Stirring the Culture: Are You a Gospel Culture-Maker or an Enemy Sniper?: Gospel Culture Change

Heb 10:24

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,”

Maintaining a Gospel culture that stirs up love and good works is often difficult. One of the challenges we face is against our propensity to focus on self. The love of self comes packaged with easily digested bits of destructive attitudes and activities. One of these easy morsels, amazingly, is character assassination. 

When we hear the words “character assassination,” we might think we are far from such actions. Unfortunately, we often aren’t. In reality, we might be an elite sniper for the enemy— taking out the character of so many of our friends, family, spouses, and brothers and sisters in Christ.

Like the confused P.E. participant, we often score on the wrong goal. We love in the wrong direction. We get misguided into accepting certain behaviors and viewpoints that the enemy wants us to believe. We observe issues in others and instead of lovingly going to them— to work things out, we tell someone else of our frustrations, issues, and judgments— informing one another about what foolish things others have done. We might camouflage it as “seeking counsel”, “getting support”, “talking about our issues”, or “talking life”, but its real and true name is Gossip. 

Our definition of gossip is often skewed and distorted. We might think gossip is only communicating things that aren’t true, to a vast number of people, or not having some concern for the other person. These are a few ingredients of gossip, but only a portion of its vast meal. Gossip is a large banquet of corrupting talk. It’s one of the overlooked sins that we often excuse and unwittingly participate in. In the culture around us, it has become the norm. Ironically, we can even gossip about others gossiping.

Gossip, truly and Biblically defined, is telling anything about someone to anyone else that isn’t stirring them up to love, appreciation, thanksgiving, and good works. 

Our intentions might seem good to us. We may even want to help the other person in some capacity. However, in gossip, we avoid keeping the dialogue to the person we should be loving and instead love ourselves, telling others. 

When we unlovingly tell others how foolish someone else has acted it is outright sin. It destroys confidence, our Gospel witness, trust, and hope. It places our needs above other’s needs. It doesn’t stir up love but erodes it. The words we use about others can either build and stir up love or destroy and erode it.

Some examples of gossip we might hear or say are, “I can’t believe (insert name) did that,” “I hate it when my spouse does (insert issue),” or “when (insert name) did (insert action) it made me (insert negative emotion).” Gossip is the result of sinful heart motivations to justify our feelings and attitudes of anger, hurt, jealousy, superiority, judgment, selfish desires, or to sway the love of others our way. 

When we speak about others in a negative way we avoid our Gospel responsibility, excuse our sin, and grow distrust of someone in others. In reality, gossip multiplies our sin.

What gossip creates is carnage and a devastating wartime landscape that is void of good fruit and work. It creates rotten fruit for all who hear— to be eaten and digested with disastrous results. Those who hear it are not stirred up to love one another and do good works, instead, they now have a rancid taste left on their minds that destroys the sweetness of the Gospel and the love we are to have for all. This should not be so in the body of Christ.

The Gospel should inform us that Jesus could have told all of our deepest, darkest, and putrid, rotten secrets to all and fairly rained judgment upon us. Yet, Jesus loved us, took our place, took our sin, took our punishment, took our gossip, and tells only loving things about us to God, the Father— who has the right to hear all. Our character has been transformed into that of Christ’s. The Gospel improves someone’s character, regardless of their past and present. The Gospel is about personally loving and lifting someone out of sin and condemnation.

Do we get that? Jesus has come to us, personally. He has restored us. Wiped sin from us. And speaks only love about us through his life, death, and resurrection. 

If we get this. If we understand the Gospel, then we will begin to end gossip and character assassination. With our own lives transformed we will wish to transform the lives of others. This transformation can only occur by the Gospel and the love we demonstrate towards others, not ourselves.

The opposite of gossip is love. The Apostle Paul speaks to the Church of what love is for all, in 1 Corinthians 13. We may have heard this many times at weddings— so much so that the reality of what it speaks to has often been lost to us. So as you read, hear of what love is pointing to:

 “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

When our hearts are reminded of what love is, what the Gospel is, we can understand its ramifications. When the Holy Spirit is working and transforming our lives, then gossip is revealed as it truly is— unloving and full of evil works. 

So, brothers and sisters, let us consider the Gospel and how it stirs us up to love and good works. Let our eyes be opened to the Gospel culture we are to be living in. When you speak about others let your words be full of grace, hope, thankfulness, and love. When you encounter gossip, don’t participate or listen, instead, lovingly point the person back to restoration. When you have an issue with someone, then go to that person, in love and humility. This is the new life and culture we are to be living in.

A Gospel culture isn’t easy. It is often counter to our old identity and what the culture around us is promoting. But true love is never easy, for Christ had to suffer and die for it.

Thanks be to God for his grace!

Forgiveness and Our Gospel Forgetfulness

Matthew 18: 21-35

“Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.””

Let me take you on an internal heart journey:

Someone says something to you or treats you in a certain manner. You react with some type of internal pain. It’s an impact to something that you hold dear to yourself. Your emotional reaction is then typically some element of anger and then often transitioning to bitterness, resentment, or retaliation of some level and form. Somewhere in our hearts, we create a balance sheet. And that balance slips quickly to the red when we feel affected by others. In our sin and lack of Gospel realization, we desire justice and a balancing of the scales. This can be with anyone– spouses, friends, strangers, and those in your workplace.

Have you ever wondered why other’s behaviors have this impact on you?

Some of it could stem from our God-given desire for goodness and justice. People can sin against us. But often, we have known or unperceived idols lurking in our hearts. Someone does something that attacks our idol, such as our identity, our value, our trust, our security, or even our sin. All of these can be important and meaningful, but they can also expose what we are holding on to or where we haven’t allowed the Gospel to take root. And often, as believers, we have Gospel forgetfulness. We hold grudges and we desire others to apologize and make amends. And in some ways, we can perpetuate a legalistic redemption and reconciliation for others– a grace balance sheet.

Why Forgive?

Why is Jesus telling us we should forgive for what really is an unlimited number of times? Some translations say seventy times seven. Essentially, Jesus is using hyperbole to demonstrate unlimited grace.

The quick answer to why we should forgive would be because Jesus says so, but that isn’t really a deep Gospel-heart answer.

Let me give you three important heart-affecting reasons:

1. Jesus has forgiven you.

In this life, we can easily be distracted. In our hearts, we can also get caught up in the balance sheets of others. All-the-while we forget about our worksheet on page one. You know, the sheet that has a tally of every sin that we have and will commit against God. It’s a balance sheet that should wreck us and also send us pleading to our knees in desperation until we see the blood of Christ that says “Paid in Full” in bold letters that cover up all of our sins.

Jesus uses the parable to demonstrate that in our lives we try to collect on debts that we feel others owe us, but we need to see and remember the greater forgiveness that has been given to us– by NOTHING we ever did. The Gospel should inform us of the vast mercy we have been given and can now give.

A question I have to ask myself is whether the Gospel is a treasure? Do I see the incredible grace of Christ? If the Gospel isn’t valuable to me, then forgiveness has no meaning or true foundation.

2. Jesus has paid for those sins against us.

In 1 John 2:2, John says, “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

This propitiation means that Christ has regained the favor of God by taking on our sins. Our sins are forgiven and paid for by Christ when he willingly died on the cross and suffered the wrath of God for sin. Not just ours, but for every sin that will be committed against you by others. Do you grasp the totality and impact of that?

Although those that sin have or haven’t believed in Jesus as their savior and received this awesome gift of forgiveness, Jesus has still paid for those sins. His sacrifice is fully sufficient for all sin. Before we believed in Christ, He had already paid for our sin.

This has a two-fold reality. One, that we can glorify God and be eternally elated that we are forgiven in spite of our ourselves. And, two, that we are to have the mind of Christ that even the sins against us by others have been taken care of. That balance sheet that we tend to have of others should also be marked as “Paid” in our hearts.

When I saw this reality it was mind-blowing. This mind of forgiveness frees us to show grace all the more. Not only have we been forgiven so greatly, but all the sins against us have been served and dealt with by our loving Savior! This allows us to go in love to even those we perceive as enemies and act in outrageous ways of forgiveness.

This is how we can love because we see the full and incredible love of Christ.

3. You have a hope and foundation that can’t be hurt.

Earlier, I discussed how the behaviors of others can impact us. Much of that hurt comes from our idols being exposed. We might find our identity and hope in other things, such as our career, leisure, sports, success, sex, marriage, or family. We can see our value or worth in our physical appearance, work, losses, gains, our viewpoints, and from the opinions of others. We can find our security in objects and situations.

The problem with all of these is that they will fail us. We also will falter. And people can infringe upon those idols to cause us pain. But with the Gospel, we have a hope and foundation in a savior that is unbreakable. Our identity isn’t found in earthly things and especially no longer in ourselves, but in Christ– the creator of all things and the one that IS worthy.

When we place our trust, hope, and identity in Christ, then it becomes harder for our feelings to be hurt, for us to be offended, or impacted negatively.

That said, it doesn’t mean that we won’t falter. We are currently in a dual nature and our sinful flesh and the enemy will try and play tricks with our faith and minds. But in those times we should rely on God and others in the church to direct us back to the grace and identity of Christ– The God of forgiveness.

So, the next time you feel that twinge of negativity, hurt, or wrong being done to you by friends, coworkers, your boss, or even so-called enemies, cause your aching heart to remember the Gospel and the incredible grace and identity we have been given. Allow that Gospel reality to soak your heart in grace and forgiveness seventy times seven.

The Gospel Wheel & Karis

Chances are if you have been to recent Karis Gatherings, you have possibly heard something mentioned about a "Gospel Wheel".

What is the Gospel Wheel?

At Karis, we believe in three vision values– Gospel, Community, and Mission. All of these point to us, as believers, being intentional in the mission of Gospel-announcing disciple-makers. If you are like me the whole idea of being missional can seem overwhelming at times and we can often struggle to find a starting point and consistency in our connections. The Gospel Wheel is a missional and relational tool to help put tangible steps to that Gospel-missional call. It provides us with incremental steps and directions on how to create and develop deeper connections with those we are serving and reaching out to, personally and through our MCs.

The Gospel Wheel was developed by City on a Hill church in Arnold, MO, a SOMA church. Tim Gray, the lead pastor of City on a Hill, says, “We wanted people to realize that it’s not a perfect wheel. It’s not a true linear wheel, it’s multi-directional, more like a spaghetti wheel– where any section can happen at any time, depending on the Holy Spirit.”

So, it’s a relational tool, a multi-directional wheel, but how does it work?

How Does it Work?

The center represents the missional hub– the connection progression. The basic premise is that we want to develop through four stages of connection: 1) Contact, 2) Acquaintance, 3) Friend, and 4) Disciple. We want to learn someone’s name, grow into a deeper relationship with them, learn their story, eventually tell them our story, and then be able to layer God’s story onto theirs.

And the Disciple element of connection isn’t necessarily that they are a disciple of Christ, but that we have developed a friendship so deep that the other person feels as though we have their best interests at heart. They are relationally willing to follow us– hopefully to Christ. All of these connections are initiated and driven by the Gospel, prayer, and walking in the Holy Spirit.

The outside of the wheel represents opportunities, activities, and conversations where we can express the Gospel and deepen the connection. Our basic starting point is “Go In Love”, but we may find ourselves at different points around the wheel that the Holy Spirit has made available to us.

How will Karis do the Wheel?

It is our hope that the Gospel Wheel becomes a central component of our MCs (Missional Communities) and personal missional activity. One of the benefits of the Gospel Wheel is that we can celebrate little steps of connections and the next steps that God has in store for us. It helps us to see growth. And it causes us to be reminded of our reliance on prayer and the Holy Spirit.

During weekly MC gatherings, MC members will talk about connections, pray for future connections, tell about their weekly stories, and celebrate steps. MCs, as a group, will also build relationships with those connections that their members have built– inviting them and their families to a meal, an event, or have an opportunity to serve and love them. The Gospel Wheel helps drive MCs to deeper missional focus.

At Karis, it is our hope, that the Gospel Wheel will help grow us relationally and missional every moment of every day– to become a church that is praying and listening for the next steps and connections that God is pointing us towards.

Communication Breakdowns and Gospel Communication

When Communication Fails: It's A Lack of Gospel Application

"Apply the gospel," is an easy statement to say. We might say it to one another all the time. But have we come to grips with what that truly means? It is different and counter-cultural to the world. And it is one of the most important things for those in Christ.

Applying the Gospel in communication should be the default action of the Christian. It's supposed to be the natural outflow of our Gospel identity. However, our humanity, our flesh, often fights us and in turn, we fight against one another. 

In marriage, we might have thoughts of "why are we not communicating?" or "he (or she) just doesn't understand me." In other life arguments and situations, we might think, "I'm not going to listen to them until they hear from me." We struggle to be heard and we fail to listen. Communication and relationships without the Gospel are always headed towards difficult and unresolved territory.

The reason that communication fails is that we are often speaking, hearing, and trying to communicate while idolizing ourselves. We aren't really communicating, instead, we are listing conditions, stating our demands, and listening to the speech that focuses on us. We make great debaters, but lousy listeners. We speak with strong voices but hear with weak ears.

Our communication is an evidence of our fruit. It demonstrates and often exposes who we truly worship. If we worship ourselves then our conversation is bent on getting our own justice, getting our way, holding grudges, creating bitterness, exposing impatience, and growing unforgiveness. It is not loving the other person as ourselves, but loving ourselves more than the other person and worse – more than God.

Gospel Communication: A Different Focus

Gospel communication, however, offers a different focus. It is applying the Gospel when we are captured heart and soul by the Gospel. It first recognizes that I am a sinner and I am in need of forgiveness. Secondly, it realizes that the grace that I have received is so incredible that I have no ground to stand on. I am in need of the Savior Jesus Christ and it is He that is to live in me. And third, it recognizes that the Gospel and Jesus Christ are to be the focus of our lives and conversations. 

Jesus tells us that when an issue comes about that we go to the other not for judgment, not for justification, and not for our way, rather for restoration. We are to facilitate peace, build connections, and love the other person deeper. Gospel conversations seek peace, patience, love, kindness, goodness, and meekness. It isn't self-serving but seeks to speak Jesus Christ into every moment.

So how do we have better Gospel communication?

First, to have Gospel communication we have to first lay down our own lives. We have to apply the Gospel to ourselves. Often the purpose of a conversation will be totally destroyed when we do this. In light of the Gospel and Christ's love so many issues dissolve or crumble. The foot of the Cross humbles us all.

Secondly, we have to come with total forgiveness – remembering the Gospel. If anytime in a conversation we say: "you always do _______," we have demonstrated that we have not forgiven past wrongs or issues. We are holding judgment over the other person– something that is totally opposed to the Gospel.

Gospel communication seeks restoration, seeks the love of the other person, and forgives the past and hopes for a different outcome. If we continue to repeat those negative things then we communicate that the other person's identity is based on the wrongs they have done to us. Forgiveness removes that from their identity. Gospel communication seeks to create new identities in Christ.

Third, we have to speak in love and in truth that is held up to the Gospel. If what we say or how we act goes against the fruit of the Holy Spirit we can be assured that it isn't Gospel communication. Instead, it is devoid of love and thus just a noisy gong clanging and doing nothing for the sake of unity or grace.

Fourth, we also have to submit to each other as to the Lord. That means that after we have spoken, we have to allow the other person to correct and lovingly rebuke us in light of God and His Word if we are in error. Gospel communication isn't a one-way street, in fact, it isn't even a two-way street – it is a three-way street – between you, the other person, and Christ.

In Gospel Communication, the goal is not ourselves, but to point one another to Jesus Christ. All other communication seeks to create discontent, dissonance, and selfishness.

More Than Pornography: Our Abuses of the Mind: Matthew 5:27-32

When you hear of the #metoo movement, it might bring sadness, concern, or a deep impassioned reaction to sexual violence and harassment. And there are elements of the #metoo movement that focus on sexual violence. #metoo started ten years ago as a way to help those who had survived sexual violence. But recently it has become a voice and message for those who have been sexually abused and harassed on a variety of levels.

Using #metoo as a cultural entry point isn’t to focus on those who have been chastised by it. It isn't to point judgment to abusers, instead, I want to use it as a point of cultural contextualization of the common grace of God. It is a point where we can begin to connect with those around us of God’s heart and design.

What I mean is that we can expose a realization, in our culture—news, social media, and our social and cultural contexts, as there being something evil or wrong in abusing women or men sexually.

A point of truth is being established by society that isn’t relative truth but is a moral and ethical grounding point. And portions of our culture are standing for, often unknowingly, a tenant and truth of God.

Taken to its deepest meaning, the #metoo movement symbolizes and points to the lostness and sexual depravity of the human mind. Taken to its furthest point— a point of recognizing the selfish motives of one or both of the parties, within even consensual sex, as being a form of abuse, then no sexual activity outside of Gospel marriages can be seen as fully consensual or unselfish. Outside of marriage sex will always be some form of abuse of power against God’s design in the mode of adultery and sexual misconduct or immorality.

Gospel marriages are to point to Christ and his servant attitude of honoring God and the other spouse and their needs above ours. A Gospel-oriented worldview of marriage (between a man and a woman) sees it as the only God-ordained safe and sacred space for sex. It is the only place legitimized by God for thoughts of fleshly desire and their consummation. And it is a place where we display a covenant of intimacy, devotion, and the endurance of Gospel love. As Christ demonstrates his love for us and doesn’t leave us, so also do we love and remain devoted to our spouses. What God has put together, we are to honor, cherish, and fight for its unity.

As Christians, we should have an even deeper and heartfelt sensitive realization of what is sexual immorality and abuse. We have a more profound understanding that all of us abuse God’s plan.

We are to realize that sexual abuse isn’t just physical acts, but how we think about things. In our viewpoint, adultery isn’t just committed behind closed doors, but also within our minds and closed eyes. How we play things out in our heads is paramount, for it plays from our hearts. And the root of our hearts leads our thoughts and focus.

In Matthew 5:27-32, Jesus said:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

One of the main points of Matthew 5:27-32 isn’t what we often make it out to be– just avoiding pornography, lustful desires, and divorce, although those are important facets and discussions to be considered, it is even more. It is about the root of our heart’s affections. It is about the deep holiness and special design that God has created for sex and connection—for a Gospel-oriented husband and wife in marriage. It’s about the radical love we have for that design and our radical reaction and heart protection against any thoughts and distortions against it. And it is a deep heart affection that sees any thought not captured by Christ as an affront and abuse of another person. Such radical motivations don’t come from moralistic teachings or devices, but from the Gospel, by the equipping of the Holy Spirit, and a deep understanding of what is so offensive to God that Christ uses the hyperbolic language of cutting off or plucking out parts of our bodies to protect us.

Without this heart and understanding, avoiding lustful thoughts and its adulterous implications will seem more like a restriction. However, the Gospel heart beats in love and with a mind that is renewed by Christ. This Gospel mind brings a fuller understanding that any extra-marital sexual act, even within the mind, is sexual misconduct that violates God, hurts others, abuses individuals, downplays a person’s value, trades holiness for a moment of wasted pleasure, and harbors a lack of Gospel love for our spouses, our neighbors, and their spouse (or future spouse).

Ultimately, the Gospel, through Christ, teaches us about God's design and intentions, shows us the depravity and distortion of sin in our lives, redeems us and forgives us of these abuses and sin– through Christ's work, and then restores our hearts back to God.

This Gospel activity also calls for us to die to ourselves. It calls us to different motivations and a love that is compelled and created by Christ’s love for us. In him, we have a treasure of love that is greater than anything we have in this world. This love allows us to not only die to ourselves but also equips us to tear out the sinful eyes and cut off the offending parts of our lives. Ultimately it creates in us a new heart.

In this Gospel understanding and life, we have an opportunity to demonstrate to those in society, our friends, and those in our schools, that we are also concerned for the #metoo movement. And we have a greater vehicle to speak to an even deeper purpose and level. We can communicate that we care for the sanctity of each person’s life and their value not as a body to be used for advertisement, not as a morsel of our flesh appetite, not as the source of our twisted mental or physical sexual happiness, but as people made in the image of God. We can demonstrate that true love is about having a true heart of God and not about lust and pleasure.

As for application, here are some steps:

1. Repent: Let us repent of our flesh tendencies and our own abuses.
2. Pray: Pray that God will give you the grace and faith to fight the flesh and help others to see in the heart of God.
3. Apply the Gospel: We must surrender to the grace and life-giving Gospel. We also are to share the Gospel and its healing to all we come in contact with– in words of love, hearts of protection, and actions of grace and help.
4. Cut out: Cut out elements of our lives that are just that– our lives, rather than God’s life. Remove yourself from situations that compromise your thoughts and motivations.
5. Protect: Protect all marriages, your mind, and the minds and hearts of those around you.
6. Submit: Allow other believers to know your weaknesses and for them to help you monitor and speak into your life. Fully submerse yourself into the church and missional communities to come alongside others for yourself and them.

Questions:

1. Have you considered the Holy Spirit’s fruit of love and how that motivates our hearts and minds to see others as valuable in God’s eyes, rather than an object of pleasure?
2. How does viewing one another as Christ’s bride and someone’s spouse (current or future) help us see and guard against our flesh proneness and selfishness?
3. Do you find yourself bending to your fleshly desires often?
4. Are there situations that you are putting yourself in that are compromising your thoughts and heart? 
5. What steps, personally, do you think you can implement to protect your mind?
6. Maybe you have been given the gift of singleness or lack of sexual desires. How might you help others?

Racial Reconciliation and the Gospel: A Nerve Has Been Struck

There have been many open letters recently. Letters that I hope have good intentions. But the judgment that I see in many of the comments and responses, of those who call themselves Christians, to those opening their hearts, is astounding and disheartening. And in some capacity, it all seems surreal.

I was at the TGC MLK 50 Conference 2018. I am a white male. And many of the messages were uncomfortable. But as I began to listen I could understand the heart of these men and women who voiced their frustrations, their hearts, their fears, their trepidations, their hurts, their viewpoints, their past, and their wisdom. Did I understand and agree with everything said?... I don’t know. I’m still processing. But as a Christian, it should motivate me to view things differently and act differently. Often, the truth will be uncomfortable. And I think a nerve has been struck.

Maybe we think that everything should be rosy and easy when we encounter truth and hard topics. The reality is that it is hard, it’s messy, it’s complicated and thus we should respond not with an equal or greater harshness, but a gentleness of a loving brother. We shouldn’t respond with quick single thoughts that compress everything down to hard concepts with no process of understanding what we might unknowingly see as minutiae. I think a nerve has been struck.

I think we should compose ourselves and listen before we interject our knee-jerk reactions to things that sound possibly counter to our cultural Christianity. Because the truth is that somewhere in our belief systems are ingrained ideas that are still counter to the Gospel. We might think and claim that we have it all figured out, but sadly we don’t. None of us has attained the unity of the body of Christ or the maturity of he who calls us. I think a nerve has been struck.

The Apostle Paul said that we are to submit to one another and focus on the unity of the body. Christ said that the world would know that we are his disciples by how we love one another. Someone has to be silent while another speaks. How long has the majority asked those on the other side of the unseen racial divide to be silent and let time work it out? Shouldn’t they also have a time to voice their hearts to the family of God? Each has to love one another before we even think of beginning to poke holes or find an error in another’s heartfelt communication. And in reality, we have to be as Christ and take the blows that we receive from a Brother or Sister in Christ. Hurt people tend to hurt people and if you haven’t noticed – there is a lot of hurt in this world. And we also need to realize that we might be the ones hurting others and not even know it. I think a nerve has been struck.

Recently, a white, leading, Gospel-oriented, Christian leader proposed that he has missed out on part of the Gospel. He lamented his unbalanced Gospel. I gathered from it that he was openly repenting of not giving equal action to social concerns and justice – his reorientation to racial reconciliation. That his view of the Gospel was limited. There has been a backlash towards him and also TGC– a virtual or actual mob of men and women seem eager to cast word stones at his supposed “heretical” Gospel and TGC’s supposed “liberal agenda” and new racial divide. But I wonder if the chastisement by these pundits seeks unity or seeks division–even if they say the other is causing the division. Where is the heart of this response? And was he really saying a different Gospel? I think a nerve has been struck.

This leader didn’t say that the Gospel wasn’t only through Faith in Jesus Christ. His life and teachings run counter to that. But there is also a living and physical process of activity that is lived out in the believer. This Gospel, when translated into Gospel living, is to be lived in a Gospel balance. It is probably James’ point, in his letter, when he redirects our vision of a life lived in faith of having a visible language of works– a form of a justified faith that isn’t alone. It is a balanced Gospel that is also a form of social and economic focus. These works aren’t concepts, they aren’t theological constructs, instead they are physical manifestations of the Gospel lived out. A Gospel that is lived out speaks and works out itself in spiritual and physical caring. The spiritual is always primary, but the physical is not absent. To say that we have a mind and heart of Christ and at the same time say that we can’t be concerned about voices crying out for social and economic justice is the heretical voice. I think a nerve has been struck.

God’s concern for the poor and justice and commands to do something for them is littered throughout the Old and New Testament. Maybe it is just that we haven’t noticed it because we have an unbalanced Gospel viewpoint. Maybe the Gospel with a so-called Faith in Christ isn’t really faith when it has no hands and feet in that it unknowingly avoids the calls to die to self, to sacrifice, to give up my goods for the poor, to share what I have, and to have compassion for the oppressed. I think a nerve has been struck.

Yes, we have to be careful with what and who we are yoked to, but we can also listen and come alongside other human beings and try to hear their voices and realize that our ears just might be clogged. The actual people we aren’t supposed to hang with are so-called brothers that are immoral, covetous, idolaters, revilers, railers, and swindlers. I think these charges could be leveled against American Christendom of the past and even today. I think a nerve has been struck.

Now in writing this, I might be labeled a “liberal”. The Gospel I purport might be re-examined and called a “social” Gospel. My motives might be tested and scrutinized. And I might even suffer for this. But then again, this also happened to Christ. And as Ligon Duncan said, at the 2018 T4G Conference, “This is a 2nd Commandment issue.” I think, no, I know a nerve has been struck. An idol is being exposed and it will hurt for awhile. Because there are always rumbles and shrapnel when an idol comes crashing down.

Gossip and Mistrust: The Great Scandal Out of Matthew 18:15-16

Your friend has an issue with someone else. You want to help them and you want to counsel them. You hope to encourage and build them up – point them in the right direction. They desire counsel or friendship on the matter. And they want to describe the situation and conflict with you. But sometimes there is a fine line between helping and harming. There should be a boundary between addressing them and the actual issues they have with someone else.

One of the most precarious elements of discipleship, counseling, and friendship is when we open the dialogue for our friends or brothers and sisters to address the issues they have with someone else. There is a dangerous slippery slope of gossip, slander, and disunity that can come about in the information that your friend exposes to you.

How so? It's truth and good counsel, isn't it?

Any whisper about another person, whether true or not, isn’t wholesome, for building up, or what Jesus desires in His people. Grace is often mugged in back alleys of gossip mislabeled as good counsel. 

Instead, we must disciple and help our friends to see the Gospel, apply the Gospel, confront their sin, understand grace, work on their own actions, and teach them to act within Gospel truth.

Jesus says in Matthew 18:15-16:

"'If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.'"

Did you see the first phrase there, "go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone"? 

Jesus specifically commands that when we have an issue, we don't tell anyone else. That bears repeating – We. Don't. Tell. Anyone. Else. It is between you and the other person alone. We are to only go to that person first. 

As an important caveat, if there is an issue of abuse or fear of violence or something of a similar nature, then that is grounds for a different direction and form of help.

Aside from the extremes, when we don't follow the model of going and discussing the issue with the one we have an issue with first, then we violate Christ's teaching, we violate love, and we create gossip and slander. 

How is that? Think about the following:

1) Miscommunication: If you don't go back and communicate with the one you have an issue with, then you haven't found out all of the information. You may have miscommunicated something or misunderstood something. The whole issue might be overblown or nonexistent. You will never know the truth or have an issue that actually needs counseling until you have determined the actual problems and confronted them. In love, we should be trying to understand the "why" and "what" of those we are trying to love. We are to be quick to listen and slow to speak (I feel heavily convicted here).

As Paul David Trip says, in Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands, "Thanks to your assumptions, the person you think you are helping may exist only in your mind." Likewise, our assumptions of situations and hurts will often construct personas and create solutions and dialogue to issues that don't even exist.

2) Misplaced Love: You aren't loving the other person that you have an issue with more when you go to someone else, instead you are loving yourself supremely. You are going to someone else first, avoiding the other person, and loving your own side of the story. Humbleness is a hard but necessary road back to reconciliation.

Or you aren't loving the other person enough to go to them first – which demonstrates to everyone a lack of love and connection with the other person. This creates disunity and breaks down a loving community. If you truly loved the other person, then you would go to them to work things out. It is often an out-of-joint connection when we go to someone else about someone else.

Love IS hard. But it IS worth it because Christ IS worth it. It's our call and who God is, according to 1 John. And if we lack love or don't love our brother or sister, then how can we call ourselves members of Christ's body?

3) Bad Testimony: Telling others about your issues with another, before the other person has a chance to explain, apologize, or even for you to apologize and repent, creates negativity in the person you are telling. 

Whether you mean it or not you are spreading information and allowing others to create opinions of someone else that you are supposed to be loving, honoring, and building up. You are allowing possible false information to be spread and poisoning the hearts of others around you. You have now broken down someone's opinion of someone else. You have torn down a temple of the Holy Spirit in the heart of another believer.

And even if the information is true, their sin is now being spread abroad. Whispering seeds that are easily blown in the winds of insecurity and judgment. 

Or the person you are telling now bears a bad testimony of how you deal with issues. The only thing we are to spread is the Gospel. The spread of bad seeds doesn't grow anything but bad and rotten fruit, which spoils the whole batch.

4) Growing Conflict: You have now created a situation where forgiveness is even more difficult. Because even if you reconcile with the person you have an issue with the other person you told now bears and holds that sin, whether imagined, misunderstood, or true in their minds and hearts. 

Forgiveness and grace mean we let things go and don't hold it against someone, but when we tell someone else first, then we withhold and destroy the forgiveness. It isn’t being let go of. It is now being held captive by another– the other person you told– who now has a bow hearsay and arrows of assumptions. You have weaponized and created a totally new conflict. 

5) The Goal is to Gain: Not going to the other first (and only them first) is a lost moment, a lost opportunity, and may cause a sister or brother to be lost. Trust is more important to the ones that have the issue between them. 

Your relationship with the person you are going to is Christ's goal and His desire. Going to someone else breaks that goal and makes gaining them secondary. If the other person finds out you talked to someone else, then you have created shame and mistrust between you both and now you have another issue to deal with. 

In the process, you haven’t gained a friend but identified yourself as an enemy and untrustworthy. You have hurt them. And now the road to gaining them back is full of potholes of doubt and mistrust.

6) Which is the greater sin or issue? You might have an issue with someone, but not following Christ’s specific teaching to go to the other person, in love, might be a greater violation and issue. In some ways, this points to you claiming to see a splinter in your brother’s eye and you having five sheets of plywood in yours. 

7) Bad Witness: If you were to approach and tell someone who isn't actually a believer or a nominal believer about another, then you have created an image of a dysfunctional Gospel family. You have produced the trifecta of a gossiping Christian, stained Christians with condemnation labels, and relationships that are hypocritical. 

Our witness, not only to the world but to one another, is the Gospel of Grace. We are to witness to the world how Christ can change everything – even our methods of conflict resolution. We are to love one another as Christ loved us. We are to witness to one another the love of Christ. We are to produce and live out the trifecta of truth, grace, and love.

8) An Awkward Bigger First Meeting: Since you jumped the order, you now have to take along everyone you told to your meeting with the person you have an issue with. This means having to come in greater humbleness (and repentance) and make the others feel ashamed or awkward.

Can you see and understand why it is important that exposing issues is and should be labeled as sin, gossip, slander, hurtful, unChristlike, evil, and part and parcel with the enemy? 

Yet, it is one of the enemy's greatest weapons amongst Christianity– gossip– easily mislabeled as something else and quickly used.

Hear this teaching from Christ:

Matthew 5:21-25: "'You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.'"

If every day of our lives, in light of his mercy, we are living it out as gifts on the altar of God, then we are called to view issues we have with one another of paramount importance. We are called to pause all other duties of living sacrifices and not go to someone else, not let it go, but go and be reconciled to them before we go on doing anything else we consider as worship of giving to God. Our issues and pride have to be sacrificed also.

So what do we do when we encounter the situation of a friend, brother, or sister wanting to expose the issues they have with another?

I believe the answer to this question within counseling, discipleship, and friendship is:

1. Tell them that you don’t want to know anything about the other person if they haven't gone to work it out with them first.
2. Point them to quickly address it with the other person. Teach them Matthew 18:15-16 and 5:21-25.
3. Let them know that you can only talk about the issues between them when and if it doesn’t get resolved between the two of them. And then you will have to meet with them both so that the issue is hopeful resolved and uncovered, quickly.
4. Have them talk about their heart, their own motivations, their own possible sin, and Gospel actions. 
5. If this is a repeated offense, then you can also confront, and lovingly rebuke them (if they are Christian) on the issue of why they aren’t going to the other person first (Matt. 18:15-16). Seek them to see a possible pattern of sin and a need for repentance in their hearts.
6. Remind them of Grace. Remind them of the great grace that Christ gave us when we had an incredible dividing issue with Him – our sin – and He came to reconcile with us. If this Grace has any worth, and beauty, then we will see the great gift and importance of being reconciled one to another. We will value being image-bearers of God's great grace and redemption. Praise God!

Ministering to the Obstinate Child While Glorifying God

Whatever stage of life our children are in it's hard being a parent. It's especially hard when we miss the point in parenting and even life itself. When I first became a parent I was naive and admittedly focused on myself (I probably still am). My common mantra was "there isn't a manual for parenthood." The reality is that there is – God's Word. And more importantly, there is a point in our parenting and all aspects of our lives.

So, how do we react, as a parent to the "terrible twos", "the teenage years", and all that comes with the personalities and lives intersecting? How do we minister to the mother faced with an obstinate two-year-old child flexing his self-will?

Admittedly, I failed. I failed most in reflecting Christ in my parental actions. Thank God, for grace. However, I think that I, and many others in the faith of Christ, can learn and pass on that lesson to other parents so that they too can grow.

Within the context of parenting, there are two persons or aspects to be observed and addressed in the relationship and interaction of needed discipline. The first is the inherent representation of our sinful nature in the obstinate two-year-old child flexing his self-will. The second is of the opportunity for Gospel response and example that the mother can display in her Gospel-oriented correction, grace, and love.

The truth of the inherent rejection of God’s Glory

The two-year-old, let’s say his name is David (highly appropriate), is operating in a human, sin-based, self-focused, and hard-hearted motivation. His words are often, “No,” to his mother’s promptings. He wants to do his own thing, regardless of what he is told. Oblivious to any danger he might be to himself he processes his primal and assumed needs. They are pure idols to him. What Tommy wants, Tommy will try to get, to the point of full-blown tantrums, screaming, and flailing.

However off-putting this behavior is, it is reflective of our own sinful humanity, even as adults. We might not have a tantrum in the same manner, but our emotions, impulses, and desires are often the same. What we want is what we will try to get. Our happiness, comfort, convenience, and pleasure is our idol. Our tantrums are manifested in our displeasure, discontentment, anger, bitterness, and lack of love for others. It is reflective and reflexive of how often our definition of God is in relation to ourselves.

In our sinful state and in this two-year-old’s mentality, our lives are not lived for God’s glory. Our reference point is often not on God but on ourselves. We tend to gravitate to living for our glory and our own rule.

The truth of a Gospel viewpoint in the life lived for God’s Glory

As a child, Tommy is being taught at every moment and can be properly disciplined to see what is good, what is right, and what correct focus should be through a parental example and the Gospel community around him. A life worth living, as a parent, is one that exemplifies the Gospel and the glorification of God.

How you react as a parent will reflect your true worship of God. Every aspect of our lives is to be lived for God’s glory. And every behavior or situation is an opportunity for the Gospel to be lived out and contextualized. It is our reasonable sacrifice and service in light of the Gospel. And how we, as parents, discipline our children can glorify God.

Our children see every move, hear every word, and notice our every behavior. This reality could turn us into legalists and moralists– where we try to do good at every moment, but this misses the point. If we are living our lives to demonstrate to others a morally good life, then we miss the glory aspect and the Gospel foundation. This approach places the glory on us and not on Christ and His work.

So, what would Gospel living look like?

The Apostle Paul teaches, in Colossians 3: 17, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” This is a heart that is not focused on the relationship of behavior to a situation, rather on the realities of God as our god, Christ as our Lord. A life lived for God’s glory is a life that anticipates eternity, understands the treasure in Christ and recognizes our issue is our desire to be a god like God – the original sin.

What we treasure and where our hearts are will be exposed in moments of stress. When God’s glory is our reference point we begin to fully understand the impact of the Gospel. We realize our dependence on God for everything. We see the immense love and grace of God. We are transformed and are different from our old self. Our treasure will be His glory.

How you respond, how you communicate, and how you relate to a child will reflect your reference point. But it’s not easy and we can’t do it on our own. In fact, that is what you have been trying to do already. The good news is that Christ can do the work for you. It is only by the grace of Christ that we can glorify God in our lives and have the strength to do it (James 4:6.)

Using God’s glory as your reference point

Here are some concepts to think about and implement in your discipline while worshiping God:

Buffer the Anger and Frustration

Instead of being mad and frustrated, glorify God in His grace to you. Glorify God and give that same grace back to your child. Remember how you were once unruly and an enemy of God, yet He still loved you, humbled himself, and died for you.

Gospel Discipline

Instead of demanding that your child obey and worship your rules, glorify God in His rule. Move the worship from your lordship to that of Christ. Follow the law of Christ – love. Don’t be led by your sin, but by the Spirit in peace, patience, kindness, goodness, joy, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and love.

Ensure that the rules and structures that you are implementing are God-glorifying. Allow your discipline to be saturated with the fruit of the Spirit and love your child, rather than judging and laying down the law on your child.

Refresh and Gain Strength from God

Instead of retreating to your inner self or your sin during moments of stress, glorify God in His strength and providence. Have faith that he will give you strength and is using these trials to grow you deeper within Him. Abide in Christ and His rule. If God is truly God, then His abilities, power, and foresight are much more powerful, good, and wise than any of our abilities or the things of this world.

Be a Gospel Community

Instead of trying to do it all on your own and in your own kingdom, glorify God through His Gospel Kingdom community. Allow other believers to help you, carry your burdens, pray for you, and help disciple the child you have been given, by God, to steward and raise up. You are not alone. Part of glorifying God is loving His body – believers and living life with, for, and along-side of them.