Tonight I Saw the Gospel
When St. John wanted to tell us about the Gospel, its curious that he didn’t say, “Here are the main propositions about Jesus” or “Here are ten ways to apply the teachings of Jesus to your life.” He didn’t talk about Jesus as an idea, a concept. Instead, he spoke about that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands.” John knew that Jesus was not just a great teacher, but God incarnate…and also the very incarnation of his own Gospel.
Too often we just talk about the Gospel. We preach it, teach it, analyze it, disect it, debate it. All of which are needed, and are part of the task of the church. But all of that is nothing if we can’t hear it, see it, and touch it. Tonight I feel like I had that opportunity.
Six months ago Karyn and I experienced for a moment a very nauseating sense of deja vu all over again. We had just been attending our new church in Philadelphia for a few months when we were startled by an announcement made at the end of a service one evening. One of the two founding pastors of this little church plant stood up and confessed to the congregation that he had become unfit to continue in pastoral ministry. He admitted that his drivenness in ministry had caused him to neglect his marriage and family to a dangerous degree. The provisional session (elders supplied to our “mission” church by other local churches from our denomination) had ordered him to take an indefinite leave of absence, during which he and his family would receive intensive counseling, aid, and accountability. The pastor and his wife told us that they were in full agreement with this and wanted to cooperate fully.
Now our fright of deja vu came because we had been in two churches previously which had mishandled an errant pastor, causing much damage to the people. In the most recent case, the pastor had seemed at first to be humble and open to correction, just as in the current situation. But something changed along the way, causing that former pastor to increasingly reject those who had set out to help him.
But this time it didn’t turn out that way. This time a church and a pastor both believed the Gospel.
Tonight our pastor and his wife stood before the congregation to be restored to ministry. They told a story of the past six months in which instead of condemnation or cover up, they received the mercy of the Gospel from our elders and from other local church leaders who helped them. They also expressed their deep appreciation for a congregation that was willing to bear with them through their time of travail.
Tonight at a little church plant in Center City Philadelphia, the Gospel was seen, and heard, and touched.
And it works.
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August 28th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
Mark, praise the Lord that this body of Christ was faithful to their own and that the glory of the gospel was on display tonight. I like your reminder that the gospel is something we should be enacting –seeing, doing, touching –as ministers of reconcilation and peace.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
Rachel,
I was so thrilled by what I witnessed tonight that it was hard to wait the 40 minute drive home to get this blog post up!
August 28th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
Thanks be unto God.
August 28th, 2005 at 10:54 pm
Amen, Geof.
Now this will be totally out of place, but you semi-Anglican response reminded me of my favorite N. T. Wright anecdote:
He tells of the aging Church of England rector who opens the service by tapping his microphone and mumbling, “Their’s something wrong with this mic.”
The well-trained but sleepy congregation dutifully responds: “And also with you.”
August 29th, 2005 at 8:47 am
” 31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”
John 20.31.
John explicitly puts knowledge before experience. This is true Christianity.
August 29th, 2005 at 8:55 am
First off, Ron, don’t misunderstand me to think that I am discounting the importance of knowledge. I am not a follower of Schliermacher, nor even of Barth. I think the content of our belief does matter. And if you’ve read my post below on “personal relationship” with Jesus, you’ll know that I am no whispy-eyed pietist either.
What concerns me, though, is the tendency in extreme forms of conservative Evangelicalism and Reformed circles to emphasize propositional knowledge to almost the exclusion of experience. People who read me regularly will be bored with me mentioning it again, but I am quite taken right now with Kevin Vanhoozers The Drama of Doctrine, which is firmly based in sola scriptura but realizes that that means nothing unless the doctrine derived is being lived out (”improvised according to the Script”) in the life of the church.
Also, I think we always need to raise the question of what is meant by the word “believe” in passages such as the one you quoted. I think it has been amply shown that it is not limited to an Enlightenment-based idea of “mental assent,” as most Evangelicals seem to think (at least, in their praxis).
August 29th, 2005 at 10:16 am
Mark:
Leave it to me to be the stickler who doesn’t even talk about the main point of your post. But first let me say, that’s fantastic. It’s always a joy to see the church handling difficult situations in the right way, and it’s great to see such a result. I am glad your church is well.
Now to be a stickler:
I know you know this, but we really can’t separate propositions from communication. This is probably just an issue of semantics; I just think that the gospel does come in propositions (but is not itself a proposition). E.g., “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” This is a proposition. Anyway, I’m ‘exhorting’ to the choir.
Second, just to be even more of a bum: It seems that the way you frame the experience you had slips into a definition of “gospel” that in fact moves away from what the gospel is. As Machen said, the gospel is “good news,” meaning that “something happened.” I would prefer to define gospel as the good news of what happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus. What happened at your church is a wonderful implication of that thing that happened, but I would hesitate to say it was “the gospel.”
I think there is a growing tendency to consider ourselves “in the story,” and this is an emphasis I embrace wholeheartedly (which I was first introduced to through Charlie Dennison’s preaching), but I think that along with this tendency comes the danger of somewhat flattening out the contours of redemptive history. John’s testimony of that which they saw, heard, touched, etc. refers very concretely to Jesus of Nazareth. I fear that to refer to the subjective application of the gospel in the same way as the gospel itself actually undercuts the uniqueness of that gospel.
Nitpicking aside, praise God for what he is doing in your church!
August 29th, 2005 at 11:12 am
It’s nice to see that “what works” doesn’t always have to oppose “what’s right”.
August 29th, 2005 at 11:31 am
Jason…there’s just no poetry in your hardened old Calvinistic soul
Nah…totally kidding. I agree with you completely and thank you for your clarifications. When I said “the Gospel” in my post above, I was using shorthand for “the implication (working out in our time and experience) of the good news of what happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus.” Precisely…well said.
More on your other comments later…my boss is actually saying I have to do some work.
August 29th, 2005 at 11:42 am
Statement: “…“the Gospel†in my post above, I was using shorthand for “the implication (working out in our time and experience) of the good news of what happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus.—
Answer: ” The Apostle Paul tells us what the Gospel is in 1 Corinthians 15:
“Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the Gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that Word which I preached to you (unless you believed in vain) — for I delivered to you first all that which I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures.”
That is the Gospel of Jesus Christ [there is no reference to experience--if you want to know what God thinks of your 'experience', see Ezekiel 16].
In his letter to the Christians at Rome, Paul explained the Gospel further:
“By the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his [God’s] sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by The Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God which is through faith in Christ Jesus to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation [something that appeases the wrath of God] by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his [God’s] righteousness, because in forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus…. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.[or, one adds, our experience]“
August 29th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
“…all of that is nothing if we can’t hear it, see it, and touch it.”
Better not lose your hearing, go blind, or burn your hands.
What I’m after is the empiricism: sensation doesn’t give you truth.
Believing that Christianity must be ‘experienced’ reduces Christianity to just another false religion; the emphasis of Christianity is upon the truth, which one cannot have unless one has propositions.
Did the believing thief on the cross have an experience? In fact, he believed while having the worst experience of his life, which ended some moments later.
I’m very glad the pastor and his wife were subject to the truth, and that the church acted according to truth (we can only presume you are presenting the experience accurately, but even all those there didn’t have the same experience…)
Over and out.
August 29th, 2005 at 12:47 pm
Ron,
You said…
…which is exactly what I meant, as I explained in my response to Jason above. I’ve argued with pure empiricists like you before, and it has always been a frustrating experience (oops….sorry I keep having those experiences!).
Ron: guess what? You have experiences, too. You’re having one right now as you read my blog. Have I ever once said that experience=truth? No. Have I even said that our experiences validate (or invalidate) the truth? No. All my simple little post was about is that the TRUTH of the Gospel really works in God’s real world in which people…guess what, touch, feel, smell, etc. I know it’s shocking, but Jesus did those things too.
The truth of the Gospel does not stand or fall on our experiences. But our experience of the outworking of the truth of the Gospel in our real touchy smelly lives is the opportunity to glorify God for his truth. That’s all I was trying to do in my little post.
August 29th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
Jason,
A question for you on your final picked nit above. Do you think it is entirely improper to make analogies based on Scripture? That’s all I was trying to do when I alluded to 1 John 1:1 in saying that we “saw, touched, and heard” the Gospel’s outworking last night. I certainly didn’t mean to imply in any way that when John wrote those words he meant anything other than the historical Jesus of Nazareth. If you’ll forgive me, I was using an Ennsian “incarnational analogy.” God’s plan to redeem his people is not just a set of propositions, but as Ron said, it is propositions based in a historical reality: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By way of analogy, the outworking of the Gospel today takes place not just in our heads but also in the visible effect in our lives.
August 29th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
“Ennsian” Therein lies a problem. But, that’s a different discussion.
I did not say what you say I said, “God’s plan to redeem his people is not just a set of propositions, but as Ron said, it is propositions based in a historical reality: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
I did not say that the Gospel is propositions based in a historical reality, I stated propositions from the Bible that referred to history, behind which lies God’s decree, his pre-determinate counsel and foreknowledge, all of which belies the juxtaposition I was objecting to in the first place.
The Reformed position is that doctrine precedes events. Are you Reformed?
I am not denying that events are part of reality, but Reality (God, the center of being, Col.1:16) was there before any event ever took place…I hope this discussion is useful in clarifying both what you believe and the accuracy with which you state things. You can help me do the same.
August 29th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
Ron said,
Right…but you don’t discount the importance of the historial events, do you?
Yes, I would call myself Reformed. But frankly, one of the things about us Reformed folk that has become tiresome to me is the very fact that I can’t tell a little story about something good that happened at my church and link it to the space/time effects of the Gospel without Reformed folk appearing from out of the bush firing away because I did not deliniate the entire theological progression behind my simple statements, with full footnotes to the WCF and a letter of permission from my Presbytery!
OK, I’m exaggerating for effect there…but you know what, I’ll bet that most folks understood perfectly well what I was saying in the post. The Gospel is True. It is True because God is God and he declared it so. He chose to work out that truth in our space/time history by becoming a flesh and blood person. The Apostle John didn’t just hear a teaching tape about Jesus, he heard, saw, and touched the flesh and blood Son of God. John declared that to us. The Gospel is True. My pastor and our church believed its propostions (which is to say, they did more than give mental assent to them; they lived as if they were true). My pastor’s life changed. I witnessed that (in space/time history). I write about it here to give glory to God.
Th–, th–, th–, that’s all, folks!
August 30th, 2005 at 6:28 am
Mark,
I am immensely thankful for this outcome. What a beautiful encouragement that not all situations like this end in utter confusion and broken relationships. I will pray that your Body can continue to receive your pastors as broken sinners who need the Gospel and trust them through the Supernatural power of God’s love. I find it precious that this post is so close to the one rejoicing in your marriage to Karyn. Both are a testimony to God’s desire for one aspect of our refinement to be through enduring relationship. I miss you both very much, but praise God for leading you there.
I hope that your friends don’t analyze my response
August 30th, 2005 at 8:10 am
Beth,
Thanks for “getting it”…I knew you would. There is a great deal that I love about my seminary experience, but the “dark side” is its production of a few people who seem to think that the chief value of their theological education is to roam across the Internet–or from church to church–slicing and dicing others who don’t say it just the way they’ve learned to say it.
As you discerned, I write posts like the one above and the one announcing 28 years of marriage because every time the Gospel works in our lives(translation for my fellow seminarians: “the outcome of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is extended into our world”
)it is worship…and worship is the proclamation of the greatness of our God…which is, I hope, the real purpose of this blog.
August 30th, 2005 at 8:31 am
Hyper-spiritualistic pietism.
How do you worship God in the water-closet?
Why is it so necessary to overstate everything, Mark?
You would apparently have had a great problem with Paul, who told Timothy: “Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.”
How is it that when people ask you to speak biblically, you denigrate them as you do? I pray you will be a Timothy, and not remain impaled on the Hornes of error.
The people who happen to come across your blog and take exception to it are very uncharitably called by you “slicers and dicers” of their brethren. This is unfortunate, because you do not seem to discern the times. This is not simply a civil war about how to say Sibboleth; it is spiritual warfare over the salvation of souls.
August 30th, 2005 at 8:49 am
sensation doesn’t give you truth.
At this point, we should have all known that what we just read was a lie and left the discussion.
August 30th, 2005 at 11:07 am
Very good story.
August 30th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
Mark:
Of course, no problem as long as we maintain the distinction between objective and subjective redemption, ordo and historia, accomplished and applied, etc. Which I know you do, I was just seeking a little more clarity in what you were saying.
To Ron:
Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean when you say that the “Reformed position is that doctrine precedes events.” Nearly every doctrine [maybe all?] in the New Testament follows the event of the death and resurrection of Jesus. How could Paul even construct his two-Adam christology in 1 Corinthians 15 prior to the resurrection? Read Vos early on in Biblical Theology for the relationship between word and act revelation (not saying it’s a perfect formulation, but he’s Reformed, and doesn’t say that doctrine precedes events).
Finally, does our experience matter in conjunction with the objective gospel? Why not let the hyper-spiritualistic pietist Calvin answer: “We must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us.” If one’s participation in that event feels only like reading a paragraph out of a book on symbolic logic, I’m afraid they’re not understanding what it means to be in Christ. Yes, we articulate such things in propositions, but being in Christ far transcends a set of declarative sentences.
August 30th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
That Calvin! What a pietist. Good thing he doesn’t have his own blog. He’d have to turn comments off if he did.
Too bad you identified the quote, Jason…it would’ve been fun to do another edition of my “Who said this?” posts and see who people thought that quote was from. Wesley? Finney? MacLaren?
Or maybe one of those real heretics. You know, Enns and Green?
August 30th, 2005 at 10:00 pm
Good to “talk” with you Mark. I know I am terrible about e-mail, but I think and pray for you both often. Send my love to Karyn.
August 31st, 2005 at 11:16 am
Great story, Mark. It does me good to hear it. I’m not smart enough to respond to the rest of the comments, but I wanted you to know I went and got me a killer gravatar!
August 31st, 2005 at 11:46 am
Pat:
Haven’t you been around Reformed circles long enough to realize that you must be very smart to be truly saved?
And I’m glad that you finally got a Gravatar. So good to know what you really look like. It’s worse than people said, how pastoring ages you.
August 31st, 2005 at 6:38 pm
Well, I am turning 40 on October 2nd, so I don’t mind the gray beard so much. The white hair is a wig, actually, because I’m really starting to lose a lot of hair.
My whole purpose in building up my blog, by the way, is about to unfold before your eyes. Sometime in the next few days I plan to announce that I’m turning 40 on October 2nd, and then direct people to my amazon.com wish list.
I guess I’m smarter than I give myself credit for…
August 31st, 2005 at 7:20 pm
If you were really so smart…your wish list would link to http://www.wtsbooks.com!
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:54 pm
wow i just read all the comments.
sometimes i think reformed people come across like jackasses. I know b/c I am one. (of both)
ron needs to take a deep breath. push your brain aside for 3 sections and examine your heart ron. good Lord.
October 11th, 2005 at 8:57 am
Mark,
WOW and Praise God!!! I have had some similar experiences of observing and even in lesser cases personally experiencing restoration. It is a mighty victory that the church will struggle to do what is true and that the pastor and his wife would be open to rebuke, challenge and restoration. I honestly feel that every regenerate being who comes across this post or stories like it should stop and worship God and ask for more testimonies of this nature.
As a former youth pastor, I was sitting thinking of the amazing tesitimony to the truth and the power of the Gospel on display for the youth in your church. It is through demonstrations of the working of God in the real and difficult situation of our lives that breathes life into the very propositional nature of truth. This powerful exaple can be a very solidifying experience for a young person. Unfortunatly most young people in the church seem to only become aware of our inherent hypocracy and judgement, but not the generation in your church today!! God is indeed rich in mercy and mighty in action.
I must admit my frustration and lack of charity for Ron, who in my simple judgment, just doesn’t get it. I could not continue to read his comments that were simply a mesns for him to argue and try to use his closed position to make you submit to him rather than truth. There was no charity in his comments. This is my frustration with the church that there are individuals who fancy themselves to be mature who could possibly taint the praising of God’s redemption and reconciliation with prideful argumentation.
Apparently Ron has forgotten that before any proposition could be, it took a being to act it into existence. Being come before propositions always, which is why Moses, when asking God’s name was given “I AM”. This why redemption in God’s economy had to be enacted by the Son becoming flesh and taking the cross. That is why Jesus IS the Truth. Truth as we know it in propositional form is a lesser reflection of the being who is in his nature Truth itself.
Again… thank you for your post. I am encouraged and I hope to hear of God’s continued work in our real, temporal, experience filled lives!
October 11th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Thanks, Ken. I think you “got it”
I listened this weekend to a talk by a certain Reformed writer who has made a lot of noise about my seminary leading the Reformed world into apostasy. It was very revealing. Basically, he believes that there is the possibility of our human systematic propositions having an exact one-to-one correspondence to the truth of God. All this seems to be drawn from the verse that we “have the mind of Christ.” From this he concludes that the Westminster Confession of Faith is a perfect statement of the truth contained in the Bible, and thus an exact representation of the mind of God. He rejects any idea of word/deed revelation. I think this kind of thinking undergirds people like our dear Ron.
November 1st, 2005 at 12:34 pm
Yo Mark:
Thank you for your blessing on this, and your benediction at this evening when this occurred. Your encouragement means a ton to this pastor and our little flock. Thanks again!
G