If ever there is a passage of the Bible that has caused controversy and division today, it is 1 Corinthians 6:9—11. There is not much doubt as to what the passage says or means, yet the application of this passage in the church and in society has led to great conflict. In today’s episode, Peter outlines something of the background of the conflict within the Anglican Communion over the last two decades, before we turn to the real pastoral importance of this passage in the lives of the leaders.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Before we get into this week’s episode, we would like to encourage you to invite your friends and family members to subscribe so that we can share the news of 1 Corinthians to a wider audience.

Last week, we looked at 1 Corinthians 6:1–8 and discussed the question of disagreements between brothers that require reconciliation. But this week’s passage is quite stark. 1 Corinthians 6:9–11

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Peter Jensen: That is confronting, especially in the age of the Sexual Revolution, and also due to the power of the warning. In other words, if you continue to practice these things, you will be lost.

Phillip: It says twice that they “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” It’s hard to be more explicit than that. This is the passage that got Israel Folau, a Rugby Union footballer, into trouble. After he read and discussed the passage in his church, the Rugby Union cancelled his contract. I know there are disagreements about the basis on which they did it, but we all know, underneath it all, he was making a point here about entering the kingdom of God that people objected to, particularly the homosexual community. Similarly in Melbourne 2 years ago, Andrew Thorburn was appointed as the CEO of the Essendon Football Club, and the next day was forced to resign because years before, the church in which he was a member spoke on issues of sexual morality and marriage. The Essendon Football Club took objection to this, and so he was forced to resign. We have this difficulty in that a subject that 30 or 40 years ago could barely be mentioned has now been one of such widespread or powerfully spread promotion that you can’t even express a disagreement without at least chastisement. In the early 2000s, our federal government ruled that marriage was between a man and a woman; by 2017, the federal government ruled that marriage could be between people of the same sex. Now, if you speak against that, you are in trouble in the community, and may lose your job. But this passage deals with something greater than losing a football contract. These are very important subjects.

Peter: They are. First of all, here is a list of sins seen by Paul to be so grave that to live in accordance with them has dire consequences; you will not inherit the kingdom of God. It is a life and death matter which has had a vast impact on many places, but particularly on the worldwide Anglican church in the last 30 years.

The Anglican Communion, as it’s called, is not like Roman Catholicism. It’s more of a worldwide fellowship of independent denominations, depending on the country you’re in, which share the same history and much of the same theological basis, structure and liturgy. In its present form, it traces back to the Reformation. Central to the unity which has been maintained has been a fellowship with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He has been seen as the first amongst equals, so to speak, thus he has the capacity to call a conference called the Lambeth Conference every 10 years of all the bishops around the Anglican Communion.

Phillip: The Anglican Communion is a bit like the gathering of a very big extended family, in that all of the Anglicans have come out of England.

Peter: Yes, and when I travel around the world as an ordained person, my ministry is largely accepted. So when I lived in England for three-and-a-half years, I was allowed to minister. There are applications of this that are not insignificant; for example, there’s the way in which the churches in more wealthy countries try to look after those in poorer countries with financial support and with personnel. It’s not simply that once every 10 years, the bishops get together in communion. As you pointed out, we also have a shared history, and so what goes on in England is still particularly important to us.

Phillip: I remember the Lambeth Conference in 1998 when the Sydney bishops returned delighted that the conference had rightly and overwhelmingly decided that same-sex relations were inconsistent with the Scriptures and were not to be accepted within the Anglican Church.

Peter: I also remember them coming back, and partly because their advice and wisdom had been part of creating the document that spelled this out. Yet within five years or less, some Canadians and particularly the United States Anglicans, who are called Episcopalians, had gone ahead to bless same-sex relations despite what the Lambeth Conference had said. The Lambeth Conference is not a legal entity, so it does not make laws, but it was overwhelmingly in favour of supporting the traditional view of sexuality.

With some difficulty up until then, the Communion had stayed together over the advent of female clergy. This was also a fairly disputed subject which caused division, but people stayed together because that was not a matter of life and death. I have dear women friends who have been ordained. I don’t think they’ve lost their salvation as a result, although I do disagree with them. But as we can see from this passage, the practice of same-sex relationships and other sinful relationships put you outside the kingdom of God. It threatens your eternal salvation, which makes it very significant.

Phillip: Before we look at the significance in this passage, we should continue talking about the Anglicans for a while. How did the Orthodox Episcopalians—the ones who believed in the Scriptures—respond to the acceptance of same-sex marriage?

Peter: About 100,000 Episcopalians decided that they could no longer stay in their denomination with a clear conscience, so they withdrew. They lost many of their buildings as they did so, but they preferred to bear such losses over staying in a denomination which had made this decision, which to their mind went against the teaching of God’s Word. Subsequently, the same thing has happened in New Zealand, in Brazil, in Wales, in Scotland, and other places.

Phillip: What happened with the property issues?

Peter: Most of the court rulings went against the leavers, and so they lost their property. I remember one minister telling me that he and his whole congregation had left their building. I saw this building once; it was magnificent. But this large congregation left to meet in the local school, and some years later, they built a new building.

Phillip: That’s hard because often, the building is paid for by the congregation, not the denomination.

Peter: Leaving a building can be heart-rending for that reason, but also because the building is where members of the congregation were married, or where funeral services took place. Nonetheless, people sacrificed for the sake of the Word of God. In fact, the minister said to me that he never felt more free than when he left and was able to preach the whole Word of God without it being damaged by others.

In the following 5 years after these congregations left, there were many efforts all around the Anglican Communion to get the Americans and the Canadians to repent, but they refused to do so. So when the next Lambeth Conference was held in 2008, the then Archbishop of Canterbury had an impossible decision to make on whether or not he would invite the whole of the bishops of the Episcopal Church who had agreed to this. He decided to invite them, and so a large group of us decided that we could not attend the conference, so we set up our own conference in Jerusalem called GAFCON. It was at this conference that we took the key step of disassociating ourselves from the offending churches as we saw them, and recognising those who are left as the true Anglicans. GAFCON recognised their Anglican authenticity, which the successive archbishops have never been able to bring themselves to do.

Phillip: It raises the question of what it means to be Anglican. Is my Anglicanism just a matter of birth, or is it a matter of confession? Is every Englishman a member of the Church of England, or only those who believe in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?

But first, can you tell me what GAFCON stands for?

Peter: GAFCON stands for the Global Anglican Fellowship Conference. But of course, this conference has now turned into a movement.

Phillip: What are the achievements of these last 20 years of GAFCON?

Peter: There are many, but the one that I think is most significant is that, when the true Anglicans had to leave their churches for conscience’s sake and at some sacrifice, GAFCON helped them to start their own Anglican churches. In other words, the real heart of GAFCON is fellowship and communion. Not having fellowship with those who have disobeyed the Bible on a clear and vital matter, but having fellowship with those who have obeyed it. Essentially, this demonstrates that the authority of scripture is preeminent.

Phillip: The genuine Anglicans are not cradle Anglicans, but confessional Anglicans. So GAFCON was born and goes on to this day.

There is a new Archbishop of Canterbury, however, and she has made it clear that homosexual practices and partnership has her support. What does that do for the crisis that’s been happening for the last 20 years?

Peter: In the past, we have called the Archbishop of Canterbury “he”, which has been the case for the last 104 of them, but now we call her “she”.

Phillip: Does that make a difference at this point?

Peter: The Anglican Communion before 1998 had women priests and had women bishops shortly thereafter. Though this created tensions, it didn’t break the Communion because it wasn’t, in that sense, a salvation issue. But the advent of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, who has made it clear that she is in favour of homosexual practices, has made a difference. The Church of England has not gone down this path as yet, although it’s been debating it in its synod. Perhaps it never will, because there’s a fair bit of objection to it, but there are also a large number of people agitating for it. I’ve discussed this at length to illustrate the sheer importance of the disagreements, which we call “salvation issues”: issues which put at risk your inheritance in the kingdom of God. It means that there are moments when we need to stand back from fellowship and call for repentance. It’s not that we’ve washed our hands of the Americans; it is that we long for them to turn back and adopt the biblical teaching once more.

Phillip: Just to be clear, we do have strong disagreements, for example, about a woman Archbishop of Canterbury, but GAFCON is not separating from Anglicanism or maintaining that Anglicanism is separated from us because of the female Archbishop. I’ve seen that idea in secular media, but it’s not true.

Peter: It is to do with the stand she has made on this key subject. Though it’s not necessarily a helpful phrase, this is what I call a salvation issue.

Phillip: However, having ordination of women and consecration of women as bishops has created enormous strains in how we operate together. It’s not like that’s nothing.

Peter: No, it’s not. As I said before, one of the features of the Anglican Communion has been that I can go to England, to Africa, to South America and be with my fellow Anglicans. The fact that I’m an authentic minister is recognised in those places. But now, because of the disagreement based on our understanding of Scripture, since the ‘80s and ‘90s there has been a tension in the Anglican Church of Australia. Certainly, the appointment of a woman Archbishop in Canterbury does create its own tension. For example, the Nigerian Church, which is the largest group of Anglicans in the world, do not agree with this. So if the Archbishop of Canterbury visits Nigeria, will she be able to conduct Holy Communion? How will she be recognised with respect to her office, but also with the desire to keep the teaching of God’s Word?

Phillip: We no longer have mutually acceptable orders. But given the explicit nature of 1 Corinthians 6, the issue of homosexuality is in the list of things that prevent you from being in the kingdom of heaven.

But the first thing to notice about this list is the word “deceived”. Sin fools us. We’re all fools at different times, but it’s sin which fools us. We’re warned by the Apostle that there are certain sins that have this deceptive quality. In Galatians 5:21, where he talks about the works of the flesh, he says, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Additionally, in Ephesians 5:6, he says, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” So these sinful things have a deceptive quality that lead people to accept them.

Peter: Why is that the case if they are fairly obviously sinful?

Phillip: Firstly, we fool ourselves into thinking that God’s grace is expressed in freedom from sin: that he will forgive anything and everything at all times. That’s a very poor understanding of the love of God which removes the turning aside of God’s wrath through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as the repentance.

Secondly, so sinful are our hearts that we are very good at making exceptions and excuses for ourselves, finding a reason why God wouldn’t possibly condemn us: “What I’m doing is just natural to me because of the situation I’m in.” Therefore we can excuse almost anything. I’ve had friends excuse their adultery to me. They tell me that given how their wife had treated them, it’s not their fault that the girl in the office was now attractive to them. “It’s not really adultery because the marriage had dried up anyway,” they say.

Thirdly, the world is constantly telling me that sin is okay, and we succumb to the voice of Satan that is expressed in this world. In movies today, there is an acceptance of certain sexual immorality and of drunkenness. The world is not saying that if you do these things, you will be excluded from the kingdom of God; it is denying these very things. Sinful as the list looks, it’s fascinating how easily we’re deceived.

Peter: Indeed, and it’s important to underscore this because the discussion we’ve just had about GAFCON, which happens to be centred on one of the sins mentioned in the passage, may make it feel as though sexual immorality is what this is all about, and the Bible is denouncing this as the worst of all possible sins. But this passage is certainly not just about sexual sins.

Phillip: The list goes: the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who practice homosexuality, thieves, greedy, drunkards, revilers, and swindlers. There’s no hierarchy of sins. We mustn’t try and downplay it as if homosexuality is not in this list, but so is adultery, greediness, the love of money, drunkenness, swindling, and slandering. These, too, are sins that would exclude one from the kingdom of heaven. It is important to notice that it is about more than just sexual sins that we’re talking about, while at the same time not using that to downplay or exclude sexual sins. It is also important to notice that it is about committing these sins repeatedly. It’s not that you are excluded from the kingdom of heaven if you commit these sins once; it’s about being habitual, because he goes on to say, “Such were some of you.” It’s not talking about being drunk once, but about being a drunkard. It’s not talking about being greedy once, but about being a greedy person. It’s the very lifestyle of it.

Peter: There are many people caught up in this. Now, it may be that you are tempted by alcohol, but that doesn’t make you an alcoholic. But we’ve got to recognise that there are temptations to sin which arise from the heart, from the way we are. We need to be sympathetic to people in that situation and encourage them not to capitulate to a lifestyle which will only damage them and others.

Phillip: Yes. I’ve spent many years working with alcoholic friends and helping them, as Christians, out of what I see as an addiction. That is, there are certain sins that, when practiced enough, become addictive. They change the synapses of your brain to make it a difficult thing for you to renounce. Whereas some people can drink without ever getting tempted to be drunk, there are some people who, as soon as they start drinking, can’t help but get drunk. They’re different in those situations. The Bible doesn’t speak against drinking alcohol (I say that as a teetotaller myself) but it is speaking against those who drink and get drunk. Getting drunk is not of the kingdom of God. If that is your continued practice, then you should stop it, because you can’t be a drunkard and a member of the kingdom of God. However, if you’ve reached the third stage that I mentioned a few moments ago, namely becoming an alcoholic, not getting drunk becomes an almost impossibility. My alcoholic friends get tremors when they haven’t drunk. It’s physiologically an addictive practice that requires considerable help. And help is available, both in counselling or through Alcoholics Anonymous or Overcomers Outreach. Just because you may have this addictive characteristic to a particular sin, that does not mean you must and will always be there. Now, my alcoholic friends will never say they’re cured. The alcoholic always says, “I’m in recovery,” because he knows that should he lapse, he will lapse hard. So they are in recovery, but they are forgiven by Jesus Christ. They are no longer drunkards. They’re alcoholics because they’re addicted, but they’re not drunkards because they don’t get drunk anymore.

Peter: So there is hope. There is a way back.

Phillip: That’s true in the homosexual world too. Though people may have tendencies; I won’t go into the reasons why, because there’s considerable disagreement on this. Practising homosexuality is a different thing. There are many Christians who have same-sex attraction for various reasons, but who do not practice homosexuality. A few weeks ago in Malta, a man called Matthew Grech was finally declared to be not guilty of breaking the law. He gave testimony to his conversion out of the gay lifestyle into Christianity, but was accused of promoting gay conversion. Three years of court cases have finally settled that he was not guilty of such a thing by declaring that he has changed. Many people say that you can’t change, but he has demonstrated that you can, as many others have as well. Whether he continues to be attracted to men or not, he is no longer practicing. That’s the point: that the gospel has changed his life, and in the same way that my alcoholic friends love the Lord Jesus Christ and are no longer drunkards. But sadly, you also see people who are drunkards and who think it doesn’t matter, that it’s fun. You cannot have that; repentance and faith has to be serious. So you’ll notice the change, “And such were some of you.” That is the path of forgiveness and justification of adoption.

Peter: But what if a professing Christian falls away?

Phillip: Think back to where we started in chapter 5. There was a man who was practicing incest—he had his father’s wife as his sexual partner. The church was to take action in order to save him. There’s always a way back through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ has paid for our sins, past, present, and future. But the way back starts with repentance. It involves turning to the Lord and leaving the sin behind. You can’t keep practicing the sin, because repentance is about turning back. It’s not simply remorse. The question is, are you turning away from that and finding the forgiveness that is in Jesus?

Peter: This has been an interesting and difficult conversation. But some of our listeners, I’m sure, may well be those who have found a habitual temptation arising perhaps from their personalities. What advice do you give?

Phillip: Firstly, all Christians are habitually tempted, so there’s nothing new or different about you.

Secondly, don’t try and solve the problem by washing away the idea that sin is sin. Don’t try and rationalise out of it. Recognise sin for what sin is, and recognise the dangerous grip that it can have on us, and worse, the exclusion from the kingdom of God. But recognising the power of Satan and his lies must be matched with a recognition of the far greater power of the forgiveness that comes through the death of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And recognise that by his resurrection, the work of the Spirit is in our lives to bring us to repentance, change, and transformation.

So recognise that the sin is wrong. Turn to God and plead for the mercy that is available to us all in the death of Jesus. Ask for the power of the Spirit to work in bringing about the change. The fellowship of Christians is really helpful, for as we confess our sins to one another, we can encourage and build each other up in the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

Seek help, and do not accept the hopelessness that Satan will try and tempt you to believe.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, listen to this talk given at Moore Theological College chapel entitled Israel Folau has Caused a Controversy in Australia.

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1 Corinthians 6 opens with a very challenging issue of disputes within the congregation. The Corinthians seem to have blown up these minor disputes into lawsuits against each other. This raises for us a plethora of issues about resolving disputes inside the church and when it is appropriate and right to take issues beyond the church into public law courts. I’m sure you will find this issue as complex as Peter and I discovered in our conversation.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In this episode, we will be looking at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 6.

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 6:1–8

When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!

This is a challenging passage. Once again, we are reminded the Corinthian church was far from perfect. The word ‘church’ to many people means ‘denomination’ – for example, the Anglican church or the Presbyterian church. But Paul is dealing here with disputes within the congregation, which is called ‘the church’. But what specific situation is Paul addressing?

Phillip: He’s not referring to the courts of the early Reformation period that just tried the clergy, but about grievances within the church. He speaks in terms of relatively trivial cases, such as disputes between brothers. Mind you, a dispute between brothers can entail being defrauded and suffering wrong, but generally speaking, it’s of small concern, and the matter can be settled by a wise person from within the ranks of the church. There’s the famous passage in Luke 12 where one man calls out to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” It’s an appeal for justice, yet Jesus tells him not to be greedy, then teaches the parable of the rich fool. Similarly, in Matthew 18:21, a man asks, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” to which Jesus says, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

So why does the apostle regard taking things beyond the church as a shameful thing? Why is it so vital that we shouldn’t take things to court?

Peter: Before I come to that, I must add that sometimes these relatively trivial disputes within a congregation can be extraordinarily painful and can lead to bad results. We’re not saying they’re just trivial in the sense that they’re all minor matters about, for instance, where you park on a Sunday.

Phillip: But sometimes minor things are large because of our emotional reaction to them, when in fact they are very small. A parking spot can cause terrific fights.

Peter: That’s perfectly true. So the matter itself can be relatively trivial, but the emotions involved may not be. The apostle here mentions going to law before unbelievers, and he suggests that this is a shameful thing that brings the gospel into disrepute. You can imagine how this is true, especially in a village community where everybody knows everyone else. The matter becomes public, and in the wrong way. The fact of a dispute causing such passions as to be taken to court can do nothing good for the standing of the church. It says little for the wisdom of the saints that they can’t judge their own matters. If you’re a Christian, you have a clearer picture of what love, forgiveness and justice are, which ought to equip you to judge. But this raises some tricky issues that are very relevant to our own day in a way. What about criminal cases, for example? Has there been a tendency to deal with these within a denomination rather than taking them to the police or to the courts?

Phillip: Criminal cases should be reported and/or go before the governmental courts. But our problem is a little bit with this word ‘criminal’, because at the moment, the word is used with 2 different connotations. Technically, the word ‘criminal’ just means ‘against government legislation’. But government legislation can be immoral. Under our present government with its long Christian history, most of our governmental laws are of a Christian nature. But in a non-Christian society, we can have criminal behaviour which is godly, like preaching the gospel or praying publicly. But the word can also mean, ‘immoral’. In some situations, we may say something is criminal because it is immoral, even though it may not be against the law. However, if someone is doing something which is criminal because it is illegal and immoral, covering it up to guard the reputation of the ecclesiastical structure, rather than see the case dealt with, is a big mistake.

Our denominations have been doing this with the best intentions, but they absolutely should not be. God has given us government, as said in Romans 13, to deal with wrongdoing, and it’s to the government we should hand over matters of criminality. 1 Corinthians 6 says that in disputes between members of the congregation, we should be able to rule on those ourselves. But when you come to somebody committing a crime, we must take those matters to the courts to be dealt with properly. In recent decades, there have been many sexual abuse cases which have been covered up and not dealt with properly. What was done to the victims was wrong, and these cases should have been brought to court. Mind you, the church at this stage in the late 20th century was following the social norms of society. The police and the government generally underestimated the impact of sexual abuse upon children and did not deal with it properly. We’ve changed that attitude, and we need to continue doing so. But 1 Corinthians 6 simply deals with grievances between the saints.

But there are some matters that are tricky, like marriage breakdowns. Should divorce be settled between members of a congregation, or is that something to deal with externally?

Peter: This is a sensitive matter, because a number of our listeners will themselves have been through this or have witnessed it in their church. There’s every reason to think of a marriage breakdown pastorally, in the first instance, and to see whether the relationship can be restored. It’s a good thing if members of the congregation, particularly the pastor, can help to restore the relationship. This may involve recommending a counsellor, or the pastor may need to listen to both sides and offer biblical counsel on rights and wrongs. That is important, and it would fit in very much with this passage.

In a church I belonged to 50 years ago, there was a husband who was physically abusive to his wife. The chief pastor in the church rebuked the husband, advised the wife, and sought to bring peace and justice. In the end, the pastor advised the wife to consider leaving the husband because the man persisted in this abuse. He also gave up coming to church at the same time.

Phillip: But that crosses a line, because physical abuse is a crime that should be reported to the police.

Peter: It is nowadays, and it has become a crime because members of the public, households included, have not dealt with it very well. Sometimes, the person being abused may prefer it not to go to the courts, but the alternative would be that it goes on and the abuser is not brought to book as they should be.

Phillip: But it always was criminal. See, this is the trouble with this word ‘crime’. Physical abuse has always been a crime. We may not have recognised it as such as a society, but that was an error.

Peter: I agree with you. We have taken our freedoms and not used them well, which means that the law has to be far clearer and far more invasive on this issue. But sometimes there are decisions which flow from a breakdown, which may go well beyond the capacity of the saints to decide. There are decisions to be made about money, about property, and about who has the children. If these matters can be agreed to before the courts are involved, that would be good, provided the agreement is just. But it is a matter of secular law, for the marriage is registered by the state. So these issues may well need to go before the courts in order to be resolved in a way that can’t easily be resolved in a congregation.

Phillip: The law courts themselves are very big on trying to get people to discuss these matters before coming to court to settle them. The courts will reinforce the decisions that have been made in discussion with court appointed officers to come to some agreement. But within our society, there are people who are choosing not to get married, or there are people who are choosing religious marriages that are not part of secular registration. We know God doesn’t want divorce because divorce is always violent. It’s the breaking of a relationship of unity that God has created, and it damages children, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Our government in 1975 changed the divorce laws in such a way as to undermine marriage, for the covenant by which we take one as a spouse, has now been undermined. The words we say at a wedding service no longer mean what they mean, because you say, “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, until death do us part,” but you don’t mean that, legally speaking. The trouble is, God does unite us in marriage.

Last week, I saw in the paper that de facto marriages, which are growing in great numbers in Australia, are now being seen in exactly the same terms as de jure marriages. So when people think, “We won’t get married, so we can divide up 50-50 if we break up, and we can make our own decisions,” the courts do intervene. These marriages are then considered to be equally legitimate marriages, and you can lose your properties to your spouse as much as if you’d gone through the legal processes, because the legal marriage recognises a reality that children have rights. In a divorce, the property needs to be divided in ways that are concerned for the welfare of the children as well as for the people. So the sinfulness is not dealt with by just avoiding marriage law, for the law recognises the sinfulness of people. The reality is that we don’t always live together in harmony because we are sinful people.

As 1 Corinthians 7 tells us, if you cannot live with each other, then be separate. God does not want you to be separate, but if it is impossible to live together, then you should be separate, but not so you can marry a third party. The command is to live separately, and if you can’t stand being separate, then be reconciled. The Bible doesn’t encourage this mentality that I can change partners to solve my problems.

Peter: It would be good if such matters between members of the congregation could be resolved internally. Not criminal matters, but those of defamation, for instance.

Phillip: These are civil matters rather than criminal matters in terms of our courts. While you talk of the case many years ago where a marriage was lost and where violence was involved, over the many years I’ve seen quite a lot of marriages at the breaking point that have been restored, and some that have not. You can be reconciled on minor disputes or on more serious matters like the breakdown of a marriage through Christian intervention and pastoral care.

Peter: That’s a win. It’s one of the blessings of belonging to a church, ideally, that others around you can be on the front line of advice, help, counsel, and mediation.

Phillip: Absolutely. When it comes to owning property, though, that’s where the problem moves into another category, for you must work out who gets what.

Peter: It may be worked out within the fellowship before it goes to the court, but then it has to be agreed to by the court.

Phillip: Yes, because the property is licensed on the title deed, which is a government title deed.

But there are times when Christians and non-Christians within the legal system are at odds. The issue of women’s ordination in Australia during the 1990s demonstrated the problem we have with law now, because we are shifting to judicial activism from non-Christian lawyers and judges. They think that the settlement should be X, which is from a non-Christian point of view a just answer, but it is not just from a Christian point of view. In previous generations where we had Christian judges, or judges operating on a Christian basis, we were able to have confidence in the government to make just causes. But this is now becoming more difficult.

Peter: I think so. Think of the legal fights that we saw between, as I call them, the leavers and the stayers in the Episcopal Church in America. This was a big debate over sexual matters, during which around 100,000 people left the Episcopal Church and set up their own churches; still Anglican, but away from the Episcopal denomination, which in their view had fallen over the cliff theologically. That led to questions of who owned the property. Could the leavers not keep the property that they owned? In the end, the courts decided that the leavers could not keep the property, so it went to the original denomination. While this was very painful for all involved, I’m sorry that it was taken to court. Whether they stay or leave, they will be preaching the gospel, and it’s better for them to be able to do that, perhaps by renting the church, than for us to go to court and take the church from them. The implications need to be studied carefully, and we must always ask ourselves, “Why are we doing this?” We must also think about whether a Christian mediator could help, or even whether I should accept the wrong being done to me, as Paul suggests here in this very passage. Perhaps the idea of mediation is closer to what the passage is suggesting than simply taking things up with the law. There’s a difference in where things were back then and where things are now, but these, I think, are some of the direct implications of this passage.

Phillip: I have a problem though. That is, the passage is talking about minor things like you and I having a squabble over a parking spot. It’s not over whether the denomination or the congregation owns the property. While you may be able to settle that through Christian mediation or through mediation generally, in the end, the title deeds on a property is a decision of the government and of the courts.

Peter: It sounds to me as though this merits a bigger discussion.

Phillip: Absolutely. I’m just worried about pushing this passage beyond its scope in the discussion. But I’ve got another question. Paul says that the saints will judge the world and even angels, as 1 Corinthians 6:3 tells us, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!”

Where in the Bible are we taught this other than in this passage? I thought Jesus was the judge of the living and the dead. Why are we then listed as judges? What is this business about the saints judging the world and judging angels?

Peter: If this verse was the only reference, I’d be a little bit agnostic about it. I guess I still am, but the reference that comes to mind is Matthew 19:27–28

Then Peter said in reply, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

There’s a picture of shared judgement. The way I see it, it is a marginal reference. There’s also Revelation 3:21, which is relevant. But it fits in with the fulfillment of our humanity in Jesus as image bearers. That’s who we are. We have trashed it, but not lost it. Image bearers are those who rule, those who govern the world; hence when the age to come is upon us, we will be still working for Christ. We’re told that too in 1 Corinthians 5:9. Christ, of course, is the last Adam, the man from heaven in whose image we are. Therefore, I take it that we will share something of his work, because he gives us work to do, seen here as judgement. But I think on the broader front, that’s a way of looking at it. Whether indeed we will be judging the world on the day of judgement, I can’t deny it, but I am not sure what it exactly means.

Phillip: Can it be that we are judges like in the Old Testament Book of Judges?

Peter: Yes, you wonder about that, don’t you? Because we think of judges with white wigs, but the judges in the Old Testament have a more active role in working out the righteousness of God.

Phillip: Yes, because they’re sitting on the thrones; they’re not sitting on the bench.

Peter: They’re sharing Christ’s rule under Christ’s lordship.

Phillip: Yes, and if you’re able to do that, then you should be able to help people sort out minor matters, like King Solomon did with the baby who was claimed by two women.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk. It’s called The Gospel and Lawsuits.

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Christians in Western society have had a large say in public morality. When appointed the Dean at our cathedral, I was told by several people that my role was to be the moral conscience of society. I thought I was supposed to preach the gospel, but what is the relationship of the gospel to public morality and of the church to the rest of society? 1 Corinthians 5 raises these issues for us; I hope you enjoy our discussion.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip: Today, we will look at the second part of 1 Corinthians 5. The first half was addressed last week in our episode The Arrogance of the Immoral as it told us how the Corinthian church was immoral and yet so arrogant. But the second half of the chapter, in a sense, is twisted around, and so we’re looking this time at The Arrogance of the Moral.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 5:6–13

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

That all sounds fairly rough. We are to see that such a sin as the man of the previous passage has committed corrupts the whole church, and indeed as we saw last week it was a corrupt church which allowed it, and that as a result he is to be cast out. It reminds me of some of the stories that our father told us about the country town that he grew up in during the 1920s.

Our father attended the local Anglican church and it was a blessing to him, but he also noted that there was a general critical mood in the town towards those who were judged to behave in non-Christian ways. So no woman hung out her washing on a Sunday, for fear of being sharply criticised for breaking the Fourth Commandment in doing the washing on a Sunday. The word of those critics was pretty strong around town.

Phillip: He mentioned to me the whole issue of the Sabbath, which he found was the most difficult of the Ten Commandments to keep, and the one that caused the most division and unhappiness. For most people, the majority of the commandments are obvious: you don’t steal, you don’t commit murder, you avoid taking the Lord’s name in vain. But if, for instance, you played tennis on a Sunday afternoon (assuming that Sunday is the Sabbath), then you could be condemned. He spoke of people, of men in particular, who would avoid attending church rather than face being condemned for hypocrisy, because they knew they would go to work or organised sport on the Sabbath. What was going on in those days?

Peter: There’s an old word for it, which you and I are old enough to use: ‘wowserism’. But since no one 10 years younger than us knows what the word means, I’m going to call it the power of moralism, of acting superior and looking down at people who don’t do what they ought to do.

Phillip: What did the word ‘wowser’ mean?

Peter: A wowser was a person who went around telling other people what they were doing wrong, like hanging out their washing on a Sunday, and criticising them for it. It was an acronym which stood for We Only Want Social Evils Remedied.

Phillip: There’s a lovely quote I once came across, and though I can never remember who said it, it goes, “If all the moralists are to be believed, England has been in decline since 1066.” Moralism and wowserism are very negative, then.

Peter: Yes, although the moralist sees it as a positive, in the sense that through moralism there is good to be done. But 100 years ago, Australia was regarded by most citizens as a Christian country, regardless of whether everyone went to church. Throughout the 19th century, there had been several strong movements aimed at putting Christian ethics into the daily life of the nation. One of the most famous was the Temperance Movement, an attack on the abuse of alcohol. Some people allowed moderate drinking, while others were against drinking at all. But as a whole, the movement focused on calling for strict controls to limit its use, for drunkenness was addressed as a real social evil.

Phillip: It drove forth the movement of women having the right to vote. One of the key motivators for it was to change the character of government, and enable the regulations of life that would come about by women who were the victims of alcoholic excess, and who were believed to have superior moral values. So the push for women voting, which happened in Australia very early, came out of this moralism.

Peter: I believe it did. I also understand that there was a movement like this in the United States which led to the period called Prohibition. I haven’t researched that for this episode, but according to my memory, Prohibition led to an improvement in people’s health, in social cohesion and so forth, though the consequences in criminality were so bad that it didn’t last.

Phillip: It led to the improvement of people’s health and of criminals’ wealth simultaneously. But it wasn’t only an attack on alcohol; gambling, the breach of the Sabbath, and smoking were all considered to be very bad things. It’s fascinating, of course, that 50 years later the community came to agree on the issue of smoking, and now those who smoke are treated like lepers and hang around outside buildings looking guilty.

Peter: Indeed. Some in the movement even looked down upon going to the movies.

Phillip: There was also the attack on the wearing of make-up, and the implementation of blasphemy laws, which we’ve done away with; though there are new blasphemy laws coming in with a different god in terms of Islam. These attacks on those moral problems were quite successful in a way, though they of course never succeeded in abolishing sin in any of these areas. But to understand it, you do need to know the history of us Australians seeing ourselves as a national church. But were these the blessings of the gospel, or was it that as a nation we were obscuring the gospel?

Peter: My answer to that is yes and no, so the whole subject is worth the discussion. This moralism was based on the idea that we were broadly a Christian nation, but what it became, as people became more and more strong in their arguments, was a finger-wagging perversion of the gospel; the ‘wowserisation’ of the gospel, if you will. The danger is that being moralistic makes you feel good, particularly if you have a great cause to fight for, because then you have an enemy to defeat. You regard your enemy as self-evidently morally inferior, as a bad person. Who wouldn’t want to be a moralist under these circumstances? Remember, these were often good causes, but they became an obsession. As you pointed out, they didn’t, in the end, succeed. You can control gambling, but you will never eradicate it. A government that knows its business will try to control the ill effects of sinful behaviour, but will not think that somehow we are going to eradicate the problem. We haven’t eradicated smoking, for instance. At the same time, as you said, the gospel gets lost in this.

Phillip: Yes, because the idea of a Christian nation 100 years ago is different to our society today. I believe Australia is still a Christian nation because our foundations, our way of thinking, and our whole history are all founded and based in Christianity. But we’re not a Christian nation as they thought of themselves 100 years ago, where being a Christian was considered to be the norm. Back then, around 90% of the population, according to census figures, identified as Christian, whereas today it’s less than 50%. So the nation we live in today is a different kind of Christian nation to what it was 100 years ago. Back then, people disagreed about normative ethics, or the norms of life. How you observed the Sabbath, or what trading hours you would have for the selling of alcohol, or in terms of shopping, were all contested topics. People disagreed about the details of the rules and regulations of morality.

But when you move to a non-Christian society like Corinth, and to some extent now Sydney, we no longer disagree simply about the norms of society; we now disagree about the very nature of ethics itself, what the professionals call ‘meta-ethics’. We ask, “Is there such a thing as right and wrong? How do we determine right and wrong? Who says that right is right and wrong is wrong, and why should we believe them?” Moralists still exist, of course, and so we’re beset with all kinds of moralism. But now the nature of this moralism has shifted. The norms that are being imposed now come out of causes and fiery advocates rather than a total package of a moral system. Anyone who doesn’t share this enthusiasm at the moment is shamed on social media or ‘cancelled’ from the public square. Think of the #MeToo movement, the climate catastrophising movement, feminism, transgenderism, Black Lives Matter, Indigenous Rights, etc. In fact, some famous feminists have now come out against the transgender movement, and they are no longer welcome to speak on different university campuses. Nevertheless, there’s a whole range of these movements that are couched in very moral terms, even though our society has come to no agreement about what morality is.

Peter: In other words, these movements assume that we are moral creatures, and we therefore can respond to their morals, yet they do not agree on what the source of their morals is. I take it you’re not saying that these movements are necessarily all wrong, only that there’s a problem as to the question of where these morals come from, and the way in which some people exercise their morals in their finger-wagging, ‘wowser-istic’ way. When it doesn’t succeed, they demand for the government to do something in order to make things happen.

Phillip: One thing that moralists today and the moralists of Christianity in the past have in common is a tendency to focus on the minor issues. For example, we thought that alcohol was a problem in our society. The Temperance movement then took over, acting as if alcoholism was the only moral issue in society. When we base our morality just on causes—whether good, bad, Christian or non-Christian—we make rules about things, and we make the cause the totality of morality. With that being said, take us back to 1 Corinthians.

Peter: This passage raises the question, “How does a congregation relate to its social milieu?” For instance, Paul points out that the sin of the offender in 1 Corinthians 5:1 would be condemned by non-Christians. That is true of things that have happened in our own lifetime. Christians are likely enough, in fact, to face criticism from the world, for instance, due to our inability to cope with pederasty, which is child abuse. There is a lesson for us here: although a number of moralistic causes of our own time may conflict with Christianity and must be resisted despite criticism, there are a number of causes for which we should listen to what’s being said and change our ways. However, Paul makes clear that his strong words address the church, not the society in which they are living at this point. He’s not calling upon the church to become a little club or a sect cut off from the world; indeed, he expects Christians to live in their world, recognising, however, that sin is everywhere. But he does not call upon them to confront the sinfulness of the world with moral righteousness. Why not? Surely our love of our neighbour would mean we make a stand against things like sexual permissiveness, abortion, greed, and other sins by which people exploit each other. So why be so strong about a Christian brother needing to be chastised, yet so speechless about the world in which we’re living?

Phillip: I don’t doubt that the Christian ethic is for the good of society. Making sure that workers have the freedom to take a day off each week, for example, is a good thing for society. Furthermore, the abuse of alcohol and the prevalence of gambling in Australia has been a dreadful blight upon our society and ruined the lives of many people. Adultery, which is now semi-promoted in some circles, is a dreadful thing, causing untold damage to the lives of married couples, children, grandparents, uncles and aunts. But while imposing the Christian ethic would be good for society, Paul knows what our contemporary moralists don’t know—and frankly, the earlier moralists had forgotten this—that the power of Christian ethics is based on a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, not a performance relationship where you get rewarded or punished for your transactions. The basis of Christian ethics is the gospel of the Passover Lamb who has died for us and risen again, bringing us the grace of the gospel.

The moralists of today motivate people by finger-wagging and inducing guilt, and then they try to solve the problems through their government: throwing money at problems, changing laws and regulations, or through adding to the educational curriculum. But such moralists don’t understand sin and the gospel. Sin is the disease that gives rise to immorality, therefore band-aid solutions on the symptoms of sin don’t work. To make rules and regulations about certain sins, without addressing the issue of sin itself, will always fail, but the gospel brings atonement, forgiveness, relationship, and regeneration. These things change the hearts and minds of people, which in turn transform their lives.

Peter: It’s interesting too that the Christian gospel has had a very powerful impact all around the world on the social lives of people. It’s not as though the two things are not connected. It is just that if you forget the heart of the matter—loving God, loving your neighbour, and the need for grace and a new life—you will carry on about the causes, but you won’t have the essential insight into where this is coming from, what you call the meta-ethics. When I was in public office, I was not unwilling to enter into debates about the Sabbath, for example, because I regarded having the same day off each week as being important for Australian society; but I also tried on every occasion to link that back in to the gospel itself, so that people could see that it flows out of the gospel. The ethic has a source in the gospel of the grace of God, and the command to love God and love your neighbour. It is essential that people can see the gospel in the moralistic causes.

Phillip: The big problem of preaching the gospel in Australia is that people think we preach, “Good people go to heaven; bad people are punished.” That is because people have this moralist framework, and also because we address the morals of society. This is exacerbated by the fact that back in the days when Australia was a Christian country, we pushed our morals like the wowsers that we were. People then got very confused about the gospel, and I still find in evangelism that the fundamental obstacle for people coming to the Lord Jesus Christ is not atheism, nor doubting the existence of God; it’s that people think they’re Christians because they’re good enough, and that the gospel we’re preaching is simply about being good.

Peter: Returning to the passage, I notice that Paul is very strong in his condemnation of the sinner, but as you have pointed out, he is wishing that he repent and return to the fellowship. He loves the sinner. You have mentioned Galatians 6 and the way in which the failures of the Christian brother are to be treated in the fellowship. I think it is good to bring that passage to bear on 1 Corinthians 5 in order to help us to see the whole picture of what ought to happen in church.

Phillip: Galatians 6:1–5

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load.

Those who are spiritual are to take action for those who are struggling with some sin. The aim of this action is restoration, as you are to seek to restore them. But you restore a person not in the spirit of judgementalism, but in the spirit of gentleness. We come alongside our brother or sister who is struggling with sin and gently point the sinfulness out and the consequences that are involved. But in the process it’s important to watch yourself for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I must never think that the sin that my brother or sister is committing is beyond me to also commit. As they have fallen into temptation, I too may fall into temptation. So I don’t approach my brother or sister as though I am approaching someone who is morally inferior, because I accept that I have the exact same sinful capacity that they have. There is nothing beyond my capacity for sinfulness, and so I go with the spirit of gentleness, watching myself.

Secondly, I must not be aiming to boast over a brother or sister’s weakness. I go on the basis that I am nothing, because if I think I am something, I deceive myself. That is how I bear my brother’s burden: by helping him with his difficulty. But that’s also how I bear my own burden, because I do not take credit for my superiority over him. I am nothing, as he is nothing, and the two ‘nothings’ must help each other. Yes, we may see our brother or sister fall into sinfulness, and the church cannot tolerate sinfulness, so must seek to address it. But how we address it always has to do with seeking the salvation of the other person: not seeking to put them out, to rule over them, or to establish our own superiority by their failure.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk from St Matthias evening church called New Morality or Old Morality.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

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Because of sin, immorality is universal. Sometimes it is so blatant that everybody can see it. But what happens if everybody can see it except for the church? In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is dealing not only with immorality, but also with arrogance.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip: Today, we will start off by reading 1 Corinthians 5:1-8

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Peter: I would have thought we would delve into all of chapter 5, and maybe even chapter 6. Why are you reading only half of this chapter?

Phillip: That is because of the significance of what is said here, its current applications, and the care with which we need to think through the issues raised. Chapters 1–4 have focused our attention on ministry and the unity of the church, but chapter 5 confronts us with a very difficult question about the presence in the congregation of serious moral failings. These sins are not just sexual; later in this chapter he talks about swindlers, idolaters and drunkards. Therefore, we will discuss today what I would call the arrogance of the immoral. Do you think that’s a fair description?

Peter: It’s a confronting description, but it is fair. What you put your finger on is interesting: the problem, in a sense, is not the man who’s committed this offence, but the reaction of the church, in its arrogance. ‘Arrogance’ is an unpleasant word, defined by Macquarie Dictionary1 as “Offensive exhibition of assumed or real superiority; overbearing pride.” What we see throughout 1 Corinthians is that the first sin is not so much the highly immoral one, but the ethos and attitude of the church in Corinth. It’s already illustrated, for example, by the way in which they take sides with the different preachers in chapter 1. Furthermore, we have also seen a sharp critique by the apostle in 4:6, 8, and 18; and so too in 5:6. But when confronted with such a great sin as incest, why does Paul blame the church, and how is that a warning for us?

Phillip: ‘Arrogance’ is never a word that a person applies to themselves. But Paul applies it to the Corinthians in 5:2. They think they rule, they think they’re kings, and yet within the church, there is a terrible evil: this incestuous relationship of a sexually immoral character. We don’t know the details, only that “a man has his father’s wife.” But it’s such that the non-Christians, the pagans, wouldn’t accept such behaviour. It’s called ‘arrogance’, however, because of the church’s superior attitude. The church’s problem is that they’ve taken no action, instead tolerating what has been done. Tolerance is a good thing in some ways, but it becomes a very bad thing when it is used to accept sinfulness. So, while the church tries to cover themselves with glory, appealing to the ‘big name’ preachers that they’re following, their acceptance and tolerance of the sinfulness of this person means that the church as a whole is corrupt.

Peter: That is what upsets Paul. It’s interesting that he preaches the way in which God, in his extraordinary love, takes us enemies of God and makes us one with Christ, yet we can see the danger of grace when it’s misunderstood. Because there is such a thing, to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship,2 as “cheap grace.” He says, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” But the misunderstanding of grace is in thinking that because we’re forgiven, we are free to act how we want. Cheap grace, therefore, creates arrogance.

However, the first act of worship that we engage in is faith. When you put your faith in someone, you are praising that other person. In essence, you are saying, “I haven’t got this, the other person has; therefore, I trust them.” When we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is our worship. But cheap grace enables you to become arrogant. Cheap grace, where you say, “I’m forgiven, therefore I’m free to behave as I wish,” is the opposite of faith. Grief, repentance and sorrow is our real act of worship.

But what does this passage tell us about the corruption of a church? Is it possible for such a thing to happen today?

Phillip: The gospel entry for us into church has to do with forgiveness. As we are forgiven, so we are always to have in our hearts forgiveness. The end of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew chapter 6 speaks of the necessity of being a forgiving person, as a person who has themselves been forgiven. Therefore, it’s always good to approach others with forgiveness in your heart. But forgiveness without atonement, without payment, is acceptance and even approval of sin. Sin always has a cost. Sometimes we cannot pay for what we have done; the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is about the wonder of God’s payment on our behalf.

One year, I came home during the Christmas holidays to find that the front fence of our house had been destroyed after a car had run through it. About half an hour afterwards, a father and his young teenage son came along and apologised to me. The son had been given a car for Christmas, and as he’d driven his first time around the block, he had wiped out our front fence. It was very painful for the young boy to repent, but the father was very quick to say, “We will pay for the new fence,” for the fence still had to be paid for. That was part of the forgiveness. For him to say, “I’m sorry, I hope you didn’t need a fence,” or “I hope you can afford to build your own,” would not be the way of forgiveness and repentance. The way of repentance is to at least offer if you cannot pay. But the wonder of the gospel is what God has paid for us.

But it’s not enough to preach forgiveness without also preaching repentance. As if, when you say “sorry”, I forgive you and it’s all forgotten, therefore we don’t have to worry about the woman that you bashed, or the child that you abused, or the money that you stole. That’s not grace. That’s accepting sin.

Peter: Yes, just saying “sorry” is not repentance. Repentance requires a determination to repair the relationship, to do the right thing.

Phillip: It has to do with going forward in a new way. But Jesus going forward in a new way is not enough either. There has to be a payment somewhere, and God in his kindness has paid the price for us.

Peter: Hence Bonhoeffer, “When Christ calls a man to him, he bids him come and die.”3 That’s not saying that we are to die in order to gain God’s grace. Rather, we “die” because having received God’s grace through the cross of Christ, we take up his cross daily and follow him. This is repentance. That presumably means that we all need to take account of the spiritual health of the congregation and be on the lookout for the tolerance which grows sin. This passage is not primarily about the sinner. It’s about the sinners, namely the congregation. The point of the passage is not to denounce the incest of the individual sinners, though we should do so anyway. It’s to denounce a congregation which, through arrogance, has practiced tolerance.

You mentioned ‘tolerance’ before, which is a popular word these days. In a sense, the greatest virtue of our society is tolerance, though I don’t see too much of it around. But is tolerance a Christian virtue? It could be, under certain circumstances. But always remember that the greatest Christian virtue is love. How do you best love the congregation, and the sinner within it? Paul addresses everybody in the congregation and is critical of all. For example, in 1 Timothy 4, he shows us that the teaching pastor is vital for the good health of the congregation, as the congregation needs to be taught. But it’s essential that we encourage, speaking the truth in love to one another, as is said in Ephesians 4, in order that we may live godly lives and build each other up. As congregation members, we must act positively and lovingly for the whole congregation, even if it requires rebuke.

Phillip: But the teacher is judged with the greatest strictness, as we’re told in James 3. 1 Timothy 4 also tells us that when an elder does something, public rebuke is required for the elder but not necessarily the whole congregation. The difficulty is when congregation members do something as outlandish as the person here in 1 Corinthians 5 is reported as doing. How do we handle it? There are two polar opposite approaches on the subject of church discipline that are difficult to negotiate. There is the desire to save members, and then there is the desire to have a pure church. But the pure church in this world is not going to happen, and we can’t always save members.

These conflicting desires are represented in the scriptures. Diotrephes in 3 John is the ‘patron saint’ of the pure church, as we see in 3 John 9–10

I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.

Diotrephes is the man who kicks people out of churches. That’s not the way to go. Representing the other extreme, however, is Thyatira in Revelation 2. The letter to the seven churches addresses Thyatira’s toleration of heresy and immorality. Revelation 2:20–21

But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Then the risen Lord Jesus goes on to denounce Jezebel and the judgement that will fall upon her. So Diotrephes and Thyatire are the representations of the 2 extremes: those who always resort to kicking people out of churches, and those who are happy to accept an ongoing, unrepentant sexual immorality. Both of these are wrong, but negotiating between them is difficult. That’s where most of us have to live and move.

Peter: What does Paul recommend here in Corinth in the face of a terrible sexual sin, condemned by the word of God in a context of arrogance and outward displays of sinful behaviour by the church?

Phillip: His recommendations are to “deliver him over to Satan,” placing him outside the fellowship of the church. But there are several things to note here. Firstly, what the man is doing is a heinous sin, bringing the cause of Christ into disrepute. The punishment must fit the crime, and we’re dealing with something very great here. Secondly, the judgement is the activity of the whole church. Paul asserts that though he is absent, he has already cast his vote, and the congregation needs to agree on the action they will take. But I particularly like the aim of the action. It’s remedial, for they are still concerned for the sinner. They place him outside, back into the world, treating him as a tax collector and a sinner in order that he may come to his right mind, repent and be saved. When the congregation is involved in these activities, it’s not to protect ourselves so much as to save the sinner. Diotrephes is putting people out of the church because he thinks highly of himself as a moralist, whereas Paul is concerned about saving this man.

Peter: So love, not tolerance, is key. I like what you said about delivering him to Satan. That means putting him back into the world, so to speak, which is dominated by Satan, the god of this world. That is awful, but the action is intended to bring him to his senses and back to Christ. But in speaking about these things in church life, we do need to be careful about such things as defamation. Sometimes things are said publicly which leave people open to legal action, and perhaps rightly so. After all, Christians are not above gossip. So how do we navigate such difficulties?

Phillip: It is difficult; there’s no doubt about that. In one sense, in a litigious society such as ours, people race to the law to defend themselves. But in another sense, people shouldn’t be defamed. That’s why it’s right that there are laws on defamation. We mustn’t say that which is untrue of people, or present them in a bad light for our own satisfaction. That’s why sometimes confession is better than accusation; to have people admit to what they’re doing, so that we are not making the accusation, but they are accepting it publicly or privately.

But think back to Jesus and his teaching in Matthew 18 about what we should do when a brother is causing offense to us. It’s not all that different to what we do when we see someone fall into sin. It starts with the offended person talking to the other person about the problem. If they listen and repent, that is a great victory. If they don’t, the next step is to take a witness with you. Then, with the knowledge that other people are seeing the problem, and that it’s not just your prejudice that is giving rise to the question of their behavior, see if the sinner may come to their right mind and confess. But you must do that before you go to the church. The part about going to the church can confuse us. ‘Going to the church’ can mean taking the concern to the office bearers, but Paul is saying that we should take it to the congregational meeting. Taking problems to the office bearers of the churches has created church courts and the like, which have not had a great history.

Peter: No, but it’s tricky to make sense of this, because church is a public occasion. Anyone can come to church in our setup, but that was not the case back in Paul’s day. Thus we need to be careful here, to take the difference between the church then and now into account. We need to be careful about what we’re summoning here.

Phillip: But the church was still public in those days. The non-Christian in 1 Corinthians 14 comes in and hears them preaching.

Peter: That’s a discussion for another day.

Phillip: We’ll work out about how public it is another time, but certainly we are in a different society now which is much more litigious about these things in particular. But if we can have the sinner confess their sins to the church, then it’s easier to be able to have the discussion resolved in a congregational meeting. It’s painful nonetheless. On other occasions, I have dealt with this issue, given the complexities of our church life, by talking about it with groups in the church rather than the total church. If you’re in a large church where not everybody knows each other, it is better to take the issue to whichever group that the person is a part of: for instance, other families of the Sunday school children, or amongst the other people in a Bible study group. The aim is that the church will hear that there is a need for repentance. There is the offer of forgiveness and the need for the person to be rescued. However you do it, these are the goals that you need to be seeking to achieve, especially their salvation.

Peter: To sum up, what we’re talking about is the health of the church, preeminently. And the church can be arrogant in many ways. Next week, as we come to chapter 5, we will talk about how the church can be moralistically arrogant.

3

Ibid

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this Campus Bible Study talk from 1977 on 1 Corinthians 3-4 (the audio quality isn’t great but a great listen nonetheless!)

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Just as Western society is confused over the subject of identity, so we are confused over the issue of judgementalism. The modern push is to be a non-judgemental, inclusive society, but the reality is one of high condemnation and exclusion of people whose views or lifestyle differ from those in power.

Christians believe in the judgement of God, but what do these judgements involve? And what are the differences between discernment and condemnation? I hope you enjoy our consideration of 1 Corinthians chapter 4.

I remind you again of our point of contact, namely respond@twm.email.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Last week, when reading 1 Corinthians 3, we followed a very unusual procedure in which we read through the beginning of the chapter, then the end, before finishing with the middle. This time, as we look at chapter 4, we will return to reading 1 Corinthians chronologically, as the Apostle Paul wrote it.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 4

This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favour of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labour, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?

Phillip: That is a great chapter in judgement. We now occupy a very judgemental society in which we regularly condemn and ‘cancel’ people. People are banished because of statements they make or their practices of life; at the same time, however, we are ‘anti-discriminatory’. Everybody is to be included, yet our ‘inclusive’ society keeps excluding people.

Furthermore, we Christians have a particular problem when it comes to the ‘celebrity Christianity’ that is around us. I remember being at a conference overseas where the speakers needed bodyguards because of the number of people who were pressing upon them. They needed bodyguards not to protect against someone who was going to shoot or stab them, but because so many people treated them as if they were pop singers. But these people keep on being caught out for their failures. I remember meeting Paul Cain years ago, one of the Kansas City prophets who was commended to me as the man who could tell me exactly what God thought on all kinds of topics. Paul Cain has died now, and the judgements that have come upon him because of his sexual immorality are just some examples of the many problems within the Kansas prophecy movement. In more recent times a great Christian writer, Philip Yancey, has now spoken of his 8 years of having an adulterous affair, during which time he was writing Christian books and his own biography. There are many of these kinds of people for whom we are judgemental, and indeed we should judge them, because they were exercising Christian leadership.

Peter: But the Lord said in Matthew 7:1, with words that are unforgettable, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Yet, though I hardly know how to say it, judgement and discrimination is essential to being human and to being Christian. How do we chart these waters? How do we hear what the Lord says, but also live in a world where every moment we are called upon to make a judgement?

Phillip: “Judge not, that you be not judged” is one of the favourite verses of our inclusive society. It’s a part of the teaching of Jesus that people who have never read the Sermon on the Mount still know, because they love this message in isolation. But the full quotation warns you not to read it that way. Matthew 7:1-2

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

What follows is the illustration of the speck in the eye versus the log in the eye. Therefore, it’s not saying, “Make no discriminations”; rather it is warning you that the judgements you make on other people are exactly the judgements that you will receive yourself, and that if you are harsh, then expect harshness towards yourself. If you are overly generous you may expect over-generosity, but the passage has got more to do with the word ‘judge’. That word carries the connotations of discernment, discrimination, and condemnation. Discrimination is essential in a fallen world, for you need to be able to discriminate between what is right and what is wrong. I had Paul Cain presented to me as the man who could tell me exactly what God was thinking. Do I accept that or not? That requires a discrimination. But that is different to condemning somebody for what they have done. I think of that passage in Galatians 6 which tells us that if anybody is sinful, then those who are spiritual are to restore them in a spirit of gentleness. You bear one another’s burdens, but you ought to look to yourself, lest you too be sinful.

One of the ways of dealing with somebody else who is sinful is to push them further down so that you can lift yourself up. “Well,” you may say, “I wouldn’t do that.” But the spiritual person says, “I would do exactly the same thing. Let me help you; let me lift you up.” It’s a different mindset in which we consider the other person. It’s not for us humans to condemn; that’s the Lord’s work, as is said in 1 Corinthians 4:4–5

For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

Essentially, he says, “I don’t even judge myself. I’m going to be judged by God, but that’s God’s work because he knows the secrets of the hearts. He knows everything, and so the judgement will be right and true and proper.” The message of chapter 4 is that we are to think about the other person, rather than condemning them.

Peter: Let’s take up this business of human judgement versus the Lord’s judgement as Paul talks about it. It’s interesting that he says in verse 3, “It is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.” I can see the truth of it, namely that there are times when someone will judge us. It may well come from someone who loves us, or even someone who doesn’t love us, and from this experience we can learn. I can think back to such experiences that I’ve had myself. So what is the best way of putting it? In the end, can we learn unconcern about how others judge us—bearing in mind that the Lord is our judge—except where there’s something to learn?

Phillip: Indeed, but how we think about this has also got to do with what we are judged for. For instance, I run faster than you do. That’s a discernment that can be made, but it’s not of great significance, unless you’re going to enter a competition. It’s not that all people are exactly the same and there is no discernment to be had between people. But the judgement we’re talking about here can be 1 of 2 judgements in the Lord. The first is the judgement of salvation: the condemnation that Jesus has borne for us. The second is that we all stand before the judgement seat of Christ to receive our blessings for what has happened in this lifetime, to see the outcome of our lives in this. That is what Paul is speaking about here. So I don’t judge myself.

You can discriminate, saying, for example, “I’d prefer to have Fred preach, because I think he’s a better preacher for this situation than John.” But to say, “Fred’s a better person because he’s a better preacher than John,” is a different thing altogether. It would also be wrong to suggest that God couldn’t use John to bring about his purposes in ways that Fred wouldn’t. The Lord will judge. So I personally don’t care whether you think I’m a good preacher or a bad preacher.

But notice that the basis of this judgement is faithfulness. That is, the Lord is not going to judge me on how many words I can say in a minute; he’s going to judge me on whether I’m faithful to the task that’s been given to me. In saying ‘faithful’, I don’t mean to suggest that we shouldn’t look at the outcome. Remember the parable in Matthew 25, where a man gives 3 workers different talents (sums of money) and the first 2 put them to work, as was intended. When the man returns, they are able to give back the money with interest because they’ve put it to work; they are called faithful. Whereas the third man buries the talent, because he doesn’t want to lose it, and he is called faithless, because it was given to him to do something with. Likewise, God gives us gifts to use for the salvation of the people, for the glory of the Lord Jesus. The judgement will come on how faithful we were to the tasks of the commission that God has given to us. But God’s judgement is superior to the judgement of other people, because God can see the secrets of the heart.

Peter: I love those sorts of texts which are really troubling, because they speak to you in the end very deeply. I return to 1 Corinthians 4:4, “For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.” That is one of those troubling texts, which is a good thing.

Phillip: And to quote Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Peter: Indeed. It reflects reality too, because there are times when I am not aware of anything against myself, but it may be due to my very poor memory, or my misunderstanding of what it is that I’ve done. The Apostle says that he does not judge himself, that doesn’t mean you should never reflect upon yourself; it’s that the final judgement is not yours. In the end, the final judgement belongs to God himself. We may have an assurance of our salvation which depends upon the blood of Christ. Some people are smitten by internal agony frequently, while other people drift along without a thought. But either way, we must come to the cross of Christ and say, “This is what we are trusting for our salvation on the Day of Judgement.”

Phillip: That flows on from the end of chapter 3, that my works may be burnt up. But it’s not a question of salvation. It’s just that I don’t want it to be the case that I’ve done nothing for the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ ever since I became a Christian 60 years ago.

Peter: Or worse, that you’ve done things which haven’t been so good.

Phillip: If I have done nothing, it will all be burnt up, but I will not lose my salvation at that point. It’ll just be that I have nothing to show.

Peter: What can we see here about Paul’s method in ministry?

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 4:6–7

I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favour of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

You start to re-think the last chapters which talked about people claiming, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas”. When you come to the last few verses, you start to see that there were real people who were arrogant, but Paul says, “I’ll come soon, and then I’ll see the talk of these arrogant people.” Because this arrogance is all talk; it’s not the power of God. Instead of doing the gospel work and transforming lives, they’re building themselves up. Those who are impressed by men, or by themselves, are the real arrogant talkers.

The other day, I heard the North Queensland politician Bob Katter describing people as “Double-degree-do-nothings.”

Peter: I love Bob Katter!

Phillip: He’s a great one. There are the people who have all the qualifications under the sun, but they don’t do anything. Likewise in this passage, here’s this arrogance among the church, but rather than talking about them and therefore getting caught up in the politics of it, Paul has talked about a policy and about himself, so that you will follow the argument that has been written, rather than worrying about the particulars of these ‘super apostles’.

Peter: What method in ministry is he talking about? What can you see here which makes us think as ministers of the gospel?

Phillip: That he is concerned with how well people will understand what he is saying. He takes us back to the very principles of the gospel itself, and diffuses the personality issue of the church. But he also describes his method back in verse 14.

Peter: “I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.” That’s not insignificant. There’s a big debate about what the marks of the church are: preaching, sacraments, or discipline? If we’re going to accept discipline as a mark of church, we have to think of what it means. 1 Corinthians flows into that question, for as this verse points out, Paul is not trying to make the church feel ashamed.

What does that mean? Do we try to make people ashamed? We may. If our ministry is our real sense of our identity, and if we are driven by the desire to have power over other people, then we may well admonish others in a way that creates shame in the other person. But the apostle, in telling us here about ministry, says that this is not what he aims to do. What he aims at is to admonish them. We admonish children in order that they may learn from it and grow into the adults we want them to be. Likewise, the aim of admonition in ministry is not to make us feel superior; it is very deliberately for the blessing and usefulness of the other person.

Paul also uses the language of family in this passage. The way in which the Corinthians came to Christ was through Paul ‘fathering’ them. Additionally, he says that when Timothy comes, he will remind them of what Paul has done so they may imitate the Christian life as they saw it in Paul. It’s not that Paul is putting himself in the centre of things; rather, these are the earliest days of the Christian faith, and Paul as a man is expressing that faith.

Furthermore, as he mentions several times, the Corinthian church is not the only church. There is a universal brotherhood, if you like, of Christians from all of the different churches.

Phillip: I would like to highlight several key points that you mentioned which are important. Firstly, there is Paul’s claim, “I became your father.” ‘Father’ can be a powerful position. In fact, Jesus said, Matthew 23:9, “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.” That is because ‘father’ connotes this patriarchal power. But in this passage, it’s a term of love and commitment that is being expressed, to admonish your children out of responsible and loving care.

You also talk of the marks of the churches. As John 13:35 says, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Love, then, surely should be the key mark of the church.

Peter: I believe so, and too little is spoken of it. I can remember a lady who came to our church, and because we didn’t have prophecy from the front, she left as soon as she could. I said, “But we do love each other,” to which she responded, “It doesn’t matter; you don’t have prophecy.” Regardless, I think that Christian love in the congregation is immensely important, and is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Phillip: A key aspect of 1 Corinthians, which we mentioned a few weeks ago, is that while it’s written to a specific context, it’s a universal letter. Therefore, what he’s saying to the Corinthians is true of all churches. There is a Christian way of living that is universal, at least in some elements. It may be that some church members differ in small ways such as attire, but Paul never implies that those things matter in the slightest. But there are certain things about love and care for others that are true everywhere. Likewise, arrogance and boastfulness about our ministries, skills and abilities are wrong everywhere.

The Corinthian problem seems to be their ‘over-realised eschatology’. That is, they think that heaven has already arrived, whereas the Apostle Paul knows that we’re still in this world; that the eschatology, the last days, have not yet arrived. So the ‘super-apostles’, the arrogant people who speak of their victorious Christian living, have missed the point. The apostolic reality is seen in 1 Corinthians 4:9–13

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labour, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

This demonstrates the contrast of the apostolic reality as opposed to the arrogance of people’s arrival, because in this world, our ministry is of the cross. You can’t be a preacher of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and be a conquering king yourself. Bearing the cross gives us the expectation of rejection and refusal.

Peter: Here is true wisdom. Judge not by what the eye sees; instead, judge in accordance with what God has revealed to us about himself, ourselves, and the world. In the end, leave the ultimate judgement to God in the assurance that Jesus died for us and that we are in Christ.

Phillip: You as a minister never rise above being a servant. William Cowper’s hymn, ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’, is one that I love. The last verse goes

God’s purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour.

The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err

And scan his work in vain.

God is his own interpreter,

And he will make it plain.

That is what will happen on the last day.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk by Phillip on 1 Corinthians 4. It’s called The Foolish Stewards of God.

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Today as we proceed through 1 Corinthians 3, we think of the pressing problem for modern Western culture: that of identity. Apparently, many people struggle with the questions, “Who am I?” or “What am I?”. This chapter answers these questions for Christians.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter Jensen: Today, we will look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Before we begin, what is the key theme of the passage?

Phillip Jensen: The theme is that of identity: the “Who am I” and the “What am I” questions that people ask themselves.

Peter: I’ve noticed that when I meet someone new, I often ask them what they do for a living. Why do we go for that question?

Phillip: I presume that is because one of the key ways in which we define ourselves is by what we do. We say, “I’m a lawyer,” or “I’m a carpenter,” or “I’m a surgeon,” or if we’re someone who really earns money, “I’m a plumber.” We’re very selective, though. We don’t identify ourselves, for instance, as being a prison officer, a garbage collector, or a street sweeper. We’re especially anxious that our children go into the top professions. There is a very clear pecking order of the things we can be proud of our children going into, versus what we’re slightly embarrassed about. But generally, we think that people are what they do.

Furthermore, what you do for a living can indicate your level of education, your status, wealth, and intelligence. It’s a women’s issue too: that is, getting women into the workforce was a way of establishing their place and their importance in society. The feminist drive for establishing you as a ‘real person’ is achieved through having a ‘significant job’, so that you don’t have to say, “I’m just a mum.”

Peter: I agree. It’s interesting that earlier generations generally identify themselves by family connections. We think, “I am who my family is.” I suspect that in many different cultures, the same thing would apply. In this understanding of human identity, the individual is less important than the family that the person belongs to. You are part of the clan, part of this wider group. You are the son of someone; you are the sibling of someone else; you are the father; you are the grandfather.

Phillip: This concept is applied in Russian names through patronymics. If you’re the son of someone, your name would include the patronymic ‘-ovich’ or ‘-evich’, meaning ‘son of’; if you’re a daughter, the name would be ‘-ovna’ or ‘-evna’. I’m sorry to our Russian readers if I have misunderstood this, but there is a code that determines where you fit in the family.

Peter: Surely, that’s better than identifying yourself by your work. It’s not wrong to tell people what your occupation is, but to identify yourself by what you do is a little worrying. But are either work or family enough to identify yourself by? It can become, in either case, a form of pride which is not helpful.

Phillip: I definitely think it’s better to identify yourself by family. Rather than asking ourselves, “Who am I?”, we should ask, “Who are we?” Individualism is one of the weaknesses of Western culture. Other cultures of the world have held family as a more important way of understanding oneself, which is the way God has created us, too. He’s created us through family, through the unity of the father and the mother. But you’re right; we can still fall into the trap of pride in family. This shows up especially in aristocracy, for instance.

Peter: Indeed it does, or at least it used to. Additionally, in the cultures where family is everything and the individual is subservient to the family, it can be a very imprisoning sort of context to live in.

Phillip: Yes, the cultures that practice family identity are the cultures that also practice control by the shame system, which is dreadful. Tribalism is another one of the weaknesses of our society, and family is a part of tribalism. For instance, the countries in Africa, where tribes are a foundation of society, have their problems. But you mentioned pride, which leads us into 1 Corinthians 3.

It can be tempting to have pride in what we do in the ministry of the gospel. Frankly, that’s worse than having pride in achievements or in family. We need God’s wisdom to understand and evaluate ourselves and our ministries. This applies to full-time ministers, to Sunday school teachers, to youth fellowship leaders, to home Bible study group leaders, and every other kind of ministry. We need God’s wisdom, and that’s what 1 Corinthians 3 gives us.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 3:1–4

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

Phillip: This follows on from chapter 2, where we saw the contrast of two wisdoms: the wisdom of the world, which wound up crucifying the Lord of glory in its folly; and the wisdom of God, which was made known by the Spirit of God. The passage has arisen from strife in the church: the intrusion of the wisdom of the world into the church in Corinth. The Corinthians had not been Christians for very long, therefore they were still carrying over the wisdom of the world. As a result, parties arose as people claimed as their heroes various Christian teachers. So we’re essentially dealing with the same issue through chapters 1, 2, 3, and into 4.

Peter: Is this division a marker of identity for the Corinthians?

Phillip: Yes; it’s in a sense like identifying as a Lutheran or an Anglican.

Peter: Interestingly, Paul is speaking to Christians about their lack of wisdom. These are Christians who have been drawn to God by the Spirit of wisdom. Despite this, he has some pretty harsh things to say about their behaviour and what leads to it. He says they’ve been fed with milk. They allow the flesh to dominate their thinking and behaviour; therefore, they’re going to be fed with milk again because they haven’t developed beyond that. We certainly aren’t dealing with a perfect church here. Of course, we never are. But this church was marked by jealousy and strife. Were they real Christians?

When I was a new Christian, as a young person, I was reading some books about holiness that were doing the rounds at the time. I was taught in some of these books that this passage meant that there are 2 sorts of Christians: the ‘carnal’ Christians (‘carnal’ meaning ‘of the flesh’) and the ‘Spirit-filled’ Christians. According to the books, you needed a second blessing, as it was called, to become a Spirit-filled Christian. What would you have said to my young self back then?

Phillip: I would say that you mustn’t follow that kind of teaching. This letter to the Corinthians is written, as it says in 1 Corinthians 1:2, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.” These are Christian people, and to divide Christian people is a fundamental error. Paul is not saying that there are two kinds of Christians, the carnal and the spiritual. All Christians are spiritual; if they weren’t spiritual, they wouldn’t be Christians. What he’s saying is, ‘I can’t talk to you as the spiritual Christians. You are acting childishly, and so I can’t talk to you as adults. I’m having to talk to you as if you are still children.’ He is adjusting his speech to the Corinthians as if they’re babies.

He’s using the arguments of this world, if need be, to remind them to think as adults. In fact, he uses the same imagery in 1 Corinthians 14:20,

Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

Here, he presents the problem. It’s not a question of there being 2 kinds of Christians; it’s that there are two kinds of wisdom, and these Christians are showing the world’s wisdom. So Paul reminds them to turn their minds to that which is of God, rather than the things of this world.

Peter: This is the summary at the end of chapter 3. 1 Corinthians 3:18–23

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

Phillip: The wisdom of the world has the profound quality of deception. When you achieve the wisdom of this world, it puffs you up. But that kind of worldly wisdom, that kind of arrogance, is a deception. You start to think you are something when you are nothing. God’s wisdom is quite different. So our boasting is never in human achievement. The thing that we have to boast about is that we are in Christ. Frankly, what we boast about in Christ is infinitely more valuable than the things the world boasts about. For instance, I recently saw an Olympic athlete win their gold medals, yet I couldn’t remember their name. It was a thing of which they could boast, which really is of no significance. But to be in Christ Jesus gives you everything in this world to have. Therefore, the wisdom of this world is deceptive because it tells you that having wealth, a great house, a great education, and a great job makes you significant, when in reality, you are not. It says, “You have Christ, you have eternity. You have the temple of God. So what?”

Peter: The presenting problem in Corinth, of course, is one that’s not atypical in our churches. That is the worldly problem of following the great leader: in this case, Paul or Apollos or Cephas. We are constantly, even in our circles, invited to identify ourselves with some great leader, past or present, like Calvin or Wesley. We may even identify ourselves pre-eminently with a denomination, like Anglican or Orthodox, rather than Christ. Of course, we owe much to others who have been our teachers and friends. I am not unhappy to be an Anglican, but we must remember that we are not disciples of these great ones; we are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we learn from him above all. That is true wisdom. Let’s then go back to the middle of the chapter.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 3:5–17

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Peter: Indeed. This is particularly addressing those in ministry, but as Phillip has said, in a way, we’re all in ministry. Please remember that this is written to all the Corinthians, not just the leaders. But anything we achieve for God goes back to his grace, mercy, kindness, and love, undeserving as we are. It’s interesting to see the description of God’s work here: that the result of preaching his Word is described as a field and also a building in verse 9. Then finally, Paul says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” We take that to mean the church, but of course, it’s also true of the individual. You are the temple of the Lord in whom the Spirit dwells. But the work of God comes from his grace. It makes nonsense of the misreading that we referred to before of verses 1-4, about there being 2 sorts of Christian, because he declares that all are indwelled by the Spirit of God. What then do we learn here about the workers in ministry?

Phillip: If we’re in this world’s wisdom that sees our identity in our work, we will think of our identity and value in the work of ministry that we’re doing. It sounds more pious to say, “I’m a Sunday school teacher,” rather than “I’m a shop owner,” or “I’m an engineer.” But it’s the same philosophy of identity in what one does. It is fascinating that according to verse 9, we are ‘God’s fellow workers.’ There’s no higher status than to be God’s partner. Yet we are nothing. The one who plants and the one who waters are nothing, because although God is our partner, he does the work. Yet God uses our work to do his work. So we are God’s skilled and masterly servants.

It’s not as if humans are only puppets. We’re more than that, for God gives us wisdom. God gives us an ability. That’s an extraordinary phrase which is difficult to translate. We have great abilities; we water, plant, and we lay foundations. Yet it is God who does the work through us. Therefore, while I am God’s partner, which is a terrific status, I am not anything, because God is working through me.

Furthermore, we’re united in the fact that there is one building, one foundation stone upon which we lay, yet we are diverse. Verses 6-8 speak of our diversity: being a planter, a waterer, a builder. We are doing different things, because we are individuals. This takes us back to what we were talking about earlier. It’s not just about individualism or anti-individualism, or about communalism. We work together as individuals, for as God’s partners we are assigned different tasks. Therefore, God is working through us in different and varied ways, but nobody is to think that he or she is better or worse than anybody else, because we are all working towards a united effort.

Our tasks all come from the grace of God, or the gift of God. But as individuals, we must take care of what we are doing, because we are working on the temple of God. The foundation is in the Lord Jesus Christ, as verses 10-11 say, and our task is to take care of it. We will receive wages, and we will receive a reward for our labour, because when the judgement day comes, what we have done will be revealed. If we have built with shabby materials—wood, hay, stubble—our work will be burnt up, and we’ll see that what we’ve done was of no great significance. However, if we build with the precious stones that come through the fire, then what we see will be of great significance.

Phillip: And so our work will be seen. Though we’re not talking here about salvation judgement; rather, we are talking about the judgement of our Christian life. We will be saved, but what will our life have added up to? Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20

For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.

The work we do has eternal significance, and will be seen for its significance. But it’s the quality of the work that we’re doing that matters. It’s not that I am the preacher as opposed to the musician, or the person who cleans the building, because God uses us all to bring about his purposes. It will be seen on the last day how we’ve shared in the purposes of God. Given this, we will go back to our first topic on Christian identity.

Peter: In listening to you, I’ve been thinking about life in ministry. There are times when, being the minister of a church, everyone smiles at you, and everyone compliments you (although what they say behind your back may be different). Over time, it is easy to get the impression that you are somebody, and to draw your identity from this rather than from the Lord himself. We need to be careful in saying this, of course, because there are moments when the Lord uses another person to encourage us when we need to be encouraged. But there is the danger of believing the smiles that everyone gives us and drawing our identity from that, rather than drawing our identity from the grace of God and the ultimate fact that we are in Christ Jesus.

Phillip: So when you stand before the Lord on the last day, are you going to stand as a bishop?

Peter: I’m just putting my trust and confidence in the Lord and knowing that there will be things which I have done, and things that I have failed to do, which will be drawn to my attention. It may well be that there will be people that I now think little of who are ahead of me in the kingdom that is to come, and I will rejoice in this because I’ll be a better person. But my only trust is in Jesus.

Phillip: To bring up one of our heroes, how did John Newton perceive himself and his identity?

Peter: The last words of John Newton, whose influence goes on to this very day, were, “I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Saviour.”

Phillip: That doesn’t mean that what we’ve done has no eternal significance.

Peter: No. I plant, others water, and God gives the growth. But that’s not my identity.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk from 1 Corinthians 3 on The Work of God.

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We do appreciate comments and feedback, and even questions from our many subscribers. Sadly, we haven’t got the time or resources to be able to answer each question; however, two of the comments that came in to us on the Acts 17 passage we thought would be very helpful to air in this episode of Two Ways News, before we look at the two wisdoms contrasted in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today, we will speak on 1 Corinthians chapter 2, a great passage about the two wisdoms. But before we start, we must go back to some previous episodes. I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who have written to us, and to respond to some of the questions and comments that have come through. We don’t reply to every comment, but we do read them all and take careful note of them. But there are two pieces of feedback on Acts 17 that we should pick up on.

The first piece of feedback came from our dear friend Barry, who said that he enjoyed hearing about ‘the unknown god’ regarding Acts 17:23 . However, he informed us that the ancient Greeks didn’t have a concept of religion, according to Edwin Judge, since for most people, all of life was what we would term ‘religious’. A more accurate translation of what Paul said regarding the Athenians’ understanding of spirituality might be something like, “I perceive you are very careful in your piety.” For the Greeks were so afraid of offending any gods that they built altars to unknown gods, one of which caught Paul’s eye.

Peter Jensen: Personally, I agree with this viewpoint, particularly if it’s held by Edwin Judge, the great ancient historian to whom we owe so much.

Phillip: Religion is a funny thing. I have used the language of today in my referral to the ancient Greeks as being ‘religious’. We have a general understanding of what is meant by ‘religion’—temples, sacrifices, priests, holy buildings—but it is important to acknowledge this point, because the word ‘religion’ is something that has developed over time. This word, as it is used today, comes from the 19th century, when the Raj in India had to differentiate followers of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. However, the word became especially useful in Western society when Holyoake and others invented the term ‘secularism’. At that point, religion became what was not secular, and that then defined how we refer to religion today. Our 21st-century word ‘religion’ is frankly unhelpful, because it implies that anything ‘secular’ is the norm, and anything other than a secularist worldview is a religious worldview, which is oftentimes deemed ‘irrational’ and ‘superstitious’. When we refer to the scriptures, that division between secularism and religion does not appear; therefore, we need to be careful not to impose it onto the Bible when we read it. So thank you Barry for raising this point. We need to express clearly that ‘secularism’ is atheism, a modern invention, which then created ‘religion’ as a modern invention.

Peter: It’s worth noting too that the word ‘secular’ in itself doesn’t mean ‘without religion’. It means ‘things of this world’. There are secular priests, for example.

Phillip: The Catholic Church has secular priests who are “out in the world” as opposed to being monastic.

Peter: Indeed. It’s also important because here in the state of New South Wales we have what is called ‘secular education’, but that doesn’t mean it is anti-religious or even unfair.

Phillip: No; it just means education about the world.

Peter: Now onto a point raised by Sharon, which is again very helpful indeed. Sharon recently visited Greece, during which the tour guide drew her attention to the fact that there is an existing extra-biblical ancient source explaining the origin of the altar to the unknown god. She refers to Diogenes’ ‘Lives of Eminent Philosophers’, in which he recounts the philosopher Epimendides setting up several altars to the unknown gods near the Areopagus at around 600 BC. This certainly corroborates the evidence in Acts 17, although it seems to suggest that the altars were for several unknown gods rather than one. Regardless, this is particularly relevant because Paul also quotes from Epimenides later in the same speech. I might add that this point is made in the commentaries by David Peterson and F.F. Bruce, for those who are interested. But we would like to thank Sharon for this very enlightening and helpful comment.

Phillip: Indeed. The question is, though, do I believe it now because the history books refer to it, or do I believe it because the Bible says it?

Peter: That’s an important question because there’s been much dispute around this topic. For example, there was previously no reference to King David outside the Bible, leading to skepticism over whether he existed. However, a recent archeological find has revealed that David did exist. But we didn’t need that archeological find to know he existed; we have the Bible.

Phillip: A similar thing happened with Pontius Pilate. In the 1960s, archaeologists discovered a stone with his name and title. But I believed in Pontius Pilate before then.

Peter: What we need to recognise is that even the greatest historians only know about a small fraction of what happened in the past. If I could spend a week in Israel at the time that Jesus was there, how much more would I know about what life was like?

Phillip: The old saying goes, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” It’s important to remember this when people say that because there is no evidence for something other than the Bible. The Bible is evidence.

However, we must come to today’s passage in 1 Corinthians 2 about the two wisdoms that we deal with. Part of the contemporary attack on Christianity is about the notion that it’s anti-intellectual. Indeed, some Christians are profoundly distrustful of learning to the point that they attack modern science, modern education, and other areas of the wisdom of this world. But is Paul’s attack on wisdom in line with this anti-intellectualism?

Peter: Not if we see in the second half of the chapter the embrace of the wisdom he’s talking about. There are two wisdoms: that of the sinful world and that of God.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 2:6–16

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Peter: So the wisdom of God is not opposed to great human thought. Paul quotes the philosophers, thereby demonstrating that there are wonderful things that occur through human thought; that’s the way God created us. But the wisdom of God does differ from that of sinful human culture in thinking about fundamental issues. How do we experience this? What do you think is the best way of describing it?

Phillip: Take the Tower of Babel for example. There was great wisdom and great foolishness in what the people were doing. For they used technology. They understood how to make bricks without stone, which was impressive. Indeed, God, when he views what they’ve done, says that they will be able to do anything. The wisdom demonstrated here is described as “the wisdom of this age” and “the rulers of this world”. Every age has its rulers who impose their wisdom, and whose wisdom passes away with them. From the late 19th century through to the late 20th century, the wisdom of eugenics was imposed upon our societies. In the hands of Adolf Hitler, of course, it did incredible damage to the whole world, but it didn’t just show up in Germany. It was here in Sydney and Melbourne, too. It was this way of thinking that gave rise to a whole host of terrible social problems, such as the Stolen Generation amongst the Indigenous people.

But of course, these rulers didn’t understand God’s hidden wisdom. Now, the rulers that Paul is talking about in Corinthians demonstrated their wisdom in their execution of the Lord of Gory. Here were men and women, face to face with the Prince of Life, and they killed him. But that was God’s hidden plan: that he who was the ruler of the world would become a man rejected by humans, in order that he may pay the price for our sinfulness.

Peter: Indeed. Human wisdom can accomplish great and terrible things. We are surrounded by advances in medicine, but we have also created atomic power. But the Apostle speaks here of fundamental wisdom. Wisdom is defined relationally, as being the true knowledge of God: the fundamental wisdom without which all other wisdom is lost. It’s a wisdom which is secret and hidden. The wisdom of God is God’s determination for our glory. It is hidden, but it is eternal in God. Furthermore, it is the wisdom which rules the world, and which we need to discover. But we can’t discover it because we are sinful people. So how does that relate to the way in which human beings, as God’s image-bearers, achieve so much in the world?

Phillip: I am happy with that way of putting it, and that God has a plan for our glory. What lies ahead of us? The world doesn’t know. But God tells us what lies ahead of us: our glory, that he planned to bring about through the death and resurrection of his son. That was a great secret. The wisdom we have is built on a lie. The scientific revolution has been a wonderful thing, but of course, neither rationalism nor the scientific revolution of empiricism can ever tell me what’s on your mind and what’s in your heart. If you can’t tell me what’s on a human’s mind or heart, you certainly can’t tell me what’s in God’s mind or heart.

Peter: Do you accept that the true wisdom that we need, the fundamental wisdom, is relational?

Phillip: It is, because it’s God’s wisdom of revelation: not of rationalism or empiricism, but of knowing the mind of God.

Peter: It’s not just general revelation, but the revelation of a person.

Phillip: It’s knowing the mind of a personal God as opposed to knowing the functioning of an impersonal force. Physicists may understand the functioning of a force, but no one will understand the mind of a personal God. But the difference is very great. What we have from the personal God is his plans for us, for the universe that he’s made, but also for the future. Plans which involved hiding his wisdom so that the rulers of this world could kill his son. In Acts 2:23, Peter says, “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”

There’s the great plan of God: our glory through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection, which the rulers of this world did not understand, otherwise they would not have put into effect the plan of God. But the mind of God is very personal, for he’s a personal God. Therefore, the way in which we know him is by the revelation of the Spirit.

Peter: I like the way you have put things, particularly in comparing God’s wisdom with ourselves. It’s very difficult to know another person. You can tell certain things about them, but having a deeper understanding of them requires a disclosure from them. This is what we call ‘revelation’: God’s disclosure of himself without which we could not know him. This is connected with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Phillip: That is what 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 is about.

Peter: We learn a great deal about the work of the Holy Spirit in that passage, because the Spirit knows what humans cannot know. The Spirit knows the mind of God, because he is God. So in this new age of the Spirit following the resurrection of Jesus, it means that the Holy Spirit reveals what the spirit of this world has never understood. Even given the remarkable things that human beings do, even the most brainy person cannot understand the things of God unless it is revealed to them. That is because of human sin, particularly.

But we do know God. It comes to us through the Spirit-inspired words of the gospel, found in the Bible, and it’s received by us through the illumination of the Spirit.

Phillip: But it’s more than just sinfulness. It’s also that as creatures, we cannot know the mind of the Creator without revelation. I can’t know your mind without you speaking to me. You are human, you are personal, therefore I cannot know what you’re thinking.

Peter: So whenever God discloses himself, he does it in a way that he doesn’t have to, but he chooses to out of his grace. This is wonderful.

Phillip: It’s marvellous. But there are two sides to this. One side is the public revelation of himself through Jesus’ death and resurrection. The other is the opening of our minds to understand what is being said.

That illumination is the work of the Spirit. For here is the great divide between the elect and the non-elect by their reception of the gospel. For the natural person hears the gospel and calls it folly, whereas the person enlightened by the Spirit hears the gospel and sees it as the truth by which to live. He hears the wisdom of God rather than the folly of the preacher. Then the spiritual person judges all things from this worldview of wisdom that comes from God, which is so contrasted to the worldview that comes from the rulers of this age. The key to evangelism is this enlightening work of the Spirit, which in turn gives us the key to our wisdom.

Peter: Phillip, you have the gifts of an evangelist. So what difference does it make in your evangelistic work to know what 1 Corinthians 2 teaches us?

Phillip: It makes a lot of difference, in terms of the salvation of people and how the gospel goes forth, but also in the activity of day-by-day preaching the gospel. Firstly, it makes you prayerful, because it’s the work of the spirit that makes the difference in people’s hearts, rather than the quality of your presentation or anything like that. It drives you to your knees that God would open the hearts and minds of people. That gives you humility, because when people are converted, you know that it’s not because of your own gifts.

I remember giving the same exact talk at 2 separate university missions. At one university, hardly anybody was converted, but at the second, many people were converted. They were the same talks given by the same preacher. The difference was the great plan and the purposes of God: that is, the work of the Holy Spirit in the opening of minds. So when people get converted, I’ve got no grounds for calling myself a great preacher. In fact, if they were converted because I was a great preacher, I suspect they weren’t truly converted.

You must have humility as an evangelist, but this will also give you confidence, because there is nothing so simple as the gospel that, under the Spirit, can convert the greatest and the least of minds. So I know God has his people who he’s calling through the gospel. My job is to call; he will bring that message. It’s this hidden message. 1 Peter 1 tells us that the prophets of old didn’t know what they were preaching. They preached faithfully, but the sufferings and the glories of Christ were hidden from them. Again, in 1 Thessalonians, Paul knew that the Thessalonians were chosen because they responded positively to the gospel. Romans 8:5–8 says

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Plain and simple is our message. But the power of God is in the message to transform, to enlighten the hearts and minds of people, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of that wisdom that enables people to see everything differently.

Peter: There are 2 points I would like to add. The first is that even the elect may resist the gospel to begin with, but then comes the moment when they accept it. So the fact that people may reject the gospel now doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t accept it in the future. That means you must persist in speaking.

The second point is that the 1 Thessalonians passage you refer to illustrates not only God’s great work and the elect people, but also the way in which he uses us to do his great work. It’s very kind of him to do so. The passage also talks about the way that the Thessalonians responded. It’s as if God works through human responses and human obedience, even though he doesn’t need to.

Phillip has been talking as an evangelist, and I want to conclude by mentioning that I teach doctrine, and 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 is great for christology, the teaching about Jesus Christ. It is also great for teaching the grace of God, for it tells us that our salvation depends upon him. Additionally, it is wonderful in teaching anthropology: our doctrine of humanity, our understanding of sin, and the inability of human beings to understand the fundamental truth of the gospel. Furthermore, it informs us about pneumatology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Apparently Phillip Jensen has also written a book on pneumatology, The Coming of the Holy Spirit,1 which is so helpfully written. About half of it is taken up with appendices on different subjects to do with the Holy Spirit, but the first half provides an exposition of the motion of the Holy Spirit.

1

Phillip D. Jensen, The Coming of the Holy Spirit, 2022 (Matthias Media)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk from St Andrews Cathedral City Night Church called The Secret Wisdom of God.

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Freely available, supported by generosity.

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Sign up to support us

As we continue in our studies on 1 Corinthians, we learn a lot about Paul the evangelist. This helps us in understanding evangelism ourselves and our evangelistic efforts.

However, before we get there, we need to backtrack a little to our episode about Bondi and antisemitism to clarify some of the things that we said. I hope you find these clarifications helpful, though the subject of evangelism in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 is more important.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Following our recent episode Bondi and Antisemitism, we need to make some qualifications about the things we discussed, for we are worried that some of our points were not expressed as well as we intended.

Firstly, I think we gave the impression that we thought antisemitism was a new phenomenon that did not exist in the 1950s. That isn’t the case, and the history of Sydney’s golf clubs, for example, indicates just that. At that time, Jews weren’t allowed to join several of the leading golf clubs of Sydney, which led to them creating their own club, Monash Country Club up at Ingleside. In one sense, this was simply part of the tribalism of the early 20th century in Sydney. The Roman Catholics were also excluded from golf clubs and, like the Jews, they founded St Michael’s at Little Bay. This aspect of history reminds us that there’s no such thing as a golden age of sinlessness. However, we must not generalise tribalism to such an extent as to fail to notice that antisemitism was a particularly nasty feature of it, and had its own distinctive characteristics. As a matter of fact, the Catholics and the Protestants got on with each other better than the way either of them treated the Jews. In fact, Christianity has had a very sad history of antisemitism throughout the centuries.

Yet the antisemitism of recent years is more explicit, more hateful, and more potentially violent than it was in the 1950s. I don’t recall, either historically or from our experience, that back then there was any likelihood of people shooting or bombing Jewish people. The synagogues in our suburb then didn’t have guards standing outside them, whereas the synagogues in my suburb now are surrounded with guards and police. Antisemitism has become much more explicit. There are all kinds of reasons why: firstly, there has been a re-emergence of the Nazi party, which is almost unimaginable to people who grew up in the 1950s, after our nation had fought against them. Another contributing factor is that we now have an Islamic community of great size in Australia, which we didn’t have in previous generations, creating a division in our society that we didn’t have previously. Thirdly, there’s been a shift towards the ideology of identity politics, of oppressors and oppressed tribes. There is also the community response to the war in Gaza, and especially to the way in which Israel prosecutes that war. And of course, there is the historical ignorance of our society. We don’t teach about the Holocaust; we don’t teach about the history of the establishment of the State of Israel; we don’t teach the history of the Bible; we don’t teach the history of the Middle East. Thus, there is a significant amount of ignorance in our community about these matters.

One of the factors that I believe contributes to our ignorance is the secularists, who often run our education and our government, because they fail to understand or respect religious motivations. They are against religions in general, and they lump them all in one category called ‘faith communities’, because they don’t understand the differences and the motivations involved. This can be seen in the way the government has tried to equate antisemitism with Islamophobia, even though they cannot really be equated. This has resulted in our government being unwilling to protect the Jews. I noticed that the Prime Minister, in making a public apology, said that “we could not” defend the Jewish people, rather than “we did not”, implying that it was somehow beyond our capacity to do so. These many contributing factors have given rise to why we are going to have a Royal Commission into antisemitism. But as we wish to reiterate, antisemitism has been running for over a century within Sydney as a community.

That brings us to the second qualification that we would like to make, which is about the usage of certain terms. How do you understand terms such as ‘antisemitism’, ‘Zionism’, and ‘the Israeli government’? How do these 3 ideas interact?

Peter Jensen: Antisemitism has had an extremely long history, whereas Zionism, being the belief in the right of the Jews to have the modern state of Israel, only goes back to the post-Second World War period. People, of course, have very strong opinions about this. Those in favour support sending the Jews back to their homeland, an event which occurred during that period of time. However, this action led to negative consequences. So Zionism is a political matter. But it’s worth saying that you can be against the idea that there should be a state of Israel whilst not being antisemitic; it depends on your reasons as to why you hold that opinion. Likewise, Israel’s government makes political, economic and military decisions which we may or may not agree with. If, for example, you disagree with the way in which they are conducting the present war, it doesn’t automatically mean you are antisemitic.

Phillip: There were people who objected to the ways in which the allies prosecuted the Second World War, after all, including those who objected to the dropping of the atom bombs. How a government conducts a war is a political decision that you can agree or disagree with.

Peter: I have been reading a book about the conduct of war, where the author talks about how the British prosecuted the war in Europe with carpet bombing and other such things. There were many people who objected to these actions, and some of the stories that this man brings up in his book highlight that war is a horrible and ugly thing. I hope that I’ve been clear in saying that antisemitism is wrong, but the issue of Zionism and the activities of the Israeli government are matters for discussion, and differences of opinion can arise about those topics without those opinions necessarily being antisemitic.

Phillip: But there is an overlap, for the antisemitic person will be anti-Zionist and will be against the Israeli government’s decisions.

Peter: I fear so. Furthermore, given the fiery nature of this discussion, it is interesting to see how much the war in Gaza has been covered within Western media, yet there are other terrible things going on elsewhere that hardly get a mention. What are the reasons for this?

Phillip: You could argue that the West’s involvement is part of it too, but you raise a good point: why don’t we hear about Sudan? There are many Sudanese people in Australia, yet we don’t hear much about the horrendous things that are happening there. However, that is a discussion for another day. For now, we will move on to 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, which is on the subject of evangelism.

When Paul came to evangelise to the Corinthians, he taught us how to fulfill the Lord’s commands to go into all the world.

Peter: Inherent in what he says here, and even throughout the whole chapter, are key insights into how God works in bringing people to himself. Fundamentally, what we see here is yet another example of the way in which God’s grace and love for the undeserving is at work, how salvation is from grace, and how we cannot praise ourselves for choosing God.

Phillip: Yes, although as I indicated, the passage is about evangelism. We have been given the task of evangelism, which is about what we say and how we say it. What we say is the message of the cross: a message that is not attractive to the world, neither then nor today. How we talk about the message of the cross is described in 1 Corinthians 2, for Paul mentions in verse 3 that he proclaimed it “in weakness and in fear and much trembling.” Many people, when they come to evangelise, have a certain fear and trembling just like the Apostle Paul did.

Peter: To read from 1 Corinthians 2:1-5,

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

The great Apostle Paul, the evangelist who stood up against authorities that were threatening to kill him, reveals here his own weakness and fear. I find this so encouraging, because I personally find evangelism very hard, especially one-to-one evangelism, and particularly amongst people that I know, because of my own fear. It’s encouraging, then, to see Paul admit this.

Phillip: Indeed, because within the New Testament, speaking the gospel boldly is one of the characteristics of evangelism. In Ephesians 5, Paul asks for prayer that he might be bold enough to speak as he ought to speak. It’s part of the fact that we are, essentially, clay vessels. What matters is not the appearance of the vessel; rather, it is that we contain the gospel, the power of God. It is important that we understand Paul’s teaching here in terms of ourselves. Like you said, it’s encouraging, because we also fear. But it’s also about the nature of evangelism, that it isn’t about being a great orator. What is more important is the humility of the message of the cross.

The cross assures us that the way of salvation is not by conquest, but by sacrifice and service in the Lord Jesus Christ. Having been saved by his sacrifice, we do not preach the gospel by overwhelming people. We have a message, but the message is an invitation to accept the sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour. Paul doesn’t come proclaiming the testimony of God using lofty language; he is not on his high horse speaking down to people. He deliberately proclaims the gospel by highlighting the humiliation of Jesus, and hence the humility of the cross. Paul does not portray himself as being the great man in Corinth. He’s the humble visitor in Corinth, building tents for a living.

Peter: As a doctrine teacher, I often turn to 1 Corinthians 2 in teaching the doctrine and the work of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul tells us here, as you say, that his speech was not in plausible words of wisdom. He is not like someone trying to sell a product as in our day. He attributes his success simply to the work of the Holy Spirit in opening people’s eyes, despite the fact that he speaks to them in a very plain way. The Holy Spirit has done this. Once again, we are reminded of God’s grace in bringing people to himself. It’s God’s work.

Phillip: It is, because he describes the message as foolishness. Evangelism is about speaking, talking, proclaiming, telling. It seems strange, the idea of aiming to convert the world by simply telling people things. It’s not in doing miracles, in signs and wonders, or even through clever arguments and rhetorical tricks, but in opening hearts and minds to believe. But that’s the work of the Spirit who comes with our speaking. Because as we speak the Word of God, so the Spirit works in the hearts of the recipients. When Paul describes his preaching in 1 Thessalonians 1:4-5, he says

We know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

As the Holy Spirit comes upon God’s people, they are fully convinced of the words that are being spoken in 1 Corinthians 2. That is because the purpose of evangelism is that our faith may rest on the power of God, not on the wisdom of man. When a very clever person evangelises with very clever arguments, the temptation is to put our faith in the person. C.S. Lewis was indeed a very clever man who used very clever arguments, but I would rather rely upon Jesus than C.S. Lewis to be saved. In fact, I’m sure C.S. Lewis would prefer that too. Wonderful miracle workers point to the messenger, and so our faith is in the cross of Christ, which is the purpose of God.

Peter: One of the best books that I read as a teenager was Dr. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God1 which I still recommend because it reminds us of some of these points. Returning to today’s topic, however, what do you think is the lesson about evangelism for us in 1 Corinthians 2?

Phillip: There are many things to take from this, really. Evangelism is about simply and plainly telling God’s truth. That’s why any Christian can be involved. If you can talk at all, you can tell people Christ is Lord.

Peter: But let me ask you a question. Paul says here that his message about the crucified saviour was regarded as ridiculous, and so it was. But 2,000 years later, the cross is something else entirely: it is everywhere. Is our message ridiculous to the Western world in which we live?

Phillip: It is, but it’s ridiculous for 2 reasons. The first is that people don’t understand it, but the second is that people do understand it. When you say that Jesus died, they say, ‘Yes, Jesus died for our sins’, because that’s the standard Sunday School answer that we were taught as children. But people have no understanding of what sin is or how Jesus dying for sins could make any difference. In our gospel summary Two Ways to Live2, we highlight 3 great doctrines that are essential to have as background information to understand the cross and the resurrection. If you don’t understand the creation, sin and judgement, Jesus’ death and resurrection don’t make sense.

Peter: So why does Paul say that he preaches Christ crucified?

Phillip: Because that is the one message that makes sense of the 3 doctrines of creation, sin, and the judgement that is to come. But without that background, you can’t make sense of the cross. In some ways, the connection between the Old and the New Testament is what we’re talking about. But it’s more than that: when people do understand the cross, they think it’s foolish because that message surely cannot bring about the change of the world, even though historically it’s quite manifest that it has. Paul writes later, in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures

The phrase, ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’ appears twice, because without the Scriptures, you won’t understand either the death or the resurrection of Jesus. But this has to do with understanding, not apologetics. I'm afraid that people confuse apologetics and evangelism.

Peter: To return to the observation I made before about myself and doctrine, evangelism is the work of God the Holy Spirit.

Phillip: Absolutely, and to leave that out is a great mistake.

Peter: Indeed. Evangelism does not rely on human wisdom, but is the work of God by his spirit in the heart of unbelievers. One of my favourite passages is 2 Corinthians 4:1-6

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

This passage refers to unbelievers as being ‘blind’, unable to see the light of the gospel. It refers to Paul as preaching the gospel, summarised aptly as “Jesus Christ as Lord”. But then, to summarise verse 6, the light is switched on and we see the face of Jesus Christ in all his glory. The switching on of the light is God’s work by his Holy Spirit. So the essence of evangelism is certainly about preaching the message to people who cannot believe. Then those whom God has chosen for that moment believe because he has turned the light on.

Phillip: That’s how we know the Thessalonians had been chosen, because of the way they responded. One of my favorite passages is 1 Thessalonians 2:13

And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

The Holy Spirit does the great work of evangelism through human messengers, by this great divine message of the cross, in the hearts and minds of hearers, as he brings them to new birth. The evangelist in this whole system is the Holy Spirit, and we are the microphone, the vessel which contains the powerful treasure of the gospel.

Peter: To conclude, evangelism is God’s work through his people, and therefore, all of us are evangelists who should take the opportunity to share the gospel, trusting in the Lord that if he pleases, he will open the eyes and hearts of the people we’re speaking to. But are there not people who are gifted as evangelists?

Phillip: There are, because we know Philip is called an evangelist in the book of Acts. Ephesians 4 also speaks about the gifts of the Lord Jesus Christ, which include the evangelists alongside the apostles and prophets. Additionally, Timothy is told to do the work of an evangelist. Thus, there are people who have a particular giftedness in evangelism.

Peter: How do you account for that?

Phillip: God in his kindness and Christ in his plans has given people this gift, but it’s not exclusive. It’s like prophecy: there are certain who are prophets. “Are all prophets?” writes Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12. No. But in Chapter 14, he tells us to seek prophecy, and he says that we can all prophesy in time. The universality of our prophetic abilities is given to Christians, because whenever Christians speak of Jesus Christ as Lord, according to Revelation 14, it’s the Spirit of Christ that puts the word of prophecy in the mouth, and our words of prophecy are of the lordship of Jesus.

2

Read all about the Two Ways to Live gospel presentation here.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this series of talks from Mid Year Conference 2004 on the Doctrine of Evangelism.

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Is pride a virtue or a vice? Is it right or even wise to boast of oneself? Traditionally, modesty has long been commended and pride decried. But today, we encourage the young to be proud of themselves, and we hear celebrities of all kinds proclaiming pride in themselves and their achievements. What place, then, does pride have in the Christian life? Should we be proud to be Christians?

The ancient world, as with the modern, places great emphasis on learning, education and wisdom. The human ability to think deeply is one of the great distinctive characteristics of our species. But does God set limits on human wisdom? Can we judge God or even know him by our wisdom?

The gospel always undermines human pride in ways we never expect, and so I hope you enjoy our discussion in this episode. Thank you to those who have inspired conversations by contacting us and providing feedback; if you want to do the same, please write to us at respond@twm.email.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter Jensen: Continuing in our series on 1 Corinthians, we are now moving into the body of chapter 1, starting at verse 18. In the preceding verses, as we discussed last time, Paul talks about the divisions in the church. He concludes his point by mentioning that while he did baptise some people, he says, verse 17, “For Christ did not send me to baptise but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” If you asked a class at a theological college to finish the sentence in verse 17, assuming they’d never read it before, I doubt that they would finish it with these words, “lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” It is astonishing, because we often don’t see how central the cross is, nor the way it speaks of the power of God. We think about God in terms of miracles and of healings, but the cross exhibits the power of God in an extraordinary way.

Phillip Jensen: What we have in that passage is a contrast, not simply between baptism and preaching, but between eloquent words and the power of the cross.

Peter: In fact, the gospel preached by Christ and by Paul was ridiculous to the world. Any modern advertiser would strongly discourage their client from selling their product in the way that the Apostle Paul was preaching the gospel. In our day and age, we don’t realise how incredibly absurd the Christian message was in the 1st century, firstly because it was about the Jewish God. Although some Gentiles were understandably drawn to the Jews, they were a minority, and they were looked upon as strange. The Jewish religion was so unusual in the pagan world that it was regarded as something ridiculous, and thus the gospel was profoundly disregarded.

Phillip: Even within the Jewish framework, the idea of a crucified Christ is nonsensical. It’s hard for us to imagine now how unbelievable it was to proclaim that your god was crucified. Within the scriptures, it is said that anyone who hangs from a tree is under the curse of God.

Secondly, from the Roman point of view, someone who was crucified was a failure of a person. One of the oldest pieces of graffiti in Rome, dating back to around 200 AD, depicts a man named ‘Alexaminos’ worshipping a crucified man with a donkey’s head. This piece of graffiti was making fun of the idea that someone’s god would be crucified. It was a particularly absurd idea because crucifixion was not only cruel, but it was the most degrading, shameful way of being executed. No Roman citizen was ever supposed to be crucified; it was what happened to slaves, to foreigners, and to rebels. So this gospel about the crucifixion was nonsense to the Jews and to the Romans.

Peter: These days, if we were the apostles, we would probably agree to tell people what Jesus said, and of the miracles he performed, but to never talk about his disastrous end.

Phillip: Indeed, we would want to focus on how Jesus can satisfy and give meaning to your life. There’s a whole range of things Jesus can do for you which, from a public relations point of view, are much more interesting and attractive than his crucifixion.

Peter: Funnily enough, that sounds a bit like some modern preaching that we hear.

Phillip: Yes, it’s the idea that we must emphasise the positive rather than the negative: that we should not mention sin, judgement, or Jesus’ crucifixion.

Peter: That’s right. But not only was the idea of God being crucified unbelievable; the resurrection was equally abhorrent and absurd. Before the invention of modern medicine, your body was your enemy. The length of life was much shorter than it is today. The pain and suffering that people put up with is now unimaginable. Today, a problem like a rotten tooth can be resolved within 24 hours, but back then, it could cause lifelong problems. If you did have an operation of some sort, there would be no kind of pain relief. The body was, then, something that you wanted to get rid of.

Phillip: There was also a philosophical aspect to the relationship between a person and their body.

Peter: Upon death, the spirit was believed to leave the body. Within that framework, if you were crucified, the spirit that left the body would be attached still to the earth. You could not ascend to the heavens, even if you were crucified as an innocent. If we were sitting with the apostles, discussing the most convincing way to preach the gospel into the world, we would say, “Let’s talk about what Jesus said, and the miracles he performed. But we should avoid the resurrection, and the idea inherent in the resurrection that every human being would be resurrected.”

Phillip: What is the connection between Jesus’ resurrection and the promise of everybody being resurrected?

Peter: It’s eschatology again: that is, the study of what the Bible teaches about the end of all things. For what Daniel 12 teaches us is that there will be a moment when everyone who is in the dust of the earth will rise, and God will create a new heaven and a new earth. He will revise all things and set us in this new world. But when we get to 1 Corinthians 15, we will discover how the body is utterly transformed and suitable for the new world. But here, we have the resurrection of all human beings: both those who believe and those who don’t — though the fate of each is going to be different.

Phillip: This was where the Pharisees and the Sadducees disagreed. For what they disagreed about was this eschatological resurrection that you mentioned.

Peter: Indeed, and Jesus is the first fruit. The resurrection of Jesus is extraordinary. Theologically, it is the evidence that God has introduced the last days, because the first resurrection has occurred.

Phillip: When Paul preaches about that in Acts 17, the audience mocks him. They aren’t necessarily mocking Jesus’ resurrection, but the entire concept of a person being resurrected from the dead.

Peter: You wouldn’t want to preach this gospel in a million years. But we will now return to this idea of the cross and its connection to God’s revelation of himself.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 1:19–21

For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

The desire of people is to decide for themselves who God is, by human reason or by seeing some mighty works. But the gospel is a revelation from God. ‘Revelation’ is a fascinating word, for Christians use it in a way that the non-Christian world doesn’t always understand. The word ‘revelation’ means ‘uncovering’, or a ‘disclosure’ of something. Revelation in this context is not the result of human searching or inquiring, but the result of God showing us who he is through the cross and the resurrection.

Peter: But in the Old Testament, we’re told that the creation is a revelation of God. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” What is the connection between the cross and God’s revelation?

Phillip: While the heavens made clear the glory of God, people do not hear or see. For God has revealed himself by what he has created, but because of our evil, we suppress the truth of God’s revelation in creation. It’s the sinfulness of us humans that prevents us from seeing the truth. There’s no lack of evidence about God, but there is a lack of desire to know and to relate to God, because God rules over us. Obedience is not what we want; instead, we want to sit in judgement on God by human wisdom. That’s why we come to verse 19, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” This verse quotes from Isaiah 29, which talks about the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem. At that point, the empire, having destroyed city after city, arrived at Jerusalem, intending to destroy it. But out of nowhere, they packed up and went home.

Why did they pack up and go home? Because God sent them home. God predicted it would happen, and it did. All the Israelites had to do was trust God, for he was going to do it. So all the wise prophecies and expectations from the Assyrians and the Jews were proven false, because God decided to thwart the wisdom of the wise. God has decided not to be known by wisdom; in fact, he uses his wisdom to thwart our wisdom. Clever people think they can understand everything, which is of course nonsense. You can learn certain things from empiricism, testing, surveys, and by rationalism, especially through mathematics. But you cannot learn what a person chooses to hide. The Enlightenment of the 18th century enthroned humans instead of God, and thus enthroned human reason instead of God’s wisdom. In the arrogance of the Enlightenment, we decided that God is answerable to humans. But God’s choice is to reveal himself to whomever he chooses to. It’s the same as ours in that regard. For example, we once had an older brother named Ralph. You will never know what he was like, unless you knew him personally or unless we revealed to you what Ralph was like. Personal knowledge requires not empiricism or rationalism, but revelation.

Peter: This means that the way into the knowledge of God is humility. It’s the willingness to listen and to hear. It is not the way of pride and boastfulness. Calvin begins his great work Institutes of the Christian Religion by putting the knowledge of God at the very center of things, and by asserting that there is a connection between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. He says that the knowledge of ourselves has to be the knowledge that we have nothing, we are nothing, and we are sinful people. Our only way of knowing God is through God’s revelation of himself.

If we could come up with some philosophical proof of God’s existence, we could award ourselves medals. But that doesn’t actually relate you to God. It doesn’t mean that God is God for you because you have proved his existence. On the contrary, your pride may exempt you from that. It’s not that God and the gospel lack wisdom or power.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 1:22–25

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Peter: This makes me think of the cross of Christ, once regarded as so abhorrent that it was unmentionable in polite circles; now, the cross can be seen throughout the world. The cross has conquered the world. That is the power of God.

Phillip: It’s astonishing that the cross is the most recognised symbol in the world. It testifies to the fact that what was once completely powerless, a crucified man, is more powerful than anybody ever imagined. That which we think is foolish, a message about a man being crucified, is wiser than anything anybody ever imagined.

Peter: Let us return to this extraordinary point about the knowledge of God resting upon his revelation.

Phillip: But it’s not the universal revelation of God that we’re talking about here. It isn’t the creation revelation of God that all men see.

Peter: Let’s refer to the text to see whether you’re correct: in 1:24-25, Paul says

But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Phillip: Those verses repeat Paul’s point in verse 18, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Peter: Indeed, what we have read is so important, so heart wrenching. Our sin is so great that we cannot believe that we can receive this salvation.

According to some interpretations, when the gospel is preached, it is up to you to believe it. In a way, that’s true, but you must understand that when you do believe it, you only believe it because the light of the truth has shone in your heart, so that you may see the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, it’s God’s summons through his Holy Spirit that brings us to salvation. The reason that we tell you this is so that we cannot boast. As the hymn goes

Naked, come to thee for dress;

Helpless, look to thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

The salvation we are talking about is entirely the work of God in its supreme achievement, its accomplishment, and its application to us. For we are called into the knowledge of God by the Holy Spirit.

Phillip: As Paul continues through verses 26–31

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Peter: Is there still a temptation for us to boast in our strength, as there was among the Corinthians?

Phillip: Of course, there always is. In fact, it’s a modern practice to talk about being proud of oneself. Pride has now become a virtue in certain circles, but pride is never of the people of God. Our boast is in another: Christ Jesus. We are not significant in any shape, form or fashion of this world. The reality is that we’re unimpressive, we’re unimportant, and we’re weak. This is why the rich find it so hard to be saved, though it is possible. The Countess of Huntingdon, a famous and wealthy woman of the 18th century, said in regards to verse 26,

Blessed be God, it does not say “any mighty,” “any noble”; it says “many mighty,” “many noble.” I owe my salvation to the letter “m.” If it had been “not any noble,” where would the countess have been?

She knew that she was not saved because she was wealthy or significant or had the right family connections. She was saved because of the Lord Jesus Christ’s death. The death of Jesus empties us of all pride, of all self, as we simply cling to the cross. So it’s the basis of true piety that our boast is only in the Lord.

This affects so many things, such as evangelism. People often confuse apologetics, arguments, and philosophical debates with evangelism. However, the difference is that you don’t have to read up on all possible arguments to preach the gospel. In fact, it’s better that you simply tell people about the Lord Jesus Christ and his death for them.

People also confuse evangelism with miracles. Some speak of ‘power evangelism’, the performing of miracles to persuade people to turn to Christ. But it is the death of the Lord Jesus Christ which is the great power of God demonstrated in this world. This brings us back to the subject of divisions in the church. Because when I think I’m somebody, then I am tempted to fight with others; but when I recognise that without the Lord Jesus Christ, I am nobody, but with Christ, I am only one of the saved, that diminishes the fight, the pride, the quarrelling.

Peter: Boasting is not wrong; it’s what you boast in that can be right or wrong. You can boast about the achievements of your children, of your nation, of your own accomplishments, but that is all garbage. As this chapter concludes in verse 31, “As it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”

We as Christians should not boast in our own achievements, our own righteousness, our own intelligence, or anything of that matter. Our boast is simply in the Lord because we are saved in him. To our readers, I ask the question: do you believe that? Is your boast only in the Lord Jesus, and what he has done for you in dying for you on the cross?

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Church division dishonours our Lord and creates great pain amongst his people. Sadly, it is all too frequent in our experience. But what is the nature of church unity, and what level of priority should we give to it? Clarity of thought and expression is very important when painful disagreements are being addressed; this is particularly true when we discuss the nature of unity and the church.

In Corinth was the disunited church of God. This is the issue that Paul discusses in his first letter to the Corinthians. However, we must remember that he not only addresses the particular situation of the Corinthian church, but also “all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Since the tragedy in Sydney, with the shooting of 15 mainly Jewish people at their Hanukkah festival, our nation has been struggling with unity and with discord. Our government has talked more about social cohesion, which is a difficult concept to make sense of; subsequently, they are struggling to make meaningful changes. Our national government in particular has demonstrated the problem with their legislation, which has led to further disagreements as it has displayed the deep divisions within our society, for nobody could agree about almost any element that was involved in this massacre. The public media, in its typical judgemental fashion, demonstrated the same kind of divisiveness, because instead of reporting on what the government had decided, they spent pages talking about the divisions within the government, particularly within the opposition parties. The political mindset of journalists prioritises fighting, for division is more interesting to report than the decisions of governments.

But we Christians have to be careful in our criticisms about divisions. Within our churches, we also often have divisions, which are painful and dishonouring to the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what we’re going to deal with when we look at 1 Corinthians, for we find that such divisions are the subject of chapter 1.

Peter Jensen: Could you clarify why you have chosen 1 Corinthians in particular?

Phillip: Because I believe in all the Bible, as you do. But I chose this particular part because as we read and talk about the Bible, we discuss the significance of passages in a particular context which have a general application, for general truths are being spoken. It’s typical of the New Testament to see that the Apostle Paul appeals to the great fundamental truths of the gospel in order to address the particular situations of Corinth. So out of these particular contexts come universal principles.

Peter: In our last episode, we talked about the introduction to 1 Corinthians. I would like to refer back to this wonderful introduction, which is a very positive description of the church. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 1:2

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.

This is a very positive, wonderful description of the church in Corinth. Subsequently, you could hardly believe what he says next.

Phillip: Paul is particularly addressing the church in Corinth, but the letter is not written exclusively to Corinth; it’s to the church of God. It’s to anyone who calls upon the Lord from any place. That begs the question: what is the church, and how do divisions fit into it?

Peter: Paul describes divisions in 1 Corinthians 1:10-17

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgement. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarrelling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptised in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptised none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptised in my name. (I did baptise also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptised anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptise but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Phillip: Here’s a great passage about divisions and Paul’s appeal, but what is the church? What’s the meaning of this concept of the church of God that he’s writing to, which can apparently be so divided?

Peter: We both know that we have what may be regarded, in terms of most Christians, as a slightly unusual doctrine of the church. I believe it’s a biblical one, but it’s unusual nonetheless. The chief expression of church in the New Testament, from our point of view, is a congregation: a gathering of people with the intention of meeting the Lord in his word and by the power of his Spirit. We think of that as being a congregation, a gathering around the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than the way the word ‘church’ is so often used to mean a denomination. In a sense, I would prefer the Anglican Church to be called the ‘Anglican Denomination’ to distinguish it from the local church. Interestingly, William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English, wanted to use the word ‘congregation’ instead of the word ‘church’, but was talked out of it.

Phillip: It’s a sadness that he was talked out of it, because ‘congregation’ has a more specific meaning, whereas ‘church’ can mean so many things. We’re not alone in holding to the church being the congregation.

Peter: Indeed; for example, Jim Packer wrote about the church in these terms in his book Concise Theology

Essentially, the church is, was, and always will be a single worshiping community, permanently gathered in the true sanctuary which is the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal. 4:26; Heb. 12:22-24), the place of God’s presence. Here all who are alive in Christ, the physically living with the physically dead (i.e., the church militant with the church triumphant) worship continually. In the world, however, this one church appears in the form of local congregations, each one called to fulfill the role of being a microcosm (a small-scale representative sample) of the church as a whole. This explains how it is that for Paul the one church universal is the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-26; Eph. 1:22-23; 3:6; 4:4), and so is the local congregation (1 Cor. 12:27).1

Phillip: So this word ‘church’ is fundamentally referring to the heavenly, eschatological, current end-of the-world gathering. But the local congregation is the expression of that.

Peter: Indeed, it is the microcosm, or the manifestation of it. So when we enter our local congregation, we are entering the church of God. I sometimes see these documents that say the Church throughout the world is the ‘body of Christ’, and we are parts of it. As if one church is a ‘toe’, and another is a ‘hand’, and so forth. But that’s not the case: the church is the local gathering of Christians with the intention of meeting the Lord Jesus in his word, by the power of his Spirit. It is the body of Christ, and it is the bride of Christ.

One of the key elements here is New Testament eschatology, or the doctrine of the end. Often in systematic theology, the idea of the end is the last subject you come to. But in the Bible itself, based as it is upon promise and fulfilment, eschatology suffuses the whole. The time in which we are living is between the first and second coming of Christ. The first coming of Christ is the end: the kingdom has arrived, the king has landed. Now we are living between the first and second coming, in what the Bible calls the last days. The last days have gone on for about 2000 years so far, but in this period of time, the resurrection has begun.

This helps us to understand church. There are not many churches, but one church: the heavenly church. Every place where the gospel is being preached and Christians gather together to meet the Lord, whether it’s a hillside in China or a vast cathedral somewhere, is the church.

That of course begs the question: what is the relationship between my local church and the other gatherings of Christ?

Phillip: 1 Corinthians speaks of churches. For example, 1 Corinthians 7:17 says, “This is my rule for all the churches.” He thereby acknowledges the reality that there are different churches around the world. However, the churches belong to each other as one eschatological, heavenly church. They are all members of the same family, which is why Paul uses the language of ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. In Christ, you belong to the family of God; therefore, there is only one church in which we share.

Peter: 1 Peter 5:9 mentions the “brotherhood throughout the world”.

Phillip: It is spread across the world, but it’s still the same brotherhood. There’s no harm in a set of churches forming a denomination and helping each other. I’ve always been slightly amused by the fact that both in England and in Australia, we have ‘the fellowship of independent churches’. The language is a paradox: if it’s a fellowship, they’re not independent; but if they’re independent, they’re not a fellowship. It’s a strange phrase, because although it’s in some ways correct, because there are many churches, there really is only one fellowship of the churches. But this organisation is not itself a church. That’s why we use the phrases, ‘the Anglican Church’ or ‘the Presbyterian Church’. It’s interesting to see the shift that’s happened in language regarding the Baptists, for people nowadays talk of ‘the Baptist Church’ when it was originally called ‘the union of Baptist churches’. That was because the ‘church’ referred to the local church or congregation, but these denominations are not themselves the church of God.

Peter: Does that mean you have no objection to denominations merging in the name of church unity? After all, Jesus prayed that we may all be one. Should we not work to fulfil that prayer? Shouldn’t John 17:21, “That they may all be one” be taken as a command that we’re all meant to be one?

Phillip: I don’t mind denominations and associations uniting, but I don’t see that there’s any reason why they need to. For that is not church unity; it’s association unity. But talking about it in terms of John 17, I think, is quite wrong. John 17:21 is a prayer, not a command. Furthermore, that prayer is asking God firstly that he will once again have glory with his Son; secondly, that the apostles will faithfully deliver the message; and thirdly, that all who receive it may be one with the apostles. It would be very strange to think that the first two prayers would be answered, but then to think God wasn’t concerned about the third point, that they are one. In fact, Paul tells us in Galatians that we are all one in Christ Jesus. We don’t create church unity because God has created church unity.

Peter: This passage in 1 Corinthians, however, tells a very different story to that of church unity. The Corinthian church was a mess. I’ve seen churches that have been in deep trouble before now, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across a church quite as bad as the Corinthians. It was a mess of fighting and quarrels, and that’s how this passage begins. How can this be the church of Christ?

Phillip: I agree with you. The church of Corinth is as messed up as any church you may come across. So when people hold up the church of Corinth as a great example of spirituality, that is a problem.

Churches are messy. There never has been a golden age of churches. There will be a golden age in the return of the Lord Jesus, but certainly not in the first century, the sixteenth century, or today. If anything, we’re told by Paul in Corinthians not to expect perfection, but divisions. He says in 1 Corinthians 11:18–19

For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognised.

It’s the expectation of the Apostle Paul that it won’t be all plain sailing in Corinth. But that’s not to say that divisions are acceptable. Back in chapter 1 verse 10, he commands them to speak with one voice. It’s not the vague unity and social cohesion that our parliamentarians in Canberra try to create. It’s the agreement in the gospel, that they might strive to have the same mind, the same judgement, the same understanding and knowledge. He wants them to restore that same speech and understanding. But Paul had heard that they weren’t like that.

Peter: He must have known his own eschatology. He taught us, as did the Lord, that this period between the first and second coming of Jesus would be marked by sin. So it’s hardly surprising to find churches which are divided in the way you’ve described.

Tell us about the parties mentioned in chapter 1: the followers of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ.

Phillip: Cephas is the Aramaic name of the Apostle Peter. Apollos was a great preacher at the time. Thus, there were followers loyal to Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ. The parties seem to be real, but the names may not be. Paul may have applied false names to these parties to avoid getting entangled in the particulars in Corinth, so he could draw out the greater truths.

It’s not that there are, in reality, different apostolic theologies. It’s not as though there is a ‘Gospel of Peter’ or a ‘Gospel of Apollos’. Regarding the ‘Christ party’, it may be that there was a group of people who would say, “I only follow Christ”, to feel a sense of superiority over the others. It’s more likely, however, that Paul was making the point that Christ is what unites us, rather than the apostles. Christ is not divided, and Paul was not crucified for us. So he reminds us that we are followers of Christ, not Paul, for Paul was not crucified for our sins; nor are people baptised in Paul’s name. We are baptised in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He wasn’t sent to baptise, but to spread the gospel.

Peter: It’s initially a surprising thing for Paul to say – though it becomes less surprising when you think about it. For the Lord said in Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

So the apostle goes to the very heart of what Jesus has said, pointing out that while preaching and discipling are important, what is most essential is the preaching of the gospel. Furthermore, after addressing the situation in Corinth, Paul turns to the universal truth of the gospel, hence 1 Corinthians 1:17

For Christ did not send me to baptise but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Phillip: Matthew 28:20 provides us an important understanding of the nature of baptism, that it is about repentance and for the forgiveness of sins. The pivotal aspect is not the water; it is the cleansing that happens. As 1 Peter chapter 3 describes, it’s the appeal to God for a clear conscience through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul in 1 Corinthians says that while he did baptise people, the baptisms he performed were not what he was sent to do. What matters is not who performed the baptism; rather, it is to be baptised into Christ, as a result of hearing the gospel of the cross of Christ. Therefore, Paul was not sent to baptise, nor to impress others with his own words of wisdom, but to spread the gospel: that is, the message of the cross of Christ.

Peter: It is interesting that Paul in this chapter moves immediately to the cross, and that 1 Corinthians also finishes with one of the most magnificent passages about the resurrection. Thus as we continue in our series on 1 Corinthians, we will be discussing the themes of the cross and the resurrection.

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1

Jim Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, 2001 (Tyndale House Publishers).

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today we start our year’s work by looking at the opening of 1 Corinthians. It’s such an exciting letter covering so many topics that we look forward to God using this podcast to challenge us all.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In this episode, Peter and I commence our 2026 program on 1 Corinthians.

Peter Jensen: Amongst the 27 books of the New Testament, what is the relevance of 1 Corinthians in particular?

Phillip: In one sense, all books of the Bible are as good as any other. But 1 Corinthians covers so many issues: in particular, it addresses disunity in the church and the nature of the cross. It also discusses sexual immorality, lawsuits against one another, the question of our relationship with other religions, and the subject of idolatry. But built into this letter is the issue of Christian freedom. For example, the topic of marriage comes up in chapter 7, as does the question of spirits in chapters 12-14. It then finishes with a great chapter on the resurrection. 1 Corinthians covers, in my opinion, a broader range of topics than any of the other letters of the New Testament. Therefore, there is a year’s worth of discussions about what comes out in 1 Corinthians.

Peter: If you asked me what my favourite epistle of Paul’s is, I would say Ephesians. Have you got a personal relationship with 1 Corinthians? Is it your favourite?

Phillip: I would say my favourite is Colossians, because it is written to a new church whom Paul has never met. It is a good example of what you might say to new Christians.

Peter: One of the reasons that I like Ephesians is because it is written on the doctrine of the church. But I’ve been reading some literature on 1 Corinthians written by Tony Payne, who has drawn out in no uncertain way how, like in Ephesians, the church is a key subject throughout. With this in mind, how will we approach the subject of 1 Corinthians?

Phillip: We will go through it bit-by-bit. I believe the different paragraphs and chapters of the book open up subjects for us to discuss, as well as closing them off.

Peter: There’s another reason that I like 1 Corinthians. It is that we all have this habit of looking back to a certain period and thinking of it as the ‘golden years’, then subsequently claiming that everything has gone wrong since then. But one of the wonderful things about the New Testament—and 1 Corinthians illustrates this perfectly—is that we find that there were no ‘golden years’ of the church. The early church was very far from being perfect, and the church at Corinth in particular was a disaster. It was heavily influenced by its surrounding culture, which is also true of the modern church here in Sydney.

There’s another element, too, that was pointed out by our teacher when we were studying these matters many years ago. That is, as the church in Corinth was in such a mess, you would expect the Apostle Paul to address the leadership first and foremost. But he doesn’t; he talks to the whole church, as though everybody has a responsibility to the way in which the church functions. He does not address the leadership before Chapter 16. Therefore, 1 Corinthians is a reminder to us that the whole congregation must act responsibly, not just the minister.

Phillip: Even chapter 16 addresses how the congregation should treat the leader of the church, rather than focusing on what the leader must be doing. It is a powerful point. But 1 Corinthians is also a missionary letter. The church in Corinth was a missionary church, for it has just come into existence. But it was not the type of settled, established church that we may be familiar with today. In Corinth, sin was out in the open because the Christians there had only just been converted; they still carried the baggage of their old life. For example, one prominent topic in 1 Corinthians is the question of eating food that had previously been offered to idols. Some of the converts were opposed to eating such food, because for them, it was a symbol of what they had left behind. Others concluded that since the pagan gods didn’t exist, the food offered to idols was harmless. Thus, many of the issues raised in 1 Corinthians are issues of the basics of Christianity.

Peter: There’s another element to this as well. Often in the course of Christian history, particularly in the last 100 years or more, issues have arisen: for example, the question of evolution. This forces us to look back to the Bible to ask ourselves, “What is the Bible saying here?” It encourages us to understand what it is and is not saying. The rise of Pentecostalism, which has become so prominent in an astonishing way since the 1960s, has forced us to look again at 1 Corinthians, because there are a number of issues that arise out of the Pentecostal movement which are addressed by this book. We must ask ourselves, “Have we been reading the Bible correctly all these years?” One of the benefits of the rise of Pentecostalism is that it forces us to do just that.

Phillip: When we read the Bible correctly, it changes our mind, as opposed to our culture changing our view of the Bible. It unravels our cultural blind spots, although sometimes, our culture may lead us to open ourselves up to what the Bible is actually saying. When I wrote my book, The Coming of the Holy Spirit,1 the entire chapter on 1 Corinthians 12-14 caused me to make a complete rediscovery of 1 Corinthians, as I realised that so many of the arguments of the last 50 years have got nothing to do with what it is about. There are two sides arguing over Pentecostalism and using Bible verses to defend themselves, rather than turning back to the Bible and realising what it was saying for its own sake. This debate is pointless.

Peter: Let’s see if I agree with you as you read verses 1-3.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 1:1–3

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes,

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

One of the wonderful things about studying the Bible like this is seeing both the generality and the specificity of what is being spoken of. This letter is written to the church of God in Corinth, and also to “all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” As Christians, this letter is addressed to us as well as to the early church of Corinth. Yet Paul was writing to Corinth about the specific things that were happening in the church at that time. So we do not just move in the generalities of for example the book of Proverbs; we are dealing with the specific church in Corinth with its particular problems. But the way in which Paul deals with the problems is always to go to great gospel truths, which then find their resting place in us. So the letter controls our understanding of the general truths of the gospel by having a specific application in Corinth. Thus, 1 Corinthians greatly contributes to our self-understanding as Christians, for Paul establishes who we should and should not be, as illustrated by the Corinthian church.

Peter: In other words, the universal is found in the particular. You look at the particular thing and you see the universal truths within it. That seems to be a very helpful way of understanding things like this, so I agree with you.

What about this business of the church of God that is in Corinth? Do you not think that there might have been multiple churches in Corinth?

Phillip: The word ‘church’ just means ‘the gathering’. The difference is that it’s God’s gathering as opposed to any other gathering. It’s a pretty big claim; this is the church of God, because each congregation is really the church of God when it gathers in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Furthermore, he is writing to the people called ‘saints’. These are the holy ones; anybody who is a Christian is a saint.

Peter: In Christian history, the idea of the ‘saint’ has referred to ‘the extraordinary Christian’: the Christian who is head and shoulders above the rest of us. But that’s not what seems to be the case here.

Phillip: The word ‘saint’ means ‘to be set aside’. It’s to be the consecrated person who is set aside for a purpose. All Christians have been set aside for the Lord Jesus Christ. Being set aside for Christ means you must live in a way that brings glory, honour and praise to him; but again, it does not mean you are ‘the extraordinary Christian’. For example, my Bible, which has my name written on it, has been set aside for me. In the same way, a Christian is someone who has been set aside for Jesus. Therefore all Christians are saints.

Peter: It’s easy to skip over this aspect because we are so familiar with the language, but I noticed that in these 3 verses, Jesus is mentioned 4 times.

Phillip: This signifies that Jesus is the dominant element of Christianity; it cannot be any other way. Paul’s apostleship, the Corinthians, Christianity, and God’s blessings all come from the Lord Jesus Christ. Christianity is totally Christ-centred. That’s why Christianity is not just morality. Christ-less Christianity is not Christianity any more than cross-less Christianity can be Christianity. If you haven’t got Christ or the cross, you haven’t got Christianity. You may have cultural Christianity, or Christian morality, but you do not have authentic Christianity if you are not being set aside for Christ Jesus or calling upon his name.

Peter: Indeed. Moving on to verses 4-9

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge—even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

It’s characteristic of Paul to begin his letter with a prayer. He does it frequently in his other letters.

Phillip: Another aspect that is so characteristic of Paul is to say ‘you must pray with thanksgiving.’ To pray is to thank God for the blessings we’ve received, so he starts with a prayer of thanksgiving. He thanks God for what God has done for the Corinthians already, in that they have been set aside as saints for Christ Jesus; consequently, they have received these particular blessings. Thanksgiving is fundamental to Christian living.

This reminds me of the contrasting cultures of Australia and America. The myth of Australia is of the convict settlement, whilst the myth of America is that of the Pilgrim Fathers. Therefore, the defining characteristic of Australians is of whining and complaining, whereas the characteristic of the Pilgrim Fathers was thanksgiving. Though many have lost who they’re thanking, Thanksgiving is a culturally significant holiday that comes from a Christian foundation. Whereas if you ask an Australian who they thank for their blessings, they’ll likely say, “I thank my lucky stars,” as if their lucky stars have done anything for them. We’ve got everything to thank God for, but if we don’t know God, we won’t thank him.

Peter: I attended a service this week of a dear brother who had died, which was called a thanksgiving service. There’s no harm in exalting the person for whom we hold the thanksgiving service, as long as we recognise that the person’s good gifts are from the Lord; furthermore, the person’s achievements must be put into the context of what the Lord has done in that person’s life, the gifting they’ve received, and the determination to use those gifts to God’s glory. That’s what Paul says here.

Phillip: Without pride and boasting, and without flattery.

Peter: Indeed, that is the proper way to do it.

Phillip: Today, pride is seen as a good thing. Previous generations thought being proud was a dreadful thing, but today we say, “I’ve done XYZ and I’m proud of my achievements,” or “I pride myself in XYZ.” The language of pride is now used positively, rather than the language of gratitude. We should be saying, “I thank God that he has given me the opportunity to do these things.”

Peter: Bearing that in mind, the Apostle Paul starts the letter thinking about the Corinthians, but primarily thanking God for what God has done. And notice the word ‘grace’ in verse 4, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus.” The word ‘grace’ indicates that this is not something that you have achieved, nor something that you deserve; it is something that, out of the extraordinary mercy of God, has come into your life as it has come into Paul’s life.

Phillip: I agree, but while it is the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, it’s not narrowed down to the grace of mercy and forgiveness through the death of Jesus, because it goes on, “In every way you are enriched in him in all speech and knowledge.” The generosity of God was given to these people in speech and knowledge, so that they are “not lacking in any gift.” What do you make of the reference to spiritual gifts here?

Peter: This is a subject that is going to be significant, particularly as we get to chapters 12 to 14. Therefore, it’s interesting that it appears so early in the letter. It’s not as if Paul doesn’t know where he’s going with all this, but it’s likewise interesting that he should especially mention as having been gifted to all, the gifts of “speech and knowledge”. I’ve already mentioned that I’ve been reading a book soon to be published by Tony Payne. In it, he takes up this point, saying that all Christians are gifted with speech: the sort of speech which encourages, rebukes, and strengthens the other members of the church. What we’re seeing here is the beginning of a theme of the way in which church should function. It is something for which we are all responsible in how we speak to one another.

Phillip: That’s a very important point. I would like to point out that our translations have inserted the word ‘spiritual’ to the verse, “so that you are not lacking in any gift,” even though it’s not in the original Greek. The imposition of ‘spiritual’ into the English translations is part of what has misconstrued the whole discussion about the importance and the place of spiritual gifts. Here, the gifts are of knowledge and speech, but notice the purpose for which they’re given: namely, for sustaining us until the end.

I love evangelism; I love to hear people becoming Christians. But of course, the heart of evangelism is not that people start the Christian life but that they finish the Christian life. The key is being so converted as to stand mature in Christ on the last day, guiltless before him because of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. God not only starts the good work in us, but brings it to completion on the last day. That is what is being spoken of here. God is not quixotic. God is not temperamental. God is faithful. He starts that work and enables it to find its fulfilment, so that we are “called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Peter: What do you make of the suggestion that it is God the Father who has called us into the fellowship of his son Jesus Christ? That is to say, aren’t we related to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit? Is it not a relationship where the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are equally God? Why has he particularly mentioned the fellowship with Jesus?

Phillip: I’m not sure that it’s the fellowship with Jesus alone. When we come into a relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come into a relationship with each other, for we are all called into that same fellowship. So the fellowship of Jesus Christ is the fellowship that he owns: namely, his people. Therefore, the solitary Christian is not the normal Christian. The normal Christian is one who is in fellowship in the name of Christ, and therefore is in fellowship with all who call upon his name. The church is not called the Holy Spirit Church, nor is it God the Father Church; it’s the Christian Church.

To continue with verses 10 to 11

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgement. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.

The letter started from such a wonderful high point of thanksgiving, only to immediately move into the reality of church life. Though our translation says that he appeals to them, a more direct translation would be to say “I exhort you, brothers.” It’s not just a polite request for them to stop quarreling. But notice how he exhorts them “by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I’m afraid that unity is such a theme of modern Western civilisation, with its emphasis on “social cohesion” and the like, that we’ve underestimated what is meant in this passage. Real agreement is about being of one mind, in the same judgement, having the same understanding. To sit together and sing Kumbaya around a campfire, so to speak, does not capture the sense of agreement that Paul calls upon people to have. It is agreement in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we have the same mind and the same judgement.

Peter: Indeed; one of the marks of the church is unity, particularly in the congregation. That is to say, church unity has become something that goes on in the public service of the church.

Phillip: It’s an institutional view of church, and an institutional view of unity.

Peter: Exactly, but what we’re seeing here is something far more profound. We’re seeing the necessity for each congregation, and hence every member of each congregation, to take the responsibility for a profound unity in the church, a love of one another. This is going to be a theme as we continue in Corinthians, because we are going to find out how we can achieve this.

Phillip: Especially as Chloe’s people reported that there wasn’t unity. Paul is addressing the particular situation of disunity in the early church, which is also an issue in congregational life.

Peter: Let me ask you this: you chose 1 Corinthians as our subject for this year. It’s a big change from Genesis. Are you happy with this first discussion? Do you think we’re going to really benefit from each other? Because it’s the benefit you and I receive, which we hope we share with others. What’s it doing for us?

Phillip: The first study lays the foundations; that’s always the problem with the opening sermon in a new series. In fact, one of the problems with starting a new series on a letter is the amount of time that the preacher spends on the first verse. The enthusiasm is there, but understanding what we’re doing while we’re doing it is vital.

The main subject of 1 Corinthians starts with the mention of Chloe’s people. That is where the conflict starts, which we will address throughout this series.

Before we start our 2026 Two Ways News series on 1 Corinthians, we need to have an important discussion on Bondi and antisemitism. This is something that neither of us imagined would happen. Not all our listeners will agree with our views, but we hope the thinking and discussion is helpful grist to the mill.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Over the summer, we did a series focusing on Acts 17. That should take us to our 2026 series on 1 Corinthians; however, recent events have overtaken the discussions we previously had, especially about nations.

Firstly, President Trump’s actions in Venezuela raise concerns about what is going to happen next. The same uncertainty arises regarding whether Trump may involve troops in Iran. Nevertheless, the concept of the state and its sovereignty has been challenged in light of the US’s involvement in the affairs of these nations. Of course, this is not the first time that such events have occurred; the US has, in the past, been in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. The concepts of national sovereignties and independence are not now as steady as we may like to think.

More telling, though, is the tragedy in Sydney with the terrorist shooting of people in Bondi at a Jewish festivity, during which 15 people were murdered. This has raised several issues regarding terrorism, Israel, and Jews within Sydney.

Peter: For both of us, the Jewish population in Sydney was very much our background growing up. We grew up in a strongly Jewish area, to the extent that I once thought that most of the world was Jewish. My wife Christine was raised in Bondi, and as the terrible photos emerged of the shootings in Bondi, she was looking at the place of her childhood, and at the very people amongst whom she grew up. When Phillip and I were children, a Jewish married couple lived next door to us who were refugees from Austria; they had arrived just as the Second World War began, and our parents were very friendly with them. Therefore, we have a particular feeling for Jewish people, as we have always had Jewish friends and neighbours.

Phillip: Indeed. Though there was a consciousness of difference between ourselves and the Jewish community. For example, we attended Sunday school, but our Jewish friends attended Saturday school. But at our Sunday school, all our heroes were Jewish. I was on the side of Moses and David; it never occurred to me to think of the Jews as anything other than heroes. As a result, antisemitism never seemed like a psychological possibility for either of us.

Peter: But it was strange that amongst some who were very friendly with Jewish people, there was also a slightly critical edge to their friendliness. I can remember, for example, standing with someone when a new car went by. The person I was standing with simply remarked, “Jews.” In other words, the Jewish people were known to be very successful in a way that others were not. But that comment wasn’t an instance of antisemitism, because the person I refer to was very supportive and friendly with Jewish people. But there was a sense of difference which this person felt.

Another instance in which the difference between ourselves and the Jews was clear to me was when we read the Bible in school, and the boy sitting next to me didn’t have the same Bible as I did. He seemingly only had half a Bible. I asked, “Where did you get this from?” to which he said, “From Sabbath school.” That was when I realised that the Bible had two parts: the Old and the New Testament. The point is that from the very beginning of our lives, Jewish people have been present and admired. We’ve had many friends who are Jewish, and we love them.

Phillip: When you look at the history of Australia, the contribution of the Jewish community to the welfare of our society has been massive. For example, the first Australian-born Governor-General was Sir Isaac Isaacs. They were part of our Australian community, and although they seemed to us to have their oddities, it was not difficult to accept and love them.

Peter: Antisemitism was not something that we grew up with. But it is real, undoubtedly.

Phillip: Historically, antisemitism has been present across the world. Pogroms against Jews have occurred in different parts of the world at different periods of history. Sadly, even Christians have taken it upon themselves to attack Jews. It is a great evil that we cannot accept, that we should be treating people as less than citizens and as less than full humans because of their Jewish heritage, as has happened. It rose to its worst, of course, under the Nazi regime. Peter and I, having been born at the end of the war and raised in the light of new information coming out about the Nazi treatment of Jews, came to recognise the Nazis as the greatest symbol of evil. I wonder to what extent, 80 years later, the generations that have been born subsequently, or have come to our country, are not living under the light of the Holocaust in the same way that we were. Even though the Jews have maintained Holocaust history, I’m not sure that society has to the same extent.

Peter: I think you’re right. The history is still there, but I don’t think it has the same bite as it did in our generation. However, it is important to realise the origins and the growth of antisemitism in Germany, because this history feeds into the contemporary world.

Jews in Germany likely comprised about 1% of the population. Knowing this, you may wonder why the Jews were picked on. There were several reasons, but one of them, as mentioned by Christopher Browning in his book, ‘The Origins of the Final Solution’,1 was that while there wasn’t initially a deep antisemitism in Germany, there was, particularly among some people, a considerable antagonism based upon the sheer success of the Jews. At the end of the 19th century, in a number of European states, a more liberal attitude had emerged, and some of the old laws against Jewish people were abolished. The Jewish people were, at last, given full citizenship and allowed to progress – and progress they did. This created a considerable degree of jealousy and antagonism, often among deeply conservative people who were committed to German culture. That certainly fed into the success of Nazism.

Phillip: Nazism also took hold of science. Hitler was very proud of creating a scientific society, but science at that time was heavily influenced by Darwinian eugenics. Out of Darwinianism came the sense of some biological systems being more “fit for existence” than others. Eugenics is the idea of ensuring that those who are “superior” breed and those who are “inferior” cease from living. This idea was popular not just in Nazi Germany. The concept of creating better quality people was popular across the world. It lay behind the issue of the Stolen Generation here in Australia: the idea of separating the “half-caste” Aboriginal people, as they were called, from the “full-blood”.

Eugenics lay behind a lot of what we now call racism. Today, ‘racism’ is a word that is used to cover a multitude of sins. If you don’t like someone, you may direct a racist comment towards them, which has got little to do with whether or not you believe they’re inferior to you on a biological basis. Whereas the Nazis argued that the Jews were ‘biologically inferior’ and should therefore be operated upon and killed. Add to that the geopolitical attitude towards the state of Israel, which was set up after the Second World War, to which people have very different attitudes. Antisemitism, through the Nazis, became focused on racism. For it wasn’t a rejection of their beliefs in the one God; it was the rejection of them as people. Subsequently, different people object to the Jews having a state. This has fed antisemitism leading up to the war of today. For a time when you and I were raised, antisemitism was severely looked down upon because that was immediately equated to Nazism. But in recent times, attitudes towards Zionism and the state of Israel have opened the doors again to people’s residual antisemitism.

Peter: I take it you’re saying that antisemitism has no place in Christian thinking. What was the attitude of Jesus, Paul and Peter in the New Testament?

Phillip: Of course, they were all Jewish; in fact, the first Christians were all Jewish. The presiding struggle in the New Testament was the question of whether you could be a Christian if you were not Jewish. Furthermore, the Jewish Christians saw Christ as the fulfilment of all the Jewish dreams, hopes, aspirations, and prophecies. Indeed, it was Jesus who not only fulfilled but also explained it and was the end point of the whole Jewish plan and the purposes of God. So the Christian is very pro-Jewish. In the sense of fulfilment, it changes our focus as Christians. We’re not theologically interested in Jerusalem, Palestine or Israel, for our city of God is above, where the Lord Jesus Christ reigns. So we talk of the New Jerusalem, but the New Jerusalem for us comes from heaven. So many of the Old Testament practices—the priests, the sacrifices, the altar, the temple—were all fulfilled spiritually in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we do not go back to that kind of Judaism, but we never reject Judaism because we know that our faith goes to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. It was God’s ancient people who led us into the truth of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. If God can make us Gentiles into his people, it is so much easier for him to make his ancient people into his people. Chapters 9 to 11 of Romans speak on those issues. Thus we have no right to ever despise, look down on, or reject God’s ancient people.

Peter: No, indeed. Though we may disagree deeply with their religion, we invite discussion and invite faith in Christ, as they have every right to speak to us.

This discussion has been stimulated by the awful shootings at Bondi. There have previously been killings at a shopping centre in Bondi Junction. What are the differences?

Phillip: Bondi Junction, for those who don’t know Sydney, is two miles away from Bondi Beach, where there was once a tram junction. But the killing at the shopping centre was the result of a man with mental problems. It wasn’t aimed at Jewish people; if anything, it was aimed at women. Whereas the Bondi Beach attack was aimed at the Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah out in the open air. It was conducted by two Muslim men who were advocating ISIS and killed out of their beliefs in the rightness of killing Jews. This is the extreme horror of antisemitism. But antisemitism in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, where Bondi is located, had been increasingly present for a while before that. The synagogue next to the church I attend always has 2 or 3 guards outside every Sabbath. Additionally, a protective wall surrounds it, and there are cameras on the wall surveilling everybody who comes in. We don’t have these measures outside the church, but they are present outside every synagogue in Sydney, as with the Jewish school. The massacre is just the end point, the worst of the worst, and it has finally provoked our government to take action against antisemitism. But I worry about how these actions are going into effect.

Peter: Of course, when something like this occurs, there is a general outcry, as people look to the government to do something. For example, we’ve had a haste to change the gun laws. There’s now a royal commission to be called, and an introduction of legislation against hate speech. These are thought to constitute an answer of some sort. All three of those things may have their strengths, though I doubt that they will be particularly effective. Looking back over many decades, I have found that royal commissions are often called to make people think that something is happening, yet not much happens in response. Changing the gun laws may be a good idea, but it’s not going to solve this problem, because people will still find ways to possess guns if they want to. The whole issue of hate speech certainly needs a great deal of thought before it’s introduced. We abandoned censorship many years ago, but now we’re in a sense reintroducing censorship of a different sort. Where will it stop? How do we define it? How do we know what people are thinking? How is speech linked to hate?

They are passing laws about these things, which hardly constitutes an answer. The government doesn’t solve all of our problems, any more than the public service can; this is a problem for every one of us. We need to step back, and we need to ask ourselves what is happening in the way our nation is constituted that such an event could occur. We need to ask, “What aspects of the way in which our nation has developed may have contributed to it?” As our listeners and readers know, I’m not a young person, nor am I optimistic, but I did previously think to myself that the placement of guards outside the Jewish schools and synagogues was overdoing things. I thought, “This is Australia. We are not going to see something here like what they are suggesting.” How wrong I was. What is there about our nation that such a thing could happen? We must look deep within our own hearts, because it’s got more to do with what’s going on in the heart of our nation and the individual than with policies and laws.

Phillip: Generally, we need to do something about this. It is not right that people need to have guards outside their schools and synagogues. Things need to change, and we do need to investigate. The Royal Commission is the way to investigate the contribution that our government and its policies have made towards this issue. They will assess whether in the last few years, particularly since October 7th of 2023, we have acted rightly, or whether we should have clamped down on certain demonstrations. However, such a solution is like putting band-aids on a cancerous growth. There’s a fundamental problem that we have established, and seemingly, the solution being offered is to change the gun laws.

I have never owned a gun, nor do I want to. But changing the gun laws is not going to prevent such things from happening again. During the investigation, police found explosives left in a car; changing a gun law won’t prevent people from leaving bombs in cars. But the problem is not simply the band-aid solution to the cancerous growth. I’m afraid of overreach in what the government is doing. In trying to solve a problem, they create more problems. Some years ago the government enforced upon us the philosophy of multiculturalism, in opposition to the policy of assimilation. But when one person, by their culture, feels justified to shoot into a crowd of a group exercising a different culture, it is evident that multiculturalism has not worked. However, when laws are brought in against hate speech and about social cohesion, we may wind up with a society similar to the Soviet Union under Stalin. That’s exactly what the Gulag Archipelago was about; it enabled persecuting people for the strangest of reasons. It is what allowed the government to send anti-Soviet thinkers to Siberia.

Overcoming our present problems by immediate knee-jerk government regulations does not build trust. But trust is what used to exist in Australia. In the suburb we grew up in, I once counted that there were 11 synagogues. There was no guard outside any one of them, nor were there defensive walls or gates.

Peter: That’s why I was silly enough to think, “Why do they have all those guards outside?” In the Australia I grew up in, we could trust each other. Where did that trust come from?

Phillip: It came from the fact that we were a monoculture, and that monoculture was heavily influenced by a Judeo-Christian understanding of rights (or responsibilities) as to the truth of justice. We can’t go back to it now, because it has been undone. But we’re not going to go forward just by putting more regulations in place. Rules and regulations are not only an expression of a lack of trust; they also undermine trust. The government is wrong in thinking that it can somehow stop hate, for it’s the gospel that stops hate, that changes and transforms humanity. If we don’t teach a religion in our society that promotes love, then we must not be surprised when hate becomes part of society.

Peter: Christianity is a religion that promotes love and also teaches that every human being is a sinner. One of the nonsensical teachings of secularism is that human beings are “basically good”. We are not basically good; we need to be transformed by love. Knowing this doesn’t make me a perfect person, and it won’t make a perfect society, but it is nonetheless vital. We used to say that recent migrants would be new Australians. I love migrants, but we need them to become Australians with that basis in the Judeo-Christian ethic. We also need not only a recognition of human sinfulness, but a spiritual reformation. We need the gospel again.

Phillip: Indeed. It is important to remember that the world we grew up in was still sinful. But the concept that there is no right and wrong, because all cultures are equal, and we need to respect them and value them equally, is not true.

Peter: I agree. This is an enormous subject which we need to come back to sometime. But as a final question to conclude this week’s episode, which way do you vote?

Phillip: I vote by secret ballot!

The politics of how you implement culture—which is really implementing religion—are open to question and to agreement. There is no right Christian vote. As a minister of the Christian religion, I don’t tell people how I vote, and I do not encourage other ministers to tell people how they should vote.

Peter: Do you mean you don’t even tell your own brother how you vote?

Phillip: I don’t even tell my own wife how I vote, and she certainly doesn’t tell me either!

The Australian voting system is, I believe, a great voting system, but a key aspect is the privacy of the vote, where I can express between me and God what I believe are the best mechanisms forward. It is important to remember that policies are only mechanisms, and other people would skin a cat differently, so to speak.

Peter: There is a deeper issue here too. That is to say, if you vote one way for your entire life, I wouldn’t say that’s not Christian. The country we live in is a country where Christians are perfectly free to vote as they wish. Some Christians will vote one way, and some Christians will vote the other way. We are not living in a country which has been torn apart by these differences, and that principle comes from somewhere. I would say it comes from the Bible.

Phillip: Unfortunately, party politics are becoming more ideological and more fanatic, so that there are certain people who will not speak to others because they vote the other way. That’s unhealthy. Part of the Australian culture that we wanted new Australians to join into was this wonderful democracy, which is not in the countries that most of them came from, but it is here. We express our differences in the ballot box, not with guns on Bondi Beach.

1

Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, 2007 (Bison Books)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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The climax of Paul’s great Athenian sermon is the call of God for all people to repent. But there are some strange elements in this call. One important element is its timing. Another is in the judgement “by a man”. Let’s listen afresh to Paul’s great gospel statement.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In our summer edition of Two Ways News, we are looking at the great address of the Apostle Paul in Acts 17, in which he preaches the gospel to the Athenians. That sermon rises to its climax in Acts 17:29-31

Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Peter, what do you think of this great address of Paul?

Peter Jensen: It is astonishing, and such an encouragement to the preaching and sharing of the gospel. So far in this sermon, Paul has been telling the Athenians of the God that they acknowledge in a way; in last week’s episode, I quoted from Francis Bacon, “Atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man.” The heart of human beings is religious, and the Athenians acknowledged that by creating many gods, including this strange one: the altar of the unknown God. That is a confession of not knowing God, so Paul essentially says, ‘I’ve come to tell you about the real God.’ Then he proceeds to tell them this astonishing, wonderful, extraordinary truth, that there is only one living God, who has created and sustains all things.

If you ask who rules this world, the answer is one God. If you ask why things are happening, the answer is the will of this one God. Furthermore, this one God is so almighty and powerful that he rules over the nations in such a way that we should all be seeking and searching for him. But the truth is that he’s not far from any of us, that his disclosure of himself in his general revelation of the universe means that he speaks to us all the time. But more than that, he discloses himself to us in the truth of the gospel.

Furthermore, Paul tells us that God is the father of all humans. In other words, we all have a connection to him; it’s not as though he’s only the father of Christians. Though there is a special way in which he is the father of Christians, he is the father of all. Therefore, all are united in one people, and all of us should be seeking the Father. That’s why religious practices like temples and idols are, in the end, incoherent. We know that there is one God, not many gods. We know that this one God is such that he discloses himself to all his children. We know that he is the ruler of the universe; therefore, to put him in a building and worship little statues of him is so human and so sinful.

Phillip: That’s why we come to the climax on the judge of all the earth, because doing that to God is not something neutral; it is to reject the God we know, as he made himself known. It’s the attempt of humans to control God, to make him answerable to us, rather than to acknowledge ourselves as answerable to God. It’s the attempt to manipulate God to give us good weather, children or grandchildren, or whatever else we want. Religious practices, while completely normal, are completely sinful. The different temples, sacrifices and idols are not truly mankind’s attempt to find God; they’re humanity’s attempts to run away from the God that is clearly revealed to us. So far, Paul tells them of the God they acknowledge in the idols, but whom they confess not to know: this true and living God, who creates and sustains all things. That’s why these religious practices are so awful.

Therefore we come to the conclusion of the sermon, the judgement of God. But this judgement is not quite as people expect. One of the beautiful things about the Bible is that it keeps changing my mind for me. I have my expectations as to what the Bible is going to say, which are then subverted by what it truly says. That’s because it is right and I am wrong. It keeps changing me.

In this conclusion of the sermon, I have drawn out 5 points. The first is, “The times of ignorance God overlooked”; the second, “Now he commands all people everywhere to repent”; the third, “Because he has fixed a day on which to judge the world in righteousness”; the fourth, “and to judge by a man whom he has appointed”; and the fifth, “of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Let’s start with the first point, “The times of ignorance God overlooked.”

Peter: It is a strange phase, but what it means is clear enough. It’s not ignorance in the sense that people didn’t know about God’s existence, because their religious life showed that they knew something, even though it was an ignoring of God. Remember that we are dealing here with a relationship between ourselves and God. We all know what it is like to be ignored, for someone to turn their back on us, carrying on as though we don’t exist. It’s very painful to us as human beings, and that is the point that Paul makes. We have ignored God. That is to say, we have done everything to avoid looking at him.

Phillip: Indeed, it is a profound rejection of God.

Peter: The times of that sort of ignorance, God overlooked. He didn’t do what you would have expected him to do: namely, to end the human race right there and then, because that’s what we deserve for our treatment of him. But we read in the Bible that God is slow to anger. That does not mean that he is devoid of emotions; in fact, he is angry. It is the righteous anger of God which we’re referring to. It’s not a temperamental matter. Another way of putting it is to be found in 2 Peter 3:9, which states that the Lord is “Patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

So it comes out of the very being of God himself, that judgement is not being wrought upon us. The very being of God himself, his love for his wayward children. He could have condemned us at any point in history. The sins of Adam and Eve could have been the end of all things. But he has overlooked these things in the sense that he has patiently given us time to do what he tells us, which is to turn to him.

Phillip: Could this overlooking of our sinfulness bring people to accuse him of not being righteous?

Peter: It could indeed. If the state refuses to take action on a crime, you can be aggrieved and accuse the state of not being righteous. But there may, even in this example, be a good reason for this. That is certainly the case with God.

Phillip: It made me think of Romans 3:23-26

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

The work of the gospel is the bringing to an end of this overlooking of sinfulness, which therefore takes us to the second point: “Now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” ‘Now’ is a key word in this sentence, as it indicates the change that has occurred between the past, during which sin was overlooked, and the present, in which we are called to repent.

Peter: In Mark 1:15, when Jesus preaches in Galilee, the gospel is summarised thus: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Phillip: Furthermore, in John 12:31, Jesus says, “Now will the ruler of this world be cast out.” Here he speaks again of his death, indicating that he will be a profound disruption to the history of the world. Our forebears were right in dividing history as ‘Before Christ’ and ‘In the year of the Lord’, because no continuum of history can be written without this fracture that happened when God stopped overlooking the wilfulness of humanity by paying the price. Therefore, now is the day for repentance.

The word ‘repentance’ means a change of mind, particularly one that leads to a change in the direction of one’s life. For example, I made my repentance back in 1969 when I married Helen. At that point I said, ‘No longer am I going to live as a single man; now I’m living as a married man.’ That change of mind, declared in a church building in front of many witnesses, meant that I did not go back home to my parents; from then on, we combined as a couple. Repentance is therefore the change of life that comes from a change of mind.

The repentance Paul refers to in Acts 17 is the turning away from idolatry and from the false views and the rejection of God. The reason why he calls people to repent brings us to the third point, “Because he has fixed a day on which to judge the world in righteousness.”

Peter: Indeed, the end of history is at hand. To once more quote Mark 1:15, “The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” You may think that this kingdom never came. However, it came in the person of Jesus, and there will be a second coming. That there’s been 2,000 years so far is neither here nor there. We’re living in the last days now. We don’t know how long this period will last, but the day will come at any time, for there is a fixed day in which he will intervene and bring judgement to pass.

Phillip: It is good news. But what does it mean to judge the world in righteousness?

Peter: We want God to be just; we all love justice. We want the right thing to be done, especially when we are the victims of injustice. So the fact that God is totally just and will bring all sin and evil to account is good news. The only bad news is that we are the ones who will be brought to account. Even then, it’s not bad news, because God has warned us of this and has called upon us to repent. Particularly, we must repent of our wilful misrepresentation of him by the idolatry of our hearts: the worship of money, for example. Our idolatry has to finish, and we need to repent and turn back to him now.

Phillip: God is going to judge by righteousness. That a judgement would be on the basis of righteousness is to be expected. But then he says something unexpected, that fourth point we raised: “He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.”

Peter: That is one of the most astonishing verses in the Bible, for it tells us that God will judge the world by one of us.

Phillip: Indeed, you don’t expect the world to be judged by a man. But it’s not just any man; it’s the one he has appointed to do this. It’s an extraordinary idea. But Jesus taught it by the use of ‘Son of Man’ as a phrase. In Daniel 7, there is a picture of God’s judgement taking place. The Ancient of Days is there, the books are all open, and everybody is standing before the judge of all the earth; suddenly, there appears a ‘Son of Man’ coming in the clouds to the Ancient of Days. You’re not told anything about this man, other than the fact that the Ancient of Days gives to him all nations for all time. Suddenly, in the middle of the judgement seat of God, a man is given sovereignty over the universe.

You may think, ‘Who is this man?’ Nothing more is said about it in Daniel 7, but throughout the gospels, the phrase that Jesus uses most often to refer to himself is ‘Son of Man’. Most of the references may make you think he’s referring to himself, but it likely doesn’t make you think of Daniel 7. That is, until Mark 14:61-62, when he’s challenged, “Are you the Christ?”, and he says, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” Suddenly, you realise that all those other references to the Son of Man indicate that he is the judge of this earth.

To once again quote John 12:31, “Now will the ruler of this world be cast out.” That is because Jesus is the judge. It’s an extraordinary idea that Jesus continues to be a man, yet he is still the one whom God has appointed according to Acts 2: “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” It’s the appointment of God to the dead and risen Jesus. But the resurrection is a key part of it, which leads us to our fifth and final point about Paul’s sermon.

Peter: We are certainly not left in the dark about this man, hence the words, “Of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” The resurrection from the dead likewise is predicted in Daniel: it’s the resurrection of all people from the dead, and Jesus confirms that. But the resurrection from the dead is something that occurs on the last day. When the end has come, and God has created a new heaven and a new earth, the resurrected dead will be there. There will be a day of judgement. But one of the most telling features of the story of Jesus is that his resurrection occurs 3 days after he was crucified. Among other things, this tells us that the new day has dawned, for the king has come. In a sense, the day to come has invaded the present time.

Why was Jesus resurrected from the dead? Was that strictly necessary? The resurrection is God’s great enthronement of Jesus as the king of humanity, the king through whom God rules. As the apostle Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15:22, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”

So Jesus’ resurrection from the dead speaks to us of his status, and tells us that ours is an age which begins with that judgement. We have the assurance of this age to come through the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We are therefore living in the last days; though they have gone on for a long time, we can be sure that they will come to an end when Christ appears to judge all things.

Phillip: The breaking in of that resurrection age is something that is not taught much. I have had to learn about it over time, because I previously did not realise how fundamental the judgement resurrection is to understanding the Jesus resurrection. It reminds me of the parable at the end of Luke 16, where the rich man begs Abraham to send the poor man back to warn his brothers of the judgement, and he says, in Luke 16:31, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” But you must understand what resurrection is to see the importance of Jesus’ resurrection in bringing about the judgement of the world, and assuring us of the judgements to come.

Preceding the verse you quoted earlier, “So as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive,” is 1 Corinthians 15:20–21

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

The phrase ‘firstfruits’ refers to the assurance that there is going to be a crop, through the first sign that the harvest has started. Furthermore, there is a strange reference in Matthew 27:51–53

And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

The general resurrection started with the death and resurrection of Jesus. He is the first of the new age; thus, his resurrection is the assurance of our resurrection, because God is going to judge the world by him.

When Paul’s Acts 17 sermon finished with the mention of the resurrection, there were 3 types of reactions from the audience. The first was that some mocked the idea of the resurrection; secondly, some wanted to hear more; thirdly, some were converted. That is still the case when you preach on the resurrection. When some people hear of the resurrection of Jesus, they start to mock it and find fault with the historical evidence that we have. But others want to know more about the resurrection and what it means. Because simply knowing about a man rising from the dead alone is not enough; you must know the prophets and Moses.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk. It’s called The Inevitable Judgement.

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If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

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Fathers are so important in life, even in this anti-patriarchal age. For fatherhood is derived from God the Father. He is the provider and protector of us all, who knows our needs before we even ask. He is not far from us, and he is open to our prayers.

This is an important point in Paul’s logic as he attacks the inconsistency and incoherence of Athenian idolatry.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Throughout the rest of this summer season at Two Ways News, we will continue to deal with the great speech of Paul in Athens in Acts 17, where he explains to the Athenians who God is. Today, Peter will start us off with a reading from Acts 17:26-29.

Peter Jensen:

Acts 17:26–29

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for

‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

Phillip: Before we go further, let’s summarise what we’ve said so far in our summer series about the points Paul makes in his sermon. Firstly, he tells us that God is the creator of the universe. Secondly, he says that God is the sustainer of all life. Last week, we saw that God is the ruler of the nations, who leads us to seek after him because our nationalism divides us. Now, in our seeking and searching after him, we find that God is the father of humans. The reason for this addition is the claim of God’s sovereignty over the nations, for we now get an idea of the nature of this ruler. But what is the nature of God’s rule over the nations, and how does that lead to us seeking and searching after God?

Peter: It is certainly an encouragement to us that God is the father of humans. But the reason Paul says such a thing is because of the claim, as you said, of God’s rule over the nations, where he has frustrated humans in order to have them seek and perhaps find him. For when all is said and done, the whole purpose of humanity is captured in those words. Our true business in life is not to run a business, fly an aeroplane, or achieve any other great human accomplishment; it is to “seek God, and perhaps feel our way towards him and find him.”

That said, it sounds like a daunting and difficult task. How and where do we seek God? Though of course, human beings all throughout history have been engaged in that search. But one may notice the word ‘perhaps’ in the phrase, “And perhaps feel their way towards him and find him.” This is interesting, because the matter of God’s existence has been debated for centuries. Different proofs of the existence of God have come up, and people have disagreed over whether or not they are adequate. Even if you conclude that God is real according to some philosophical proof, it does not mean that you have found him.

Phillip: Indeed; trying to feel after this ‘knowledge’, this ‘person’, this ‘being’ that is out there is like being a blind man searching for the light. But Paul says that it shouldn’t be difficult, for he reminds the Athenians that God is not far from us; in fact, he’s right here. Our problem is not God’s absence but our sinfulness. Our problem is not a lack of evidence, but our blindness. It is the blindness of our sinfulness, and there are none so blind as those who will not see.

According to Psalm 14:1, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” That is a moral foolishness. The fool does not want there to be a God; he is looking where God is not in order to make sure he doesn’t find him. Likewise, the fool desperately hopes that God will not find him in his sinfulness. The Enlightenment atheists give the impression that the evidence is not there, that God has not shown himself clearly enough to us all. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that we don’t want to find him. If you don’t want to find him, you certainly won’t, because sinfulness means that humans are not searching after God as they should. God is not far from us, but in feeling after him, we keep our eyes closed.

Paul illustrates the point by quoting the audience’s own poets against them. The first one is Epimenides of Crete, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Then he references the Stoic poet Aratus, “For we are indeed his offspring.” Therefore God is not a being who is inaccessible; the Athenians themselves knew that God is right there. But quoting the pagans Aretas and Epimenides raises several issues for us.

Peter: It does. It reminds me of the great thinker from the 17th century, Francis Bacon, who said, “Atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man,” which is interesting. In other words, we know that God exists, but we are not prepared to admit it. It is, as you pointed out, a moral problem. It’s the problem of who rules over us: are we in charge of ourselves, or are we prepared to say that God is in charge of us?

Phillip: It’s like putting God in the dock, when in fact, we are in the dock and he is on the bench.

Peter: Indeed. Some of us may be a bit surprised that the Apostle Paul refers to the pagan poets and philosophers to argue for Christian truths, yet we shouldn’t be. I think it’s a good thing to do, though we don’t necessarily accept their teachings. There have been times when some of the great philosophers of the past have had too much of a dominance in Christian theology, which needs to be held in check. But on the other hand, of course it’s right to say that people from all sorts of religious affiliations, or none, may speak truths. Augustine once said, “All truth is God’s truth.” The fact is that people speak the truth, and we can use that truth as a way of promoting the gospel, while always being careful that what is being spoken is in fact truthful, and that it is not going to take over the gospel. Therefore, the sayings of these pagan thinkers can be used.

In fact, the truth that the pagan thinkers speak is useful in helping us understand this principle. God’s first disclosure of himself is through his great works. To quote Psalm 19:1-2

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

What we see around us is called ‘the general revelation of God’ (the word ‘general’ here meaning ‘universal’). It comes to every one of us as we dwell in this absolutely extraordinary world of ours, and it all testifies to the reality of God. So too does what theologians call ‘common grace’. In other words, all of us are corrupt, yet we are not completely bad. We are capable of good. There are books written by non-Christian authors that are profound, challenging, and informative, telling us things that we need to know. Though such things do not lead us to God himself, they may stimulate thought, encourage us to see, and be used as a testimony to God, as they are here by Paul, who essentially tells the Athenians, ‘Even your poets know the truth; let me use them to introduce you to the real truth.’

Phillip: I disagree; I think that Paul is negating the Athenian view rather than affirming that their pagan writers know the truth. In other words, Paul shows them the truth to point out their inconsistency. That is, he says, ‘You say you don’t know God, yet there are things about God and life that you’re already professing.’ We don’t use the pagan poets to accommodate our message to local views. You already mentioned that we can go too far with pagan philosophies. There were times when Platonism was the mode of the day, and Christians rephrased Christianity into Platonism, distorting Christianity as a result. Likewise, the Aristotelian revival of the church had the same problems when people changed Christianity in order for it to be consistent with Aristotelianism. Enlightenment Christianity had the same problem, as does postmodern Christianity. Christianity must rule over the philosophies of the world, rather than letting the philosophies of the world rule over it. We must be careful not to accommodate our message to local worldviews.

Furthermore, the poet Aratus, whom Paul quotes, was a Stoic; in the same passage, Paul preaches against Stoicism. Thus, he does not use the Stoic philosophy as a way of explaining Christianity. Instead, he shows the inconsistency and the incoherence of the Athenians. He does not speak of their great grasp of truth, but highlights that their worldview has a fundamental error running through it: they say they do not know God, yet they also claim that they do. The way in which they want to know God is inconsistent with their practice, so Paul teaches the Athenians that we are all God’s offspring.

Peter: Let me take that up with you, because after all, this part of the sermon where he mentions that we are all God’s offspring is quite jaw-dropping, since in so much of the Bible, terms like ‘offspring’ and ‘sons’ are used to refer to Israel. Israel is the son of God. As is said in Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Afterwards, we are born again into God’s family, and we have the inestimable privilege as believers of being able to call God our Father in that intimate way. Romans 8 and Galatians 4 make a great deal about this. It’s not a privilege you are born with; it’s a privilege which comes to you through a rebirth. Remember the genealogy of Luke 3.

Phillip: That takes you in the other direction, because the genealogy goes all the way up to Adam, who is said to be the son of God. But he was not born again by the Spirit of God, nor was he an Israelite. It was in his creation that he was the son of God. Thus I am not quite sure whether you can so limit God’s fatherhood to the rebirth of sinful people that you exclude the fatherhood of God in general. After all, isn’t all fatherhood in heaven and earth named after him?

Peter: It is. There is a unique sonship of whom only Jesus, the eternal Son of God, is that person. Then there is an adopted sonship of those who are born again and come into that living, wonderful, and unique relationship with God, who is our loving Father. But there is also the fact that we all belong to humanity, and humanity itself was created by God. Therefore we are the recalcitrant, prodigal children of the living God.

Phillip: I’ll put it this way: he is God the Father before we are created, so he is always the Father. It is right that we call upon people to turn back to God the Father. We are created, but we’re created in relationship with the Father. Jesus says, in Matthew 7:11, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Peter: Assuming, rightly so, that this is not an unbiblical expression, why does Paul use it here?

Phillip: It is because of the failure of idolatry, for they know God is not a statue, but the source of life and their Father, yet they continue to make statues. As Paul says in Acts 17:29, “We ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” God is not made in our image; we are made in his image. All idolatry is the making of man, and all idolatry comes from man’s image, whilst God is fundamentally not from man’s image. So Paul points out that what the Athenians say through their own prophets contradicts the presence of statues within the city.

Peter: Idolatry is a spiritual failure, which takes different forms. Traditionally, it has involved making images of the gods of the world, depicting them in human or animal forms as an attempt to understand and relate to them. But it doesn’t work. It works from the point of view of fulfilling a need in the human heart for worship and for organising the world, but it doesn’t fulfil the human heart, which longs for the great creator of all things, a creator who cannot be represented by plastic, by stone, or by any other malleable instrument.

Phillip: Idolatry is not feeling our way towards God and finding him; it’s running away from the God that we know, in making our own gods, because all idolatry is a misrepresentation of God.

Peter: To state something that’s been said many times before, instead of recognising that we are made in the image of God, we make God in our image. As Christians, we can be tempted to do that too; we make God a bigger form of ourselves in the hope of organising the world. This can be done verbally, in painting a portrait of God with our words, which is idolatrous.

Phillip: That is because what that does is reduce God to something we can control, and therefore it’s a rejection rather than a searching for him. Man in the Bible, especially religious man, is not seeking God but running away from him. Sometimes we talk of people as seeking God, and we should, because he is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. But what we are doing as sinful people is running away from him. That is the message of Acts 17 and the point of the climax of the sermon, which we will talk about next week.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on Acts 17, check out this talk. It’s called Who Judges Judges?

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

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As we start off another year, we are still conscious of how troubled our world is. Wars and rumours of wars continue to fill our news media. When will mankind ever come to peace? … not until the Lord returns! It may look as if God has lost control of the world as nations war against each other, but that is a failure to understand God’s purpose in creating and appointing the nations. Paul, in his speech in Athens, speaks of God’s ongoing rule of the world through his rule of the nations.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: We meet again to talk about the great God whom we proclaim in the gospel, just as the apostle Paul did in Acts 17, when he was called to the Areopagus to explain the strange teaching that he was bringing to Athens. We read in Acts 17:26-28

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’.

Paul spoke to the Athenians of the God that they professed they didn’t know, as denoted by the inscription, ‘To the unknown god’. Paul told them that this God is the creator of the universe and a sustainer of life. That’s what we have looked at during the last two weeks. This week, we will focus on Paul’s proclamation that God is the ruler of the nations.

Peter Jensen: We have grown up with the concept of national identity and its profound influence on us. For example, we are engaged in mortal combat with one of our oldest enemies: the English cricket team. We Aussies gather in huge numbers in loyalty to our country to defend the Ashes against the English. We’re keen to play against other nations as well, which reflects a loyalty to our own.

But a more significant example, and one that has particularly impacted the older generations, is what happened in the 20th century with loyalty to our nation regarding wars. The willingness of Australians to volunteer to put their lives at peril to defend the nation was fairly clear. I often wonder what it is about a nation that makes us so keen to offer our lives.

Phillip: Indeed, it is extraordinary. I once watched a rugby game where the Welsh team sang the hymn Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah. But in the last verse, instead of singing, “Bread of Heaven, bread of Heaven,” they sang, “Wales forever, Wales forever.” I even noticed that the volume of the singing increased at that point, demonstrating the unity that comes from a shared national identity. However, this sense of national identity varies across the world. In the African continent, tribalism is stronger than nationalism, because some tribes transcend the national boundaries that were imposed by the Europeans.

There’s also the problem of religion. For many people, their nation is more important than God, yet there are others for whom God is more important than their nation. What do you do when loyalty to God puts you in conflict with your nation? Or what happens when your personal ethics are of a different character to the ethics of your nation, and you are called upon to do things that you think are unethical? The Vietnam War, for example, saw significant demonstrations in Australia against the fight that the national government had committed the people to. Many may say that nationalism is a freedom of expression, but at the time, it felt divisive of the nation because people claimed an ethical framework which was of greater significance than the national decision made through Parliament.

We may take the nation-state for granted today, but where did the concept originate?

Peter: One of the main features of the nation-state’s historical foundation arose after the 30 Years War in Europe during the mid-17th century, sparked by tensions between Protestants and Catholics, which was eventually resolved by the Treaty of Westphalia. As a result of the treaty, it became clear that from then on, nations would have their own identity vis-à-vis, for example, the papacy or the Holy Roman Empire, and that the religion of the nation would be the religion of its ruler. There was also the principle of non-interference with other nations. So the idea of the national state was influenced significantly through that treaty, and we live with it today.

Phillip: Of course, problems arose when one nation, in this case Germany, took upon itself a morality—or rather, an immorality—that exceeded what everybody thought was humane. There was a nation which, after it elected Adolf Hitler, took upon itself a way of life that the rest of the world has disapproved of, to such an extent that the name of Hitler is used to represent the epitome of evil.

Peter: There were people under that regime who stood against Adolf Hitler’s leadership, including some famous Christians. It’s important not to forget these courageous people.

Phillip: Indeed. There’s a wonderful picture of the workers at a dockyard saluting Hitler, where right in the middle of it, one man stands with folded arms, refusing to participate. Thankfully, there were people of conscience back then.

At the end of the war, when it was discovered how dreadful the camps of the Holocaust were, we executed the leaders of that nation through the Nuremberg trials. Moreover, we created the United Nations, which developed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a set of principles that ruled over the nations. There’s an uneasy tension that exists in many places including Australia, where, as governments attempt to pass legislation, people say, ‘You cannot do that because it contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’ Not everybody accepts it, of course. At the time that the Declaration was founded, 48 nations accepted it, 8 abstained from doing so, and 2 did not vote at all.

One of the nations that did not accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was Iran, because at the time, Iran was under the Shah. After the Great Revolution took place under the Ayatollah, Iran rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1982 because they claimed that it was a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian traditions. That’s not a bad description of it, which is interesting; I think that Christian tradition puts more emphasis on responsibilities than rights. But by the year 2000, the Muslims had created the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, which expresses the right to a dignified life in accordance with Islamic Sharia. So the problem with the Universal Declaration is that it’s not universal.

The nations want to rule themselves, but the verse that I read earlier tells us that God rules them. Paul said that God “determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place”, and that from one man, he made every nation. How do you see that in the scriptures?

Peter: Going back into antiquity, although the modern nation-state isn’t exactly the same, you see peoples, empires and nations. That begs the question, ‘To what extent is God involved in all this? Does God let us be free to do what we want?’ Though the biblical picture is certainly one of sin and wickedness, the Lord in his mercy overrules, turning sin and wickedness to his good purposes. One prominent example is that of the Pharaoh when the Israelites lived in slavery in Egypt. When the Pharaoh, upon being asked by Moses to let the Israelites go, declined, the Bible interestingly says of him that the Pharaoh was raised up to serve this purpose. It tells us that the Pharaoh hardened his heart against the word of God, yet it also says that God hardened his heart. In other words, God used Pharaoh to achieve his great purpose of the redemption of his people.

Likewise, the references to Nineveh in Isaiah 30, or the books of Jonah and Nahum, are of a similar nature. Nineveh was the terror of their day and the huge power associated with the empires. Isaiah 10 describes the Assyrians as an axe in the hand of the Lord to bring his righteous punishment to his people. This isn’t to say that the punishing horde pleases him, but that even their wickedness can be used to do his purposes.

Likewise, Cyrus in Isaiah chapter 45 was raised up by the Lord to free his people when they were in bondage again.

Phillip: Isaiah 45 is interesting, because Cyrus didn’t know the Lord who raised him up, and he was even called the Messiah. The people of Israel didn’t like the fact that the rescuing, redeeming Messiah was Cyrus the Pagan, yet God raised up Cyrus to send the people back.

Peter: It’s a bit of a mixed message, this business of nations. How and why were we divided into what we think of as nations?

Phillip: It takes us back to our episode on the Tower of Babel. When humans were all one, building their way to heaven, God in his purpose confused our languages so as to divide and scatter us. It’s the judgement on our arrogance, preventing us from doing more damage, because as a united, sinful humanity, we would do untold damage to God’s world. So God in his grace judges us by scattering us into different languages and nations. That’s why it’s God’s purpose to appoint people in their differences to be unable to work together, which is what Paul is referring to in Acts 17.

Peter: I can remember first hearing about the United Nations and being so awestruck by the wonder of that suggestion. Of course, the United Nations was preceded by the League of Nations, which in the end was a failure. But when we were young people, the United Nations seemed to be a beacon of hope in the world, that what we had experienced in the First and Second World Wars need not happen again. There are many symbols that point to the rolling back of the Tower of Babel. For example, the Olympic Games are a powerful symbol of unity, until instances of cheating arise and until nations are expelled. There’s Esperanto, the language that was invented so that all people everywhere could speak the same language, which I understand is almost gone. It’s difficult now to have such a glowing feeling about the United Nations as one did back then, although I wouldn’t say that it’s been a total failure. There have been some wonderful things coming out of that activity of drawing the nations together.

Phillip: But of course, there were 50 major international wars between 1945 and 2000, so it didn’t succeed in stopping conflicts.

Peter: To quote Paul again, God has “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” The whole consequence of Babel is not intended to make us move away from God but to seek God.

Phillip: It is intended to move us away from self-salvation and from the hope that humanity will be able to find its way to God. To our frustration, we have to turn back to God, because we can’t do it ourselves. So Jesus tells us that we will always hear of wars and rumours of wars. We want peace, and we should work for peace wherever there is a chance to do so. But we must accept that we’ll never succeed because of human sinfulness. We laugh at the beauty pageants where the contestant is asked about what they want for life, and they all say, “World peace.” But frankly, our hopes and expectations of universal human rights in the United Nations are not much better than the beauty pageant contestant. Nations don’t want to be dictated to by outsiders. Take, for example, Britain and Brexit. They don’t want to be run by Brussels. You may agree or disagree with it, but nations have their own integrity. Yet their integrity can be profoundly immoral and wrong.

Peter: It’s compromised by human sinfulness. World peace is not stupid; it’s unachievable.

Phillip: World peace is only achievable through the Prince of Peace, who came to die for us and rise again. God creates world peace.

Peter: This is not only important for us at this moment in history either, because it is easy to forget that the great empires of the past have passed away. We have lived since the Second World War virtually under the beneficial eye of the United States of America, not with total success—there have been fifty major wars since the United Nations was founded—but it has been a good time in one way within human history. Yet empires pass away, and they often pass away by corruption, by sin from within the nation. There are many signs indeed in the Western world of the return of corruption, which will, in the end, bring us down.

Phillip: Indeed, and we talk of the Western world and Australia at our privilege. But Sudan has been at war for 50 years; thousands are being killed, but not on our television sets because they’re not Westerners.

Peter: What does this have to do with what Paul says, that “They may seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him”?

Phillip: It’s the ‘perhaps’ in that statement which tells us that God has frustrated our lives so that we will not be satisfied with this world and what we are doing, in such a way that we will turn to find something greater, namely God himself. But, sadly, many people don’t; so next week we will talk about how we can find God.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on Acts 24-25 entitled Who Rules Rulers?

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Our second episode of our summer series on Paul’s evangelism in Athens points to the enormously important doctrine of God’s sufficiency and our dependence. I hope during this holiday time, for our Southern Hemisphere subscribers, you are having a great time to reflect on God’s goodness. For our Northern Hemisphere subscribers, we wish you well as you lurch into winter.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: For the second episode of our summer series, we will once again delve into Acts 17 together.

Peter Jensen: I love this passage because it demonstrates a very interesting way of preaching the gospel to unbelievers. In many ways, the ancient Athenians are exactly like us.

Phillip: The city of Sydney is not much different from the city of Athens in ancient times, especially in its paganism. Today, we will follow up on last week’s episode about God the Creator by looking at God the Sustainer.

Acts 17:24 starts with God the Creator, then gives the implications about this Creator for religion: Paul tells the Athenians, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.” In verse 25, Paul introduces God the Sustainer: “Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” That is the God of whom Paul speaks.

Peter: As we saw last time, God reveals himself in the wonderful news that he is the one who has made all things. The word ‘reveals’ here is essential to our understanding of him. Last week, I read an extract from the book The Intellectual Adventures of Ancient Man,1 which describes the “discovery” of monotheism as “Israel’s greatest achievement”. But it wasn’t a discovery; it was a revelation. It is impossible to think that human beings may have stumbled across monotheism in the way in which it is described in the Bible. It is a revelation from the God who speaks to us, based upon what he is like. Therefore, it is a wonderful revelation of the truth.

But there is more to God than simply the revelation that he is one and that he created all things. Many people down through the ages have agreed that there is one creator God. But they think that having made all things, God stepped back. They see the universe as a machine that was set into action: the world has been made by God, but it is independent of him, and it carries on in the way in which he has designed it to. Meanwhile, God watches but does not interfere with the unfolding history of the world.

Phillip: But the God in the Bible reveals himself. We are told that he knows all things; nothing would operate without God’s work. In fact, Hebrews 1:3 tells us, “He upholds the universe by the word of his power.” That is, the Old and New Testaments both tell of a God who is actively involved and engaged in every aspect of life. Furthermore, Isaiah 45 speaks of him creating ill and creating good; nothing happens without the supervisory activity of God. Yet we still talk in terms of the laws of nature. Where do you think the laws of nature fit into God’s world? If it is not a machine, does nature itself have laws?

Peter: I don’t strongly object to the phrase ‘the laws of nature’, provided that we recognise that the laws of nature are only possible because they describe the habitual, ongoing work of God. For example, the chair I’m sitting on only remains a chair because God sustains it every moment. As you pointed out, everything is God at work, including every hair on our head. Because God is good, he is consistent in all that he does, and that consistency can be described as the laws of nature.

Furthermore, it’s not that cause and effect doesn’t matter, for God uses cause and effect; in fact, cause and effect are only possible because he continues to use it. So our scientific enterprise is not made impossible by what I’ve stated. Indeed, the reverse is true; it is the ongoing work of God that we trust every day. We all exist by faith, for we constantly trust the world in which we live. The basis of that trust is the goodness and the power of the one God, who has made and continues to supervise all things. God makes a promise after the flood, signified by the rainbow, where he assures all people in Genesis 8:22, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” Now this is the work of God.

Phillip: This is not descriptive of the world; it’s prescriptive by God.

Peter: Indeed. Jesus comments in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:45, that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” This is at the heart of the matter: God is constantly at work. The rain comes for the just and the unjust. It’s directed at the human race, which has been made by God. Thus we are in the hands of this good God wherever we go.

Phillip: As Christians, we are not living in the fear and anxieties of the world: we do not use religion to try to control the world, nor do we attempt to manipulate God into controlling the world according to our will. We don’t say, ‘It’s raining, so I must have done something bad,’ or ‘It’s sunny, so I must have done something good.’ God is habitually controlling our welfare.

Peter: I believe that is the best way of seeing it. Our welfare does include pain and suffering, of course. But before we get to that, there is another issue: the subject of miracles. Because God is not always consistent. He allowed someone to walk on water; he fed 5,000 people with a small portion of bread and fish; he raised people from the dead. What’s the best way of thinking about miracles?

Phillip: Firstly, the word ‘miracle’ is not a biblical word. It comes out of that mechanistic way of understanding the world, where miracles are the moments in time when a mechanism of the world seems not to have worked in its usual fashion. But the Bible uses half a dozen other words that are not the word ‘miracle’. It describes ‘shock’, ‘amazement’, ‘awe’, and ‘wonder’ about what takes place. All of these words express what is abnormal, but it doesn’t mean that God has abandoned the normal processes of life.

For instance, one of the greatest miracles of all time is the crossing of the Red Sea. The Bible explains how it happens, in terms of a great wind driving back the waters. It’s not a suspension of the laws of nature, but rather God using the laws of nature in ways that astonish us. God can, at any time, use the very ways in which he normally operates to bring about his purposes. He doesn’t have to suspend how the world operates; he uses it because he is in control of it.

The Bible does speak of signs and wonders, often in terms of the judgement that is coming. But that language in itself reveals that these signs and wonders signify God’s work: for example, they often signify that Jesus is fulfilling the expectations of the Old Testament. In the book that I wrote some time ago, The Coming of the Holy Spirit,2 one of my many appendices speaks on the subject of miracles itself. I encourage you to think about it, because we must not turn miracles into proof of God’s existence, for the Bible never does such a thing. It does point to God fulfilling his promises in the person of the Lord Jesus, but some of the things that happen in the world are bad. When we talk about God supervising all things all the time, using the ways in which he has created the world for it to be used, what do we say about the fact that some things in this world are incredibly awful?

Peter: Before we get there, I have another observation about miracles. You are right that in the Bible we sometimes see miracles occurring through an unusual, unexpected natural force, like a gust of wind. But sometimes we can’t. God doesn’t need such things to walk on water, for instance. So bear that in mind.

Your question is about suffering in the world in which God is in charge. One of the things that is very striking about the Bible is the way that from the third page all the way to the end, it stares pain and suffering in the face. Though some people use suffering as an argument against Christianity, the Bible is unwavering in talking about it. Virtually every page is an acknowledgement and a description of the pain and suffering of living in this world after the Fall. So we live in the world of death, for as God says in Genesis 2:17, “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were expelled from the garden into a world in which there was pain and suffering. So suffering is attributed to Adam and Eve’s decision to be like God. It’s not as though pain and suffering are just natural; they occur because of the rebellion of human beings.

But at the other end of the Bible, Revelation 21:4 says, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,” promising a future in which suffering will come to an end. Therefore the Bible is not just a book about the inevitability of pain and suffering, though it tells us that pain and suffering is the world in which we are living by choice.

Phillip: People who raise the problem of suffering as being a put-down argument against God’s existence have never read the Bible, I presume, because the whole Bible is about this subject and has multiple answers within itself.

Peter: Indeed. But one viewpoint that the Bible maintains is that God is good. Additionally, the Bible tells us that God does not approve of evil; however, through his power, he can use evil to accomplish his good ends, and to benefit those who serve him. So all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose. It doesn’t mean we will always succeed at everything we do, or that our faith can be strong enough to make miracles occur. It means that as we go on living in this world of pain and suffering, God will turn what happens to us for our good. Of course, the ultimate good is to be more like the Lord Jesus. This brings us to the very central story of the Bible, which is the story of God himself: the Son of God who came among us and was betrayed, deserted, and crucified. If there’s anyone who understands evil, pain and suffering, it is Jesus Christ.

Phillip: You keep moving from evil to suffering. Can you explain the difference?

Peter: People have different ways of putting it, but I see it like this: because of human beings in their sinfulness seeking to be like gods, we now live in a world in which there is pain, suffering, and evil. But not all pain and suffering is a direct result of evil. For example, in John 9, when Jesus came across a blind man, his disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”, to which Jesus replied, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Furthermore, the book of Job tells the story of a man who suffered terribly, but it was not because of his sin; it was due to other events behind it, of which he was ignorant. So not all pain and suffering is directly attributable to evil, though overall, we live in a world like that because of our own rebellion against God.

Phillip: There is a general suffering that comes from evil, but particular suffering may or may not come from any particular evil.

Peter: That’s what the Bible tells us, which is worth remembering because we sometimes think, as the disciples did, ‘I’ve fallen sick; what evil have I done?’

Phillip: But is it necessarily wrong to think that way?

Peter: It’s always right to remember that we’re all sinners, and we live in the sort of world where these things happen. Sometimes it is right to contemplate our sins. The epistle of the Hebrews reminds us that God will sometimes deal with sin in that way as a way of forming us and shaping us.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 11 speaks in those terms, too. I remember that in the section of the Book of Common Prayer called The Visitation of the Sick, one of the first things that the sick person is instructed to do is to ask themself if there is a particular sin for which God has visited this sickness upon them. However, there need not be, for we live in a sinful, sick world. It’s important that sickness and death remind us of sin; therefore, they remind us to think again about ourselves. But sickness and death will come to all because we are all in this fallen world.

Peter: I couldn’t live in this world without God and the hope that he provides. Because the Son of God came for us, we are given the hope of resurrection that the world does not have.

Phillip: One immediate issue is a misunderstanding about the reasons for which a person may become sick. Many ask themselves, ‘I’m sick; am I sinful?’ or ‘I’m not sick; am I good?’ Personally, many of my friends are sick whilst I’m enjoying good health, and I thank God for my good health, but I know that it has nothing to do with the fact that I am in some way morally better than my sick friends. The idea that sickness is a direct result of the afflicted person’s sin is a dreadful doctrine.

Peter: It sure is, and we should avoid it.

Phillip: That is not what Paul is talking about when he explains God and his self-sufficiency in Acts 17. Paul makes the point in verse 25 that God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything.” There is this constant temptation of human beings to make God in our image. We think of him as a superior man: just a bit more intelligent, a bit bigger, a little stronger; slightly above us in power and might, but someone to whom we could lend a hand. We think we can help him out just as he helps us. But Paul puts an end to that way of thinking about God. God needs nothing from me; not even my worship or my good works will do anything to improve or assist God. He is independent of us, so this sense that we are doing God some service by our good works is a terrible misconception about the nature of God.

Peter: This reminds me of the sayings that we hear sometimes in Christian circles, such as ‘We are God’s hands’, ‘He is impotent apart from us’, or ‘We do his work for him in the world.’ The truth behind that is that God, in his mercy and kindness, uses human beings to do his work. However, we only do it through his wisdom and with his power.

Phillip: He doesn’t need us to do it.

Peter: But God is very kind, so he enables and encourages us to do it. For example, in Job chapter 42, God, having uttered a rebuke to Job, tells him to pray for his friends so that God may forgive them. God doesn’t need Job’s prayer, but God incorporates it into his deeds, and grants Job a status as an adopted son of God. So we are all doing the work of God in the world, not because he needs us, but because he kindly incorporates us into his work and empowers us to do it.

You spoke about what’s going on in our own generation. It’s interesting that the atheistic thinking of the early 21st century seems to have died down because it is not satisfying. There’s a move back to what people are calling ‘spirituality’ or, as I sometimes say, ‘the new paganism’. But even within the Christian community, there is sometimes a temptation to treat God as our servant. There’s this idea that if we have enough faith, we can move the levers of the universe, and then all sorts of good things like health and prosperity will come pouring out, as though we are God. But that is not how faith works.

Another thing that we are all guilty of doing is taking the salvation wrought by Christ for granted, as though it’s a band-aid for our sores, when indeed it should move us every day in wonder and awe of what God has done in his love for us. We use the fatherhood of God as though he’s a cheery ‘dad figure’ of sorts who hands out lollies to his kids. He’s not a grandfather in the heavens, so to speak; that is a trivialised picture of God. Worse still, we think that we are giving money to God when we are generous. We think that we are truly worshipping him when we do good works to make him happy with us. In short, the attempt, by the goodness of our hearts and our deeds, to win God’s approval, is the most popular religion of all.

Phillip: This obscures the very truth of the grace of God. It is not until we understand that we can give God nothing that we can begin to see the nature of his mercy and grace. Our relationship with God is not transactional. We should not think, ‘I do this for God, and God does that for me; if I don’t do this for God, God won’t do that for me.’ Sinners, as we are, have nothing to give to God, who sustains all life and does not need us yet gives us everything. Therefore, it’s only through his mercy and his generosity that we breathe our next breath. It’s only by his grace that we are saved from the judgement that we deserve. It’s only as we discover that God needs nothing from us, and he owes us nothing, that we can truly grasp how sinful we are, and how merciful and generous he is towards us.

So we pray for the mercy of God, not to win favour, but because he is merciful. It’s the right response to God. As the song goes, “Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.” I always ponder, when people sing that song, whether they actually believe that they are wretches. I’m sure that the man who wrote it understood it. Because you need to understand it in order to understand the God that Paul proclaimed to the Athenians all those years ago.

2

Phillip Jensen, The Coming of the Holy Spirit, 2022 (Matthias Media)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on Acts 17, check out this sermon. It’s called The Religion of a Dead World.

For more information and a link to purchase Phillip’s book The Coming of the Holy Spirit click here.

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Welcome to a New Year. We are commencing Two Ways News’ summer series today, looking at evangelism through the study of Paul’s famous sermon on the Areopagus of Athens in Acts 17.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In this summer series, we will look at the great evangelistic sermon in Acts 17, where Paul delivers a speech on the Areopagus in Athens.

John Stott’s The Message of Acts1 in the commentary series The Bible Speaks Today breaks this sermon into 5 points about who God is: the creator of the universe, the sustainer of life, the ruler of the nations, the father of humans, and the judge of the world. Our series will discuss these 5 great points from this sermon. Acts 17:22–25

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

This passage hits the first 2 of John Stott’s points: God is the creator of the universe, and God is the sustainer of life. But it’s an interesting sermon due to its audience. The people of Athens were everlastingly interested in the latest ideas; the Epicureans, the Stoics and the philosophers in particular wanted to hear more of this new preacher. Paul preaches the same gospel here as he does elsewhere, but the audience shapes the presentation of his truth.

Peter Jensen: We learn something here about the flexibility needed in the preaching of the gospel. It is important to take account of the audience. That sounds simple enough, but we don’t always do this. If you compare the Apostle Paul’s preaching to different audiences, you’ll see that while the message stays the same, he shapes it to the audience. He knows the audience, so he moves from what they know to what they don’t know. That’s a very good rule. Interestingly, of all his sermons, this one speaks to our own situation; the Epicurean philosophy in particular is alive and well today, thus the situation in Athens is similar to our own. There was in Athens an intellectual pride, and there was idolatry, which included an image of ‘the unknown god’.

Furthermore, the Athenians were seeking to have a discussion with this man who came preaching foreign deities, based on contempt for the preacher and their fascination with new fashions. There’s a lot there that is so human, that speaks to us of our own age. Through this, Paul sends the arrow of the gospel into that context.

Phillip: Paul is called by the Athenians ‘the babbler’. It’s a derogatory term; Paul is not coming as the great preacher but as someone that they hold in contempt, for he is of no significance to them. In his sermon, he starts by addressing this idolatry issue, which is not at the heart of either the Epicureans or the Stoics, but is certainly at the heart of Athens. In fact, the reason he was in the streets preaching before this event was because when he was in Athens alone, he was provoked by the amount of idolatry he saw. It’s always a challenge for us to realise how upset Paul was about how pagan the people of a pagan city were. We ourselves live in a pagan city of sorts, but because our society has Christian roots, we do not seem to be as upset by the idolatry of our society as Paul was.

Paul starts with the idols and with religion, addressing their idol of ‘the unknown god’. He refers to the audience’s self-acknowledged ignorance, saying in essence, ‘You say you do not know this god; I will tell you about him.’ He then tells them of the true and living God and the implications that has for religion.

Peter: I’m no expert in religion; however, there are some things which strike me about it. An Indigenous student from Moore Theological College, on the subject of spirits, once told me, “If you were on your own in the bush for 2 days, you’d think there were spirits.” That idea that the world is inhabited by many spirits, some evil and some good, is probably the most common idea in the world even today. It is we, the inheritors of the Western tradition, who are the strange ones. Thus the world that the apostle is speaking into is still our world.

I recently had the great honour and privilege of hosting an African bishop here. I asked him about magic and sorcery, for that is the world from which he comes. He was involved in these practices until the age of 12, when he first heard the gospel and turned to Christ. But that view of the world, in which we are surrounded by gods and spirits, is very common indeed. The human heart longs for something more than simply this world; we long to have an explanation for it. We long to have some sense of purpose and meaning that comes from beyond ourselves. We need answers to questions like ‘who?’ and ‘why?’

Someone who worked in Papua New Guinea once told me that when an accident occurred or when someone fell sick, the question often asked was, ‘Who has done this?’ or ‘What spirit is behind this?’ There’s a sense of the world being inhabited with the spirits. So they would ask, ‘Who has done this, and why have they done it to me?’ We are surrounded in that world by mystery and religion. In saying ‘religion’, I am not talking about the Christian faith, but human religion, which helps people to cope with the mysterious. We need power; we need an ability to communicate with the dead and with the world around us. Religion puts us in touch with the supernatural, or so it is believed. I have never lived in that world, and I’m no expert in religion, but that’s how I understand the world in so many places, including the ancient world.

Phillip: It’s interesting to see the understanding that the Athenians had about Paul’s sermon. When they heard Paul preaching of Jesus and the resurrection, they thought he was speaking of foreign gods. Though Jesus is indeed God, the resurrection is not a god. They didn’t understand what he was saying, but it is interesting that they misunderstood in terms of gods and of religion. In other words, they lived in the world, as people have throughout human history, of gods and of spirits. It seems like the best way to explain the world, which to many people is chaotic. According to that view, there are many good and evil forces at work in the world, so people pray to the gods of healing or of travel, for instance.

This notion shows up sometimes in Christianity, wherein the different saints are assigned different activities to protect us. For instance, Christopher is supposedly the patron saint of travellers, and Luke the patron saint of healers. It’s a very natural religious response. For some of our audience, it may be somewhat confusing to hear Peter, as an archbishop, say that he is not an expert in religion. But religion is different from Christianity in this regard.

Peter: Indeed, but not by accident. That is to say, you can categorise Christianity as a religion, but there’s a standout feature in Christianity which is quite significant, though we take it for granted. I once asked our father, when I was six years old, “Are there any ghosts in the world?” to which he replied, “No, ignore that. That’s nonsense.” That answer was comforting to me, but what would you have said in response to this six-year-old?

Phillip: I would ask, ‘Why?’, as in ‘Why do you ask about these things?’ Because at that age, what you were getting at was where a lot of religion comes from: anxiety, fear, and impotence. It’s partly the understanding issue, the viewpoint that the world doesn’t make sense; it’s also the harm issue, the knowledge that the world seems to bring sickness, death, and all other kinds of suffering.

Peter: There’s a book called The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man2 in which there is a set of essays, one of which says this about ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptian had a similar sense of a surrounding world of forces. A mother had to croon a protective song over her sleeping child… In an incantation against disease, the malevolent forces which may bring sickness include “every blessed male, every blessed female, every dead male, and every dead female,” that is, the dead who have attained a state of eternal glory, as well as those who have died without certainty of immortality.

This passage provides a sense of a world in which there were many gods, spirits, and forces, and a subsequent longing that people had to be protected. Some people also longed to control the forces so that they could use them against their enemies.

Phillip: Thus, the truth that Paul starts with is to go straight to who the true and living God is.

Peter: What he said was astonishing: he went straight to God, and he spoke about one God. The world in which the message of the Bible came is summed up in those wonderful first 4 words, “In the beginning, God”. In a sense, the Bible itself is summed up in that simple phrase. We cannot get the picture of how revolutionary those words are. The Bible does not say, ‘In the beginning there were many gods,’ or ‘In the beginning the gods had a fight and the world was the product of it.’ Nor does it say that the world is a result of sex between gods, or anything like that. There is one God, the maker of all things. The maker who makes by speech, who simply speaks the non-existent into existence. The one God, the maker of all things; the single will who rules the world.

The answer to the question, ‘Who is doing these things to me?’ is that whatever happens, it is the will of God. You’re not dealing with the many; you’re dealing with the one. This is good news, as it sets us free from the anxieties and the fears of the spirit-filled world. It’s an announcement of ‘the unknown god’ that Paul refers to. To quote once more from ‘The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man’

Israel’s greatest achievement, so apparent that the mention of it is almost trite, was monotheism. It was an achievement that transformed subsequent history. One may raise the question of whether any other single contribution, from whatever source since human culture emerged from the Stone Age, has had the far-reaching effect upon history that Israel in this regard had exerted through the mediums of Christianity and Islam, and directly through the world of Jewish thinkers themselves.

Israel’s greatest achievement is this phrase, “In the beginning, God”; that is, one God. We need to see it as the fundamental truth on which our society is built, as we have stopped recognising it as such.

Phillip: It is the fundamental reality upon which the gospel is built. When Paul preaches the gospel in Athens, with the diversity of views and the acknowledged ignorance of the unknown god, he immediately speaks of the true God, but then fills out the information. He essentially says, ‘I am talking about the one God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth; not one of your many gods, but the true and living God.’ All of the gods of the Greek pantheon had limitations of various kinds. None of them were the Lord of the whole universe.

So Paul goes straight to this non-Jewish audience, the Gentile audience as we call it, and says in essence, ‘Now that you understand God, let me tell you about him.’ He then continues by filling out the details. The key point he makes is that God created everything; therefore, he doesn’t live in temples, and he is not under our control. He is the one who makes and rules everything. Church buildings are not temples; that is a difference between religion and Christianity. Because Christianity is monotheistic, there are not multiple different ways to this great God, as he rules over everything. He doesn’t live in temples. Though of course there is a temple in the Old Testament.

Peter: There is, and eventually there is one built in Jerusalem. It was, in a sense, the palace of God in Jerusalem, because there was the line of King David and the true king, God. But that temple was only a foreshadowing of what was going to happen through Christ, as were the sacrifices, the food laws, and all the rest. When Jesus comes, he tells us that the temple will be destroyed, but that it doesn’t matter, because in three days the temple will rise. In this context, he is referring to the temple of his body. I agree entirely that God is everywhere and that he doesn’t dwell in temples made with human hands.

Phillip: When Solomon dedicated the temple, he said in 1 Kings 8:27

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!

The God who made everything does not live in temples. There’s a reason within the Bible for that, as you’ve pointed out: the reason is to help us to understand Jesus. In Revelation 2, in which the city of God is described, there is no temple, because we are with God. Therefore, the gospel is preaching the creator God of heaven and earth; we need to make that clear.

Peter: The idea of the temple turns up in the New Testament. It’s translated into the terms of Jesus, wherein he calls his body the temple. But the church is called the temple of the Lord.

Phillip: The church that is called the temple of the Lord is the people, for our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and we are the living stones being built into this temple. Metaphorically, the temple is where God lives. That is because God lives in us, as God lives in the Lord Jesus Christ and we are in him. The language of the temple is used symbolically, but never literally, of Christians and Christian life. But when Paul is preaching the gospel to literal temple worshippers, idol worshippers, and polytheists, his first and clearest point in Acts 17 is that God is the creator of all, the one God creates everything, and he doesn’t live in temples.

Peter: When you said the temple is metaphoric, you didn’t mean that his presence is metaphoric, but that the language of the temple symbolises his presence. He is present with us, but it doesn’t mean he’s not present everywhere else. The reason anything happens is through the will of God.

Phillip: But when it comes to gospel preaching, you have to start there.

Peter: That is where you started in ‘Two Ways to Live’.

Phillip: ‘Two Ways to Live’ is a gospel presentation that we wrote years ago. Some friends of ours were working at that time to look at what the gospel in the book of Acts truly meant. They noticed that when they preached to Jews, there was no reference to the creator. It was assumed that the reason was because when they preached to the Gentiles, they started each time with the creation and the Creator, whereas the Jews already knew of the Creator. Thus, they realised that an understanding of the creation is needed to understand the gospel.

The first time I was taken out to do street evangelism, the man who mentored me chatted to a student. He told the student that God loves him, and the student responded and continued talking. Afterwards, I asked my mentor, “How did you know he believed in God?” My mentor said, “Unlike you, I believe in the Bible.” I asked what he meant, to which he replied, “God says in the scriptures that people know God exists. It’s you who doubts that God exists; I just assume that the people we evangelise to will be like the Bible says: believers in God. If they’re not, they’ll tell me. But what they know about God is confused and wrong. Paul doesn’t start on the ‘if’; he just says, ‘I’m telling you about God.’”

Peter: Paul says, ‘I’m telling you about the unknown god that you believe in.’

Phillip: You need to know who God is, the creator of all; otherwise, you will not understand sin as being rebellion against God. You will reduce sin down to rules and regulations, cultural norms and mores. If you don’t understand sin, you won’t understand why God judges us. If you don’t understand judgement and sin, you’ll never understand Jesus and his death on our behalf to turn aside the righteous anger of the creator God.

2

H.A Frankfort, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, 1946 (The University of Chicago)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk by Phillip on Acts 17. It’s called How To Know God.

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Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

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There are many Christmas traditions that I happily do not practise, from sentimental Christmas songs to reindeer, trees, and Santa Claus. However, I would never forgo the glory of eating a great feast at Christmas time, for eating food together is the God-given expression of fellowship, and Christian fellowship is derived from God sending his Son into the world to save sinners. Read on to see how Peter and I remember our Christmas festivities and have come to understand the importance of food at this season.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Here we come to Christmas time once again. It is a nostalgic time for all people.

Peter Jensen: It surrounds itself with stories and tales.

Phillip: Most people recall Christmas in terms of their childhood. It was a universally happy time; you were allowed to eat things which you ordinarily weren’t, you got second helpings of ice cream, there were presents, and there were relatives whom you wouldn’t normally see. It was during the holidays, too, and for us in Australia, there was warmth in the air. Do you remember Christmas Day when we were children?

Peter: I remember that we had a big lunch which included a pudding with real money inside. In our family, there was a tradition where the money was collected up and invested in a lottery ticket. We did win five pounds once, but of course we do not commend such gambling!

Phillip: Indeed. But for many people, Christmas Day is a very difficult time. Some years ago, I spent some time talking to a casino boss, who said that Christmas Day was the busiest day at the casino. On that date, he would see around 25,000 people there. They were alone, bored, and playing with machines because they had nowhere to go for Christmas. He found that profoundly sad, having left his family’s Christmas gathering.

Peter: It is particularly sad because of the contrast between our Christmases as children and our Christmases ever since, and the reality of this day for so many people. The joy of sitting around the table eating is not just about the food; it is about the fellowship of eating. It is hard if you have to eat alone, particularly when you know that you have eaten with others in the past. Or you may eat with others, but you look around the room and think of people who are missing. It might be a husband, a wife, a child, or a friend who is missing, sometimes because death has taken them. The first Christmas after a death is always hard. But death is not the only cause for people around the table to be missing, of course. Sometimes it’s because family members have fallen out with one another. Commonly, a mother wants to get all her children together, particularly on Christmas Day, which is wonderful. But sometimes, having a family in which there are big tensions between people makes being around the same table difficult.

It is interesting that eating together is such an intimate activity that signals unity and peace with the ones you are eating with. But when the peace is make-believe in order to make a parent or other family member feel better, it’s very difficult. Though of course, that coming together means there’s also an opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation. I know of one family which had grave problems, but after considerable work, they all came together and ate with each other. It was a remarkable and unforgettable moment that signalled the end of warfare and the beginning of reconciliation. There’s a natural oneness in shared food which is hard to ignore. That’s why people sometimes attend a wedding but leave before the reception. Food matters, not because it’s just a fuel in our bodies, but because of what it signifies.

Phillip: That communality is an important thing which is culturally difficult in western society. We had a group come to a conference one time who stopped at McDonald’s on the way. An interesting conflict took place, because one of the Asian members in the group thought that the McDonald’s was meant to be shared with everyone else, whereas everybody else bought their own. She was quite miffed that no one was taking from her or offering their food to her. When we eat at the same table, we are sharing one meal. It’s like all drinking from the same coffee or tea pot. Sharing matters, because the eating of a meal is not only about the fuelling of the body; it is about the inherent fellowship that comes with sharing.

If you only intend to fuel the body, stand in front of the fridge and graze. But if you’re going to sit at the table, you should be in fellowship with one another. That’s why table manners are so important to us. Our great aunt was fierce on table manners, which I am grateful for, because she taught us the essentials of fellowship with others when eating a meal. She taught us that you don’t start until everybody’s there, you don’t start until you’ve said grace, and that when the dessert comes, you don’t start eating until the person who served it has their helping. Because of these rules, we could all eat together.

Peter: The story about the McDonald’s reminds me that other cultures, particularly those of Asia and Africa, still have something which we have lost: the importance of food. When I go to an Asian church, for example, inevitably there’ll be dinner afterwards. Conversely, in many of our Anglo churches, we may have a dry biscuit and a cup of coffee. Fortunately that is now changing, but we Anglos don’t fully understand the significance of food.

Phillip: This sense of fellowship through food is found within the Bible.

Peter: Of course, food is at the beginning of Genesis, with the fruit of the garden. That signals a fellowship with God. I also think of the elders being summoned to eat in Exodus, when the covenant with Israel is made and when the Ten Commandments are given. The elders are gathered at the mountain, and after the covenant has been made, they eat and drink in the presence of God as a sign and seal of the covenant. You can do various things to sign and seal a covenant; for instance, a married couple is given rings. But in those days, when a covenant was made, you had an unforgettable meal together.

Phillip: I also think of the Passover. Before the Israelites came to Mount Sinai, they were enslaved in Egypt. During the last plague, they ate a sacrificial lamb together. The blood of the lamb was spread on the doorposts, and they ate the meal, dressed up and ready to leave. The Passover was to be eaten every year to remind the people of that famous meal that was had when they were saved.

There is also an instance where the people complain about the lack of food in the wilderness, and God provides manna as a sign of his grace and his sustenance to the people. God reminds them that man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. It is the mouth of God that provides the food that makes it possible for them to survive in the wilderness.

Peter: It is significant that the Passover and the provision of manna in the wilderness both point towards the coming of Jesus. As God fed the people in the wilderness in the Old Testament, so Jesus fed the people in the wilderness in the New Testament. Then Jesus said, in John 6:51

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

Phillip: How do you eat of Jesus?

Peter: You eat of him by faith; as you put your trust in Jesus, so you are feeding on him, the bread of life. Food becomes a symbol of the very essence of Jesus, in the sense that when we have put our faith in him, we feed on him; thus, we owe our very lives to him. It is interesting that John’s gospel does not recount the story of the Last Supper. Instead, it recounts that saying of Jesus. This is because the Last Supper is intended to point to the feeding on Jesus, rather than being the feeding itself.

Phillip: The Passover was the appropriate time for Jesus to die, for he died as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He was the Passover Lamb. Therefore, to understand the salvation that Jesus won, you must look back to the salvation that God won in Egypt, where the blood of the lamb meant that the Angel of Death passed over that house. So the blood of Christ means that judgement passes over us; forgiveness and salvation from our slavery to sin take place because of the Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for us.

Today, we remember that great Passover by celebrating what we call the Lord’s Supper. On this occasion, we are reminded of what Jesus did on the cross for us, of the promises of salvation as a result of his sacrifice, and of the new age, where we love one another as God has loved us. The Lord’s Supper is our Passover meal, reminding us of what Jesus, the real Passover Lamb and the real Passover meal, was all about.

Peter: It’s intriguing that there was a traitor present during the meal. The ignominy of Judas, the awful corruption of human life that we see in him, is caused by what he did. But it’s also significant that he had been eating and drinking with the one that he was going to betray. That is terrible.

Phillip: It’s because love is at the heart of the meal. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul chastises the Christians of Corinth for not celebrating the Lord’s Supper properly, because they are not loving one another. One person goes ahead and eats, while the other is yet to arrive and is still hungry. It’s the failure of our Aunty Dot’s good manners. You should sit and wait until everybody is served, because that is the way to treat each other properly.

Peter: As Paul says in that very passage, the meal is the portrayal of the cross of Christ. In this, you proclaim the death of Jesus, through which we are all forgiven and forgive each other. By failing to love one another, you manipulate and desecrate the Lord’s Supper by not observing the body of Christ. In our churches today, the Lord’s Supper is eaten symbolically. It is a portrayal of a reenactment of the gospel of God’s grace, as well as a sign and seal of the new covenant of forgiveness in his blood, as people eat and drink together and are reminded of the death of Jesus. Of course, we receive Jesus not by chewing bread, but by faith.

Phillip: I do feel the abstraction in the symbolic nature of the way we serve the meal in our church gatherings. We have reduced it down to a small piece of bread and a small drink of wine or juice. It means that we concentrate on the body of Christ in terms of his physicality, rather than in terms of the congregational activity. Within our Anglican tradition, we are not to be celebrating this alone but in fellowship with other people. We are all meant to participate in it.

Peter: Sometimes we forget that there is a strong exhortation to be at peace with each other and to avoid partaking if you are not at peace. The prayer book also asserts that it’s not the consecration of the bread and wine that is important; it is the eating and drinking of the bread and wine. We take it in remembrance that Christ died for us, and we feed on him in our hearts by faith.

Phillip: I believe that we have reduced the meal down to such symbolic abstraction that we have moved away from the loving fellowship of sharing a meal together. Our Asian friends who eat together straight after their church services are in some ways closer to this fellowship than our liturgical meal.

Peter: Indeed. Are there other instances in the New Testament where food matters?

Phillip: Jesus often talks about feasts as a character of life. There are the instances of the feeding of the 4,000 and the 5,000, but he also talks in Luke 15 of a feast in the parable of the prodigal son that the father has to celebrate his son’s return. That’s a wonderful exhibition.

Peter: Luke 15, to which you’ve just referred, is very interesting because it begins with Jesus eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. The moralists of the day are shocked by his mixing with such people. Jesus points out that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over 99 sheep that stay in the fold. Then, as you rightly pointed out in the parable of the prodigal son, the son comes home, and far from being treated in the way he should, there’s the equivalent of a wedding feast for him.

Phillip: It’s wonderful. That’s what younger brothers who return home in repentance should receive. There’s also the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, where Lazarus dies and is with Abraham at a feast in heaven. Heaven is a joyous place of fellowship; therefore, it is a place of food and pleasure in eating together.

Peter: So what about Christmas dinner?

Phillip: Christmas dinner is the celebration of one of the great things that we have. Easter and Christmas are the great celebrations of Christianity, where we celebrate the Lord Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners and by his death and resurrection did so.

Peter: It’s not just a meal; it’s a meal for a particular reason.

Phillip: Yes, we rejoice that the Saviour has come by having this grand feast at Christmas. It’s like a wedding feast; I can rejoice over the food that I am eating, but the purpose of the meal is to rejoice over the couple that is married. Likewise, I can rejoice over the marvellous food provided on a Christmas meal, but the meal is for the purpose of rejoicing that Jesus has come for salvation. That is why inviting other people into the meal is so important. Jesus said in Luke 14:13–14

But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

This Christmas time, as you look around your church, see who will have difficulty eating with others on Christmas Day, and invite them to join your own Christmas meal, because that is the nature of God’s generosity. He has invited us into his heavenly feast, so let us be generous to invite others into our earthly feast as we celebrate this Christmas.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this sermon by Phillip called The Two Feasts of Sinai.

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Christmas is a great time for gifts, and Two Ways News comes to you free of charge and provided by generosity. If you would like to support the ministry, please see the details of how to give here or at the end of this article. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this Christmas special.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In today’s episode, we will talk about the when, what, who, why, and how of the birth of Jesus. When was Jesus born? Was it December 25th, and if so, what year was it?

Peter Jensen: We’re not sure of the year, but it was almost certainly between 5 BC and 3 BC. Christ was born in the years ‘Before Christ’. It’s a paradox that exists because the estimation turned out to be slightly wrong. The birth of Jesus has been located BC, but it’s within a very short distance of when AD begins. The chief reason is that there’s a reference in Matthew’s gospel to Herod the Great and his attempt to assassinate Jesus by killing all children under 2 years old. Herod died around 4 BC, meaning that Jesus must have been born during that era.

We are not told the day within the Bible, and there’s very little evidence one way or another. Some people refer to the presence of shepherds in the field and say that it’s more likely to have been in September, for example. But it’s not decisive. It has often been suggested that 25th December was chosen in the early centuries because it was the same day as a Roman feast. More recently, scholars suggest that it was chosen because it occurs 9 months after Passover, and it was at the time of the Passover that the angel came to Mary. If it mattered, we would have been told.

Phillip: We do not know if Jesus was born on 25th December, but we are sure that he was born around 4 BC.

Peter: Yes, and we are sure that he was born. That’s the ‘when’ question, but I’ll let you answer the ‘what’ question. Famously, he was born of the Virgin Mary, who was unmarried at the time, although betrothed to Joseph. Is it because he was half man, half God, and therefore had to be born of a woman, but not of a man?

Phillip: The virgin is the first issue to be raised. The prophet Isaiah speaks in chapter 7 of “the sign of the virgin”, which is also picked up in Luke and in Matthew. Some people believe Mary was simply a young woman, as the Greek word can mean ‘a young woman’, but when you read it in the context of the scriptures, the whole point is that she was not united to her husband until after she conceived. So the New Testament clearly describes a virgin having a baby, which, in the days before IVF, was completely impossible. The scriptures say that Mary was a virgin, but no other conclusion is made other than it being the sign of God.

Certainly, it does not make the false point that Jesus is half man, half God. He is fully man. We know this from Luke 2:52, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man.” It’s extraordinary that he is clearly a man like any other, born as a baby, growing up physically and in wisdom; he doesn’t come as God fully formed in his knowledge of everything. He is fully a man who has to grow up like any man grows up, not only in stature but also in learning; and not only in good repute with other men but also with God. So Jesus is fully man but also fully God. It’s not because of the virgin birth that he’s fully God; he is fully God because God has made him such. The conclusion that we wish to draw is that he had to be born of a virgin in order to be fully God, but that is not the conclusion that the scriptures draw.

Peter: Let me put it this way: around Jesus, there cluster miracles, except the word ‘miracle’ is not a word that I favour; ‘signs and wonders’ is more accurate. At various times in biblical history, there is an outbreak of signs and wonders to draw attention to what is going on. Unsurprisingly, therefore, when Jesus comes, there are many signs and wonders culminating in his resurrection. But they begin with a virgin birth. So it’s not so much that he’s born of a virgin for a technical reason, because he’s half God, half man; it’s because at the very beginning, something happens to indicate the importance of the event.

Phillip: He is fulfilling Old Testament prophecies and expectations, so he doesn’t come without a context. He comes with God’s prepared context, so it doesn’t surprise us. But some people talk about it as an immaculate conception, which is inaccurate.

Peter: Sometimes people think that Immaculate Conception is the same thing as Virgin Birth, but it isn’t. Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic teaching that was solidified in the 19th century, but it had been around before then. The idea is that the sinlessness of Jesus is owed to his mother, who was herself sinless. It’s her Immaculate Conception that is being referred to. ‘Immaculate’ means ‘without stain’ or ‘without sin’, so Mary herself is thought to be without sin.

Phillip: That is thought to enable Jesus to be without sin.

Peter: It’s an explanation of the mechanism of Christ’s deity and sinlessness, but it’s not biblical. There’s no hint of it anywhere in the Bible.

Phillip: I would have to ask, what happened to her parents that she could be immaculate?

Peter: The question is asked, and there are answers from the Roman Catholic side. But we don’t know who her mother was. In Catholic thinking, it was a woman called Anne, but we’re not explicitly told. That is not a biblical account, nor is it necessary. It’s a misunderstanding of what the virgin birth is about.

Phillip: Jesus is a real man, but not a sinful man; however, it’s not caused by his mother. But then, who is he? Is he God’s son?

Peter: He is. Dr Jim Packer, in his book, Concise Theology, puts it this way

While we cannot affirm that a divine person could not have entered this world any other way than by virgin birth, Jesus’ miraculous birth does in fact point to his deity and also to the reality of the creative power that operates in our new birth (John 1:13). Also, while we cannot affirm that God could not have produced sinless humanity apart from virgin birth, Jesus’ humanity was sinless, and the circumstances of his birth call attention to the miracle that was involved when Mary, a sinner (Luke 1:47), gave birth to one who was not ‘in Adam’ as she was, nor therefore needed a Saviour as she did.1

Phillip: It is important that she needed a saviour. There are a few words to describe Jesus: for example, ‘Immanuel’, which means ‘God with us’. So in Jesus, we have a full human, but we also have God.

There is only one that is God. It’s not like he is a god; he is ‘God with us’, the God of the Bible, who is with us. But that divinity of Jesus was quarrelled over and discussed for some centuries after the Bible. There’s a wonderful word which today is not used, but has terrible consequences for us. It’s the word ‘theotokos’. It came as a key word in the year 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. The discussion was about this issue of whether Jesus is simultaneously fully God and fully man. As a litmus test, Christian Orthodoxy came up with this word ‘theotokos’, which says that Mary was the mother of God. Most of us Protestants, when we hear the phrase ‘Mother of God’, are tempted to completely disregard it, but that is a great error.

Peter: Yes, we need that word because we want to assert that this was nonetheless God himself. Not a god, not a sort of godlike figure, but the Word made flesh. John 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God, and the same was in the beginning with God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.” So he is God, and this goes back to the mystery of the Trinity: there is one God, but three persons in one God; the persons are equal, but it is the Son who comes amongst us.

Phillip: This word ‘theotokos’, meaning ‘mother of God’, is theologically orthodox and right, because it asserts that when Jesus was the man, and the son of Mary, he was at the same time the one and only God: the Son, the second person of the Trinity. So Mary was indeed the mother of God. But it can become a matter of false piety, of worshipping Mary and giving her a higher status than the Bible would give to her. The phrase gets taken out of the context of theological dispute and put into the context of people’s prayer life, which is not what it was meant for in the first place, and it is not accurate or helpful.

Peter: We have this extraordinary privilege of being able to address our Heavenly Father in the name of the Son and the power of the Holy Spirit. Then it is suggested we address other human beings, for Mary is one of us at that level, and the saints. It distracts our attention from the truth.

Phillip: The truth being that Jesus, the man, is God. God the Son has become the Son of God, here in this world as the man. A few times in the New Testament, he is explicitly called God, as in Romans 9:5 and in Titus 2:13. So it’s not a common thing to have Jesus called God, but it is completely consistent with fundamental ideals of Christianity. Certainly the John 1 passage makes it quite clear.

Peter: I always remember ‘Doubting Thomas’.

Phillip: In John 20:28, the disciple Thomas says to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” It sounds like terrible blasphemy, like the instance in Revelation 22:8-9 when John bows down to worship an angel in heaven, and the angel rebukes him

You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.

But Jesus accepts Thomas’ worship, which clearly leads us to understand that Jesus is God; at the same time, it is very important to remember that Jesus is human.

Peter: That’s why we are baptised in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s one God, three persons.

Now we come to the ‘why’ question: why did God become man in Jesus? This is the mystery of the divine Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. John 6.28-29, for example, refers to the way in which Jesus has been sent

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

The Father sends the Son. It’s not by accident that the Son who comes amongst us takes on human nature. It doesn’t diminish his equality with the Father, but it is an indication of something like order that in the Godhead, the Father sends the Son, and later the Spirit.

Phillip: While the Father sends the Son, the Son, in obedience to the Father, comes of his own initiative. It’s not that the Father packed him up and sent him off so that he had no say in it himself. Philippians 2:8 tells us, “Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Similarly, 2 Corinthians 8:9 reads, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” Therefore it was Jesus who chose to become poor because his Father sent him.

Peter: It was for our sake that Jesus, through his poverty, would become rich. Matthew 1:21, in talking about the birth of Jesus, says, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Phillip: That verse tells us the very purpose for Jesus being sent, and it’s a purpose for all of us as well as for the glory of God. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. 1 Timothy 1:15 tells us, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

If you want to do what Jesus would do, go into the world to save sinners. You won’t be able to do it the way he did it by dying on the cross, but you can do it by preaching the gospel.

Peter: Yes, and by pointing to Jesus, the one who saves sinners.

Phillip: Jesus came bringing his kingdom, and he will return with his kingdom.

Peter: Yes, and he preached the kingdom. “The kingdom of God is at hand.” There’s a revealing interchange with the Pharisees recorded in Luke 17:20

Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

He is saying that the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed. The King had arrived and was living amongst them, yet we human beings crucified him. In a miraculous way, our sin against God turned into our salvation, because the Saviour was bearing our sins. It is extraordinary.

Phillip: It is in his resurrection and ascension and in return that we see him as the King. So on the day of Pentecost, Peter preaches in Acts 2:36, “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Jesus becomes the Christ by the appointment of God through his death and resurrection. That is, the King was crucified, but in his resurrection and ascension he was crowned. But you don’t see that until his return.

Peter: Jesus will be seen because he has not and will not shed his humanity. He is still one of us. He came to save us, and in doing so became one of us. He is, as the scriptures call him, the last Adam. When he comes again, God has fixed, as Acts 17:31 tells us, “A day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.”

Phillip: It is an extraordinary idea that as the Ancient of Days sits in the judgement of the world, there’s one like the Son of Man who is given all authority and power. The universe has changed. God, the unchangeable, has changed, in that God has embraced humanity, his creation. The incarnation is an extraordinary concept, because it isn’t like he became a human for a little while, then stepped out of his human ‘skin’; he becomes a human for eternity.

So why did he come? The whole gospel is in that question.

How, then, do we celebrate Christmas?

Peter: Well, the Scottish Presbyterians of an age gone by believed that we shouldn’t celebrate Christmas. It would be okay to celebrate the new year, but not Christmas, as it was considered worldly to do so. We were brought up with a Christmas much influenced, I think, by 19th and 20th century Charles Dickens and the highly commercialised Santa Claus.

Phillip: When I became a Christian, I had a reaction against all that cultural Christianity which had blinded and deceived me. I wanted nothing to do with it. I didn’t take it as far as the Scottish Presbyterians, because I want to celebrate the Incarnation, but I didn’t see Christmas as a family affair. I want to celebrate the Incarnation, but I don’t want to celebrate the Christmas season. I want to celebrate the reality and the truth; therefore, Santa is to me an objectionable character because he takes the place of Jesus as the centre point of the celebration.

Peter: Does your branch of the Jensen family celebrate Christmas by having lunch together?

Phillip: Yes, because that’s a good way of celebrating Jesus’ birthday.

Peter: The family getting together at that point is so crucial, which is also why Christmas is so awful for so many people.

Phillip: If it’s a celebration of family, and family is dysfunctional, then Christmas is a very painful season. As a replacement for the Incarnation, family life is a failure.

Peter: If you think about Jesus, who came into the world to save sinners, and everyone who gathers around the table is a sinner, you may realise the importance of forgiving each other because we are forgiven. That may help families.

1

J.I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, 2001 (Tyndale House Publishers)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this series of 5 talks on the book of Isaiah entitled God’s Preparation for Christmas.

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🎁 Support us by giving a Gift Subscription

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider gifting someone you know a subscription to our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To gift a subscription to the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• a Gift option

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Next year at Two Ways News, we are expanding our regular team of Peter and Phillip Jensen by adding James Chen. James has just finished Moore College and has been ordained to minister at St Andrew’s and St Paul’s in Wahroonga, and we hope to have him as a regular member of our team. So this episode introduces James to our podcast family with a fascinating description of his life story.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Friends, before we get to this week’s episode of Two Ways News, can I make a Christmas suggestion to you? How about you give a subscription to Two Ways News as a Christmas present to a friend or to a family member? Click here or go to the foot of the page.

On today’s episode of Two Ways News, I am here not with my brother Peter, but with James Chen. James is about to leave Moore College to go into ministry elsewhere, and will feature on this podcast next year alongside Peter as we continue Two Ways News. Today, we thought we’d take some time to give you the opportunity to get to know our newest team member. So to start off, let’s go back to the beginning. James, where were you born?

James Chen: I was born here in Sydney, but my parents migrated from Shanghai, China, in 1991, two years before I was born.

Phillip: What were the reasons for your family’s migration to Sydney?

James: My father was the last in his family to come here, after his father, his mother and his four siblings, so he decided to start a new life in Australia with his newly wedded wife.

Phillip: Given your parents are both from Shanghai, was Shanghainese the language spoken at home?

James: That’s right. Shanghainese is a dying dialect because many people in Shanghai learn Mandarin at school, which is the language that they speak in their day-to-day lives; although interestingly, there’s been a slight resurgence in Shanghainese among young people.

Phillip: When did English come into your life?

James: English has been in my life since the beginning. My parents would frequently turn on the radio and the television to make sure that I had English around me to learn. My mum would also try to speak to me in English. My family had home videos of her teaching me the alphabet, as well as certain English words such as ‘calendar’ and ‘alarm clock’. So I was speaking English very early on.

Phillip: Being the child of a migrant and learning English alongside maintaining the family language is a typical story for many Australians.

James: Indeed. Growing up, it was very confusing to learn two languages. I would ask myself, “Am I meant to speak to my mother in Chinese or in English?”

Phillip: I presume that when you went to school, you realised that you were surrounded only by English.

James: That’s right. It was strange to grow up in a bilingual home, then to go to preschool and school and realise that only English was spoken, and that most people did not know two languages at home. I went to Croydon Park Public School, and even my Greek friends there didn’t know much Greek other than the Greek alphabet. Another thing that was different about me was that I went to school from Monday to Friday, but then on Saturday, I attended Chinese school to learn Mandarin and simplified Chinese.

Phillip: They wouldn’t have taught Shanghainese there, though.

James: They didn’t. The first time I went back to Shanghai, my relatives and friends all made fun of me for not knowing Shanghainese, which grew my resolve to learn it.

Phillip: Do you have many opportunities to practise it these days?

James: Not particularly. We see my parents every fortnight, and my wife Vivian’s parents every other fortnight. Vivian was born in Hong Kong, and she speaks Cantonese. It’s interesting to tell our friends that our parents, who are both Chinese, don’t have a common dialect. Often, they default to English.

Phillip: Indeed. Many of us Anglo-Australians think all Chinese people speak the same language, but that’s not the case.

So you attended Australian schools. Which area of Sydney did you live in?

James: I grew up in Randwick, moved to Ashfield, went to school in Croydon Park, and then I went to school in Marrickville for Years 5 and 6. In Year 7 I was accepted into James Ruse Agricultural High School in Carlingford.

Phillip: Where in this process did you become a Christian?

James: My parents aren’t Christians; they’re culturally Buddhist. Specifically, they are part of the particular mainland Chinese variety of Buddhism, which has many elements of Taoism and Confucianism mixed into it. But growing up, I had some Christian influences, and so I had a Bible. I knew enough about the Bible, about God, and about Christianity to know that I was a sinner. I don’t think I ever doubted that God existed; what I doubted was where I stood with him, and if he would accept me. Throughout high school, I would attend the Christian group occasionally. James Ruse used to have a very strong Christian group which, at its peak, had about 140 students attending every Friday afternoon at lunchtime to hear a Bible talk.

Phillip: It’s remarkable that there was such a strong Christian group at a non-religious school.

James: That’s right, they were going voluntarily. They weren’t obligated to be there. When I was in Year 11, at the age of 16, I still knew that I was a sinner, but I didn’t know enough about the Bible to know that Jesus is my great saviour. I remember on one occasion, I was in my bedroom, and I opened up my Bible and said, “God, if you’re there, show me something.” I flipped open to the book of Amos, and I said, “God, if you’re there, show me something else,” because I didn’t understand what I was reading. The second time, I opened up to the account of the paralytic in Luke chapter 5.

Here a group of people dig through the roof of a crowded building in which Jesus is preaching, in order to lower their paralysed friend to Jesus. The man arrives in front of Jesus, and everyone expects him to heal the man instantly. But seeing the faith of the man and his friends, he says, “Your sins are forgiven.” That’s Luke 5:20. I remember reading that particular verse.

The passage continues with Luke 5:21

And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

I could sense that something was going on here. In verse 20, Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven. In verse 21, the scribes and Pharisees say that only God can do that. I consider that to be my conversion moment. I thought, “Jesus is claiming to have the authority of God to forgive sins. If my great problem is that I’m a great sinner, here is the great saviour. Jesus is his name, and he offers to forgive my sins through faith.” I remember praying at that moment, “God, I trust in Jesus. I receive his forgiveness. Please forgive me.”

Phillip: The power of God’s word is fantastic. It never goes forth without achieving his purposes, as the prophet says.

Where did you go from there? Did you talk to a Christian about it? Were you going to church?

James: I wasn’t allowed to go to church yet. My parents wanted me to wait until I’d finished Years 11 and 12 to make those sorts of choices. I did get more invested in the Christian group at school, but the truth is that when I had newly become a Christian, I started looking for Christian podcasts, and I ended up coming across many podcasts by American Christians, including those by Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, and Benny Hinn.

Phillip: That’s unfortunate. This content is not a good diet for a new Christian.

James: No, it isn’t. But at that point, I was listening to about 10 to 15 hours a week of Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, and a bit of Joel Osteen.

Phillip: That’s not much of an improvement.

James: No, but that was the diet I had through the rest of year 11 and throughout year 12.

Phillip: Friends, can I encourage you to invite people to join Two Ways News? The alternatives that James grew up with are not what I think anyone should listen to.

How did you get out of that into solid Christian Bible teaching?

James: I intended to get my driver’s licence when I finished Year 12, which would mean I could start driving independently. I intended to go to a church in South Sydney, which is a Pentecostal church that preaches the prosperity gospel. By the time I finished Year 12, I didn’t have enough hours yet for my licence, but I wanted to go to church, so in November of 2010 I attended a local Anglican church named St Paul’s Carlingford.

I ended up staying into the next year when I started university. A ministry apprentice named Craig Reid started meeting up with me to read the Bible, and he was exactly what I needed. When we started reading, I would be spouting all kinds of things that I’d heard, and he would say things like, “That’s very interesting; where did you get that from?” He would let me rebuke myself, because eventually I’d realise, “I don’t know where that’s from in the Bible,” and he would say, “That’s because it’s not in the Bible.” It was lovely to have this man take me under his wing and read the Bible with me. I strongly felt his love and affection, because even when he rebuked me, I felt like he cared.

Phillip: That’s good. We’ll come back to where you went as a Christian, but now we will focus on your life after school. What did you go on to do?

James: I went to the University of Sydney to study information technology, because I wanted to be a video game developer. My long-term goal was to travel around the world to different conventions. But I realised very quickly that while I had a mind for the video game side, the information system side was not something that particularly interested me.

Meanwhile, I was meeting with Craig and reading the Bible. I had also gotten involved in the Christian group at university, the Evangelical Union. My interests were shifting as my worldview and my priorities were changing, because I realised that there are real stakes to the gospel truth. God is real. Jesus is Lord, and he is returning one day; that changed every facet of my life. So towards the end of first year, my plan was to become a teacher. I switched degrees the next year to major in physics and philosophy.

Phillip: Which one did you choose: physics or philosophy?

James: I studied physics, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy, but philosophy ended up taking a lot more of my attention as it piqued my interest. I realised that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to read more. I wanted to think deeply about our world because it helped me to read the Bible better, to teach the Bible more clearly, and to speak to my friends about Christianity.

In 2012, when I was in second year, the new atheists were still around: Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. The discussions about science and philosophy, about atheism and how that works with religion, were rife amongst my friends and family. Studying philosophy assisted me as I sought to speak with non-Christians about Christianity and to encourage my Christian friends about struggles that they were having. Eventually I switched my physics major to major in the history and philosophy of science at Sydney University.

Phillip: What did you do after university?

James: Throughout high school, I had been working as a tutor at a tutoring college, and after I finished, my plan was either to go directly into ministry training or to pursue postgraduate study in philosophy. But my boss at the tutoring college allowed me to work full-time for a few years, so I became a full-time tutor.

Phillip: Meanwhile, did you stay at St Paul’s Carlingford Church?

James: That’s right. I was involved in children’s ministry, which I loved. This year, one of my first kindergarten children’s ministry girls graduated high school, which I can hardly believe, but that’s part of the joy and the sadness of seeing all these kids grow up.

Phillip: Will she come to Launch Camp for school leavers?

James: I hope so.

Phillip: If you don’t know what Launch Camp is, you can go to phillipjensen.com to find out about it, so that you can pray and encourage others to attend it.

It is exciting doing work with children and seeing them grow. What other things did you do?

James: I did children’s work, and then I began coordinating a church youth group. I was also doing a lot of itinerant preaching, particularly among the Chinese churches in Sydney. On top of that, I was involved in the Church Missionary Society Summer School, in the Year 9 and 10 kids’ programme. I didn’t grow up with Christian parents, so to have all these people come along who have Christian parents, and to see the difference that makes, was delightful. Some kids came along and were quite hardened to the gospel, but they had a vocabulary that meant that I was able to have discussions with them, and to push them in different ways with a base level of understanding that others just don’t have.

Phillip: It is extraordinarily different. It becomes something of a subculture within our society to be raised in that Christian family bubble. But it does change worldviews. It’s a different understanding of everything around you. On that note, when did you decide to come to Moore College?

James: While I was teaching at this tutoring college, I was dating a wonderful woman, Vivian, and we had discussions throughout that relationship that we would love to put ourselves forward to be trained for a lifetime of service. We were willing to do that vocationally full-time if God would have us do that. But at the very least, we didn’t want to be careerists about it. We told ourselves that we would put ourselves through training and submit to those who would be training us, and they would let us know if we were suitable. But the goal was to go to Moore College, to be trained and to serve for the rest of our lives in whatever situation we may find ourselves in. So after two and a half years of me working at that tutoring college, we began ministry apprenticeships. My wife started a ministry apprenticeship at the Evangelical Christian Union at the Cumberland campus, which was the health science campus of the University of Sydney.

Phillip: It was a great health science campus. There were a lot of Christians there under a great training programme.

James: It was a wonderful ministry, and my wife Vivian, as a student going through the health science campus, had benefited from the ministry of men and women there. So it was only natural for her to want to go back. I began a split apprenticeship where I was doing four days a week with St Paul’s Carlingford and two days a week with Vivian at the University of Sydney Cumberland campus.

Phillip: Did you both come to Moore College, or did babies enter in to disturb this programme?

James: They happened simultaneously. In 2022, when I began my first year of college full-time, Vivian had already been attending part-time the year before. Throughout that year, she was also pregnant, so during my first year of college, our first son Henry was born. That was a whirlwind way to start college.

Phillip: He’s not a passive little boy; he’s very active and very lovely.

So after four years, you’re almost done with college. Can you sum up the Moore College experience?

James: It’s an incredible college, not just because of the faculty, but because of the experience of the cohorts. Knowing that you’ve got the same 20 to 60 people side-by-side with you is a blessing. Being able to learn from each other, teaching each other, blessing and being blessed by each other, being able to talk about what we’re learning, sharing, debating and discussing, and seeing each other’s life in progress throughout the years, is wonderful.

Phillip: Indeed. Our modern tertiary education is nothing like that. You go there, you come home; your life is not there, you don’t know anyone other than the lecturers, and you may not get to meet anybody who’s in the same course. So the old ideal of university, of students living together and learning with each other, is almost totally gone from many universities, especially with the prevalence of online courses. It’s very impersonal. The Moore College experience of residential learning with the same group is completely different.

James: It’s fantastic. To be able to disagree with someone who you’ve known as a brother or sister in Christ for the last few years, and to see how you grow together, is a privilege we have as students at Moore College. You can have a level of conversation, of disagreement, and of sharpening one another that you can’t afford when you don’t have that kind of relationship. It’s especially difficult to form a relationship of that sort when you don’t know who might be in your next class.

Phillip: Likewise, the lecturers are different in their relationship with you.

James: Indeed. It’s interesting because these faculty members could have incredible careers in the world of academia, writing, speaking and touring, but they are first and foremost pastors. Therefore, they do a lot of pastoral work with our students: in chaplaincy groups, going on mission each year, meeting up with us throughout the semesters, and teaching. They do important academic work, of course, but the fact that they spend time with us, the accessibility, and the ability to reach out and ask to have a discussion, are all incredible. It’s a wonderful group of people that we get to interact with.

Phillip: Absolutely. If we can focus on the academic side for a moment, what are the key things that you’ve learned?

James: There are so many answers I could give to this kind of question, but one that I love sharing with people is something I learned in second year. We were learning about the doctrine of creation, and as someone who’s read philosophy and about creation ex nihilo, I foolishly went into the unit thinking that I knew what to expect. But I was thoroughly humbled; it was one of the most impactful units I’ve done at college.

One example of how that was the case was when I learned about the contingency of creation; in other words, that creation wasn’t necessary. God wasn’t bound by the need to create. It wasn’t as if there was something missing in him and who he is that meant he needed to create people to satisfy some lack in himself. It’s a profound point, but the thing that particularly struck me was this truth that creation is utterly unnecessary, and therefore it amplifies the love of God. Because on a human level, sometimes love is reciprocal. We think, ‘I love you because of what you can give me,’ or ‘I give you something because of what I can get back.’ But God didn’t need anything from us. God is not missing something, yet he created us and he loves us. He did not have to do that. There is a purity and a complete selflessness to his love that is unmatched by anything else that we can see here in our world.

Phillip: It’s a great thought. Will that improve you as a preacher in the parish church next year?

James: I think so, because a number of the things that you learn at college, if you’ve had a good formation beforehand, give you the guardrails. These truths teach you what not to say. For example, this year in our unit on atonement, we learned about the distortions that some people teach regarding what happened on the cross, particularly around Easter. For example, people talk about the Trinity being disrupted and broken, which is untruthful. What you learn at college is a vocabulary, as well as the biblical grounding, to tell people what the Bible is saying and to not go further, because God’s word is sufficient. We like to over-explain things; we like things to be very neat. But something like that truth, that God didn’t need us and yet he loves us, helps me when I’m talking about why God created.

It’s not as though God needs you to love him, that God is egotistical and selfish. That sort of language is not the biblical picture. Moore College gives us the biblical basis for things and the guardrails to make sure that when we’re teaching, we are seeking to be faithful. But it also teaches us a framework. It teaches us how to find out things. When someone asks me a question, I have tools that college has given me through the languages of the Bible, through church history, through knowing how to discern what’s going on in a commentary, and what assumptions they have that I didn’t have before college. They’ve given me a methodology to approach anything that might come up for the next few decades of ministry, God willing.

Phillip: That’s right. College taught me and gave me the technology to read the Bible. The rest of my life has been spent reading it, but I’ve read it now with the skills and techniques that come from a proper theological education. I’ve looked at some of my old sermons recently, and I can see my progress. When I came out of college, I didn’t know everything, but I knew how to find out everything. So you just keep working. Now, you’re leaving college. Where are you going next?

James: Next year I’ll be headed to Wahroonga Anglican Church, which is in the north shore of Sydney. I will pastor a 9.30am congregation and a 6pm congregation, and help the parish think about and be trained for service. But that’s just what it is in terms of the details and specifics. The big picture of what I’m doing is people, proclamation, prayer, and partnership for the promotion of God’s glory.

Phillip: So James is going to Wahroonga next year, but he is coming back into college for one day a week. That means we can pick up with him in the coming year, so there will be three of us speaking on Two Ways News. As James comes in from time to time, we’ll be exploring other parts of the Scriptures.

We’ve got a special summer programme coming up where Peter and I will go through the great address of Paul on the Areopagus in Acts 17. After that, we’re thinking of picking up one of the longer epistles of the Apostle Paul. But we’ll wait and see what happens as to how James and Peter share with me in looking at the world through the eyes of the Bible next year.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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