Written by T. M. Suffield |
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 about the church being a ‘body’. He’s arguing against an idea some people in Corinth had that certain kinds of gifts were better than others, and that people with the ‘better’ gifts were due extra respect. He instead teaches them that all gifts are equal in value and all are necessary. The body needs all of its different parts to function properly.

When Aesop, busy imagining tortoises volunteering for foot races, said “in union there is strength” he was acknowledging a truth that we all recognise. Like O2 used to tell us when trying to flog phone contracts, we’re better connected.
That’s easy enough to say, but when it comes to doing something about it we swiftly decide that unity may not be worth the pain it seems to bring. Turns out that we think being joined with others is the best way to achieve something worthwhile, right up until someone asks us to join with others to do that.
That’s how I tend to react anyway—it’s easy to say that people need other people until you have to actually do something with other people.
Unfortunately, we’re all a little bit more awkward than we would like, and our brokenness makes it hard for us to be in community with others. It doesn’t come that easily. The church is supposed to be united (Ephesians 4): a lofty and laudable goal, almost impossible for mere mortals. The biggest issue church unity has is that any given church is full of people. The biggest weapon in the fight for churches to be united communities is the Spirit of the living God.
You see, God isn’t like us. He’s united as part of his nature. He’s three persons, but somehow still completely one. God is Triune, and simple: somehow God can be diverse without being made of parts, three and yet more united than I manage when I’m just on my own.
And in Jesus we find even more union, he’s the perfect union of God and man. Paul’s favourite way of describing our state after Jesus rescues us is that we are ‘in Christ’. In Romans 6 he says we are united to him. We become one with him, and by extension with all of the Trinity.
Jesus then gives each one of us his Spirit to unite us to each other by shared experiences, speaking the same truth to each of us.
A. W. Tozer uses the analogy of tuning an instrument. When you tune lots of pianos with the same tuning fork, they are automatically in tune with each other. When followers of Jesus are tuned to Jesus by the Spirit, we automatically become in tune with each other. We don’t have to strive for unity to find it, we follow Jesus and find our hearts are knit together with our fellow travellers.
A friend of mine talks about a game he likes to play in the pub, looking around at groups of people who are sat together and trying to figure out what they have in common. You can usually make a decent guess. Maybe they’re work colleagues, or play football together, or they’re old school friends. If the church is working as it’s designed to, it becomes really hard to play the game.
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Estelle’s book provides some truly original biblical insights as he reflects upon the Joseph and Daniel narratives, arguing that they exemplify God’s people engaging as individual believers in the secular field. The historical material provides an illuming exploration of what the spirituality of the church is not, and what it is. Readers will find throughout this nearly-comprehensive volume thought-provoking material to help discover a refined, precise, and biblical understanding about what task Christ gave his church between his ascension and return.

Western culture is being ripped apart, to varying degrees depending on the country, over issues of social justice and cultural welfare. That increasing pressure has also often included the advocates of various social causes demanding assent from everyone else. This no exception approach to ideological uniformity has also often affected the church, as proponents of cultural issues impose their views upon us as another institution that must get in line with secular orthodoxy. Perhaps even more troubling, Christians also have sided against one another even on these exact same issues—in some way or another—both insisting that the church must adopt and promote their cause. Christians sympathetic to mainstream cultural woes summon the church to align itself overtly with the same causes defended in the popular media, while Christians who see those issues as nonsensical intrusions of unbiblical mindsets insist that the church speak out against these same agendas. Ironically, both sides of this issue demand the same thing: that the church as church address cultural issues with a formal and official stance and pronounce from the pulpit about what God has said we must do.
Into this furor of demands for the church to saddle up for or against every wave of cultural concern, Bryan Estelle has contributed a balanced, even-keeled defense of the church’s mission as focused primarily upon spiritual matters.
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Denying hell is unwanted progress. Evidently, the progressives that went further didn’t know when to apply the brakes. Having abandoned clear biblical teaching in one area, they found that if they continued updating their doctrine, they would progressively become better friends with the world.

Franklin Graham On Newshub
Newshub’s slanted take on Franklin Graham’s “God Loves You” tour has had the mainstream church upset for the last few days, and with good reason.
In typical fashion, Newshub called upon a progressive lady “pastor” to give her angle on Graham’s work and, of course, she declared he had Christianity all wrong.
According to her, New Zealand doesn’t need saving. Hell and punishment do not exist. God accepts all things (except for Trump voters, apparently). And we (she said, speaking for all New Zealanders) are not old-fashioned bible-believing Americans. Therefore, Graham should just go home.
The Church’s Reaction and Non-reaction
The progressive Church has come under fire because of this. And rightly so. Such a clear and shameless rejection of biblical revelation proves that these progressives are not Christian. They deny the Master who bought them.
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. (2 Peter 2:1)
But while some things the lady “pastor” said were very upsetting to all, her claim to be a pastor went by like it was nothing.
I’m old enough to remember when women preaching was the issue that separated progressives from the mainstream. Feminism was the engine that drove “progress” back then. Now women preaching – a position not held for 1900 years of church history – is mainstream and acceptable. The concrete has dried on those doctrinal renovations, and the church happily stands on the old progress we made.
Unwanted Progress
But denying hell is unwanted progress. Evidently, the progressives that went further didn’t know when to apply the brakes. Having abandoned clear biblical teaching in one area, they found that if they continued updating their doctrine, they would progressively become better friends with the world.
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4)
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