One Christian's Response
The following affirmation appeared right here on Blogspot, signed by one follower of Christ in North America. The purpose of the statement is to encourage prayerful reflection on the foundational commitments of the church and through the resulting conversation to clarify the identity of the church under the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is, in some measure, a response to some who have jointly posted their own Christian Affirmation.
The statement affirms the convictions of the signer regarding beliefs and practices that have served to strengthen the Christian identity of the church but now suffer challenge or neglect; it does not attempt to describe all aspects of the Christian faith. I recognize that others think differently about some of the matters treated. I don't mean to judge them, but to encourage them as fellow servants of Christ to seek to create unity through freedom of interpretation and belief, allowing others to read and study, meditate and pray for themselves. I hope, through discussion with my brothers and sisters, we'll all come to a deeper understanding of God’s saving truth simply through the richness of the dialogue.
ONE CHRISTIAN'S AFFIRMATION 2005
Identity as a Christian isn't hard to define: essentially, Christians are people who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the Son of God, who left heaven to take the form of a man; to teach, live and die in the service of humankind and then was raised from the dead on the third day afterwards. You can add details as found in the Bible to your heart's desire, but that's the gist of it. His church, an assembly of His followers which began soon after, almost immediately enjoyed Spirit-led growth and suffered hell-sponsored disagreements. Some of the things practiced by that church were worthy of admiration and imitation; some were not.
Because Jesus prayed for the unity of all of His followers as a kind of "dying request" (as Neale Pryor phrases it) the night He was betrayed to His murderers, disunity and division have been Satan's primary goal to achieve among followers of Christ and he has achieved no small success in convincing them that there must be no diversity of interpretation among them that could lead to arguments; they must all agree on essentially everything there is to believe, plus a few more things. I don't believe that the God who created such diversity in mankind and clearly expressed every detail of His law in the Old Testament lacks the capability of expressing it in the New Testament. So the Way to unity must be found in imitating Christ and clinging to His teachings, especially those which describe the Kingdom He rules. They remain, to this day, extraordinarily novel and idiosyncratic, nor should they be regarded as anything other than a call to perfection.
The Original Scheme
The irrefutable rationale for this divine approach to church formation through the spiritual formation of individuals is perfectly stated by Jesus Christ Himself. Recognizing that people would wonder what He meant by it, Jesus states,
His statement could well be describing the kingdom that spreads from a tiny source to have a huge influence. It could also refer to the influence of evil within it. As a great story, this parable is open to interpretation and can have more than one meaning, giving it a memorable mysterious quality that begs one to meditate on it; discuss it with others; interpret it differently as one matures, and turn to God in prayer for substantive guidance in doing so. Such is the common faith to be shared by and to unite all Christians. Division is sown when one interpretation or practice regresses from being discussed, to being favored, to being declared the "one and only" interpretation or practice.
As an example, there might arise a group who believes that the Lord God is One and that rules out a Trinity. Another group believes that three comprise the One. Still another could believe that God is not limited by our concept of mathematics; three or one, God is God. Which group is more likely to extend a hand of unity toward the other two?
According to the New Testament, the kingdom of God exists for unity in glorifying Him through His Son and in His Holy Spirit. He yearns for all of His creation to be reconciled to Him through His Son. He has in mind a total renewal of all things; a salvation that begins in this life but doesn't end with it; a purpose that has meaning for everyone; a release from guilt; a new life. So everything that followers of Christ put themselves to should have this same centrality.
Rebirth: A Whole New Life
Jesus told Nicodemus that to follow Him he had to be born again. Following Him appears to be an obedient journey of many steps, with faith in Him expressed in many ways: confessing His identity and our evil, selfish sins; repudiating those sins and leaving them behind; adopting a new purpose in our lives by sharing His Story; helping others (sometimes sacrificially); and - some believe - through baptism which models His death, burial and resurrection and represents our cleansing from sin. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the ways God wishes for us to emulate His Son. In the Kingdom there can be no un-Christlike Christians. (Though there will be no perfect ones - only perfected ones!) And there can be no Christlike followers who exist outside of His Kingdom. Faith, another of God's many gifts, creates a saving relationship with Him through His grace in Christ.
Many Christians practice baptism as the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Others interpret it as permissible for the believer to be sprinkled. Others see baptism as a metaphor expressing the giving of God's Holy Spirit. It is certain that Christ was baptized in water; that Peter suggested baptism as a response to a convicted crowd with the promise that they would receive the Spirit; that Philip baptized a passing foreign official in water nearby; that the Gentiles' receipt of the Spirit was a sign to Peter that they should be baptized. And it is certain that baptism, as stated before, cannot be the only way in which God asks us to imitate His Son.
Feeding and Being Fed in Fellowship
Jesus realized He would not be with His followers physicially - yet He also knew that they would need to sense His presence in a physical way. So he spoke of them as His church, literally, His assembly. He promised to be with them when even two or three gathered in His name. On the night He was betrayed, He gathered around a Passover table with them. He proclaimed the bread to be His body and the cup after the dinner to be His blood. He asked them to remember Him as often as they ate and drank it. He prayed - with the breaths of His last full day of life - that His followers would be one, just as He and the Father are one.
As Israel remembered God’s deliverance in the Passover, many Christians gather to remember and celebrate the salvation bought by Christ - His body broken like bread for us; His blood poured out like wine for us - and the unity we have as His body. We ask Him to serve as our Host, just as He did on that final night. Some do so each Sunday; others, each Passover or Good Friday; still others, on very special occasions only.
All He asked was that we remember Him as often as we do it - and as often as we do it, God makes us one.
Worship from the Heart
For as long as God has blessed His people, their hearts have been drawn to give thanks and praise to Him in worship. And from the very first, when something was wrong in the heart of the worshiper, something went wrong with the worship. It was true of Cain. It can be true of us. So the overwhelming concern of scripture about worship is to encourage us to participate in it with all our hearts. Whether it takes the form of sacrificial living, prayers public or private, a hymn of praise or lamentation, worship must come from the heart. If the worshiper cannot perceive God's action in the world, how can worship come from the heart?
Even on the night when Jesus knew His death was imminent, He could leave that upper room singing a hymn with His followers.
Today His followers sing in solos, groups, praise teams, choirs, and whole churches. Some sing with instruments of music; some with microphones and public address systems; some sing without them. Some praise with hands and heads uplifted. Some sway and some stand still. Some kneel and some sit. They sing of Him; they sing to Him. They sing encouragement to each other. They sing praise to God. Some sing with their lips; others - without a voice given by God - with their hands.
And as long as it comes from their hearts, they can be sure it is heard.
A Few Words of Clarion
While the work of building a church one believer at a time is difficult and has not often been tried, we should never stop trying. Many in the church today are rightly concerned about overcoming a legacy of legalism, sectarianism, and divisiveness, and doing so by overcoming pride, arrogance, anger and self-righteousness is a wonderful way to start. It would be easy to relax our commitment to living like Christ and let the church spiral downward into decay, but He promises the by-our-side support of His Holy Spirit, His intercession in prayer, and the strength we can derive from a confessional life in the fellowship of His followers.
I commend His alternative vision of establishing a kingdom to sponsor unity among all Christians across barriers of geography and time, to give an indispensable guide to life in Him through their faith - which Christians in every age respect and honor. In every century, the goal of imitating early Christian practice has been held as a norm and as a basis for seeking unity by leaders - Protestant, Reformation and Roman Catholic - and over those centuries doing so has failed to yield that unity. It would be a sad irony if, now that others in the world are recognizing the value of individually living a Christ-like life, His own church was to abandon the quest for being good and righteous - concentrating instead on being right about everything.
The undersigned prayerfully commends these considerations, this third day of May in the year of our Lord 2005.
W. Keith Brenton
Member of the Body of Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas
Would you like to sign this affirmation? Well, you can't; it's mine. But I vigorously encourage you to add your comments - all men, women, children - and while you're at it, write your own affirmation or statement or creed. Write it on tablets of stone, in a private journal, for a newspaper advertisement or even as a blog and then e-mail me so that I can link to it here. Draw deeply from scripture and write what your heart finds important there right now; post it as a milestone that you can look back upon and, as you mature, add or delete what God's spirit has revealed to you should be a part of it.
Know, however, that this is my blog and I will delete comments that are obscene, profane, threatening, argumentative for the sake of argumentation, jealous, boastful, arrogant, rude, insisting on their own way, irritable, resentful, unrejoicing at right, rejoicing in wrong, unbearing, unbelieving, unhopeful, unenduring - at my own poor, human judgment. Hey, it's my blog.
The statement affirms the convictions of the signer regarding beliefs and practices that have served to strengthen the Christian identity of the church but now suffer challenge or neglect; it does not attempt to describe all aspects of the Christian faith. I recognize that others think differently about some of the matters treated. I don't mean to judge them, but to encourage them as fellow servants of Christ to seek to create unity through freedom of interpretation and belief, allowing others to read and study, meditate and pray for themselves. I hope, through discussion with my brothers and sisters, we'll all come to a deeper understanding of God’s saving truth simply through the richness of the dialogue.
ONE CHRISTIAN'S AFFIRMATION 2005
Identity as a Christian isn't hard to define: essentially, Christians are people who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the Son of God, who left heaven to take the form of a man; to teach, live and die in the service of humankind and then was raised from the dead on the third day afterwards. You can add details as found in the Bible to your heart's desire, but that's the gist of it. His church, an assembly of His followers which began soon after, almost immediately enjoyed Spirit-led growth and suffered hell-sponsored disagreements. Some of the things practiced by that church were worthy of admiration and imitation; some were not.
Because Jesus prayed for the unity of all of His followers as a kind of "dying request" (as Neale Pryor phrases it) the night He was betrayed to His murderers, disunity and division have been Satan's primary goal to achieve among followers of Christ and he has achieved no small success in convincing them that there must be no diversity of interpretation among them that could lead to arguments; they must all agree on essentially everything there is to believe, plus a few more things. I don't believe that the God who created such diversity in mankind and clearly expressed every detail of His law in the Old Testament lacks the capability of expressing it in the New Testament. So the Way to unity must be found in imitating Christ and clinging to His teachings, especially those which describe the Kingdom He rules. They remain, to this day, extraordinarily novel and idiosyncratic, nor should they be regarded as anything other than a call to perfection.
The Original Scheme
The irrefutable rationale for this divine approach to church formation through the spiritual formation of individuals is perfectly stated by Jesus Christ Himself. Recognizing that people would wonder what He meant by it, Jesus states,
The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough." (- Matthew 13:33, The Bible)
His statement could well be describing the kingdom that spreads from a tiny source to have a huge influence. It could also refer to the influence of evil within it. As a great story, this parable is open to interpretation and can have more than one meaning, giving it a memorable mysterious quality that begs one to meditate on it; discuss it with others; interpret it differently as one matures, and turn to God in prayer for substantive guidance in doing so. Such is the common faith to be shared by and to unite all Christians. Division is sown when one interpretation or practice regresses from being discussed, to being favored, to being declared the "one and only" interpretation or practice.
As an example, there might arise a group who believes that the Lord God is One and that rules out a Trinity. Another group believes that three comprise the One. Still another could believe that God is not limited by our concept of mathematics; three or one, God is God. Which group is more likely to extend a hand of unity toward the other two?
According to the New Testament, the kingdom of God exists for unity in glorifying Him through His Son and in His Holy Spirit. He yearns for all of His creation to be reconciled to Him through His Son. He has in mind a total renewal of all things; a salvation that begins in this life but doesn't end with it; a purpose that has meaning for everyone; a release from guilt; a new life. So everything that followers of Christ put themselves to should have this same centrality.
Rebirth: A Whole New Life
Jesus told Nicodemus that to follow Him he had to be born again. Following Him appears to be an obedient journey of many steps, with faith in Him expressed in many ways: confessing His identity and our evil, selfish sins; repudiating those sins and leaving them behind; adopting a new purpose in our lives by sharing His Story; helping others (sometimes sacrificially); and - some believe - through baptism which models His death, burial and resurrection and represents our cleansing from sin. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the ways God wishes for us to emulate His Son. In the Kingdom there can be no un-Christlike Christians. (Though there will be no perfect ones - only perfected ones!) And there can be no Christlike followers who exist outside of His Kingdom. Faith, another of God's many gifts, creates a saving relationship with Him through His grace in Christ.
Many Christians practice baptism as the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Others interpret it as permissible for the believer to be sprinkled. Others see baptism as a metaphor expressing the giving of God's Holy Spirit. It is certain that Christ was baptized in water; that Peter suggested baptism as a response to a convicted crowd with the promise that they would receive the Spirit; that Philip baptized a passing foreign official in water nearby; that the Gentiles' receipt of the Spirit was a sign to Peter that they should be baptized. And it is certain that baptism, as stated before, cannot be the only way in which God asks us to imitate His Son.
Feeding and Being Fed in Fellowship
Jesus realized He would not be with His followers physicially - yet He also knew that they would need to sense His presence in a physical way. So he spoke of them as His church, literally, His assembly. He promised to be with them when even two or three gathered in His name. On the night He was betrayed, He gathered around a Passover table with them. He proclaimed the bread to be His body and the cup after the dinner to be His blood. He asked them to remember Him as often as they ate and drank it. He prayed - with the breaths of His last full day of life - that His followers would be one, just as He and the Father are one.
As Israel remembered God’s deliverance in the Passover, many Christians gather to remember and celebrate the salvation bought by Christ - His body broken like bread for us; His blood poured out like wine for us - and the unity we have as His body. We ask Him to serve as our Host, just as He did on that final night. Some do so each Sunday; others, each Passover or Good Friday; still others, on very special occasions only.
All He asked was that we remember Him as often as we do it - and as often as we do it, God makes us one.
Worship from the Heart
For as long as God has blessed His people, their hearts have been drawn to give thanks and praise to Him in worship. And from the very first, when something was wrong in the heart of the worshiper, something went wrong with the worship. It was true of Cain. It can be true of us. So the overwhelming concern of scripture about worship is to encourage us to participate in it with all our hearts. Whether it takes the form of sacrificial living, prayers public or private, a hymn of praise or lamentation, worship must come from the heart. If the worshiper cannot perceive God's action in the world, how can worship come from the heart?
Even on the night when Jesus knew His death was imminent, He could leave that upper room singing a hymn with His followers.
Today His followers sing in solos, groups, praise teams, choirs, and whole churches. Some sing with instruments of music; some with microphones and public address systems; some sing without them. Some praise with hands and heads uplifted. Some sway and some stand still. Some kneel and some sit. They sing of Him; they sing to Him. They sing encouragement to each other. They sing praise to God. Some sing with their lips; others - without a voice given by God - with their hands.
And as long as it comes from their hearts, they can be sure it is heard.
A Few Words of Clarion
While the work of building a church one believer at a time is difficult and has not often been tried, we should never stop trying. Many in the church today are rightly concerned about overcoming a legacy of legalism, sectarianism, and divisiveness, and doing so by overcoming pride, arrogance, anger and self-righteousness is a wonderful way to start. It would be easy to relax our commitment to living like Christ and let the church spiral downward into decay, but He promises the by-our-side support of His Holy Spirit, His intercession in prayer, and the strength we can derive from a confessional life in the fellowship of His followers.
I commend His alternative vision of establishing a kingdom to sponsor unity among all Christians across barriers of geography and time, to give an indispensable guide to life in Him through their faith - which Christians in every age respect and honor. In every century, the goal of imitating early Christian practice has been held as a norm and as a basis for seeking unity by leaders - Protestant, Reformation and Roman Catholic - and over those centuries doing so has failed to yield that unity. It would be a sad irony if, now that others in the world are recognizing the value of individually living a Christ-like life, His own church was to abandon the quest for being good and righteous - concentrating instead on being right about everything.
The undersigned prayerfully commends these considerations, this third day of May in the year of our Lord 2005.
W. Keith Brenton
Member of the Body of Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas
Would you like to sign this affirmation? Well, you can't; it's mine. But I vigorously encourage you to add your comments - all men, women, children - and while you're at it, write your own affirmation or statement or creed. Write it on tablets of stone, in a private journal, for a newspaper advertisement or even as a blog and then e-mail me so that I can link to it here. Draw deeply from scripture and write what your heart finds important there right now; post it as a milestone that you can look back upon and, as you mature, add or delete what God's spirit has revealed to you should be a part of it.
Know, however, that this is my blog and I will delete comments that are obscene, profane, threatening, argumentative for the sake of argumentation, jealous, boastful, arrogant, rude, insisting on their own way, irritable, resentful, unrejoicing at right, rejoicing in wrong, unbearing, unbelieving, unhopeful, unenduring - at my own poor, human judgment. Hey, it's my blog.
posted by Keith Brenton at
8:09 PM
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