Towards a Gospel-Centred Church

“What, then, is the nature of petitionary prayer? It is, in essence, rebellion—rebellion against the world in its fallenness, the absolute and undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. It is, in this its negative aspect, the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God.”  

How, then, should we pray?

In The Mission of God, Christopher Wright argues that “it is in Christ crucified and risen that we find the focal point of the whole Bible’s grand narrative, and therein also the focal point of the whole mission of God”. He notes in the book’s epilogue that this God-centered worldview should challenge us in these ways:

• We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” when the real question is where does my little life fit into this great story of God’s mission.
• We want to be driven by a purpose that has been tailored just right for our own individual lives (which is of course infinitely preferable to living aimlessly), when we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation.
• We talk about the problems of “applying the Bible to our lives,” which often means modifying the Bible somewhat adjectivally to fit into the assumed “reality” of the life we live “in the real world.” What would it mean to apply our lives to the Bible instead, assuming the Bible to be the reality–the real story–to which we are called to conform ourselves?
• We wrestle with the question of how we can “make the gospel relevant to the world” (again, at least that is clearly preferable to treating it as irrelevant). But in this Story, God is about the business of transforming the world to fit the shape of the gospel.
• We argue about what can legitimately be included in the mission God expects from the church, when we should ask what kind of church God expects for his mission in all its comprehensive fullness.
• I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission.

The Ligonier Ministries blog has a good post about measuring ministry success based on church size.

Here’s a quote: “What is most important to Jesus in any church? Is it not the combination of biblical proclamation of His Word, faithful administration of His sacraments, as well as loving care and Jesus-like discipline of His people?”

One aspect of being gospel-centred is to live a life that is worthy of the gospel. We are who we are solely because of what God has done on our behalf through his only Son, Jesus Christ. Yet, we are not what we ought to be–we continue to struggle and fight against sin. Our Christian life is thus lived in tension between the already and the not-yet, between the flesh and the spirit. I found this excerpt from Thomas Schreiner’s New Testament Theology (p. 656) to be a very helpful description of the Christian life:

“Believers would not need any ethical exhortations if they were already perfected. But in the interval between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, ethical exhortation is needed. If the priority of the indicative is lost, then the grace of the Pauline gospel is undermined. The imperative must always flow from the indicative. On the other hand, the indicative must not swallow up the imperative so that the latter disappears. The imperatives do not compromise Paul’s gospel. They should not be construed as law opposed to gospel. The imperatives are part and parcel of the gospel as long as they are woven into the story line of the Pauline gospel and flow from the indicative of what God has accomplished for us in Christ.” 

How does this affect the way we think and teach about the gospel, the Christian life, sanctification, etc. ?

Hi Guys,

Thought you might be interested in this. The Gospel Coalition Network Website from The City is now open. Registration is free. For more details, please visit Adrianwarnock.com. The link is available here: http://adrianwarnock.com/2009/04/free-gospel-coalition-network-from-city.html. Looks like a great place to connect with like-minded Gospel centred people.

——-

Grace and Peace

Ollie

Apr 2009

Ollie, great post on joy and suffering. I once heard a sermon which said that one of the best things a pastor can do for God’s people is to prepare them for suffering. A biblical understanding of suffering will serve us well when trials and tribulations arise–and they will. This runs counter to our materialistic and hedonistic culture, which measures well-being in terms of physical prosperity. But then, the Christian life is not supposed to make sense in the eyes of this fallen world. Like our Saviour, our path to resurrection proceeds through the cross. There is no glory without suffering.

“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,  and if children, then heirs- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”  (Romans 8:16-17) 

“When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch,  strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” (Acts 14:21-22 )

Besides Ajith Fernando’s book, here are some other helpful resources on the issue of suffering:

1) Night of Weeping: When God’s Children Suffer (Horatius Bonar)

2) Suffering and the Goodness of God (Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, eds.)

3) How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (D. A. Carson)

4) Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds.)

Hey guys, how have you been? Sorry I’ve been silent for a while; the transition to Southern Seminary was a tad more difficult for me to adjust than I anticipated. I must be growing older!

I’ve started reading Ajith Fernando’s book “The Call to Joy and Pain”; I realized that contemporary Singaporean Christians (me included) often do not have a well formed biblical concept of suffering. I’ve blogged about it back at my blog and I thought that Fernando’s writing would also be worth posting here as well.

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. – Colossians 1:24-29 (ESV)

Fernando reflecting on how joy and suffering come together says,

One of the interesting things about the New Testament record is that suffering is hardly ever mentioned without also a mention of the blessings of suffering. And often the blessing mentioned is joy. I was able to locate eighteen different places in the New Testament where suffering and joy are found together. The texts I found making this connection between suffering and joy were in the Gospels, the book of Acts, and the epistles. We also know that through Revelation may not mention this connection explicitly, it is implied there.

So according to the Bible, joy and pain can coexist. Christians don’t talk about suffering unless they also talk about the joy of suffering. It is the joy that makes the cross worthwhile, for it gives us the strength to bear it. As Nehemiah said, “The Joy of the LORD is your strength” (Neh. 8:10).

I once heard David Sittion, the founder of To Every Tribe Mission, tell how when he was a teenager a ninety-year-old Missionary spoke at the youth fellowship of his church. He had been a missionary for seventy-two years. At the start of his talk he kept saying the same thing over and over again. It was something like, “I want you to remember this. You can forget everything I say, but don’t forget this.” He kept saying something like this for about five minutes, and the young people were getting impatient, wishing he would go ahead and say it. Finally he said what he wanted to say: “The Joy of the Lord is your strength. when the joy goes, the strength goes.” Having said that, he sat down! That is the basic affirmation of this book. Joy and suffering are necessary aspects of Christianity. And they can and must exist together. – Ajith Fernando, The Call to Joy and Pain

Take care and see you all real soon. I’ll be back in Singapore over the Summer.

——–

Grace and Peace

Ollie

Apr 2009

Greg Gilbert over at 9 Marks writes a good critique of N. T. Wright’s understanding of the gospel. Read it here.

Southern Seminary professor Jim Hamilton has written a song about Jesus Christ in the OT and NT. Check it out here. This is the chorus: 

Arise, O Star
Jacob longs for you
Keep your word, Lord
Your promises all true

Your people wait
For that Day when you will come
Take your power and reign
Heaven’s highest Son

During this Easter weekend, as I was reading David Well’s “Above all earthly powers“, I was reminded of Carl Trueman’s fascinating paragraph when he was reviewing another of David Well’s book – “The courage to be Protestant“.

One of David’s strong points is that, though primarily a systematic theologian, he is too good a historian to indulge in some of the ahistorical doctrinal abstractions which too often afflict the discipline. He knows that beliefs, behavior, and social and economic conditions are intimately connected. That is what makes his analysis so satisfying: it is not just that he offers some version of the “the church is in a bad way because of sin” argument. Such an argument, undoubtedly and indisputably true as it is, of course, is by itself of but very limited usefulness, somewhat akin to saying that the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11 because of gravity. Universal causes only take us so far in understanding the nature of particular actions and events. Thus, everything happens because of providence; and bad things happen because of sin. So much for the general rules; a more useful and probing question is how and why did this bad thing happen at this particular juncture of time in this particular place and in this specific way? Answering that question is the task of the historian or the cultural analyst, and that kind of question yields far more useful results. Thus, David not only tells us what we know—that the church is in trouble because of sin; he also provides contextual specifics that allow us to gain greater insight into the specific manifestations and ramifications of particular sinful phenomena in the contemporary church world.(emphasis mine)

My experience in sharing the gospel in Singapore is that I have found it difficult to get across the “sinfulness of sin”. It is also another famous line of David Wells which said that worldliness is that which makes sin looks normal.  It is the challenge of the church to show outsiders why sin isso serious, to make persuasive arguments for it. I guess this post is more of one that tries to fish for gold by throwing out a question -

What are the main obstacles to Singaporeans in being persuaded/convicted of the sinfulness of sin? (Apart from the sovereign work of the Spirit, of course, but I think that we do believe that Holy Spirit works through the means of his Word effectively preached and applied too!) I have some ideas on this..but I would like to hear from some of you before giving my miserly two pence.

Edward

P.S.  I hope that I have made the question as practical as it can be already.