Written by Samuel D. James |
Saturday, January 1, 2022
This is how I want to view the church of Jesus: wicked and compromised, but loved, and purified, and destined for greatness. I think this should be reflected in everything we do for and inside the church: our stand for truth and justice, as well as our newsletters. For those who spend a lot of time looking at the church’s failures, look at them the way Jesus would look at your own. For those who spend time looking at the church’s glory, don’t forget the sin he died to save it from, that still so easily entangles.

The past few years of my spiritual life have brought two distinct, intersecting truths to the surface of my consciousness. First, the answer to shame, insecurity, and fear in my own individual heart is the gospel, because the gospel not only confirms my real guilt but assures me that this guilt has been dealt with in love, forever. Second, the answer to my suspicion, cynicism, and even hatred toward those I perceive as my enemies is also the gospel, because the gospel tells me that those people are as loved as I am, and withholding from others the grace that was given to me is a sign that I myself have not experienced deep enough forgiveness.
When I translate the gospel into thinking about truth, culture, and the church, what I get is a profound sense that being a Christian is a disadvantage in the rat race to “win” social or political power. The gospel is a disadvantage because it tells me that I’m a sinner, and I cannot genuinely believe that I am a sinner while at the same time marketing myself or my ideas as the cure-all for the world’s ills. It’s a disadvantage also because the experience of the gospel makes certain worldly strategies unthinkable. In secular politics, I am supposed to crush my opponent with every tool available to me, even if it means stretching the truth or doing to him what I would not want done to me. The Bible says that my willingness to do that is evidence against my genuinely knowing Jesus. Disadvantage.
The thing about the gospel is that it moves so quickly from how we are treated by God to how we treat others. It’s horribly inconvenient. But it gets worse: the Bible tells us that if we refuse to treat others the way we believe God has treated us in Christ, it will turn out in the end that we actually were not treated by God the way we thought we were. The grace we will have thought we received will turn out to be a mirage. The most famous prayer in the history of the world features one of the strongest threats in Scripture:  “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)
Why does Jesus say this? Why is there a seeming condition on his offer of forgiveness for our sins? Why is the condition forgiving others? I think one answer must be that forgiving people who sin against us is one of the primary ways we remember who we really are. To forgive the person who hurts us is to tell ourselves again, “I am the one who trespassed against God. God forgave me, and I am not a better sinner than this person who has trespassed against me.” Remember that Jesus said he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Mark 2:17). The ones who are saved are the ones who, by mercy, hear that call. To withhold forgiveness is to stop our ears.

This tension is exemplified by a tense exchange between two men whom I admire. David French is a superb writer and an unusually compelling journalist. In the recent past, particularly since the election of Donald Trump, David’s writing has increasingly focused on the moral failures of a plurality of conservative American evangelicals. The failures of the predominantly white, evangelical church clearly occupy much of David’s attention and concern, and this comes through in his forceful and frequently blunt criticisms of it.
Kevin DeYoung is a Presbyterian pastor. He is also a wonderfully gifted writer and an excellent theologian. This week, Kevin expressed dismay at David’s criticisms of wide swaths of white evangelicalism.
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The Lord Jesus Christ came to the world and kept the whole law for a wayward people. He bore the wrath of God for us sinners and died on the cross. Perhaps for a righteous man one would die but Jesus died for unrighteous men. Who has ever shown such mercy like that? Not Mary, nor Elisha, Paul, or Peter. 

And when these lepers came to the outskirts of the camp, they went into one tent and ate and drank, and carried from it silver and gold and clothing, and went and hid them; then they came back and entered another tent, and carried some from there also, and went and hid it.
II Kings 7:8 NKJV
Who is as merciful as the Lord?
When Vatican II wrapped up in 1965, Mariology was brought to a new official level in the Roman Catholic Church. The catechism gave her the title, “mediatrix” (RCC #969). Numerous Popes prior to Vatican II and afterwards titled her “co-redeemer” (Benedict, 1918, John Paul II, 1980). Popes and Priests of Rome regularly refer to Mary as the “Spouse of the Holy Spirit,” “Queen of the Apostles,” “the Ark of the New Covenant,” and of course the 9th part of the Rosary begins “Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our Life… most gracious advocate.”
When witnessing to Roman Catholics they often ask me, “would you rather go to the mother for help and mercy or to the son?” Pope John Paul II said it this way, “who will better communicate to you the truth about him (Jesus) than his Mother? (John Paul II’s Book of Mary, p. 23). The question is meant to come across as sound reason – surely we would go to the mother of the Lord for mercy rather than to the Lord because who could be more merciful than a mother? After all, she is the mother of mercy and most gracious advocate…right?
These ideas about Mary have many presuppositions including: that Jesus Christ could be less merciful than some other; that Mary is more merciful than Jesus Christ; that Mary can hear all people; that she is omniscient; and that Mary has power to show mercy to all who call upon her.
When looking at Scripture we see something quite different from Rome’s arguments.
But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion and gracious, long suffering and abundant in mercy and truth.
Psalm 86:15
Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.
I Chronicles 16:34
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It was the habitus [habitual behavior] of patient endurance that made Christianity both deeply disturbing and yet attractive to outsiders amid the turmoil, paganism and hurly burly of the first century.

What did the early Christians actually do?
In Evangelism in the Early Church,[1] Michael Green declares ‘A priority of the early Christians seems to have been to have personal conversations with individuals.’ But Green’s emphasis on every Christian being a personal evangelist got it wrong.
That is the claim of Alan Kreider’s recent investigation into the church of the first few centuries, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire.[2] In fact, the teaching given to Christians in those early days after the apostolic period contains no instruction in, or pressure to do, what we call personal evangelism. It seems that Green was assuming twentieth century evangelistic methods and trying to find a rationale for them which simply wasn’t there. In the NT there is no constraint put on ordinary believers to buttonhole their neighbours and confront them with the claims of Christ. Rather what we find is that Christians are to ‘make the most of every opportunity’ when their stand-out lives provoke questions from people (Col 4:5-6; 1 Pet 3:15). It is a responsive witness, not an aggressive one.
This also looks much more like what Kreider finds in the writings of early fathers like Justin, Tertullian and Cyprian and what has been discovered of ancient catechisms.
The church during those years not only withstood empire-wide persecution but grew remarkably. How did it grow? We need to ask that question. As we see the current state of the churches in the West, we must have wondered at some point whether we have been missing something vital—something which builds better churches in the long run.
I do not think that we should swallow what Kreider has to say uncritically. But it is worth pondering what he has found in his investigation of the sources.
Four Basic Elements
According to Kreider the early church grew through a combination of four things, all of which are counter-cultural, to a greater or lesser extent, to current mainstream evangelicalism. These were:

Patience—this virtue was centrally important to the early churches and early Christians. The first attribute of love, according to Paul, is that it is patient (1 Cor 13:4). Whatever the circumstances, patience reigned.

‘Habitus’—habitual behaviour. They took seriously that it was behaviour that spoke truly about what they believed. ‘We do not speak great things, but we live them,’ said Cyprian.[3] A ‘Sermon on the Mount’ patient generosity was to be the Christian’s default setting even under persecution.

Catechesis and worship—the churches committed to forming these habits of behaviour in their members. A thorough catechesis, which majored on a changed life rather than simply the acceptance of certain doctrines, was the way habits were nurtured. Deep engagement with God in worship provided the motivation in maintaining that changed life.

Ferment—they relied not on Christian activism, but on God’s invisible power to fulfil his plans, which was seen as not susceptible to human control. Kreider chooses the metaphor of fermentation because, though it is a relentless process, it is both unseen and not in a hurry. The churches were grown by the life of the Spirit not by thrusting evangelistic strategies.

These elements of church life don’t look very much like the exhortations we receive in our churches today. This should make us curious. It was the habitus of patient endurance that made Christianity both deeply disturbing and yet attractive to outsiders amid the turmoil, paganism and hurly burly of the first century.
Character Formation
Instead of making it as easy as possible to become members of the church, it was emphasized that to become a Christian meant committing oneself to a deep change of life. A course of catechesis before baptism and joining the church could take up to three years.
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