The Holy Spirit - Revealing and Convicting (13)

 

  

 

Adoption (IV)

 

As we ponder Romans 8:12 – 30 (in context), what is the story we are reading? If you were to script this for a play, what would it look like? If you were to tell the story of the passage in your own words, to a group of people who had no frame of reference, how would you tell it?

 

Dear friends, if we cannot tell the story then it is likely we do not understand the passage. If we cannot tell the story of Romans or Colossians or 1 Kings or Mark, we likely do not understand these books of the Bible, they have not yet become ours and we have not yet come to belong to them – belong to the Story of the Bible – which reveals Jesus to us in His unfolding glory.

 

What do we “see” in Romans 8:12 – 30? What are the highlights of the story? What is the trajectory? What is the culmination?

 

Where are you in the story? Where are the sons and daughters of God?

 

In this story, how is the term adoption (the placing of a son) used? You might want to ponder Galatians 3:23 – 4:7 to help with this.

 

Adoption, the placing of a son or daughter, is connected to inheritance (this should be especially clear in reading Galatians 3:23 – 4:7). Children do not receive inheritance, it may be ready and waiting for them, but as long as they are children they cannot receive and possess the inheritance, they must grow up, they must mature before they can be entrusted with responsibility.

 

We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, all that Christ has we have in Him, our inheritance is indivisible, it cannot be divided. We are not like ancient Israel which divided the inheritance of Canaan, we do not say that I am of Judah or I am of Benjamin or I am of Gad or Asher – our inheritance is indivisible. We are One Body with Christ Jesus as the Head. We are the Bride of the Bridegroom, and in marriage there is One Person, not two – the two become One. 

English common law long recognized the “unity of person” in marriage, and this concept was naturally found in our original colonies. It is a legal understanding that was practiced into my own lifetime, and in real estate law when a husband and wife purchased property, they took title as "tenants by the entirety,” which meant that they took title as one person. Sadly this legal concept has been destroyed in recent years.

 

This is why, when reading John 16:14 – 15, we are to remember that all that the Father has is Jesus’, and all that Jesus has is ours. The Holy Spirit takes what belongs to Jesus and discloses it to us, but of course we must be faithfully growing in Jesus Christ to be able to receive from Him, we do not share with children what they cannot handle, we do not give children great treasure to steward, we give them quarters or dollar bills.

 

Nor do we place great callings on our children, great responsibilities, they must grow into responsibility, they must be nurtured and trained and disciplined and mentored. (We see this especially in our Galatians passage.)

 

In Romans 8, inheritance is connected with suffering, and suffering is connected with calling, and this is all the fabric of us “being conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29).

 

In the Story of Romans, we were once slaves to sin and to fear, but now we are slaves to righteousness as sons of the Living God (Romans 6:15 – 18; 8:12 – 15). But there is more! Having been freed from slavery, we are now called to live life in Christ in such a way that a time, a season, will come in which creation will be freed from its “slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

 

Having been freed from slavery, we are now called not only to free others by proclaiming the Gospel (Romans 1:14 – 17), but we are called to live in such as way, growing up into the Firstborn (Ephesians 4:11 – 16), that the creation will be released from its slavery to corruption into the freedom which we ought to be expressing as the children of God.

 

O dear friends, there is no hope for the creation if we do not live as the sons of daughters of the Living God in Jesus Christ.

 

We are so easily distracted by teachers of the “End Times” who focus on the tea leaves of world events, when we are called to be looking unto Jesus, seeking Jesus, growing up into Him in all things as His People, His Body, His Bride, His Temple. We are to be looking for the New Jerusalem, for the City whose Builder and Maker is God, we are to be about our Father’s business – not preoccupied with discerning the entrails of dead news and chasing after ministries that do not call us to follow Jesus, but which rather appeal to our sense of curiosity and desire for special knowledge. We are called to be mature daughters and sons, not children on a religious playground.  

 

This in turn means that we participate with Jesus in His sufferings, “if indeed we suffer with Him” (Romans 8:17). This means that we learn to desire to “know Him in the koinonia of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). As sons and daughters, we learn to allow “death to work in us, but life in others” (2 Corinthians 4:12). For if we will not embrace the cruciform life which we are called to in Jesus Christ (Mark 8:34 – 38; Galatians 2:20; 6:14), the creation will not know freedom from the slavery of corruption, nor will our generation know the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. (It may know some brand of cotton – candy Christianity, but it will not know Jesus).

 

To inherit with the Son is to participate in all that the Father has, this includes the high – calling of the Son to lay down His life for the world. For you see my friends, God not only loved the world so much that He gave His Only Begotten Son, He loves the world so much that He keeps giving His sons and daughters (who are in the Son). Isn’t it a glorious privilege to be participants in our Father’s love for the world, for all mankind?

 

Are we learning what it is to live as those who are “being placed” as sons and daughters?

 

As those who are learning what it is to be about our Father’s business?

 

What does this look like in my life today?

 

In yours?

 

 

Bonhoeffer's Discipleship Part II - Reflections (4)

 

“Those who are baptized no longer belong to the world, no longer serve the world, and are no longer subject to it. They belong to Christ alone, and relate to the world only through Christ” (page 185).

 

The word “world” can be confusing, though it need not be. It can mean “people,” as in the people of the world, or it can “system,” an order of things and ways and dynamics that is governed and animated by Satan and his minions, which rules over unregenerate mankind and seeks not only its perpetual enslavement, but seeks to enlist it in rebellion against God and the destruction of His Kingdom.

 

Context indicates the sense in which we ought to understand the word “world.”

 

When we read, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,” we understand that “world” means the people of the world.

 

However, when read 1 John 2:15 – 17 we see something different:

 

“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.”

 

The world system has myriad subsystems, and none is innocuous, none are innocent. In Christ we learn to be “in the world but not of the world” (John 15:19; 17:13 – 16), which also means that we strive to be a blessing to the people of the world, to show them Jesus, to lay down our lives for others as Jesus laid down His life for us.

 

When Bonhoeffer writes that we “no longer serve the world,” he does not mean that we no longer serve the people of the world, but rather that we no longer serve the system of the world. This does not mean that we do not live and function within world systems, for again we must live in the world for many reasons – to eat and drink, for provide for others, to benefit humanity, to share the Gospel and grace of Jesus – but we do not subject ourselves to the values of the world, to the goals of the world. We refuse to be intoxicated by the world, to grab for what the world dangles in front of us, and we refuse to offer our children on the altars of the world.

 

We have an adversarial relationship with the world system, and this means that we must often say “no” to the world if we are to be faithful to Jesus Christ, to the Church, and indeed to the people of the world. The professing Christian who does not live a life of saying “no” to the world perhaps ought to ponder the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4). The parent who is not teaching his or her children to say “no” to the world might want to consider how deeply he or she truly cares for those children and adolescents.

 

The people of the world need us to be faithful in our obedience to Jesus and in saying “no” to the world system, for otherwise they will not see a better Way, they will not see Jesus. This is one reason why it is critical for us to do all that we do in the name of Jesus and to the glory of God (Colossians 3:17, 23), so that when we do say “no” we will have credibility and integrity. People may not like it when we say “no,” but they may respect it; others may take courage when we say “no” and they may see the light of Christ.

 

But there is more than saying “no,” there is more importantly being an active blessing to those around us, seeking the welfare of others, attempting to improve the condition of our communities and broader world. We are to be the Good Samaritan to the world, the Presence of the Good Shepherd, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting those in prison, caring for the widow and orphan and disenfranchised, clothing the naked and housing the homeless and caring for the sick. Whether at work, at school, in civic life, in recreation and entertainment, in economics – we are to be in the world but not of the world, we are to be showing the people of the world a better Way because we belong to Jesus Christ – we are no longer our own.

 

I am puzzled why we are more pleased with our children doing well in the world than we are in them growing in Jesus Christ. Perhaps because we are more pleased with our own success in the world rather than our growing in Jesus Christ?

 

Bonhoeffer writes, “The break with the world is absolute” (page 185).

 

Followed by, “It requires and causes our death.”

 

Bonhoeffer can be a nuisance, can’t he?

 

What do you think?  

The Holy Spirit - Revealing and Convicting (12)

 

Adoption (III)

 

While Ephesians Chapter 1 speaks to us of the placing of a son (Biblical adoption), the two great passages are Romans 8 and Galatians 3 and 4. It is hard to know which of these to explore next, but I think we will turn to Romans 8 in order to see the high calling of adoption and then turn to Galatians in order to see another facet of the calling and also see how Galatians gives us a sure context of the use of the word we translate as “adoption,” and thus its meaning.

 

I should also point out that Biblical adoption is a theme throughout the Bible – that is, the placing of a son, a son (or daughter) entering into the Father’s glory. Ancient Israel was to have been a son entering the glory of Yahweh, being a priest to the nations, a blessing to all, displaying the character and glory of God; sadly Israel and Judah rejected this calling. Of course Jesus is the “Son who learned obedience by the things He suffered, and being made perfect, He has become to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation” (Hebrews 5:8 – 9).

 

We see this working of sonship especially in the book of Hebrews, and we see it not just in Jesus Christ in the Incarnation, but we see it in all of us who call God our Father, for our Father is bringing many sons to glory in the Firstborn Son, having “perfected the author of their [our] salvation through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10). However, it is important to note that this theme is truly throughout the Bible, another example being in Isaiah in which we see many passages in which the Father calls His Son to be the salvation of all peoples through trial and suffering, entering into the glory of the Father.

 

Biblical adoption is not about becoming a child of God, it is about the children of God growing up, moving from childhood to adolescence; then crossing the threshold into adulthood via adoption, being placed as mature sons and daughters to serve in the Father’s House with their Elder Brother, laying down our lives for those around us to the glory of God. We discover our adoption in Jesus’s adoption, in the Father placing Him as the Son in which we all find our sonship – individual and…more importantly…collective as the Body of Christ, the corporate Son.

 

As we consider Romans 8:12 – 25, I want to point out some preliminary things. It needs to be read and reread in context, a challenge for us today who often have a piecemeal habit of reading and teaching the Bible. I cannot stress this enough, we need to “see” this passage in its setting and keep trying to see it. It also makes sense to read Galatians 3:23 – 4:11 (in its context) alongside Romans 8:12 – 25 to reinforce both what Paul means when he writes of “the placing of a son” and to see the parallels and contrasts between the two passages, for they complement each other.

 

Both our Romans and Galatians passages have our freedom in Christ juxtaposed with bondage to the Law and sin. In Galatians we see this beginning in 3:1 (actually starting with the account of Peter in Antioch in Chapter 2), and continuing  with Sarah and Hagar in Chapter 4 and then into Chapter 5 with Paul’s insistence on our freedom in Christ, and that we are called to be led by the Spirit and that we are not under the Law (5:18), and that we ought to be displaying the fruit of the Spirit (5:23). We also see a parallel between Galatians 5:24 and Romans Chapter 6, and Galatians 5:25 and Romans 8. The parallels are many, how many can you see? Each reading will likely reveal more and more.

 

Romans Chapter 8 ought to be read, as it was originally heard, in the context of justification by the blood of Jesus Christ – God sees us, in Christ, as having never sinned and as having always been righteous (3:1 – 5:11). We are no longer in Adam but in Christ, through the death of Christ we have been taken out of Adam and placed in Christ (5:12 – 21). Our relationship with the old “man” and sin has been severed, for we have died with Christ and have been raised with Him; therefore we are to “consider ourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (6:11) – why do we reject this?

 

Then in Romans 7:1 – 6 we see that through the death of Christ we have died to the Law and are now free to serve God in the newness of the Holy Spirit.

 

All of this means that when we arrive at Romans 8 that we arrive as saints, as children of God in Christ, free from the Law, free from sin, free from death, free from guilt…and we experience the crescendo of all this in Romans 8:38 – 39, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!

 

But…you must see this for yourself in Christ, I can tell you about it, perhaps I can give you glimpses of it by God’s grace and the Holy Spirit, but you still must “see” these things in Jesus Christ for yourself, experience them yourself with your Good Shepherd; so that you in turn can share them with others. If you do not share them then they will not remain with you, they will be fruit that drops to the ground and rots.

 

“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption [the placing of a son] as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” the Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God…” (Romans 8:14 – 16, NASB).

 

“We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us” (1 John 3:24b).

 

“By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13).

 

Do we preach the New Birth of John Chapter 3, and then once someone has professed faith in Jesus, deny what we have preached? Do we teach the New Creation of 2 Corinthians Chapter 5, and then, once someone has entered into that New Creation in Christ, teach as if it has not really happened? Having “begun by the Spirit, are we now seeking perfection by the flesh” (Galatians 3:3)?

 

I ask these questions because our placing as sons requires that we emphatically affirm our new life in Christ, it requires that we confess that the Spirit of our Abba Father lives within us, it calls us to unconditional security in the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Furthermore, Biblical adoption, being led by the Spirit of God, growing up into our Lord Jesus so that we may be placed as sons and daughters in the Family and Kingdom of our Father, requires a process of discipline, obedience, and suffering. The idea of “being led by the Spirit of God” is not that of someone doing his or her own thing, going and doing wherever or whatever a person’s fancy may lead. There are no loose cannons in sonship, those in the process of sonship are learning to be under the authority of Jesus Christ and His Word and to live in submission to the Body of Christ - there are no Lone Rangers in sonship. Sons and daughters live lives of surrender to God and service to others, presenting themselves as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1 – 2).

 

Let us remind one another that, immediately after Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. This is what it looks like to be led of the Spirit of God!

 

Inherent in the concept of Biblical adoption is the idea of our Father’s discipline (Hebrews 12:1 – 17; 2:10; 5:8 – 10) so that we might be partakers of His holiness (Hebrews 12:10) and be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29).

 

This is why in Romans 8 we see suffering intertwined with the placing of sons, this is why we see the Cross – Biblical adoption is cruciform.

 

“If indeed we suffer with Him” (8:17).

 

“I consider the that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us” (8:18).

 

“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (8:36).

 

The glory of sonship is the glory of the crucified Lamb, it is the glory of entering into His sufferings for others (Colossians 1:24), of laying down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16). It is the glory of the koinonia of His sufferings as we are conformed to His death (Philippians 3:10).

 

We can be certain that being led by the Spirit of God leads to the Cross, always the Cross – and on and through the Cross to the Lamb (Revelation 5:6; 14:1 – 5; 21:22; 22:3 – 5).

 

Where else could we possibly want to be?

 

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (3)

 

 

After Bonhoeffer’s chapter, Preliminary Questions, we come to Baptism, for after all, Part II of Discipleship is titled, The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship, and how can we speak of entering into the Church of Jesus Christ, of becoming a member of the Church, without speaking of the means of entrance, which is Baptism. Furthermore, how can we live a life of discipleship, and how can we participate in the Church, without constantly being aware of our baptism – our baptisms as individuals, and our baptism as the Body of Christ?

 

Baptism is a living experience in Jesus Christ, it has a beginning, but it has no end…its beginning is in Genesis 1:1, in the Beginning – Jesus Christ. Yet, I suppose it does have an End, a Completion in the One who Completes all things, the Alpha and Omega. Baptism is a mystery that can be lived but not defined, it can be described but not confined within the gravitational pull of earth. As far as I am aware, no tradition since the Fathers has displayed a unified Biblical approach to baptism and perhaps this is because the Fathers were more interested in proclaiming Christ and the Scriptures as they are written, rather than in devising theological systems that confine the Word of God and place it in subjection to religious man – professional religious man. This is, of course, speculation on my part, and it is no doubt too simplistic, I am thinking out loud.

 

There is mystery in Baptism just as there is in the Incarnation, just as there is in the Lord’s Table, just as there is in the Word of God. We are presumptuous to think we can define the Incarnation and explain it, whether in ten words or in ten thousand words – again, we can experience it in Christ, we can describe it to some degree, but we cannot comprehensively explain and define the Incarnation. Nor can we comprehensively define and explain Baptism and the Eucharist and the Bible. We can say, however, that their roots are in the Incarnation and that they draw us into Christ and keep us living in Christ.

 

I think one of our problems in thinking about baptism is that we tend to define ourselves in terms of what we don’t believe rather than in terms of what we do believe. We see something in other people and traditions that we don’t agree with, whether in doctrine or practice or both, and we want to ensure that we are not like “those people.”  

 

An example of this is an article I recently read on baptism by an advocate of viewing baptism as an “ordinance” that is strictly symbolic. The author, rather than explore the many facets of baptism in the Bible, focused on others who teach “baptismal regeneration” and insisted that since his denomination could not believe that doctrine, that the only alternative was a view that saw baptism as symbolic. Here is an author who is more interested in being against something than in being for something.

 

Let me confess that I often fight that tendency in myself, and that I very much used to be like this author. My early Christian experience contained an element of being known for what my group was against rather than being known for what my group was for, but this isn’t unusual, and we can see it in both long-established traditions as well as in newer groups. The central problem is that this approach misses Jesus Christ. We can be more interested in distinguishing ourselves from others than in following Jesus and serving others.

 

There are many tributaries that flow into the Grand River of Baptism, and to think that our tributary defines the River deprives us and those around us of a glorious element of our identity and inheritance in Christ.

 

Can someone read Colossians 2:9 – 14 and tell me that there is not a living experience in Baptism? Can we read Romans Chapter 6 and not see a living and ongoing work of the Holy Spirit within us in Christ in Baptism? Does not 1 Corinthians 12:13 portray something more than symbolism?

 

On page 31 of Worshipping with the Church Fathers, Christopher A. Hall quotes Ambrose, “Do you believe in his working but not in his presence? Where would his working come from were it not preceded beforehand by his presence?” (This book by Hall is an excellent introduction to the Fathers and a sacramental view of the Word, Baptism, Eucharist, and our life in Christ.)

 

Bonhoeffer begins Baptism with arguing that the Scriptures, whether they are the Synoptics or Paul, testify to us of the Presence of Jesus Christ with us. While we may find different terminology in the Gospels than in the Epistles, they are a unity in their testimony of Jesus Christ and His call to discipleship.

 

“Baptism is not something we offer to God. It is, rather, something Jesus Christ offers to us…In baptism we become Christ’s possession. The name of Jesus Christ is spoken over baptismal candidates, they gain a share in the name; they are baptized “into Jesus Christ” (…Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27; Matt. 28:19). They now belong to Jesus Christ. Having been rescued from the rule of this world, they now have become Christ’s own” (page 184).

 

Bonhoeffer will expand on this in the next few paragraphs, but in the meantime, do we view baptism as “becoming Christ’s possession”? Do we live like this?

 

Do we live like this as individuals, as families, as congregations, as denominations and movements?

 

No pun intended, truly; but have we watered down baptism to the point where it really means nothing? Where it is no longer living? Where at best it is like having a shopper’s card in our wallets?

The Holy Spirit - Revealing and Convicting (11)

 

Adoption (II)

 

As we ponder three of the four passages in which “the placing of a son” is used in the NT (our English word “adoption” is not the best translation because the word “adoption” means something different to us than it does in the Bible), there is a connection between a son's or daughter’s placement and his or her inheritance.

 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:3 – 6, NASB).

 

I suppose I should say, regarding the Father choosing us before the foundation of the world, let’s embrace what God reveals to us, let’s enter into what He says to us, and not become preoccupied with what we don’t know or understand – we are not accidents looking for a place to happen, God loves us and has drawn us to Himself in Jesus Christ (John 5:35 – 44). Let us live in this reality and let’s fulfill our calling by sharing Jesus Christ with others, by being the Presence of Christ to others, by entering into our inheritance today for the glory of God and the salvation and blessing of others.

 

As we continue reading Ephesians and come to 1:11 we see, “In whom [Christ] we have obtained an inheritance.” (This can also be read, “In whom we were made a heritage.”)

 

Then as we read further and come to 1:18 - 19, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.”

 

Romans 8, Galatians 3 and 4, and Ephesians 1 all associate “inheritance” with “the placing of a son,” what is typically translated into English as adoption. All three passages also treat the placing of a son as a process with a consummation, as “already – not yet.” While at first glance we might think that Ephesians 1 is not as clear on this as are Galatians and Romans, this may be because of our piecemeal habit of reading Scripture in which we focus on tree after tree and never see the forest, never see the entire picture, never see the parts coming together to see the greater Whole, which is Christ, Christ, always Christ. It takes time for our eyes to develop, for our ears to hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit, but since this is our calling and inheritance, we ought to be patient and persevere.

 

I promise you, that if you will read, and read, and read, and ponder, and mediate on Ephesians Chapter 1 in reliance upon the Holy Spirit, that you will have more stars in the heavens to draw you into Jesus than you could ever imagine.

 

In 1:11 we see that in Christ we have obtained an inheritance, and in 1:18 that Jesus Christ has also obtained an inheritance. We can associate the fulness of our inheritance with the “summing up of all things in Christ” in 1:10, and this may remind us of Revelation 21:7 in which the Father says, “He who overcomes will inherit these [or all] things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.”

 

While we may not think of inheritance very much, and when we do we may tend to think of it in terms of us having an inheritance, but in Ephesians 1:18 we see that Jesus Christ has an inheritance in us. We inherit Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ inherits us. The Bridegroom inherits the Bride and the Bride inherits the Bridegroom (Ephesians 5:22 – 32; Revelation chapters 21 – 22). This is along the lines of 2 Thessalonians 1:10 – 12 in which we see Jesus being glorified in us and us being glorified in Him.

 

This, in turn, is distinctly Trinitarian, this is distinctly the life of the Trinity that we see in John Chapter 17, and indeed throughout the Upper Room (John chapters 13 – 17), indeed throughout the Gospel of John. Here we see the Father “bringing many sons to glory,” here we see both Jesus and His brothers and sisters having one Father (Hebrews 2:10 – 13). Here we see us being “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” and “being glorified with Him” (Romans 8:17).

 

Is it any wonder that Paul prays that the “eyes of your hearts may be enlightened so that you will know the hope of His calling, [and] what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18)?

 

Sadly, tragically, as Tozer writes in The Pursuit of God (page 12), “The doctrine of justification by faith…has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God.”

 

To arrive at first base is not to cross home plate, the average professing Christian never ventures beyond first base, never enters into his calling in Christ, and continues to live as a sinner, an infant, a slave to the Law and the elements of this world (Galatians 3:23 – 4:31). This is not simply a tragedy for us, it is a tragedy for the people of the world who desperately need Jesus Christ.

What do you see in the following verses?

                               

“In whom [Christ Jesus] the whole building, being fitted together, is GROWING into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21 – 22).

 

“Speaking the truth in love, we are to GROW UP in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes growth of the body of the building up of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:15 – 16).

 

We are to be a People who are growing….growing as a People, God’s Temple, Christ’s Body; growing as individuals in the Temple and Body. And once again, we have the Trinitarian experience, koinonia, Life – as “every joint supplies” in Christ. This is heavenly Church Growth, not the church growth we are so enamored with today. What good are numbers if we are not growing up in Christ, if we are not moving from infants to being placed as sons and daughters sharing the Father’s glory and laying down our lives for one another and the world?

 

Where is the vision of the Biblical Body of Christ, Temple of God, Bride of the Lamb?

 

I don’t know if we can say that the world needs us now more than ever, but I am pretty sure that we can say that now, when the world truly needs us, when our neighbors need us, that we are not to be found – for rather than living as daughters and sons, those who have been placed as adults in the Father’s family with adult responsibilities – we are still to be found in the nursery.

 

Hebrews 5:11 – 6:3.

 

Only those who are already children can experience Biblical adoption, can know the joy and glory and challenge of the placing of a son…sharing in the Father’s placing of the Son.

 

How is your heavenly Father working this out within you, in Christ?  

 

 

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (2)

In the chapter, Preliminary Questions, Bonhoeffer is asking whether the first disciples had an advantage over us in hearing and seeing and responding to Jesus. When he points out that we usually ask the wrong questions, he does so because he maintains that our questions reveal that we think Jesus Christ is dead and that we don’t live in His Presence. 

Bonhoeffer writes that Jesus Christ, “is still speaking to us today through the testimony of scripture. He is present with us today, in bodily form and with his word” (page 178). 

Bonhoeffer argues that the first disciples did not immediately recognize Jesus as the Christ, but rather that it was through receiving His Word and command to follow Him in discipleship that they recognized Him. In other words, whether we live in 2025 or A.D. 33, the essential experience of following Jesus and knowing Him is the same – we must receive His Word and respond in obedience to His Word to know Him. 

“Jesus’ command always has a single purpose: it demands faith from an undivided heart, and love of God and neighbor with all our heart and soul” (page 180). This not only flows from the Great Commandment of Mark 12:29 – 31, but also from Paul’s letter to Timothy, “The goal of our commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). 

I can’t count the times over the years that people have talked to me about wanting to know the will of God, they present me with numerous options and want to know which option they should choose. They view God’s will as ambiguous. 

Bonhoeffer acknowledges that the call can seem ambiguous, but he insists that, “What counts is not the call as such, but the one who calls” (page 178). However, the ambiguity ought to give way to the continual unveiling of Christ and to the core call to love God and our neighbor.  As Bonhoeffer reflects on the first disciples he writes, “For them, as for us, it is the hidden Christ who calls” (page 178). 

If we aren’t loving God and others today then nothing else matters, we are foolish to speak of wanting to better understand God’s call and His will if we are not loving Him and others with undivided hearts. If we are not obeying the light that we do have, then the light that we don’t have doesn’t matter. 

When Bonhoeffer explores whether the first disciples had an advantage over us in understanding the call of Jesus to discipleship and in knowing Him, he has what might be a surprising conclusion:

“The gift Jesus gave to his disciples is thus fully available to us too. In fact, it is even more readily available to us now that Jesus has ascended, by our knowledge of His transfiguration, and by the Holy Spirit that has been sent” (page 180). 

It is only by following Bonhoeffer in the following chapters that we will have an opportunity to understand what he means, after all, right now he is asking preliminary questions and making preliminary statements. Perhaps he is saying, “Let’s get real with Jesus Christ. If He is truly alive then let’s think and act like it, let’s align our desires and expectations with the reality of His resurrection and Presence with us today.”

The word of Jesus Christ, he writes, “Then and now…is the gracious call to enter his kingdom and to submit to his rule” (page 180). Here is a fundamental element of the Gospel and of historic Christian teaching, which we have abandoned, to follow Jesus Christ is to belong to Him, it is to surrender all right to ourselves – as individuals, marriages, families, congregations, and as the transcendent Church of Jesus Christ – and follow Jesus. We are no longer our own, we have been purchased by the blood of the Lamb.

“Scripture does not present us with a collection of Christian types to be imitated according to our own choice. Rather, in every passage it proclaims to us the one Jesus Christ. It is him alone whom I ought to hear. He is one and the same everywhere” (page 180).

This is one of the lessons from the Mount of Transfiguration; as Peter wants to build three tabernacles, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus, the Father shuts Peter down by proclaiming, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear Him!” (Matthew 17:1 – 8). 

(How many tabernacles have we built on the Mount? Isn’t so much of our internal conflict over what additional tabernacles we will allow on the Mount? How many of us identify with our traditions and doctrinal distinctives, before we identify with Jesus Christ? How many voices are we hearing that drown out the Voice of Jesus?)

If we are not seeing and hearing Jesus Christ from Genesis through Revelation then we are not reading and seeing the Bible, for the Bible is all about Jesus Christ. In and through the Bible we are to partake of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4). As we behold Jesus Christ we are transformed into His image (2 Corinthians 3:17 – 18; Romans 8:29; 12:1-2; 1 John 3:1 – 3; Colossians 3:1 – 4). 

What a wonderful promise and expectation we can have everyday of our lives – that we will see and hear Jesus Christ, that we will live in His Presence, that we will have deep fellowship (koinonia) with one another in Him, and that we will live in the very unity, love, and joy of the Trinity (John Chapter 17; 1 John 1:3; 1 Corinthians 12:12). 

Is this our expectation today? 

Are we living in the Presence of Jesus Christ? 

Are we knowing Him as our Lord, our Friend, our Brother? 

Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship Part II – Reflections (1)

I have been thinking for a few months about writing a series of reflections on Part II of Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship. Part II is titled, The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship; it consists of six chapters and is about one hundred pages. My reluctance has been that it is dense, much denser than Life Together which has 97 pages and for which I wrote 110 reflections a few years ago on this blog. 

When I write “dense” I mean that Bonhoeffer uses concepts that most of us are unfamiliar with – even though they are Biblical – and that those of us who are familiar with them wrestle with (at least I wrestle with them). When I consider that Life Together required 110 reflections to complete the journey, I can’t begin to think what The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship might demand, I’m not even sure that I can do it. 

Yet, when I see that the professing church in the United States has abdicated its identity in Christ, when I see that God’s People do not know that they are God’s People and that they are not their own but have been bought with a price, when I see the great need of our generation to know Jesus, I want to explore what Bonhoeffer writes about discipleship and the Church; I want to hear the call of Jesus, I want us to hear the call of Jesus – to live in community, to live as His Body, to be His Presence in the world. 

There is a sense in which Life Together is a practical manual for living in koinonia with one another in Christ, while The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship (CJCD) explores the deep space, the height and depth and breadth and length, of who we are as the People of God, the Body of Christ, the Bride of the Lamb, the Temple of God, the Church of the Living God. Perhaps Life Together is our trek to base camp, while CJCD takes us to the summit of Everest. 

I was undecided about embarking on this journey until last Friday, when I had the briefest of interchanges with someone in the parking lot of a building not far from where we live. The nature of the interchange had to do with the book Discipleship, and it was so unusual that I thought that I’d better get with the program and take the journey that Aslan was offering. 

I first read Discipleship (then published as The Cost of Discipleship) about sixty years ago as a teenager. At the time I also read Letters and Papers from Prison (a more comprehensive edition has since been published). I am hardly an expert on Bonhoeffer, but he has been with me most of my life.

When someone says to me, “I know Bonhoeffer,” I want to ask, “Is that possible?” 

On the one hand Bonhoeffer is straightforward when he says, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” On the other hand, to live with Bonhoeffer from that point onward is to invite more questions than answers – yet the questions keep us seeking and knowing Jesus and the answers are always found in Jesus Christ – Bonhoeffer is unambiguous about Jesus Christ. He is also unambiguous about us needing to live in koinonia with one another in Christ.  There is no discipleship apart from the Body of Christ. 

My current copy of Discipleship is translated by Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss and is the Reader’s Edition published by Fortress Press. If you want to know Bonhoeffer, in some measure, I don’t think you can do so without knowing Discipleship. If you want to know Jesus, Discipleship can be an important element in that process…and a lifelong friend. It can be the kind of friend who challenges you and puts weight on the bar, the kind of friend who is steadfast and faithful. 

If you want a biography of Bonhoeffer, make the commitment to read Eberhard Bethge’s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer A Biography. Bethge was a close friend of Bonhoeffer’s and was married to his niece. Bethge’s work will not only take you on a journey, but will serve as a future reference, allowing you to return to it time and again to refresh your memory and understanding. There was a (sadly) popular bio of Bonhoeffer published a few years ago that contained historical inaccuracies and lacked literary merit – Bethge is worth the effort. 

My goal in these reflections is to interact with what Bonhoeffer wrote, it is not to explain why Bonhoeffer wrote what he wrote, it is not to delve into Bonhoeffer’s motives, it is to take what he wrote, as he wrote it, and allow the words to speak to us today – we don’t always know the full extent of what we write, of what we say, of what we create.

Discipleship was published in 1937 as Germany and the professing church in Germany were being enveloped in darkness. Bonhoeffer saw the darkness, and in the midst of the darkness he also saw the Light of Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer was in the minority with his perspective, both the minority in society in general and the minority within the professing church. What is popular is seldom true, this was the case in the German church in 1937, and it is the case in the church in the United States in 2025. 

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13 – 14). 

Part II of Discipleship begins with a short chapter titled Preliminary Questions and in the first paragraph Bonhoeffer poses no less than eight questions. He then begins the second paragraph by telling us that the questions in the first paragraph are all wrong because they indicate that we don’t really believe that Jesus Christ is alive, we don’t believe we are in His Presence. 

“There is something wrong with all of these questions. Every time we ask them, we place ourselves outside the living presence of the Christ” (page 178). 

We might ask ourselves, “Do we speak and act as if Jesus is alive or as if He is dead?” Is Jesus in the past tense or is He in the present? What does our language reveal about the way we think of Jesus? What does our language tell us and others about our relationship with Him, about our discipleship? 

Bonhoeffer writes, “Discipleship in essence never consists in a decision for this or that specific action; it is always a decision for or against Jesus Christ…What counts is not the call as such, but the one who calls” (page 178). 

What role does the Word of God, Scripture, play in all of this? We’ll return to this in the next reflection, the Lord willing, and hopefully have a fruitful beginning in CJCD.  

The Holy Spirit – Revealing and Convicting (10)

 Adoption - I

In our previous reflection we considered that all that the Father has, Jesus Christ also has; and that all that Jesus Christ has we also have in Him. We briefly looked at what it means to be a joint heir (Romans 8:17) with Christ. When we arrive at the Holy of Holies of John Chapter 17, we will hopefully see the confirmation and congruity of these threads, for we are called to be one with the Trinity as the People of God, the Bride, the Temple, the sons and daughters of the Living God.  

Now I would like us to ponder what the Bible means when it speaks to us of adoption. This is a central thought in the Himalayas of Romans Chapter 8, and yet it is something that we miss, that we typically do not understand, and because of this we forgo much of our high calling as daughters and sons of the Living God and joint heirs with Christ. I hope you will give prayerful thought to the Bible’s portrayal of adoption as we work through this, it may take some time, but we can always trust the Holy Spirit to lead us deeper into Jesus and His Word.

I will begin with a statement: In Biblical adoption, you must first be a child of the Father before you can be adopted by Him. 

To put it another way, only those who are already children of God in Christ can be adopted. 

I am making these statements because they go against everything most of us know about adoption and I want to get our attention. Our present-day concept of adoption is the opposite of the above statements, in our world the reason for adoption is to make someone a member of a family, we have no reason to adopt anyone already within the family – and yet, as I hope we will see, Biblical adoption is not about bringing someone into the Family of God, it is about what occurs to those already in the Family of God.

There are three places in the New Testament where the word “adoption” is used, and we will explore all three; Romans 8:12 – 25; Galatians 3:23 – 4:11; Ephesians 1:1 – 14.  What patterns do you see in these passages? Are there similarities? Before we begin with these passages, there are two observations I want to make.

What is our approach, or methodology, in understanding Scripture? If you have read much of my writing these past few years you may realize that I believe that we have suffered a catastrophic failure in our approach to the Bible with our various interpretive methods, including the historical – grammatical method. While elements of some methods can be helpful, they ought not to be the engine that powers the train. We simply cannot understand Scripture and see Jesus Christ, who is the focus of all Scripture, without the illumination and revelation of the Holy Spirit; Jesus speaks to us of the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room (John chapters 13 – 17) and Paul explicitly writes of our dependence on the Holy Spirit in understanding the things of God in 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:16. 

As I have written and said many times, if Jesus and the New Testament writers were in seminary, they would receive failing grades in exegesis, for their use of the Old Testament hardly aligns with the historical – grammatical method. The same is true of the Church Fathers, who, as a whole, demonstrate a Christology that far surpasses what we see today and a love and command of Scripture that dwarfs us. 

I am deeply sorry that I didn’t realize this when I was pastoring, and most certainly when I was in seminary. As I look back, I did have professors who were not slaves to naturalistic approaches to Scripture, and I surely believe that all of my professors were fine men and women, people of integrity – we are products of our systems, and when the systems produce our paychecks it does make it difficult to gain perspective. 

Now if the above doesn’t make any sense to you right now, don’t worry about it. However, I do have a point in writing it, and that is that we are going to look at the Bible and only the Bible in pondering adoption; yes, I may make a reference or two to adoption in the Roman Empire, but the core of our focus will be the above three New Testament passages. 

I have read various perspectives on Biblical adoption for decades, many of them confusing, many tentative, most falling far short of the glory of the Biblical passages, and many not thought out at all. Many of them are so mired in the historical – grammatical method that they chase their tails trying to pin down what Paul meant in his historical context and often come to no firm conclusion. 

Some arrive at the correct conclusion without incorporating the best information or knowledge to get there, but their base instincts in Christ nevertheless lead them into the glory of Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians – these are often folks not academically trained and so they are free to respond to the Holy Spirit without the constraints of naturalistic exegesis and hermeneutics. They “see” the glory of sonship, the glory of the Firstborn (Romans 8:29), the glory of the Father “bringing many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10).

(One of the consequences of our naturalistic methods, including the historical – grammatical method, is that we have created accessibility barriers to the Bible for the average person, once again the people have been led to believe that only the professionals can truly understand the Bible and that the priesthood of the believer is a fiction.)

The second observation concerns the idea that God adopts us into His family. As I wrote above, this is not what Biblical adoption is about, in the New Testament you must first be a child to be adopted. While we will explore this in-depth when we work through the three passages cited above, I want us to think about what the Bible teaches about becoming a child of God.

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12 – 13).

“Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). 

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4 – 5). 

“For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable” (1 Peter 1:23). 

We become children of God when we are born of the Holy Spirit, when the very life of God enters into us. This is obviously not like our understanding of adoption, for it is impossible for a human to cause another human to be born again with the adoptive parent’s very life. This is but one way in which what the Bible means by adoption is not what we think of as adoption. 

I also point this out to ask us to think twice before we use the term adoption to indicate what it means to come into a relationship with the Father through the Son – for it bypasses the necessity of the new birth and can cause confusion with people. Furthermore, as I hope we will see, Biblical adoption is for those who are already the children of God, it is not associated with the process and experience of becoming a child of God (other than that becoming a child of God sets us on the maturation process of adoption).

While you will have to be your own judge of these things, hopefully in communion with the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, there is no doubt in my heart and mind that if adoption were an element of today’s Gospel, as it originally was, and if God’s People saw their calling by the Father in the Son to live as sons and daughters in the adoption process, that our lives would be dramatically different and that our witness to the world would be dynamic in Jesus. We simply do not know who we are in Christ or who He is within us. 

How critical is adoption? 

“For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing [this is the adoption process] of the sons of God…the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (see Romans 8). 

I hope you will be meditating on the above passages from Romans 8, Galatians 3 and 4, and Ephesians 1. The Lord willing, we’ll begin our exploration of them in the next post in this series.