Category Archives: Current issues

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Civil discourse on the internet?–Proverbs 18:2

Sometimes the comments people append to articles tell us more about the commenters than about anything else. Trolling betrays the antinomian spirit of the trolls.

Proverbs 18:2, NRSV:

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion.”

NIV:

“Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.”

NASB:
“A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.”

Comments on Comments

Comments sections are good for free speech and good to invite readers to engage ideas. Unfortunately, sometimes the engagement is at a level of intellectual discourse that requires very little cerebral capacity.

For laughs, on the few occasions when I used to have some spare time, I sometimes would read comments sections. Such sections often reveal more about the commenters than the articles on which they comment, since the articles may be labeled either too conservative or too liberal depending on the commentator.

Some have been surprisingly well-reasoned (including some with whom I disagreed), and in these cases I often learned to consider angles I had not thought about. Those who offer thoughtful comments should by no means be discouraged from doing so. Some comments, however, reflect astonishing immaturity. I would complain how many appear to be written by adolescents, but I don’t want to offend my daughter or other positive representatives of that age group.

On one YouTube video, where a young woman was simply trying to share a song, a comment below said something like, “You’re ugly. You should kill yourself.” If an adolescent mind gets away with such a comment because it is anonymous, one still is left to wonder what kind of person thinks and speaks this way. For those of us with kids in high school, it is scary to think that some such people may lurk their halls.

Civil Discourse

Candy Gunther Brown, a leading expert on prayer studies, wrote a balanced, concise article for a major outlet. Some suggested that she was ignorant because such-and-such a study had demonstrated the opposite of her conclusion. In a book published by Harvard University Press, she had shown the error of the study that this person cited, but apparently it was the only study with which her critic was familiar, so he assumed that he knew more than she did. Meanwhile, she was concisely synthesizing material from hundreds or thousands of sources, as I also often do.

Academic discourse at its best allows a range of interpretations on the table and then uses evidence to seek to find the interpretation(s) that best fit the data. At least in its ideal form (often observed in the breach), academic discourse refuses dismiss others’ positions without consideration; it also refuses to denounce its interlocutors with ad hominem labeling or with guilt by association. It explores evidence, weighs various options, and (again, ideally) respectfully engages those with whom the author disagrees.

Partisan political discourse, however, has seeped into everything else. Even in academia, discourse is often coarsened today, and every discipline has its share of rude and arrogant voices. But the ideal gives us something to strive for, even if some circles (say, British academia, minus, say, Richard Dawkins) tend to do it better than some others.

Free speech provides the right to say (almost) anything (explicit exceptions include yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater). But one can exercise rights responsibly and intelligently, or not. Just because one is allowed to say (almost) anything does not mean that it reflects well on one’s intellectual character. (I do not have in mind here comments that are simply playful or humorous, but those that are dismissive.) Just because one can speak anonymously, without fear of personal consequences, does not mean that one is making a helpful contribution. We live in a society, and if we contribute to the coarsening of public discourse, we ultimately share in the larger consequences.

Proverbs 18:2 remains all too relevant today.

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Should prophecies always be positive?—1 Corinthians 14:3. Part 2

Some people may want prophecies to be positive to guard against abuses, though this is subject to its own abuses (see part 1). Others, however, may prophesy positively as a way of expressing faith.

Prophecy as positive confession?

Some may insist on prophesying only positively as a vestige of an emphasis on positive confession (a more distinctive emphasis in some earlier charismatic circles). When the New Testament speaks of “confessing” something other than sin, however (Mark 1:5; James 5:16; 1 John 1:9), it usually refers to Christ’s followers confessing Christ (e.g., Matt 10:32; Rom 10:9-10; Phil 2:11; 1 John 2:23; 4:2-3, 15; 2 John 7; Rev 3:5). The one exception familiar to me is a more specific confession of faith in Heb 11:13: some heroes of the faith confessed that they were outsiders to this world, because they awaited the promised New Jerusalem to come (11:16). If we examine biblical proverbs about the tongue together as a whole rather than speculating about some verses in isolation, it is clear that Proverbs also speaks not about “confessing” something to make it happen but about how we speak affects others and our relationships with them.

Of course we should speak and live like those who believe what God has spoken! And of course we should pray in faith in God’s grace and power—why waste words praying if we’re not trusting God to hear us? But that’s not the same as confessing something as an intended act of faith that God will do it and calling that prophecy. “Who speaks and it comes to pass, if the Lord has not commanded it?” (Lam 3:37). That limitation is surely implicit even in Mark 11:23 (“whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and hurled into the sea,’ … it will happen for them”). If you don’t believe me, go test it empirically on some mountain and see what happens, especially if there’s not been any seismic activity there recently.

 

Faith is only as good as its object. God is absolutely trustworthy. His voice is absolutely trustworthy. Our hearing … well, most of us do need to mature in that. Our fallibility limits both our prophesying and our teaching. “For we know only partially and we prophesy only partially” (1 Cor 13:9).

When the Bible talks about humility, that principle should invite attention to being epistemically humble too. I was quite impressed with my knowledge in my 20s. I know far more in my 50s, but also am far more aware of how much I have yet to learn. Hopefully by my 200s, I will know fully as I am known; what I know now is very limited compared to that future knowledge.

Recognizing true prophecy

There are some who are specially gifted in hearing God’s voice, have cultivated that gift, and walk humbly before God. Mesfin, a brother from Ethiopia, did not know that I was a writer. Yet he prophesied to me about two big books that I would write, the second larger than the first. Since I was already working on my Acts commentary (which turned out to be 4500 pages) and could not imagine writing a book larger than that, I was confident that he was at least partly mistaken. Only later did I discover that my miracles book (merely 1100 pages) would be completed and published before the Acts commentary. Similarly, three people in Congo who did not know each other independently prophesied to Médine Moussounga, who later became my wife, that she would marry a white man with a big ministry. I am glad to be married to her, but my whiteness was not something that I arranged.

Conversely, on some major personal decisions (such as whom to marry), it is not always easy for us to hear God clearly. Sometimes, in fact, our personal biases can get in the way (e.g., as in whom to marry—did I mention that?) It helps when wisdom and whatever ways we have learned to hear the Lord line up. But the issue of personal guidance better belongs to a different post, so I mention it here just to reinforce what most of us already know: God is infallible, but God is not who we are.

 

True prophecy must be consistent with Spirit-inspired Scripture and led by the same Spirit who inspired Scripture. The biblical gift does not always tell people what they want to hear. If we’re just learning to hear God’s voice, if we don’t have mentors like Samuel or Elisha (who supervised some younger prophets in the OT), and if we don’t have the safety net of other first-generation hearers of God for peer review (as in 1 Cor 14:29), some messages remain fairly safe.

If it’s truly biblical, it’s good. (If you feel like God is telling someone that he loves them, there’s no risk of getting that one wrong.) If it’s an appropriately encouraging word spoken in a timely way, it’s good (Prov 15:23; 25:11). If it exalts Jesus and builds people up in faith in him, it’s good. If it draws people to Christ, it’s good. But of course, such words can be Spirit-led without even calling them prophecy, or without us always even being conscious that the Spirit’s fruit moves us to such words.

But for beginners in hearing God’s voice, such basic discernment is a great place to start, allowing us to “test” our own words (cf. 1 Cor 14:29). And for brothers and sisters striving to serve the Lord, most such words will indeed encourage and strengthen them. May we have encouraging words all the more!

Nevertheless, a rule that limits all prophecy, or even all exhortation, to what sounds encouraging runs the risk of missing larger divine warnings if judgment or suffering lies on the horizon (cf. Jer 28:6-9). This was a serious mistake of most prophets in Jeremiah’s day. “They have healed the wound of my people flippantly, declaring, ‘Peace! Peace!’—when there is no peace” (Jer 6:14; 8:11). Biblical prophets sometimes told people where their lost donkeys were. But we had better not lose sight of the bigger picture—because what lies on the horizon will impact many of us.

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Should prophecies always be positive?—1 Corinthians 14:3

When as a young Christian I attended a Pentecostal college, a beloved administrator warned me that prophecies should always be positive. That did not match all the prophecies I read about in the Bible.

It also did not match all the prophecies I had given; for example, I had felt led to warn one Christian friend who was living unmarried with their partner that they knew better and that God was displeased. That is actually a very tame way of putting it. The message was more like, “Because you have esteemed the Lord lightly, you are lightly esteemed. Because you have dishonored the Lord, the Lord will dishonor you,” etc. I felt awful delivering that message to a friend, and I felt that I was not allowed even to stay for tea; I had to leave right after delivering the message. Had it been anything but that I felt the Lord leading me to do it, I would have talked it over with my friend in a friendlier way. (Soon after that they did quit living together—after the partner disappeared with some of my friend’s property.)

But some of the ideas about prophecy at this training school were formulated, I think, in understandable reaction against stories about a recent movement that abused prophecies and prophesied falsely and harmfully. In any case, one of the ideas was that you should never prophesy to individuals (despite how common that was in the Bible), and another was that prophecies should always be encouraging.

New Testament prophecy is for encouragement—always?

The administrator supported his position with 1 Cor 14:3, which declares that prophecy is for “strengthening, encouraging and comfort” (NIV), “edification and exhortation and consolation” (NASB), or “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (NRSV, a translation that didn’t yet exist back then). The second Greek term can include an appeal or (as in the NASB) exhortation as well as comfort, but the idea is generally positive. Paul probably did expect mostly positive prophecy for the Corinthian house church gatherings.

At the same time, the prophetic process could not have been entirely positive. Prophetically gifted persons were to collectively evaluate the prophecies (1 Cor 14:29), which would probably mean that not all prophecies would pass muster. Even when spoken in an encouraging way, such corrections may not have felt entirely positive to some of those whose prophecies were not confirmed by their peers. Often in 1 Corinthians, Paul himself corrects the church, and believes that his own (apostolic) authority is greater than that of the local church prophets (14:37-38). And ideally, prophecy included revealing people’s secret sins (1 Cor 14:24-25)—although one had certainly better be sure one has genuinely heard from the Lord before trying something like that. (Even if one is right about the sins, blurting them out is not always the most effective way to bring restoration; cf. Gal 6:1.)

A couple of the clearest samples of prophecy recorded in the New Testament are the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2—3 (what “the Spirit says to the churches”) and Agabus’s prophecy to Paul in Acts 21:11. The prophecy in Acts 21:11 was that Paul was going to be bound in Jerusalem. This was not very encouraging news, but it was consistent with what the Spirit had been saying to Paul in other cities as well (20:23; cf. 21:4).

Two letters to churches in Revelation were quite comforting; both were to persecuted churches, although one was told that the Lord would deliver them from their trial, whereas the other (Smyrna, in Rev 2:10) was encouraged to be faithful to death. Meanwhile, the other five churches received varying degrees of reproofs, two or three of them rather severe. (As an aside, those who claim that prophecy should never claim, “Thus says the Lord,” also overlook these same most explicit passages of prophecy in the NT. But again, one had better be sure before one frames a message in those terms. The more we claim to speak for the Lord, the stricter our judgment if we are wrong; that is true even with the gift of teaching—James 3:1. Ouch.)

Guarding against immaturity

Some circles that insist that all prophecies must be positive may intend this limitation as a precaution against those who are immature in the gift harming people with harsh messages. If you’re going to make a mistake in a setting where prophecy can’t be quickly tested, it seems better for it to be harmless. To be truly harmless, though, it shouldn’t promise blessing to the wicked any more than God’s disfavor on the righteous (Prov 24:24; Isa 3:10-11). And Samuel was probably fairly immature in prophecy when, in his first experience of it as a boy, he was sent with a harsh message to the high priest who was raising him (1 Sam 3:11-14). Although Eli believed him (3:18), and I confess to envying Samuel’s clarity in hearing from God (3:19), I would not want to have been in Samuel’s sandals right then.

It is true that we should seek to encourage people with our words whenever possible—that is definitely a good rule of thumb for what is normal (cf. Prov 12:18; 15:1, 4; 25:15; Eph 4:29; Col 4:6). But if you’re going to be arrested in Jerusalem it might be helpful to know that in advance (Acts 21:11), and if your church’s lampstand is going to be removed if the church fails to repent of its lovelessness (Rev 2:5), it’s better to know that so we can respond. In fact, if we fail to warn people to turn from genuinely sinful ways, their blood is on our head (Ezek 3:18-20; 33:6-8; Acts 20:26-27).

Some people, however, may prophesy only positively as a way of expressing their faith. Is this biblical? I will address this question in part 2.

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The Zealot

The other day I was laughing while recounting to my wife about an incident that took place when I was maybe 22 or 23 years old. A Bible college student who was about my age had invited me to speak at a worship service that he was leading. I was feeling nervous, as always before I spoke, conscious that I was better at “teaching”—explaining biblical passages—than at rousing hearers’ emotions with stirring rhetoric.

But the young man who invited me was indeed a rousing speaker. He got everybody stirred up. He was urging everybody to vote for a particular political candidate, a mixture of church and state that one of my classes had taught me was illegal under IRS rules. (His candidate was Ronald Reagan. I did vote for Reagan in that election, and though earlier too young to vote, I had campaigned for Jimmy Carter. To avoid offending members of either major U.S. political party now, I shall simply insist for both cases that I was very young back then. Though if Jimmy Carter wanted to run for his second term in this next election …)

Worse, in my view, he was shouting that we were going to kick in the devil’s teeth and stomp on him. I took such rhetoric to be a violation of Jude 8-10:

“Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.” (ESV)

He got the crowd really worked up, but I, meanwhile, was growing angrier and angrier at his rehearsal of old-time Pentecostal rhetorical tropes without regard for the context of passages that I lost my fear of speaking. If he could get up there and spout unresearched drivel, I could get up and preach the text soundly. I preached confidently, at points fiercely, just the way the same audience liked it. It was thoroughly rousing, both biblical and in fairly old-time American Pentecostal preaching style. And when it was done, the brother congratulated me.

And I took that opportunity to rebuke him for his violation of IRS policy, for his inappropriate mockery of (fallen) angelic majesties, and probably for speaking (as I recall—it’s been many years) about things like “binding the devil” based on Pentecostal tradition instead of on what the “binding” texts meant in context.

As I was recounting this story to my wife, I suddenly stopped laughing. At this more mature stage of my life, it occurred to me to consider not what this brother had done, but what I had done to him. This was a kind brother, doing his best, but I laid into him. Yes, he probably had some unsound elements of Word of Faith teaching, and maybe nobody had explained to him about IRS regulations. But he was my brother in Christ. He was a Bible college undergraduate in his 20s, not a scholar; I should have shown him some mercy. I could have met with him and challenged him gently on some point if I thought they were matters of grave concern. My reproof was deeply unkind, yet he responded with grace and humility.

As I recounted the story to my wife, I realized that I had been severely guilty of pride, and of judging others more harshly than I would want to be judged. Granted, sound doctrine is important. But I was in my early 20s, enthralled with my new (but still so small) academic knowledge. I, no less than he, had a whole lot yet to learn. I, probably even more than he, needed God’s mercy in my life. Yet I did not show it to my brother in Christ, and my hit-and-run correction probably did him little good. If perhaps he was neglecting Jude 8-10, I was neglecting 2 Tim 2:23-26:

“Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth, and that they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.” (NRSV)

In context, 2 Timothy 2:23-26 speaks of correcting those in serious heresy. How much more should I be gentle with those whose errors were comparatively minor and who were open to correction! I should have been gracious and gentle with my brother, the way I wanted the Lord to be with me. I was a young guy who knew a fraction of what I knew now, yet I acted from a position of arrogant superiority. I still think that what my brother said was in error, but in my rightful zeal for truth I wrongly crushed the spirit of my brother. From God’s perspective, which of us was in greater error?

Since then I have taught in some academic settings alongside non-Christians or alongside those who would claim to be Christians yet denied something as central as Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. I maintained my ground, looking out for the welfare of my students and honoring what I believe to be true. But I also had to learn, for the sake of those colleagues and of the same students, to be at peace with and love my colleagues. During the most notable of those periods, my chief allies in clearly articulating the saving message of the gospel were a cessationist and someone influenced by Word of Faith teaching. In an environment not disposed toward the gospel, the gospel that united us was bigger than the important differences that divided us.

Through the prism of more decades in the real world, I look back at how I treated my brother in Christ on that day and instead of laughing at how his error made me “preach well” I am filled with remorse for how I treated him.

One reason that Truth matters is that it changes people’s lives. But I brandished it as a weapon instead of caring for my brother who had given no indication of unwillingness to rethink things. I was still in my old Bible college mindset of debating ideas without much sensitivity to those who held them, or to why they held them. (I am not blaming the Bible college for this; rather, I was young and inexperienced, reveling in academic theory without much pastoral experience yet working with real and usually broken people.) Now I would want to be patient with my students, and especially the youngest and greenest ones. It horrifies me now, in my fifties, to think of how I treated a guy in his twenties (though I was his peer back then).

When I was pastoring, I assaulted a certain doctrinal stronghold in the congregation (varying elements of Word of Faith teaching) so firmly that one young man, who did find himself forced to abandon some tenets he had held dear, nicknamed me a heresy hunter. I hope that today in a similar situation people would find me a friendlier dialogue partner: bringing to bear the Scriptures, but in love and without arrogance. I still have plenty of room to grow. The kingdom is not about me. It’s about Jesus. And when Jesus found people like sheep without a shepherd, he had compassion on them and taught them (Mark 6:34). Granted, he lambasted the arrogant who taught others falsely (and there is a place for this today as well). But he welcomed the humble, including those ostracized by others as immoral or as traitors to God’s people.

There are brothers and sisters who might have less knowledge than I do in some areas yet love Jesus with all their hearts. If I am gifted with knowledge, my role is to serve them, not to crush them. Even regarding food offered to idols, Paul warned, “… knowledge puffs up while love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1). We need to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15); if we have all knowledge, but don’t express it in love, we are nothing (1 Cor 13:2).

I still need grace. A few decades from now I will probably have some remorse about my present blind spots. In light of eternity with Christ, when we know as we are known, what will matter most is that we acted in love. People need truth; and teachers will be judged most strictly (James 3:1). But people also need patient teachers, and teachers who can distinguish issues of the gospel from errors that may cause them trouble yet do not in themselves constitute apostasy. Zeal without knowledge is not good; and knowledge without love just puffs up arrogance. Forgive me, my Lord.

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Are There Apostles Today? (part 3)

Are there apostles today? As noted in the previous two posts, that depends on what you mean by an apostle. If by “apostle” you mean one of the Twelve, which is the most common use of the term in the Gospels, the answer must be No. But Paul uses the term in a broader sense than this (e.g., Rom 1:1, 13 16:7; 1 Cor 15:5-7; Gal 1:19; 1 Thess 1:1 with 2:6-7). In this broader sense, one can allow for continuing apostles. That does not settle what they are: some take them to be missionaries, others take them to be bishops, still others (including myself) take them to be those breaking new ground for the kingdom (such as missionaries or others reaching new areas in ways foundational for the gospel there).

But does that mean that everyone who calls himself or herself an apostle does so appropriately and wisely?

Not simply administrators or CEOs

I thank God for those who are gifted administratively. But biblically, apostles are not given to administratively govern the church. This view of apostolic governance fits the later Christian tradition of apostolic succession through bishops accepted in some churches. I have no quarrel with those who use such language provided (as in those churches) those who employ the title are clear what they mean by it when using it.

But most who publicly claim apostolic authority today do not belong to such churches. Rather, they want to appeal to the New Testament model of apostleship. Yet the NT model is a model not of institutional authority, which could belong to local elders, so much as gifted servant-leadership. Paul was an apostle and a leader to the churches he started, yet he usually reasoned with them and gave direct commands only when necessary. Paul warned against those who wanted to be compared to his apostolic ministry who were not doing what he was doing—starting new churches in their own spheres.

Simply convincing other people’s converts of one’s different doctrine does not make one an apostle. That is not to deny the authority of those God has called to teach his word (I would in fact be one of the last people to suggest that), but to point out that by itself this is not what apostleship is. In birthing a new movement, John Wesley did help many people who were already Christians to see the truth more clearly, but he and his movement were also strategic in reaching nonbelievers.

I see Wesley’s ministry as an example of apostolic ministry, without thereby affirming everything that he did or taught. I suspect the same for William and Catherine Booth, cofounders of the Salvation Army. Today an example of apostolic ministry with which some are familiar could be Rolland and Heidi Baker, who have catalyzed a church planting movement in Mozambique. And I meet many from the Majority World who could fit such a description.

Perhaps in a culture where the gospel was more widespread, as it was in Jerusalem c. A.D. 50, apostles spent a lot of time leading believers, alongside the local elders of the Jerusalem church (cf. Acts 11:30; 15:2, 4, 6, 22-23; 16:4). But they broke ground for that church initially, and at least some kept doing so in other areas while retaining Jerusalem as a home base (9:32-43). Within a few years after this, most of the Twelve had apparently left Jerusalem (cf. Acts 21:18). Eckhard Schnabel is probably right in suggesting that they devoted themselves to mission outside Jerusalem (see his Early Christian Mission [2 vols.; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity; Leicester, U.K.: Apollos, 2004). In this respect, the apostolic model they followed is the same as exemplified by Paul.

Those who come along and tell people to follow them because they are apostles are not birthing churches or movements; they are raiding other ministers’ sheep pens. If they have truth for God’s people, they should trust the gift God has given them to function effectively and equip God’s people; this is not the same as claiming authority over churches by appealing to an office they have not demonstrated.

Conclusion

Are there apostles today? I believe that God continues to use apostles, like other ministers of God’s message, to bring Christ’s body to maturity and to equip God’s people for ministry to the world (Eph 4:11-13). I expect that they will continue until the time of the end (Rev 18:20). Those who disagree with using the title for anyone today still generally recognize that God uses some people to evangelize new regions and break new ground, so the disagreement in this sense is a semantic one. Again, neither cessationists nor continuationists such as myself claim that anyone is writing Scripture today, and all of us do believe in “missionaries.”

But in any case, the title cannot apply simply to anyone who wants to claim it. Those who have not demonstrated the humility and sacrifical service of apostles should not claim the title. People should not leave their churches just to follow someone who claims the title. Recall again the initial praise that Jesus offered the church in Ephesus: “I know your works … I know that you cannot put up with evildoers, and you have tested those who call themselves ‘apostles’ but are not, and have found them to be false” (Rev 2:2).

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Are There Apostles Today? (part 2)

Are there apostles today?

As noted in part 1, that depends on what you mean by an apostle. In contrast how some define it today, biblical apostleship does not seem to be a matter of summoning people to accept one’s authority. The Jerusalem church had elders in addition to the founding apostles; the elders may have exercised administrative authority, whereas the apostles’ authority inhered in their mission. Paul had a special apostolic authority in relation to the Corinthian Christians because he had birthed and labored over them (1 Cor 9:2); when he was coming to a church he had not founded, however, he simply offered to share with them from his spiritual gift (Rom 1:11-12). Even the apostle Peter is clear that church leaders as a whole should not “lord it over” others (1 Pet 5:3).

Although some passages about apostleship in the NT do mention signs (e.g., 2 Cor 12:12; Matt 10:8), they emphasize sufferings even more heavily (e.g., 1 Cor 4:9-13; Matt 10:16-39). Apostleship was not an authority to boast in, but a calling of service that involved suffering. An apostle as an agent of Christ was to act in Jesus’s name, as in a sense all of us Christians are to do; that means that Jesus should get all the credit for the works (cf. Rom 15:18-19; Acts 3:12-16; 14:15). Where the agent rather than Jesus takes credit, eventually the agent may be left to work on their own, instead of the Lord doing the work through them. That is, they may have to depend on marketing gimmicks instead of God’s blessing to maintain their hearing. One wonders if this has not sometimes happened.

In Scripture, apostles apparently normally break new ground, rather than simply laying on another’s foundation (Rom 15:20). The Jerusalem apostles initially broke ground for ministry in Jerusalem and then oversaw the work for some time; Paul and his coworkers broke ground in the cities of the northern Mediterranean world. (Some of his coworkers occasionally appear to be apostles as well, as in Rom 16:7; 1 Thess 2:6-7; at least some, such as Timothy, were converted after him, Acts 14:6-8; 16:1-3.) Paul had suffered and done the work, but his rivals wanted to take over his work and boast in it. They were poaching in the sphere of ministry God had given him, and Paul charges them with false apostleship (2 Cor 10:12-16; 11:12-13).

If some today believe that God has called them to be apostles according to the biblical model, they may need to distinguish their ministry from practices that distort biblical apostleship. Otherwise all those who use the term may face a backlash just as happened in antiquity. In Revelation and the Didache, those who claimed to be apostles or prophets were tested. Soon after that, the church began limiting the title to the Twelve (the narrower Lukan usage rather than Paul’s broader usage). Without being harsh toward those who abuse the label “apostles,” those who use the title but stand for a different kind of ministry should clarify that their mission is different. They are called to serve the church, not to divide it.

I discuss this matter further in part 3 (to be continued).

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Are There Apostles Today? (part 1)

Are there apostles today? That sort of depends on what you mean by an apostle. If by “apostle” you mean one of the Twelve, which is the most common use of the term in the Gospels, the answer must be No. If by “apostle” you mean someone who writes Scripture, although most biblical apostles didn’t write Scripture and not all New Testament authors were apostles, the answer must be No. By definition, the “canon,” or measuring stick, for revelation is the agreed-upon works either endorsed by Jesus—the Hebrew Bible—or written by witnesses of Jesus or their immediate circle. One need not claim that any spiritual gifts have ceased to claim that the first century has ceased!

Apostles besides the Twelve

But if by “apostle” you mean other commissioned agents of the Lord besides the Twelve, no text suggests that these must cease, so I am inclined to think that this ministry continues, and remains one of the ministries necessary to bring Christ’s body to maturity (Eph 4:11-13). (Sometimes people aver that an apostle must have seen Christ, based on 1 Cor 9:1, but Paul there asks three rhetorical questions, and apostleship is equated with seeing Christ no more than it is equated with being free. 1 Cor 15 also does not equate apostleship with seeing Christ.)

Whether you agree with me on that point or not, Paul does speak of many apostles besides the Twelve, including himself (Rom 1:1, 13), clearly a group of early apostles beyond the Twelve (1 Cor 15:5-7, maybe related to the followers sent in Luke 10:1), James the brother of Jesus (Gal 1:19), Silas and Timothy (1 Thess 1:1 with 2:6-7), Andronicus and Junia (Rom 16:7).

Although the foundation stones of the New Jerusalem include the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the lamb (Rev 21:14), Revelation endorsed still testing those who claimed to be apostles (Rev 2:2). The Didache, a Christian document from the late first or possibly early second century, also advises testing apostles (Did. ch. 11). Later apostolic fathers often settled into using the title just for the Twelve plus Paul (a combination usage nowhere followed in the New Testament itself), but the New Testament usage is wider.

What “apostle” in the broader sense means is a legitimate debate, since the New Testament never provides a definition. Putting together the Twelve and the wider use in Paul, I suspect that “apostles” are people who lay foundations in new areas (Rom 15:20). Today we might think of those laying new ground in previously unevangelized regions or spheres. They also mentor other leaders there to multiply the work.

Many such pioneers do not claim the title for themselves; yet some who are not pioneering anything do aspire to the title. What does it mean in the latter case to “test” apostles (Rev 21:14)? That (rather than a debate about the continuation of apostles) is what this post primarily addresses.

Today there are reports of people claiming to be apostles and calling others to accept their authority, sometimes summoning them to abandon denominational or other ties. What should we make of this reported behavior?

Various uses of the title in various churches

Before I suggest some criticisms of that agenda, let me first qualify what I am not saying. First, a criticism of the movement does not depend on the theological and biblical question of whether apostles exist past the first century. Christians hold various views on this point. Certainly the idea of continuing mission as “apostolic” in a general sense is not new; thus for example Bartholomew I Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople addressed the Synod of Bishops of the Catholic Church on Oct. 18, 2008: “Missions and evangelization remain a permanent duty of the Church at all times and places; indeed, they form part of the Church’s nature, since she is called ‘Apostolic’ both in the sense of her faithfulness to the original teaching of the Apostles and in that of proclaiming the Word of God in every cultural context every time” (http://www.focolare.org/repository/PDF/081018_InterventoBartolomeoI_en.pdf, accessed Nov. 28, 2015; I owe this reference to Scott Sunquist, The Unexpected Christian Century, Baker Academic, 2015, p. 181).

Likewise, Francis Asbury, the inaugural leader of U.S. Methodism, labored for “an apostolic order of poverty and itinerancy” (Cracknell and White, Methodism, 48) and “an apostolic form of Church government” (his valedictory address of 1813, reproduced in Christian History 114 [2015]: 39).

Although virtually everyone agrees that the Twelve and (an entirely separate question) the writing of Scripture are complete, some argue that there is a sort of apostolic succession among bishops. Others use the broader Pauline sense of apostleship and believe that this gift continues (as missionaries, church planters, or perhaps specially influential founders of movements such as John Wesley). Personally, I do not find compelling any biblical arguments that apostleship in this broader sense had to cease (nor that it requires a resurrection appearance, which I believe misreads the relevant texts). I will not argue that point here, however, because the issue here is a different one.

All of that is beside the present point: Christians have disagreed among ourselves over issues of church order for centuries, and most of us would acknowledge that we have structures in our denominations or movements that are not mentioned in Scripture. The issue is whether those who are behaving in the way mentioned above fit the biblical understanding of apostolic ministry, and that, I believe, is a legitimate question. Recall the commendation of the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2:2: “You tested those who call themselves apostles, yet are not, and you found them to be false.” The early Christian document called the Didache urges Christians to welcome those who call themselves apostles as agents of the Lord (Did. 11.4). If, however, the apostle seeks support rather than opportunity for ministry, the Didache cautions, he is a false prophet (Did. 11.6). Of course, in those days one did not need to pay for air time.

The second qualification is that some simply employ the term as a leadership title, the way other churches have “bishops” and the like. Again, Christians already disagree among ourselves regarding church order, and usually this does not keep us from getting along. If people are seeking not titles and positions but are seeking to influence people positively, they are doing what any good writer or minister seeks to do. Whatever we call them, we simply need to evaluate whether their influence is positive.

Moreover, if apostleship in the sense of influential leaders does continue beyond the first century, some influential leaders today might fill that role whether or not the rest of us think that use of the title is discreet. One of the first people who comes to my mind is a noncharismatic (though not anticharismatic) friend who has exercised huge influence for Christ in Nigeria, where he has spent decades in ministry. Whatever one thinks of “apostles” today, his ministry seems closer to that New Testament ministry category than to any other that I can think of. I am not sure that he would own the title for himself. I knew a church planter in Congo named Eugene Thomas who had a similar ministry; he didn’t believe that apostles or tongues were for today, but apart from apostolic “signs” (2 Cor 12:12), he fulfilled most of the other “criteria” for the broader definition.

What should real apostles look like? That will be the subject of part 2 (to be continued).

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Spiritual Hypochondriacs

I must confess that I have often been a hypochondriac. I always want to err on the side of caution, so when I lived in walking distance of my doctor’s office in Philadelphia I got checked on all sorts of things that turned out to be nothing. (My doctor was very patient with his patient.) Of course, lack of caution can be even more problematic. A couple years ago I deferred going to the doctor to avoid being a hypochondriac and ended up in the emergency room with internal bleeding. The ER physician asked why I had waited so long to come in.

 

Tender Consciences vs. Spiritual Hypochondriacs

Spiritually, however, Western Christians sometimes act like hypochondriacs. We get so introspective that we root around looking for hidden sins (and not just on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday) instead of focusing on Jesus Christ, who saves us from sin and empowers us to live as the new creatures God has made us in him. Again, I don’t want to err too far on the other side: when we are in his presence, the Lord does bring to our attention matters that need correction. Some who want to overlook sin look to Scripture for verses of vague comfort when they need to seek God’s power for consistent victory over temptations of jealousy, hatred, pornography, or sometimes even directly outward sins such as gossip or intercourse outside marriage.

But sometimes we indulge our consciences in tenderness so much that we don’t want to read any verse that speaks about judgment or suffering or the like. We get softer and softer and more and more sensitive until we live in perpetual fear of fear. We are afraid of anything that can make us afraid, whereas facing into the fears is sometimes the best way to overcome them. (This has been true of me at times as well, and I have had to lay hold on “grace” Scriptures with determined faith.)

When I preach, I do want to help those with the most tender consciences to recognize that my strongest words are not for them. (I have a tender conscience myself so I understand that people can heap up guilt that is not about something real; sometimes it is an attempt to dutifully accept the condemnation that we think Scripture or the preacher is sending our way.) Jesus preached harshly, but to the resistant religious people who did not think they needed a savior and oppressed the “real” sinners. By contrast, our Lord welcomed those who understood that they were sinners, who understood that they needed grace. Scripture tells us repeatedly that God is near the broken but far from the proud.

Our backgrounds help shape how we hear harsh words. If we’ve been internalizing criticism all our lives and doing our best to meet up to others’ demands but falling short, we often approach God the same way. It’s too easy for us to forget the central act of salvation history: that God desired our fellowship with him so much that he gave his own Son’s life to bring us to himself. God was more eager for us to be right with him than we were! Nevertheless, the conviction needed to come to him to begin with does not mean we need to keep feeling desperate for God’s salvation after conversion! Instead we should celebrate salvation, even while welcoming him to continue to transform us into Christ’s image. The completion of that transformation at Jesus’s return will be our ultimate deliverance from all sin.

 

Using Verses to Confirm What We Want or Fear

But in addition to our personal backgrounds, we often become hypersensitive because of how we read Scripture. Some with condemning backgrounds or depressed circumstances have mental red-letter editions that highlight only verses that make them feel guilty or depressed. They often miss the passages most relevant for them. Noting common symptoms, beginning medical students sometimes fear that they have many of the diseases they read about. Beginning counseling students sometimes fear the same when reading about psychological problems. (I did that in my first counseling classes. Okay, maybe you think that I do have some of those problems, but surely not all the ones I read about!) Bible readers who have not yet developed more careful ways of reading Scripture can do the same.

Others, by contrast, become hypersensitive precisely by looking to Scripture only for comfort and not so much for exhortation. In the West, we too often read the Bible in a personalized, proof-texting way, grabbing verses here and there as a fast-food diet rather than reading them more thoroughly in context. If one wants just a verse “on the go,” one probably wants something encouraging, but usually not too challenging and definitely not something that makes one uncomfortable, or makes one have to think too much or research too long. This habit, however, limits one’s repertoire of verses and also takes a number of them out of context.

Not everything in the Bible is directly for each of us personally. Yes, good things about God’s followers can apply to us individually. But so can texts about God’s followers suffering; these can encourage us when we are suffering. And what about God disciplining sins? If it’s not your sin, you don’t need to appropriate any guilt to yourself: if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it.

But even if a passage about suffering or sin (or comfort) doesn’t apply to you individually, it’s still important to know, because we live in a fallen world and those passages give us perspectives. The world is full of refugees (Congo-DRC, Syria, Iraq, and so forth). Innocent blood is still being shed, whether by some dictators against protestors, by gangs or drug dealers or sometimes agents of governments on the streets, or even in the sanctity of womb. (If any of these sins involve your past, former perpetrators are forgiven in Christ and former victims find compassion in Christ.) Pretending that sufferings and sins aren’t real may reflect some other religious movements, but they are not the way of Jesus, who healed the sick and confronted injustice rather than ignoring them.

 

When Spiritual Immune Systems get Bored

Our Western culture can also make us hypersensitive. One theory about the proliferation of allergies in the industrialized world is that our immune systems lack many serious new enemies because we have been immunized against so many diseases. (Whether the theory is true or not, immunization is overall a very good thing.) Thus our immune systems become hypersensitive. I have no idea whether the theory is correct. Certainly I would be glad for our “bored” immune systems to overcome more quickly new strains of colds and flu!

But spiritually, we can often become hypersensitive because we are too inwardly focused. So much of Western Christianity is focused on how we feel, a focus for which our spiritual immune system was probably not primarily designed. If our focus is outreach to others, or we are facing persecution, or even we are working very hard to earn our living, our spiritual immune systems may become less inward-focused than if we spend our days hiding from ourselves in videogames, entertainment, or even work.

An outward focus can also run from intimacy with God and inward healing, but some of us need to balance our inward focus with more of an outward one. If we are regularly sharing the gospel with unbelievers, we grasp the true power of the gospel in a way that we do not when we are trying to get it to always speak to us as if we need to be continually reconverted. Worship celebrates the gospel and inculcates intimacy with God; outreach balances this by making us conduits for God rather than us being flooded vessels because of broken pipes.

 

Hypergrace Reacting against Hyperguilt

Such hypersensitivity, reinforced all the more by preaching that emphasizes condemnation even for God’s children, can make us vulnerable to a form of hyper-grace message that makes us allergic to anything in Scripture that seems uncomfortable. And it is true that someone who has overdosed on such condemnation needs some safe space to recover from it. But just as the goal is for physical wounds to heal, God can give us the grace to heal enough to mature and move on from those emotional wounds. He can give us faith to stand firm that the message of the cross is our salvation, not our condemnation.

Paul was sensitive to the “weak” and warned the “strong” not to cause them to stumble (Rom 14:1; 15:1; 1 Cor 8:9-12). But he also encouraged maturation in faith that ideally enables us to draw boundaries in the right places, rather than too tightly (or loosely). If people cannot be justified by keeping biblical law (Rom 3:20; Gal 2:21; 3:11; 5:4), we certainly don’t get justified by keeping laws of our own modern or historic making. And what matters objectively is not feeling justified all the time, but our status of justification before God accomplished by Christ (Rom 5:1, 9; 8:30; 1 Cor 6:11).

 

Faith Affirms Truth that is Higher than Feelings

In other words, instead of waiting for feelings that assure us of God’s faithfulness, we need to exert faith—which is not a feeling, but often simply a raw commitment to truth or a raw determination to affirm it. Rather than waiting for a feeling, we can acknowledge that in Christ we are justified. (Feelings are great too, but the Bible never says anything about being saved by feelings.)

Once we have welcomed Christ as Lord and Savior, we must embrace the gospel not as a continual summons to get saved, but as a continual celebration of the good news that we are saved in Christ. (I am not denying the possibility of apostasy here, a denial that I believe is refuted both by Scripture and human experience. But apostasy is walking away from Christ, not merely a personal struggle to overcome temptation and certainly not a bad feeling.) Feeling quite often flows from faith, but waiting for feeling to verify faith is counterproductive; it puts the cart before the horse. Horses are meant to pull carts, not to push them.

 

Implications for Preaching

When preaching the gospel to polytheists, Paul summoned them to turn from idols (Acts 14:15-17; 1 Thess 1:9). When preaching to believers, he offers himself as an example of sacrificial service and provides warnings to watch out for even Christian leaders being turned away by worldly temptations (Acts 20:17-35). But his message was a message of the new covenant, depending on the Spirit (2 Cor 3:1-18). That is, preachers shouldn’t deliberately guilt-manipulate their hearers (sticking in the knife and them sometimes turning it for good measure). Our job is to speak the truth, lovingly but without compromising God’s message, yet depend on the Spirit to change people through the truth. We don’t assume the Spirit’s job; God can do that well enough on his own, but we must be faithful agents of his message.

Those with hardened hearts may need preaching like Jesus’s preaching to the religious elites of his day. Those with vulnerable hearts need more the message of kingdom embrace that Jesus gave to sinners, inviting them through repentance to a new life. Those in Christ still need periodic warnings, but the nature of this differs from congregation to congregation. Corinth needed serious pastoral reproofs; Philippi needed a bit of exhortation to unity, but mostly warranted encouragement; Thessalonian Christians needed reminders about a disciplined life, but especially reaffirmation of God’s faithfulness in the face of their hardships. One sees the same variation in the letters of Revelation 2—3 (which should put to rest any belief that all prophecies to churches must be positive, or that all must be negative).

 

Reading the Whole Bible but in the Right Way

Those of us who are too sensitive sometimes have to just exert raw determination, insisting that the gospel is so true that it applies even to us; God’s grace that saves sinners has saved us.

We also need to learn not to apply every text directly to ourselves. The solution is not to ignore the other texts. The solution is to realize that it’s not all about us individually, but about our God’s purposes in history. Then we can apply all the Bible in the right ways. Even texts about God judging sin can encourage us that he does not look the other way in this world of pain and injustice. Texts about grace apply to all who acknowledge Jesus’s sacrifice for us and his triumph.

Let’s not be spiritual hypochondriacs, anxious about diseases we don’t really have. Let’s be strong in the Lord and the power of his might.

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The Future is Now: Prophetic Empowerment in the Last Days—Acts 2:17-18

When God pours out the Spirit in Acts 2, hearers recognize some of the languages in which Jesus’s followers are (presumably rather loudly) praising God. In Acts 2:16-21, Peter begins to explain this marvelous event in light of God’s earlier promises. He quotes from Joel 2:28-32, while also paraphrasing as needed (as was the custom) to highlight key points. In context, Joel announces the restoration of God’s people; Peter thus adjusts Joel’s “afterward” to “in the last days.” If Luke regards this occasion as already part of the “last days,” he must also view all subsequent events as “last days” as well.

For Luke, then, the future has invaded history: God’s promised restoration has already begun to dawn; “the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). Other early Christians spoke of the Spirit as the first fruits or first installment of our future inheritance (Rom. 8:23; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5). The Spirit provides a foretaste of the future age, when God makes everything new (1 Cor. 2:9-10; cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). Because we have tasted the life of the future, nothing in the present can ever be the same for us again. As citizens of a new age, we must work, like Jesus, to bring divine wholeness into the brokenness of the present age.

Because Joel speaks of prophesying, visions and dreams, Peter understands that the promise is also about prophetic empowerment. Even more frequently than in earlier Scripture, early Judaism often associated the Spirit with prophecy, but to make sure that no one misses the point, Peter adds in another line (the final line of Acts 2:18): “and they shall prophesy.” The Spirit empowers God’s servants to speak for God just as did the prophets of old. A wise preacher or witness may well tremble at the awesome task of speaking God’s message; but our confidence can be in God’s ability to touch hearts rather than in ourselves.

In the writings of the biblical prophets, the promise of the Spirit was for the time of the end, the time of Israel’s restoration (note in context Isa 11:2; 32:15; 59:21; 61:1; Ezek 11:19; 36:27; 37:14; 39:29; Joel 2:28-29). That is why the disciples suspected that God would even restore the kingdom immediately (Acts 1:6-8).

The Spirit brings into our lives a foretaste of the future age, so we can work for God’s kingdom here and now. If this broken world cannot see in the church at least a foretaste of God’s promised restoration, we have settled for too little. Let us, like the first disciples (Acts 1:14), pray for God to empower, transform, and renew us by his Spirit (Luke 11:13).