paradoxum

It's funny how popular rhetoric and semantics can quickly be devoid of meaning. Just like the term "orthodox". It's unfortunate. But it's the whole bandwagon thing...

Forget "missional". Now that it's the hot term, I'm jumping ahead to the next one. I'm "INCARNATIONAL" baby.

Being missional is just like any other good thing in our faith. It can so easily be turned into something that will give us favor with God. Instead of doing all those "ministries" inside the church to avoid feeling like we've let God down, now we do "mission" outside the church.

It still boils down to motive. Why do we do what we do? Is it out of a sense of duty and trying to "please God", or is it from gratitude for the amazing grace God has showered on us?

Missional for me runs the gamut of hands-on mission work (I just returned from a workcamp in southern Kentucky) to empowering people to do this kind of work themselves to working to change the systems and powers that keep people in their cycles of poverty and abuse. I do this because it draws me closer to God. Jesus came to the lowest of the low and I strongly believe that we who advocate for the poorest and the weakest of people truly become the hands of feet of Jesus in the world.

I always have to keep myself from becoming a creature of law. If I am showing God's grace to people I serve, I have to keep connecting with that grace myself. I have served churches where they were so social justice minded, they were really not very good for missions. I've also served churches that were very missions concious, but had no sense of social justice. I think that law happens most in both kinds of churches. We in the church business have to work very hard to maintain a balance. We have to worship corporately as a church. We also have to get out of the pews.

As an aside, I have taken youth on a summer mission trip the past 3 years, and the trips are so popular, we have only one driveably distant choice this year during our week (June 15-20). I haven't decided if this is good or bad yet.

Jake, it definitely IS the "bandwagon" thing. Kind of like when I jump OFF the Panthers "bandwagon"...which hasn't had that many ppl on it in the past few yrs!

Bob, LOL...I hear ya brother!

Co_heir, exactly right...you're stealing my thunder!

Dan, it's always good to read your comments. I hope things are going well and it sounds like they are! Our ability to make anything good into LAW is incredible isn't it? I'm continually amazed at my ability to ground so much of my life in my own self-righteousness! I may even start off well...and before I know it, self-righteousness is trying to sneak in. God's blessing on those mission trips...especially the youth one...I remember how life changing they were for me.

Sorry. :)

Well said. I just found your blog and I find it refreshing!

Hey Sarah! Thanks for visiting, and thanks for the kind comment.

I think ALL good things can be misused and misrepresented, and I think we just have to deal with that. We can either sit back and watch it happen, or we can embody their true meaning.

Pastor, much agreed. Our enemy is a master at turning good into evil - but our God is even "more better" as he is the master at turning evil into good.

Of course, I also think it's wise to understand (as much as possible) how to avoid misusing good things. I hope to explore that a little more in depth in this series.

I hope by saying "turning good into evil" you're not talking about social justice and missional churches. How can people giving their lives to make the world a better place be evil? No "missional" or "emergent" churches that I know are saying that people are right with God based on how much good they are doing. And maybe we are too quick to dismiss Jesus' words regarding the sheep and the goats, or the house built on the sand.

I have only read a couple of these blogs on this site, but fr'nklin seems to always to be afraid of things turning into 'law'. Why does the word 'law' leave such a bad taste in your mouth?

Law often in the NT refers to the Torah. (though not always in Paul's letters).

Read Psalm 1 replacing 'law' with Torah. How do you think God feels about law? His law. His Torah. His words of life.

Psalm 119:32 - "I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free."

Psalm 119:72 "The Torah (law) from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold."

In Jewish discussion, the Torah was known as God's way. It was known as God's truth. It was known as words of life.

The way, the truth, and the life.

See my post in response to "The problem with the Emergent Church":

http://paradoxum.squarespace.com/journal/2007/10/1/the-real-problem-with-the-emergent-church.html#comment1040349

Bryan, I share the concern with things turning into law. I grew up in churches that motivated their people by a feeling of guilt if you didn't do what you were told. Grace was for salvation, after that you "pleased God" by toeing the party line and following everything the church taught. Some of the things we were told to do were good, but the motivation for doing them was wrong. Instead of doing good works because we were grateful to God for redeeming us and because he was forming us into the image of Christ, we did them because we were afraid of what the pastor or youth leader might say.

Doing good works is right and necessary. If they are a result of God's grace and his Spirit working in us, then they are a good thing. If they are motivated by anything else, then they become a type of law.

Bryan, thanks for visiting. I appreciate your comments. As far as "turning good into evil" I don't doubt that any institution or individual is capable of doing that. However, I thought my comment about that was very obvious - Pastor had commented that we can often turn good things into evil things, and I was saying that YES that happens. Good things are often used for ill purposes and churches...regardless of their strip can do that. No one was accusing any church or movement of doing that. It was a simple comment into which you read quite a bit.

For the record, I believe that believers are FREE from the law through the death of Jesus Christ. The law was a schoolmaster given to bring us to Christ, and now that I am a son, I don't need the school master.

I love the Jewish people (I've spent much time in Israel), but I am not Jewish. I am unashamedly Christian and I love the OT because it points on every page to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, not the Law / Torah. The rabbinic writers were wrong about that.

Co_Heir...You said it more eloquently than I. Thanks for writing for me!;)

To clarify what I believe about "the law" let me quote the WCF which calls Israel under the law, "a church underage".

VI. Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts and lives; so as, examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against sin, together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of His obedience. It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin: and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve; and what afflictions, in this life, they may expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law. The promises of it, in like manner, show them God's approbation of obedience,and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof: although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works. So as, a man's doing good, and refraining from evil, because the law encourages to the one and deters from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law: and not under grace.

VII. Neither are the forementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the Gospel, but do sweetly comply with it; the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely, and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, requires to be done.

I'll stop stealing your thunder. :)

Are we really FREE from the law?

Even Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism tell us that obedience to God's law is our response to the salvation we have in Christ. Why do churches make a big stink about posting the 10 Commandments (the summary of the whole of Torah), if we are free from the law?

Of course we obey it with God's grace - I'm not saying saying otherwise, and I like what John Piper has to say about that in Future Grace. Moment by moment we are dependent on the grace of God. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- NOT BY WORKS, so no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus TO DO GOOD WORKS, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

It's both-and. We are saved by grace through faith. And the result is so that we can live lives of obedience (good works), which also stem out of faith and grace.

But obedience to what? To God's ways. To God's commands. To say I'm free from the law is like saying - now I can do whatever I want, hate, murder, lust, adultery - that law was for those people and that time. God laid his laws down as an "eternal decree". Jesus said whoever doesn't keep the least of these commandments will be least in the kingdom of heaven. Was he making that up?

When he referred to himself as the way and the truth and the life, he was calling himself the Torah made flesh. The Torah lived out among us.

1 John 2:5-6 says "If anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him: whoever claims to live in him, must walk as Jesus did."

How did Jesus walk? In obedience to the Torah, to the Word of God, otherwise he wouldn't have been sinless.

Obviously we can never be exactly like him, because we are not perfect, but that doesn't mean that with the help of the grace of God we don't try (not out of earning anything, but in response to God's love and because we love God and his ways).

I know it gets tricky when talking about this stuff, and some people want to turn things into "works" that shouldn't be - it's our nature to want to earn things.

But I think when we throw around the word 'law' all the time like it's a bad word without the context that it often refers to Torah and to God's ways, we do a disservice to people. How are we supposed to know how to live? God's word tells us.

I'm not Jewish either, but according to Paul, as a Gentile, I'm grafted into the olive tree. The olive tree is not Jesus, but Israel. And it's the tree that supports the branches, not the other way around.

In Romans 13:8 Paul says, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law (torah). The commandments, 'do not commit adultery', 'do not murder', 'do not steal', 'do not covet', and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (torah)."

Why is Paul concerned about us living in a way to "fulfill" the law? I thought we were free from it? I thought we didn't have to care about it anymore? No - it's a response to God's grace, and by God's grace, that we continue to live in obedience to God's ways, his law.

Interesting discussion about this regarding: Gospel and Law - a discussion for the Emergent Church between Tony Jones and Sean McDowell is found here:
http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php?ArticleID=2575

Don't want to overrun your forum - just wanted to add my 2 cents (however imperfect).

Bryan, perhaps we could agree that we are free from sin. Where does sin get its power? I think Scripture suggests that sin gets its power from the LAW. Does this make the law evil? No.

However, the point I have made many times on this blog (especially of late) is that any time we preach the Scriptures in a way that simply leads us to moralism, is, in my view, going back to preaching "the law". It revives the power of sin if you will. I think this type of preaching is rampant in the evangelical church. It's a type of preaching that says to just do what Scripture says...and doesn't lead us first and last to Christ...and then, in light of his glory, show us that we are FREE to obey him.

Also, you talk a lot about Torah, and the logic you follow is not a logic I find in NT writers. The logic of NT writers doesn't seem to follow what you suggest - we are to be like Jesus and Jesus was a Torah keeper so we should be Torah keepers. You just don't hear that logic in the N.T.

In Paul's writings I hear a lot of talk about God and the Gospel followed by exhortatiosn on how we should live in light of those truths.

Of course, I do agree with your "both/and" comment. I certainly don't think you can "do whatever you want", but in essence, you can...because anyone made new IN CHRIST will WANT to do what? Live a life of holiness, and yes, I believe the moral law of God reveals to us the beauty of our Holy God. It's perhaps, again, a matter of focus. As I focus on the GOSPEL, I am motivated to love, delight and grateful obedience to HIM. Yes?

However, preaching that stops short of showing me the MOTIVATION...preaching that focuses on "how to" and spends it's time exhorting me to "do good works" but fails to take me first and last to the Gospel is preaching that to me leaves me at "the law".