Bible Shaped Identities

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How Reading the Bible Shapes Our Identity byDavid Powlison from Crossway on Vimeo.

Rewiring Our Self-Understanding

We often talk about Scripture as God’s self-revelation. But if every revelation of God is a revelation of myself in relation to God, then all of Scripture is continually in the business of rewiring our self-understanding.

Here are two examples that are particularly stunning and lovely: the Psalms and Ephesians.
The Psalms are one sustained portrayal and expression of an identity that is small before a God whom I both need mercy and refuge from, and a God who is great and worthy of all praise, adoration, and love. The Psalms never explicitly say, “Here’s an identity rejig.” But the whole book of Psalms rejigs your identity—every psalm, every prayer, every hymn of worship.

But my favorite “identity” book is Ephesians. Depending on how you understand the nature of what each sentence says about who you are, there are about fifty different identity statements in Ephesians. Every single one of them connects you to God. If he is Father, I am son. If he is the Holy One, I am a saint. If he is the one who indwells the temple, then I am part of that temple. If he is the possessor who is giving an inheritance to his children, then I am an heir owned by the one whom I will inherit from.

The Text That Shapes Our identity

How Reading the Bible Shapes Our Identity from Crossway on Vimeo.

How Reading the Bible Shapes Our identity by David Powlinson

Rewiring Our Self-Understanding

We often talk about Scripture as God’s self-revelation. But if every revelation of God is a revelation of myself in relation to God, then all of Scripture is continually in the business of rewiring our self-understanding.

Here are two examples that are particularly stunning and lovely: the Psalms and Ephesians.

The Psalms are one sustained portrayal and expression of an identity that is small before a God whom I both need mercy and refuge from, and a God who is great and worthy of all praise, adoration, and love. The Psalms never explicitly say, “Here’s an identity rejig.” But the whole book of Psalms rejigs your identity—every psalm, every prayer, every hymn of worship.

But my favorite “identity” book is Ephesians. Depending on how you understand the nature of what each sentence says about who you are, there are about fifty different identity statements in Ephesians. Every single one of them connects you to God. If he is Father, I am son. If he is the Holy One, I am a saint. If he is the one who indwells the temple, then I am part of that temple. If he is the possessor who is giving an inheritance to his children, then I am an heir owned by the one whom I will inherit from.

David Powlison serves as the executive director of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation and is a contributor to the ESV Men's Devotional Bible.

One Word

"Our Understanding of the Gospel Can Hinge on One Word" - From Michael Kelley at Forward Progress:

“For.”

It’s only 3 letters. A throw away word. The kind of word that appears countless times in an article. One that we simply write or say or read without thinking much about it because at its best it simply links what comes after it to what comes before it. It’s a word that shows up in a passage of Scripture that beautifully summarizes the gospel message:

“For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

In these three verses, the word appear three times in this particular translation, but it’s the appearance in verse 10 that I’d like to call your attention to. We are newly created in Christ for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to walk in.

You find in this passage a holistic treatment of the gospel. That is we were saved by grace, through faith, for good works. Take any of those three components away and you have an incomplete message. We are brought near to God not on the basis of our own merit, but by grace. Unmerited favor. Undeserved blessing. Completely apart from ourselves, this grace finds its root in God alone and His great love and mercy. It is by grace we have been saved.

And that grace is given to us by faith. Faith is the track upon which the train of grace rides. It is the avenue by which we are made right with God. It is through faith alone that anyone at any time is ever made right with God. As Charles Spurgeon beautifully put it, “Faith is the silver thread upon which the pearls of grace are to be hung. Break that, and the pearls lie scattered on the ground.” Faith is the mechanism by which the gospel ceases to be mere historical fact and actually comes to rest on a person. It’s the moment when a person ceases to merely know and begins to actually believe.

And then there is the last part. This grace, which comes by faith, is for good works. It’s a cause and effect kind of thing. Those who experience this grace are irreversibly changed. They bear the fruit of righteousness and now love God with their deepest desires. Their souls have been awakened to true beauty and, like someone who has eaten the richest fare once, no longer find a cheeseburger from McDonald’s all that satisfying any more.

By grace. Through faith. For good works.

Reading the New Driscoll Book

I'm currently reading Mark Driscoll's new book Who Do You Think You Are: Finding Your True Identity in Christ. I've already posted some quotes from it and will be posting more. In full disclosure, I received a free pre-publication copy from the publisher as part of their program for bloggers.

I have read several (but not all) of Driscoll's previous books. I have not found anything in the ones I have read that I seriously disagree with. Pastor Driscoll is controversial, and I certainly am not going to blanket endorse everything he has written or done. However, anyone who has built a church as large as his in one of the most unchurched cities in America deserves at least some benefit of the doubt.

This book is a study of identity, based on Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. I have read Ephesians countless times, and have read many commentaries and studies on the book. But until now, I have never read or heard anyone point out something Driscoll does. Every commentator points out that Ephesians has too parts: Chapters 1-3 are theological in nature, and chapters 4-6 are practical. Driscoll adds that chapters 1-3 are about identity in Christ, and chapters 4-6 attack the idols in his readers lives based on that understanding of their true identity. That makes perfect sense.

I look forward to finishing the book, posting more quotes, and doing a review when I am finished.

The Mission of Marriage

Saw a good post today at Confluence on the Mission of Marriage.

My guess is that there are a lot of Christians, including Christian leaders, who got married for the wrong reasons. We can all think of one main reason Christians get married; starts with an S and ends with an X. To be fair the Bible is not in opposition to the hurry up offense when it comes to marriage (1 Corinthians 7:9), but at some point, all Christian couples need to come to grips with the mission of Marriage or else a lifetime of disappointment awaits....

 Read it. It's worth the few minutes.

Are Elders and Pastors the Same Thing in the NT?

If you are interested in the subject of "Five-Fold Ministry" and/or church government by Elders check out this post by Andrew Faris at Christians in Context: Are Elders and Pastors the Same Thing in the NT?

...is it possible that all elders are pastors but not all pastors are elders? I think so, and here is why:

1. Pastors are never told to do the work of elders in the NT- the examples Berding gives necessarily point towards elders doing pastoral work, but not necessarily the other way. So the position is possible.

2. Besides generally exemplary character, the Pastoral Epistles (esp. 1 Tim. 3) give two major requirements for being an elder: having a good home and being able to teach. 1 Tim. 5:17 [Open in Libronix (if available)] seems to indicate that some elders did not, in fact, teach. Still, this was likely a major role. It is less clear that "pastoring" necessarily includes teaching. But what about Eph. 4, you ask? Keep reading!

3. This corresponds well with the oft-noted hendiadys in Eph. 4: pastor-teacher is two parts of the same position. If my thesis here is correct, then "pastor-teacher" is basically another way of saying "elder" in Ephesians. So why not just say elder? Is it so far-fetched to think that perhaps some people were doing only one part of those roles, such that while mostly elders would be in mind, God also equips His people by providing leaders who labor primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) in only one of those ministry roles? That is, perhaps there are more leaders than just elders, and Paul wanted to include an at least slightly broader range of equippers in his ministry list in Eph. 4.

4. This makes practical sense. How many people in your church can you name who shepherd other people? Probably more than just the elder(s). But how many consistently teach, or even have teaching as a major part of their job description? Probably mostly just the elder(s). That is probably in part because no single or small group of elders can pastor an entire congregation. Healthy congregations have more functional leaders than just those who are official leaders. But they tend not to have too many teachers, which seems reasonable enough.

Andrew also discusses the implications of this position for the "women in ministry" controversy.

Pastors and Teachers—Ephesians 4:11

Interesting article and Greek grammer study at Koinonia Blog on one of my pet hermeneutic causes: Does Ephesians 4 teach a five-fold ministry or only four? See Koinonia: Pastors and Teachers—Ephesians 4:11 by Bill Mounce

Paul is discussing the gifts that God gives. In v 11 he says, word for word, “And he gave men the apostles de the prophets de the evangelists de the pastors and teachers. The men … de is the correlative construction “both … and … and” that often does not make it into translations because while it is gentle and smooth in Greek our correlatives are a bit rougher and more intrusive.

The question is whether “pastors and teachers” designate one spiritual gift or two.

One interpretation sees them as one gift and point to the use of the article. It is repeated before all the other gifts, but when it gets to the last two there is only one article that governs both nouns. Grammatically, this signals a change and expects us to see that “pastors and teachers” form a unit that is set off from the preceding series.

There can be no debate on this point; this is just plain Greek grammar. The question is the precise nature of the “unit.”

The use of a single article with multiple plural nouns indicates a single unit, but it does not necessarily mean the two nouns are identical. This same construction occurs earlier in 2:20 and joins “apostles” and “prophets,” but these are not identical gifts

Paul is discussing the gifts that God gives. In v 11 he says, word for word, “And he gave men the apostles de the prophets de the evangelists de the pastors and teachers. The men … de is the correlative construction “both … and … and” that often does not make it into translations because while it is gentle and smooth in Greek our correlatives are a bit rougher and more intrusive.

The question is whether “pastors and teachers” designate one spiritual gift or two.

One interpretation sees them as one gift and point to the use of the article. It is repeated before all the other gifts, but when it gets to the last two there is only one article that governs both nouns. Grammatically, this signals a change and expects us to see that “pastors and teachers” form a unit that is set off from the preceding series.

There can be no debate on this point; this is just plain Greek grammar. The question is the precise nature of the “unit.”

The use of a single article with multiple plural nouns indicates a single unit, but it does not necessarily mean the two nouns are identical. This same construction occurs earlier in 2:20 and joins “apostles” and “prophets,” but these are not identical gifts.

Hoehner suggests that the distinction is that the prior gifts are expressed in an itinerate ministry and the later two are gifts for a local ministry. Harold’s discussion of this is excellent and worth reading (Ephesians. An Exegetical Commentary published by Baker).