Finally Alive: Piper

Finally Alive:

Chapter 2: You are still you, but new

‘we are not dealing with something marginal or optional or cosmetic in the Christian life.’

‘The new birth is not like the make-up that morticians use to try to make corpses look more like they are alive. The new birth is the creation of spiritual life, not the imitation of life.’

The new life is ‘something above the natural life of our physical hearts and brains.’

‘flesh gives rise to one kind of life. The Spirit gives rise to another kind of life. If we don’t have this second kind, we will not see the kingdom of God.’

“The Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to himself.” John Calvin

‘What happens in the new birth is the creation of a new human nature – a nature that is really you, forgiven and cleansed; and a nature that is really new, being formed in you by the indwelling Spirit of God.’

‘born of water’ is not a reference to baptism:

here’s why:

-      if baptism was the means by which and through which people were born again you’d expect the theme of baptism to play a more predominant part of Jesus’ teaching. Especially in this chapter where Jesus is explaining being ‘born again’ to Nicodemus. It seems that believe is emphasised more than baptism.

-      Jesus said in reference to being born again that the wind blows wherever it pleases. His point was that you cannot predict or control where the Spirit moves and who he selects for the new birth. If water baptism was a prerequisite for being born again how would this statement about the Spirit remain true since we could control it through baptism.

-      Nicodemus is rebuked for not knowing what the statement of Jesus’ meant. Jesus expected Nic as the teacher of Israel to know the old testament scriptures. Christian baptism would come later and so isn’t in the OT scriptures. Jesus is not rebuking him for a lack of prophetic understanding of the things to come!

‘Water’ refers to Ezekial 36

‘I shall sprinkle you with water and you shall be clean from all your uncleanesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.’

‘the ones who will enter the kingdom are those who have a newness that involves a cleansing of the old and a creation of the new.’

I am still the same morally accountable human being that I was before the new birth occurred. The old Jez has been washed clean by water. My guilt has been washed away, my shame has been washed away. I am the same person but my sin has been washed off of me.

However, a clean version of the old me isn’t enough, my sin is deeply rooted and is a result of my heart of stone. My old heart could respond with passion and desire to lots of things but it was a stone toward the spiritual truth and beauty of Jesus Christ and the glory of God.

Chapter 3: We are spiritually dead

John Calvin: Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

‘no one knows the extent of his sinfulness. It is deeper than anyone can fathom.’

God loved us even when we were dead. Even when we were a corpse.

‘if we don’t know that we were dead, we will not know the fullness of the love of God.’

What does this deadness mean? The NT gives us ten statements:

1)   Apart from the new birth we are dead in our trespasses:

-      not physically or morally: but spiritually

-      we are dead in the sense we cannot see or savour the glory of Christ.

2)   Apart from the new birth we are by nature objects of wrath:

-      our problem is not just in what we do but in what we are. I am my problem.

-      ‘Apart from my new birth, I am my main problem. You are not my main problem. My parents are not my main problem. My enemies are not my main problem. I am my main problem. Not my deeds, and not my circumstances, and not the people in my life, but my nature is my deepest personal problem.’

3)   Apart from the new birth we love darkness and hate the light.

-      ‘We are not neutral when spiritual light approaches. We resist it. And we are not neutral when spiritual darkness envelops us. We embrace it. Love and hate are active in the unregenerate heart.’

4)   Apart from the new birth our hearts are hard like stone.

-      ‘Ignorance is not our biggest problem. Hardness and resistance are.’

5)   Apart from the new birth we are unable to submit to God or please God.

6)   Apart from the new birth, we are unable to accept the gospel.

-      The unregenerate person cannot because he will not. His preferences for sin are so strong that he cannot choose good. It is a real and terrible bondage. But it is not an innocent bondage.

7)   Apart from the new birth we are unable to come to Christ or embrace him as Lord.

-      ‘It is morally impossible for the dead, dark, hard, resistant heart to celebrate the Lordship of Jesus over his life without being born again.’

Chapter 4:

Unless we are born again we cannot say with Paul ‘I count everything as loss compared to the surpassing joy of knowing Christ my lord.’

“We will not sing with authentic amazement the words ‘amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,’ unless we know the wretchedness of our heart. John Newton knew his heart, that’s why he wrote the song.”

Our condition apart from the new birth:

8) We are slaves to sin

9) We are slaves to Satan: The unregenerate may scoff at the very idea of a devil. And of course, nothing is more in line with the father of lies than the denial that he exists.

10) Apart from the new birth, nothing good dwells in us. In one sense we have good things: creation, eyes, ears, the soul, government, marriage, family. However we’re told that all these things exists for his glory, for the pleasure and acknowledgement of the one who made them all. Thus: ‘Where people use all that God has made without relying on his grace and without aiming to show his worth they prostitute God’s creation.’

This is our tenfold condition. Without the new birth we are hopeless, we cannot fix ourselves or improve ourselves. ‘Dead men do not do better.’

Without the new birth we won’t:

-         ‘see the kingdom of heaven’ is what Jesus says. We won’t be able to see God’s kingdom, be with him in heaven. Instead we’ll be separated from him suffering in hell for all eternity.

-         We won’t:

o   Having saving faith

o   We’ll be condemned

o   We won’t be children of God, but children of the Devil

o   We won’t bear the fruit of love but our actions will result in death

o   We’ll have eternal misery and suffering at the hands of the devil

-         Opposite to this, with the new birth we will:

o   We’ll be given saving faith: 1 John 5:1

o   We’ll be justified, and imputed with Christ’s righteousness: Romans 5:1

o   We’ll be adopted into God’s family. Born by the will of God. John 1:12

o   We have the Spirit of God in us, the spirit of love, who causes us to produce good fruit with our lives. 1 John 3:14

o   We have heaven to look forward to, the pinnacle of our joy being intimacy with our creator.

This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, ‘you MUST be born again!’

Chapter 5: Faith, justification, adoption, purification, glorification

Why was the incarnation necessary? The incarnation is directly linked to our regeneration. With all of the great things listed in the previous chapter: saving faith, being justified, being given the Spirit, with heaven to look forward to… why did Jesus need to come for those things to happen? If that is the new-birth why couldn’t God have affected it without the incarnation, death, burial and resurrection of Christ?

In 1 John 3:5 we’re told that Jesus appeared to take away our sins and then in v8 we’re told that he came to destroy the works of the Devil. Our sin and the devil’s work are what prevent us from being born again. For this reason Jesus appeared.

We have new life by being united to Christ, the incarnate one. Jesus said ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.’ Jesus’ life was such that we are super-charged, made alive and given real life simply by being with him. We connect to him and receive his life. Without his life, we would have no one or nothing to be united with.

1 John 3:3 ‘everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself…’

By hoping in him, his life, his death, his resurrection we purify ourselves. A mark of our new birth is our desire to be pure as he is pure.

‘The perfection we do not have, Jesus provided. The judgement we do not want, Jesus bore.’

What keeps your life alive? Natural life is sustained by the pumping of blood around the body, spiritual life is sustained by the life of Jesus flowing through us. We do not have a spiritual life of our own but only one that exists because it’s connected to him.

Part 3: How does the new birth come about?

Chapter 6: Ransomed, raised and called.

‘One of the most unsettling things about the new birth, which Jesus said we all must experience if we’re to see the kingdom of God, is that we don’t control it.’

We don’t decide to make it happen any more than dead men decide to make themselves alive or babies decide to make themselves become conceived and then make themselves leave the womb.

Before the new birth we treasure sin and self-exaltation so much that we cannot treasure Christ.

Faith and the new birth are inseparable. You cannot have fire without heat so you cannot have the new birth without faith.

From God’s side and our side, what is the new birth? Are we involved? In John 11 Jesus called Lazarus to life and told him to ‘come out’, Lazarus walked out. Jesus raised him, Lazarus did the rising. God regenerates us by 3 ways:

1)   Christ’s ransom on the cross.

2)   Christ’s resurrection

3)   God’s effective call

Quoting Piper:

‘ He ransomed us from the sin and wrath by the blood of Christ and paid the debt for sinners to have eternal lie. 2) He raised Jesus from the dead so that union with Jesus gives eternal life that never fades away. 3) He called us from the darkness to light and from death to life through the gospel and gave us eyes to see and ears to hear.

I’m alive because he’s alive! I’m alive because he died! I’m alive because he called me!

Chapter 7: Through the washing of regeneration

‘Washing’ here again is used in conjunction with our new birth. We last saw this in John 3 when Jesus said to nicodemus born of water and the spirit.

As with the John passage so with here, washing is another way of referring to the rebirth since our rebirth is a cleansing in the same sense that the spirit cleanses us as he gives us a new heart.

The word ‘regeneration’ used in Titus 3:1-8 is used only one other place in the NT. Matthew 19:28 where Jesus talks about the new creation, the regenerated creation. Our new birth really is the first instalment of the new creation. That is why we MUSt be born again to see the new creation. The new creation will be a regenerated Earth and only regenerated people can live there. Regernerated trees, and seas and plants and people. Presently we see that God has cursed all of creation as a visible display of the horrors of sin.

‘God’s purpose is that the entire creation be born again.’

He has started this process with us. He makes us aliuve by the cleansing and washing of the word and spirit(!) and he does it by his kindness.

If you are born again it is owing to the kindness of God.

The loving kindness of God – in greek the ‘philanthropia’ of God. The philanthropy It occurs only here in the NT. Paul says that God is the ultimate philanthropist. God is inclined to bless humanity!

1 John research notes

Overview:

John Stott:

Even a superficial reading of the gospel of John and the first letter reveals a striking similarity between the two both in subject-matter and syntax... love of opposites set in stark contrast to one another - light and darkness, life and death, love and hate, truth and falsehood.

Those who have been born of God, God's children are variously described in relation to God, to Christ, to the truth, to each other, and to the world. They are 'of God' and have come to 'know' God, the true God through Jesus Christ. It may even be said that they have 'seen' God... Christians are not only of God but of the truth as well. The truth is also 'in' them and they 'do' it or 'live by' i, for the Spirit given to them is 'the Spirit of truth'

Occasion:

His first concern is not to confound the false teachers, whose activities form the background of the letters, but to protect his readers, his beloved 'children', and to establish them in their Christian faith and life. He defines his own reason for writing as being 'to make our joy complete', 'so that yu will not sin', and 'so that you may know that you have eternal life'

He is also concerned about: those who would lead you astray and deceive you.

The deniers of the divine-human person of Jesus are called: false prophets, deceivers, antichrists.

"Once they passed as loyal members of the church, but now they have seceded and 'gone out into the world' to spread their pernicious lies."

The heretical teaching is either a denial that 'Jesus Christ has come in the flesh' or a denial of Jesus as 'Christ come in the flesh.'

The denial of the incarnation took two forms: one who denied Jesus' humanity, one that denied his divinity. 

The three 'if we claim' sentences of 1:6-10 are a denial either that sin exists in our nature, or that it has erupted in our behaviour, or that it interferes with our fellowship with God.

'whoever claims' to live in Christ ought to give evidence of it by walking as Christ walked. And what do the commands of God and the walk of Christ involve? In a word, love.

Of the liars: they cannot claim to 'be' righteous unless they actually 'do' righteousness.

Sin and lovelessness are as much at variance with the mission of Christ as they are with the nature of God.

Gnosticism summary: the impurity of matter and the supremacy of knowledge.

Certainty about Christ.

Perhaps realigning the gnostics emphasis on knowledge John says: we know... that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. 

But how do we know these things? Three stages.

1) The historical event, Christ's being 'sent' 

2) The apostolic witness. The even did not pass unnoticed. The one who came in the flesh was seen, heard and touched, so that those who say could testify from their own first hand experience.

3) The anointing of the Holy Spirit, by whom we are taught and therefore know.

We are not to lead the congregation into novel doctrines, but to recall them to what they have heard 'from the beginning'.

Certainty about eternal life.

To be a Christian, in the language of John is to have been born of God, to know God, to live in him, and to enjoy that intimate, personal communion with him which is eternal life.

The three 'cardinal tests' by which we may know whether we possess eternal life or not:

1) theological, whether we believe that Jesus is 'the son of God' 3:23

2) moral, whether we are practising righteousness and keeping the commands of God. Sin is wholly incompatible with the nature of God.

3) social, whether we love one another. 

The three tests belong to each other because faith, love and holiness are all the works of the HS. It is only if God has given us his Spirit that we are able to believe, to love and to obey.

To fail to pass these tests is to stand self-exposed. 

A fresh certainty about Christ and about eternal life, based upon the grounds which John gives, can still lead Christian people into that boldness of approach to God and of testimony to the world which is as sorely needed as it is sadly missing in the church today.

David Jackman:

1 John is a cicular letter. It was probably sent from Ephesus to the congregations of Asia Minor. 

These letters may well be the last of the canonical scriptures to be written, probably during the decade AD 85-95

The first letter is directed to a specific situation in the churches, where false prophets have separated themselves and their followers from the main body of believer and so divided the church.

Their reasons for this action seem to have centred on their claim to a special 'anointing' of the HS, by which they had been given true knowledge of God. This knowledge became the centre of their distinctive beliefs and lifestyle. 

John's concern, as we shall see, is to emphasise and define what is a true knowledge of God: 'we know' is one of his favourite recurring assertions.

Among the many strands of gnostic belief, we can note two major ones which are vital to our understanding of John's context. The first is the exaltation of the mind, and therefore of this speculative knowledge, over faith and behaviour. The second is the conviction that matter is essentially evil because the physical world is the product of an evil power.

Three times he describes them as 'liars'.

To the gnostics to describe the eternal Son as having flesh and blood was unthinkable; to John it was the heart of our salvation. His body given for us, his blood shed for us were the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world and the supreme demonstration and guarantee of the love of God for mankind.

False teaching always leads to false living, and the ethical implications of gnosticism are equally John's concern throughout the letters... Such an attitude led them to separate themselves from the churches as a new moral and spiritual elite.

On: 'my dear children' Lenski comments: this is the voice of a father.

When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3

John has no doubt as to the answer. Doubtless aware of the special personal relationship he had had with the real, historical Jesus in his incarnation.

Belief and behaviour are inseparable. Mind and heart belong together. True light leads to real love. 

'The gospel and...' is at the root of many errors. 

In every generation the church is challenged by the world, either to confront or to absorb its culture, to 'be squeezed into its mould', or to 'let God re-mould your minds from within'.

John does not attempt a detailed analysis or critique of error; he has no need to do so. He proclaims the truth in the characteristic apostolic confidence that where the truth is declared and believed, error will be undermined and will ultimately collapse. 

Chapter 1:

Phil Moore:

- example of William Pit making a return visit to the House of Lords as an old man to implore them concerning a decision over France. He died during his speech.

John as an old man (80-90) addresses his church to reassure and strengthen their confidence in the gospel.

'True Knowledge' Phil says is it what 1 John is about.

The Fixer - he says that John is keen to lend whatever help he can to fixing the church and ensuring her nets are capable of catching fish. 

First: John fixes their view of the Christian message. He emphasise 'eternal life' meaning both undying in the face of persecution but also the power of the life in the gospel: 'the life of the eternal age;

"We are meant to feast so fully on the delights of the coming age that we are able to bring down its power to people living in this age that is passing away. If the church remembers this, its powerful preaching will never fail to catch a crowd of eager converts, but it never will if its nets are broken through forgetfulness."

Second: He fixes our view of Christian calling. Koinonia = partnership. We are called to partner with one another and with God. 

Third: He fixes our view of Christian experience. we are meant to be marked by joy. 

John Stott:

The word of life is not a title for the Son but an expression for the gospel, the message of life... the particular emphasis of which concerns that which was from the beginning which we have heard, seen and touched... what the apostle stresses in his proclamation of the gospel is the historical manifestation of the eternal.

The preface's sweep is: from eternity to eternity, from that which was from the beginning to the fullness of joy.

The eternal pre-existence:

The author is announcing, he says, 'what has always (from the beginning) been true about the word of life.'

The historical manifestation:

The four relative clauses proceed 'from the most abstract to the most material aspect of divine revelation'. To have heard was not enough; people 'heard' God's voice in the OT. To have seen was more compelling. But to have touched was the conclusive proof of material reality, that the word 'became flesh, and lived for a while among us'. 

The word 'pselaphan' is to grope or feel after in order to find... it may also mean 'to examine closely.' Although this is the climax of the sentence the emphasis is on seeing. Two verbs are sued for sight: see and behold. 

It is impossible to distinguish between Jesus and the Christ, the historical and the eternal. They are the same person, who is both God and man.

The authoritative proclamation:

He must be a witness before he is competent to bear witness.

It is for this reason that the verbs to 'see' and to 'testify' are so commonly associated with each other in the NT, as they are in v2.

Our author insists that he possesses these credentials. Possessing them he is very bold. Having heard, seen and touched the Lord Jesus, he now testifies to him... For the Christian message is neither a philosophical speculation, nor a tentative suggestion, nor a modest contribution to religious thought, but a confident affirmation by those whose experience and commission have qualified them to make it.

The communal fellowship

The proclamation was not an end in itself; its purpose immediate and ultimate is now defined. The immediate fellowship and the ultimate joy. Westcott: 'the last of the apostles points to the unbroken succession fo the heritage of faith.'

'Fellowship' is a specifically Christian word and denotes that common participation in the grace of God, the salvation of Christ and the indwelling Spirit which is the spiritual birthright of all believers... our fellowship with one another arises from, and dpends on, our fellowship with God.

This statement of the apostolic objective in the proclamation of the gospel, namely a human fellowship arising spontaneously from a divine fellowship, is a rebuke to much of our modern evangelism and church life. We cannot be content with an evangelism which does not lead to the drawing of converts into the church, nor with a church life whose principle of cohesion is a superficial social camaraderie instead of a spiritual fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

The completed joy

The substance of the apostolic proclamation was the historical manifestation of the eternal; its purpose was and is a fellowship with one another, which is based on fellowship with the Father and the Son and which issues in fullness of joy.

David Jackman

The phrase (from the beginning) echoes the start of the gospel of John... Go back as far as you will in your imagination, says Genesis, before anything that exists came into being, and you will find God, the eternal Being. 

The phrase pros ton patera (with the Father) indicates the closest sort of face-to-face fellowship, existing in the eternal mystery of the Godhead. 

Jesus himself asserted: I am the life.

Paul could say, "We preach Christ" showing that the message and the person are ultimately identical. 

Every clause of this introduction has its own edge.

Everyday experiences

Some of the strongest rebukes and warnings of the NT are reserved for such double-mindedness, which is at root hypocrisy. 

Faith is the door to fellowship.

The word fellowship (koinonia) is an interesting one. Used in classical Greek as a favourite expression for the marriage relationship, the most intimate bond between human beings, it is particularly appropriate to describe the Christian's personal relationship with God and with his fellow believers as here.

In our desire for visible unity among Christians, however, we must not forget that it is fellowship with God that comes first; fellowship with one another is derived from that.

The conscious possession of eternal life, the daily enrichment of personal fellowship with the living God, the deepening awareness of oneness with all God's people everywhere - could there be any comparable recipe for fullness of joy? 

As a spiritual song from a bygone generation put it: happiness happens; but joy abides. 

Disappearing Church - Mark Sayer

Introduction: darkening clouds or a disappearing sun?

Therefore, the final checkmate of this secularist coup is accomplished not by a frontal assault upon theology, but by a practical atheism that offers the fruit of shalom minus the tree of biblical faith that bore it.

The Gospel of Self

We will find that progressive, contemporary Western culture is shaped by an ancient heresy—Gnosticism. Gnosticism at its heart is an alternate gospel, which moves authority from God to the self, in which the individual seeks to power their own development and salvation.

Scot McKnight:

Scot McKnight observes that contemporary Christianity “has increasingly displaced the Bible as its foundation for knowing what to think and how to live and supplanted it with experience, desire, and preference. In other words, it has surrendered its heart to personal freedoms.” Our challenge, therefore, is not found just outside the walls of the church—it is also within.

PART ONE: Understanding Our Craving For Cultural Relevance

A history of Post-Christianity

the medieval theologian Joachim of Fiore. Joachim hoped for a future epoch of the Holy Spirit, in which the gospel of Christ would be transcended by a new order of love, and the church replaced by a new, spiritualized elite. Hope would not be in the return of Christ but in the arrival of an enlightened future, an idea that is central to post-Christianity.

...

in Joachim’s three-part division of history that would grow into the trisecting of history into ancient-medieval-modern. This is the foundation of the belief that Western, developed culture is more progressive, enlightened, and evolved than other cultures. Hope then lies not in God, but in being on the right side of history.

...

The German philosopher Schelling, building upon Joachim’s age of the Spirit, predicted a coming age of perfected Christianity, creating the idea of a liberal or progressive Christianity. The thought that Christianity must change and evolve into a new progressive form is ubiquitous both inside and outside of the church. Anytime anyone complains that the church must evolve its core theology with the times to stay relevant, or that the church’s future is found in ditching the structures, institutions, and forms of “organized religion” and embrace a fuzzy notion of “community” or “spirituality,” we can detect Joachim’s fingerprints.

...

the cultural critic Joseph Bottum further sharpens our understanding of post-Christianity. For Bottum, our cultural post-Christianity bears a tremendous likeness to liberal Christianity, in particular its Protestant forms. Liberal Christianity grew alongside modernity, attempting to reshape faith and theology around the worldview of the Enlightenment. Miracles, the supernatural, and Scripture were viewed through the lens of skeptical scientism. A more materialist faith was formed, which removed the transcendent elements of Christianity and focused the believer’s attention on an achievable kingdom of God that could be shaped by responsible and diligent human hands.

Chapter 2: The history of relevant

The period during and immediately following World War Two was a high point for the church in the Western world. Despite the ongoing hostility of cultural elites, churchgoing attendance was significant in the United States, Britain, and even my own country of Australia. The horror of war and the spectre of political movements such as Nazism and Communism had seen a whole host of intellectuals and writers such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene embrace or return to Christian faith. C. S. Lewis’s wartime BBC lectures on Christianity had gripped the United Kingdom.

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As the 1960s progressed, things began to change. A cultural revolution broke out... the spirit of the ’60s paradoxically also contained desire for a radical personal autonomy, a shedding of inherited cultural wisdom and prohibitions, and questioning of not just corrupt authority, but of all authority.

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This rebellion against all inherited authority led to the enshrinement of the individual as the highest authority. By the 1970s, the communal spirit and desire for culture-wide change had been subverted into a quest into the self. The novelist Tom Wolfe famously labeled the 1970s The Me Decade. The desire for societal change devolved into a pursuit of self-development. This was evidenced as the famed 1960s countercultural radical Abbie Hoffman by the 1970s proclaimed that “it is more important to get [your] own head together than to move multitudes.”1
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The beginning of the ’80s saw the rise of the contemporary church movement. Missionaries returning home from the Two-Thirds World found their home culture secularizing, and they began to adapt some of the missiological methods that they had learned on the mission field back home in the West. They began to look to the corporate world to gain insights that might aid the church. This train of thought grew into the church growth movement. A growing belief that secularism could be arrested by an emphasis on relevance began to take hold.
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As the church growth movement grew, denominational distinctives began to recede. Believers chose churches according to their tastes rather than their denominational heritage. Previous emphases on dogma, doctrine, and ecclesiastical authority were replaced by a taste for community, experience, and the relational. The assumed belief was that people were uninterested in Christianity because they found church traditions and rituals alien and unwelcoming. If the church could be made relevant—with culturally relevant forms instead of traditions and ritualized trappings—then Christianity would flourish in the Western world again.

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The contemporary church model thrived in American soil.... However, in other parts of the West, namely the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe, the model struggled to work as they found themselves further down the road of secularization.

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In the 90s with the popular rise of alternative lifestyles/choices: A kind of panic swept the Christian cultural landscape. If this new generation was defining themselves against contemporary church, what was to be done? The need for an even more radical approach to relevance seemed only to be given more impetus by a discussion that began to grip the evangelical world around the cultural condition of postmodernism.

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Despite the contemporary church’s decades-long quest for cultural relevance, it continues to struggle to gain ground in the secular West. The aging profile of the church inevitably means that many churches are demographically disappearing. Intriguingly, churches that pursued cultural relevance with the greatest gusto have also suffered their own disappearances. Those who have pursued a policy of relevance in their theology—attempting to reshape their theology into unorthodox forms to suit the contours of contemporary sensibilities—suffer the fate that liberal churches have throughout church history: inevitable decline and eventual disappearance.

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The Dutch cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker note that our cultural mood has shifted from the postmodern mood of cynicism and irony, to what they label as metamodernism.3 The era of postmodern irony and cynicism has been replaced by what they label as the “new sincerity,” which is visible across Western culture and can be seen in the new folk music movement, the films of Wes Anderson, and the novels of Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith. Vermeulen and van den Akker use the term “meta” to prefix modern in the sense of swinging between poles, not learning from either pole, but simply bouncing between sincerity and being overwhelmed, between hope and anxiety, between modernity and postmodernity.

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Despite the desire of many to again engage in institutional, communal life—such as the people drawn to the Sunday Assembly—many know nothing but this posture of disengagement. This is true too of faith, threatening the viability of many of our churches. Some churches, while keeping their theology and their traditional church structures alongside a strategy of making their communications, worship, and aesthetics culturally relevant, find themselves experiencing another kind of disappearance. The church as an entity stays and even grows in size and influence. Yet, the majority of its members disappear annually to be replaced by another class of attenders. The size of the church stays the same or even grows, yet the annual turnover of attendees can run at between 60–90 percent. Such turnover may be sustainable in the short term, but one must wonder how such an approach can work long-term. Such churches are in danger of becoming what could be called flashmob churches: churches that are able to harness social networking and energy to gather an impressive crowd, but who soon disappear.

Chapter 3: How Much More Relevant Can We Get

As they transitioned out of their allegiance to what they saw as the failed ideology of Communism, Chinese leaders, schooled in the art of the long-term view, looked curiously to the West to uncover the secret of her ascent from a murderous medieval backwater to a peaceful and prosperous culture. Their investigations uncovered a key factor, as an academic from China’s Academy of the Social Sciences explained:

We were asked to look into what accounted for the … preeminence of the West all over the world. … At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible … the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.1 

The irony of the observation could not be thicker when you think that for half a century the Chinese, officially atheistic, persecuted religious minorities. Yet now their pragmatic vision allowed the Chinese to see the vital role that Christianity had played in producing the West’s most life-giving cultural fruit.

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On the draft of the 2004 EU's constitution that ignored its Christian roots:

Even the atheist president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, could see the lunacy of such an omission, protesting that “there is no excuse for making reference to ancient Greece and Rome, and to the Enlightenment, without making reference to the Christian values which are so important to the development of Europe.”

The three cultures: Pre-C-Post

COLONIZING AND BEING COLONIZED  The danger for Christian second cultures communicating the gospel to pre-Christian cultures is that they may inadvertently colonize them. The danger when Christian second cultures communicate the gospel to post-Christian third cultures is that they themselves may be colonized—

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In the third culture, you can reach levels of blistering hipness, gain position within a key industry, hold an encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture, throw yourself into the great justice causes of the day, and still your belief in the second culture values of faith will see you viewed as beyond the pale.

A desire for a killer app:

All we need to do is discover the Killer App, and the discomfort we feel, the obstacles we face, will disappear. We just need that program, that new expression of church shape, the silver bullet to defeat secularism. But what if there is no Killer App? Solutionism is ultimately a belief in novelty, and a lack of patience and faith. Solutionism is instant gratification.

In the book of Jeremiah, God proclaims, “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16 ESV). God invites us to follow the ancient paths. A path is not a Killer App.

Civilisation in collapse:

In 2013, in New York, a group of Christian leaders anxious to negotiate the new cultural landscape gathered to listen to the advice of a contemporary Hebrew prophet, in the form of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the UK and Commonwealth. Sacks captured the sense that something fundamental was occurring within Western culture, noting that “there are moments in history, and we are living through one now, when something new is taking shape but we do not know precisely what.”7 For Sacks, an incisive observer of contemporary culture, this new moment was shaped by a crisis within Western culture, a crisis of which “the results lie all around us: the collapse of marriage, the fracturing of the family, the fraying of the social bond, the partisanship of politics at a time when national interest demands something larger, the loss of trust in public institutions, the buildup of debt whose burden will fall on future generations, and the failure of a shared morality to lift us out of the morass of individualism, hedonism, consumerism, and relativism. We know these things, yet we seem collectively powerless to move beyond them.”8


Chapter 4: The Gospel of Self (Gnosticism)

ANCIENT GNOSTICISM, CONTEMPORARY GNOSTICISM & THE GOSPEL

The world is inferior.            Your world is inferior.                         Creation is good, although broken by the fall. Yet Christ has won victory, and creation now groans for the day heaven and earth will be reunited.

Matter is the problem.            The mundane is the problem.             Sin and rebellion against God and His created order is the problem.

Escape from your body to perfect-spirit. Turn your body into a perfect-looking body. Jesus’ gift of grace frees us from sin and death.

Look inward to find truth and the god within.     Look inward to find the real you.     God’s revelation opens our eyes to God and the true nature of things.

Escape the world to the perfect spiritual place.        Escape the mundane to the amazing life.     Joy and meaning is found in worshiping and serving God.

Move toward perfection through finding hidden spiritual knowledge.            Move toward the perfect life through tips, tweaks, hacks, and the secrets of success. Self-create.                  Pursue Christlikeness.

You are a seeker, pursuing spiritual truths and hidden knowledge.           You are a seeker, pursuing fulfillment through incredible experiences and pleasure.              You are a recipient of Grace. Pursued and loved by God.

Move past the inferior god to find the real God beyond.         Move past organized religion, and find spirituality.            God chooses to partner with us in His mission in the world through the church. The church is a foretaste of the coming kingdom. Build up the church.

Move toward fulfilment by breaking past the barriers left by the inferior god.             Move toward fulfillment by breaking past the barriers set by tradition, religion, and others.                Move toward spiritual maturity through battling against the flesh. Gain wisdom.

You are a god.           It’s all about you.        It’s all about God.

Grace illustration - 'because I'm yours'

From the book 'PROOF' by Timothy Paul Jones

“Because I’m Yours”

I never dreamed that taking a child to Disney World could be so difficult — or that such a trip could teach me so much about God’s outrageous grace.

Our middle daughter had been previously adopted by another family. I [Timothy] am sure this couple had the best of intentions, but they never quite integrated the adopted child into their family of biological children. After a couple of rough years, they dissolved the adoption, and we ended up welcoming an eight-year-old girl into our home.

For one reason or another, whenever our daughter’s previous family vacationed at Disney World, they took their biological children with them, but they left their adopted daughter with a family friend. Usually — at least in the child’s mind — this happened because she did something wrong that precluded her presence on the trip.

And so, by the time we adopted our daughter, she had seen many pictures of Disney World and she had heard about the rides and the characters and the parades. But when it came to passing through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, she had always been the one left on the outside. Once I found out about this history, I made plans to take her to Disney World the next time a speaking engagement took our family to the southeastern United States.

I thought I had mastered the Disney World drill. I knew from previous experiences that the prospect of seeing cast members in freakishly oversized mouse and duck costumes somehow turns children into squirming bundles of emotional instability. What I didn’t expect was that the prospect of visiting this dreamworld would produce a stream of downright devilish behavior in our newest daughter. In the month leading up to our trip to the Magic Kingdom, she stole food when a simple request would have gained her a snack. She lied when it would have been easier to tell the truth. She whispered insults that were carefully crafted to hurt her older sister as deeply as possible — and, as the days on the calendar moved closer to the trip, her mutinies multiplied.

A couple of days before our family headed to Florida, I pulled our daughter into my lap to talk through her latest escapade. “I know what you’re going to do,” she stated flatly. “You’re not going to take me to Disney World, are you?” The thought hadn’t actually crossed my mind, but her downward spiral suddenly started to make some sense. She knew she couldn’t earn her way into the Magic Kingdom — she had tried and failed that test several times before — so she was living in a way that placed her as far as possible from the most magical place on earth.

In retrospect, I’m embarrassed to admit that, in that moment, I was tempted to turn her fear to my own advantage. The easiest response would have been, “If you don’t start behaving better, you’re right, we won’t take you” — but, by God’s grace, I didn’t. Instead, I asked her, “Is this trip something we’re doing as a family?”

She nodded, brown eyes wide and tear-rimmed.

“Are you part of this family?”

She nodded again.

“Then you’re going with us. Sure, there may be some consequences to help you remember what’s right and what’s wrong — but you’re part of our family, and we’re not leaving you behind.”

I’d like to say that her behaviors grew better after that moment. They didn’t. Her choices pretty much spiraled out of control at every hotel and rest stop all the way to Lake Buena Vista. Still, we headed to Disney World on the day we had promised, and it was a typical Disney day. Overpriced tickets, overpriced meals, and lots of lines, mingled with just enough manufactured magic to consider maybe going again someday.

In our hotel room that evening, a very different child emerged. She was exhausted, pensive, and a little weepy at times, but her month-long facade of rebellion had faded. When bedtime rolled around, I prayed with her, held her, and asked, “So how was your first day at Disney World?”

She closed her eyes and snuggled down into her stuffed unicorn. After a few moments, she opened her eyes ever so slightly. “Daddy,” she said, “I finally got to go to Disney World. But it wasn’t because I was good; it’s because I’m yours.”

It wasn’t because I was good; it’s because I’m yours.

That’s the message of outrageous grace.

Outrageous grace isn’t a favor you can achieve by being good; it’s the gift you receive by being God’s. Outrageous grace is God’s goodness that comes looking for you when you have nothing but a middle finger flipped in the face of God to offer in return. It’s a farmer paying a full day’s wages to a crew of deadbeat day laborers with only a single hour punched on their time cards (Matthew 20:1 – 16). It’s a man marrying an abandoned woman and then refusing to forsake his covenant with her when she turns out to be a whore (Ezekiel 16:8 – 63; Hosea 1:1 — 3:5). It’s the insanity of a shepherd who puts ninety-nine sheep at risk to rescue the single lamb that’s too stupid to stay with the flock (Luke 15:1 – 7). It’s the love of a father who hands over his finest rings and robes to a young man who has squandered his inheritance on drunken binges with his fair-weather friends (Luke 15:11 – 32)…It’s one-way love that calls you into the kingdom not because you’ve been good but because God has chosen you and made you his own. And now he is chasing you to the ends of the earth to keep you as his child, and nothing in heaven or hell can ever stop him…

But here’s what’s amazing about God’s outrageous grace: This isn’t merely what God the Father would do; it’s what he did do. God could have chosen to save anyone, everyone, or no one from Adam’s fallen race. But what God did was to choose a multi-hued multitude of “someones,” and — if you are a believer in Jesus Christ — one of those “someones” was you. God in Christ has declared over you, “I could have chosen anyone in the whole world as my child, and I chose you. No matter what you say or do, neither my love nor my choice will ever change.” That’s grace that’s truly amazing. (Pgs. 81-84)