Are you building the Kingdom of God or are you building your own Empire?

The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian church, saying he had received reports of divisions among them. “What I mean is that each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor. 1:12-13)

Followers Want a Hero to Worship

While Paul specifically addresses the factions and quarrels roiling the Corinthian church, implicit in the “I follow Apollos” and “I follow Cephas” charge is the tendency of some people to derive identity, sustenance, and life itself from obeisance to a leader. Following well is what followers should do, and giving honor to one’s teachers is biblical, but what is godly about hero worship?

Leaders can’t help that sin manifests itself through some people putting mere images of God on pedestals. It’s not the sin of good leaders but the sin of the idolatrous followers that pedestalizes mere humans.

That’s all on the demand-side.

Our Empire or Christ’s Kingdom?

The supply-side of the same problem is the temptation that leaders experience to create personal or corporate Empires. The Empire can be the organization or the part of an organization that one leads, or the Empire can literally be a cult of personality that a leader creates and fosters. While the supply-side problem of Empire-building occurs in any arena of human endeavor, this problem looks particularly grotesque when we recognize our imperial labors done in the name of Christ’s Kingdom.

But how could we not pervert the calling of Christ’s Kingdom? We sin. Our hearts are idol factories (Calvin, Institutes, 1.11.8). We pervert everything else we touch, so how would we not, at least in part, turn Christ’s Kingdom into personal Empire? If the telos of our call is to glorify God by building his Kingdom, the means for obeying that call can become, unwittingly, means of disobedience.

Hijacking God’s Gifts for Empire-Building

As Pastor Mark Driscoll taught in his message at the Advance 09 conference, the essence of idolatry is this: take a good thing, make it an ultimate thing, and that’s a bad thing. Our various specific callings within the call to build the Kingdom are good things that require all sorts of specific actions to fulfill the callings. Your special talent and mine? Perverting those good actions, hijacking the means intended for the Kingdom and diverting them into means of Empire.

Repent, Believe, Obey

I spend a lot of time trying to build an Empire, Docent, in the name of the Kingdom of God. My failures in this regard prove that one doesn’t have to have a reputation or lead a large organization. All that is required is a heart that longs for significance found anywhere but in Jesus. So I repent, believe the gospel, and seek by the Spirit’s power to follow Christ again in Kingdom-building. Over and over I repeat this three-fold gospel rhythm of repent, believe, obey.

With renewed recognition of the gospel, knowing that Jesus has already redeemed your sin of Empire-building, and has already made you righteous—knowing that you’re not under condemnation—would you ask yourself this question? Better yet, ask your spouse, your close friends, your colleagues to ask you this question:

Are you doing what you’re doing for your Empire or for the Kingdom of God?

Pastor Dad

Every dad is a pastor. The important thing is that he cares for his flock well. Pastor Mark Driscoll's new eBook offers spiritual insights on fatherhood. Get it here.

Is God's law a delight, or a drag? You would probably say the answer is a little complicated. Many of us who work hard to remain focused on the gospel as our hope before God have an almost visceral reaction to "the law," particularly when it is presented as a means of obtaining or maintaining peace with God. This is good. The law is never our hope. Jesus is.

However, the law is "holy, righteous and good" (Romans 7:12) and  Scripture tells us how "blessed" is the man who "delights" in the law (Psalm 1). The Psalmist says, "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 19:97). The apostle Paul also says, "I delight in the law of God in my inner being" (Romans 7:22). Why do (should) the people of God love the law? Here are 3 reasons.

1. In the law we have divine direction.

God has not left us alone to figure out what is right and wrong. He has graciously spoken clearly, and we now know the difference between good and evil. In the law we see the character of God and his will to be carried out on earth as it is in heaven. For example, we not only know that God calls us to do good to others in some general sense, but more specifically that we should be hospitable, loving, generous, and patient. He tells us what he desires of us. This is itself grace. We can delight that God has been kind enough to tell us what he requires of us (Micah 6:8).

2. Through the law we uncover our sin.

The law of God not only shows us God's will, but it also acts as a mirror that exposes our sin and falsehood. In the law we see God's standards and commands, but we also see how quickly we break them (Romans 7:7-25). As we have broken the law, it breaks us. The law is used by God to afflict our conscience so that we feel the weight of our guiltiness. And this is a reason to love the law, as it can eventually destroy our pride and any confidence we put in our ability to measure up to God's standards.

3. By the law we are led to the gospel.

In showing us the will of God, and our inability to keep it, the law leads us to see our need for mercy and grace. As many like to say, before we can know and embrace the "good news" of redemption and restoration in Jesus, we must first know and embrace the bad news that we are condemned as law-breakers and under the curse of God. It functions as one of the tools that God uses to prepare us to meet Jesus. So, we love the law as it leads us to see our need for grace and the beauty of the gospel against the backdrop of our guilt and corruption.

But here's the rub: we can only love the law after it has been fulfilled by Christ on our behalf. The law will only be a delight to us after we have found life by the gospel. 

For without the gospel, in the law we only find standards unmet and guilt without relief. We wind up sharing Martin Luther's frustration with the call to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," and say with him, "Love God? Sometimes I hate him!" Apart from the gospel the law leaves us broken and needy.

It is in the gospel where God's standards are met, his law is fulfilled, sin is forgiven, and we are restored to him. The reality of our justification before God through Christ liberates us from the law's condemning power and produces in us a delight in God's law and a motivation to keep it for God's glory and our good.

Is the law our delight? It really depends on whether the gospel is our hope and boast. If it is, then the law does not condemn us, but guides us. It shows us God's way, reminds us of our need for the gospel, and as we walk in it the law leads toward the good of our neighbors and praise of our God (Matthew 5:16). That is our delight.

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One of the most difficult aspects of my work as a pastor is wading through the vast amount of ministry opportunities that seem to be never-ending.

Opportunity Is Everywhere

For church leaders, every day brings a barrage of ideas and decisions related to potential opportunities. They come from everywhere: God, the Bible, church staff, Sunday services, a restful vacation, the congregation, the web, the news, a walk down the street, and on and on.

I’ve found that every opportunity is fraught with some form of opposition.


Opportunity and Opposition


You don’t have to get far into the Bible to see the tension between opportunity and opposition. Our forefather Adam is created and given an enormous opportunity from God: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28).

Those with an entrepreneurial bent get pretty excited when reading about an opportunity of such grandiose potential—being the first to inhabit the entire earth. Read a little further, however, and the opposition is readily apparent. In this case Adam and Eve are opposed and tempted by Satan, and they’re also opposed by their sinful desire to be like God, knowing good and evil.

Of course, our first parents do sin, and all future opportunities are forever changed by the curse upon humanity. For the man specifically, his work to “fill the earth and subdue it” is a lot harder now that the earth is at war against him, broken and fallen from its luscious garden state.

You Are Cursed

The same call and the same curse that burdened Adam remain in place for all of us, which means that effectively evaluating opportunities is no easy task.

Three key filters can help separate fruitful opportunity from sinful distraction: wisdom, priorities, and cost. I’ll discuss these biblical principles in future posts.

Jamie Munson is the Lead Pastor of Mars Hill Church. You can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.

Advance 09 Media

Video, audio, and images from the Advance 09 conference in Raleigh-Durham, NC, June 2009. Find out more.

In preaching through the book of Colossians at my church, we have come to Colossians 3:5: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you…” Precious little is written or taught these days on how to put sin to death. But thankfully, our forebears spent some ink on this issue—the most notable work being John Owen’s marvelous treatise On the Mortification of Sin.

Even the most educated scholars find Owen’s writing style to be dense. J.I. Packer states that Owen is “heavy and hard to read;” and an earlier biographer observed that Owens “travels through (his subject) with an elephant’s grace.” I pray that some of the more daring will read Owen’s work firsthand, because despite its cumbersome nature, it is some of the finest theological writing in the English language. But for those who don’t wish to do so, I am posting below my summary outline of Owen’s treatise. This outline was organized for preaching, so it is not exactly correlative to Owen’s layout. However, it does preserve the general logical flow of the original. For those who prefer a more thorough and analytical outline, including some of the more memorable quotes from Owen’s pen, you can download my 12-page reading summary in PDF format.
______________________

Why Must We Mortify Sin?

• Because sin is always active
• Because unmortified sin weakens and darkens the soul
• Because unmortified sin hardens others to the gospel

What Does It Mean to Mortify Sin?

What It Does Not Mean

• To mortify sin is not to utterly destroy it. (That’s Jesus’ job, not your job.)
• To mortify sin is not to outwardly forsake its practice. Those who do this are just “more cunning; not more holy.”
• To mortify sin is not to have a quiet, sedate nature. “Some men have an advantage by their natural constitution… they are not exposed to unruly passions and tumultuous affections as many others are.” This does not mean they have mortified sin.
• To mortify sin is not to divert it. “He that trades sensuality for Pharisaism has not mortified sin… He has changed his master, but he is a servant still.”
• To mortify sin is not to experience “occasional conquests” against it.

What It Does Mean

• A habitual weakening of sin.
• A constant fighting against sin.
• Success. Victory over sin!

How Do We Mortify Sin?

4 General Principles

• You must set your faith on Christ. (Fill your soul with the consideration of who Jesus is and what he’s done for you)
• You must rely on the Holy Spirit. “A man may easier see without eyes and speak without a tongue, than mortify a sin without the Spirit.”
• You must be truly converted.
• You must intend universal obedience. If you don’t intend to obey God in every area, you don’t hate sin; you hate the particular sin that is bothering you. Which means you don’t love Christ; you love yourself. A particularly strong, besetting sin commonly issues from a careless, negligent spiritual life in general.

9 Specific Directives

1. Get a clear and abiding sense upon your mind of the guilt, danger, and evil of your sin.
2. Load your conscience with the guilt of your besetting sin.
3. Long for deliverance from the power of sin. “Longing, breathing, and panting after deliverance is a grace in itself, that has a mighty power to conform the soul into the likeness of the thing longed after… Unless you long for deliverance you shall not have it.”
4. Consider whether you are prone toward a particular sin because of your personality or disposition. This should awaken your zeal. “So great an advantage is given to sin and Satan by your temper and disposition, that without extraordinary watchfulness, care, and diligence, they [sin and Satan] will prevail against your soul.”
5. Consider what occasions your sin uses to exert itself, and watch against them all.
6. Fight strongly against the first actings of your lust. “Sin is like water in a channel – once it breaks out, it will have its course.”
7. Dwell on thoughts that humble you and remind you of your sinfulness.
8. Know the warning signs of particularly dangerous sin patterns: persistent, habitual sin; secret pleas of the heart to leave sin alone; giving into sin without struggle; ignoring the conviction of the Holy Spirit; avoiding sin because you fear punishment. If a lust has any of these symptoms, it cannot be dealt with by an ordinary course of mortification; it requires extraordinary measures.
9. Do not speak peace to yourself before God speaks peace to you.

Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

Vintage Jesus

A theological journey chasing Jesus through Scripture and pop culture. Timeless answers to timely questions about the most important man who has ever lived. Find out more.

To answer any significant question about where we come from, why we are here, what is right and wrong, who God is, and where we are going when we die requires doctrine. Subsequently, everyone has doctrine. The only question is whether it is truthful, biblical, and helpful.

Admittedly, in the name of being doctrinally vigorous, some people go too far and put secondary issues—those that are unworthy of battling over—in the closed hand of conviction. Conversely, some people do not go far enough and put in the open hand primary issues that are worthy of battling over. In writing Doctrine, my coauthor, Dr. Gerry Breshears, and I sought to follow the storyline of the Bible and focus on the major unifying, liberating, and life-changing doctrines of the Bible.

The timing of this book is incredibly significant. At the very least, evangelical Christians in general, and younger evangelical Christians in particular, seem incredibly confused on doctrine. One study revealing the incredible need for Doctrine is the third wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion (2008) (see note below). It reports the beliefs of the 13.5% of emerging adults (ages 18 to 23) in the United States today who self-identify as Protestant Christian and who attend an evangelical church at least “two to three times a month”:

• 97.2% believe in God.
• 96.6% believe that Jesus was/is the Son of God who was raised from the dead.
• 96.4% believe that God created the world.
• 89% “definitely” believe in angels.
• 76.2% “definitely” believe in demons.
• 82.5% “definitely” believe in any form of afterlife.
• 83.0% believe in astrology “not at all.”
• 83.2% believe in reincarnation “not at all.”
• 94.8% “definitely” believe in miracles.
• 95.0% believe in a coming judgment day, when God will reward some and punish others.
• 91.2% believe that God is a personal being who is still involved in the world today.
• 81.9% believe that only people whose sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus go to Heaven.
  Corollary: 5.3% say that only good people go to Heaven; 2.5% say that all people go to Heaven; 4.9% believe “something else” about Heaven, and 2.2% “don’t really know or care” who goes to Heaven. 3.3% don’t believe in Heaven at all.
• 1.6% tries to include practices from Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, or other Asian religions.
• 85.5% say that it is “okay for religious people to try to convert other people to their faith.”
• 71.8% say that Christians should only practice one religion.
• 24.6% say that it is okay for Christians to practice other religions as well. (Another 3.6% don’t know.)
• Less than two-thirds (66.2%) say that “only one religion is true.”
• 70.8% say that it is not okay for Christians to “pick and choose their religious beliefs without having to accept the teachings of their religious faith as a whole.”
• More than one-quarter (27.0%) thinks that it is okay to “pick and choose.”
• 89% say that they have “a lot of respect for organized religion in this country.”
• Almost one-quarter (24.3%) agrees with or is still undecided about moral relativism.
• 36.0% “agree” or “strongly agree” that “we should adjust our views of what is morally right and wrong” to reflect changes in our world.
• 52.0% “agree” or “strongly agree” that people should not marry someone of a different religion.

REMEMBER: These statistics are from the 13.5% of emerging adults (ages 18 to 23) in the United States today who self-identify as Protestant Christian and who attend an evangelical church at least “two to three times a month.” In Doctrine we hit all these issues and many more in a readable manner.

Note: The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) is the most comprehensive and rigorous social scientific research ever conducted on the religious and spiritual lives of American youth. It is based out of the University of North Carolina and the University of Notre Dame. The wave 1 survey was conducted among American youth ages 13 to 17 between July 2002 and April 2003, and produced a total N = 3370. Most recently, a third wave of the survey was conducted from September 24, 2007 through April 21, 2008 with the same respondents—when they were between the ages of 18 and 23 years. (This is during the first half of what developmental psychologists call “emerging adulthood.”) The National Study of Youth and Religion was generously funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and is under the direction of Christian Smith of the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. For methodological details and related publications, visit: http://www.youthandreligion.org/.

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In Martin Luther’s essay, “The Freedom of a Christian,” we read the following: “I believe that it has now become clear that it is not enough or in any sense ‘Christian’ to preach the works, life, and words of Christ as historical fact, as if the knowledge of these would suffice for the conduct of life.”

WWJD Is a Bad Question

Luther is claiming that asking “What Would Jesus Do?” is a bad question for your spiritual formation. Luther continues: “Yet, this is the fashion among those who today are regarded as our best preachers…and such teaching is childish and effeminate nonsense.” Luther’s 16th century words are still relevant today.

Thankfully, Luther explains why he considers WWJD a bad question:

There are some who have no understanding to hear the truth of liberty and insist upon their goodness as means for salvation. These people you must resist, do the very opposite, and offend them boldly lest by their impious views they drag many with them into error. For the sake of the liberty of the faith do other things which they regarded as the greatest of sins….Use your freedom constantly and consistently in the sight of and despite the tyrants and the stubborn so that they also may learn that they are impious, that their laws and works are of no avail for righteousness, and that they had no right to set them up.

Are You Offended by the Gospel?

Don’t get all excited because you now have a great theologian giving you a divine sanction on your favorite sins. Luther spends the rest of his essay talking about what it looks like to love God and your neighbor. He is no antinomian.

But do get angry if you’re offended by the gospel. That can be a good thing because it points you to some good news—that the remedy for guilt and condemnation is NOT your better law-keeping or adherence to your well-polished moral sense, but faith in the law-keeping of Jesus. Because of Christ, you are already vindicated in the eyes of God. God’s riches of forgiveness and freedom from guilt, condemnation, and shame are offered not on the basis of working or measuring up. Rather, you have a right standing before God because of the righteousness of Christ.

So, what would Luther do? In the face of suffocating religion and moralism, he would offend boldly and celebrate the liberty of faith for the sake of the gospel.

Mars Hill Global

Serving the church and spreading the gospel. Help support this effort by giving to the Global Fund. More info at MarsHillGlobal.com.

From the recent sermon Jesus Without Sin, on Luke 4:1-13.

1. Satan is a real enemy

Satan is a real enemy. Do you believe that? You need to discuss that at your community group and with your friends. If you don’t, if you still think, “I think that’s hocus pocus. I think that’s psychological projection. My community college professor really confused me on this point,” you need to articulate that. Don’t be a liar. Be honest. Come clean.

See, one of the most amazing things Satan did is he presented himself in the media: cartoons, little horns, red cape, and pitchfork. “Here he comes. Yeah, we know it’s him. How can we tell? He’s the red guy.” It’s not that easy. He’s into marketing and advertising. He’s subtle and crafty and sly and he’s very adept at baiting the hook. You have a real enemy. If you don’t believe that, confess that as sin. That’s the beginning of all your troubles. You have a real enemy. You’re born into a real war. You’re born again as a Christian on Christ’s side of the battle. But, the battle rages in your life as it did in his.

(Click here to see the rest of this post)

Sinless

This poster explains the doctrine of the perfect, sinless life of Christ and how it relates to our salvation. By God’s grace, the perfect obedience of Christ is attributed to all who put their faith in him.

Download the Sinless poster here.

Click here for ideas for how to use the posters.

Advance 09 Media

Video, audio, and images from the Advance 09 conference in Raleigh-Durham, NC, June 2009. Find out more.

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

I have been studying these verses recently and thinking about the command to love one another and how that can actually happen.

• Romans 13:9—The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandments there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.
• Galatians 5:15—The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself.
• John 14:34-35—Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
• 1 John 3:11,16—This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

The problem is that a command doesn’t generate the ability to fulfill the command. People can tell you over and over again to love each other, but telling you to do something doesn’t make it possible for you to accomplish it.

Lack of Love

Doug Coupland writes about this “problem of love” in his book Life After God: “Now here is my secret—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, I need God to help me be kind, as I no longer seem to be capable of kindness, I need God to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”

To add to the problem, when Jesus and Paul make love the fulfillment of the law it really points out our failure. Summing up the law in the command to love just consolidates our failures to one big failure: our lack of love.

The gospel has something to say about this “problem of love”: God has loved us in a way that has given us life. The atoning death of Jesus provides the means by which we enter a relationship in which love is received and expressed. With that as the context of the commands to love, the commands are viewed not as the "ought" of compulsion but the “transformation” of internal constraint. To those who encountered the source of love, the commandment to love can be read with hope and joy, because love is not alien to our experience.

An Abundance of Love

God’s love for us transforms us. The more we bask in God’s affection, the more the reality of God’s acceptance of us seeps into our hearts, the more we might love others as ourselves. This seems to be the logic behind Jesus’ statement: love one another as God has loved you. We have been given an overabundance—a surplus—of love. And out of that love, we can love others out of the overflow of God’s affection for us.

Our inability to love others (our failure to keep God’s perfect law) can point us to the God who accomplished perfect love, self-denial, and self-sacrifice. The command can be a moment to encounter God’s love for us and for God to enable us to participate in his love for others.

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A Miracle

In John 6, Jesus performs a miracle of multiplying loaves of bread and fish to feed over 5,000 people. This passage has been used to make the point that Jesus had to wait for the boy to offer his food before Jesus would do his part. When applied to our spiritual lives it looks like this: “God is really into you, but he wants you to be really into him first and he wants you to make the first move and show him that you are serious and all about his glory. And after you respond, God will look upon you with favor and good pleasure. God may even ‘use you’.”

This is not true. We do not have this miracle recorded for the purpose of trying to convince you to try harder to get God’s attention.

When Jesus’ first century audience sees this miracle they corner him and ask: “What do your works mean? Come on! Tell us what you’ve come to do. We want to know. We’d like you to be our king. We have an agenda for you.”

Bread of Heaven

Jesus reminds them about the bread or manna in the desert with Moses and says: “It wasn’t Moses who gave you bread in the desert. It was my father who brought the bread from heaven. And now it is the father who is giving you the true bread from heaven. That would be me! I am the bread of life. I am the true life that has come down from heaven.”

He claims to be the one who can truly give the life of God and says “If you do not have me you do not have life.” The life of God was poured out in his life. The bread came down from heaven; we didn’t climb up to God.

In Jesus’ words about being the bread of life, claiming that he is the life of God on earth, we are looking at the very heart of Christianity—that we are not spiritual, but that we have a desperate spiritual need. We cannot climb the ladder to God through some technique. Rather, Christianity teaches our alienation from God until it is remedied by Christ. God came near to us in Christ, so Christ could take care of that which separates us from God and then bring us near to God.

God’s Condescension

To understand this is to get at the heart of what Jesus is about. We do not inherently have “spiritual life.” Christ was our spiritual life for us on our behalf. In being the bread of life, Jesus disarms us of our self-reliant spiritual efforts. As a result, we have a problem. We do not naturally on our own come near to God. He must come near to us. So a relationship with God is based on God’s condescension to us in Jesus being the bread of life from heaven.

It is not that we have risen to spiritual heights, but that the bread of heaven has come down to us. Thankfully, it’s not all about us.

Vintage Church

In this book, Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears discuss the essentials of what it means to be a biblical church. Find out more.