Heavenly Mindedness (39)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“And this applies not merely to objects of natural affection; it involves also much that is of transitory purpose in the service and Church of God. Even our religion in its earthly exercise is not exempt from the tragical aspect borne by all existence in time. The summons comes again and again: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house,” and after a brief spell of comfort and delight we anew find ourselves in tents roaming through an inhospitable world. There is no help for these things. Like Abraham we must resolutely confess, that we are strangers and pilgrims in a land of time, and that the best this land can offer us is but a caravanserai to tarry in for a day and a night.” G. Vos.

 

As we saw in our last post, there is a “going out” from the world, and there is also a “going out” in terms of our experience in the Church of God. We have “brief spells of comfort and delight,” and we come upon caravanserai where we can rest, but if we are indeed on pilgrimage then where we are today ought not to be where we were one year ago, or five years ago, or ten years ago; and where we will be tomorrow ought not to be where we are today.

 

Just as the Body of Christ is on a trajectory of maturity and victory, so the individual members of the Body are called to be on a pilgrimage in which they know Jesus Christ in greater and greater intimacy, in which they are drawn deeper and deeper into the koinonia of the Trinity. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” is a blessing that we are to experience as a People and as individuals as we continue to seek the Face of God in Christ.

 

When Vos speaks of “transitory purpose in the service and Church of God” and of “get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house,” I think there are two aspects to consider, one which is more palatable than the other, though both have their challenges.

 

The more palatable facet of this transitory purpose is when the Church engages in meeting the immediate needs of the members of the Body and of the world around it. This takes as many forms as the needs of humanity, a humanity which we are called to serve. This may be feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, advocating for the protection and rights of the politically, socially, and economically disenfranchised; it may include education, medical care, after-school tutoring, visiting nursing homes and shut-ins, caring for refugees. The level and nature of our engagement in these transitory needs may vary according to the ebb and flow of our surroundings.

 

There are times when, in meeting these needs, organizations are founded, branches of ministry are formed, educational institutions are established; there are also times when the nature of specific needs has abated, when society has changed, when the lifespan of an organization has run its course – our tendency is not to “go out” of these places, but to maintain them at all costs. I have pastored churches in which there are organizations that exist to no purpose, at one time they had a worthy purpose, but that purpose has long since vanished and the groups are simply “there” because they’ve always been there – there has been no “going out,” no awareness of the transitory nature of many of the things we do. We are more interested in maintaining old wineskins than in seeking new wine. When we do things a certain way because we’ve always done them that way, the chances are that the “life” has gone out of those things…and most certainly the life has gone out of us.

 

Jesus tells us that those who are disciples of the Kingdom of God are like a wise steward who brings forth out of his treasury things both old and new (Matthew 13:52). We learn, we grow, we “go out” and we “come in”, we are alive in Christ and alive with one another – and our organic nature in Christ means that we are growing up into Him in all things (Ephesians 4:11 – 16). We ought not to be the same people today in our growth that we were thirty years ago, or fifty years ago, or two hundred years ago – we are to be living trees and not a petrified forest.

 

While change for the sake of change is foolish and leads to chaos; I’ve also found that the question, “Why are we doing this?”, is guaranteed to offend others, even though it is not meant to be offensive but simply exploratory. The Church in Jerusalem struggled with what was a radical change in thinking about the dietary ordinances of the Mosaic Law; and an even more radical change regarding circumcision, a covenant rite that precedes the Law in Abraham, a rite that was the core of ethnic and religious identity. What a shock to realize that the Law of Moses was transitory! It should be no surprise that there were Jews who could never reconcile themselves to this element of the Gospel; even as there are Christians today who cannot reconcile themselves to the New Covenant in all of its fulness.

We'll continue this in our next post.