“‘But you,’ he asked them, ‘who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus responded, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the church lately, what it is and how it was designed by God to work. I’ve been doing this as my own church has been going through a season of growth, especially with kids and young families. I’ve been doing that as more and more reports keep coming in from more and more different places about the growth of the church in parts of the world that have been deeply secular for a very long time. Through all of this, I’ve come away even more impressed with the profound uniqueness and goodness of the church. Let’s take some more time today to think about all of this together.
When Moses was making his farewell speech to the people of Israel, recorded for us in what we know of as Deuteronomy, he said something really interesting. Usually when a retiring leader offers a final word to his people, he tries to build them up and encourage them. Not so much with Moses. Check this out.
“For you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. “The Lord had his heart set on you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors, he brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
That’s a lot there, so let me translate just a bit. God didn’t choose Israel to be His people because of something inherent to them. They weren’t better or more powerful or wealthier than any other people. They brought nothing to the table with them. No, God chose them and did great things with, through, and for them simply because He chose them. It was about Him, not them.
Extending this one step further, the same is true of us. When God calls us to His kingdom, this is not because of anything inherently noble or worthy about us. You aren’t good enough for God’s kingdom and neither am I. You don’t measure up to the standards of God’s righteousness, and I certainly don’t. There is no one who has attained a high enough social status that God will finally let them in. Elon Musk is not rich enough for God. Mother Theresa didn’t do enough good works. Billy Graham didn’t preach the Gospel to enough people. On the other end of the scale, no one has been sufficiently victimized that God has finally allowed them in as an act of mercy. The only hope we have is in Jesus. We are welcomed into God’s kingdom in Christ and on His merits, not our own.
Now, look at Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession of His identity here. There’s obviously much to talk about, but focus in on just one part. Jesus called Peter a rock and said further that He is going to build His movement on Him. But while the grammar makes clear Jesus was talking to Peter, many scholars have held that this wasn’t first and foremost about Peter. It was about Jesus’ building His church. And although He said He would build it on Peter, this was a more metaphorical way of saying He was going to build it on Peter’s confession of His identity. To put that yet another way, Jesus’ church is founded most fundamentally on who He is.
If the church is founded on something else – anything else – then it’s not really the church at all. It’s a social club, a civic organization, a country club, or something else. But it’s not a church. If we are going to rightly bear the name “church,” then everything about us must proclaim who Jesus is to a watching world. We must not only proclaim who Jesus is, but we must get it right. Thankfully we have the Scriptures as our guide. In the Scriptures we have the only reliable source revealing who Jesus is. For us to be a church rightly proclaiming who Jesus is, we have to be founded on the Scriptures. But we can’t understand and apply the Scriptures properly unless we are being guided and informed by God’s Spirit. This means we have to be in regular communication with God through prayer. A church that is worthy of the name must be grounded in prayer.
Let’s take a small step back here for a second. What does it mean for us to be proclaiming Jesus’ identity to the world? It means just that. We are to be constantly, in everything we do, revealing to the world who Jesus is. We are His body. When they look at us, they should be able to see an accurate picture of Him. Okay, but how do we do that? How long do you have? We do it in word. We do it in deed. We do it in big ways. We do it in small ways.
Think especially about the power of the small ways we can do this. How do we proclaim to the world who Jesus is with our actions in small ways? We do the things He did. More specifically, we behave the way He did. We’re kind. To everyone. All the time. Even to the people who don’t like us. Even to the people we don’t know. Can you imagine just how much of a difference it would make if known church members were kind all the time? Instead of being known as a people who are judgmental or intolerant or hateful or bigoted or hypocritical or anything else like that, what if we were just known for being kind? You think that might draw some people to Jesus who might not otherwise come?
What else? How else could we behave like Jesus did? How about being patient. You know what being patient is, right? It’s graciously operating on someone else’s schedule instead of insisting on our own. What a difference maker it would be in the world if we just got that right. Instead of being so prideful and arrogant as to think that our schedules are the ones that are most important, we intentionally set those as of second-tier significance, and work to help the people around us realize their goals and dreams. You think the world might be drawn to that?
What about being gentle or compassionate or generous? How about our working for justice for the oppressed? What if we were a pure people; pure in the sense of being morally pure, but never self-consciously so. Goodness is an awfully attractive quality. Especially when it is a goodness with strength. How about if we were a protective people, actively seeking to protect those who can’t protect themselves? All of these and more are different ways we can proclaim who Jesus is to a watching world. They are different ways that we can be a people founded on Jesus’ identity and not our own.
One more thing here. Think about what it does when we are founded on Jesus’ identity instead of our own. Think about how freeing of a thing that is. We don’t have to worry about maintaining an identity or protecting an identity. We can just be like Him. We don’t have to worry about building ourselves on the wrong identity. This prevents us from being taken over by a strong personality and led by that in a direction other than toward God’s kingdom. It keeps us from getting divided by individual preferences and projects. It helps us say no to things—even good things—so that we can say yes to the best things. Keeping Christ and who He is at the absolute center of our identity is incredibly powerful. It’s who we were designed to be. When we do that consistently and well, everything else falls into place.
The Nexus 
A question if I may, from the Horse’s Mouth as it were.
Why do you abide by Sola Fide and not stick to the original, faith and works?
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What makes you think salvation by faith and works is original? Original with respect to what?
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“Original”. The Catholics and the Orthodox.
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They weren’t “original.” The New Testament is original. Where the idea that salvation was in any way a function of good works was developed or entertained, as it has been at various points in church history, that has been in flagrant disregard for the clear and consistent teaching of the New Testament authors, and so it was always a wrongheaded idea.
Reformers like Martin Luther represented a movement from within the Catholic Church that the Church leadership eventually purged from its ranks because of their unwillingness to acknowledge errors in their practiced doctrine, calling the Church back to faithfulness to the clear and obvious New Testament teaching that salvation is and has always been by faith in Jesus alone.
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Surely context is King?
James?
Research suggests Luther wasn’t the first to insist/develop Sola fide
And… Although it is a forged text..
Timothy.
“All scripture is inspired by God”
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It always is.
When you actually understand what James is saying, he doesn’t present the slightest challenge or deviation from an entirely faith-based understanding of salvation. Good works are the proof of someone’s salvation, not the means by which they receive it in the first place.
I didn’t say Luther was the first to insist on salvation by faith alone. I didn’t even suggest that.
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I do understand what James is saying.
And I did not suggest it was by works alone, but faith AND works. Surely you have qualified this by your reply?
And the Timothy verse?
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James doesn’t suggest salvation is by faith AND works. Salvation is by faith. The proof that you have received it by faith is that you do the kinds of things Jesus did. That’s the works piece James talks about.
I fail to see how the verse (taken out of context) from Timothy is at all relevant.
That’s all the time I have for this today.
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Re Timothy All Scripture is God breathed. Apparently.
Furthermore, there is no verse that asserts by “faith alone”
I understood that faith without works/deeds is dead. Is this not so?
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I still fail to see any relevance of that verse to your point.
Try Ephesians 2:8-9: salvation is by faith alone and not by works. That’s about as explicit as you could ask for.
And, yes, faith without works is dead, but that doesn’t mean works play a role in our receiving the gift of salvation. It simply means that faith professed without works to back it up is very likely faith professed falsely.
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That’s the point. Without works faith is, dead.
So, you accept that faith is justified by works?
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Justified in the sense that it demonstrates that it exists and that it is genuine, yes. Justified in the sense that the works contribute in any sense to our receiving the gift of salvation, no.
I’m curious what your goal is here given that you don’t believe any of this in the first place.
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I was in discussion with a former protestant who converted to Orthodoxy and the subject of Sola Fide was the subject of a post.
As it was not an issue in the original Church or among the original Christians for over a 1000 years before Luther came along I wonder why it is such a big issue for you and other Christian sects?
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It wasn’t an issue because it was assumed as Paul’s teachings on the question were clear. It wasn’t until the late Medieval period before the Reformation which included the appearance of aberrant doctrines like the sale of indulgences that the church started to egregiously move in the direction of a more explicitly works-based salvation. That deviation from orthodoxy is a big part of what motivated the early reformers. The had departed doctrinally from the clear teachings of the New Testament, and the reformers sought mostly just to call it back to what was right and true.
Luther in particular was originally trying to reform the church from within. He didn’t want to leave the church. He wanted to help set it back on the right track. It wasn’t until the church thoroughly and violently (at least by attempt) rejected Luther’s efforts that he went the route of forming an entirely new movement (which really wasn’t all that different on the whole). The two main points of deviation were his vigorous reaffirmation of the obvious commitment to sola fida in the New Testament and a complete rejection of the authority and even position of the Pope.
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Yes… Assumed. And you know what assumption does, of course?
I firmly acknowledge Christianity is corrupt through and through. Always has been.
The differences / heresies are all about interpretation. Even the ephesians passage is manipulated to suit.
Out of interest, as you consider your approach is scriptural/Biblical on what grounds do you afford authority to the sinners prayer?
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The sinners prayer as I suspect you are imagining it is nothing more than a model aimed at helping someone enunciate a profession of faith. It doesn’t have any authority on its own. It is essentially a formalized expression of what Paul teaches in Romans 10:9 about how one is saved.
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So, in essence, it’s all about interpretation and to paraphrase Life of Brian, you are making it all up as you go along.
Is it really any wonder there are tens of thousand of sects?
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And, as you just can’t seem to escape your egregiously negative bias against the Christian worldview, that’ll be the end of this conversation train. To credit, though, you held on longer than you usually do before falling back into it. We’ll count that progress. Enjoy what remains of your Tuesday.
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I have no bias I merely state the facts of the matter.
The bias/bigotry is all with religious people who condemn each other over scriptural Interpretation.
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