Economy of Generosity

The apostle Paul’s parting words to the Ephesian elders: “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (acts 20.35). Could Jesus (or Paul) say anything more counter cultural to our culture today, particularly that last part? We might not like to admit it but practically speaking, don’t most of us live as if the opposite is true? That it is more blessed to receive than to give?

The materialism that invades our lives is not about how many material items one is able to distribute but how many he/she is able to accumulate. The aim of the American dream is not about another person’s prosperity but about one’s own. And its not about one’s own prosperity for the sake of enriching other people’s lives, its about prosperity for the sake of enriching one’s own life.

Yet clearly, based on Paul’s quotation of Jesus, God’s economy works so radically different than ours. It always about the other. It’s always about giving over receiving. And ironically its in this upside-down economy of generosity that one finds himself/herself truly blessed. Or according to the Swiss theologian Karl Barth’s favourite translation of blessed, the one who gives rather than receives is truly the lucky bum.

The Church as the People of God

What is the church?

I grew up in a Christian family, and so the language of the church was all around me. And as far I understood it the church was a building, and it was a service. It was a literal place I went to and a weekly event I attended. This definition served me well up until eventually I started to look through scripture and realized that were no mentions of church strictly as a service or a building. Obviously, this realization was perplexing, and so I searched the scriptures even more, asking, “Well ok, what is the church then if not a service and a building?” But this new question brought me another realization, that the Bible actually never says, “This is the Church…” A clear definition is never given. Though that is not say that God is silent on the church. He is anything but silent. He just speaks about in ways that are slightly more hidden or that require a closer look.

There are really two main ways that God speaks about His church in the New Testament: marks and metaphors; this is what the Church is like, and these are the marks or the fingerprints that church must have. So, I want to look briefly at some of those marks and metaphors, though before I do that I will try to give a simple and biblical definition of the church. The New Testament word that we translate as church is the Greek word ekklesia, which just means assembly or legislative body. It is a people or group with shared beliefs and/or a common identity. When it comes to the Christian body then, we ought to ask “What is the common identity? What is it that unites these people?”

In Ephesians chapter 5, speaking to husbands about the treatment of their wives, Paul brings up the church for his analogy and he says, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” If we are looking for what unites Christians, there it is, Christs sacrificial love. In other words, the church is a gathering of people who have received what Christ gave up, namely himself. Or to say it another way, the church is the community of the redeemed.

If that is an accurate description, which I am convinced it is, then the church is even bigger than we could imagine. It is everyone who has been redeemed over all places and all time. It is a universal community. Still God seemed to have in mind that this community of redeemed people would also exist in smaller, local contexts. So, in Romans as Paul is giving his final greetings, he tells his recipients to greet Prisca and Aquila, and the church that meets “in their house” (Romans 16.5). Likewise, in his letter to the Colossians he says, “Give my greetings to the brothers3 at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house” (Colossians 4.15). Clearly, from the beginning then the church was a universal group of believers, and a local gathering of believers. Christians were spiritually connected as brothers and sisters across the known world and yet they also belonged to a local group of Christians with whom they could live out the metaphors and marks of the church.

The People of God

There are at least 96 metaphors in the New Testament saying essentially, “This is what the Church is like.” From those 96 just take one, The People of God.

Listen to the language of 1 Peter, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2.9-10). What stands out to me as I read that passage is the claim God makes upon Christians. He calls them, “A people for his own possession,” and then ends by telling them directly, “You are God’s people.” It stands out particularly because I have heard the language spoken before, but spoken about Israel.

In Exodus 19 God gives this conditional promise to Israel, “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine” (Exodus 19.5). In Deuteronomy Moses says something similar to them, saying “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7.6). In both references God’s promised blessing to Israel, if they would walk in obedience to Him, is that they would be His people. Now stop for a second and think of what that means, that they would be His people. It does not mean that He was going to make a bunch of individuals that belong to Him separately. No, it means that He was going to make them into a community that belonged to him, into a people group that was His, like a tribe or a nation. God was going to make Israel into a tribe or a nation that would be for His own treasured possession.

Think also about what it means that they would be His people. What does it mean to belong to God? Don’t overthink it. What does it mean for a husband to say to his wife, “You are mine.” It is not suppose to be an oppressive or objectifying statement. Instead, it says, “I will be your home. I will protect you. I will care for a nurture you.” It is a statement of cherishing. When God promises Israel that they will be His own people that is exactly what He is expressing. If you doubt that just listen to how God speaks of Israel in other places in the Old Testament. “But you shall be called, ‘My delight is in Her’” (Isaiah 62.4). “He kept them as the apple of His eye” (Deuteronomy 32.10). What a thing then to be called God’s people!

As it would happen Israel disobeyed and failed over and over to keep God’s covenant, and so judgement comes. Still, even in the midst of judgement, God does not forget about His people. He promises them through the prophets that He will have mercy and that He will one day restore them. Jeremiah 31 reads like this, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31.33).

The New People of God

And then Christ comes, and He dies on the cross. And in His death, He wipes away sin. He brings forgiveness. But it is not just to make a bunch of individually forgiven and separated people. He substitutes Himself in the place of sinners to recreate and reclaim His people, and this time in a way that their failure will never cut them off from Him again. So then out of Christ and through the cross comes this renewal of Israel as God’s own people again, only this time it doesn’t stop with Israel, it is worldwide. It is everyone, every tribe, tongue and nation who trusts in Christ’s sacrifice. They are incorporate into God’s people, so that the apostle Paul, referring to the gentiles, can quote the prophet Hosea, ““Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people’” (Romans 9.25).

This is the Church then, the fulfillment of the promise that Israel would be His people again. This is what Christ died to create, a new Israel. A people who can once again be called the apple of God’s eye.

Now isn’t that so different then the idea that the church is a building or a service?

The Church - Why Bother Studying It?

There is a tragically interesting situation in western Christian culture right now, and it is this: an increasing number of people who are not only leaving the church, but who are leaving behind any religious affiliation whatsoever. They have grown tired of religion in general (at least as they understand it) and they no longer want to be connected to it or with it in anyway. And so they are departing. This group has come to be labelled as the nones; those who belong to nothing; those who are no longer identified with any organized religion.

The nones are on a staggering rise. Today, for every one person that had no religious affiliation and now does, four people leave the church and become a none. Just between 2007 and 2014, while Christianity in America was declining, the number of nones rose literally by millions. The largest portion of them were millennials (22–37-year-olds), but it wasn’t limited to just that demographic. The rise also included baby boomers and those in generation X. In other words, the nones were and are crossing all generational boundaries.

At the same time that this exodus of nones is occurring, there is also this group who wants to continue to embrace Jesus and to identify as Christians but like the nones, they don’t want the church. They argue, and maybe rightly at times, that the Christian church has become politicized by agendas and sides and has been infiltrated by televangelist like preachers seeking to make gains off the backs of religion and religious people. The only way forward is to liberate themselves from the church and get back to the simplicity of Jesus and His Word. No creeds; no traditions; no buildings; no religiously infused positions; just Jesus.

Add to that this group as well: those who identify as Christians and who are remaining as participants in and of the church but who don’t see it is as a primary priority or necessity for the Christian life. They are the products of an individualistic age and culture, where there is a primacy of the individual over and above the corporate, where everything is about personal freedoms, personal experiences, self-interest and self-help. To them (which is probably all of us to some degree), church is great if you want it, but it’s a voluntary choice. In the list of priorities, church comes after one’s personal experience and relationship with Jesus.

Don’t we see this priority of the individual even in our evangelism? We say everything about making a decision for Jesus and almost nothing about being incorporated into a church, because that’s secondary to the personal experience and ultimately optional.

The Situation

So here we are then. We have professing nones leaving the church; professing Christians leaving the church and professing Christians staying in the church but not seeing its importance. All of that tells me that we need not to develop more strategic programs to attract people and keep them, but rather to develop and share a right theological understanding of the church. We need people who understand what they are apart, or what they are being invited into. I am convinced that if we could see the church even a sliver of how God sees it, we wouldn’t run from it no matter how hurt or offended we got.

Did you know that in all the areas of theological study over the last two-thousand years, one of the least studied areas or subjects has been the church? Scholars speak of ecclesiology (the study of the church) as being in its “pre-theological phase.” And it shows, doesn’t it? We don’t know if the church is a building, a service or a group of people. We are not sure where a bible study stops being a bible study and becomes a church. We don’t want to be members of the church because that doesn’t seem right to us. Still, many of us are dedicated Sunday attenders, unless there is a special event. On snowy days many make statements like, “Church for is on the ski hill.” One group says the primary function of the church is worship, while another group says its social justice. When it comes to understanding the church, we are so confused!

If you go to a Christian bookstore today you will find lots of writing on the church, but almost all of it will be practical: how to plant a church; how to attract people to church; how to lead a church; how to be a missional church. There is a big concern for how to do church and a seemingly little concern for understanding it biblically. That means for the average Christian and maybe even the average pastor, there is little biblical knowledge of who and what the church truly is according to God’s Word. This makes it very easy to not care about the church, and very hard to promote the church. It makes it very easy for the church to become whatever humans think it should be, and very hard to see when it has actually stopped being a biblical church.

The Hope

All of that to say, in this short series I want to ask the theological questions: What is the church? What is its mission? What is its structure? Etc. And I want to look to the Bible for the answers to those questions. My hope is that, God willing, by the end of this little mini-series you will not simply have more knowledge about the church but will have a new and invigorating love for God and His church, as well as an unrelenting desire and conviction to be a part of it. Whatever category you land in right now in your relationship with and opinion of the Christian church, I pray that you will come to see it as Christ sees it, as something beautiful and essential.

No Intermediaries

How amazing is it that Christians have direct access to Jesus? You know it didn’t have to be that way. When Jesus was on the earth he had his twelve disciples. Within that group of twelve disciples he had his inner circle of three. Then within that inner circle of three, at least according to John’s gospel, he had that one disciple, “the one whom Jesus loved” (John 20.2). Given these close and intimate relationships it would have made sense for Jesus, at least while he was on earth, to have routed access to him through the one, three or all twelve of his disciples. And then it could have continued that way when he ascended, whether through Saints in heaven, angels, etc. In other words there easily could have been a hierarchy where the disciples, or Abraham, or angels ended up acting like his assistants, and the intermediaries between other Christians and himself. That would not have seemed that crazy. Really, it wouldn’t have been so different then the setup in the Old Testament between Israel, the priests and God.

But he didn’t do that. He didn’t set up the disciples or anyone else as intermediaries. He didn’t appoint more priests. Instead, he said things like, “Let the little children come to me,” (Mt 19.14) and “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11.28). Instead of making any hierarchy or system of intermediaries he made himself directly available to anyone that would come to him.

Again, how amazing that even right now I can come to Jesus and speak to him without anyone standing in between? And how crazy that I/we don't take advantage of that relationship more often; that we aren't on our knees before him more than we are?

Human Signposts

I remind people from the pulpit on a weekly or semi-weekly basis that if they are Christians then they are God’s witnesses. They have been saved to now witness to the reality of the Gospel. As Luke writes and Jesus says in Acts 1.8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

In saying that though and quoting Scripture that says the same, I do realize that the idea of being a witness can seem overwhelming. I can picture people’s minds racing with questions as mine has often done, “Do I have to stand in a pulpit? Do I have to speak in public? Do I have to prepare sermons? What if I don’t know what to say? What if I say the wrong thing? Where do I even begin?”

If this is you at all then let me try to put your mind at ease by attempting to describe the act of witnessing in a very simple way. Maybe you will realize in this that being a witness to Christ is less intimidating and complicated than it sounds.

We all know how to point at stuff. My son learned to point before he could walk. Well witnessing is just pointing. Pointing away from yourself and to the thing you are bearing witness about. Jesus calling Christians to be witnesses is Him simply calling them point; to be signposts; to be arrows that point to back to Him. And the first way we point is by living like Him. We live lives that imitate Jesus. We live in such a way that people see can something different in us. We live lives that people are curious about, lives that as Peter says, make them ask “for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3.15).

The second way we point is the response we give when they ask for a reason because they have seen this different reality in our lives. At this point we must use words, but this too does not have to be so intimidating. It’s still just pointing. You know the beautiful thing about witnessing to Jesus is that the gospel writers have already done the hard work of telling His story. The words that we speak then are just to try and point people back to the gospels, to the Words and the Word of God. Of course, we have to be able people to tell the story of Jesus and explain the gospel enough to point to it. But it’s the Words of Scripture that are inspired, that stir that affections, and that ultimately lead to salvation.

At the end of the day witnessing is just pointing. I don’t say that to belittle the job of a witness or to be careless about the role, but just to simplify it. Anyone who loves something will inevitably be able to point to that something in word and deed, and honestly it will probably come quite naturally. Perhaps the key then to being a good witness is just loving Jesus and seeking to love Him more than we do.