Our Ministry- Surprising Global Opportunity
(I originally wrote this article for the blog SBCVoices.com)
In a town across the waters live members of one of the world’s largest unreached people groups. In the past 20 years, their population in this city has grown from about 8,000 to around 60,000. While their home country’s political situation is tumultuous, in this new city there is stability and religious/political freedom, including the freedom for missionaries to preach the Gospel to them. Like many other people groups in large cities, they have clustered in several major neighborhoods and have assimilated in a variety of professions, from doctors to taxi drivers.
This people group is the Bengali. While their homeland is made up of the country of Bangladesh and the bordering Indian states, a high population and good work ethic have enabled them to scatter to other cities around the globe.
The city, however, is not the desert towers of Dubai or the congested streets of London. The waters one must cross to reach these 60,000 Bengali are not the Bay of Bengal or the Pacific Ocean.
These 60,000 members of an unreached people group live here in the United States of America, in New York City, to be precise. The trip across the waters is a plane flight to LaGuardia or a ferry ride across the Hudson or East Rivers.
And in just a few months, Lord willing, my wife and I, along with our 9-month old daughter, will be loading up our family car to make that trip from here in Kansas City and settle into the borough of Queens where about half of these Bengalis live. The twists and turns God used to bring us to this point were not always easy (wanting to go overseas with IMB, health issue making living overseas impossible for the time being) but He has proven his goodness to us throughout. I can still remember my jaw dropping when I learned that one major people group was the Bengali, the people I had lived among for half a year doing a missions apprenticeship as a college student!
Many unreached people groups are in the US, especially in New York City. One of the like-minded people we will be working with in NYC wrote an entire book with pictures and profiles of 82 of these people groups. (available on Amazon or learn more at ethNYcitybook.com.)
We are excited to be able to work with the Bengali of NYC. It will take a lot of work: prayer, language learning, bold evangelism, discipleship. There are many obstacles. While some are suspicious of church plants because of experiences of ”sheep-stealing”, we don’t even have that option as 95% of our people group is Muslim and about 5% are Hindu! That’s not leaving many Bengali Christians left. New York is an expensive place to live and do ministry. Bengalis face temptations on both sides- their cultural religious traditions and the materialistic individualism they find in NYC. Despite these obstacles, we believe that God has brought these people to our shores for a reason. Our vision is to see faithful, reproducing churches of Bengali believers in each of these various neighborhoods in the 5 boroughs of New York City.
If you take a look at the states listed in our SBC Voices blogroll, you will see some states missing. I am hoping to see New York added this June and to use my writing to share about how God is molding, teaching, and using us to share the Gospel among the Bengali people of NYC. I’m a firm supporter of international missions; I wanted to be one for 11 years or so! But it would be irresponsible stewardship of us to completely ignore the mission field God is bringing to our shores. Would you take a moment today to pray for the spread of the Gospel in New York City and among the people groups found therein?
If you would like more information about our ministry or how you or your church can be involved in praying or partnering with us, email me at joshcollins8 AT gmail DOTCOM.
To learn more about SBC work in New York, check out:
Metro New York Baptist Association
Were the Apostles Lazy Bookworms?
As we prepare for our move to New York in June, I’ve been reading through Acts a chapter a week. (I did Luke’s Gospel in a similar slow-cooker fashion last year). This week I hit Acts 6, where the early Christians experience their first internal discord that we read about in Acts. Before this, their problems have largely been external persecution. I guess you could count the lies of Ananias and Sapphira as internal, but the Jerusalem church didn’t really have to make any decisions about that problem, other than how many people were needed to carry the bodies out.
But here we find that the Greek-speaking widows are being neglected in the church’s distribution of food. There were some cultural differences between the Jews who were more Hellenized and those who spoke Aramaic. And apparently, these cultural differences led to the Greek-speaking widows getting passed by in support.
The Twelve assemble the church and propose that a group of Spirit-filled, wise men be selected from the church who can be put in charge of the food and promote unity. This is done, and seven excellent men were chosen.
Some have critiqued the twelve apostles though as being part of the root of this problem. Rather than being involved in the ministry to people, they have isolated themselves in their rooms in devotion to “the Word of God and prayer.” They’re like a pastor who can’t meet with people because he has 40 hours in his sermon prep each week, locked away in his study. Acts 6:2, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.”, has been interpreted as a pompous elitism from bookish pastors with no heart for service.
Is this the case though? I don’t think so. Here are a few reasons why:
1) “The ministry of the Word” would have been very people-centered. In Acts so far, the phrase “the word of God” is primarily used as a summary for all the Christian teaching, specifically the Gospel announcement of Jesus as the crucified and risen Messiah foretold in the Old Testament. So for them, “the ministry of the word” would have included their evangelistic activities in the temple courts (for which they have been imprisoned at various times). Acts 2 also tells us that the early church was devoted to the apostle’s teaching, meeting in various homes day by day. Now, the apostles did not have a written New Testament for these Christians to read. So for the early Christians to be so regularly encountering the apostles’ teaching in homes, the apostles themselves would have been present in the home! Imagine sitting in a house as Peter tells you of the final events of Jesus’ life (including his own denial) or as Bartholomew recounts the feeding of the 5000. “The ministry of the word” would have been a very personal and people-centered activity.
2) “The ministry of the Word” required a whole lot of work. We don’t know how much access the Twelve had to actual written copies of the Old Testament Scriptures. We do know that only the very wealthy had access to such things. For them to be studying the Old Testament scriptures to learn how better to present Jesus as its fulfillment would require them to memorize various texts beyond what they had learned in synagogue growing up. Whether this involved them reading scrolls provided by a wealthy Christian (perhaps one of the priests who converted- Acts 6:7) or quoting passages among themselves to memorize, we don’t know. And they wouldn’t have a scroll to quote from when they evangelized or taught in the houses. There would be work to memorize these things, especially as they were in Jerusalem where many literate and devout Jews could have refuted them for sloppy teaching. Thinking through the amount of work and study required to preach as they did should keep us from assuming they were too lazy for serving others.
3) Luke presents their statements as good things. He calls their work “the ministry (diakonos) of the word.” It is not as if food service is real ministry and Gospel proclamation is subpar, or vice versa. Both are essential ministries of the church, both for its internal unity and external witness. Luke also presents their statements as “pleasing to the whole church.” And to end the story, with the 7 taking over the food distribution and the Apostles focusing on the ministry of word and prayer, Luke reports that the converts multiplied. And many priests were converted at this time. Would the conversion of the priests be directly related to the increased focus of the Apostles on their Word ministry of evangelism and teaching? Either way, Luke wants us to know that this arrangement was a good thing.
I’ve written this post for two reasons. One, there are those who denigrate the evangelism and teaching ministry of the church as less important than “real” ministry like feeding people. Don’t do it! We need those devoted to the ministry of proclaiming the message of God into people’s lives. Two, there are those who would use this text to justify bookish avoidance of people and their problems. Don’t do that! Your teaching will only benefit from dealing with people each week. Encountering non-Christians will make you think about how you present things in a sermon to deal with actual objections people have to the Gospel; praying and counseling believers will force you to practice speaking God’s words into life situations. And both of these are what Acts calls “the ministry of the Word”, not just a pulpit ministry.
When Saul Became Paul…
A zealous young Pharisee named Saul, from the city of Tarsus, encounters the risen Messiah Jesus, in a blinding vision. He is converted from killer of Christians to Christian. He no longer goes by the name Saul and changes his name to Paul upon conversion, and becomes the great missionary of early Christianity.
Or so the narrative goes. It was never quite explained to me in Sunday School why the name Paul was more Christian than Saul. (God likes “p” more than “s”? Saul developed a speech impediment when he fell off and could no longer pronounce his name right?) But it was assumed this had something to do with his conversion.
There are a couple problems with that narrative, though. First, Paul most likely had both names his entire life. Saul was his good Jewish name and Paul (Paulus in Latin) would have been part of the Roman trinomenaccompanying his Roman citizenship.
The other problem with that is the Book of Acts itself. Granted, we don’t have a single epistle bearing the authorial introduction for one “Saul of Tarsus” but only the familiar “Paul, an apostle…” But a brief survey of the Saul/Paul’s life in Acts will reveal to us a little more about this name change.
Acts 7:58- Saul stands by holding the garments of those stoning Stephen. (How do you think Luke knew Saul was there? or how he knew Stephen’s speech before the Sanhedrin? I would imagine it was Paul himself years later, perhaps with tears, recounting the final moments of Stephen’s life.)
Acts 9:1-5- Saul encounters Jesus while on the road to Damascus and is confronted by the true Lord, Jesus.
Acts 9:19-30- Saul meets with Barnabas who is willing to risk meeting with this former executioner of Christians to disciple him.
Acts 11:19-26- Saul is brought by Barnabas from Tarsus to Antioch to help lead a growing church of Jews and Gentiles.
Acts 13:1-3 -Barnabas and Saul are commissioned by the Holy Spirit and the church at Antioch to start churches in other cities.
Acts 13:5 -Saul the missionary preaches the Word on Cyprus
Acts 13:6-12-Luke subtly mentions that Saul is also named Paul while recounting the conversion of Sergius Paulus on the island of Cyprus.
Acts 13-28- Saul is called Paul from this point forward in Acts.
What can we draw from this?
Paul’s change of name was not simply related to the fact that he was a Christian. In fact, for years after his conversion, even when Acts was written, he was also known as Saul. Had Luke wanted us to tie Paul’s name change to his conversion, he would have switched names at the point of Paul’s baptism. But apparently he wants us to connect Paul’s name change to a different story altogether, one that occured almost haphazardly on Paul and Barnabas’ first missionary journey. Our narrative should not be “Saul the Pharisee becomes Paul the Christian” but “Saul the Pharisee becomes Saul the Christian missionary, also known as Paul the Christian missionary.”
But still, Luke begins using Paul for the rest of the stories in Acts, with this story on the island of Cyprus being the pivot for Luke’s usage of Paul’s Roman name rather than his Jewish one. Why?
I think this change was a conscious one. A couple things stand out about this location in Acts. First, we meet a proconsul named Sergius Paulus. I can imagine having our character Saul/Paul encounter another character named Paul would be a memorable place for Luke to disclose Paul’s second name. But why would he continue to use the second name? Second, this is Paul’s first recorded missionary work with a Gentile. We know that Peter has already preached to Cornelius in Acts 10, and that Paul himself taught many Greeks at Antioch who were coming to faith in Jesus. But this is our first specific encounter of Paul with a Gentile that Luke recounts, a Gentile who shares Paul’s Roman name. And Saul goes by Paul from this point on. Paul, the one who “became all things to all men”, was willing to be primarily known by his Roman name from here on out as we see in the rest of Acts and the epistles. Perhaps he saw the connection he developed with the proconsul that day on Cyprus, or perhaps he had slowly come to this conclusion that in order for this ex-Pharisee to reach Gentiles with the Gospel, he would exploit every God-given connection with them available. If that meant eating new food, he did so. If that meant working as a tentmaker rather than be paid in some cities, he did so. Even if it meant going by his other name, Paul did so.
What natural ways has God given you and me to connect with people? What interests, skills, family connections might we, like Paul, exploit for the sake of the Gospel? If the difference between an “S” and a “P” was seen by Paul as strategic to the Gospel advancing among the Gentiles, how can we neglect entire areas of our life that God might use for the mission He has called us to?
“Gospel-Centered” Pitfalls Part 6-Gospel Branding
This is the final post of a series:
Part 1-Defining “Gospel Centrality”
Part 2-Everything is Justification
Gospel Branding
In this final post of this series, let’s talk about one final pitfall-branding. Branding is a big deal. Corporate trademarks like Nike and Coca-Cola are recognized around the world. And the Christian world is no different. Remember when anything with “Purpose-driven” sold like hotcakes? Or books with that Jabez guy?
Well, search “Gospel-centered, -powered, -driven, etc.” on Amazon. The danger of course is that Gospel centrality just becomes the latest Christian fad to wind up in a future “Stuff Christians Like”-retro post. And of course, when Gospel gets moved from noun (the announcement of the Lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus) becomes an adjective, i.e. Gospel community, gospel service, gospel evangelism, is that it is no longer central. It has moved to the periphrary of whatever that new thing is. So Gospel-centered parenting is basically just parenting with a chapter about the cross thrown in front. Gospel-driven marriage is just marriage teaching with a little cross-talk thrown in. And the label “Gospel-” gets thrown on to sell books or conference messages or whatever and nothing in evangelicalism has changed.
The danger of this happening is that when we read Paul working through a book like 1 Corinthians and skillfully applying the Gospel to various conundrums and Corinthian shenanigans or James kicking favoritism in the teeth by drawing us back to the Gospel, we don’t see branding. We don’t see the Gospel as a label slapped on to marriage but marriage as something that grows out of the Gospel. It’s the difference between a race car with an M&M label on top and one that has one of those talking M&M guys behind the wheel. If our gospel-centeredness is just branding, let’s leave it behind. We need less Christian nostalgia on our library shelves anyways.
*I hope that if you’ve read this series, you’ve been helped. I’ve intended this series as a complement to much of the good Gospel-centered resources out there. Jesus is amazing. What the Gospel announces to us regarding his death and resurrection for us is worth meditating on and bringing to bear in all aspects of our life. For a few helpful resources in doing so, check out Part 1 of this series.
“Gospel-Centered” Pitfalls Part 5-Morals of the Story
This is part 5 of an ongoing series.
Part 1- Defining “Gospel Centrality”
Part 2- Everything is Justification
Morals of the Story
If you’ve endured a certain amount of preaching, you probably have found some bizarre sermons preached out of bizzare texts. One of my personal favorites is Pharoah and the frogs as an evangelistic text warning us to not wait until tomorrow for God’s salvation like Pharoah did (an old youth camp memory). The degree of difficulty on that manuever is pretty high. Such attempts to squeeze an obscure or pithy moral conclusion out of a Biblical narrative is common, especially in children’s Bible stories or teen ministry.
One of the beautiful things about true Gospel-centered discipleship, teaching, preaching, etc. is that it views each portion of Scripture with one lens in wide-focus. How does this particular story, psalm, proverb, law, etc. fit into the larger context of the grand narrative of Scripture-the Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration? Especially in light of passages like Luke 24 and the sermons in Acts, how does this passage point speak of Jesus?
But like all beautiful things, there is a cheap knock-off available. This is the “squirrel” hermeneutic. There’s an old preacher joke about a kid in Sunday School who hears about something that has a big fluffy tail, stores nuts in winter, climbs trees, and has rodent teeth. The little kid, well-trained with years of Sunday School, replies to the teacher, “Well, I know it sure sounds like a squirrel, but I know the answer has to be Jesus.” Some, in a zeal for Gospel-centeredness, have taken to making every passage about Jesus. Great. But they make it only about Jesus. Gone are the nuances of each individual we read about in Scripture, gone are the specific settings the Psalmist is singing about, and they probably don’t even mess with Proverbs as a teaching text. And of course, to find any other application besides, “You are a sinner in need of Jesus to save you”, would be moralizing.
But unfortunately, the New Testament doesn’t view the Old Testament in this way. As Paul writes in Romans 15:4, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.” Or 2 Timothy 3:16-17, speaking about the Old Testament Scriptures specifically, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of Godmay be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Yes, these Scriptures point us to Jesus, but they also are provided for our instruction, to correct us, to train us in righteousness. This means that we will find morals in the Old Testament stories. It means we can learn from Jacob the consequences of deceit, or from Joseph the temporary hardships of resisting temptation. We can even “dare to be a Daniel” and maintain our faith in the one true God in the face of a pagan culture. In fact, many of the readers of Daniel in the centuries before Christ would have found encouragement and a model of endurance as they faced Greek and Roman temptations to acquiesce their monotheism to the demands of the polytheistic, pluralistic (sword-weilding) majority.
Hebrews 11 finds the topic of enduring faith in a vast array of OT narratives. James gives us Rahab, Job, and Elijah as moral examples of active faith, patience, and prayer. Let’s not be more Gospel-centered than the Bible! As in much of these series, the pitfall is found not in the affirmations of those attempting to be Gospel-centered, but in the denials. In a zeal to acknowledge one aspect (Christ in all of Scripture) that has been missed in much of popular evangelicalism, they jettison a good instinct of previous generations. I believe we can find morals in the OT narratives without reducing them to Aesop’s fables. I believe we can see Jesus as our greater Daniel who unjustly died in the Lion’s Den but came back to life without ignoring the wisdom of imitating Daniel’s godly example. I believe we can see Psalm 22 as foreshadowing Jesus’ experience on the cross while also allowing it to speak into our moments of suffering and need to call on God’s covenant faithfulness.
Help Reach Unreached People Groups in NYC!
For those who don’t know, our family is currently raising support and preparing to move to New York City in a few months to work with the 60,000 Bangladeshis there. We will be working through a new organization called “Global Gates”, which coordinate the work among unreached people groups in New York City.
Anyways, there are some volunteer opportunities you can be involved with in NYC, some from your own home. Here are a few of the areas we could use volunteers in:
Stay-at-Home Volunteering
Many of the needs we have in reaching unreached peoples in Metro New York can be met even if you can’t travel to NYC!!! We need people to help with the following on an as needed basis from their own home or church:
• Web design
• Web management
• Graphic design
• Duplicating CDs and DVDs of gospel resources
• Administrative-type work
Evangelism among South Asian Peoples. (In our case, specifically among Bangladeshis)
Volunteers will come to New York and be trained in meeting people on the street, sharing their testimony and the gospel with them, and being able to tell if the person is a person of peace. This is a very strategic role that you will play as we sift through many people in the city to find those the Holy Spirit is at work in. These ‘Sifting Weeks’ are very strategic as we seek to bring the gospel to South Asian peoples here in the city.
Material Distribution.
Help us saturate Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist areas of the city with gospel literature. Some will come to NYC to hand out materials. Others can mobilize their churches back home to do a mail saturation campaign, as we seek to get truth into the homes. Each piece of literature will have a contact number where seekers can reach field personnel.
Prayer Coordinator for Unreached Peoples
- The Metro New York Unreached Peoples Prayer Coordinator will focus on mobilizing Christians in Metro New York and beyond to pray for unreached peoples located in Metro New York by disseminating information and resources, leading prayer groups, and starting initiatives to focus more prayer on the unreached.
If you are interested in any of these, email me at joshcollins [thenumberEight] AT gmail DOT com.
A little more info about Global Gates:
Global Gates is a new mission organization formed to reach unreached peoples in cities—starting in Metro New York. The vision of Global Gates is the gathered of the world in cities spreading the light of the world to nations. The mission of Global Gates is to restore a broken world through ministry, missions mobilization, training, and church planting movements among unreached peoples in our cities.
We, the Christian community in the Tri-State area, have neglected Christ’s command to make disciples of the nations He has brought to our doorstep. If the members of unreached people groups living in Metro New York were collectively counted as a city, they would form the second largest city in the United States. There are over 2 million Jews, 800,000 Muslims, and 400,000 Hindus in Metro New York, yet little gospel witness is taking place among these groups. The time has arrived for Christians in the Tri-State area and beyond to focus prayer, personnel, finances, talents, knowledge, ministry, church planting efforts, and other resources to reach the unreached peoples of Metro New York. At a time when technology has connected the entire world, with New York’s large and diverse immigrant population as well as unparalleled global influence, we declare Metro New York to be one of the most strategic places at the most strategic time in history to “make disciples of all nations.”
“Gospel-Centered” Pitfalls Part 4- Eggheadism
This is part 4 of an ongoing series. Be sure to catch up on the previous posts!
Part 1- Defining “Gospel Centrality”
Part 2- Everything is Justification
Eggheadism
Eggheadism is a danger in many Christian circles, not just the “Gospel-centered” ones. I can name a few circles of Evangelicalism where I don’t think this will ever be a danger, but they carry their own forms of elitism. Eggheadism is a by-default class system where those smart and bookish enough to catch onto the vocabulary of the movement are separated from the normal people who don’t. It often isn’t intentional, but one of the inevitable consequences that comes from a movement being both young and educated.
I think Gospel-centered movements tend towards eggheadism for a few reasons:
1. We are people of the Book. Can’t really do much here. Literacy will always be a part of the Church and discipleship simply because we believe God has reveals Himself to us through the pages of Scripture. But being people of the book doesn’t mean we have to be bookish to be disciples. We need to acknowledge the need for discipling that occurs in minimally-literate environments, whether this is among the urban poor, rural poor, or immigrant communities. One of the questions which those teaching Gospel-centrality should ask themselves is “Would this translate to a new believer from Iran and would he/she be able to easily share it with others?” or “Would a single, working mother who didn’t finish high school keep up with what I’m teaching or would she need years of specialized, Christian education to do so?” Those kinds of questions will keep our Gospel-centrality truly centered on the wonderful Gospel of Jesus and away from abstraction and over-complication.
2. Most church leaders have a book-centered education from an academic institution. Once again, you can’t undo your past education. I loved my time at college and seminary. But we need to remember that many Christians, including some leaders, throughout history were unable to read (and more were unable to write). As Tim Chester and Steve Timmis discuss in their book Total Church, one of the biggest reasons most churches reach middleclass people is because our trained (graduate degree-wielding!) leaders are middleclass. Which means that for the future, we need to look at finding ways to develop leaders and disciplers who wouldn’ t fit the bill for a traditional academic education but who can share their faith, lead, and train others to follow Jesus. A sweeping gospel-centered movement will need both leaders with DMins and leaders with GEDs.
3. Reading or philosophizing about Gospel-centrality is easier than living Gospel-centered. Sometimes our Christian discussions, books, Bible studies, and conferences serve as a numbing agent we use to keep ourselves feeling spiritual while being able to live much of our lives without following Christ. We can blog about the Gospel or read the newest “Gospel-centered” book without doing the dirty legwork of making application to our lives or sharing it with others.
4. We enjoy being part of the “in crowd.” Ironically, the Gospel-centrality should humble us and give us outward eyes for loving others and including the weak and marginalized, but instead we can take it and make it another personal distinction for ourselves or our group. We know the vocabulary, we know how to see the Gospel all over the Scriptures, we know the right books for parenting, marriage, etc. It would be a shame that a focus on the Gospel would turn us into Gnostics! But our pride knows no bounds and can twist any good thing into a source of personal accomplishment and worth.
Eggheadism is a pitfall in the path of Gospel-centrality. Let’s take caution so that a good desire to “study to show yourself approved” does not become a source of division and elitism.
“Gospel-Centered” Pitfalls Part 3- Jesus?
This is the 3rd post in an ongoing series. Be sure to catch up before going on!
Part 1- Defining Gospel Centrality
Part 2- Everything is Justification
Part 3- Jesus?
We could call this the “de-personalizing” error. In short, one pitfall that any truly Gospel-centered movement must watch out for is losing sight of Jesus in all the “gospel” talk. Some, in fact, would go back and push for a “Jesus-centered” movement in the very nomenclature just to avoid this. Let’s look at how Gospel-centrality might do this. Imagine the following being shared by someone with a friend after the worship service one Sunday:
“The Gospel is amazing! The Gospel frees me from my sins and restores my relationship with God. The Gospel humbles me so that I don’t look down on others. The Gospel is my life! The Gospel empowers my life! I need to learn more about the Gospel. Did you know that the Gospel speaks into that fight you’re having with your wife? The Gospel says that you are accepted and loved and can share that love with others.”
Wow. First of all, if Christian people are having these conversations with each other, then that may be a step up from where we are. But did you notice what got lost in all the “Gospel” talk? We forgot that the Gospel is all about Jesus! Most of that above could easily replace “Gospel” with “Jesus”.
And the point here is that we should never use “Gospel” as the subject of a sentence. The point is that our theological shorthands can sometimes get us into trouble. As one of my pastors has talked about before, when he lived in a predominately Catholic area, he talked about Jesus because that was something that opened more doors and was a fresher topic because of so much talk about “God” or “Christ” or “Mary.” And in Kansas City, everyone talks about Jesus, so that has become the cultural catch-all for the religious warm and fuzzies. So talking about “the Gospel” can be a shorthand way to teach them about Jesus subversively without directly assaulting people’s previous concepts. But when we overuse shorthands, we lose a bigger picture of the Triune God who has revealed Himself most fully in God the Son, Jesus Christ.
Remember in Galatians, a book where Paul talks about “Gospel” quite a bit, the most stirring part and rehearsal of the Gospel is 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” No mention of the word “gospel” but I’m hard-pressed to find a better Gospel-centered, Christ-centered text. And the impact of those verses comes when Paul doesn’t settle for an abstract theological concept of “Gospel” out there, but brings it down to “loved me and gave himself for me.“
So don’t abstract the Gospel so much that you lose the person of Jesus. Our speech matters because it trains our thought patterns. If we can talk about the Gospel without talking about the wonderful love of Jesus for us (for me!), we are headed into a soulless philosophical and religious exercise. Instead, thinking about the Gospel of Jesus should propel us to fall down and worship him, then rise up and follow him wherever he may lead.
“Gospel-Centered” Pitfalls Part 2- Everything is Justification…
This is the 2nd post in a series called “Gospel-Centered Pitfalls”. You can read the intro and Part 1- Defining Gospel Centrality before heading into this one.
One of the first dangers I see possible for the “Gospel-centered” movement is an unhealthy emphasis on “justification.” Hold on with the pitchforks and torches, my theology of justification is fairly traditional. I think Luther was right in his context to say that “justification is the issue on which the church rises or falls.” I think justification is a wonderful part of the Gospel, even one of the central New Testament metaphors for describing how the death and resurrection of Jesus conquer the sin and death problem and bring us back into God’s family.
There’s a danger, though. I’ve noticed that some talk about Gospel-centrality almost purely in terms of justification. Every issue of our Christian life, every temptation we face or trial we endure, every conflict with another human being is a justification issue. Every sin is an issue of self-justification. The central problem of every story of Scripture is whether the person knows that they are justified by faith alone in Christ alone. Part of this is simply that because the topic of justification was at the heartbeat of the Protestant Reformation and we are its descendants. Another reason is the perceived (and sometimes real) attack on Justification from the New Perspective on Paul, especially the work of NT Wright in recent years. Also, the Lutheran hermeneutic of dividing all scripture into categories of Law and Gospel makes every text a justification text. Add to that the late Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde’s work on making other categories like sanctification essentially subsets of justification, a good example of which can be found in Christian Spirituality: 5 Views of Sanctification.
The issue here is not that the topic of justification doesn’t pop up in places besides Romans and Galatians. It shows up in Luke’s Gospel, Job, and other places. But it’s not the only thing that pops up there. In fact, let’s revisit my statement about justification being “one of the central New Testament metaphors for describing how the death and resurrection of Jesus conquer the sin and death problem and bring us back into God’s family.” Even in describing justification, note how other Biblical metaphors showed up: victory, adoption. In fact, no less than J.I. Packer in Knowing God said that he would define the New Testament message about Jesus as “adoption through propitiation.” No mention of justification there.
Once again, it’s not that justification isn’t a major teaching of the New Testament. It’s not that it has relevance only to our entry into Christianity but not to our ongoing Christian life. That’s one of the key points of Galatians, that we don’t start something new after our Christianity. And Romans, the other major treatment of justification, is a letter sent to Christians, and there Paul rehearses justification to exhort the house churches in Rome to “accept one another in the Lord” since there is no difference between Jew and Gentile.
But note that justification isn’t the only metaphor Paul uses, even in Romans. Paul is willing to use any facet of the Gospel story to empower his readers to follow Jesus. Just in that letter, he talks about the Gospel in terms like mortification/resurrection, adoption, acceptance, unification of Jew/Gentile into one people, peacemaking.
Understanding justification is a key part of Gospel-centrality, but not the only part. Don’t withhold from yourself and those you disciple the vast richness of Gospel facets we find in Scripture. Yes, one person you meet may need to hear that she doesn’t have to prove herself to God and can rest assured in her justified status before him, but another may need to hear that they are adopted as God’s children as they face a difficult family past. Another may need to hear that the Gospel declares they have died to sin in Christ and no longer have to be enslaved to a particular habit. Someone might need to know the Gospel truth that Christ has broken down the dividing wall between ethnicities in his death and we can love those different from us. And there are so many more that could be used!
Avoid the pitfall of reducing the Gospel to “justification” only. It is not less, but it is so much more.
(A helpful book that deals with showing multi-faceted Gospel applications from a variety of Scriptures is A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love by Milton Vincent.)
“Gospel-Centered” Pitfalls Part 1-Defining Gospel-Centrality
We’ll get to the J-word next post. But I didn’t feel I could rightly discuss potential hazards and missteps of “Gospel centrality” without first laying a basic grid for what I mean by the term. After all, without knowing the destination, it’s hard to know whether course corrections are needed.
The idea of being Gospel-centered is scriptural. Essentially, it means that the joyful announcement that God has entered human history in the person of Jesus Christ to fulfill his promises, redeem his people, conquer sin and evil and death, and restore and re-create this world is not just the start but the whole of the Christian life. All of our fundamental human needs are addressed in the Gospel. Everything we need to know Jesus and become more like him is addressed in the Gospel. We don’t ever move on. And here are some Scriptures where I see this:
Paul tells us in Colossians 2, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” Note the connection between the manner of our initial receiving Christ and the way we continue to live.
1 Corinthians 15- “”Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.” We received the Gospel and have taken our stand (baptism?)- Note the past tense. We also are saved (present tense- literally “you are being saved”). We don’t let go of the Gospel after becoming Christians like a torn movie stub after we enter the theater. 1 Corinthians 15, in fact, Paul goes on to remind them of the Gospel in order to address present shortcomings in their lifestyles. (And of course, he’s already done that throughout the letter as he deals with each topic under discussion.)
James 2- “”My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.” James? Who knew there was Gospel-centrality in James? But James often argues from the Gospel to ground his commands. Here, he’s claiming there is something inherent in the Gospel of Jesus that doesn’t allow us to show favoritism. And 2:1 isn’t the only place he argues in this way.
Hebrews. No proof texts here, but the entire book is a summons to continue faith in Jesus alone for salvation. It assumes that professing believer can drift away from the faith (2:1) and that faith is the only way to please God (11:1). Hebrews reminds us that our faith in the Gospel of Jesus isn’t a 1-time checked box that we can move on from, but that we persevere in faith because the Gospel tells us that Jesus is our faithful priest and sacrifice who has opened the throne room of God to us.
(And don’t quote Hebrews to me about moving on from the Gospel to “deeper things”, since the stuff the author wants to move on to is a fuller exposition of the Gospel in light of the Old Testament sacrificial systems.)
Revelation 12- “”They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” Much like Hebrews, in Revelation it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that enables believers to continue through persecution and suffering. The conquering Lion is the sacrificial Lamb who was slain. “The word of their testimony” likely refers to their repeated witnessing to the Gospel of the crucified and Risen Christ, not to their own personal conversion stories.
We don’t have time to go into every place where this type of exhortation rooted in the Gospel narrative occurs. I deliberately only used Paul twice lest I be accused of importing Paul’s style on the rest of the New Testament (hmmm…wonder if that will show up later?). But above you have a basic grid for why I believe that the Gospel narrative of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus isn’t just an introduction to Christianity, but the mould into which our Christian lives should be shaped. It addresses all of our fundamental needs and is the only thing that will enable us to persevere in faith.
So next time we’ll discuss the first pitfall of Gospel-Centrality, namely dealing with the J-word. Justification.
