“I Believe Therefore I Speak” (2 Corinthians 4:13)

Recently I was asked to make a simple direct statement of my Christian faith. In response to this request I sat down at my desk and wrote out a confession of the common faith of the church, as I understand it. Inside this confession I have made my profession of faith taking care to accentuate how the common faith makes sense to me (intellectually and experientially), all the while committed to staying faithful to the ‘common faith’. Standing under precedes understanding. God’s Grace comes to meet us in the Gospel. By faith we stand under it and from this position we seek to understand what we believe (faith seeking understanding – Anselm). It is from this position, in pursuit of this understanding I have scripted the following. It is incomplete! Many things I have come to understand and believe are not included. But my confession will always be incomplete because in this life we can only begin to grasp the breadth and depth of the mystery of the truth that comes from God’s revelation of Himself in Christ. “Now we know in part then we shall know even as we are known” (Apostle Paul). When the people who requested my confession/profession received it they wrote back and said it was too long so I shortened it and sent it back. Here follows the unabridged edition. When schools, churches and Christian groups have knocked on my door, and I on theirs, with inquires about preaching and teaching, often questions about my beliefs emerge. This script was explicitly written to clarify this.

This is where ministry begins. Paul believed therefore he spoke (2 Corinthians 4:13); under- standing what I have come to believe is the key to under- standing what shapes and empowers my experience and ministry. I believe, therefore, I speak…

Jesus said, “I have come to seek and save the lost”. I believe there is real “lost ness” in this world, and in all of us, but through the Gospel of Christ, the lost are found. In his parables Jesus spoke of the lost and the found but being lost and found is, however, not a one size fits all matter. People are in the grip of despair, addictions, and meaninglessness. Some are frantically pursuing new frontiers of pleasure and in the process losing their humanity. Others are crushed by sorrow and loneliness. Many are driven by anxiety, straining to secure the basic means of life, lost to its real end and purpose. Those who have attained a measure of material security easily succumb to an all-consuming passion – that of securing their wealth and upsizing it.

These descriptions sketch the earthly shadow of “lost ness” but not its heavenly source. Humans have lost their grounding in God as Lord. The essence of sin is not merely ‘missing the mark’ but a spiritual malignancy that has penetrated the souls of all women and men. Sin in Scripture is the end of loyalty, trust, and dependence on the One to who all belong. Sin means to refuse God’s Godness. Sin stakes a claim for independence from the goodness of God to us, his provision for us, and his place under us, in love, and over us in correction. “Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I” prayed David. Sin denies this ‘higher than I’, priority of God. Sin puts the good things of life in the room where only the best things belong. This is the seed and root of ‘lost ness’

I believe in the Gospel because in the Gospel we discover ourselves reconciled to God. Looking at our God, and ourselves, in and through the lens of the Gospel of Christ we, the lost, discover that we are found. God has overcome that separates God’self from us . We realize we are lost only when we  discover through the Gospel we are  found, and when we are found, then we understand what it means to be lost. Faith believes this good news and enjoys an abundance of peace. Jesus Christ (Son of God – Son of Man) lived, died and rose again to return us ‘home’ and set us free from all that is false and sinful measured by the righteousness rooted in the reality of God, to know divine and human acceptance, love and the healing power of real trust in the provisions and care of God as Heavenly Father, and to know the healing power of life lived as service to him and others.

This ‘knowledge’ not only makes sense to my mind but also shapes my experience. Truth that is theological and spiritual in origin has, as Pascal urged, two points of contact within us – the head and heart. The first of these possess a compelling rationality, but not the rationality derived from universal cannons of reason (so called universal) which this world relies on to conclude truth. The Judeo-Christian revelation of truth, given in and through the Bible, grounds the reality and ordering of life deeper than the reason, science and philosophy this world relies on. The second of these indicates that the truth of which the Sacred Tradition sponsors, also speaks to our souls – our existence – our dreads, our fears, our guilt, our sorrows and regrets, our disenchantments, disappointments with life, our greed, lust and anxieties, and chiefly, the transience and brevity that holds our being in its grip. In between being lost and found is sandwiched truth – spiritual truth. I believe in truth

I believe that God’s reconciling forgiveness and the resurrection of the crucified Jesus are inextricably bound together, not out of necessity, but simply because God, in God’s freedom, purpose, and wisdom, bound them together. This forgiveness, on which the Gospel turns, puts us right with God. And precisely because it comes via the Cross, it is not cheap, but costly grace. This grace, coming to us in this way, opens the door to life eternal. This is the heart of the Gospel and God’s meeting place. There is no other meeting place. God has chosen the place where God is ready and willing to meet all women and men, high and low, righteous (so called) and sinful, noble and brutish, brilliant and foundering. This place Scripture calls “a rock of offense and a stone of stumbling”. With Paul “I am not ashamed of the Gospel”.

I believe this Gospel must be heard and understood, therefore, I believe in preaching and in the Supper that Christ bequeathed and in Baptism. Rightly administered and preached these present God’s free grace and call us to assurance and faith. Not faith in the ritual that is seen but what the ritual points to that is unseen saves us, and for this reason, preaching must always accompany the ritual (“faith comes by the hearing of the word” writes Paul in Romans). The ritual is a drama, a pulpit that points to God’s free grace but it is no mere form with words attached Christ via the Spirit is alive and present. In Baptism water and spiritual cleansing appear to be  spiritually and organically joined together as in many non Christian faiths. Whenever the church fails to attend to Paul’s exposition of baptism it is a short step from sacrificing its distinctive teaching to ancient ideas of water and spiritual/moral cleansing. The water in Christian Baptism is not a simple direct symbol of spiritual cleansing rather it depicts the death Christ died to sin for us, and his resurrection to righteousness and life eternal on our behalf. Baptism is a believer’s faith union to Christ. Going down into the water and coming up out of the water confesses our dependence on Christ’s death and assurance of the resurrection he inaugurated. The believer is baptized into his death and his resurrection to life eternal. Sin’s damning power is exhausted in Christ’s death and eternal life has dawned in his resurrection. Sanctification is the life long process of conforming to this new reality. Baptism as sprinkling falls short of the distinctive Christian meaning of Baptism but this practice celebrated by other Christians must be honoured.

I believe that not only are people lost but also social systems are lost. Family, economic and political systems often structure evils of one sort or another and insulate these from critique. The Gospel is not only a private soul affair. The macro vision of Scripture is the promised coming kingdom, which through the resurrection of the crucified Jesus made its debut. The resurrection is the first fruits of the kingdom, the presence of the future.

I believe in the coming kingdom. The province that befalls humans is not that of building the ideal kingdom and bringing it into existence but of preparing to meet it. All institutions and persons must prepare themselves to meet the coming kingdom repenting of all ways and means organised contrary to that righteousness which the messiah has already inaugurated and will yet consummate once and for all. The repentance that follows in the wake of faith is the heart of Biblical vision of change and the penultimate transformation of a world caught in the embrace of an impending ultimate transformation that is coming to meet us from the ‘other side’. The human province is not to create the ideal kingdom on earth, but to prepare to meet it, to image and reflect the ideal that has emerged through the Prophetic vision and the Christ.

I believe in the change that is empowered by repentance and that this change includes persons in their private lives and their public lives where they exercise power and fill positions in society. Abstracting corporations and institutions from the persons who they serve and by whom they are powered, treating them as non-personal entities, is a modern device often used to obscure responsibility – a useful and convenient way to escape the moral consequences of human actions. Both the public and private realms are exposed to the reality of the messianic kingdom of gracious justice and pressed into alignment with it or if not suffer becoming self-consciously polarised against it. The rail on which the Gospel moves and gains its traction in the world is not its offer for spiritual renovation or fulfilment but ultimately the realization that we are caught up in the movement of time: Prophetic and messianic promises and fulfillments. The realization that we are sandwiched in between these two movements of time new ways of being in the world take hold – faith that works by love, passionate expectant hope, (i.e. the suffering of waiting) and repentance.

Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church”. Upon the rock of Peter’s confession that Jesus is God’s messiah promised by the Prophets of old Christ builds His Church. I Believe in the Church. It is not in Christ’s wisdom for us to ride into the kingdom like the Lone Ranger. We travel toward God’s future bearing one another’s burdens, caring for and mediating the grace of God to each other. Church, ‘ecclesia’, is not nation or kingdom. Ecclesia conceived as nation and / or kingdom contain the seeds of violence. Rather the church, conceived of by Christ and the Apostles, is the end of ecclesia as nation and the beginning of ecclesia as a ‘passionate’ fellowship in route to the kingdom. In this form believers are joined in expectant hope and voice their doxology to God for His grace that through Christ he has overcome all the ultimate enemies of humanity – evil, sin and death and freely introduced them into the messianic Kingdom which is and is coming. Here in this fellowship the ultimate power of all that is dark and dreary, broken and evil is down sized. Instead the life and power of the kingdom is celebrated and practiced albeit imperfectly, partially. Here everyone learns to serve the common good and the needs of others. In this fellowship the social fabric of mutual love seeks to fulfill the unity Christ founded the church on. More than a personal virtue love is the commitment to prioritize the common good and the good of others above oneself. Love is the fabric of true community and commitment to prioritize, protect and strengthen community. Forgiveness is the pinnacle of love because it overcomes hostilities, offenses and injures and restores harmony and community. Love is the presence of the future.

But the church is more than ‘koinonia’ – fellowship; it is an instrument ordained to mediate Christ’s grace called to turn out to the world with the power of love and truth. As such it is ecclesia – called out, called to embrace a mission – Christ’s mission on earth instituted by Him for Him. I believe in mission. The church is not to draw its sanctimonious robes around itself and retreat into its own fellowship and remove itself from the world. Rather as Christ’s body, it is called to turn out to the world and minister God’s love both in word and deed (one beggar showing another beggar where the bread is). Every pastor, every church and church member is charged to form his or her ministry in the posture of mission. Mission is not a ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ endeavor. It is to be warp and woof of ministry. Even though I knew and believed this teaching early on in my ministry the ‘underground’ ( unregistered church) in —– demonstrated to me the reality of this truth. Ministry is mission. The recent shape of mission for me, for what it is worth, God knows, has been teaching Christian ethics to fledgling seminaries all over the Far East, in —–, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Laos, Myanmar and India. Seven years ago I went to Asia to have a look and this need presented itself. A chronicle of my teaching work may be seen on this website. Paul the greatest thinker in the church is at once its greatest missionary. The separation of study and mission is spacious and leads to distortions. Each needs the other.

I believe in leadership but not all forms of leadership. It is leadership that Christ modeled and instituted that makes sense to me. This is the kind of leadership where the leader’s power is not validated by leveraging his or her position over others. Rather, as Jesus taught, true leadership is validated by a different kind of spiritual ethos. This is the spiritual freedom to downsizes the prerogative to rule from above and bend under others to serve them, carry their burdens and attend to their needs. It is true that leaders must possess strength but I believe that the strength that is needed is measured by the presence of clarity and truth needed in any situation and the courage to differentiate oneself. The leader must seek, and through the Spirit’s promised help, find the difference that Christ embodies; find it, if need be, over and again in every situation where wrong, confusion, conflict and anxiety prevail and then summon the courage to stand up. The church and the world wait upon leaders who do not, “swing hard with a dull ax”, but put their saltiness into the mix and their light on a stand. The rest is history.

I believe in Christian ethics. There are many kinds of ethics in the world stemming from family, tribe, country and the cultures generated by every kind of society and group. The Scriptures sponsor Christian ethics and these come from Christ and the Gospel. Standing in freedom, using wisdom, discretion, and experience, these ethics, again and again, must be translated into the worlds we live best we can. Essentially the Gospel gives us three spiritual ethics to put into play – faith, hope, and love. Each of these comes to meet us before we come to them. In the Gospel, we are in the embrace of faith, hope and love. Received as gifts they empower and inform a new spiritual ethical task in the world. There is nothing righteous that these three do not comprehend and transform. My books Existence and Faith and Religion and Life in Three Movements: Faith,Hope and Love unpack this assertion.

I believe in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, which Christians’ call the Old and New Testament. I believe they are faithful and trustworthy. Through them, God has spoken and continues to speak. We must study these Scripture to hear God’s word with due attention to its time and culture, attending to the great theme that it is organized around – the Covenant God made to Abraham. Most importantly reading Scripture we must listen to the Apostles, who, on the other side of Easter, repackaged Jesus and preached him to the Gentiles. Without the Spirit, God’s word is not heard, and, without the Word the realm of the Spirit and the spiritual in one’s life, easily morphs into many psychological and cultural voices within and without. Spirit and Word ultimately must never remain separated or independent. Working together they lead us to the Living Word, the risen Christ who speaks grace and life to all.

In the Gospels we read about the earthly Jesus of Nazareth, a particular man in a particular time and place. One who trekked around Judea and Galilee telling enigmatic stories with subtle lessons, restoring people’s bodies to wholeness, forgiving their sins and preaching the arrival of the kingdom promised by the Prophets. On the dusty roads of Galilee and Judea this Jesus directly ministered to a few women and men mostly from Judean and Galilean abstraction. Face to face he met and mixed with them and liberated them. In the book of Acts and the Epistles this presentation of Christ’s ministry (found in Mathew, Mark and Luke) changes. On the other side of Easter, no more bound to the limitations of ethnicity, nation, time and space he becomes a universal messiah. The immediate face-to-face encounter ends but a new mediated encounter begins. Through the Apostolic Gospel Christ speaks grace and life to all peoples in all times. The word of the Gospel spoken through the church and its ministers, faithful to the Apostles and alive through the power of the Spirit, is the word of God spoken and heard in the present. Through the Apostolic Gospel Jesus continues to speak and fulfill the liberating, saving mission he began in the flesh on earth. (“ I come to seek and save those that are lost”).

*I believe therefore in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit protects the freedom of God and creates the freedom of all womankind and mankind open to the Gospel. No exertion of human will, intellect or emotion can bring the Word of God to life in the soul, in the church, or in the world but the Spirit, again and again, calls the Word to life. While believers worship, work and study (and we must worship, really work, and really study) we also wait on the Spirit and while we wait on the Spirit we must be about preaching, worshipping, work and study in the posture of prayer, hope, and expectation. Work is an act of faith and hope; hope, not in the perfection and power of one’s efforts to bear fruit, but in God’s power and blessing. All true work must be filled, not only with diligence and ability, but with something intangible and hidden – passionate waiting on a power and blessing that comes from an unseen gracious hand. Because there is no direct deduction between work and genuine fruitfulness, work is passionate!