I
want to return now to that uncomfortable chair I spoke about earlier. We have positioned ourselves with a view to
eternity past and to eternity future; to the time before God made the first Adam and created the time-space-matter world
and to the time after the second Adam
is married and getting on with his new life when the time-space-matter world is
no more. We have settled and quieted our
spirits for God to enlighten us with His truth.
Where does that leave us?
The
rope coil: from eternity past, through our long history of salvation,
redemption, righteousness and justification and on to eternity future we
perceive as sequential history, but to God it is ever before Him – and so are
we. We were always on His mind, ever
present to His consciousness, His will and His love.
You
may recall that much of what is here began with the basic question, ‘what is
God doing?’ My preliminary answer to
that question is that God is establishing His kingdom, building a household,
and making a ‘future’ for His creation.
The Household of God is central to all He is doing – always has been,
always will be. And the core business
and the four pillars of that household are salvation, redemption, righteousness
and justification.
If
you are anything like me, all of this will leave you in a place of seeing many
things very differently. It’s like
removing an old, limited pair of spectacles and replacing them with a new pair
specifically made by God for viewing things from His eternal perspective. Many things – perhaps even most things –
don’t just look different, they are different.
I am no longer satisfied with the limited view of the old
spectacles. In fact, I find myself
wanting to only ever use the new spectacles.
The
view I am talking about is the view that drives Frank Viola to write From Eternity to Here and other works
like Reimagining Church. It’s the view that inspires Paul Vieira to
write Jesus Has Left the Building and
Neil Cole to write Organic Church and
Floyd McClung to pen You See Bones, I See
an Army and for Greg Boyd to write The
Myth of a Christian Nation and The
Myth of a Christian Religion.
And
it raises so many questions. So many
things we have seen as fairly fixed and certain are fundamentally redefined by
God when we allow Him to give us His perspective – the eternal
perspective. In fact, I think there is
nothing of any real importance left untouched by God in this process, including
our definitions of pretty much everything we have become familiar with.
The
first things that come to mind for me are questions like ‘what is this thing we
call “the church”?’ … What is ecclesia then? … What is evangelism? … What can I
say to my neighbour that is good news?
Fundamentally, what happens is a God-inspired disconnect between God,
church and religion and a reconnect between us and God’s household and the core
business of that household.
I
find that now, when I go back over the things I have been doing and writing
about in recent years – probably since the mid-1990s – they come clearly into perspective
and into proper alignment. For instance,
ecclesia really is a minimum of two or three Jesus-disciples gathered in His
name going about our Father’s business.
I can’t and won’t call it ‘church’ because that word means something
entirely different. I am happy to call
it the household of God.
His
household does not, in fact, contain any denominational sub-groups – a
household divided against itself cannot stand!
The ecclesia is not in a fight for survival as ‘the church’ is; rather,
it stands strong as a bastion against the gates of hell. Members of the household of God can
voluntarily be part of human organisations, including ‘churches’, so long as
that in no way compromises their commission to be about our Father’s business,
the core business of the household of God, as defined by God, not humans.
In
particular, it leads to an understanding that ‘the church’ has a long history
that stretches all the way back to the fall of man. And the core business of ‘the church’ is to
build a tower that suits us and meets our specifications to reach God without
having to encounter God directly and personally; to construct a religion that
satisfies man’s perceived needs while using the language and ‘theologies’ of the
bible.
Now
since the bible doesn’t actually talk about ‘the church’ – least of all as a
relevant part of the Jesus-inaugurated New Covenant – we are under no
obligation to support it or to entertain the guilt it imposes on those who
choose to go about the Father’s business without it. Indeed, if you trace the persecution history
of disciples of Jesus, the biggest and most severe problems have always come
from institutional religion, whether in the form of governments or of
State-sponsored ‘faith-based’ organisations.
For instance, the ecclesia of Jesus and Paul was persecuted by the
Jewish ‘church’ and, to a lesser extent, by fanatics of other religious
persuasions, including secularists.
The
Roman authorities sought to put down what they saw as rebellion among the
ecclesia. They blamed these ‘christians’
for setting fire to Rome, they sacked Jerusalem, then they subsequently got
into bed with ‘the church’ to enforce their mutually beneficial legal code. Hundreds of years later (and many thousands
of lost lives later), this adulterous relationship between church and state
produced a bible, authorised by the English King, that contains deliberate
obfuscation in that the King ordered the translation team to make sure they
inserted the word ‘church’ into the text where the word is not in the original
language, and that the correct translation of various words (including
ecclesia) did not make it into the finished product. So much for our insistence on the verbal
inspiration of the bible!
Somewhere
along the line of history, they even produced a word for this exercise of
binding up free people and making them submit to church authority: religion.
Briefly,
let’s take a look at some of what Paul wrote to the ecclesias of Galatia in his
day. You may recall in chapter one of
Galatians he said this:
Paul,
an apostle (not from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus
Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead), and all the brethren
who are with me…
To the ecclesias of Galatia: Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our
sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the
will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen. I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting
Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really
not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the
gospel of Christ.
What was the distortion that Paul was referring to that
would make him profoundly disturbed that his beloved disciples were so quickly
and easily deserting God the Father for a “different gospel”? Take a look at the next chapter of Galatians. I’m not going to reproduce it all here – you
can look it up or perhaps follow this link:
The short version: “But
not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be
circumcised. But it was because
of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our
liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.”
This adulterous relationship was evident from the earliest
days of the ecclesia. Paul fought it
arduously. The distortion Paul was
referring to is the same distortion the ecclesia faces today: the persistent
insertion of law into the gospel of the kingdom of God. At one stage it was about circumcision; at
another stage it was about paying tithes; at yet another stage it was about
compulsory attendance at a ‘temple’ of some sort. How does it happen? False people secretly brought in to spy out
the freedom of the saints and return them to bondage – the meaning of the word
religion.
Revisit the story of William Tyndale – the man who did the
one honest translation of the Greek words agape,
episkopos, presbuteros and ecclesia
and who was murdered for it! He couldn’t
get his translation printed in England, so he went to continental Europe. He met with Luther and Melancthon and others
and ended up in Antwerp. But even there,
the spies had followed him. When he
visited his printer in Antwerp, a spy just happened to be getting his printing
done at the same time! He is invited to
dinner and a spy ingratiates himself into Tyndale’s life then betrays him to
the security guards at the host’s meal hall.
And, as they say, the rest is history,
Think about it. A
vicious fight to make sure the word ‘church’ is in any and all translations of
the English New Testament instead of the word used by Jesus and Paul. And that corruption, among others, still
exists today! The adulterous murderous
church won! I wonder if, when Paul was
murdered, the rot set in almost immediately.
But here’s the thing: I don’t believe the ecclesia itself
can be corrupted. It is a creation of
God in eternity; it belongs to God; it is God’s household; how can it be
corrupted? The church has not corrupted
the ecclesia. The ecclesia is not
corrupt. Jesus Himself is the door of
the sheep; he is the keeper of the household; the ecclesia is his bride whom he
is cleansing and keeping clean.
I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen
by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The
man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the
gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name
and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of
them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in
fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s
voice.
Jesus
used this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling
them. Therefore Jesus said again, I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves
and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever
enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may
have life, and have it to the full.
I am
the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns
the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs
away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the
sheep.
I am
the good shepherd; I know my sheep and
my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I
lay down my life for the sheep. I have
other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too
will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. (John 10:1-16)
Revisit Ezekiel 34 and see if this doesn’t match. There is an eerie correlation between the
‘shepherds of Israel’ in Ezekiel 34 and the ‘hired hands’ of John 10. And the descriptions in both fit with what is
today called ‘the church’. In Ezekiel’s
day, in Jesus’ day and in our day there are corrupt false shepherds. But more importantly, God is taking care of
His own; He will not abandon them; He will keep them and feed them and bring
them to His bosom. Absolutely! Totally!
Without fail!
Our problem is not a corrupt ecclesia. Our problem is a corrupt church pretending it
is the ecclesia – and this has been going on since the year dot. It is the primary strategy of God’s chief
enemy – the angel who rebelled and took a third of the servants with him. But do we really believe God hasn’t got it
all in hand? Nothing can or will stop
His plan with His ecclesia, and nothing takes Him by surprise. Sure, what we do can delay the plan, but it
can’t terminate it. If we are seeing
corruption, we are not looking at ecclesia.
In the next series, I hope to take this up further and
develop the theme of “This Gospel of the Kingdom”, taking the words of Jesus as
noted by Matthew in chapter 24 of his gospel:
“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as
a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (v.14)
If the ‘end’ hasn’t yet come (as most of us believe), why
is that? Has it come and we missed
it? Has the gospel not gone to the whole
world? Or is it perhaps that we have not
been preaching Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom but “a different gospel” – one like
Paul was writing about to the Galatians – one infested with church and
religion?
I
suspect the latter, and I will develop this in the subsequent series. One of the things that raises my suspicions
is that an inordinate amount of the practices and the theologies of ‘the
church’ comes from the Old Testament. And
you won’t find any support for this practice from either Jesus or Paul. The Old Testament is an entirely Jewish set
of documents designed as law, to act as a tutor to bring the Jews to Jesus –
which, in large part, didn’t seem to happen since many still do not accept Jesus
as the Messiah and Lord.
The
Old Testament system is organisational, institutional and law-based – and so is
‘the church’, since it builds itself on the patterns of old Jewry and of
secular religions throughout history.
For instance, the word ‘cathedral’ means the home of the bishop’s throne
and imitated secular practice. Ecclesia doesn’t
have bishops but overseers who are elders who don’t have thrones or cathedrals;
and ecclesia is a band of brothers with but one Lord, Jesus, not a hierarchy of
position and prestige. Ecclesia’s
thrones are eternal in the heavenlies; eternity where God resides is His
‘cathedral’. If you are not so sure
about this, try reading the Viola/Barna book Pagan Christianity, Tyndale House Publishers.
What’s
more, if we actually believed apostle Paul, we would get Romans 9-11 – where it
is clearly set out what is the part and place of the Jew in the plan of God,
and the part and place of the non-Jew.
As far as Paul is concerned, since the new covenant in Jesus, there is
one way to be righteous before God and it is open to both Jew and non-Jew alike
and it does not involve religion, whether Jewish, Christian, secular or of any
other persuasion. In Paul, there is no
connection between the gathered disciples (ecclesia) and any form of
establishment religion and there is no place for Judaism, ‘church’ or religion
in the gospel to be preached. In fact,
Paul sees these things as the complete antithesis of ecclesia – as I believe we
should.
As
I said, the history of ‘the church’ stretches all the way back to the fall of
man and his desire to get to God on his own terms. Ecclesia, on the other hand, stretches back
to Jesus as the inaugurator of God’s new covenant with man. Here, man realises that neither his own best
efforts nor the religious efforts of others can bring him to God. Instead, one comes to God on Jesus’ terms,
and those terms are neither religious nor irksome.
Cheers,
Kevin.
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