The greatest message that is on the heart of God at the present moment for the church is not the release of apostles and prophets, nor the peace of Jerusalem, nor evangelism, nor missional churches, nor networking, but love. I sense this very personally, both in the context of the local church and in what Jesus is saying to Christians about their relationships in our city. I want to pass on a message that I believe is difficult for us to hear but crucial to the Lord’s purposes for church and nation.
As I was out praying about issues to do with love early one morning, a subject I often struggle with, I happened to step near a torn up New Testament that was blowing along the ground. Picking it up, sensing that God probably had something to say to me, I found it open to John 17:23 with a difference in translation to what I am familiar with. “I in them and you in me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.” The key word that grasped my attention was “perfect”. Jesus was praying that we be perfect in our oneness. This led me to the same word (in Greek, if not in some English versions) in 1 John 4:17 – 20.
“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love is made perfect among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love cast out all fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears in not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God,’ but hate their brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”
The content of the perfect oneness that Jesus prayed would reside in the church (John 17) is clarified by the explanation of how Christians should love one another (1 John 4). John’s key point is that the perfect love expressed “among us” as a community is the means by which God drives out the fear of the last judgement. That is, the love in the church is the solution to the fear of punishment that has plagued the human race from its first sin in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:8 -10).
Interestingly, in Genesis, it is as Adam and Eve look at one another that shame and guilt strikes their hearts (Gen 3:7). This is not primarily an individual experience but a corporate one. The first human beings recognised and reflected to one another that they stood under judgement before God appeared to them in supernatural revelation by walking in the garden. This seems to be Paul’s understanding in Romans 1 of the way the wrath of God functions. Even though “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18), the content of wrath expressed in this passage is not mysteriously supernatural but the things people do to each other.
“Impurity…. degrading passions…. Wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice…envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness…gossips, slanderers, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (Rom 1:24, 26, 28, 29- 32) It is this climate of mutual human oppression that is the content and experienced reality of the anger of a holy God.
The result of the presence of such sins is, “They know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die.” (Rom 1:32a) The death Paul is referring to is not simply physical death but the final punishment for sin (Rom 6:23) God warned of in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:17). In other words, an unholy climate of behaviour sustains a conviction in the human heart that God’s judgement is impending. This does not however lead to less sin but more. “They not only do them (evil practices) but even applaud others who practice them.” (Rom 1:32b) It is a case of: “If I’m going to go out I may as well go out with a bang.”
Tragically, many of the sins Paul describes amongst the lost in Romans 1 (from sexual sin to pride) are found in the church today. By the Spirit and Word Christians know that the following is true: “wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God… Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Cor 6:9 -10). Yet hardly a week passes without me hearing terrible stories involving there various errors among the people of God. Apparently, many of us do not have a strong sense that we are inheriting the kingdom of God, if we did know this we would not be sinning like this. Tragically, the more we do sin as God’s people the more we create an environment where there is an apprehensiveness of judgement, and so the more we sin. (For the fear of punishment always creates relational distance between us and God.)
The answer to these problems in the church is not greater discipline and commitment. As Paul says, “the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient” (1 Tim 1:9). Where the law is laid down strongly in churches it forms in the consciousness an awareness of sin (Rom 3:20; Heb 10:2) that induces a fear of punishment. Christians live as though they are lawless and disobedient sinners under judgement. They are intimidated by one another and generally afraid to take bold ventures for God in the world. (How many career missionaries are being released into the third world from Australian churches?) It is not law that frees us from sin but grace, the sinful state of the contemporary western church infallibly shows that it is living as though it were under the law. “For sin will have no dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14). Only the truth that we as “justified” people (Rom 5:21 have no reason to fear the judgement of God, can release us from our current enslaved spiritual condition.
What I want to suggest now may sound extreme, but from a biblical and practical viewpoint I am driven to this radical conclusion. I am sensing that the churches greatest problem is not the absence, or even lack of recognition, of the “five –fold ministry”, but its dysfunction. I have two bases for this conclusion. The first is scripture.
According to Ephesians (2:20; 4:7 -16) the gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher are essential elements in the life of the church. The church cannot exist without the presence of these giftings, however they may have been misdescribed e.g. for centuries many apostles have been called “bishops”. The church does not need more gifted people. The purpose of these ministries is “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry” (Eph 4:12). The result of this equipping for service is that the church moves towards, literally, a “perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph 4:13). The word “perfect” here (usually translated “mature”) is the same word form used in John 17:23 and 1 John 4:17 – 20. The means by which the church moves towards perfection is “speaking the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). It necessarily follows that if we do not see the church in Australia maturing, we can trace this back to a failure of the “five- fold ministry” to “speak the truth in love”.
The second basis for the conviction that the “five-fold ministry” is at the core of the problems of the church today is experience. With some notable exceptions, it is my observation that most believers do not have a coherent biblical world view. Your average church – goer would be hard pressed to explain in detail the eternal plan of God in Christ (Eph 1:10). In some places they are implicitly being told that they are not successful enough (“God wants you to prosper”), in others that they need to be doing more as Christians (witness, pray etc.). These are actually subconscious forms of punishment. It is difficult to come across fellow believers who are completely assured in their forgiveness. In other words, it seems to be a general rule that the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher are mediating a sense of judgement.
I am not suggesting that any of this is intentional, but that we are in a place of needing the sheer mercy of God to deliver us. Nothing less than a release of the Spirit in our midst can create a community environment of pure love where there is no judgement (Rom 5:5). The gifts of God cannot work to build up the people of God outside of a climate of radical unconditional love.
Someone once wrote a book called “Mind at the end of its Tether”; this was a statement of hopelessness. The only thing that saves me as I write this from a sense of despair is that God’s love must be able to find a way forward in the midst of the overwhelming difficulties that confront the church today. Apart from a sovereign move of grace we will go from worse to worse, and this is exactly how it should be.