Special Note: This material once comprised a chapter in my book entitled Discipling (1997). This longer book was condensed into a shorter version called The Power of Discipling – now in its second (slightly longer) edition. A number of chapters from the original book were omitted in the shorter one. I added back two of these chapters in a condensed combination (about group discipling and family discipling) in the second edition of the shorter version. Another chapter omitted in the original is this one, now published in a standalone article. It is in some ways “deeper” than the material in other chapters of the book, being more theological in nature. Newer disciples may find it more difficult to understand, but along with more mature disciples, all will find it highly stimulating and challenging if read carefully. In re-reading it now, over twenty years after I wrote it originally, it is hard to believe how relevant it is right now compared to its earlier setting. Our churches and our members need it – badly!
God is a God of order and harmony. The various aspects of his revelation to us fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. He does not arbitrarily tell us that something is good for us or that he wants a kind of behavior from us when it does not in fact fit beautifully with other realities. What is good for us always grows out of who God is, who we are, and what it takes to live together in love and harmony. So it is with discipling.
Close relationships in general and discipling relationships in particular fit perfectly with what we know about God and about man. These relationships first of all find their basis in the nature of God himself. The vital need for these relationships is further seen by looking at the nature of man. Then finally we can look at the nature of the church that God dreamed to establish, and we can see how essential these relationships are to that church. If we properly understand God, man and the church, there is nothing surprising about our need for the kind of relationships we are describing.
The Nature of God
What do we know about God that would lead us to anticipate that discipling relationships would be a part of his plan for us? Several of these “theological” foundations come to mind.
First, God himself is all about relationships. Even though we intellectually limited creatures cannot really comprehend the Person of God, we do know that he has revealed himself as a Father, Son and Spirit. This one God is thus wholly relational by definition. Of course, the concept of the trinity is beyond our understanding, but this insight from Lanier will perhaps help to clarify.
“We do not affirm that one God is three Gods; we affirm that there is but one infinite Spirit Being, but within that one Spirit essence there are three personal distinctions, each of which may be, and is, called God; each capable of loving and being loved by the others; each having a distinct, but not separate, part to play in the creation of the universe, and in the creation and salvation of man.”[i]
Since God is somehow “Three within One,” then our capacity for relationships grows out of the very essence of his nature. This fact provides the ground zero basis of theology behind all spiritual relationships. The biblical definition of Deity is the very foundation of relationships. And if our relationships are to be patterned after who he is, do we need comment about the required closeness of spiritual relationships? Yet, where are the relationships within religious groups that can be accurately described as “deep” and “close”¾patterned after the nature of God? It would certainly be challenging to find such relationships in the average church that meets on Main Street, USA!
I don’t doubt that exceptions to this sad rule exist, but when they do, it will be in spite of the nature of the church group involved, not because of it (if my experiences in other churches is any indication). Deep, close relationships cannot be developed in large-group settings, on which most churches totally rely. The more intimate the setting (the fewer people), the more intimate the relationship can become¾but only if the parties involved are committed to such development. Otherwise, our closest friendships will be no closer than a good “golfing buddy” relationship.
Second, God in his very nature has a heart that moves toward relationships. John simply wrote, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The Old Testament abounds with passages which show that the heart of God is full of love. Psalm 32:10 is typical: “Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him.” His love is variously described as faithful, unshakable, unfailing and steadfast. God’s heart is full of divine, agape, unconditional love, and love always has to do with relationships. What is found in God clearly shows us what needs to be found in us.
I may have thought I “fell” in love with my wife Theresa, but I can assure you that we did not build our relationship on some euphoric feelings which caused our hearts to soar and even skip a few beats when we were at close quarters! It took time together, sharing our hearts, doing things as a team and working through all kinds of differences to establish a true agape relationship. Agape is the Greek word used most often for “love” in the NT which means “a commitment to another person at all costs for their good, not our own.” My relationship with Theresa was not simply doing “what comes naturally.” Who could claim that the qualities described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 are “natural” or accidental? “Falling in love” can only refer to the eros type of love, which has to do with physical attraction or perhaps the phileo type, the warm affection of a friendship. In a marriage developing an agape relationship takes intent, a plan, self-denial, sacrifice, time and just plain old hard work.
Did it not take all of those things for God to build that kind of relationship with us? Now he wants us to have this kind of relationship with each other. But what settings most naturally “grow” such closeness? While you will find it difficult to build such close relationships with hundreds, you can do it with the smaller numbers. You cannot learn to love everyone without first learning to love someone. As we are helped to learn how to build one such relationship, we will be able to duplicate it with others as time goes by (just like a baby begins with the parents and branches out to others in the family). With whom in the church do you share this type of relationship? Without the plan and intent, it will not happen, which is the logical reason that discipling relationships are so vital. The more we learn to love, the more we will become like God; and the more we are like him, the more people we can love more deeply.
Third, God’s nature of rewarding certain qualities logically makes discipling relationships the object of his graciousness. Two of the qualities he rewards most are faith and humility. He is less patient with pride and unbelief than with many other sins, and conversely, he takes special delight in those of his creatures who possess faith and humility. But what does this have to do with discipling relationships? A great deal, to be sure.
Faith and Humility
Allowing someone to disciple you requires faith. Our prideful and independent natures say, like some two-year-olds, “I can do it all by myself.” We have confidence that we know best and that we do not need input or guidance. We naturally distrust others who would get too involved in our lives. We fear that if we are not independent and self-preserving that our lives will not end up in a good place. But God says something different. He says we will be much better off getting counsel, advice, guidance and even rebukes from others. To let that happen, you must show more faith in God’s plan than in your own knowledge and intuition.
But do you remember the admonition given to Christian wives in 1 Peter 3:1-6? They were to trust God to work through even their non-Christian husbands to lead them. And the model for their submission was given in the previous chapter where Jesus trusted God to work even though the Herods and Pilates of the world (1 Peter 2:21-23). The idea that God cannot work through a well-intentioned brother or sister who disciples us is a faithless idea indeed. And without faith, we can neither please God (Hebrews 11:6) nor be blessed by him (James 1:6-8).
What about the quality of humility and discipleship? To place ourselves in the hands of an older brother or sister in the family requires a great deal of humility. And the nearer we are to that older sibling in age and maturity level, the greater the challenge. Think of the situations in physical families where the older kids baby-sit the younger. The less the age difference, the greater the challenge. How humble are you in the family of God?
When we first moved to Boston in January of 1988, Theresa and I were asked to disciple Tom and Sheila Jones (long-time editors of Discipleship Publications International). After several months, Tom expressed appreciation for the discipling relationship and made some nice comments about how much I had helped him. His humility humbled me, for we are near the same age (I know I’m a few years older, Tom, but not very many!) with much the same experiences in ministry. In fact, he had been more in touch for a much longer time with many of the principles of discipleship than I had. Yet, in humility he was happy to be discipled by me. A truth dawned on me that day. I expressed it to him in terms similar to this: “Tom, I think I understand why discipleship works so well. It is not because all of the advice and direction given is the very best available; it is because to be discipled by another demands humility, and God blesses humility. It wouldn’t matter in our case whether I discipled you or you discipled me¾what really matters is the level of humility which determines how much God is able to bless.” (Of course Tom provided me with much helpful discipling, and still does!)
On March 16 of that year, after many talks and prayers, I advised Tom to step out of the ministry position he was in because of the physical and emotional effects of having multiple sclerosis. I wasn’t sure what he would be able to do, but I had become convinced of what he could not do any longer. His immediate response was one of humility. He started working in the church office, and after several years, God raised him up to be the editor of a fast-growing and widely influential publishing company. His influence far exceeds what it did in earlier years, and only eternity itself will reveal the extent of that influence. How did all of that happen? Great discipling? I would like to say “yes” since I was in a “one another” relationship with him in those day, but we now know better, don’t we? It was Tom’s humility that caused God to abundantly bless him.
You see, the material in this book is not some dry, dusty theory written by a theologian wearing a clerical collar. It is written by a disciple who disciples others and is himself discipled by others, and who has discovered that the answers in the Bible do work in the laboratory of life. Because God is God, discipleship works, and because his Word is irrevocable, we cannot receive the quantities of the blessings which he longs to shower on us until and unless we practice what he has preached!
The Nature of Man
What about man’s nature makes discipling relationships essential? Of course, the Bible teaches that we are to have them, which makes them essential. But God as our Designer and Creator prescribed in his Word everything which exactly corresponds to our nature and its needs. Why then, did he prescribe discipleship?
Two Potentials to Develop
First, since he is made in God’s image, man has tremendous potential for relationships. Just as Deity is three in one and one in three (in some totally inexplicable way!), man is designed to be bound to others like himself in the closest of bonds. Our nature will always be crying out for incredibly deep relationships with other humans, whether or not we are aware of it. And usually we are not aware of it, are we? At the earliest stages of life, these inherent longings are stifled and redirected (or worse), with the result being that most adults are not remotely aware of their relationship needs or potentials.
Why is it that we feel and say things at times of tragedy (the death of a loved one, for example) that we aren’t normally aware of and certainly don’t express? Where do those amazingly deep feelings come from¾sentimentality gone awry? Absolutely not. The emotions and expressions at such times are quite genuine, but until something breaks through our shells, we just don’t let them surface. In fact, we most likely don’t even know they are there. Especially is this true of unreal men (real men are that very small minority who are real¾vulnerable and honest about who they are!).
As a young man, I knew I needed a wife, but I didn’t have much of a clue about how much I needed real relationships with other guys. Honestly, I am not often in touch emotionally with those needs even now, except when something pierces the protective coating (of fear and selfishness, I think) around my heart. However, intellectually I know what I really need, and I am trying to become more like God in developing deeper relationships. You male readers are going to have to think about this one for a while to really get it, but keep trying—your wife or girlfriend or co-leader or sister friends will be grateful to you if you do get it, to say nothing of how God will feel when you start functioning more like he designed you to function! Without question, discipling relationships with brothers have helped me far more than any other types of relationships to grow in being a deeper, more loving man.
Second, another potential we have as those made in God’s image is our creative ability. We have the capacity and the inner drive to create. We may exercise this drive in careers, hobbies or other avenues, but our inner prompting toward creativity is actually aimed at reproducing ourselves in the lives of other people. Why is it that even in our self-focused society the large majority of us want to have children? Simply because they are so cute and cuddly when they are little? Hardly. The most naïve person has figured out that babies eventually become teenagers. And the thought of raising teens in our dangerous world scares responsible parents and potential parents enough to make them soberly count the cost before embarking on the trail of family development. Why then, do we still have such a deep-seated desire to reproduce? Because we have an inborn drive to create something that will outlast us!
Discipling fulfills this need more than anything else with the exception of parenting. Did not Jesus say to go “make disciples” and then train them to become like him (Matthew 28:19-20)? To pour our lives into others is to expend our creative “juices” in the most rewarding way possible, reproducing our lives in the lives of those who will make a real difference in time and in eternity. What kind of legacy will you leave behind when you die? Most people will leave very little that really matters, and the most successful in the eyes of the world will leave some business with their name on it! What a horrible waste of creativity. Just imagine someone who knows you describing you a week after you die. “Well, he made lots of money, lived in this fine house, drove this expensive car, and founded a multi-million dollar business.” SO WHAT? WHO CARES? What a hollow reason for existing on this planet! Never give up your life for anything that death can take away!
On the other hand, what if you were a disciple making disciples: How would you then be described? “He loved God with all his heart and he taught his family, friends and scores of others to do the same. On the Day of Judgment, only God will be able to show all the influence exerted on many lives by this dear brother.” This disciple understood the basic spiritual value system, but unlike many religious people, he also understood the true purpose of discipleship—reproducing Christ-like qualities and values in others.
What does Scripture have to say about such desire to create or reproduce? Paul wrote: “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…” (Galatians 4:19). “Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15). Many similar passages could be noted, but these are sufficient to make the point. By sharing Christ and by pouring his life into new disciples, Paul was bearing spiritual children. God has stamped on our hearts the need to create, the need to make a difference and leave a legacy. Discipling fits our need: It allows us live a life where our influence outlives us in the most significant way. Without it, our potential for creativity will be squandered on something transitory and valueless.
Two Weaknesses to Offset
Our potential makes discipling vital but so do our human weaknesses. For one thing, we tend toward blindness about ourselves. Without looking in a mirror or appealing to another person’s view, we can’t tell if we have egg on our face or not. This is true both physically and spiritually. God’s word is one type of mirror (James 1:22-25) and close spiritual friends are yet another, functioning as our “eyes” to help us see ourselves as we actually appear. At the risk of sounding a bit blasphemous, the Word alone will not provide us with the complete picture of ourselves. There is nothing wrong with Scripture, mind you. It is just that we read it sometimes through our distorted lenses. We need help seeing ourselves—honestly.
When I moved to Boston many years ago, my view of myself was distorted. But thankfully, for the very first time, I was being discipled by other men. I will never forget a leader’s discipleship group of men at the home of one of my disciplers, Wyndham Shaw. In that group I was given input regarding my critical edge. Of course I knew that I was very outspoken and direct, but I thought that only demonstrated my amazing honesty and ability to see people clearly! I actually told them something like that, but they didn’t buy it. When asked for the evidence behind their evaluation, they had only to repeat some of the statements I had made that night in the group. Those same statements coming out of their mouths sounded sharp, abrasive and unloving. Their loving input cut to the innermost part of my being and hurt terribly. But the pain was like that inflicted by spiritual surgeons performing a life-saving operation, whose scalpel was the sharp sword of the Spirit (Hebrews 4:12).
My picture of myself wasn’t yet quite clear. I had lived with my sinful nature for a long time, and my image of myself was still out of focus. Shortly after the discipleship group described above, I had a discipling time with another person while walking in his neighborhood talking about the ministry and related items. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, he said something that reminded me of my recent spiritual critique. His statement was little more than a passing comment, but now my antennas were up. I was becoming more aware of my weaknesses, so I asked what he meant by the brief comment. He seemed quite willing to elaborate! A few minutes prior, he had asked me about an evangelism seminar I had just attended, and I tried to give him a full description of both its strong and weak points. He explained that he had just received a similar evaluation from another brother who had attended, and although both of us mentioned both the positives and the negatives, he was left with two different impressions of the overall quality of the seminar. From the other brother’s description, he thought that it must have been great, but from mine, that it had been pretty mediocre.
Wow! The scalpel was out again and my self-image was bleeding again. By that night I thought I was about to have a heart attack—weak, dizzy, chest pains. This physical distress gave way to spending three days in bed with the flu. Was I really sick? Well, yes, with the flu, but thankfully not with a heart problem (physically). Why was I hit with the psychosomatic heart problem and the actual illness of influenza? Because of the major emotional hit of seeing myself more clearly than I had ever seen myself. How did I feel at that time? Devastated. How do I feel about it now? Unbelievably grateful for disciples who were willing to be honest with me!
Most people in the world never experience being discipled, and they simply do not change once their adult character is developed. When I visit old friends who are not involved in discipleship (though they may be religious), I know exactly what to expect of them. They remain the same year after year, with the same character sins and personality quirks. On the other hand, I have changed remarkably because of discipling. My blindness has given way to sight, and with the help of others, the man God designed me to be has emerged more and more (and the work on me continues).
After the discipling described above, I came to the rather obvious conclusion that I did not see myself as I really was, and I decided to take the challenging and narrow road of humility. I asked those brothers who had given me the godly critiques (along with many others in my life) to point out quickly and clearly all such ungodly qualities as they saw them appear. They did (and do), gently and lovingly, and my life has soared with eagles as a result. We need to be discipled—badly.
A Spiritual Second Law of Thermodynamics
A second weakness of our nature with which we need help is our strong tendency to turn away from the spiritual to the worldly. Something much like the second law of thermodynamics is evident in our personal lives: Order gives way to disorder; spiritual strength to weakness; resolve to doubt; conviction to sentimentality; righteousness to sin. Surely we don’t need much proof of this one, do we? We can look at David, Solomon, Moses, Peter, or just at ourselves in the mirror. The Hebrew writer quoted these words from Psalm 95: “Their hearts are always going astray” (Hebrews 3:10). In the original context, the Psalmist was describing the faithlessness of those who wandered in the wilderness for forty years. However, note how the Hebrew writer applies it to Christians:
“See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Hebrews 3:12-13).
What was the antidote for this strong tendency toward going astray? Discipleship of the daily variety. Now who in the church is going to encourage you daily, if not someone specifically responsible for doing so? We will have more to say about the whole process of discipling relationships, but I have personally never seen this one passage obeyed by a majority in any church I have ever been a part of before coming to a discipling ministry. And now I am not seeing it much anymore here, to be totally frank!
The Bible frequently describes humans as being like sheep—usually sheep who have gone astray. There’s a good reason for that comparison: Sheep are notoriously dumb. They wander off and do stupid things which endanger their lives. So do we, and therefore we need all of the help we can get! We simply cannot afford to look at passages such as Hebrews 3:12-13 as containing optional commands. Discipleship, as described quite plainly in this passage, cannot be ignored if God is to be pleased and our spiritual lives protected!
The Nature of the Church
If you were to describe the nature of the church, what would you say? How do you think most religious people would describe it? Picture a woman going to the most popular type of church in the area in which I lived at the time (Boston). I chose to describe a woman for two reasons. One, they seem to be more naturally attuned to the spiritual side of life; and two, most traditional types of churches have far more women members than men. This average church attendee arrives only a few minutes before the service is scheduled to begin. As she comes into the sanctuary foyer, she might or might not greet other worshipers. She thinks that it’s nice to be friendly, and should she meet anyone she knows, she would exchange pleasantries for a minute or two.
But now she must hurry into the sanctuary and find her pew. As she awaits the clergymen’s entry, she mediates quietly yet intently. You can almost picture a vertical shaft of light connecting her to heaven. After the fairly brief service, she quietly leaves the sanctuary, goes to her car and drives home. Perhaps she exchanged a greeting or two leaving the building, but she has done what she came to do—spend time focused on God in the midst of her busy life. Therefore, she leaves feeling much better for having come. She has been raised to view church attendance as a spiritual duty, a moral responsibility, and after having fulfilled this spiritual obligation, she returns to her mostly “secular” world. But she feels spiritually cleansed, for she has done what she believes to be right before God.
Now, I’m not trying to be critical here; I’m just trying to describe the religious reality of most of our modern society. Several observations from the illustration are in order. First, religion is seen as a very important part of life, but really only a small part. It is a slim slice of the pie, in terms of time spent, while the other “slices” (job, family, entertainment) may be much larger. Spirituality is a segment of life, but it is an isolated segment. Second, religion is mainly vertical in nature, an experience with the Divine, and other people are an incidental part of it.
Many faithful churchgoers have virtually no relationships in their congregation, and they certainly have no relationships which remotely resemble those we are calling discipling relationships. Third, the atmosphere of a religious assembly is very quiet and “reverent.” I have attended funerals at some of these kinds of churches, and occasionally arrived early enough to stand in the back of the building to observe the last part of the regular church service. I honestly could tell little difference in the atmosphere of the regular service and the funeral service.
Is that what the Bible teaches about the nature of the church? Folks, we are talking different planets or galaxies here. The church described in the New Testament does not remotely resemble what has become the norm for churches in our day. Let’s just consider the three observations mentioned above in light of the Bible’s description of church. First, religion is not simply a part of life—it is life. It is not a slice of one’s weekly pie—it’s the whole pie. Consider just this one passage:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1).
Our lives are everyday sacrifices to God, and that living sacrifice is described as “spiritual worship.” The purpose of attending a church service is not simply a coming together “to worship;” we come to worship together. In other words, we don’t worship only at a church service; we worship every day, for our whole lives are worship, biblically understood. And one key reason our lives can continue to be worship is because of the spiritual relationships we must develop and maintain every day with people in and out of the church.
Second, religion was never intended to be vertical only, or even mostly vertical (man and God). It is quite horizontal at the same time, uniting us with others in the church. Even a casual reading of the account of the beginning of the church will provide proof positive that the church was a family (Acts 2:36-47). If I am a son of God, then other sons and daughters of God are by definition my brothers and sisters. A one sentence greeting in a church foyer doesn’t quite equate with family relationships! Because we are a part of the body of Christ, “each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:5) and “its parts should have equal concern for each other” (1 Corinthians 12:25).
The New Testament is replete with “one another” and “each other” responsibilities (mentioned in these phrases scores of times and in other words scores more). If we are family, we must function as family. In a church setting, where members may be quite scattered geographically, there must be some kind of plan for the organization and function of the group, and because of the preeminence of love in Christ’s group (John 13:34-35), the organization and function reflect a focus on relationships as described in the Bible. The family nature of the church demands discipleship as an integral part of its life. (For those who resist organization and structure in God’s spiritual family, do you also resist in your physical family? If so, your children are going to face a rough future.)
Third, the atmosphere in the church should be like that found in a family. Acts 4:32 gives us an intimate glimpse of the early church: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.” Certainly this sounds like family, and family metaphors used in connection with the church abound in the New Testament. No less than five NT letters talk about disciples greeting each other with a holy kiss or a kiss of love. Church assemblies should be much more like family reunions than funeral services.
Discipling relationships fit with the biblical church like a hand in a glove. Everything about the relationships we are describing enrich the church and help her to be all God planned her to be. Such one another relationships are not contrived by man, nor are they optional. Just as biblical morality finds its basis in the nature of God and the needs of man, so the close spiritual relationships found in discipleship grow out of God’s triune nature and man’s need. Without discipleship, church members become lukewarm, churches stagnate and entire societies die. In America, we are in that downward spiral and picking up speed. The only thing that can turn the tide is a return to biblical discipleship, which alone can produce disciples radical enough to be the leaven, light and salt of God—and to once again be used by him to turn the world upside down in a good sense! (Acts 17:6, King James Version).
[i] The Timeless Trinity by Roy Lanier, page 46.
Revelation 2:1-7
1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
In this first letter to the seven churches in Asia, John penned a very sobering challenge to the church at Ephesus. It is also a very puzzling letter, in that many more commendations are given them than criticisms, and yet the one criticism given is obviously a salvation issue. Forsaking our “first love” marks a very far fall from where we once were with God. Just what does it mean to forsake our first love? I’m convinced that our normal explanation isn’t close to what John had in mind.
Good Deeds Abound!
First, note how many positive things are found in this end-of-the-century church.
- Good deeds
- Hard work
- Perseverance
- Refusal to tolerate wicked people
- Tested leaders and called the false ones out for what they were – false teachers
- Endured hardships
- Have not grown weary
- Hate the practices of the Nicolaitans (as God hates them – we cannot love what God loves without hating what he hates)
Wow – all in all, you have to admire a church like this one, do you not? It is almost shocking that only one negative thing could offset all else on that list of commendations. Whatever constitutes losing one’s first love, it must be a very, very serious matter in the eyes of God. We must therefore give special attention to discovering what it is in the context of this otherwise highly commended church.
An Explanation That Falls Short
The normal explanation given for this serious spiritual malady is often stated in the form of a question like this one. “Do you still feel the love for Jesus that you felt when you came out of the baptistery?” Of course, we can look back to the excitement we felt after being baptized, knowing (and feeling) that all of our sins were now forgiven in the blood of Christ. I am thankful for that realization and euphoric feeling. But do you have that same feeling today, perhaps decades after your acceptance of Christ? If not, have you lost your first love and thus possibly your salvation? That very thought can bring a stone-cold feeling of dread into our hearts, can’t it?
Happy Anniversary!
Perhaps you might be wondering just why this passage is on my mind today. It isn’t because I’m worried about being lost, not at all. It came to mind as our 53rd wedding anniversary approached, and today is that day, taking my thoughts back to January 30, 1965 on a sunny day in Shreveport, Louisiana. Four years prior to that, Theresa and I had started falling in love when we were seniors in high school. I do remember those almost overwhelming euphoric feelings of early infatuation. Whatever chemical reactions in our bodies takes place during that period of time, they were quite strong ones for both of us.
Rather scientific studies have been conducted about this infatuation period – what causes the proven chemical reactions and how long it typically lasts. The one thing shown by such studies is that this period doesn’t last indefinitely. It is a combination of two kinds of love, which can be defined well by Greek words. One is phileo, meaning a friendship type of love – you are attracted to another’s personality and character, and really enjoy being in their presence. The other is eros, the word for physical or sexual attraction. This combination constitutes romantic love, what the world generally calls “falling in love.”
The problem for those not committed to Christ’s will is that when this type of love wanes (and it most certainly will), too many people assume that they have now fallen out of love and many couples start down the road that leads to divorce. God’s plan, of course, is that the romantic love has as its foundation the most vital type of love, that of agape love – a commitment love that keeps the good of the other person as one’s top priority. When this love is the foundation of the relationship, the two aspects of romantic love can be rebuilt time and time again. Our marriage is a living testimony to that fact!
We Are All Married and Some Have Two Mates
So what does this have to do with Revelation 2 and our relationship to Christ? For starters, the church is the bride of Christ, according to Ephesians 5. Comparing our relationship with our physical mate to our relationship with our spiritual Mate can teach us a lot. I think our earliest relationship to Jesus began with something like infatuation. It was indeed a euphoric time and one we would love to have kept every minute of every day for the rest of our lives. But alas, we are not designed in a way that allows that in any relationship, even the one with Christ. Hard times come and testing comes and age comes – all of which causes all relationships to have an ebb and flow in how they affect our feelings at any particular point.
As I sit in a warm room with my dearly loved bride, looking at her cuddled up in a blanket having her time with God, my heart is full and my eyes moist. Happy Anniversary to my extraordinary wife with her beautiful big brown eyes and beautiful big heart that have totally captivated me! We have spent 57 years (counting our boyfriend/girlfriend years) of ups and downs and all-arounds, governed and kept intact by God, who is agape love by definition (1 John 4:8). Do I have that infatuation type of feeling right now? Not really, but rather something far deeper and far more precious – the mixture of all types of love seasoned by nearly six decades of being immersed in it with her. She is far more important to me today than I could have imagined 53 years ago today as I watched that stunningly beautiful bride of mine walk up that church aisle to become Mrs. Ferguson.
Are You Ready For This?
In the midst of my reminiscing and rejoicing today, I still must return to the sobering passage with which I began this article. If forsaking one’s first love is not referring to losing that emotional rush that was present at our baptism, then to what does it refer? The most logical explanation I have seen is this one from “Baker’s New Testament Commentary.” Read it very carefully, please.
When Jesus says that the Ephesians have lost their first love, he does not mean to say that the Ephesians live and work without love for God or their neighbors. He stresses the adjective first. In effect a literal translation reads, “You have left your love, the first [love].” The lush green color of springtime in the congregation has disappeared, and the fading shades that characterize an early autumn are now prevalent. To put it differently, the church that Jesus addressed no longer consisted of first-generation believers but of second- and third-generation Christians. These people lacked the enthusiasm their parents and grandparents had demonstrated. They functioned not as propagators of the faith but as caretakers and custodians. There was an obvious deficiency in evangelistic outreach as a result of a status-quo mode of thought. They loved the Lord but no longer with heart, soul, and mind.
The first generation exerted extraordinary effort so that in Ephesus “the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power” (Acts 19:20). In later years Paul addressed an epistle to them and praised them for their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love for fellow Christians (Eph. 1:15). The children and grandchildren of these people opposed heresy and demonstrated persistence in fulfilling the needs of the church, but they fell short of genuine enthusiasm for the Lord.
Did you get the bottom line conclusion of that quoted material? A deficiency in evangelistic outreach is equated with a failure to love the Lord with heart, soul and mind. Perhaps this helps you understand better why I have written so often about what our movement of churches used to be like and what I believe it is like now. Collectively, we are doing many good things, just as the later Ephesus church did. But one thing I miss seriously is the evangelistic zeal and overall fervor the large majority of our members once had. It is not the same now, and yet Romans 12:11 still reads the same as it did 25 years ago. “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” I think the commentary is spot on correct in defining the loss of first love for Christ. Am I still as zealous to see the Great Commission carried out as I was 25 years ago? Sadly, no. Are you? I doubt it, based on my observation of congregations and growth rates (or lack of same). Honestly, it is challenging to keep this level of zeal all by ourselves – we need others with us to build and maintain the synergistic fervor. I think we all need some serious repentance, don’t you?
I am zealous about my marriage, for sure. I keep investing in it in multiple ways. I am more in love with my wife now than ever and looking for better ways to keep showing it. I want to please her and make her happy. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to believe that being seriously dedicated to carrying out Christ’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), for which he shed his blood, would please him and make him happy? As the byline of an old publication for which I used to write said: “Let’s stop making excuses and start making disciples!” Amen – be it so, Lord!
I wrote this article back in 2007 and included it as an appendix in the second edition of Prepared to Answer. At that particular time, it seemed to be quite in vogue to object to countless issues in our movement of churches, claiming that those things violated one’s conscience. While we should certainly not violate our consciences, I believe appeals to conscience can be both misused and overused. And we must be careful how we make those appeals. At that time in our history, once people objected to something supposedly based upon their own conscience, they essentially shut down any discussion on the matter, and dismissed any further consideration. My goal in writing this was to help us all have a more biblical understanding of what constitutes a valid objection based upon one’s conscience.
I believe this issue to be quite relevant a decade later as we consider current issues among us. I believe that some people do misuse the conscience principle in discussing certain emotionally charged topics (for them anyway) and are far too quick to pull the “conscience card.” I simply want to offer my study of the subject to a broader audience in hopes that biblical interpretation would be enhanced and deepened, helping us to avoid the misapplication of Scripture in the area of the conscience.
Common Misconceptions
The study of conscience biblically is a very interesting study, due partly to how misunderstood the subject actually is by many. For example, it is common to hear the old (mistaken) adage, “The conscience is a safe guide.” It wasn’t a very safe guide for Paul, who said before the Sanhedrin that he had “fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day” (Acts 23:1). That resulted in a slap in the mouth at the command of the high priest, but it had resulted in something far worse prior to this – he had helped kill Christians while believing that it was a service to God (Acts 26:9). He later stated in 1 Corinthians 4:4, “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” The conscience is a safe guide only to the extent it is properly trained by the word of God.
Through the years, I have encountered several misunderstandings of just how the conscience was designed to function by God. I remember studying the Bible with a person who was deeply immersed in the teachings of Watchman Nee, teachings that I would call “neo-gnosticism.” (See my article, “Watchman Nee’s Teaching on Soul and Spirit: a Form of Neo-Gnosticism” on this website.) Essentially, his teaching is based on making a very sharp distinction between soul and spirit, and building an entire system on this distinction, which is very confusing to anyone not familiar with his system and its terminology. But as it relates to the subject of conscience, he says that the conscience is based on the intuition component of the spirit, which ushers in a type of gnosticism by claiming to have something of a direct pipeline to God’s truths through hearing his voice in our inner self. Many religious people believe that God somehow speaks directly to their spirits, in a way that is better felt than told, and their consciences are often quite misled as a result.
Another misunderstanding, or in this case, blatant misuse, occurred with a ministry acquaintance of mine who often played the “conscience card” if his opinions weren’t carrying the day. If his ideas were accepted, he was happy; if they weren’t, he had a “conscience” problem with the directions chosen by the rest of the leadership group of which he was a part. This frequent appeal to conscience was nothing short of manipulation, and it likely isn’t a surprise for you to hear that he didn’t keep his job long.
An Historical (Almost Hysterical) Example
Another misunderstanding and misuse of conscience takes me back to my old days in the Mainline Church of Christ. In that setting, a number of older leaders often mistook an immature or untrained conscience for a sensitive conscience, which supposedly demonstrated a high level of spirituality. As an anecdotal teacher, I can’t help sharing an amusing incident in my life that illustrates this point all too well. Back in the late 1970s, I was preaching for a church deep in the heart of the Bible-Belt. Once I took a week’s vacation to go with my father and young son on a hunting trip, during which time I didn’t shave. Although beards were none too popular for ministers to have in those days, I decided to let mine grow for a while. The negative reactions by church members to my sporting a beard were nothing short of amazing. I suppose the hippie years were in the too recent past for them to see beards and rebellion as anything other than inseparably connected.
I remember one older member asking to meet with me, and he started the meeting with the question of whether anyone had ever told me that I was hard to get to know. I was trying to validate his evident feelings in any way I could, but unsure of just where he was coming from with such a question. About half an hour later, I figured it out. In essence, he said that he thought he knew me and that I was a great guy – but then I grew the beard, which showed that he didn’t know me at all! Wow, that was an enlightening conversation! But it did show how deeply some prejudices ran in that church at that period of history.
After a fairly short time, I shaved off the beard, but determined to address the issue of how I had supposedly “violated the consciences” of many members with my beard. It was obvious to me that the understanding of Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 8–10, along with Romans 14, was woefully lacking. About six months later, I preached a sermon entitled “The Sin of Beards and Bowties.” At the time, large butterfly bowties were still on sale in stores, but quite out of style anyway (except to one news announcer on a local TV channel). The night I preached the sermon, I wore one of the floppy things, and knew that a young ministry student with a beard would be sitting in his normal place in the second row in front of the pulpit. Thus, I had the props all set up for my sermon!
I began the sermon by talking about the importance of example and influence, and the sin of causing brothers to stumble (an oft-repeated claim in situations like mine). The “amens” started pretty early that night. I went on to show the biblical basis for not offending our brothers, by simply reading a number of verses in the chapters mentioned above. If you would like to read them, they are, in the order read, 1 Corinthians 8:1-2, 9, 12-13; 1 Corinthians 10:23-24, 32. Romans 14:13, 15, 19-21; 1 Corinthians 9:3-7, 11-15, 19-22; 1 Corinthians 10:31-33; and finishing with 1 Corinthians 11:1: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”
I ended the readings with this statement, “If my bowtie bothers you, I ought to take it off; if Ralph’s beard bothers you, he ought to cut it off! The chorus of “amens” rose to a new level, as quite a number of people were evidently rejoicing to see that I had finally seen the light! My next statement was that since it had been a very short lesson up to that point (about seven or eight minutes, as I recall), surely there must be other things on the subject to notice and study out in the context of the passages read. From there, I explained the passages used thus far in their context and in a way that caused the blood to drain from the faces of a number of folks in my audience. I stuck the sword of the Spirit in and twisted it! Just why I never was fired or asked to leave a ministry is a mystery!
As I began that confrontational explanation, since the last passage read was 1 Corinthians 11:1, I talked about the example of Christ in his earthly ministry. Certainly Jesus, like Paul, gave up many rights to influence people for good. Matthew 20:28 is a good passage on this point, as it states that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Another good one is Matthew 12:20: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”
However, some things Jesus did seem to point in another, somewhat contradictory, direction. For example, Jesus often healed on the Sabbath Day. Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 were very explicit – work six days and do no work on the Sabbath day. In fact, the Jews cut their teeth on the teaching that they shouldn’t do anything on the Sabbath that they didn’t absolutely have to do. It is not a mystery why some might see Jesus’ work on the Sabbath as at least questionable. Yet Jesus seemed to make a point of healing on the Sabbath. Sometimes Jesus disrupted those gathered in the temple or the synagogues for the purpose of worshiping God to the extent that bedlam ensued.
Don’t you think the people had at least some reasons for their feelings? There were six other days in which Jesus could have healed, but he insisted on Sabbath day healings! Even a more amazing situation was when the apostles picked grain on the Sabbath. Go back and read Exodus 16, which contains some very strong warnings about doing much of anything on the Sabbath. Also read Numbers 15:32-36, where it describes a man being stoned to death at the command of God simply for gathering wood on the Sabbath day! What would you have thought about the disciples gathering grain on the Sabbath day if you had grown up with these passages? They could have prepared food the day before – Israelites had been doing it for hundreds of years. Further, Jesus was criticized for the kinds of people he associated with, including prostitutes. (Likely, a minister in my ’70s setting would have caused some serious buzz through such associations, even if for spiritual purposes!) He was also accused of being a glutton and drunkard – but he didn’t quit eating or drinking. The fact that his behavior and practices drove some up the wall didn’t stop him from doing it. Why did he continue? We will answer that question a bit later in the article.
The Importance of Context
Studying passages in their context is a must, especially when sensitive subjects are involved or when addressing misunderstood texts. Look back at 1 Corinthians 8:4, 7-13, where the context gives a deeper insight to this subject of influence. First, notice in verse 9 that the wrong use of influence could cause someone to stumble. Verse 11 states that it could cause them to be destroyed. (Romans 14:15 uses similar terminology.) We must understand that there is a difference in causing someone to grumble, and in causing them to stumble. Second, 1 Corinthians 8:9-10 shows exactly how someone was caused to sin in this setting. Bottom line, they see your example and end up doing the same thing, but their conscience won’t allow them to do it without seriously damaging them. So, to make the application to beards and bowties, it would mean contextually that my example or Ralph’s example caused someone to wear a bowtie or grow a beard when their conscience wouldn’t allow it without producing guilt!
Third, note that the weak person is the one that is caused to stumble, not the strong person. My experiences growing up often showed the supposedly spiritually mature brothers raising issues about nearly everything, and thus they backed others off of a given choice so that they wouldn’t be caused to “stumble.” Frankly, those men were only grumblers and actually should have been the focus of church discipline, because in the words of Titus 3:10, they were divisive. Fourth, Romans 14 makes the other three points, but gives one additional point. It’s about the attitudes the strong should have toward the weak, and also about the attitudes the weak should have toward the strong. Read verses 1-10 to grasp Paul’s line of reasoning. Note that in verse 1, we are dealing with matters of opinion.
The strong brother should not discount the conscience of the weak brother. The weak brother, on the other hand, should not judge the strong brother who has the stronger conscience and the freedom that goes with it. Either way, Romans 14 gives a clear call for tolerance towards each other. It should be quite obvious that my hearers in the long ago had looked at these passages in a surface way in the past, and had often given some incomplete or even wrong applications of them. To summarize, (1) Paul was talking about causing someone to fall away; (2) the way that they were made to sin was by following your example when their conscience wouldn’t allow it; (3) the weak person is the one caused to stumble, not the strong one; and finally, (4) in matters of opinion, we must develop and exercise tolerance toward one another with different viewpoints.
But how do we harmonize what Paul taught here with the examples of Jesus already noted? Paul is dealing with young Christians, whereas Jesus was dealing with those who were supposedly mature. Paul was arguing for giving the immature time to grow, while Jesus was not willing to placate the ones who claimed to be mature – the keepers and defenders of the law of God! I have found that the young are typically not the ones upset about such things as beards and bowties – they haven’t had time yet to become traditionalized. It is most often the supposedly mature who appeal to conscience being violated.
In my lesson of long ago, I went on to discuss possible objections, which although strongly felt, were emotionally based instead of biblically based. I decided as a result of that study that I would try to imitate both Paul and Jesus. In a nutshell, I wanted to be very careful with those who were newer Christians and thus immature in their faith, but not be manipulated by older Christians who were not willing to change their minds and alter their consciences. Real maturity is willingness to entertain the possibility of being wrong – of having a conscience that needs further training. Digging in one’s heals in the kinds of issues that Paul would call matters of opinion is not a very mature practice. Hardening of the arteries is probably an inevitable part of aging; hardening of the attitudes should never be.
Consciences Can and Should Be Retrained
All in all, I would never advocate someone violating their conscience, even in an opinion area. I believe that is what Paul was warning against in the passages referenced. However, I will always try to help someone retrain their conscience in opinion areas. The reason I make this distinction and feel strongly about it is intensely personal. I was raised in a church of about thirty people, all of whom believed sincerely that taking communion from multiple cups, having more than one tray of bread passed, and dividing the assembly into Sunday School classes were all sinful practices. We were technically called a “one cup, no Sunday School” type of Church of Christ. Once, we debated for six months whether we could change from using grape juice in communion to using wine, in order to have one couple join us on Sundays who were driving to another city to worship with a “wine, one cup, no Sunday School church.” Although I was a preteen at the time, or maybe a young teen, I still remember vividly some of the heated conversations between my parents and other members of that little church. The memories are not good ones, but after a number of decades, sometimes they can seem at least a little humorous. During those conversations, the questions of violating consciences came up often, rest assured.
When I married at the ripe old age of twenty-two, my (then) Baptist wife wanted us to attend church together. We at first agreed to switch off attending each other’s type church, which we did for a few months. When it was time to attend the Church of Christ, I chose one of the more typical ones, with multiple cups and Sunday School, thinking that the little church of my childhood would be so different from what she was used to that it would seem too weird to her. After a few months, I just couldn’t go to the Baptist church anymore, knowing how far off they were on the subject of conversion. In one service with a guest preacher, he had everyone close their eyes, and then asked those who wanted to accept Jesus to simply raise their hands. He kept telling us that one and then others were now being saved as they raised their hands. Although I honestly wasn’t interested much in going to church anyway, I just couldn’t condone what I was observing in that church, and told Theresa that I wasn’t going to go with her anymore.
That could have been the end of it, and I could have used my Sundays for fishing – which was more to my liking anyway! But she said that she would just go with me to the Church of Christ (which was not particularly good news to me). But we started visiting various Mainline Churches of Christ at her insistence. It is a fact that the Baptist church teaching on salvation violated my conscience, based on passages about baptism and forgiveness of sins. And I believe that my conscience was correctly educated on that matter. It was not a matter of opinion.
However, like the folks being addressed in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10, I had conscience issues about other matters that were not as clear biblically – notably the use of multiple cups and Sunday School (which Paul could have called “disputable matters.”) Fortunately for me, I became friends and fishing buddies with a preacher whom God used to change my life and my eternal destiny. I have written about him in the introductions of my books on Surrender and Romans. He introduced me to other scriptures about conscience and patiently helped me think through it all. He basically said that conscience shouldn’t be violated, but it could be re-educated, noting that those addressed in passages like 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 and Romans 14 were younger Christians with weak consciences in areas related to their backgrounds. Those like Paul had stronger consciences, which meant in essence that they had better trained consciences. I’m sure one of the passages my friend used was 1 Corinthians 4:4, which we have already quoted.
While abiding within the boundaries of our conscience is important, the conscience is not always correct in its conclusions, however strongly the conclusions may be felt. With my friend’s help, I was able to retrain my conscience and accept a number of teachings that once violated my conscience. Those same principles he taught me served me well when I first encountered the discipling movement and then later became a part of it. I did not violate my conscience (although at times it got “stretched” a bit!), but I did seek to ask the hard questions and try to deal with them biblically, and then prayed that God would help my conscience change in ways that it really needed to – moving from what would be classified as “weak” to “strong” (or at least “stronger” as the process continued).
Current Trends
In recent settings (then 2007), I am hearing more about conscience than I have heard in a long, long time. Perhaps that is because some (most?) of us violated our consciences in our movement’s past. But we have had far too many pendulum swings in the last several years, and this may well be among them. I would hope that matters of conscience would become more and more confined to biblically clear matters, not simply to what Paul calls disputable matters. People need retraining of their consciences far more than the strengthening of them in opinion areas. In the Mainline church, we used to have an old saying: “In matters of faith, unity; in matters of opinion, liberty; and in all things, love.” The problem I found with some folks was that their definition of faith issues was really broad. They didn’t like to admit that very much of what they believed belonged in the opinion arena. The practical result was most often that they were able to hold others at bay who had different opinions. Otherwise, they reasoned, we would be asking them to violate their consciences.
I am not the judge of anyone’s conscience. As Paul said, God is the one who judges. I am just pleading for consideration of possible weaknesses in how we are viewing conscience and conscience issues. My plea grows largely out of some of my own experiences in trying to work with others, and from my experiences in needing to retrain my own conscience – a painful but highly rewarding experience, for which I am most grateful. Had I not been open to that, I believe my life would have gone in quite different directions than it has, and I’m so thankful that my preacher friend (now deceased) was patient and loving enough to help me get past some things that were at first very difficult to deal with due to my background. And I do believe in looking back that my conscience was simply improperly trained in some areas, and hence according to Paul’s definition, it was weak.
As we mature, I think our opinion areas should become less important to us. Learning to properly identify the differences between opinion and faith areas is pretty essential for unity and harmonious relationships. And as we do that, the strength of our emotions in opinion areas should lessen considerably. One thing that has helped me since I have been in our movement is to realize that when good brothers who know the Bible well have sincere differences, this fact alone makes it highly likely that these differences fall into opinion areas. And in opinion areas, I want to remain tolerant and open to being persuaded to go in other directions than I might opt for personally, in order to work together most effectively. That is a worthy goal, and clearly a biblical one.
A Caution to Leaders
Since leaders are in the forefront of making decisions that affect a lot of people, they are the ones who especially need these lessons, it seems to me. Back when Wyndham Shaw and I co-authored the book Golden Rule Leadership, I wrote the introduction. Near the end of the introduction, I included the following caution:
WARNING!
The greatest danger in reading this book is to assume that you really already understand the principles being discussed and are currently putting them into practice. This is especially true for our most experienced leaders. We do not see ourselves as we are; we do not see ourselves as others see us. Our strong tendency is to think more highly of ourselves as leaders than we ought to think (Romans 12:3).
Guess who got offended by my cautionary remarks? Not young Christians – they were saying “Amen.” But a number of older leaders were definitely offended. What does that say to us? It says to me that as we age in leadership and years of service, we can be guilty of exactly what I penned in the quote above. In our earlier days as a movement, I was often cautioned about how I stated things, lest I offend the leaders. Now I am again being given exactly the same cautions. Something is wrong with that, and I think badly wrong. I can “lay it out” strongly to the average members, but I have to be careful not to offend the older leaders? Wow! Must history repeat itself again? Leaders ought to be able to hear challenges more humbly than anyone.
Certainly Paul argued in 1 Corinthians 8-10 that we must be willing to give up our “rights,” and he used himself as a great example of such. But for whom was he anxious to give up his rights? The weak, immature ones in the fellowship who were struggling with their consciences over past pagan practices, and also for those not yet saved. Hence he was willing to become all things to influence the ones in those categories and to give up all things in order to do so. But he was not willing to compromise or change his approach in teaching to placate the ones who should have been more mature. His question in Galatians 4:16 was “Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?” Rest assured that he was not directing that question to young Christians.
Frankly, one of my bigger concerns for us as a movement is our tendency in the direction of some of the unsavory elements of the churches of which I used to be a part. I suggest that you look up every New Testament passage using the term conscience. The only places that I could find where it was warning against violating the consciences of others were in 1 Corinthians 8–10. Romans 14 contains the same concept without using the word itself. In light of the context of who Paul’s concern was about (immature Christians with weak consciences), and what the issues of controversy were (background pagan practices primarily), we need to be slow to play the “conscience card.”
My best judgment about how to view and use money is not shared by all disciples, and that can bother me. My best judgment about the kinds of movies or TV shows to watch or allow our children to watch is not shared by all, which also bothers me. My best judgment about alcohol consumption (especially where and with whom it is done) is not shared by all of my brothers. So once again I am bothered. But I don’t intend to let those differences of opinion cause me to violate my own conscience by joining in to practices with which I disagree, nor do I intend to become bothered enough to let it affect my love and fellowship with my brothers who have opinions and practices that vary from mine.
What others do in opinion areas is ultimately their choice, and it is not about my conscience. In other areas more related to leadership decisions and directions, I am pretty flexible. If a real biblical issue is involved, we are going to have to hash that one out before proceeding, but if it is a judgment matter, I will for the sake of unity throw in my lot with majority opinion. Those are practical and workable paths to follow in our personal families and in God’s family. Let’s just keep conscience appeals out of places where they don’t belong biblically. Generally, I like the old Restoration adage about faith and opinion, with this one change: “In matters of clear biblical doctrine, unity; in matters of judgment, freedom – but freedom exercised with a strong bent toward practical unity; and in all matters, love.”
“But when the goodness and love for man
appeared from God our Savior,
He saved us –
not by works of righteousness that we had done,
but according to His mercy,
through the washing of regeneration
and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
This Spirit He poured out on us abundantly
through Jesus Christ our Savior,
so that having been justified by His grace,
we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.” – Titus 3:4-7 HCSB
A few months ago, I wrote an article about our ongoing ICOC 3.0 initiative, focusing on spirituality and the next generation. I am aware of some inter-generational dialogue having taken place, but it is thorny, with divergent perspectives clearly in view. I am prayerful.
On another note, in my observation, there are three big topics that may get short thrift in some of our churches, and they are spiritual intangibles, things we can’t see but are powerful motivators: grace, the Holy Spirit, and heaven. If we don’t rely on our human efforts and traditions (I call it spiritual humanism), we can find deep and powerful motivation in our relationship with God – what He has done for us (initially and continually), what He is doing in and through us, and what He will do for and with us.
I trust many of my friends, Gordon Ferguson and Doug Jacoby especially, to write and teach on each of these topics. They are trained and experienced Bible teachers and leaders in other capacities. There are dozens if not hundreds of others who are well qualified to explain the deep truths of each topic. This article is about how much we focus on grace, the Holy Spirit, and heaven, individually and corporately. I studied the Bible with a friend who became a Christian about a year ago who asked me near the end of our studies, “Do you believe in heaven?’ I said, “Yes, of course!”, and then he replied, “We haven’t talked about it and I have not heard a reference from the pulpit the last several months I have been attending.” As I reflected, I realized that heaven is something I (we?) take for granted, and it is simply too wonderful not to talk and dream about.
One reason we may be a bit tentative with these topics is that there is so much false doctrine such as cheap grace, emotionalism associated with the Holy Spirit, and bizarre and/or worldly views of heaven. But maybe another reason is that we rely too much on the flesh, on human effort, and our theology reflects it.
Some of us (me, especially) are performance-oriented and hard-working by character. I have and can do a lot to give, serve, and lead in the church. But my motivation may be perfectionism and/or the approval of others. I want to do things that are good and right but am too often driven by something that is not spiritual. Spiritually intrinsic motivation will please God. I don’t think a steady diet of worldly intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation communicates to God or others how much I love them.
Grace
“You therefore, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” – 2 Timothy 2:1
“But by God’s grace I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not ineffective. However, I worked more than any of them, yet not I, but God’s grace that was with me.” – 1 Corinthians 15:9
Grace makes confession of sin less difficult. Grace motivates compassion and evangelism more than the expectations of my leaders or friends. Grace motivates me to give – in secret. Grace gives me the fuel to be patient, to be humble, and to suffer. To be strong in grace is something intentional. It requires study, prayer, and conversation. It also deserves teaching and preaching – but not with so many qualifiers that we focus too much on our response, getting the cart before the horse. Let’s talk about grace more and find God’s motivation to live as followers of Jesus. God forgave me at baptism and His continual fountain of grace (1 John 1:7) forgives me every day. God’s grace also teaches me to be gracious towards others, providing a safety we all need. What’s not to talk about?!
The Holy Spirit
“’Repent’, Peter said to them, “and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’” – Acts 2:38
“After beginning with the Spirit, are you now going to be made complete by the flesh?” – Galatians 3:3
God has not only forgiven us but he has put His Holy Spirit in us. Let that sink in. I/we tend to focus on the negatives such as don’t quench or grieve the Spirit, or alternatively, putting on the fruits of the Spirit through human effort. Not only did we receive the gift of forgiveness, we received the gift of the Holy Spirit. When we collectively are in step with the Spirit, amazing things can happen. Some have called Acts the Acts of the Apostles. While true, I prefer to call it the Acts of the Holy Spirit.
“As they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work that I have called them to.’ Then, after they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off.” – Acts 13:2-3
When we are spiritual and in step with His Holy Spirit, He can do amazing things through us. We find the power to live as followers of Jesus.
Heaven
“But our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” – Phil 3:20
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are still alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.” – I Thessalonians 4:16-18
I introduced this topic to a group of men and women, and an evangelist confessed that though he speaks regularly on grace and the Holy Spirit, he could not remember the last time he talked about heaven. Maybe we are so concerned with matters of this world that we don’t think, talk, or dream enough about heaven.
“Then I heard a loud voice from the throne:
Look! God’s dwelling is with men,
and He will live with them.
They will be His people,
and God Himself will be with them and be their God.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will exist no longer;
grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer,
because the previous things have passed away.” – Revelation 21:3-4
It’s hard not to cry tears of hope and relief while typing these words. Life is hard. There is so much pain, sorrow, and injustice. And it won’t all be made right until the end.
No more grief, crying, and pain. He will wipe the tears from our eyes. How tender, how moving, how comforting. How motivating. He has one more gift yet to give.
Our longing for heaven gives the hope we need to live as followers of Jesus.
Conclusion
What if we talked less about performance and more about our sin and the grace of God?
What if we decided to no longer trust in the flesh but in God’s Holy Spirit? What if we spent more of our thought lives and conversation focused on being grateful for God’s gift of His Spirit? What if we were inspired more by the Holy Spirit than the latest plan or initiative?
What if we put much less hope in this life and rested completely in our hope of heaven?
Grace, the Holy Spirit, and heaven. Thinking about these and talking about these will keep us humble and give us wonderful things to talk about with each other, our families, friends, and those we will meet. Pretty good topics for evangelism, don’t you think?
Grace, the Holy Spirit, and heaven: three incredible gifts!
I was exposed to the now popular futurist teaching as a young person and accepted it as being true for many years. I did not know an alternative was available, and being biblically ignorant, saw no reason to question what I was taught. However, I did not like the impact it had on the leaders who taught it. They often seemed to be caught up in it to the point that they lost perspective of the average person’s needs for practical help in trying to live a spiritual life in a pagan society. They were more intrigued by trying to figure out dates and events of the end times than about how the world could be evangelized for Christ. My present opinion is that people have become materialistic to the point that they cannot envision anything good apart from this earth, including heaven! Also, the futurist teaching appeals to the emotions because of its “mysterious” elements, and many people are looking for mystical fancy rather than biblical fact.
The modern “end-times” prophets obviously focus much on their interpretation of biblical prophecy in both Old and New Testaments. Some groups, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, have set many dates for the return of Christ, and once these dates had passed, they spiritualized the “return” in some way in order to save face. The apocalyptic style of the Book of Revelation has especially been twisted it into some bizarre doctrines. For example, the JWs interpret the 144,000 of Revelation 7 and 14 as being literally descriptive of an exact number of highly spiritual people who will go to heaven (which, by their own admission, does not include most of the Witnesses!). All of the end-times folks also take the “1000 year reign” mentioned in Revelation 20 as being literal, and assume much about that passage that is not even mentioned there – such as Christ being the one reigning. I will include more on numerology later on in the article.
The idea that Christ will reign on earth as a physical king is a widespread belief that crosses nearly all denominational lines. Not all groups believe exactly the same things about it, but the general outline they all accept. This system of interpretation, usually called “premillennialism,” was once rejected by many religious groups who have now come to accept it. The reasons for the current acceptance of the doctrine are not biblical ones, as we shall show. The doctrine of premillennialism, briefly stated, is the view that Christ will come back to earth at some future point and reign for a literal thousand years. A large segment who hold this view believe that, seven years before this return, the righteous will experience a rapture (catching up) from the earth while those left on earth will experience a great tribulation. The concept of such an earthly reign supposedly finds its foundation in Revelation 20:1-10. But in approaching this or other difficult passages, several fundamental rules of interpretation need to be kept in mind.
- Truth does not contradict itself. If two verses seem to do so, there is either a misunderstanding of one of the verses, or possibly both of them.
- Doctrine cannot be based on difficult passages without due consideration of less difficult passages on the same subject. To establish a theory on symbolic passages forces you to completely ignore literal passages which contradict it, and also forces you to apply figurative interpretation to obviously literal Scriptures.
- One does not have to know exactly what a difficult passage means in order to know what it does not mean. For example, a person could be unsure of the exact interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:29, but at the same time, be absolutely sure that it does not teach proxy baptism for the physically dead. Too many plain passages render that explanation impossible. In a similar way, one could be somewhat uncertain of the precise meaning of some of the symbolism in Revelation, while rejecting the doctrine of premillennialism itself.
When I began to study the Bible in depth on premillennialism, I soon saw the vast inconsistencies in the teaching. I have read many writings on all sides of the issue, and have no doubt that my earlier indoctrination in premillennialism was not correct. Exciting it was, but accurate it was not! This view removes the book from its original setting of Christians being persecuted and killed in the early centuries of the church. What comfort would a “twenty-first century newspaper” type of prophecy bring to people being killed for their faith? Such an approach is filled with distortions of Scripture and fanciful interpretations cooked with a “dash” of Ezekiel, a “shake” of Daniel, “scoops” of Revelation and “pinches” from other New Testament books. In spite of its popularity, the view has little to commend it from a biblical perspective and many reasons to reject it.
Important Principles in Interpreting Revelation
To begin, God would not include a book in his word that could not be understood. To do so would be contrary to the very purpose of Scripture (Ephesians 3:2–5). Revelation, properly viewed, is an incredible book of impact. Because of its style and content, it is often called the “grand finale” of the Bible. Revelation’s literary structure, beautiful imagery, majestic visions, mysterious symbols and dramatic presentation of eternal truths make this book distinctive from all other books of the Bible.
“Revelation” is the English translation of the Greek word apokalupsis, meaning “to reveal or uncover that which has been hidden.” Revelation is classified as “apocalyptic” literature by scholars. Such literature was popular for about 200 years before Christ and for about 100 years after him. It has the following characteristics:
- It addresses those undergoing some form of persecution.
- It addresses the reader in the nuances and style of the language and time period in which it is written.
- It is dramatic and highly symbolic (expressed in visions and symbols).
- It is sometimes predictive, although the basic message is focused
The book of Revelation is similar to parts of Old Testament prophetic books such as Ezekiel and Daniel. In fact, much of Revelation cannot be understood without a basic knowledge of the Old Testament and its phraseology. But this relationship should not cause us to think that Revelation is the fulfillment of OT prophecy. Rather, it uses a similar style to describe the ultimate downfall of heathen nations and the exaltation of God’s kingdom. Similar symbols may be used in the OT books, but they are describing very different events – events separated by hundreds of years.
Apocalyptic language is used to create a dramatic effect. It appeals to the imagination more than the intellect. In times of persecution, those who are suffering need inspiration from hearing about God’s conclusive triumph over evil far more than academic pronouncements of doctrine. With this in mind, understanding symbolic language is much like understanding parables – get the main points and avoid over-analyzing the details. If more commentary writers and theologians followed this approach, sensationalistic interpretations would be greatly reduced, thus limiting the abounding confusion about Revelation.
No book in the Bible has resulted in more contradictory interpretations than the book of Revelation. It is likely that more false ideologies have arisen from a misunderstanding of this book than from any other portion of the Scriptures. In studying such a book, we would be better off to first consider what it does not teach rather than what it does teach! One rule must be remembered when studying any book in the Bible, namely that an easily understood passage must not be explained by a difficult or symbolic passage. We must let the “easy” passage interpret the “difficult” one. Therefore, Revelation should be studied in close harmony with the rest of the Scriptures.
The Use of Numbers in Revelation
I will use a section of my book, Prepared To Answer, that addressed the prophetic teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to clarify how numbers are to be viewed as symbolic and not literal. Most of the images in Revelation are also to be viewed as symbolic, since that is the very nature of the book. The explanation of numerology regarding the teachings of the JW’s will then help us understand Revelation 20 better.
To the Jewish mind, numerology was very important. Many numbers had well-defined meanings, and they conveyed spiritual lessons. For example, the number “1” carried the idea of unity. Think of the series of “ones” in Ephesians 4:4-6. The number “2” carried the idea of strengthening. Jesus sent out his early preachers two by two. Revelation 11:3 mentions God’s two witnesses. Then, the number “3” was the divine number (Father, Son and Spirit). Next, “4” was the cosmic or world number. In Revelation 7:1, you find four angels, four corners of the earth and the four winds of heaven.
Combine the divine number and the world number and you get “7,” the number of perfection. Thus, in Revelation 4:5, the seven spirits most likely refer to the Holy Spirit in his perfection. The number “6” was an evil, sinister number because it fell short of the perfect number. In America, many of our hotels do not designate a 13th floor. In that Jewish setting, they would not have had a designated sixth floor. The “666” of Revelation 13:18 carries with it the idea of evil and failure. The next significant number was “10,” which signified completeness (all fingers or all toes). You find this number often in the Revelation. A multiple of that number would be 1,000, denoting ultimate completeness. The 1,000 years in Revelation 20 show this kind of completeness, as a look at the references mentioned earlier will demonstrate.
The number of organized religion was “12,” calling to mind the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. In Revelation 7, the twelve tribes are connected to John’s mention of the 144,000. If you take the organized religion number, multiply it by itself, and then multiply it by 1,000, the number of ultimate completeness, you come up with 144,000. Therefore, if you understood the way that numbers were used symbolically, you would expect this number to signify the ultimate number of a religious group. And we will see that this is precisely what is being done in Revelation 7. Finally, the other key number in Revelation is “3 1/2,” found as three-and-a-half years, forty-two months, 1,260 days, and from Daniel, a time, times and a half a time. This number, in whatever form, symbolized the period of persecution itself, an unstable time, but one with an end to it.
What about the 144,000?
With this explanation in mind, let’s look at the passages in Revelation 7:4-8 and 14:1-5. A careful consideration of how they are misapplied by the JW’s will help us see the fallacy of trying to make numbers (or other symbols) literal.
[4] Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.
[5] From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben 12,000, from the tribe of Gad 12,000,
[6] from the tribe of Asher 12,000, from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000, from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000,
[7] from the tribe of Simeon 12,000, from the tribe of Levi12,000, from the tribe of Issachar 12,000,
[8] from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000, from the tribe of Joseph 12,000, from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000 (Revelation 7:4-8).
[1] Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. [2] And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. [3] And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. [4] These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among men and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb. [5] No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless (Revelation 14:1-5).
In chapter 7, the 144,000 are used to represent the church during the time of persecution. Earlier in this chapter, all of them were “sealed,” showing God’s protection of them. See Ezekiel 9:4 for this usage. Since the persecutors were often Jews, or were aided by Jews, it should be obvious that the twelve tribes were not literally the twelve tribes of the Jews. The ones being sealed, or being guaranteed God’s protection, were the Christians, those who were now a part of the new Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). When you look closely at the listing of these tribes, it becomes even more obvious that the list has been “spiritualized.” For example, the fourth tribe (Judah) is mentioned first, because that was the tribe out of which Jesus came (Genesis 49:10).
Also, we find Levi in the list, although that tribe was not normally listed, because they did not inherit a land area in the OT. But, since all Christians are priests (1 Peter 2:5, 9), Levi here is to be identified with spiritual Israel, the church. Furthermore, Dan and Ephraim were excluded from the list, because Dan and Bethel (in Ephraim) were centers of calf worship under King Jeroboam. Therefore, they were excluded here. Finally, Joseph’s name is added, even though, in the OT, his sons were the tribes listed and not Joseph himself. But to the Bible reader, this name has only good connotations.
After the 144,000 are thus described in chapter 7, the next section (verses 9-17) goes on to talk about a great multitude that no one could count. This great multitude was composed of those who “have come out of the great tribulation” and are now before the throne of God (verses 14-15). Therefore, the 144,000 showed the church on earth during the persecution, and the symbolism taught that God knew every one of them and would protect them spiritually, even if they had to die physically. Therefore, the great multitude did not need to be counted, because they had passed from time to eternity. The lesson of the chapter was that God would be with them and ultimately get them to heaven.
In Revelation 14, we simply find a description of Christians, the 144,000 (all of the redeemed). They were not defiled with women (literally, virgins), showing spiritual purity (2 Corinthians 11:2) as opposed to spiritual adultery through idol worship (Jeremiah 3:6; James 4:4). They followed the Lamb by keeping his words (John 10:4-5). They were purchased by the blood of Christ (Acts 20:28). As such, they were the first-fruits to God. Just as the first of all physical harvests was to be set apart for God (Deuteronomy 26:1-11), Christians are likewise set apart for the service of God (James 1:18). No lie was found in their mouths, but lying was one of the chief characteristics of pagan Rome and emperor worshippers (see Revelation 21:8).
Now, once we understand biblically who the 144,000 actually are, what should we say about the Jehovah’s Witnesses interpretation? Simply this: if they insist on making the 144,000 a literal number, then you insist on making their description literal. When you do that, the 144,000 would have to all be Jewish (from the twelve tribes), and they would have to be male virgins (had not defiled themselves with women). No Witness would agree to those things, but if the passage is to be taken literally, these points would have to be accepted, because the wording itself is quite clear.
What About Revelation 20?
The actual examination of Revelation 20 reveals some important facts: first, the text does not mention a number of things that people assume are taught there. The second coming of Christ is not mentioned. Christ is not mentioned as being on earth. No mention is made of anyone reigning on earth. A bodily resurrection is not mentioned; and finally, no one living in modern times is mentioned in connection with this 1,000 year reign. The persecuted of the early church are the ones who sit on thrones and reign with Christ. How can a passage which mentions none of these things be said to teach all of them?
Second, this passage is full of figurative symbolic language. If we insist on making the 1,000 years literal, why are not the key to the abyss, the great chain, the beast, etc. also literal? Actually, the Book of Revelation employs apocalyptic language, as it portrays (by means of symbols) the victory of God’s persecuted people over the Roman Empire. This type of writing was well understood in its day, although it may well be unfamiliar and strange to people today. The book dramatizes the victory of good over evil to bring hope to the persecuted saints of the first century. If the book really taught what many people advocate, it would have been of scarce comfort to those in the early church who were dying for their faith!
Now to a brief explanation of the passage: the binding of Satan (verse 2) was to stop him from deceiving the nations (verse 3). The text does not suggest that he would be tied in such a way as to be totally inactive (1 Peter 5:8). The nations as a whole had been deceived into emperor worship (see chapter 13:11-18), but the binding of Satan would limit this blasphemy for a thousand years (symbolic of a long period – see Deuteronomy 7:9; Job 9:3; Psalm 50:10, 90:4).
In verses 4-6, the persecuted Christians in the early church are promised a victory. Their cause looked as if it had been defeated, but here God assures them that Christianity would be vindicated. Their cause would be raised from the dust of defeat into a resurrection of victory. The souls under the altar (6:9) are now elevated to thrones as their cry has been heard and answered. See Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Isaiah 26:13-19 for the idea of a resurrection of a cause in victory. Revelation 20:5 calls this the “first resurrection” to avoid confusion with the general bodily resurrection at the end of time (1 Corinthians 15).
“The rest of the dead” in the first part of verse 5 (which is a parenthetical statement) are the non-Christians, the persecutors. Their cause lies in defeat for a long time-period (1,000 years symbolizes this period), but it will briefly arise at some future date (verses 7-10). Fortunately, this renewed deception of the nations is short lived, as Christ brings his judgment upon the wicked (verses 9-15).
Although this explanation seems logical to me, I claim no infallibility in my interpretation. The passage is a difficult one, and dogmatism is not urged in such cases. However, in spite of how Revelation 20 is to be explained in its various details, it assuredly does not teach the doctrine of premillennialism.
The Reign of Christ
The premillennialists claim that Jesus will not begin his reign until the time of his return (second coming). He will then reign on a literal throne in a literal Jerusalem for a literal one thousand years. When this concept is examined in light of Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah and its New Testament fulfillment, the idea is shown to be false. Zechariah 6:12-13 is one of the key passages disproving the validity of premillennialism. For clarity, we will quote from the more literal New American Standard Bible (NASB):
Then say to him, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Behold, a man whose name is Branch, for He will branch out from where He is; and He will build the temple of the LORD.
Yes, it is He who will build the temple of the LORD, and He who will bear the honor and sit and rule on His throne. Thus, He will be a priest on His throne, and the counsel of peace will be between the two offices.’”
The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus built his church, and that his church is God’s temple (Matthew 16:18; 1 Corinthians 3:11, 16; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:19-22). Now look back at the Zechariah passage in light of the church being the temple of God.
Christ would sit on his throne (Zechariah 6:13), and Acts 2:1, 32-35 says that he began occupying that throne on the Day of Pentecost when the church was established. He was to be a priest on his throne (Zechariah 6:13), and he is a priest now (Hebrews 4:14). This Branch was to rule on his throne while sitting (Zechariah 6:13), and he began sitting on this throne nearly two thousand years ago (Acts 2:32-35). Therefore, he is ruling on his throne now. Since he was said to be a priest on his throne, and he is a priest in heaven (Hebrews 4:14), his throne must be in heaven. In fact, he cannot be priest on earth, for Hebrews 8:4 says, “If he were on earth, he would not be a priest.” Therefore, his throne cannot be on earth.
Psalm 110:1, 4 also speaks of Christ ruling as a priest. In this case, his rule will last until his enemies are conquered. In 1 Corinthians 15:25-26 the Bible says, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Therefore, Jesus is reigning now and will continue to do so until the resurrection of the dead, at which point he will cease to reign over the Messianic kingdom as heaven begins. This truth is exactly opposite to what the premillennial doctrine teaches. They say he will begin reigning at his return, and Paul says he will cease! It should be mentioned that as a part of Deity, he reigns over heaven and all of its subjects, which includes all of the redeemed from all ages.
It should be obvious that Jesus is reigning in his spiritual kingdom now. In his earthly ministry he claimed that the kingdom was near, with a fulfillment of prophecy in mind (Daniel 2:44; Mark 1:15; Hebrews 12:28). This kingdom would come in the lifetime of some of the apostles and it would come with power (Mark 9:1). Power came when the Spirit came at Pentecost (Acts 1:8; 2:1-4). Therefore, the kingdom of the prophesied New Covenant was established on the day of Pentecost (although it was present in its preparatory phase when the King himself was present during his earthly ministry). After this time, the kingdom is spoken of as a present reality (Colossians 1:13; 4:11; Revelation 1:6). Furthermore, the kingdom is inseparably connected with the church in Matthew 16:18-19. Any future view of the kingdom is of necessity referring to the heavenly state after the church has been delivered up to the Father by Christ (1 Corinthians 15:24).
The Place of the Nation of Israel
The common “end time” prophets typically place a good deal of emphasis on the role of the present nation of Israel. However, such an emphasis can easily be shown to be mistaken. One of the first questions needing an answer is this: Will there be a restoration of Israel in fulfillment of Biblical prophecy? The answer is negative, for several reasons.
- Christ is already on David’s throne (Acts 2:30-33).
- The tent of David has been rebuilt (Acts 15:14-17). The saving of the Gentiles is in fulfillment of Amos 9:11-12, according to James, the Lord’s brother. The argument in Acts 15 is clearly that the tent was to be rebuilt before the Gentiles were to “seek the Lord.” Therefore, either the tent here is spiritual in nature (the church), or Gentiles are yet in their sins and the Great Commission is nullified!
- God’s promises to Israel concerning the land inheritance have all been fulfilled (Joshua 23:14). Notice that the boundaries God specified to Abraham in Genesis 15:18 were reached by the time 1 Kings 4:21 and 2 Chronicles 9:26 were written.
- God said, through Jeremiah, that Israel could not be made whole again (Jeremiah 19:11).
- Jesus promised that the kingdom would be taken away from the Jews (Matthew 21:33-43).
- The last state of the Jews would be worse than the first (Matthew 12:43-45).
- God’s special people are spiritual Jews (Christians) and not physical ones (Romans 2:28-29; 9:6; Galatians 3:26-29; Philippians 3:3). Philippians 3:2-3 could not state the point any more directly nor bluntly, as Paul contrasts the physical and spiritual “Jews”: “Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.”
But What About Romans 11:25-26?
Does it not clearly state, “And so all Israel will be saved?” The larger context of the passage begins back in Romans 11:11. After establishing the fact that most physical Jews had always rejected God, Paul moves on to show how God intended to use even their wrong choices (Romans 11:11-24). Israel’s wrong choices and subsequent rejection has ended up being a blessing to the Gentiles. They had Jesus crucified, making salvation available. They drove Christians out of Jerusalem, which resulted in the Gentiles being able to hear the gospel. They rejected the message in each city to which the early missionaries preached, after which they preached to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46). However, if the Jew’s rejection of the gospel ended up blessing the world, then how much more their acceptance would do for the world (Romans 11:15)!
Next, Paul expresses hope that the Gentile inclusion in God’s kingdom will provoke the Jews to envy, causing them to reconsider the message of Christ (Romans 11:13-14). This section concludes with a warning to the Gentiles not to be prideful and self-righteous. They had not been a part of the olive root (Judaism) in the first place; they had been merely grafted in by the grace of God. The Jews had been cut off because of their faithless rejection of Christ, but they can be grafted back in again if they turn to Jesus in faith. The means of how they might be motivated to respond in this way is discussed in the remainder of the chapter (Romans 11:25-36).
Israel’s hardening is stated to be only “in part” until the “full number” of Gentiles has come in (Romans 11:25). Since it is partial, it has the possibility of being reversed. The key to a reversal is the coming in of the “full number of Gentiles.” Paul likely was referring to the completion of his own ministry as the apostle to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:7), resulting in more and more Gentiles in the church all over the world. In Romans 15:24, we find that his missionary plans were far from completion, for he planned to go all the way to Spain. Once this larger Gentile inclusion had occurred, all Israel could be saved in the sense being discussed in this context.
The word “so” in Romans 11:26 is from the Greek houtos, an adverb of manner, meaning “in this way.” “In this way” refers back to the envy-provoking process mentioned in Romans 11:13-14. (Paul refers to the same idea again in Romans 11:31). Therefore, when the Jews saw the growing number of Gentiles in the church of Jesus Christ, and the blessings from God that they were enjoying, those with good hearts would be envious enough to humble out and reconsider. In this way, they would be saved. The “all Israel” refers to those whose hearts would allow them to become humble and reconsider. It could not refer to every last Israelite coming to Christ at some future point – for a number of reasons.
For one thing, the “narrow road” will never be chosen by a majority from any nation, race, or population group (Matthew 7:13-14). This was true of the Jews even during their heyday, as the early part of Romans 11 establishes forcefully. Two, Paul had already expressed his hope that some would turn to Christ by being provoked to envy (Romans 11:14). Three, even if some future generation of Jews in the majority were to accept Christ, what comfort would that be to the scores of generations that had already died lost? Centuries have passed in which millions of Jews have rejected Christ and been lost as a result.
The key idea of “all Israel” being saved is that of hopeful potential, much like Jesus expressed: “I…will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32, emphasis added) and “By this all men will know that you are my disciples” (John 13:35, emphasis added). Note that the quote in Romans 11:26-27 refers to salvation in Christ, which became available at the cross and will continue to be available to anyone who will accept the gospel in faith. The only plan of salvation that God has and will have to the end of time is this plan, which must be accepted individually! (See Acts 4:8-12.) He still loves the rejecting Jews and desires to save them, for his promises made to the patriarchs still stand. But his salvation can be based on nothing less than the blood of Christ accepted by bowing our hearts and knees to his lordship.
The Second Coming of Christ
Our next consideration involves the second coming of Christ. When he comes, there will be only one bodily resurrection of the dead as good and bad are raised simultaneously to be judged (John 5:28-29). All nations will be gathered for this great day (Matthew 25:31-34). Note that this is a judgment of every person within all nations, not a judgment of entire nations as nations, as some premillennialists claim. (Compare the wording of 25:32 with Matthew 28:19 in this regard.)
As stated in the first chapter of this book, there simply cannot be two separate bodily resurrections. If the righteous are raised on the “last day” (John 6:40), and the unrighteous are judged on the “last day” (John 12:48), both must occur at the time. We must allow the last day to really be the last day! When the last trumpet sounds, the dead are raised and the living are changed – in the twinkling of an eye, no less (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). If the wicked are raised a thousand years later, they will not be awakened by the last trumpet, for it will have already sounded! When it does sound, the physical universe will be destroyed (2 Peter 3:10-12; Revelation 21:1). Note that the OT passages that speak of the earth remaining “forever” mean only that it is “age-lasting.” Ordinances such as circumcision and the Levitical priesthood with its sacrifices are also called “everlasting,” but they are simply age-lasting (which in that case was the Mosaic Age.) See in chapter 13 of my book, Prepared To Answer, the related discussion under the heading, “The Sabbath, a Perpetual Covenant?”
Even the “proof text” for the premillennialist view of the rapture falls far short of actually teaching it:
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, emphasis added)
What about the passage would make anyone look for a rapture of the righteous to heaven for seven years, followed by a return to earth for a thousand years? The explanation seems simple enough – we will go to be with the Lord forever, rather than him coming to be with us on the earth. The futurists want him to come and be with them on our little planet, but Jesus wants his children to be with him in his amazing heaven.
Does It Really Matter How We View the End-Times?
A final consideration might be a look at the real dangers of the premillennial view. Surely no one would argue that salvation is based on a perfect understanding of biblical prophecy! However, accepting the premillennial theories has some serious implications.
- Premillennial theory denies that Christ is reigning now, and therefore denies God’s eternal purpose in Christ (Ephesians 3:10-11).
- It contradicts every passage that speaks of this present period as the last days (Acts 2:15-17; 1 Corinthians 10:11; Hebrews 1:1-2; 1 Peter 1:20).
- It makes Jesus false to his promises when he said that the kingdom was near (Mark 1:15).
- It alternates between Judaism and Christianity by reviving the OT sacrificial system during the thousand-year reign. However, that old covenant Jesus nailed to the cross (Colossians 2:14; Ephesians 2:15).
- It demotes Christ from the throne of his majesty to the earth, his footstool (Psalm 110:1).
- It denies that Amos 9:11–12 is fulfilled and thus denies salvation to the Gentiles (Acts 15:14-17).
- It is the same mistake that the first century Jews made by expecting an earthly kingdom that was political in nature.
Paul said in Philippians 1:23 that he wanted to go be with the Lord, but the premillennialists in essence say, “Lord, you come be with us; we like it here.” Jesus makes it plain in John 14:1-3 that eternal rewards have absolutely nothing to do with this earth:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”`
The title reflects a question that people often have, both those who are studying and contemplating being baptized and those who have already been baptized and now are studying with others. Biblical concepts give us direction, along with common sense based on the principles of the Bible. Sometimes these two can seem at odds even though they are not. At other times, the two are at odds because the principles involved in each are not understood well enough to produce their correct application. Let’s begin with the biblical principles, then move to the practical principles that may be involved and hopefully end up with an approach that strikes a balance.
Bible Examples
Of course it should almost go without saying that we are looking only at examples in the New Testament and in Acts particularly. Baptism as a faith response to Christ is found primarily after his death and resurrection, since baptism is a picture of these things. Romans 6:1-4 gives us a clear explanation of how we by faith accept his death in our behalf through our own death, burial and resurrection in baptism. This means that John’s baptism prior to this time was a restoration baptism for the Jews, who had either wandered from what they knew was right or had wandered in another way ─ through misunderstanding what was right. (See my article on this website entitled, “Was Apollos Re-baptized?” for further explanation of John’s baptism.) With that in mind, let’s focus on the examples of baptism in the Book of Acts, that wonderful history of the establishment and spread of the early church.
Acts 2
In Acts 2, the church was begun with the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, who then by inspiration spoke to the huge audience of Jews who had gathered for the Day of Pentecost. The day began with the apostles as a group speaking in many languages to those gathered from many nations and ended with Peter being the main spokesman. He preached about the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, concluding that God the Father had declared Jesus to be both Lord and Messiah (verse 36). After those with stricken consciences asked what to do, realizing how their sin had led to the death of Christ, Peter told them. He gave two commands and two promises based on their acceptance of the commands. Repent and be baptized in order to receive forgiveness and the indwelling Holy Spirit (verse 38). Verse 41 informs us that 3,000 obeyed the commands and were baptized ─ on the same day in which they were initially taught.
Acts 3-6
Baptism is not mentioned as directly in these three chapters as in Acts 2, and the indirect references to baptism do not indicate the amount of time prior to baptism for anyone. Acts 3:19 reads thusly: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” Turning to God would evidently correspond to baptism in Acts 2:38 and the times of refreshing would parallel the reception of the indwelling Spirit. Several passages just mention that additional people became believers, without detailing the process. Acts 4:4, 5:14, 6:1, 7 are examples of such passages. When we reach Acts 16 and the conversion of the jailor in Philippi, we will see that coming to believe included baptism. This understanding will help us to avoid the false conclusion that variations of how to become a Christian existed in Acts (i.e. – people becoming Christians without repentance and baptism).
Acts 8
Verse 12 informs us that many in Samaria were baptized, and verse 13 mentions the magician Simon believing and being baptized. In neither case are we given a time frame between hearing the gospel and obeying it in baptism. However, beginning in verse 26, we find the conversion account of the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip taught him about Jesus, using the very passage he had been reading from Isaiah 53 as a starting point. The text simply says that Philip told him the good news about Jesus, but in doing so must have taught him about how to respond to Jesus. The eunuch saw water as they were traveling in his chariot, asked to be baptized and Philip went down into the water and accommodated his request. Hence, much like those in Acts 2, he was baptized as soon as he was taught (on the same day).
Acts 9
The first part of the chapter records Paul’s conversion, with verse 18 mentioning his baptism. Evidently he was baptized very soon after he was taught by Ananias. His conversion account is also found in Acts 22 and Acts 26, with Acts 22 being the most specific. “And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name” (verse 16). Thus we have another account of someone being baptized as soon as they were taught, obviously on the same day. Certainly God had already worked in his life providentially prior to his conversion, but his baptism followed his being taught very quickly.
In verses 31, the church is said to have increased in numbers and verse 42 simply says that many people believed in the Lord. Such summary passages leave out the details of just how the people became disciples and they also omit any time factor between being taught and responding in baptism. We obviously have to conclude that these details would parallel what occurred in the other passages that provide the details. Something as important as salvation is not going to be non-specific. All of the passages that do mention baptism definitely form a discernable pattern.
Acts 10
This chapter describes the conversion of Cornelius and his family, the first Gentile converts. The last two verses of the chapter mention their baptisms. In the preceding verses, we are told that the Holy Spirit came on them prior to their baptism, an unusual occurrence not found anywhere else in the NT. This was a miraculous work of the Spirit, not to convince the Gentiles to become disciples but to convince the Jews present (including Peter) to allow them to become disciples. Hence, they were evidently baptized right after the miracle convinced Peter that God was opening the doors of the Kingdom to Gentiles. For further help with this passage, see my article on this website entitled “Baptism With the Holy Spirit.”
Acts 11-15
In these chapters, the conversions are mentioned in broader, more general terms. In 11:21, we are informed that a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. Acts 11:24 describes the effects of Barnabas arriving to teach in Antioch, stating again that a great number of people were brought to the Lord. Acts 12:24 states church growth in even more general terms, just stating that the word of God continued to spread and flourish. Acts 13:12 says that the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, believed ─ again a general summary without the specifics being included in the account. Acts 13 continues in the same vein with Paul preaching in Pisidian Antioch, as verse 43 shows Paul encouraging the Jews and Jewish proselytes to continue in the grace of God, implying that they had already been saved. Then in verse 48, the Gentiles honored the word of God by believing.
Acts 14:1 says that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed. Then in Derbe, verse 21 says that Paul and Barnabas preached and won a large number of disciples. In Acts 15:3, we find Paul traveling from Syrian Antioch to Jerusalem and reporting on the way about the conversion of Gentiles. Interestingly, these conversion accounts use different terminology describing the salvation of both Jews and Gentiles, but the variations are all found in summary type reporting when specifics not included. When we reach chapter 16, the specifics will again be found and found in a way that is extremely informative.
Acts 16
This chapter begins with a general report of church growth in verse 5, “So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.” Verse 15 says that Lydia and the members of her household were baptized. The text doesn’t say that they were baptized immediately upon hearing the message, but it strongly implies such. The next conversion account is one of the most helpful in the Book of Acts, showing the specifics involved and ending up with a summary that enables us to fully grasp what the other generally stated accounts no doubt included.
The jailer’s question in verse 30, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” has generated much discussion. What was he asking? Simply to be saved physically, as some allege? Paul and Silas had been preaching in the city for a number of days by this time, and the jailer may have even heard them or at least heard about them. Further, he was surely aware of what charges had been lodged against his prisoners, and he may have heard them singing and praying earlier. The point is that he knew enough already to be asking about spiritual salvation, even if it was a hazy concept for him.
The answer given by Paul and Silas was as basic as the man’s question: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household” (Acts 16:31). The answer was the introduction of Paul’s message to a pagan man who needed to start at square one. That statement is Paul’s topic sentence, but its meaning must be spelled out before there can be a response. Since faith is predicated on hearing and responding to the Word (Romans 10:17), the jailer and his family had to first hear message. Therefore, Acts 16:32 informs us that the next order of business was to preach that message.
After they did hear the message of who Jesus was and what a response to him would involve, they were urgent about baptism. With the dust not yet settled from an earthquake, they were baptized “the same hour of the night.” A remarkable statement! What more could one need to understand that baptism into Christ is at the very center of the conversion process? Delay cannot be tolerated when it comes to baptism, once a person understands what they need to do and are fully ready to do it. Churches that wait until a “baptismal service” once or twice a year to baptize certainly do not connect it with the forgiveness of sins and initial salvation.
The jailer heard the message, believed it, repented (shown by washing the wounds of the preachers, among other things) and was baptized—all after midnight. When were he and his family saved? They were saved when they, in faith, accepted and responded appropriately to the message. Verse 34 provides us with a wonderful summary as it describes the entire faith process in these words: “The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole family.”
The “believe” in verse 31 is defined in verses 32–34, and it quite obviously includes baptism rather than excludes it! Additionally, we see once again that those becoming saved in Acts did so through baptism and did so immediately upon knowing what to do to be saved and being ready to do it ─ understanding the implications of what they were doing (giving their lives to Jesus as Christ and Lord). The conversion process for Gentiles in this chapter was precisely the same as in Acts 2 for the Jews. Again, something as important as conversion was destined to form a distinct pattern, a pattern for those in the first century and the twenty-first century. For more details regarding this, I suggest reading the article on this website entitled, “Are We Saved By Faith Alone?” In it, I examine six different ways that the term faith is used in the NT, using this same passage to demonstrate the comprehensive use of the term.
Acts 17-28
These chapters mainly describe conversions in general terms by way of summaries, although Acts 18:8 uses both the general and the specific: “Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.” If we are to understand the conversion process as it is described in Acts (or in any other NT passage), we must grasp that the specific descriptions clarify what is included in the general descriptions. Acts 17:4 describes those converted in Athens as being “persuaded” and “joining” Paul and Silas. Acts 17:11-12 describes those in Berea as “receiving the message with great eagerness,” resulting in them becoming believers. Acts 17:34 shows some people becoming “followers of Paul” and believing.
Acts 18:26 contains the very interesting account of Priscilla and Aquila taking Apollos aside to explain “the way of God more adequately” to him. My article about Apollos’ conversion previously mentioned takes the position that Acts 18 doesn’t describe his conversion but rather his enlightenment about John’s baptism. If you read that article, you will definitely find it interesting! Then in Acts 19:5, those who had apparently been taught wrongly by Apollos were “baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” This for them constituted a “re-baptism.” The remainder of Acts has no direct references to conversions, although Acts 19:20 speaks of the word of the Lord spreading widely and Acts 28:31 speaks of Paul proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. With that exciting comment, the Book of Acts closes!
Practical, Common Sense Principles
Since most of the churches in our movement (the ICOC) use a series of studies to lead someone to conversion, the question naturally arises about why this is done. After all, conversions in Acts seemed to happen quickly. Those hearing the message of Christ were baptized the same day (Acts 2), as soon as they were taught (Acts 8), and even the same hour of the night (Acts 16). Another question that should arise about our typical use of a series is not only “why” but “must we?” Of course the answer to the last question has to be no, if we take the biblical examples seriously. We must be able to distinguish between a useful approach and a necessary approach.
Our main reason for using a series and not baptizing people as quickly as we read about in Acts is that so much religious confusion exists now. When Christianity was new, false teachings regarding the conversion process had not yet arisen, but now they abound. Originally, the process was a one-step process of simply learning about Christ and accepting him through faith, repentance and baptism. Now, the process is most often a two-step process, at least in parts of the world where some form of Christianity is popular. Those who have been taught falsely must first unlearn the erroneous teaching and then replace it with proper teaching. The confusion between the two often lengthens the conversion process.
That being said, we also have to understand that our series of studies cover not only the first part of the Great Commission (“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Matthew 28:19), but also a good deal of the second part (“and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” verse 20). Honestly, our standard approach should raise a number of related questions that we should be able to answer clearly.
The Questions Raised
Why Do We Use A Series?
As we have already explained, primarily to clear up confusion for those who have been taught falsely about conversion. Additionally, to help those whom we teach to understand enough to resist other false teaching that friends and family may introduce after hearing about their decision to be baptized biblically. We do not want someone to be baptized only to become a part of a church that does indeed teach wrong things about topics as vital as conversion. If we are studying with a non-religion person, perhaps the second reason would still apply and perhaps it would not, or if it did apply, perhaps to a much lesser extent. In that case, we might well decide to baptize someone much more quickly.
Must We Use A Series?
The short answer is no. If we who are teaching know the Bible reasonably well, especially the basics about Jesus and what it takes to accept him as Lord and Savior, a series is not absolutely necessary. I have found that using a series is helpful in most cases, since many of those with whom we study are fairly illiterate biblically and often confused with the myriad of false teachings in our American society. Along with this, many are reluctant to make Jesus the Lord of their lives quickly, once they understand what this actually means in their lives. Thus, the answer to this question depends on the person with whom we are studying, their understanding and their heart openness. As we deal more and more with the younger generations, we will discover that their questions, concerns and possible obstacles are going to be different than those we dealt with in the past. We need to continue to re-examine our approaches and adapt to sharing the gospel in ways that will be most effective.
When I am studying with someone who is biblically literate and spiritually involved in Christianity in broad terms, I don’t use a series. I explain that discipleship is the issue, for Jesus said in the Great Commission to make disciples. I further explain that discipleship has both a vertical aspect and a horizontal aspect. The vertical is about us and Jesus. We must be fully committed to him as the Master (Lord) of our lives. The horizontal is about the relationships we have with other followers of Jesus, the “one another,” “each other” responsibilities we have within God’s family as defined in the NT. I go to the passages that deal with both of these aspects and ask if the majority of the members of their present church are practicing them. Then I ask if they as an individual are practicing them, and if they say yes, I dig more deeply to see whether they are accurate in their answer or not. Obviously in this process, I am using many biblical passages that are applicable to their personal situation.
Ultimately, I am going to deal with their conversion, but usually not until I find out where they are with their current beliefs and practices regarding discipleship. Repentance and baptism (Acts 2:38) are issues of Lordship, so this response will be covered as a part of examining initial discipleship. For those who are seriously involved in their church, topics like the inspiration of the Scriptures and Jesus’ death for our sins are already familiar topics to them. I will ask enough questions to make sure that their understanding is in line with the Bible, but it doesn’t take an entire study on common Christian topics to establish that. Therefore, while I am not against using a series by any means, I don’t want anyone to believe that such is a necessary part of the process of becoming a Christian. Otherwise, we have taking something that is often helpful and turned it into a law and a tradition.
Must We Use A Certain Series?
Again, the answer is no. I’ve used several different ones and helped developed several others. When faced with helping a seriously ill person come to Christ, I use a very basic approach that covers only the essentials. Among those would be God’s love for every person; the Bible as God’s word; what sin is and does between us and God; the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross; the definition of faith and repentance; and the church as the family of God and how that family should function. Surely these basics understood and accepted would cover enough to prepare someone to be baptized into Christ. Any study, whether carefully written out or not, that covers these basics would be sufficient to lead a person to Christ. We should be able to ask enough questions to discover which areas might need more attention, and we should know enough Bible to provide that attention.
On this website is a rather lengthy article, actually a series of articles, with the title “Paradigm Shirt Evaluation.” The Paradigm Shift series called into the question much of what I am questioning in this present article regarding the conversion process. As I stated in that evaluation, my main concern was not about the content of the series, but the tone of it. Those presenting the series seemed to me often condescending and arrogant, totally unnecessary and unhelpful attitudes. I agreed with the main focus of the series, which rejected the idea that a series of studies must be laboriously followed in order to bring every person studied with to Christ.
What Should Determine How Quickly Someone Is Baptized?
In a word, readiness. Readiness is shown by three things: head knowledge, heart knowledge and urgency. Head knowledge is the easiest to determine. Heart knowledge is shown by a person’s emotional reactions to God’s love, especially as demonstrated in the cross of Christ. Different people show genuine emotions in different ways, which means that our expectations have to match those individual differences. For example, tears may or may not show the right emotional response. The human part of the study process is one of the most fundamental. The one being studied with is trying to figure you out, to see if what you are teaching them is being shown in your life. You should be trying to figure out the one with whom you are studying, to grasp their head and heart knowledge and their level of urgency.
The urgency factor cannot be overlooked. You cannot allow your urgency to see someone be saved to push them beyond their own urgency. That is a serious mistake that has been made far too often. I explain very clearly and fairly frequently that while I am urgent to see them accept Jesus, they have to be motivated by their own urgency. I provide them with enough information to help them develop urgency, but it still must be their own that drives them to the ultimate decision to turn their life over to Christ. I often wonder if focusing more on Jesus and less on man’s response might prompt more urgency of the right kind. After all, that is the gospel message, according to passages like 1 Corinthians 15:1-4.
No matter what study approach I am using, when a person says that they understand that they are lost and are urgent about getting saved, we are most likely going to move forward quickly. When a lost person’s urgency level reaches a certain point, they are most likely going to get baptized soon. I do not want them going to someone else to accomplish that if I am the one studying with them. If they are reaching that level of urgency, I will determine their readiness through asking questions. They must be ready to repent and make Jesus the Lord of their lives, present and future. In the event that I think they are just responding based on a temporary emotional reaction, I will either keep asking more questions that are increasingly probing or ask another person to join us and ask the questions. If either or both approaches show that they are in fact as ready as those three thousand in Acts 2 were, I will baptize them.
What About Making People Wait Longer?
If the one being studied with wants to wait until a different day, regardless of the reason, this shows their lack of true understanding and urgency. If the one studying with them suggests waiting until a certain time or date in spite of the lost person’s urgency, they are the one with a problem. For example, sometimes it has been suggested that one should wait until a church service is held in order to encourage the Christians. When something of that nature occurs, the lost person’s urgency is not the issue; it is the one making such suggestions. When any person understands that they are lost until they are baptized into Christ, trying to make them wait is unbiblical and unloving – if the readiness factors are in place. If they are not in place, you cannot proceed until they are. It is a judgment call, to be sure, but I am going to err on the side of urgency. I do not want to be the one holding another back without very good reasons. It should go without saying that the goal of finishing a study series is not a good reason (but I will say it anyway!).
