bullseye
- Handling Others With the Gospel, Part 1
- Handling Others With the Gospel, Part 2
- The Gospel Affects How We Give AND Receive Criticism
- The Gospel Helps us Hold Others in High Regard
- Handling Pain & Offense with the Gospel
- Every Offense is an Opportunity to Preach the Gospel
- The Effect of the Gospel on How We Perceive Others
- Measuring Discernment & Criticism with the Gospel
- Conquering Hypocrisy with the Gospel
- How to Treat Others With Whom You Disagree
- The Gospel & Blog Slander
- Applying the Gospel to Our Criticisms of Public Christian Figures
There just ain't no doubt about it and no gettin' around it. This is a stinkin' long post, as my redneck brothers would say. But I double-dog dare you to work through it and see what you think.
A dear friend and I were talking today about the fears commonly and inherently associated with the continuationist position among cessationists. The fear is basic. It is subjectivism.
Subjectivism is opinion guided by one's own experience. To be fair, this has guided much of the charismatic movement when it began. Weighing Scripture by one's experience became a common practice. The meaning of a text no longer matters as it seemed to come under the spell of a neo-neo-orthodox approach, which teaches that the Scriptures mean what they mean to each individual person. As a result crucial issues like hermeneutics, exegesis, and exposition melted like wax under the heat of personal experience and subjectivism.
Thankfully that is changing. Among movements like Acts 29, Sovereign Grace Ministries, and Association of Charismatic Reformed Churches there is a return to the healthy and imperative respect Scripture deserves. No text is a wax nose to be fashioned according to our experiences. Authorial Intent in any and every text is important. What God said through His agents needs to be interpreted correctly in light of when He said it, why He said it, where He said it, how He said it, and to whom He said it.
However, the danger too easily becomes another pendulum swing. We go from one extreme to another when we swing away from "Experience Interprets Theology" to "Theology Interprets Experience." But that's where cessationism as a whole seems to have swung. And I was a Tarzan in my own jungle once swinging on that same vine. Now, I've seen the value in just hanging on the vine until it finds a theological equilibrium.
At present I believe the gospel is that equilibrium. It is the place where experience and theology marry and get along with each other. It is the home where both of these "spouses" help mature and encourage one another and live in harmony. Sure there will be family fights, quarrels, disagreements, and "issues" each will have with the other. But until we face the fact that they are married and should be married, we will be treating each like they are divorced tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners who have apostasized from the family of God.
Theology and experience get along fine with each other...as long as we let them. But when we pit one against the other we create family fights that really shouldn't exist. We intrude into this home of the gospel, take a side, and begin picking fights with the other side. If any man arbitrarily intruded into my home, took a side with me on an issue where there were no "sides" and starting picking a fight with my wife, I'd be liable to do something unchristian to him! But we tolerate it in this house where theology and experience long to be happily married to each other if the nosy neighbors would just keep to their own business.
When I say the gospel is the home where theology and experience are happily married, I merely mean that the gospel is the foremost place in which they meet and fall in love with each other. Think about it for a second. As lost people we had one view of the Bible: it's boring. Oh sure, we may have carried it with us to church when our parents made us go. Or we have may have carried it with us so we wouldn't look like a dolt at church as everybody else is carrying theirs in the building. But the long and short of it is that lost people don't like God's Word. It's not that they don't want to read it. They hate it! It's boring! It carries no interest for them whatsoever. And that's their theology, plain and simple. God is a God who is "out there" if He's there at all. And the Bible is a book filled with stories about people who followed God. That's nice for them. But it was boring for me. And it always is for lost people.
Yet what happened when the Holy Spirit showed up? He brought a new "experience" with him. It was called regeneration! It blasted its way through my "theology" and saved me from my own delusions and from the wrath of God headed my way because of those delusions. So experience rushed headlong into my "theology" and tackled it! And then married it. Now look at it from the other perspective.
My experience ruled my heart. I knew what I knew and that’s all I needed to know. I didn’t need anybody telling me what to do. “We don’t need no education! Teachers leave us kids alone!!” “All I know is the way I feel, and if it’s real I’m gonna keep it alive!” Songs like these still have a residue left on my brain because they appeal to my life before Christ. It’s experience and subjectivism plain and simple.
Yet what happened when the Holy Spirit showed up? He brought a new belief with Him. He brought a theology of the gospel to my experience. It was called faith and repentance. He convinced me intellectually that I was a sinner and accompanied that conviction with sincere guilt and sorrow emotionally over my sins. When He brought these to bear on my mind I was converted! Glory be to God! So it was theology who rushed headlong into my experience and crushed it like a Yugo at a monster truck rally. And then theology married experience.
It was a missionary marriage from the start, wasn’t it. Theology dated, converted, and married my experience. Or was it that my experience dated, converted, and married my theology? Does it really matter?
Is it okay for experience to confirm the reality of something I’m exegeting, interpreting, or theologizing? Cessationists say experience cannot be the judge of anything, but rather Scripture alone should guide us and direct our experience. Even though they are historically inaccurate when they wave the banner of Sola Scriptura over this reasoning, I see some good in it because the other way around is really, really bad. I definitely don’t want experience bossing my theology around.
To be sure, this is a complimentarian approach to this marriage. Theology is the head of the household, and experience is the joyously submissive wife. But they are equals nonetheless. Cessationists would have Theology be the federal head of the house, the king of the roost, dictating for his bride Experience what is and is not of God. Charismaniacs, on the other hand, would have Experience be the egalitarian spouse of the house, constantly preaching to her husband Theology that she is just as, if not more important than he is and he’d do well not to forget it.
In the Charismaniac household, Experience is coming of age and finding her own way in a theological-cheauvanistic society where Theology has ruled the world far too long with his Experience-demeaning teaching and writing. But across the street in the Cessationist household, Theology knows he’s in charge, all bold about his dogma, large and in charge of his wife with a pristine arrogance clouded with the glory of God. I’d rather live in a tent in the middle of the street.
Experience is a joint-heir in the grace of life for theology. She woos her husband, theology, and captivates him with her beauty, majesty, splendor, and mystery of the living God in moment-by-moment activity throughout daily life. She quietly demonstrates for him, without preaching and teaching, the matchless and indescribable beauty and glory in the power of God through His marvelous acts of providence and miracle. The supernatural work of a God who sovereignly intervenes at will in His creation is her silent yet awestriking manifestation.
Her husband loves her. He also gently and faithfully guides her. He washes her with the water of the Word of God, sanctifying her. He lives with her in humble understanding, seeing her as a God-created equal….a divinely ordained help-meet! He needs her! Not to be his theological amanuensis, nor his ever-affirmative “yes man” but a lover and counselor.
I imagine Theology and Experience working and loving together like man and wife in the Song of Solomon. The imagery is rich with application to the subject here at hand. Give it a fresh read only as an illustration of the point I’m making here and see what changes.
The Pharisees had a hard time with this very concept. Their theology conflicted with the experience God introduced into the world in His Son. In Matthew 12 they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons” (v. 24). I’m shaking my head right now, even as I read this again. There is no greater illustration than this passage of the domineering husband Theology.
Jesus, the marriage counselor, patiently counsels the husband who in this story is Pharisee. “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste…And if Satan casts out Satan he is divided against himself. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out?...But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (vv. 25-28). This is the story of the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Regardless of your theological view on this as to whether or not it can take place or not, the meaning is plain. Those who place the source of power for God’s miraculous works at the hands of the devil are speaking blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
Jesus brings experience to bear on their theology. Their theology, good as it was, stemming from the Torah, made little allowances for the actual man God would come into this world as in order to set up His kingdom. His supernatural activity created new experiences they simply could not cope with. So they killed Him. This is a classic case where they should have allowed experience to influence their theology.
Thankfully the Ephesians did not respond this way by killing Paul. Paul, good charismatic that he was, asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2a). They said they hadn’t, explaining, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (v. 2b). They were believers. They had been taught good theology. But a missing component…an experiential component…was missing. Experiencing the Holy Spirit better informed, morphed, and shaped their theology.
Experience is the Aquila and Priscilla who, upon hearing Apollos “speak boldly in the synagogue” (Acts 18:26), “took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately.” He had great theology! “He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only of the baptism of John” (v. 25, emphasis added). Had he not been humble enough to receive the encouragement of Aquila and Priscilla, he would not have been welcomed by the other brothers (v. 27), nor would he have been able to be of such great and gracious help for the believers (v. 27), nor would he have been able to refute the Jews so powerfully with such good Christology (v. 28).
And what about those two fellows walking back home to Emmaus, so depressed that their friend had just been murdered? Not knowing it, they entertained their dear friend in conversation until nightfall, only to come the full realization of what He was teaching them along that way by an experience! “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him!” (Luke 23:30). Experience is that instantaneous and supernatural moment when God breaks into our intellects with something so mysterious, forcible and powerful that our theology is forced to bow in worship. Is this not what happened with these men? The burning in the heart they were experiencing was consummated by the revelation of their Savior sitting there in front of them all along!
Other passages come to mind. Acts 2 and Acts 15 in particular. They are monumental texts in the history of the church. Yet buried right there along with everything else in the text is the truth that the experience of tongues is what guided Peter to reshape his theology of Joel. It meant what it meant for the people of God in Joel’s day. But it’s fulfillment was realized through an experience. So also with the council of Jerusalem whose sole job there was reconciling the experience of Gentiles coming to salvation with a theology of Amos prophecies. Here again, experience guided and helped shape this theology. This was predicated, of course, on Peter’s experience in a vision which helped guide and shape his theology about Gentiles and their place in salvation history.
A great place to end this post is Romans 8 where we see the internal work and witness of the Holy Spirit – an almost completely subjective experience – validating and guiding and shaping our theology of the Holy Spirit as described in the Bible. And is this not the source of our experience? It was His work which brought about the tongues in Acts 2, the salvation of Gentiles in Acts 10, the tongues and prophesying of the Ephesians in Acts 19, the enlightening of the two men on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, the conversion of Paul in Acts 9. And it goes on and on.
The danger today is to think nonsense. It is nonsense to conclude, “That’s what the Holy Spirit did in the Bible. He doesn’t do that anymore today.” And it’s worse to conclude that those similar works of God which the Holy Spirit has in fact done in the world since then are actually ploys of the devil to trick us and make us a dumb group of people who rely more on our experiences than on the Scriptures. I think rather that we are encountering the same devil who wants to come up with the same irrational, illogical excuses like the ones he motivated the Pharisees to use with regard to the same miracles Jesus did in the NT. The ploy of the devil I’m speaking of here comes not in trying to trick us into living by experience more than Scripture. That is a real threat and charismaniacs prove it constantly. I’m speaking rather of the ploy he uses in trying to convince us that dismissing, neglecting, rejecting, ignoring, bashing, reasoning, and suspiciously judging against experience is smarter, more godly, more consistent, and definitely more biblical. The Bible preaches loudly and clearly against this!
Leave Theology and Experience alone, I say! They are happily married and will remain so in our lives and churches and bible studies if we quit trying to intrude into their harmony and pit one against the other. They like each other. No! They love each other! And the gospel is their home. For it is a message that cannot exist without both. A gospel without experience makes our heads blow up. A gospel without theology makes our hearts dry up. A gospel with experience and theology makes us grow up. Sanctification is the beautiful and mysterious outworking of what I am learning with what I am experiencing. And this, in my opinion, is the foundation of biblical-charismatic theology.
Subjectivism is opinion guided by one's own experience. To be fair, this has guided much of the charismatic movement when it began. Weighing Scripture by one's experience became a common practice. The meaning of a text no longer matters as it seemed to come under the spell of a neo-neo-orthodox approach, which teaches that the Scriptures mean what they mean to each individual person. As a result crucial issues like hermeneutics, exegesis, and exposition melted like wax under the heat of personal experience and subjectivism.
Thankfully that is changing. Among movements like Acts 29, Sovereign Grace Ministries, and Association of Charismatic Reformed Churches there is a return to the healthy and imperative respect Scripture deserves. No text is a wax nose to be fashioned according to our experiences. Authorial Intent in any and every text is important. What God said through His agents needs to be interpreted correctly in light of when He said it, why He said it, where He said it, how He said it, and to whom He said it.
However, the danger too easily becomes another pendulum swing. We go from one extreme to another when we swing away from "Experience Interprets Theology" to "Theology Interprets Experience." But that's where cessationism as a whole seems to have swung. And I was a Tarzan in my own jungle once swinging on that same vine. Now, I've seen the value in just hanging on the vine until it finds a theological equilibrium.
At present I believe the gospel is that equilibrium. It is the place where experience and theology marry and get along with each other. It is the home where both of these "spouses" help mature and encourage one another and live in harmony. Sure there will be family fights, quarrels, disagreements, and "issues" each will have with the other. But until we face the fact that they are married and should be married, we will be treating each like they are divorced tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners who have apostasized from the family of God.
Theology and experience get along fine with each other...as long as we let them. But when we pit one against the other we create family fights that really shouldn't exist. We intrude into this home of the gospel, take a side, and begin picking fights with the other side. If any man arbitrarily intruded into my home, took a side with me on an issue where there were no "sides" and starting picking a fight with my wife, I'd be liable to do something unchristian to him! But we tolerate it in this house where theology and experience long to be happily married to each other if the nosy neighbors would just keep to their own business.
When I say the gospel is the home where theology and experience are happily married, I merely mean that the gospel is the foremost place in which they meet and fall in love with each other. Think about it for a second. As lost people we had one view of the Bible: it's boring. Oh sure, we may have carried it with us to church when our parents made us go. Or we have may have carried it with us so we wouldn't look like a dolt at church as everybody else is carrying theirs in the building. But the long and short of it is that lost people don't like God's Word. It's not that they don't want to read it. They hate it! It's boring! It carries no interest for them whatsoever. And that's their theology, plain and simple. God is a God who is "out there" if He's there at all. And the Bible is a book filled with stories about people who followed God. That's nice for them. But it was boring for me. And it always is for lost people.
Yet what happened when the Holy Spirit showed up? He brought a new "experience" with him. It was called regeneration! It blasted its way through my "theology" and saved me from my own delusions and from the wrath of God headed my way because of those delusions. So experience rushed headlong into my "theology" and tackled it! And then married it. Now look at it from the other perspective.
My experience ruled my heart. I knew what I knew and that’s all I needed to know. I didn’t need anybody telling me what to do. “We don’t need no education! Teachers leave us kids alone!!” “All I know is the way I feel, and if it’s real I’m gonna keep it alive!” Songs like these still have a residue left on my brain because they appeal to my life before Christ. It’s experience and subjectivism plain and simple.
Yet what happened when the Holy Spirit showed up? He brought a new belief with Him. He brought a theology of the gospel to my experience. It was called faith and repentance. He convinced me intellectually that I was a sinner and accompanied that conviction with sincere guilt and sorrow emotionally over my sins. When He brought these to bear on my mind I was converted! Glory be to God! So it was theology who rushed headlong into my experience and crushed it like a Yugo at a monster truck rally. And then theology married experience.
It was a missionary marriage from the start, wasn’t it. Theology dated, converted, and married my experience. Or was it that my experience dated, converted, and married my theology? Does it really matter?
Is it okay for experience to confirm the reality of something I’m exegeting, interpreting, or theologizing? Cessationists say experience cannot be the judge of anything, but rather Scripture alone should guide us and direct our experience. Even though they are historically inaccurate when they wave the banner of Sola Scriptura over this reasoning, I see some good in it because the other way around is really, really bad. I definitely don’t want experience bossing my theology around.
To be sure, this is a complimentarian approach to this marriage. Theology is the head of the household, and experience is the joyously submissive wife. But they are equals nonetheless. Cessationists would have Theology be the federal head of the house, the king of the roost, dictating for his bride Experience what is and is not of God. Charismaniacs, on the other hand, would have Experience be the egalitarian spouse of the house, constantly preaching to her husband Theology that she is just as, if not more important than he is and he’d do well not to forget it.
In the Charismaniac household, Experience is coming of age and finding her own way in a theological-cheauvanistic society where Theology has ruled the world far too long with his Experience-demeaning teaching and writing. But across the street in the Cessationist household, Theology knows he’s in charge, all bold about his dogma, large and in charge of his wife with a pristine arrogance clouded with the glory of God. I’d rather live in a tent in the middle of the street.
Experience is a joint-heir in the grace of life for theology. She woos her husband, theology, and captivates him with her beauty, majesty, splendor, and mystery of the living God in moment-by-moment activity throughout daily life. She quietly demonstrates for him, without preaching and teaching, the matchless and indescribable beauty and glory in the power of God through His marvelous acts of providence and miracle. The supernatural work of a God who sovereignly intervenes at will in His creation is her silent yet awestriking manifestation.
Her husband loves her. He also gently and faithfully guides her. He washes her with the water of the Word of God, sanctifying her. He lives with her in humble understanding, seeing her as a God-created equal….a divinely ordained help-meet! He needs her! Not to be his theological amanuensis, nor his ever-affirmative “yes man” but a lover and counselor.
I imagine Theology and Experience working and loving together like man and wife in the Song of Solomon. The imagery is rich with application to the subject here at hand. Give it a fresh read only as an illustration of the point I’m making here and see what changes.
The Pharisees had a hard time with this very concept. Their theology conflicted with the experience God introduced into the world in His Son. In Matthew 12 they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons” (v. 24). I’m shaking my head right now, even as I read this again. There is no greater illustration than this passage of the domineering husband Theology.
Jesus, the marriage counselor, patiently counsels the husband who in this story is Pharisee. “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste…And if Satan casts out Satan he is divided against himself. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out?...But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (vv. 25-28). This is the story of the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Regardless of your theological view on this as to whether or not it can take place or not, the meaning is plain. Those who place the source of power for God’s miraculous works at the hands of the devil are speaking blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
Jesus brings experience to bear on their theology. Their theology, good as it was, stemming from the Torah, made little allowances for the actual man God would come into this world as in order to set up His kingdom. His supernatural activity created new experiences they simply could not cope with. So they killed Him. This is a classic case where they should have allowed experience to influence their theology.
Thankfully the Ephesians did not respond this way by killing Paul. Paul, good charismatic that he was, asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2a). They said they hadn’t, explaining, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (v. 2b). They were believers. They had been taught good theology. But a missing component…an experiential component…was missing. Experiencing the Holy Spirit better informed, morphed, and shaped their theology.
Experience is the Aquila and Priscilla who, upon hearing Apollos “speak boldly in the synagogue” (Acts 18:26), “took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately.” He had great theology! “He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only of the baptism of John” (v. 25, emphasis added). Had he not been humble enough to receive the encouragement of Aquila and Priscilla, he would not have been welcomed by the other brothers (v. 27), nor would he have been able to be of such great and gracious help for the believers (v. 27), nor would he have been able to refute the Jews so powerfully with such good Christology (v. 28).
And what about those two fellows walking back home to Emmaus, so depressed that their friend had just been murdered? Not knowing it, they entertained their dear friend in conversation until nightfall, only to come the full realization of what He was teaching them along that way by an experience! “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him!” (Luke 23:30). Experience is that instantaneous and supernatural moment when God breaks into our intellects with something so mysterious, forcible and powerful that our theology is forced to bow in worship. Is this not what happened with these men? The burning in the heart they were experiencing was consummated by the revelation of their Savior sitting there in front of them all along!
Other passages come to mind. Acts 2 and Acts 15 in particular. They are monumental texts in the history of the church. Yet buried right there along with everything else in the text is the truth that the experience of tongues is what guided Peter to reshape his theology of Joel. It meant what it meant for the people of God in Joel’s day. But it’s fulfillment was realized through an experience. So also with the council of Jerusalem whose sole job there was reconciling the experience of Gentiles coming to salvation with a theology of Amos prophecies. Here again, experience guided and helped shape this theology. This was predicated, of course, on Peter’s experience in a vision which helped guide and shape his theology about Gentiles and their place in salvation history.
A great place to end this post is Romans 8 where we see the internal work and witness of the Holy Spirit – an almost completely subjective experience – validating and guiding and shaping our theology of the Holy Spirit as described in the Bible. And is this not the source of our experience? It was His work which brought about the tongues in Acts 2, the salvation of Gentiles in Acts 10, the tongues and prophesying of the Ephesians in Acts 19, the enlightening of the two men on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, the conversion of Paul in Acts 9. And it goes on and on.
The danger today is to think nonsense. It is nonsense to conclude, “That’s what the Holy Spirit did in the Bible. He doesn’t do that anymore today.” And it’s worse to conclude that those similar works of God which the Holy Spirit has in fact done in the world since then are actually ploys of the devil to trick us and make us a dumb group of people who rely more on our experiences than on the Scriptures. I think rather that we are encountering the same devil who wants to come up with the same irrational, illogical excuses like the ones he motivated the Pharisees to use with regard to the same miracles Jesus did in the NT. The ploy of the devil I’m speaking of here comes not in trying to trick us into living by experience more than Scripture. That is a real threat and charismaniacs prove it constantly. I’m speaking rather of the ploy he uses in trying to convince us that dismissing, neglecting, rejecting, ignoring, bashing, reasoning, and suspiciously judging against experience is smarter, more godly, more consistent, and definitely more biblical. The Bible preaches loudly and clearly against this!
Leave Theology and Experience alone, I say! They are happily married and will remain so in our lives and churches and bible studies if we quit trying to intrude into their harmony and pit one against the other. They like each other. No! They love each other! And the gospel is their home. For it is a message that cannot exist without both. A gospel without experience makes our heads blow up. A gospel without theology makes our hearts dry up. A gospel with experience and theology makes us grow up. Sanctification is the beautiful and mysterious outworking of what I am learning with what I am experiencing. And this, in my opinion, is the foundation of biblical-charismatic theology.
Authority
"There is Power in Pain: How Authority is Earned Through the Cross" by Mike McLoughlin
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Mike McLoughlinwrites a blog I recently found. It has been of incredible value, especially in the area of ministering at work. Perusing his blog while home sick today, I came across this article which was worthy of a re-post here at M.O.G. It is called, "There is Power in Pain: How Authority is Earned Through the Cross." Feel free to link back to the original, but I was strongly impressed to post it here too.
There is Power in the Pain – How Authority is Earned Through the Cross
by Mike McLoughlin on Fri 22 Sep 2006 10:56 AM PDT Permanent Link Cosmos
"I forgive! I forgive!" These were the dying words of Sister Leonella who was gunned down by Muslim extremists in Somalia last week. ("I forgive" whispers dying Italian nun).
I have heard it said, " Forgiveness is the fragrance of the violet which still clings fast to the heel that crushed it."
There is great power in the fragrance of Sister Leonella's forgiveness. Power that is greater than all the signs and wonders the church would hope to unleash to prove the love of God.
Forgiveness is a power that does not overwhelm evil, but takes on board the full measure of the pain of evil. By allowing evil to do its worse and not returning evil for evil, it captures the evil act for God and uses it to demonstrate a power that is greater, the power of love.
Today I look at the notions of power and authority and how they work in the Kingdom of God. Power and authority are not the same thing. One can have power without authority. For example, those gunman in Somalia exercised their power to kill Sister Leonella. They had no authority to do it. There can be no rational legitimization for murdering an innocent nun.
On the other hand, one can have authority but have no power to exercise that authority. The recently deposed Prime Minister of Thailand has a legitimate authority to govern the country but without the military on his side he no longer exercises that authority.
One can have the authority to exercise power such as President Bush has, but by exercising that power unwisely and alienating people, it will reduce the legitimacy of the authority that stands behind the exercise of that power.
One can have the authority to exercise power such as President Bush has, but by exercising that power unwisely and alienating people, it will reduce the legitimacy of the authority that stands behind the exercise of that power.
Finally, one can exercise power wisely and in doing so gain authority in the minds and hearts of the people who one wants to influence for good.
The Kingdom of God is all about that last approach. In this post I want to contrast the Charismatic approach to gaining authority through the exercise of power: signs and wonders; with what the gospel of Mark says is the true pathway to authority inherent in the gospel -- the Cross. In doing so I want to challenge the Charismatic church to earn its authority in and through the pain rather than seeking to earn that authority through the "raw power" of signs and wonders.
In a previous post on Bill Johnson’s book When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide To A Life Of Miracles, I talked about how the Charismatic Church needs to ground its hope in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the event that established once and for all that God intends to redeem creation. The resurrection is an affirmation of our creatureliness so we do not need to be insecure about the “natural” because as Johnson says “the anointing transforms the vessel it flows through.” That is, the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is at work even now in our naturalness empowering us to do God’s work. Johnson’s stated purpose for his book is to raise up a generation that would walk in the “raw power of God”. By that he means demonstrations of God’s power to heal and set people free from spiritual oppression. His hope is for a Church that would operate in the authority of God and have a “dominating impact.”
Johnson’s stated purpose for his book is to raise up a generation that would walk in the “raw power of God”. By that he means demonstrations of God’s power to heal and set people free from spiritual oppression. His hope is for a Church that would operate in the authority of God and have a “dominating impact.”
He states that “vision starts with identity and purpose. Through a revolution in our identity, we can think with divine purpose. Such a change begins with a revelation of Him.” (p.34) So in his chapter on the Christian identity. Johnson states that “As He is, so are we in this world.” (p. 145) Since Christ is glorified, powerful, triumphant and holy so we are to be as well as his church. This is what ought to be shaping our Christian identity as Christ followers. This is what will give us the authority to have a dominating impact.
“His promises for the Church are beyond all comprehension. Too many consider
them to be God’s promise either for the Millennium or heaven, claiming that to
emphasize God’s plan for now instead of eternity is to dishonor the fact that
Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us. Our predisposition toward a weak
Church has blinded our eyes to the truths of God’s Word about us. This problem
is rooted in our unbelief, not in our hunger for heaven. Jesus taught us how to
live by announcing, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” It is a present reality,
affecting the now.
We lack understanding of who we are because we have little
revelation of who He is. We know a lot about His life on earth. The Gospels are
filled with information about what He was like, how He lived, and what He did.
Yet that is not the example of what the church is to become. What He is today,
glorified, seated at the right hand of the Father, is the model for what we are
becoming!” (p. 178)
Johnson goes on to give a list of “the heart of God for us right now.” Wise – especially as demonstrated in excellence, creativity and integrity. Glorious – with the Holy Spirit’s presence and anointing. Without spot or wrinkle; unified; knowing Christ; mature; filled with the fullness of God; with the gifts of the holy Spirit fully expressed; doing the Greater Works and seeing God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. All these are attributes of the Church God wants manifest now. Johnson quotes the passage from Haggai, where the prophet says, “The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former.” (Haggai 2:9)
The problem is that most of the church is mired in powerlessness. Johnson attributes this to being on “the wrong side of the cross.”
“The Christian life is not found on the Cross. It is found because of the Cross.
It is His resurrection power that energizes the believer. Does this diminish the
value of the Cross? No! The shed blood of the spotless Lamb wiped out the power
and presence of sin in our lives. WE HAVE NOTHING WITHOUT THE CROSS! Yet, the
Cross is not the end—it is the beginning, the entrance to the Christian Life.
Even for Jesus the cross was something to be endured in order to obtain the joy
on the other side! The great majority of the Christian world is still weeping at
the foot of the cross. The consciousness of mankind remains fixed on the Christ
who died, not on the Christ who lives. People are looking back to the Redeemer
who was, not the Redeemer who is…
Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”10 A misunderstanding of this call has led many to follow His life of self-denial, but to stop short of His life of power. For them the cross-walk involves trying to crucify their sin nature by embracing joyless brokenness as an evidence of the cross. But, we must follow Him all the way—to a lifestyle empowered by the resurrection!” (p. 145-146, see online here)
I agree that God calls us to a lifestyle “empowered by the resurrection.” but I disagree that this means we are to march forward in a triumphant or dominating manner. I believe the Bible teaches us that the Christian life is cross shaped through and through. It is not that we are on the wrong side of the Cross but that we need to enter through the Cross to live a life of resurrection power. It is only by suffering the indignity of pain and evil that we can truly know the full measure of Christ's victory over the powers at the Cross. (Colossians 2:15)
Johnson likes to emphasize that “As He is, so are we in the world!” However, before we can get to be "as He is” we must answer the command that Jesus gave his disciples which was “As the Father sent me, even so, I send you!’ (John 20:21) Jesus did not come as a triumphant Lord, he came as a suffering servant. So too, we are called to a life of service as we take up our cross. This is how the Charismatic Church earns its authority. It earns it in and through the pain not by calling down the "raw power" of God from heaven.
In Mark 10:35-45, the gospel writer shares the story of two disciples who were looking for positions of authority in Jesus’ kingdom As Jesus approached Jerusalem for the last time, these disciples asked him for a big favor. “Can we sit at your right hand and at your left hand when you come into your kingdom?” James and John knew that something big was about to happen when Jesus arrived into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey with people waving palm branches and crying out, “Hosanna to the son of David!”
Their hope was for the kingdom of God to come in full force: Jesus would throw out the Romans, establish his religious order in the Temple and appoint spiritually gifted leaders, such as themselves, to wisely exercise power on his behalf. This was their fast track to fame and fortune.
Instead, Jesus rebuked them. “Can you drink the cup I am about to drink?” he asked. “Of course,” they said, “we can drink it.” But little did they know what Jesus had in mind. Sure they thought it would involve some suffering but hey, ‘no pain, no gain,’ was their motto. Their focus was on the power not on the pain. The power they were interested in was simply the world’s power dressed in new clothes.
So Jesus promised them that they would drink that cup, but that the positions to his right and to his left were not his to give. There were those who were already appointed for such places.
I can just see the disciples scratching their heads and thinking, now who was it that had earned those special positions of authority? Who else had journeyed all those miles with Jesus? Who else had suffered deprivation and persecution? Who else had he sent out to heal the sick and cast out demons? Who else but them?
I can just see the disciples scratching their heads and thinking, now who was it that had earned those special positions of authority? Who else had journeyed all those miles with Jesus? Who else had suffered deprivation and persecution? Who else had he sent out to heal the sick and cast out demons? Who else but them?
They did not get it. They didn’t understand what Jesus understood was the pathway to his kingdom. It was an entirely different pathway to power. A pathway that led to the Cross. A coronation that involved thorns. An ascension to kingship that confounded all the world’s concept of authority and power. (See Colossians 2:10-15)
Jesus knew the disciples would have places of authority in his kingdom, but the power they would exercise was not at all what they thought. It was the power found in forgiveness. It was the authority earned through pain. It was the glory that came through death.
This was the lesson they were about to learn and that Jesus was about to demonstrate. It was a lesson that there is a power that is greater than all the world’s power. This is the power that Jesus demonstrated as nails were driven through his wrists and he said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This is the power demonstrated as he was lifted up on a cross with a crucified thief on his right and on his left, wearing a crown of thorns on his head, under a sign announcing to the world, ‘Jesus, the King of Jews’. This is what real power looks like in God’s kingdom, not the shallow pretentious power of positions, abilities and words.
In the screen play, Jesus Christ Superstar, there is a scene where Jesus is leading his disciples up to Jerusalem and they are singing joyfully,
Jesus, I am on your side
Kiss me, Kiss me, Jesus.
There must be over…
Screamin' love and more for you
And every one of them
Would do whatever ya asked them to
Keep them yellin' their devotion
But add a touch of hate at Rome
You will rise to greater power
We will win ourselves a home
· You'll get the power and the glory - You'll get the glory
· Forever and ever and ever - Ever and ever
· You'll get the power and the glory - You'll get the power
· Forever and ever and ever - Ever and ever
· Forever and ever and ever - You'll get the glory
You'll get the power and the glory
Forever and ever and ever
You'll get the power and the glory
Forever and ever
Forever Amen
In reply Jesus sings the refrain,
“Neither you, Simon
Nor the Romans nor the Jews
Nor Judas nor the twelve
Nor the priests nor the scribes
Nor doomed Jerusalem itself
Understand what power is
Understand what glory is
Understand at all
Understand at all
If you knew
All that I knew
My poor Jerusalem
You'd see the truth
But you live a lie
But you live a lie
While you live
Your troubles are many
Poor Jerusalem
To conquer death
You only have to die
You only have to die “
Kiss me, Kiss me, Jesus.
There must be over…
Screamin' love and more for you
And every one of them
Would do whatever ya asked them to
Keep them yellin' their devotion
But add a touch of hate at Rome
You will rise to greater power
We will win ourselves a home
· You'll get the power and the glory - You'll get the glory
· Forever and ever and ever - Ever and ever
· You'll get the power and the glory - You'll get the power
· Forever and ever and ever - Ever and ever
· Forever and ever and ever - You'll get the glory
You'll get the power and the glory
Forever and ever and ever
You'll get the power and the glory
Forever and ever
Forever Amen
In reply Jesus sings the refrain,
“Neither you, Simon
Nor the Romans nor the Jews
Nor Judas nor the twelve
Nor the priests nor the scribes
Nor doomed Jerusalem itself
Understand what power is
Understand what glory is
Understand at all
Understand at all
If you knew
All that I knew
My poor Jerusalem
You'd see the truth
But you live a lie
But you live a lie
While you live
Your troubles are many
Poor Jerusalem
To conquer death
You only have to die
You only have to die “
In my article Earning The Moral Authority to Govern, I discuss the tendency that those who experience power assume there is a uniform way in which it gets exercised, that is, it provides authority to govern. In other words, it gives you the legitimacy to “rule over others.”
Bill Johnson’s hope for a Church with a dominating impact rings similar to this view of power. He wants to see the ”raw power of God” activated. It stirs images of “shock and awe”. Images that are more about overwhelming force than they are about genuine love.
Bill Johnson’s hope for a Church with a dominating impact rings similar to this view of power. He wants to see the ”raw power of God” activated. It stirs images of “shock and awe”. Images that are more about overwhelming force than they are about genuine love.
Is this the kind of power that is on display in the New Testament? No, in fact it is exactly the opposite. (See 1 Corinthians 1:17-29;1 Corinthians 2:1-5;1 Corinthians 9:22;2 Corinthians 11:30;2 Corinthians 12:9;)
Johnson believes in the Cross. He believes in atonement theology, but he fails to see how that theology connects with the power of God. The grand statement of atonement theology in Mark comes right at the end of this section we have been examining. The gospel writer ends his story about the two disciples and their request of Jesus with the words, “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45).
Luke also makes this point in telling the story of Jesus' rebuke of the two disciples who wanted to call fire down from heaven on a rebellious town.
But He turned and rebuked them, and said, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."> And they went on to another village. (Luke 9:54-56)
These stories illustrate the way power works in the Kingdom of God. It is completely upside down from the way power works in the world. Power in the New Testament is the power of love.
The point of Marks’ story is that Jesus is advocating a different way of doing power, a way that is only fully seen in the Cross. The Cross already was a symbol of power, Roman power, power to crush all those who dared challenge the might of Rome. The beauty of the atonement is that it took a symbol of overwhelming force and turned it into a symbol of divine love. That is the power of God. That is the power that overwhelms evil.
In summary, there are those in the Charismatic church who are candidates for the list in Jesus Christ Superstar of those who do not understand what power is or what glory is. They want the supernatural power but without the Cross shaped life through which it comes. They want the glory but without the shame of suffering. They want the fast track to triumph but they are not willing to drink the cup of pain by which God triumphs over all the powers of this world. “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians 2:15)
For the Charismatic church to operate in the power of God, in resurrection power, it must abandon its pursuit of world domination via the "raw power" of God and instead follow the way of the cross, bearing the world’s grief and pain in love. The power is in the pain, through the pain and out the other side of that pain. That is the way the Charismatic Church earns its authority in this world.
This classic prayer was found in the breast pocket of a Civil War soldier shot at Gettysburg: (HT: The Presidential Prayer Team)
"I asked for strength that I might achieve.
He made me weak that I might obey.
I asked for health that I might do great things.
I asked for health that I might do great things.
He gave me grace that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy.
I asked for riches that I might be happy.
He gave me poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.
He gave me weakness that I might feel a need for God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.
He gave me life that I might enjoy all things.
I received nothing I asked for.
I received nothing I asked for.
He gave me everything I hoped for."
