faith for faith

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:15,16).

In a society where tolerance is a virtue and offending a person is a crime, telling the truth at times can be tough. And, like it or not, our society’s “morality” has influenced the church’s reaction to the truth. How can we know this? Take this passage from Ephesians 4, for example. Ninety-nine percent of the time when this verse is quoted it is quoted because someone ruffled someone else’s feathers. The expression, “in love,” is taken to mean, “without offense,” in spite of the teachings of this passage. Knowing this passage and understanding its implications are essential to understanding how we are to love one another in the Church.

1. Understand the Goal of the Truth
Paul’s instruction to speak the truth in love is not a call to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. The instruction has a very particular end, namely, to grow up the Church in every way into Christ who is the head. In other words, the instruction does not have an individual objective but a corporate one–unity of the Church under the Lordship of Christ. Therefore, our objective for speaking the truth in love should always be Church-centered. The reverse is true as well; if we are Church-centered people, we should speak the truth in love.

2. Dare to Speak the Truth
Like a physician who would be deemed negligent and hateful for withholding a bitter cure for a terminal disease from an infected person, so should we be deemed negligent and hateful when we refuse to speak the truth. The only remedy that we possess for the heterodoxy and sacrilege that has infiltrated our churches is to persistently apply the truth of God’s Word. We must dare to speak the truth, because when we do, we will be singled out dissenters and as haters of the unity of the Church. People will talk behind our backs, and people who we once thought were our friends will turn against us. But we must persist, because unity that is based upon falsehood and heterodoxy is a not unity from Christ, but it is the appearance of unity from the devil.

3. Dare to Love
Every instance of speaking the truth should be imbued with love. If we do not weep for those to whom we speak the truth, we have no business speaking it. The truth is never a tool for personal gain, and it is never ended by an “I told you so.” Before we ever open our mouths, we need to make sure that, one, our ultimate goal is the sanctification of the Church and, two, that we actually know the truth. These two things coupled with the power of the Holy Spirit are sufficient to cure all the ailments of the Church.

Continued from Spitting on the Holiness of God, Part 1: The Story

You might be thinking, “What an absurd story,” and you would be right. It is an absurd story. But what makes the story absurd is not the selling of coffee mugs, or the painting of pictures, or the putting on of dramas by Israelites during the Exodus, but it is their response to God’s holiness. People do not behold the holiness of the Lord and then proceed to make him who is holy appear to be common. There is a fear that naturally grips the heart and soul of a man when he realizes what holiness means, and that fear changes his life.

A casual look at the church today would reveal that we are a diseased people. We are people who possess God’s holy revelation, and yet we cannot grasp God and his holiness. Oh, we sing songs with the word “holy” in the lyrics, but we never tremble as a people before the Almighty or even show a sliver of respect toward the Being who is wholly other. We love to embrace the humanity of Jesus Christ and his “likeness” to us, and yet we only ascribe to him deity when he must be so to cover our sins. Do you not see the disease of the church? The symptoms are everywhere:

Disregard for His Commandments
If Christ demonstrated anything in his discourse in the Sermon of the Mount, he demonstrated that the law is not a stepladder, but it is a demonstration of God’s holiness. No man can ever keep the law, because no one is holy but the Lord. This is the very reason that Christ came and died, to demonstrate that he is Yahweh by keeping the law perfectly, and then to die in the place of unholy persons so that they might be counted as holy.

We know this well as the Church. We know that Jesus Christ died for sinners to reconcile them to God, but what we do not know well is the command, “Be ye holy.” What that translates to in practice is an apathy toward to commandments of God because our mistakes are “covered.” For example take the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Now take a look at the phrase, “Any likeness of anything that is in heaven.” Then ask yourself, “Where presently is Jesus Christ?” Now ask yourself if you have ever seen anything that has attempted to portray the likeness of Jesus Christ. Right, they’re everywhere! Pictures of Jesus, crucifixes with Jesus on them, statues of Jesus–all idols transgressing the second commandment. And your response? “What’s the big deal?” “It helps the children.” “The commandment is kinda fuzzy on that.” “I like nativities.” These are real responses from past conversations that show that we in the church want to walk as close to the boundary of Mt. Sinai without being struck down by a holy God. And you will probably lightly nod your head in agreement with that and still keep your pictures of Jesus and your nativities showing that you still don’t give a rip about holiness.

Cornifying God
The next time you step into your local “Christian” “book”store, survey what is there for you to buy. To your right and to the back there’s the t-shirt section, where the t-shirts take catchy secular sayings and manipulate them to put Jesus on a Reeses cup, an Abercrombie logo, or in a punchline from a perverted TV show. To your left you’ll see a rack of auto decals that have things like a fish with an American flag on the inside (because you know, the U.S. is a Christian nation), a Godfather movie logo manipulated to say “GodtheFather,” and a quote borrowed from those infamous billboards, “Don’t make me come down there. ~God.” At the front counter you’ll see a collection of “Christian” erasers, pencils, fingernail clippers, and some Testamints that sanctify your breath. All these are designed to press you on to the comprehension of the holiness of God–to portray God as the glorious, unfathomable, infinite Lord of the Universe and his Son as the Holy One, Yahweh Incarnate in whose presence you would be incinerated. Testamints do that, they really do.

Mocking the Revelation of God
There are few things in life that cause me to lose sleep at night, but I lost sleep two nights in a row over the mockery that happened at a local church this past Sunday. During the morning service, some sacrilegious imbeciles thought that it would be a good idea to put on a drama where someone would act as Moses receiving God’s revelation, and another would, in Wizard of Oz fashion, speak as God over the speakers, justifying to Moses his not entering into Canaan. And what was this drama for? To demonstrate the justice of God? To pay tribute to God’s greatest prophet? No! It was a promotion for some upcoming conference! Really! Someone thought that it was worth making trite the holy revelation of God, through the voice of a puny man, with words that God never spoke, all to advertise a conference! Fools! Praise be to the immeasurable mercy of God that withheld his hand from striking down those who permitted such blasphemy!

All this is to say that God is holy, and we need to be a people who know that God is holy. The American church obviously does not understand the holiness of God, and it demonstrates that by its flippancy toward God, his commandments, and his revelation. We should be utterly terrified at our state, because the Lord is not idly watching.

Imagine this. It is the 2nd millennium, B.C., at a place between Egypt and Canaan on the Sinai Peninsula. Moses, a prophet of Yahweh and the king/leader of Israel, is about to leave Israel at the foot of Mt. Sinai while he ascends the mountain to receive revelation from Yahweh. Before Moses leaves the Israelites, Moses gives them one last revelation: “The Lord has said, ‘Behold, I am coming in a thick cloud upon the mountain. Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death.’” The commandment from the Lord resonates throughout the millions watching, and the very ground begins to shake from the fearful trembling of the Israelites. One in multitude exclaims, “How holy is Yahweh the God of Israel that even the dirt around his presence will kill a man!” The exclamation is echoed by a quick and unified “Amen!”, and Moses begins to ascend the mountain.

The moment that Moses is out of site and in the presence of the Lord, three groups within the Israelites think of three different ways to respond to the holiness of God that they had just beheld.

The first group was made up of Israelites who had the gift of entrepreneury, and they built a trading stand at the edge of the mountain. At the stand they began to sell things that would help the Israelites remember that the Lord is holy. One of the things that they sold was a coffee mug that had a picture of mountain with a cloud around it; another was a stuffed Moses for the kids that when one pulled a string it said, “Stay away from the mountain, or you’ll die!” Another was a picture of a bridge beside the cloud-covered mountain by famous Israelite painter, Thomak Chichade, and also a t-shirt that said, “What has two thumbs and thinks that the Lord is holy? This guy!”

The second group was gifted artists, and they began to paint different things that portrayed the holiness of God to them. Some simply painted the cloud-covered mountain that Moses ascended; some added a dead person beside the edge of the mountain. Some painted a picture of a bull, explaining that it reminded them of the strength of the Lord. Some painted pictures of the sun, citing that it reminded them of the Egyptian god Ra whom they believed was the closest Egyptian god to the Lord. And some painted pictures of a man since they felt that God had condescended himself to them. They hung their paintings of the holiness of God all around the Israelite camp–in the children’s tents, in front of the altar, and even in the latrines, so that the people could always see a visual representation of the holiness of the Lord.

The third group was a group of gifted dramatists who had a knack for throwing return parties. They said, “Hey, let’s plan a return party for Moses for when he gets back from speaking to the Lord, and we’ll promote it by putting on a drama!” They decided that the best way to promote Moses’ return party was to imagine how the Lord would promote a return party. And that’s what they did. The party planning dramatists built a stage at the edge of the mountain and gathered the people of Israel together. They pulled back the curtains, and their promotion drama began. The scene looked like the top of a mountain with thick fog around it. On its peak was a man prostrate with his face looking upward. Out from nowhere, it seems, a deep voice says, “Moses!” The man lying on the mountain peak says, “Speak Lord, I am listening.” The voice says, “Moses, Moses, you have been up here receiving my commandments for weeks, and the people of Israel miss you a lot. Moses, they miss you so much that they are throwing a party celebrating your return, and it is going to be out of this world. Moses, everyone who is of the people of Israel should come to this party. It is going to be awesome. Thus says me, the Lord.” And thus the party was promoted via dramatization.

To be continued…

Peace is a blessing from the Lord. Aside from the occasional ridicule that Christians experience from time to time, the Church in America resides in a relatively friendly and peaceful environment. The evidence of this can be seen in where the Church expends most of its energy–divisions. When the Church does not have to worry about hiding underground to avoid being lined up and shot, two things happen to the Church. First, the Church is infested with false teachers and unregenerate converts. When Christianity becomes a low risk lifestyle and social network, people who get invited to church on Sunday might stick around for a few Wednesday night dinners, teach a Sunday School class, and help out with a barbecue fundraiser, all without submitting themselves to King Jesus. Persecution is the refinery of the Church and is extremely effective at removing the insincere. Second, is linked to the first, and that is, divisions in the church become the subject of jokes. So often we find ourselves jesting about how most new churches form from an argument about carpet color, when we should instead be brokenhearted over the disunity in the Bride of Christ–a disunity that is so natural that a church would actually split over the color of carpet.

Even in the innumerable cases where the issue of division is orthodoxy, the greatest teaching and commandment that Christ gave to us is placed on the backburner while we fight and despise each other over minutiae–”Love one another as I have loved you.” While orthodoxy in all spheres is weighty and worth fighting for, no orthodoxy is worth sacrificing the love that we are to have toward one another. And until that fateful day when concerns over carpet and music styles become ash in the refinery of persecution and the tares are removed from the wheat, so long as one names Jesus Christ as Lord, God, and the sole-giver of Reconciliation, we are to love him without question as a member of the Body of Christ.

This is somehow related to CO2 emissions, I promise!:

Alaskan Glaciers Grow for First Time in 250 years from DailyTech

A bitterly cold Alaskan summer has had surprising results. For the first time in the area’s recorded history, area glaciers have begun to expand, rather than shrink. Summer temperatures, which were some 3 degrees below average, allowed record levels of winter snow to remain much longer, leading to the increase in glacial mass.

“In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound”, said glaciologist Bruce Molnia. “In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years”.

“On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface [in] late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying [did] not become snow free until early August.”

Molnia, who works for the US Geological Survey, said it’s been a “long time” since area glaciers have seen a positive mass balance — an increase in the total amount of ice they contain.

Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months.

Those records date from the mid 1700s, when the region was first visited by Russian explorers. Molnia estimates that Alaskan glaciers have lost about 15% of their total area since that time — an area the size of Connecticut.

One of the largest areas of shrinkage has been at the national park of Glacier Bay. When Alexei Ilich Chirikof first arrived in 1741, the bay didn’t exist at all — only a solid wall of ice. From that time until the early 1900s, the ice retreated some 50 miles, to form the bay and surrounding area.

Accordingly to Molnia, a difference of just 3 or 4 degrees is enough to shift the mass balance of glaciers from rapid shrinkage to rapid growth. From the 1600s to the 1900s, that’s just the amount of warming that was seen, as the planet exited the Little Ice Age.

Molnia says one cold summer doesn’t mean the start of a new climatic trend. At least years like this, however, might mark the beginning of another Little Ice Age.

As DailyTech reported earlier, Arctic sea ice this year has also increased substantially from its low in 2007.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25-27).

What’s in a name? We give them to dogs, cars, cows, and I’m sure someone somewhere gives them to trees. And even when we name our children, we care much more about how the name sounds with our surname than what it means. It is obvious, however, that names in the Bible had a much greater significance than they do now; in fact a person’s name was the very definition of that person. When Jacob was born, he was given the name “heel catcher” that literally described the manner in which he was born and also the deceptive nature by which he would live. When God revealed to Jacob that his life would be much more that heel-catching, he gave him the name Israel–”he who contends with God.”

We also hear in Scripture of praying in the name of Jesus, calling on the name of the Lord, and not taking the Lord’s name in vain, and we react to such statements much more foolishly than the Jews did who would refuse to utter, “Yahweh,” out of fear of transgressing the commandment. We flippantly tack on “In Jesus’ name” at the end of prayers, not realizing that it is when we pray in accordance to the very being and character of Christ that our prayers are answered not when we add a magical phrase. You will find much more success in your prayer life if you pray, “Conform me to the image of thy Son for thy glory; amen,” than “Lord, please give me a new car, in Jesus’ name; amen.”

All this is to say that when God gives something a name, he does it for a glorious and holy purpose. When God gave the name, “church,” to those he would call out and redeem, a certain reverence should have been granted to that name for his naming it thus alone. Furthermore, when Christ hung on the cross and shed his precious blood for the church, the price of the name “church” went up a million fold. I don’t know about you, but if the very God of the Universe died for the sake of something, I would be sure that I knew and used the correct definition of that for which he died.

In a previous post, we took a look at the origin of the Greek word for church, ekklesia, and noted that the word is a compound word meaning, “Those who have been called out.” This defintion being at the core of the church is significant because it makes the church at its core a personal and living entity rather than impersonal and lifeless one. Each member that composes the body of the Church has been chosen specifically by God before the foundation of the world and singled out in this life by his call through the Holy Spirit.

The question that we must ask ourselves at present is, “Does our present misdefinition of the church as the building with a steeple affect how the genuine church functions?” Or another way, “Do you think that our regarding the church as a building rather than the people who God has called to himself affects relationships within the church? I think that it must, for how much strife would vanish and how much more regard would we have for the each person in the church if we regarded each of them as particularly called by God? I think the impact would be profound indeed.

Let me offer this challenge to you this week: You know that person who is a member of your local body of believers who gets under your skin with his personality, who teaches something that you know is unbiblical, who looks at you funny, who voted against your proposed chair color at the last business meeting?—this week, instead of murmuring and talking about that person behind his back, look at that person as one who was called by God to be exactly where he is now. How will your attitude toward him change now that you look at him not as “that guy at church” but as “him who was chosen and called by God”?

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 1:1-7).

There is a certain ambiguity that one encounters with every mention of the term “church” at this present time roughly two thousand years after the Apostle Paul penned his letters to the saints dispersed throughout the Roman kingdom. Typically, that ambiguity is solved by the context of the conversation in which the term is mentioned. If one listens in on a conversation and hears the word “church” mentioned in the same sentence with basketball, barbecue chicken, committee meetings, and the like, that person can be pretty certain that the term “church” is to be defined as the building(s) where a certain group of self-identified Christians gather together to participate in various activities. On the other hand, if the term “church” is mentioned in the context of Jesus Christ and his bride, church discipline, holiness, and the like, one can be fairly certain that “church” in that instance is to be defined as the collective saints of God, called by him to holy and blameless before him. There also exists another key identifier, the Church Universal, which is unambiguously the whole of the redeemed, bought by Jesus Christ to be his spotless bride and to dwell with him forever in eternal bliss.

Confused yet?

Unfortunately, I believe it is history, not Scripture, that is responsible for the confusion that we now encounter with the term “church” and like a tumor, has attached itself to the word and has usurped the proper meaning and replaced it with an improper one. “What is the big deal?” you might ask, “What impact can the meaning of one word have on the whole of Providential history?” The impact has been great indeed, and I believe that an evaluation of our present definitions of the “church” put beside what the Bible says concerning the church will reveal the gravity of that which we regard as trivial and trite.

For the sake of brevity, I will address our definition of the church with what Scripture says concerning the church on future posts and gauge the significance of our misdefinition:

1. The Church is Called by God
2. The Church is Bought by the Blood of Jesus Christ
3. The Church is the Bride of Christ
4. The Church Is To Be the Holy and Blameless
5. The Church is To Love Its Members

Oftentimes, the best way to understand a word is to understand where it comes from. In our case, the original word for church, ekklesia, is particularly insightful as to its original definition. Ekklesia is a compound word in the Greek, composed of a preposition, “ek,” which means “from, after, out,” and “kleth-,” which means “to call, to bid.” Therefore, at its base, ekklesia means “called out,” or when applied to people, as it is, “those who have been called out.” This definition by itself raises two very points–those who are of the ekklesia have been called by someone and have been called out for something. The first chapter of Ephesians, vv. 3-10 gives some insight on these two points:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Though in this text we do not see verbatim “those who have been called,” we do clearly see the idea of the church and the definitions of the aforementioned two variables. First, we see that those who have been called have been called by the Father through Jesus Christ. The Apostle writes, “Even as he [the Father] chose us in him [Jesus Christ] before the foundation of the world.” It is the Father who has called the Church through his instrument, Jesus Christ, before the world existed.

In this statement alone we can deduce that the Church is established outside of the power of men (for it is establish by God), it is established through an intermediate (i.e. Jesus Christ), it is established outside of the dominion of man (i.e. the world), and it is established outside of the existence of man (i.e. before the creation of the world). In other words, the Church is an institution established and called by God alone beyond the realm of human influence.

Second, we see what the Church is called to. The Apostle writes: “He chose us in him . . . that we should be holy and blameless before him.” In other words, the
Church’s purpose in being called out is for the creation of a holy people that will be to praise of God’s glorious grace through the work of his intermediary, Jesus Christ.

This is the Church at its very base. From this base I build the rest of my evaluation of the doctrine of the Church.

Perhaps one of the more difficult things, and indeed unexpected things, in my marriage has been getting involved in a particular “church.” Since getting married early last year, the wife and I have attended regularly two “churches” (one at the beginning of our marriage, the other in the latter months) on Sunday all the while not acknowledging those “churches” at any other point in the week. We had rather flippantly begun the membership process (which by God’s providence was never completed) at the latter “church” across the street from our home simply because of its proximity and lack of heterodoxy, which, in retrospect, seem not to be the two most important factors when joining a “church.” And now again, the wife and I find ourselves on the brink of making the ever important decision of joining a particular “church” and finds ourselves a bit more sober-minded this time around.

Before taking the plunge of “church” membership, I have decided that before we join the aforementioned “church” that I would evaluate first the Bible’s picture of the church and then place that picture against our present picture of the “church” (which my present opinion you might have ascertained by the ridiculous amount of quotation marks). I will share my thoughts with you here, so stayed tuned.