God With Us!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. His name was called Immanuel: God With Us!

 Our celebration of the birth of Christ is our celebration of God with us and we with God! God did not simply dress Himself in our “flesh” to come and simply dwell in our midst. He is “with us” because is He is one of us, sharing in our very humanity! Praise be to God! He is “with us” because He has partaken of our very nature, sharing in all that we are as human beings (except for sin): our relationships, our joys, our accomplishments, our surprises; our sorrows, our aches and pains, our failures, our darkness and yes, even our alienation and estrangement. He is not simply in our midst—He is with us! He is one with us!

 And praise God we are with Him! By the Spirit we have been joined to Him in Christ. We are now partakers of the divine nature, sharing in the very life of God. In uniting us to Himself, Christ has brought us to participate with Him through the Spirit in His relationship with the Father. “Our lives are hidden with Christ in God.”

 A great theologian put it this way: “What we have in Christ in none other than Immanuel, God with us, but because that is God with us, in our being, our very bones and flesh and blood, it also means we with God. If we with God is not true, then God with us is not true. God with us means that God almighty insists on sharing his divine life with us, on binding himself up with us in the same bundle of existence and being and life, so that we may share with him his divine life. That has been once and for all consummated in Jesus Christ, so that God has for ever and ever committed himself to us and will no more abandon us than he will abandon himself in Jesus Christ.”

Blessed be the Babe in the manger: God with us! Amen!

Headship and the Cause of the Gospel-1Cor. 11:3

What role should women have in the church? Should they be allowed to teach? If so, should it only be to other women? Are they allowed to pray publically within the context of the worship service? Can they be Pastors / Elders? Questions such as these have been a source of division and rancor for much of the last century and still causes confusion today. Many people go to Paul's letters to answer these questions (whether or not these are the questions Paul is even addressing). Specifically, 1Corinthians 11:2-16 (along with a few other passages) has been used (misused?) to justify a number of positions on how women are to minister within a local church. How does Paul address these concerns, if at all?

1 Corinthians 11:3 gives us a clue as to how Paul thinks about these things: the principle of "headship". And this principle of headship must be understood in a very specific way: as defined by God in the inter-Trinitarian relationship within the Godhead. The relationship between God and Christ is the key. The relationship between the Father and the Son is emphasized as the model for all human-to-human relationships; in this case, specifically between male and female. There are four main points about the relationship between the Father and the Son that are relevant (taken from the outline of the sermon found here):

1. Complete and Absolute Equality

2. Relational and Functional Distinction

3. Exhaustive Intimacy

4. Mutual Submission

While this sermon is not specifically a treatise on the Trinity, it does provide us with one of the most succintly presented explanations of the inter-Trinitarian relationship that defines God in His Person and His Purpose. If we can apprehend who God is in Himself as Father, Son and Spirit in relationship, then we can begin to live into the freedom of the "sons of God" who have been taken up in Him through Christ by the Spirit. Only in this way are we going to be able to authentically live out the life of Christ in us in all of our relationships; in other words, to live and relate to others as an authentic Human Being.

This sermon is not just about the role of women in the church or even male-femal relationships. It is about the inter-Trinitarian relationship between Father and Son (specifically) and Spirit and how this must inform our understanding of every human relationship. Check it out.

Kingdom and quotes

Yes, it’s been a long time. I was hoping to be more regular here but life, as it tends to, keeps getting in the way. Since my last post on Peter Enns and some random quotes I have been busy: preparing and then “preaching” my very first sermon, working at my new job, helping Mrs. Moogly prepare and then recover from surgery, and trying to get caught up on some much neglected reading. Writing on my blog (and playing my bass) has had to take a back seat for a while. My goal is to post at least once a month (and no, I won’t be posting a review of Enns’ book since it’s been so long and I would have to practically re-read it). So, here goes….

 Even though the focus of my sermon, “What is the Meaning of Life?”, was not specifically on the Kingdom of God, the idea of the Kingdom was not far from my mind. And of course this should be the case because as the meaning of life revolves around Jesus, so does the Kingdom. In the next few posts I will be considering the Kingdom of God: what it is, where it is, and what it looks like. I don’t know if you’ve ever considered this before, but I believe our understanding of the Kingdom is a major factor in how we think and act as Christians in this world. To the extent that our understanding of the Kingdom is flawed our testimony of the Gospel will be flawed.

 Have you considered, for example, how your conception of the Kingdom of God affects how you think about and deal with the issue of homosexuality—both as this issue pertains specifically to the church and also to society in general? How about the issues of poverty, homelessness and social justice? Politics, greed, and marriage/divorce? In other words, how does our understanding of the Kingdom affect how we think about and deal with life in this world?

Sadly, I do not think the church today appreciates the crucial connection between the Kingdom and our lives in this world; or if we do understand there is a connection, we tend to see it in terms of Israel’s life under the Old Covenant rather than our life in the New Covenant. Obviously I will not be able to engage in a full and in-depth treatment of these things, but I hope that through the next few posts we will allow the Spirit space to shape our thoughts and understandings such that, if necessary, we will re-evaluate how we are living our lives in this world even as we are citizens of another—the Kingdom of God.

 In the meantime, chew on these for a while:

 “Membership in a local church is nothing more, but also nothing less, than the practical expression, the living out of the truth of the individual believer’s participation in the life of the Triune God—unto the Father, in the Son and by, through and with the Spirit.”

 “Whether it is life in the church or life as individuals, our relationship with God—all of the Christian life—is simply the living out practically the truth of who we are.”

 “The Scripture does not think about the notion of individual believers, of being a Christian, except as viewed as a community, so that Peter can say: Christ is the Living Stone; and having come to Him you, individually as living stones, are built into a spiritual house so that you will offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.”

 “Hey, how you doing? I’m Kansas and this is my little man, Toto.”

 “So many American evangelicals are just infatuated with Jerusalem and rebuilding the Temple and what a marvelous thing that is. God says, “I am building My Temple in My Church!” The Church is the dwelling of the Living God!”

 “Frankly, we’re a little mimed out.”

 “Despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘mono theists’. We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.”

“As election is a decision in which God determines His own being, so too is human being enacted in obedient response to this decision. Through His life of obedience for humanity, Jesus Christ objectively establishes the being and identity of humanity. Analogously, subjective participation in Christ occurs in the event of obedience, in which human beings embrace and enact their being as Jesus Christ has objectively defined it for them. God shares Himself with human beings by becoming their gracious Lord. Human beings participate in God by becoming His grateful disciples. Thus, participation in Christ takes both an objective and a subjective form, the former being teleologically directed to the latter and thereby guaranteeing its genuine occurrence. Jesus Christ’s life history, grounded in election, constitutes the covenant of grace, and therefore participation in Christ is participation in the covenant.”

 “So when you say psychosomatic, you mean like he could start a fire with his thoughts?”