The first type of soil — “beside the way”

The seed that falls beside the way is “trampled underfoot” (8:5). This indicates that there is a lot of traffic on this ground. If one’s heart is busy with much worldly traffic, then one’s heart will be like a well trodden dirt path — hardened and impenetrable. The result is that the seed cannot get through, and “the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they would not believe and be saved” (v. 12).

The second type of soil — “on the rock”

The seed is able to penetrate this type of soil, but only superficially. The seed cannot compete with the hidden rocks beneath the surface. Rocks may signify all manner of subterranean blockages — hidden sins, personal desires, self-seeking, self-pity — anything that is hidden and hinders the growth of the seed is a rock that must be dislodged. Luke characterizes this heart as lacking two crucial items for the growth of a seed: there is “no moisture” (v. 6) to help the seed grow, and there is “no root” (v. 13) for the seed to endure. Thus, these are ones “who believe only for a while, and in time of trial they draw back” (v. 13).

The third type of soil –”in the midst of the thorns”

The seed that falls into this type of soil not only penetrates but grows. Yet the seed does not grow alone; something nefarious “grows with it” (v.7). These are thorns, whose growth suggests a competition with the growth of the seed. The thorns are the “anxieties and riches and pleasures of this life” (v.14). The seed eventually cannot compete with the thorns; such ones “are utterly choked” by the emergence of the thorns. These ones do not perish, but due to the thorns they “do not bring any fruit to maturity” (v. 14).

The fourth type of soil — “the good earth”

Matthew describes the good earth as “he who hears the word and understands, who by all means bears fruit and produces, one a hundredfold, and one sixtyfold, and one thirtyfold” (Matt. 13:23). Mark uses substantially similar language (Mark. 4:20). But Luke is particular:

But that which is in the good earth, these are those who in a noble and good heart hear the word and hold it fast and bear fruit with endurance” (Luke 8:15)

What does it mean to have a “noble and good heart”? The word “noble” is frequently translated “honest” (as in the KJV). The “honest and good heart” is a phrase that is peculiar to Luke and unique in the whole New Testament.

But here is a predicament: how can any of us fallen sinners claim to have an “honest and good heart”? Our hearts are anything but honest and good. Here we attest to and affirm Jeremiah 17:9:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

This excerpt from Watchman Nee’s classic book, What Shall This Man Do?, reconciles this brilliantly:

[T]he point in the parable of the sower is not that the man who receives the Word is a perfectly honest man in God’s eyes, but that he is honest towards God. Whatever is in his heart, he is prepared to come to God frankly and openly with it. Of course, it is a fact, and it remains a fact, that the heart of man is “deceitful above all things,” but it is still possible for a man with a deceitful nature to turn honestly to God. A dishonest man can come to God and say honestly to Him, “I am a sinner; have mercy on me!” In the realm of desire towards God he can be true.

Thus, the honest and good heart is not referring to a congenital condition within man, but fallen man’s acknowledgement of his actual condition before the Lord. A dishonest man can honestly confess his dishonesty to God and be saved. The gospels are full of these accounts of salvation. But the gospels are also full of the accounts of dishonest men who continued to be dishonest before God and could not be saved. Consider the two criminals hanging on the cross. One blasphemed, but the other responded:

Do you not even fear God, since you are in the same judgment? And we justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for what we did, but this Man has done nothing amiss. (23:40-41)

This dying thief was saved at the end of a criminal life because he possessed an honest and good heart toward the Lord.

Watchman Nee, in the same chapter of What Shall This Man Do? concludes:

This gives me the confidence to state unequivocally that there is not one other condition necessary to being saved except that of being a sinner and being honest enough to say so to the Lord.

Excerpts above taken from chp. 3 of Watchman Nee, What Shall This Man Do? (Living Stream Ministry, 1993).

De Botton’s goal is quite simple: “to reclaim our sense of community…without having to build upon a religious foundation”. To this end, he chooses idealized religious customs and considers how to clone them for society-at-large. This has been done before, of course (see: Socialism).

The climax of de Botton’s piece is to conceptualize a modern mimicry of the Christian love feast (which I described in an earlier post), and which de Botton venerably regards as a historical oddity:

“What we now know as the Eucharist began as an occasion when early Christians put aside their work and domestic obligations and gathered around a table (usually laden with wine, lamb and loaves of unleavened bread) in order to commemorate the Last Supper. They talked, prayed and renewed their commitments to Christ and to one another…In honor of the most important Christian virtue, these gatherings became known as agape (love, in Greek) feasts and were regularly held by Christian communities in the period between Jesus’s death and the Council of Laodicea in A.D. 364. Complaints about the excessive exuberance of some of these meals eventually led the early Church to the regrettable decision to ban agape feasts.”

De Botton then pitches “an ideal restaurant of the future, an Agape Restaurant“(!), with the following characteristics:

• “Such a restaurant would have an open door, a modest entrance fee and an attractively designed interior. In its seating arrangement, the groups and ethnicities into which we commonly segregate ourselves would be broken up; family members and couples would be spaced apart. Everyone would be safe to approach and address, without fear of rebuff or reproach. By simple virtue of being in the space, guests would be signaling—as in a church—their allegiance to a spirit of community and friendship.”

• “The Book of Agape would direct diners to speak to one another for prescribed lengths of time on predefined topics…to coax guests away from customary expressions of pride (“What do you do?” “Where do your children go to school?”) and toward a more sincere revelation of themselves (“What do you regret?” “Whom can you not forgive?” “What do you fear?”).”

• “Thanks to the Agape Restaurant, our fear of strangers would recede. The poor would eat with the rich, the black with the white, the orthodox with the secular, workers with managers, scientists with artists. The claustrophobic pressure to derive all of our satisfactions from our existing relationships would ease, as would our desire to climb ever higher in social status.”

I can see how this notion of an “Agape Restaurant” would be very appealing to one uninitiated with this decidedly Christian phenomenon. De Botton’s restaurant has all the supposed trappings of the love feast: warmth, diversity and openness. But it is missing the most basic and fundamental motive for the gathering, and, even the main course of the meal itself: agape.  That is, love. The love feast is a feast of love.

Thus, as a Christian believer whose local church life involves at least one vibrant love feast each week (and sometimes more), the notion of a love feast without love, or an “Agape Restaurant” without agape is laughable and makes me think of this:

But in all seriousness, I am.

To have the vestiges of the love feast, and yet to be devoid of agape itself, the love of God, or, perhaps more precisely, the God who is love (1 John 4:8), is to have the most refined futility and the most absurd isolation.

Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is, than a fattened ox and hatred with it. (Proverbs 15:17)

De Botton’s proffer is actually an honest plea for community, and I give him credit for candidly recognizing that great need of man. But in his romantic naivete he forgets that community is but the second of man’s deepest longings and incomplete without the first: the longing for reality. Reality (aletheia in Greek) is the opposite of vanity and conveys the sense of verity, veracity, genuineness and sincerity.  It is one of the profound words in the New Testament and ultimately reality is found only in God and through His dispensing of Himself to us.

Without reality, all community is predictably vain and empty. There is actually no shortage of community in the world: sports teams, reading clubs, fraternal organizations, alumni classes, virtual communities, work societies, ethnic groups. The list is endless. But there is only one place where the two common desires of humanity — reality and community — truly converge: the church.

And this is where de Botton’s atheism fails him. The church is a profound mystery (Eph. 3:4) and the spiritual union of the visible church with the invisible Christ is, in the apostle’s words, a “great mystery” (Eph. 5:32). This great mystery can never be properly understood by one who stands at the threshold of faith.

And He said to them, To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those outside, all things are in parables. (Mark 4:11)

But this great mystery of Christ and His love for the church is known to every genuine believer.

This love is not abstract but is the very atmosphere of the church. The church exists in this realm of agape. This love takes fallen, pitiful humans as the object of the Father’s great affection (Eph. 2:4). This love caused God to send His Son, Jesus, to redeem us and give us eternal life (John 3:16). This love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). And now, this love spontaneously impels us to love God and one another (1 John 4:21).

And thus we have the true origins and practice of the love feast from the earliest days of the church through the present. Clearly, agape is no ordinary love. The apostle John writes, “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19, emphasis added). Christians love because. This love has a unique source — God Himself. Thus, this love cannot be duplicated or manufactured. Any attempt to do so is actually an admission of one’s need and desire for God Himself, as agape and aletheia.

Dear Alain, I would be happy to acquaint you with Christian friends of mine throughout the world — wherever you may be living or traveling — if you are desirous of tasting a genuine love feast. Certainly if you are ever in Los Angeles, a standing invitation to a love feast awaits your acceptance.

It’s not easy to find a biography of Count Zinzendorf. If there are any budding church historians out there looking for a dissertation topic, consider Count Zinzendorf as a subject.  So despite the contrived and forced title, I was happy to come across Phil Anderson’s “The Lord of the Ring — In Search of Count Von Zinzendorf“. (The “ring” here refers to the medallion which Zinzendorf and his school-mate companions used as an emblem for their spiritual society, The Order of the Mustard Seed, formed in 1716 when he was 16 years old.) The book is a quick read at 175 pages and is interspersed with the author’s present-day account of his actual pilgrimage to locate modern-day Herrnhut, ground zero for the recovery of the church life and spread of the missionary movement in the first part of the 18th century.

The Lord of the Ring

“Herrnhut” is the German word for “Lord’s watch” and the community would become a model for the church life and a hub for prayer and missionary work, marked by a remarkable, upper room-like outpouring of the Spirit on August 13, 1727.

You can tell from my previous review that I leave the affirmations and critiques to others and focus instead on insights and inspirations as I attempt to learn how the Spirit operates in and through the main characters.  In other words, this is not so much a review as a gleaning of helpful vignettes.  With that, here are 10 helpful and applicable learnings for our practice of the church life today based on the pattern of Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren as described in the book:

Count Zinzendorf’s Influence on Church Life

1.  A daily church life full of worship: Every day at Herrnhut began with singing at sunrise in a short service called the “morning blessing”. At 8am and 8pm the community met together in the village hall for more worship, prayer, and reading the Bible.

2.  Singing with their hearts to the Lord: The central feature of their meetings was music and their theme was the “adoration of the Lamb”. Readers of this blog may be familiar with one of his most famous hymns, “God’s Christ, who is my righteousness“. The Sunday schedule was given over entirely to various manifestations of worship beginning at 5:00am with singing and concluding at 9:00pm with the young men of the settlement marching around the village singing hymns.

3.  He who gathered much had no excess: Herrnhut was not a commune and individuals where able to own property and profit from their own trades. But the universally accepted rule was that every member would keep to the same simple standard of living, and that any surplus produced would be given to the needs of the community or its wider missions and projects.

4.  Believers were vitally related: At the most basic level, virtually every community member was part of a same-sex group of about three people known as a “band”, meeting together for prayer, encouragement, fellowship, accountability and confession.

5.  A healthy church life culture: In contrast to the traditional countryside diversions of drunkenness, the community developed alternative traditions including the so-called “love feast”. This was a simple meal shared as a celebration of both friendship and spiritual unity, and in practical terms presented an opportunity for socializing and conversation.

Count Zinzendorf’s Influence on Missionary Work

6.  All can serve the Lord: Zinzendorf was ground-breakingly inclusive in understanding who was called to spread the gospel and how it should be worked out in practice:

Everyone should work to further the kingdom of God within the context of their own profession. If you are a teacher, then teach for the Lord, etc.

7.  Living a life of the altar and the tent: Although he was a man of some means, he forsook extravagance. Above the door of his home he had an inscription that summed up his attitude to pilgrimage:

As guests we only here remain / And hence this house is slight and plain / We have a better house above / And there we fix our warmest love.

Later he would comment:

Our home will be that particular place where at the moment our Savior has the most for us to do.

8.  Not merely maintaining what had been built, but aggressively spreading it: By the end of the 18th century, this tiny village of around 300 people was responsible for sending out over 1,000 missionaries to virtually every part of the known world. By the end of Zinzendorf’s life, the number of missionaries sent out from Herrnhut exceeded the total number of missionaries sent out by the entire Protestant movement in the whole of its previous history. These missionaries were mostly ordinary, working-class people, without formal education or financial resources, and few were ordained clergy.

9.  A martyred living: Zinzendorf personally took an interest in training missionaries, interviewing volunteers, providing resources and instructions, and maintaining correspondence. Once, stung by critics who implied that he was happy to send followers overseas to death but unwilling to go himself, Zinzendorf traveled to the Caribbean to visit some missionaries. Zinzendorf traveled with a team of others and as they approached the island, Zinzendorf asked, “What if we find no one there? What if the missionaries are all dead?” A fellow Moravian responded, “In that case, we are here.” That exchange summed up the attitude of the Herrnhut missions.

Count Zinzendorf’s Influence on Prayer Life

10.  Unceasing prayer:  The community of Herrnhut (the “Lord’s watch”) was characterized by unceasing prayer.  On August 27, 1727, two weeks after the “Moravian Pentecost”, a group of 24 men and 24 women entered into a solemn commitment to cover every hour of the day and night in continuous prayer. They did not realize that Herrnhut would go on to pray continuously for 100 years.

As with all Christian communities, the history of the Moravian Brethren is not without blemish and the book does a fair job of summarizing some darker moments in the history of Herrnhut. But this necessary “sifting” period helped to purify Zinzendorf and the community as a whole. Today, nearly three hundred years since its inception, the Christian church continues to reap the benefit of Zinzendorf’s contributions to the recovery of normal church life. On his gravestone is this apt inscription:

He was chosen to bear fruit; fruit that would remain.

While writing this post, I was reminded of James Reetzke’s biography of Count Zinzendorf and highly encourage readers to avail themselves of that freely available online resource. It will be an inspiration and help to us in our learning and practice of the church life, missionary work and prayer life.

The first group of parables we considered were in Luke 5:36-38:

And He also spoke a parable to them: No one tears a patch from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise, he will tear the new garment, and also the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the wineskins, and it will be poured out and the wineskins will be ruined; but new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.

If you compare this portion against its synoptic account in Matthew 9, we can identify four illustrations that Jesus uses in this parable:

1. a new patch or new cloth (cf. Matt. 9:16)

2. a new garment (Lk. 5:36)

3. new wine (Lk. 5:37)

4. new wineskins (Lk. 5:38)

These four illustrations may correspond to four categories of people or types of Christians. The first category consists of those who take Christ as a new patch or new cloth; this is to regard Christ’s virtues as a model for behavior and to attempt to imitate His noble character. Those in this first category have not advanced to salvation. The second category consists of those who go one step further and genuinely believe in Christ as their redeemer.  This is to not just have a “patch” or “piece” of Christ, but to receive Christ as one’s new garment, being clothed and covered from one’s naked and sinful condition. Yet there is a third category consisting of those who go one step further: these ones are not only clothed with Christ outwardly as the new garment, but they are filled with Christ inwardly as the new wine.  These are believers who are not merely redeemed once-and-for-all, but they are daily full of life and joy because of the Holy Spirit within them.  Finally, there is a fourth category of believers: these are ones who are not only clothed with the new garment and drinking the new wine, but are meeting in the proper church community — the new wineskin which contains the new wine. These ones are justified, have Christ as their life, and enjoy the local church life as their living.

God’s desire is that all of His children would know and enjoy Christ to such a full extent. As our small group studied and conversed over these items, my prayer was that the Lord would cause me to be a Christian in this fourth category.

Last, I particularly enjoyed seeing the context of this speaking in Luke 5: a dinner celebration for Jesus taking place in the house of Levi the tax collector with his sinner friends. The Pharisees and scribes murmured that Jesus was eating and drinking with such sinners.  In a sense, we may say that the Pharisees (at best) were the first category of people: merely observing Jesus as an outward model.  But Levi was actually enjoying Christ in a personal way, as a forgiven sinner clothed with Christ as his new garment, as a joyful Christian filled with Christ as the new wine, and even enjoying Christ in a communal sense as the new wineskin with an open home filled with his friends and the sweet presence of Christ.  What a contrast and awesome picture of enjoying Christ in such a rich and complete way!

Portions of this post were inspired by Witness Lee’s book, Being Delivered from Religious Rituals and Walking according to the Spirit (Living Stream Ministry, 2011).

These were some of the questions I pondered during a recent trip to Germany in Nov-Dec 2011 to visit my sister, her family, and some dear fellow Christians.  My visit was brief and I’m completely unqualified to offer any serious, de Tocquevillian observation about the state of Christianity in Germany. But I did have sweet, serious, and substantive fellowship with genuine seekers there. And while no one will dispute the general decline of a vibrant Christian faith across Europe, there are still the overcoming stars shining in Europe amidst the darkness.

At the risk of generalizations, let me simply state some of the observations I made from my week in Germany: Germans are disciplined and orderly. They are a people of precision (think BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Bosch, Miele, etc.). People live and work according to regulated schedules. Family time is prioritized. There is a strong commitment to a social contract where if everyone plays by the rules and does their part, then society as a whole will prosper.

What this suggests is that the type of gospel one might preach in Las Vegas or Los Angeles may not be so effective in Munich.

The human condition is the same everywhere and the power of the gospel is not in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit. But if we really want to reach people, we have to take an interest in them and understand what makes them tick. And my interest in this people’s weltanschauung is due in part to Germany’s substantial contributions to the Lord’s recovery through the centuries. This is the land of Martin Luther, Count Zinzendorf, and, one of the 20th century’s most important academic theologians, Karl Barth.

Amidst these considerations, on my departing flight out of Munich I finally finished Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Published in 2011, Bonhoeffer won the 2011 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association book of the year award and has been widely received by critics and its audience. Metaxas is well-known for his previous book on William Wilberforce (never finished the book, but really enjoyed the movie). The book clocks in at 624 pages, so it’s not a quick read (one side benefit of reading on the Kindle app is that you lose sense of how long a book is and thus are less likely to be intimidated by its length).

Brother Marcus and I on Dietrich Bonhoeffer Strasse near Stuttgart

If you don’t know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer is you can Wikipedia him. But you should. He’s an important figure in German history and the history of the German church. While the book, true to its LeCarre-esque title, is full of his exploits and adventures, the parts that I found most interesting were the seminal and formative experiences of his spiritual life. Other reviewers can discuss how Metaxas does a good job of pacing his biography with important events leading up to WWII, or, perhaps criticize him for getting too technical with all the details of the Hitler assassination plot.

But what interested me are the insights into the factors that shaped his faith. Selected vignettes are provided below:

•  Unsurprisingly, and this is a common theme throughout Christian biographies, his devout mother played a  highly influential role in nurturing his Christian faith.  As a girl, Paula Bonhoeffer’s faith was shaped in part by her attending the Moravian Brethren community of Herrnhut, founded by Count Zinzendorf.
• Born in a well-to-do and large family, young Dietrich was cared for by two governesses, sisters Kathe and Maria van Horn, whose relationships with the family would continue for two decades. Both of these women were devout Christians schooled in the Herrnhut community as well.
• Thus, by influencing the key women in his young life, the Moravian Brethren had an indirect but lifelong influence on Bonhoeffer. The Moravian Brethren, led by Count Zinzendorf, advocated the idea of a personal relationship with God rather than the formal churchgoing Lutheranism of the day. Daily life in the Bonhoeffer household was filled with Bible reading and hymn singing and, interestingly, not much formal attendance in the actual Lutheran church. For the duration of his life, Bonhoeffer would continue to use the Moravian’s daily Bible texts for private daily devotions. These devotionals were called Losungen (watch words), and for each day there was a verse from the Old Testament and a verse from the New Testament for meditation. He continued these devotions to the end of his life and introduced the practice to his fiancee and many others.
• Bonhoeffer had the good fortune to count Karl Barth as a mentor and friend. Barth, among the past centuries most influential theologians, led the “neo-orthodoxy” approach to the Bible which asserted the idea, particularly controversial in German theological circles, that God actually exists (!). For refusing to swear his allegiance to Hitler, Barth would be kicked out of Germany in 1934.
• Bonhoeffer, perhaps due to the influence from the Moravian Brethren, wrote his doctoral dissertation on the church, which he identified as neither a historical entity nor an institution, but as “Christ existing as church-community.” Remember that last word, it comes up again.
• He did not have much interest in ivory tower theology that was divorced from actual field work. He wrote, “It’s much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.”
• In his 20s, as a young academically-accomplished and promising theologian, he visited America and made some astute observations about the state of American Christianity: “In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.” The only notable exception, Bonhoeffer observed, were the “negro churches”. Bonhoeffer was astounded by the vibrant and authentic expressions of faith and spirituality in these “negro churches”. It may have been that through these experiences Bonhoeffer actually experienced a personal regeneration. (Interestingly, for all of the copious amounts of detail in this biography, it’s not clear when Bonhoeffer was definitely “born again”.)
• On Reformation Sunday in 1932, the day Germany celebrated Luther and the great cultural heritage of the Reformation, Bonhoeffer preached from Revelation 2:4: “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” He then remarked that the German church “is dying or is already dead.”
• As Bonhoeffer began teaching and pastoring, including taking on responsibility for seminary training, he became fascinated with the idea of modeling the Christian life. He felt that Jesus did not only communicate ideas and concepts and rules and principles for living. But that by living with his disciples, Jesus intended to show them what life was supposed to look like. This led him to the idea that, to be a Christian, one must live with Christians.
• In 1935, Bonhoeffer was called to train seminarians in Zingst and Finkenwalde. He emphasized a strict daily routine and the spiritual disciplines, which resembled what Bonhoeffer had discovered at the various Christian communities he had visited through the years. Each student meditated on the same verse for an entire week, a half hour each day. Students were asked to deal with the verse as though it was God’s word to them personally. Bonhoeffer would teach students that the challenge was to deliver the Word of God as purely as possible, without feeling the need to help it along or dress it up.

As you can tell from the points I’ve tendentiously gleaned above, the most interesting takeaway for me is the influence that the Moravian Brethren and the concept of church as a community had upon Bonhoeffer. Perhaps in a coming post I can write more about the Moravian Brethren, who were modern pioneers of what we now know as the “church life” or what others may refer to as the “organic church” or “house churches”. This is for sure not the main emphasis on Metaxas’ biography, but it’s what is most interesting to me.

And now we come full circle and return to one of my original questions above — how do you preach the gospel to the Germans?

The life of Bonhoeffer may provide some clues as we consider the factors that captivated this young man and led him on the road to discipleship: a pure gospel based on the Word of God and delivered with meaningful intellectual precision; a daily life and personal relationship with God sustained by nourishing spiritual disciplines such as prayer and Bible reading; and a communal living of the people of God where genuine faith, oneness and brotherly love is publicly displayed.

And someone will say to Him, What are these wounds between Your arms? And He will say, Those with which I was wounded in the house of those who love Me.  (Zech. 13:6)

Witness Lee’s commentary poignantly states:

The children of Israel killed Christ, but in this sweet word Christ counts their actions as wounds from those who love Him.

What a touching sentiment to conclude my Bible reading schedule for 2011.  Lord Jesus, I still love You.

But each time I read it, I have to ask myself, what gospel is being announced here? Is it the gospel of Jesus Christ, or is it adopting the language of Christ to herald a different gospel?

The op-ed begins in this way:

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

Yes, The Bible does speak of “bondage” and “oppression” quite frequently.  But it is not the bondage or oppression of Caesar that is paramount; it is that of sin and even further, the vain efforts of the flesh to overcome sin by the practices of the law.

The op-ed then continues and summarizes the gospel as follows:

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

If you were to summarize the entire gospel of Christ, would you have done it in such a manner?  The gospel that must be spread to the uttermost ends of the earth is the gospel of the kingdom (Matt 24:14).  Witness Lee’s exposition of the “gospel of the kingdom” is worth quoting:

The gospel of the kingdom, which includes the gospel of grace (Acts 20:24), brings people not only into God’s salvation but also into the kingdom of the heavens (Rev. 1:9). The gospel of grace emphasizes forgiveness of sin, God’s redemption, and eternal life, whereas the gospel of the kingdom emphasizes the heavenly ruling of God and the authority of the Lord. This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole earth for a testimony to all the nations before the end of this age.

The op-ed continues to develop this theme of the “kingdom of man” versus Caesar, and concludes as follows:

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Who could find fault with our country’s leading newspaper ending an opinion piece by quoting Galatians 5:1?

But the “yoke of bondage” that Paul refers to here, in the context of Galatians, is the yoke of slavery under the law. Christ has set us free not from the tyranny of Caesar, but from the tyranny of the law and the self which delights in the law. True freedom is not merely from something, but in Christ.

It is not my intention to cavil against an op-ed piece written under the emerging specter of communism 60 years ago by editors whose faithful libertarian instincts have (in my opinion) helped steer this country away from the road to serfdom ever since.

But the truth is the truth, and the apostle reminded us in that same epistle never to remove ourselves to a “different” gospel (Gal. 1:6-9). Paul’s gospel is not anti-Caesar but pro-Christ. It is a gospel of Christ revealed in us (Gal. 1:16), living in us (2:20), being formed in us (4:19), and realized by us as the Spirit in whom we live and walk and conduct ourselves (5:16, 25; 6:8). Let us stand fast therefore in the liberty and message of this gospel.

But since his passing I have occasionally thought to myself, How would one preach the gospel to someone like Steve Jobs?

This consideration has coincided with my campus ministry’s year-long exploration into “The Life and Letters of the Apostle Paul“. This past week we were on the topic of Paul’s visit to Athens in Acts 17:14-34. It’s a famously rich portion which gives insight into how the apostle Paul preached the gospel to the secular intellectuals of his time.  Three insights which freshly stand out to me are the following:

1. Before you preach the gospel to someone, you have to know what that person worships.

Paul in his brief time there in Athens did not retire or disengage from the populace and its culture. He was in the marketplace daily interacting with the Athenians. He was a keen observer of their idols, their architecture, their philosophy, and even their poetry. The subtitle of this blog — “carefully observing the objects of your worship” — is a reference to Paul’s thoughtfulness in observing the Athenian culture. He entered into their situation and condition and could speak to them respectfully with an understanding of their culture.

2. Being able to point out that the object of worship is a reflection of a deep desire to know God, which was implanted and put within man at the time of creation.

Paul did not haughtily dismiss the multitude of idols surrounding him in the city. Informed by his classical training in his youth, and with an insight honed and whetted through the exercise of his regenerated spirit, Paul could see behind the idols and diagnose the Athenian condition as that unique longing of man — to know God. Paul artfully presents God first as the universal Creator, in whom we live and for whom we all grope after during an appointed season in our life. Paul shrewdly identified the commonality between Jew and Greek — two groups which each pride themselves on their distinctiveness — and in effect said to them, “We are all of One, and we are all seeking the same One.”

3. Being bold to announce God’s commandment that all men repent today or face judgment in righteousness by Christ.

Paul concluded his message not with human words of wisdom but a faithful word of repentance. Repent today and know the resurrected Christ as your gracious Lord, or delay and meet the same One in the future as a righteous Judge. This kind of speaking sobers the audience. Thoughtful men think of their own mortality. It is no shame, and it is the pattern of the apostle, to preach a gospel that ends with the faithful charge — which is God’s commandment – to repent and receive Christ today. Or else…

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So with that as a background, let’s come back to the initial question: How would one preach the gospel to Steve Jobs?

I’m sure there are many ways. But considering the three points above, this is what I humbly suggest as one viable way to share the gospel to someone like Steve Jobs.

First, what does he worship? Based on my reading and observations, perhaps chief among the many virtues he extols is beauty. Steve Jobs is a worshipper of beauty. He loved to create beautiful products and could not countenance what other manufacturers did — even if functional — if only because they were ugly.  He was obsessive, demanding, petulant, and unyielding, in his relentless pursuit for beauty.

Second, knowing that Steve Jobs worships beauty, we would then have to show how beauty has its source in God, the unique Creator and original Inventor. This beautiful universe we live in, and our capacity to identify beauty, and even to create something beautiful, has its source in a God of beauty.

There is a very touching moment in his biography where the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who was adored by Jobs, made a personal visit to Jobs’ house:

Jobs tended to be deeply moved by artists who displayed purity, and he became a fan. He invited Ma to play at his wedding, but he was out of the country on tour. He came by the Jobs house a few years later, sat in the living room, pulled out his 1733 Stradivarius cello, and played Bach. “This is what I would have played for your wedding,” he told them. Jobs teared up and told him, “Your playing is the best argument I’ve ever heard for the existence of God, because I don’t really believe a human alone can do this.” (p. 474)

Last, and finally, having established that the desire for beauty is ultimately a desire for the eternal, we would have to conclude with the charge to repent and receive Christ today, before a future day of judgment. No man, even a giant among men like Steve Jobs, can escape his own mortality. Here is a man who loved to control everything about his products — their design, their manufacturing, their retailing, and even their use by end users. But the matter of death and what lay beyond is not something he could control.

Again, I refer to a point in his biography where he had been first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer:

One of his first calls was to Larry Brilliant, whom he first met at the ashram in India. “Do you still believe in God?” Jobs asked him….Then Brilliant asked Jobs what was wrong. “I have cancer,” Jobs replied. (p. 453)

I would love to hear others’ considerations about how they would preach the gospel to someone like Steve Jobs. We may never have the chance to speak the gospel to someone famous like him, but we are surrounded by men like him, like those in Athens centuries ago, who “worship without knowing” (Acts 17:23). Let us learn to announce the unknown God to such ones everywhere.

1. We will hate our sins.

We will realize that Christ was wounded because of our transgressions and that He was crushed because of our iniquities (Isa 53:6). It was not the sins of other men that caused Him to die. It was not the plot of Jewish religionists or the cowardice of Roman politicians which led to His death. The subjective realization of the sinner is, “Christ died because of my sins.”

We cannot enjoy the roasted lamb without the taste of bitter herbs (Exo. 12:8).

The great sinner-turned-saint, John Newton, wrote in a classic hymn:

If Thou hadst bid Thy thunder roll,

And light’nings flash, to blast my soul,

I still had stubborn been;

But mercy has my heart subdued,

A bleeding Savior I have viewed,

And now I hate my sin.

2.  We will love the Lord Jesus.

The spontaneous result of seeing the crucified Christ is that we love Him. Paul’s coda, in Galatians 2:20, will become ours as well:

I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now life in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Yes, God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son. And yes, Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. But one who sees the Savior in such a way will realize that Christ loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Witness Lee captures this sentiment powerfully in his hymn:

O how deep and how far-reaching

Is Thy love, dear Lord, to me!

Far beyond my pow’r to fathom,

Deeper than the deepest sea!

It has caused Thee death to suffer

And to me Thyself impart,

That in Thee I might be grafted

And become of Thee a part.

3.  We will follow the Lord and do the will of God.

The cross represents the perfect will of God (Matt. 26:42). If we truly see and appreciate the cross, it will cease to be merely a singular event; it will become the pathway of a life in submission to the perfect will of God. We each have our own particular path ordained by the Lord. The cross becomes the instrument by which we know this path.

The Lord in His mercy may allow us to do many things and to go many ways. But the cross always aligns us perfectly with His will for us.

And He said to them all, If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. (Luke 9:23)

4.  We will have a radical change in our value system.

What do we currently boast in or take pride in? What accomplishments or successes do we cherish? What do we really value in this life?

The apostle Paul could have boasted in many things as a young man named Saul. But he became Paul, a “little” brother, who at end of Galatians boldly declares:

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. (6:14)

If we see the cross of Christ, we will have a radical change in our value system, giving up formerly valued items and counting them worthless, to know Christ and to be conformed to His death (Phil. 3:7-10).

5.  We will live in peace with all men, as much as it depends on us.

The cross not only reconciled us back to God but it also reconciled us to one another (Eph. 2:14-15). The cross of Christ created peace and now as members of the Body of Christ we should experience the arbitrating peace of Christ (Col. 3:15), which is practically manifested in this way:

Bearing one another and forgiving one another, if anyone should have a complaint against anyone; even as the Lord forgave you, so also should you forgive. (Col. 3:13)

If we have truly seen the cross, we will forgive one another of all of our respective offenses and sleights, and live in peace as the reality of the one new man. Paul’s charge to the Roman believers is:

If possible, as far as it depends on you, live in peace with all men. (Rom. 12:18)