Bible Study

Three Biblical Strands in the Leadership Rope - Full Version

Introduction

A church that fulfills God’s purpose must have leaders who understand the church’s divine authority-base: in other words, they must understand that the church’s message, its mission, and its method flow from God. This is extremely important for church leaders to know. Our reason for being as a church and our power to accomplish that purpose are not our own inventions, are not simply social conventions, but come from the Sovereign Creator of the universe.

At Christview Ministries, Judy and I work from the assumption that there are two pre-eminent means of knowing what God would have us do: Word and Spirit. A church that wishes to carry out God’s mission must have leaders who are grounded in God’s Word and Spirit.

As part of developing that grounding, we will look at three strands that run through the whole Bible: redemption, calling, and empowerment. We will show how these strands form a rope to guide believers in grasping the message and mission of the church and in becoming equipped to be spiritual leaders.

Strand 1: Redemption

The first and most important strand that runs through the Bible is the strand of redemption.

Genesis 1-3

Genesis 1:1--2:3 tells us that God created everything good and that God created human beings with the capacity to represent his nature and purposes for creation, provided that they stay in harmony with him.

The remainder of Genesis 2 shows that God created a garden where he placed Adam and Eve to begin human family and community, to till and to keep the garden, and to worship and obey God. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation to grasp after equality with God, thereby failing to keep the garden and failing to obey God. In the process, they distorted their likeness to God and made themselves unfit for the purpose for which they were created. Because the garden was a place where one could walk in the presence of the holy God and because God had placed in the garden a tree of life, which would allow those who ate of it to live forever, he had to banish Adam and Eve from the garden.

Sin cannot come into the presence of the holy God, and God cannot maintain his perfect purposes for creation if he allows sin to anchor itself in eternity. God’s holiness refers among other things to his perfect purposes for human beings; God wills that we reach our destiny. This sets up the dilemma that is a central theme of the rest of the Bible. God’s holiness which cannot tolerate sin and God’s love which must cling to the purposes for which he made humanity are now stretched apart. In the face of human sin, it is hard for our human minds to imagine how God’s holiness and love will ever be brought back together. Please understand that, if God gave up his holiness, his perfect purposes for us, he would not really love us. Ultimately, holiness and love must stick together. But, temporarily, human sin drives a wedge between them.

Genesis 6-9

After Adam and Eve left the garden, human sin began to dominate life on earth. Eventually, according to Genesis 6-9, God expressed his holy wrath against sin--his refusal to give up his perfect plan for us--through a great flood; he expressed his continuing love for his creatures by preserving life on the ark. After the flood, God used a rainbow to mark his decision to bind himself to a historical process by which he would offer redemption to still sinful humanity. Through his work with a chosen representative people, God would take onto himself the cost of reconciling his holiness and love.

Tabernacle and temple

The rest of the Bible shows the unfolding of this plan of redemption. In the Old Testament, the focus of redemption is on the tabernacle and temple. At Mount Sinai, God unveiled a covenant in which the human sins of the chosen people were temporarily covered by means of animal sacrifices, and their partial approach to God’s holy presence was enabled at the tabernacle. After leading the chosen people into the Promised Land and establishing their capital at Jerusalem, God replaced the portable tabernacle with a stationary temple, but it continued to represent temporary, partial solution. Then, because of the ongoing sins of the chosen people, in a series of events culminating in 587 or 586 B.C., foreign invaders carried the people into exile and destroyed the temple. Beginning in the 530’s, a small remnant of the exiles and their descendants returned to the Promised Land where they gradually rebuilt the temple.

Throughout the Old Testament, from Genesis through Malachi, there are hints that a redemption better than the systems of animal sacrifice and legal codes is coming. The anticipations of this new covenant can be traced through books of law, history, wisdom, psalms, and prophecy.

Between the testaments, a synagogue system emerged, supplementing the centralized sacrificial system of temple and priest with a decentralized legal system of synagogue, scribe, rabbi, and the Pharisaic reform party. The combination of temple and synagogue, of sacrifice and law, of priests and Pharisees, did not prove fruitful in ending the dominance of sin in the lives of the people.  Instead, it made a few of the people into privileged elites and many of the rest into discouraged underachievers.

Jesus

But as we enter the New Testament, all the threads in the strand come together in the life and ministry, the death, resurrection, exaltation, and future final return of Jesus Christ. Jesus began his public ministry traveling through Galilee showing discouraged people of all kinds that the reigning power of God could act on their behalf, restoring them to health and wholeness, encouraging them to dare great things for God. In the Galilean context, Jesus’ miracles themselves might have seemed to authenticate his message about the reigning power of God, but when people encouraged by his ministry made their required pilgrimages to Jerusalem, what they experienced at the temple, the central institution of religious authority among the people of God, might well have called the authority Jesus’ ministry into question in their minds.

At the temple, the kinds of people Jesus helped were often excluded or put down. If they wished to make a financial offering, their money of daily commerce had to be exchanged for temple money, and the money-changers profited on the exchange. If they wished to bring a sacrificial offering, their animal had to pass inspection, and, if not, they had to buy a pre-approved animal from the temple vendors—which they could do only if they could afford it.

Inevitably, they would have been forced to ask, “Which view does God uphold, Jesus’ message that the reign of God can restore the broken or the temple’s policies that tend to exclude the broken?”  Jesus came to give hope to the excluded, and therefore he could not let the temple system break their bruised reeds or extinguish their dimly burning wicks (Isaiah 42:3; Matthew 12:20).

In about the third year of his ministry, Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover and to address the issue of his ministry’s authority in relation to the temple.  On Monday following his Palm Sunday entrance, Jesus headed toward the temple. Along the way into the city, he saw a fruitless fig tree and cursed it as representative of the fruitless temple. He arrived at the temple and drove out the animal-sellers and money-changers. He quoted Isaiah 56 that the temple was to be a house of prayer for all peoples. Matthew (21:14-16) tells us that Jesus then brought into the temple the blind and the lame whom he healed and the children who celebrated.

On Tuesday, as Jesus once more entered the city, the disciples saw that the fig tree Jesus had cursed on Monday was now dead. As we have said, the fig tree symbolized the fruitless temple that Jesus came to replace. Soon thereafter, Jesus predicted that not one stone of the temple would be left on another.

Events moved fast. The incidents with the fig tree and Temple were Monday and Tuesday. By mid-day Friday, Jesus was being crucified. Now, the question about authority was about to be answered. Friday’s apparent answer seemed to side with the temple leaders and to say that life with God is measured by visible achievement, by who looks most obedient and most blessed on the surface. By Sunday dawn there was a quite different answer. With the testimony, “He is risen!” the Sunday’s answer says that life with God is measured by faith in Jesus, his message, his ministry, his redemptive heart. Sunday’s answer is for those humble enough to let a Savior cleanse them, heal them, counsel them, direct them, and to let his mercy and grace pass through them to others.

Jesus, in giving his body on the cross for the sins of humanity, became the new temple, the new place of atonement. Somehow the reconciliation of God’s holiness and love had to be accomplished. The message of the New Testament is that the radical solution that was needed has been offered only once in history, once-and-for-all. The solution came through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. On the cross, Jesus replaced the temple and its countless sacrifices with one sacrifice greater than all the rest together.  Sunday’s resurrection confirmed that transaction.

There is something of a mystery here of how Jesus’ death accomplishes the reconciliation of holiness and love. There are several major explanations of the atonement that have solid biblical grounding. The Christus victor explanation views Satan as the prosecuting attorney with the right to demand punishment and ultimate destruction for the souls of sinners. But Satan had no right to prosecute Jesus, and in attempting to do so, forfeited his role as prosecuting attorney. All who trust Jesus are protected by him from Satan’s prosecution. The moral suasion explanation views the problem as one of transforming the human heart. Jesus’ demonstration of extreme self-giving love wins our hearts and compels our giving ourselves in gratitude for Jesus. As true as both of these and many other explanations are, the dominant biblical image of atonement addresses the underlying issue of how justice and mercy, holiness and love, can be preserved and united in the face of sin. This theory may be called the sacrificial, substitutionary, vicarious, or satisfaction explanation. If we think of this theory as the placating of an angry God with an offering of blood, it is naturally and rightly repulsive. But that is not the correct understanding. The point is that holiness and love must be brought into coordinated action; that reconciling of holiness and love occurs through the totality of Jesus’ incarnation, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension. The cross is a vital part of that redeeming drama in ways that exceed our rational and emotional grasp, but that are nonetheless real and effective. It is important that we know that Jesus endured every temptation that we have endured, yet without sin. It is important that we know that he did this with total human vulnerability and with totally divine perfection. In all human history, only he is fit to take the role of the perfect, once-and-for-all sacrifice. Jesus is the one who accomplishes the task and replaces the temple’s sacrificial system.

Our sin is covered by Jesus’ righteousness so that we may enter an ongoing and gradual process of transformation back toward the perfection that God has planned for us. Figuratively speaking, we get to wear Jesus’ clothes while, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we are growing up to fit them. God honors our faith in Jesus and our openness to transformation by completing the process of perfecting us for the new creation.

We, too, have our part in replacing the temple. The temple is to be replaced at the primary level by Jesus’ sacrifice and at the secondary level by gatherings of the faithful. Where two or three of us gather in his name, there he is in the midst of us, and there his purpose is realized. His purpose is that the church would be a fruitful fig tree, a place of redemptive love, of healing power, of restoring ministry where the lost can be found, where the lame can walk, where the blind can see, where the poor can experience good news, where the despairing can rise up in hope.

Revelation 4—7

When we get toward the end of the Bible, in Revelation 4--7, the issue of how the holiness and love of God can be brought together is still being discussed. This is the issue that causes the visionary John to weep because it seems that no one is found worthy to break the seals on the scroll of redemption. Then he hears that the Lion of Judah, the Jewish Messiah, can do so, and he looks up to see the Lamb of God, standing as though he had been slain, preparing to fulfill the task. And the Lamb redeems a countless multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation. The Lamb Jesus may be the Messiah, but he is far more, and he calls those who believe in him to join in solidarity with him in declaring the message of redemption, cost what it may.

The New Testament asserts that Jesus provides the needed redemption and shows how the church is to be a fruitful fig tree in sharing the benefits of the redemption. That is the redemptive strand of the Bible’s message.

Strand 2: Calling

The second strand that runs through the Bible is the strand of calling. The key text for understanding calling is Exodus 19:4-6, most specifically verse 6 when the Lord God speaks through Moses that Israel is to be for God “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” First, Israel was to be a kingdom, not just an earthly kingdom, but a divine one. Israelites were to live in a way that showed that they were royal children of the divine King. Second, they were to be priestly, not just to have specially designated people who practiced priestcraft, although they were to have that too, but they were to be priestly, all of them. This meant that they were to represent God to the world and to represent the world to God, serving as go-betweens in the drama of redemption. Third, they were to be a nation, a defined entity among the nations of the world, so that they could have a history that other nations could observe and thereby see something of the God that Israel represented. Finally, they were to be holy, set apart from the world to represent God’s nature and purposes.

Israel’s calling was anticipated even in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were called to form community and they were assigned to till and to keep the garden. The same Hebrew words that are translated to till and to keep are elsewhere used to mean to worship and to obey. Their calling was to live in such a way that they represented and honored God in all that they did. They failed, but their calling anticipated that of Israel which also failed. Much of the Old Testament deals with how Israel failed to heed the terms of their calling.

In the New Testament, the calling is both preserved and transformed. The church is not a nation or even a culture, but a transnational and transcultural community of faith. If we may speak of the church as a nation, it is only figuratively so. All geopolitical and a good many of the cultural components of nationhood are removed. The church consists of people of every tribe and language and people and nation who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ and accept their calling to be his representative people in the world. Nevertheless, Exodus 19:6 is echoed frequently in the New Testament. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians and John’s Revelation offer two examples, but most obvious of all is 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (NRSV). We have a distinctive calling to represent God and the gospel of Jesus Christ in the world. For this purpose we are called out and set apart, made holy. Our baptism symbolizes our dying to the world so that we may come alive to God as the source of our ways of living.  The holiness and love that God has reconciled through Jesus Christ must be expressed through believers. We must be holy and loving.

All believers in Jesus are called to proclaim the good news of salvation and to be salt and light in the world. This means that we must be distinctively Christian. The word translated church in the Bible is ekklesia; literally, it is the called-out. We are a called-out people, and we cannot be that without leaving the value-structures from which we are called out. If we are deriving our values from entertainment media, news media, political parties, or educational institutions, we are likely to be compromising our Christian identity. Yes, we are to live in the world, in communication with the world, but we are not to be of the world; our values are not to come from the world, but from the Word and Spirit of God whom we recognize through Jesus Christ. Yet we are called to express God’s love for the people of the world and to give ourselves to the mission of sharing the good news.

If we are to obey our calling, we need to understand that calling with great clarity. When the church derives its vision from the world rather than from the Word and Spirit, it loses its ability to pursue God’s purpose for the church. On the one hand, the church is called to be separate from the world’s values. On the other hand, the church must have a communications strategy that engages people of the world. Only the Word and Spirit can show us how to do this.

Strand 3: Empowerment

The third strand that runs through the Bible is the strand of empowerment.  The Holy Spirit is the source of empowerment in the Old Testament. Genesis 1:2 reports the Spirit/Wind of God sweeping over the dark, chaotic waters just before God calls forth light and firmament. Genesis 2:7 reports God breathing into Adam the Spirit/Breath of life. The Holy Spirit by various names does many things in the Old Testament: he conveys life, vitality, strength, guidance, wisdom, knowledge, vision, the word of God. He enables the select members of the people of God to function as prophets and judges, as psalmists and artists, as miracle-workers and military heroes. We see the Spirit of the Lord working through kings, priests, Levites, and historians.

Moses longed for the day when all God’s people would be Spirit-led and Spirit-empowered, and the prophet Joel prophesied that the day would come.

Of course, there is a great power in being able to say, “Thus says the Lord,” and, throughout history, it has led many would-be shakers-and-movers to pretend to be prophets without having received their message from God. This was no less true in Old Testament times than now. Among the last books of the Old Testament, completed early in the fifth century B.C., is the written record of the prophet Zechariah who foresees that, as a purifying measure against the false prophets, the Lord will bring prophecy to an end. It was this period in which prophets were absent that left the vacuum that allowed the emergence of the Pharisaic rabbis as interpreters of the law.

When we get to the New Testament, prophecy re-emerges. Interestingly, Luke portrays the re-emergence of prophecy as occurring through another Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. In Luke’s conception and infancy narratives, we also see the Spirit speaking through the infant John the Baptist, through the young Mary, and through the elderly Simeon and Anna. 

Jesus introduced his ministry in his hometown by quoting Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to….” Jesus’ kingdom ministry was an expression of the Spirit’s power at work in and through him. He listened to his heavenly Father, saw into the hearts of people, cast out demons, worked signs and wonders, dared great deeds, and spoke stunning truth about past, present, and future, all in the power of the Spirit. He also promised that his Spirit would be available to his disciples if they would ask, seek, and knock; and he told them that the Spirit would come to them to be their Counselor/Advocate, leading them into all truth and transforming their lives so that they would do the kinds of things that he did.

On the fiftieth day from Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus--crucified, risen and exalted at the right hand of God--poured out his Spirit upon his followers empowering them for their ministries of witness and service. The Spirit enabled them to do the kinds of things Jesus had done, and the Spirit carried them into far places Jesus had not gone, enabling them to reach across great cultural divides in the name of the gospel. 

Later Paul would describe many aspects of the work of the Spirit in his letters. In summary, the Spirit:

The New Testament wants us to know how to tell the real thing from the phony.  Paul and John (1 Corinthians 12-14; 1 John 3-5) give rather similar criteria. If something is genuinely from the Holy Spirit, (1) it should be consistent with the fact that the Christ came in the human flesh of Jesus and that Jesus the crucified is Lord of life, and (2) it should lead to love for God and people and for the building up of the body of Christ through loving evangelistic outreach and spiritual encouragement.  Those criteria would be totally unnecessary in the scriptures unless Paul and John under the inspiration of the Spirit expected that the Spirit would still be doing amazing things after the scriptures were completed.

Conclusion

Our message is redemption. Our mission is that we are called out to represent God holy and loving nature and purposes. Our method is that we are to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. Church leaders must learn to operate with the authority and power that come from God through Word and Spirit.

See the Summary Version.

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