Hand in the Cookie Jar

Yep, I was caught.  This morning, I was overheard asking a person if they might find time to tell their story to me.  I must say, this will be a great opportunity to appeal to the Word once again.  But before I do, I want to put this in perspective.

After reading all of these blogs I write about sparing me your story, I suppose I should explain myself.  The first point to make is that the context of the request was not a moment of evangelism.  The two people involved in the conversation are both clearly Christians already, and I am happy to call him my brother in Christ.  The context of the discussion is the end of a Bible study on 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1, on which I blogged yesterday.  One of the two key doctrines from that passage is the doctrine of separation.  My brother has an interesting tale to tell concerning his own life and that doctrine, that passage of scripture.  The manner in which he worked through his dilemma, knowing both that his separation was over doctrine and that he was in the minority, may help me with my current concerns over doctrine and theology in my local church.  I’m sure I’ll get a little of the feelings involved, but he will probably focus on the issues.  It will be a great listen.

Also this morning, I heard the ever present, and grating on my nerves, suggestion that we should live the Gospel and be an example to non-Christians as a form of evangelism.  As we can see from the preceding paragraph, telling your story can be of some value, some of the time, to some audiences.  Most of the time, to most audiences, most value is obtained from talking about the Gospel.  The key difference is that the story I hope to hear is heavily grounded in scripture.  The story is about scripture and doctrine.  While my brother’s experience will play a central role in the story, the theme of the story will be a doctrinal discussion that led to separation.  These types of examples were common in Puritan communities.  They developed a set of stories, sort of like case law, to discuss particular doctrinal issues that would arise in practical application.  Their thinking was that law, no matter how specific, could not account for every conceivable situation in life.  Therefore, they discussed, worked through and recorded all of these events, creating a journal of applications, each story an example of doctrine in practice.

Coming back to the example, I’ve often wondered what living the Gospel looks like.  Let me get this right, if we just live our lives, loving our neighbors, everyone will think we are wonderful and want to live like us.  That sounds like the Mormons.  They are great neighbors, very trustworthy, reliable, nice people.  They have lousy theology.  But how would you know that by just observing their lives?  

Also, haven’t we discussed how the purpose of the law is to point out our sin?  The law is designed to demonstrate our fallen nature.  We may try and achieve some measure of success at living the “good” life.  I’m not sure I’ll ever perfect it.  If you examine my life, I’m sure you can find all sorts of reasons that I fail at obeying the law.   

But wait!  We are supposed to be living the Gospel.  What does that look like?  The Gospel is news.  It is completed action.  It is history.  It was done by someone else.  How do we live the news?  Am I to walk up the nearest hill dragging a large wooden pole and let my neighbor stab me?  Is that right?  The thing is that you can’t live the Gospel.  The Gospel is in the indicative.  You can try to live the imperatives.  Imperatives require action.  Imperatives are always grounded in indicatives.   

The amazing thing is that the same set of imperatives can be grounded in many different indicatives.  In other words, do Christians have a monopoly on sound ethics?  Clearly not.  Therefore, Christian living, the imperatives, shed no particular light on the Gospel.  The Gospel has to be proclaimed.  The Gospel requires notification, communication, words.  Yes, young people who don’t believe in words any longer, words and ideas are necessary.  People do not die for warm and fuzzy feelings.  People want to have a very clear and well articulated idea of what is at stake before they are going to put their own neck on the line.  I’m not going to die for any moral stake.  I’ll die over the indicatives.  The Gospel is worth my life.  Is the Gospel worth your life?

So, start with the Gospel.  Save your story until someone asks for it.  Even then, ground your story in the indicatives, and make sure that the person who asks remembers the indicatives more than the parts about you.

--Ogre--