It makes me want to say a “well done” to those who have decided that instead of resenting what God has not given them they will embrace what he has given them, and steward it with faithfulness. For these are the ones who please him, who honor him, and who magnify his name.

God does not distribute his gifts equally among all his children. Rather, to some he gives much and to others he gives little. Some are given great opportunities while others are given minimal opportunities, and some are given massive wealth while others are given paltry wealth or even straight-out poverty. Some have towering intellects while others are well below average, and some are able to receive a world-class education while others are able to receive no education at all. God, in his sovereignty, determines all of this.
I was recently considering God’s gifts and pondering this: I have known Christians who have great gifts but low faithfulness. God has given them much and it is apparent that they are making little of it. They are five-talent people who in that great accounting may be explaining to God how they took all five—or four, at least—and hid them in the ground. “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours” (Matthew 25:24-25).
Read More

Related Posts:

.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Theologically, ideas of God as Father (Matthew 23:9– “for you have one Father, who is in heaven,”), Jesus as brother (Romans 8:29, “firstborn among many brothers”), believers as children of God and as co-heirs with Christ (John 11:52– “and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad,”), are all important here–all pointing to the church as a spiritual family, which serves as the community for disciples of Jesus. To speak of our fellow Christians as “brothers and sisters” as is common in the New Testament, presupposes that we belong to the same family and household of God.

In an age of growing uncertainty, increasing angst, and divisive tribalism, a number of strategies (often politically focused) have been proposed to stem the rising tide of unbelief and the social havoc of our times.  But one important area of doctrine which speaks to these issues is often overlooked—ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church.  In the first of this series (Christ’s Spotless Bride) I addressed some of the reasons why the doctrine of the church is not of interest to many, and why I think reflection on the nature and mission of Christ’s church offers important, if overlooked, answers to many of our current woes.  In this and the next piece in this series I will consider a number of the images given us in the New Testament in order to stimulate thinking about how the church offers solutions to these contemporary problems, and then address some of the ways we ought to think about the church.  These images of the church in the New Testament, along with the attributes and marks of the church (which will be taken up later), help us to better understand the nature of the church and the comfort to be found in the new covenant community.
New Testament Images of the Church
There are a number of images used in the New Testament to describe Christ’s church.  Such images are but one way of approaching the doctrine of the church.[1]  To understand the value of these images, an analogy to the doctrine of God (theology proper) might help.  Scripture teaches us about God (who is incomprehensible in himself) not only by ascribing certain attributes to him (e.g., justice, knowledge, power) but also by identifying him as a certain kind of person or having a certain kind of role (e.g., king, shepherd, warrior).
But these attributes of God are analogical and anthropological and cannot be absolutized.  God is like but also unlike human kings, and being a king does not exhaust who God is.  Similarly, the church displays the images given us in certain respects, but none of them describes the church comprehensively.  Louis Berkhof speaks of “figurative designations of the Church, each of which stresses some particular aspect of the Church.”[2]  That is my approach here.  There are certainly a number of these images given us in the New Testament which are well worth consideration.
The Inauguration of the New Covenant Community
In Acts 2:41-47, Luke reports the following events as a consequence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.  And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.  And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.  And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
These events were unique to that tumultuous period in redemptive history in which the age to come breaks in upon this present evil age, and the kingdom of God has come in the power of the Holy Spirit.  F. F. Bruce points out that “the conviction of sin that followed Peter’s preaching was no momentary panic, but filled the people with a lasting sense of awe.  God was at work among them; they were witnessing the dawn of the new age.  This impression was intensified by the wonders and signs performed through the apostles.”[3]
The apostolic church was composed of several thousand newly baptized believers, who devoted themselves to four particular activities spelled out in Acts 2:42: 1).  The apostles’ teaching, 2).  The fellowship, 3).  The breaking of bread, and 4).  “The prayers.”  These activities became the foundation of Christian worship and grounded the orientation of the Christian life in the apostolic age which commenced.  Word and sacrament are at the center.  Believers in this transitional period also practiced a sort of communal living, and witnessed the signs and wonders associated with the apostolic office.
Initially, public assembly and worship (the koinonia) took place in the temple precincts, but then moved into local dwellings for the fellowship meals, described by Luke as “the breaking of bread.”  Those who heard the word preached–the authoritative teaching of the apostles–were baptized and celebrated a fellowship meal with other believers.  The “fellowship meal” may be a carryover from a Jewish fellowship meal (the haburah), but given the connection made by Luke to “the fellowship” and “the prayers,” this likely points in the direction of the Lord’s Supper.  This connects the preaching of the word to the administration of the sacraments (the latter derive their efficacy from the preached word) from the earliest days of Christianity. 
Longenecker offers this summation: “what can be said here [in Acts 2] is that Luke shows, both in his emphasis on the early Christians’ meeting in the temple courts and on the favor accorded them by the people, that early Christianity is the fulfillment of all that is truly Jewish and that it is directed in its mission first to the Jewish world.”[4]  The future of Jew and Gentile in God’s redemptive purposes is explained in the subsequent ministry of Paul, especially in Romans 9-11 and Ephesians 2:11-22.
After Pentecost, the church is in many ways the fulfillment of Jesus’s words in John 14:12, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”  These greater works are already coming to pass with the conversion of three thousand souls and the first assemblies of the Christian church to worship the risen and ascended Christ.
The People of God
This image is not merely a generic use of “people” (as in, there are many people in the world), but a kind of social-political use: a community bound together through a shared identity as believers in Jesus, a common faith (as Christ revealed the gospel to the first apostles), and an allegiance to Christ as prophet, priest, and king.  As used in the New Testament, the “people of God” is a specific reference to those particular people whom God elects, calls, justifies, sanctifies, and then incorporates into the “people of God” (Romans 8:28-39).  1 Peter 2:9-10, also comes to mind in this regard.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by C. Leonard Allen |
Monday, August 19, 2024
A Christian account of beauty is shaped not primarily by envisioning a return to a paradise lost, but rather anticipating a glory yet to appear—a glory or beauty already seen in Jesus Christ but that is being spread about through the Holy Spirit. The beauty we discern now is a preview, given by the Spirit, of a beauty yet to come in the new heaven and new earth. It is being revealed in the midst of a creation still groaning in anticipation (Rom. 8:20–22). Earth’s most dazzling beauty is thus only a glimpse of the beauty to come.

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing—to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from.”
—C. S. Lewis
At age eleven classical music started it all for me. My parents, wanting to divert me from what they viewed as the corrupting rock ‘n’ roll of the sixties, got me a set of LPs introducing the great composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Chopin, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and a few others. I listened to them over and over during my early teenage years. I came to love them, to know them by heart. I got a taste of how beauty works, how it settles down deep in the soul, stirring feelings both noble and aching and giving glimpses into regions unknown.
Maybe this all started the day when my fifth-grade class got to go to the symphony orchestra. We were loaded onto a school bus, given sack lunches, and driven to the civic center and concert hall in Orlando. We joined hundreds of other elementary school children, finding our seats, watching the orchestra warming up on stage amid the buzz of voices. We had been instructed on some things about an orchestra: what it was, the various instruments, the kinds of music it played, the role of the conductor and the concert master. We were to applaud when the conductor entered and when an entire piece (not just a movement) was finished.
The orchestra played a whole Beethoven symphony and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. My eyes could not move fast enough and my ears were not skilled enough to take it all in, but it was both fascinating and magical, glorious and mesmerizing. Unforgettable. What was this thing I had experienced?
Philosopher Roger Scruton, in Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, wrote: “beauty is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations.”1 This trio—the true, the good, and the beautiful—are traditionally known as the “three transcendentals.” They were called that because they were viewed as the three qualities that God possesses in infinite abundance.
Hans Urs von Balthasar spent much of his career seeking to reclaim beauty as one of the great transcendentals. In a world where sin and error are rife and truth and goodness hotly contested, beauty has a key role. Beauty, he says, can sail under the radar of our arguments over what is true and good and, in the process, smuggle in a ray of the beatific vision. Beauty can pierce the heart, wounding us with the transcendent glory of God. Beauty, he says, “dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another.”2
Concerned about the neglect of beauty by Christians in our time, writer and poet Dana Gioia spoke of “the necessary relationship between truth and beauty, which is not mere social convention or cultural accident but an essential form of human knowledge—intuitive, holistic, and experiential.” It is a form of human knowing that “awakens, enlarges, and refines our humanity.”3
*  *  *
I grew up in a Christian tradition that highly valued truth and goodness but in which beauty had no intentional place—and certainly not as an “ultimate value” worthy of pursuit for its own sake.
Read More
Related Posts: