Worldview Church » September 2008

Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard University, is the author of This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. During the Civil War, Americans lived—often excruciatingly—with violent death as a fact of life. Even so, death on the scale that occurred during the Civil War was unprecedented; more died during that war than during the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, Word Wars I and II, and Korea combined.

Faust’s clearly written and gripping history reveals how America’s religious beliefs at the time attempted to come to grips with violence on this scale. Predominantly Protestant, America’s views of death were in the main shaped by Jeremy Taylor’s The Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying. The concept of the Good Death was central to the belief structures of that day; it had long been at the core of Christian practice. Faust states: “Dying was an art, and the tradition of ars moriendi had provided rules of conduct for the moribund and their attendants since at least the fifteenth century.”

Masses of men facing one another armed with weapons of technologically improved lethality circumvented the desired Good Death death-bed scene in which one could reassure one’s family with dying words that one’s soul would be welcomed into heaven. Instead, men died ignominiously far from home, their bodies left to rot in fly-plagued jumbles of limbs and viscera that littered acres of battlefields. Families were bereft without assurance of their departed loved-ones’ eternal life. Survivors of battles often wrote the families of casualties attempting to reassure them that their beloved had indeed been a person of faith.

Neither side anticipated the overwhelming casualties that ensued once the first large battle of Bull Run was fought. No formal provisions had been made for proper burial. This was a further indignity to the Christian sensibilities of the times. Retreating armies abandoned their dead to the battlefield, while the remaining armies buried only their own, and that not carefully or respectfully, but hastily. Bodies were often thrown into ditches or covered in unmarked shallow graves. They were treated as if they were nothing more than the carcasses of mere animals.

Naming the dead was very difficult. The military and governments of both sides had to rely upon voluntary organizations to identify the dead, such as the Northern Christian Commission. Accounting and numbering also proved problematic in that often the battlefields were towns, farms and even cities; civilian casualties commingled with military casualties. Medical practices were crude; infection, especially gangrene, often resulted from filthy surgeries done without anesthesia. Diseases spread rapidly in unsanitary camps—killing even more than those actually killed in combat.

Such large scale brutality created a crisis of faith in many while reaffirming the faith of others. Reverend Robert Dabney preached that the narrative of Stonewall Jackson’s life “is God’s sermon to us. His embodied admonition, His incorporate discourse.”

Sermons for the well-known personages who were killed became primers for the families of lesser-known casualties on how to properly mourn their dead. But mass death on the scale witnessed by the Civil War inflamed a growing sense of doubt in the minds of the intellectual elite such as Ambrose Pierce and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., both veterans of that war who rejected their Christian faith. In these intellectual circles, Transcendentalism, Unitarianism, and materialism were on the ascendancy. Others less intellectually inclined found themselves—along with the elite—doubting the existence of a benevolent God.

Despite these doubters, many more carried their Christian views of service and patriotism into the very jaws of death, believing, as the Reverend John Sweet put it, that death “is the middle point between two lives.”

What strikes one about Faust’s book is how far removed contemporary American views of death are from those of Civil War America. Death was something people faced squarely and did not hide from their children—it involved the whole family as well as whole communities. All were touched by it either directly or indirectly. Most people understood that the end of their days was in the hands of a sovereign God who had determined that day before the foundations of the earth.

Contemporary America, on the other hand, pretends death does not exist. Our military dead from Iraq and Afghanistan are secreted home through Dover Air Force Base; although they are honored locally and privately, they are not truly accorded the national honor they deserve. Often, the naming of our contemporary military dead is done by protestors rather than by our nation as a whole.

As compellingly horrifying as Faust’s tale is, it nonetheless points out to us that once, as a people, we did not flee into a fantasy world of denying death. As time placed distance between the horrors of that war, the residual pain of it led, by the end of the 19th century, to what Faust states became “the vehicle for a unifying national project of memorialization.”

Even though This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War is a history written for a popular audience, it has lessons within it that are pertinent to us as pastors, such as our responsibility to remind our people that all of them will eventually die—some violently. We must also remind them that if their lives are hidden in Christ Jesus, death is simply “the middle point.”

During All Souls Eve, the church once named and honored the saints who went to be with the Lord that previous year. The church as a community looked to the lives of those departed saints as examples of faith to be emulated. In that sense, the dead became the church’s “vehicle” of “memorialization” for lives lived faithfully in service to their Lord. As grim as Faust’s book is, it nonetheless reminds us that our ancestors not only faced the grisly aftereffects of death in battle, but often had their faith strengthened despite its traumatic and “dehumanizing” reality.

David R. Sincerbox, a retired public school administrator and teacher is currently a candidate for ministry in the Anglican Mission in America.

Worldview Church » September 2008

Secret Believers is an excellent introduction to the plight of the Body of Christ in the Islamic world. A quick and fascinating read, it is, if you will, a Christian “thriller” of sorts. Its purpose is to help Western Christians identify with their brethren who confess Christ in Muslim lands at the risk of their lives.

The main body of the work is a fictional narrative of “composite characters” in an unnamed Arab country who, against all human odds, come to Christ and grow as Christians. Some are martyred. Some must run for their lives. All pay a steep price. The balance of the book is a call to action for Christians in the West to pray, give, and—as God calls—go to aid the persecuted church. It is also a reminder of the vast spiritual hunger that underlies the surface of the Islamic world, an emptiness that is satisfied only when people with Muslim backgrounds finally learn of Isa (Jesus).

Brilliantly incorporated throughout the book are snippets of useful information that equip ordinary Western Christians to begin discussing Christianity intelligently with their Muslim friends such as:

1. Muslims and many evangelical Christians share a disgust for the moral decadence of Western Culture. They differ in the definitions of modesty and the solution (jihad versus conversion and reformation).
   
   
2. Ninety percent of the material in the Quran is found in the Bible. But the New Testament—called the Injil—answers many questions about Jesus that the Quran leaves unanswered.
   
   
3. Muslim difficulties and distortions in accepting the Christian faith, and the answers “Muslim Background Believers” use to explain the Christian faith.
   
   
4. The two most compelling arguments for the Christian Faith: Love and forgiveness in the face of hate.
   
   
5. Why today's brand of pop evangelicalism is sorely lacking in persuasiveness, and why the ancient liturgical spirituality offers insight. Our evangelicalism offers the freedom from legalism to be sure, but lacks any passion for God expressed in godly discipline.

One twist most Western Christians will find odd is the unwillingness of the Christian communities in Islamic nations to accept Muslim converts. Receiving them provokes a backlash of persecution against the church. Sad experience has also taught them that too often “converts” were also either informers for the secret police or young men interested in marrying an attractive Christian girl. Too many Christian girls would wind up being forced to “convert” after their husband had shed the pretense of being a Christian. As a result, efforts to bolster the historic churches in Islamic lands are not enough. Efforts to help, train, and support “Muslim Background Believers” who form their own small underground congregations are desperately needed as well.

I was encouraged to see much overlap in this book with another useful book that will not reach the same audience. I refer to the chapters on evangelizing Muslims found in David Garrison's book Church Planting Movements. I can honestly say his book prepared me to read Secret Believers with greater insight and appreciation.

The authors hope the stories of the suffering (like Layla, the Christian girl who was kidnapped, forced to convert on threat of death to herself and her parents, and then raped nightly by her "husband" yet escapes with her baby faith intact) will be so moving that readers connect with the associated website to learn more. It worked for me! Perhaps it will do the same for you.

Brother Andrew and Al Janssen also demonstrate the profound naiveté of Western foreign policy. Our fellow Christians in Afghanistan and Iraq simply wanted true freedom of religion in their nations, not new untested regimes which merely ape Western style “democracy.” After years of war and billions spent to create these “democracies” in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Christian communities there are worse off.

My only real criticism of the book is that it might be interpreted as a complete guide to dealing with the terrorist threat. I do not think it wise for any Western nation to use this book as a guide to the sum of their internal security policy. It is the right thing for individual Christians to forgive their wrongdoers. It's another thing for a nation charged with protecting its citizenry to let down its guard and let criminal acts against its people go unpunished.

For fast, stimulating, and profitable Christian reading I strongly suggest this book. May God use it to help Christians in the West focus renewed prayer, energy, and resources on this crucial mission.

Chuck Huckaby is pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Lawrenceburg, Tenn.

Report on the Sound the Alarm Pastors' Conference

Worldview Church » September 2008

What would it be like if pastors and leaders across denominational lines covenanted together to pray for revival in their state? What would happen if those leaders of God’s people would humble themselves before God in repentance and prayer and intercede for spiritual awakening in their own lives and the Church so that God’s people would live and stand for biblical righteousness?

I was at such a gathering in my own state of Washington. Here in the Pacific Northwest, a coalition of leaders has formed to pray for revival. Sound the Alarm is made up of pastors and leaders from across the state who are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and the authority of His Word, and who are covenanting together to pray for a turning of the spiritual tide in our churches and in our state.

Jim Cymbala of Brooklyn Tabernacle Church was the guest speaker at this inaugural Sound the Alarm Pastors’ Conference. Using Mark 3:13 as his text, Cymbala encouraged the shepherds that we are not only called to “preach” but we are also called to “be with Him.” The end of the first afternoon session ended with an altar call for those whose sons or daughters had wandered from the Lord. The altar literally filled with hurting pastors and leaders who were carrying the burden of a child adrift in rebellion or indifference. How those pastors cried out for their kids!

In the daily burden of ministry a pastor’s family is often a target of the enemy. But here in this place, in the gathering of leaders from across all denominational lines, intercession was being made for those families and children. Would not God be pleased that Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Assemblies of God, Independents, Charismatics, and others were standing together and praying for each other’s children? One on one, men with men and women with women, prayers were lifted for each one’s ministry and church.

The tone and spirit of this gathering were permeated with humility, unity and prayer. No church was exalted for its numbers, and no personality was promoted. Only God’s cause was encouraged and His ministers strengthened.

What will come of this grouping of men and women, churches and ministries? The vision for Sound the Alarm is striking in it’s simplicity: “The network of Sound the Alarm pastors was formed in 2004 in Washington State for the purpose of uniting the Church of Jesus Christ in our state in repentance, in prayer for spiritual awakening, and, as needed, in united action.” And again, “. . . the hope for our nation is spiritually awakened pastors and a spiritually awakened Church. Not just awakened to civic duty, but awakened to our first love for God” (Revelation 2:4).

Could this be the will of God for leaders from across denominational lines to gather together and seek His face? And if it is His will, would He hear their request for revival and awakening? We will soon know. But already a stirring is taking place, for who but the Holy Spirit could bring so many leaders from so many camps together to pray for the most precious thing they have in this life: their children? Who but the Holy Spirit would have men lay aside their local church agenda and pray for the welfare of their brothers’ ministries as well as their state?

Jesse Slusher is pastor of Grace Community Church in Quincy, Wash.

An Interview with Centurions Director Martha Anderson

Recently, Jimmy Davis, pastor and graduate of the 2006 Centurions Program, interviewed Martha Anderson, national director of BreakPoint’s Centurions Program, to help pastors and church leaders learn more about the Centurions movement.

God's Hard Words

Sometimes people post Bible verses in their homes for encouragement, or to remind themselves of something. My guess is not too many people have this passage from Psalm 137 posted on their refrigerator door:

O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! (Psalm 137:8-9)

A framed print of that passage likely wouldn’t be a big seller at your local Christian bookstore. Here are some others you probably won’t see on sale:

Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call his wickedness to account till you find none. (Psalm 10:15)

O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord! Let them vanish like water that runs away; when he aims his arrows, let them be blunted. Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime, like the stillborn child who never sees the sun. (Psalm 58:6-8)

COMFORT, REFRESHMENT, AND . . .
The Psalms are wonderful places to which we can retreat to find comfort and refreshment and courage to press on. Yet the Psalms are filled with passages like these, imprecatory passages that pronounce malediction instead of benediction. In some cases, whole Psalms seem to be dominated by malediction, such as Psalm 35 or 58 or 83 or 109, so much so that they are designated “imprecatory psalms.” Yet these imprecations are not just isolated to certain Psalms; they are spread across the Psalter, many even employed as calls to worship and impetus for rejoicing.

Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more! Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord! (Psalm 104:35)

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. (Psalm 96:11-13)

When was the last time you, in your prayers, addressed God as the psalmist does: “O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance,” and then asked Him to “Rise up, O judge of the earth; repay to the proud what they deserve!” (Psalm 94:1-2)?

What’s going on? Are these tar pits we need to avoid as we make our way through the green pastures and still waters of the Psalms’ landscape? A while back I encouraged my congregation to begin praying the psalms because doing so would enrich their prayer life, give greater variety to their prayers, and increase their vocabulary concerning God and what they pray for. I put together a schedule of praying through the Psalms in 100 days. Some in the congregation expressed to me their discomfort when they would come upon these imprecatory sections. They didn’t know what to do with them. What do you do when you get to passages like these? We wonder what sentiments like that are even doing in the Bible.

FOUR KEYS FOR IMPROVED PRAYER
Let me suggest four features of these imprecations that inform our prayer through the Psalter and enrich our prayer lives in communion with God.

1. These imprecations record the word of God.
What do we make of these harsh statements that are hard to read, let alone pray or find application in our lives? How do we reconcile Christ’s call to love our enemies with these prayers that desire their ruin? It’s easy—and some scholars have gone this way—to see these imprecations as pre-Christian or even anti-Christian. Some chalk it up to the Old Testament and say that’s a harshness of bygone days that has no part in the Christian mentality. Others might find the voice of Satan recorded in the pages of Holy Writ, akin to Job 1 or Matthew 4. Or perhaps it is the simply the misguided words of man, such as those of Job’s counselors.

None of that works, however. We can’t divide the Bible that way. For one thing, the New Testament affirms the Old Testament by citing the Psalms throughout, including these imprecatory Psalms, even to the point of quoting the sections we have such trouble with.

Certainly, the Old Testament expresses things in candid, concrete ways and deals with a warfare that is physical (as with the wars King David fought with fierce brutality). Psalm 137 places itself as a song and a prayer of the old covenant people of God in their Babylonian captivity, separated from their homeland, the temple demolished, having experienced unspeakable horror and cruelties as part of the warfare of the time. But we can’t just dismiss these expressions of a cry for justice as belonging to a time of the brutalities of ancient warfare.

The Psalms are Hebrew poetry. They employ vocabulary that is vivid and evocative. They are rich in metaphor. Perhaps something of the imprecatory language of the psalms can be chalked up to poetic license, and is not meant to be taken with literal cruelty. However, even expressed with poetic imagery, the sentiments that make us uneasy express the mind of God. The images drip with the truth of wrath and vengeance.

Nor, if the Bible is the Word of God, can we dismiss these statements because we find them offensive or confusing. Spurgeon, in commenting on Psalm 109, says this:

Truly this is one of the hard places of Scripture, a passage which the soul trembles to read, yet as it is a Psalm unto God, and given by inspiration, it is not ours to sit in judgment of it, but to bow our ear to what God the Lord would speak to us therein.

Not only that, but if the Bible is a redemptive document that holds a unified message of God’s salvation in His Messiah, then we can’t neglect these imprecations if we would understand the work of Jesus Christ in that redemption of sinners. Christ is both the subject of the Psalms and the singer of the Psalms.

Therefore, when we pray: We need to receive these imprecations of the Psalms as the revealed Word of our God that they are, inspired of the Holy Spirit, disclosing His will for application in our lives.

2. These imprecations reflect the character of God.
One of the benefits of praying through the Psalms is that it gives us a full-bodied, balanced, large picture of our God with all of His attributes. He is a God who is not only our loving Father; He is a terrifying Judge. He is merciful and He is just. He is near and personal in relationship. He is holy and transcendent. And this God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. What do we learn about God from these imprecatory Psalms as part of God’s self-revelation?

The psalmist in Psalm 137:7 asks God to “remember.” On what basis does he do so? On what basis can he call for and actually expect God to repay his enemies? How can the psalmist possibly say that the one who exacts vengeance of his oppressors is “blessed?”

The name used of God in verse 7, by which the psalmist implores Him to remember, is Yahweh, the covenant name of God. To use that name for God is to highlight that covenant relationship, where God promised to be their God and to be with them and care for them. Just as when we address someone saying, “Doctor, what’s wrong with me?” or “Officer, arrest that man,” or “Boss, what do you want me to do now?” we approach them on the basis of their relationship to us. Here the psalmist calls out the name of God by which He entered into relationship with them. He is their God; they are His people. It is to say, “Yahweh, you who are with us and for us, take note; take action.”

But “Yahweh” speaks of more than relationship. Doesn’t the covenant say that those who are with God will be blessed and those who are against Him will be cursed? Doesn’t this theme that distinguishes those who know God and those who do not carry right through the Bible? Notice the sober thought of 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 that carries this covenantal concept from the Old Testament through the New Testament, reaching to the age to come:

. . . since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. (2 Thessalonians 1:6-10)

Consistently throughout the pages of Scripture, malediction is pronounced against those who reject God and His covenant, while benediction is pronounced for those who are covenant-keepers. When the Bible says we are blessed because Christ became a curse for us, aren’t we using covenantal language? When parents in baptism hear the covenant promises, acknowledge their children to be sinners and in need of Jesus, they are affirming that the salvation blessings of the covenant are bound up in Christ, and so they teach their children about Jesus as the refuge from the wrath to come as they themselves have by God’s grace taken refuge in that provision of God through faith.

Therefore, when we pray: we come before a God who is loving and merciful, but also holy and just, who will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, and whom we approach only through our mediator, Jesus Christ. These imprecations remind us of the character of our God as judge and of the awful fate that awaits those who reject Him. The imprecations of the Psalms give us but a taste of this judgment and are tame compared to how terrifying it is to fall into the hands of the living God.

3. These imprecations react out of zeal for God.
When we read these imprecations, they seem so vindictive, and we have such trouble reconciling them with the call to love our enemies, or Christ’s example of forgiveness, even from the cross, to those who crucified Him. Are these imprecations directing us to pray for someone’s harm?

A pastor made news recently by urging his congregation to pray the imprecations of Psalm 109 against those he identified as the enemies of God. That would mean asking God:

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow! May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit! May the creditor seize all that he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil! Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any to pity his fatherless children! (Psalm 109:9-12)

Are we to heed that call and use the imprecations as our prayer list against the flesh-and-blood adversaries of Christ and His Church?

One of the basic principles of justice given us by God for the way we treat others is this: “vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” That’s an Old Testament quote from Deuteronomy 32 and cited in Psalm 94. It is applied by Paul in Romans where he sorts out our responsibility and God’s:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. . . . Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. (Romans 12:14-20)

Here Paul tells us we are to bless and not curse, but notice at the same time we affirm that God is the one to curse, and He will execute His righteous vengeance.

Jesus said for us to love our enemies, to be ready to forgive. He is our supreme example of such love and forgiveness. But we also read in Scripture that He will put all His enemies under His feet, casting those whom He never knew into the pit of outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This dual emphasis enables us to hear the voice of Jesus as the Suffering Servant in Psalm 69:9:

For zeal for your house has consumed me and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.

But the same Psalm also contains the imprecatory cry of those who reject the Messiah of God as Suffering Servant:

Pour out Your indignation upon them, and let Your burning anger overtake them. May their camp be a desolation; let no one dwell in their tents. For they persecute him whom you have struck down, and they recount the pain of those you have wounded. Add to them punishment upon punishment; may they have no acquittal from You. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous. (Psalm 69:24-28)

The imprecations of the psalms are not dealing with personal matters of ill-will and revenge. Rather, they refer to matters of the honor of God. It’s not about us; it’s about God. David interrupts his discourse on the knowledge of God with these words in much-loved Psalm 139:

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against You with malicious intent; Your enemies take Your name in vain! Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies. (Verses 19-22)

That prayer is fueled not by zeal for personal revenge, but zeal for the glory and honor of God against those who are in rebellion against Him.

These prayers of imprecation look to our God as the one to exact vengeance, to defend His people. They seek His glory as a just God. R. L. Dabney challenges our unbiblical hesitancy:

Righteous retribution is one of the glories of divine character. If it is right that God should desire to exercise it, then it cannot be wrong for his people to desire him to exercise it.

Dabney goes on to say that while we as creatures are not allowed to take revenge or to take pleasure in revenge, we can take solace in God doing what He says He will do to the honor of His name.

One of the prayers of the persecuted saints in the book of Revelation is this:

They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before You will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10)

God answers with a variety of horrific previews of the certainty of that avenging and what that looks like for those outside of the city of God. The psalmist records this same sort of prayer anticipating a day when God will execute justice: “O LORD, how long shall the wicked exult?” (Psalm 94:3)

So that pastor is right in one sense and wrong in another. He is right in saying that we as Christ’s church are to call out to our God for justice. It’s part of who He is. It is the character of His covenant and consistent with eschatological expectation. But he’s wrong in saying that we should call down coals of judgment on our flesh-and-blood enemies rather than coals of conviction. Our enemy is not flesh and blood but spiritual. Our prayer is for the demise of Satan and his demonic minions, but also for the release of those held in bondage to do his will.

Therefore, when we pray: We cannot have in mind someone who has wronged us upon whom we want to see harm fall. We are to love our enemies, desire their salvation, knowing that we are sinners also in need of the grace of God. Yet we are also zealous to see the vindication of God’s justice to the glory of His name.

4. These imprecations refer to the salvation of God.
How do we understand salvation? As the New Testament puts it, how can a holy God be both just and the justifier of the ungodly? The answer is the cross—Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If we tone down the imprecations that course throughout the pages of Scripture—Old Testament and New; if we tame or mute the justice of God; if we try to sanitize or minimize the curses of the covenant, then we dim the splendor of the love of God and diminish the severity and horror of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and what He endured under the judgment of God. We weaken what it means for Jesus Christ to be the propitiation for our sins.

If we skirt the imprecations of the psalms and other places in Scripture, then we forget the implications of the curse of the law that hung over us and was taken for us by Jesus Christ as our substitute. We will also ignore the teaching of the Bible about the judgment to come for all those who have not believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, as starkly and soberly expressed in John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

Right now the Bible speaks of the coexistence of two kingdoms: the kingdom of this world ruled by the prince of darkness, and the kingdom of light and life ruled by the Prince of Peace. When we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done,” we pray for the destruction, the annihilation of Satan’s kingdom. Why?—because it is opposed to our God and His Christ.

One author writes: “The church that is conscious of the life and death struggle between the two kingdoms will not exclude hatred for Satan’s kingdom from its love for God’s kingdom. The church is compelled to show love unto all men and to pray for their conversion. At the same time, with her eye fixed on the promise of the coming day of the Lord in which all God’s enemies will be crushed eternally, the church prays for the hastening of the Day of Judgment.”

When we pray, “Come, come quickly, Lord Jesus,” we invite and welcome His return. That prayer is recorded at the end of the book of Revelation after Christ has shown His church the horror and finality of the judgment to come. In that prayer is embedded every imprecatory prayer of the Bible that seeks His judgment, the vindication of His justice, the eradication of the kingdom of this age, and consummation of His kingdom in righteousness, joy, and peace.

Therefore, when we pray: We pray for God’s mercy and grace, for the building up of His kingdom in the reconciling of His enemies through the cross, and the consummation of the kingdom of God in the destruction of all evil and wickedness.

FIVE PRAYERS
The imprecations of the Psalms disturb us. They should. They must. But for the right reasons. Not because we are offended, but because God is. They must be part of our prayer life. When God directs you in prayer through the imprecations of the psalms or other portions of the Bible, they should spur you on:

1. to pray for the salvation of those you love without God and without hope in this world.
2. to pray for your witness to Jesus Christ as God’s only refuge from the wrath to come.
3. to rejoice in your salvation and give God thanks for His undeserved, unexpected, unmerited mercy to you.
4. to express awe and wonder to God for the transaction of the cross, where God’s love and justice collide.
5. to cry out for the Day of the Lord, “Come, come quickly, Lord Jesus.”

Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him. Even so. Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:4-8)

Stanley Gale is pastor of Westchester (Pa.) Reformed Presbyterian Church and president of CHOP Ministries.

The Cross-Shaped Life

Worldview Church » September 2008

The Christian life is all about being shaped by the cross into the shape of the cross. At least that’s the way I’ve come to understand it, and I am beginning to teach others to do the same. For the last 10 years I’ve been working to develop a Christ-centered, Kingdom-oriented worldview and practice it in my everyday relationships, roles, and responsibilities. With the help of a few friends and mentors along the way, I’ve found that what I’m calling “the Cruciform Life” is a helpful way to frame the life of faith. As I get the opportunity to teach others these concepts, I am pleasantly surprised to learn that this cruciform pattern helps them, too. In the next few issues of the Worldview Church, I’ll pass this framework along to you. Perhaps the Spirit will be pleased to use it to encourage you in your walk with Christ and equip you with a discipleship tool that will help your local church “build itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16).

CREATION: A “YOU-FIRST” HEART
We were created to be cruciform, to live a life that is shaped like a cross. In order to help you visualize this, I’d like you to draw what I’m about to describe on a blank sheet of paper or on the marker board of your mind. In the center of your blank page let’s draw a stick figure that represents you. (We’re pressing the envelope of my drawing skills here.) Next we’ll draw four arrows, all of them pointing away from you. One arrow points above you; one points out to the right; another to the left; and one points below you. Got the picture?

Now, at the end of the arrow above you, write “God”; at the end of the arrows on either side of you, write “People”; and at the end of the arrow below you, write “Creation.” Like Adam and Eve, we were made to live in a right, loving relationship with God, people, and all that God has made (Genesis 1:26-28, 2:15-25). We exist and have been placed here for God, for other people, and for the sake of all Creation. We exist to exalt the glory of God and to enhance the reflection of His glory in other people and all of creation (Psalm 8; Isaiah 43:6-7). In my family, this is what we call living with a “you-first” heart. We were created to look toward God, people, and all of creation and say “you first.” Look again at the picture we’ve drawn. A person with a “you-first” heart recognizes that life is about using oneself to serve God, others, and all that God has made, thus living a life that takes the form of a cross. Can you see it?

FALL: A “ME-FIRST” HEART
Today, however, cruciform is not the norm. Go back to the drawing we’ve made and erase the four arrows that point outward. Now, draw new arrows that point inward, away from God, people, and creation, and toward you. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, this is how all of us have come into the world. We’re all born with a “me-first” heart. We all believe that we are the center of reality, and that everyone (God and people) and everything (creation and all its resources) are here for us. So, we live as if everyone and everything exists for the exaltation and enhancement of our glory, not God’s. The tragic result of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God is that their relationships with God, people, and creation are broken. They are hiding from and blaming God and each other while their God-given purpose to fill the world with the multiplied glory of God is corrupted and curtailed by God’s curse on creation (the snake, the ground, and the womb—Genesis 3:7-24).

Let’s represent this brokenness on our diagram by drawing zigzag lines across the middle of the arrows that represent our relationships with God, people, and creation. Our drawing now portrays the human condition as we know it. People are disconnected from God, isolated from one another, and cut off from meaningful purpose in the world. We have traded the self-sacrificing cruciform life for an excruciating self-centered life lived with a “me-first” heart. We are, therefore, subject to suffer the just wrath of the One who made us for Himself (Romans 1:18-32).

REDEMPTION: SHAPED BY THE CROSS INTO THE SHAPE OF THE CROSS
If I were God, I would have wiped the board clean and started from scratch. But God was—and still is—determined to create a cruciform people who live to magnify and multiply His glory in people and all of creation. So He chose Abraham, whom He intended to bless, and through whom He would bless all the world, by shaping Abraham and his descendents into a cruciform kingdom of people who lived by the Royal Law of loving God and loving others, as together they purposed to cultivate a new cross culture—not just a garden, but a garden city designed, built, and prepared by God for cruciform living (Genesis 12:1-3; Deuteronomy 5:1-8:20; Matthew 22:36-40; James 2:8; Hebrews 11:8-16; Revelation 21:1-22:5). He gave this Royal Law (the Ten Commandments) and countless illustrations of it (the case laws) as an artist’s rendition of the cross shaped kingdom He had in mind. But they would not, could not, create it. So just as God banished their first parents from the garden, He sent His favored people out of the Promised Land and into exile, where they continued to profane His name (Ezekiel 36:16-21).

At this point, my plan would again include going back to the drawing board. But how much more glorious would it be if God were to vindicate the glory of His name and fame through the very people who had trashed it? This is what makes Ezekiel 36:22-32 so wonderful:

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate My holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be My people, and I will be your God.” (italics mine)

God would claim, clean, and craft for Himself a people who would live the cruciform life of loving God and others as it is laid out in His Law. He would forgive them for living a “me-first” life and give them a new heart and the power of His Spirit to live the “you-first” life they were made to live. Now that’s good news!

Good News, indeed. This promised plan of God to create cruciform people would come through the life, death, and resurrected life of His Son Jesus Christ, the Last Adam, who lived the cruciform life that the first Adam and his descendents failed to live, and died by a crucifixion that all of us deserve. Jesus’ resurrection proved He had triumphed over His enemies by His cross (Colossians 2:13-15). It is by faith in this message of the cross that we realize the promises of Ezekiel 36 (Acts 13:26-33). Through the Gospel we enter the reality of the promise that our corrupt “me-first” life will be forgiven and progressively replaced with a cross shaped, “you-first” life of glory by the power of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18). Through Jesus we are shaped by the cross into the shape of the cross.

RESTORATION: A CRUCIFORM KINGDOM
God the Father is still at work, employing His Word and Spirit to form His faithful into cross-shaped disciples. As God’s saints continue to gaze at His glory in the Gospel, He conforms them to the image of the Last Adam, Jesus Christ. Transformed from one degree of glory to the next, the disciples of Jesus progressively take the shape of the cruciform life of Jesus, being restored to a right and loving relationship with God, people, and all of creation so that the cruciform life of Jesus may be manifested in their lives (2 Corinthians 3:18-4:11).

PROFILE OF A CRUCIFORM DISCIPLE: SON AND SERVANT
Now that we’ve seen the larger context in which each disciple lives the cruciform life, I’ll close by sketching the profile of a cruciform disciple that I’ll be unpacking over the next few issues of Worldview Church eReport.

The description of Jesus’ life in the gospels, and the prescription for the Christian life in the rest of the New Testament, have led me to believe that there are two major ways in which cross-shaped disciples progressively become like their Master, Jesus (Luke 6:40).

First, a cruciform disciple is shaped like Jesus, the Son, who lived in complete awareness of and dependence upon His relationship to the Father as His Beloved (Matthew 3:17, 17:5; Mark 1:11, 9:7; Ephesians 1:6; Colossians 1:13; 2 Peter 1:17).

It is by believing the message of the cross that we too become beloved sons of God. (See John 1:12; Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 4:4-7; and also Galatians 3:26-29, where both men and women are said to be “sons of God.” An adopted son in Paul’s day was a full heir while adopted daughters were not. In Christ, both men and women are full heirs and are therefore called “sons.”) The more we become like Jesus, the Beloved Son, the more we will fill up on the love of the Father through the Gospel.

Second, a cruciform disciple is shaped like Jesus, the Servant, who lived in complete awareness and practice of His role as bondservant to God, people, and all of creation (Mark 10:43-45). Jesus’ confidence and contentment in His relationship with the Father enabled Him to lay aside His rights, pick up the towel and basin, and take the form of a servant by emptying Himself for the sake of others (John 13:3-5; Philippians 2:5-11). As we fill up on the love of the Father as it is offered in the Good News about Jesus and poured out by the Spirit, we overflow with love back to God and out to others, our lives taking the form of a cross-shaped servant.

SERVANT: SEEKER, SHEPHERD, STEWARD, AND SOWER
This role of Servant takes on more specific forms as the disciple relates to God, to other believers, to unbelieving neighbors, and to all that God has made:

1. In relationship to God, the servant is a Seeker: one who exalts God by seeking first the Lord, His Kingdom, and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33; Psalm 24:3-6, 27, 34:8-10, 63:1, 105:3-4, 119:2,10; Proverbs 2:1-5; Daniel 9:3; Jeremiah 29:13-14; Hosea 3:5; Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:5-13; Acts 17:26-27; Galatians 1:10; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 11:6, 8-16, 13:14).
   
   
2. In relationship to other people who are also disciples, the servant is a Shepherd: one who encourages his or her brothers and sisters in Christ as he loves and labors with them for the sake of the Kingdom (Luke 6:12-19; John 10:1-18, 15:12-19, 21:15-17; Acts 2:42-47, 4:32; Romans 1:11-12; Ephesians 5:18-21; Colossians 1:28-29, 3:12-16; 2 Timothy 2:22; Hebrews 3:12-13, 10:19-25).
   
   
3. In relationship to other people who are not disciples, the servant is a Sower: one who engages unbelieving neighbors with the love of Christ by sowing the Good News of the Kingdom into his or her Personal Mission Field through works of service and witness (Genesis 1:26-28; Isaiah 58:10-12; Psalm 80; Matthew 9:35-38, 13:1-43, 28:18-20; Mark 4:26-32; John 4:31-38; Romans 1:13-17; 2 Corinthians 9:6-15; Acts 1:8; Galatians 5:6b, 6:8-10; James 3:18).
   
   
4. In relationship to all that God has made, the servant is a Steward: one who is continually equipped by God’s Word to use the resources (body, time, talent, treasure, truth, words, work, creation and relationships) God has given to him or her for the advancement of the Kingdom (Ezra 7:10; Mark 14:36; John 17:4; Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, 10:31; Ephesians 4:11-16, 5:15-17; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 1 Peter 4:10-11; Colossians 3:17, 23-24; Hebrews 5:8).

Embracing the Gospel and Expressing the Law

You’ll notice that the diagram has two-way arrows that connect the inner role of Son with the outer role of Servant. This indicates the interplay between the Law and the Gospel. As the Gospel (through which we understand ourselves to be beloved sons) shapes us, our lives conform to the Law, which prescribes the cruciform life of loving God and loving others (Matthew 22:36-40). The role of Servant and its four expressions (Seeker, Shepherd, Sower, Steward) represent the Law being practiced in our lives as evidence that we truly have come to know God and His love through the Gospel (1 John 2:3, 3:1-10, 4:7-21). As we embrace the Gospel by faith, we express the Law by loving God and others (Galatians 5:6).

Then, as we pursue by faith a life of Spirit-empowered obedience to God’s Law, we will come to find all the ways we still fall short of the Law. By faith we will seek God, only to find that we don’t seek Him well or worthily, and we will return to the cross with this new insight into our remaining sin (Romans 7:22-25). By faith we will shepherd our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, only to find out how selfish we still are and again see clearly our need to embrace the Gospel. By faith we will be sowers in our Personal Mission Field, only to discover how little we love our unbelieving neighbors, and we’ll be driven back to the cross for fresh grace to love them like Jesus does. By faith we will steward the resources God has given us, only to be convicted afresh by how we use them for our sake, not His, and we will run like the wasteful, prodigal son back to our forgiving Father and ask to be clothed with Jesus again.

Each return to the cross as beloved sons propels us back into the world as bondservants (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). We live the cruciform life as adopted sons who are being shaped by the cross in the presence of our Father to be apprenticed servants who live the shape of the cross in the presence of the world. As our Father’s adopted apprentices, we are being restored to our original purpose: to live in right relationship with God and people as we participate in His plan to reconcile all that He has made to Himself through the cross for the glory of God and the good of neighbors, nations, and the next generation (Colossians 1:19-20).

I pray that as we explore this cross-shaped framework in coming issues it will be as helpful for you as it has been for me, enabling all of us to “look closely at how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of time for the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).

I’d love to interact with you about these concepts. Please ask questions, raise concerns, or offer further insight about this paradigm by visiting my blog, The Cruciform Life. You can also download a PDF copy of the “Cruciform Life Quick-Reference Card” to keep in your Bible, on your mirror, or in your car visor to help you familiarize yourself with these concepts.

Jimmy Davis is associate editor of Worldview Church and pastor of Riverside Church in Knoxville, Tenn.He maintains the Cruciform Life Blog.