Bible Study in Washington, DC
Death is a great fact that all acknowledge, but very few seem to realize. Most people eat, drink, talk and plan, as if they were going to live upon earth forever. The true Christian must be on his guard against this spirit. “He that would live well,” said a great divine, “should often think of his last day, and make it his company-keeper.” In the state of poverty, be against murmuring, discontent, envy. In the possession of wealth, be against pride, self-sufficiency, arrogance. There are few better antidotes than the remembrance of death. “The beggar died,”and his bodily wants were at an end. “The rich man died,” and his feasting was stopped for evermore.
~ J.C. Ryle
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke volume 2 , [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986], 213. {Luke 16:19-31}
He washed my eyes with tears that I might see, The broken heart I had was good for me; He washed my eyes with tears that I might see, By Ira Stanphill |
Last week on his television show Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said a man would be morally justified to divorce his wife with Alzheimer’s disease in order to marry another woman. The dementia-riddled wife is, Robertson said, “not there” anymore. This is more than an embarrassment. This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore. Most roll their eyes, and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment (for instance, defending China’s brutal one-child abortion policy to identifying God’s judgment on specific actions in the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake). This is serious, though, because it points to an issue that is much bigger than Robertson.
Marriage, the Scripture tells us, is an icon of something deeper, more ancient, more mysterious. The marriage union is a sign, the Apostle Paul announces, of the mystery of Christ and his church (Eph. 5). The husband, then, is to love his wife “as Christ loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). This love is defined not as the hormonal surge of romance but as a self-sacrificial crucifixion of self. The husband pictures Christ when he loves his wife by giving himself up for her.
At the arrest of Christ, his Bride, the church, forgot who she was, and denied who he was. He didn’t divorce her. He didn’t leave.
The Bride of Christ fled his side, and went back to their old ways of life. When Jesus came to them after the resurrection, the church was about the very thing they were doing when Jesus found them in the first place: out on the boats with their nets. Jesus didn’t leave. He stood by his words, stood by his Bride, even to the Place of the Skull, and beyond.
A woman or a man with Alzheimer’s can’t do anything for you. There’s no romance, no sex, no partnership, not even companionship. That’s just the point. Because marriage is a Christ/church icon, a man loves his wife as his own flesh. He cannot sever her off from him simply because she isn’t “useful” anymore.
Pat Robertson’s cruel marriage statement is no anomaly. He and his cohorts have given us for years a prosperity gospel with more in common with an Asherah pole than a cross. They have given us a politicized Christianity that uses churches to “mobilize” voters rather than to stand prophetically outside the power structures as a witness for the gospel.
But Jesus didn’t die for a Christian Coalition; he died for a church. And the church, across the ages, isn’t significant because of her size or influence. She is weak, helpless, and spattered in blood. He is faithful to us anyway.
If our churches are to survive, we must repudiate this Canaanite mammonocracy that so often speaks for us. But, beyond that, we must train up a new generation to see the gospel embedded in fidelity, a fidelity that is cruciform.
It’s easy to teach couples to put the “spark” back in their marriages, to put the “sizzle” back in their sex lives. You can still worship the self and want all that. But that’s not what love is. Love is fidelity with a cross on your back. Love is drowning in your own blood. Love is screaming, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”
Sadly, many of our neighbors assume that when they hear the parade of cartoon characters we allow to speak for us, that they are hearing the gospel. They assume that when they see the giggling evangelist on the television screen, that they see Jesus. They assume that when they see the stadium political rallies to “take back America for Christ,” that they see Jesus. But Jesus isn’t there.
Jesus tells us he is present in the weak, the vulnerable, the useless. He is there in the least of these (Matt. 25:31-46). Somewhere out there right now, a man is wiping the drool from an 85 year-old woman who flinches because she think he’s a stranger. No television cameras are around. No politicians are seeking a meeting with them.
But the gospel is there. Jesus is there.
This idea that the gospel is just as much for Christians as it is for non-Christians may seem like a new idea to many but, in fact, it is really a very old idea."
-Tullian Tchividjian
Throughout high school and college, unbeknownst to me, the Lord was merciful in using my growing legalism to shield me from many sinful patterns and choices, but I still struggled with intense judgment of others, selfishness, hardness of heart, and lust — the very things Jesus rebukes the most in the Scriptures. My friends and family knew me as the funny guy, the person who was always smiling, who seemed to rarely have a bad day. The Lord had indeed blessed me with a sense of humor, but convinced it was my own, I wielded it in order to try to impress everyone around me. In reality, when nobody was around, I found so much of how I spent my time of trying to impress everyone at all times as a really exhausting and endless cycle.
After so much time serving myself, The Lord in His mercy brought Veronica into my life after I moved to DC. Through the early months of our relationship, He displayed His Spirit to me in how He had been working in Veronica’s heart over the course of her life. With that, God was after my heart. Over the weeks, He began to tear down my idols of self, lust, and my intense fear of man. On February 14th, 2010, the Lord reached into the sinful pit of my proud and sinful heart and lifted me up out of it to set me on a solid foundation. He granted me repentance, and as if blinders had come off my eyes, I could now see. I could EXPERIENCE the Spirit and what a relationship with the creator of the universe was actually like. All of my legalistic and shallow beliefs about the Lord were changed, and I experienced a RADICAL shift in my heart in the immediate weeks. I saw the ways I had been wasting my life unintentionally with everyone I knew.
All of a sudden, obeying the Lord and seeking Him were not arduous tasks or something to be “checked off” a to-do list. Scripture was no longer a long book of names and lineages, but held the very truth and the greatest news of all: That despite all of the ways I rejected God through my hypocrisy, my hatred of His holiness-the Lord chose to love me, to send Jesus to pay for my sin, and to draw me into love for Him. There is nothing in my heart that would have sought Him, He sought me out and rescued me, completely, wonderfully, and undeservedly, bringing this arrogant, prideful, enemy of His from death to life.
I've been enjoying Tullian Tchividjian's forthcoming book Jesus + Nothing = Everything "Legalism traps you in slavery and despair. To define ourselves by what we must do, what we must accomplish, and who we must become--that's the epitome of slavery. When we believe, deep down, that God's blessing depends on how well we're behaving, we wither and groan under the heavy burden of self-reliance. In this 'performancism,' we eventually figure out that being the star of our own show actually makes life a tragedy. When life is all about us--what we can do, how we perform--our world becomes small and smothering; we shrink. To have everything riding on ourselves leads to despair not deliverance. When we're living by this legalism--trusting in our rule-keeping, our abilities, our performance--to sustain our little safe and controllable world that we're addicted to, someday it will all start to crumble. Our kids will spin out of control, or our marriage will, or our finances, or our career. And it's devastating. We've tried so hard to hide our frailty and weaknesses, building our self-esteem on our success at that, then suddenly those faults can't be hidden any longer. We feel hopeless. The bitter truth slams us: those attractive idols we keep trustfully turning to are indeed 'nothing' and 'less than nothing' (Isa. 41:24). They're only black holes, the blackest of holes, dragging us down into desolation.” h/t: Josh Harris |
We seek to serve the Washington, DC area with the love of Christ by studying and proclaiming the gospel of Christ.
