Advance09: The Resurgence of the Local Church

Advance09 Conference, June 4-6, Durham, NC

Christ promises to build His Church, and that no force will prevail against it. Yet, the local church has been heavily battered in battle. Sadly, churches in America are in steady decline, with over 4000 closing their doors and 500,000 members leaving each year, never to return. This is not what the Lord desires.

The Apostle Paul tells us that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” The local church is called to lift up Jesus so that all the world might see Him. The local church is called to make known the gospel and to be the vehicle of redemption for the world.

Led by local churches, Advance09 is a conference committed to the resurgence of the local church for the glory of God. Our aim is to equip attendees with the gospel so that the local church might become all that Jesus calls it to be. At this conference, we hope to ensure that on our watch and in our time we honor Jesus and see the resurgence of the local church. Advance09 is open to anyone: pastors and lay-leaders; church members; and regular attendees. We invite you to join us in this Great Cause.

Speakers include John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Ed Stetzer, Bryan Chappell, Daniel Akin, JD Greear, Tyler Jones & Eric Mason.

http://www.advance09.com
http://www.theresurgence.com
http://www.desiringgod.org
http://www.dpacnc.com

Why art?

Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.” (from Culture Making)

Another false caricature?

One of the main critiques I’ve heard of Wright’s understanding of justification is that he diminishes our full assurance in Christ for our salvation. He tries to make the case that we can actually have a fuller sense of assurance by seeing justification this way. Here’s part of the conclusion to the book where he explains this:

The present verdict gives the assurance that the future verdict will match it; the spirit gives the power through which that future verdict, when given, will be seen to be in accordance with the life that the believer has then lived.

He makes a direct link between the present and the future, and goes on earlier in the book to explain that the presence of the spirit is the “proof” of our faith (our “mark” of membership in God’s family). I’m still digging into this, but it doesn’t seem like you lose any sense of assurance, and there is a logical connection between our faith, the spirit’s active work in our lives, and the coming judgment on the Day of Christ.

What am I missing?

Imputation or Embodiment?

I just finished Wright’s book, finally, and I have a lot to work through and respond to. But, I just want to bring out one strong point that he makes, and let it soak in for awhile.

Recently, I’ve become much more aware of the danger of pulling phrases or sentences out of context and not letting the natural flow of a passage (and book) set the tone for each statement within it. A great example of this is my recently being convinced that 1 Cor. 9:22 (“I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some”) is not about “evangelism” toward those outside the church but rather about unity within the church (I’ve tried to defend this elsewhere).

With this post I want to highlight one verse that seems to be the most important proof-text for what most of us refer to as “the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.” At this point, I’m not defending either interpretation, but rather I want to focus on how Wright reads it.

Wright describes the verse in focus (2 Cor. 5:21) as the “chord” to the “symphony” of 2 Cor. 2:14-6:13, which he says is a “long apologia for Paul’s apostleship” (p.136). He points to numerous passages along the way…

2:15-16 – For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?

3:5-6 – Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant…

4:5-6 – For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

4:7-12 – We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way… always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Then, he refers to 5:10 as explaining Paul’s eschatological framework: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” He says that, “present life is lived in the light of the coming fact of resurrection, which itself is set in the context of the coming great day of judgment” (a key concept for Wright’s theology, but seemingly not for most of us).

He goes on to say that “Paul is not just someone who tells people about the gospel; he is someone who embodies it” (p.137). Basically, the messengers are part of the message itself (from other writings this seems to be Wright’s understanding of most of the book of 2 Corinthians).

From this point, he uses 5:15 as the first in a series of statements connecting the accomplishment of Christ and the ministry responsibility which results from it: “He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (with v. 16-21 continuing this theme, of new creation!)

Then, the second statement in 5:18: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation”; with 5:19 as a continuation of this two-pronged theme: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”

Then, he goes on to stress that 5:20 has often been mistranslated as an evangelistic command rather than a statement describing Paul’s ministry: “Watch, he says to the Corinthians: this is how I spend my time… I appeal to people, on behalf of the Messiah, ‘be reconciled to God.’ That’s what I go about telling people. And, as a result, I am in a position of a royal ambassador, one in whom, when people look at me, they see the King whose message I bring… When I am present and doing my job, they are confronted not only with the King but also with the God whose son he is.”

Thus, he explains that 5:21 is the summary to all of this. Here’s how he paraphrases the second half of this verse: “in the Messiah, we might embody God’s faithfulness, God’s covenant faithfulness, God’s action in reconciling the world to himself” (p.140).

Later, in his chapter on Romans, Wright also explains the importance of Christ’s sinlessness: “It was not so much that God needed a sinless victim, though in sacrificial terms that is no doubt true as well, as that God needed a faithful Israelite, to take upon himself the burden of rescuing the world from its sin and death.”

I don’t want to comment just yet on all of this, but what I don’t see here is Wright trying to impose a “system” upon the text itself. Rather, it’s very clear that he is attempting to read this verse in the context of Paul’s letter, and within the context of the story of God as a whole.

Idolatrous Methods?

I’ve been reading a great book called Thirty Years That Changed the World: The Book of Acts for Today by Michael Green. I just randomly skimmed through it at Lifeway and was intrigued by it immediately. Earlier I posted some stuff from Tim Chester about this, but here is Green saying something similar:

Evangelism and church planting on the whole seemed to have happened spontaneously without heavy planning. I am not denigrating planning: there needs to be proper planning behind any work for God if it is to take root and grow… The planning was done by the Holy Spirit, and he seems to have guided the Christians into the appropriate approach for different situations. This meant that they needed to keep depending on him, and could not denigrate into producing a technique. Had the Apostles sat down to plan the outreach in Acts, it would have looked very different from what actually happened, and it would have been microscopic in scope compared with the breadth it attained when the Holy Spirit led them in their ways.

Of course, there are always extremes. I personally am trying to think about this in relation to the community group that I have been leading, and our strong emphasis on multiplication. We actually go into this during this week’s discussion. The two extremes I laid out were unfaithful multiplication and stagnant in-breeding. We can go one direction and simply think about growth for the sake of growth – in which the “fruit” produced is not the fruit of the Spirit (a united, healthy expression of who Jesus is to the world) but rather simply a desired outcome (a certain number of people for a certain number of groups). On the flipside, we can become so focused simply on ourselves that nothing new is birthed from within our group – and this is not health.

So, the question I posed was, “How do we balance these two biblical visions: deep, sustainable community and healthy multiplication?”

I heard Tullian Tchividjian quote AW Tozer a couple of weeks ago and I had to let what Tozer said 50+ years ago sink in. I can’t find where the quote came from, but basically what he said was that in the early church 99% of what happened was because the Spirit was leading, directing, planning, etc. Today, 99% of what happens is because of us trying to lead, direct, plan. The question then becomes, “What would our churches, our small communities, our families, etc. look like if we depended more on prayer and the indwelling Spirit of God than our flawed attempts at making something happen?”

But, then, I am also left with the problem of redeeming methods. I am not arguing against the reality that we can and should use different methods to accomplish our vision. But, at what point do the methods themselves (the “ways” in which we “get things done”) become idolatrous and actually go against the Kingdom of God?

Mission Planning

Tim Chester: “The book of Acts is not the story of the apostles making plans and then putting them into effect. It is the story of the Holy Spirit directing mission” (http://timchester.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/mission-planning-in-acts/).

What was the purpose of the law (Torah)?

I can’t remember how many times where I’ve only heard “the law” spoken of in a negative way. Of course, there was a “hard edge” to the law – the fact that not a single individual Jew could keep the entire law. But, was that expected of every single individual Jew? I haven’t really thought much about this, though I’ve heard many people say it: “The purpose of the law was to show that we couldn’t keep it, and therefore we needed Jesus to keep it for us.” Of course, I’m sure many different people explain this in many different ways. But, that seems to be a basic, “Reformed” viewpoint toward the law. Again, I’m not saying that wasn’t part of the purpose of the law, but was it the main purpose of the law?

Something Wright says here seems to throw a wrench into most of the things I’ve heard about the law:

Torah, of course, included the sacrificial system through which Israelites could atone for their sins, so that one did not need or expect to be always perfect in all respects.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone say, “Jews weren’t expected to be perfect.” At the moment, I can’t think of exactly the foundation upon which the expectation of perfection has been built. But, I’m posting this to ask the question really..

Were Jews expected to be perfect? Or, was the sacrificial system to be seen simply as “making up” for the fact that Jews would sin?

Of God’s character…

I’m wrestling with this quote from Wright’s book (Justification):

It is because God will be true to His outward-facing generous, creative love that he must also curse those ways of life, particularly those ways of life within his covenant people, which embody and express the opposite. It isn’t that God basically wants to condemn and then finds a way to rescue some from that disaster. It is that God longs to bless, to bless lavishly, and so to rescue and bless those in danger of tragedy – and therefore must curse everything that thwarts and destroys the blessing of his world and his people.

The first time I read this, I naturally thought Wright was creating a false dichotomy here. But, from this previous works focusing on forgiveness, I know this isn’t the case – he’s not pitting God’s wrath against God’s love. So, I’m not sure why I’m wrestling with this. It sounds beautiful, but something is keeping me from fully embracing it. Something in me wants to think that God’s natural disposition is wrath. Maybe it’s my own misperception of who God is, the God who created everything that is and called it very good – before sin entered the world.

Hope

We spent a good deal of our time in Ecclesiastes with our community group discussing the idea of hope. It seemed like every week I was trying to paint the picture of the Jewish hope that Jesus was born into. Of course, we can’t be certain of exactly what every single Jew was hoping for. But, I think we can have a pretty good idea (based on the Old & New Testaments) about how Jesus actually fulfilled the hope of the Jews, but not in the way they were expecting. This, to me, is a huge part of the understanding of not only certain doctrines but the whole narrative of Scripture itself.

I almost feel like Wright here is quoting me (but I’m sure I’ve somehow subconsciously been quoting him all along):

Many first-century Jews thought of themselves as living in a continuing narrative stretching from earliest times, through ancient prophecies, and on towards a climactic moment of deliverance which might come at any moment.

That sounds pretty basic. I doubt that many of us would debate this, but the bigger question is, should this be the central “act” of the drama that Jesus stepped into?

They were not understanding themselves as living in a narrative which said, “all humans are sinful and will go to hell; maybe God will be gracious and let us go to heaven instead and dwell with him; how will that come about? Let’s look at our scriptures for advance clues.”

Maybe Wright is making a crass caricature here, but I don’t think it’s that far off.

If “the gospel” is the public announcement of the climax of a story, which story are we telling, and have we missed important points of the story to frame the climax?

Second-Temple Judaism according to Tom Wright

One of the main criticisms I’ve heard of Wright (and others who fall into the category of “the new perspective”) is that THE basis for their theology of justification is predicated upon a belief that all Second-Temple Jews thought the same way. Here is what Wright says about this:

Judaism was richly varied, right across the period from the last two or three centuries BC to the second century AD, so much so that many have understandably wanted to speak of “Judaisms,” plural. There are many different theologies, many different expressions, many different ways of standing within, or on the edge of, or in tension with, the great ancestral traditions of Israel. There is a rich panolopy of ways of understanding Israel’s law and trying to obey it. Not only is it too simple to say, as some versions of the new perspective have said, that all first-century Jews believed in grace; they meant many different things by “grace,” and responded to those meanings in a rich variety of ways. (Justification)