(Matt) When Chrissie and I were in seminary we went on a summer missions trip to Zimbabwe. It was a challenging and wonderful experience. One of the things that was stipulated by Gordon Conwell is that the Overseas Missions Practicum (OMP) be at least 6 weeks long. The reasoning was that a shorter term trip would fail to adequately prepare students for the realities of missions. A short term trip can offer helpful ministry assistance in "the field" and it can be great exposure to new lands and exciting ministry frontiers. But a shorter trip can often feel like a whirlwind of activity. It is one long adrenaline rush that you don't come down from until you return home. A shorter trip fails to replicate the real challenges of living overseas and struggling to adapt to a foreign culture and context. A shorter trip is all honeymoon. The OMP needed to be long enough for the honeymoon to end and the real challenges and joys of overseas living to begin.
Today was a day in which Chrissie and I looked at each other and said, "The honeymoon in Greece has ended." I thought about using that as a title of the post, but I feared it sounded too negative. I don't mean it that way. Nothing is wrong. Things are still beautiful and there are still very encouraging and fruitful things happening in ministry. But the newness has worn off. This past week we were in Corinth helping with a conference. It was a lot of demanding work, but also quite beautiful. We stayed near a pool with a constant view of the Mediterranean Sea. I had a better than expected time as a youth group leader (which brought back memories) and was delighted to see God at work in the midst of our time. We visited ancient Corinth and walked through the streets where Paul spent 18 months of ministry. And then we returned from what felt like a retreat only to arrive at our "old apartment" in Athens. It is everything that we prayed for, and in many ways a perfect fit... but the reality of our situation is less fresh and a bit more gritty. There is still fresh bread at the bakery around the corner and still a view of the Acropolis from our rooftop and still daily interactions with people from all over the world. There are still daily glimpses of God at work. But... the national language is still Greek and my ability to engage with modern Greek is developing more slowly than I would have hoped. My mind still churns when I read every sign. Most people speak English well enough for us to get around, but there is still the ever present humiliation of needing to ask someone to accommodate to your language. We have made new friends, but the support network that develops over a long period of time spent living with others is not here. The complexity of current relationships has begun to emerge, once you get past the initial newness. The apartment is adequate, but it is still small, with no yard and the kids are still restless quite often. (See picture.) The temperature has cooled from last week's heat wave, but it is still quite hot and hard to exercise except for the early morning hours. There are still new things to see, but it is hard to know how to find quiet time in the morning to read and pray. I wrote to my brother-in-law and told him that the honeymoon was over. He lived in Kurdistan for 4 years so I knew he would understand. He did, but also reminded me that the honeymoon (in general) is fun, but real life is where the action is at. And so, here we are... real life in Athens. Life on life with people. Praying and longing for God's fresh work in our circumstances. And developing a bit of a wistful feeling for a certain little city nestled into the mountains and rivers of western Pennsylvania. And all of our friends there. And perhaps that is, after all, one of the things that a sabbatical is intended to do. Love you all. Keep us in your prayers. Worship on Sunday has been a highlight of our trip. We attended both the morning and evening service at the Omonia Square Church. The morning service was in Greek with some translation and the evening service was in English. Each service was filled with people from all over the world. We were introduced to missionaries who were passing through Athens are their way to furlough from Tanzania. There were Greeks, Americans, Egyptians, Philippinos and Ukrainians. Prayers were offered in many languages. Were were joined for parts of the service by Muslim background friends.
Please pray that the gospel would be clearly heard and understood. Chrissie quickly made friends with a couple of women from the Philippines. They have been members of the church for years and work as live-in domestic help for Greek families. It is not an uncommon arrangement for many southern European countries. Though we come from very different backgrounds we find common ground at the foot of the cross. We have relished the space to worship with people who live out their faith in very different walks of life. On Wednesday we go to Corinth to help the local church with a church conference that they have been doing annually for several years. We are going to help with childcare and I may be getting slotted in with the youth group. It has been awhile since I have done youth group programming and they will likely be speaking about five different languages - but I am looking forward to it! Please pray for us! And well... yes. We will be in Corinth. Pretty cool. This year, there will also be several refugee families that will be joining us for the conference. It is an amazing opportunity and represents the fruit of faithful care and relational investment on the part of the local church. Please pray that Christ would be known, glorified and embraced! Matt: Theo, tell me about your time in Athens.
Theo: It is great. And, the metro (subway) is very close. Matt: Do you like riding on the metro? Theo: Yeah. I goes really fast. Matt: What have you enjoyed seeing? Theo: Looking at the acropolis from the roof of our apartment. Also, we went to Mars Hill. The rock was all marble. It was somewhere that Paul preached at. Matt: What has the weather been like? Theo: It has been hot the whole time. It has gotten up to 106! It is exhausting. Matt: Have you learned anything about the refugees that we are serving? Theo: Most of them have lost families members in their home country, but not all of them. Some of them know a little bit of English. Matt: Have you been able to remember any Greek words? Theo: Yeah... "Efharisto, parakalo, yasas, kailmera, kalispera." Matt: Have you used any of your Greek words in conversation? Theo: Yeah. Yasas (hello) ... that is about all. Matt: Anything else that is notable about Greece? Theo: A lot of things. The food is really good. There are a lot of restaurants by us. Matt: What do you enjoy eating here? Theo: The gyros, and ... pretty much everything else. (Matt) There are three types of places that refugees are staying in Athens. Some (a few) are placed in hotel rooms or apartments paid for by UN agencies. Many are in official refugee camps. Others are living unofficially in abandoned buildings in Athens. These are called "Squats." I think the term relates the idea of a "squatter" as someone who lives in a building that they don't own. The structure of the squats is a bit confusing, because there is some order there and they have electricity and running water, but they are not run by a particular government or NGO. Their presence is tolerated and perhaps even appreciated by the Greeks, because their simply isn't enough room in the official camps.
The two squats that I have visited are abandoned schools. Each classroom typically has multiple families living in it. The other members of our SGI term have been here a bit longer and visit two of the squats regularly. These four young women do an amazing job of building bridges with the refugees who are living there in pretty desperate circumstances. I admire their courage and compassion. Over the last few days I have tagged along and tried to be helpful. Last Friday I visited a Squat with my two boys. We were recruited to help organize and re-box donated clothing. After entering the front door, the children usually are the first to greet you. It was too hot to play outside, but our teammates will typically bring pages to color and some crayons. That we descended into the basement of the old school. The walls were graffitited and there was some trash on the floor, but it was generally organized. We worked under the direction of a Syrian man who is himself a volunteer. He had worked as a veterinarian before the war broke out. He mentioned in passing that he misses the animals and that after the fighting he has seen he prefers them to people. He asked me to explain the American dream. I told him that it meant that all people had opportunity to advance if they had were willing to work. He responded by telling me his version of the Syrian dream: "All you need is to gather a small army and you can be as rich as you want - by taking things from other people." No one thought twice about smoking in that small un-ventilated basement room. Unfiltered cigarettes. I'm not too squeemish about those things. I figure it won't hurt us for short exposure and lung cancer is probably the least of their concerns. The large bold print reading, "Tobacco leads to a shortened life span" caught my eye. Tobacco is nothing compared to civil war. The boys joined another missions family who had joined us for the day. We matched hundreds of shoes and boxed up winter clothing. Other members of the team cleaned rooms so that the boxes could be stores away from prying hands. I admire their willingness to serve. (See picture below.) Today I visited a second squat. Apparently it is one of the older ones and seems to be forgotten as new camps and squats emerge. Generally speaking, there are many other teams of volunteers that visit the camps and squats. Some from other missions groups and others from various NGO's. I don't know who is who, but I admire the willingness of so many people to give their time and energy to reach out to those in need. Again, we pass through the gate that used to control the flow of traffic for a school. The courtyard has the familiar smell that comes from too many people in too small of a place. Is it the latrines, or the gray water, or the waste containers? My teammates are greeted by enthusiastic hugs from little arms. As we sit in the courtyard some of the mothers come out and join their children. Its really hot and many people are staying in their rooms, close to their fans. (See picture above.) I pondered the easy manner in which the women connect. It seems to be always harder for men to meet as strangers. I am thankful to ride the coattails of these young women. Soon we are invited upstairs to someone's home. There are three families living inside of an older classroom. They average 4-5 people each family. The classroom that we enter has two families are living in a tent (each) and a newly arrived family is behind a screen. We remove our shoes and sit on a blanket that is spread on the floor. Tea is boiled in a hotpot and offered to us. The restless young boy brings in plates of sweet cereal. I am touched by the generosity and wish that we had something to give in return. I think about the call to incarnational ministry. It is an honor to share this food with people who have so little right now. Another part of my brain calculates whether the water is hot enough to sterilize the glasses that we are given. Internally, I reflect on Philippians chapter 2. Jesus left the glories of heaven to enter the poverty and squalor of a middle-eastern village. "He took on the form of a servant." I wish I could love more freely and serve more willingly. (Matt) I have been thinking about a couple of blog posts that I intend to write about some very interesting things that we have been doing. But, this morning I woke up and had a very typical day. It was the first time since arriving here that everything didn't feel new. I thought that this would be a good way to give a picture of the ordinary parts of our life in Greece that we could easily take for granted.
I slept in this morning a little bit. I had been getting up early to jog the last 4 or 5 days, but it is so blistering hot here now that if you don't start exercising by 8:00 am you will dissolve in a puddle of sweat. It has been a long, demanding week and full of so many new experiences that it would good to finally have a morning to rest a little. Isaac made eggs for breakfast. That was not typical, but a welcome surprise. I walked to the bakery around the corner to buy fresh bread. It only cost .80 euros and was still fresh when we picked it up. I read a bit after breakfast and left the house at 10:30 to head to the church office. We live in a residential neighborhood, but it is very close to the acropolis and full of tourists. The walk to the subway proceeds along a cobblestone street full of nice restaurants with outdoor seating. Each restaurant has a worker who stands on the sidewalk and attempts to convince the tourists to come in and eat. One of the men knows us now and smiles when he sees us. We have promised to stop in before we return to the states - but not today. The subway offers a welcome relief from stifling heat. I have already bought a 5 day pass and I know which way to go and how to get there. It is a good place to practice my Greek, because the words are written in Greek and phonetic English. The electronic voice on the car speaks in both English and Greek so I can practice sounding out a few phrases. I have a head start in Greek because I am familiar with ancient, Biblical Greek, but the modern language is pronounced differently and has a much different vocabulary range. I know how to tell people that "I am the bread of life"or that they should "put off the deeds of the flesh", but neither have come up in casual conversation. As I exit the subway into Omonia square, the heat hits me again. This past weekend, the temperature rose to 105 degrees. It won't be as hot today but it is close to 100 already. Omonia Square is a very different place from where we live. Refugees are more common than tourists here. Although this was once an important commercial hub, it was subsumed by darker elements and a few years ago had the reputation as the center of drug trafficking. Locals say that it is improving again and hope that better days are ahead. It is fine during the day time, but the women have been warned against walking alone at night. Beggars are more common here and as I ride the escalator up out of the darkness, street vendors offer Greek sim cards for cell phones. The food is less expensive here and cheap foreign goods fill the streets side markets. I walk a few blocks to the church and wait outside as other members from the SGI team arrive with the keys. After they arrive we talked a little about our upcoming trip to Corinth and what we will be doing to help. We are going to manage the child care as a team and Chrissie and I want help as much as possible. My first class is with a Kurdish man who volunteers with the church. He speaks Syrian, Greek and Kurdish and is a helpful resource for the church. He has lived in Greece for over two decades so his Greek is good, but his English is still at a rudimentary level. After working through a level one workbook for most of the hour, I ask to use the last 5 mins getting help on my Greek. I want to do a better job asking for things at the store in Greek and he helps me to ask for the price. The second class is with a young girl from Syria. Her English is better than I first thought, but it is still level one. (In the books that we use.) She is a bit shy, but this is our third time meeting and she is beginning to warm up. Sometimes the biggest step is just finding out what she does not understand. Google translator is immensely helpful with words that we do not know. The third class is with a young Palestinian man who is married with a child. His English vocabulary is very good, but he wants help with his grammar. We spent most of our time talking about the various way to say things in the past tense and the way that we use the subjunctive tense to describe thoughts that are potential. For instance, the difference between saying: "I would like to meet you tomorrow" and "I will meet you tomorrow." In the midst of doing this I am painfully reminded that my own knowledge of the official rules of the English language is a bit spotty. Like most native speakers I learned the language by ear and forget the name of various tenses. The day ends a little earlier that normal and I spend a few minutes trying to locate a music store to buy a cheap guitar for Chrissie. The church hopes she can acquire one before the retreat in two days. She debated bringing her own, but didn't have a good travel case. If we can find one here we will buy it and let the church keep it. It is hard to locate a Greek music store on the internet, so I decide to walk part of the way home and pass by a place where someone remembered seeing one the other day. The backstreets around Omonia Square are even dirtier than the main streets. I see Asian immigrants who are unloading produce and imported goods. The dirty jobs in Greece are done by immigrants from Asia and Africa. A delivery truck is stopped in the middle of street completely blocking traffic. A motorcycle slows down then ramps up onto the side walk in front of me and dodges the street vendors as he circles around the truck. The rules of the road are fairly flexible here. The heat is bearing down on me and I try to find the shady side of the street. Something that looks like a pawnshop has a used guitar hanging from the roof. I tried to recall the Greek words for "How much?", but in-between Arabic and Farsi and English grammar pushed it right out of my head. I bartered a little in English and took a picture of it for Chrissie to see. On my way to the music shop I stop into two supermarkets. I am looking for two items that we can't find near us - raisins and peanut butter. Again, Google translator helps me pull up the words and I asked for them in broken Greek. No luck. And no luck at the music store when I finally find it. It is closed today because of some Greek Holiday. I will try again tomorrow. My shirt is soaked through by now and I am happy to retreat back into the subway. The day finishes a bit earlier than normal, but we have a meeting planned for the morning, ESL lessons tomorrow afternoon and the schedule will likely be demanding at the retreat in Corinth this week. I am happy to get home a bit earlier than usual and spend some time writing. I have completely sweated through my shirt and no one wants to hug me when I return. (See picture.) I guess it turned out to be a fairly typical day. We are all not of this world. We are all people who belong to another Kingdom. This is the welcome that EVERY person hears as they come through the doors of this sweet little church in Omonia Square. Eleni does not speak of these beautiful people from Syria, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine as “refugees.” They are friends: friends that need a safe place to rest, to learn English, to meet people who love and follow Jesus and are there because He has called us to care.
D is 11. Only months older than my Isaac (my 1st born son.) D is also a 1st born son, the only son to his mother, following by three sisters. Only one year ago, D lost his father to a bombing in Kabul. His mother (and her family) mostly walked from Afghanistan to Greece … taking a route that included walking through a treacherous mountain range into Pakistan and involved snow and horrid weather and then that boat ride: “I am the man of the family now. Many times I had to carry my sisters. I dropped M once and hurt her. I do not like the responsibility that is on me now.” This family is currently at one of the camps that is infested with lice, rats and is about to be shut down (they are building newer ones and they will have to move – praise God!) Would you pray for this sweet family? Pray that my boys will connect with D and just be friends to him. This past week there were a lot of kids from the US (there is another group of missionaries that have a lot of kids) and mine were distracted by other kids that weren’t much different than them. I watched D watch them. My heart ached watching what I felt was him aching to “fit in,” and be with those boys. By the end of the week, I made my boys (and the other American kids) include him and sit with him and ask him about his school and family and what he loved. I sat at the table of kids and asked him questions and related the answers to the crew of “missionary” kids and arm wrestled them into sharing life. THIS has been the hardest part of my time this week. I ache to see my kids SEE THESE KIDS. I ache to see them move from the “comfortable” of others LIKE them and move towards what I know feels hard for them. I know, because it feels hard for me too. Stella has thrived hanging out with the refugee kids. Playing. Singing. Dancing. Coloring. It has been so fun to watch her easily make friends, indifferent to the “otherness.” I spent the afternoon with a new Middle Eastern friend. We had an hour long English class scheduled and after the class we had some free time so we ate a Gyro together and he told me his story. For reasons of security, I am not writing his real name or including a picture. The story will be an example of the types of people that we are spending time with.
Abbas was a university student in Syria when the Arab spring washed over that nation. Many students were joining in the protests and he was swept along with the tide. His father had a good job in Syria and he had a bright future. When the government began to crack down on protesters and Abbas was identified his entire family were put in danger. As fighting broken out, he was hit with shrapnel from a bomb. Since then it has been hard for him to do stairs - and impossible to play soccer. The Syria government didn't play games with protesters. Abbas knew people who had their finger nails pulled out with pliers. Others didn't survive the interrogation. Abbas speaks good English, but he didn't know the word for torture. When he described his fears of being arrested he described what would happen to prisoners this way: "You will beg for the death, but you will not be able to find it." (In other words, the torture is so bad that you beg to die, but the torture will be prolonged.) From Syria he fled with his family into Lebanon and from Lebanon he returned to his native country of Palestine to be with his college girlfriend. They were married in Gaza but it was hard to find a job that paid the bills. When Abbas and a small group complained to the Hamas controlled government, the police responded with brutal repression. Abbas was beaten with a night stick and had his teeth kicked in. He was given refuge in Egypt and then journeyed to Turkey and later to Greece. He now has a daughter and hopes that his small family can relocate to a European country where he can find work. "I have been unable to find peace for five years," he told me today. "Every night I go to sleep and I cannot rest. My mind is turning over about the things that I need to do. I long for the day when I can find peace. I long to finish my degree (in Civil Engineering) and find a job. I just want to have a house where I can keep my things and come home to see my family after work." I asked Abbas what went wrong with the Arab spring. He reflected on it for a while, then summarized his comments by saying. "When the government began to shoot the protesters we asked the world for help. At first no one came. Then foreign fighters came and began to fight the government." (The resistance group was first called AL Nusra. After it split in two, the radical jihadist segment started to be called "ISIS" or "DAESH.") He concluded by saying, "We asked the world for help, and the wrong people came to help us." Pray for Abbas and his family. One of the boys that I tutored in English is a refugee from Afghanistan. He is only a few months older than my son Isaac. After his father was killed by a bomb recently he fled from Afghanistan with his extended family. In the words of his uncle, "The Taliban, they mess everything up."
Over lunch he told me about the trip. It was quite harrowing. The border from Afghanistan into Iran was closed, so they had to go into Pakistan first and then into Iran. At one point they had twelve people crammed into a small car. At another point in the journey they walked twelve hours in one day. From Iran they made their way into Turkey and from Turkey they hired a smuggler to ship them to Greece. The unscrupulous boat captain took a high price from each member of his cargo and then proceeded to load over seventy people into a boat that was only 9 meters long. It must have been riding low in the water. The waves rolled in quite high. As he told the story his eyes grew very wide. "The waves were two meters high!" They survived the passage and are hoping to start a better life in a more stable place. He speaks good English and has a winning smile. Like many children in Greece, the U.S. and the MIddle-East he loves watching sports on T.V. and he follows pop music. In many ways he is like many 12-year old's that I know in the states. We are starting our third full day in Athens. Life has been a whirlwind and it has been a little hard to sit down and write. We survived our trip across the Atlantic and things generally went pretty well. Our apartment has been a real blessing. It is located in a seemingly safe area which is fairly "touristy". That means that most of the shops have English speakers and we tend to not stand out as much as foreigners. It also means that there is a fairly visible police presence, which is a comfort for us. We are also very close to a subway stop and have only 3 stops (about a 10 min ride) to get to the church where we are serving. By contrast the location of the church is in a much rougher area and we would not likely feel as safe there after dark. We have been to the church each of the last two days and I am going again (by myself) to teach one-on-one language classes. We'll write more about the refugee ministry later, but for now I will just say that it is going quite well and has been very encouraging.
Let me tell you a little bit more about our apartment and neighborhood. We are about 2 blocks away from the Acropolis and have a great view of that historic section of the city from a rough top deck of our apartment building. (Above is a picture of me and Stella celebrating the Penguins victory.) On Monday night we did family devotions on the roof top and I read from Acts chapter 17 and Paul's address to the Areopagus. The Areopagus is a section of the larger Acropolis and it was a place for regular philosophical discussion in ancient Athens. The entire acropolis is a section of the ancient city which was located on top of a large rocky outcropping. It made for a great defensive position and was a fortified stronghold that the Athenians could retreat to in times of trouble. It was the home to the temple to Athena which was (as the name says) a very important goddess for the Ancient Athenians. Reading Paul's address to the Athenians while the Acropolis was in sight was a pretty powerful experience for me. I have been blessed to travel a fair amount in my life, but this is the first time that I know for sure that I was in the same location as a biblical character. I can say, for sure, that Paul walked these same streets. Perhaps sat on some of the same stones. It is one way that the biblical stories come to life. But there are other ways that stories are coming to life. Many groups of people that had previously existed for me as vague characters in the events of our modern world have also become more personal. We have spent the last two days eating lunch with refugees from Afghanistan, Palestine and Syria. We will need to write much more about that, but for now my simple observation is that it is always a powerful experience to meet - in person - the people that you had only read about. Suddenly the refugee crisis becomes more real and personal. Real people with stories and hopes and dream. Real experiences of suffering and loss. We are thankful to be hear and ask for your continued prayers to make Christ known in a hurting place. I am still plugging away reading and writing about William King. It is slow going, but the story is so good and relevant for our own time that someone needs to try write about it. Right now, no one else is lining up to do it.
I have also reading Sinclair Ferguson's new book, "The Whole Christ" over the last six weeks and found it to be helpful. The book discusses the age old challenge of legalism and antinomianism, but sets it in the context of a 18th c. Scottish Presbyterian debate. That may seem a little too technical or a little too historically distant for some of you, but trust me... it is relevant. You may or may not know the terms "legalism" and "antinomianism", but if you have been around Christianity for any significant amount of time you know the concepts. The term "legalism" has the obvious root "legal" and relates to a misuse of the law, or using the law to achieve salvation through our own religious efforts. By contrast, the term "antinomianism" has the root "nomos" which also means law and with the prefix "anti" it means against the law, or a rejection of the law of God in the Christian life. The stereotypes can help us get introduced to the problem. The legalist says, "If I want to be a good Christian, then I need to work harder to keep the rules. Then God will love me." The antinomian says, "Jesus died for my sins, it doesn't matter if I keep the rules." Now both of those stereotypes are a little off, but they do represent two trends in Christian thought. Sometime we approach the matter by thinking in terms of law and grace on a spectrum. That is, we think that a legalist has too much law or too much Old Testament... but the antinomian has too much grace and not enough law. If we approach it that way we tend to think that the antidote for one is a little more of the other. As if a legalist has just swung too far to one end of the spectrum and needs more grace to lighten up. In actual practice, people do often swing from one mistake to the other. That is a person who grows up in a legalistic church setting regularly swings the other way. They end up saying, "Now that I know grace, what is the point trying to be more spiritual. God just takes me as I am." But the goal of the Christian life is not merely to get a proper balance of grace and law and land right in the middle of the spectrum. Instead, the goal of the Christian life is to deepen our spiritual life by becoming more like Jesus. Here are two quick references: 2 Corinthians 3:18 Beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image. Romans 8:29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, Here is where Sinclair Ferguson's book comes in. Through the lens of this historical controversy, Ferguson puts his finger on the solution to this important problem. His premise is by no means new - in fact, it is probably the most obvious thing that one might say about Christianity. That is, the solution to our struggles with law and grace is not to focus on "law" or "grace" as abstract qualities. Rather, the goal is to focus on the way both law and grace are expressions of God's character. And since Jesus is the manifestation of God's character (Heb 1:3), we can say that our goal is to look at the way grace and law are expressed through Jesus Christ. Viewed through this lens, the problem with legalism is not that someone is too serious about rules. God's commands are good and meant to be a blessing. If only more Christians agonized over the commands that God has given to his people. After all Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15). Instead, the problem with legalism is that a legalist has separated the law of God from the person of God. As a result, the experience of law is no longer viewed as coming from the same loving father who has saved us and dealt graciously with us. Instead, the law becomes an enemy. (Now some of you may be thinking: "Doesn't Paul say that the law has a ministry of death." Ferguson deals with this is detail, and I won't rehearse all of the arguments there. His main point is that the context of this passage shows that Paul is referring to a misuse of the law. Or, the same sort of abstraction of law that Ferguson is warning against. Simply put - if all you have are a bunch of religious rules and you lose sight of God's gracious character, then your experience of the law will bring spiritual death to you. If that drives you to Christ, then it is a good kind of death. If you don't go to Jesus then it will not be.) On the other hand, the antinomian makes a similar mistake with both grace and law. They detach grace from the person of Christ. Grace is not a substance that floats around in the air. It is not something that we can store up. It is not something that we access outside of our relationship with Jesus. Grace is not an abstract quality. It is a quality that a person possesses. God is a personal being and he is gracious. He is gracious to us in Jesus. That doesn't mean that we can never use "grace" as a noun, but conceptually it must be linked to a person. Here is Ferguson's summary: "Practical antinomianism has many forms today. One of them is the secular gospel of self-acceptance masquerading as Christianity. 'Since God accepts me the way I am, I ought to not get straight-jacketed by the law of God - what God wants is that I be myself.' This has very concrete expressions in what are euphemistically described as "lifestyle choices": "This is how I am, God is gracious... and he accepts me as I am, and therefore I will remain as I am. "... But it is misleading to say that God accepts us the way we are. Rather he accepts us despite the way we are. He receives us only in Christ and for Christ's sake. Nor does he mean to leave us the way he found us, but to transform us into the likeness of his Son. "...There is only one genuine cure for legalism. It is the same medicine the gospel prescribes for antinomianism: understanding and tasting union with Jesus Christ himself." Here are a few very practical applications: 1.) This means that the goal of the Christian life is to draw closer to Jesus a truth found on nearly every page of the NT. 2.) It also means that relationships are a great way to learn about salvation. Real relationships impose demands on our life, and also provide opportunities to experience grace. This is why the church is so important - a truth found on nearly every page of the NT. 3.) It means that my ability to produce good spiritual fruit is directly related to cultivating a relationship of dependence upon Jesus. See - John 15. 4.) It means that even though I am growing in the grace of Jesus, I am still capable for falling into sin when I stop leaning on him. That is a truth that I know all too well. 5.) It means that our goal as a church is not to focus on either "grace" or "truth" in abstract ways. Doing that obscures the gospel. Instead, we must focus on both grace and truth as they are expressed in Christ. Salvation is relational from beginning to end. 6.) It means that a person doesn't get saved by simply saying a prayer or raising their hand. Saving faith is always personal - it connects us to Jesus. If you said a prayer of "accepting Jesus", but have no relationships with Jesus, then you really do not have saving faith. (see picture) |
AuthorMatt Koerber is the senior pastor at City Reformed Presbyterian church. This is his personal blog that he also asks guest writers to participate on. Archives
August 2018
Categori |