Charles Simeon on Gospel Charity

Charles Simeon was known as the Prince of Evangelicals. Converted during his undergraduate years at Cambridge through reading the Book of Common Prayer's Holy Communion service, Simeonplayed a significant role in the late 18th, and early 19th centuries - in what David Bebbington describes as one of two great waves of evangelicalism. 

Simeon was a thorough going evangelical of Calvinist persuasion. But Simeon was not factional;at a time when English evangelicals were divided over Calvinist and Arminian theologies, he had no time for those who lacked generosity and charitable in their dealings towards others outside their own tribe.. On the key doctrine of election from Romans 9 Simeon preached:

Many there are who cannot see these truths [the doctrines of God's sovereignty], who yet are in a state truly pleasing to God; yea many, at whose feet the best of us may be glad to be found in heaven. It is a great evil, when these doctrines are made a ground of separation one from another, and when the advocates of different systems anathematize each other... In reference to truths which are involved in so much obscurity as those which relate to the sovereignty of God mutual kindness and concession are far better than vehement argumentation and uncharitable discussion (Horae Homileticae, Vol. 15, 357).

One example of this attitude at work in Simeon's life comes from a conversation between (the Calvinist) Simeon and an elderly (Arminian) John Wesley:

Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission I will ask you a few questions. Pray, Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God, if God had not first put it into your heart?

Yes, I do indeed.

And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything you can do; and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ?

Yes, solely through Christ.

But, Sir, supposing you were at first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?

No, I must be saved by Christ from first to last. 

Allowing, then, that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?

No.

What then, are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother's arms?

Yes, altogether.

And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you unto His heavenly kingdom?

Yes, I have no hope but in Him.

Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is in substance all that I hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree. (H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon, London: InterVarsity, 1948, 79ff.) 

May God raise up more men and women like Simeon who make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Why Liturgy?

Alison and I recently put together a Lenten supplement to our work last year during Advent. What follows here is the introduction I wrote for the resource, briefly outlining the place of worship in formation. You can view the rest of the resource here.

One way of approaching Christian anthropology is to say that humans are lovers. We are what is known as Homo Liturgicus; liturgical animals, who can‘t not worship. That before you say anything else about humans, whether it be as rational beings or believers, you must say that we are lovers. The centre of gravity of a human person is not the brain but the kardia – the heart. Although there is deep and complex relationship between our heart, mind, will, affections, and body, we are, when it comes down to it, made to love and be loved. 

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
                                                                                    (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’”
                                                                                    (Matthew 22:36-39)

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."
                                                                                    (Augustine of Hippo)

It follows then that one of the major changes wrought on humans by the entry of sin, evil and death into God’s good world was on our heart. We become people who loved the wrong things. We love the creation rather than the creator. We make good things ultimate things, instead of receiving them as gifts of a kind and gracious Father. And instead of cherishing something for the thing itself, we use and abuse them, as we look to them to give something they weren’t created to provide. Our desires are disordered.

The work of the Holy Spirit amongst who have been united to Christ and justified by grace through faith is to reorder our desires so that we love in the right way. This is the work of sanctification, grounded in our justification that changes our hearts to love in a right way. One of the ways this happens is through worship – as we apprehend the generosity of our heavenly Father and the work of his Son, our affections change. As we hear the gospel again, we apprehend the beauty and majesty of Christ, and so worship him. And this happens with our bodies. You and I are embodied beings. We inhabit a body. As we stand, sit, or knell, as we sing, pray, or declare, as we partake in the sacraments, we worship with our bodies. And what we do with our bodies has the power to shape and drive who or what we love. That is to say the practices in which you habitually engage have such power to shape what you ultimately love. Our heart’s desires are shaped and moulded by the habit-forming practices in which we participate daily and weekly.

Worship plays a transformative role in our growth towards Christ likeness. And liturgies – the practices that we habitually partake in – when they are charged by God’s word and his Spirit, they reorder our hearts and minds to desire God and his kingdom. It expels the disordered loves that have occupied our heart, and brings forth a new affection. Worship forms who we love. And we are what we love.*

* James K.A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom.

Resurrecting the Gospel - Redux

Back in 2009 I wrote an article for the magazine Salt, a publication of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES).

AFES have republished my article, which you can find here.

How to Guard the Gospel

The gospel of the crucified, risen and ascended Messiah - Jesus - is a precious gift from God. As Paul explains to Timothy, it is a deposit that it to be unashamedly guarded:

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. - 2 Timothy 1:13-14.

The truth entrusted is to be guarded against erroneous and strange doctrines. According to Paul's instruction to Timothy, the gospel is something that is to be suffered for (1:8, 12). It is something that is to be proclaimed, and therefore taught and preached without embarrassment (1.11). And finally it is something to be guarded from unsound teaching. It is to be held fast too, without variation or departure.     

But there is a particular shape to guarding the gospel. That is, Paul not only gives Timothy instructions on what to do - guard the gospel, but how to do it. Verse 13 says "in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." Timothy's theological convictions and catechism of others is, even in the context of the hostility outlined in verses 15-18, to be done in faith and love.

Amongst evangelicals, one of the most frequent rallying cries is: "Guard the gospel!" We talk about the ease of losing the gospel, of generational change and slippery slopes. So we want to guard the good deposit, fight the good fight, and entrust the gospel. But I am not sure if I have ever heard the connection explicitly drawn between guarding the gospel, and doing so "in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus". Without this link, defending the gospel quickly descends into a climate of bullying, group-think and uniformity.

I stand within a tradition that has gallantly guarded the gospel: within the cloisters of the university, within our para-church organizations, within denominations, and within parishes and churches. It is a heritage that has done much to preserve the faith once for all delivered to the saints from erroneous and strange doctrine.

Yet my observation is that other motivations besides guarding the gospel creep into people's behaviour - especially when the guarding is divorced from the faith and love of Jesus.

In seeking to guard the gospel, we forget to guard our own hearts. We are  motivated by a fear of change and difference; or an immaturity to rest confidently in what Paul says in verse 12 God is able to do. As I've observed this, I've noticed that guarding the gospel without faith and love isbeen characterised by:

• A lack of theological depth in being able to handle both the unity and diversity of the body of Christ. This is particularly evidenced in people only reading books that they will agree with.
• A lack of epistemic humility is the consequence; an inability to understand difference and relate generously to those who are different to you as your brothers and sisters in Christ.
• This is followed by tribalism, as we draw ever smaller and smaller circles around who is 'in' and 'one of us', and who is 'out' and suspicious.

This runs something like 'we need to guard the gospel, otherwise the church/institution will slide into error. And we cannot be gracious in the way that we deal with this, because being gracious and generous is part of the problem.' Except that to some extent, if you guard the gospel without being gracious, you have in effect lost the gospel (see for example, 1 Corinthians 13). Because it matters how you guard the gospel. The combination of these characteristics seems to allow for Christians to act like jerks in their ministry. That is, they are pastors who hurt people by justifying ungodly practices.

Graciously guarding the gospel fits with the New Testament trajectory of not arrogance, but humility and gentleness, patience and kindness, love, joy, peace and self-control. Graciousness is not the slippery slope that will lead to, say liberalism (cf. The Dying of the Light by James T Burtchaell). Graciousness is the fulfillment of guarding the gospel in the faith and love in Christ. This is not laying down the gospel and leaving it open for attack. Instead, this is resting humbly but confidently in the gospel. This confidence in the gospel allows you, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to get on with the business of guarding the gospel. Carson describes it in this way:

"You do not finally guard the gospel by raising the mote, circling the wagons, going into defensive mode alone, so as not to be contaminated by the interaction with the world. You preserve the gospel by gospelizing. That’s why any form of apologetics that becomes primarily defensive is finally spelling its own demise." - Don Carson

The way to get on with guarding the gospel in faith and love is not through closed sets, but through proclamation and training. Through passing on the good deposit, growing people in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and confidently proclaiming it. As Carson puts it, you guard the gospel by giving it away, by training people in it. This means neither denying or hiding the gospel, or making everything the gospel, but confidently holding to the core. Graciously guarding the gospel likes this does not create a culture of fear that exists around the slippery slope to liberalism. Graciously guarding the gospel likes this is confident that Christ will build his church. Hence graciously guarding the gospel like this allows you to (with thanks to Byron Smith):

• Recognize differences between Christians without declaring everyone who disagrees with you to be an enemy of the gospel.
• Avoids an anti-intellectualism that assumes that others - even those I disagree with - have nothing to teach me.
• This leads to a hermeneutic of trust. That is, generosity to all others who call on the name of the Lord - our first move is towards them, rather than suspicion or distancing yourself from them.
• Avoids tribalism; guru-ising those we agree with and demonizing those with don't.
• Prevents an arrogance that assumes that 'God is lucky to have us'.

Graciously guarding the gospel is the refusal to use power in a way that subverts the gospel. It's the refusal to resort to ungodly patterns of relationships, but seeks to be above reproach as the word of Christ is taught and dwelt richly in.  Now that is guarding the gospel in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Moments of Recapitulation

Here is an interesting and novel thought: what the Church does in ministry should reflect what the gospel is. I've been spurred along in this idea recently by Tim Keller, who argues that the gospel should fundamentally shape our doing of ministry. Following DA Carson, Keller argues that the gospel consists of three moments in Jesus life: 

1. The Incarnation (what Keller describes as the upside-down aspect of the gospel) where Jesus, though he was rich, became poor, and made himself the servant of all. This creates a community of service, where people live out an alternative way of being human, seeking neither moral, financial or social superiority.
2. The Atonement (the inside-out aspect of the gospel), which speaks of the way we are justified by grace and not by works. Grasping this changes the way we relate to God, to others and ourself.
3. The Resurrection (the forward-back aspect of the gospel); Jesus is reigning now, and Christian live in the light of this reality, looking forward to the day when Jesus ushers in the new creation. So now we live by faith, hope and love, especially love.

Few churches will follow through on the implications of the gospel: the upside-down, inside-out, forward-back kingdom. But for Keller, the gospel is the Christian life, and the church that comprehends the Gospel of Jesus Christ will "champion and cultivate" all three aspects of the gospel.

Oliver O'Donovan proposes a similar idea in The Desire of the Nations, that the Church's life and ministry is a recapitulation of Jesus's own life and ministry. And what we see in the sacraments is a visual reflection of Jesus own kingdom announcement. O'Donovan traces God's political authority within Israel. The Lords reign is, first, an exercise of power that gives Israel victory or salvation; it is, second, the execution of judgment or justice within Israel; and it is, third, the establishment of Israel's communal identity as a people existing over time (an identity connected at first with the land and, later, with possession of the law). These three aspect summarize what it means to say that the Lord rules as king in Israel, and a fourth aspect is added by O'Donovan. The Lords rule is acknowledged—though not established—in the praise Israel, as a worshiping community, offers (which incidentally, provides a stinging critique of liberalism's view of authority).

These four aspects of God's kingship are recapitulated in the career of Jesus. He does mighty works of power that bring salvation; he proclaims the judgment of Israel; he reforms the understanding of the law upon which the identity of a restored Israel is based. The praise that acknowledges Gods rule corresponds now to faith that recognizes the reign of God in Jesus.These four moments are 

1. the advent of Christ to save 
2. the passion of Christ in which the judgment of the world is given
3. the restoration of Christ, which affirms Israel's new identity in its representative
4. the exaltation of Christ, the coronation of the one who has triumphed over the powers that oppose Gods rule.

Christ is the head over the church, and O'Donovan argues that these moments of his Kingship are recapitulated within the church's life. They structure the church:

"The church represents God's Kingdom by living under its rule, and by welcoming the world under its rule. It recapitulates the Christ-event  in itself, and so proclaims the Christ-event to the world. The Christ-event, then, is the structuring principle for all ecclesiology, holding the key both to the church’s spontaneous ‘catholic’ existence and to its formal structure."

As Chris Swann has noted before, their are four moments that enact the distinctive shape of the church’s identity:

1. Advent – gathering community – Baptism. Marked by the sign of baptism, the Church now gathers to herself those who acknowledge Jesus as Lord
2. Passion – suffering community – Eucharist. Marked by the sign of the Eucharist, the Church now suffers—paradigmatically in her martyrs, but in countless other ways as well.
3. Resurrection – glad community – Keeping the Lord’s Day. Marked by the sign of her keeping of the Lords day as a little Easter, the Church now rejoices in the restoration of the creation.
4. Exaltation – community that speaks the words of God – Laying on of Hands. Marked by the sign of the laying on of hands, the Church now speaks Gods word in prophecy and prayer.

O'Donovan is in agreement with Keller, that churches have often been tempted to understand themselves in terms of one of these “moments” alone—as marked by mission alone, by suffering alone, by triumph alone, or by social responsibility alone. But such truncated understandings cannot recapitulate the narrative coherence of the moments in the story of Christ.

It's quite a big claim, "the structuring principle for all ecclesiology". And it's different to other accounts I hear of the Church's life and mission. Yet I find it quite compelling, that the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, the true Israel, orders the Church, giving it cohesion and definition.

Postscript
At this point it may seem that O'Donovan sees fours in everything, as O'Donovan also offers a tantalizing, though fleeting, correlation between these four moments of recapitulation and the order of ministry within the church:

1. church gathers – ministry of recognising Christians – primatial bishop
2. church suffers – ministry of suffering service – deacon
3. church recovers creation order – ministry of instruction – presbyter-bishop
4. church as prophet – ministry of diverse administration to build up the community – lay charism

Saying No To The HUP

No, it's not a new disease or government initiative known only by abbreviation. The Homogenous Unit Principle - or the HUP amongst it's hipster friends - is the missiological idea that "people like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers" (McGavran and Wagner 1970). And to a certain extent, it works. So as you look around the contemporary church scene, you'll find a church for almost every social and cultural group in Australia. Armed with pragmatic, 'missional' ecclesiology, churches have been started that minister to artisans, entertainers, etc. "Homogenous churches are those in which all the members are from a similar social, ethnic or cultural background. People prefer to associate with people like themselves – ‘I like people like me’. And so we should create homogenous churches to be effective in reaching people" (Tim Chester).

The only problem with the HUP is that's questionable just how biblical actually is. According to Tim Chester:

"The main criticism of the homogenous unit principle is that it denies the reconciling nature of the gospel and the church. It weakens the demands of Christian discipleship and it leaves the church vulnerable to partiality in ethnic or social conflict. It has been said that ‘the homogenous unit principles is fine in practice, but not in theory’!"

A central picture in New Testament of the church is of Jews and Gentiles with one voice glorifying the the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Romans 15). In Christ two peoples become one; Christian Jews and Gentiles become one new people of God, part of the one body of Christ. So then "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (cf. Galatians 3.28-29). Or again in 1 Corinthians "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12.13). And according to Ephesians 3, it is the unity of the church "across barriers that have hitherto divided humankind is the sure sign to the powers that their time is up, that they are not masters of the world and that Jesus is" (NT Wright). The very fact that "Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free" (Colossians 3.11) can praise God together in and of itself declares that Jesus Christ is Lord.

So this year, at Sydney Uni in the eu postgrads & staff faculty, we've said no to the HUP. Campus life is already segmented enough as it: between arts and science, staff and students, academics and support staff. According to Alasdair MacIntyre this results in:

“the graduates of the best research universities tend to become narrowly focused professionals, immensely and even obsessively hard working, disturbingly competitive and intent on success as it is measured within their own specialized professional sphere, often genuinely excellent at what they do; who read little worthwhile that is not relevant to their work..." (MacIntyre 1999).

Instead of organizing our groups by schools and faculties, this year our small groups, prayer groups and reading groups will be organised by broad geographical terms, i.e. Darlington, Fisher, Manning, etc. So in 2011 we're making the English and Physics postgrads sit down and read the Bible - together. We are convinced that they have great things to offer each other, and by talking to each other they'll become more rounded academics. But more importantly, we are convicted that the gospel tears down whatever barriers people place between themselves. We are convicted that what defines as people isn't our academic disciplines (and the expectations these entail) but our identity in Christ. And we are far more united than the academy would have us believe.

We don't do this to ignore the different academic disciplines. The Physics postgrads will still need to support and talk to each other as the live out the Christian life in their school. We're not intending to force people to blandly assimilate. Rather, as we acknowledge the wealth of diversity across eu postgrads and staff, we realise that their is more that unites us than divides us. "...[F]or the same Lords is Lord of all" (Romans 10.12).

Let Light Shine out of Darkness

⁶

"For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

If there is one thing that stood out to me as during student during my time at Sydney Uni, it is the EU's commitment to the t-shirt truth that "Jesus Christ is Lord." This is the gospel we proclaim and live out on campus.

Photo: The light tower of the new law building library.

Two Must Read Articles on Social Welfare in Sydney

Firstly, Stephen Judd (CEO Hammond Health Care) and Anne Robinson (Chair, World Vision) spoke on "Christianity and Australia’s Social Services" at Australia’s Christian Heritage National Forum, Parliament House, 2006. Their paper reveals some surprising results about the nature of non-government welfare providers in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Less than a quarter of the top 25 US charities are Christian, in the UK there are only three such Christian agencies. In Australia by comparison, 23 of the top 25 non-profit organisations by income are Christian organisations - almost all focused on social services. Make sure you read this paper (h/t APK for drawing my attention to it).

Secondly, last Friday Peter Kell (CEO ANGLICARE Sydney) delivered the annual Richard Johnson Lecture at the University of Wollongong. It is well worth reading for what Kell says about 'social exclusion' and urban planning in Sydney. See also this.

Kell also sets out a rational for caring:

"For Christians, deeply aware of the nature of saving grace in their lives and the need to honestly question any personal motivation beyond a simple response to grace, the question of why we care is just as important as the question of how we care. And this is especially true also for an organisation like ANGLICARE, a Sydney Anglican
diocesan organisation charged with delivering care beyond the scope of individual Christians and the local church but, wherever possible, in partnership with them. ANGLICARE Sydney has always been committed to the reality that the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. So it must first be said unequivocally, that for ANGLICARE the gospel is primary."

Kell goes onto quote Don Carson's sermon on 1 Cor. 15 at the 2007 Gospel Coalition Pastors’ Colloquium. According to Carson, the gospel is primary because it is:

1. Christological: that is, that the gospel centres on the person and work (the life, death and resurrection) of Jesus Christ.
2. Theological: The gospel tells us that sin is first and foremost an offence against God and that salvation is first to last the action of God, not our own.
3. Biblical: The gospel is essentially the message of the whole Bible.
4. Apostolic: The gospel is passed on to us by Jesus’ disciples as authoritative eyewitnesses.
5. Historical: The gospel is not philosophy or advice on how to find God, but rather the news of what God has done in history to find and save us.
6. Personal: The gospel must be personally believed and appropriated.
7. Universal: The gospel is for every tongue, tribe, people and individual.
8. Eschatological: The gospel includes the good news of the final transformation, not just the blessings we enjoy in this age.

I'm happy to say a hearty Amen! to this (although it is probably far too individualistic, and if you are going to talk about sin in the second point then I would also want to talk about evil). But I would add a ninth point: the gospel is primary because it is political. This has been touched on in several points, but I think it needs to be explicit. The gospel is primary because it is political: Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Lord over the evil powers, he is Lord over earthly powers, and he is Lord over my life. The gospel is political because it brings about the obedience of faith from among the nations and demands that I submit every aspect of my life to the Lordship of Christ. This makes the gospel primary and also provides a basis for caring - because Jesus isn't satisfied with just our souls, but demands also our heart, souls mind and strength in every part of our life.

Resurrecting the Gospel

A few years ago when I was at uni, the EU was using Easter as an opportunity to witness to the university. We gave out hot cross buns, books about Jesus, and had lots of good conversations. But the center-piece of this event was a large banner, which in giant letters stated ‘We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ The banner also bore the names of hundreds of students and lecturers who agreed with the statement and wanted to proclaim it to a doubting and skeptical university. We were declaring the Christian gospel –Jesus Christ is Lord and God has raised him from the dead (Romans 10.9). As the Evangelical Union, the gospel union, we were committed to declaring the same gospel that the Apostles had declared thousands of years earlier. It is from their eyewitness accounts that we believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The very shape of Christianity is determined by the events that first Easter – a fact that the Apostles were acutely aware of. For the Apostles, the resurrection was the core foundation of their gospel: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15.3-4). In his resurrection, Jesus is designated as the Son of God, the King of Israel and true heir of David (Romans 1.3-4, also 2 Timothy 2.8), and is marked out as the one who will judge the world: “…Now God commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17.30-31, also 10.39-43). As the one who is to judge, the apostles believed that Jesus was not just the King of Israel, but the Lord of all creation and to him belongs obedience from all nations (Romans 1.5, 15.12).

As the King that Israel had long waited for, the apostles knew that Jesus’ resurrection was significant for understanding the purposes of God. When Paul states that the gospel was “promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures”, he doesn’t have a couple of proof-texts in the back of his mind. The gospel – the death and resurrection of Jesus – is the climax of God’s covenant with Israel. In raising Jesus from the dead, God has shown himself faithful to his promises to Abraham and David, and has ultimately triumphed over sin and death – the evil powers that have held the world captive since Genesis 3. Jesus is the Christ promised by God to Israel in scripture. His death and resurrection reveal God’s plan for Israel and the world.

For the Apostles, this meant two things. Firstly, forgiveness of sins was now possible for both Jews and Gentiles through Jesus (Acts 13.37-38, 5.31). All people every where must now repent and follow the true king. Secondly, the resurrection of the dead, which Israel didn’t expect until the last judgment, had already happened to Jesus. The newly risen Lord now reigns over creation and guarantees us a resurrection like his when he returns (1 Corinthians 15:20ff). This was the gospel the apostles proclaimed – Jesus is Lord and he offers forgiveness for all and a living hope of a future resurrection.

Our challenge today is to continue announcing the resurrection of Jesus and allowing it to shape our lives. Despite living amongst many competing world views including post modernity and materialism, the resurrection of Jesus, God’s King, shows these up as idolatry by announcing the reality of Jesus’ Lordship. Like the apostles, evangelicals today must keep the resurrection central in our understanding and proclamation of the gospel.

The Gospel and the Happiness Paradox

You may like to check out this article by John Ortberg (author of 'If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get out of the Boat'; source of all good sermon illustrations) talking about 'The Gospel and the Happiness Paradox'.

Discipleship or obedience is not something we have to cajole people into by obligation or gratitude ("after all, Jesus died for you; the least you can do is deny yourself happiness for a while on earth"), it is simply the process of learning to enter into the good, with-God life. The gospel becomes social as well as personal—not because individuals don't matter, but because to be "saved" means (among other things) to be delivered from the chronic selfishness that contributes to the world's hurt and to my misery.

Celebrating a year of HEBEL

On 10 October 2006 a young punk, in reaction to an adverse decision about his career, started this blog - not with too much purpose in mind. It survived the high infant mortality rate for blogs, despite never finishing any of the series of posts it started (i.e. James, British hymns + nationalism, etc.). It had lots of NT Wright, a bit of O'Donovan, and one quote about a Moore College mission that was posted somewhat illegally. It has been a blog that has had to survive a poor sense of grammar, vocabulary and an inept spell checker. Often it has been a pale imitation Michael Jensen, Justin Moffatt, and Byron Smith, and suffered from the rise of Facebook and my lack of internet access this past six months. Hebel has been a blog that has taken a healthy interest in ecclesiastical doctrine, and to celebrate (if indeed there is anything worth celebrating), Hebel will feature this month a series on Church unity - a Gospel truth.

If someone comes up with a snappy title for this series (like Byron's Not the end of the World series), let me know. And stay tuned for the first post of the series: Church Unity = Jesus is Lord.

"...and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Jesus - Matthew 16.18