Soapbox

I’ve noticed that when Jesus was teaching general principles people seemed both interested and positive, but when He got specific regarding the implications of His those principles to real life, everything from confusion to hostility set in. For example, the crowds loved the beatitudes in concept,

And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at His doctrine; for He taught as one having authority . . . (Matthew 7:28-29).

But when the Lord explained what discipleship would mean in real life for those who professed a desire to follow Him, the reaction was quite different,

Now when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, You lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute unto the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful; for he was very rich. (Luke 18:22-23, John 9:57-62).

As C.S. Lewis once put it, Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.

I will admit that what I am writing in this article is, for me, a soapbox. Though I am aware of the danger of imbalance which can happen by focusing on one truth to the exclusion of others, I also believe strongly that there are certain truths which have been lost and are in desperate need of recovery. In relation to the practical expression and outreach of the church of Jesus Christ, it is my personal belief that the importance of this particular soapbox cannot be overstated.

I touched on this subject in an earlier article and may draw in part from that writing, but what I plan to present in this article is intended to be more functional and comprehensive that what has proceeded. I have no desire to offend anyone, but I cannot in good conscience forgo doing the best I can to make clear the implications of what I am learning in this area of Scripture.

With these things in mind, let’s begin with the following passage in John 10: 37-38,

If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me. But if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know, and believe, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.

In my opinion these verses do an outstanding job of giving us a clear picture from God’s viewpoint of what matters most when it come to providing a testimony to the truth. Here’s what I mean. While we remain on this planet, God’s will for us, by His grace, is to convince the world that we are His and that salvation can only come through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Satan’s primary objective with regard to us in this matter is to destroy that testimony so we convince no one of anything.

If words alone could persuade people that we belong to God and are telling the truth, our entire nation would be converted. Information is not lacking. But as John wrote in another context,

My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:18)

Immediately preceding this verse John explains exactly what he means by this. In 1 John 3:17 he wrote,

Whoever has this world’s good and sees his brother have need, and closes his compassion from him, how dwells the love of God in him?

This is extremely practical. Telling people we love them, or God loves them, but doing next to nothing to help them is meaningless. People are not convinced of anything by words alone. Jesus knew exactly what was needed for people to honestly consider His claims. He didn’t expect even the genuine seeker to believe Him if His life was not in itself evidence of the truth He was trying to communicate.

People often wonder why the church in China or the Middle East is growing so much more rapidly than the church in the West. We talk at least as much as they do via radio, television, the internet, etc. We’re flowing with information. But they are flowing with life. Consider this familiar passage in 1 Corinthians,

Though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge . . . and have not love, it profits nothing.

In the West people have heard the information and because of the lives of the informers, they have rejected it. But in the early church, that which was communicated matched what was lived.

Notice again the passage quoted earlier in 1 John 3,

Whoever has this world’s good and sees his brother have need, and closes his compassion from him, how dwells the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Are we to do these things only to avoid being considered hypocrites – saying one thing but living another? Partly. But mostly we want our lives to match our testimony for a much greater purpose than simply our reputation. In John 10, Jesus wanted the people of Israel to believe in Him. He didn’t want them to simply be impressed with His integrity. He wanted His life to substantiate His words so they would come to Him. We want our lives to be the evidence that what we say is true, not only for people to notice our consistency, but so they will believe us when we tell them they need the Savior.

Was the early church involved in what we might call informational outreach? In other words, did they run to and fro and witness for Christ? Of course. But unless something else had happened first, few would have listened.

Those who believed Peter’s message were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all. All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals and to prayer. A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. (Acts 2:41-47).

Let’s focus on a couple of key phrases in this passage: A deep sense of awe . . . and the Lord added daily.

What caused this deep sense of awe? Signs and wonders? To some extent, certainly, but before we look at what really captured their hearts, never forget the reason, as well as the results, of our Savior’s signs and wonders. Christ did miracles to authenticate his claim as the Messiah (Acts 2:22, 36; John 20:30-31; John 6:14). He also did them from pure compassion (Matthew 9:36; Mark 1:41; Luke 7:13-16). But as a means of drawing and sustaining disciples, signs and wonders have little impact. The same crowds that followed Him, attracted by His miracles, would eventually turn against Him and demand His crucifixion. Miracles are great for getting someone’s attention, but not so great for holding it.

In John 6:66-68 we see the following,

From that time many of His disciples went back and no longer walked with Him. . . Jesus asked the twelve, Will you also go away?

Peter didn’t say, Of course not! I’m not going anywhere. You can do miracles! If I’m ever sick, You can fix me. What Peter did say was, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

It wasn’t signs and miracles that held the disciples; it was the promise of life in Christ.

The sense of awe in Acts 2 was because of the evident love the disciples had for one another. During the life of Jesus the world saw a love it had never seen before; a love from above, not from beneath - overwhelming, unconditional, supernatural. That same life entered into the disciples at Pentecost by the Holy Spirit and continued to express itself to the next generation in Acts.

If you have a hard time believing this was really that awe-inspiring, imagine in your city, your community, a group of people gaining attention because they literally shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshipped, they rejoiced, they had peace and hope while living in a darkened world, they loved each other so much that no sacrifice was too great for any of them to make in order to help a brother or sister in need. Do you think that would get the world’s attention? When was the last time you saw that, anywhere? And this is just one example of what the world saw in Christ and later in His people. Love beyond comprehension, holiness, commitment and an otherworldliness that, as the Bible says, created a deep sense of awe.

Some people try to argue that what happened in Jerusalem in 33 AD was only for those people at that time. There are two very good reasons why that isn’t true.

First, we already read 1 John 3:18,

My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. Whoever has this world’s good and sees his brother have need, and closes his compassion from him, how dwells the love of God in him?

That’s exactly what was happening in Jerusalem. Are we saying that 1 John 3:18 was only for the 1st century church? Second, the early church historians and the church fathers talk about churches having all things common decades after Acts 2.

The issue isn’t an historical timeline; it’s a principle of how Christians love one another in a very practical way – in every generation. If our congregations would catch this vision there would not be one person in our churches who had a genuine need unmet. We’d see the reality of Acts in our churches, the city would hear about it, great grace and power would come, and many people would be saved. Our communities would say, Behold, how they love one another! They would be astonished. But they won’t be astonished if they don’t see it, and they won’t see it if we won’t do it.

Remember, this first church in Acts 2 was made up of brand new believers, not seasoned saints. So the argument of needing time to grow into this doesn’t hold water. They were simply living out the reality of the indwelling life of Christ. They were normal Christians. What does that make us?

The second phrase in Acts 2 we want to look at is,

And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

People were flocking to discover what this new life was all about. It was supernatural. It’s not normal for people to sacrifice for one another like that. The lives of the early disciples were convincing proof of the God Who indwelt them. When people saw the church being the church, they wanted an explanation. They were willing to believe the words because of the life they saw.

It seems we are unwilling to embrace this kind of personal sacrifice in our churches, so we develop outreaches and partnerships with the community hoping our experiments will get results. They do, in part. But, a much greater impact could be made by the church if she were living as a corporate expression of the cross; living life in the Spirit in relation to the members of her body. This was the way God got the world’s attention in Acts and I’m sure His way of doing things will always be more effective than ours.

We are genuinely motivated to reach the lost so we creatively engineer ways to move the church outside the box, but God’s way is to show the world and angels what the body of Christ really is. By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you love one another (John 13:35). He could have said, They will know you are my disciples if you develop creative ways to reach them. But He didn’t.

He knows that the world is looking for something from another world, not something that simply does outreach or demonstrates compassion to the community better than other 501c3 non-profit organizations. There are many people in our churches who are hurting on numerous levels. There are others in the congregation who have the ability to completely revolutionize these people’s lives and dignity. But it rarely happens.

When Christ came He made visible what was invisible. He revealed the Father Who indwelt Him. Jesus was God in the flesh. To come into relationship with Him was to come into relationship with God. To see Him was to see God. Now the church is to be that vessel of expressing the reality of an indwelling Christ. As the Father has sent Me, so now send I you (John 20:21 cp. John 17:18). But no matter what we profess or what we say, if we don’t love as He loved, few will believe us.

We wonder why our ingenious outreach programs fall on deaf ears. We rationalize and say we’re living in a secularized, post Christian society – nobody is interested in the truth anymore. That may be partly true, but the real reason nobody is listening is because we’re talking, not living, the truth.

The early church and many around the world today are willing to live their lives in the power of God, in denial of themselves and their comfort, simply for the sake of providing evidence by life that the gospel is true. If the church in the West could come to grips with the fact that when we have all knowledge and have not love it profits nothing, then we, along with our brothers and sisters in the persecuted church, will see Gods grace poured out on us as it was in the early church. For the church to effectively reach their community God’s way (not our way) the principle of John 10 and the historical reality of Acts 2 cannot simply be a good topic for discussion as we move forward with our programs and our excuses for not doing this.

What we have looked at in this writing is the way God chose to reach communities for Christ as recorded in the historical accounts in Acts and doctrinal instruction in the epistles (such as 1 John 3:18 or James 2:15-16).

Jesus made it clear that the only way the world will know we are His disciples is if we love one another as He loved us. He didn’t say they will know we are His disciples if we develop imaginative ways to reach them. They need to be astonished, not impressed. Our churches are impressive; the early church was astonishing. What drew the lost to Christ and captured the wonder of the first century world was their inability to explain the early church. Community outreach, Christian AA groups and rummage sales can be explained. But things were much different in the early church. There’s really no rational, programmatic, human explanation for Acts 2. Only God could do that.

The world will only be drawn to the Lord when, as they look at the church, they see another world (another King, another Presence, another Life). This is when Christ is glorified, because glorifying God happens when His own invisible nature is expressed visibly through His people. When there is no other explanation for the church except the presence and power of Christ, then true spiritual life is being seen. But there are other explanations for our Christianity (our compassion, creativity, sincere desire to follow the teachings of our sacred literature, etc.) These are all very human, and can be found in most religious thought and expression. We no longer need to operate from heaven, nor do we necessarily need heaven involved.

The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common . . . neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them . . . and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. (Acts 4:32ff)

And the result;

And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all. (Acts 4:33)

The 21st century church wants great power and grace but we don’t want to walk the path that gets us there. We want the resurrection without the cross. We have turned Christianity into a religion rather than a relationship while proclaiming vigorously that Christianity is a relationship not a religion. We’re playing church; the one thing we said we’d never do. We have become a religious system with observances of days, programs, rules, dress-codes (or at least dress-expectations), mid-week life groups, times for witnessing, and a universal Sunday morning agenda that changes little from church to church. We all know this is what God wants, right? Go to church on Sunday, follow the format, get involved in a small group, witness to your neighbors, and give money to support the continuance of this organization.

Listen to what Paul would say about this, You are observing days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain (Galatians 4:10). What is Paul’s problem? Why is he so concerned about what seems on the surface to be good, right, Bible-based, and even at least partially effective? The problem is this: The Galatians had begun to move from a spiritual movement of God to a definable religion of Man; from that which is natural and spontaneous to that which is programmed and scripted. In the early church, leadership was coming from heaven, not earth, but now the Spirit’s leading has been replaced by programmatic definition. The technical term for this is legalism. The unbelievers around Galatia weren’t seeing Christ in His church; they were seeing followers of Jesus attempting with great zeal and commitment to act out His teachings according to their own ideas of the way things should be – just like we’re doing in our generation.

I realize that churches can become extremely selfish and so focused on their own needs and wants they can no longer see the bigger picture of the mission field around them. What we see in the Bible is not a matter of either/or (evangelism or body life) it’s both, but with God’s priorities and leading in all things. The Lord is big enough and His grace provisions are sufficient to meet the needs of His children and to take the gospel into all the world. But the problem we now face in the West is a growing hardness and unwillingness to fully do either. They offer superficial treatments for my people’s wound. They give assurances of peace when there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14); and we let missionaries handle missions.

I’m afraid some skepticism will have to sneak in at this point. I’ve watched congregations hear and ignore these truths; many congregations. They tell me this is just my own personal soapbox and though they appreciate it, they do nothing to move toward implementing it. Polite but distant.

It’s not just my soapbox. It’s God’s own record of how and why He did what He did. What is both spontaneous and wonderful in third world countries is disregarded in the West as being either extremist or heretical. Insanity has been defined by Ben Franklin as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Rather than completely revamp the way we do church to bring it in line with what we see in the Bible, my guess (skeptically speaking, of course) is that we will continue to re-arrange the chairs in new, innovative designs and wonder why, with all our mega mania and outward show, nothing really changes – at least not spiritually. People in the church remain hurting and marginalized and the world watches, waiting and longing for something that will bring a deep sense of awe; something incomprehensible; something not of this world; something worth seeking out as a possible solution to the emptiness of life outside of Christ.

How will we explain to the Lord at His appearing that we saw His ways in the Scriptures but decided our ways would be better? How do we explain that when Paul said, Do good unto all men, but especially the household of the faith (Galatians 6:10) we decided to reverse that exhortation and spend most of our time and money on all men to the neglect of our own family in Christ (and note: 1 Timothy 5:8).

Some of our churches have shown the world how excited we are about missions (and we should be; anyone who has the image of Christ stamped within them will have a passion to reach the lost and will do everything in their power to do so), but we have failed to show them the awe-inspiring love that exists in the hearts of those indwelt by the resurrection life of Christ. Our testimony depends on our love being seen and felt and expressed in fullness and in joyful expectation of God’s grace being poured out. As is clearly seen in the passages we’ve discussed in Acts 2 and 4, love expressed in this way will have a much greater impact on the lost than all the outreach programs we could ever create.

Why can’t we trust that God knows the best way to reach those who are seeking Him? I feel that at some point we will need to take this much more seriously than we do now if we really want to see the Lord glorified in His church in the presence of a lost world and if we want to see more than superficial treatments for His people’s wounds.