Category: The Church

The Revolutionary Christ

My attention was drawn recently to a very profound truth which I’d ignored so often, but which for some reason made a lot of sense to me now. I’ve been studying Jesus Christ’s ministry in recent time in the context of the times in which he was on earth, and I can’t cease to be amazed. There is no doubt that Christ was a revolutionary, but in a way that borders on the “other” way, a way which most reasonable men in their comfort zones will not accept, or can only accept at some cost to them. But let’s press on to the issue at hand and it will become more apparent.

“It is often mistakenly held that the key concept of Jesus’ ethic is the “Golden Rule”: “Do to others as you would have them do to you”. This is stated by Jesus, however, not as the sum of his own teaching but as the center of the law [i.e. – “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”]. Jesus’ own “fulfillment” of this thrust of the law, which thereby becomes through his own work a “new commandment” (Jn 13:34-35) is different, “Do as I have done to you”. It is striking how great the mass of writings on religious ethics … which still fails to note this very evident structural change.” (The Politics of Jesus – John Howard Yoder).

I have had conversations with many people, some who are not Christian. Out of the many things I have learnt, two of them are of immediate relevance to the above statement, and they are

  1. A lot of people choose the Jesus of dogma, and leave the Jesus of history.
  2. A second batch of people prefer Jesus the wise teacher, but not his claim to being divine.

In the light of Jn 13:34 and Mt 5:43-45( “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy’. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father I heaven.”) – none of these stances are true to Christ, and we will examine why.

Choosing the Jesus of Dogma over the Jesus of History

Much of Protestant Christianity has made a strong emphasis on the metaphysical benefits that Jesus’s life and death brought to we who believe in him. They’ve emphasized the grace of God in bringing his Son to bring forgiveness of sins, redemption, justification, sanctification etc. As it stands today, Christians are claiming their “in-Christness” now more than ever, relishing who Christ has made them. However, this emphasis has in effect abandoned the fact that Jesus Christ lived in a certain historical, socio-cultural background. Whether out of ignorance or intentionally, we have de-emphasized the context within which he did what he did and said what he said for the three years of his ministry. In effect, if all Jesus Christ came to do for us was to die for our sins, he might as well have died when he was born – when he was an innocent baby and knew no sin. He still would have achieved the purpose, wouldn’t he? Or some would say that he had to fulfill some of the things written about him by the prophets, and so he stayed on for thirty three years to fulfill them and then die. This being the case then, everything that he said and did within those years were not important to his mission, only to provide a source of evidence of his claim to being the Messiah.

I don’t believe that is the case, however, this is the impression that much of Christendom seeks to portray. Because the moment that I confront most Christians with the evidence of the Gospels and Christ’s demands on us his followers, the impression I get is that those are not important, they are too utopian. They were meant to be personal guidelines by which we can choose to live our lives, but they are not important to our foundation as a group of people called the church. In effect, Christ has become too “personal” a saviour.

However, there is no doubt that Christ’s life was a thorn in the flesh to the establishment. He pointed out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in creating a million and one laws that everyone was supposed to obey but for which they never lifted a finger to practice. They placed more emphasis on sacrifice, than they did on mercy. His demand? “Your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees”. But of course, that is too difficult to achieve. Again Christ denounced the power of the rulers of the earth to truly dispense justice, by forcing the government of the day to release a treasonous criminal Barabbas for an innocent man, showing how governments of the day are fallen for their pandering to the whims of the popular vote.

So to most of us, the only reason that Jesus Christ came was to transform us to be like him, and then being made like him, all we have to do then is now use that gift he has given us to pursue our own agenda – seeking miracles, financial success, successful marriages, political power etc. We’ve provided a blank cheque, and we expect Jesus to sign so we can write any amount we want. Because we have refused to accept the community forming actions and attributes of Christ as the norm in our corporate lives – which should make us a people free from the prejudices and trappings of tribe, social standing, class distinctions and personal resources to a self-sacrificing, always loving, non-discriminating society – we have ignored the fact that the reason Christ lives in us is so that we can now live a life of love for one another, without fear of tomorrow. And this alternative society is what Christ calls his body, the church and as Paul states in Eph 3:10, the manifold wisdom of God is not to be made know in “me”, but in “us”, the church. It is part of this wisdom, that Paul again speaks of in 1 Co 1:20-25.

“Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles … for the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”

To the Greek Corinthian, Stocism taught him that man’s pursuit of their own happiness was their highest purpose. To the Jew, man’s obedience to the written down laws of God was man’s highest purpose. But Paul, following in the footsteps of Christ, shows us that the nature of God is given to us so that we can now turn our life and love towards each other, and not rather for our personal gain. It is this wisdom that was the stumbling-block, and is still the stumbling-block to most of Christianity today.

Choosing Jesus The Wise Teacher, But Not Divine Son of God

The other end of the scale relates mostly to those who don’t believe in the existence of God and/or of Christ being a divine person sent from God. When I have a deeper chat with such people however, they see a lot of wisdom in what Christ taught, especially his values on how we relate to each other. They also fall into the same error that the church has fallen into – that Christ’s most important teaching was to “Do to others as you would have them do to you”. However there is no way that without accepting Jesus Christ’s claim to being the Son of God, one could fully understand the message of Christ.

There are many reasons why Christ died and resurrected for us, but one that I’ve come to fully understand and whose dimensions affect this discourse is the fact that Christ gives us victory over death. By virtue of his victory, we are free from the fear of death. The end of this is to make us bold to take the actions that a world which is saturated in self-preservation cannot take – a decision to love no matter the cost. Christ tells us that we are supposed to be on earth to show how communities of love can exist amongst all the fallenness that surrounds us. That’s why he says that a city on a hill cannot be hidden, because we are that city, we are the light that cannot be hidden (Mt 5:14-16). A light does not have to do anything else but shine – it will draw men unto itself.

By we being true to ourselves as the church of Christ – the community within which we exhibit the traits of Christ – we automatically become a society that is counter-cultural. When we move from a people who are always pursuing our own agendas to be come a people who are watching over each other, we become different. We become a people living on a higher set of laws, who do not need a “constitution” or “bye-law” of their country, town or cities to tell them how to live with each other. We do not need homosexuality to be “criminalized” in the constitution for us not to tolerate it in our community. We do not need abortion to be “criminalized” to enforce that our members do not participate in it. We do not need to go fund-raising from the world, because what we have is enough to meet our essential needs. We do not need divorce to be “criminalized” before our Archbishops know that they have to love their wives with all their faults, just like Christ loved us even before we acknowledged him. We do not need to follow the model of leadership model of the world, where all our leaders fight for is how to please their superiors, not how to meet the needs of their brethren. In effect, nobody teaches us to know God, for we will all know him.

In becoming a counter-cultural society, we will definitely make enemies, most likely enemies with power, and their attempts to frustrate us is what Christ and the NT apostles calls our “suffering”. Without a hope that we have a better place to go when we are persecuted, we cannot be empowered to live like Christ expects us to. That’s why Christ encourages us not to fear for losing our lives, for we will gain it in the end. His resurrection is our hope of the same.

Let me give an example. Imagine a country in which slavery is the norm. However, the Christian communities in this country do not recognize amongst themselves this man-made class distinction. As a result, a slave has full rights of participation and activity in this alternate community. To Christ, the important thing is not gaining your freedom from slavery in the general society, but having those distinctions blurred when you come into the Christian community, granted all the full rights of membership. They do not need to fight for the laws in that country to be changed, because to them in their communities, their slave status makes no difference. In any case, Christ does not care about who you are in the general society whether slave, free, circumcised, woman or man, but rather what you have become in the Christian community. Does this sound familiar? Well, this was exactly the state of affairs in Corinth, and is the premise of Paul’s advice in 1 Cor 7:17-19.

“Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him … Was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised …Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s command is what counts. Each one should remain in the situation in which he was in when God called him. Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you – although if you can gain your freedom, do so.”

This passage has been used before in the history of Protestant Christianity to support all sorts of abuses by the political elite in telling everyone else to “stay in their situation” – but that is another topic for another day. If early Christianity did not spend it’s effort fighting slavery, racial and gender discrimination publicly using political means, it’s not because they supported it. It was because what you are in the body of Christ is what counts. And once you begin to take your part in the body of Christ as a full citizen, you are denying the power that the society’s laws have over you. You are telling the society that even though you are a slave in your midst, yet when you come to Christ and his community, you’re treasured. And that is all that matters. If I can gain my freedom, I will. But that’s not what’s important. Something else (or rather Someone else) matters more, something for which you are ready to die.

By means of the cross, Christ and his church declare their victory over sin, the world and all it’s prejudices. “And disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col 2:15). Not by political intrigue, not by violent machination, but by the cross. The Corinthian church was ready to bear the cross of being “slave lovers” and by so doing, declare the victory of God over the politico-socioeconomic conditions of their time. This again, is wisdom that the world cannot understand.

Observations

Interestingly, even though the second issue is something which should be addressed more to the unbeliever or realist, I find that increasingly Christians themselves have lost this understanding. And therefore we continuously fight battles which Christ himself never fought. We continue to not only support but actually propagate religious intolerance and xenophobia, and use Christianity to set an agenda of binding our societies with our religious laws. We forget that when the law is applied, it has no room for forgiveness. It’s punishment will have to be exacted, even when the criminal shows remorse. So first and foremost, when we agitate for what we consider to be a sin to be criminalized, and we fall into it ourselves (And I tell you, we are not perfect. Some of us will by all means fall), two things happen.

  1. We are shown to be hypocrites who cannot obey our own laws.
  2. The sinner (in this case now a “criminal”), even if they repent of their sin as a result of the abundant mercy of Christ to always forgive, will still have to face the penalty of the legal system.

However if it’s only a sin amongst us and not a criminal offense, we have recourse to the hope of Christ’s mercy for such a person, and will only have to cast them out after continuous unrepentant behavior. We also don’t need to make a public fuss of it, but can help our fallen brother on the quiet.

As for the first, it’s a problem that 500 years of Protestant Christianity from Evangelical to Pentecostal and Charismatic has not addressed itself to adequately. The focus has been so much on “spiritualizing” and “personalizing” the faith – on “salvation”, “Holy Spirit” and more recently “in-Christ” –  that the community forming purposes for all these things that Christ has made us or given us have paled in comparison to what we personally will gain from him or how we can use Christ to achieve some other agenda.

With the advancements of technology, the 20th century has given birth to an enormous amount of research on the New Testament contexts of Jesus’s and the early apostle’s times and ministry, which should help us to correct these impressions. Unfortunately, this is also the age in which most Christians are acting with much abundant zeal and very little knowledge, with ears ready only to listen to what suits our agenda, and a penchant only for more deception. Are we going anywhere fast?

Refocusing the Spotlight

Recently there was quite a theological furore on my friend Kwame Antwi-Boasiako’s facebook wall, owning from a statement he made to the effect that the world is yet to see our Christianity in action. Some of us shared our thoughts on these, and the session was quite a useful dialogue aimed at further deepening our shared faith in Christ. Having descended from a month of reading the two classics in Robert Banks’ “Paul’s Idea of Community” and John Howard Yoder’s “The Politics of Jesus”, I’m left with no choice but to expand my point of view on that topic, at the pain of sounding repetitive.

Many preachers have labeled their ministry and preaching as “Christ centered” and have tried to bring to the fore the unique relationship that exists between Christ and us. It is a commendable effort, one which sets forth the finished work of Christ as the premise of everything that we are and will be. There’s talk of “I no longer live but Christ lives in me” and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”.

In fact, there can be no understating the importance of Christ’s work in bringing us to freedom. Galatians clearly states these in the following.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:28-29)

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do no let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Gal 5:1).

It is not for fun that Paul mentions these categories of people to explain the freedom that these Galatians (and for that matter all Christians) have now attained. This was basically because slavery, marginalization of women and Judaic pride was a real threat in their age. Let me give an example. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, men of Jesus’ time used to pray thanking God that he didn’t make them a woman. Why? Well, women were so marginalized in their culture, that even rabbis and teachers of the law were not allowed to teach women. In fact, women were not even allowed to sit amongst men when they were having a discussion, even if it was in the living rooms of their own houses. In this respect then, Jesus Christ was revolutionary, for he broke the above mentioned inhibitions by talking to the woman at the well, and secondly by allowing and encouraging Mary to sit with him and his disciples whiles her sister Martha was busy in the kitchen, unlike most women of the their time would have been permitted to do.

In the same way, Paul, just like Christ, didn’t find it necessary to condemn slavery and fight against it. This practice wasn’t just a personal but societal and national problem. His notion of freedom for these people was not centered in trying to change their status physically through the changing of the Israelite (or Gentile) laws, but by showing them that through Christ they had now come into a different kind of freedom which made they and their masters the same, and therefore were together with everyone else, heirs now of the promise of Abraham. They were therefore to take their stand in that freedom and the resultant community of people who believe in that freedom that Christ had given them, and to actively contribute to the building up of that community, whether slave, free, man or woman. However, in contravention of Christ’s ideals, Christianity’s subsequent support for slavery is a sore point in our history which deserves it’s own separate uncomfortable discourse.

Freedom? But For What Purpose?

What made Paul’s teaching on freedom so different from the Stoic philosophy of the Greeks (from the Platos, Aristotles etc) and the legalistic worldview of the Jews was the notion that this freedom was attainable in and through Christ, and was to be directed towards service to one another. The Stoics believed that man was free to know the difference between good and evil, and to use his own skills, talents and resources to achieve the greatest potential that they could achieve. In the course of achieving this, they can then change the course of history. Stoic philosophy therefore focused itself on the human ability to achieve, and therefore its main proponents were educated and middle to upper class citizens of the society, who had the resources and the seeming potential to achieve such greatness. The Jews on the other hand believed that God had written down a certain set of Laws that man must follow, and that man’s purpose was to know and follow those laws and then all will go well with them in life. Although Paul’s teaching was closer to the Stoics in the concept of freedom, the fundamental purpose of that freedom is to use it in service of one another, even to the point of death. This is summed up by Paul as follows:

“You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather serve one another in love” (Gal 5:13).

To the Stoics, this was foolishness, for how can a man use his freedom to serve another man? That was not freedom, they said. Refuting the stoic mindset which some of the Corinthian Greeks still held was what influenced Paul’s writings in 1 Cor 1:

“Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:20-23).

Looking at the Christian landscape today however, I’m of the opinion that we have now set ourselves squarely back into slavery, of both the Greek and the Jewish kind i.e. slavery to self and slavery to the institutions. Before you disagree with me, let me share my point of view then. Let me start from slavery to self, which was the bane of the Greek.

Slavery To Self

Five hundred years of Protestantism has ingrained in the Christian mind the notion that we as individuals are the center of God’s purpose. We preach forgiveness of sins as something personal that we’ve received from God, which we aren’t worthy of in our own rights (which is not wrong, just not properly focused). We continuously focus our teaching on how Christ came to solve our individual need for God. Our songs talk not about “us” or “we”, but “I”. We speak of Jesus as a “Personal Saviour”, something which is found nowhere in the NT, whether in the Gospels or the Epistles. Christ has come to give us freedom and to bring us into the family of God, but our pursuit of Christ has not been a corporate one, but an individual one. We are busy celebrating individual brilliance, making super stars out of our leaders (who inevitably let us down, and then we turn around and criticize them for not being “super starrish” enough i.e. forgetting they are human). We go to church, sing, dance, hear some “word”, pay the fee for the show and pack up our bags and go home, without knowing the next person sitting beside us on the pew. We are quick to spend our time talking about how God has blessed a brother or sister (most often than not with some material things), but there is very little concern for making a change in the lives of those who do not have any. To help us further pursue our focus on individualism, we only associate ourselves with those who are “upwardly mobile” so that they can help us achieve our own upward mobility. Just walk into your everyday church filled with the educated elite, and see how many poor and uneducated members exist amongst them and even more importantly how many of the richer ones amongst them actually have a meaningful relationship with such less privileged members. I’m talking about a relationship that goes beyond saying “Praise the Lord” when we meet at church.

What has fueled most of these misconceptions?

  1. The problem of Sola Fide. In Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation’s haste to fight against the hegemony of Roman Catholicism, they posited all their arguments on “faith only”, to the detriment of everything else. Faith has been defined as something abstract, so much so that there’s very little emphasis on the practical expression of this faith. In addition, it’s been so personalized that it’s all that “you” as an individual believe, and everything else is relative to that. Worse still, we are focused on how to use faith to get what we want from God, not what he wants for himself. For us, the heroes of faith in Heb 11 who in spite of all their faith didn’t get obtain what God had promised but are waiting for the future fulfillment of their faith is not a good enough example. We’ve gotta have it now.
  2. Most of us have been thought to read the New Testament as if it was a love letter written to us individually. We have forgotten that with the exception of 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon, most of the Epistles were addressed to a group of people, a church. We do not attempt to reconstruct what exactly was the problem that Paul, Peter and other Epistle writers were trying to address by writing each letter. We have translated all the “you” and “us” and “we” into “I”, and apply everything to ourselves individually.
  3. We are more interested in hearing the word, not in knowing Christ. There is a world of difference between knowing the word, and knowing Christ and if we don’t let it sink that “Christ is the word”, we’ll only be marking time. As John said in 1 Jn, it is not only that which they’ve heard but “which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life” (1 Jn 1:1). Christ can be known only through his cross, but unfortunately many of us prefer to be enemies of the cross (Phil 3:17-19), than learn to carry our own cross. And even our understanding of carrying our own cross seems to be about our own personal trials, when Christ’s focus is on what we suffer for the sake of each other and for him.
  4. We read back our own practices and prejudices into the NT. For example, because our men of God today found churches and sit on them for life, we don’t realize (and can’t seem to grasp how it is possible) that Paul founded churches and left them to be on their own. He only wrote to them when they told him of issues going on in their churches. Another example is the collection of offerings in church meetings. Most NT scholars now agree that this was a one time thing that was done for the distraught Jerusalem church and not a regular practice, but we are not yet ready to rock the financial boat of our pastors. Over the past century there has been a lot of research into the life and times of the early church which has been published and available, but there is very little attempt to find out what underpinned the things they did in the early church. In fact, Christians are the most confident in their practices. We just can’t see how it is possible that we could have got it wrong somewhere along the line, which unfortunately is just what the Pharisees felt when Jesus confronted them with the truth.
  5. We are interested in the Holy Spirit only for what he can do in our lives. However, it is clear from 1 Cor 12 that the Spirit is given for the benefit of the body, not for the individual. “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7) and that all these gifts must be used for the “strengthening of the church” (14:26). In fact not only the Holy Spirit is given for the common good, but all other gifts (including our riches) is to be used for the benefit of the body of brethren (Ro 12:8; 2 Cor 9:8;1 Pe 4:9-11:), not by force, but freely.
  6. There is also a very interesting assumption which bedevils our conception of Christ. We do not realize that the Bible as we know it was put together in the 5th century, and only began to be widely spread in the 15th century with the invention of the printing press by Gothenburg. When the authors of the NT were writing them, they didn’t think they were writing the Bible. They were just writing letters and books to each other, albeit under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Our interest in knowing the “word” therefore should be juxtaposed against the fact that Paul and Peter and the others of their time did not have a “Bible” as we do, but were more fruitful than we are now. Again, it’s not about knowing the word, it’s about knowing Christ.

And all of this is in spite of 58 “one another” verses in the NT which connote laying down our priorities for the pursuit of each other’s advancement. In this and many respects, what we teach and practice today is not very different from Greek humanism. To sum up this section, I’ll quote Howard Yoder

“The idea of Jesus as an individualist or a teacher of radical personalism could arise only in the (Protestant, post-Pietiest, rationalist) context that it did; that is, in a context which, if not intentionally anti-Semitic, was at least sweepingly a-Semitic, stranger to the Jewish Jesus.” (The Politics of Jesus).

Slavery To The Institution

The second form of slavery is slavery to the institution and to ritual, from which the Jew needs to be freed to fully participate in the freedom that Christ gives. We have banished the OT law, but replaced them with our own.

  1. A separation of clergy from laity, with an appeal to OT Levitical priesthood, in spite of Christ making us all a royal priesthood. Clearly a class system, from which only the clergy continues to benefit.
  2. Next is the focus on investing in buildings in the name of building a “temple” of God, when it’s more than evident from the NT that the people are the temple and that “The Most High does not dwell in houses made by men” (Ac 7:48). We are now slaves to that building, and we can’t see ourselves freely worshiping Christ without being in that building.
  3. Next is the enactment of laws surrounding marriages, including compulsary “marriage counseling”and “if you don’t ‘bless’ the marriage in a church, then it’s not a marriage”. Even the choice of whom to marry must be approved by the pastor. And yet, there’s no NT basis for such law. There’s even no NT basis for marriage being officiated by the church.
  4. Then there is the Sunday order of service, which is set in stone. You can’t intervene with your own innovation, unless you are the pastor. Then there’s the sermon, in which the pastor (and/or basically the same old set of people) give us some “word”. In fact, there is no room to ask a question in church after the speaker’s sermon. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it affair. When will they want to hear from you too?
  5. As for the music, you not only have to be a member of the choir but be the “Music Director” or the “worship leader” to be able to sing out a song that you feel like sharing with all of us. Interestingly there’s no mention of a choir in the NT and only a few mention of hymns and songs, and therefore the only way to defend it is using the OT.
  6. Then there’s the abundance of all-night services and “30 day fasting” to “Deal with Stubborn Situations”, when Isaiah 58 is so clear on the important things we should pursue.

    7. “For day after day they seek me out, they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right … ‘Why have we fasted’ they say, ‘and you have not see it?’ … Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke … is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter? … Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.” (Is 58:2,6-8)

  7. To fulfill the need to look like we are doing something, we put together some clothes and some money and make donations to the needy, making sure we appear in the newspapers. Well, the corporate bodies and institutions also do the same. The last time I checked, it was called “Corporate Social Responsibility”, and interestingly even churches are adopting that title for their charity work. If that is the measure of our righteousness, then we haven’t as yet exceeded the Pharisees. When are the hopeless and destitute actually going to make it beyond our donations and start making it into our homes?

Like I said before, I only do this at the cost of being repetitive and annoying, but there’s no other way to say it. As the Americans say, “Pick your poison”. Are we going to be enslaved by the individualistic leanings of Greek humanism, or be proselytized by the Jewish appeal to obedience to tradition? Interesting as it stands today, we’ve managed to fuse the two together in our practice of what Christianity is about. But maybe there is a third way. In the Epistles of Paul, he addresses 3 kinds of people as exemplified by 1 Cor 10:32 “Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God”. Are we ready to stand as the church of God, where there is freedom from self as well as all these laws and restraints, where the spotlight is not on our freedom from the aforementioned, but our ability to lay down our freedom to be used in serving one another in love? The spotlight has always and should always be on Christ, not on us. He has a purpose, to bring together a people who are a display of who he really is to the world; the Lamb who is the King, the Servant who is the Lord, the one who loves his enemy, even to the point of death. Are we ready to seek Christ, who has given us only one commandment by which we are measured?

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:34).

I end with a quote from “The Politics of Jesus”.

“Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur – Our Lamb has conquered: him let us follow.”

My Church

Some people have asked me about the church I attend. They wonder how I can be so critical of the church, and yet claim to be a Christian. Therefore, the logical question to ask then is what church am I in, and how are we “practicing what I/we preach”? Like we used to do in primary school, instead of writing a “Myself”, I’ve decided to write a “My church”. In that direction, I’ll first talk about the ABCs of measuring a contemporary Christian ministry, and then we’ll pick it up from there.

Attendance

My church is made up of about 10 people, so judging by mega church standards, we’d not be considered a church. However, being small allows us to be more focused on each other than most other churches will allow. It has enabled us to build relationships of open questioning, encouragement, criticism and in some circumstances, severe heartbreak. As someone said, “Everybody is fine until you get to know them”. One of the important lessons that such relationships force you to develop is trust. You have to begin to learn to trust your brother, even though he is very capable of hurting that trust that you have reposed in them. Being small can be very intensive, and if you are not ready to lay down your pride, your social and tribal prejudices and your own self interest, then I’ll suggest that such close relationships are not good for you. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Christ meant by “carrying our cross” and “laying down our lives” for each other.

The membership is quite varied, from a management consultant (my dad) to a software developer (me) to final year university student (my sis) to trotro & taxi drivers, to masons and the unemployed. Interestingly you will hear Ewe, Akan, Krobo and English being spoken freely with attempts to explain to each other what we are saying when we ever do get into our local languages. But we tend to stick with English & Twi.

We believe that God will through our lives and our interaction with people we meet, draw others who are willing to walk with us the walk of discovering Christ together, and we keep encouraging ourselves in this direction. However, we are mindful of the fact that we are not doing it FOR Christ, we are doing it WITH him. When we grow beyond our current number, I believe we’ll have to define some limit in which case another meeting will be started in a different location, probably the house of a member which will be suitable enough. The idea is to keep our gatherings small and people focused, and we believe this can be done.

Buildings

Our church meets in my dad’s house. It has quite a big lot with plenty trees, and a lot of shade. Therefore we meet under one of the bigger trees, and in the case of rain or bad weather, we meet in our living room. I guess by the standard of a mega church, we do not exist if we do not have a church building of our own like the million and one that surround us. Well, my only answer to that is that it enables us to focus our little financial resources on the needs of the members of the church, and not on the hustles of buying land, getting a loan (or squeezing out the last drop of money from the church members) to build the church and dealing with the maintenance costs of running such a building, in the name of building a “temple” for the living God. The NT is abundantly clear that the people are the temple, and the money we have is better spent on them.

Cash

Obviously, we find ourselves in a community where there is a lot of unemployment (which is not surprising in a nation of endemic unemployment), and therefore our financial affairs are nothing to write home about by mega church standards. Although we have a bowl in which people may put in donations from what they have, very few of us do so, basically because very few of us can actually afford to do so without starving for the rest of the week. And actually no one is under compulsion to do so. When a member is in need of something, they let us know and we begin to plan together how we may be able to meet that need. Most times, those working amongst us have to actually dedicate some of their monthly salary to meeting some of these needs, and we try as much as possible to look for solutions to problems that involve getting these people a job so they can sustain themselves. However, demand is more than supply, so we have to be wise about what we spend our monies on (and in effect, it also affects how we as individuals also spend our own monies because we are to be people who work to sustain ourselves and others who are incapable of doing so at any given point in time. See Eph 4:28; 2 Th 3:6-10 for a better understanding of this.) In the same direction, those who receive such help have a responsibility enforced by the other members to make sure that they use it wisely. The end is always that they too should be a source of funding to meet someone else’s need in the future.

In the face of this, it is obvious then that nobody is a “paid” minister, although we are all actively engaged in what most people consider “full time ministry”. For us the principle of a priesthood of all believers is not mere talk, it’s a reality. Oh, and we do not have a headquarters on this earth, and neither are we ever going to have one. So we are free to focus on ourselves and in the future on the needs of other sister churches that may develop as we grow bigger, without feeling the breathing on our back that we have some higher human authority to appease.

The Meeting

Ours is not a service, nor a performance. It’s a meeting (because the “ecclesia” – the assembly, has met), and we strive to make it quite an open one. The chairs are arranged in a semi-circular shape, with a whiteboard if you want to write something (like teach a song). There’s no choir (not that we ever intend to have a standing one), so everybody brings up a song they want us to sing. As the Ewes say “If your corn flour is not in the bowl, then you don’t participate in eating the akple”, so our singing is only as good as we contribute to making it, and it can go in any direction that the Holy Spirit so leads us. There are some amongst us who do not have that good a musical voice or ear, and sometimes introduce a song out of beat or tune. But we correct the tune or beat and along we go. Whether your voice is the sweetest soprano or the croakiest tenor, no one stops you from singing. That is the beauty of being a part of Christ. Whoever you are, you are accepted.

And we also have people writing their own songs and teaching them to us, or teaching some songs that they feel are helpful to our meeting. We do have one person accompanying the singing with the guitar, but they are not the choir master or anything like that, so that no one is stifled from bringing in their song.

We have an open time of sharing, in which testimonies, songs, hymns, teaching, exhortation etc is allowed just like in 1 Cor 14:26. This is basically the center of our gathering. There is not going to be a sermon, so the focus is on allowing and encouraging everyone to share what they have to contribute to the brethren. And trust me, the stuff we talk about may be directly from scripture, or from someone’s experience of life as they went through the week, to discussions on how to help a brother fix his taxi to go back to work, to some business ventures that some of us want to engage in to bring employment to others, to querying and if applicable rebuking a brother for some behaviour someone has noticed over time and so on. So far as it helps bring build each other up in our spiritual and physical lives as we live together for Christ, it is encouraged. Your contribution can be disrupted with a question, correction or additional perspective, and yet there is absolute order. Like I said, there’s no sermon, neither is there an abundance of announcements, so we have all the time to spend engaging each other in these.

We typically pray together over certain topics that we ourselves feel are important to pray together for, and we also chip in our individual needs if you feel like you need help. We end up having a meal, and then taking the Lord’s supper as it should be taken – like supper. Not in some sombre religious attitude, but in one of even further engagement and discussion with one another. In fact, I wonder why I didn’t realize all this while that it was “supper” we were supposed to be taking. When taking lunch or supper with your friends, you don’t keep mute – you have a conversation, right? It’s interesting why to most evangelicals, the Lord’s supper is some supernatural event which cannot be taken in an informal, non-religious manner. Oh, and anyone is chosen on the spur of the moment to share the bread and wine, so it’s not some particular person’s duty to do so – the idea is to put more of the priesthood of all believers into practice.

Name

I guess the final point that most people reading this will have a bated breath waiting for me to talk about is the name of our church. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no name. Or better still, it’s such a long one that I prefer not to talk of it. The reason you ask for a name is because you see churches with names all around, but let me draw an analogy, and you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

I threw this challenge the last time that we in Africa can easily understand the idea of extended families, because we still practice it. In fact, I drew and will draw again similarities between these two for us to understand the perspective from which to approach it. When you have an extended family meeting, what do you call yourselves? Probably by your surname i.e. maybe the surname of your great-grandfather, in my case the Morny family meeting. In the same way, we are named after our ancestor, God. Our family head is Jesus Christ, a position which he will not share with anyone else. And it is by his permission that we belong to this family. Therefore, we could possibly also be named after the one who has given us to belong to this family – Christ. The only other thing is that maybe some of our family members meet in Ashongman, whiles others meet in Godenu, and others still in Agbogba. So we say then that we are the “ecclesia” (assembly) or family of God/Christ which meets regularly in Mr Morny’s house in Agbogba. Does that make sense to you? Do you see why Paul addressed his letters to the “ecclesia” of Christ in Colosse, Corinth, etc?

Paul didn’t build bureaucratic organizations with high hierarchies interested in dominating the world. Paul went to homes, and picked people from disparate families to form a totally different family that loved each other with the same love that Christ loved them. So try thinking from this perspective. In the meantime, if you are interested in carrying your cross for the sake of a brother (and by extension, Christ) you are always welcome to my church. I’ll encourage you to ask as many questions as you can of my description so far.

We are not perfect, but our focus is on showing Christ to the world through our lives lived together – to display the manifold wisdom of God through Christ’s body, his church. It’s a most challenging, exciting, difficult, maturing and fun road, with very little religiousness and yet very deep characters being formed. You are welcome to join us.

Character over Charisma

I was scandalized the other week when a friend told me that the most popular American televangelist and noted “miracle worker” Benny Hinn’s wife had filed a divorce against him, siting “irreconcilable differences” just this February or so. My immediate reaction like most Christians was how could she even be contemplating divorce? Doesn’t she know that Christ stands against it? Upon further contemplation, it brought into sharper focus our own star-studded case of Duncan Williams and his wife Francisca’s divorce a couple of years ago. Coupled with the case of a high profile Methodist church leader being accused of rape a few months ago, it is very obvious that we are overlooking many fundamental things which when properly applied, could minimize the occurrence of such extravagant failures in our faith. I believe that like in most crisis that confront contemporary Christianity, we tend to focus on an immediate fix to the problems or castigate the guilty one as if they were the latest leper in town. In effect, we are good at providing medicine to fight the symptoms, but never confront the disease itself.

Character Over Charisma

When I was at PENSA-KNUST, an alumnus and friend of mine Kwame Pipim came to deliver a sermon to us about the importance of charisma and character in the work of the Holy Spirit. It was one sermon that I will never forget, for as I’ve grown in my own life and in the Christian faith, I’ve seen the importance that Christ places on the transformation of the character and attitudes of the individual Christian as well as the assembly of Christians he calls his “ecclesia” – his church. He reminded us of the fact that the Holy Spirit was supposed to give us both the power to do Christ’s work (known as the gifts of the Holy Spirit or charisma – 1 Cor 12), as well as the transformation of our lives into one that is Christ lived (known as the fruits of the Holy Spirit which is evidence of the transformation of our character – 1 Cor 13; Gal 5:22). Therefore when the abundance of the Holy Spirit’s presence does not lead us to begin to exhibit a transformed character, there are questions to be asked.

This is exactly what Paul wrote about in Chapters 12 and 13 of his first epistle to the Corinthians. He talked about a diversity of gifts, and how they are all from the same Spirit and given for the benefit of the body. If you read this as a letter and not as a book with chapters and verses, then you’ll understand that after describing these gifts, he purports to show in chapter 13 “a most excellent way”, as I described in my previous post on “Falling In Love With the New Testament”.

“Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 12:30 to 13:2).

In this exercise, Paul only further underscores the unmovable importance of love as a proper display of Christ living and working in and amongst us. And this clearly buttresses Christ’s only new command to the disciples:

“A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:34-35)

The only yardstick that Christ himself has determined by which a people may be measured for true discipleship of Christ is not the abundance of healing and miracles that they have performed. It is not the number of “souls” that they have won. It’s definitely not about being invited to give a sermon at the Independence Square on Ghana’s Independence Day, or saying the opening prayer at Obama’s inauguration ball. Christ measures our love, and even more striking, He measures it relative to others i.e. have YOU loved ONE ANOTHER?

I, like my brother who gave us the sermon, cannot understate in the slightest the importance of the transformation of individuals from a people who only care about “God has blessed me & my family”, to a people whose daily worry is about each other – because that is the only way in which the world would see us (and I mean the corporate us) as the body of Christ, as the expression of Christ. This is why Paul says that before the foundation of the earth God had determined that the church that gathers at any location, will be a display of the “manifold wisdom of God” to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places (Eph 3:10-11). Of course, if the heavenly places will see the wisdom of God, how much more the earthly people themselves.

However, placing the gifts above the fruits leads to the classical case of the Corinthians – baby Christianity. Paul noted the abundance of spiritual gifts in these people, but called them babies in 2 different sections of 1 Corinthians. Because in their pursuit and practice of these gifts, they had forgotten what the outcome of these should be. Interestingly, the NT especially in Hebrews shows us how God has always intended to train us into sons through suffering, not babies. For no kingdom is ever inherited by a child. It is always held in trust until the child is matured into a son, and God’s kingdom is no exception.

In fact, it is for this reason that Christ said even though we lose brothers and sisters for his sake, we shall gain more ON THIS EARTH and in the life to come (Mk 10:29-30). The church is where we are to find these brothers and sisters (and I do not mean rainy day “brothers & sisters”), and if we are not finding them, it raises questions about whether we truly are in the right environment. And I believe that this trait of a strong love bond between people who are not blood brothers and sisters but who have become more than so is the reason why the Antioch assembly was first named Christians, and not so much because they individually behaved like Christ.

In the light of the above, I ask a few questions of people like Susanne Hinn (and in effect, Benny Hinn). Did all the two decades of Christianity not lead to the transformation of their character so that they ceased being just two individuals who have been wed together to actually become one flesh? With all the flair that they both exhibited in the individual “Holy Spirit focused” ministries (they actually both claimed spiritual giftings and sometimes organised programmes independently), how come their Christianity has been bankrupted to the point of a divorce? Were they actually being led by the Holy Spirit in the first place?

I did a little bit of research on the Duncan/Francisca Williams case. Apparently one daughter of theirs granted an interview to Joy FM back in the day about how she supported the divorce for various reasons. Among other accusations, one of them was that her mother had been very abusive of her husband. You can do a google search about this and you’ll find the old article (I think 2008) on MyJoyonline.com just to get where I’m coming from. The question I ask then is that for all the decades of Christianity that Mama Francisca (and again in effect, Duncan Williams) practiced, did it not lead to a transformation of her character? Were they all about “what I want”, not what we together ought to be doing to display the love of Christ abundantly planted within us?

I do not purport to justify these divorces, neither do I want to pour judgement on them for it’s occurrence. In fact, the facts I have presented here about what could have led to these divorces could be false for all I care. I’ve gone past the days when I focused on the symptoms of the disease. I prefer to deal with the disease itself.

The Disease: Lack of Submission to One Another

Yes, that is the disease. A simple lack of submission to one another under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And though I’ve put it this simply, it is a problem of unimaginable proportions in Christianity today.

You see, there are 58 verses in the NT that talk about ONE ANOTHER or EACH OTHER (and that is more evidence for submission to each other than there is for the existence of the contemporary “Pastor”, which occurs only once). I’ve already given one example above from Jesus Christ’s only new commandment, the one Paul calls the Lord’s commandment in Gal 6:2. I’ll quote that, along with a few “one anothers”.

“Carry EACH OTHER’S burden, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal 6:2).

“But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve ONE ANOTHER in love” (Gal 5:13)

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish ONE ANOTHER with all wisdom …” (Col 3:16).

“Be devoted to ONE ANOTHER in brotherly love. Honour ONE ANOTHER above yourselves” (Ro 12:10).

“I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to INSTRUCT ONE ANOTHER” (Ro 15:14).

“Therefore encourage ONE ANOTHER and build EACH OTHER up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Th 5:13)

Well, I’m running out of space to quote them all, so I’ll leave the rest for your own research. However, the most loaded ONE ANOTHER is perhaps also the most misused and misquoted in Christianity.

“And let us consider how we may spur ONE ANOTHER on towards love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together … BUT LET US ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER …” (Heb 10:24-25).

The above is the favourite quotation that a Christian uses to remind their brother to come to church. However we see the reason why we should not neglect the gathering of the brethren so clearly stated here, but so painfully ignored – to encourage one another. It is to strengthen one another, to build one another up, to correct one another. We do not gather for one person, i.e. the pastor or the music choir to build us up. The responsibility of strengthening each other does not reside in the clergy. It resides in the assembly of people. And therefore every individual must be empowered to be a source of correction, encouragement, strengthening and enlightenment in any way that they feel they can contribute to doing so.

This is our priesthood as Christians. Because in Christianity we are all priests, our responsibility as priests is to one another. Therefore any system that purports to take this responsibility and put it in the hands of a certain few is a system that stands against the express purpose of God. A brother of mine said at our meeting last week that the “clergy” has done a lot of harm to us, because it has taken up all the responsibility of priesthood that everyone has to be actively involved in, and has left “us” (the laity) with nothing for which we may receive a reward in Christ’s kingdom. Whether they will indeed receive a reward for lording it over their brethren like the Gentiles do is not for me to decide, but the eminent New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn put it best when he said that the clergy-laity tradition has done more to undermine New Testament authority than most heresies (Dunn, New Testament Theology in Dialogue).

And So What?

And why is lack of submission the disease that is affecting the body of Christ? Well, first of all it is well established that Christ himself had never liked the hierarchical leadership style of the Gentiles (see Mt 20:25-28). And neither has God (1 Sa 8). It is quite obvious to us all who have seen the practice of bureaucracy (in schools, offices, governments etc) that it always tramples on the needs of those who work under it for the purpose of self-perpetuation. But what is less obvious is that this system does not lead to a people being introspective about their own motives, or allowing others to correct them when they are going wrong. It doesn’t have to be a conscious decision. Its just the nature of the beast. Hierarchy tends not to help in changing character. It only brings our un-Christlike nature into further view and the room for correction is very little.

Let me make my argument more down to earth. Assuming for the sake of the argument that the Duncan Williams/Francisa Williams story I gave above was true. Do the members of Action Chapel who are close to them mean to tell me that they’d never seen the purported character trait of lack of respect for others in Francisca (or maybe in Duncan)? What opportunity does a common church member who notices this trait in Francisca have to go and admonish her about it, without getting hounded out of the church? But moving away from this very specific (and probably judgemental/prejudicial example), how often do you have the opportunity to correct your pastor about what he does that you feel is wrong (and I mean publicly if it’s that grave)? What about your fellow Christian with whom you sit in church with? Today, everybody is a law unto themselves. Church is just like a show, a performance – no wonder we call it “a service”, not a meeting. We come and sit down, sing with the choir, listen to a sermon (dull or pimped up), shout some prayers, pay the ticket for the show (i.e. collection) and pack our baggage back home to live our individual lives.

But it is not about “each one for himself God for us all” (thank God this statement is nowhere found in the Bible). I’m sorry to disappoint you, but God is not interested in your individual salvation, if it does not add to make a certain assembly of people a reflection of the manifold wisdom of God. Our salvation is so that we are added to the Lord (Ac 5:14 KJV,NKJV), not just added to the number. It is a people willing to challenge each other, strengthen each other, annoy each other, forgive each other, argue with each other and most of all, love each other. Because although we are saved by Christ, we are transformed into his likeness as we together look at him with one face (2 Co 3:18). His likeness is a likeness of love without restraint, and if we haven’t got the message that we together should depict that likeness yet, then I beg to differ. The character is infinitely more important than the charisma.

Therefore the only tool of transformation that Christ has got is submission to each other, and allowing the Holy Spirit to exhibit the fact that Christ in us is the hope of glory.

Conclusion

For those of my friends who don’t understand why some of us are so critical of the clergy/laity distinction, it is simply because it does harm not only to the so called “laity”, but to the “clergy” itself. How long will it take us to realize this basic truth that the further away you are from a people you claim to serve, the less likely it is that you will look like them and truly appreciate their needs (as well as your own need)?

For those calling on the Christian Council of Ghana and all the parachurch orgranisations to do something about the falling standards of christian leadership today, ranging from cases of divorce, to amassing of wealth, to duping people of monies and deception, to child molestation and incest and the like, time will only tell if these efforts do not end up as window dressing. The disease still remains. Like they say in America, “It’s the system, stupid!!”.

But to conclude, I’ll throw this in the works. Maybe we ought to start thinking of church like we do of our extended families in Africa. God is our ancestor through whom we were all born into the family. Jesus Christ is the family head (Abusua Panin in Akan) and we are all family members. In this system, no one has more right to the family land and other property than the other. Let me know what you think, because I believe this is exactly the model that the NT expects us to think of when we talk about the church.

An NT Perspective on Christian Leadership

Many Christians have complained about the attitudes and behaviour of Christian leaders today. We complain that our “pastors” are taking too much money, abusing their powers and falling to seemingly every sin under the sun that even the ordinary Christian in the church is able to guard against. Today it is very difficult for us to find role model christian leaders in the nation called Ghana, and the few that people try to point out to me are in my opinion no where near the examplary leadership that was exhibited by the New Testament church and its leaders. Today, Christian leaders are breaking our ears with conferences, seminars and talks about leadership, but they themselves do not see the principles that underpin Christian leadership. I believe that people are looking in the wrong direction for solutions to the problems of failed Christian leadership, and I’ll explain my reasons below.

The problems of failed christian leadership stem from a severe misunderstanding of what kind of people we are as Christians. You see, the church is the earthly manifestation of Christ. Christ is the head, and we the church are his body. Therefore we exist to display who Christ is. Without Christ, the church is not complete. Without, the church, Christ cannot be displayed to the world, simply because a head cannot exist without a body. Therefore, most of us who think that the church is “a voluntary association for the saved” are seriously mistaken. According to Ephesians, the church displays the manifold wisdom of God (Eph 3:10). Therefore, if the world cannot see Christ displayed through his church, they are somewhat justified in not accepting to believe in Christ (despite all our mega evangelism efforts). Secondly, the church is an organism, not an institution. That is why Christ calls his church “a body”, not a machine. It is not a business organisation run by the principles of profit and loss and maximising returns with minimal loss to the enterprise. Au contraire, it is anything but. It is a body made up of different parts, with each one is no more important than the other. It behoves us then to come at the problem from a different perspective.

In recent times one of the things we have had opportunity to discuss in our free and open participatory meetings was Matt 20:20-28. It tells a story of the two sons of Zebedee (i.e. James & John) and their mother coming to Jesus and the mother pleading that her sons be set on both sides of Jesus Christ in his kingdom. I can imagine an old woman making a passionate appeal to Jesus Christ, doing what every mother will do – seeking the best interests of her children. I do not know if they put the idea in her head to plead on their behalf, or if she saw into the future of Jesus and wanted to secure good positions for her children. Suffice it to say that Jesus was not moved by this attempt at arm-twisting, and tells them that it is not up to him to decide who sits besides him in the kingdom, but the Father. It is important to note that Jesus does not preclude the possibility of anyone sitting on his left and right, he only says that the decision is not up to him, but to his Father. This presupposes that the positions will one day in the future be filled.

As you would expect, the other disciples became angry when they heard that the two had tried to acquire for themselves these positions using their mother. This is because these were positions of authority, where the two of them will be elevated over the rest. It is in this light that Christ makes the cardinal statement that will drive this whole discourse.

“Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercised authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matt 20:25-28).

Christ in this statement established one of the cardinal differences between Christianity, Judaism, Greco-Roman paganism and a host of other religions – the principle that we are a priesthood of all believers, not a priesthood of some. Therefore no one of us has the right to lord it over the other one. However, to most human institutions (or churches run on human institutions), this notion is very difficult to swallow, and any group of people who have attempted to uphold this principle have been met with very severe opposition (including the shedding of blood) from those who do not understand that the church is an organism, not an organisation. In this direction, I’ll doff my hat to the Anabaptsts, who for this stance suffered a great deal of persecution from the institutional church surrounding them. This however does not mean that there is a total lack of leadership, but that leadership springs from the community of people gathered together as a church. Let me use the NT to explain.

When the church started off, the apostles took up all the responsibility of work in the church. From receiving donations, to distributing the food and other collections that were put together, to ministry of the word to prayer to everything else in between. However, when they realized that some people among them, specifically the widows of the Grecian Jews were being discriminated against, they saw a need to appoint a certain group of people who would take some of the responsibility from them (Ac 6). To solve the problem, they took the first step that began to establish the principles of Christian leadership.

Leadership Must Come from Amongst and Be Selected/Acknowledged by the Led

Instead of they choosing for them who will take up these responsibilities of leadership amongst them, the apostles told them to choose from amongst themselves men who matched the criteria they gave, and they will lay hands on them and hand over the responsibility of “waiting on tables” to them. This is starkly different from today’s way of selecting leaders in the church. The church has no say in determining who leads them. In fact, in one Pentecostal church that I used to attend, the church only receives a circular from the headquarters detailing who has been appointed to preside over what assembly. And this person most of the time is a member of that congregation at all, meaning few if any of the members actually know them. This is in spite of the fact that when working with human beings, it is not rocket science that people work more effectively with those whom they are familiar with and have come to know personally than some shining star pastor from somewhere. In fact, by allowing the people to choose whom they want, they put the power in the hands of the people and it gives them people the power to complain and withdraw this person at any point that he fails to meet these qualifications. However, if the person is appointed by “the apostles”, then the members feel their hands are tied. It is even more instructive to note that all the people chosen were Grecian Jews. They were even closer to the problem and therefore will do the work better than any outsiders. To draw a parallel with Ghana’s political system, it is not surprising that Ghanaians are asking that the political District and Municipal Chief Executives are elected and not appointed, but contemporary Christianity has yet to learn from this.

This is the same principle that Barnabas, after 13 years of having worked in the Jerusalem church (right from the start) and learning these principles and 5 years in the Antioch church, alongside Paul who also did about 3 years in Jerusalem and 5 years with Barnabas in the Antioch church, did the same things when they went about planting churches. After being commissioned in Ac 13, they travel to the Galatian towns of Iconium, Lystra and Derbe spending according to bible scholars and church historians 3-5 months in each town, as depicted in Ac 14. I will point out at this stage that they moved away from each church without appointing elders and to the next one to continue the work, leaving each previous one to grow up together in fellowship, and for the natural leaders amongst them to emerge. This also gives the members a chance to get to know each other better, and to make it easier for them to see which of them is naturally suited to leadership amongst them. They then came back and seeing these leaders from amongst them, appointed these as elders (v 23). Their work of choosing leaders and laying hands on them was in accordance with what they had already experienced in Jerusalem. These are what Paul refers to as holding onto their traditions, which as we can see from here have sound biblical, human relations and community building backgrounds. Appointing leaders this way creates more confidence in the leaders, and gives power to the members to check the leadership.

In my opinion, what should not be compromised in this exercises is the criteria for leadership. In fact, Paul expanded it further in the letters to junior apostles Timothy and Titus in what is popularly called the Pastoral Letters (see 1 Th 1:1,6 – the two were not pastors but apostles. The term is an 18th century creation which needs reformation).

There Must be Multiple Leadership with Equal Status

It is very evident throughout the New Testament that there was multiplicity of leadership. Nowhere in the NT is there a reference to elder on it’s own, but rather a reference to “elders” of a church. The only such reference was when Paul, Peter and John were addressing their audience in their letters, and even then we already knew that they were among the elders in the Antioch (Ac 13) and Jerusalem churches respectively (Ac 15). Nowhere in the NT is there a reference to one elder who is appointed above other elders. Protestant Christianity has the position of “Head Pastor” or “Presiding Elder”, who is head over a group of elders. There is absolutely no evidence for this in the NT. The reason is simple; otherwise the devil only needs to deceive the “Head Pastor”, and being vested with authority over the others, he will have his way with the rest of the church (which is exactly what happened when Emperor Constantine deceived the “Bishop” of Rome to force the other churches to be subservient to the Roman church). Most people claim that these “Head Pastors” are only ceremonial, and that in every institution we need a leader. You see, maybe the current “Head Pastor” will be a good one and not get it into his head that he’s the boss of all he surveys. But the next one may, and it is better to avoid that situation than to create the room for it. In addition to this, I don’t know how many of those who make such an argument have done an indepth analysis of 1 Sa 8, when Israel asked for a King. God was Israel’s king, and has never been willing to give away that kingship. We can all obviously see what happened to the Israel nation when the decided to be like every nation surrounding them, with a king to lead them. David was probably alright, but what about those that came after him? Today, Christ is the head of his church, and he will forever be that head. He will not give that authority to anyone, whether it be ceremonial or actual.

Oh, and the word Pastor is no different from Elder, as is the classical argument. The word Pastor comes from the Greek word “peomen” which means “shepherd” and interestingly occurs only once in all of NT. Isn’t it interesting how much weight we give to that function with such little occurence in the NT. Now look at what Paul said to the Ephesian elders, and you’ll see what I mean.

“Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood” (Ac 20:28).

In fact Pastor, Elder, Overseer and Bishop refer to the same function – guiding the church (note that I use the word “guiding”. I’ll explain why in the next section).

To prevent people from exercising arbitrary power, the apostles always appointed more than one elder in a church, and asked them to work together with each other and to check each other. No one had more authority over the other, but unfortunately there was an attempt to change this even before the last apostle, John the Elder of Revelations fame died. This attempt was personified in Diotrephes showing signs of wanting to be head over everyone.

“I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us.” (3 John 9)

Well, the rest as they say, is history. The rise of the Roman Catholic church and its abusive power did not only succeed because of monetary and worldly persuasions offered by Emperor Constantine and subsequent ones, but began with the decision to go against the safeguards established by the apostles in ensuring multiplicity of leadership. I guess people are always struggling to sit on the left or right of Jesus Christ before the Father decides.

Leadership Is Meant to Guide, Not Rule and Dominate

Because Christianity is a community of people who are a royal priesthood, it is of the utmost importance that each individual member be allowed and actively encouraged to be a priest to one another. Unlike the Levitical priesthood where we had a separation between those who were priests and those who were not, in Christ we are all priests to one another. Our rewards that Christ will give will be based on our contribution to building each other up, whether spiritually or physically. Our membership is defined by function, not by authority. Therefore leaders in Christianity should see themselves as guiding the process that allows everyone to be active, not taking over all the activity. If you are a teacher, it is your function, not your title. As my brother Kwame Pipim pointed out the other day, never in the NT do we see “Apostle Paul”, but rather “Paul the apostle”. The respect that the church has for Paul’s opinion is in the fact that his work is evident to them, not in the fact that he carries a title. Therefore leadership is to see itself as playing a role that allows the body to naturally grow itself. The hand does not take up the work of the legs, neither does the kidney take up the work of the lungs. Every part of the body has work to do, and no matter how little it is, it must NEVER be trivialized. Therefore if you feel that you are the leg and without you the body cannot move, then the lowly members who are just small intestines in the body can also give up their work, and you can imagine what will happen. Christian leadership should be redefined in the context of a body, not an institution. This is why some of us cannot feel comfortable again in a church in which we daily go to sit in a pew and listen to the pastor preach without the opportunity to ask a question, share an insight on that topic, disagree with him totally or share something different. Let me use Paul’s work as an example to explain what I mean by function not title.

An apostle is a person who founds churches, or strengthens existing ones. They do not stay in one church and run it, but rather focus on building the foundation blocks that will enable the church to float on it’s own. Once the foundation is established, their work is sealed by appointing elders amongst the congregation. They then move on to look for other places where they may found a new church, or go back to some of the previously existing ones (founded by them or not) to strengthen them and share some insight in what God is doing in the places that they have been. To all intents and purposes, their work is the most difficult in advancing the kingdom of God, due to the travelling nature of it. This therefore requires men who have really been groomed within the context of existing churches and most probably have also learnt from a previous apostle (this is what Timothy, Titus, Epaphras etc were doing around Paul).

The elders then take over the day to day running of the church, making sure that they “shepherd” the church in the right direction so that every person is growing in their individual and collective knowledge of Christ, and that the church is looking more and more like Christ each day. Whenever something is going wrong in the church which they feel they need external help, they may call on the help of the founding apostle or any other apostle who is available, simply because of their depth of experience. All the letters that Paul wrote to the Churches (except Ephesians) were based on reports that members or messengers from these churches had made to him. Paul wrote Galatians from Thessalonica, between 1 to 2 years after founding the Galatian churches and leaving them alone. 1 & 2 Thessalonians was written from Corinth, whiles he was there working. Corinthians was written from Ephesus and so on.

The churches however, have the right to refuse the guidance of the apostle, and this was exactly the fear of Paul when he wrote 1 Cor. In 2 Cor he stated that he was afraid they might not heed his advice to them in 1 Cor, and he might then have lost his apostolic guidance over them. But thank God they did listen to him. Again, if you look at all the Epistles, there is very little use of commanding language. Mostly Paul “appeals”, “pleads”, “beseeches”, “prays” and “encourages”. Look at the language and attitude of the founder of these churches.

Compare this to today. A person founds a church, and forever he is the “General Overseer” of it. They dominate the church for life, and nobody else has the right to ever bring in an opinion which is different from theirs. Other churches founded directly or indirectly by (or even associating with) this person become a franchise, making sure that some percentage of monies collected are paid to the “parent” church. The “parent” church decides who becomes a leader in the nucleus churches, and the cycle of enforcing “authority” and lording it over them only continues. What is the difference then between this system and the system of a king ruling over their kingdom, as the “Gentiles have it”? Or a corporate organisation like Microsoft, IBM and GMC? Wasn’t this form of “lording it over” recently exemplified by a church splinter recently when a Ghanaian “subsidiary” refused to obey the orders of a Nigerian one.

Leadership Is a Calling to Suffer for The Flock

I cannot conclude without talking about the most popular cause of failure in Christian leadership – a refusal of leadership to lay down its life for the flock, but rather to milk the flock. It is the failure for which we are must un-Christlike to the world, but we Christians seem to be either oblivious to this or do not see the solution to it. Today anybody who attempts to found a church is automatically labeled by the world as attempting to secure their source of daily bread, and Christians seem hopeless to change this perception.

It is well and truly established by church historians that the leadership of primitive Christianity was not dependent on the flock for its needs. In fact Paul the apostle, who was entitled to help from the church by virtue of the fact that he moves from location to location and therefore will find it difficult to hold down a job to sustain himself, refused to take donations from the church. He was rather a tentmaker, alongside Priscilla and Acquilla, and worked for his own upkeep. In fact, he worked to sustain himself as well as the people on which he went on his journeys with. And he encouraged the Thessalonian church that every one in the church is to do the same, that no one, not even he an apostle, would be a burden to the church unless absolutely necessary.

“We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, labouring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have a right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow.” (2 Thess 3:8-9)

If there is one thing that Christ thought, it is that we must be willing to lose our lives to gain it. We must be willing to be servants to be crowned kings in his kingdom. A shepherd not only takes care of the sheep, but makes sure they have food to eat. By Christ’s own admission, a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. But today’s leader is not interested in laying down their lives for their sheep. They will hurriedly quote to you 1 Tim 5:17

“The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honour” (1 Tim 5:17)

They claim that the use of the word honour denotes some form of payment for their services.

But the same NT says

“Be devoted to one another. Honour one another above each other” (Ro 12:10).

So, going by that analogy, we are all supposed to pay each other for the services we render to each other, aren’t we? The question I ask myself is that if we are all priests, and we put resources together, why don’t we share it amongst ourselves, instead of giving it to some of us only? That’s not fair, is it? Isn’t this passage rather referring to respecting those who guide us well? Why is Paul’s example not good enough for us today? Or do we have different motives than Paul had? Do we have different motives than Christ had?

The principle of NT leadership is a leadership of sacrifice. Christ fed his sheep, and not the other way round. If we were more interested in putting our monies together to benefit the poor in our churches, we will see truer leadership in our churches than we do today. And the world will see Christ more in his church than they do today. They will see the church as a brotherhood of people who care for each other and are willing to financially support the poor amongst them. And this was possible in the NT church because they were not under any obligation to put their monies together to be given to a so called “headquarters”, simply because they did not have an earthly one. Each church was independent and took decisions on their own about what they wanted to do with their resources. If they felt a sister church was in need, they could also put some money together for them, and only did it because of brotherly love between churches, not because somebody commanded them to.

Conclusion

From the aforegoing, any wonder our leaders feel like “lording it over us” like the Gentiles do? When we ignore the safeguards that have been put in place by the apostles based on the guidance of the Holy Spirit and on the principles of Christ’s unique relationship with his church and we create our own empires, we cannot expect the same results. Freshwater fish will not survive in saltwater.

There are so many other areas which I could point to why Christian leadership since the departure of the apostles has fallen short of standard. But the abiding principle is that the church is a different ball game altogether. It cannot be run on the principles of corporate business management, of one man shows and megalomania. The worldly measures of ABCs i.e. Attendance, Buildings and Cash do not work here. The only thing the Christ promised to build was his church, and his church is not a building, neither is it a machine or a business conglomerate. It is an organism, a body, made up of different parts with different responsibilities but equal rights and importance. It is a community of people who are living the life of Christ, who are depicting who Christ is. If leadership is not committed to building that kind of body, perhaps they were better not building it at all.

As I said to my friend Alfred the other day, it is better to come to Christ with a small piece of gold which will be put in the fire and not burn, than to bring a pile of wood 20 stories high, which when tested in the fire will result in the obvious.

How Prophetic are our “Prophetic Messages” ?

There has been a general increase in the use of the word “prophetic” in the diction of the contemporary Ghanaian Christian, and the tentacles of prophecy are stretching from football predictions to 31st night watch services prophecies of “dominion” in the coming year. It seems your everyday Christian is ready to swallow hook, line and sinker any such “prophetic” message, without a whiff of suspicion or a finger lifted in questioning. However, to say the prophetic gift and working of the Holy Spirit in our times is highly misunderstood and wrongly applied is quite an understatement. And all the while, the actions of our so called “prophets” are justified by an appeal to the prophets of the Old Testament (OT), an appeal which when one takes a very critical scriptural look at, will keel over.

This is because though the principle is the same, there is a fundamental and monumental difference between the application of the principles of the Old Testament and New Testaments, and if you’d take the time to read my post on “New Wine, Old Wineskins”, you may find a lot of education on the differences. But I will limit my discussion to the topic of prophecy and it’s application to the contemporary church.

Having learnt from Paul’s attitude of stating who Christians are in Christ and what makes them different from the Jews & Gentiles, I’ll start off by making this distinction of the OT and NT with regards to prophecy as apparent as possible.

OT – God Calls a People

From the time of Abraham, God had been interested in not him alone, but his descendants that will come after him. And this fascination with Abraham’s “people”, is made very obvious in the exodus of the Israelites and his dealings with them afterwards. God has always been interested in a people and a nation – a distinct people who are set apart for his own purpose. As a result, the OT depicts an attempt by God to preserve the sanctity and establish his possession over the Israelite nation, and half the time that effort was frustrated by the same people.

“This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’” (Ex 19:3-6) – [God speaking to Moses]

“You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own” (Lev 20:26) – [God speaking to Moses]

“From the rocky peaks I see them, from the heights I view them, I see a people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations. (Nu 23:9)” [from Balaam’s First Oracle]

As a result of this special relationship with them, God provided prophets, who served two basic purposes – foretelling and forth-telling. The former concerns things that will happen in the future, the latter is an explanation/exposition of what is happening now. Except in very few cases, and this is the important part, their work was targeted at the nation Israel, and not at individuals. The notable individuals who received instructions from prophets were the kings or leaders of the Israeli people, who were simply the embodiment of the people themselves. After all, from all biblical examples whenever a king began following false gods, the people also followed suit (in some cases they actually forced the people to do so). Therefore, prophecy directed at a king is ultimately aimed at preserving the sanctity of the Israelite nation. This is the case for the work of Samuel towards Saul and David, Nathan towards David, Elijah towards Ahab etc.

It is abundantly evident from scriptures that the majority of the work done by these prophets was towards the nation and it’s tendency to rebel towards God, and not towards individuals, granted though the examples of Naaman etc. Just look at the book of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the rest, as well as the lives of Elijah and Elisha as documented by the books of 1 & 2 Kings. Add to this the fact that God actually grudgingly agreed to the Israelite nation having a king of their own because he wanted to be their God and King, and there is no need to stretch the point further.

Also worth noting are prophecies to other nations. Here again, these are not prophecies to individuals.

NT – Again, God Calls a People

Just as I stated that the principle was always the same, in the NT God again begins the process of setting apart “a people for himself”. That work began with Christ’s promise, which is not to build individual super disciples, but to build a church, an ekklesia, an assembly. That ekklesia is made up of a combination of Jews and Gentiles, not either alone. This is captured in Paul’s statement to the Corinthians.

“Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God” (1 Cor 10:32

Nothing could be a stronger statement of the nature of the church. In the dispensation of the NT, everyone could only become a part of Christ by submitting to membership of his body (e.g. Ac 5:14 should correctly be translated “added to the Lord” not “added to their number”). To God, there is no longer a Ghana, Nigeria, Israel or China. There are three nations: Jews, Gentiles (here referred to as Greeks because of the context of the letter) and the church of God. Again, this conglomeration of all sorts of people into one nation before God is reiterated in these passages below.

“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26-28)

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God …” (1 Pe 2:9)

It is obvious from an examination of the OT and NT in the light of God’s desire for a people that the church of Christ has become the God’s Israel – God’s covenanted nation. God’s desire to extend the Godhead to encompass a people special and separate unto him is finally achieved in the NT – and it’s achieved through Christ and in Christ’s body. Interestingly, these are a people who according to Rev 13:8, have their names written in the book of life before the creation of the world. I’ll leave that for you to ponder on your own.

This setting apart of the church as God’s nation is the reason why it is quite futile for us Christians to be busying ourselves claiming our physical nations for God. God is not interested in America being a “Christian” nation, neither is he interested in Ghana being one. He has already determined who his nation is, and it encompasses all who through Christ have come into fellowship with him. This is a fundamental difference between Christianity and other religions like Islam which Christians in our ignorance try to fight.

NT Practice of Prophecy

There are various men & women mentioned in the book of Acts as being prophets. These range from the 5 prophets and teachers of the Antioch church recorded in Ac 13 (including Paul and Barnabas), Judas and Silas from the Jerusalem church (Ac 15:32), Agabus, the four daughters of Philip who prophesied (Ac 21). It is interesting to note that in all the instances where the prophetic gift was used, it was intended at directly building the members of the body of Christ together up in their knowledge, faith and perseverance in Christ – not in prophecies of a personal nature. Indeed, one might want to use the example of Agabus prophecy to Paul concerning what would befall him in Jerusalem as an example of personal prophecy, but this is a woefully inadequate one, given that the prophecy was in relation to suffering as a result of Paul’s ministry to and for the body of Christ, not to his personal life’s circumstances (i.e. business, marriage etc).

Paul’s overriding concern whenever he wrote to any of the churches was that they would be granted further knowledge and depth of insight into Christ. This is evident in almost all the epistles to the churches, where he always offers thanksgiving for their current display of faith and love, and goes on to pray for them to further grasp the “unsearchable riches” of Christ. This same principle applies when Paul talks about the gifts of the Holy Spirit in 1 Cor 12 and how to use these gifts in 1 Cor 14.

“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” (1 Cor 12:7).

“What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church” (1 Cor 14:26).

In commending prophecy over the speaking of tongues in the meetings of the brethren, Paul encourages the Corinthians to “excel in gifts that build up the church” (1 Cor 14:12).

Paul always had in mind the work of the Holy Spirit in the church corporately, not individually. And his belief reflected what Jesus said to his disciples concerning the Holy Spirit, that He was to lead us into all truth, which truth Jesus said was himself.

Therefore in keeping with the principle that the gifts of the Spirit are targeted at building up the body, it is so starkly obvious the lack of personal prophecies in the NT church. Interestingly there is a full book of prophecy called the Revelations which buttresses this lack of personal prophecy

Nonetheless, I believe this does not preclude personal prophecies – they should be seen as an exception rather than the norm. In addition because prophecy is primarily targeted at building the body of Christ, it should be an exception rather than the norm for this spiritual gift to be applied to the benefit of them that do not belong to the body of Christ.

The Modern Prophetic Movement

Having established the NT practice of prophecy, I’ll like to reiterate some of the points we have tried to establish as the principle which drives prophecy, whether OT or NT.

  1. Prophecy is primarily targeted at God’s nation, which in the OT was Israel, and in the NT is the church.

  2. Prophecy is meant to provide guidance to the church for the future, or to explain to and encourage the church in current happenings.

  3. Personal prophecy is an exception and not the norm. In fact, there is no example of personal prophecy in the NT church’s experience as recorded in the Bible.

  4. Again, because God’s nation in our dispensation is the church, prophecy targeted at nations e.g. that Ghana will win the World Youth Cup or who will win the next presidential elections should also be an exception rather than the norm. In fact unless under matters of extreme urgency, such prophets should be treated with a large dose of suspicion.

Coming from this background, it is saddening the contemporary Christian’s attitude to prophecy. Having already come into the church through an emasculated gospel which targets our personal needs rather than God’s need (the kind Paul calls “no gospel at all”), we then come to our “clergy” with the clarion call for prophetic messages. Interestingly all these messages are only about how “God is going to open doorways” for our businesses, marriages and personal pursuits, how He’ll make us a success and cripple (sorry, kill) our enemies.

Sometimes I really feel like crawling into a hole and hiding and denying Christianity when I hear all the adverts on radio and TV about “prophetic” services and sermons. From the whole TB Joshua saga concerning our current president and his predictions on football, to the most recent craze about 31st December watch night services being places to “expect prophetic messages to enter into the new year and grasp our destinies”, this whole yearning for the prophetic has become farcical. In fact, if we truly understood what prophecy was about, I believe some of the notable preachers of our times who have the title “Prophet” appended to their names would have removed them long ago. I honestly wish I could name some of them, but I might offend some sensibilities.

There is a phenomenon in Ghanaian Christianity today which I think most Christians are not realizing. Our preachers preach more from the OT than from the NT, and yet we claim that we are liberated from the law. Are we not rather being made slaves to the law? Is it not the case that it is very easy to use the OT to support every action that we take, from calling curses on our enemies to the practice of investing in magnificent church buildings and paying exorbitant monies to our pastors? Don’t we realise that there is now very little difference in principle and practice between a fetish priest and a modern day “prophet”?

Is the New Testament standard now too hard to live by?

Rediscovering NT Christianity – New Wine in Old Wineskins

This article is available for download in pdf format here

“Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matt 9:17)

Last Sunday I was moved to share this in our meeting (oh by the way, I don’t “go to church” on Sundays. The church “meets” in our house on Sundays. I hope you get the difference. If not, keep reading). In our shared personal perusal of the New Testament, I have come to appreciate how the above applies so appropriately to us, and I’ll explain why. However, one thing I’ve learnt over the past few years is that religious people are also the people who are the most ignorant about the history of their religions, and are bound to repeat the same mistakes their predecessors made.

Look around in every major religion in the world. You will find three things which almost always runs through all of them. The first is sacred offerings i.e. sacrifices, second is sacred spaces aka temples and the third a sacred priesthood that offers these sacred sacrifices in the sacred spaces. Hinduism, Budhism, Judaism, Islam, Greco-Roman paganism, you name it. There is always a combination of all or some of these. Even Christianity has these as well, however, there are some things that sets Christianity apart from the others. We’ll start off by looking at sacred offerings.

Sacred Offering

We as Christians believe that there is no need for us to perform any sacrifices, be it of any animal, human or other form. We believe that Christ is the ultimate sacrifice which was offered once for all, and does not ever need to be repeated.

“Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sin, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself” (Heb 7:27)

Therefore the only thing we need to do is to “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Heb 4:16). However, this was not always the practice. In the hay days of the Roman Catholic church, Christians lived in the understanding that the bread and wine that was termed the “Holy Communion” represents the actual body and blood of Christ – a concept known as transubstantiation – and that every time that it was shared, Jesus was being re-offered again. I stand to be corrected, but I think this is still the mindset (if not the practice as well) of Catholicism and I dare say some of us Protestants as well. It is because of this need to “resacrifice” Christ, that we see alters in most Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Suffice it to say that historically it has been established that this whole mind frame came from the adoption of purely pagan practices, i.e. Roman, Gallic and Frankish religions of the time.

However, thanks be to God for the work of Martin Luther and the Reformation struggle, which seriously challenged this thinking and has set Reformed Christianity on the truthful path. Nonetheless, I wish they had gone further.

Sacred Priesthood

The Norm

Of course, to perform a sacrifice and to make it pleasing to whichever god you serve, it must be given by “respectable”, “holy” people, right? So, we come to the second pillar – the priesthood. In every religion, there is always the special set of people who have the sole preserve to present sacrifices and make interventions on behalf of the “ordinary” people to their god. It is the same in Christianity, but how profound the differences are!

In the Old Testament, beginning from Aaron, there was always appointed a high priest from the tribe of Levi, who were dedicated and set apart for the service of the temple. In the case of the high priest, not only did he have to be of the tribe of Levi, but he must of necessity originate from the family of Aaron (and by extension Moses, since they were brothers). Ordinary people were only allowed into the temple courts, and not the temple itself, the preserve of Levites. In addition, only the high priest was allowed to go into the section of the temple called the holy of holies once a year, where they performed a sacrifice for the sins of the whole Israel. This form of separation between the ordinary people and the “holy” is one that exists in most of the religions I’ve mentioned.

The Difference

However, in this respect there are 2 things which set Christianity apart from all others.

  1. Christ is our high priest. Unlike other religions including the Judaism, we need no human high priest.

“The point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man” (Heb 8:1-2).

When Jesus Christ went to heaven, he went and offered his own blood in the tabernacle that was situated above (Heb 9:12). You will note that the tabernacle Moses made was based on very explicit instructions. That was because God was looking at the dimensions of his own tabernacle above, whiles giving the instructions to Moses to make a copy of (Heb 8:5). The above will be come even more important when we come to the third pillar.

However, at the completion of this exercise, he now sat down at the right hand of God, and received the power to send down the Holy Spirit to the church. This is exactly what Peter said about Christ when the Spirit was poured out on them.

If this is the case, then I’m tempted to ask where the concepts of General Overseers, Moderators and Presidents come from. Are we trying to replace the High Priesthood of Christ? Are we not just going back to the other religions of the day, especially to Judaism? Hmm.

  1. We Christians are now priests of the Most High God. And i mean ALL OF US. Unlike other religions including the Judaism, we need no separate priesthood.

“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi’, for you have only one Master, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father’, for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher’, for you have one Teacher, the Christ.”(Matt 23:8-9)

Ask any modern day preacher the meaning of this passage, and you will hear a million and one explanations. However, it is very clear from the context that Jesus was making this comment because of the pharisees and teachers of the law who now “sit in the chair of Moses” (v 1-2). By this statement of Christ, he has leveled us all onto one ground. There is none higher than the other, and our only Master, and Teacher is Christ, and our only Father is God.

In fact, this is the motivation for passages like 1 Pe 2:9, 1 Cor 14:26, Ro 15:14 etc.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”(1 Pe 2:9)

“To him who loves us … and has mad us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father …” (Rev 1:5-6)

“What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” (1 Cor 14:26)

“I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another” (Ro 15:14)

There is a problem in the Christianity today, and it’s called the clergy – which translated means “heritage” or “inheritance”. Interestingly, the rest of the church is called “laity”, translated “people”. Ironically, God has always described his “people” as his “heritage” or “possession”. Where did the division come in? You see, because of the concept of priesthood of all believers, it is imperative that we allow others to express what God has given them to give to the body in more ways than even 1 Cor 14:26 above here envisages. It is of the utmost importance that we don’t let our practice become a one-man show, as it pertains today.

Someone asked a question that for all their over 30 years of being a Christian, it never occurred to them to ask why it is that Christianity is the only place where people are not allowed to ask questions after such an “important” thing as the “sermon”. I know most of the reasons that will be given, but I tell you the answers never address the core of the problem. Infact, we are practicing the Levitical priesthood all over again, though we claim to be under a new law – New Testament law.

“If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the law was given to the people), why was there still need for another priest to come – one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron? For when there is a change of priesthood, there must also be a change of the law.” (Heb 7:11-12).

In the NT, there are about 58 verses that talk about being priests to one another, just like the examples given above. I tell you, the priesthood of all believers has more mention than elders and pastors that we so revere today. I hope to do a little discussion of them as part of this series on Rediscovering NT Christianity. Although elders have an indispensable role to play in the growth of the church, they are only guides, not gods.

The usurping of the role of Christ as the High Priest of his church, and the continuous division between the clergy and the laity leading to a non-functional, apathetic priesthood are unfortunately still with us, a demon which still begs exorcising, and one which unfortunately the Reformation left untouched.

Sacred Space

The Norm

Having a holy sacrifice and a holy person to perform that sacrifice, what is left is the holy place to perform it. This brings us to the third and final pillar – sacred spaces.

As we’ve already mentioned before, Moses was given explicit instructions to build the Tabernacle of the Testimony, which he did. Therefore the tabernacle became the place for the offering of sacrifices to God, and where the Ark of the Covenant was, on top of which God was supposed to dwell (in the mercy seat between the Cherubim). This was then carried about everywhere the Israelites went during the Exodus.

When Israel settled down, David wanted to build the Lord a temple, and finally Solomon did build the temple. It is very important to note that unlike the tabernacle, though God gave his approval for the building of the temple, he gave no instructions as to how it should be built. And God did make manifest his presence to them through his Spirit descending in glory over the temple. However, God never meant this temple (or any subsequent ones) to be his abode, and therefore we find that the Spirit never stayed in the temple for long. This is what Stephen referred to when he reminded his accusers that “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men” (Ac 7:48), quoting what the Lord himself said in Isaiah 66:1-2. Unfortunately, the Jews had taken the temporary interest of God in temples to mean that he could be camped in a thing of man’s making.

However, this is not entirely their fault, because every major religion before, in and after their time had temples. There is always an attempt to house a god in a certain man made location, be it in Mecca, the Temple of the Dome in Jerusalem, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre also in Jerusalem, Buddhist temple in China or Kweku Bonsam’s shrine in Ghana.

The Difference

Herein lies the difference when it comes to NT Christianity. God’s ultimate plan is revealed, and his disinterest in all man made abodes made clear, when we are told that God’s temple is not a building, its a people.

“Jesus replied, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with Him‘” (John 14:23).

“But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness” (Ro 8:10).

“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (1 Co 3:16)

“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God” (1 Cor 6:19)

All these point out how different Christ’s ministry in the NT is from the OT. No longer do we need to make an appearance in a certain building before we consider ourselves in God’s presence. God is in us (note, I didn’t say we are in his presence). And whenever we meet together, he dwells in us. We are his temple.

It is no wonder then that archaeological evidence shows that no church buildings existed until 100 years after the death of the apostles. The earliest church buildings can be dated to mid AD 200, in the time of Emperor Constantine.

It is not because they were poor. In fact, the Christians of Achaia (i.e. Corinth) were quite the contrary, and were rather putting money together to help their brethren in Jerusalem.

It is not because they were in small numbers, because the language of Acts 21:20 says “thousands of Jews had believed” in Jerusalem.

It is not because they were persecuted, because the Roman empire was one of the most religiously tolerant empires, until the times of the Emperor Neros and Emperor Domitians who came way after Christianity was established. In fact, Gallio’s refusal to deal with religious arguments in Ac 18:12-16 is only representative of the attitude that the Roman leadership took to their subject colonies – freedom of worship.

And don’t misconstrue Ac 2:46 saying “they met in the temple courts” to mean they met in the temple. Don’t forget that it was only Levites that were allowed to directly worship in the temple. And worst of all, the Jews had just killed a man they considered a blasphemer – I don’t think they’d take kindly to his followers sharing the same temple with their Judaic worship. That would have to be over the dead bodies of the Pharisees and the priests of the temple. Just as it says, the temple courts were open spaces outside the Jerusalem temple where people could meet. Period.

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

Like I stated previously, the Reformation led by Martin Luther helped rid Christianity of the hegemony of man-made sacrifices, and we owe them a debt of gratitude. However, the concept of the clergy – which stands starkly against the priesthood of all believers, and the church building – a paradox when compared to the people being the temple of God – seem to be so ingrained in the modern Christian mindset that it’s difficult for us to admit that there is something wrong with them.

For some (mostly the laity) the status quo suits their lifestyles, and don’t want to be ruffled by getting too deeply into active participation in the body of Christ. After all, “that’s the pastor’s work, right”?

For others (especially the clergy), that is all they know to do, some having even attained PhDs in theology. Its the source of their daily bread. They dare not touch these historically, archaeologically and scripturally unfounded institutions, for they do so at great personal peril.

Even though it’s been established historically that early Christianity was the first religion to practice a system of equal priesthood and non-temple based worship, we have however abandoned that and gone for old testament based Judaic and Greco-Roman pagan practices. Would it not be right to say that we have put new wine in old wineskin?

My only personal pain is that Christianity is not judged by what it was meant to be, but what it is now (which is only natural). We live in a world where people have become increasingly cynical, if not hostile to the message of Christ, simply because of what they see us doing. Maybe we in Africa don’t see it much, but it’s so visible in the western world. However, I can already see signs of it creeping into the African society.

Are we willing to change the old wineskin for the new?

Rediscovering NT Christianity – A Purpose Driven God

This is the first in a series I’m writing on Rediscovering NT Christianity. This article is available for download here

Many of us have read the popular title by Rick Warren, “Purpose Drive Life”. Unfortunately I am yet to read it, but I’ll like to tweak his title to apply to this writing. I have heard many people say “God will reveal what he has purposed for me” or “What God has purposed for me will surely come to pass”. We seem to think that God is yet to reveal that purpose, and that some special time will come when we will be made aware of it. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint a lot of us, but God’s purpose for us has already been revealed. We are only meant to conform to that purpose, and I’ll explain why by touching on one of the facets of that purpose – the body of Christ.

Let us start off by asking ourselves these questions. If the God we believe is really an omniscient God, how come he didn’t know that Adam could fall to the temptation of the devil? Or did he? If he did, then if Adam had passed the test, what would God have done? Would there have been the need for Jesus Christ at all? Did Christ only exist for the purpose of saving us from our sins, or God had a purpose for Christ far greater than we can all imagine. These for me are about the most important questions that we as Christians must answer to be able to truly understand the purpose of man on this earth, and by extension the purpose of our faith.

God’s Mysteries Revealed

This is why the epistle of Ephesians is such an important one (and part of the reason why we should spend more of our time reading the NT than the OT). Like I mentioned in a previous post, its the only letter Paul wrote to a church which didn’t attempt to deal with any particular problem that the recipient church was facing. It is full of such theological weight that many of us read it without fully assimilating it’s implications for our faith. I encourage you to take the time to read that book again, alongside Colossians and Hebrews. It is the epistle that explores God’s purpose for our redemption, a purpose which existed before the foundation of the earth.

Paul always spoke of certain mysteries. Of these, he often said though it had been given directly to him by revelation, other apostles and prophets of his time had also received these same mysteries. These then became the vision that drove Paul’s ministry. However, he states clearly that these mysteries were totally hidden from the prophets of old, who wished they could look into them as well. These mysteries were hidden nowhere else but in God himself, and obviously it will only take God to reaveal them.

“And he made known unto us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ” (Eph 1:9-10)

“Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus” (Eph 3:2-5)

“Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me; to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph 3:8-11)

Paul here mentions 3 mysteries hidden to the prophets of old.

  1. When the times have been fulfilled, everything will be brought under one head, Jesus Christ our Lord.

  2. The promises of Abraham are available to both Gentiles and Jews through a living body called the church, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

  3. The world, spiritual and physical is intended to see the many-sided wisdom of God through the same living body called the church. This ETERNAL PURPOSE was again achieved in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You can see the amazing plan of God. Christ and his church are everything. When God sought to achieve his purpose on this earth, he made that purpose happen through Christ, and that to make that purpose clearly visible to the earthly and heavenly places, he chose the church to display that purpose. From the three above, it is obvious that because everything is IN CHRIST, THROUGH CHRIST and UNDER CHRIST, the church is nothing without Christ. However, what is even more shocking to me is that God’s wisdom can only be displayed in the church.

Let me use this example to display the implications of these mysteries. We know scientifically that decisions are taken by the brain, and communicated to the rest of the body for action to take place. In the same way, God’s intention and design is that when Christ being the head thinks of something to do, his Church will act it out. This is what we mean when we say that Christ is the head of the church. We don’t only mean that he is the say “General Overseer” of the church, but that he is the source of direction for the rest of the body to act.

And this is exactly what the Ephesian epistle seeks to communicate to us – our relationship to Christ as his body (Colossians talks about the supremacy and headship of Christ over his body amongst other things). That we are in a very privileged and powerful position, being the body of Christ. Our role is to seek out what the head wills, and do it. However, no part of the body acts alone, but always in coordination with certain other parts. To grasp something, the arm must move toward the object, and the nerves and muscles exerted for the fingers to clasp the object. The biceps and triceps are then flexed to lift the object up, and the purpose is achieved. I hope the doctors will excuse my ignorance of human anatomy, but I believe this is basically what the human body does, and the church is no exception.

The Manifold Wisdom of God

But what exactly is the manifold wisdom of God? Hmm, that will take me a whole book to delve into, but I’ll summarise it in three ways, though they are actually more than three.

  1. God intends the Church to be the bride of Christ, spotless and holy as Christ himself. (Eph 5:27; Rev 19:7-9). Just as Abraham sent his servant to bring a wife to Isaac, so has God sent his Holy Spirit to bring the Church to Christ.

  2. God intended and has created a new family, in which he is the Father, Christ the eldest son, and the church his younger brothers. (Ro 8:29;Heb 2:10,19;5:8). We have a direct relationship with him, again possible only through Christ. That is why both Gentiles and Jews have to come under the church. Check out what Paul said “Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God” (1 Cor 10:32). In fact, the world even awaits our revelation as the sons of God, and until then will continue to groan in the pain that it does. (Ro 8:19-23).

  3. God has always intended to dwell within and among men. It’s the reason why we individually and corporately are his temple (1 Co 6:19;3:16). This conforms to the new Jerusalem, where the writer of Revelation writes “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them’” (Rev 21:3). When you continue reading, there it is stated clearly that there no temple in that city: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Rev 21:22). Can you guess why? Because the church which is part of Christ will be with Christ then. Christ will be joined with the church, which will in turn be joined with God. No temples needed. Hallelujah!

Purposed Before Creation

Liberating and empowering as this purpose is for us – a purpose which became Paul’s burning passion – it was a purpose that existed before man was created. The apostle calls it an eternal purpose, and that is why he says it was hidden. That is even more amazing to me. That means that even if Adam had not sinned, the church will still have come into being somehow, existing in, under and by Christ solely for the purpose of displaying God’s wisdom. Oh, and Paul cannot be accused of introducing teaching that Jesus did not teach. Christ himself said that his kingdom was prepared “since the creation of the world”. Let me show you some places where this “before/since creation” concept exists.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world‘” (Mt 25:34)

“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be adopted as his sons …” (Eph 1:4)

“This purpose was given us in Christ before the beginning of time …” (1 Ti 1:9)

If Adam Hadn’t Sinned

So now, we come back to answer the million dollar question. What if Adam & Eve hadn’t sinned? How does Christ and the church fit into the picture? Do you remember that apart from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, there was also the tree of life in the garden? Well, what did Jesus Christ say about that same tree of life in Revelations 2?

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (Rev 2:7)

Well, a tree of life can only give eternal life. And therefore when man had fallen to sin, God had to prevent access to that tree, so they don’t stick to their sinful nature for eternity. Therefore they would have been given eternal life from that tree. Now note who is making the promise here. Jesus Christ himself. He is the one who will give it to them – again salvation in, through and by Christ. They would then have become the founding members of the church.

Implications of God’s Purpose

We can see that God had already determined his purpose for our creation and inclusion into the body of Christ. His overriding concern is for Christ and his body, the church. And therefore, it is obvious then that God’s purpose is intensely a corporate one. God is not going to reveal a separate purpose for you, apart from a purpose that fits within his eternal plan, a purpose centered around the church. The church is the reason why Christ came. If this is so, then the following observations can be made.

  1. Salvation is not about us the individuals who are saved by Christ. I know that our gospel and everything else that we teach today is so individualistic, but trust me, you were not saved for your own salvation’s sake. You are saved to take an active part in building up that body alongside others to make manifest God’s wisdom.

  2. Because of the unfortunately individualistic twist which church scholars trace from the D.L. Moody line of preaching, most Christians see the church not as the end itself, but just a point for gathering Christians who have been saved. We see our main mission as saving the whole world, which has shown evidence historically of producing very weak Christians. We don’t realize that it is within the church that transformation really happens, and every avenue must be explored to make that transformation be visible to the world. That is how the world will see the wisdom of God. Christianity has always been about “calling out from among the Gentiles a people for himself” (Act 15:14). Its the same thing God told the Israelites when he saved them from Egypt – “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles wings and brought you to myself … out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession” (Ex 19:4-5).

  3. It is because of the truth that God wants to dwell within his people that it’s painful to observe the mindset of Christians regarding the church building, as if God still dwells in buildings (this is exactly what Stephen tried to tell the Jews which incited their anger to kill him – “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men.” (Acts 7:48) ). The 1st century Christians understood this so well through Paul’s ministry, that it has been established historically and archaeologically that they never built for themselves church buildings, but simply used their homes or any available meeting spaces (a natural consequence of this was that they met in small groups, allowing them to also pay more attention to individual maturity). It’s only when a Roman emperor (Constantine) decided to nationalize Christianity that he commandeered existing temples for the Christians and built new ones as well, that set us on this path of decline.

  4. Because everyone is to be actively involved in building up Christ’s body, simply because that is the eternal purpose of God, it’s again painful to observe the separation between clergy and laity. We have created an artificial split between those who may serve God, and those who may just watch the show. It is a natural consequence that once you put some people in charge and not just give them guidance roles, but tell them that they are supposed to do all the important work in the church, then everyone else will relax. If there is one thing we all agree with, growth comes from directly experiencing an activity. No matter how many lessons you give a student, if they do not have the opportunity to practice it (and I mean practice it in the most important organism to any Christian – the church), they will never be a well-rounded student. The same is true of the church. If we only sit on the pews everyday and only a handful of us do any spiritually related activity, we are not displaying the wisdom of God – that he lives in everyone and is capable of using everyone.

I’ll leave you to ponder the rest of the implications of adopting such a mindset towards God and his purpose for you. However, I hear people say very often that where there is no vision, my people perish. The problem with contemporary Christianity is not that we don’t have a vision. Au contraire, there is an abundance of vision. The only question is whether this vision is defined by ourselves, or its the eternal purpose that God had designed before the foundation of the world.

Understanding that the church is God’s central eternal purpose on this earth made me see why Christ said this:

“I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them”(Mat 18:19-20)

When a group of people gather under Christ’s headship (i.e. where he is the brain and they are the body) and are focused on his already predetermined purpose, they are walking in the mind of God. Therefore, whatever they as a group (not individuals) wish for concerning that purpose WILL BE DONE, because it already is in line with God’s vision. No wonder Paul said that “WE have the mind of God” (1 Cor 2:16), not “I have the mind of God”.

Our vision must not be individual, but corporate. It must not be from us, but from God. And finally, we must understand that God’s vision was predetermined before the foundation of the earth, and we can only conform to it, not dictate new terms to him. Or else we will heal the sick, raise the dead and do more than Mother Theresa did, but God will tell us he doesn’t know us because we pursued our own purpose.

** For an indepth discussion of the eternal purpose of God, refer to “From Eternity to Here” by Frank Viola, “So Beautiful” by Leonard Sweet, or “The Stewardship of the Mystery” by Theodore Austin-Sparks, which is available chapter by chapter at http://www.austin-sparks.net.

Praise In the Key of The New Testament

One of the defining marks of Christians is praise and worship, and I will not even begin to go into the importance of such an exercise to the faith. Suffice it to say that it is a tool not to be underestimated. It is in the same vein that I’ll like to look at our praise of God in the light of the two theological masterpieces – the epistles of Ephesians and Colossians. The question has never been whether we should praise God or not, its what we should be praising God about.

Before I go on, it is worth noting why I deem these epistles masterpieces, especially Ephesians. The Ephesian epistle is the only one that was not written to address any particular problem that was happening in any church, unlike most of the the Pauline epistles. In fact, some bible scholars argue that since the earlier manuscripts of Ephesians do not have the phrase “in Ephesus” (“To the saints in Ephesus” – Eph 1:1), it may be that it was a circular letter written to a host of churches. It was written during a time of imprisonment in Rome, when Paul was not going anywhere fast.

Paul had already written a gist of the revelations he propounds in here in the prior letter to the Colossians (Don’t fret. Even though most bibles place Ephesians before Colossians, bible scholars agree that Colossians and Philemon were written together and Ephesians followed them, all in AD 61. Maybe you need a chronogical bible, but I’m not sharing mine 😀 ). He only goes on to delve fully into these matters in Ephesians. As an author’s comments on Ephesians goes,

“This letter is the crown of Paul’s ministry, ‘the Divinest composition of man’, and ‘the high water of Holy Writ’ … Ephesians is a matchless presentation of God’s eternal purpose and the unsearchable riches the Christians have inherited in Christ. (The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, Frank Viola).”

I couldn’t agree with him more, because in my experience, it is the book that Christians need to rediscover – one that clearly states in no uncertain terms why the church exists, and why we are called to be a part of it. For me (and countless others I’ve met in the blogoshpere and beyond), it’s one of the books that reinforce why I should be proud to call myself a disciple of Christ in the face of so much despondency and despair at what Christianity has stood for over the centuries.

But I digress. Let us look at the cause for Paul’s praise in Eph 1:3-10. It’s quite a long one, but easy to break down and assimilate.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will – to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given to us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace the he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure in Christ, to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfilment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”

First off, he says we should praise God for blessing us with every spiritual bless “in Christ”. Now that is mind boggling – not that God is going to bless us, but he has already blessed us. But don’t forget he is very specific about the kind of blessings – spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms “in Christ”. The question is, what are these blessings? Well, if I know God very well, he “will not do anything without revealing it to his prophet”, so I believe it won’t take a rocket scientist to show us what these are – they are right next in line.

  1. We were chosen before creation: This is exciting! Even before Adam and Eve were brought into being, God had chosen us. This reason alone is good enough for us to give praise to God every second. Do you doubt that? Well, even Rev 13:8 says “All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast – all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world”.

  2. We are predestined to be God’s sons: Have we even thought about what comes along with being a son of God, alongside Jesus Christ? Have we even considered being in the same family as God, with Jesus Christ as our elder brother? “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the first among many brothers”(Ro 8:29). Do we even understand the fact that the world continues to be in the pain that it is – and that this pain will not go away – until the sons of God are revealed? “The creation awaits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed” (Ro 8:19).

  3. We have redemption through his blood: I cannot overstate the work that Christ did on the cross, turning us “from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” (Ac 26:17). Most assuredly, the battle was won on the cross, but the war will be won in his coming kingdom (Rev 19-22).

  4. He made known to us the mystery: This is the part that fascinates, and enchants me. What is that mystery? That all things in heaven and on earth will be “brought under one head” or “summed up in Christ”. This mystery is so great that God had it hidden in no one than within he Himself. He had kept this mystery from the devil, and in the latter’s planning and scheming, he didn’t know that he was fulfilling that mystery. In expounding “summed up in Christ” further, Paul gives us this gem:

“Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made manifest to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus” (Eph 3:8-11)

I’ve been writing about purpose and process, but I tell you, this is the eternal purpose of God. That Christ, through his church, will display the manifold wisdom of God to the everything everywhere, spiritual or physical. You will notice that this purpose was “accomplished in Christ Jesus”. Well, there’s your “summed up”.

You see, most of us don’t realise that God is a God of purpose, and undoubtedly even as he is eternal, so are his purposes. In that ignorance, we always think of Adam’s sin and Christ coming to save us, as if God didn’t know that it would happen. The church for us is an after thought. To God, it’s his masterpiece and part of his purpose from eternity past. I urge you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind about this. But if his purpose considering the church and Christ was an eternal one as stated above, then we must always ask ourselves “What was God’s purpose in creating man”? We must start asking questions about “before creation”, not put our binoculars on “Adam to Christ”. Like Austin Sparks said and I paraphrase, most Christians are stuck at the bottom of a ravine between 2 hills, from which Christ came to redeem us, ignorant of the fact that we were meant to move to the other side of the hill, where God had always intended us to be. Frank Viola terms the two hills Gen 1 & 2 and Rev 21 & 22 – everything else is just an intermediary step. But again, I digress. We will have time to talk about the consequences of the eternal purpose of God later.

(I’d recommend “From Eternity to Here, Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God” by Frank Viola or “So Beautiful” by Leonard Sweet if you want to get a full discussion of God’s eternal purpose. Again, I won’t give you mine 😉 ).

However, I want us to be happy about the fact that we are part of that church, part of that eternal plan before Adam fell. Another reason to be ecstatic.

Might I remind you that all these reasons given by Paul for praising the glorious grace of God are extremely spiritual. They are absolutely connected with the heavenly. In fact, Paul had this in mind already when he wrote the previous letter to the Colossian church (thinking chronologically here, remember) about their attitude, reminding them to set their minds on things above.

“Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col 3:1-4)

Again, he reiterates how everything is summed up in Christ – how we died and our life is hidden in Christ, by virtue of which we can only appear in glory when Christ’s glory is manifested. He makes it ample clear that our glory is not on this earth. And again, it is not for naught that Paul gives the same reminder to the Corinthians.

“If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Cor 15:19).

So, what is my point? What has this got to do with our praise?

I hear too often, and my ears grow weary, of Christians only praising God for bread and butter. I’m heartbroken at how we excel at praising God with the clichéd, “I thank God for taking care of me and my family throughout the week …”. I’m astounded at the vim with which we everyday praise God for “Making us somebody amongst our earthly peers” and having saved us from “Families without hope of any success”. It’s like a canker. It’s in our “gospel” music, local or foreign. Its in the pulpit, and it’s in Christian literature. It’s everywhere.

The question I want to ask us Christians is this – when it comes to comfort, prosperity, family comforts and world fame, who are on top of the list? I’m not very familiar with the world’s rich list (I hope my ignorance is forgiven, because there are weightier matters than these), but remind me if Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, the Sultan of Brunei and the Queen of England are people you will consider true Christians. Even ordinary “by mouth” Christians. Hmm, I didn’t think so. Make no mistake, if you are aspiring to “Bill Gateship”, you are in the wrong organisation (i.e. the church).

Because it is a well known fact that the world’s most successful people are either self-professed or can be considered atheist. A few may have a belief in God, and fewer yet in Christ. Yet we are lost in trying to attain the world’s comforts by “going through God”. And, because we do not know what Christ has given us which makes us diametrically different from these people, we continue to “praise” God for the things that he gives to everyone, whether they believe in God or not. Even the Psalms say that it is God who gives rain to the wicked as well as to the righteous. So, when we are praising God, I find it very very disquieting that we have very little notion of some of these things that are causes for the praise of the New Testament writer’s praise. In fact, there are few occasions in the NT where the writer praises God for anything other than the hope that he has called us to, the eternal purpose which he predestined from the foundation of the earth, the salvation which he has given us, the body of Christ which is the church of which we are part, the bride of Christ to which we belong, the house/temple of God of which we are precious stones in, the royal priesthood and the holy nation of God to show forth God’s excellencies, etc. If we are people of a new covenant and not the old, then I challenge us to redefine our praise according to New Testament standards.

I’m not saying that don’t praise God for what he provides for you. Far from it. But like my dad said the other day, if you sow to earthly hope, you will reap earthly hope. Obviously I do not need to state the converse.

If we are truly sons of Abraham, “who was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb 11:10), and is still waiting for that city that Christ his seed will bring (again another example of “bringing everything under” his headship or “summing up”), then our praise must change to reflect that glorious hope. Because it is indeed glorious and great.

“Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven …” (Mt 5:12)

Apostle Paul’s Heart Desires – Are we Living Up to Them?

Theodore Austin-Sparks said that the mere existence of epistles after the Gospels points out the fact that Christianity is not a single event that happens to you, but a lifetime of progression in knowledge, which should lead to further obedience. That underpins our discourse today and I hope we come to a “unity of the faith” on this matter.

The Apostle Paul was indisputably instrumental in the early church and it’s growth. Even as he went about doing his work, his heart’s desire was to see certain traits in the churches that he had either founded or at least had spent considerable time working in. This desire is expressed in his prayer of thanksgiving when he heard of two traits in these churches – Faith and Love.

Paul’s Thanksgiving

“For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers”(Eph 1:15-16)

“We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love you have for all the saints – the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth.” (Col 1:3-4)

“We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thess 1:2-3)

“We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.” (2 Thes 1:3)

As you may have observed from these passages, he talks about “faith in Christ Jesus” and “love for the brethren”. One may ask what was so distinct about these that he continuously looked out for them in the members of these churches (and I believe wherever else he went). There are quite a number of reasons, but we will look at only a few.

Why Faith?

Because faith is the foundation of our relationship with Christ. You see, when we love someone, we want to please them. Heb 6:11 says without faith it is impossible to please God. That means God himself has shown the way we may show love to him – by faith in Him. Christ’s atoning death on the cross achieves a certain double edged benefit for us.

  • In the negative sense, it sets us free from sin and it’s ultimate punishment, death.(Ro 6:3-14; Heb 2:9)

“The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the live he lives, he lives to God.” (Ro 6:10)

“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour, because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone”. (Heb 2:9)

  • In the positive sense, it brings us into fellowship with Christ himself and the Father, a fellowship that existed when God created man. (I Jn 1:3; 1 Cor 1:9; 1 Pe 2:9-10)

“We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 Jn 1:3)

The first benefit had to come, to enable the second one. God could not have fellowship with sinful man, but since Christ has become the intermediary for us, we are able to approach God now and our fellowship with him is now restored. When the Scriptures say that Abraham walked with God, it does literally mean that. Simply put, he was a man of faith not in anything or anyone else, but God alone. We cannot clothe God when he’s naked because he never is. We cannot feed him when He is hungry, because he never is.

What determines our fellowship with God is faith. Even our ability to take advantage of Christ’s aforementioned work is again only by faith. Nothing else suffices. There is nothing else we can do for God besides that.

Why Love?

Because love is the basis of our relationship with each other. Note that we are talking about “love for the saints”, not the rest of the world. Many Christians today engage in some good deeds for their communities and those in need but who are not a part of the saints that they share fellowship with. Though this is commendable, their real first responsibility is to the saints (Gal 6:10). In fact, in Jn 13:34-35, Christ says the basis upon which the world and by extension Himself will identify his disciples is through the love the disciples have for one another.

The fellowship described previously is a fellowship akin to family. God becomes our Father, and we his sons. Check out what Jesus told Mary when she met the risen Christ on the third day:

“.. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God‘”.(Jn 20:17)

Now imagine I claim that God is my Father and you also claim that God is your Father. By simple logic, we are siblings, right? But I withhold the use of a spiritual gift which will build you up simply because of some personal problem I have with you. That is not a family in sync. That is hypocrisy, pure and simple. That’s why James had some strong words for those who saw their brother in need but only told them “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed” (Jas 2:16).

It is therefore not surprising that Paul is overjoyed to find these traits in them. These are the things that show growth, and signs that we should all look for in our lives, those of our fellow Christians and in our churches. Not growth in numbers, as wonderful as that may be.

Paul’s Prayer

Having thanked God for the exhibit of faith in Christ and love for the brethren that he had witnessed in these disciples, he goes on to pray for something additional, something which I believe is the source of these two traits in the first place – he prays that they may know Christ more. He believes that their faith and love will abound more not just in “gnosis” – knowledge – but in “epignosis” – what the Strong’s dictionary defines as “recognition, that is, (by implication) full discernment, acknowledgement: – (ac-) knowledge (-ing, -ment).”

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.” (Phil 1:9-10)

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe”. (Eph 1:17-19)

“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” (Col 1:9)


When men have come to that discernment of Christ, then they can be deemed to have become mature in Christ. Until then, they are still babies. This same word “epignosis” is the basis again of the word “knowledge” used by Paul in describing the reason why God gives us the ministries of apostle, prophets, teachers etc.

“to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:12-13).

The new life experience as a result of repentance and faith in Christ was never the end in itself to the disciples of old. It was only the beginning of a process, the purpose of which is that we “attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ”. And this can only be achieved through the discernment of Christ’s supremacy, His superiority and his position as the foremost of all things in heaven and on earth, God having purposed that everything be summed up in Him. This is what Paul describes as “the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfilment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” (Eph 1:9-10)

This is not just a knowledge that we have, it is knowledge that we experience. It is knowledge that moves us into a life of faith and love without limits. When you’ve caught this vision of Christ, you don’t need any motivational message or any other gospel. Christ himself and the attainment “of the whole measure of the fullness of Christ”, becomes your passion. Nothing on this earth holds you back any more.

Now this knowledge and the work that it does in our lives Christ can only be granted by the Holy Spirit working within us. That is why them that continue to walk according to the flesh are unable to discern Christ, and therefore are unable to please Him as Ro 8:7-8 tells us. This is why Paul yearned to see further increase of “epignosis” in the disciples, which will only make their “love to abound more” (Phil 1:10), and obviously their faith as well. His hope, his prayer, his mission was that by making this knowledge of Christ’s supremacy real to them and they accepting it, he may then be able to present fully rounded, mature and perfect men to God as the evidence of his work.

“To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.” (Col 1:27-28).

“For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy” (1 Th 2:19-20)

Conclusion

It is interesting to note that this yearning of Paul’s was consciously transferred to those who had close fellowship with him in the glorious burden of service to Christ. See what Epaphras, the elder from Colosse’s prayer day and night was for:

“Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured”.(Col 4:12)

2 Cor 10:4-5 is a very well known passage in the arsenal of the modern day Christian, and I’ll like us to draw the curtains by taking a very good second look at it. Note my emphasis in bold.

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Cor 10:4-5)

Although the word “knowledge” here refers to “gnosis” – the simple form – and not “epignosis”, one cannot ignore the fact that the strongholds that we are fighting are not “devils”, “witches” and “enemies” as we Africans always postulate in our sermons. Though there is no doubt that these strongholds are from the devil, the strongholds themselves have to do with issues of the mind – arguments, things that stand against the knowledge of God, thoughts etc. The battlefield has always been in the mind, and until we are “transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Ro 12:2) so that our minds and hearts are filled with the gnosis and epignosis of Christ, the devil will continue to hold sway over us. In fact, any preacher who spends most of his time teaching you more about the devil, witches and “enemies” than filling you with knowledge of Christ and his supremacy and sufficiency, and must be discounted as a false preacher. Trust me, in Ghana even our dailies are filled with such false doctrine from “great” men of God.

If we continuously bring men to Christ only so that they will fill the church seats and be utterly ignorant of Christ, we are only doing the devil a service. Because until men are “perfect in Christ” (not “perfect” by their own measure), they are useless to Him when he returns. If we want to see more faith and love in our churches, we must first see more knowledge of Christ in them. There is no short cut.