Rethinking Life as an Evangelical Christian

Recently a friend of ours sent an email in which, among other things, he said the following: 

I have recently been thinking about some very fundamental ways that my religious beliefs have changed (or are changing, as I'm not sure quite where I will end up on some things) in recent years.  … Some of the areas in which my beliefs are shifting, that I would not have foreseen a few years ago, include

·         my view of scripture

·         existence of hell

·         importance of a conversion experience

·         substitutionary atonement

·         beliefs about homosexuality

The questions he raises are questions for many people today, and especially for those of us who grew up within what is sometimes called Evangelicalism. [Defining “Evangelical” is another blog, and has been worked in detail by good Evangelical scholars; I won’t say more about it here.] Although I do not sense a radical shift in these areas in my own thinking, I also have thought a lot about these questions. This brief essay is an effort to suggest what I have been thinking. Obviously this is not the space for an in-depth consideration: These are beginning thoughts.

1. Scripture. Within the Brethren in Christ Church inerrancy-infallibility has never been part of our official statement of belief. Many of our people subscribe to some form of such language, but I have never found it helpful. Clark Pinnock’s book, The Scripture Principle, stated well what I thought 30 years ago, and what I still believe. I accept Scripture as my final written authority in matters of faith and life.

Here is a brief summary of why I hold the view I do.

·         We need some authority outside of ourselves in order to evaluate what is true. If that outside authority is only societal norms, they are as subjective as my own personal opinions; I need something with deeper grounding than “the spirit of the age.”

·         Scripture (OT and NT) has a clear general validity so far as ancient documents are concerned. F.F. Bruce’s The NT Documents: Are They Reliable is an older statement of this validity within the NT, and I find it persuasive. Good arguments do not become false because we keep questioning them! [A current example is the tendency of some to think that climate change will go away if they can resist the findings of climate scientists long enough. They are wrong; the findings of the experts stand, whether we question them or not.] The Bible’s general truthfulness does not prove its authority, but it does mean we can rely on what it says about the life and death of Jesus, for example. Which leads to the next point.

·         The importance of Scripture in our lives today rests on what it teaches about Jesus. The NT tells us that Jesus taught his disciples [most people today like what they know of his teaching]. The NT also tells us that Jesus claimed a unique union with God—that he was one with God. Among the Jews such a claim could only lead to his death for blasphemy. The NT says that he was duly executed, and that he rose from the dead. In Surprised by Joy C.S. Lewis tells how an atheist history tutor at Oxford helped lead to Lewi’s conversion to follow Jesus. In an after-dinner conversation, the tutor commented on the NT along the following lines: “Rum thing, Lewis,” he said, “It looks like that resurrection thing really happened.” Speaking as an historian, he found the documents credible. The tutor remained an atheist, but Lewis saw the force of the statement and recognized that Jesus must be more than human.

Such an abbreviated argument for the reliability of Scripture does not deal with weaknesses in the argument or with objections to it. I am doing no more than sketching the way that I conclude that the Bible is true and that it leads us to God. This line of thinking leads me to search for Scripture to find how God—the Creator of all—reveals God’s self to us—human, finite creatures. The problems that people raise within Scripture are of less interest to me than this search for what God reveals about God through the self-revelation of Jesus.

Infallibility-Inerrancy gets bogged down in other questions: Seven days of creation [which Genesis 1 has no interest in teaching]; Jonah and the big fish [an acted out parable not intended to tell us about marine biology]; the extra day from thee time that Joshua told the sun to stand still [really? We’re chasing ancient calendars to find God?] The language of Inerrancy superimposes our scientific categories on people from two to three thousand years ago. If Scripture had been written to answer our modern questions of science, it would have been incomprehensible to the people for whom it is written.

Hard passages of Scripture (such as the apparent calls to genocide in the OT) must be understood through the lens of the language and culture and literature of the people for whom they were written. We wrestle with these passages because we read them as moderns (and sometimes as post-moderns) who don’t know the categories and thought patterns of the ancients. Here is a link for a sermon in which I try to understand one such passage. And here is a sequel.

My summary statement is that my faith rests on Jesus, forged through my relationship with Jesus, the Son of God. Scripture is the only written witness we have to meet God in God’s self-revelation. I read the Bible to know Jesus and God better. Those passages that stump me become paradoxical problems that stimulate further reflection and continued searching. In most areas of learning, unresolved problems lead to new discoveries. When one decides to set aside a paradoxical problem and go around it, one loses the chance to penetrate further into the mysteries of life as God’s creatures in this world.

2. Heaven and Hell. My friend wonders then, is Hell there? The question of Hell is one that theologians wrestle with. Jerry Walls is an example of a philosopher who has researched in this area (Hell: The Logic of Damnation). My friend Terrrance Tiessen is an example of a theologian who has thought deeply about such questions (“Thoughts Theological”). Here are a couple of my own thoughts.

·         It seems to me that it is primarily Christians in prosperous relatively stable countries who want to do away with Hell. Christians in Zimbabwe may pray for Mugabe and desire his conversion, but they can understand the logic or need for Hell. [I have a good Zimbabwean friend who believes that all people, including Mugabe, will finally be with God, so my statement is not universally true.] My sense, however, is that our desire to do away with Hell takes the reality of evil in our world too lightly.

·         I do not see a particular need for what some Evangelicals call “eternal conscious torment” as part of our understanding of Hell. Scripture is remarkably sparing in descriptions of Hell, spending more time talking about the rewards and joys of Heaven. Jesus speaks more about Hell than anyone else in the NT, so we must take it seriously, but he does so in picture language that does not lend itself to systematic description. Jesus also tells us to not be afraid of those who can kill our bodies, but to fear [live in awe and respect towards] the one who can destroy both soul and body. Those who consider “annihilationism” refer to such passages as part of their belief.

·         I affirm the reality of Hell, defined as a final and eternal separation from God, but see no benefit in describing Hell more precisely than that. I do not see Hell as necessary to serve God’s wrath, but rather as a logical extension of the dignity of free will that God has conferred on those of God’s creatures made in and as “the image of God”. God has given us the dignity of choice, and God respects our choice to be with God—or not—so much as to make that choice last forever.

3. Conversion. The importance of conversion lies simply in the need to choose and state the centre of our lives. Everyone has something or someone at the centre of his/her life. If our centre is not Jesus it will be something else. An emphasis on conversion derives from recognizing that God is the centre of life.

I don’t know in what way my friend was questioning conversion. This question may have to do with a related issue: Must one insist that only those who have a specific conversion experience are going to Heaven. That is a big question! I have found help in John Sanders (No Other Name!) and Terry Tiessen (Who Can Be Saved?). My short answer to the question is that Jesus is the only way to God, but we try to know more than we can know if we try to work out precisely what that means in each person’s life.

For my part I prefer to state core confessions without trying to harmonize them into the classical positions (exclusivism-inclusivism-universalism-pluralism). So I can say, “Jesus is the Only Way.” I can say that all who are with God in eternity are saved through the blood of Jesus on the cross. I do not need to decide what happens to each individual, but can affirm with C.S. Lewis and John Wesley (and others) that all who truly seek God will find God.

4. Atonement. This is a subject that I am thinking through in more depth at the moment. In a recent sermon I dealt with the topic briefly. Here it is enough to say that I think that those who insist on one model for atonement have gone astray.

·         Some (often mainline Christians) hold up the moral theory (or imitation theory) [that we seek to live like Christ] as the essential model. But the ability to follow Christ is part of the new life described as “you must be born again”. We take up our cross (imitation), and God works in us to give us new life.

·         Some (often Evangelicals and Roman Catholics) insist that penal substitution is the necessary model [in Jesus’ death “the wrath of God was satisfied”]. But this version of the satisfaction theory is only one way to describe what is happening in the atonement.

I could go through other models or theories in the same way. For now just these comments: 1) Any image of the atonement we use must be derived from Scripture. When we as finite creatures try to comprehend and describe the ways of God, who is Creator and infinite, we will fall short. So we use images from God’s self-revelation in Scripture. 2) We use those images that speak most clearly to us and help us draw closer to God in Christ. 3) We do not forbid others the use of other images of atonement, nor do we insist that our way is the only way we can understand what God is doing.

Many turn away from substitutionary atonement because they think it demeans God, who is Love. I would rather continue to use the biblical images, which include substitution. At some level, the idea of substitution is found in all of the images of atonement that the church has used. Jesus in some way beyond understanding did for us what we could not do, whether or not we can understand it. As John puts it, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus laid down his life for us, and there can be no greater demonstration of the truth that God is Love.

5. Homosexuality. Well look at the time! I must run! We’ll have to leave this question for another time!

Seriously, I won’t try to state my own position here and now. I will make a couple of observations. How we respond as the church to issue of same sex relationships is a great opportunity, one that for the most part the church has not taken. “Traditionalists” note that the story arc of Scripture is based on male and female as God’s image in the world. Embracing same sex relationships as marriage cuts against that story arc. “Progressives” note that another story arc in Scripture involves the way that God (and God’s people) includes those whom society has marginalized. Embracing same sex relationships as marriage is one way to include those whom we have too often rejected.

I have been part of difficult conversations about this subject, in which progressives make it clear that traditionalists are homophobic and unfaithful to the gospel. Such judgments do not help us move forward. In the same conversations I have heard traditionalists make it clear that progressives are “false prophets” and sinners. Such judgments do not help us move forward.

The societal shift that has taken place in my lifetime is so massive that it requires careful exegesis of our social setting as well as careful exegesis of Scripture to discover what God wants us to do now. I have more questions than answers. Question: What changed in our society to lead to where we are now? Question: Are these changes all good? Do we embrace them all? Question; What themes in Scripture speak to these issues? I am not particularly interested in proof texts, individual verses or brief sections of Scripture, but rather in the overall themes that shine through all of Scripture. Then I want to bring those themes together with what our culture teaches and look for how God speaks to us today.

Society is fickle and demanding. Same sex issues and transgender issues and many others are brought together with an absolute commitment to the rights of the individual, including those based entirely on their feelings. We insist too quickly on affirming one side of the argument or the other. I would rather take the time to listen and reflect and work at discovering what is truly good and right in a radically new situation.

I doubt that these brief thoughts are an adequate response to my friend’s probing thoughts and questions, but they are a beginning. It is important to keep thinking together, and not to submerge these issues. We do better when we think and talk together, listening together for God’s Spirit to speak within us.

Daryl Climenhaga

29 July 2017

The Triumph of God’s Spirit

Last week we talked about the failure of being human. Chapter 7 lays out the dilemma we face: We know what is good and we want to do what is good, but we are slaves to Sin. Even our best efforts lead to failure, so that we long for the victory that God gives through Jesus Christ.

Today we talk about that victory. Paul turns a corner here in Romans 8. Chapters 1 to 7 have laid out the problem with being human. As Ben Witherington puts it, Paul works from the general (all people have sinned) to the particular (even the Jews have fallen short of God’s glory) in chapters 1 to 3, then back from the particular (Abraham) to the general (sinful humanity) in chapters 4 to 7. He has set up the problem carefully and comprehensively; now he gives the cure: Life in Christ through the Spirit of Christ.

The Text

We walk through the text together to see what Paul is saying. Although we read Romans 8: 1 to 11, I will go through verse 17 this morning.

Verses 1 to 4: Those who are “in Christ Jesus” are free from “condemnation”. The Spirit of God sets them free from the power of “sin and death” (that is, the power of Satan). God [the Father] sent the God the Son in human form (fully human), but as the perfect one [the New Adam: see Romans 5] whose righteousness in dying on the cross sets us free from the penalty of sin and sets us free to fulfill the law of love [“Love God; and love your neighbour].

There is a huge amount of material packed into this basic thought, most of which we cannot explore. Just two comments this morning. 1) The Son sets us free from the penalty of sin. We call this atonement. We have various images drawn from the New Testament to describe how God sets us free on the cross.  Given that we are finite creatures, we cannot comprehend the mind of the Creator, so we draw on God’s self-revelation in Scripture to understand what is going on in the atonement.

One [substitutionary atonement] is that Jesus takes our place: We deserve to die, and Jesus took our death into his own so that we can live. Another is that Jesus conquers sin and death [Christus Victor]. Satan thought that he had won when Jesus died on the cross, but in the resurrection of Jesus we find that death itself has died. We are therefore free from the power of sin and death. A third is that Jesus invites us to follow him [Imitation of Christ], to take up our cross and die with him so that we can rise with him. A fourth is the simple image of sacrifice. The sacrifice [or offering] for sin, as the Jews understood it, cleansed the sinner and made him/her able to stand in God’s presence, righteous and unafraid of the Holy God. We do not think often of this category of cleansing today, but you recognize its psychological truth in life. I think of Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play, after she and her husband have murdered their king, Duncan. She comes on stage miming the action of washing her hands and talking about the spot of blood that she can’t get off her hands. She knows that she and Macbeth had the power to kill Duncan, but cries out, “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.” Our sin leaves us feeling dirty and ashamed, and we need cleansing from our slavery to sin.

All four of these are present in verses 1 to 17, and we do not need to choose between them. I recommend that you use the image that speaks most clearly to you. There are other “theories of atonement” besides these, but we don’t need to comprehend the process fully. Indeed, we cannot. In my mission studies I had a professor from Kenya (Timothy Kiogora) who once said to us, “You Americans try too hard. You think you have to understand mystery. Sometimes you need to stand under mystery.” This passage is, I believe, one of those times.

Verses 5 to 8:  There are two realms. The realm of the flesh is the place where people do what they want according to the desires of this world. [Note that “flesh” here means self-willed; it is not a statement about physical matter.] The realm of the Spirit is the place where people live according to God’s Law and desires. Those who live in the realm of the flesh do what they want, and therefore they cannot please God. They will die, because they have decided to live for themselves and not to live for God.

“They will die.” Everyone will die physically, but death in these verses refers to eternity without God. If you want to live with God here on earth and in the eternity that follows, you need “the mind governed by the Spirit.”

Verses 9-11: When you give yourselves to God, the Spirit of God [that is, the Spirit of Christ] lives in you. Christ in you then gives you the life and ways of Christ. You begin to walk the way that God wants everyone to walk.

We do not need to think of what some call “sinless perfection”. At the end of the next section in verse 30 Paul lays out a progression from being predestined to being called to being justified to being glorified. The point these is that “sinless perfection” [being glorified] comes when we die and are made perfect in God’s presence.

I remember a long time BIC minister who preached sinless perfection on the basis of such passages as Romans 8. He was a pastor in Pennsylvania and a noted camp meeting preacher. Then he went to Zimbabwe and taught in a Bible School there for 10 years, when he was in his mid-50s. When he returned to Pennsylvania he said, “The people in the Bible School in Zimbabwe taught me that sinless perfection is not true.” And he went around to the churches he had taught before, reminding people that we live with the reality of the realm of the flesh until we die.

But we do not need to feel afraid or trapped by “the flesh”. The triumph of the Spirit is real. Although we may fall into sin from time to time, we have God’s Spirit with us to help us stand up and seek and receive forgiveness. I have been learning this lesson through an inner voice that spoke to me last year when I was about to indulge in a habit God wanted me to break. The voice said, “I don’t want that.” I discovered that, therefore, neither did I. God’s Spirit gives us freedom in areas of our lives we may have never expected.

If you ask me how I reached that point, I can’t tell you. But I have prayed each day for many years something like this: “Lord, teach me to know you better, to love you more deeply, and to serve you more fully.” We enter a relationship with Jesus in which the Spirit of Christ takes control.

Verses 12 to 17: So we live by the Spirit, who leads us into an intimate relationship with God, so close that we can cry out to God, “Abba Father!” Walking closely with Jesus, we find that we are God’s children, we are God’s heirs, and we share in the sufferings and glory of Christ.

What Does This All Mean?

I have a friend who no longer believes in God. When we have talked about what he believes and what I believe, he has said to me, “The trouble is, I don’t know what you mean by ‘God.’ The word doesn’t mean anything to me.” This is a common problem as we try to express what we believe as Christians. People listening to us wonder what we mean. This problem is especially acute in a letter such as Romans, in which Paul speaks as a Christian teacher to Christians about their common faith. He is not trying to speak to those outside the faith.

What then do we mean when we say that God gives us victory as we live in the Spirit? I must admit that the answer is not obvious to me. To some extent I can only say, “Come and see!” Give it a try and see what is there. Jesus told us that God is Spirit, and those who worship God worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4). I can add also, God is a person – not a person with a body, but a person who relates to us. If I tell you about Lois, you may wonder who she is. But when you meet her you find out. That’s the idea with God. You can’t explain God so much as you have to meet God.

I think that is what is going on in Romans 7 and 8. The Jews were trying to become part of the realm of the Spirit by keeping the Law of Moses. They failed. Paul suggests a different way that does not contradict the Law, but goes around it in order to fulfill it. The point of the Law is to become people who love God and love each other, but the Law cannot produce such love. Instead, Paul tells us that the Spirit of Christ living in us makes us people who fulfill the Law, that is, people who love God and love each other completely.

The beginning essential step is that we become people in whom the Spirit of Christ lives. How does that happen? This is like the question, how does the atonement happen? All I can do is give you images that together try to show the picture of Christ living in us. If you want to know what that means, I can only invite you to come to God and ask for God’s Spirit within you.

Thinking It Through

This is a process that begins with conversion and continues throughout our lives. I have spoken before about my encounter with darkness when I was 58 years old. The healing of my darkness came through a dream in the night and a voice in the morning. God came to me in my darkness and told me what to do. If you want me to tell you how this happened, I can’t. I can only tell you that it did. In my last dream I remember floating in the sea, and thinking, “It’s all right. This is the sea of God’s love. Even if it gets stormy, I’m floating in the sea of God’s love.”

I have not achieved perfection in loving God or loving others as God’s Spirit lives in me, but I’m on the way, and I know that God is with me and in me. Who is God? I can tell you about God, but I can’t really answer your question. I can only invite you to join me in the way.

I think of another person’s experience. Don Jacobs was a Mennonite missionary in Tanzania. He came to faith in Pennsylvania, joined the Mennonite church there, and married a Swiss Mennonite from Lancaster County. They went to Tanzania in 1954, where they came in contact with something called “The East African Revival.” Missionaries and African Christians experienced the inbreaking of God’s Spirit in wonderful ways. They became known as the Balakole, “the saved ones”. At first Don resisted their influence, figuring that he was already a Christian, and that was good enough. Then he met Mugimba.

Here’s how he describes what happened through this dear Ugandan brother:

My relationship with Eliezer Mugimba opened a new chapter in my spiritual journey. He was tall, tender, and kind, like a caring family member. He opened his heart to me, encouraging me to come out of my spiritual shell and be willing to walk in light with another person. His love overwhelmed me, and at last, my reserve broken, I poured out all my frustrations and fear, my cynicism and critical spirit and a host of other sins that I was pampering in my life. The dam broke. In an instant my resistance to the revival collapsed, and I knew that I had found a truly human context in which to learn of Jesus.

Many years later, I visited Mugimba, then an old man, almost blind, in his village in Uganda. As we reviewed those early days, he said, “When you came to Katoke, the Holy Spirit said, ‘That young American is your mission field!’” That explained it all. I was sent to the mission field, not knowing that I was that “field.” I surely was. God turns things upside down often.

Jacobs describes life with others who had experienced revival as a relationship within which people regularly reviewed their lives and sought forgiveness for the normal clashes among those who live and work together. When he visited another group of missionaries who were in conflict, he described the distress he felt that they could not bring their conflict into the open and seek the presence of God’s Spirit to heal their conflict.

But how does this happen? How do we “receive God’s Spirit”? The images of atonement I mentioned earlier are one clue.

·         The image of substitution lets us know that this is something God does for us by taking the penalty for our sin on the cross. This substitution sets us free to live “in Christ” as slaves of righteousness.

·         The image of victory lets us know that God breaks the power of sin on the cross, absorbing sin’s work into himself and defeating it in the resurrection. This victory sets us free to live in Christ as servants of righteousness.

·         The image of imitation lets us know that we have a part to play. We imitate Christ—loving God fully and loving each other without reserve, acting as servants of righteousness. As we put our hands to the tool and start to do our work, God takes our hands and guides them to do what we cannot do. God fills us with the Spirit of Christ to live God’s way.

·         The image of sacrifice, cleansing our sinfulness, lets us know that we are remade in God’s likeness and as God’s representatives [“images of God”—“in God’s image”]. As God makes us the way we were meant to be, we are free to live in Christ and to serve righteousness.

You see that this process combines our choice to follow God [“whoever would be my disciple must take up their cross and follow me”] and God’s work in us. In ourselves we cannot love with God’s love, and we cannot live as God’s people. God must do the work. But equally God respects our choice to serve Christ or to serve ourselves.

Another clue: in Don Jacobs personal story, you note the place of community. We receive God’s Spirit most easily and most fully when we are searching with our brothers and sisters. When I was at Asbury Seminary, I heard stories about the Asbury Revival that had come to first to the college campus and then to the seminary in 1970. Both of the elements I have noted above were present: God entered people’s lives doing what they could not themselves do; and people were seeking for God’s presence. Paul says it like this in Philippians: “Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to do his good will.”

Conclusion

You see that I cannot really answer the question: How does this happen. I can only echo my Kenyan friend: “We are too eager to understand mystery. Sometimes you have to stand under God’s mystery.” What I can tell you is this: If you desire God’s Spirit in your life and continue to search for the Spirit of Christ, God will give you the Spirit of Christ. Christ will live in you, “the hope of glory.”

How? All I can say is, “Come and see that the Lord is good.” If you ask me, “How can I meet your friend?” all I can do is introduce you to my friend. Meeting my friend is up to you and my friend. The same is true of meeting God and receiving the Spirit of Christ. Paul is clear: The Spirit of Christ living within each of us is the path for every Christian, not a special gift for a few holy rollers. We meet Christ, and we live with Christ, and Christ lives in us, setting us free from the power of sin to fulfill the goal of law, which is to love God fully and to love each other with God’s love. Sin is power that seeks to destroy us; Christ is the Person who sets us free.

Grace Bible Church

16 July 2017

Text: Romans 8:1-17

Life through the Spirit

8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ² because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. ³ For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

⁵ Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸ Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

⁹ You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. ¹¹ And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

¹² Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation – but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. ¹³ For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ ¹⁶ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷ Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.