NOTE: Many of today’s commenters should go to New Reformation Press and buy that “Weak On Sanctification” shirt. You’d look good in it.

Some texts related to being “connected” to Jesus in salvation by faith and in growing as disciples into Christlikeness.

Justification by grace, Kingdom discipleship and growth following. No “”Jesus disconnect here”:

Colossians 1:9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

[Continue reading]

The second half of the Gospel of Mark is dominated by Jesus’ focus on the cross. He begins predicting his passion, death and resurrection in chapters 8, 9 and 10, and arrives in Jerusalem in chapter 11.

On the way to Jerusalem, starting with the first prediction in chapter 8, Jesus begins a focus on discipleship in the light of the cross. The teachings and material in the early part of Mark part II seems to indicate that the calling of the disciples to the proclamation of the Kingdom was now recalibrated to the equipping of the disciples to relate everything to the cross.

Matthew and Luke have far more teaching material, but the vast majority of this material can be categorized as either “Kingdom” oriented or “discipleship” oriented. What is unmistakable in all three of the synoptic Gospels is the immense amount of time and effort Jesus put into connecting Kingdom, discipleship and cross/resurrection. There is simply no way that an honest examination of the Gospels can make the material on Kingdom and discipleship to be secondary to the focus on the cross. [Continue reading]

This May 2008 post is from a series I did called “The Jesus Shaped Question.” You can find it in the “Jesus Shaped” category on the sidebar. It goes along with the material in “The Jesus Disconnect.”

Mark 3:20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”….Mark 3:31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers* are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

Most Christians aren’t like Jesus.

Should we even try to be? Isn’t that impossible?

None of us can be like Jesus perfectly, but the Gospel of the Kingdom calls Jesus’ disciples to hear his call and set the goal and direction of their lives to be like him. For a follower of Jesus, Paul’s words of “follow me as I follow Christ,” are translated simply, “follow Christ in every way possible.” [Continue reading]

UPDATE: In the latter part of this IM essay, I deal with some of this issue.

I am continuing an extended series on how and why so many Christians are disconnected from Jesus as he is revealed in the Gospels. We began here.

How does the ministry of Jesus fit into our consideration of Jesus?

In 1982, I returned to seminary and took a job as youth minister at a church near the seminary. Because of some of my studies in seminary that semester, and because of something I heard Dr. John Piper say in a sermon, I determined to make the Gospel According to St. Mark a major life’s project.

At the time, 27 years ago, it seemed like many other resolutions that I made but probably wouldn’t keep. Surprisingly, I have kept that resolution, much to the chagrin of all those around me who have come to hear far more sermons, lessons and talks from Mark than any other Gospel, and especially to the regret of my Bible students, who have come to view my annual trek through Mark as the great mountain to be climbed in my Bible survey class. [Continue reading]

I want to write some posts exploring what I am going to call “The Jesus Disconnect.”

Nothing has impressed me more in my last few years of writing, reading and discussion than the disconnect the average Christian believer feels from the ministry of Jesus, specifically his miracles, exorcisms, teachings, training of disciples and encounters with individuals as described in the first half of the Gospels.

For many Christians, their view of Jesus is much like the movie Passion of the Christ. The story of Jesus begins with the suffering of Jesus, with the ministry of Jesus fading anonymously into the background, appearing occasionally in a few moralistic or sentimentally devotional flashbacks. [Continue reading]

Commenter: Please explain what you mean by:”community as Jesus exemplified it”. Thanks

It is the community that Jesus created and demonstrated during his earthly ministry.

I would describe it as:

Cross cultural: Jesus crossed every available cultural barrier to announce and practice the Kingdom.

Counter cultural: Jesus was offering an alternative to the dominant cultural and religious options in his world.

Inclusive: Jesus was creating community that included all of the excluded at every level. He dd this– as he did all of his community movement– with total intentionality. [Continue reading]

Oh, my dear children! I feel as if I’m going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives. (Paul the Apostle, Letter to the Galatians, 4:19, NLT)

This line from Paul has stayed with me for two days. It comes from a section of the Galatian letter when Paul has shifted from teaching to recounting his personal relationship with the Galatians and the love he has for them. The metaphors here are especially insightful.

Paul isn’t in labor pains for the Galatians to come to faith as new believers. That’s already a reality. No, Paul is in “labor” as the Galatians are struggling in their journey toward Christ being “fully formed” in their lives. In other words, Paul is watching the struggle of real disciples, in the growth process, and his heart is the heart of a mother in labor and a father who longs to see a healthy child.

The Galatians aren’t the Corinthians, but they are in a mess. Flatterers have taken them down the road of a false Gospel. What was a solid church plant is at real risk, but Paul is not just concerned about doctrinal correctness. He is concerned over what will be the result of moving away from Jesus and the work of the Spirit, instead encouraging a dependence on flesh and the works righteousness of the old covenant. He sees dark results ahead if the Galatians lose this battle. [Continue reading]

I can’t speak for anyone else, just for me.

When I became a Christian in 1974, I was immediately taught to define myself three ways.

First, did I believe that I was a sinner and that Jesus died for my sins so I could go to heaven?

Second, was I doing the the things my church taught me to do: attend worship, pray, read the Bible, tithe, “witness”, come to Sunday School, be a good Baptist?

Third, was I not doing the things my church taught me were sinful: drink, dance, use drugs, watch R-rated movies, listen to rock music, have sex outside of marriage, use profanity, work on Sundays, marry a Catholic?

That was the menu. Simple. Comprehensive. Understandable. [Continue reading]

My posts so far have carried an agenda. I would like readers to consider what church discipline looks like when it is the church’s compassionate ministry to those who are suffering, rather than primarily a punitive action toward those who are sinning.

I am aware that, according to a full understanding of church discipline, it is compassionate to deal with someone in a way that their need for repentance and returning to faith in Christ becomes obvious in their life. What concerns me is that the paradigm for church discipline is assumed to be radical surgery rather than the promotion of health in as much of the body as possible.

There are Christians who need church leadership to step up and take church discipline seriously, but not by attempting to turn an issue into a “bring it before the church,” I Corinthians 5 kind of response. These are persons who need church leaders to show an interest as shepherds, offering oversight, accountability, resources or mentoring, as needed, in situations that might normally be ignored. [Continue reading]

NOTE: I have chosen not to post a larger number of comments than usual. If you want to know why comments aren’t posted consult the IM F.A.Q. where this is addressed in one of the questions.

I could have posted some perfect examples of moral reasoning following our love, but I think the point is clearly made.

I recently searched my email archives and found a letter from a reader about the use of marijuana by a Christian. It reminded me of why I am more than a bit annoyed at the unhelpful moral reasoning that leaves out Jesus.

First, the highlights of the letter:

1) Almost everyone in America smokes marijuana or assumes it’s not wrong. (A statement that is factually untrue and if so, means nothing to the Christian. Great portions of the Bible were written to people living in empires and kingdoms that insisted everything from child sacrifice to emperor worship was universally the right thing to do.)

2) It’s no different than moderate use of alcohol. (Again, factually untrue from any number of angles, but it doesn’t matter. In scripture, comparing one thing to another without reference to God is meaningless. Similarities between legal and illegal behaviors don’t address why we make those distinctions. Why is it illegal to have sex with a consenting 17 year old but not with a consenting 18 year old? And the question for the Christian isn’t anything like “How is smoking week like drinking?”) [Continue reading]

Without any intro, I’d like to get right into what I would be saying about Matthew 18 if I were lecturing on the “What does Matthew 18 tell us about church discipline?”

I’d begin by noting that the church discipline material in I Corinthians 5 predates Matthew 18 in composition. Assuming Markan priority, it’s safe to assume that the matter of what to do with certain kinds of situations in the early church moved Matthew to include more material for that context than you find in Mark or the other Gospels. There is a focus in Matthew on catechetical material and church context.

The epistles (including Revelation 2-3) are evidence enough of what these situations were and why they were of the utmost concern. They ran the gamut from interpersonal conflicts, family issues, business disagreements, immorality of various kinds and division. Evidence in the epistles also is clear that leaders were to function as shepherds in working toward the resolution of these conflicts. The matter in I Corinthians 5 is a matter of scandalous immorality, but it is also part of the larger Corinthian church problem: complete lack of functioning leadership, resulting in a kind of “charismatic” leadership that was allowing the church to go down the route of Thyatira in Revelation 2. [Continue reading]

Down through the years, I’ve been part of a few in-church discussions about church discipline. They were all memorable. Almost everyone was against it and treated me like I was going off the deep end for bringing it up. Being against church discipline was an issue worth yelling over, and I’ve been yelled at more than once.

In my denomination and tradition, church discipline of a certain kind was common in the late 1800’s and even early 1900’s. I recall reading the business meeting minutes of a church I belonged to that was founded in the late 1700s. In the the late nineteenth century, many business meetings involved the discipline of members for things as trivial as card playing and as serious as shooting another church member.

In the 1920’s, church discipline began to disappear and today is almost totally unknown in Southern Baptist circles. The reason is clear. Southern Baptists and most evangelicals completely lost the ability to see anything positive in church discipline, at least by the measurements they now use to measure what is positive and helpful in church life.

Church discipline was punitive and exclusionary, overstepping the church’s role and destructive to the church’s mission too represent Christ. [Continue reading]

From April of ‘08.

“Now – here is my secret:
I tell it to you with an openness of heart
that I doubt I shall ever achieve again,
so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words.
My secret is that I need God –
that I am sick and can no longer make it alone.
I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving;
to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness;
to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love”

- Life After God, Douglas Coupland, (p. 359) HT to Tim at Sacrosanct Gospel

Did you ever wonder why Jesus didn’t call anyone from the religious establishment or extant established religious movements to be one of his disciples? I think I’m starting to see it more clearly, both in the gospels and in my own experience. [Continue reading]

From February of 2005. I’ve never reprinted this one and it’s one of the most “Jesus shaped” essays I’ve written. I have renamed it. It was originally called “Read It Again…And Don’t Skip The Hard Parts.”

Let’s be honest. A lot of Christians have no idea what to do with the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry. What does it mean? What does it have to do with evangelism, church growth and “having a great life now?”

Many of the readers of Internet Monk are familiar with my interest in the Gospel of Mark. I started seriously studying Mark in 1982, in my second year at seminary. I’ve continued reading and studying Mark ever since, in much greater depth than any other Gospel.

Since I came to where I serve today, I’ve had the opportunity to teach the Gospel of Mark 2-5 times a year for a 9-12 week term for 15 of my 17 years here. The Gospel of Mark has really become a part of my mental furniture, and I know my friends have logged plenty of eye-rolls when I reference the Gospel at every possible opportunity. [Continue reading]

The past year and a half has been the most personally tumultuous time I’ve ever experienced as a Christian believer. At one time or another in this past year, I have re-evaluated every area of my Christianity, often with many tears, prayers and hours of reading. Much of this has been in response to the questions raised by my recent encounters with Roman Catholicism.

I entitled this adventure “Jesus Shaped Spirituality.” It’s a catchy and provocative label, but I’m not sure I could have come to your church and given a talk on what I meant by the phrase.

Today, I’m at a different place on that journey. I’ve now come to the place that Jesus shaped spirituality has some feel, form and substance for me. I have some confidence and comfort in expressing what I’ve discovered, reaffirmed and began to express to others.

I want to be clear that I am not trying to “return to primitive Christianity” or “reinvent the church.” What I am doing is developing a tool, a grid or filter, to interpret Christianity wherever I encounter it, by asking basic questions about Jesus. If I am going to be faulted, it will be for this: I am determined to be satisfied with nothing short of a Jesus-shaped Christianity, as best I can understand what that means.

This isn’t a staking a claim for a new denomination, but simply an expression of the shape of discovering, knowing and following Jesus as the one who reveals both the Father and the shape of human experience.

What does Jesus-shaped spirituality look like? [Continue reading]