Had an interesting thing happen at the Lipscomb Summer Celebration at the first part of this month. I went over to where the Spanish classes were being held, and the brother in charge apologized to me for not having invited me to speak. I told him that wasn’t a problem, that I was there to listen but would be happy to speak for them at some point in the future. Then one of the men said, “But you can help us out, right?” I said that I would be happy to the next year or some other time. He said, “No, I mean today.” Long story short, I was asked to give a talk that afternoon on “The Early Church.”
So obviously, this wasn’t a class that I spent weeks preparing for. But as I put my thoughts together, I realized something that I should have realized before. We often look to the early church as our model. The early church didn’t, at least not primarily. Sure, there were things that they learned from one another. But their goal was to imitate Christ.
The apostles didn’t go around saying, “Look at the church in Jerusalem and do the things they do.” They said, “Look at Jesus and try to imitate Him. We will try to imitate Him as well, so you can look at us and imitate us, but only as we imitate Him.”
Fact is, when we set out to imitate the early church, we have to ask “Which early church?” The church in Jerusalem where thousands still lived according to Jewish law? The chaotic Corinthian church? The confused Galatian church? We talk about “the early church” as if there were uniformity across the landscape… and there wasn’t.
If our churches are made up of people who are doing their best to imitate Christ, we will have the right kind of church.
Pretty obvious, I know. But sometimes I’m a little slow to pick up on these things.
YES!!!
As my dear friend and mentor, Bobby Hise, used to say, “Rave on, Maniac!”
I used this quote from A.W. Tozer in a sermon I preached on Psalm 133. It has to do with unity, but it is along the same lines as what you are talking about here.
“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”
In other words, Christ is our tuning fork.
Bingo!
After reading this I suppose I am one who asks the tough questions. Did the early church get instructions to be “Christ like” or to follow the teachings of Paul? As Paul puts it “I am the apostle to the gentiles and I magnify my office.” Was he wrong with this statement? To follow Christ you have to know his teachings. You have to understand his purpose, and what was that? For every gentile living during the time of Christ they were out of the blessings, and special favor of God. Only till Paul and his recieving of a new message from the risen Christ did things change. No cloak of righteousness was to be worn by gentiles till this new message of salvation thru the cross. Another interesting fact is this, Please if you can point out any mention of the word “grace” coming from the mouth of Christ during his earthly ministry.
Could there have been any grace bestowed on anyone outside of Israel, before the cross?
H.B.,
Paul instructed the early church to be Christlike. You don’t ask the tough questions, just the misguided ones. By not understanding that Jesus’ message and Paul’s message were the same, you miss the whole point of what Jesus came to do.
Of course Jesus brought grace. Did he say the word “grace”? No idea. Did he teach grace? Obviously.
Here’s what Paul said about his message: “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” (Ephesians 3:4-5) He learned no mystery that the other apostles hadn’t received.
As for your last question, read the book of Jonah.
Again, I urge you to trash the books and read the Bible. You desperately need to find out what it says.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
Reading the bible is as Paul puts it in 2nd Timothy 2:15 Show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly DIVIDING the word of truth. KJV
Not to be confused with rightly handling…in some other translations
Understanding this verse is the beginning of truly understanding God’s word!
Sorry, H.B., “dividing” isn’t a good translation of that word. It was the best guess back in the 17th century, but later finds have helped us understand Koine Greek much better. Here’s what a modern lexicon (BDAG) says about it: “found elsewhere independently of the NT only Pr 3:6; 11:5, where it is used with “hodous” and plainly means “cut a path in a straight direction” or “cut a road across country (that is forested or otherwise difficult to pass through) in a straight direction”, so that the traveler may go directly to his destination…Then “orthotomein ton logon tes aletheias” would probably mean “guide the word of truth along a straight path” (like a road that goes straight to its goal), without being turned aside by wordy debates or impious talk.” (pg. 722).
If your understanding of the Bible is based on an outdated translation of a Greek word, then maybe you need to start over.