The Church – Reflections: 6

Ephesians 4:14 – 16 has long been embedded in my vision of the church. “…from whom [Christ] the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love” (4:16).

The image of the church in this passage is one of growth into Christ and of mutual and reciprocal edification in Christ, from Christ, and to Christ. This passage portrays a dynamic church, a church growing into the image of Christ, of us collectively becoming like Christ – and of us all participating in the process as we give and receive from one another, as we are animated by the Holy Spirit.

The apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers of verse 11 are called to equip the saints for the work of ministry; they are not called to equip “sinners” nor are they called to monopolize the work of ministry – they are called to equip others to function in ministry as the body lives in Christ. The term “status quo” cannot describe this passage and yet in practice we do not encourage the people of God to live as the priests of God, as people who all have something to give, something critically necessary for the building up of the Body of Christ.

In the natural when we see a baby or a child not developing, not progressing along the path to mental, emotional, and physical maturity, we become concerned, we think something is wrong. Yet with the church we think nothing of it if we are frozen in time, if the status quo prevails year after year, decade after decade, century after century. We think little of it, if anything at all, if brother Joe who grew up in the church and who is now 75 years old cannot share the Gospel with others, cannot mentor younger men, cannot stand in the congregation and share a thought from God’s Word, cannot contribute the Word of God in a small group. This is simply wrong and is an indictment against both those who stand in front of congregations and of those who sit in congregations. The church is developmentally disabled and those who lead it do little to foster functional change and maturity.

It is ironic that we are approaching the 500^th anniversary of Luther’s nailing the 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, an act many mark as the beginning of the Reformation, and that instead of asking; “How far have we come since then? How has the church grown into the image of Jesus Christ? How has the doctrine of justification, and the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, affected the growth of the church into the image of Jesus Christ?” that we will tend to think uncritically of ourselves and may even congratulate ourselves in preserving the status quo of Reformation thinking and practice.

Reformation thinking and practice (and let’s remember that it was diverse and not monolithic) was hardly perfect any more than our thinking and practice is perfect – do we strive to be frozen in imperfection – whether our own or others? Whether our generation’s or a prior generation’s? And for those of us who are not Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, let’s not forget that there are rich treasures to be found in those traditions as well as in our own.

To have not moved on from the Reformation is akin to laying the foundation of a house and never building upon it. Building on a foundation affirms the value of the foundation, it does not repudiate it – the foundational teachings mentioned in Hebrews 6:1 – 2 are teachings to be with us forever, but they are elementary, they are basic, they are Christianity 101; and yet not only have we not moved on, not only have we not built upon them – they are what we hear week after week, year after year – no wonder our congregations have no muscle mass, they are fed baby food and not allowed out of the playpen.

Cannot we see the tragic irony in Luther risking his life to translate the Bible into German, of Tyndale being burned alive for translating the Bible into English, when we, their heirs, take the freedom of knowing Christ and the Bible away from the people of God through our practices that relegate most Christians into second or third class status – the unwashed masses incapable of reading, interpreting, and living out the Word of God? The Latin Bibles may just as well have remained chained in the churches, inaccessible to the people. How have we convinced otherwise intelligent men and women that they need an “expert” to understand the Bible? Have we committed insurrection against the Holy Spirit? Are we seeking to form the church into our image as opposed to the image of Jesus Christ?

When people within congregations commit ungodly actions perhaps it is because they have been shielded from the Bible? Perhaps it is because their relationship with the Word of God is secondhand, mediated through the experts – whether the experts are scholastic and intellectual and practice subdued decorum, or whether they are religious entertainers out to blatantly foster dependence on themselves. Dear reader, when God’s people are unable to gather and open the Word of God and interact with one another without a study guide or a video series or some other “tool” (and don’t get me wrong, these all can have their place) something is grossly wrong in the church.

The Church is the Bride of Christ, it does not belong to man. Christ, the Bridegroom, left His Home, He left His Father, and in and through the Incarnation He was joined to His Wife (Ephesians 5:22 – 33).

We are not to take the place of the Bridegroom. We are not to attempt to woo affection from Him to us. We are not to be so presumptuous as to think that we know better than Christ. We are to point the Bride to her Groom. We are to say over and over again, “Look at Jesus. Go to Jesus. Behold Jesus. Allow Jesus to speak to you, to love you, to draw you to Himself.”

I suppose we can do the best we can wherever we are. If we must live in prison the least we can do is to help the other inmates.

Reflections on Bonhoeffer’s Life Together – 103

“In confession there occurs a breakthrough to the cross. The root of all sin is pride, superbia [Latin for pride]. I want to be for myself; I have a right to be myself, a right to my hatred and my desires, my life and my death…Confession in the presence of another believer is the most profound kind of humiliation.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress Press, 2015 (Reader’s Edition), page 90.

Bonhoeffer argues that Jesus Christ suffered shame for us, being crucified as an evildoer, and that when we confess our sins to one another that we are forced to abandon our pride and selfishness and experience humiliation and shame, and in so doing share in the Cross. “The cross of Jesus Christ shatters all pride (page 91).” There is also a breakthrough to community in confession for we lay down our masks, our pretentions, our religiosity, and stand together at the Cross of Christ – all of us in need of the forgiveness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Crucifixion was a humiliating death, we are called to the fellowship of that death – the last vestiges of our pride must go, and must go again, and must go again. “Now we share in the resurrection of Christ and eternal life (page 91).”

Contrast the shame inherent in Biblical confession with the therapeutic disclosure of struggles and wrong doing and “mistakes” that society encourages us to engage in today – both within and without the church. There is no closure in such practices, no forgiveness, no peace – without the confession found in Biblical repentance there is no Cross and no forgiveness. Therapeutic deism avoids the Cross and its shame, it avoids admission and confession of sin; rather than insisting on the death of the old humanity and its sin nature it seeks to reform it into respectability, to administer palliatives, to clothe it in psychology and extra-Biblical images and thinking.

Bonhoeffer writes that in confession we find “a breakthrough to new life.” The break with the past is made when sin is hated, confessed, and forgiven (page 91).” He quotes Proverbs 28:13, “No one who conceals transgressions will prosper, but one who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”

“What happened to us in baptism is given to us anew in confession. We are delivered from darkness into the rule of Jesus Christ (page 91).”

Why has Bonhoeffer chosen to emphasize confession to one another at the end of this book? Why is he taking so much time with it (for there is more to come)? Why does he see so many breakthroughs inherent in confession one to another? Why is this so important to him? What do you think about all of this?

I cannot pretend to know all of the answers to the above questions. I do know that as long as we hide behind our self-righteousness that we are playing a religious game, and that simply saying, “I am a sinner,” or “I have sinned,” or joining in public congregational general confession and not naming our sin in confession one to another allows us to continue our hypocrisy and façade, it allows us to continue to play the game. We need not humble ourselves when we avoid naming specific sin in confession, we need not confront the shame that Christ endured on the Cross, we need not participate in His shame and humiliation.

Not naming sin in confession one to another allows us to live in isolation and it allows sin to continue its hold on us, we are prisoners of that which we hide and do not confess – sin thrives in darkness, but when it is exposed in confessional repentance then it flees. Again, this is not some voyeuristic therapeutic exercise in which we parade our sin and evil before an audience seeking sympathy and applause, this is Biblical confession and repentance acknowledging not just that we have sinned against other men and women, but that we have sinned against a holy God and desperately need His forgiveness.

Perhaps we have become powerless to minister to others mired in deep sin and seeking deliverance because we no longer see sin for what it is in our own lives. If we look for therapy for ourselves we will default to therapy for others; only the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross can deliver from sin, can heal from its effects, and can restore us to fellowship with God and with one another. Perhaps we have been so therapeutically smart that we are spiritually stupid.

There can be no real life together if we pretend to be something we aren’t.