Unboxed
“’What role does God play in our lives?’ It is an inevitable but wrong question. We shall be freed from it only by captivation to the right question: what role do we play in God’s life? The story is not our story with a role for Christ. The story is Christ’s story with roles for us.” (Robert Jenson). The Lord has reminded me (JY) of my experiences in the revival atmosphere of Argentina in 1995. It was a time of unsolicited repentance, a time when Jesus graciously answered every one of my questions. I believe it was a time when the Lord took me out of my box to show me something of the future for the Church in our city.
Introduction
In intimate relationships that truly image God, some things are known only by the Lord and your spouse (John 17:3). This is especially the case in relation to the knowledge of how difficult you are to live with. Whilst there are no limits to the grace of God in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), the Lord often uses the limited capacities of those closest to us for our sanctification. When Donna started habitually, and with a note of desperation, to characterise the busyness of our schedules as “unsustainable”, I knew I needed to petition the Lord for more mercy. By divine providence, in the process of tearing up something for scrap paper (Jeffrey Young Early Maladaptive Schemas), my eyes fell on this heading, “Excessive Responsibility and Standards”, whose emphasis on people “taking care of other people at the expense of oneself” by the application of rigid rules, “perfectly describes” (so Donna) my merciless inner mode of life. This psychological insight provided the catalyst to me receiving more revelation about my own life and in relation God’s plan for his Church.
You Hypocrite (Luke 13:15)
Whilst talking to a local pastor years ago pastor outside a coffee shop, another minister walked by and quipped, “Talking to John Yates, you better be careful, he thinks outside of the box!” I naively replied, “There is not box.” In truth, the Spirit of the Lord is now showing me I put all things in boxes. Box type 1 is a narrow box with very high-performance expectations applied to myself, those closest to me, and to the able, intelligent and competent. Those who don’t conform to this box may be labelled lazy or self-indulgent. (They are probably just restful and relaxed.) I recall as a young minister visiting 1000+ homes in 9 months to talk to self-identifying Anglicans about Jesus. A little later I completed my masters’ and doctoral theses in well under minimum time. This silly over-achievement has its expected social rewards. However, my tragic history of conflicts, misunderstandings, betrayal and evictions from Christian groups, also teaches me that living in this box opens you up to extreme spiritual warfare. It is only a miracle of grace that I have both survived and kept growing in Jesus.
By the mercies of God (Rom 12:1), the vast mass of people I know do not go into box 1. Box type 2 is a very broad box into which I place eccentrics (whom I tend to collect) and people with various limitations or disabilities. Whether these handicaps are moral, intellectual, emotional, physical, or spiritual doesn’t really matter. These “broken children” can all be assured of regular pastoral care. This makes my “spiritual fathering” less than 100 percent pure and something that should not be imitated (1 Cor 4:14-16).
A New Revelation
The wonderful truth of life “in Christ” is that I am not in the harshness of box 1 nor even in the far more relaxed box 2, where there is plenty of patience and tolerance etc., for “in Christ” I have been unboxed “from a human point of view.” and am in “a new creation” (2 Cor 5:16-17). This is exciting beyond imagination (Eph 3:20). I am not merely a new creature with a new power to live free from my old addictions (to ministry busyness), in Christ’s new creation there are no boundaries, only a centre. The Jesus in whom we now dwell is no longer, “the bearded sandaled one of the Gospels” (Juan Carlos Ortiz https://crossingtheriver.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/livingwithjesustoday.pdf), not even with his mighty miracles. He is the exalted God-human in the glory he shared with the Father from “before the world existed.” (John 17:5). In him there are no limits or dimensions.
Entering the Fulness
When Jesus returned to God, he took many sons/daughters with him “to glory” (Heb 2:10). He prayed on his way to the Father, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one” (John 17:22). As they shared everything together in eternity, we too will share their sharing. All our boxes, or little visions about life, are undone in the revelation that we share together in the one story of Jesus. His testimony (Rev 19:10) includes all that has ever been purposed for us all by the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. This replaces “my” Church/ministry thinking for “our” Church/ministry thinking, for there is only one Father, one Lord and one Spirit for us all (Eph 4:4-6; 1 Cor 12:13; Matt 6:9). This is a huge challenge for our extreme Western individualism. There can no longer be an individual/personalised faith any more than there can be a solitary Saviour. Of the Early Church it was boldly declared, “no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32 cf. 2:44). This is how the baptism of the Holy Spirit transformed the lives of the first disciples of Jesus. Do we want this? How can this become our shared testimony?
Let Go and Let God
Since Jesus already “fills all in all” (Eph 1:23) and “in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.” (Col 2:9-10), our entering into this reality cannot involve attaining a higher (elite) spiritual state but involves a letting go of all our self-enclosed ego boundaries. When we do let fully go, either at death or at the Second Coming, we will instantly be filled with the fullness of God. Then we will completely share “in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) and limitlessly understand the glory of the plan of God. Today, we must understand that the pressures, like Christmas stresses, which push in on our “boxes”, are meant to turn us to Christ. Even the apostle Paul had, “the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Cor 11:28) to move him Christ-ward (2 Cor 12:9).
Conclusion
The Lord has patiently ordained a long period of suffering for the saints of God in Perth, this now seems to be approaching a consummation. It’s first fruit will be a new way of relating to one another, which is a new way of being human. The greater our immersion in his new creation, the greater our natural humility and open brokenness in Christ. Though glorified, “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor 10:1) powerfully enables us to suffer together without shame (1 Cor 12:26). In the glories of Christ, we can “count others more significant than ourselves” (Phil 2:3). The greater we see Jesus to be the more we will be freed from all the boxing and comparing (2 Cor 10:12) that has so long ravaged Western Christianity. Entering into the rest of God (Heb 4:11) by childlike faith (Matt 18:3) we can simply enjoy Jesus’ enjoyment of the glory he shares with the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. “For the sake of Christ…when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).