the baby. The great irony of this was that I used to love the Gloria as a prayer. Perhaps you remember the words, “You alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ ...” On the one hand, I loved this prayer which exalted Jesus in his divinity, yet culturally I still thought of him as an infant. How spiritually schizophrenic is that! In practical terms, Mary was the one who had our affections and loyalty. We believed that she was the one who had influence with God. We didn't think about Jesus in that way.

What was it that led to the change in your outlook towards Jesus when you became a Christian?

It was my conversion experience. My mother had laid a foundation for me by teaching me that I could know God personally. However, beyond that, it was a friend at university who helped me. She had become a Christian from an atheistic background. She had read one of those Gideon Bibles that she had been given at school, and had surrendered her life to Christ. Then she began witnessing when she started going to church and could articulate her faith. She would often read me sections of the Bible at Manning Bar in Sydney University. I was studying there at the time. I knew she had something I didn't have. I was a strong theist, I suppose, but Jesus didn't rank high in my kind of spiritual experience. Yet I knew she had something I didn't have. I remember she shared with me the CS Lewis trilemma—you know: Jesus is either “Lord, lunatic or liar”. She told me I needed to make a choice.

I didn't act straight away, but her challenge was like a stone in my shoe that kept coming back to trouble me. About 12 months later after a series of events in my life, I dropped out of my social work degree. I realized I didn't have the motivation to care for anyone else in spite of my warm family upbringing. At the end of that year (I think it was 1980), I went for a reflective walk and realized that if Christianity is true, then I was in big trouble. I made a deal with Jesus there and then. I said, “Lord, the Bible says, ‘Seek and you will find; ask and you will receive’. I'll meet you halfway. I'll read the Bible, based on this promise. If you are really out there, please reveal yourself to me. Furthermore, I'd appreciate it if you could do it within three weeks because I'm a rather impatient man!” In God's kindness, he allowed me three weeks in a hotel in Bondi with some friends who tried to discourage me from becoming a Christian.

It sounds amazing that you ever became a Christian!

That's right! I remember sharing the room with Vince. He was on his bed reading Playboy, and I was reading the Good News Bible. He would say, “Take a look at this!” and I would say, “Vince, you should listen to this!” As we chatted back and forth, I was implicitly counting the cost. It soon became crystal clear to me that I was facing a fork in the road. Going with Jesus seemed to be the only logical thing to do. That was my conversion. However, it really took me six months after that before I officially said ‘goodbye’ to Catholicism.

How did your new understanding of Jesus affect your relationship with your church, and especially with your mum and dad and brothers and sisters?

In one sense, they could still understand what had happened to me as long as I remained a Catholic. I had just become more zealous. Some Catholics are like that: they become more Mary-centred; others become more social justice-centred. I just happened to be Jesus-centred. They say Catholicism is like the Hinduism of the western world: it can absorb lots of things. It is only when you decide that you can't be a part of it that the trouble starts. That's when everything hit the fan for me. My mum was actually quite pleased with my new-found faith, but she changed her tune the moment I said that I could no longer in good conscience remain a Roman Catholic. We had a few discussions about the place of Mary in the Christian life. She asked me, “Ray, what about visions of Mary?” Mum is quite a devotee of Mary. It was hard to say to her, “Look, Mum, if the visions are real, there's a possibility that they could have come from Satan”. That didn't go down well at all. My poor mum cried every day for two years. It really struck her hard.

Were you living at home?

Yes, I was. Mum was weeping all the time. It was incredibly hard to bear because I loved her so much. She is a wonderful lady.

How did you cope with it?

It was one of the toughest trials I have had to face. Jesus' saying in Matthew 10—“Unless you love me more than your mother or father, you are not worthy of me”—became a key verse for me to hold on to. I love my mum a lot and I am still very close to her. When I went to church each day—morning and evening—as well as Bible study on Thursday, I would leave her in tears. It's funny how my conversion at the age of 20 coincided with mid-life changes for her as well. Mum was passing through a number of changes at that time which I didn't really understand. All I knew was that when I began to call Jesus, ‘Lord’, it caused my mum a lot of grief. However, it crystallized everything for me. From that moment on, I knew that Jesus had to be first and that he wouldn't tolerate being second, and rightly so.

For Catholics, the mass lies at the centre of their religion. The climax of Pope Benedict's visit to Sydney will be the celebration of the mass at Randwick Racecourse. Why is the mass so central? What concerns do you have about it?

When I was growing up, I didn't fully understand everything that was happening in the mass. I knew one thing took place very clearly, and that was the transubstantiation of the wafer and the wine into Christ's actual body and blood. When I took my first Holy Communion, a nun told us about a girl who took the host home and put it in her drawer, only to discover later on that the drawer was full of blood. Transubstantiation was taken very seriously. The mass was where you met God in a very physical way. The sacrament wasn't a sign, it was a reality of Christ's physical presence. That was made very clear to us. The other aspect of the mass—namely, that Jesus was meant to be re-sacrificed in the rite—was not so clear at the time. I didn't really think about that until I started investigating the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. I think that sometimes you understand more about your faith when you are leaving it; it was certainly that way for me. The more I thought about the mass after my conversion, the more I realized that it undermined the sacrifice of Christ for our sins because it repeated a sacrifice that God had intended to be once-for-all. It was never meant to be done over and over again. Catholicism is essentially Old Covenant religion with human priests taking the place of Jesus, our High Priest. Catholics look at the communion table as an altar where Christ is re-sacrificed. It really is an insult to God once you understand what is taking place at each mass and compare that with the unrepeatable nature of what Jesus has done at the cross.

Why is the Roman Catholic idea of priesthood of concern to you as a Protestant?

Well, I have a number of reasons why I can no longer accept Catholic teaching about priesthood. My major objection to it is that it subtly undermines the person and work of Christ. Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ, as our great High Priest, “offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins” (Heb 10:12). It is this perfect sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ that makes us perfect. My difficulty with Catholic teaching at this point is that it allows its own priests to share in a role which can only be accomplished by the one perfect priest. All priests other than Jesus fail at every point. Only God in Christ can offer the perfect sacrifice.

The problem with Catholic teaching is that it panders to the inherent desire within the human heart to cooperate and participate in its own redemption. This desire is at the core of every major Catholic error. When you think of distinctive Catholic doctrines, the one factor which is common to them all is that they undermine the person and work of Christ in some way. For instance, the doctrine of purgatory teaches that Jesus didn't really complete the work of purification on the cross. Again, the need for a priest to mediate between us and God undermines the fact that Christ is our sole mediator. Furthermore, the Catholic teaching about priesthood ignores the fact that God has given all his people certain priestly functions and privileges. For instance, Christians now have direct access to the Father through Christ. However, the Catholic Church has removed this in a variety of ways so that now people are forced to go through human priests and the repeated celebration of the mass.

What other aspects of the mass trouble you?

I am also troubled by the mass because the Church teaches that Jesus' death on the cross within time and space 2,000 years ago was not enough. Although Catholics are careful to point out that they are not repeating Christ's sacrifice (they are very strong on that), they do claim that they are somehow tapping into the eternal reality of Christ's death that happened outside of space and time. The only problem here is that the Bible says that Christ's death for our sins is described as occurring within space and time. It was while we were sinners that Christ died for us. Surely that locates Christ sacrifice for our sins in time.

Our role with respect to the crucifixion is simply to look to Christ as our Saviour and trust him; we don't offer anything to God. The thought that we can offer something to God as guilty sinners is unthinkable. Of course, many people think of the mass as just another service, and are unaware that the re-offering Christ as victim by a priest is deeply offensive to God because it undermines the ‘once-for-all’ nature of Christ's work for us.

Protestants say that people should rely on the Bible alone. Why don't Catholics take the same position?

There are probably a couple of reasons. The first one is that every distinctive Catholic teaching requires oral tradition, and you can't find that in the Bible. So you can't really find the teaching of purgatory in any part of the canonical Scriptures. Catholics claim that these ideas are there in embryonic form, but you really need something in addition to the Scriptures to come to any conclusion about them. If you just refer to the Bible alone, then you can't hold to any of those teachings. The other thing, too, is that there is a lack of understanding amongst Catholics. They have been taught to believe that you can't make sense of the Bible without the church, and that you must have the Pope's authoritative interpretation as well as the councils and traditions of the church to understand the Bible properly. They believe that the Bible is not clear enough or sufficient to communicate these truths to us.

Until recently, the Catholic Church used to actively discourage their members from reading the Scriptures for themselves. This is now beginning to change. Nevertheless, Catholics are still supposed to read the Bible through the lens of Catholic doctrine. This means that if you get to the point where your interpretation of Scripture contradicts some Catholic dogma, then you have to assume that you've got it wrong, and you must defer to the church.

How should Christians view religious tradition? Is it always bad?

Tradition, in its technical sense, simply means that which is handed down. So the word of God is ‘tradition’, but it originates from God. When we talk about human tradition, we talk about that which originates from man and therefore has no final authority. So if we claim that human tradition has final authority, then we are giving it an authority which it doesn't have. It then undermines the word of God that has been passed on. So it's impossible not to have tradition. However, we shouldn't reject tradition outright, but understand what is from God and what is not, and then keep that distinction clear in our minds. Non-biblical teachings and customs obviously have no final authority.

Nevertheless, we would be foolish to think that we don't have things to learn from Christians in previous centuries. We need to test our own understanding of the Bible against the best insights of Christians in previous ages. The Reformed conviction of sola Scriptura doesn't mean that we don't listen to Christians in other ages; it just means that the final authority rests with Scripture, not with the tradition of the church. Evangelical Christians need to have a certain degree of humility as they assess the contributions of Christians down through the ages. At the same time, they must always remain completely under the authority of Scripture.

Why do Catholics believe that the church has the final authority in matters of faith and practice?

The reason why the church claims infallibility is that it believes that Jesus entrusted to Peter and his papal successors the authority to speak infallibly about issues of faith and Christian practice. Catholics heed the so-called infallible teachings of the Pope. Of course, not everything that the Pope says is deemed to be infallible, though, in practice, the distinctions are often blurred anyway. However, when the Pope makes an official pronouncement, say, for example, that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven as he did in the 1950s, it becomes official Catholic dogma. Catholics are bound to believe it. This is because the Pope is deemed to have the kind of authority that the Apostle Paul had among the other 12.

As Protestants, we naturally differ from the Catholic position. We believe with Jesus that the Scriptures have final authority over the church. He said that it was wrong to “leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (Mark 7:8). We must always be subject to God's word, and let it have the final say. Now, at some point, the church has to come up with its understanding of what the Scripture says. The church only has authority when it is declaring the truth of Scripture, not because it is the infallible agency for interpreting Scripture.

Protestants say that we can only be justified before God on the basis of faith in Christ alone. What do Roman Catholics say?

Catholics like to think of justification as a process which begins with baptism and continues throughout our lives. The process involves two parts. In the first, God forgives us. The second part involves us working with God to become more righteous and acceptable to him. God thus makes us righteous, infusing us with justice and righteousness over time through the sacraments and our own good works. This means that when the Judgement takes place, God will judge us in part upon what Christ did on our behalf to remove our sin, but it will also depend upon our own efforts to strive after his righteousness.

Protestants understand justification by faith quite differently. We say that the Bible teaches that justification is an event, not a process. It's a one-off declaration by God that a sinner is cleared of all guilt, and is thus completely blameless and righteous in God's sight because of—and only because of—the death and righteousness of Christ which is imputed to us. Righteousness is credited to us apart from works (Rom 4:5-6). According to the Bible, when God justifies us, he doesn't do it gradually by infusing righteousness into us; he declares us righteous when we put our faith in Christ. The real problem is that Catholics confuse justification with sanctification—they confuse God's declaration of our righteousness with God's work in us.

Is this an important difference? Yes, it is. Some time ago I had to speak to a class of 13-year-olds at a Catholic high school. In the course of the class, I asked them why they thought God would save them. Some wrote, “I don't know”. But the majority appealed to their good works in some form or other: “I've tried hard all my life to be a good person”, “I was good on earth”, or “I have gone to church every week and tried to be a good Catholic all my life”. This is where Catholicism ultimately leads its followers through its teaching on justification. This is where the Roman Catholic ship ends up, given the direction charted by the church. People who believe this are ultimately robbed of any meaningful assurance, and have to rely on their own good works to get them over the line.

You claim that only as a Protestant have you come to understand the true nature of grace. What do you mean?

Catholics and Protestants understand God's grace differently. While we could have a lot of discussion about the exact meaning of the term, grace is best summarized as ‘God's favour towards the undeserving’. It is a disposition within God towards unworthy sinners that reflects his unmerited kindness and love, chiefly through the kind provision of his Son and Spirit.

Within Catholicism, grace becomes much more complicated because Catholic dogma tends to emphasize the work of the Spirit in transforming the sinner, as opposed to God's favour towards him. So Catholicism end up emphasizing what God is doing in a person, rather than what God is doing for him/her. As a result, Catholics think of being justified by grace as cooperating with the Spirit of God to become more righteous. Unfortunately, when we think of grace in this way, we evacuate it of all its meaning. Grace is grace precisely because it is unmerited and free. If we think of grace in terms of God helping us to do good works through the Spirit's help, then we lose the idea that grace is about what God has done for us in Christ.

Why is Mary so essential to Catholicism? Are you concerned about it?

In the hundred years leading up to Vatican II, Catholic teaching about Mary underwent some incredible changes. Pope John Paul II brought about many as well. Catholics regard Mary as the mother of God and the mother of all Christians as well. In 1854, Pope Pius IX declared that she was without original sin. The emphasis on Mary focuses on the claim that she is the mother of God, or the ‘God-bearer’. The term was originally used at the Council of Ephesus to affirm the divinity and humanity of Christ. It was not meant to be a statement about Mary; in its original context, the title was quite appropriate.

The problem is that the term is now abused. People think of Mary as a special mediator who has a privileged, intercessory role with Jesus and the Father. The way this plays itself out in practice is like this: imagine yourself as a child who wants something really badly. To whom will you go: an angry father or a loving mother? The answer is obvious: you'll go to your mother every time. You know that if she takes your request to your father, you have the best opportunity to get what you want. Of course, this is an example that has instant appeal. The problem is that it doesn't square with Scripture. It's disrespectful to the Father because the gospel tells us that his wrath has been turned away by the sacrifice of Jesus. We can now draw near to God in complete confidence. It's also insulting to Jesus because it completely ignores what he did at the cross by opening a new way for us to approach the Father.

The problem is that Catholic theology misrepresents the roles of the Father and the Son in salvation. It also throws an emphasis on Mary which is entirely unsupported in Scripture. Mary is presented as a tender and gentle mediator who is one with us and who has the capacity to plead for sinners. As a Catholic, I grew up praying prayers like, “Hail, Holy Queen, mother of mercy, hail our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry for the banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in the valley of tears.” As you can see, this is quite emotive sort of language. If you really need a sympathetic ear, you don't go to an angry father or a baby; instead, you go to your mother.

I suspect a couple of trends in theology may have contributed to the rise of Marian doctrine. First, quite early in the history of the church, Christians lost the biblical emphasis on the sufficiency of the cross. This meant that they felt insecure and unable to come before God with confidence. The second factor contributing to the popularity of Marian dogma was an early stress on the divinity of Christ at the expense of his humanity. This meant that it became less clear that Jesus was the believer's High Priest who empathizes with us. When this aspect of Christology was neglected, the door was opened to Marian theology. The last Pope, Pope John Paul II, developed this as far as he could by proclaiming Mary as co-redemptrix with Jesus. Frankly, it is hard to think of any other doctrine that so robs Christ of his glory. The only word to describe it properly is ‘blasphemy’.

The interesting thing is that the only time my mum stopped and pondered this issue seriously was when I used her own empathy towards Mary against her. I said, “Mum, if Mary knew that you were praying to her (and I am not sure she does), then I know she would be crying right now in heaven because I know she loves and honours her Son. She would be deeply hurt that you were taking away his glory.” For a moment, she actually stopped and thought, “Really? Do you mean that?” The thought that she might have been upsetting Mary really caused her some grief.

How should we think about Catholic World Youth Day? Is it appropriate for the government to be spending so much money on it?

First, I am surprised that our politicians, both State and Federal, have kicked in over one hundred million dollars for the conference. Would they do the same for other religious conferences? However, what does annoy me is that the Premier issued an edict to all principals to renegotiate every contract with people hiring schools on Sundays so as to keep those two Sundays free so that overseas visitors to the conference can meet in the schools.

Personally, I think this action is unfair and unjust. The members of our church are citizens of NSW and we pay $12,000 each year in rent for the use of the local school building. Now we are kicked out for a few visitors. What has happened to separation of church and state in Australia? I am a strong advocate of it. This is a problem that lies with the government at that point, and a particular government. I think that this is a justice issue. If regular contracts were being broken to favour Protestants, it would still be wrong. So there is certainly a justice issue involved here.

On the other hand, I think we should be open to any opportunities to witness about Jesus.

If the Pope receives a copy of your book, Nothing in My Hand I Bring, and asks you over for a cup of tea, what will you do?

I'll go. I will talk to him about the claims of Jesus. Interestingly, he was behind the Catholic Catechism that was released in 1994, so he is as conservative as the previous Pope. Anyone who thinks that the Catholic Church is really changing its core teachings is a million miles away from reality. At the time, Benedict was nicknamed the ‘theological watchdog’. He is clearly concerned, like Pope John Paul II, about liberalism gaining the upper hand within Catholicism.

I think Christians should be alert for any opportunities that arise through the Pope's visit to gently and respectfully witness to Christ. We should pray that God will use his visit to raise important religious issues, and that God will use the focus on the conference in ways that surprise us to bring people to himself. One thing I do know is that this will only happen through the faithful preaching of the gospel, not through the teaching of the Pope.

Copyright Australian Presbyterian, June 2008. Used with permission.

This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 3.

“Which part of ‘thou shalt not’ did you not understand?”

This church sign, smugly berating the morning traffic, communicates an important perception of Christian ethics: it is fundamentally negative and considerably holier-than-thou. This view seems almost as common among Christians as it is in the wider public. Many of us seem to hold the idea that we get in by grace, and then there's a list of things we can't do. We'll be fine as long as we don't do stuff the Bible explicitly forbids.

Either that, or we fail to see that the gospel changes our lives at all. After all, we're okay spiritually, and Christ has set us free from all that legalism. We're free to get the same jobs, buy the same houses, send our children to the same schools, and vote for the same parties as everyone who lives near us. At the end of our lives, when God asks us why we should be allowed into his heaven, we'll just tell him that Jesus died for us, and everything will be fine.

What this article proposes is that the gospel, properly understood, shouldn't allow us to recognize ourselves in either of these caricatures. The gospel carries within it a way to live—that is, it's not the kind of message which we can believe merely ‘academically’, without it changing our lives. This is because the gospel speaks of God's powerful activity in the world and in us; it is a message that concerns the fate of all humanity and, indeed, the whole creation (e.g. 2 Pet 3:10-12). By the gospel, we are set free from sin's penalty and power. We are enabled to live as God intended—kings and priests whose lives are committed to serving and blessing our creator's world (e.g. 1 Pet 2:9-12). Therefore our morality can't be exhausted by a list of ‘thou shalt not’s, but is marked by the freedom positively to do good (Titus 2:11-14).

But before we develop these ideas, we need a definition of ‘the gospel’. At its most basic, ‘the gospel’ is a proclamation, the message that Jesus is the Christ and the Lord. However, we find the New Testament writers using the word in a broader sense to mean something like ‘the body of teaching about Jesus’ (e.g. Gal 2:2-5, Eph 1:13, 1 Pet 4:17). I'll use the word ‘gospel’ in a loose sense, to refer not just to the message, but to the events themselves—the whole life and work of Christ (his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, baptism with the Spirit, ongoing intercession, and return to judge the living and the dead). Each of these ‘gospel moments’ will have some bearing at different times on how we live as Christians. Fundamentally, though, the reality that ‘Jesus is Lord’ has real consequences for us and for the world more broadly. It is not just a doctrinal box to tick; it changes the orientation and actions of our lives in all their detail. With this in mind, let us explore firstly what God has done in the world through the gospel, and then what he has done in us.

Jesus Christ is Lord

If we are to make sense of God's activity in the world, we must see that he has made Messiah Jesus the world's ruler. By his death, Jesus has conquered God's enemies and ours (John 12:31, Col 2:13-15, Heb 2:14). His resurrection from the dead has made him king not just of Israel, but of all the nations and, indeed, of the whole creation (Matt 28:18, Rom 1:1-4, Col 1:15-23). With his lordship comes the authority to judge (Acts 17:31). To live rightly in this world, we need to recognize this world's ruler. We must also acknowledge the debt we owe to Jesus, the one who bore God's wrath for us. This is the gospel, revealed by God, and reviled as blasphemy or foolishness by those who don't know him (1 Cor 1:23).

Gospel and created order

This gospel affirms God's good ordering of his world. I argued in my first article that God has stitched a moral order into his creation: the world is governed by moral laws, even as it is governed by physical laws. The world is not just a convenient stage where God could enact a great drama in the events of Jesus's life. Rather, God's love for his world is the very reason for the Christ event (John 3:16). That is, the gospel shows us God's passionate care for his creation: Jesus has overcome those things that spoil the world—the devil, sin, and death (1 Cor 15:54-57, 1 John 3:8). Jesus didn't come to do away with creation; he came to set God's twisted world to rights, to restore the moral order.

The gospel and history

Therefore the gospel is the high point of history: it fulfils God's plans and promises, and it establishes what's to come. Many of our contemporaries read history as the march of human progress, or as an endless parade of meaningless events. But in truth, God has his own purposes for the world's history: it is a salvation-history. He is the director and the principal actor: he “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11). History's goal is to see all things, whether on earth or in heaven, come under the headship of Messiah Jesus (Eph 1:10, Col 1:16).

Furthermore, Jesus Christ is the man who fulfilled God's original purposes for humanity. God's intention was to bless his “very good” world (Gen 1:22, 31, 2:3) through the agency of humans. Humanity had a dual role: to rule (Gen 1:26), and to perform the priestly task of bringing God's blessing to the creation beyond the Garden (Gen 1:28, 2:15).¹ The Fall frustrated those purposes to an extent (Gen 3:16-19), but God promised to undo the Fall's effects by bringing blessing to all the families of the earth through the seed of Abraham (Gen 12:1-3).

We see this promise partially fulfilled in the nation of Israel, which was like a new Adam. They were placed in an Eden-like land of fruitfulness and rest, watered and blessed by God, where they could enjoy God's presence (Deut 3:20, 8:6-10, 11:10-12, 12:5-10, 26:15). Israel had the task of fulfilling Adam's kingly and priestly roles (Exod 19:6; cf. Deut 4:6). As in Eden, God's continued blessing in Israel depended on their obeying his word. God warned that when Israel disobeyed, they would be expelled, just as Adam had been (Deut 28:1-68). Clearly it was not until Jesus Christ appeared that an adequate new Adam was found.

Christ's life resumed Israel's history, and he became God's means of bringing blessing to the world. Although Jesus didn't need to repent of sins, he was baptized in order to identify himself with faithful Israel: he was declared to be God's son (Matt 3:17), just as Israel had been (Exod 4:22-23). However, where God's son, Israel, failed (e.g. Hos 11:1-2), Israel's new representative, God's son Jesus, triumphed (Matt 4:1-11). He was the new Adam, the ultimate king and priest, and the fulfilment of God's promise to Abraham of blessing (Gal 3:29). In this way, the gospel is God's final and decisive word on the life of humanity's first, fallen representative.²

That is, because of Adam's sin, God could have left the sentence of condemnation and death on humanity. But by his grace, God in Christ broke into history to bring forgiveness and life (Rom 3:25-26, 5:17, 1 Cor 15:21-22). When he says that his purpose now is to sum up all things in Christ (Eph 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:28), he is also pointing to a new creation where he will be present in blessing, even as he was in Eden (Rev 21:1-5, 22, 22:1-5). Moreover, through the Christ event, the life of that new age has irrupted into our present reality.

If we want to live rightly in the present, we have to recognize that this world groans in the overlap of the old age (of sin and death) and the new (of forgiveness and life; e.g. Eph 1:21, Heb 4:9-11, 12:18-25, 1 Pet 1:3-7, 13). We must live in a world where we see some of God's blessings already poured out, and yet we know that a thoroughly renewed created order is still to come.

Thus the gospel provides the key to the whole of history. It causes us to look both backwards to God's creation and forwards to Christ's return and the new creation, while we seek to live rightly now. The question immediately arises, then: precisely what effect does this salvation-history have on God's creation?

The redemption, vindication, and transformation of the created order

It is time to draw together these threads of thought on history and the created order. We must notice that the historical gospel doesn't dismiss or overwrite God's purposes in creation. On the contrary, it redeems, vindicates, and transforms the created moral order.

‘Redemption’ is an aspect of salvation which is usually tied to Christ's death (e.g. Rom 3:24-25, Heb 9:12, 15, Rev 5:9). Christ's perfect life meant his death could pay to rescue humanity from sin and death (Heb 7:26-27). Again, this isn't merely some abstract idea: the New Testament writers are emphatic that Jesus was a truly human part of the real created order (Heb 2:17, 1 John 4:2-3). He could therefore be a legitimate substitute for humanity (Rom 8:3, Heb 10:4), and he could also act as representative head of the whole creation (Heb 2:5-15). For while the notion of ‘ransom’ or ‘rescue’ is primarily applied to humanity, sold as a slave under sin, God's plan has always been to redeem all that belongs to him—the whole sin-affected creation (Rom 8:19-23; cf. Acts 3:21, Col 1:20, Jas 1:18; cf. Lev 25:23-24, Isa 35:1-9, 44:23).

This, along with the fact that Jesus was raised with a body, vindicates the creation. God has fulfilled his purposes for his creation; he has not abandoned his world to decay! Christ's resurrection is the proof that God has accepted his redeeming work (Rom 4:25, 1 Cor 15:17). It is also the firstfruits that guarantees the new creation (Acts 26:23, 1 Cor 15:23, 42-53). All of this gives us reason to work for the Lord now, in this world (2 Pet 3:13-14): serving the redeemer will mean living redeemed lives, being “zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).

In the early church, some people thought that there was no point doing good in the world because Paul had said that Jesus was coming back soon (2 Thess 3:11 with 2:2). Perhaps they thought Jesus had condemned the creation to oblivion. Some of us can fall into the same way of thinking. But this is precisely the opposite of the apostle's intention: the news that Jesus Christ is coming soon is a call to action in the here and now (1 Cor 15:58, Col 3:1-17, 1 Thess 5:2-15, 2 Thess 3:12-13). The task of Christians is not merely to wait, but also to serve (1 Thess 1:9-10). Our goal is not to escape earth for some supposedly immaterial heaven; we are in heaven now (Eph 2:6)! So we must let our present heavenly life inform and shape our present earthly existence (Col 3:1).³

For the redemption and vindication that we see in the gospel have not just restored the created order, they have transformed it. It was still possible to sin in the ‘very good’ creation; in the the new creation, it will be impossible: there will be no more curse, night, or chaotic sea (Rev 21:1, 22:3, 5).⁴ Moreover, some purposes of the original creation will be fulfilled and superseded in the new.

Let's consider again the example of marriage. Jesus is clear that there won't be any marriage in the new creation (Luke 20:35). Knowing this will affect the way we live in this time of overlap. Thus, Paul could make some notoriously positive statements about singleness (1 Cor 7:7, 27-32), even though the Old Testament reveals God's very high view of family and children. (After all, Adam's aloneness is the first thing God declares to be “not good” in Genesis 2:18).)

We might see this as an example of the new creation affecting our present reality. In the present creation, marriage has special functions: fellowship, a unique and faithful love, creating a new family, and filling and subduing the earth. Presumably, in the new creation, these will be either unnecessary or not confined to marriage. If it's possible and even ‘good’ to be unmarried under the new covenant, it must be because God's people can supply, say, social conditions, encouragement and fellowship that allow them in some ways to be a substitute for marriage.⁵ In my circles, at least, I feel we are failing single (and all manner of ‘family-less’) people rather badly on this front! We must learn to expand the boundaries of our families beyond biology. When we talk about ‘our brothers and sisters in Christ’, it should be more than empty jargon.

Meanwhile, it's important for new-covenant believers to participate in the moral order in the light of the transforming power of the gospel. Various aspects of our lives will be affected differently by the gospel's salvation-history. It shall, therefore, require serious, sustained and prayerful reflection on Scripture and the world to come up with concrete applications in this era between Christ's ascension and return. Further guidelines will be explored in the next article. For now, however, having surveyed the difference the gospel makes the God's world, we turn to consider the difference it makes in us as we seek to do good in that world.

New spiritual life in and with Christ

The moral order has been transformed by Christ's activity in the world and its history; likewise, the way we participate in that order is transformed by Christ in us. By the Holy Spirit, we receive a new capacity to know the moral order, and to act accordingly. We have been set free from both the penalty and the power of sin. We have also been given corresponding freedom and authority to order life towards its proper purposes. Nevertheless, as we await the final revelation of God's kingdom, the righteousness of our lives shall consistently fall short of our Lord's.

When we are included in Christ, we undergo a radical, spiritual rebirth. In this overlap of the ages, we experience salvation because God dwells in us by his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the agent of the resurrection (Rom 8:11). This means he is also a sign of the judgement and salvation of the Day of Yahweh (Acts 2:16-33; cf. John 16:7). Therefore it is a mistake to think that the New Testament's word ‘spiritual’ (πνευματικος) means ‘immaterial’; rather, it is better understood as a synonym for ‘of God’.

So for Paul, the Spirit's arrival is one way to describe the beginning of God's new age. He gives us a series of contrasts: all humanity is either in Adam or in Christ (Rom 5:12-21, 1 Cor 15:21-49); believers have moved from being an ‘old man’ to a ‘new man’ (Rom 6:6, Col 3:9-10, 4:22-24); we once were fleshly (Rom 7:5, Eph 2:3; cf. Gen 6:3, 12, Jer 17:5, Isa 40:6) but now are spiritual (Rom 7:6, 1 Cor 3:1). This new life with Christ is characterized by forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, holiness and joy (Rom 5:1-11, 2 Cor 5:18-19, Col 1:14, 3:12; cf. Acts 2:38). Having been adopted and raised with Christ in the power of the Spirit (Rom 8:9-11, 15), believers are now said to be seated with him in the heavenlies (Eph 2:6, Col 2:12), waiting for the full revelation of our salvation—including new bodies (Phil 3:19-21, Col 3:1-4). Our resurrection bodies shall be imperishable and incorruptible (1 Cor 15:53). No longer merely ‘natural’ or ‘earthy’, they shall be ‘spiritual’—that is, not ‘immaterial’, but ‘animated by the Spirit’—and suitable for the new-heavens-and-new-earth creation (1 Cor 15:47-49).⁶ In short, redeemed humanity is remade in the image of God (Rom 8:29), now fit once more to fulfil God's purposes as kings and priests in the created order.

New hearts and minds

Through the gospel, we learn what pleases God. The first thing we need in order to live rightly in God's world is a new insight into the moral order. For previously the twisting power of sin prevented our perceiving or understanding reality properly. Humanity under sin is completely helpless: sin is a kind of slavery (John 8:34, Rom 6:17) and death (Eph 2:1). Our whole being is corrupted: sin makes our thinking futile, and our hearts foolish, dark, and hard (Rom 1:21, Eph 4:18). Unregenerate humanity is also susceptible to ungodly passions (1 Pet 1:14), following the course of this world, or the prince of the power of the air who blinds us to the truth of the gospel (Eph 2:2, 2 Cor 4:4). Fallen people in their ‘natural’ state, then, are ignorant enemies of God, subject to his wrath. We have no idea how to please God, as well as no desire to do so. We are so far gone, we can't even see how badly off we are (Rom 3:10-18, Eph 2:3).

In the gospel of Christ, however, the effects of the Fall are undone: there is freedom from sin and death (Rom 6:17-18, Eph 2:4-5); our minds and hearts are renewed in the power of the Spirit (Rom 12:1-2, 2 Cor 4:16, Eph 4:22-24); we may resist the wiles of the Satan and the lures of the world (1 Cor 10:13, James 4:7); we can embrace the gospel and be reconciled to our heavenly Father (2 Cor 4:6, 5:17-18). Finally, by his grace, we want to please God, and we can discern how to! The third article in this series will explore how the gospel shows us the shape of God's moral order as, with the Spirit's help, we dwell in the Scriptures and observe the world.

The obedience of faith

The Holy Spirit not only allows us to know the moral order, he also helps us to live in line with it. Under the old covenant, even the faithful Israelite who wished to obey God found that he couldn't because of his fleshly condition (Rom 7:18-23). In Christ, however, we have been rescued from this body of death (Rom 7:24), and, having received the Spirit, we are given power to obey God in a way that was impossible before (Rom 8:4-9). Thus God is not an angry, unpredictable judge, nor an impossibly oppressive taskmaster. Instead, he's a loving creator and redeemer who shows us the best way to live in his world, and who empowers us to please him. For the New Testament insists that when we obey God, it is because he is at work in us to transform us (1 Cor 12:6, 15:10, Phil 2:12-13, Col 1:11, 1 Thess 3:12-13, Heb 13:21). We are no longer slaves to sin; we have been freed from its power. So when God commands us to obey him, he can expect that we'll be able to do so (Rom 6:11-13). We are called to act in a certain way because of who we are—who God has made us to be.

This truth saves us from two momentous errors: firstly, that being Christian makes no difference to godliness, and, secondly, that being Christian makes us immune to sin. So some of us cling faithfully to the soul-satisfying truth that Christ has died to save us from God's wrath (the penalty of sin), but we don't see ourselves as saved now from the power of sin. We continue to consider ourselves miserable sinners, no more capable of doing good than we were before we knew Christ. This flies in the face of God's promise that he has given us new life, and that his Spirit is at work in us to empower us to do good. We are slaves no longer of sin, but of God (Rom 6:4-7, 17-18); we are no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit (Rom 8:9). Becoming Christian is painted in stark terms: it is the difference between death and life (Eph 2:4-5), between dark and light (1 John 1:5-7), between enemy and heir (Rom 5:10; 8:17).

This should change the way we approach the world. We should expect to see God transforming us powerfully “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:14) so that we come to resemble the Lord Jesus more and more. That is, redeemed people can now live as God intended for humanity: kings and priests who bring order and blessing to the world correctly (1 Pet 2:9; Rev 5:10). We have been made free to live with purpose in conformity with the shape of the created moral order. If our goal is simply to ‘not sin’, we are selling ourselves—and God—very short indeed. We have been given freedom and power to live the best life possible under God, actively doing good in his world.

For example, if I am looking for a marriage partner, I shouldn't just find the scriptural boundaries of not-sin and tick them off: Christian, opposite sex, not a close relative, not already married. I also need to ask, “Who shares my passion for Jesus? With whom can I best be a blessing in the world? What new ways of serving are opened up through this relationship?” (By the way, in a fallen world, physical attraction's important too!)

None of this is to say, however, that sin will no longer be present in our lives. Even John (who writes so that we may not sin—see 1 John 2:1) reminds us that we will still commit sins. Thankfully, Jesus is our advocate who also cleanses and forgives us (1 John 1:8-10). The notion of the Christian life as ‘walking in victory’, completely free from sin ourselves and from its effects in this fallen world, is a wicked, dangerous fiction.

Many of us will be tempted to think either that we are still enslaved to sin, or that we are completely finished with it. Both of these extremes can prevent our striving for godliness—on the one hand, because we think it is impossible and unnecessary, and on the other, because we don't take the sin in our lives seriously. But living rightly in the overlap of the ages requires a different view: when we notice that we are doing good deeds, we should thank God for his work in us. When we fall short, we should repent—that is, change not just our attitude but what we do (Luke 3:8-14, 2 Cor 7:10-11). And we should pray that he will continue to so give us of his Spirit that we are able to change.

In brief, a right understanding of the gospel should affect the way we live in the present. God's activity in Jesus Christ has vindicated, redeemed and transformed his creation. He is also at work in us to transform us into Christ's likeness, so that we might do good now as a kingdom of priests. Working out from this gospel foundation, it remains for us to examine in greater detail what it should look like to do good in the Christian life.

(This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 3.)

Endnotes

¹ The Hebrew words translated ‘work’ and ‘keep’ in the ESV are words commonly used for priestly service in the tabernacle or temple (e.g. Num 3:7-8, 8:26, 18:5-6). For a fuller discussion, see GJ Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word, Dallas, 1987, ad loc.

² I owe this insight to O O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An outline for evangelical ethics, 2nd edn, Apollos, Leicester, 1994, p. 13. This book has been a major influence on much of my thinking for this series of articles.

³ NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, SPCK, London, 2003, p 355.

⁴ While we may not have a definitive answer as to why God created a world where sin was possible, we must note that through his redemptive work in history, God has had occasion to display his glory (Rom 9:22-23, Eph 3:10, Phil 2:5-11).

⁵ O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, p. 70.

⁶ Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 351.

This is Part 3 of a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matt 7:24)

As people who follow Jesus, we want a firm foundation as we seek to live well and wisely in God's world. We long to be blameless and innocent, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom we shine as lights in the world (Phil 2:15). But how can we know how to live righteously in each moment when we don't always have a direct word from Jesus that we can hear and do? How can we know what is the most loving and just thing to do in these circumstances?

In my two previous articles, I have argued that proper Christian ethics must flow out of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is through the gospel that we have life and that we know how to live it. The gospel is the key to doing good in the here and now.

This article will begin to explore how we hear and do Jesus' words, especially when he doesn't appear to have addressed the particular problem in front of us directly. We will consider how the arc of the gospel—from crucified servant to reigning Lord—might help guide the way we live. We shall also begin to trace a bit more of the shape of ‘doing good’, drawing out the biblical themes of love and wisdom.

Following Jesus: Between the martyr and the prince

Being a ‘good’ Christian must evoke strangely conflicting images in the modern mind. On the one hand, Christianity has given rise to asceticism: poverty, chastity, obedience, and self-flagellation; on the other, to health, wealth and fast-talking Jeep-drivers. And indeed, when we look at the Bible, we see that the Christian life necessarily involves both suffering (2 Tim 3:12, 1 Pet 5:9) and joy (Rom 12:12, Phil 4:4, 1 Pet 1:8). How can these images be reconciled?

Let's begin by noting that in Jesus' life, there is a movement from suffering to joy, from cross to resurrection, from shame and humility, to vindication and exaltation. We shouldn't be surprised, then, to find in the New Testament a similar pattern for those who are in Christ: we might share both in his sufferings (as servants) and in his authority (as God's image-bearers). Our temptation is always to privilege one of these over the other: we like to think of ourselves only as miserable worms, or only as privileged children in the royal household. But both are true, and this will affect the way we live as we seek to do good in the world.

If we are to make any sense of this, we need to recognize that our contemporary western idols of comfort and happiness are not the highest goods. Instead, in all things—pleasant or no—God is working for our good—that is, conforming us to the likeness of his Son (Rom 8:28). While we should never label ‘good’ what is, in fact, ‘evil’, we must notice that God can bring good out of evil consistently. This is most evident in two views of the death of Jesus: it is the most abhorrent violation of the moral order, and yet it may also be seen as the good fulfilment of God's justice and mercy (Acts 2:23, Rom 3:25-26).

On far less grand a scale, the same ‘two views’ may be applied over time in our lives:

... we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Rom 5:3-5; cf. Jas 1:2-4).

Suffering is not to be masochistically pursued, but it is sometimes God's chosen means to discipline us (Heb 12:4-11), so that we will bear the good fruit of becoming more like Jesus. But more like Jesus how—servant or king?

Some Christians suffer terrible poverty or persecution, and the circumstances of their lives restrict the concrete options available to them as they seek to follow Jesus. For some, it is a daily struggle to avoid violence, disease or starvation. These conditions existed for the early church, too, and so we find that the primary ethical call in some New Testament books (e.g. Mark, Hebrews, Peter's epistles, Revelation) is not pro-active ‘love’, but ‘faithfulness’, ‘patient endurance’ or ‘taking up one's cross’. In such instances, the focus of the resurrection is not the vindication of the created order, but the vindication of the victim: God will raise up his unjustly downtrodden servants! I am, by no means, suggesting that persecuted Christians can never initiate good; God has shown again and again how he works through the humblest and meanest circumstances! But let's acknowledge that the kinds of good that some Christians can do are limited by their surroundings. Street evangelism may not be a wise option when it leads immediately to execution. Should a widow feed strangers when her own children are starving?

But what about those of us who aren't victims of this world's injustice? God has granted some of us an embarrassing amount freedom and power with which to serve him. Being martyred remains a serious probability for some, but it seems quite unlikely for me. Therefore, it is not necessarily the best reference-point for me as I orient my life. Instead, I need to recognize that I belong to a group of Christians in peculiarly blessed circumstances: I live in a peaceful, safe country, with an abundance of worldly goods, and endless options for education and employment. It is not difficult to use these gifts to do good; the difficulty is choosing how best to do so. People in my circles tend to have wealth, might or other influence that open up numerous possibilities for being a blessing in the world. We may expect such Christians to be ‘not many’ (1 Cor 1:26-29), but perhaps that only increases the call on us to exploit our favourable conditions for the glory of God and the good of his creatures—not least fellow Christians who are suffering (Matt 25:40, Gal 6:10)!

Obviously we should be doing this on the small and local scale (e.g. caring for poor people in our suburb, or supporting stable marriages and families in our neighbourhood), but we can think and act in larger spheres as well. The histories of, for example, Joseph, Daniel, Nehemiah and Esther show how wise and godly believers can bring God's blessing to people who do not know him, especially through leaders. The apostles clearly saw it as their task to pray for and to preach Christ to those in authority (Acts 4:6-31, 26:2-30, 1 Tim 2:1-2). How much more should we, whose governments do not threaten us with even a metaphorical sword for doing so?

Of course, our rejoicing in the victory of the resurrection must be filtered through the cross or our ethics will become distorted. The still-to-come aspect of the New Testament teaches us that we are “fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17; cf. Acts 14:22). The normal pattern is for good things to come only through (painful) effort. Suffering and joy, weakness and power, are twin companions of the church who await Christ's return.

Thankfully, however, the arc of the Messiah's life provides guidance for us, whatever our situation. For all of us, discipleship (i.e. faithfully following Jesus) will not mean merely standing at a safe distance and thinking about his life. Instead, we must emulate that life!

Love: the bond of deeds and character¹

If we emulate Jesus, we will love (Mark 12:28-34, Heb 10:23-25, 1 Pet 1:22, 4:8, Rev 2:19). We are to follow his example of self-sacrifice (Phil 2:4-5, 1 Pet 2:21). If the gospel is at the heart of all theology, love is at the heart of all of its practical outworkings. This love is not soppy sentimentalism; any proper interpretation of the term will include repentance, discipline, sacrifice and transformation.² So when we look for love, we should find both deeds and character.

Living a godly life does not merely consist in performing various loving actions, it involves the development of Christ-like virtues and character. In the first instance, the shape of our character is determined by God's gospel love and forgiveness: he who is forgiven much, loves much. As God through the gospel grows a ‘new self’ in us (e.g. Eph 4:20-24), we find that all its virtues might be summed up as ‘love’. This must be an implication of 1 Corinthians 13, and a similar idea appears elsewhere in the New Testament (Eph 5:2, Col 3:14, 1 Pet 4:8). Indeed, ‘love’ might even be described as what marks Christians apart (John 13:35). Of course, Christian moral character is never completely formed, but is always being refined: love grows (Eph 4:16, 2 Thess 1:3).

A loving character and loving actions are interdependent: good character helps give rise to moral decisions and deeds, while acting rightly grows a righteous character.³ To make moral decisions, we will need to hold to a gospel-centred biblical theology, learn to draw from the Scripture's moral principles in accordance with love, and obey appropriate rules. We develop a moral character as we pursue the various virtues emphasized in the New Testament (including patient endurance, gentleness, kindness, humility and purity) and as we avoid vices (such as those listed in Mark 7:21-22 and Rom 1:29-31), all the while educating our conscience. Such character is developed in community through particular instances of being, say, patient or gentle, or of experiencing such treatment from others. Over time, we might hope that, out of our transformed character, we will more easily perform loving actions. Of course, this may well be a slow process, but we have much reason to thank God when we see him at work in us and in others to grow us in love!

Love: The fulfilment of the Law

For the New Testament writers, the Law of Moses may be summed up as ‘love’ (Matt 22:37-40, Rom 13:8-10, Gal 5:14; cf. 1 Pet 4:8). It is difficult to know exactly what this means, and these sayings are much discussed.⁴ It should help, however, if we press the notions of ‘loving God’ and ‘loving neighbour’. Loving God cannot mean less than honouring and obeying him (John 14:15, 1 John 2:3-4). If we obey God, then we will worship him with our whole lives and thus fulfil the law of Deuteronomy 6:5 (cf. Rom 12:1). Moreover, if God is the creator and sustainer of reality, loving him also implies loving his creation: as he seeks its good, so should we.

Thus we cannot see ‘love of God’ and ‘love of neighbour’ as potentially opposed.⁵ Instead, if the command to love our neighbour is a necessary result of loving God, we really only need the one commandment! Perhaps Jesus insists on loving our neighbour to remind us that loving God is not an airy-fairy, mystical affair: we show we love God in the real world he has created (1 John 3:17). Our own Christian culture may not be so far removed from Jesus' contemporaries' who claimed to love God and yet were indifferent to his creatures (Mark 7:11-13, Luke 10:29-37).

The command to love our neighbour becomes difficult, however, when we start to think it through practically.⁶ With our human limitations, we cannot love the world concretely; that is God's job! But we can—and must!—love our neighbours—that is, the people in our vicinity. Even here, of course, we are limited: beyond praying, how can I love the 12 million people in my city, the 200,000 people in my borough, or even the thousands of people in my street? Naturally, I can love them in an indirect and shallow way, by, say, working hard, paying my taxes, and contributing generally to peace and well-being. But if I want to show self-sacrificial love (in which I love people in deep, particular and quantifiable ways), I need to choose a smaller group: my family, in the first instance, then, perhaps, my small group at church, a few colleagues, and my neighbours across the landing. Whomever I choose, I must choose someone, and begin to love them prayerfully in concrete ways.

As we puzzle through ‘love’ as the fulfilment of the Law, we should observe one more thing: love helps to define our Christian freedom. Love is both an expression of freedom and a limit on freedom. That is, the command to love is completely open-ended, and puts no limit on Christians' service of one another and of God. At the same time, it constrains the kind of freedom that is on view: Christian freedom is not a licence to live badly, but the freedom to serve (Rom 6:17-18, 8:2, 6-7, Gal 5:1, 5-6, 13). Thus the ‘law of love’ gives us both boundaries (things we must not do) as well as contours (things we should consider doing if we want to call ourselves Christian). We might use the metaphor of a river: it has banks (specific negative commands which give the limits of what is appropriate), but within the flow of the stream (positive commands to love), there is almost boundless freedom to do good.⁷

The New Testament also provides us with a few worked examples which should help us understand the shape of Christian love and freedom. For instance, as we contemplate an action, Paul invites us to ask such overarching questions as: “Am I fully persuaded it is right?” (Rom 14:5, 14, 23); “Can I do it in service of the Lord?” (Rom 14:6-8); “Am I being a stumbling-block?” (Rom 14:13, 15, 20-21); “Does it bring peace?” (Rom 14:17-19); “Does it edify my brother?” (Rom 14:19); “Is it profitable?” (1 Cor 6:12, Phil 4:8); “Does it enslave me?” (1 Cor 6:12); and “Does it bring glory to God?” (1 Cor 10:31).⁸

And, of course, we must not see ‘love’ as a principle that somehow trumps everything else. If we want to take the ‘loving’ course of action, we shouldn't expect it to be inconsistent with being, say, ‘just’ or ‘courageous’. On the contrary, we learn what it means to love as we see the breadth of what God values (and indeed, how he acts), even as our understanding of other laws and virtues is informed by our view of love.

Having said all this, we may find that there are some actions (such as shrewd business management that leads to material prosperity, or positively influencing government) that do not easily fit under the rubric of ‘love’, and yet are not inconsistent with it. Perhaps here we might appeal to a biblical notion of wise or righteous living.

Wisdom as right living

The freedom and knowledge we have in the gospel will allow us to live well, which will include behaviour that that we would not ordinarily describe as ‘loving’. For example, the Bible instructs the employee to work hard (Prov 6:6), the home owner to be vigilant (Eccl 10:18), the king to be just (Prov 29:4) and his subjects to be canny (Prov 16:13, 20:2, Eccl 10:20). Such strains of thought run throughout the Bible, but are concentrated in the books of Wisdom.

Getting wisdom is not an easy process; it requires intervention from God (Jas 1:5), and, on our part, it demands careful contemplation rather than unthinking obedience. The opening of Proverbs tells us that the book will teach us wisdom, but we first need to learn how to read the book in order to understand its “words of insight” (Prov 1:2)! Many of these proverbs are cryptic sayings in sparse Hebrew; just comparing some different translations shows how difficult they are to interpret. Moreover, we find that contradictory principles are sometimes juxtaposed, e.g. 26:4-5: “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” The sayings appear to be compiled in such a way as to draw the reader into reflection: in some situations, we must answer a fool; in others, we must not. We will be wise when we know which situation is which!

The wisdom on view here is aligned with righteousness (Prov 1:3, 9:9, 10:31, 23:24; cf. Ps 37:30, Eccl 7:16, 9:1)—that is, living rightly in the world. Perhaps this is clearest in Proverbs 9 where Ladies Wisdom and Folly call people to righteous life (v. 9) and to death (v. 18) respectively. We find a similar thought in the New Testament where wisdom, like love, might be seen as a summary of ‘doing good’ (Matt 11:19, Eph 5:15, Col 4:5, Jas 3:13-18). Jesus himself is, of course, the ultimate wise man and the very wisdom of God (Matt 12:42, Luke 2:52, 1 Cor 1:24, 30, Col 2:3). Time and again, we marvel at his control of his surroundings and his skill in making judgements (e.g. Matt 13:54, 22:22).

It would seem that this wisdom-righteousness consists in knowing how to live rightly, and then actually living rightly. That is, much sin and selfishness in the world arises from not knowing (or deliberately ignoring!) the uses of God's good gifts. Thus, food and wine and celebration are wonderful gifts from God (Eccl 10:19), but the foolish twist them into gluttony, drunkenness and debauchery. We are created in God's good purposes to enjoy our work and the bonds we build through it (Eccl 2:24, 4:9-12), but if we lack wisdom, we idolize our job to the detriment of our families and other relationships, and we develop an unquenchable thirst for money. Sex and marriage can be the source of great joy, but the fool in lust debases both God's gifts and himself. In contrast, the wise person knows how to read Scripture and observe the world so as to benefit from the blessings that lie in God's created order.

The moral order revealed in Scripture and the world

Even a shallow reading of Wisdom literature shows that Scripture does not simply give us a set of rules to follow or promises to claim, but rather a shape to conform to and a pattern to keep. That is, because of the contradictions mentioned above, we cannot blindly obey the Proverbs. Experience teaches us, too, that the Proverbs are not iron-clad promises; we all know good and just parents with children who have gone off the rails, despite Proverbs 22:6. Instead, what Scripture reveals to us is the shape of God's created reality. In general, hard work pays off; in general, righteous people will live longer; in general, undisciplined children will be a curse for their parents and the society more broadly. In this fallen world, we will find counter-examples, but these do not make the pattern worthless. There are still moral principles stitched into creation, and we can still discern them in both the Old Testament and New Testament.

Deducing moral principles is one thing; knowing how to apply them is often another. When it comes to gaining wisdom, there is a complex interrelation between the pattern of Scripture and observation of the world. Christians often seem to privilege one of these completely over the other, to the detriment of wisdom. That is, some Christians have come to believe in a ‘natural law’: God has written the moral order into the creation in such a way that it can be grasped by reason alone. Certainly some wisdom can be gained just by looking at the world: some sections of the Proverbs are almost identical to other Ancient Near Eastern wisdom writings, and we benefit every day from helpful things non-Christians have discovered about living well. But human reason is twisted, and the creator alone knows all his purposes (Job 28:20-23). When we are building our worldview, we need to know the shape of the whole edifice: it is not just individual bricks (pieces of knowledge) that we need to have correct, but also the order in which they are put together.

The flipside of the same error is to think that the Christian scientist has no advantage over the non-Christian when observing the world. This is not always true! God describes his created reality to us in his word, so there should be times when Christians know where to look. For example, a Christian psychologist might learn from Scripture what authority is for. She should therefore be able to help managers learn how best to lead their employees. A Christian sociologist should perceive from Scripture (against the societal tide) that fathers are important figures in children's lives. We shouldn't need Dr Phil to point it out to us. We have an opportunity to be proactive in bringing God's wisdom to a world that is sorely short of it.

Meanwhile, other Christians will claim that the Bible alone can supply all our necessary wisdom. Without question, the Old Testament and New Testament have a lot of instruction and ethical guidance, including various laws, general principles, moral examples and narratives, parables, visions, sermons, and outright commands. Moreover, we have been given spiritually renewed minds with which to discern what pleases God (Rom 12:2; cf. Phil 1:9-10, Eph 5:8-10, 1 Thess 5:19-22). But Scripture itself encourages us to use these minds to examine the world and so better understand the created order (e.g. 1 Cor 15:36-42, 2 Tim 2:4-6; numerous instances in the Proverbs). This must at least hold where Scripture gives us broad principles; we may need to go to the world to fill in the details. Scripture tells me I should look after my children; I need to look at the world to discover that McHappy Meals won't suffice. As we dwell on God's word, we will be spiritually equipped to ‘read’ reality rightly; as we observe and live in God's creation, we should find, at points, new significance in or more light shed on his word.

It is as we gain wisdom that we will learn how to do good in those instances where the Bible says little directly. We must use the whole of Scripture to build a comprehensive view of God and his world, and of our relationship to both. This is, by no means, an easy process, and we very much need one another's help because, again, it is inadequate to read Scripture as if it were just a set of timeless laws to keep. After all, we face some issues that were unknown in the ancient world. So we must use God's description of his moral order (and our Christian forebears' insights!) to know how to deal with the same created reality. We must apply the same boundaries and contours in new and creative ways.

Take the example of voluntary childlessness. Someone might ask, “Where does it say in the Bible that Christians should be open to having children?” There is no single verse we can point to as a ‘rule’. But the shape of the Bible's teaching speaks at every point about children being part of the created purpose of marriage. Children are a blessing (Psa 127:3-5); childlessness is routinely cast as an unenviable position that we should call on God to reverse (e.g. Gen 25:21, 1 Sam 1:10-11, Prov 30:15-16, Luke 1:6-7); Jesus welcomes children despite the annoyance they were to his disciples (Matt 19:13-14); there are endless reminders to raise children so that they will be a blessing to the community (e.g. Prov 19:28). A married couple choosing not to have children is simply unthinkable in biblical terms—not just because of inadequate contraceptive technology, but because of the goodness of the created ‘package’ of marriage-sex-children.

Therefore, we cannot follow a culture that locates the value of children in the will of the parents. The tragedy of involuntary childlessness is not just that people's desire has been frustrated, but God's design has been as well.⁹ If we understand properly that children are human and precious in God's sight, we won't need a rule to tell us to be open to having our own. We may well recognize that raising children entails some loss of personal freedom and other difficulties. But as we come to value what God values, our hearts will delight in the blessing they are. We will spend time getting to know and caring for other people's children, and we will trust God for our own.

In brief, then, the arc of the gospel (from cross to resurrection) will inform our orientation towards God's world and our action in it. Whatever our circumstances, we are called to emulate the life of Jesus. This will mean being loving in deed and character, and growing in the treasures of the Lord's wisdom. This we do as we dwell in the Scriptures and, by the Spirit, learn how to live in the real world in conformity with God's created order.

While I hope that these articles have helped you to think better about how to do good in the world, let's pray that God always make us people who do better than we think!

This is Part 3 of a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Endnotes

¹ For this elegant phrase, I am indebted to SN Williams, ‘Outline for ethics: A response to Oliver O'Donovan’, in Themelios, Vol. 13, 1988, p. 87.

² So Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation; a Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, Harper, San Francisco, 1996, p. 202, citing Luke 14:25-35, Heb 12:5-13.

³ This paragraph is almost entirely dependent on Michael Hill, The How and Why of Love: An introduction to evangelical ethics, Matthias Media, Kingsford, 2002. See especially pages 247-260.

⁴ For an accessible and interesting introduction, see DJ Moo, ‘The Law of Christ as the Fulfillment of the Law of Moses: A Modified Lutheran View’, in WG Strickland (ed.), Five views on law and gospel, 2nd edn, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1999, pp. 319-376.

⁵ I owe this insight to O O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An outline for evangelical ethics, 2nd edn, Apollos, Leicester, 1994, pp. 226-7. This book has been a major influence on much of my thinking for this article.

⁶ I am indebted to discussions with Tim Adeney for much of the material in this paragraph, as well as more generally throughout these three articles.

⁷ I first heard this metaphor from Andrew Cameron. For a brilliant, potentially life-changing observation of how Old Testament Law and narrative have these twin functions, see chapter 5, ‘Ethical Ideals and Legal Requirements’, in G Wenham, Story as Torah: Reading Old Testament Narrative Ethically, Baker, Grand Rapids, 2000.

⁸ Feinberg and Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World, Crossway Books, Wheaton, 1993, pp. 44-45.

⁹ Again, I am indebted to Tim Adeney for this observation.

An email dialogue between Tony Payne, Simon Flinders and Steve Timmis, co-author of Total Church. (Read Parts 1 and 2.)

From: Steve Timmis

Hi Tony and Simon,

At this stage, I have no idea how long this will turn out to be, but we'll see what transpires!

Thank you, Simon, for your kind and thoughtful words at the close of your email. I am thankful that Total Church has been a benefit and encouragement to you, and our prayer is certainly that it will prove to be that for many people. I do hope you realize that we do not labour under the delusion that this is the book is the final word! Our aim was to state some principles clearly, and to initiate reflection and long overdue discussion about what it means to be the people of God. Some sort of follow-up is being considered, but we will probably wait to see what happens to Total Church once it gets published in the US in the autumn.

I think I will resist the temptation to revisit the issue of whether church is an all-encompassing category. I do think the concept of the people of God is, and my only argument is that ‘church’ is the term which describes those people in situ, as it were. I just can't get away from passages like Deuteronomy 4: it is as Israel lives under the law of God that it displays that it is good to live under the reign of God. As you know, Deuteronomy is preparing people to live in the land of promise, and the aim is that as they, for example, leave the corners of their fields unharvested so that others may glean, they model the reign of Yahweh. People will look at the farmer leaving gleanings and conclude something about the nation, its law and its God. Its corporate life, lived out in a myriad of small ways, points to its message and so its King. I find the language of Deuteronomy 4:20 incredibly suggestive. Israel comes out of Egypt and goes into the Promised Land as God's image. This and similar imagery is picked up throughout the New Testament: for example, Matthew 5 picks up the imagery of the life of the community lived out in the world proclaiming the gospel.

However, I do take on board the point you raise about how people understand the term, and I suspect you're right, though part of our aim was educative and restorative! I appreciate your comment, Simon, about you believing in both individual and corporate engagement. Amen to that! Where I am a little surprised is when you start to get concrete with your concerns. I will try to address them point by point:

“[P]astors/teachers feeling constrained to be evangelists/missionaries as a first priority and to squeeze the work of shepherding the sheep in around seeking the lost”: In our community-centred model, the opposite is actually the case, and we tried to describe the dynamic of that in the evangelism chapter. Pastors do not have to ‘do’ the job of mission, but work as part of a team. They make a distinctive contribution to the process of evangelism by teaching the Bible “in public and from house to house” (Acts 20:20), so that God's people recognize who they are and live accordingly. They do model the responsibility and privilege of building relationships with non-Christians and introducing them to the believing community, but that is anything but a diversion, as Jesus made non-Christians his priority. One of the most effective ways the sheep can be shepherded is by involving them in such relationships so that they can be taught ‘along the way’.

“[C]hurch services being tailored to seekers in such a way as to dilute proper praise, prayer and preaching”: In our community-centred model, the opposite is actually the case because mission does not primarily occur through a meeting (though it does happen in that context), but primarily throughout the shared life of God's people. We have never followed nor advocated a seeker sensitive model. We do encourage a thoughtfulness to non-Christians (but that is a heart-set, rather than a strategy) which means that we explain simply what we're doing. But we want to expose them to the people of God joyfully teaching one another through psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Col 3:16). We want them to hear us talking naturally and respectfully to our heavenly Father. We love to see them exposed to the word of God being taught faithfully and relevantly (you can listen to some of our talks on our website to see if we achieve this!).

“Christians feeling like they are sub-standard members if they're less evangelistically able than others”: In our community-centred model, the opposite is, once again, the case true because now Christians contribute to mission as part of a team. Again, we attempted to spell that out in the evangelism chapter. By all of us being involved in the gospel task as a community, then I can introduce Pete to my family, which will include John, who is natural evangelist.

“[U]ndermining of the importance of the gathering in the minds of Christians so that engaging with the world starts to feel more important than engaging with God”: In our community-centred model, with its accent on shared life, our aim is not to diminish our meetings but to raise the rest of our life together. Because we do share our lives together, our meeting together is all the richer and more real. Furthermore, engaging with God, one another and the world is all of a piece for us, and each informs the other in a practical and dynamic way. We really do love our ‘gatherings’. They are family times and more often than not a delight.

As for your shared theological concern about church replacing gospel, I suspect this is, at least in part, because of the way we use the term ‘church’. As I tried to explain in my last email, there is no confusion in my mind between gospel and church. Church (continuing to use it in the way I have throughout!) is the fruit of the gospel. We don't say church saves you; it is only Christ crucified, risen and reigning who does that. But we do say that God litters the world with communities of light that demonstrate the truth and effect of the gospel. I can only go back to Ephesians 5 once more: Paul is teaching them how to live as a community of light, and how their corporate life will be radically different from the dis-communities of darkness out of which they have been called. It is by their life together (created by the gospel) that they expose and dispel the darkness around them. Christ shines on the dead (conversion metaphor) as the light of the transformed community radiates. We continually emphasize the gospel as a word to be spoken by way of explanation. Of course God saves independently of his people sharing their lives (e.g. the Ethiopian eunuch), but that sovereignty doesn't absolve us of the responsibility of developing our life together under his gracious rule. Our job is to be faithful as God's people together, and to be faithful as individuals in whatever context we find ourselves. God will save through our corporate witness, individual witness and even without our witness! I cannot think of anytime when we have claimed that church is a common denominator in every life transformed.

One of the characteristics of The Crowded House from the perspective of people who spend some time among us is the way gospel functions as a verb: we gospel one another as we bring the good news of the kingdom to bear upon one another in the nitty-gritty details of our lives. I hear the gospel taught far more now than I have in any previous context: I hear ordinary, everyday Christians speaking gospel truth to one another in ordinary, everyday life situations in a way that I never have in all my long exposure to and involvement in confessional evangelical contexts throughout this country and in different parts of the world. As I listen to church leaders in more traditional settings with a more conventional understanding of the Christian life, I am always so very thankful that I don't have their problems and difficulties. It's not that what we have here is perfect (far from it!), and we aspire to do better, but there is something truly authentic and profoundly biblical about what I see and experience.

Phew! That was longer than I expected. But there it is. I've enjoyed our discussions immensely, gentlemen. I've found them helpful, not least as I prepare for my trip down your way in a couple of weeks. So thank you for your stimulus and thank you for your grace. I can honestly say that, as a result of our engagement, I love the Lord and his gospel more now than I did before.

I look forward to our face-to-face! In the meantime, continue to enjoy grace.

Love,

Steve

From: Tony Payne

Dear Steve and Simon,

Three final, final thoughts from me.

1. Enormous thanks to both of you for giving of your time and your selves in engaging in the discussion as you have. I know how hard I found it through the impersonal medium of email to express my thoughts and reactions clearly without it coming across more sharply or aggressively than I wanted it to (because I didn't feel ‘sharp’ or ‘aggressive’ at any stage!). It took a lot of care in the writing (and re-writing); I know you've done the same, and I'm very grateful for it. The end result, I think, will be very helpful and encouraging to many.

2. I recently came across a quote from Confucius, who said that the first and absolutely necessary task of government was “to call things by their right names”. A good deal of our discussion has been wrestling with this. What has become clearer to me through your responses, Steve, is that I can go a long way with your model if I clarify it in my own mind by using some different (and I guess I think more accurate) names.

   So there is the regular ‘gathering’ or ‘assembly’, which is when a group of Christians get together to meet with each other in the presence of Christ, to hear his word, to respond to him and to edify each other (the New Testament ekklesia or ‘church’). Non-Christians sometimes attend, and (as you say) when they do, it's largely a matter of us being ourselves and explaining things as we go along.

   Then there is the ‘shared life’ (‘fellowship’?) of those who are gathered, which exists not only when they are gathered but continues in their relationships with one another the rest of the time, and is lived out day by day in godliness, love and mission. This new life in Christ, which is a shared, relational life as well as an individual one, shines as a testimony to the world. It is not salvific, nor is it a ‘strategy’. It functions as an ‘adornment’ to the sound doctrine of the gospel (naming it in the words of Titus 2:10, where the godly life of the Christian slave is on view).

   One of your big points, Steve, is that ‘standard’ evangelicals tend to set the bar pretty low on this second aspect. It's hard to argue there. There is not the strong sense of mutual belonging and commitment that is captured in New Testament phrases like “love one another earnestly from a pure heart” (1 Pet 1:22). Rather than seeing our relationship with and commitment to our brother and sisters in Christ as fundamental and life-determining, we easily see it as just one more responsibility to be juggled along with the rest. And your experience is that when this is strong (what you describe as finding one's identity in the community), mission just flows out. The gospel is at the centre of people's lives (as shown by their love for one another), and this adorns the gospel and makes it attractive. And then there is the natural context in which the gospel is shared—as people come into close contact with Christians-loving-one-another (what you mostly mean by ‘community’).

   So I guess my suggestion for some further theoretical clarification would be to look again at the Bible's names for what you want to say—namely ‘in Christ’, ‘Holy Spirit’, ‘gathering’, ‘fellowship’, ‘love’—rather than the looser and less biblically grounded ‘community’ and the always confusing ‘church’.

3. And lastly, not wishing to close with the dry bread of conceptual clarification, I'd like to say that this conversation has really stimulated me to think about the life of the congregation I am part of, and about the congregation we're thinking of planting later this year. What's our culture like? How well do we hang together, and mission together, as part of everyday life? And what could we do to foster and build this?

Anyway, with much gratitude again to you both I will close. Now I just have to work out how to get all this to a publishable length! Maybe I'll just do it in two parts and be done with it.

Your brother in Christ,

Tony

(Read Parts 1 and 2.)

Download the MP3 of Kirsten Birkett's seminar on magic at the 2005 EQUIP conference (18.9 MB; 55:06).

(This talk has been reproduced with kind permission from EQUIP. For more information about EQUIP resources, visit our online store.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

2. Responding To Doctrinal Diversity

We now turn to examine how the gospel controls our response to doctrinal diversity. We suggest here six ways that we can respond, before concluding with a return to the slogan for our consideration ‘In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity’. Our goal is to consider how this statement fares as a guide for responding to doctrinal diversity.

Unite Around Truth

Our unity must be grounded in shared belief—the one faith for which we must contend together (Eph 4:2, Jude 3, Phil 1:27-30). A shift from this position may be subtle, because there may appear to be unity (but no longer around the gospel). Historically, we have seen this in a range of gospel organisations.

The Student Christian Movement, once the largest evangelical student movement in the world, had a basis of belief ‘I acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as my only Saviour’. This obscured spiritual disunity and within ten years, divisions arose over whether Jesus’ Lordship involved divinity or not.⁸⁴

Iain Murray’s analysis of evangelicalism in Britain is insightful.⁸⁵ Under a false ecclesiology, Evangelical Anglicans began to see evangelicalism as just one ‘party’ in a broad church, rather than calling others back to the ‘one faith’. Evangelicalism was understood in sociological terms, rather than by the theology that gave rise to it.⁸⁶

The glory of the local church must not be transferred onto an association of churches or unity sought in institutional mergers. Indeed, where the gospel is threatened, unity will be best preserved by preparedness to speak out boldly and at times demonstrate that spiritual unity has been lost by withdrawing fellowship. Sometimes by staying we will only obscure the gospel. The schismatic is not the one who leaves a partnership, but the one who departs from the truth. Holding together an association is not the highest goal, but unity in the truth. We may be actually contributing to spiritual unity by leaving, rather than being silent in the vain hope of maintaining unity. Whatever unity that remains will not be unity in the gospel.

Finally, because we do not equate an association of churches with the one catholic church, we need not feel the necessity to leave an association when false teachers gain preferment. That would place too high a stock in the association. Yet, public acts of false teaching must be met with equally public acts in defence of the gospel. Therefore, for the sake of the public testimony to the gospel, we must respond in the same sphere as the false teaching occurred. Yet, because the New Testament focus is on the local church as an expression of the invisible, we are not automatically compromised by mere membership of an association. By contrast, if our local church leaders deny the gospel, fellowship must be withdrawn if repentance is not forthcoming.

Tolerate An Agreed Degree of Breadth

‘Comprehensiveness’ is a commitment to tolerate a breadth of understanding of the Christian revelation within a particular context. We will argue that it is both desirable and necessary this side of heaven. This is not primarily because we are finite, but because we are sinful. Divisions occur when we insist on distinctives that are outside of the biblical revelation, or demand freedom where God has spoken. Biblical humility is not a desire for infinite breadth, but a willingness to submit ourselves to God’s revelation. This is of course done with a degree of provisionality, acknowledging our own sinfulness and with an eye to the resources God has given us to read it—His Spirit and His people.

There will be no need for ‘comprehensiveness’ in heaven—for there we shall ‘know fully and be fully known’⁸⁷; there we shall reach ‘unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God’.⁸⁸ However, given that we still have room to grow in our unity, we need to define a breadth of understandings that are acceptable in a particular context. We must not see doctrinal diversity as inherently good, but as a necessary protection in a sinful church. Complete unity now would be a false unity—it could only come about by coercion.

Comprehensiveness needs to be carefully defined for it can be either a vice or a virtue. Like the word ‘unity’ it can be defined in a way shaped by the gospel, or hostile to it⁸⁹. The Church of Ephesus is commended for hating the practices of the Nicolaitans because Christ himself hates those practices.⁹⁰ The teaching of the pastorals is that the role of the Christian leader is to exemplify, teach and defend a specific apostolic deposit. Undefined breadth is no virtue at all.

An agreed breadth is appropriate and healthy. If our criterion for gospel partnership was total agreement then no partnership would be possible.

Biblically, Paul’s call for unity around the gospel is addressed to sinful people who are not in complete agreement. Our doctrinal judgements are only ever provisional—Jesus’ final judgement relieves us of the need to respond to every error. This gives theological space for breadth.

Historically, we see the dangers of strong personalities arbitrarily defining orthodoxy in a tight circle around their own beliefs. Publicly agreed limits of breadth, defend both the integrity of the gospel message and the individuals who agree to work within it. Individuals can hold minority views and may not fear removal unless they stray beyond the limits that all in the union have given their consent to.

Of course, an agreed comprehensiveness must not be used to shut down discussion on issues within the bounds of the basis of union. To borrow a phrase, we are called to work together to make a ‘more perfect union’. Hence we must desire a dynamic, not static union—our eschatology demands growth in unity. Part of our problem is that many unions never actually meet together with the Bible open, leaving a legal entity but no dynamic pushing it towards unity. Due process is important in any union, but it does not create agreement, merely manage differences. Whilst agreement is not guaranteed when the Bible is taught, we should meet expectantly when we use the resources God has given us—His Word applied by the Spirit, in the context of His People.

This view of comprehensiveness is intentionally theological not institutional or sociological. We rightly have a degree of inertia in our attachments to institutions and movements, yet our attachment is first to the gospel and the clarity of its proclamation. Our job is not to hold a movement together at any price. If we are to effectively proclaim the gospel, we must be willing to walk away from partnerships that compromise the gospel. Thus the Reformation splits are not to be viewed as failure. In that division, the message of justification by faith was made abundantly clear and sealed by the blood of martyrs. Office bearers must first and foremost be leaders who maintain fidelity to the gospel, not simply committed to holding diverse opinion groups together within their union. The Reformation proves that a split can actually promote real spiritual unity.⁹¹

If our organisational affiliations confuse people about the gospel and demand our primary allegiance then they must be severed. Our absolute commitment is to the universal catholic church, not to a denomination or even a local church. Allegiance to the former will at times mean breaking with the latter.

J I Packer⁹², reflecting on the situation in the Church of England, has highlighted that many of its difficulties come from using the term ‘comprehensiveness’ in totally different frameworks. Whilst he argues for a view of comprehensiveness, he critiques three alternatives, which we may recognise:

Integration championed by F.D. Maurice, attempted to synthesize Evangelical, Tractarian and Broad Church principles in the Church of England. He saw the church as primarily institutional and only secondarily confessional. Packer notes:

If ever we wondered when came the facile idea, often met, that the Church of England is a liturgical rather than a confessional church, now we know.⁹³

Tension summarises the more recent view, that the Anglican Church has a special role in a dialectical process, which ends in the synthesis of different theologies (particularly Protestant and Catholic). This future synthesis justifies the current disarray. This view has the advantage that at least it recognises that the current forms are incompatible. However, its eschatology is overly optimistic—where does this hope come from? Do we see Paul incorporating the Judaizers’ gospel in Galatians 2?

Relativism is the most recent understanding of comprehensiveness. It has paralleled the theological success of liberalism⁹⁴. Previous views were internally consistent platforms of belief, but liberalism brought a new form united largely by its opposition to the alternatives (hence liberal catholic or liberal evangelical). This view of comprehensiveness is fundamentally antagonistic to the breadth envisaged by the Reformers.

Given this understanding of comprehensiveness, we suggest five areas of application relating to diversity:

1. A right comprehensiveness defines itself propositionally. If the gospel comes to us in verbal form, we ought to be able to define our beliefs propositionally. A step away from confessional boundaries to liturgical or historical connections is a step away from the gospel. This is a direct repudiation of approaches like that of Peter Carnley:

   “Historically speaking, Anglicans appear to have been content to live with mystery and ambiguity, and this has meant that Anglicanism has not involved confessional definitions in its approach to Christianity”⁹⁵

   We view this statement as historically false and theologically dangerous.

2. Establishing the breadth of boundaries of comprehensiveness is partly a pragmatic decision, related to the consensus that could be achieved at the origin. The biggest problem is not a broad definition, but having a centre other than the gospel. As long as the Word of God is central, there will be a dynamic towards unity.

3. An enforced comprehensiveness inevitably produces a structural unity without a matching spiritual unity. This is a false unity that only harms the gospel. Comprehensiveness only works effectively when it is consensual. If it is not, we do not get agreement ex animo, but a legal splitting of hairs or a playing with the definition of assent⁹⁶. We commend the practice of having multiple platforms that define their own comprehensiveness, such that the temptation to play with definitions is minimised.

4. Comprehensiveness varies between contexts and we operate simultaneously in a range of contexts. It is entirely appropriate to have the extent of our partnership defined by the extent of our faith agreement. Membership of a denomination may require less agreement than belonging to a staff team at a specific local church. Annual Bible teaching conventions can gather a broader range of people because they are an occasional event.

5. Comprehensiveness only works effectively if both members and office bearers respect the boundaries created by their common consent⁹⁷. Members contribute by withdrawing from the partnership if their beliefs change. Office bearers need to have enough courage to confront members (or member churches) who publicly deny what they have promised to uphold. On the other hand, withdrawal from the partnership must not be penalised. The goal must be to make it easy for people to uphold the basis of the union ex animo. Having multiple platforms to choose from can only make this easier and would allow people to choose their affiliations based on theology rather than it being the only option available.

To summarise, our view is that comprehensiveness is a useful and necessary concept provided it is carefully defined. Any definition of comprehensiveness must be seen as a minimum, not maximum requirement for belief. On the one hand, it must protect a person holding a minority position from exclusion from the union. On the other, we are called to teach the Bible, not the basis of belief. By joining a particular union we are agreeing to expound the Scriptures within the limits set by the basis of belief, but not limiting ourselves to it.

Listen Carefully

Speaking the truth in love operates in both directions. If God has give us His Word, His Spirit and His people, we must use all three. We must enter into dialogue with others expecting to benefit from God’s provision of the person in front of us. In fact, even error can benefit us: the Church has developed depth in responding to heresy, forcing it to define the truth more clearly.

Listening also expresses a right acknowledgement of our own fallibility in responding to the revelation in the Scriptures. Love dictates that we listen in precisely the way we would like to be heard by others.

Charitable assumption dictates that we treat people generously. Where is room for doubt then we must presume nothing. When we are tempted to attribute motive to a view, we must refrain. In all our dealings, we must not judge people, only the words that they say.

Respond Proportionately

Our response to theological diversity must be proportional to the seriousness of the error. Some describe this as having a ‘graded response set’. This is where our earlier categories and criteria can be put to good use.

On one end, we can choose to stay silent. At the other end, the most extreme response is the withdrawal of fellowship. For most occasions the response will be ‘speaking the truth in love’ (Ephesians 4:15). Pastoral judgement is called for—Paul obviously knows the situation well enough to decide to confront Peter in Antioch over influences from the Judaizers (Galatians 2:11-21), but to counsel silence over law issues in Romans 14. In all of this, the mode is one of persuasion not coercion because the aim is for the authority of Christ to affect the conscience of the believer, not for us to stand over the believer as judge (Romans 14:4).

Withdrawal of fellowship,⁹⁸ is not to be viewed as a retributive action, for that is God’s domain⁹⁹. It is intended rather, to signify the coming eschatological separation. It warns both the offender and the church that sin is serious and that false teaching destroys the work of God.¹⁰⁰

Yet, these are both the extremes. The general mode of operation is ‘speaking the truth in love’ to which we now turn.

Speak Truth in Love

This is a refusal to let divisions be final; to be optimistic about change because of the direction of history. Words of truth are the God-ordained way that Christ will build his church (Ephesians 4:11-16) and are the direct expression of his rule in this world. Of course, it will be prayerful speech, for we know it is the Spirit of God that makes the externally clear Word of God, internally clear to the hearer. They will also be loving words for we are speaking to someone for whom Christ died.¹⁰¹ Yet failure to speak is not an option—for the church is ‘the pillar and buttress of truth’ (1 Timothy 3:15).

Speaking truth in love may take a range of forms: from the confrontation in Antioch (Galatians 2:11) to the tender fatherly words to a church (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12). Both are truth in love and we must not allow love to be defined in such a way as to exclude ‘tough love’. Saying ‘Peace, Peace’ when there is no peace is profoundly unloving. Therefore, when using the categories above, we recognise teaching that will undermine the gospel, we must speak out.

We model ourselves on Jesus who weeps over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41) and desires to gather them as chicks (Matthew 23:37-39), yet in the same breath condemns the teachers of Israel as hypocrites, blind guides, fools and snakes. ‘How will you escape being condemned to hell?’ (Matthew 23:33). If we follow his example, we too will follow the path of the cross.¹⁰²

Discern the Context

Understanding context is critical to speaking the truth in love. We will be looking for the best opportunity to build up our brethren.

Whilst maintaining unity in salvation, the Bible does not ignore our obvious diversity. Male and female, older and younger, masters and slaves are all to relate differently because of their context.¹⁰³ Timothy is not to rebuke an older man harshly; church members are to respect their leaders and so on.¹⁰⁴ Awareness of these distinctions is important for faithful communication.

Contexts may also limit what we can discuss fruitfully. If the leadership team of a church cannot come to agreement on an issue, it may be best not to endlessly raise the issue. However, this is a limitation of that specific context. It may be appropriate for some individuals on that team to pursue the issue in another forum.

Evangelicals believe in liberal education because truth could come from any quarter and we can only refute error we have understood in depth. We must therefore create contexts where we are exposed to ideas that are hostile to the