BLOG 11/13/13. ONE ALWAYS HAS TO ASK THE BASIC QUESTIONS

BLOG 11/13/13. ONE ALWAYS HAS TO ASK THE BASIC QUESTIONS

One of my favorite television mysteries has been P.B.S.’s Inspector Morse. In a recent episode Morse is exhorting his young aide that in any criminal investigation and about evidence, one always needs to pursue the question: Why? Why was this evidence overlooked? Why did this person do this and not that? Etc. I have the same sense of questioning the purpose of so much of our understanding of the church, its essence and its mission. And we must ask not only why? but also what?, and how?.

Take, for-instance, an interesting implication from the familiar (and often yanked out of context) text of Romans 8, which tells us that God works all things for good to those who are called according to his purpose. And just what is that purpose? Paul goes on to tell us that the purpose is that those whom God loves “be conformed to the image of his Son.” That, in turn, opens the question for us of exactly what that image of his Son might look like? What are the dimensions, or characteristics of that image? Which in turn opens up the question of how, exactly, is that image formed in us? And then: whose responsibility is it to be the equipping agent in that process of conforming? All of which brings us back to my quest for a church for the Monday morning world, a church that produces sons and daughters of light who can function in the often-intractable exigencies of everyday life, and do it knowledgeably and with grace.

We can extrapolate from Paul’s writings that there are at least three major components of the image of Christ that are to be formed in us: 1) in Ephesians 4:24 Paul identifies the image of the likeness of God as true righteousness which pertains to the behavior (or Kingdom behavior) of God’s people; and 2) as holiness, which has to do with our being in synch, or in that unhindered intimacy with God, with the divine nature, as was true of Christ. Then, 3) in Colossians 3:10 Paul again refers to this new self, or new creation person, as one who is “renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

In summary, we know that it is God’s purpose to recreate his people in at least these three dimensions of their persons: knowledge, true righteousness, and holiness, i.e., in their thinking, in their behavior, and in their relationship of intimacy with the triune God. So then, how does that happen? Which brings us back to the Ephesians 4 text I spoke of in my last couple of blogs.  There, Paul tells us that the risen Lord Jesus has given to his church four gifts for the equipping of God’s people (his saints) for their works of ministry. It would be the function of one of those gifts: that of the teaching-shepherd/pastor-teacher to equip God’s people with the knowledge that they would need to have about who they are, and about God’s design in them, and about the provisions of his love and grace through Jesus Christ.

First off, then, the church is to be a community that incarnates the knowledge of God’s great salvation, i.e., a community that thinks like God, that sees all things from God’s point of view, that wears the helmet of salvation. Every follower/disciple of Christ needs to have that basic sense of his/her calling into God’s great salvific mission, so that the church can never be mindless if it is to have integrity. The church is the community of the knowledge of God and of God’s salvation. That’s the beginning place.

Next time: that same Ephesians passage says that the church is a community that incarnates the gifts of: apostle, prophet, and evangelist. But it is never, never, never a community of passive consumers of religion!

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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