MY CONTENTION (5)

Freedom

 

The second ‘but’ is the word freedom itself.  Since what we’re talking about here is the good news of Jesus and the life and times of Jesus and his apostles, the word we’re looking for is the Greek one – from the New Testament.  In English, we have a couple of medical terms that help us: eleutherophilia – meaning a love of freedodm; eleutherophobia – meaning a fear of freedom; eleutheromania – meaning an intense and irresistible desire for freedom.  The root of them all is eleutheria, the New Testament Greek word for freedom.

To ancient Greeks, this ‘freedom’ was a natural law: a proper state of being, the aberration of which is slavery or bondage.  It refers to the power of self-determination; exemption from arbitrary or despotic control.  However, it was not, in that era, universally available but the possession of a select few in a class of their own, for whom it means the possession of particular privileges.  At its root, it carries the idea that a person or thing is “free” when it can and does perform in the manner and for the purpose for which it was made.  A train is not free to act as a fishing boat but to run on fixed tracks; and a human being is not free when constrained under the control or bondage of another.

The good news of Jesus (and its apostolic heralding) sees it as the natural state of being for all who are in Christ – restored and reconciled to God.  Paul expressed it to the Corinthians this way: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Cor. 3:17)  Paul appears to take the view that, in Christ, we humans can now live and operate according to the purpose for which we were created by God – a condition constrained by the disease of sin and by the futile efforts of law in our unredeemed state.

However, as with all words, we must resist the temptation to apply all our meanings of our English word freedom onto this Greek word and its common use in the time the apostles would have used it.  One of the main objections people have to the concept of freedom is that it appears to imply no restraint – and certainly that is a useful understanding of the idea.  But it is perhaps not the best one to understand its meaning as the apostles intended.

One of the best apostolic quotes to use to get a handle on freedom comes from Paul’s letter to the Galatians 5:1 – “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.”  As a matter of interest, the phrase “be subject again to a yoke of slavery” is a perfect rendition of the word ‘religion’ as we discussed earlier.

What is the nature and substance of the freedom for which Jesus Christ has set us free?  New Testament Greek scholars (Thayer and Strong for example) give us this insight: a) liberty to do or to omit things having no relation to salvation; b) liberty from the yoke of the Mosaic law; c) liberty from Jewish errors so blinding the mental vision that it does not discern the majesty of Christ; d) liberty from the dominion of corrupt desires, so that we do by the free impulse of the soul what the will of God requires.

And d) above is central and pivotal to the good news of freedom in Christ.  One of the most important things to understand about Jesus, his gospel and the life and ministry of the first apostles is that freedom in Christ is not simply a lifestyle choice by people seeking their own good pleasure or good fortune.  To them, freedom in Christ comes as a result of laying down one’s life in the cause of Christ, in repentance and faith, and, in the words of both Jesus and his apostles, being born again as a gift from God the Father by the will and power of the Holy Spirit, into a brother relationship with Jesus, where God the Father names us among His sons.

This process – all an initiative and act of the grace of God – enables and equips one to, as point d) above says, “do by the free impulse of the soul what the will of God requires.”  Paul wrote to the Romans, “... sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.  What then?  Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?  May it never be!”  Law is not our Master, Jesus is.  Consistent with that, he wrote to the Corinthians, “All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.  All things are lawful, but not all things edify.”  In Christ, we are not under law – any law.  But that does not excuse lawlessness; the same freedom in Christ also gives us the capacity, as I said, to “do by free impulse of the soul what the will of God requires.”  In our unredeemed state, we do not possess that free impulse; in Christ, we do – as a result of the gracious gift of God’s Spirit.

In Christ in this way, we are not under any obligation (another meaning of the Greek word eleutheria) to keep any other law in order to please and satisfy God our Father.  This is the fundamental reason they sought to kill Jesus, and ultimately succeeded.  It is also the reason for the continual persecution of Paul and his teams throughout their lives.  It is what lies behind the recorded incident in Acts 15 of the eleutherophobiacs (Pharisees and their adherents) trying unsuccessfully to bring Jesus’ disciples back under the law of Moses.

And so-called church history is riddled with the holes of an unrelenting stream of bullets from a continually firing machine gun that refuses to permit the freedom in Christ of those who opt to lay down their lives for Christ and, as the New Testament says, “worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” (See John’s gospel chapter 4.)  In Jesus’ day, they were fanatics and radicals worthy of internment or death – and little has changed to this day.  As Karl Marx suggested years ago, religion is the sop we take to immunise ourselves against the reality of freedom in Christ; it is the illusion of godliness we take on board so we can delude ourselves that we have the ‘benefits’ of having a right relationship with God without actually having the relationship we think we have.

And now, at this point in history, religion is the preferred way and freedom in Christ is decried, persecuted and lampooned – as it has been from the beginning.

But now it’s all coming apart and the opportunity for the truth to be inserted into the dialogue is imminent and pressing.

 

>>  NEXT: But it's all coming apart!

MY CONTENTION (4)

What Have We Missed Out On?

So, in all of this, what have we missed out on?  Well, it’s not so much what we’ve missed out on as what we’ve failed to see and understand and apprehend – because it has been hidden, corrupted and campaigned against.  And if it can be reduced to a single word, that word is freedom: freedom in Christ; freedom from and freedom to, both in such abundance that any – repeat any – human being can find their origin, purpose and destiny, and live a full and abundant life fully immersed in all that Jesus has accomplished for us.

BUT – there’s always a but, or two or three.

We first have to understand that religion is the direct opposite of that freedom.  To get at the nub of this matter, we need to consider three issues: the original/literal meaning of the term and it’s etymology; it’s dictionary meaning; it’s current contextual meaning.

Religion is an old Latin word made up of three parts; a root, a prefix and a suffix.  Thus re-lig-ion.  The root is lig meaning to bind up or a bondage; the prefix re means back or again; the suffix ion means the act of.  It’s literal meaning then is ‘the act of binding up again’ – implying that a thing or a person was once bound up, has been freed and is bound up again.  The use of this word is traceable back to a time in history – and in particular ‘church’ history – considered by some as the “Late Latin” era: 200 to 550 AD.

In this period, a deal was struck between the so-called ‘church Fathers’ and Roman Emperor Constantine to accept “Christianity” as a legitimate social force and institution and permit the ownership of land and property and the construction of houses of worship.  In the lead-up to this agreement, the profound freedom discovered and experienced by those who chose to follow Jesus Christ as their Lord and Master was a real problem to the political and ecclesiastical authorities of the day.  Not least of the problems was their insistence that they had no king but Jesus.  The agreement struck was that, in return for the right to official recognition, the right to own property and the right to build places of worship, the church Fathers would bring the “rabble” into line by curbing and restricting the freedom of Christians and subjugating them to the Emperor’s authority by bringing them under the authority of an equivalent to the Emperor – one who would be known as a Bishop, and later Arch-Bishop or “ruling” Bishop.  In other words, a description of what transpired was “the act of binding up again” otherwise free people: in Late Latin, religion.

Many people today do not know that the word cathedral means the “home” or site of the Bishop’s throne.  Over time, cathedrals and the institutions and authority structures they represent legitimised the impositions and the destruction of the freedom in Christ the Apostle Paul was at pains to emphasise right up to his death prior to the end of the first century AD.  How familiar it seems to us today – with so many freedoms being compromised in the name of “national security”.  A sanitisation process akin to money laundering turns freedoms into crimes and crimes against humanity into a new definition of ‘freedom’.  White becomes black and black becomes white.

That is what ‘religion’ in its original form represented.  However, if you look up a dictionary or hold a public forum with a panel of society’s leaders today, you’ll get a very different picture.  This is the evolution of the sanitisation process legitimising the destruction of the freedom in Christ that the true gospel of Jesus – the one true faith which was, according to the epistle of Jude, “once for all handed down to the saints” (1:3) via Apostle Paul – delivered to those who staked their lives on Jesus Christ their Lord and Master.

There is an Old Testament story analogous to this sad theme of history.  In Genesis 25:29-34, Esau sells his birthright for a bowl of lentils or some rough equivalent to his scheming brother Jacob.  Esau’s attitude was ‘I am about to die, what good is a birthright to me’.

Wikipedia notes the meaning of the AV Bible English phrase “mess of pottage” which Esau traded his birthright for in this way: “A mess of pottage is something immediately attractive but of little value taken foolishly and carelessly in exchange for something more distant and perhaps less tangible but immensely more valuable”.

That definition aptly fits the debauching of the freedom in Christ that happened long ago basically terminating the blood-line and DNA of the true gospel of Jesus and the first apostles soon after they were dead and gone.

But we do need to understand that this was not some surprise, unexpected circumstance or happening.  The entire ministry of Jesus and those first apostles was plagued by the pressure for this debauchery imposed by the religious and political establishment of the day.  From the very outset, both Jesus and Paul were persecuted for the ‘scandal’ of the freedom the good news of Jesus brought to people’s lives.

Our present day dictionary definitions and socio-political interpretations have all taken on board the sanitisation process described earlier, leading to the situation where religion is viewed and accepted as a positive force for the good and the betterment of individuals and societies globally.  When evidence appears of the opposite, every effort is made to placate offenders and excuse their behaviour – whether malicious or not – on the basis of ‘It’s our religion, we’re entitled to it.’

Is it legitimate for our dictionaries and our social, political and legal mores to be tilted permanently and irrevocably in favour of a deliberately twisted and distorted word?  Can we justifiably continue the delusion of bondage being used to justify itself – in the name of political expedience?

Many today refuse to look at or think about anything Karl Marx said, but we would all be better off if we paid a bit of attention to some of his words.  Sometimes people argue against all official ‘religion’ on the basis of a supposed quote from Karl Marx that goes something like this: “Religion is the opiate of the masses”.  But, as usual, this is poor translation and a cut-down version of Marx.

In 1844, the introduction to Marx’ work critiquing G.W.F. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right was published and it contained this paragraph:

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.

Note the sentence, “It is the opium of the people”.  In the midst of distress and difficulty, people turn to religion.  According to Marx, religion is the sigh of the oppressed, the heart of the heartless world and soul of the soulless situation – all probably true, and certainly that’s the positive spin most put on it today.  To Marx, in this, it works like opium giving a feeling of disconnection from oppression, from the heartless world and from soulless situations and connecting to a much better place.  However, to Marx, if people want real happiness, they need to abandon religion because it is an illusory happiness.  Further, he says, if people want to abandon their illusions about their human condition, they need to abandon religion because religion is a “condition which needs illusions”.  Religion mitigates against being fully human, fully alive because it is in part about disconnecting from everyday reality.

I’m with Marx.  I sometimes find it useful to consider this analogy: you want the latest model of your favourite car but you can’t afford it so you settle for a tiny pedal car scale model of it instead.  Religion, to me, is the pretend, scale-model look-alike of the real thing.  And to me, the real thing is faith.  Hence, as with Marx ‘if you want true happiness, you have to abandon illusory happiness and the pursuit of it’; religion is pretend or faux faith and it requires illusion to sustain it.  Furthermore, religion cannot deliver you to faith since it is going in the opposite direction; it is the reverse boat gear.  Therefore religion is, to me, the antithesis of faith.

The Late Latin word ‘religion’ has never been translated into English – how very convenient!  It is a Latin word, appearing in a Greek New Testament, and simply transliterated (from its Latin form) into English.  The New Testament apostles and writers used the Greek word threskeia to represent the idea behind the only time the word ‘religion’ is used in our English New Testaments and it has only tenuous links to the meaning we attribute to the word today.

The word ‘religion’ should never have been used in our English bibles since the word is more correctly translated as one of several words for ‘worship’.  Although using a slightly older from of English, Ellicott’s commentary for English readers on James 1:27 says:

It will be observed that by religion here is meant religious service. No one word can express this obvious interpretation of the original, taken as it must be in completion of the verse before; and certainly “religion” in its ordinary sense will not convey the right idea. Real worship, we may say, pure and undefiled, beheld and acknowledged as such in the presence of God, even the Father—mark the tender pathos of His divine relationship—is this: to visit the fatherless (or orphans) and widows in their distress and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

What we now see as “charity” the first apostles saw as ‘pure and undefiled worship’; what we now call “religion” had an equivalent for them in either paganism or in Jewish culture.  Religion is the antithesis of both faith and worship for true disciples of Jesus.

That’s the first ‘but’ out of the way.

 

>>  NEXT: Second 'but' - freedom.

MY CONTENTION (3)

Everything Must Change

William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament does not contain the word ‘church’ because, he said, the word is simply not there.  [See my blog "God Without Church".]  He was murdered for that, along with a few other words, all of which are ‘church’ words and were inserted into our English bibles illegitimately by edict of King James, not by informed, spiritual translators.  Revival begins with our seeing the elephant in the room and putting it out – or at least letting those so gifted do so instead of marginalising them and ensuring they can only serve the body in certain ‘acceptable’ ways.

The implications of this are comprehensive and profound.  Nothing is left untouched; most things are re-defined; everything is re-made and re-shaped.  In my view, that’s revival: personal spiritual renewal; corporate spiritual restoration; community/national spiritual awakening.  But we delude ourselves if we think we can have the revival without the restoration and the renewal; and the renewal and restoration is a comprehensive and profound transformation.  As author Brian McLaren says, Everything Must Change.  The subtitle of this 2008 book is “Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope”.

On my watch, over the last twenty years, God has been saying – through His prophets and teachers – that everything must change.  And, of course, that is way too radical for most if not all to hear.  It is no less true just because we struggle to hear, listen and obey.  Throughout the journey of my watch since the early 1990s, there has been no subject or ‘theology’ that does not need to be transformed, renewed, turned on its head or – frankly – properly heard for the first time.  The vast bulk of our theology traces its heritage back to one version or another of ‘historic church doctrine’.  In the process, its DNA has been corrupted and it can no longer reproduce uncorrupted offspring.  We need – if you’ll excuse the analogy for a moment – stem cells from Jesus and Paul to bring our body back to health and make it capable of reproducing according to the apostolic pattern.

And at the core of this entire process is our profound need to understand – as the first-century disciples did – that a full and complete and perfectly mutually satisfying relationship with God is available without church, without religion and without bible-thumping.  And on that last matter, we need to understand – again, as the first-century disciples did – that the bible and “the word of God” are not synonymous; one really must not interchange the two terms.

In an interview about his book Everything Must Change with ‘theotherjournal.com’, Brian McLaren said this:

… when you think about civilization, in many ways it’s like a machine. It’s this complex structure that we put together to help us achieve these three good desires for prosperity, equity, and security.  Not to say there aren’t other desires too, but those seem to be the fundamental purposes of civilization.  But if that machine is driven by bad programming, and once again, the term I use for this is a destructive framing story, then the very machinery that you’ve built to help you becomes machinery that can destroy you.  That’s why I call it a suicide machine.  And you know, it’s interesting that this shows up in modern film. You think about a movie like The Matrix. It’s about a machine that we’ve built turning on us.  Or the movie I-Robot.  Or even the movie Titanic, in a certain way. It’s a machine that we’ve put our confidence into to take us where we want to go, and because of the hubris or overconfidence that drives it, we sink!

In his book, McLaren reminds us that the earliest followers of Jesus were called ‘disciples’, “which means students and apprentices.  As disciples, they would learn to practice, to live, to walk this new way, which would also require them to unlearn old ways.”

He then goes on to say (page 284):

So, faith communities that seek to form disciples of this sort today will have a dual task.  First, they must recognize that the dominant societal system, the collective reality we have called the suicide machine, has its own covert curriculum, a curriculum that must be unlearned.  Second, they must develop their own creative counter-curriculum to teach people the art of living in this new way.  As they do so, they discover the subtle but pervasive power of the dominant system’s covert curriculum.

 Although I have not employed this language, I have really warmed to McLaren’s idea, which apparently came from something Dr Leonard Sweet said in McLaren’s hearing (see McLaren p.52 ).  In particular, I’m interested in this “covert curriculum”, or McLaren’s “framing story”.  Embedded within it are what he calls “the stories we tell ourselves” – the narratives that form a central part of the covert curriculum.  And this curriculum is the engine, if you like, of the suicide machine, contributing significantly to the various dysfunctions that turn our societal-system machine feral and it begins to turn on its creators.

Personally, we tell ourselves all sorts of strange things: “that’ll never happen to me”; “I can quit anytime”; “if I can do it, anyone can”; “good will triumph over evil”; “positive thinking will win the day”.  We tell ourselves these things so we can feel like we’re in control and not letting anything get the better of us.  We become over-confident and hubristic; and it seems to never enter our heads that these ‘stories’ might be lies.

And it’s not just ‘stories’ like these; on the one hand, we have large and elaborate myths – personally and nationally – that we pass on from one generation to the next for the purpose of social control.  On the other hand, we have individual words we love to use even though those words mean different things to different people and we have deliberately changed their meaning to suit our purposes.

 

>>  NEXT: What have we missed out on?

MY CONTENTION (2)

The Elephant in the Room

Few people who have not done theological study can accurately recount the apostolic ‘gospel’; most people can regurgitate some churchy and religious explanation of going to heaven or hell when you die.  Where did that come from?  How did we get here?  Why are we in this predicament?  Most Australians have never heard, seen or experienced the good news of Jesus, the gospel of Paul, the mystery of the grace of God.  Instead, what they are most likely to hear is a churchy and religious corruption of it with strings attached that bind people up to ideas, organisations, structures, systems and rites, all of which have nothing in common with Jesus or Paul.

And of course, I’m a raving lunatic – at best, seriously deluded – or so they say.  Well let me ask: since our concept of ‘church’ is nowhere to be found in the New Testament (the word isn’t even there, let alone its ideas and rites) how do we communicate Jesus and Paul without reference to ‘church’ and without insisting that people should listen to and/or attend ‘church’?  We cannot separate ‘church’ and religion from our preaching, yet neither concept was present in Jesus, Paul or the first apostles, nor was it in their preaching.

We have well and truly departed from the apostolic gospel, the mystery of the grace of God, but that departure was well before White Australia came into existence.  I was born in 1952, and in my lifetime, my experience of our ‘preaching the gospel’ has been, first, that I cannot remember ever hearing the apostolic message uncorrupted by ‘church’ or religious rites or moral behavioural injunctions; second, that when I attempt to do it (noting that I am not gifted as an evangelist) I am mostly shunned, ridiculed or ‘counselled’; third, that a lot of modern teaching says that the best way to ‘preach the gospel’ is to multiply churches.

Now even if we admit the word ‘church’ into New Testament vocabulary for the moment, the first believers had it the other way around: ‘churches’ are the product of the gospel, not the source of it.  If our ‘churches’ were like the ones we see in Acts, perhaps they could be effective in allowing the surrounding culture to hear, see and experience the good news of the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ, the gospel of Paul, the mystery of the grace of God.  Instead, our churches repeat the culture of old Israel and then expect that the gospel of Jesus is going to emanate from them.  That is not only counter-intuitive and counter-productive, it is rather like having the police and the military running a family holiday resort: there are rules for everything!

But Australia did not inherit New Testament-like gatherings and assemblies of disciples of Jesus; instead, we inherited a long-established religious and ‘church’ history from the UK and Continental Europe, complete with its corrupted DNA.   And most of the other stuff that has come here has come from the private-wealth, free-market capitalism theology of the United States, with its ‘health, wealth and happiness’ dogma.  The rare exception to this came in the form of preachers on horseback arriving in this land from out of the fires of the Wesleyan revivals in the UK, European Anabaptists escaping church persecutions and Brethren missionaries preaching Christ without ‘church’ and ‘pastor’.

From time to time, the grace of God could be seen in Australia in small outbreaks of sovereign, authentic Holy Spirit revival and awakening.  But the Wesleys and Whitefield were not trying to start a new denomination, they were Anglicans; it was their followers who turned ‘methodist fellowships’ into ‘churches’ and denominations.  The Anabaptists, similarly, sought the freedom to be true to the apostolic preaching as they typically saw it.  The Brethren, on the one hand, wanted no part of what they saw as unconverted Clergy presiding over their own fiefdoms and, on the other hand, sought to bring people Christ without the trappings of church.  All tended to focus on taking the gospel as they knew it to working-class people.

Pockets of genuine, sovereign, organic Holy Spirit awakening did emerge.  However, these never really continued in the same vein; they all ended up as institutions or parts of pre-existing institutions.  Multiplying churches and counting numbers of people in them came along in less than one generation in most cases.

Where is a genuinely immigrant-Australian expression of the good news of Jesus?  Where is our “Book of Acts”?  And of course that begs the question:  where is the gospel of Jesus in our indigenous peoples?  Have they, in fact, got something to teach us?  Have we corrupted them too – with our White European culture-religion we call church?

My contention is that Australia needs ‘revival’ (for want of a better word).  But it needs ‘revival’ that is not manufactured out of the raw materials of ‘church’ here.  If I were making humans, would I use cancerous or otherwise corrupted DNA?; only if I had a vested interest in producing something that suited me.  We need the pure DNA of God’s eternity and a direct ‘genetic’ link to Jesus and Paul.

Is that possible?  How do we get there?  It is eminently possible; and we get there as the first disciples did.  However, we will never get there by repeating any culture-christianity, which is what all ‘churches’ have proven to be.  You cannot make a ‘church’ without cultural-religious rites.  But making church (or rather ekklesia) is not our business anyway.  Like Paul and the other apostles, we are to be first and foremost bond-servants of Jesus as they were.  When we are, the Holy Spirit brings about renewal, restoration and revival; and He builds ekklesia, a ‘dwelling-place of God in the Spirit’.

Want revival?  Don’t think about church and activities and programs and the like; think about being ekklesia and living, as well as sharing and earnestly contending for, “the faith once for all handed down to the saints.”  It will not happen as long as we insist on church and our religious clubs.  How do I know?  As a prophet, I see the elephant in the room.  The elephant is called ‘church’ and, like the H & R Block advertising campaign (see still below), it’s my job to call out and point to the elephant.  Whether we care enough to put the elephant out is another matter altogether.

 

>> NEXT: Everything Must Change

MY CONTENTION (1)

Cut Down and Shaved Back

It is unequivocally my clear contention that Australia has yet to see, hear and experience a full and unadulterated presentation of the good news of the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ, and of the revelation of ekklesia and the new covenant as delivered to apostle Paul.

According to the letter written by Jude, a half-brother of Jesus, “the faith” was “once for all handed down to the saints” (1:3): once for everybody (Jew and non-Jew alike); and once for all time.  And according to Ephesians, that ‘handing down’ was to apostle Paul: “the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you [Gentiles]; that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery...” (3:2-3)  And the ‘mystery’ is not some weird invention of Paul himself but “the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” (3:5).

When Paul said in 3:3 “as I wrote before in brief”, I believe he was referring to an earlier part of this same letter, quite probably 1:3-14.  And, to be sure, that passage is a ‘brief’ restatement compared to his other writings of Romans and Galatians.

The central core of his message – not dreamed up but received by revelation from the triune God – was that, since Jesus and in and through Jesus, the blessings of God were now available to Gentiles (non-Jews) or ‘Greeks’ as Paul often referred to them.  And indeed that was a true ‘mystery’ to most Jews, being written about in type and symbol in their sacred writings but largely not comprehended or understood.

The most galling part (to the Jews) of Paul’s revelation was that the new revelation included the point that one does not have to keep the ‘Law of Moses’ to be reconciled and justified in God’s sight.  To this day, it galls many, to the extent that people write and preach sincerely and loudly that Paul is in fact the “false apostle” of Revelation – precisely because he teaches that one can be right with God without the need to keep the Jewish law.

Paul’s message is both the revelation of what was previously ‘hidden’ and of how this is a profound act of grace on God’s part which should not be trifled with or trivialised – least of all should it be corrupted by permitting the Mosaic law to creep back in.  Paul fought for this his entire post-Damascus life and many attempts were made on his life.  Eventually his opposition succeeded in having him assassinated.  Nevertheless, he died true to the revelation.

Jude in his short letter (see above) is arguing for the same thing when he says, “I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.  For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into wanton violence and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”  The central reason for the revelation and for the act of Grace on God’s part was the point that most of the Jews then and many still today reject Jesus as Master, Lord and Christ.

Bringing this back to Australia today, my chief contention is that what Australia got was a corrupted version of the apostolic doctrine and Pauline ‘mystery’.  And I point specifically to the systems, structures, hierarchy and ‘rites’ of religious culture and practice in what we call “the church”; to our consistent failure to ‘earnestly contend for the faith’ as Jude urged; and to not noticing legalists creeping in – because we rely on logic, natural desires and human planning instead of the Spirit-gifted persons God has provided for us.  These people, incidentally, are part of the Divine plan, the ‘mystery’ and the revelation of Paul (see Ephesians 4), yet we so easily abandon them for a system that mimics the thoughts, practices and theology of old Israel.  Then we brand it all with a word stolen from the Pauline revelation (ekklesia) and think that sanitises it and makes it what it patently cannot be.

My contention is that ‘church’ and ekklesia are NOT – repeat NOT – the same thing: not now, not then, not ever.  In fact, I contend that what we know as ‘church’ in the White history of Australia is a case-in-point of “certain persons have crept in unnoticed”; of the “leaven” of Galatians 5; of those whom Paul wished would “go and mutilate themselves”; of the tares in among the wheat that Jesus spoke of (Matthew 13).

My contention is that ‘church’ shares almost nothing in common with the revelation of Paul and the mystery of the Grace of God in Jesus Christ; and that it shares much in common with Old Testament Judaism – including its moral code and religious rites.  And that is what we have preached; and that is what Australians consistently dislike.  We have not received and passed on Paul’s revelation and the mystery of the Grace of God in Jesus Christ; instead we have received and passed on the very thing Paul was fighting against as we see it in the book of Acts: the redemption of Jesus on condition that we keep the law.  And this despite the fact that part of Paul’s revelation is that the law is fundamentally, totally and absolutely unable to save a Gentile!

My contention is that we must make a clear separation in our message between the good news of the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ [the revelation of Paul and the mystery of the grace of God] on the one hand, and ‘religion’, church and a rites-based ‘faith’ on the other.  Church has stolen ekklesia and we need to steal it back – alternatively, we could find a new word.  But whatever word we use, it must mean basically the opposite of what we know as ‘church’.

The “faith which was once for all handed down to the saints”, from its earliest time, has been persistently assaulted by “certain persons [creeping in] unnoticed”.  Luke wrote about it in Acts 15:1: “Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’.”  They managed to hit it on the head, but it never went away.  Eventually the Judaisers won and today the “faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” is the heady domain of debated theology, not the life and times of the everyday christian.

>> NEXT: The Elephant in the Room

Out of the Boat

“Lifemessage” July 19 2004 by David Orton from Melbourne [Out of the Boat: Jesus and the Contemporary Church] recounts the story at the end of Mark’s gospel chapter 6.  After a hectic day with the disciples and the crowds, the disciples get into a boat to row to Bethsaida on the shore of Lake Galilee and Jesus goes up onto the mountainside to pray.  As night wore on, the disciples were having real trouble against the wind and not making progress.  They were beginning to worry.  In the early hours of the morning, seeing them in difficulty, Jesus goes to them walking on the water.  The disciples are terrified thinking they have seen a ghost and begin crying out – what, we are not told.  It appeared to them that this ‘apparition’ was walking right past them.  I think I’d be terrified too.

Mark records that Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘It’s me; don’t be afraid’.  They recognised his voice and no doubt the terror left them and gave way to utter relief.  Jesus climbed into the boat, and as he did, the wind and the waves ceased and it became calm.  It seems they were very confused about what was going on: a few hours ago they had seen Jesus multiply a boy’s picnic lunch and feed thousands of people with it; now he was walking on water like a ghost; and just as he climbed into the boat, the bad weather ceased.  I think if I were there, I would just have been happy to row to the safety of shore and discuss things later.  Perhaps that is just what they did; they anchored at Gennesaret and still the crowds pursued them.

But Matthew’s account of the same incident adds a bit extra.  When Jesus spoke and said, ‘It’s me; don’t be afraid’, Peter replied, ‘If it really is you, tell me to come to you on the water.’  According to Matthew, Jesus said, ‘Come’, so Peter got out of the boat and started walking to Jesus on the water.  Part way there, he began to panic (no surprises there!), took his eyes off Jesus and began to sink.  Jesus reached out and caught him and said to him, ‘You of little faith – why did you doubt?’

Matthew’s account then re-joins Mark’s and the story goes on.

“Out of the boat”.  Orton sees this event as “A picture of the Western Evangelical / Pentecostal church” in the 21^st century, in the following terms:

“With the winds of a post-modern world blowing against her she is ‘straining’ on the oars. Despite their ability as seasoned fishermen, accomplished in boatmanship and experienced in storms, the winds are too strong. Like the disciples the contemporary church is exerting all her strength, training, and skill to fulfil the commission given her. But with all the resources available she cannot move forward. Over recent times the church in Australia (measured by Sunday attendance) has shrunk by 12% and in the UK by 26%.  North America is not faring much better.  By any measure, the contemporary western church is in ‘distress’.

“And so, Jesus is coming to her in the fourth watch (between 3-6 AM) – in the darkest hour before dawn (see Mk 6:48).  The night has been spent in a toilsome and futile labour.  Exhausted, the disciples are at their wits end. But it is the watch when Jesus comes, the watch before the dawn, before the new day.

“My question is twofold – from where does He come, and how does He come?

“The answer is that He comes from ‘outside the boat’ through a ‘new thing’.

“This is, for the church, the worst of times, and yet the best of times.  An hour of great testing and darkness on one hand, but on the other, one of great visitation and new beginnings.

“In her darkest hour Jesus is coming to her in a new manifestation of divine power and purpose.  But she is constrained by her own strength and structures.  She is self-reliant and secure in her man-made systems.  She is so mired in these and so focussed on the storm, on her own effort – on physical and sensate things, that she is caught by total surprise.  Jesus appears walking on the water.  This is so outside their frame-of-reference they immediately conclude that it is a ghost!  How could this be of God?  It is outside of their ‘boat’ – their man-made vessel – outside the design, engineering, and structures of man!

“Not only that, it is a completely ‘new thing’ – Jesus healing the sick they knew, feeding the five thousand was OK, but what was this?  It was unfamiliar and impossible, defying all the natural laws on which they were depending for their survival. Boats were designed to float on water and that’s where they were staying!  And so, they concluded that it was a ‘phantom’ – a ‘ghost’ (Gr ‘phantasma’). This manifestation was not only not of God, it had no ‘substance’ – it was not real – it was either a figment of the imagination, or from the ethereal world of the spirit.

“Not only do they misconstrue this new visitation of God as having no substance; their response was one of fear.  In a moment of time these self-assured sea-salts are reduced to abject terror shrieking for fear! (see Mk 6:49, 50).

“The parallels are obvious. There is a new visitation coming to us from ‘outside the boat’.  A sudden and surprising manifestation of Christ is coming toward us.  And it is coming from the storm-tossed seas of people – from the tumult of the nations...”

I have no problem with Orton in this matter.  He begins this article by noting that it is “A Prophetic Teaching”.  And if you read through the new testament book of Acts, you will see that such a thing is not outside the gamut of the life and experience of the disciples of Jesus post-Pentecost AD 30.  I myself have been in this stream of ‘prophetic teaching’ since the early 1990s and I concur with the parallels he draws.  My personal journey for over twenty years has been one of “outside the boat”.

My question, though, is different from Orton’s double question.  My focus is on the boat.  What is the boat?  What happens when Jesus gets into the boat?  What is the nature of their life and their journey after this ‘boat’ incident?  And for twenty years or more this has been my interest, since Jesus called me to get out of the boat (metaphorically speaking) and come to him, leaving behind all the support structures of the boat, what it represented and what it was connected to.

¤

Now hold that thought for a moment while we visit a later time and a different part of the new testament record.  Researchers and professors are uncertain of the exact authorship of the new testament book of Hebrews.  Some say it was the apostle Paul; some say it may have been Barnabas; some say it might have been a sermon Paul gave transcribed by Luke.  Many options have been suggested.

And who was it written to or for?  Its title appears clear, but in the original, there is no salutation or greeting.  The phrase “To the Hebrews” was a later addition.  However, the content makes it quite clear that it was, at least in part, intended for an audience of Hebrew (Jewish) believers.  It also seems quite clear that the fall of Jerusalem (AD 70) had not yet transpired.

Most probably, it was a letter or a ‘sermon’ written by an eyewitness to the events surrounding Jesus and immediately following his death and resurrection as a kind of treatise for Jewish people but with an eye to Gentiles who converted to Jesus but not to Judaism.  The central theme of the writing is the superiority in every way of Jesus over Abraham, Moses and David; of the new covenant over the old covenant; of grace and the Spirit over the law and the book and the letter of the law.

Now against that background, read Hebrews 13:7-14.  You can see traces of this ‘comparison’ and the superiority of the way of Jesus in this short extract.

Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.  Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited.  We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.  For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp.  Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.  So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.  For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.

“Outside the Gate” or “Outside the Camp” is the emphasis here.  Just like the animals sacrificed for the temple offerings and religious rites, Jesus was sacrificed (read murdered) outside the city walls as a criminal the authorities were glad to get rid of.  And his blood was spilled on the ground, not collected and taken into the city for the temple rites as was the animal blood.

The early disciples of Jesus were instructed in the profound significance of this.  Their ‘city’, their spirituality, their future, lay not inside the walls and gates of the city of man, but outside the gate; outside the camp; out where all that is not holy belongs.  How could this possibly be the place for them?  How could outside the walls and gates of Jerusalem possibly be the true city of God?  Because that’s where Jesus was; and that’s where the ‘common people’ who ‘heard him gladly’ lived and moved and had their being.  Jesus made it perfectly clear he did not come for the righteous but for the unrighteous.

Inside the walls and gates they are righteous in their own eyes; out here, now, with Jesus, the unrighteous are granted righteousness before God on His terms; they are Christ-righteous; they are righteous in Christ.

That is why the writer to the Hebrews says clearly, “So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.  For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.”  The City of God is “outside the gates”; “outside the camp”.  But those inside continue on blissfully ignorant, thinking they are in the city of God.

To me, the parallels here are also obvious – at least as obvious as the parallels around the ‘out of the boat’ story.  So, my strategy is to join the two sets of parallels together.  In my left eye, I have the ‘out of the boat’ story; in my right eye I have the ‘outside the camp’ story.  And like our natural vision is best when we have both eyes, to me our spiritual vision is best when we have both stories – when we see through both lenses.

¤

The boat and the walled, gated city-camp are analogies for the same thing.  And I believe there has been a long continuous line of “prophetic teaching” reaching all the way back to Jesus and the first apostles – and possibly back much further too, linking Joshua and Caleb, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Nathan, Micaiah and many others to the first century AD ecclesia and to present-day apostles, prophets and teachers who are the foundation of ecclesia in every generation.

The boat and the walled, gated city-camp are where religion lives; they are the home and the spawning ground of Pharisees – in every generation.  They are safety, security, normalcy to all who want to preserve the past and make sure everything they believe in is maintained and perpetuated into the future.  They represent that mood and habit that actually changes nothing but adopts and co-opts the language of what they want but want on their own terms in their own forms with their own prescriptions and decrees.

The boat and the walled, gated city-camp are ‘church’, ‘Christianity’, ‘Christendom’, and ‘Christian City’ as Robert Burnell put it in Escape From Christendom (Bethany House Publishers, 1980) [http://awildernessvoice.com/Escape.html]; while ‘out of the boat’ and ‘outside the camp’ represent ecclesia, The Way and ‘The City of God’ in Burnell’s analogy.

The boat and the walled, gated city-camp have “the gospel” (their own preferred story of God); while ‘out of the boat’ and ‘outside the camp’ have “the good news of the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.”

Inside is the old covenant; outside is the new covenant.  Inside is what Orton describes in the quote at the top of this piece; outside is his “new visitation”.

But the really important thing is this: ‘the church’ is not ‘the ecclesia’ now (presently) sick and that sickness healed by this “new visitation”.  The church has never been the ecclesia and never will be; the ecclesia has never been the church and never will be.  They have always been, are now and ever will be two distinct things.

In Jesus’ day, for a Pharisee to be joined to ecclesia, he had to follow the direction of the letter to the Hebrews (Pharisees were usually Hebrews): “Let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.  For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.”

In Matthew’s record, when Jesus finished his damning discourse with the Pharisees and Scribes, this is what he said: “Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall [the guilt of] all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. ‘Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.’” (Matthew 23:34-36)

Dr Luke the new testament historian says pretty much the same thing – Luke 11:45-52.  This is very damning and not at all pretty.

This puts me in mind of the old testament account in Ezekiel 34.  While addressing the ‘shepherds of Israel’ in similar condemnatory tones, God (through his prophet Ezekiel) declares that He will appoint new shepherds over His people who have a heart after His own heart.  And the people whom He will personally shepherd are out in the mountains away from those who injure, insult and harass them – ‘outside the camp’.

In reality, the outsiders are the insiders to God, as the insiders are the outsiders to Him.  ‘Inside’; the boat; the walled, gated city-camp – these are not God’s intention plan or future.  And the “New Jerusalem” coming down out of heaven in John’s revelation is not the old Jerusalem made new, restored or healed but a new creation in Christ Jesus – made up of foreigners, strangers, aliens: “outsiders”.

And if ‘insiders’ want to be joined with these ‘outsiders’, they have to “go to him outside the camp bearing his reproach”.  Likewise, those “forsaking assembling” (à la Hebrews 10:25) and not the outsiders who refuse to come inside but the insiders who refuse to go outside to meet in twos and threes where Jesus now lives and moves and has his being by the Holy Spirit.

I concur with Orton – there is a “new visitation” coming; and, yes, it is “out of the boat”.  But it is also outside the gate; outside the camp.  There is no redeeming what is inside and making it a holy place; holiness, righteousness, salvation are in getting out of the boat – going outside the camp; leaving ‘Christian City’ – to meet with the redeemer, the saviour, our righteousness and be joined together as one body with the outsiders in the ‘the city of God’, the New Jerusalem, the ecclesia, God’s new Zion.

Whoever wrote Hebrews noted that, when you “go out” to Jesus...

“...you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them.  For they could not bear the command, “IF EVEN A BEAST TOUCHES THE MOUNTAIN, IT WILL BE STONED.”  And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, “I AM FULL OF FEAR and trembling.”  But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”

By Jesus’ definition, true ‘Mount Zion’ is not inside the walls; indeed, he IS Mt Zion – all that Mount Zion was to old Israel and so much more Jesus is to God’s new covenant people.  Just as Jesus did not come to start a new religion or form a new sect within Judaism, his visitation is not to redeem or ‘heal’ the church but to help us see that ‘the church’ is nothing more nor less than a false ecclesia.  Too many of us have been looking at the old Mount Zion instead of being with Jesus outside the camp and thus being perpetually AT and IN the true Mount Zion.

Orton’s article then goes on:

“At first, those in the boat will claim this visitation has no substance – that it is a ‘phantom’ – a passing fad, of no consequence. By comparison, their boat with its human design and construction is far more substantial than this mere apparition. They can, feel it, see it, and even row it! They even believe they can control it – despite the overwhelming force of the elements!

“They will also respond with fear. Any fear of the storm will be completely overtaken by their fear of the unknown and particularly by their fear of the supernatural. It will drive them to reject this move of God.  Even, many of those who are currently networking new movements of mission, of pastoral unity, and even many so-called ‘apostolic’ networks will react in fear and cling to the boat – to the structures and patterns that offer a more tangible security.

“But some like Peter will be stirred in their hearts. And at the word of the Lord they will step out of the boat to come to Him (see Matt 14:28, 29). They will be irresistibly drawn from the securities of familiar patterns and structures to Him. And thus stepping out of them enter a new realm of freedom – of the miraculous. A realm of walking on water where they are no longer governed by sense-knowledge and natural reasoning!  They will distinguish themselves from the rest of the disciples by their fearless hunger to be with Him – to come to Him ‘outside the boat’, and thus step into the ‘new thing’. They are willing to “suffer with Him outside the city gates, bearing the reproach outside the camp” (Heb 13:12, 13). A study of revival history and of the coming of Christ Himself eloquently teaches us that the visitation of God comes most often through the least expected avenues and usually through those of no account in the religious system.”

Well – this very thing has been going on for at least the last twenty years.  Prophets spoke in the first half of the 1990s not only about this ‘visitation’ but also about what Orton explains in these three paragraphs.  I know because I was a part of it.  I have documented what was happening and the prophetic teaching of the time.

Those ‘in the boat’ have already done what Orton describes here – and done it for twenty years or more: claim that it is a phantom, a passing fad, of no consequence.  Their human ‘boats’ have continued uninterrupted their course of buildings and programs and they all tout that their ‘success’ is the blessing of God.  Sounds just like the Pharisees in Jerusalem compared with the dishevelled disciples out on the lake with Jesus.

They have, for twenty years or more, responded with fear and sought to fortify themselves and shore up their fiefdoms against the bulwark of Jesus’ woes.

And, for the past twenty years or more, there have been Peters, stirred in their hearts, stepping out onto the water to go meet with Jesus bereft of all attachments and securities – sometimes even to begin to sink.  But beginning to sink is not a measure of wrongness or failure.  Quite the opposite: it is that beautiful moment when we realise we have nothing left but Jesus – and we need nothing more than Jesus, with his hand reaching out to lift and stabilise us.

These ones are, as Orton puts it, “no longer governed by sense-knowledge and natural reasoning!  They will distinguish themselves from the rest of the disciples by their fearless hunger to be with Him – to come to Him ‘outside the boat’, and thus step into the ‘new thing’. They are willing to ‘suffer with Him outside the city gates, bearing the reproach outside the camp’ (Heb 13:12, 13).”

But I disagree with Orton when he says, “And so, through this visitation the church will be purged of human control.”  That’s a pipe-dream.  I believe the reality is that ‘the church’ is a human organisation that has only ever been under human control and without human control will simply die; whereas ‘ecclesia’ is a divine, living eternal organism that has never been under human control and never will be.  What is, in character and mood, “inside” cannot become, in character and mood, “outside” and vice versa.  Consistent with Paul’s teaching, the old does not become new; rather, the old is shed and replaced with the new.  You ‘put off’ the old and you ‘put on’ the new and you don’t put new wine in old wineskins.

In like manner, the church’s ‘gospel’ says that, in Jesus, old ways are transformed and become new ways (like pruning a tree or simply changing behaviour); whereas the good news of the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ is that, in Christ, the old is put to death (crucified) and the new springs up out of the new life of the Spirit of God implanted within (the old tree is ring-barked and an entirely new tree is planted).  In this latter scenario, the old tree is withering away to death; the new tree is taking root towards abundant eternal life.

Why do I make such a distinction and such a point?  Well...  Who says who is “in” the church and who is “out”?  As far back as you trace its history, man has been determining that.  Furthermore, some groups and individuals that are “in” today were “out” at some time in the past.  All denominations started as rebellions that gave way to splits and later to accommodation and tolerance if not outright acceptance.  At one stage, the so-called ‘house-church movement’ was “out’; now it’s “in” for some and still “out” for others – all based on our own individual personal interpretations and preferences.

Does it matter, in the end, whom the church thinks is “in” and who is “out” – well, no; not really; not if Jesus really is the Head.  But, since the word ‘church’ does not appear in the original language of our bibles, how are we supposed to deal with this?  Personally, I think God cares about as much for it as Jesus did about whose inscription was on the money of the day.  Render to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and to God that which belongs to God.  Church belongs to man and it will be rendered to man and it will die with man.  Ecclesia belongs to God and will be rendered to God and it will share eternity with God.  What we do with church is about as important to God as what we do with our sports clubs and community associations.  What we do with ecclesia we are accountable to Him for since we are all – let me stress all; not some – responsible for our part and place in it.

You join church by selection and human will; you are joined to ecclesia by an act of divine will and promise.  You can leave church by human will and resignation; only God can separate you from your divinely grafted place in His family tree.  Your church can change its constitution or rules and leave you “out” where once you were “in”; ecclesia’s only ‘rule’ is “IN CHRIST” and that is fixed for all time and eternity for all humans.

Church and ecclesia cannot possibly be the same thing.  And the language confirms it.  The church lied from the beginning when it claimed that ecclesia equals ‘church’: it does not.  William Tyndale was murdered by the church for this truth; we love to claim lineage to Tyndale yet we practise the very thing he died fighting against.  The church has forsaken assembling with millions of “outsiders” yet turns this around and blames them for its own sin.  As usual, Jesus stands outside the door and knocks while inside we play our games of charades and pretend that he’s inside with us by quoting Jesus’ own words from our overly-precious bibles.  Go figure!

I believe that Jesus never intended us to treasure a written relic of him over his own dynamic personal presence in the person of the Holy Spirit; yet that is what we have done, and then gone on to institutionalise and sacralise it all.  The scriptures were intended to draw and deliver us to Jesus, not to replace him, so we can then boast about how clever we are because we have tamed Jesus to our particular liking.

And I believe the “new visitation” begins right here: in is out; and out is in.

Amen.