Wesley's Sermon 18: The Marks of the New Birth

"...So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)

[This is a post on one of John Wesley's Sermons as part of the Getting to Know John series. See the other posts here.]

Since, in Jesus' famous conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 (the passage where we get "for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son..."), Jesus said to him that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again, Wesley asserts in the beginning of this sermon that it's really important for us to know exactly what that phrase means. He also equates being born again with other similar phrases in Scripture: being born of God and being born of the Spirit.

He then goes on to describe the three defining characteristics of those who have been born of God: their lives display faith, hope, and love. Faith is both a belief in things that are true about Christ and a personal conviction of their effects upon each of us as individuals; hope is assurance from the Holy Spirit that we are God's children we have joy now and a joyous future to look forward to; love is the greatest of all, and consists of our love for God and for everyone around us, and results in a life of total obedience to God's commandments and desires.

The sermon concludes with a very straightforward challenge to Wesley's hearers to examine whether or not these characteristics were truly part of their lives, or if they were resting too heavily upon past obedience to God (particularly their baptism).

The content of this sermon is similar to that of his previous sermon, Sermon 17: Circumcision of the Heart. Both sermons offer descriptions of faith, hope, and love as defining characteristics of true Christians. In Circumcision of the Heart, he also included humility in his list.

To dig in further:

  • Read my pdf outline of the sermon
  • Download my ePub file of the entire sermon
  • Or read the entire text of the sermon online here.

An Ever-Available Option that We Can't Afford to Choose

Several years ago, I had lunch with one of my wisest friends, Richard. I consider Richard wise for several reasons; among them are that he's found a way to make a living as an artist (not easy to do), he has a great beard, he's generally happy, and he lives his life very differently than most people I know, who aren't generally happy.

Among our topics of conversation that day was why, even among people who participate faithfully in Christian churches for the majority of their lives, some people grow to take on a significant amount of the character of Jesus and others never do. We disagreed on why this happens.

My case was, because churches generally do not do a very good job of leading people to learn reliable ways of living in the Kingdom of God (focusing more on getting people ready to die than getting them ready to live), that people are pretty much doing the best they can but have been given poor guidance. If we were to offer more reliable guidance, I thought that almost everyone would be ready and willing to walk the path of whole-life discipleship to Jesus.

Richard thought differently. He thought that people's lack of growth comes from their simple choice not to grow. Through God's grace, the opportunity has been made available to everyone, and most people just choose to say, "Thanks, but that's really not for me right now."

Now it's nearly a decade after that conversation, and I think that the best answer is somewhere between our two opinions. I absolutely still believe that churches must do a better job of seeing themselves as training centers where people learn to take Jesus' invitation to live in God's kingdom. We have to experience and teach deeper, fuller, and more reliable answers than "pray, read your bible, and go tell everyone you know about Jesus." Or, as Henry Cloud summarizes what we usually hear in church, "God is good. You're bad. Try harder."

Yet although the lack of reliable guidance is true, Richard's point is also true: God's grace (that builds Jesus' character in us) is already available to everyone, and many of us simply choose to say "no, thanks."

So, what's the explanation that accepts both sides of our conversation?

The option of not growing will always be available to us.

I continue to shape my ministry around the assumption that if leaders in churches can live, model and offer a more reliable way of living in God's kingdom, many more people will willfully and thankfully enter into it than we're accustomed to see doing so now. My dream for churches is that among the people committed to them, lives overflowing with the love, joy, peace, and hope that were characteristic of Jesus would become the norm rather than outstanding exceptions.

But, at least in our culture, I've also become convinced that the option of living another kind of Christianity will always be available. This other kind of Christianity accepts a mediocre kind of life (with one foot in the kingdom and one foot happy to remain outside) as the acceptable norm. It sees getting into heaven as the point of Christianity, rather than getting heaven into us (or, staying out of hell rather than getting the hell out of us.) It's a way for us to do enough religious things to feel like we are paying our dues or doing our duty, but to still avoid entrusting ourselves, here and now, to Jesus, his kingdom, and his way of life.

Dallas Willard calls this kind of Christianity "Vampire Christianity." In his article, "Why Bother With Discipleship?", he says, "One in effect says to Jesus: 'I'd like a little of your blood, please. But I don't care to be your student or have your character. In fact, won't you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I'll see you in heaven.' But can we really imagine that this is an approach that Jesus finds acceptable?"

As I read the gospels, I don't see that Jesus ever intended to leave this option open to us. Rather, the only kind of life he describes and invites us to is one of being his disciple (student, follower, or apprentice), with he being our Lord and Teacher, as to how we live our lives.

Perhaps a large part of the problem is that we don't really understand how good Jesus' way of life really is, and how much we miss out on by not living it. The option of not growing will always be available to us, but we cannot afford to take it. It costs us too much life.

In one of his most often-quotes passages, Willard says:

"...the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus. Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring." (From his article "Discipleship: For Super-Christians Only?" in [amazon_link id="0060694424" target="_blank" ]The Spirit of the Disciplines[/amazon_link]).

You and I both have many choices today, and as we make them we will be headed down one road or the other: either toward a life ever more full of the character of Jesus himself, or toward something less. The good news is that God's grace and our relationships with one another provide everything that we need to consistently choose wisely, beginning right now.

Wesley's Sermon 17: Circumcision of the Heart

"Circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God." (Romans 2:29, NIV)

(Notes: I went with a friend on my first-ever backpacking trip last week, so although last week was the 17th week of the year, I'm posting this a little late. In a couple of days, I'll post this week's sermon, Wesley's Sermon 18: The Marks of the New Birth. Also, in searching for an image to use with this post, I had the choice of searching for images about the heart or about circumcision. I hope I made the right choice.)

[This is a post on one of John Wesley's Sermons as part of the Getting to Know John series. See the other posts here.]

This sermon from Wesley touches on several things that are key to understanding him, without going into too much depth on any of them: the nature of faith, the relation of faith to works, the centrality of love, and Wesley's doctrine of assurance.

This sermon's structure is also pretty simple, as he breaks down the meaning of the circumcision of the heart with four virtues: humility, faith, hope, and love ("charity"). Then, after describing what each of these means, he lists ways that people can know if their hearts have been circumcised... If you have humility, faith, hope, and love, they have been. If not, they haven't.

Wesley also includes a great description of the ultimate characteristic of those with circumcised hearts as "having God as their chief and only end." Other traditions will describe this same characteristic as simplicity, purity of heart, or willing one thing.

If you would like to dig in further:

  • Download my pdf outline of the sermon.
  • Download my ePub file of the sermon's text.
  • Read the entire sermon online here.

What REVEAL Can't Reveal

[This is one of a series of posts related to the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey. To see the others, click here.]

I am a big fan of the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey produced for churches by the Willow Creek Association. I have invested a lot of my time and energy in digging into its findings and helping other people to do so; I've tried to be creative in communicating some of the things we learned by writing A Parable of Churchville; my endorsement of REVEAL is even printed inside the third book on their research, Focus. The work they are doing is unprecedented, and church leaders will be much better off to learn from their general findings, published so far in three very quick reads (Reveal, Follow Me, and Focus), as well as to see what the survey finds about their own specific congregations.

After being pretty immersed over the past 2 1/2 years in any information I could find about REVEAL as well as my own church's data, I've noticed something that's lacking. (The lack isn't in the survey, but in me.)REVEAL gives church leaders insights like we've never had before into what is going on inside of the people in their churches, what they're looking for, what they really need, and specifics about what will be most effective at helping them grow in their love for God and for other people. The problem (to no fault of the survey, because it isn't supposed to serve this purpose) is that all of these insights can keep a pastor's focus on obstacles to spiritual growth that are exterior to him or her.

In other, more direct, words, REVEAL cannot reveal any insights like these to a pastor:

  • It has been years since your church's staff members have had any time in solitude with God.
  • The speed of your church's programming schedule allows no room for you, your staff, or your lay leaders to learn the ancient discipline of resting in God.
  • Although you may be highly effective at teaching others about God and the spiritual life, rather than enjoying your own relationship with God, you use ministry to avoid ever having to be alone with him.
  • The most vital factor in a church's effectiveness at helping people to grow is the quality of your friendship with God.
  • Your staff have never learned to be discerning in their own lives and can therefore be very dangerous to themselves and others when making decisions that affect the entire congregation.

REVEAL will make a church's leadership face some great questions, like "Are the things we're putting so much time, energy, and resources into actually and predictably helping people grow?", "Which ones should we keep doing?", and "Which ones should we stop?" And the focus is certainly not all external; it does have some detailed analysis of people's perception of their senior pastor and the research lays a strong emphasis on the importance of staff modeling in their own lives how to grow.

Yet leaders who have become accustomed to looking for programmatic answers to problems before waiting on God for them will still easily find ways to focus on what the data says are the problems "out there" in the congregation rather in "right here" in the hearts and lifestyles of the people in the highest levels of leadership.

In a great article available here, Ruth Haley Barton says, "Spiritual transformation in your church or organization begins with you and your transformation. Any additional strategy must and will come quite naturally after that." Leaders should keep that constantly in mind, focusing first on helping one another learn to live more fully in God's kingdom together before digging in to all of the exterior insights that REVEAL can provide.

So, if you have any influence in your church and are someone other than one of the pastors, you can do a couple of very important things: Encourage your pastor to learn about and participate in REVEAL, if your church is not already doing so. Also, do everything possible to help your pastor(s) be assured that they are in an environment where cultivating their own intimacy with God is not a luxury for them to attend to when time is left over from the real work that they do. Rather, use your influence to communicate to them that "no time is more profitably spent than that used to heighten the quality of an intimate walk with God" (Dallas Willard- read the entire article here). As someone who is being pastored and shaped by them, your own well-being depends heavily upon this.

A very practical way to do this is to make it possible for your pastor(s) to participate in a community where their own spiritual formation is the focus. I have recently finished a Transforming Community with Ruth Haley Barton and benefited greatly from it. Renovaré and The Upper Room also have good opportunities available.

If you are a pastor, you may or may not have control over whether or not you can participate in something like this. If you can't, you must find ways to cultivate your own life with God through practices such as Sabbath-keeping, solitude, and silence, and involve others in your efforts to do so. As Dallas Willard says in his penetrating article, The Key to the Keys of the Kingdom:

A response to giving attention to personal soul care often is, “I don't have time for extensive solitude and silence. I have too much to do.” The truth is you don't have time not to practice solitude and silence. No time is more profitably spent than that used to heighten the quality of an intimate walk with God. If we think otherwise, we have been badly educated. The real question is, “Will we take time to do what is necessary for an abundant life and an abundant ministry, or will we try to 'get by' without it?”

So a couple of words of counsel are appropriate for our attending to the inner life. First, God never gives anyone too much to do. We do that to ourselves or allow others to do it to us. We may be showing our lack of confidence in God's power and goodness, though it may be that our models and education have failed us. Second, the exercise of God's power in ministry never, by itself, amends character, and it rarely makes up for our own foolishness. God's power can be actively and wisely sought and received by us only as we seek to grow by grace into Christlikeness. Power with Christlike character is God's unbeatable combination of triumphant life in the kingdom of God on earth and forever. Power without Christ's character gives us our modern-day Sampsons and Sauls.

 

What Made Him Who He Was

[This is the fifth post on the life of Chester Tyra. Also see the previous posts: The Man Who Never Had a Bad Day, Think of the Difference You'd Make to the One Who Needs It, My Name is Daniel, and I was His Best Friend too, and FUN.]

In previous posts, I've written about how over the years of Chester's life, his habits added up to make him who he was. I very much want to have his habits of generosity, hospitality, joy, and fun in my life, and as I've thought about Chester's life, I’ve also noticed a connection between these those habits that may not seem apparent at first.

I really believe there’s one simple and profound reason that made it possible for Chester to bring so much joy and fun into people’s lives, for him to be so welcoming to me and others to come into his life, and for him to be so generous toward others: I honestly think that reason is, because perhaps more than anyone else I have ever known, Chester had a deep and genuine trust in God’s goodness toward him.

Chester was the man who never had a bad day. He knew before any day started that that day was going to be a good day, simply because he was alive. And he knew afterward that he’d never had a bad day, not because he was naive about anything happening, but because of a deeper level of trust that, regardless of what had happened in that day, things would be okay.

Trusting in God’s goodness to us opens the doors for us to be generous, because we don’t have to be concerned about not having enough of something once we realize that God is our provider. Chester could give generously to others, and welcome others so warmly into his life, because he knew that there is no reason to fear running out of the good things of life if we give them away to others. God’s goodness never ends, and therefore there is simply never any less left when we find ways to pass it on to others.

The 23rd Psalm ("The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not be in want...") is one that we often read together at funerals, and appropriately so. But even though it’s one of the most well-known and widely-loved passages of the Bible, I think that since we hear it so often in situations where people are hurting, we’ve come to think that it’s only a psalm about God helping us through our pain. There’s much more than that to it, though. It speaks in great imagery of God’s abundant generosity toward us, of how David was welcomed so warmly into God’s home, and how regardless of what the circumstances brought, he was able to enjoy life because of the way that he had always experienced and come to trust in God’s profound goodness toward him.

David had experienced repeatedly what Psalm 118 affirms in The Message: His love never quits. His love never quits. His love never quits. I can imagine David on the day that he wrote Psalm 23, perhaps waking up after spending the night hiding in a cave because of the people who were out to take his life without reason. Yet on that morning because of the steadfast love and goodness of God that he had always known, David could have awoken and and said to himself the same thing Chester would have said, “Today’s going to be a good day.” Because God’s love never quits. God’s goodness is inexhaustible. And even though he knew that day might be the last day of his life, he still had such a desire to express his gratitude to God for his unfailing goodness, that David began writing those words, “The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not be in want...”

Sometimes words can become so familiar to us that we can miss their meaning, so sometimes it is very helpful for us to encounter a passage of scripture in different words than the ones we're used to. The Message's wording of Psalm 23 helps us to see how God’s goodness is unlimited and spilling over in our lives. It helps us to know that God’s love never quits. And if you and I can allow these words to sink deeply enough into our souls, we will know something that both Chester Tyra and King David knew in a very central part of who they were: that God, his world, and our lives in it are utterly good.

Psalm 23 A David Psalm

1-3 God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction.

4 Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I'm not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd's crook makes me feel secure.

5 You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing.

6 Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I'm back home in the house of God for the rest of my life. (Psalm 23, The Message)

The Most Important Word You May Have Said Today

  Today, millions of Christians around the world have participated in a greeting very much like this:

Greeting: Christ is risen! Response: Christ is risen indeed!

Perhaps you were one who said this. We call this the Paschal Greeting, and it has been said by Christians to one another on Easter morning (and other days) for centuries, in hundreds of languages. While all four of the words carry significant meaning, the word that caught my attention as we said it today was the last one: "indeed."

"Indeed" says that this really happened, and that all of the Christians who have said it to one another throughout all of their times and cultures have done so for a specific reason:

Because there was a historical Sunday morning, when a real woman with a shady past went to look for the physical, human corpse of a Jewish teacher from Nazareth whom she had seen be executed and laid in an actual tomb, but the body was not there.

And Christians like me have said these words to one another for so long, and included the word "indeed," because we believe that he who was dead really was alive again. "Indeed."

I'm very glad that someone centuries ago thought it important to include "indeed" in this greeting. It means that we are not saying to one another:

"Christ has risen! Maybe so!"

nor: "Christ has risen! Doesn't that sound nice?"

nor: "Christ has risen! And it makes me feel so good!"

nor: "Christ has risen! And the moral of the story is..."

No, when we say these words, we are saying that a day actually happened when, if we would have been there, we would have seen it with our eyes.

"Indeed" really matters, because it reminds us that as much as theology is important stuff in Christianity, so is history. If Christ's rising were not "indeed," there should be no Christianity, and we should give up our 21 centuries of fascination with this rabbi. But if it happened "indeed," everything else about our lives needs to be evaluated in light of what Mary Magdalene experienced that Sunday morning near Jerusalem. We need to start and end all of our theology by looking at this man who lived, died, then was alive again. Because he was human like us, we need to learn to live the way that he showed and taught us, and because he was uniquely divine, we need to remain focused on him as on no one else.

What difference would it make to you if we didn't say "indeed"? What else does "indeed" mean to us?