Forgiveness and reconciliation can be a thorny issue. Many questions must be asked to determine the shape of forgiveness and reconciliation. Is sin truly involved, or is one of the people offended because of his own unrealistic expectations of the other person? That is, one person has his feelings hurt because he is overly demanding, and no one lives up to his expectations. If sin is involved, is the sin of such a nature that it can be forgiven so that the relationship can return to what it was? If one spouse speaks uncharacteristically harshly to the other, forgiveness can be granted and the sin practically forgotten. Or is the sin of such a nature that the relationship is unalterably changed even though forgiveness is granted? If a spouse is a serial adulterer/adulteress, leading to a divorce, the marriage may never go back to what it was. Is the sinning party repentant or unrepentant? What is the part restitution plays in reconciliation? What does the healing process look like after forgiveness is granted? Though we don’t need to make forgiveness more complicated than necessary, human relationships are not as simple as “do these three things and move on.” (I’ve written several articles on forgiveness at Kuyperian Commentary. You can find them here, and a series that begins here.)
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JUST DO IT!
“Just tell me what to do!” Pastors and counselors sometimes hear these words from people in difficult situations. Whether they have gotten themselves into the situations through unwise decisions or suffering from someone else’s sin against them, they want answers. They want to know how to alleviate the painful consequences. Unfortunately, many people are looking for a silver bullet in the form of a simple formula or for the pastor or counselor to tell them exactly what to do. Telling them occasionally that you will not give them a rule or a command and expect them to follow orders strictly frustrates them. You may even be labeled as “unloving.” Sometimes, the person may be given principles and guidance with options, but that person must wrestle through the issue and make his own decisions.
When people are in trouble, they tend to revert to authoritarianism. It is simple. Follow the rules. Obey commands. Treat the world as an impersonal machine that operates by formulaic cause-and-effect. Expect everything to be fixed without time and work. People like authoritarianism at times because it alleviates personal responsibility. If I check everything off the list and “it doesn’t work,” it is your fault.
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Called Out
What if your pastor DMed you about an interpersonal relationship problem that you were having and then said, “Oh yeah, when you are finished reading this, read this or have this read to the entire church”? First, you might be a little peeved that he was digging into your business. He needs to mind his own business. My relationships at home, work, and with my friends are none of his business. Second, if you are a typical American Christian, you’d probably find another church to rid yourself of this “spiritually abusive pastor.” Then, you would get on social media and talk about how you have suffered from the abuse of spiritual power, gain a following, and start an intersectional community of all those who have been DMed by their pastor about their relationships.
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Praying in the Spirit: Our Words in the Word
In the beginning, the Speaker spoke the Word. The Word went out from the Speaker, carried along by the Breath, and the world was created, formed, and filled. Speaker, Word, and Breath working in loving, powerful union with one another to create from nothing everything that is.
The height of this creative activity was the creation of man himself, the image of God. He is a creaturely word, a revelation of God within the creation. This form fashioned from the dust of the ground was himself filled with the Spirit-Breath of God. This Spirit empowered him to take the creation given to him and, by word and deed, follow in the image of God to create, arrange, form, and fill this creation so that it will one day reflect God’s own heavenly throne room. This is his dominion task.
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Praying In The Spirit: What is Prayer?
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to God. ~Romans 8:26-27
At this time, in the created order, a hauntingly bright symphony is being performed. The creation is groaning and travailing in the pains of childbirth like the deep, resonating, sad tones of a cello. The groans of the cello are joined in the same melodic progression by the violins of Christians’ groaning. As Christians, we find ourselves in harmony with the creation, giving it further voice because we share in the same pain, waiting with the rest of creation for the redemption of our bodies. But there is a third voice, a voice deeper and more fundamental in this symphony that controls it and moves it toward its conclusion. It is the double bass of the Spirit, groaning out wordless music to the Father. We and the rest of creation with us have joined with him so that we are taking up his groans, and he is taking up our groans in this symphony of prayer.
This is praying in the Spirit.
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The Church’s People
Tychicus. Onesimus. Aristarchus. Mark. Justus. Epaphras. Luke. Demas. Nymphas. Archippus. If you know your Scriptures really well, several of these names are familiar to you. Mark and Luke wrote two of the Gospels. Onesimus is a focus of Paul’s brief letter to Philemon. The others are not so well known. Tychicus is mentioned several times in the New Testament as Paul’s companion. Epaphras is highlighted in the opening of the letter to the Colossians. If you know Demas at all, it is probably because he is infamous for abandoning Paul “having loved this present world” (2 Tim 4:10). What they all hold in common is that they are all mentioned at the end of Colossians either sending greetings, being exhorted, or receiving praise.
It’s often tempting to skim over Paul’s greetings at the end of his letters. The main body of the letter is complete, so we tend to tune out as we continue reading or listening just to check off our daily Bible reading. However, if God has included these greetings in the letter, there must be a significant reason why the church needs them. These greetings are not mere formalities, but they carry a deeper message that we should not overlook.
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The Worldly Church
For the past two hundred-plus years, the Western Church has been in the grips of a dualism that pits the material world against the non-material world (which they unadvisedly call “spiritual”). This is nothing new in the church. We have been fighting this for almost two millennia in one form or another. Material things are intrinsically evil and must be shed. The great salvation will come when I die and shed this mortal coil to live in a disembodied bliss in heaven. When Jesus comes again, he will destroy this mortal world, putting an end to its evil.
This dualistic view of reality affects the way we understand Jesus’ commission in Matthew 28:19-20. Whatever Jesus tells us, he is not telling us our mission has anything to do with this material world. Fighting culture wars with the gospel is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic … or entering into a theological debate on social media: a waste of time. Jesus’ Commission is all about snatching souls out of the world so that they can leave this world behind along with us.
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Salty Grace
Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. ~Colossians 4:6
If you think about it from the perspective of many unbelieving Americans, faithful Christians come off as weird. The message we believe is strange. One man from a backwater province in the Roman Empire who lived almost two thousand years ago died on a cross, rose again, and now sits on the throne in heaven, ruling the world to save the world from sin. How does that make sense? It is foolishness to them. We speak in odd ways to one another. We take membership in the church with utmost seriousness. We live in ways that are out of step with the mainstream. This message has been foolishness to them from our earliest days (see 1 Cor 1:18).
The message we believe and proclaim is weird. We don’t need to make it weirder by being unable to interact with the world around us with basic social skills or being unnecessarily off-putting in the name of “boldness.” While never compromising the gospel at any point, we need to live among unbelievers in attractive ways, even if they are ultimately repulsed by beauty. To accomplish the kingdom mission God gave us, we must strive to live this way.
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Slaves & Masters
Over the past 160 years in the West, we have experienced something rare in the history of the world: Chattel slavery has not only been formally abolished but has become culturally abhorrent. When Americans think of slavery, we think of Africans being sold by their kinsmen to people in the West and that slavery was only of those who had dark skin. But light-skinned eastern European Slavs were enslaved by Muslims. The Irish were slaves in the 1600s in Western lands. Slavery reaches back to the time before Abraham, who himself owned slaves. Even today, throughout the world, it is estimated that somewhere around 40 million people are enslaved. The twentieth and twenty-first-century Christian West is an anomaly in the world.
Because of our relatively sheltered place in history, many Christians are embarrassed about what the Scriptures say and do not say about slavery. We expect there to be an absolute prohibition of slavery throughout Scripture and especially in the New Testament, but there isn’t. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Paul and Peter direct slaves to obey their masters, and masters are not commanded to free their slaves. The relationship between master and slave is regulated but not eliminated.
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The Discipline of Paedocommunion
One danger of any ritual is thinking it works for blessing standing alone. The water of baptism magically grants eternal salvation apart from faith. The bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper convey blessings no matter how you live outside of the church or if you participate in the worship service. The “sinner’s prayer” saves apart from participation in the body of Christ and without perseverance. No matter the ritual, there are always dangers of isolating them from a full life of faith, treating them as if they are magic spells.
Those of us who have the privilege of practicing full covenant communion (that is, welcoming our baptized children to the Table) are not immune from the danger. Just as some treat baptism as something of a finish line, so some parents and churches treat paedocommunion (child communion) as if eating the bread and drinking the wine of communion are all that matters for the children. They don’t have to participate in the rest of the service. They can be in a nursery or some other room in the building, cutting themselves off entirely from the rest of the congregation, but when it comes time for communion, they expect to be a part.
With the privilege of paedocommunion comes responsibilities. Communion is the apex of the worship service, a piece of the whole, the end of the journey up God’s holy mountain. Participating in communion assumes that you have heard God’s call to worship, confessed and been cleansed of sin, and been consecrated by his Word. In other words, communion assumes that you have participated in the rest of the worship service. Bread and wine declare peace with God, and peace with God assumes you have received all God’s gifts that precede the gift of peace. Communion can’t be separated from the rest of the service. You can’t just walk in at the end of the service, receive the bread and wine, walk out, and expect that you have received God’s blessing. You haven’t. Indeed, you may be receiving the opposite.
Worship that culminates in the Lord’s Supper is covenant renewal. Covenant renewal is the time that God comes to declare his loving loyalty to his people and we, in response, declare our loving allegiance to him. Throughout history, God has included children in these covenant renewal ceremonies. “Little ones” are gathered around Moses on the mountain when the covenant is renewed (Deut 29:1-15). This is the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that was fulfilled in the Passover, Exodus, and formation of the children of Israel into a nation at Mt Sinai. This covenant was renewed in all the worship rites and rituals at the Tabernacle in the various offerings and feasts. Children participated in these covenant renewals (see Deut 31:9-13; Josh 8:35). When Paul wrote to the churches in the first century and expected his letters to be read to the congregation, he expected children to be present (see Eph 6:1; Col 3:20). We know from 1 Corinthians and Acts that when the church gathered, the Lord’s Supper was eaten. Children were to be present in the worship or covenant renewal of the church.
We know that children can’t understand everything in the worship service. So, why should they be there? They are covenant members, and as covenant members God is renewing the covenant with them too. They have privileges and responsibilities. The worship service is not all about intellectual ability (much to the chagrin of many a Reformed pastor and layman). God wants them there because he makes commitments to them, has commands for them, and expects them to be in his presence.
Their presence and participation in communion require something of the parents and the rest of the church. First, when the parents presented these children for baptism, Jesus took them and declared them to belong to him. Then he gave them back to the parents as members of his church to be good stewards of them, to train them to be the worshipers the Father seeks (John 4:23). Training children to participate in the worship service at various levels of maturity is vital to their discipleship.
Participating in worship in the younger years will be getting children to the place where they can be with the congregation without making a spectacle of themselves. We gather for worship as a unified body, speaking with one voice (Rom 15:6). It is not a time for children or adults to show off. We are an army that walks in lockstep with cadences. According to 1 Corinthians 14, worship ought to be intelligible. Not even the prophets were to be speaking at the same time but showing deference to one another so that everyone could understand what God was saying to the congregation. If people are speaking in languages that can’t be understood, speaking all at once, or creating a cacophony with noise so that others can’t understand, that is disordered worship.
Our children need to learn this. It will take time and effort. Christian parenting is not for the lazy. You may have to take that little one out of the sanctuary several times during the worship service for some directed instruction, but you need to bring him back in. If he knows he can act up and go to a playroom like he wants, he will play you like a cheap fiddle every time. If he knows that there is nothing pleasant outside the doors of the sanctuary and that he will inevitably be returning, it may take a while, but he will get the picture.
The disciplines of worship begin at home. Parents must have a disciplined household, one in which children are trained to understand that there are times to work and there are times to play, there are times to speak and there are times to be quiet. Fathers should direct the family this way, especially if you have little ones. Family worship is a time when children can learn that they must sit still and defer to others, controlling their impulses to blurt out. The instruction in family worship may not be making sure they understand the hypostatic union of Christ. Instruction may be that they learn to control themselves for the sake of the body of Christ.
Communion comes with responsibilities. When our children are young, the primary responsibility is on the parents to train them to participate in worship. The bread and wine aren’t magically conveying blessing apart from the rest of the worship service. Don’t teach your children that they are by excluding them from the worship service.
