The Disciplines of the Father 1. The Pattern of God

Reading

Hebrews 12:1-11

Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR8Fj75ZNZs

Whilst to be human is to long for self-understanding[1], today we are surrounded, both inside and outside of the Church[2], by evidence(s) of gross inability to discern what God[3] is already doing in all the intimate circumstances of life. For example, Many Christians are (understandably) alarmed by the ever-deeper intrusion of state-sponsored programmes on sexuality[4] into public education, but very few pastors connect this with the crisis of discipleship in their own congregations! The spiritual vacuum in the Church has led to an acceleration and intensification of assertive ungodliness in the world; such is the wisdom of our heavenly Father.

In practice, the failure of church elders to impart “God-breathed…teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16) has created a famine of inner confidence, about maturing in Christ, amongst  earnest believers (Amos 8:11). No amount of programming based on pre-existing theoretical templates, can satisfy the Spirit-given desire in the born-again believer (John 3:5, 6, 9; Rom 8:14-17; Gal 4:4-6) to know they are becoming more and more like Jesus. Over the last few years, I have had numbers of people come to me disturbed about their lack of growth in Christlikeness[5]. Such folk, a small remnant though they may be, know[6] that there is a crisis of discipleship in their lives, even as they struggle to appreciate that their very confusion and crises of spiritual authority are already signs of God’s gracious working. God’s grace always works in our life long before we realise it[7].

Back to Jesus

Some years ago, I sensed that since the language of “discipleship/disciple/disciples” is limited in the Bible to the Gospels and Acts, it was more helpful for my ministry to concentrate on the biblical revelation of “sonship”. Whilst this was an outstanding focus of my earliest spiritual mentor[8], I can now see that in some ways I have viewed sonship and discipleship in competition[9], whereas the two are united in the Person of Jesus. This is clearest in scripture when Hebrews 5:8-9 points out about Christ, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him”. The word translated as “learned” (Gk: emathen ἔμαθεν) is closely related to the Greek word for “disciple” (μαθητής). The thinking of the author of Hebrews, is that “even though he (Jesus) was a son” he was also the perfect disciple.[10] The idea of Jesus as a perfect disciple might be a strange idea to us[11], but it is consistent with the way I have been teaching discipleship in recent years. The last time I did a public discipleship series I moved away from the traditional structure of teaching under the headings of: Bible reading, prayer (and fasting), Christian fellowship, worship, sacraments, money, sexual ethics and so on[12], to a far more Christ-centred approach. In this approach we examined what we learn from understanding how Jesus himself read scripture, observing Christ’s own life of prayer and fasting, his need for fellowship, how he worshipped in Spirit and truth and so on. By looking at the life as Christ as a dynamic model for our discipleship-sonship we discover his key relationships mirror and reflect those in the Trinity. What began with Jesus has been passed on to us through his apostolic successors.

Fathers and Teachers

I will come back to Paul in far greater detail in a later session, but he openly exhorts those who were following him in the churches he planted, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Cor 11:1 cf. 4:16; Phil 3:17; 4:9; 1 Thess 1:6; 2 Thess 3:9)[13]. The apostle unhesitatingly points to himself as an heir of Christ[14] because he has already testified, in 1 Corinthians 4:15-17 to the same congregation at a foundational level, “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.”

Brothers and sisters, if you take the lead in instructing people in the faith[15], whether in Bible studies, or your own children, you will generate sons and daughters who will imitate you, for better or worse, and you will see fulfilled in your own life what James says, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For we all stumble in many ways.” (3:1-2).

In understanding the basis in divine revelation for James’ tough word about how God deals with “teachers”, we need to remember that James was the half-brother of Jesus (Matt 13:55-56; Gal 1:19)[16]. Which means he had firsthand experience of the trials of Jesus, including those caused by his own persistent unbelief (John 7:5), until the risen Jesus personally appeared to him (1 Cor 15:7) and changed his mind about everything. (Next week’s topic is the difficult family life of the Lord.) Whilst Jesus is described from his earliest days of ministry as a “teacher”[17], his role as Teacher is incomparable, because it bears the weight and glory of the reality of his Sonship. Like other teachers of the Law and prophets (Matt 7:12; 22:10; Luke 16:16) he expounds the way of God, but unlike them[18] he is the Way of God (John 14:6). Jesus could have avoided suffering if he behaved like the other rabbis[19] of his day, but the absolute nature of his teaching was inseparable from who he was,[20] so that it gripped the hearts of his followers and drew out of those who saw themselves as the teachers of Israel (cf. John 3:10) the closest scrutiny and the fiercest opposition[21]. Nothing has changed.

Suffering and Glory

E.g. when was the last time you heard this simple truth from 2 Tim 3:12 preached with authority, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”?  About 40 years ago I was privileged to hear Australia’s’ greatest theologian of the cross[22] say, “Every sermon must preach the cross, even if the word “cross” isn’t used.” To the degree that your life is cruciform in shape (cross-shaped) this will be true of your testimony[23]. (I.e., your life will preach the cross cf. 2 Cor 2:14-17)

I have experienced many misunderstandings and rejections over the last half century. It is an infallible and unavoidable truth that if your own life does not reflect what you are professing about Jesus, his glorious and all-wise Father (Eph 1:17, Rom 16:27) has unavoidable strategies to bring you into alignment “with the truth that is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21). The revelation that Truth is a Person, Christ himself (John 14:6), helps make sense of the ancient observation that being a disciple [living-as-a-son of a F/father] is radically different from being a student[24]. (Over the decades of lecturing and teaching I have had many students but relatively few disciples.) Disciples learn by imitating their teacher’s entire way of life and not just by remembering their spoken words[25]. Sadly, I’ll never forget the day my most brilliant theology lecturer, whose ideas still come to mind, said to our class one day, “Some of you are much more spiritual than me.” With a radical honesty, which should be followed by many today, though they are too scared to do so, he disqualified himself from being a disciple-maker. When decades later I was called to lecturing, I had one overwhelming goal in mind, that my students would become more like Jesus. Whatever form of ministry I am doing, this will never change!

I was talking to a pastor of a small church recently and he mentioned the difference between the organic[26] spontaneous life of the congregation he is now nurturing and the “machine” megachurch he once belonged to. Things like small groups of people spontaneously (cf. 1 Cor 14:26) confessing and praying for one another at the end of a church meeting[27].  We trust such things, arranged by the Spirit, will characterise tonight’s meetings in small groups.

The contemporary comfortable Western Church has effectively failed to “make sons” rich in God (Luke 12:21; Eph 1:18) because it has brilliantly sidestepped the dominant story of the New Testament, and so the main story of the cosmos[28], that of the Lamb of God crucified and glorified (1 Pet 1:19-20; Rev 5:6; 13:8). How can we help those who are tested and tempted (Heb 2:17-18) if we have never proved the victory of Christ in our own trials and temptations? Today we hear stories of men and women “falling from grace” (Gal 5:4; Heb 12:17) when their trials and temptations were allowed by the Lord to call them deeper into grace[29].  Past generations of Christians endured relative poverty, economic depression, chronic illness, and war, so they “intuitively” understood that the fibre of life was composed of endless suffering-and-release[30]. Raw experiences of life exist to train our spiritual discernment of good-and-evil[31] so we can see and appreciate that God the Father grows his children in the same way as he grew his Son. Nothing integrates Jesus into our humanity like the depths of painful trials, which is why Paul longs, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Phil 3:10). Suffering and release, mini-crucifixions and resurrections, (week 3 of this series will discuss this dynamic in relation to marriage) are the means by which God grows his children, up to, and sometimes, including martyrdom.

At the start of his series on the Book of Revelation[32], which drew a packed audience into an Adelaide auditorium, my old mentor Geoffrey Bingham asked the crowd who had read the book 10 times, 20 times and so on. His point was to teach us that with so many in attendance it was likely someone present would die for the faith, and as such every generation needs Revelation to testify to us (Rev 1:2, 9; 12:17; 19:10; 20:4)[33] that our sufferings in Christ are never without purpose (1 Cor 15:58). (“Suffering is not the cost of glory but the means of glory.” Bingham). Submitting to divine discipline is essential to the revelation of the eternal glories[34] through sharing in the sonship of Jesus. At the end of the Bible God declares, “The one who conquers will have this inheritance (i.e. the new Jerusalem), and I will be his God and he will be my son.” (Rev 21:7).

God’s Heart for Discipleship[35]

Very early one morning recently (between 2.30 and 3.30), the Lord was speaking to me about the preciousness of the blood of Christ (1 Pet 1:19), the blood shed “from the foundation of the world” (1 Pet 1:19; Rev 13:8) and in which we are daily washed by the Spirit (1 Pet 1:2; 1 John 1:7; Rev 7:14; 22:14 cf. Eph 5:25). This blood has power to transform the Christian conscience so we no longer believe there is (intrinsically) “needless suffering” in our lives. The famous scripture, “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28) passes from being a bit of religious jargon[36] to a rich revelation of how we are being “conformed to the image of (God’s) Son”. Whilst suffering sinners understandingly curse heaven because of life’s painful circumstances (Rev 16:9, 11, 21)[37], and merely religious folk become confused about divine goodness[38], a revelation of Jesus’ Lordship over all things (Acts 10:36; Rev 6) teaches us to turn all occasions, even the most painful, into opportunities for praise (cf. Mark 14:26; Acts 16:22-26: Paul and Silas unjustly tired, beaten, imprisoned, in stocks at midnight “praying and singing hymns to God”).

The cross is powerful enough to turn any suffering submitted to Christ into something which  makes us more like him.[39] The revelation that the painful disciplines of God are a sign of loving fatherly favour to make us more holy opens us up to believe that on the inside we hold a “hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Pet 3:4)[40]. Our submissive suffering in Christ transforms everything, putting us in touch with the heavenly world so that the Holy Spirit testifies to our spirits (1 Pet 2:4; 3:4) so that when God the Father sees to even the slightest degree that we are being made more like Jesus his raptures are inexpressible (cf. 1 Pet 1:8)[41]. I believe this not only as a nice theological proposition, but through personal experience. After many years of praying that I could become a genuine “prophet of the cross”[42] I found myself some years ago in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the site of the death and resurrection of Jesus, where God the Father clearly spoke to me[43]  about the crucifixion; “This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”.  To share in such holy ravishing glory revealed through the deepest suffering, is the reason why the world has been made, and how it is sustained by the beauty of divine love[44].

Conclusion

When he appeared to his as-yet ignorant disciples[45] the risen Jesus expounded the mystery of the plan God had hidden in himself for ages and generations (Col 1:26)[46]. The Lamb of God (Rev 13:8) testified from his heart what was always at the foundation of the world, “Was it not necessary (the “must” of indispensability rather than inevitability) that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). The necessity of this plan is not a cold irresistible force but is a warm and compelling love designed to draw out from those who have the Spirit what it drew out of Jesus, ““Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”” (Mark 14:36). The preciousness of Jesus’ submission contains within it the great and extraordinary promise that we are being made “sharers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). For this to be a vital life-transforming truth in us, the children of God need to be enabled to read off the agony and ecstasy of their daily lives[47] the imprint of the Father’s never-failing love (Heb 12:5-11).  This is the ministry of the Word and the Spirit to everyone who puts their faith in Jesus as their Lord. Whilst the vast mass of believers in this city remains robbed of God’s glory in Christ and in their ignorance don’t know what they are missing, this is not your destiny tin him. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” (Rom 8:28-29)