Using Our Assignments to Serve Others

Bethany Jenkins post:  Living Faithfully in a Pluralistic Culture

Several weeks ago, Michael Gerson argued that evangelicals ought to be more introspective about how they engage culture. Citing a recent study showing that many evangelical millennials are turning away from “the embattled, political subculture of their parents,” he explained, “A desperate, angry, apocalyptic tone of social engagement alienates many people, including some of the children of those who practice it.”

For the most part, I agree with him. I, too, think “a purely reactive model of politics is not attractive, even internally.” Yet this advice is incomplete and insufficient:

 

There is an alternative. A commitment to civility, rooted in respect for universal human dignity. A passion for the common good, defined by inclusion of the most vulnerable. A belief in institutional religious freedom and pluralism for the benefit of everyone, including non-Christian faiths. 

 

Gerson tells us to commit, to care, to believe—acts that when driven by mere moralism will inevitably lead to failure, frustration, and exhaustion. If we want the freedom and courage to serve, not condemn others in a pluralistic culture, we need more than advice calling us to pursue the common good. We need the power to lay down our lives.

Calling and Assignment

One of the most significant ways we can serve our neighbors in a pluralistic culture is through our vocations. In 1 Corinthians, Paul highlights two aspects of vocation—calling and assignment: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned him, and to which God has called him” (1 Cor. 7:17, emphasis mine). While calling is about our vertical relationship with God, assignment is about our horizontal relationships with others. Tim Keller writes, “Our daily work can be a calling only if it is reconceived as God’s assignment to serve others.”

In the fall, though, both our calling and our assignments are broken. Instead of feeling welcomed and loved in the presence of God, the man and the woman feel naked and ashamed (Gen. 3:7). Instead of serving one another in love, they turn on each other and shift blame (Gen. 3:12-13). Jonathan Edwards reflects, “Before, and as God created man, he was exalted, and noble, and generous; but now he is debased, and ignoble, and selfish.”

Failure to Thrive

In our vocations, this self-centeredness often works itself out by enticing us to see our assignments as opportunities to honor and exalt ourselves, not to love and serve others. Instead of asking, “How, with my existing abilities and opportunities, can I be of greatest service to other people, knowing what I know of God’s will and human nature?” Keller says, we ask, “What will make me the most money or give me the most status?”

We use our assignments to distinguish ourselves from others, not serve them, especially when the other is a person with whom we fundamentally disagree. In “the culture of shut up,” we would rather silence our opponents than engage—much less, love and serve—them. We refer to “our tribe” and use language like “us” and “them.” We mischaracterize their views, painting them in their worst, not best light.

True Freedom and Courage

The gospel, though, gives us the freedom and courage to serve others, not condemn them, because it shatters any sense of pride and arrogance. When we see that Jesus, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, did not grasp for equality with God, but “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7), we see that assignment is not about honoring or exalting ourselves, but about serving others (see Mark 10:45).

And we serve them no matter how other they are because, in the incarnation, we see that Jesus became the other for us. He left perfect communion with the Father to become man and live among broken, sinful, and rebellious people—people like you and me—so that we might join his family (John 17:1-26). The cross has the power to restore not only our calling with God, but also our assignments with others (Eph. 2:14-16).

This enables us to serve all types of people because, even though our differences may be significant, we do not expect our neighbors to see as we do, because we know that “a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27). As John Newton writes,

He has graciously accommodated himself to my weakness, borne with my mistakes, and helped me through innumerable prejudices, which, but for his mercy, would have been insuperable hindrances: I have therefore no right to be angry, impatient, or censorious, especially as I have still much to learn, and am so poorly influenced by what I seem to know.

Therefore, we can be committed to civility with all people, as Gerson advises, because we recognize the grace we ourselves have been shown in Christ (Rom. 5:8). We can be passionate about the common good because God’s providence is our hope (Eph. 1:3-14). And we can believe in institutional religious freedom for the benefit of everyone, including non-Christian faiths, because we know that no one is converted through the power of the state, but only through the power of the Spirit (John 16:13).

The good news of Jesus Christ gives us the humility to love others in a pluralistic culture because it is more than mere advice calling us to civility. As Thomas Watson once said, "If civility were sufficient to salvation, Christ need not have died." The gospel is power (Rom. 1:16). It gives us the freedom and courage to lay down our lives in service to others because we know that, hidden in Christ, we will be lifted up once again (Col. 3:3-4).

Christ In Us - Our Hope of Glory

J.D. Greear post:  Greater Works Than Jesus?

A mentor recently told me that every 30 years or so evangelicals have a conversation about the Holy Spirit. The last really significant one, he said, was in the 1970s, and out of that came the revival known as the Jesus movement. It’s time, he said, for us to have another one.

In John 14:12, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” Greater works than Jesus’s? That’s a little hard to believe. Have any of us ever preached with greater clarity, healed the sick with greater power, or prayed with greater compassion . . . than Jesus? No one in their right mind would claim that. But, because of the Spirit, our works are greater in two ways.

The Greater Miracle

The first is that while Jesus’s earthly miracles illustrated his power to save from sin, the greatest miracle of all is conversion from death to life. Jesus fed five thousand to show us that he was the all-satisfying bread of life. He walked on water to show that he was sovereign over all dimensions of the believer’s life. 
 Missionary Nik Ripken tells of Russian believers who are currently seeing miraculous signs that would rival anything in the Book of Acts. But these believers only use the word “miracle” to refer to conversion — because amazing acts of deliverance pale in comparison to what God does when he draws someone to himself (The Insanity of Obedience, 19). When we preach the gospel and sinners believe, we are doing the greater work: Jesus’s miracles were only signs. We get to participate in what those signs point to.

The Greater Range

The second way that our works are “greater” than Jesus’s is that they are greater in their range. When Jesus was on earth, the Holy Spirit focused his ministry in and through Jesus. But now he is on every believer, and the collective impact, Jesus says, of ordinary Christians filled with the Spirit would be greater than if even he himself stayed to lead the church.

In Acts 1:1–2, Luke says that in his former book — the Gospel of Luke — he “wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day he was taken up.” The implication is that Acts records what Jesus continues to do, through his church. It’s not that in the Gospels Jesus worked, and now we, in his absence, work for him. It’s that during his incarnation Jesus worked through his earthly body and now he works through the entirety of his earthly body, the church.

Jesus’s vision for transforming society never consisted of platforming a few hyper-anointed megapastors to pack an auditorium with their electrifying sermons. His vision of the greatness of the church consisted in each believer being filled with, and used by, the Holy Spirit.

How we’ve built megachurches turns this on its head. We’ve acted like it’s about gathering a group of people to hear from one anointed guy. Did you know that of all the miracles in Acts, 39 of 40 were done outside of the church? Is that where most of our people expect to encounter the power of God? Most see the power of God as something that belongs to the pastor, in the typical routines of church life. But in a post-Christian age, fewer and fewer people casually “make their way” into our gatherings. That means people in our day will increasingly have to be reached outside the assembly, which makes it more important than ever that individual believers live filled with the Spirit.

If we want to see God’s power in our cities, we need to teach our people to listen for the Holy Spirit, to closely follow his guidance, the way the apostles did — not simply to think up a bunch of good ideas for ministry, but to tune their hearts to hear a few God-ideas.

Still Relevant Today?

Now, whenever I start to talk this way, someone inevitably says, “Well, you know, we can’t use Acts as a pattern for our time. Things are so much different now.” And I understand that Acts represents a unique period of apostolic history. But I am not convinced that the only book God gave us with examples of how the church operates is filled with experiences that have literally nothing in common with our own. The Holy Spirit appears 59 times in the book of Acts. In 36 of those appearances he is speaking. Has he ceased moving and guiding today? As John Newton said, “Is it really true that that which the early church so depended on — the leadership of the Spirit — is irrelevant to us today?” (“Letter IV: Communion with God,” 29)

Do we see ministry as something we are doing for God, or something God does through us?Tweet

Here’s a question I think every pastor would be wise to consider: Do our people see ministry as something they are doing for God, or something God does through them as they yield themselves to him? Do they know what it means to follow him, to move in his power? And do they know how to distinguish his leadership from superstition, whim, or heartburn?

The presence of the Holy Spirit was the key to the early church’s explosive growth. He is the key to revival in our generation, too. Christ in us, Paul says, is our hope of glory.

It is time we had another conversation about the Holy Spirit, time that we stopped bemoaning the fact that Jesus has left us alone, and instead started looking to, rejoicing in, and walking with the Spirit he’s given to live within us.

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Outrageously Generous

Scotty Smith post: A PRAYER OF PRAISE FOR THE SCANDALOUS GOODNESS OF THE GOSPEL

     Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.” Rom. 4:4-8

     Dear heavenly Father, this Scripture contradicts everything we assume about the way life is “supposed to work”. We expect to get what’s coming to us. We demand fairness—an honest return for our labor, time, and sweat. But the gospel flies in the face of conventionality, predictability, and normalcy. To which we cry, “Hallelujah!”

     Thank you for not being fair with us. Thank you for being outrageously generous, immeasurably kind, and scandalously good. What we could never earn—your perfect righteousness, you have credited to us as a gift. What we fully deserve—to be dealt with according to the wages of our sin, you will never do so. What we cannot imagine—that you would justify ungodly people, you have joyfully and legally done.

     Because of Jesus’ perfect and finished work, our transgressions are forgiven (all of them), our sins are covered (every one of them), and you’ll never hold us guilty for them. King David called such people “Blessed”. Because we are among “such people”, we are humbled and grateful, and free beyond our wildest imagining.

     Thank you for reconciling us to yourself through Jesus, and for placing us in an eternity of your permanent favor. Thank you for, not only removing all condemnation for our sins, but for replacing deserved judgment with your exuberant jubilation. Thank you for not just welcoming us, but for wanting us. Thank you for not just “letting us into heaven one day”, but for delighting in us fully in this very day!

     By the power of the Holy Spirit, drive the gospel, this gospel, deeper and deeper into our hearts, that we might live and love to your glory. So very Amen we pray, in Jesus trustworthy name.

    

Showing Up

Tom Nelson post:  To Engage the World Means Being Present in It

Jesus employs the metaphors of salt and light to communicate the pervasive impact people transformed by the gospel bring to the world. Speaking to his followers, Jesus states,

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matt. 5:14–16)

In all aspects of our lives, including our workplaces, we display to those around us the light of the glory of Christ who indwells us. Jesus emphasizes that we shine his light in our good works. Our good works take on many dimensions, and we must see that our daily work is a significant part of the good works that glorify God.

Faithful Presence

One of the ways that we are salt and light and act as redemptive agents in this broken world is to live out a faithful presence in the workplace. Woody Allen once observed that 90 percent of life is simply showing up. These words reveal some instructive wisdom for us. Sociologist James Hunter has thought a great deal about cultural change and the Christian’s faithfulness in the late modern world. Hunter reminds us that, first and foremost, Christ is faithfully present to us. He then makes an important point when he writes, “Faithful presence in the world means that Christians are fully present and committed in their spheres of influence, whatever they may be: their families, neighborhoods, voluntary activities, and places of work.” As followers of Jesus, we are called to a mission of engagement in, not withdrawal from, the broader world. To faithfully engage the world means we must be fully present within it.

A large stewardship of our calling in the workplace is faithfully showing up every day and demonstrating to others around us our good in and through our work. Seeking to live out a faithful presence in our workplaces means that we incarnate the gospel by doing good work and being exemplary workers. It means that we extend common grace to our coworkers and our customers and seek their good. As image-bearers of God, who is a worker, we must remember that our work has intrinsic value in itself and is to be an act of worship. We also must grasp that our work has instrumental value in that it provides for our economic needs, allows us to care for the needs of others, and creates a sphere of influence for the gospel to be lived out and shared.

Bringing Our Faith to Work

For many of us, when we think of bringing our Christian faith to work, our thoughts turn toward a kind of ethical behavior or even bowing our head and saying a silent prayer before we eat lunch. Of course these are good things. Yet when Dave and Demi Kiersznowski embraced the gospel and later began their successful and innovative Kansas City-based gift company DEMDACO, they desired to allow the biblical story of work and the broad redemptive implications of the gospel to shape their entire organizational culture.

Dave and Demi would be the first to say that DEMDACO is not a Christian company; but called by God to be business leaders, they are committed to modeling faithful presence in the workplace. Many of their work colleagues do not profess the Christian faith; some do not profess any religious faith at all. But DEMDACO is highly intentional about nurturing a corporate culture that holds up the high value of each person, the intrinsic value of work itself, the importance of seeking the common good, and bringing a redemptive influence to work, the worker, and the workplace. A relentless commitment to pursue work as it ought to be reflects the biblical storyline of work and makes its way into the purpose of the company.

DEMDACO’s purpose is stated this way: to lift the spirit by providing products that help people connect in a meaningful way and by pursuing business as it ought to be. As business leaders who are also devoted followers of Jesus, Dave and Demi have given me, and many others who have the delightful privilege of knowing them, an ongoing glimpse of the multifaceted influence the gospel is to have on our work and the workplaces we indwell. Observing the rich theology of vocation and work that permeates Dave and Demi’s calling as business leaders, I have been given a hopeful glimpse of what work was originally designed to be, and I find myself savoring an appetizer of what our work and our workplaces will one day be in the future. 

Without knowing Christ, you and I will never experience the life for which we were created. Without knowing Christ, your work will never be all that God intended for it to be. Without knowing the One who created work, your work will never be ultimately fulfilling. The good news of work is that we can be transformed—that our work can be transformed.

God Loves Justice

Bethany post at 843 Acres: The Justice of God

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Prayer: Lord, You love justice and hate injustice. Yet we recognize that, as sinners, we perpetrate injustice. We may not murder, but Jesus teaches us that we commit murder if we are angry with our brothers [4]. Yet we praise him for bearing judgment for us. On the cross, justice kissed love. Therefore, cause us to cherish your justice and, in response, seek it. Amen.

Put Not Your Trust in Princes.

1 Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! 2 I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. 3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, 6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; 7 who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; 8 the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. 9 The LORD watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. 10 The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the LORD!

Ps 146

Transcendent Self Confidence

Todd Wilson post: Mr. Milquetoast and Other Misconceptions About Humility

Several years ago, I was finishing up PhD studies and preparing to leave the place that had been my home for the past three years in Cambridge, England. Some friends invited me for a farewell dinner. They also invited another friend of theirs, an independently wealthy, quintessentially British gentleman who was bright, articulate, well-read, witty, and sported a rather posh accent. Naturally, he was curious as to what I was going to do after my graduation.

“So what are your plans?” he asked.

Since I was about to earn a PhD from one of the world’s top universities, he assumed I would be heading for a teaching post at an Ivy League school—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, perhaps?

“I’m going to be a pastor,” I told him, somewhat sheepishly. “P-a-s-t-o-r”—I can still hear the sound of that strange little word proceed from my mouth; it nearly got stuck on the way out, as if it didn’t want to be seen or heard.

My announcement surprised the dinner guest. In fact, he looked at me incredulously, as if I’d morphed into one of those ghoulish creatures from a cheap sci-fi movie. The look on his face told me I had some explaining to do—at least if I wanted to hold on to an ounce of self-respect.

I began to describe where we’d live in Wheaton, Illinois, a lovely town in what Americans call the Midwest, part of that large stretch of land between New York and Los Angeles. “You know, with all those red states,” I editorialized, adding a touch of humor—“where buffalo still roam.” My feeble attempt failed, and he continued to stare at me disbelievingly.

So I went on to unpack what it meant to be a pastor. Evidently, he’d never met one. “A pastor,” I explained, “is someone who works at this thing called a church.”

On and on I continued until his bemusement gave way to amusement. I watched as a cheeky grin took shape on his face—it was a smirk, really. It was as if he’d finally realized what sort of creature he was meeting.

He then dipped his head so his nose was strategically pointed down at me, peered over the top of his glasses, and said in a notably condescending tone, “The pastorate? Don’t you think that’s a bit anticlimactic coming from Cambridge?”

Anticlimactic. Few words strike greater fear in a proud soul. Who wants life to be anticlimactic? I felt quite small, almost silly, at that moment. In an instant, my self-worth was crushed like the ground pepper on the table before me. At the same time, I could feel the desire to defend myself surging within me. I despised being belittled and wanted to dodge or deflect the embarrassment of what it meant for me to follow Jesus.

Even worse, his comment made me doubt myself. What am I doing going into the ministry? I thought. Why waste all that education? Why squander the opportunity of a promising career as a scholar, lecturer, and writer?

I was like a drowning man groping for a life preserver, clinging to the prerogatives and prestige of my Cambridge PhD. I watched as it slipped away, leaving me to sink under the weight of my own vanity and pride. It was a humbling experience, and it didn’t feel all that good.

Often Misunderstood

Humility is hard—not like calculus, more like sacrifice. It pains the soul. No one grows in humility quickly or easily, nor do we gain it naturally. Humility cuts against the grain of human nature. And that always hurts.

Humility is also hard to define. It’s often misunderstood, even by thoughtful, godly Christians. We tend to equate humility with certain personality types—the shy, quiet, passive, and reserved folk. But that’s not what humility is really about, at least not biblically. Being a real Mr. Milquetoast, with a limp, squid handshake, doesn’t mean you’re humble.

Not Denying Reality

Sometimes we confuse humility with self-doubt or self-deprecation as though, in the words of C. S. Lewis, humility involves being “a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody.” But thinking poorly of yourself doesn’t mean you’re humble. In fact, self-deprecation can be a subtle species of pride.

Humility doesn’t mean putting on airs or affecting a humble demeanor. Nor do you achieve it by pretending to be something you’re not. To be humble, you don’t have to convince yourself you’re someone you’re not. You can be honest about your gifts and talents, and be grateful for the experiences and opportunities God has given you.

Contrary to popular opinion, humility doesn’t force you to make a dozen downward adjustments in the way you view yourself. You don’t need to downplay the fact you aced the SAT or took home a fistful of firsts at the state swim meet. You don’t need to hide the fact you graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, or that you can play the cello like Yo-Yo Ma, write poetry like Goethe, have an uncanny ability to remember names, run a Fortune 500 company, or enjoy hauntingly beautiful blue eyes with thick, dark eyelashes.

Being humble doesn’t require you to deny reality.

Expression of Love

When understood in the light of biblical teaching, humility is not letting who you are hinder you from loving others. In other words, the purpose of humility isn’t to make you think less of who you are, but to enable you to love others regardless of who they are.

Humility is how love expresses itself toward those of a different status, rank, or position. It’s the capacity to view everyone as ultimately equal. Again, this doesn’t mean denying differences between people. But it does mean looking past those differences to the underlying equality of all people.

To the humble it matters little whether a person is better educated or less attractive or more accomplished. They don’t experience that forlorn feeling that comes from knowing they’re not as successful as someone else. Nor are they prone to get a buzz from knowing they’ve done something that causes them to stand out from the crowd. In fact, a humble person views another’s victory as though it were his or her own.

Humility is delightfully self-forgetful. The humble don’t fret over their own prestige or position, nor that of others. In short, humility is, as Robert Roberts has observed, transcendent self-confidence—a quality of character that liberates people from having to compare themselves with others and frees them to love everyone equally.

This is why pride is so damaging to love, whether for God or your neighbor. For the proud heart isn’t a broken heart, but a bottled-up heart from which love can’t flow. If we’re preoccupied with who people are or where they stand in the world’s pecking order, we’ll be blind to those of a different status and fail to love them as we ought.

Humility, however, doesn’t cling to rights or prerogatives. And thus it clears the way for love to flow to the Savior, and then to others. Love, not humility, is the goal. Humility is simply the mindset needed to love others as God calls us to.

He Humbled Himself 

Consider Jesus—matchless in dignity, and consummately humble. Recall the apostle Paul’s description of the mind we see in Christ, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5–8).

Humility is having the mind of Christ, which means not holding on to status in a way that hinders love. It means letting go of your own prerogatives. You can’t cling to your rights or rank or standing as a reason for failing to love someone. Humility is love freely flowing among people of different positions.

This is what we see in the Son. He didn’t let his own divine status hinder him from meeting the needs of sinful humanity. Instead, he pressed beyond his exalted place for the sake of love. More than that, he became a human who would die the most ignoble of deaths—death as a tried and condemned criminal on a cross. And yet it was his humility—not counting his rights and privileges as something to use for himself—that enabled our Lord to meet the needs of sinners like you and me.

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