Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8
9
Christian Education: swelling the cranium, (Pagan Christianity, chapter 10 title)
I do not accept that it is either necessary or normal that
disciples of Jesus have to be educated, trained, schooled or ‘ordained’ for
them to be (and to understand themselves to be) fully functioning priests
ministering to God and one another.
The teaching of the New Testament is that God
is Spirit, and as such, He is known by revelation (spiritual insight) to one’s
human spirit... The intellect is not the
gateway for knowing the Lord deeply.
Neither are the emotions. (Pagan
Christianity, p206)
And I believe that when the letter to the Hebrews says, “By
faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command...” (11:3),
it opens a window on an important spiritual principle – one that goes
completely counter to the natural human instincts of normal daily life. In the world of the mind and education and
information and intellect, we know something in order to believe it; in the
spiritual zone, we believe something in order to know it. I believe that is how God works; that is one
of the ways the ‘spiritual insight’ spoken of above comes about. Western education teaches us that ‘seeing is
believing’; true spiritual education teaches us that ‘believing is seeing’.
The base-line for spiritual life is spiritual birth. Despite the mocking and the disparaging
comments by some, not a single human being gains entry to that sweet place of
communion with God face-to-face, where we can “approach God with freedom and
confidence” (Ephesians 3:10-12), without a second – spiritual – birth. Both Jesus and the first apostles made this
quite clear. “Unless one is born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3) is an unchanging, unequivocal
principle. Second birth is the
‘interface’ between us humans and the eternal domain of God like computer
software is the interface between us and the world-wide web – the www. Without it, the best we will have is an
imaginisation of that place and its benefits and blessings.
The most important thing to God is not that we know
something; it is that we trust Him.
Faith not only gives way to the new birth (the second, ‘spiritual’
birth); it is the basis of all future ‘spiritual’ growth; of ‘walking in the
light as he is in the light’, for fellowship and forgiveness.
Before I went to bible college in Sydney in the 1970s, I had
several important conversations with elders in my congregation in Brisbane to
clarify why I was going. My driving
motivation was to give myself two years of undistracted concentration on
walking “The Way” with Jesus; “walking in the light as he is in the light”. I wasn’t after an education but a deep,
transformative experience of spiritual life.
I love the quote from B.H. Streeter (from The Primitive Church, Macmillan 1929) at
the introduction to this chapter in Pagan
Christianity:
The Primitive Church had no New Testament, no
thought-out theology, no stereotyped traditions. The men who took Christianity to the Gentile
world had no special training, only a great experience – in which ‘all maxims
and philosophies were reduced to the simple task of walking in the light since
the light had come’. (p. 199)
At this point, I can do no better than direct readers
towards 1
Corinthians chapter 2.
I’m not going to reproduce it here, but you can follow the link. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned;
and if we reject the quest for true spirituality, God might just have to ‘tap
us on the shoulder’ (!) as he did to Saul-Paul on the road to Damascus.
Some education, training, schooling may enhance ministry,
but that is as far as it goes. If the
spiritual transformation and formation is not present, education, training and
schooling will not do in its stead. The
‘people of God’ is a family and it is a living body. That’s why we refer to things like
‘body-life’ to describe the experience of doing life together as the ekklesia.
And as Viola & Barna put it:
By body life, we are not referring to the
common experience of being in an institutional church setting. We are referring to the rough-and-tumble,
messy, raw, highly taxing experience of the body of Christ where Christians
live as a close-knit community and struggle to make corporate decisions
together under Christ’s headship without a stated leader over them. (p. 217)
Apostle Paul is a living example of the two systems in
operation; the old covenant system and the new covenant system. An interesting day at the office, recorded by
Luke in Acts 21. Several times the Jews
lay hold of Paul and seek to kill him – generally thwarted by the intervention
of the Roman authorities. Paul persuades
the commander to allow him to address the mob who had been trying to kill him –
even though he had to be carried by soldiers into the barracks because the mob
was so urgent and pressing in around them.
Paul begins (Acts 22):
I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but
brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law
of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today. I persecuted this Way to the death, binding
and putting both men and women into prisons, as also the high priest and all
the Council of the elders can testify.
From them I also received letters to the brethren, and started off for
Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners
to be punished.
He goes on to recount
his personal encounter with Jesus as he neared Damascus in the execution of the
‘warrants’ he had collected. But when he
got to the part where he tells the mob that God Himself had directed him to “Go!
For I will send you far away to the
Gentiles”, they stopped listening and raged again ‘away with this man – he
shouldn’t be allowed to live’, “throwing off their cloaks and tossing dust in
the air.” Yet again the Roman
authorities step in; but then they decide that perhaps they should torture Paul
to get answers out of him, so they stretch him out on the rack and are about to
flog him when he claims his Roman citizenship and puts a stop to their plans.
Paul had inherited Roman citizenship via his father; the
commander admits he had to buy his – with a large amount of money.
Paul
had inherited Roman citizenship; he was educated under Gamaliel (a Pharisee who
had the equivalent of a PhD in Jewish law); he himself was a Pharisee – and the
son of a Pharisee; he was brought up strictly
according to the law of the Jewish fathers; he was zealous for God (just as this
mob trying to kill him was); and he had spent a lot of time and effort trying
to rid the world of “The Way” – the name the early disciples of Jesus were
known by – exactly as this mob was currently trying to do to him.
The story recorded in this section of Acts is extraordinary and
quite graphic but I’ll leave it for now because it’s not the main point just
now. Even though a lot of the letters
Paul wrote were written before these events recorded in Acts, the letters come
after Acts in the construction of the bible; that’s rather unfortunate. As a young adult, one of the studies I
undertook was to locate the letters Paul wrote in the strung out drama of
Acts. It really helped put the letters
in their context
And it is also worth noting that the events of these later
chapters of Acts include Paul’s recounting of events in his journeys much
earlier. The story he recounts in Acts
21-22 actually happened years earlier and is recorded in Acts 9. Between Acts 9 and Acts 21, what we often
call Paul’s “missionary journeys” took place. And on those journeys, he would
often spend time writing letters to ekklesias
he had established earlier or to believers in places he was planning to visit.
The Paul we see, by way of self-revelation and agonising prayer
for the disciples of that era, is a Paul that is almost unrecognisable against
the Paul we see in his own account of what he was like before Jesus confronted
– arrested – him on the road to Damascus.
I know of no other transformation so deep, profound and all-encompassing
as that of Paul when he heard Jesus say “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting
me?”
I think we sometimes forget that Paul would have known Jesus:
they were contemporaries of around the same age. I suspect Jesus also knew Paul – at least by
reputation. It is not unreasonable to
suggest Paul (then Saul) may have been one of the Pharisees (or at least a
Pharisee-in-training) in the various groups Jesus confronted when he was in
Jerusalem.
But after Jesus confronted him, how did Paul view all this
personal history?
But whatever things were gain to me, those
things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss
in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I
have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may
gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own
derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the
righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him
and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being
conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the
dead. (Philippians 3:7-11)
And how do we see Paul in his post-Damascus interactions
with the first rush of disciples in the first century? His letters to the Corinthian disciples are
classic examples of the ‘new’ Paul – of his switch from old covenant to new
covenant.
I reiterate my earlier invitation to read 1 Corinthians 2. Then follow that with 2 Corinthians chapters 11 and 12. If you had no knowledge of Paul’s conversion
on the road to Damascus, you might well think we are talking about two entirely
different people: Saul the Pharisee and Paul the passionate disciple of the One
he once hated with a screaming vengeance.
But here’s the point: at no time did Paul attribute this
transformation to information, knowledge, academic pursuit, catechetic
teaching, human wisdom. And at every
point, he attributed it to the revelation of the Spirit and the deeply personal
experience of “knowing Christ and him crucified” as he wrote to the Corinthians. Remember Streeter’s quote earlier.
Now there is also a second – and really important –
issue. In the new testament, we see
three different types of knowledge manifest to us in three separate Greek
words. Our modern popular English is, in
my opinion, quite lazy with its use of the word knowledge, leaving it to the
reader to interpret the word as they want.
The Greek of the new testament is much clearer – and much more useful
for us if we want to grasp the nettle here.
Here’s a Venn diagram to help focus the matter: English
words; Greek words and basic meanings.
Western culture arrogantly boasts of superior “knowledge” based on
lending the greatest weight to intellectual knowledge, while placing a little
weight on experiential knowledge and virtually nothing on intuition. Indeed, intuition is often viewed as the stuff
of mystics, psychics and clairvoyants – and ‘primitive’ tribal cultures. It is disdained and devalued; often the best
that will be said is that it might be valid if it accords with intellectual or
‘scientific’ knowledge or so-called ‘factual evidence’.
Spiritual knowledge is the virtual opposite of that. It places greatest weight on discernment and
some weight on ‘getting to know’ someone or something. Intellectual knowledge (learning) or
‘scientific’ knowledge is a peripheral consideration seen on the radar screen
but not definitive.
If you follow the journey of the new testament writings, you
will find this is how they ‘lived and moved and had their being’: discernment,
checked by ‘experience of’ while keeping a watchful eye on formal
learning. It’s a brilliant gateway to
the ‘new things’ of the Holy Spirit and to truly knowing people without judging
them on their former lives.
The classic example of this is Paul himself. Read the story of Paul in Acts 9 again. Imagine that story without the spiritual
insight (‘discernment’) of Ananias and Barnabas and without their combined
experiential knowledge of the spiritual life of the region of Israel and
surrounds at that time. Relevant
‘scientific’ facts about the situation were no doubt there – and visible: what
were the Pharisees up to? What were the
Roman authorities up to? What were the
local worship rites and business schemes?
And so forth.
It might be worth us asking ourselves what kind of results
would have emerged from a ‘scientific’ research study of the evangelism or
‘church planting’ possibilities of that time and place. Could they possibly have arrived at what to
do next? And would that have been what
the Holy Spirit was already in the process of doing?
In the spiritual paradigm I work to, there is really only
one thing to ‘learn’ – and I am by no means sure it can be learned by anything
other than first, spiritual input and, second, experience of walking with Jesus
– and that is what Paul talks about in his letter to the Romans, chapter 8:
“Living according to the Spirit.”
Apostle Peter has been considered to be, largely, apostle to
the Jews. He has this opening paragraph
to one of his letters. While you’re
reading, note that the “knowledge” Peter is talking about uses the Greek for
experiential knowledge (‘coming to know of’) in this section:
Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of
Jesus Christ;
To those who have received a faith of the
same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ:
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our
Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and
godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and
excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and
magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine
nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now for
this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral
excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge,
self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance,
godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly
kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they
render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted,
having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be
all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for
as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way
the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will
be abundantly supplied to you. (1 Peter 1:1-11)
Beginning with spiritual birth, God then, in with and by His
Spirit, grants to all of his children, by His sovereign power, all that pertains to life and godliness
through the experiential knowledge of Jesus – walking with Jesus; living according to the Spirit.
That’s the new covenant way.
But why is it this way?
It is like this so the good news of the kingdom of God in
Jesus Christ is accessible to all. We do
not have to pass any intellectual tests, physical agility tests or mental
acuity tests; God is the original accessibility super-hero. No-one is banned or banished because of some
lack of physical, intellectual, emotional, psychological or sexual quirk of
fate. His grace is without limit and without ‘ability’ qualification.
What is the old covenant way? It says, “Bah! Humbug!
Let’s work it our ‘scientifically’.
Let’s follow the line of ancient history to the present; let’s study and
listen to the old masters; at least we know that works for us. If we abandon that, we lose control.”
Where did church learn its old covenant ways? There is a natural pipeline direct from the
old traditions flowing through a venturi tube of “teaching as doctrine the
precepts of men”: (Matthew 15:9) and “doctrines of demons”: 1 Timothy 4:1,
through to the present day.
We make the choice whether to go with the old or to
transition from old-covenant >>> new covenant.
There is such a thing as old covenant church. The way I look at it, “church” as we know it
can have that word; it’s never used in the new testament to speak of the new
covenant people of God. Kuriakos, kirk, church all relate to old
covenant ways and thinking. The word the
new testament does use for the new covenant people of God is ekklesia; and, as William Tyndale noted
(and was murdered for – by the church) that word should never be translated ‘church’. Old covenant: church >>> new
covenant: ekklesia; darkness >>> light.
Note to self: Remember, ‘losing control’ is
precisely what we need to do: if Jesus is Lord and Head, he needs to be
recognised as the one in control and we need to accord him that control and
abandon our schemes to ‘live according to the Spirit’.
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