Now, I don’t want to talk only about Christ-centered marriage because this principal applies to so much more. Freedom. It is an often-used word in the Christian vocabulary: freedom from the law and freedom from sin (Galatians 5). But what is not often talked about is freedom to do what? I get the freedom from, but what about the freedom for? We are free from death, from slavery to sin, free from the burden of the law, I get that part. What comes after this freedom? This subject is admittedly large and certainly not fit for a small blog post, but I will say this about freedom: when my identity and my salvation and my righteousness are in Christ, I am free to live a fuller life; a better story. I am free take more risks in life because failure does not mean I am a failure – because Christ has said I am worthy. I am free to be more transparent with my community and I may be rejected because of my honesty about my sin and struggles – but Christ has said I am accepted as his child. I am free to more radically love others (yes spouses, but also friends, coworkers and enemies) even if it is not reciprocated or not welcomed – because Christ alone is my source of hope and I am not dependent on what others give me in return.

In his wonderful book, Culture Making, Andy Crouch draws similar connections between freedom and the Christian’s ability to be great culture makers in this world. Crouch makes a distinction between “postures” and “gestures,”  saying that when we have good posture, we are free to make any number of gestures but if we have bad posture, our gestures are limited. He speaks of dancers and athletes who have a freedom to make difficult gestures because they have  good, physical, posture.  As followers of Jesus Christ, our posture, our bone structure, our foundation is Jesus. The freedom of having this unshakable posture allows us to make any number of gestures. We are defined by our posture – our identity is found in good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ – not by the gestures we make. But we can more boldly make gestures, more boldly love our spouses, take risks, be vulnerable and more creatively engage in culture-making, all because of the freedom the gospel gives to us.

Now, go be free. Not just free from, but free for.

Andy Crouch, Culture Making, (Dowers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 2008), 98.

“Picture yourself walking around a shopping mall, looking at people and the window displays. Suddenly, you get a whiff of cinnamon. You weren’t even hungry, but now you really crave a cinnamon roll. This craving isn’t something you made up. There you were, minding your own business, when some drifting molecules of sugar, butter, and spice collided with a susceptible patch inside your nose. You had a real encounter with cinnamon—not a mental delusion, not an emotional projection, but the real thing.
And what was the effect? You want more, now. And if you hunger to know the presence of God, it’s because … you have already begun to scent [God's] compelling delight.”

Hungering for and seeking after God is a key theme in the Bible.  Nurturing that hunger propels us forward in Christ.  Fasting helps us remember that our greatest yearning is not for food or any other thing, but for God himself.  Sincere and selfless fasting can draw us deeper into prayer and deeper into communion with Christ.

Throughout the history of the church, Good Friday has been a day of fasting and prayer to help us prepare for the joyful feast of Easter.  SCC traditionally celebrates Good Friday through voluntary fasting, devotions and corporate prayer and fast-breaking.  You are invited to join in any or all these with us.  Friday night we will gather at Ocean View at 7PM for prayer and a meal together.

A Note On Fasting
Fasting is a spiritual practice observed by Jesus, the Apostles, the early church and the Old Testament believers.  Jesus’ teaching assumes that at least some of his followers would fast.  While there is no command to fast (Jesus did not ordain it like he did baptism and communion), believers down through the ages have found it to be a rich and worthy tool for prayer and spiritual reflection.  If you decide to fast, we recommend a daytime fast from food (drink lots but don’t eat from when you get up until we break the fast on Friday night together).  Whether or not you fast, consider working through the devotional below throughout Good Friday and considering joining us for corporate prayer.

Click here for the Good Friday Devotional.

I’ve been saying it for several years now (it started as we were preaching through the book of Romans), we grow as we more fully absorb the powerful truth of the gospel.  We don’t need new and formerly hidden truths about God.  Those happen too,  but what changes us is a deeper absorption of the one truth of the gospel and the implications it has for our lives.  I’ve been sitting with this idea for several years now, preaching it, implementing it in counseling and applying it to my own life.  I’m convinced more than ever that the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).  That salvation is holistic.  That power is real.  That God is living and loving.

So it is with great enthusiasm that I look forward to our upcoming Gospel Proficiency course.  The main burden of the Gospel Proficiency course is to learn how to bring the gospel to bear on the story of our life, thereby unleashing its power in us.  And, by doing so, we’ll also learn how to bring the gospel to bear on the life stories of the people around us.  So don’t miss out on the potential for some Christ-centered transformation.  Sign up here.

What was unusual was that we stopped to notice them.

It was clear that Sterling and Sophia were destitute and I suspected that Sophia may have had some experiences with illegal substances given her shakiness on her feet, her missing teeth, and her glazed eyes but I believed them when they told us the money would go to food and shelter.  (That was also unusual for me because I confess that I am the biggest cynic when it comes to giving money to people on the streets.) 

Then, out of nowhere, I asked how we could pray for them.  That behavior was so unusual for me (at least when it comes to total strangers and seemingly random people on the street) that I felt as if I had floated outside of my body and some other force was taking over me – putting the words in my mouth, asking questions and offering encouragement. 

Sophia asked God to forgive her “bad” choices and for the encouragement to know that God will strengthen her to make better choices.  Sterling asked for wisdom and to remember that God will provide and God is sovereign. 

I couldn’t believe my ears.  I hate to admit my expectations were so low but to hear these two so clearly desire to cry out to God for forgiveness, healing, and redemption was incredibly moving to me. 

I didn’t want to just store up their prayer requests for the next time I had quiet time.  So, right there, on the corner of 16th and Mission, in broad daylight, Andrew and I prayed with them. 

We prayed out loud and we prayed boldly that God would provide, that Sophia and Sterling would know and experience the power of Jesus’ love, that they would know that Jesus’ death brings them forgiveness, grace, and redemption so that they would be strengthened to make better choices. 

And then we exchanged big hugs and Andrew and I left them in God’s hands. 

Another unusual thing?  Right before Sterling and Sophia approached us, they reached out to two other people who had also prayed with them!  As Andrew and I walked away, we could hear Sterling exclaim excitedly to Sophia, “Two prayers in a row, back to back?  Can you believe that?”

Looking back on the experience, I realize more and more that all of the seemingly unusual events that came to pass could only be explained by one person: God.  Our God is living, breathing, real…and He wants to be in relationship with each and every one of us.  He wants to love us, in and through each other.  It is AMAZING that we can pray to God, thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, and that God HEARS us, thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

From Andrew: Please pray for Sterling and Sophia and the thousands who are in similar places.

Betty and I talk a lot about what it means to live more radically for Jesus and how we can live out the gospel in our everyday circumstances. Here, she lived this out. Where is God calling you to practice gospel incarnation, in both word and deed?

Sometimes it seems people mean it to be a very narrow and concrete set of ideas.  Other times, it is as if the word is used to refer to “everything truly Christian.”  Is the entire Bible “the gospel?” Is each discrete section of the Bible “the gospel?”  What exactly is “the gospel?”

My suspicion is that many an eye has glazed over while listening to the preacher proclaim an ill-defined gospel.

Working through the myriad appearances of the term in the New Testament, some interesting things become apparent.  In the majority of the cases, the term is not defined at all.

On one level, this makes me feel relieved when I think of my own definitional failures.  And yet, I doubt the New Testament writers chose not to define the term with every use so they could keep it a mystery (Eph. 3:6 notwithstanding).

That the gospel is so commonly spoken of and not usually defined indicates that it was a fabulously common term and that the New Testament church would have been expected to have known what it meant.  The early church leaders must have explained it well to them.

And, given the New Testament data, it appears they did so in three principle ways.  Briefly, they are as follows:.

• In the Synoptics, the gospel is characterized as the “coming of the kingdom.”

• In Paul’s writings, the gospel is defined in two ways.  Either it is the life and message of Jesus Christ with particular emphasis on the death and resurrection (i.e. 1 Cor. 15:1-8) or simply, “the grace” of Christ or of God (Gal. 1:6, Col. 1:6).

• There is a possible fourth definition in Acts 10:36 where Luke speaks of the preaching of the “gospel of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all).”

The three primary uses of the term overlap, interrelate and mutually reinforce one another.  In fact, I’m struck not by the diversity, number and breadth of definitions but by their clarity and limitedness.  In other words, the gospel is not “everything” (although its implications may affect “everything”).

In our use of the term in the church, we would do well to reflect the biblical usage.  As such, we ought to be careful not overly to broaden the definition of the gospel and make it to mean “everything Christian,” as we might be tempted to do.  The impulse behind such usage is good: the intention is outwardly to acknowledge the centrality of the gospel in all things Christian.  The end result, however, can be a diminishing of the most important aspects of the gospel (kingdom, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and grace).

If everything is the gospel, I may be satisfied that I have proclaimed it when in fact I may merely have told a nice Bible story or talked about an aspect of the Christian faith.

Perhaps a good way forward would be to say that the gospel is (somewhat) narrow in its meaning (stick to the three definitions) while at the same time boldly insist that the implications of the gospel reach to transform all things.

I’m just re-reading The Fall, by Albert Camus, the early 20th C. French Existentialist.  Since High School it has been on my shelf of “great books.”  A recent church leadership team discussion had us grappling with how we share our faith with someone who’s content, successful and seemingly doing fine “without God.”  The story of The Fall is about just such a person. Jean-Baptist Clamence is a model human being, a lawyer given to serving the poor without pay, a man who never misses an opportunity to help someone in need.  He is well liked, attractive, winsome and successful in every area of life.

But a momentary failure causes him to look a little deeper into his own soul and he discovers that under the veneer of contentedness lies a deep-seated selfishness.  This realistic self-evaluation leads to the unraveling of his confidence.  Lacking any hope of resolution, he winds up spending his life in the local dive telling the story of his “fall” to unsuspecting tourists.  Inevitably, and this is his intent, as these victims ponder the fall of one so obviously well put together, they begin to consider their own circumstance.  The self portrait he holds out “becomes a mirror” revealing the secret motives and imperfections of his listener.  The knife cuts deep.  By the time it is over, the bar floor is littered with the tattered shreds of the tourist’s smugness and pride.  Then Clamence departs leaving his victim destroyed and without hope but feeling himself personally triumphant.

The Fall gets it partly right.  Realistic self-evaluation is painful and few embrace it because it leads to a scary precipice of self-destruction.  Camus portrays this dynamic masterfully.  And he shows us how one person’s uncompromising transparency can expose another person to a more exacting version of God’s law.  This is a technique we might do well to employ with those  who seem “to have it all put together.”  Of course our aim is to bring about repentance and redemption through Christ rather than Clamence’s personal destruction.

All this will require us to expose aspects of our character that we might prefer not to expose.  Then again, Christ didn’t enjoy hanging on the cross for hanging’s sake.  There was a greater purpose and being transparent about our failures is part of how we fill up the sufferings of Christ.  Our transparency will help those around us recognize their need.  In the words of Clamence, we might say to the “perfect” people around us, “Search your memory and perhaps you will find some similar story that you’ll tell me later on.”

Rumors are that Camus himself found forgiveness in Christ while on his death bed.  It is impossible to know for sure.  But it is certainly clear that he understood the first part of the journey.

Here is what I am bringing home from this conference: the centrality of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, in all things. The theme of the conference was “They Testify About Me: Preaching Jesus and the Gospel from the Old Testament.” This title, referencing John 5:39, made it very clear that the plan of the conference was to have really smart and really good preachers talk about Jesus and the Gospel. It blew me away. What I loved about this was that the speakers never forced metaphor or symbolism to say “this is Jesus here” or “this stands for Jesus.”  In a way which is more appropriate and truthful to the text, they found trajectories which all ended up at Jesus. Messages of faithfulness and hope, salvation by grace, on and on, they showed that Jesus was the “better…” or “greater…” or “final…” of what was presented in the Old Testament.

What stuck me like a bolt of lightning was when D.A. Carson said “People ask me, ‘Do I have to preach Jesus and the Gospel from the Old Testament?’ and I respond, ‘Of course I don’t have to, but why would I do anything else?”  Amen!  Why would you ever pass on an opportunity to show how countless stories of the Old Testament are preparing us, pointing us to the message of grace we find on the cross.

In this Easter season, think about the role the Gospel plays in your life. Many of you are probably like me; I’ve heard this message so much that I have forgotten how this is the most central teaching in my life – I am a sinner saved by grace through faith in our resurrected Lord, our Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth!  As soon as I returned from Chicago, I came across the words of Paul in his first letter to the church of Corinth that sum up what God showed me that week: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”

By the time I was in seminary in the late 90’s, there were what I considered to be three real options: the Revised Standard Version (1952), the New American Standard Version (1971) and the New International Version (1978).  I had grown up with the RSV but in Evangelical circles this version was suspect because it sought to incorporate liberal critical theory into the translation process (although many of my most conservative professors preferred the RSV and I continued to use it during seminary and for a time afterwards).  As I began to preach regularly, I realized the RSV was not going to catch on in my particular church environment and figured it was not wise or helpful to continue to be out of step with the congregation.  The NIV and the NASB provided two fairly different but widely accepted options.  The NIV was created by translators leaning more to towards the “dynamic equivalence” translation philosophy, which seeks to re-say what the original text says in words and phrases that are natural to the host language.  Dynamic equivalence translations are also more likely to make interpretive decisions in texts where the original language might be ambiguous (although most translations end up doing this because the host language sometimes has no easy way of maintaining the ambiguity).  Such interpretive decision-making is why it matters on some level what the beliefs of the translators are.  At any rate, this philosophy of translation resulted in a punchy, readable rendering of the original languages and I chose to use it because of its natural English feel and accessibility.  Besides, I’d be studying with the original languages on hand and so would be getting the full breadth of translation possibilities.  The NASB, on the other hand, was written with a bias for “formal equivalence” (sometimes inaccurately referred to as “word for word”).  Formally equivalent translations can sound very wooden in English or even unintelligible as they seek to carry over the lexical and grammatical forms of the original language into the host language.  But if translation is about making something intelligible, there is no guarantee that simply reproducing these forms makes it more intelligible; sometimes it has the opposite effect.  So, in my mind, advantage NIV.

In the last decade, the translation options have further multiplied.  The RSV was revised to become both the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1989) and the English Standard Version (ESV, 2001).  Then came the New Living Translation (NLT, 2004), Today’s New International Version (TNIV, 2005), the New English Version (NET, 2005) and soon a revision of the NIV (2011, available online now).  All these versions attempt to solve two primary translation problems: 1) how best to balance formal/dynamic equivalence translation philosophies and 2) how best to incorporate cultural changes in gender related language use.  The NRSV is an update of the RSV emphasizing the use of gender inclusive language.  Many have documented how some NRSV gender inclusive language decisions create theological confusion in places and so the NRSV has not been generally considered in Evangelical contexts.  The ESV is also a revision of the RSV, striving to maintain a balance between dynamic and formal equivalence, but with a more conservative approach to usage of gender inclusive language (it does use gender inclusive language).  The NLT is perhaps furthest on the dynamic equivalence side and, while certainly worth consulting, is not generally considered for corporate congregational use.  The TNIV was a revision of the NIV that has already gone out of print due to controversy regarding its gender inclusive language choices.  While this text was heavily criticized by the broad evangelical world, many conservative Biblical scholars who are highly trained in translation theory continue to hold the TNIV in high regard.  In surveying the debate about the TNIV it seems that while it started as a discussion among the faithful about the technicalities of gender inclusive translation theory, it ended as a somewhat politicized dispute with the majority of evangelical leaders (whether or not they were schooled in science of translation) siding against the TNIV.  While I’m not in a position to give a final ruling on that debate, it is now a mute point because the TNIV is out of print.  A new revision of the NIV is due out in 2011 and will include a reassessment of all the passages that lead to the controversy.  In the meantime, however, huge numbers of Bible readers have switched to the ESV which intends to be both faithful and readable and, as mentioned, has dealt more conservatively with the gender inclusive language question.  In addition, the publishing of the ESV Study Bible in 2008, complete with comprehensive exegetical and theological notes, has further boosted the ESV’s appeal.

Sorting it all out, it would seem that, going forward, the 2011 NIV and the ESV remain the most generally accepted options.  The question for a pastor in the daily grind of preaching and shepherding is two-fold. 1) Will the 2011 NIV be “better” than the ESV and 2) will it catch hold enough?  The second question is hard to predict given the response to the TNIV and the move of many to the ESV.  We won’t know for some years now.  With respect to the first question, however, the 2011 NIV is available online now and can be compared to the ESV.  So far, the conclusion is the same one that we get so often in biblical translation: each translation is better than the others in some ways and not in others.  I don’t particularly like, for example, that the NIV has stayed with translating “flesh” as “sinful nature” (although, after an in-depth reading of the rationale behind it, I have a much greater respect for this decision).  In other cases, it seems the 2011 NIV takes a more consistent approach to the inclusive language problem (cf. Hebrews 2:11 and 3:1 in ESV and 2011 NIV, for example).  On balance, however, I moderately prefer the overall philosophy of the ESV (generally seeking to “interpret” less, maintain ambiguities and leave more for the reader to figure out).  I can live with its imperfection (but I could live with the imperfections of the 2011 NIV and many of the other translations as well).

In all this, it is crucial to keep several points in mind. For the past months, I’ve been doing devotions and studying with four or five versions in parallel plus the original language text and have come to this conclusion: no translation is perfect.  But, since I can’t mix and match my Bibles on the fly, I have to choose one.  On balance, I choose the ESV.  At the same time, I/we must remember what a luxury it is to choose!  Instead of 16 lower quality manuscripts as was the case with the KJV, the Bible I read is based on 1000‘s of manuscripts, many of them of extremely high quality.  Not only that, generations of scholars have combed through these manuscripts and wrestled deeply to determine the best way to express in English the words of the original language.  This is a luxury very few Christians in history have had.  Lastly, we shouldn’t be put off by all the different versions and their accompanying philosophical differences.  What this says is that we are a people who take the word of God very seriously.  We want to know it faithfully.  We want to read it in the best possible way.  As long as that remains true, we can only be hopeful.   

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

I have grown weary in failure and frustrated at a lack of consistency in my ability to love my neighbors. Clear is the command of Jesus that we are to Love God and Love others; the beauty is in the simplicity of these words but only once a human attempts to live this out does he or she discover the monumental task at hand. I constantly fail my friends and family and vice versa. My good intentions to serve go awry when there is a hint of pride, self-service and arrogance. My idea of sacrificing for a brother or sister is tainted by an expectation to get something in return. A friend lent me a great book that explained this better than I could. The following is an excerpt from Henri J.M. Nouwen’s In the name of Jesus (p. 38).

[There is an] unconditional love [that] the evangelist John calls God’s first love. “Let us love,” he says, “because God loved us first” (I John 4:19). The love that often leaves us doubtful, frustrated, angry, and resentful is the second love, that is to say, the affirmation, affection, sympathy, encouragement, and support we receive from out parents, teachers, spouses, and friends. We all know how limited, broken, and very fragile that love is. Behind the many expressions of this second love there is always the chance of rejection, withdrawal, punishment, blackmail, violence, and even hatred. … These are all the shadow side of the second love and reveal the darkness that never completely leaves the human heart.

Nouwen goes on and provides hope to all who have experienced the aforementioned (p. 40)

The radical good news is that the second love is only a broken reflection of the first love and that the first love is offered to us by a God in whom there are no shadows.

My nature, human nature in general, is often reactionary. I am driven to do things because someone did something first for me. The reason we love God is because He first loved us. His love is perfect and without shadows, as Nouwen put it; it was not spurred on by anything we did; it came from His nature and His nature is love (I John 4:8). We can never match this love because His was first, and ours was a reaction. As I mentioned before, my discouragement with my incomplete love exists but it is overwhelmed by hope! Finally the lyrics of this song become relevant. “There will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears and love will not break your heart but dismiss your fears.” There is a day in which this second love, the human love, will become like the first love. A day when we are face to face with Jesus and he gives that sweet first love which was always there, yet the love we return is just as sweet. We must live in constant awareness of our task to love God and our neighbors and not give up because we can never fully do so. Be encouraged by the knowledge that when we get over our hill as the song says, over our life here on earth, He waits for us to love and be loved perfectly.