http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15168931/mature-together
ABSTRACT: Baptizing new believers captures just the first half of Jesus’s Great Commission; the other is to “[teach] them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). Moreover, the apostle Paul’s missionary example shows that teaching is no quick or simple task. Paul taught not only unbelievers and new believers, but he continued to teach established believers through repeated visits and letters. He also helped Christians in every church learn how to teach one another under the leadership of duly appointed leaders. At every stage, Paul labored for more than mere conversion — he labored for the full maturity in Christ that comes from ongoing, Christ-centered teaching.
I really wanted to prepare my missions update for a supporting church, probably from Acts. But not yet; I needed to “get through” my devotional reading in 1 Thessalonians. (Yes, I admit it.) But then I read, “For now we live, if . . .” I paused. Were Paul, Silas, and Timothy not really living yet? Perhaps not feeling fully alive before — what?
I expected something like, “if we are in Christ,” or some equally rich Christological and salvific theme. Such would certainly be true. But that is not what they wrote.
For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 3:8)
These Thessalonians — some Jewish synagogue-goers, “a great many” devout Greeks, “not a few” leading women (Acts 17:4) — already trusted Christ. They were secure in his righteousness; they had peace with God and eternal life (1 Thessalonians 1:6, 9; 2:13). Yet Paul and his coworkers were not satisfied. Not until Timothy returned with good news (euangelion): the saints are maturing together in faith and love (1 Thessalonians 3:6). Now there can be deep comfort, even life.
Mission: Maturity Together in Christ
In Paul’s missionary mind and heart, as well as in his strategy and actions, the conversion of people is not completely satisfying. Maturity together in Christ is. As we trace Paul’s missionary practice below, a glorious dimension will complement what many Christians traditionally mean by the word missions.
Some Christians speak of missions only as cross-cultural evangelism.1 Others expand the idea of missions, recognizing that the church’s mission is discipleship, which is bigger than evangelism (Matthew 28:18–20),2 though they may still reserve the term missionary for those directly engaged in the type of evangelism, church planting, and/or discipleship that crosses frontier boundaries.3 Still others commend any believer as a sort of missionary insofar as he or she participates in God’s purpose, activity, and goal — God’s mission — by playing whatever part God has given and equipped the believer to do.4
Paul’s sense of participating in Christ’s mission manifests in numerous connected layers. As we notice the connective impulse and end-goal of all the layers, the word mission(s) — in this article, at least — will appear with this general sense:
God’s mission for his people includes carefully designed tasks, jobs, or roles that God gives to one or a group of his people so that his unified purpose is furthered and moved toward his intended global end-goal.
Every stage of Paul’s ministry included maturity together as Christ’s mission. And teaching played a crucial role in layer upon layer.
Layer 1: Teaching in the Initial Missional Vision of Paul
To focus, we begin with how Paul considered his initial missionary endeavor, specifically among the Galatian Christians (Acts 13–14).5 Even this initial layer is bigger than many realize.
“Every stage of Paul’s ministry included maturity together as Christ’s mission.”
Paul and Barnabas helped start many Gentiles and some Jews as disciples of King Jesus during their first missionary journey from their sending church in Syria’s Antioch. They worked east through the “unreached” areas of Pisidia’s Antioch and Galatia’s Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe (Acts 13–14). People believed. Churches were formed.6
Some brief clarifications are already necessary. First, Paul may not have considered Acts 13–14 his first missionary journey, but just his first missionary journey from that sending church. He had already been doing the stuff of such missions in Damascus (Acts 9:19–25), Jerusalem (9:28–30), his own hometown of Tarsus (presumably: cf. 9:30 and 11:22–25), and Syria’s Antioch itself (11:26). Also, in light of Pentecost, it may not be best to use unreached to refer to the people and regions in Acts 13–14 (as I have done before). As the list in Acts 2:9–11 shows, Jews from these regions had already embraced the gospel, and likely had shared the gospel with others back home. Nonetheless, Paul and Barnabas’s missionary journey established the gospel’s presence in southern Galatia far deeper than before.
After Paul and Barnabas reached Galatia’s eastern border (Acts 14:21), they stood on the cusp of a tactical missions decision. Turning northeast, they could bring the gospel into the land of Cappadocia. Delaying that movement would result in some Cappadocians dying in their sins, without hope. Or they could travel southeast through Paul’s hometown of Tarsus and around the coast to their sending church. What was their tactical missions move? Neither.
Even as “frontier” or “pioneer” missionaries, they knew that their King’s commission — and thus their mission — was not yet complete in southern Galatia. The task wasn’t finished. True, the region was not “unreached,” and churches were formed throughout. But they were not satisfied with this; none of it meant their royal mandate for that place was over.7 Therefore,
They returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. (Acts 14:21–23)
Teaching disciples in various forms was integral to the initial layer of these missionaries’ commissioned mission — strengthening, encouraging, kingdom speaking. So too was establishing formal leaders in that local community of faith to carry on the discipleship process, the mission. (We will see more about this layer below.)
Layer 2: Teaching Again and Again
Paul’s sense of participation in God’s mission did not stop with that initial stage, even though it included all three legs of the missional stool: new converts (evangelism), new communities (church planting), and nurtured churches (discipleship).8 Teaching the same disciples and churches remained vital in Paul’s mission well beyond the initial frontier.
For example, Paul continued to teach the believers in Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, as well as in the smaller towns from a distance, by sending them a theologically and practically robust letter: Galatians. Would Paul have viewed this letter as separate from his initial missionary work there, as if one was missions while the other was not? I see no evidence that Paul thought like that.
Within this layer of Paul’s mission to the Galatians, he taught about massively important themes: justification by faith in Christ; how this relates to the Mosaic law in God’s wise redemptive-historical plan, culminating in Christ at the fullness of time; using freedom in Christ for loving each other; practically and ethically walking by the Spirit, particularly in community.
Paul’s epistolary teaching displays his passion and goal: “I am . . . in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).9 Paul’s sense of mission plays the long game: maturity together in Christ. This is why Paul’s mission continued from initial layer to further layer — and on to further layers still.
For example, Paul and Barnabas wanted to visit those Galatian churches in person again (Acts 15:36). Why? Their explicit reasoning for another Galatian missions trip was “to see how they are” and to strengthen the churches (15:36, 41).
As Paul revisited those already-reached, already-engaged, already-churched people of southern Galatia — with Silas now instead of Barnabas, and the Galatian Timothy from Lystra onward — he delivered still more teaching. On this trip (Acts 16), his teaching involved, among plenty of other topics I’m sure, delivering the theological and practical decisions made by the council of apostles, elders, and other appointed representatives (from 15:2). As his Master’s mandate specified, Paul’s teaching in his missionary trips was geared toward obedience, not bare belief (16:4).10 Again, just as Paul had hoped and strategized, “the churches were strengthened in the faith,” even growing “in numbers daily” (16:5).
“Paul’s teaching in his missionary trips was geared toward obedience.”
And we are still not done with Paul’s sense of mission to the Galatians! Paul went back again to the Galatian churches, again “strengthening all the disciples” (18:23). It seems Paul’s missionary mind and heart were profoundly committed to strengthening churches — that is, with helping believers keep maturing together in Christ — in addition to helping others come to know Christ Jesus, join the local church, and mature together.
Paul’s missional trajectory is unified, borderlessly transitioning from the unreached frontier to the same reached and engaged area, and still beyond to those same established churches and Christians so they are further and further taught. What is more, it continues still beyond.
Layer 3: Teaching Through Letters
Galatians was sent to a young cluster of churches. But Paul continued to send such letters to churches even if they had been firmly established for years. We do not have any of Paul’s subsequent letters to the Galatians (I imagine he sent some). But we can get a glimpse of the types of teaching Paul’s missionary mind and heart would unfold to longer-established churches. Take 1 Corinthians, for instance.
First of all, in 1 Corinthians — as in Galatians and all his letters — Paul organically weaves throughout clear teaching about the good news, the gospel. Jesus is King (Messiah, Christ). He died for our sins, remedying its guilt, shame, and power. He rose for our justification and glory. He is enthroned. He sends his Spirit to equip and empower us for daily life and relationships. He is going to raise us bodily and cause us to reign with him in the new earth.
What is more, Paul teaches that all this must affect life now. So, Paul teaches the Corinthian Christians about functioning as the church gathered (e.g., chapters 11 and 12–14); engaging each other as small or large clusters of Christians in the marketplace, or at dinner parties at a patron’s home, or even with pagan friends in the public or rented rooms within the various temples (chapters 8–10); daily living even as smaller Christian units or as individual Christians in the privacy of their own homes (chapter 5) or at evening parties (chapter 6); how any Christian should think and hope and act in relation to the impact Jesus’s bodily resurrection has on our present and future bodies (6:13–15; chapter 15). That is a lot of practical discipleship training!
As Paul continues teaching the believers through his letters — often bringing coauthors into this part of the mission — he consistently pursues this missional end: stand fast, mature together in Christ. As he and Sosthenes write, “My beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). And as he and Timothy write, “[Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28). And Paul extends this mission still further.
Layer 4: Teaching Through Helpers
Paul continued his missionary trajectory through sending helpers like Timothy or Titus to further establish clusters of churches. His goal was that local leaders — using terms like elders (Titus 1:5), overseers and deacons (1 Timothy 3:1, 8), pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11) — would be raised up and established solidly for the long haul. Why? To carry on the mission of maturity together in Christ. Therefore, Paul taught Timothy and Titus to teach the churches and their budding leaders (2 Timothy 2:2) about how the Scripture-saturated Christ and the Christ-centered Scriptures must deeply affect their daily lives, regardless of their sectors of life or spheres of influence, such as home or work or church (see all of 1–2 Timothy and Titus).
In a helpful recent study, Claire Smith found a high number of words involved in education in ancient religious communities in 1–2 Timothy, Titus, and 1 Corinthians: for example, teaching, “traditioning,” announcing, revealing, commanding, correcting, remembering.11 And there is a notable difference between these early Christian communities and the roughly contemporary mystery religions and voluntary associations: namely, a much heavier focus on teaching and learning among the Christians.12 From Paul’s language, then, early Christian churches were not only considered “worshiping communities” — though they were that — but could even be characterized as “learning communities.”
Some brief clarifications are necessary. Many readers will be from the world’s “weird” population (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic). We make up only 12 percent of the global population, substantially less when considering population throughout history. Yet we are notoriously adept at making sweeping, even universalizing assumptions and applications from our own particularized set of experiences and values.13 Many of us will “naturally” (culturally) assume that “teaching and learning” looks like individualized text-focused study (where everyone has his or her own Bible) and tends toward cognitive skills. (We weird Christians have even been known to unthinkingly impose our assumptions of teaching and learning on non-Western groups in missions.)
But early Christian communities, who most likely had only communal copies of their texts — Old Testament Scriptures, some of Paul’s circulating letters, perhaps other Christian writings (some Gospels, other letters) — primarily would have engaged Scripture and theology through oral (speaking) and aural (listening) forms and in communities rather than individually. What is more, much teaching and learning happened in less formal relational modeling, as in life-on-life or apprenticeship. And the point of it all was not aimed at cognitive knowledge per se but character formation14 — and that regarding both the individual’s and the community’s character.
As a layer of the mission, Paul sent and taught helpers to teach and establish local leaders. And these Paul envisioned carrying on the same mission toward maturity together in Christ, with equally robust teaching and learning.
Layer 5: Teaching Through Local Leaders
As we have seen, Paul deemed it important to help establish elders in the churches in Galatia (Acts 14:23). Paul deemed it important to send helpers to further establish people in the local offices of elders (whom he also called overseers and shepherds/pastors in Acts 20:17–35) and deacons (see 1 Timothy 3:1–13). Paul also deemed it important to teach communities of believers who already had various types of local leaders, whether offices or otherwise, that they had such leaders precisely because the enthroned Jesus himself is still on the same mission — that is, toward maturity together.
“It seems Paul’s missionary mind and heart were profoundly committed to strengthening churches.”
According to Ephesians 4:11 (on which we will focus, rather than on broader ecclesial constructions), Jesus graciously gives “the pastors and teachers” to the saints for a reason — as if sending them on a mission. Jesus gives them “toward the preparing [or equipping] of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (4:12). And how long does this layer of the mission last? And toward what end? Precisely until everyone is mature together in Christ and standing fast together in him (4:13–16).
Paul’s word equipping or preparing (katartismos) is a concrete word with numerous metaphorical applications. Matthew and Mark use it concretely for mending nets (Matthew 4:21; Mark 1:19), and Paul himself uses it for the preparation of clay vessels (Romans 9:22). Both concrete actions have to do with manipulating an object in such a way that it is thereby fit for its purpose.
The way Paul describes Christ’s mission in Ephesians 4 includes Christ sending local pastors and teachers to handle and work with (manipulate, if you will, but in a positive sense!) the saints in such a way that the saints are fit for their purpose. And what is the saints’ proper purpose (their mission)? Using two prepositional eis phrases,15 Paul describes what the pastors and teachers are to make the saints fit “for” (or unto): namely, for “the work of ministry,” for “building up the body of Christ” (4:11–12).
This mission of the enthroned Christ in his churches is exactly what Paul craves to participate in. Standing fast. Maturing together. This is why he goes back time and again to the same Christians on his missionary journeys. This is why he writes them letters. This is why he sends helpers to them. This is why he encourages their local leaders to be faithful to Christ’s mission to equip the saints. For the saints also have a role in this mission.
Layer 6: Teaching Through the Saints
In Ephesians 4:12–16, Christ’s mission extends well beyond Paul, his letters, and his helpers. It extends through “the pastors and teachers” in order to help the saints better
- build each other up in Christ;
- help each other mature in Christ;
- help each other be unified in their trust in Christ;
- help each other be unified in the knowledge of God’s Son;
- help each other not be moved by false doctrine;16
- speak to each other the truth of Christ in love;
- do their part in growing and building up Christ’s body in love.
Worded differently, as Paul writes to nearby churches, “Let the word of Christ dwell among you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16).17
Notice how it is only when the saints themselves take seriously their part of Christ’s mission that the deceitful and false teaching will stop battering them around so (Ephesians 4:14). And the missional goal for the saints is the same as Paul’s in every layer of his missional trajectory: believers maturing together in Christ, standing fast in the faith together (1 Thessalonians 3:8; cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 16:13).
If the saints are to sound like Paul in his missionary mind, heart, strategy, and action, they (we!) can be regularly asking questions like these: Are we all helping each other grow into the head, Christ? Is the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16; Philippians 2:5) and even Christ himself (Galatians 4:19) being formed within and among us all?18 Are we all maturing together in Christ in ordinary life: in family dynamics, in how we eat and drink together, in the market, with Christian friends, with pagan friends, in our gathered church? What about when no one is looking except that prostitute? What about in daily work, whether leather tanning, or working in the city’s treasury, or selling fabrics, or serving as a jailer or soldier? Are we all being fully discipled in God’s mission toward maturity, which involves (in Paul’s language)
- being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the Creator (Colossians 3:10; cf. Ephesians 4:23–24)
- as we are being conformed to the image of King Jesus (Romans 8:29; cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18),
- who himself has dominion over heaven and earth precisely as the resurrected and visible image of God (Colossians 1:13–15; cf. 2 Corinthians 4:4),
- who will share his reign over the earth with us forever (2 Timothy 2:11–12; Romans 5:17; see also Revelation 2:26–27; 3:21; 5:10; 22:5),
- and so train us in such reigning and judging now (1 Corinthians 6:1–3)?
For Paul, teaching and learning in the early Christian communities involved the saints carrying on the same mission Paul has been on since his initial missional work, and in his returning and re-returning missional work, and in his letters, and in the helpers, and in Christ’s formal church leaders. As Paul makes clear, maturing in Christ together involves reflecting (imaging) God ever more accurately as we proclaim and portray his character and kingship in Christ through our mental, affective, bodily, individual, and communal activity — all of which perfectly aligns with God’s first great commission (Genesis 1:26–28).19
End-Goal of God’s Mission
God has an end-goal, a telos, for every aspect of his mission from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 and beyond. For one, the global glory of God is the end-goal of missions — even cosmic worship.20 Yet there is more to say, for God built an eternal means into this eternal worship. In short:
God decided (1) he will be globally worshiped forever (2) as his people sit enthroned with Christ forever, perfectly mature together in him.
This two-pronged end-goal of God’s mission is portrayed throughout Scripture: for example, compare Daniel 7:13–14 with 7:27 and ask who exactly is reigning to the worship of the Most High,21 and compare Luke 22:29–30 and Matthew 19:28; 25:1–34 with this passage in Daniel.22 In the end, though, God makes it an abundantly clear and present glory. So the resurrected and enthroned Jesus says to his people,
The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. (Revelation 2:26–27; alluding to Psalm 2:8–9)
The kingship, the authority over the nations, and the rod of iron of Psalm 2:8–9 apply to Christ himself (Revelation 12:5; 19:15). Here in Revelation 2, he applies them to his overcoming followers.
Our enthroned Lord reiterates:
The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. (Revelation 3:21)
What is more, worship is given to this royal Lamb who shares his throne and authority with his triumphant followers (Revelation 5:8), for he has made the ransomed people from the whole world “a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” (5:10).
God has wed worldwide worship with the co-regency of his people with his Son. As in the very end:
No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in [the new heavenly earth], and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:3–5)
God has eternally purposed and temporally orchestrated in creation and history (1) that he will be worshiped precisely (2) as his children reign with Christ, mature together in him.
Everything God has done and will do — not just regarding redemption and reconciliation from Genesis 3 to Revelation 20, but even regarding the very fabric of creation and new creation from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 and beyond — is heading toward worship of him through co-dominion of us with Christ. And detailed teaching encompassing all of life is a major contributor.
The second great royal commission (Matthew 28:18–20) nestles into and naturally nudges along the fulfillment of the first great royal commission (Genesis 1:26–28). Paul saw them linked. And every aspect and layer of his missionary impulse and activity — including so much teaching — drove toward helping God’s people stand fast, mature together in Christ, and even endure so that “we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:11–12). Missions: matured together in Christ and trained to reign — all glory be to God.
Teaching Toward Maturity
As I considered Paul’s language and heart in 1 Thessalonians 3:8 — “now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord” — I realized I fell so far short of the glory of God’s mission for his people, even as a leader in a missions agency! And that prompted some challenging personal questions, which I continue to pursue and which I leave with you and your communities of faith.
Can we really live if those in our spheres of influence — at home and abroad — are not yet holding firm, not yet standing fast, not yet helping each other mature together in Christ in order to bring him worship by reigning with him forever?
Or do we, like Paul, find ourselves unable to really live if the mission is not yet done? Not “done” in the sense of others having heard the gospel, even if such hearing is all over the world. Not “done” in the sense of planting churches at home and abroad and helping new believers start the journey of faith together. Not even “done” in the sense of “discipled” if we have not taken seriously enough the true height and breadth and depth of whole-life training in individual and communal character development in Christ.
Because that is what is involved in the mission from Paul’s perspective. Over the long haul. In layers upon layers of teaching. Including equipping and passing on the missional torch to the saints themselves in this royal co-mission toward mature reigning together in Christ. And all by Christ’s Spirit of power and wisdom for the Father’s glory.
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Should I Charge Other Christians for My Expertise?
Audio Transcript
How do we determine the monetary value of our personal skills and gifts? And what are they worth to other Christians? This is a really practical question for a lot of you, applicable to anyone in a local church who has a skill set or gifting that benefits others.
Today’s question comes particularly from a listener in Los Angeles who writes this: “Pastor John, hello, and thank you for the APJ podcast. My question is a reoccurring heart issue for my life. I’m a graphic designer. I’m trying to live out my gift according to 1 Peter 4:10: ‘As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.’ How can I obey this verse without feeling resentful and bitter toward people — Christians and non-Christians — who mainly contact me because I have a skill that can fulfill their need, but who use my skills and never pay me for them?
“I often feel ‘used’ and deemed worthy for ‘friendship’ by what I can do, not who I am. My assumption is that if I did not possess this graphic-design gift, these people would never contact me. How do we think about the value of skills that are God-given, about the right of making a little bit of money from these God-given gifts to make a living?”
That’s a really good question that many Christians need to think about, because I have seen professionals in the church misused. This happens when people unthinkingly — I think it’s usually unthinkingly — take advantage of their professional connections in the church family to get free services, services that most people are paying for. Like services from a doctor, or a lawyer, or a plumber, or a carpenter, or a designer.
People just ask them to do little jobs or little consultations, say, in the evening or after church — it’s their gift, after all — without even thinking how this may be unbiblical by mooching or exploiting. And I’ll come back to those words, mooching and exploiting, in just a minute.
Gifts and Skills
The first thing that I would say about the text our friend quotes, 1 Peter 4:10–11, is that these verses are not speaking directly about professional services, but about spiritual gifts in the church. The text says,
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks [like preaching or teaching], as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
But even though I think these verses are referring directly to spiritual gifts in the church, some of them are remunerated in the church — for example, when Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:17–18 that some elders who have the gift of teaching should be paid.
Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”
That’s elevating some of these to the point of professional skills.
Get and Give
So I think some of those spiritual gifts rise to the level of vocational callings, which Paul says should be paid. And that means, I think, that it is fair to draw some principles out of these texts that do in fact relate to the question of natural gifts or natural skills that a person has and uses to make a living. One principle is this: God intends for us to work in order to make a living and not to be dependent on others whenever it’s unnecessary.
Here’s where I get that. First Thessalonians 4:11–12 says, “Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” One of the functions of work is to make enough money so that you don’t have to depend on others inappropriately, so it’s right to be paid for your work. As we heard earlier, “The laborer deserves his wages. Don’t muzzle the ox while he’s treading out the grain.”
“One of the functions of work is to make enough money so that you don’t have to depend on others inappropriately.”
Now, I don’t want to overstate the case. This does not mean there’s no room for merciful generosity to help those in need with your professional skill. I mean, Christians all over the world do this. A dentist will take his Fridays off, go to the inner city, set up a little clinic, and give free dental care. That’s beautiful. I’m not at all discouraging that.
In fact, Paul says that one of the reasons for working to make a living is so that we might have something to give. It’s what he says in Ephesians 4:28: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”
So I’m not saying that those with special skills and gifts should never use them freely and generously to help others. All the commands Jesus says to be generous, to give to the needy, even to be willing to be taken advantage of — they’re all still in the Bible. And what our friend is drawing our attention to in asking this question is that there is more than one kind of teaching in the Bible, and neither should cancel out the other.
There’s the command to give freely to the needy, and there’s the command to earn your living so that you and your family can eat and be clothed. So, “work to get to use” and “work to get to give” are both in the Bible. Go to work so that you can get, so that you can use it to put a roof over your head, and work and get so that you have lots to be generous with and help others. They’re both in the Bible, and that’s the tension of love and wisdom that our graphic designer is challenged with.
Willing to Pay
But I think those in his or her network (friends, the church) need to hear another message from the Bible — namely, the message found in 2 Thessalonians 3. Remember, some Christians in the church in Thessalonica had become seized by a kind of hysteria about the nearness of the second coming of Christ. So they had stopped working and started to live in idleness, expecting the momentary return of Jesus while mooching off of those who kept on working for a living. So here’s how Paul responds to that in 2 Thessalonians 3:6–8:
Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.
That’s amazing. Paul was so jealous not to give the impression that he could exploit the work of others while he lived in idleness, that he didn’t eat anybody’s bread without paying for it. Amazing. Now, that’s the message some of the believers need to hear who are taking advantage of people’s services without paying for them. Here’s how Paul continues:
It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. (2 Thessalonians 3:9–11)
So the point that I’m drawing out of that text for our question is this: the network of Christians who are taking advantage of the work of others to get something that most people are paying for — they need to be taught, “Don’t do that. That is, don’t presume upon that. Be willing to pay. If the skilled person wants to make a special gift to you, that’s the skilled person’s decision to make, not yours to expect.”
Grace-Wrought Culture
And to the graphic designer himself or herself I would say this: pray that God would direct people’s hearts in the right way. In other words, pray that people would wake up to what they’re doing, and then perhaps talk to your pastor or teachers in the church to see if they can begin to apply the Scriptures to this issue for a while in the church.
“We must not exploit those who are hard at work making a living, but rather take responsibility for our own needs.”
Hopefully, this will create a culture in the church that includes both generosity and even willingness to be taken advantage of for Christ’s sake, but also a sense that we must not mooch off of, we must not exploit, those who are hard at work making a living, but rather take responsibility for our own needs instead of depending on others to give us freebies.
Behind both those aspects of church culture — generosity and responsibility, those are the two poles I’m talking about — is the grace of the Lord Jesus. He gives the grace to work, and he gives the grace to give, and he gets the glory both ways.
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Chapter-and-Verse Protestants: The Reformation Legacy of Little Berea
It was a late night at the Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting, almost twenty years ago. The day’s formal schedule was done, and a couple dozen young, impressionable seminarians gathered chairs around a few veteran scholars to pepper them with questions.
Among the handful of established professors, two in particular shone as the brightest lights in the room. Hands down, these two had published the most books, and had the most recognizable names beyond academic circles. When these two spoke, the room listened most intently.
By the end of the evening, however, a striking difference had emerged between the two lights. As they contributed answers to question after question, one defaulted, quite conspicuously, to quoting Westminster, and little Scripture. The other shared very little, if any, Westminster — but text after text from the Bible. I suspect it went unnoticed, at first, but eventually the pattern became pronounced. More than a handful of us had taken notice by the end.
On that night, the two Reformed lights ended up with mostly the same answers to our battery of questions, but the way they arrived at those answers exposed different instincts. One defaulted to Westminster; the other, to Scripture. It left a lasting impression on me. I knew which one I wanted to imitate. And while I couldn’t find any passage in Westminster commending the first approach, my mind did immediately run to one passage in Scripture, among others, that commends the second.
Born (Again) in a Small Town
In Acts 17, having been chased from Thessalonica by an angry, envious mob, Paul and Silas come to a small town called Berea. They start with the synagogue, as was their practice. Luke then marks a contrast with these Bereans:
Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. (Acts 17:11–12)
Clearly, Luke is not just reporting. He is commending. “Oh, for all hearers of Christian preaching,” he would say, “to follow in the steps of these small-town nobles!” Luke highlights two particular aspects of what made this response “more noble.”
Like Hungry Children
First, he says they “received the word with all eagerness.”
Paul and Silas came to Berea to herald a message, a word, not their own, but from God, through Christ. They came to give what they themselves had not created but received. The noble Berean response began with openness, even readiness, to receive — to take the gospel of Jesus Christ as objective and given and unalterable and, with open hands, receive it.
And Luke doesn’t leave us guessing as to how they received it. He says “with all eagerness.” This word, from God himself in Christ, was not received with hostility, or with apathy. However much Luke commends this synagogue in Berea for an objective, level-headed examining of Scripture, let us not presume that “receiving the word” implies doing so dispassionately or with coolness. They received it eagerly. As Ajith Fernando comments, “Their nobility lay in their willingness to acknowledge their need, resulting in an eagerness to hear from God and to receive what they heard. . . . Like hungry children in need of food, they sought God’s Word” (Acts, 469).
Like Careful Prosecutors
Second, then, Luke also reports what form this eager reception took: “examining the Scriptures daily.”
Doubtless, first-century Jews did not have Christian creeds and confessions to consult, but they could have been greatly tempted to turn to a host of secondary sources: whether the Mishnah, or oral law, or the Jewish common sense and assumptions they were raised in, or the growing corpus of Second Temple literature. Like us, they had plenty of other seemingly noble sources to turn to other than the Scriptures themselves. They could have defaulted elsewhere to check the validity of Paul’s message, but by God’s grace, these Jews turned precisely to where they needed to turn: God’s own word, not human formulations.
Paul had started them in the right direction by his own practice. When he came to preach in synagogues, “he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ’” (Acts 17:2–3). Paul pointed them in the right direction. He set up his listeners to check his message in Scripture by first reasoning with them from Scripture.
“They wanted to know the truth and the true God, and neither apathy nor gullibility would benefit the pursuit.”
So, following Paul’s lead, these noble Bereans examined the Scriptures for themselves. Eagerness and examination were not at odds; Luke commends both their heartfelt concern and their deliberate care. Noble indeed, they wanted to know the true God and his truth, and neither apathy nor gullibility would benefit the pursuit. And pursuit it was. This was no mere moment or flash in the pan. They endured in their careful search. They made eager reception, with scriptural examination, a daily practice.
Reformation Warning
In our own day, we too know the temptation of defaulting to voices other than Scripture to tell us what Scripture says. We have access to a stunning (and growing!) wealth of secondary literature, old and new. And best among it all are our creeds and confessions. They are precious — to be cherished far above the latest title off the press. Too few modern Christians appreciate the wisdom and value of the ancient creeds and faithful confessions like Westminster and others in its wake. And particularly those of us who gladly profess ourselves to be “Reformed” and unashamed sympathizers with the Reformation and its legacy.
“Do we daily, with eagerness, examine the Scriptures for ourselves?”
However, as those who rally to sola Scriptura — Scripture alone as our supreme and final authority — we do well to regularly check our practice with those noble readers in Berea. Do we daily, with eagerness, examine the Scriptures for ourselves?
Our best creeds, if we’ll let them, will remind us precisely of this, and encourage us to make a practice of this, even as useful as confessions can be when checking our work.
Keep Searching the Scriptures
For instance, the first section of the Desiring God Affirmation of Faith, though recognizing that “limited abilities, traditional biases, personal sin, and cultural assumptions often obscure biblical texts,” commends “humble and careful effort to find in the language of Scripture” itself what God has to say to us through his prophets and apostles (1.4).
It’s a warning worthy of sounding at not only the outset but the conclusion. The fifteenth and final section reprises the confession,
We do not claim infallibility for this affirmation and are open to refinement and correction from Scripture. Yet we do hold firmly to these truths as we see them and call on others to search the Scriptures to see if these things are so. As conversation and debate take place, it may be that we will learn from each other, and the boundaries will be adjusted, even possibly folding formerly disagreeing groups into closer fellowship. (15.4)
For now, we see much in the Scriptures dimly, not yet as we will (1 Corinthians 13:12). Young and old, we’re all to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, as given in his word (2 Peter 3:18). How tragic would it be, then, in self-identifying as “Reformed,” to keep Scripture at arm’s length in our admiration for those who so memorably championed Scripture, whether Luther, Calvin, Owen, Edwards, Westminster, or the Second London Confession.
So too, cutting the other way, as those genuinely eager to “receive the word” and “examine the Scriptures daily,” we do well to beware of letting sola Scriptura be a cloak for our own personal interpretations. Remembering those noble saints in Berea can renew in us the resolve to hold looser to human opinions and assumptions, especially our own. It’s a subtle but real and well-worn danger: we can fly the banner of “sola Scriptura” as a guise for rejecting the time-tested wisdom of creeds and confessions in service of our own personal instincts and interpretations.
Default to God’s Own Words
Those who teach faithfully and fruitfully in the church in the coming generation, as in the past, will be eager to herald scriptural truth, and they also will be eager to keep learning and growing themselves. No pastor or Christian leader has arrived, and the best know it well. Good pastors and teachers are ready to stand for what they know Scripture to teach, and yet are humbly willing to grow, and be shown to be wrong from Scripture.
However much we cherish and rehearse and draw wisdom from time-tested creeds and confessions, we learn to default to Scripture itself. We relish the very words of God even more. Not just in theory. In daily practice. In eager daily examination.
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How Do I Find the Main Point of a Psalm?
Audio Transcript
How do I decode the point of a whole chapter of the Bible? How do I summarize the main point of a whole psalm? Welcome back to the podcast. That’s the question we need answered today. And if you’re reading your Bible along with us, using the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, our reading schedule hits January 8 today. That means we’re reading Psalm 8 together. Psalm 8 is rather hard to make sense of, hard to summarize, so it’s a good time in our Bible reading to pause and ask Pastor John how he summarizes it and other whole chapters and whole psalms.
Philip asks this very question: “Dear Pastor John, I’ve really enjoyed the way you go through individual verses and explain them very clearly by breaking them down and explaining each part. I understand that meditating on small parts of Scripture can help us really suck all the nourishment from it, but sometimes my problem is in understanding entire chapters or larger sections of the Bible.
“I read something like Psalm 8, and although I can understand small parts of these texts, I really get lost and fail to follow the entire flow of argument or where the chapter is going. I’m often confused by a whole psalm. It seems disjointed to me, and I can’t follow how one line leads to the next. Could you help me to figure out ways to understand large sections of Scripture as a whole, rather than just small chunks disconnected from other parts? Thank you.”
Let me see if I can help, first with an analogy — namely, an analogy of a jigsaw puzzle — and then with an exhortation about the hard work of seeing a whole chapter. Then I’ll give an example from my own experience.
Scripture as a Puzzle
Think of a larger unit of Scripture, like a chapter or a few paragraphs or maybe several chapters — think of it as a jigsaw puzzle, a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle. There are five hundred pieces laid in front of you, and as you look at them, they do not look at all like the painting on the front of the box. They are just one big jumble.
That’s how the words and phrases and clauses might look to you in a chapter in the Bible when you try to think of the chapter as a whole. They’re just lots and lots of words and phrases and clauses that might say some nice things, but my oh my, they don’t make one big picture.
How do you go about seeing the whole picture instead of five hundred scattered pieces? Of course, the Bible doesn’t have a picture on the top of the box. You’ll work a little harder here. How do you see a chapter as a whole, with a main point, with all the pieces fitting together to make that main point, instead of just seeing sixty or seventy scattered clauses and phrases? That’s the goal.
You take one piece, right? (I love to do puzzles like this because I love figuring this out.) You take one of the pieces, and you look at the piece very carefully. You don’t just keep scanning your eyes over the five hundred pieces superficially while saying, “Oh, let me see something. Oh, let me see something.” No, no, no, no. You get nowhere that way.
You take one piece, and you examine it very carefully. You notice that half of this piece is solid red and the other half is gold, solid gold, and you notice that the little protrusion at the top is split in half. Half of it is gold and half of it is red. From this you infer, with careful thinking, that there is another piece somewhere here, somewhere, that will be half red and half gold, and instead of a protrusion there’s going to be an indention in the bottom of the piece, leading up into half red and half gold.
Now you’re looking very specifically for that piece. As you scan the five hundred pieces, this time you’re looking specifically for it. You find maybe six or seven or eight pieces that have this half red and half gold, and you slide them around, looking for how they can fit together.
You push them off to the side of the table in a corner, and you find one or two that fit, and then another and another, and pretty soon you realize that you’ve got five, six, seven, eight pieces all fitting together. You notice, “Oh my, this is a robe draped over the arm of a throne. So, that’s going to go here, probably.” You set that midsize unit aside now, and you do the same thing all over again with another piece and its peculiar characteristics, fitting the pieces together as you go.
That’s how you build little pieces into midsize units. We might call those two or three verses, or a paragraph, and we’ve got maybe five paragraphs to fit together. Now you’ve got several — maybe three, four, five, six, seven, eight — midsize units, and you should be able to ask of those three, four, five verses in each unit, “What’s the main point here?” because of how they fit together.
Resist the Urge to Quit
Now, here’s my exhortation. One of the reasons we don’t move from the part to the whole in reading the Bible is because it is very hard work. It is hard work to fit all the midsize pieces together so as to see the whole. For most of us, and I certainly include myself here, we simply cannot do this in our heads. There’s where people run into trouble. They’re reading devotions, and they’re trying to do this in their head.
Well, I can’t even begin to do this in my head. We have to do it on paper. We have to write it down. We have to jot down the main point: “The red-and-gold midsize unit means ‘robe over the arm of a throne’” — that kind of a thing. And then we jot down the next main point of the next midsize unit, and so on, until we’ve got on our piece of paper six, seven, eight sentences, each one now summing up the midsize unit in the chapter, in the larger unit we’re trying to understand. Finally, we try to go about seeing how those midsize units relate to each other.
And my exhortation is simply this: Don’t give up on that. Use a pencil and a paper. Draw lines between them. You just have no idea how they might all fit together. You’ll be amazed at what you’re able to see by trying to fit those midsize units and their main points together to make the larger piece.
Unpacking Psalm 8
Now, I’ve been baffled over the years by the main point of Psalm 8. It seems like the main point is the phrase “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” because it begins with that and it ends with that (verses 1, 9). That’s a wonderful structural thing to see.
But in the middle, you have these babies who cry out, and God who gets victory over his foes through the mouth of infants (verse 2). So, I jotted that down: “Okay, so the meaning of the first part of the psalm, just the first couple of verses, seems to be that God gets victory over his foes by babies saying things.” And I have no idea how that works — none. That’s just what it says, so I jotted that down.
And then I move on to the next unit, which seems just totally different: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers . . . what is man that you are mindful of him?” (verses 3–4). And through this man, who’s just “a little lower than the heavenly beings,” God governs the whole world filled with fish and birds (verses 5–8). Now, what’s the main point? I’ve put a few pieces together here. I wanted to jot down on my piece of paper the main point of this midsize unit, so I jotted down, “God exercises dominion over his earth through insignificant man, who, compared to the stars, seems like nothing.”
And as soon as I wrote it, I thought, “Oh, I get it. The babies are insignificant, and God works his victories through babies. Man is insignificant, and God exercises dominion through man.” And the psalmist ends by essentially saying, “How great is his glory and his majesty?” Surely, then, the point is this: one of the peculiar aspects of the majesty and glory of God is that he gets his victories, and he exercises his dominion, through the use of weak and insignificant things.
Amen. Praise God. And that’s exactly the use that Matthew makes of it on Palm Sunday, as Jesus enters the city where the babies are crying out, “Hosanna!” (Matthew 21:15) — and he’s on a donkey, of all things.
Look, Write, Pray to See
So, the point is to look at the pieces very carefully, to fit them together in midsize units, to jot down the main points of the midsize units until you have them all on a half sheet of paper, and then to think and think, and pray and pray, and think and pray and think and pray, and to organize and draw lines, and to try to fit them all together until they fall into place and you see how these five, six, seven, eight, nine points of the midsize units are in a flow that make one big overarching point. You will be surprised, if you take up pencil and paper and do this, what you will see.
