BLOG 5/13/17. THE ROLE OF PROPHECY IN THE NEW CREATION COMMUNITY
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m continually disappointed at how consistently Biblical expositors skip over the awesome consequences of Paul’s reference to the Ascended Lord’s gifting of the church (in the 4th chapter of Ephesians) and of the necessity of those four gifts for the equipping of all God’s people for maturity in his mission. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t focus on charismatic personalities having one or the other of those gifts (though there are those especially gifted in each), … but that all four are necessary for all of Christ’s followers to be mature, to have the stature of Christ, to achieve the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
I want to begin with my own ‘take’ on prophecy. Prophets, as such, appear regularly in the apostolic writings, but without much description of precisely what their role might have been. We find one of them warning Paul of what would happen if he persisted in returning to Jerusalem, etc. … but, here and there, there are references to that phenomenon in the normal life of the church. But here in Ephesians 4 the Spirit-gift of prophecy appears to be one of the necessary components in the equipping of all of God’s people. Why is it so essential? My persuasion is that this is the capacity for cultural analysis, or cultural exegesis, of understanding the realities of the cultural-social setting in which we realistically live. It is the capacity to be (if I can say it this way) very knowledgeably this-worldly, to understand the dynamics of our incarnation as the children of the Light, of God’s New Humanity men and women.
I am very much influenced by the late French sociologist-theologian Jacques Ellul. His provocative book: The Presence of the Kingdom makes the case that the kingdom of God is most powerfully present when God’s people are not dealing in abstractions, but in consistently creating a lifestyle that demonstrates before the watching world the realities of God’s New Creation, God’s Kingdom. But to do that, one must confront those very existential realities. It is almost blasphemous to see the church as some ‘place’ in which we escape the challenges of daily life.
I, as a white guy, sit frequently with an African-American friend in a coffee shop, and have the most amazing and fruitful and honest discussions about racism. We tune in to each other. He assists me in prophetic understanding of this particular blight in our society. Racism, economic crises, global food supply, iPhone culture, a culture of urban nomads who seem to have no roots, neighborhoods without true neighbors, political darkness here and abroad, immigrants, sexuality, educational systems, crime, … and on and on. The church, as Ellul insists, must not succumb to some abstract spirituality, nor avoid what God’s people are confronting 24/7 in their particular place of incarnation.
So, then, it becomes one of the necessary components of God’s gifting the church to equip those New Creation people to exegete their specific cultures, what with all of its ‘plusses and minuses.’ This is not an elective, but a necessity. The church can never demonstrate the good works, the life-style, the counter-cultural essence of God’s New Humanity if it becomes an escapist. Church gatherings, liturgies, public teaching-preaching are all for naught if they do not contribute to the prophetic equipping of all of God’s people. This is a never ending, and always changing discipline.
In future blogs I will attempt to explain why the other three gifts mentioned are also essential. Stay tuned … [and, if this Blog is helpful, recommend it to your friends.]
