The Jesus Paradigm

Category: discipleship

  • Is Sacrificial Living the Solution to America’s Abortion Holocaust?

    10:10 AM Is sacrificial living the solution to America’s abortion holocaust?

    I don’t think morality can or should be legislated. I think if Christians want a woman not to have an abortion, then they should offer that woman however much she demands to not have an abortion.

    We often talk about the value of human life, but we seldom are actually willing to pay for it. Suppose the mother demands $10,000 for the baby. Many would be willing to pay that price. Suppose she demands $1 million. Well, you tell me, is the child’s life worth that much to you or no? There comes a point at which purchasing that child’s life might threaten your own child’s life. Which is to be preferred? Which is more valuable? What would Solomon do?

    There is usually a presumption that the woman should be responsible for keeping the baby and bearing the cost herself. This I suppose comes from a belief in Truth. But I don’t see God imposing Truth on us. Instead I see Him making sacrifice to exemplify truth.

    Read Evangelicalism = Christian Legislation. Followers of the Christian Right might be shocked by this suggestion, but Christian love demands that we take our faith to the street. Those who are the most sincere about fighting injustice are the ones who are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

    (From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm,  Why Four Gospels? and  Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions?. Used by permission.)

  • On Christian Political Activism

    5) N. T. Wright addresses the issue of church and state (i.e., the kingdom of God versus the kingdoms of this world) in this wonderful You Tube:

    (more…)

  • A Primitive Ecclesiology

    As you know, I’m involved in writing projects up to my eyeballs. One book I am currently writing is called Godworld. (I think I’ll subtitle it something like Enter at Your Own Risk). Over the past few days I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. Emerson once noted in his Journal that “Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.” For many years a considerable portion of my time has been devoted to the problem of ecclesiology. Being stubborn by nature and a professor by training and education, I hold to the notion that the status quo is rarely acceptable. John Wesley wanted his movement to recover the full message and power of what he called “the Primitive Church.” He was an ardent student of early Christianity. Wesley also studied the Anabaptist groups and the Moravians. Wesley and his followers knew that awakening interest in the church without bringing people to pursue Gospel living was a waste of time. When pre-Christian people talk about “church,” unfortunately they often refer to people whose alien language and jargon have nothing to do with the real world in which these same people live. Christians dress and act in abnormal ways. Their traditionalist churchianity is a language no one seems to understand. The New Testament, by way of contrast, calls Christians to “exegete” the culture that God entrusts to them and to indigenize their faith — witness the 18th century Methodists who wrote Christian hymns to be sung to the tunes people loved to sing in the public houses. As for missions, the New Testament calls all of us — clergy and laity alike — to live out our faith in our mundane professions. (Few are called to seminary!) We are to penetrate the culture for Christ and thus fulfill the second commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The love of which the New Testament speaks is not so much a feeling as a disposition of good will and service toward others, including people outside our own social networks, nationality, and race. We are to love others as God does. It is just as important that we love the lost as it is to believe that Jesus died for our sins. Growing into the likeness of Christ is essentially “downward mobility.” Because people matter to God, they matter to us. The goal is not mere conversion but bringing people to full devotion to Christ. Evangelism is therefore normative for God’s people. It is simply living and sharing the amazing good news about Jesus in one’s own sphere of influence. This is the process I want to be involved in. It is the process of entering this amazing Godworld — and doing so at our own risk! I want to be involved in this Godworld, not because I am a professor in a seminary, but simply because I am a follower of Jesus.

    “Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.” I would not pretend that I am yet consumed with a love for the lost as Jesus was. I have, however, begun to travel this downward path of Jesus. Just as all Christians have been joined to Christ and participate in His life, so all Christians are called to the ministry of witness and invitation.

    Think about it.

    (From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm,  Why Four Gospels? and the forthcoming Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions?. Used by permission.)

  • The Cult of the Speaker

    6:30 AM Up for a stern warning this morning?  

    Before I issue it, some background. I have nothing against public speaking. I am asked to speak all the time. I enjoy listening to other speakers (provided they are well-prepared and not just repeating the same old same old). I have been responsible for organizing two major conferences on campus that featured such speakers as Dan Wallace, Darrell Bock, Moises Silva, Grant Osborne, Keith Elliott, and Scot McKnight. I am speaking, in fact, at a conference today at SEBTS. So what is my warning?

    (more…)

  • The Standard of Obedience, not the Standard of Knowledge

    6:50 AM Good morning, friends. You won’t believe this: A blog post called Jesus – A Practicing Socialist. I feel positively giggly. This is the message I’ve been trying to get across to my students for years. Note this paragraph:

    But that is not what Christ is saying in the Great Commission. Jesus commands us to teach believers to observe – or DO – what He has commanded us to do. That is profoundly different than saying teach the great doctrines of the faith. The words “observe” and “command” indicate something much greater than just learning truths. They indicate a doing and an obedience to the commands of Jesus, not just a learning of what He said and what He taught. If knowing all the core doctrines of the faith is the indispensable element of being a disciple, then there were not many disciples until recently since millions of believers were illiterate and perhaps millions still are today. And none of His commands had anything to do with enhancing and elevating our own lives.

    (more…)

  • Get the Focus Off the Externals

    12:50 PM Do you remember the words of missionary martyr Jim Elliot?

    We are “sideliners” — coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers. Oh that God would make us dangerous!

    I thought of these words today when I read this comparison between being “imprisoned” by church traditions and literal imprisonment for the sake of Christ. As many of you know, I often travel to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East assisting the persecuted church. I have seen the suffering, up close and personal. As much as I deplore many of our unbiblical church traditions, I find the comparison unhelpful and inaccurate. Of course many of us feel trapped in our manmade traditions. And yes, we are called to suffer for the sake of Christ (Phil. 1:29). But the suffering of the persecuted church is, in my mind, in another category altogether, and I will continue to do whatever I can to make Americans who are cozy sitting in their padded pews (or on their living room sofas) as uncomfortable as possible about it. Not only do I make no apologies for it, I think that with every passing year it becomes more and more obvious to me that the most important thing we can be doing in our churches — regardless of our ecclesiology — is to get rid of our lukewarm insipid faith and take up the cross of self-discipline, suffering, and real sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel. If I have any prayer for the readers of my blog, it is that God will use it to help you take steps in this direction in your personal and congregational life. Jesus is calling all of us to a radical lifestyle lived from obedience that affects the world. With tears in my eyes, I say that as long as we are content to live out a religion of externals (home church versus institutional church, the Lord’s Supper as a full meal versus the Lord’s Supper as bread and cup, etc.), we will continue to miss the mark. Never in the history of the world has there been so much discussion about the church and Christianity but, I feel, so little real knowledge of God. Jesus made it clear that His mandate for each of us is to do the will of the Father by going into the fields just as the Father sent Him (John 4:34-38). This means that “missions” is not just one of several options for our churches. God is not asking us to give money to missions. He is asking us to make missions the central passion and thrust of our lives and congregations. When I think of your church, is that what I think of? Or of my church? Tragically, many of us have developed a church-first mentality that is distracting us from our main task. I should know, because I have been the chief of sinners in this regard.

    There is a way out of this mess. New Testament Christianity is not reserved only for super saints who are doing all the “right” things church-wise. It is for every believer, whatever your church structure, whatever your location or occupation, whatever your circumstances in life. Jesus wants to live His life through us in the world. The only question is: Will we let Him? Our problem today is that we want it all, and we want it now. But we have to choose our priorities. Yes, I will continue to call us back to the Scriptures as far as church life is concerned. But my constant prayer is that God will help me to do it with a broken heart and with a renewed willingness to make a deliberate calculation to accept sacrifice and suffering for the sake of following Christ.

    For more on this subject, see my essay Paper Perfect Churches.

    (HT: Threads)

    (From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm,  Why Four Gospels? and the forthcoming Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions?. Used by permission.)

  • Missional Task is the Basis of Christian Unity

    8:42 AM Hello Internet friends,

    Some of you who have been reading this site for a while may recall that I’ve been working on a new book called Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions? My desire is to reflect accurately what Scripture teaches in the area of associating with non-Christians and their world. I’m not especially concerned with our hallowed manmade traditions of doing missions. I feel like I’ve hit on some insights that provide a framework that allows me to combine the twin foci of unity and missions that we see throughout the New Testament. So if you’ll bear with me, I think I’ll introduce you to a few quotes from the forthcoming book. For starters, here’s something to chew on:

    Jesus’ disciples enjoyed community simply because Jesus and not a set of dogmas was at the center of their life. They never tried to “build community.” They didn’t have to. Community was the result of being united in the Christian mission; community emerged naturally when they committed themselves to something bigger than themselves. And so it is in the church today. It is my personal observation that most Christians begin to enjoy genuine community only when they begin to serve the poor, evangelize the lost, and plant churches. The glue that unites them is the missional task of loving their neighbors. A shared sense of mission drives them to community. Their congregations are mission-shaped. Like Jesus, they literally go. For them the Bible, not tradition, is normative, and they hold themselves accountable to each other in love even while they work closely with the surrounding neighborhood, developing strong links between Christians and not-yet Christians.

    I think it’s very clear that the New Testament affirms Christian mission as the basis for our unity in the Body of Christ. I feel compelled, out of fidelity to Jesus, to repudiate the notion that cooperation is impossible on a practical level. I’ll leave you with this teaser thought: Jesus prayed for our unity in John 17. Can Jesus pray a prayer and it not be answered?

    Enjoy the Lord’s Day!

    Dave

    (From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm, Why Four Gospels?, and the forthcoming book Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions. Used by permission.)

  • Changing in a Grace-Filled Way

    1:02 PM This week in our Greek 3 class we exegeted Phil. 4:1-9, a passage full of references to the need for unity and cooperation in the cause of the Gospel. I want to say from the start that I have tremendous respect for my students who are trying to effect changes in their churches. I deeply appreciate the fact that they want to go about the process in a way that is conducive to unity and does not fight against it. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do think it is wrong to force change without at least doing our very best to build a consensus. Commenting on harmony in the church, Howard Marshall (New Testament Theology, p. 347) writes:

    Such harmony could arise in two ways. One possibility is that there is considerable toleration of different points of view, so that people do not fight over differences of opinion on nonessential matters. The other possibility is that people are united because they are in agreement about how they should think and act.

    (more…)

  • True Homeland Security

    7:10 PM Good evening, thoughtful bloggers of cyberdom! I want you to meet James. I thought of James while we were discussing Epaphroditus in Greek 3 class on Tuesday. James was my translator when I trekked among the Guji tribe in southern Ethiopia a couple of years ago. At the time he was a young and optimistic 24-year old, freshly graduated from the university. All who knew him loved him. His smile was infectious and so was his passion for the Gospel. Well, when Jason Evans (one of my elders at Bethel Hill) and I decided to minister among the Gujis, we needed a translator, but not just any translator.

    (more…)

  • On Church Offices

    8:03 PM Evening, blog peeps! Here are a few takeaways I had today from our discussion of Phil. 1:1-2:

    1) The opening salutation is a window into Paul’s view of leadership in the church. Leadership is always shared. Paul’s ministry was a “co-worker” ministry! Note: “Paul and Timothy”; “overseers and deacons.” Clearly, Paul taught and practiced a “fellowship of leadership” (Michael Green). (more…)