sanctification

On Being Like Jesus, Part 4: Aligning Your Focus

July 2, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time | Part 3: Aligning Your Values

Paul’s first principle in his description of being like Jesus (Php 2.3-8) is to change your values—specifically, to regard others as more important than yourself (Php 2.3). In this post we turn to the second, complementary principle—we need to change what we focus on:

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others (Php 2.4).

As I’ve noted, this is complementary; it builds on the first principle. We begin by valuing others more than ourselves, and that change in valuation prompts us to “look out for” the interests of those we value.

I suppose the best illustration of this is parents with their children. In most cases this radical shift in focus happens naturally; it’s the rare exception when a mother feels no natural instinct to care for her infant, and indeed to put the infant’s well-being ahead of her own. Parents routinely sacrifice sleep for their newborn, and often they take on extra work to provide for the child’s needs, and further to provide things that may not be needs but that they consider important to the child’s success.

I well remember my last year in public school. I was in 7^th grade, in a junior high (that’s what we called them in those days) in a Boston suburb where the leadership was trying all the latest fads in educational theory. There were no grades; there was no discipline; and I was headed for trouble in several obvious ways. My parents decided that my Mom would go to work—she had excellent secretarial skills—and in doing that they were able to pay for tuition in a Christian school several towns over. For the next 4 years I rode to work with my parents, caught a city bus to the next town, walked half a mile down a hill to the private school bus stop, and rode to school on Mr. Dutton’s bus. Reversed the process in the afternoon, studied at Mom’s office till 5, and then drove home with my parents.

Mom didn’t have to do that. I could have kept on going to school for free, catching a bus right down at the corner nearest my house.

But like pretty much all parents, my parents were willing to upend their lives to my advantage, because, at root, they valued me above themselves.

That’s natural, or so it seems. We value our children, and so we focus on their success.

Now, here’s the thing.

We need to do that with everybody.

Everybody.

The ones we don’t naturally feel any special attachment to.

The ones who don’t seem to be as valuable as we are.

And to our minds, that’s pretty much everybody outside our friends and family—and maybe some people within our friends and family as well.

You know who I’m talking about. :-)

The emphasis in our current verse (Php 2.4) is on focus, on looking around, on paying attention. It’s on noticing need and then acting on it.

You can’t notice if you’re not paying attention—indeed, if you haven’t developed the habit of paying attention.

You can’t notice if your nose is buried in your phone as you’re walking down the sidewalk.

You won’t notice if, like me, you’re such a list-obsessed person that all you normally think about is the thing you’re working on right now, and the next thing, and the next.

Stop. Look around. Pay attention. Notice.

Sure, fellow list-makers, make your list; see to your responsibilities; make each day count; be strategic.

But as you’re doing that, value those around you, and watch them, looking for their needs, ready to be interrupted, and planning how you can help meet them.

When Jesus started his earthly ministry, he had three years to save the world. That’s a pretty big to-do list.

How would you have started?

He started by going over to Bashan and getting baptized. Then he went to a wedding, and when they ran out of wine, he provided some more.

And after 3 years of seeing and acting on other people’s needs, he saved the world.

Follow him.

Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Being Like Jesus, Part 3: Aligning Your Values

June 29, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time

In beginning this series I said that we should pattern ourselves after Christ, because it is into his image that the Father is transforming us during the lifelong process of sanctification (2Co 3.18). Of many biblical passages in which we can find information about Christ’s character and attributes, I’ve chosen to look at just one, the well-known, lyrical description in Philippians 2:

³Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; ⁴do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. ⁵Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. ⁸Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Before this passage gets to a description of Christ’s thinking and consequent actions, it begins with a couple of direct imperatives for Paul’s readers. Verse 3 addresses the mindset that should underlie our decisions, while verse 4 speaks of where our thinking should be focused. I’d like to take a post to deal with each of these imperatives. I’d suggest that verses 5 to 8, the description of Christ’s thinking and action, serve simply as an example of these two imperatives in practice—and so the imperatives are the underlying principles that more or less define Christ-likeness.

The first underlying principle—the first characteristic of Christ’s thinking and decision-making—is to “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.”

The principle is straightforward and uncomplicated: we’re to consider others as more important than ourselves.

Are they? Actually, the passage doesn’t say that. The Scripture is clear that we’re all—equally—in the image of God (Gen 1.26-27). the Creator has made each of us to be remarkable examples of living design, and we all have a place in his plan. You really are special—that statement isn’t just pandering psychobabble—and you know what? I’m just as special as you are.

But no human being has enough mass to be the center of the universe. God is the Center, and we as his creatures are designed to fulfill his purposes for this life and the life to come. Life goes badly when we consider ourselves the center of it. We are designed—and, here, instructed—to consider others as more valuable than ourselves.

In fact, Paul goes so far as to say that self-centeredness—the Greek word rendered “conceit” here means “glory”—is “empty”; there’s just nothing to it, like a cheese curl, or a soap bubble floating in a light summer breeze. All of our effort to bring glory to ourselves will simply come to nothing; in fact, it will likely encourage people to admire us less rather than more.

So instead of puffing ourselves up, ordering our affairs around our own advantage and interests, what does Paul call us to do?

Choose humility.

We’re funny about this; we admire humility in everyone except ourselves. We genuinely admire people who are genuinely humble, but we seem to think that those we admire will admire us more if we call attention to ourselves, grab the spotlight, make a big impression.

Nope.

I’ve taken several teams of students to Africa, involving all different kinds of kids. I’ve found things to admire about all of them.

But you know who made the biggest impression on me?

It was the one on the trip to Tanzania where we were out of running water for 5 weeks, and we had to cart 5-gallon buckets of water to two different houses for cooking and bathing. And whenever there was a moment, I’d see Jack (not his real name), without being told, carting 2 5-gallon buckets at a time over to the girls’ house to refill their water supply. Jack was a lot bigger and younger and stronger than I was, and he was using his gift to make a difference.

Be like Jack.

 Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Being Like Jesus, Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time

June 25, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important

Like many of my colleagues and fellow travelers, I’m leery of moralizing on deep theological passages. Gideon’s story is not about being watchful when you drink from a river, and the death of Goliath is not about “only a boy named David” and those “five little stones he took.”

Those passages are about the might of Israel’s God, and his faithful, loving covenant loyalty (hesed). In the main, the Scripture is about God, not us, and we do a disservice to its Author when we turn it into a self-help book.

I had an experience years ago that drove this idea home to me.

One Christmas my family was visiting my sisters in New England. Not far from one sister’s house was a colonial-era church, which is well known for its architecture. Built in 1719, it has the box pews and the pulpit sounding board that were common design features in those days. As it happens, a painting of the building was included in one of the BJU Press textbooks back in my days with the Press, and when I left the Press to join the BJU faculty, my boss, who knew how much I loved that illustration, gave me the original artwork (by John Roberts—no, not the Chief Justice), and it hangs in our dining room today.

I really wanted to visit that church.

We showed up for the Sunday morning service just before Christmas. The minister presented a homily on Mary’s Magnificat (Lk 1.39-56).

Now, I knew this church was theologically liberal, and I later learned that it had embraced liberal theology not long after it was founded; it was liberal before liberal was cool. But even knowing that, I was floored by the homily.

As students of the Scripture know, the Magnificat presents some really remarkable features—

To begin with, it exhibits extensive parallels with Hannah’s prayer of thanks after the birth of Samuel (1Sam 2.1ff), and it is delivered extemporaneously—which indicates that Mary was thoroughly familiar with Hannah’s song, having probably studied and memorized and meditated over it, in a day when most girls were never taught to read. As a literary work alone, it’s worthy of extensive study.
Further, it develops significant theological themes involving multiple divine attributes and works, demonstrating both his greatness and his goodness. Again, this is surprising in an age when women were generally not educated or included in theological discussions—all the more so if, as we suspect, Mary was a teenager at the time.

If it’s Christmas-time, and you’re preaching on the Magnificat, there’s no lack of substantive material to present. The hard part is deciding what to include in just one sermon.

So what was the homily about on this Christmas Sunday morning?

Mary said these things after her cousin Elisabeth had greeted her with uplifting words (Lk 1.42-45). So we should say uplifting words to one another, thereby encouraging one another to produce wonderful creative things.*

My friends, I’m all for encouraging people—even poets!—but that is not what the Magnificat is about. When we deal with biblical theology, we need to make it about what it’s about, not our own good feelings about ourselves.

So here in Philippians 2 we have a significant Christological passage, the classic biblical passage on Christ’s humiliation and exaltation. The deity and humanity of Christ are in here, and the divine plan involving the cross, and eventual obeisance of all life—human, both regenerate and unregenerate, and nonhuman as well—and the absolute and eternal lordship of Jesus Christ.

It’s not about us.

But—it is about us. The very reason Paul has (apparently) pulled this ancient hymn into this particular epistle to a particular church in Macedonia is that he wants to moralize on the theology it contains. He wants us to do what Jesus did—to humble ourselves, to serve others. He wants us to break the passage down and live it out—not just by worshiping the Great Lord Jesus, but by imitating him. We are to “let this mind be in [us]” (Php 2.5).

We’ll take a few posts to explore what that means.

* For some reason, I can remember the liberal sermons I’ve heard better than the conservative ones. I guess the horror makes the experience more memorable over the long term.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Being Like Jesus, Part 1: Why It’s Important

June 22, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We don’t know her name, because she was only 15 at the time, and the police won’t tell us. She was a student at Richmond High School just north of San Francisco. It was a Saturday in October, the night of the homecoming dance.

About 9:30 that night, just after the dance ended, a group of students gathered in the darkness of a courtyard on the school property. Several of the boys turned on the girl, who was drunk, and began to beat her, throw her around, and rape her. There were at least 7 attackers, and the attack went on for more than 2 hours.

They weren’t alone in the courtyard. They were surrounded by other students, at least two dozen, and someone as old as in his 40s.

No one called the police.

Several of them allegedly recorded the attack on their cell phones. Eventually a young woman nearby heard what was going on and called 911. Police rescued the girl, and she was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

What would you have done?

Would you have called the police? Would you have stepped in and tried to help? Would you have risked your own safety to defend a helpless victim?

Would you have thought of her, or of yourself?

What would you have done?

How do you know?

You can’t know what you’ll do in a crisis. What you’ll do is react—you’ll go with your most primal instincts. You’ll act out what you are deep inside, in your core.

And what is that? Your core is the sum of a thousand decisions you make every day, in the course of ordinary life. Today—and every other day—you’re turning into who you are.

So. You and I ought to spend our days, and our decisions, becoming what matters—the most important things.

And what are they?

The Bible answers that question for us:

God is taking the entire span of our lives to turn us into imitators of Christ:
- But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit (2Cor 3.18).
When Christ was asked what really matters, He said it very simply: love God, and love your neighbor (Mk 12.29-31).

So my decisions today, and your decisions, should be about placing more value on others than on ourselves. We need to decide every moment, in important decisions and in little tiny ones, to think as though it’s not about us.

This—thinking “otherly” in the tiny decisions—is the only way to be reasonably sure that when the really big decisions come, when there’s no time to evaluate or to do anything other than just react, we’ll do the right thing.

Why do I say that? Because doing the right thing—especially when it’s costly—is unnatural for us. We need a lot of practice, a lot of repetition, a lot of imprinting.

What does thinking “otherly” look like? If God’s lifelong work in us is conforming us to the likeness of Christ, then of course Jesus himself is our example.

There are many places in Scripture where we can get information on how Jesus thought and acted. Of course we could start with the Gospels, which we could call primary sources in the historical sense. And then there are numerous Christological passages in the epistles that would be informative—Romans, Ephesians, and Colossians come immediately to mind.

But I’d like to spend a few posts delving into Philippians 2, where Paul lays out a classic passage on Christ’s humiliation and exaltation—a passage some scholars think was an early hymn of the church. (It does appear to have the structure and lyricism one would expect in a hymn.)

Now that we have a text to study, I’ll spend a post justifying using a text that’s talking about Jesus to direct our own personal decisions—and then we’ll get to the text itself.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Fellowship, Part 5: Covering Both the Bases

March 19, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: It’s Who We Are | Part 2: What It’s For | Part 3: Getting There | Part 4: Measuring Success

Biblical fellowship is a two-sided coin, or a two-edged sword, or a two-way street, or something. (The title of this post strongly implies that I don’t know anything at all about baseball.)

I’d like to close this series, and the larger metaseries about the means of grace, by noting that fellowship, our reciprocal care for one another in the body of Christ, is a comprehensive task that involves complex people. It’s not enough to just try to be positive and encouraging.

Biblical Encouragement

Of course it includes encouragement, what the good old King James calls “exhortation.” The Greek word is paraklesis, a term applied to the work of both the Holy Spirit, our “Comforter” (Jn 14.16, 26; 15.26; 16.7), and Jesus himself, our “Advocate” (1Jn 2.1). We’re often “called alongside” to comfort others, perhaps just to be there with a ministry of presence, sitting silently with them in their grief or frustration or rage, or to pray with them and for them, or to encourage them to get back up and keep going, or to step in and do for them what they’re unable to do for themselves at the moment (Jam 5.14-15).

So yes, we ask a lot of questions when we gather, and we listen to the answers, seeking for ways that we can encourage our brothers and sisters through our spiritual gifts, teaching, helping, showing mercy, praying. It’s an obsession with us, or it ought to be.

Biblical Confrontation

But there’s more to fellowship than just that.

This word paraklesis, “exhortation,” is sometimes—indeed, most of the time—used in a stronger, more “negative” sense, one that includes confrontation, rebuke, the image of the coach getting in the player’s face and telling him that he can do better.

Paul exhorted the Corinthians to finish the work that they hadn’t yet completed (2Co 9.5). He exhorted the Thessalonians, without “flattering words,” to hear and respond to the gospel (1Th 2.3-6)—both the offer of salvation and the threat of perdition. Once they believed, he exhorted them to start making progress in obedience to God’s Word (1Th 4.1), and to exhort others in ways that included “warn[ing] the unruly” (1Th 5.14). Later he exhorted the indolent in the same church to get a job and earn their keep (2Th 3.12). He advised his protégé Timothy to “reprove, rebuke, exhort” (2Ti 4.2) his hearers. He told Titus to “exhort … those who contradict” (Ti 1.9). Jude exhorts his readers to “earnestly contend for the faith” (Jude 1.3).

As a former pastor of mine used to say, these are “stout words.” There is grace here, and patience, but there’s no coddling. Given who we are—in the image of God, but broken and susceptible to the gravitational force of our own sinful nature—we need brothers and sisters who will speak truth to us, lovingly but firmly, and who know us well enough to know when it’s time to jerk the chain. And we need to be that kind of spiritual sibling to those around us in the body as well.

We can’t do that for people we don’t know. We have to talk deeply and trustingly with one another, wisely using gentle support when it’s called for, and turning into the football coach when that’s necessary for the good of the player on the field.

You don’t get to know somebody that well just by saying “Hello” in the hallway or the aisle on Sunday morning. You don’t get that far into someone’s head and heart if you’re refusing to be honest about your own struggles, or worse yet, if you’re gossiping about the things they tell you. You get there over time, with attention and sacrifice, and with lots of prayer, individually and together.

Biblical fellowship is time-consuming hard work. It doesn’t happen without commitment and purpose and focus.

But the payoff is beyond words.

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

On Fellowship, Part 4: Measuring Success

March 16, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: It’s Who We Are | Part 2: What It’s For | Part 3: Getting There

Last time we considered a passage from Ephesians 5 that provided some basic principles to underlie our exercise of fellowship. This time I’d like to consider a different Pauline passage, one that helps us recognize when we’re succeeding.

In the opening paragraph of Philippians 2, Paul exhorts the church to live out their unity in Christ in several specific ways—

By being united to the core of their being (Php 2.2)—of one mind (what they focus their thinking on), of one love (how they choose to focus their energies and attention), of one spirit (Greek psuche, or self—what their life is all about). (The fourth phrase, “of one purpose,” is essentially a repetition of the first one.)
By setting aside their own interests or priorities (Php 2.3a)—not acting selfishly or out of a desire for self-promotion (“empty conceit,” literally “empty glory”; the KJV “vainglory” may be archaic, but it very specifically captures the word’s meaning).
By putting the needs and priorities of others ahead of their own (Php 2.3b-4)—which is exactly what love is all about; you demonstrate your love for someone by putting that person’s needs or conveniences ahead of your own inconvenience, without considering future remuneration. As Tertullian argued, the early Romans marveled at how the Christians loved one another.

What Paul is essentially asking is that they think as a team, being united in their purpose.

That’s what our churches should look like, whether assembled or out as ambassadors in the world; we should care for one another, each laboring to make the others better ambassadors for the kingdom. We should be working tactically, maximizing the strengths of every member of the team, using those strengths to support teammates whose skills are somewhere else.

Paul spends much of the rest of the chapter setting forth three examples of this kind of thinking.

The first example, to no one’s surprise, is Christ himself. In this famous Christological passage (Php 2.5-11) Paul presents Christ as the paramount example of someone who puts himself at the greatest possible disadvantage—from “equality with God” to “even the death of the cross”—for the greatest possible advantage of those he loves. No sacrifice that any of us could possibly make for the spiritual benefit of a Christian teammate could come close to the example of sacrifice he has already laid down for us.
Paul’s second example is his protégé, Timothy (Php 2.19-24). Paul notes that Timothy has a long record of selfless service—likely more than a decade as he writes this epistle—“like a child serving his father” (Php 2.22). From that record Paul concludes that there is “no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare” (Php 2.20). And Timothy’s service to Paul is not without risk; besides the long list of difficulties Paul underwent (2Co 11.23-27), we know that Timothy himself was imprisoned as well (Heb 13.23).
The final example is someone most Christians would have trouble identifying. His name is Epaphroditus (Php 2.25-30), and he spent time with Paul when the latter was under house arrest in Rome awaiting his hearing before Caesar (Ac 28.30-31). He was well known to the believers at Philippi; some commentators speculate that he was actually their pastor, but we do know for certain that he was one of the men sent from that church to bring Paul gifts during his house arrest (Php 4.18), and that on that trip he became sick, nearly dying (Php 2.30), but had recovered (Php 2.27-28). This was someone who “risked his life” for the work of the kingdom (Php 2.30).

So how are we doing? How seriously do we take our fellowship? When’s the last time you risked something in order to benefit another member of the body? When’s the last time you even put up with a little inconvenience to do so?

As I write this, the US is in the process of shutting down over COVID-19. The school where I teach, like many others, is sending its students home, where they’ll finish the academic year through online classes. At church we’re not shaking hands, and we’re thinking about the old folks, who are at higher risk.

There are people in our churches that are going to need some help, the sort that will inconvenience us. Next to the examples above, that’s small potatoes, isn’t it?

Part 5: Covering Both the Bases

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

On Fellowship, Part 3: Getting There

March 12, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: It’s Who We Are | Part 2: What It’s For

It’s time to look a little more closely at what we’re actually doing as we minister our gifts to one another in the church.

A passage I find helpful in this regard is the opening paragraph of Ephesians 5, which is just one sentence with two main verbs that point us to how we conduct our relationships in the church.

¹Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; ²and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

Loving As God Loves

The first verb tells us to imitate God, who loves us. So, clearly, we’re to love one another—and to do so as God loves.

How does God love?

The Bible gives us a lot of information about that. We can all make that topic a focus of study for the rest of our lives—and we all should.

Here are a few thoughts that come quickly to mind:

He loves us despite the fact that we don’t deserve it. He loved Israel not because she was great and mighty (Dt 7.7-8), and even in spite of her constant unfaithfulness (Ezk 33.11). Jesus told us to love those who persecute us (Mt 5.43-44), and he set the example for us in the moment of his most intense crisis (Lk 23.34). We ought to love fellow believers who aren’t attractive (to us) and who can’t do anything for us in return.
He loves us in ways that made him vulnerable, as the examples cited above also demonstrate. By the very act of creating humans in his image, God was committing himself to dying, in the nature of his Son, at the hands of his own creatures—and to becoming one of us forever. Cur Deus Homo?, indeed.
And so he loves sacrificially as well (Ro 5.8).

We should love another like this. If we did, the lost would indeed notice. And so would our fellow believers.

Living Out That Love

One of the dangers of talking about loving people is that many in our culture take that as no more than an emotion. You feel the little thing in your heart, and you click “Like,” or maybe even “Love!” and then you move on.

Biblical love isn’t like that. Biblical love moves you to act; as the most famous verse in the Bible says, “God so loved … that he gave” (Jn 3.16). And so our passage tells us not just to imitate God by loving, but to “walk in love,” just as Christ gave himself for us because he loved us (Ep 5.2).

In other words, we should love as the Bible directs us to.

Again, we could generate a long list of specific biblical commands and examples on how to love. But let’s start with just a few of the obvious ones:

Biblical love finds its source in God himself (1Th 3.12). It’s not something we can work up and then maintain. As we enrich and mature our relationship with God, the Lover of our souls, we find a “deep, sweet well of love” that flows out of us and into the needs of our fellow believers.
Biblical love finds its pattern in God himself (1Jn 3.16)—as our jumping-off verse, Ephesians 5.2, has already told us.
Biblical love invariably results in action (1Jn 3.18)—and genuine, sincere action at that. We give without reserve and without regret—a response enabled and empowered by God.

Next time, we’ll consider what the outcome of this process of fellowship through active love looks like.

Part 4: Measuring Success | Part 5: Covering Both the Bases

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

On Fellowship, Part 2: What It’s For

March 9, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: It’s Who We Are

Last time we noted that from the beginning we’ve been designed for fellowship, for interpersonal relationships—and that for our time in history, the church is a significant part of God’s plan for that. He even commands us to keep at it.

OK, if God says I’m supposed to fellowship, then I will.

But what’s the point? What am I supposed to be trying to accomplish? I don’t suppose there’s any bigger waste of time than a bunch of people standing around without any understanding of what they’re there for.

Most Christians, I suppose, go through the traditional church activities because, well, that’s what we do.

For as long as this family has been believers, we’ve gone to Sunday school and church on Sunday mornings, where we sit through, first, a Sunday school lesson, and then, a sermon—preceded by a welcome, 2 songs, an offering, another song, special music, and followed by an invitation and a closing hymn—and then we come back Sunday night for a similar but veeeery slightly less formal service, and then a prayer meeting on Wednesday night, where there’s another sermon, and some prayer requests, and then—well, actually, not usually much time left for actual prayer, but we did have a good time of, um, fellowship.

That’s what we do.

But why? What are we trying to accomplish? How will we know if we’ve succeeded?

Church, and the fellowship that comes with it, is God’s provision for accomplishing a greater work—gathering unto himself a people from all nations (Rev 7.9-12), and conforming them, over time, to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ (Rom 8.29). That’s really what all this is about—not just church, but all of history and everything it touches.

So we could say that the ultimate purpose of fellowship is the glory of God—a worship that is appropriate to the magnitude of his person and works.

And how do we accomplish that?

By helping one another become more and more like Christ, a little bit at a time, week by week, over a long period of time (Mt 28.19-20).

To help us with that, God has given every one of his people one or more spiritual gifts, which we can exercise for the benefit of those alongside us in the body. I’ve written a little iconoclastically on spiritual gifts before, and I’ve also written on the importance of our exercising our gifts intentionally whenever we gather. Go take a look at those posts. I’ll wait.

_____

OK.

We gather, then, to help one another become more like Christ by exercising our gifts toward those who need them. As we do that, faithfully, patiently, week after week, we find that those to whom we’re ministering are making progress, being sanctified, becoming a little more like Jesus, even though we’re not all that good an example. And in those interchanges, they’re ministering to us in return, and we find that we’re making progress in sanctification as well.

This doesn’t have to happen “at church.” (Since the church is just the people of God, entwined by mutual agreement, the very expression “at church” is essentially meaningless.) Many churches have set up “small groups” (mine calls them “Grace Groups,” because “Grace” is part of our name) that meet together regularly to discuss the Word, to share prayer requests, to pray together, and frankly just to socialize. You know what happens? As time passes, these little groups get to know one another better, and to develop trust, and before you know it they’re caring for one another in ways that go far beyond the “how you doing?” shallow greetings that so often characterize our exchanges in the hallways of the church building.

Sometimes Christians don’t wait for the church to set up small groups. Sometimes they agree to meet regularly with another believer or two that they trust, and they pursue that same sanctifying work in one another.

Now that’s fellowship.

And you know what happens then?

People start to notice. People in the church who want that kind of relationship in their own lives. And people outside the church, unbelievers, who say—or at least think—“how they love one another!” (Jn 13.35).

And in the end of it all, God is glorified.

That’s why we fellowship.

Part 3: Getting There | Part 4: Measuring Success | Part 5: Covering Both the Bases

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

On Fellowship, Part 1: It’s Who We Are

March 5, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

As this year began I started a series on spiritual growth, which I called “On Building Spiritual Muscle.” The series focused on the key spiritual exercises that the Bible prescribes for spiritual health, exercises that Christians have generally called “the means of grace”: Scripture, prayer, and fellowship. The next series, “On Devotions,” focused on the first two of those means of grace, and particularly on our private practice of them.

Now I’d like to spend a few posts talking about the third means of grace, fellowship. The first series included a single post on it, but there’s a lot more to say about it, and I’d like to suggest a few things that might help us all pursue fellowship purposefully and effectively.

Let me start by addressing my fellow introverts. (Yes, I’m one too, even if I don’t appear to be.)

Some of us aren’t naturally inclined toward relationships, particularly close ones, and particularly in significant numbers. People wear us out, and when that happens, we get crotchety and impatient and frustrated, and we say things we shouldn’t, and we get irritated by the inexplicable things other people do, and we decide that it’s just simpler to go live in the woods.

Church fellowship? No thanks. Been there, done that. Don’t need the hassle. I’m fine.

I know people who have withdrawn from church for these reasons. I’ve thought about it myself.

But let me suggest a different path.

Somebody made us—designed us. He’s made us to operate in a certain way, and he’s set down some engineering specifications that we really ought to pay attention to if we want to operate at our best.

So what did our designer have in mind for us?

We find that he designed us for the specific purpose of having a relationship with him. That’s clear from the beginning—

He made us “in his image,” someone who, unlike the animals, could relate to him (Gen 1.27).
He initiated a relationship with the first man, and he defined him in terms of his relationship with him (Gen 2.15-16).
He sought to pursue that relationship through time spent together (Gen 3.8-9).

We were made to have a relationship with God, to walk by his side and interact with him regularly. If we don’t do that, we’re going to be screwdrivers trying to drive nails; we’re going to be violating our very purpose.

Did you notice that I skipped over an important part of that passage in Genesis?

God didn’t make just one man. He made the man, and then he gave him a task designed to point up the fact that he was alone. As Adam named the animals (Gen 2.19), he saw the obvious fact that they came in pairs, male and female. And the absence of a female for him was starkly obvious (Gen 2.20); as God had already observed, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen 2.18). So God made a woman, a partner, a companion for him, and Adam saw immediately that she was someone he needed; he even responded by speaking poetry, apparently right off the top of his head (Gen 2.23).

From the beginning we’ve been designed for fellowship. It’s not good when we don’t have it.

Further, the New Testament makes it clear that the church was designed to play a significant role in meeting that need. Immediately after the church began at Pentecost, the Scripture identifies the four key activities in which they were engaged (Ac 2.42):

The apostles’ teaching (i.e. Scripture)
Fellowship
Breaking of bread (likely the Lord’s Supper)
Prayer

We find them gathering regularly throughout those early days (Ac 4.31; 11.26; 12.12; 14.27; 15.4, 30; 18.22; 20.7-8). And lest we think that this gathering was optional, we’re directly commanded “not [to] forsak[e] the assembling of ourselves together” (Heb 10.25).

This is really important; it’s at the core of who we are.

We need one another, and we have responsibilities toward one another.

So why should we gather? What should we be trying to accomplish?

We’ll look into that next time.

Part 2: What It’s For | Part 3: Getting There | Part 4: Measuring Success | Part 5: Covering Both the Bases

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

On Devotions, Part 8: Conclusion

February 27, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Since we didn’t quite finish covering my prayer structure last time, I’d like to wrap it up here and then share some closing thoughts about devotional life and practice.

The last part of my prayer is Supplication, or asking for things. Like many other believers, I’ve organized my requests by days of the week. Every day I pray for my family specifically and for any urgent matters that have come to my attention from church or school or social media. But then I pray for different areas of need based on the day of the week—

Sundays: church—the leadership, the other members of my small group, and any other needs in the body
Mondays: work (BJU)—administration, faculty, staff, students
Tuesdays—those who need to be saved or who are struggling spiritually
Wednesdays—the recently bereaved; I note the date of death and then pray for the families for 6 months or so. I know from experience that concern for the bereaved tends to wane long before the need for prayer does.
Thursdays—missions. There are several mission works with which I have particular connection, and I pray for specific needs in those ministries. God will hear “bless all the missionaries,” of course, but he tells us to bring our requests, which I see as implying a certain specificity.
Fridays—health needs. Acute needs typically go on the daily list; this section is for chronic needs. Right now I pray weekly for about a dozen friends who have cancer, and a handful of others with various other chronic needs.
Saturdays—governments. I cover a specific level each week: city council, county council, state assembly, state senate, governor, US House, US Senate, White House, Supreme Court, UN. (I’m not making any statement about sovereignty with that last one; but since things happen there that affect my country, I pray.)

I typically close by praying through my schedule and task list for the day, and I end with a recitation: “Father, I give you this day. Use me, as you wish, to glorify your name, edify your people, and advance your kingdom, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”

This makes for a really good start to the day, and a really sharp focus on what should be my primary motivations throughout the day.

Closing Thoughts

Several things to note.

First, these days my devotional practice takes a little more than an hour—5 to 10 minutes for maintenance Bible reading, 30 minutes or so for Bible study, 15 minutes or so for Christian reading, 5 minutes for music, and 10 to 15 minutes for prayer. Ideally I get up at 5 am and get right to it, while the house is quiet. As I’ve noted earlier, that means that I typically don’t stay up late, but as an empty-nester that’s a realistic option for me.

Saturdays and Sundays, of course, I can take a little longer.

If I have time, I’ll sometimes add a couple other items to the chain. Sometimes I’ll watch a Logos training video to sharpen my skills with my Bible study software; and if I have time, I’ll quickly scan the day’s headlines to orient myself to what’s happening Out There. Stewardship, conversation hooks, general awareness.

Second, let me reiterate that I don’t intend this to be a pattern for anyone else. I’ve intentionally used tentative language in these posts; I’m absolutely not suggesting that you have to do these things, in these ways, in order To Be A Good Christian. What I’m doing these days is working really well for me these days; but I’ll change pretty much anything if I think I can make better spiritual progress in some other way, and particularly if I find my routine getting, well, routine. I share these things in the hope that someone might harvest a useful idea or two, and that someone stumbling along might be motivated to spend more time with his God.

I cannot tell you how significantly this regular devotional practice has revolutionized my walk with God and my consequent daily life. It pays infinite dividends, and God helping me, I will not short-cut it.

May the road rise to meet you, my friend.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash