The #1 Secret of Spiritual Christians

Do you know what thing is most likely to cause you to crash and burn in your life?

There’s two kinds of people in church: spiritual people, and people who are just pretending to be spiritual.  Last week I had the honor of guest preaching, and I shared the #1 Secret of Spiritual Christians.  Click here to download the mp3.

Four main streams of New Testament Christianity converge on how they answer the question of what it means to be “spiritual”.  You can make sure that you are a spiritual Christian instead of just pretending to be one.  The sermon was preached in the context of our local church community, so I am able to take a number of things for granted.  Specifically, I am assuming that my listeners want to respond to the Biblical message.  But even if you’re not a Christian, take a listen and give me your feedback.

You can also visit the Cornerstone Church Sermon Archive for streaming audio and powerpoint of the sermon, as well as all the sermons from other spiritual Christians that have preached throughout the year.

 

Do you know what sin is most likely to cause you to crash and burn in your Christian life?

Imagine standing before the judgment seat of Christ as He examines your heart.  He’s looking to see if He was truly Lord of your life.  He examines all of your actions, your words, your thoughts, your motives.  He’s looking to see if you’ve become like Him.  He’s looking for one thing.

There’s two kinds of people in church: spiritual people, and people who are just pretending to be spiritual.  Today we’re going to look at the #1 secret of Spiritual Christians, and how you can make sure you are one, instead of just pretending to be spiritual.

N.T. Wright’s Doctrine of Justification – In Layman’s Terms!

You know there’s something exciting going on in the Evangelical world when John Piper devotes an entire book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright, to refuting N.T. Wright’s doctrine of Justification.  It’s even more exciting when N.T. Wright responds with his own book, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision.  But that excitement deflates like a week-old birthday balloon when you get bogged down just trying to understand what Wright is even saying.

Consider this recent interview with Wright.  The first commentor says, “I read the interview a couple of time and still don’t really understand what what he is trying to say.”  The third comment says, “I wish I had the time and energy to understand this debate…  I just don’t get what Wright is trying to say…”

I have read a lot of N.T. Wright’s works over the years.  As with many great theologians through history, his strength is also his weakness: he writes in a way to make you feel you have just read something greatly profound, but you’re not quite sure entirely what he meant.  This leaves his writings ambiguous enough that it is hard to pin him down about issues he’s almost addressing, but not quite.

So I’ve compiled a short list of the talking points of N.T. Wright’s doctrine of justification.  I’ve tried to cut out as much theological language as I can to help you get down to the real core of the issue instead of getting stuck before you even get started.

Here’s what Wright believes, in good theological fashion, stated in 5 points:

1. God doesn’t give you righteousness – When God justifies a Christian, he’s saying, “This guy’s okay.”  He’s not transferring Jesus’ righteousness into your moral bank account, a concept theologians call, “imputed righteousness”.  Righteousness is a status that can be granted, not a commodity that can be traded.

2. “Righteousness of God” always refers to God’s character – Since righteousness is not a commodity, it’s not something God can give away.  It basically means that God is always a good guy.  Wright calls it God’s “covenant faithfulness”.  But don’t get hung up on this idiosyncratic definition because what he means is similar to Bill Bright’s first spiritual law: God loves you [and all his creation] and has a wonderful plan for your life [and all his creation].

3. In the Bible, Justification talk always occurs in discussions about who can and can’t belong to your church – In discussions of “the plan of salvation”, the Bible uses different concepts than Justification.  Justification is a quick way of saying, “Look, if God said this dude’s okay, then you better treat him like a brother and not like an outcast.”

4. On the last day, we will be judged by the fruits of the Spirit in our lives – A number of biblical passages state that final judgment will be by “works” (e.g. Rom 2.16, 14.10; 2 Cor 5.10; Eph 6.8).  A Christian’s hope comes from being indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  Without the Holy Spirit, the entire Christian life falls apart.

5. Don’t forget Abraham! – The gospel is not, “Adam brought us sin, but Jesus saves us from sin.”  God’s answer to sin started when he created a renewed people, beginning with Abraham, and followed by Moses, David, the prophets, etc.  We become part of that people the same way Abraham did: by faith.  Don’t jump from Genesis 3 straight to Matthew 27 when you try to understand God’s story.  Salvation is not just about personal forgiveness but about becoming part of God’s covenant people.

We can sum up the main contentions in two statements:

• Piper and Wright’s other critics want to protect the traditional Protestant view that salvation consists of personal forgiveness
• Wright emphasizes that salvation is just as much (or moreso) becoming part of the church

Or:

• For Piper, it is most important for people to understand that they can’t earn God’s favor
• For Wright, it is most important for people to understand that they must be transformed by the Holy Spirit

It seems that Wright would like to minimize the differences, arguing that he is saying basically what protestant theologians have always said, though shifting the language around a bit.  Piper wants to maximize the differences, which is what prompted his initial book.  Piper sees Wright as a threat to the traditional view.

Are You Longwinded?

So am I.  I am trying to teach myself to write shorter blog posts that don’t require so much editing to get them how I want them.  The post I was working on tonight is too long, not finished yet, and it’s time for bed.

Are you a longwinded blogger?  How do you overcome the temptation to write 10 times as much as you ought to?

Here’s a Quick Way to Understand the Flow of History

Do you ever get overwhelmed with the immensity of history?  I took a course on Byzantine history in college and after a few weeks I was blown over by the sheer timespan the course covered – about 1000 years.

Whether your studying American history, the Han dynasty of China, or the history of ancient Egypt, the difficulty is wrapping your mind around a story whose main characters keep changing.  After all, a person only lives a certain number of years, but the history of nations takes much, much longer.

Moreover, the people that make a difference in a generation were influenced by the events of their childhood, when others were the influencers, who were themselves influenced by people in their childhood.

Here’s an easy way to to break up the flow of history in a way that lets you understand who’s who, and what their time-frame is as an individual.  I propose viewing the world through a grid of 25-year periods.  So each century gets four periods.

In general, an individual gets three periods if they live a full life.

1. The first period is their childhood, where they generally don’t accomplish anything.  If they do, this in itself is notable.
2. The second period, from 25-years-old to 50-years-old, is generally the professional period.  A person will begin to make their mark on the world.  Often this is when a person will publish a ground-breaking work that they will spend the rest of their life working out.
3. The third period, from 50-75, isthe expert period.  By this point you’ve worked out the bugs and you really have something to say.  Most people who have changed the world significantly have done so in these years.
4. From 75-100 are the bonus years.  Most people do not have the chance to do much in these years either because they are unable or are dead.  So if you are still changing the world after 75, you are a notable individual.

In terms of world history, a person is influenced by their childhood generation.  But they are also influenced by the 25-year period before they were born, and to a lesser extent, the 25-year period before that.  These were your parents’ generation and your grandparents’ generation.

Let’s take a quick look at a random historical figure using the grid to understand history.  We’ll take the philsopoher Averroes as ourexample.  Wikipedia says he lived from 1126-1198.  Here is the way I would understand his life:

1076-1100 – Grandparents’ generation
1101-1125 – Parent’s generation
1126-1150 – Childhood generation
1151-1175 – Professional period; he begins his translation work of Aristotle and writes some of his most important works
1176-1200 – Expert period; his philosophy is established and he is merely working out the details; in my mind he lived until about 1200, though technically he was a couple years short of it.

Hope this helps you get a grasp of world history.  If you use it, you will find it is a quick-and-dirty way to grasp the major facts of a person’s life quickly.

The Return of Alhaj

Welcome back to Alhaj!  I had interactedwith him for a few months back in 2007.  Then one day his blog disappeared and I didn’t hear from him again.  Having turned into a pseudo-blogger myself, I only pop back in every so often to see what’s up.  Today I see that Alhaj has left me a number of comments.  While I don’t have time right now to respond, I want to at least leave a quick note.  Alhaj, I will be happy to converse with you again.  Thank you for stopping back.

The Value of an Apple a Day

I have been reading The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource in order to become better at my day job.  The author, Jeffrey Gitomer, gives lots of little tidbits and ideas to get you thinking.  I came across a quote today that got me thinking.  I thought it worth sharing with my readers.  He writes, “An hour of learning a day will make you a world class expert at anything in five years.“  Now of course there’s some hyperbole here.  You can’t be a world-class expert in literally anything, but I’d bet you can become quite close to expert in quite a lot of things.  I read a Rick Warren quote that said that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and underestimate what we can accomplish in ten years.

The hard part is to pick just one thing to focus in on.  I want to be an expert in about a dozen different things, and every one seems like the most important thing while I am thinking about it.  I am challenged to narrow it down to one.  How about you?  What would you like to become an expert in?  Are you willing to make it a priority?

I Gave Up the Liturgical Calendar for Lent

Why is it that all the Bible and theology blogs — whether on the right or on the left – insist on being so dang tied to the liturgical calendar. I grew up in a liturgical church. I hated every single stupid minute of it.  Liturgy is an easy way for a pastor to get away with not thinking — after all, we know what we do in each part of the year; no point in seeking God on it or anything.  And all through the blogosphere, happy easter, blah blah blah.  Like I care.  As my friends at church say every year at Christmastime, Constantine is the reason for the Season. 

Why John Dominic Crossan Cannot Be Taken Seriously

This video serves as a great wrap-up to my week of meditations on Fundamentalism.  I am not a Fundamentalist, but I have friends that are self-described Fundamentalists.  I am more positive towards Fundamentalism than probably any of my friends on the internet, though not uncritically so.  So I write this post in defense of my friends, the Fundamentalists, just as I would defend the orthodoxy of my online friends to the Fundamentalists.

Dom Crossan is an entertaining scholar.  He is generally a lot of fun to listen to.  Better is one hour in a Crossan lecture than thousands elsewhere.  But in this video, Dom demonstrates that he is a schmuck.  He has created a straw man of Fundamentalism.  No Fundamentalist believes that “true” Christians should persecute “false” Christians.  This is because, as Dom so aptly points out, all Fundamentalists are (so-called) literalists.  And it is difficult to mistake “turn the other cheek” or “love your enemy”, especially when you are committed to a hermeneutic of literalism.  Fundamentalists are quite fond of the Bible, so this is not likely to be a point that is missed.  The Fundamentalist way to deal with unbelievers is to preach the gospel to them.  So while Crossan may find their behavior obnoxious, it can hardly be described as persecution of unbelievers.

It’s not as if this is the first time Crossan has overstated his point.  A few years ago in a lecture in Madison he stated that if Jesus were in the US today we would crucify him again.  Now if you believe Jesus was predestined to be a sacrifice for sin, you have reason to agree (as Fundamentalists would be inclined to do).  But apart from theological reasons, I find it very unlikely that Jesus would be crucified today.  During the Q&A time I challenged him on this and he quickly backpeddled.  Okay, he admitted, Jesus wouldn’t be executed but he would be marginalized; we would put him on Oprah with a whole panel of people who believe they are the Messiah.  Everyone laughed.  But being marginalized is a far cry from being executed.

The fact is that nuanced comments to the public don’t get much publicity.  That’s why Rush Limbaugh gets so much press.  It’s what makes Dom Crossan so fun to listen to, but it also makes it hard to take him seriously.

Happy Thursday!

Hope you’re not feeling too Maundy today.

Critique of Fundamentalism

I mentioned yesterday that I have come to appreciate much that is good within the Fundamentalist movement.  But this does not mean that I accept everything about the movement unquestioningly.  I am still disturbed by the tendency to make culturally relative issues into absolutes.  I still wonder if they unwittingly place barriers against the movement of the Holy Spirit in their churches.  But I think they are sincere and generally on target with issues I would deem important.

The primary issue I have with Fundamentalism is the same issue they have with Evangelicalism: separation.  Fundamentalists insist on doctrinal purity, and will not associate with churches that do not do the same.  This includes secondary separation – separating from churches who refuse to separate; and tertiary separation – separating from churches who refuse to separate from churches who refuse to separate.  I suppose the levels could be multiplied indefinitely.  Before my association with Fundamentalists, I assumed that separation meant retreating from the culture, as I told the story of the movement a few days ago.  But my Fundamentalist friends gave me a different definition.  They are no longer opposed to engaging the culture.  The issue for them is: whom will you work with?  Evangelicals (they say) have no qualms about working with theological liberals.  They point to a Billy Graham Crusade in New York in the 50s as evidence.  The liberal churches partnered together with Graham and he did not turn them away.

Certainly the Fundamentalists have a point.  We cannot work together with everyone.  Some things put a church or denomination outside of Orthodox Christianity.  The Bible is clear that there are certain beliefs which define Christianity, and denial of those beliefs constitutes a denial of Christian theology.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.  But the Bible is just as clear that there is to be unity within the true church.  No part of the church has the right to reject any other part of the church simply because they disagree.  Or as Paul wrote to the Corinithian church, the eye cannot say to the hand, “Because you are not an eye, you are not part of the body.”  Fundamentalists err on the side of too much separation.  And this is not a minor error.  It is absolutely wicked.  It is not acceptable to draw boundaries where God has not established them.  Impure separation is the major sin of which Fundamentalists must repent.