Three Biblical Strands in the Leadership Rope - Summary Version
A church that fulfills God’s purpose must have leaders who understand that the church’s message, its mission, and its method flow from God.
Strand 1: Redemption
Genesis 1-3
- God created human beings with the capacity to represent his nature and purposes.
- Adam and Eve distorted their likeness to God, making themselves unfit to represent God.
- Dilemma: God’s holiness and love are essentially inseparable. Holiness without love would not be holy. Love without holiness would not be loving. God could not really love us by settling for less than our ultimate perfection. Nonetheless, human sin drives a wedge between God’s holiness and love. How will God’s holiness and love, divided by human sin, be reconciled?
Genesis 6-9
- God’s holy wrath against sin: the flood.
- God’s continuing love: the ark.
- God’s binding himself to a costly historical process of redemption: the rainbow covenant.
Tabernacle and temple
- The portable tabernacle and stationary temple offered temporary covering of sin and partial access to the presence of God.
- Hints of something better throughout the Old Testament
- Supplementation with synagogue system
Jesus
- Jesus’ ministry proclaimed and demonstrated the loving, restoring reign of God.
- Jesus went to the Jerusalem temple on behalf of people to whom he had given hope.
- The temple system was a fruitless fig tree that he would replace.
- Primary level replacement: through Jesus’ sacrificial death.
- Secondary level replacement: through the redemptive love of gatherings of the faithful.
Revelation 4—7
The Lamb of God:
- reconciles God’s holiness and love,
- redeems a countless multitude from every race and tongue and people and nation,
- calls believers to join in declaring the message of redemption.
Strand 2: Calling
- Exodus 19:4-6 defines Israel as “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”
- This calling was anticipated even in the Garden of Eden.
- In the New Testament, the geopolitical and cultural components of nationhood are removed, but the basic calling endures.
- 1 Peter 2:9 says, “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 are called to represent in our lives as well as in our message that God’s holiness and love have been reconciled in Jesus Christ. We must be holy and loving in our relationship with the world.
- Ekklesia, translated church, is literally the called-out.
- Yet we are called to imitate God’s love for the people of the world.
- We are to live in the world, but not to be of the world.
- We need to understand with great clarity the fine line we are called to walk.
Strand 3: Empowerment
- Prophecy is the dominant form of the Spirit’s working in the Old Testament
- Due to false prophecy, God announced through Zechariah the withdrawing of prophecy.
- Centuries later, prophecy returned through another Zechariah, his wife Elizabeth, his infant son John the Baptist, Elizabeth’s young cousin Mary, and the elderly Simeon and Anna.
- Jesus’ kingdom ministry expressed the Spirit’s power at work in and through him.
- He also promised that his Spirit would be available to his disciples.
- The Spirit began to work through the church at Pentecost, enabling the apostles and other believers to do the kinds of things Jesus had done, and to reach across great cultural divides in the name of Jesus.
Paul shows that the Spirit:
- confirms our faith.
- convicts us of sin and enables our repentance.
- authenticates our baptism.
- assures us of forgiveness and eternal life.
- produces in us the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit.
Paul and John teach how to tell the real from the phony. Two of the criteria are:
- consistency with the fact that the Christ came in the human flesh of Jesus and that Jesus the crucified is Lord of life, and
- consistency with love for God and people and for the building up of the body of Christ.
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