do you shakadu?

Even Deeper

Ok, so I keep reading in the Christian devotional book mentioned in my earlier post, and, to my delight, Steven Grose has more to say about our indebtedness to the lost.  

He makes the distinction between the “Greeks” and “barbarians” to whom Paul feels indebted to share the gospel. He observes that the term “Greek” had lost its racial significance by this point in history, since the the conquests of Alexander the Great had taken Greek language and Greek thought all around the world. 

“Greek,” in this sense meant, “educated,” or “knowing the mind of the Greeks.”  This is a fitting description as contrasted with the term “barbarians,” which literally translates to “those who say ‘bar-bar’.”  These were men who did not know the eloquence and discipline of Greek thought.  These were the uneducated, the illiterate, the brutes of the day.  

So Paul is literally saying that his obligation is to the educated and to the uneducated, to the reasonable and the unreasonable, to the wise and the unwise.  We spend much of our energy in refuting the claims, removing objections, and learning to wield the “sword of truth” to reach those who know about Christianity, but who don’t believe.  Have we considered those who are totally ignorant?

Grose goes on to say that these “barbarians” are just too hard to reach, for most people, and are largely left alone.  But does their ignorance disqualify them from salvation in Christ?  Paul didn’t think so.  

Paul seems to be implying that we should be able and willing to share with “the locals”…the people where we live.  But how do we share the gospel with someone who has no psychological or historical predisposition to hear it?  Grose closes with a great anecdote:

One day, after Grose had finished preaching to around 17 people in the distant outback of Australia, a man came up to him and shouted, “you’re wrong!”  Grose acknowledged that he had been wrong many times, and would the gentleman please elaborate.  The man said, “In your sermon you said you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. And that ain’t true, ‘cause you can feed him salt.”

Grose ends the anecdote with, “You may be thinking that you can’t lead your neighbor to Christ, because he is too ignorant of the gospel, but you can feed him salt until he listens to you.”

Are we fullfilling our debt to the locals, the barbarians and the ignorant?  Are we willing to break through our prejudices to give them what rightly belongs to them?  Will we pursue this with joy, energized by God’s immeasurable grace to us, until the debt is paid in full?

Deep in Debt

I recently read a small article out of a Christian “Chicken Soup for the Soul” kind of devotional.  This kind of book is usually a mixed bag…take the good, leave the rest.  Today, I came across one entitled “A Debtor,” by Steven Grose, from New South Wales and I can’t shake it. 

My first instinct is to reject the concept of “debt” to God because it totally undermines the free aspect of his grace, and it also leads to a legalistic, joyless, works-filled life, in which we try (impossibly) to repay God.  But as I read on, his article started to resonate with me, and opened my eyes to how the concept of indebtedness can work in the Christian life. 

The article is based on Romans 1:14, “14 I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.”  This is such a weird way to talk about Paul’s ministry.  Why would he say he is “under obligation?”  Immediately, some thoughts come to mind: 

1. What is debt, anyway?  Debt is my obligation to pay someone what is due to them…what is rightfully theirs.  I have been in severe financial debt before, so this analogy really hits home.  
   
2. When we owe someone money, they are right in expecting it, whether they demand it or not.  Debt has to do with *our* obligation, even if no one is asking for it, or even knows we owe it to them. 
3. What do we think of a man who borrows and does not repay?  Or someone who shirks his responsibility to his own children?
   
4. A debtor is always in state of humble servitude. He forfeits his rights in favor of the one he is indebted to. 

Paul says he is indebted, not to God, but to the “Greeks and barbarians.”  This immediately shatters any attempt to link indebtedness to our salvation through grace.  So what could Paul possible have, then, that rightfully belongs to the Greeks and barbarians?  How could he be indebted to them?  The answer is in verse 15.  ”So I am eager to preach the gospel to you.”  

Paul does have something that rightfully belongs to Gentiles and barbarians and Romans: the gospel.  Salvation does not belong just to Paul…it belongs to everyone for whom Jesus secured it.  Not to share the gospel, in Paul’s thinking, would be like withholding payment on a debt, or defaulting on a loan. 

Using “debt” terminology describes the tension of an unresolved urging.  Imagine the feeling you get when the bills start piling up, the creditors start calling, you get “pink” letters in the mail, etc…  This is not like a savings account, where you give out of your excess, whenever you are able to.  Paul seems to be under pressure to get this done.

Now, I know someone reading this is going to start getting depressed, thinking this is a heavy burden.  If you are feeling this way, remember that this is a joy-filled obligation (just like God commands us to be “cheerful givers”), because are paying this debt with something that God provides in the first place.  

I remember when Mary and I sold our house, we had planned to settle some long-standing debts that were really weighing us down financially and emotionally.  When we got the check from the title company, it was actually fun to pay those debts!  

This may not be sound financial advice, but I never had so much fun writing thousand-dollar checks.  There was great satisfaction in settling the account, and a joy in knowing the money wasn’t coming from our tiny, limited paychecks.  

The obligation to share the gospel will never lift, because there is no end to the supply of God’s grace to save people of every tribe and nation.  Without God’s unlimited storehouse of grace, this never-ending debt to the world is a terrifying and oppressive notion that will never make sense.

May we experience the freedom and the infinite joy of settling this debt. The deeper the better. 

True Worship

I just had a conversation with my oldest daughter, Meredith, that started with her question, “if God wants us to worship him, why did Jesus come to serve us, not for us to serve him?”  Any one want to take that one on? :)

Meredith is a very perceptive and soulful little girl.  Her waters run very deep, and I love it.  Anyway, we looked for some scriptures that might help.  First, we talked about how the Jews were also looking for a savior to worship, but they were expecting a king on a white horse who would throw off the Roman government and free them politically.  Many of them stumbled over the fact that their savior was born as a normal, helpless, human being…they probably asked the same questions as Meredith.

Then, we went to Philippians 2, to get a sense of what Jesus actually did, coming from God-ness to lowly human-ness.  We talked about how you know how valuable something is because of the price someone is willing to pay.  Jesus came from the highest possible state of being, to the lowest, and even then, he gave the most one can possibly give, namely, his life.  So with verses 6-9 we establish the infinite humility (service) in the work Jesus accomplished. 

Next, verses 10-11 state that all of this happened, “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  This “so that” means that we couldn’t do those things (kneel and confess) before Jesus did what he did for us. 

Getting back to Meredith’s question, we can see that Jesus’ ultimate act of service became the ultimate object of our worship, and furthermore is the reason we can worship at all.  The two concepts (God’s requirement of worship, and Jesus servant-humility) are not contradictory, but complimentary.  The only way we *can* worship God is through his ultimate act of service, which is, in it’s own right, most worthy of our praise. 

God gets the most glory when we worship him for making us able to worship him.