The Invitation: Chapter 1, Part 2

People think they have heard the invitation. They think they have accepted it – or rejected it. But they have not. The difficulty today is to hear it at all.

Especially living in the Bible belt, you really see this a lot. There are those that self-identify as Christians, but with no real influence on the way they live. Religion has really done a disservice to Jesus. He will change your life – if you let him. Sometimes the hardest people to reach are the ones sitting in the pews.

God’s desire for us is that we should live in him.

This might be the best summary of the Divine Conspiracy in a single sentence. God wants us to live in Him. He wants us to enter the eternal kind of life now. Store this thought away, we will discuss it at length in chapters to come.

The “gospels” that predominate where he is most frequently invoked speak only of preparing to die or else correcting social practices and conditions.

Willard will devote a whole chapter to this, so I’ll just briefly comment here. The theological “right” tends to make getting into heaven the primary focus, while the theological “left” tends to make fighting social injustices the main thing.

Our usual “gospels” are, in their effects – dare we say it – nothing less than a standing invitation to omit God from the course of our daily existence.

The problem with these being the focus is that we omit God from our everyday existence. We are not living for Him, let alone in Him.

But just think how unlikely it would be that this great world-historical force, Jesus called “Christ,” could have left the depths of moment-to-moment human existence untouched while accomplishing what he has! More likely, we currently do not understand who he is and what he brings.

Willard notes the shear magnitude of the “footprint” that Christ has left on history. It doesn’t seem logical that someone of that kind of influence, who paid the price He paid, wouldn’t care about impacting our everyday lives. The conclusion is that we don’t understand Jesus like we should, nor do we comprehend the significance of the invitation He gives.

In other words, if he were to come today he could very well do what you do. He could very well live in your apartment or house, hold down your job, have your education and life prospects, and live within your family, surroundings, and time. None of this would be the least hindrance to the eternal kind of life that was his by nature and becomes available to us through him. Our human life, it turns out, is not destroyed by God’s life but is fulfilled in it and in it alone.

Willard makes an interesting note about Jesus. We often make excuses for our circumstances when we think of making a real impact on the world. The reality is that Jesus just have easily could have lived in my exact environment without thwarting His ability to change the world. The kind of life God wants to give enables us to live a fulfilled life, not hinders our happiness.

But they [the crowds who responded to Jesus] were only responding to the striking availability of God to meet present human need through the actions of Jesus. He simply was the good news about the kingdom. He still is.

Jesus is the gospel. His invitation to enter into his kingdom remains.

Now God’s own “kingdom,” or “rule,” is the range of his effective will, where what he wants done is done. The person of God himself and the action of his will are the organizing principles of his kingdom, but everything that obeys those principles, whether by nature or by choice, is within his kingdom.

This is a great explanation of the kingdom of God – a term that has been widely misunderstood. We enter the kingdom when God becomes the King of our lives.

If we attend to what he actually said, it becomes clear that his gospel concerned only the new accessibility of the kingdom to humanity through itself.

With our new understanding of what kingdom is, much confusion is cleared up as to when it will come. It’s always been, but with Jesus there is a new availability to enter it that was not present before.

The power [electricity to the rural community] that could make their lives far better was right near them where, by making relatively simple arrangements, they could utilize it. Strangely, a few did not accept it. They did not “enter the kingdom of electricity.” Some just didn’t want to change. Others could not afford it, or so they thought.

Dallas grew up in a rural community where electricity did not become available until he was a teenager. He draws an excellent illustration from his experience to explain the availability of the Kingdom of God.

We need not fly upside down. There is a right-side up, and we can find it. – But we don’t have to. We are free. For now.

We have to believe there is a right way to live and that we can discover what it is. This is the gospel – we can enter into the eternal kind of life with Jesus right now.

Flying Upside Down: Chapter 1, Part 1

Recently a pilot was practicing high-speed maneuvers in a jet fighter. She turned the controls for what she thought was a steep ascent – and flew straight into the ground. She was unaware that she had been flying upside down. This is a parable of human existence in our times… we live at high speed, and often with no clue to whether we are flying upside down or right-side up. Indeed, we are haunted by a suspicion that there may be no difference.

Willard uses this story as a metaphor to introduce the problem. The reading is heavy in the first few chapters, but stick with it – you’ll be glad you did. The problem is that our society is incredibly fast-paced, but its priorities and understanding of morality are upside down – to the point that many doubt whether there really is a right and wrong way to live.

“Secular humanism” is an idea movement, not the work of an individual, and before it, as a whole, individuals are little more than pawns. The seeming triviality and irrelevance of the “merely academic” is a major part of what misleads us about the power of ideas.

This point is the reason to stay engaged with this section of the book. Some of it abstract or “academic” in nature, but Willard’s point is that much of our societal views are the results of ideas from many years ago. The idea that the world is an accident – we accidentally came into existence through evolution – leads to the idea that life is absurd and we find happiness by striving for progress.

The peasants now watch TV and constantly consume media. There are no peasants now.

A writer, Tolstoy, struggling with the consequences of these ideas (life is an accident), noted that the peasants – who had no knowledge of these new ideas – remained very happy. The problem is that today there are no peasants. We are constantly being fed information by media that is likely detrimental to our happiness.

What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. This is what it means to fly upside down.

Here, Willard pokes fun at some “wise” saying of the day such as “stand up for your rights” and “practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty”. A more useful saying, such as “stand up for your responsibilities” is thought to be boring and disregarded for sayings that don’t actually make sense.

In fact, the popular sayings attract only because people are haunted by the idea from the intellectual heights that life is, in reality, absurd. Thus the only acceptable relief is to be cute or clever.

Willard makes the connection of ideas from years ago trickling down into our popular culture. Ideas are important. This is all setting up the groundwork or us to evaluate a new idea – well, a 2000-year-old idea, actually. Life in the Kingdom of God is our rescue from all this nonsense. Prepare your mind to take a fresh look at Jesus and his message. We’ll cover the rest of Chapter 1 in the next few days.

As always, you’re welcome to comment on any part of the reading, not just the excerpts I pulled. In addition, I will present a study question with each post. I encourage you to post your answer in the comments. This study is open to the public, so feel free to share with any who may be interested.

Chapter 1, Part 1, Flying Upside Down Study Question:

What is a message from our culture that has impacted you that is contrary to the teachings of the Bible?

For me, the message that progress, or having more, is always better. When we seek the Kingdom first, all the other good things are added to us. When we seek only for progress and more stuff, we are only more unsatisfied.

Introduction

This week's reading is the introduction. Again, we are studying a phenomenal book, "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard. The following excerpts from the introduction are in blue italics. My commentary is sandwiched between the excerpts. Please let me know your thoughts. 

My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him.

I believe this is completely necessary in today’s world. It’s especially striking with the interaction of Christians in popular culture. On the one hand we have some not exactly behaving like Jesus and spouting condemnation at unbelievers. On the other, critics are quick to condemn Christians for not behaving like their picture of Jesus, accepting of all behavior as equally valid. It can be so helpful to return to the Bible and study Jesus and his message so that we can actually do what He said and work to become like Him.

Dogma is what you have to believe, whether you believe it or not. And law is what you must do, whether it is good for you or not… Jesus and his words never belonged to the categories of dogma or law, and to read them as if they did is simply to miss them… He himself described his words as “spirit and life” (John 6:63).

The words of Jesus are powerful. He is fully God and fully man. When dealing with the creator of the world, to view anything He has to say as irrelevant or as a mere obligation is to not understand whom we are dealing with.

Jesus and his early associates over-whelmed the ancient world because they brought into it a stream of life at its deepest, along with the best information possible on the most important matters… The people initially impacted by that message generally concluded that they would be fools to disregard it. That was the basis of their conversion.

For some, this is not a revelation. For others, this is quite a concept. If you really believe what you say you believe, then following Jesus is the best possible way to live your life.

You will find few scholars or leaders in Christian circles who deny we are supposed to make disciples or apprentices to Jesus and teach them to do all things that Jesus said… We just don’t do it.

Dallas has written a whole book on this topic called “The Great Omission”. We’re not called to make converts, but disciples. After we accept Jesus as our savior, we are to be on a mission to be like Him – not to just stop where He found us.

In fact, it [the reason we aren’t making disciples] lies much deeper than anything we might appropriately feel guilty about. For it is not, truly, a matter of anything we do or don’t do. It is a matter of how we cannot but think and act, given the context of our mental and spiritual formation. So any significant change can come only by breaking the stranglehold of the ideas and concepts that automatically shunt aside Jesus, “the Prince of Life,” when questions of concrete mastery of our life arise.

This is a central point to the book. We need to re-examine our beliefs – in practice. Often what we say we believe isn’t what we really believe. In other words, our actions don’t line up with what we say we believe. By re-examining our view of Jesus and His instructions for us, we can move towards the end goal of being a mature believer.

More than any other single things, in any case, the practical irrelevance of actual obedience to Christ accounts for the weakened effect of Christianity in the world today, with its increasing tendency to emphasize political and social action as the primary way to serve God. It also accounts for the practical irrelevance of Christian faith to individual character development and overall personal sanity and well-being.

Grace is more than a cover up for our shortcomings. It is an empowerment to overcome them. If we believe Jesus meant what He said, then we have to believe that He will empower us to do it.

How life-giving it would be if their [individual Christian’s] understanding of the gospel allowed them simply to reply, “I will do them [teachings of Jesus]! I will find out how. I will devote my life to it! This is the best life strategy I have ever heard of!” and then go off to their fellowship and its teachers, and into their daily life, to learn how to live in his kingdom as Jesus indicated was best.

If this isn’t already where you are, it is my hope that after this book you’ll get there. Following Jesus and entering an eternal kind of life – right now – is the best way to live.

So the message of and about him [Jesus] is specifically a gospel for our life now, not just for dying. It is about living now as his apprentice in kingdom living, not just as a consumer of his merits. Our future, however far we look, is a natural extension of our faith by which we live now and the life in which we now participate. Eternity is now in flight and we with it, like it or not.

This is another central theme of the book. We begin our eternal life now – on earth. We don’t need to wait for heaven to begin to live an eternal kind of life. 

Buckle your seat belts. This book can take you to another level in your walk with God. It’s mostly just an explanation and enlightenment of scripture. Understanding and applying the Word of God can transform us. This book is just a tool along the way.

 

Switching Gears

After a brief hiatus from blogging, I'm returning with a new project. I've recently read a book that impacted me deeply. It is "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard. I'm embarking a journey to read it again - this time studying and interacting with the material.

As part of a small group, some have joined me in this journey. If you would like to join my online small group - commit to reading the book and posting weekly - we'd love to have you. If you want to simply comment every so often, that's great, too. For those that aren't avid readers, I'm structuring the study so that you can participate even if you don't have the book. Each week, I will pull out a few excerpts from the weekly reading and then make my personal comments. If you are chose to join in and comment, I will respond to them all. For the sake of clarity, all excerpts from the book will be in blue italics. I encourage you to get a copy of the book and participate. This week is the introduction.

An Experienced Teacher

At the conclusion of our look at the parable of the two builders, I posed the question, "what, exactly, are we supposed to apply?" We need to be doers of the Word, but what specifically does that mean. What should the priority be?

One of the letters in the New Testament was written to a church with a similar question. This church was sorting through what was important. There was information overload, with false teachers overemphasizing the wrong thing. There was confusion as to what should be done. They needed someone to bring them back to the basics. Does that sound like a lot of church situations today?

The writer of this letter was Peter, and it goes by the name 2 Peter. Is there a character in the Bible that had a bigger roller coaster of journey then he did? When we think of Peter, we often think about his loud mouth and brashness to be the first to do anything. He was the one to walk on water. He first acknowledged Jesus as the Christ. He was in Jesus' inner circle.

Peter was also the one to tell Jesus he would die for Him, and then denied Him three times (In Peter's defense, he did make good on his promise - in the garden he decided to take on the Roman army trying to arrest Jesus. He was swinging at the soldier's head when he missed and lopped off his ear). His whole world was shaken when the Messiah didn't fit his preconceived beliefs.

Peter, a fisherman, was called out of humble beginnings. He was at the top of the world in ministry - the right hand man of the Son of God, the Messiah come to earth. He lost everything when he denied Christ and returned to fishing. He was restored to leadership and lead many to the faith with powerful preaching through the anointing of the Holy Spirit. He was a man who hit rock bottom and reached the top of the world a couple times each. In other words, he is someone with a qualified perspective to help us in our walk with Christ.

Peter said many words while on earth... the letter known as 2 Peter were some of his last - it was written within a few years of his death. If we want an outline of how to grow in maturity, 2 Peter is a good place to look:

⁵ In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, ⁶ and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, ⁷ and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 2 Peter 1:5-7 NLT

We'll dive into this verse in context next post. 

The Builder on the Rock

In one of my initial posts, I asserted that in Jesus' parable, the two builders are not a sinner and a saint, necessarily, but two religious people that had different responses to the words of Jesus. I concluded that misunderstanding this distinction could create false expectations for the Christian life, but more importantly would miss the whole point of the sermon about the importance of being a doer of the Word.

Over the last few posts, I've discussed the greater context of this parable to see my conclusion fits the overall theme. We saw that the road is narrow and it's so easy to fall off into the ditch with our belief system (Matt 7:13-14). We saw that ultimately you can know a true disciple of Christ by the fruit in their life (Matt 7:15-20). Finally, we saw that it is not enough to merely confess the name of Jesus, but that you have to have a relationship with Him (Matt 7:21-23). Which leads us to our parable:

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27

The parable starts with a "therefore" - Jesus is saying, "with this in mind" everyone who hears these words of mine... Now we have the context to see that the conclusion fits. Both men heard the words of Jesus, only one put them into practice. The difference in the foundation was not a different knowledge, but a different application. Hence, to build your life on the rock is not only to know Jesus and His words, but to put them into practice. It rained on both houses. Faith in Christ is not an insulation from trouble - but applying His word will allow you to stand firm through it.

"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”              -John 16:33

What specifically are we to apply? What is it that we're to do with the words of Jesus? I believe there's someone in the Bible uniquely qualified to speak on that subject. Next post will discuss this man and his instruction to us.

Not Everyone Who Calls me "Lord"

Continuing with the discussion of Matthew 7, leading up to the Builders on the Rock parable, we find one of the more disturbing passages from Jesus found in the Bible. 

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

In this sermon of Jesus, if there was any doubt that the common theme is putting your faith and belief into practice, this passage should alleviate it. The reason this passage makes people nervous is because we like simple, safe, equations - pray a prayer and you get into heaven. As we've discussed in the ditch metaphor, this kind of either/or, black/white kind of thinking can cause us to error. 

Jesus says that many will come to Him, having done religious activities and professing that He is their Lord and will be turned away. Does this contradict Romans 10:9?

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 

Most people are familiar with the idea of confessing Jesus as Lord. I think the meat the passage is the next phrase. You have to believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. First, many declare that Jesus is their Lord, but they don't believe it in their heart - as evidenced by the way they live. Surrendering lordship means you give up the control of your life. Second, I think there is significance that we are believe that God raised him from the dead. Why is that so important? There's the element that He paid for our sins - that we accept the sacrifice. It's also that the resurrection proved that Jesus was who He said He was. Those are all crucial things to believe. The key to this passage - what make is mesh with Jesus' words in Matthew 7 - is that because God raised Him from the dead... he isn't dead. 

That may not seem like revelation, but think about it in practice. Many people confess Him as Lord, but then live like their Lord is dead. You can't have relationship with a dead person; it would be ridiculous to call a live person 'Lord' and have no interaction or relationship with him. How can you assign someone the control over your life and submit to their authority if you don't even know the person? 

One thing that stuck out to me in my study of this passage is the last sentence. “Away from me, you evildoers”. We've already discussed the importance of having a relationship with Christ. This is absolutely essential. Without the relationship none of the rest is possible. However, it’s interesting that these people that were doing churchy, religious things are sent away for not knowing Christ, and for being evil doers. I think that there’s a connection to be made between knowing Christ and the corresponding actions that show up in your life. In other words, you can pray and read the bible, but if it’s not having any effect on the way you live, are you in relationship with Christ?

Next post will conclude the study of the Builders on the Rock parable. Having firmly established the need to put the Word into practice, we'll then dive into what, specifically, we're to put into practice.