Wisdom to Disciple from 21.10.16
Personal Matters
The discipleship crisis across the Australian churches cannot be healed by any amount of programming. There is no “hunger and thirst for righteousness” in our land and so no being “filled” with the presence of Christ’s kingdom (Matt 5:6). This is not an exhortation to work harder on being a Christian, just the opposite, but to depend on someone else’s righteousness in our place, the “alien righteousness” of Christ (Phil 3:9). The radical wisdom of the gift of such “alien righteousness” enabled John the Baptist to prepare people to follow Jesus and will prove to be central to any significant restoration of godly living in our time.
The Word of Righteousness
Gabriel declared of John, “he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”” (Luke 1:16-17). Jesus understood the power of John’s message to turn the human heart to the way of righteousness and personally submitted to it, “Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.” (Matt 3:13-15). In order to be the righteousness of God for us, Jesus needed to identify fully with the sort of people the Baptist was baptising (Rom 3:22). As he explained to the Pharisees, “For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him.” (Matt 21:32). Because Jesus joined John in the way of righteousness the religious folk accused him; “‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”” (Luke 7:35). In the Gospels the children of wisdom who come in the way of righteousness are great sinners who become friends of God. Sinners like tax collectors and prostitutes became the disciples of John and Jesus (Matt 9:10, 14). Why is it that so many Christian leaders today do not cultivate this fruit of discipleship?
Who are your Friends?
Strong Christians generally have the wrong sort of friends. Most of our friends are church-goers and we together we suffer from the attitude Paul corrects in the Corinthians, “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings!” (1 Cor 4:8). Such self-satisfaction is a sure sign of self-righteousness. The prosperous Western Church is like the Pharisees, “lovers of money” who confidently justified themselves in the sight of others believing that their prosperity was a sign of their righteousness (Luke 16:14-15 cf. Rev 3:17). Western believers, materially affluent and with a rich tradition of theology, mission work and Church history, cover themselves profusely with these things like the fig leaves of Eden to smother our shame and guilt (Gen 3:7). True preachers of righteousness like the Baptist come clothed not with what money provides but in the garb of Elijah marking them out for persecution for the sake of God’s kingdom (2 Ki 1:8; Mark 1:6; Luke 24:26). The bedevilling problems of false versus true righteousness begin in Eden.
Fallen Wisdom
If Eve and Adam had judged the serpent in the Garden according to God’s just decree about the tree of knowledge, they would have entered into the way of righteousness (Gen 2:17). But when tested by Satan Eve not only saw that the tree of knowledge was made to be “good for food”, but created in her own heart the conviction that it would “make one wise” (Gen 2:9; 3:6). Wisdom in one’s own eyes as a result of one’s own efforts is the substance of all self-righteousness (Prov 3:7; 28:11). Every human should know that God’s righteousness is exclusively his wisdom to correctly judge the difference between good and evil (2 Sam 14:2; 17, 20). So whoever believes that anything in them is the cause of their righteousness repeats the sin of Eden. To believe that God accepts us because of faith was exactly how the rabbis explained why God accepted Abraham, and it is a root sin of religious Christianity as well. Righteousness is not a personal property of men and women but the property of a relationship with a gracious God.
Alien Righteousness
Sinners of all sorts found peace with God in the presence of Jesus because they sensed that his righteousness was not a self-enclosed personal property but a righteousness for them (Matt 3:15). Christ would not justify himself. He knew that he must be condemned by the highest human justice, Jewish and Roman, in order to be justified solely by God for us. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit” (1 Pet 3:18). By resurrection from the dead Jesus is declared just in our place clothed with the righteousness of his Father; he was “raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25; 1 Tim 3:16). Paul expounds the wise alien righteousness of the gospel like this, “you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God- that is, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor 1:30).
The Wisdom of the Church
Jesus prophesied that the alien righteousness he gives would be expressed in an alien wisdom; “”for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.” (Luke 21:15). Likewise, it is the “Wisdom of God” that says, “‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’” (Luke 11:49). These texts agree that true wisdom is to seek the alien righteousness of Christ for others in the way of suffering. The way of bringing Christ’s alien righteousness to others is to substitute for their unrighteousness by suffering for their sakes (2 Cor 1:6; Col 1:24). A Church that knows the alien righteousness of Christ is free from the need to judge the sins of others harshly and free from the fear of being accused of being judgmental. Freed by a justified conscience such a Church never looks down on others (legalist) nor does it look down on those who look down on others (liberal). Such a Church possesses the maturity of John the Baptist and Jesus, an ability to befriend sinners and to convict them of sin.
Conclusion
The failure of the Western Church to disciple its members, and to be salt and light to our culture, reveals that we have chosen another wisdom than the way of the alien righteousness of God in Christ (Matt 5:14-15; 2 Cor 5:21). It is radically humbling to admit that whilst we can plant and grow churches through the anointing and gifting of God we can only grow righteousness in others through a personal depth of character that renounces any personal goodness other than that of Christ (Rom 7:18). This is a great personal challenge which must take us back to the cross as the final expression of the wisdom of God in the way of his alien justice. The final friend and disciple that the dying Jesus made on earth was a man who grasped God’s wisdom in the last hour of his life, this man was a great sinner, a rebel a thief and a murderer (Luke 23:39-43). May the Lord help us find such friends too.