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‘Christ In You, The Hope of Glory’

March 31, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

On my way home from work yesterday morning I was thumbing through the local radio stations and paused for a moment on one of the local Christian stations that I listen to. I was tired and really just looking for a good worship song to take me the rest of the way home, but all I was getting was talk. I’m not sure what discussion that they were wrapping up, but the DJ quoted a portion of Colossians 1:27 at the end of what he was saying:

“To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

He just quoted the ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’ part and I couldn’t quite remember where it was and had to look it up when I got home. After I found it, I read through the first chapter of Colossians again and reflected on this ‘mystery’ that Paul is referring to. I reflected on how I have come to realize the presence of this mysterious “Christ in me’ phenomenon that simply did not seem to exist two years ago. I have found myself thinking and acting in ways that were in fact alien to me. I understand that it is Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit that is enabling me to think and act in these new ways, but I sometimes have a hard time describing it.
I drifted off to sleep thinking about this ‘mystery’ that Paul talks about. When I woke up this afternoon I did a little more reading though my Bible on the topic. Paul mentions it in a number of places; Romans 8:10, Galatians 2:20 and Ephesians 3:17 were a few that I ran across. Jesus, in his intercessory prayer also speaks of it in John 17:23. I found another passage about this ‘indwelling in 1 John 3:24b and that one hung with me for a little while;

“And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”

I did a little word study on the word ‘mystery’ μυστήριον (Str. 3466) used back in Colossians 1:27 and one of the definitions is ‘revealed knowledge’ or ‘knowledge that can only be gained by Divine revelation.’ Some of the commentaries that I read said that this mystery was speaking of the fact that, although it was spoken of in the Old Testament that the Gentiles would be eventually saved, that it was a mystery about the means by which this would take place and it only was revealed after Christ’s death and resurrection that this mystery of ‘Christ in us” was how the Gentiles would be drawn to the God of Israel.

I think that at least on some level, however, that this ‘divinely revealed knowledge’ must be talking about the fact that unless you become ‘crucified with Christ’ by completely surrendering to His Lordship you will never understand what this mystery means. It will always remain a mystery to those who have not given their lives to Christ because the Spirit must reveal it to you, and that only happens after you have reached that point in your life where you can completely submit your entire life to Him as Lord and Savior.

The whole idea that Christ lives in me is a notion that does not make any worldly sense, yet I know it to be true. I don’t know it this from books or from sermons; I simply know it to be true from what the Spirit attests to me. If however these verses about the indwelling presence of Jesus weren’t  found in the Bible,  I would still be trying to figure out why and how my very nature has been transformed from what it used to be to what it is now, and is even still becoming.

I guess that brings me back to 1 John 3:24b. It is the Spirit that reveals to me this mystery of ‘Christ in us.’ I found a passage by John Wesley describing this ‘testimony of the Spirit;”

“The testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression upon the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God,; that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given Himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.” Wesley’s Works, vol. v, page 107

This testimony from the Holy Spirit is of course our ‘hope for glory’ as is written at the very end of the verse in Colossians 1:27. It is by this testimony of the Spirit that I can rest assured that Christ is indeed in me and I in Him.  This is what gives us the glorious hope for our eventual resurrection  when Christ returns, but it is also our hope for the ability to lead a glorious Spirit-led life here on earth while we’re still waiting. It is the hope of knowing that because of Christ’s indwelling presence that he will complete the good work (Philippians 1:6) that He has begun in us and continue to transform us and sanctify us. It is the hope that we will continue to grow in the knowledge of and love for Him. It is the hope that gives us that ‘peace that transcends all understanding’ (Philippians 4:7) that I never knew before I surrendered my life to Jesus.

Seven little words that say so much. I suppose that once you come to understand this ‘mystery’, at least to the portion that you can understand it, that it might be considered the Gospel in seven words.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Joining Community of Hope

March 30, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Well, after five months of attending services at Community of Hope United Methodist Church, my wife and I turned in our membership cards last Sunday. That is to say, we are officially transferring our membership from First United Methodist in Mansfield to Community of Hope. This was not a decision reached lightly, but we have both prayed about it for several months and feel that this is definitely where God is leading us. I actually felt that way back in November, but like I said, we did not make this decision on a whim.

I’m not a big fan of ‘Church-Shopping.” I know in our consumer driven world, many people hop from church to church, looking for one that fits their ‘taste,’ and some never become a permanent part of any church community. I have no intention of changing churches until I find the perfect one, because I know that isn’t going to happen. I want to go to church where God want me to go. I personally think that God was the one who initially led us to First United Methodist and that He has now led us to Community of Hope.

It wasn’t that we disliked First United Methodist or it’s people or pastors. It is a great church. It is listed as one of the 50 largest United Methodist Churches in the country and has some great ministries. I simply felt in my heart even when we joined that we were only going to be there for a season, and that God was using that time to prepare us for some place else to worship and serve Him at. I feel very comfortable that Community of Hope is that place.

It is a very young church that was planted a few short years ago and only has about 400 people attending two services on Sunday, compared with the 4,000 or so attending the six services at First Methodist. I personally am not a “Big Church” fan. I know that there are many people who enjoy worshiping at the larger churches, and that is fine for them. I even have some of my Tres-Dias friends here in the Dallas area who attend some of the “Mega-Churches” and seem quite happy there, but that is simply not for me. I want to be able to know everybody in the church community and I just don’t know how you can ever do that in a huge church.

I have sensed from the first service at Community of Hope that the Holy Spirit is present there and that there is a lot of God’s work getting ready to burst upon the scene. Jeanie and I are excited about where God is leading us in our lives and eagerly anticipating the discoveries of where He is going to use us at Community of Hope. I’ll write more about Community of Hope as we continue to integrate into the church. I value the time and friendships that I had at First United Methodist and plan to stay in touch, but it is time to really get plugged in at this new, vibrant and growing church that God has led us to.

Filed Under: About Me

A Calvinist Who Questions The Practicality of Teaching "Once Saved, Always Saved"

March 29, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Good post from C. Michael Patton over at Parchment and Pen:

Why I Don’t Like “Once-Saved-Always-Saved”

He addresses many of the concerns that I have with the teaching. While he holds to the “P” of the TULIP, that is Perseverance Of The Saint’s, he finds practical and pastoral problems with the teaching of ‘Once Saved, Always Saved” as it is taught by many churches. The post got me back to thinking about the whole issue of justification once again. Timely post for me.

Filed Under: Calvinism, Justification, soteriology

Putting Off Justification Posts

March 29, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

I am going to put the posts that I was going to write on Justification off for a few weeks. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that it is now Holy Week, and I feel like I would like to write my thoughts and reflections as we go through the week leading up to Good Friday and Easter. That just seems more appropriate right now. Secondly, I am very busy getting ready for another Tres Dias weekend in about three and a half weeks. I have a couple of friends that I’m sponsoring and am also giving a talk so I really need to focus on the tasks that need to be completed prior to the weekend.

The main reason however that I want to put off this series of posts is because I really feel the need for additional prayer and study on the topic. I have a deep personal interest in the subject because of my own experiences in and out of various Christian churches over the course of the last 17 years. I’m saying 17 years because it was 17 years ago that I first confessed Christ as my savior and was baptized as a Christian in a little Baptist church in Shreveport, Louisiana. My journey actually began much longer ago than that with my upbringing in the religious cult known as The Worldwide Church of God, but that is a different story although it did have a significant impact on my struggles with mainstream Christianity.

Christianity was not what I expected it to be. I thought that once I was baptized that the Holy Spirit would go immediately to work ‘cleaning me up.’ I expected that all of my struggles with anger, lust, addictions, and other ‘sinful behaviors’ to magically dissipate once I was baptized. I was disappointed and disillusioned when that did not turn out to be the case. I went in and out of various churches of different denominations for the next 8 years looking for the magic bullet that would fix me, to no avail.

After my last attempt back in 2002 of trying to ‘become a Christian’ once again failed to produce the fruit that I was hoping for, I went about 6 years without attending any church at all. I fell deeper and deeper into the ‘sins’ that had plagued me for all of my adult life. About two years ago I came to the realization that if Jesus wasn’t real and either couldn’t or wouldn’t help me that I would probably end up going the way of my older brother and end up in an early grave. I went back to church, but this time with all of the desperation of a drowning man. I immersed myself in the Bible and other Christian writings and started praying like I never had before.

This time it worked. I have no doubt of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life now. Now I’m not saying that I don’t still struggle at times with some of my old sinful nature because I do. But the most aggrievous portion of my sinful nature is now but a soft whisper and some of the things that I struggled the most with have left me entirely. I wrote a while back on some of this in my post Failing Christianity or Failed by Christianity.

In that post I related how I’d had a conversation last year with my pastor and had asked him if he thought my salvation was secure back in 1993 when I was first baptized or if I had only received salvation in the last year or so. He answered that it was his opinion that my salvation had been secure back in 1993, but that I had been suffering in the meantime with ‘various addictions and bad theology.’ At the time, I felt like he was just saying that to make me feel better, but I am now coming to believe that he was correct in his assessment.

That is why this whole topic of Justification (and the topic of Sanctification as well) is so important for me to be able to fully understand. If my pastor was right, and I was simply suffering from bad theology and various addictions but was in the meantime a Christian after all, then there are a whole lot of people out there who are Christians but are similarly suffering, and suffering needlessly. They have the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit available to them right now but are not living up to their potential in the family of God because of bad theology. Conversely, if my pastor was wrong, then there are a whole lot of people out there who think that they are Christians but are lost even now and headed straight for Hell (if there actually is a literal Hell). However, I am coming to believe that he was right for reasons that I will get to when I continue in my series of posts on the topic.

I am going to come back to this subject of Justification in a few weeks after I have read and studied some more on the topic. I also want to get through my Tres Dias weekend at the end of April. God always reveals Himself to me over these weekends and I think that I will be better prepared to give this subject the time that it is due after my weekend. I’m going to spend a number of posts on Justification and probably a few on Sanctification as well.

In the mean time, I’ll just write about Easter this week and whatever’s on my mind going up to my Tres Dias weekend. I also want to work on my new WCG Survivors Page (there’s a tab at the top of this page) that will be dedicated to helping other people that grew up in the same cult that I did. My wife will be serving at the Women’s Tres Dias weekend the week after mine, so it may well be the first week of May before I get back to these subjects. We’ll see.

Filed Under: blogging, Justification

The Calvinistic Conundrum

March 27, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Polycarp had this on his blog today. Pretty good poem by John Wesleys brother. Kinda sums up my feelings on Unconditional Election.

The Calvinistic Conundrum – Charles Wesley

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Full text of the poem can be found here.

Filed Under: Calvinism

Book Review- Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision by N.T. Wright

March 26, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment
I have spent the last several months reading through N.T. Wright’s fairly intimidating series of books on ‘Christian Origins and The Question of God’ looking at the ‘Historical Jesus’ as well as the beginnings of the Christian faith from the scholastic and historical viewpoints. At the same time I have spent a fair amount of time reading various essays from both sides of the so-called New Perspective on Paul. Although the NPP covers a broad spectrum of theological ideologies, the debate in recent years has seemingly coalesced between the writings of John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and those of the Anglican bishop of Durham and have quite often centered on the doctrine of Justification.
In his latest book, Wright has sought to clarify his views on justification as well as his stance on the NPP as it relates to the topic. He repeatedly claims that he feels that he perhaps has not been clearly understood by his detractors. I get the sense that he thinks that if he and Piper were able to sit down over tea for the afternoon that Wright thinks that he would be able to elucidate to Piper that they are not as nearly far apart on the topic as Piper and his supporters claim that they are and are in fact for the most part standing on common ground.
In many of the books that Wright has written he focuses on what he terms the ‘metanarrative’, or the grand view that God has had from the very beginning to rescue mankind and restore the cosmos. In this book Wright continues in that theme, looking at justification as having it’s roots in the covenant made with Abram, extending through Israels (failed) vocation to be the light of the world which would draw all nations to the one true God and culminating in God’s faithfulness to to the covenant made with Abram to have all nations be blessed by his seed by sending his only Son to fulfill the purpose for what Israel had been intended for.
In his book, Wright repeatedly talks about his understanding of dikaiosune theo which is usually translated as ‘God’s righteousness’ as being God’s ‘covenant faithfulness’ which Wright terms as God’s ‘single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world.‘ Beginning with God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 12 where God promised to bless the entire world through Abrams ‘seed’, this promise has been fulfilled through Jesus Christs’ perfect obedience, obedience even to the Cross. The result of having faith in Jesus is to unite Jew and Gentile into the one family of God thus fulfilling the promises made starting with Abram and extending all the way through the law and the prophets. In essence, justification becomes ‘covenant membership’ through faith in Christ into God’s family which prior to Jesus’ atoning death and resurrection was limited to the Israelites. The badge of ‘membership’ which had previously been Torah has now been expanded to all of those who put their faith in and confess as Lord the arisen savior Jesus Christ.
In my mind the Reformation theologians really don’t have a lot to argue with Wright about. He repeatedly reaffirms that salvation is through faith alone and I don’t really see any of the semi-Pelagianism that he has sometimes been accused of in this book. He stands firmly on Reformation ground with all of the most central doctrines of the Reformation, especially those of John Calvin. He constantly reaffirms the fact that Jesus died a substitutionary, atoning death. The main point where he diverges from the Reformers is the notion of imputed righteousness, an idea that I’ve read Calvin himself had doubts about.
On the subject of imputed righteousness, which in my mind is supported by a slender reed of only a couple of New Testament scriptures, Wright pens on page 232:
‘It is therefore a straightforward mistake, however venerable within some Reformed traditions including part of my own, to suppose that Jesus ‘obeyed the law’ and so obtained ‘righteousness’ which could be reckoned to those who believe in Him.’ To think that way is to concede, after all, that ‘legalism’ was true after all – with Jesus as the ultimate legalist. At this point, Reformed theology lost its nerve. It should have continued the critique all the way through: ‘legalism’ itself was never the point, not for us, not for Israel, not for Jesus.’
Throughout the book, Wright focuses on the metanarrative ideas of God’s plan for salvation, not just for the individual but for the entire cosmos, moving from God’s ‘single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world’ to how ‘Gods plan was a plan through Israel -(even-though-Israel-too-was-part-of-the-problem)-for-the world and culminating in God’s-single-plan-through-Israels-faithful-representative(Jesus Christ)-for-the-world. The book focuses on how the New Perspective Pauline conception of justification has covenant, soteriology, Christology, eschatology and yes, even ecclesiology all magnificently interwoven. As I read through the book, I was consistently left with the feeling that the NPP concept of justification actually was increasing my own conception of the God who loves his creation and has been working throughout time and history for His creations salvation and glorification.
Some critics of Wright have written that he sometimes seems to indicate a semi-Pelagian concept of salvation through works, and there were a couple of times that I began to see how this conception of Wright has arisen, especially when he distinguishes between initial justification and final justification at the great Assize. But Wright is quick to point out, as some of the Reformation theologians don’t always do, the work of the Holy Spirit in accomplishing these ‘works.’ On page 235-236 he writes:
And as Paul’s doctrine of final Justification is solidly based on the fact that this great rescue operation, this renewal of all things, has already been launched in Jesus Christ, and is already being put into operation through the Spirit.’ This is Paul’s framework for what we call ‘Christian ethics.’ Let me put it like this: if we begin simply with ‘Justification by Faith,’ as traditionally conceived within much Protestantism, we have the obvious problem that ‘what we now do’ appears to get in the way of the faith ‘from first to last’ by which alone we are justified. But as we follow Paul and see justification by faith (as in Romans 3:21-4:25) within the larger framework of biblical theology of God’s covenant with and through Abraham for the world, and now fulfilled in Christ, we will discover that from within that larger, and utterly Pauline, framework there is a straight and easy path to understanding (what is sometimes referred to) as the place of ‘works’ in the Christian life, without in any way, shape or form compromising the ‘justification by faith’ itself.
Ironically, I find that Wright’s conception of God’s plan for the redemption of mankind and indeed the entire universe gives a much fuller and richer view of God and His plans than those of most Reformation theologians, especially Piper, who claim that their view of a sovereign God and his soteriological plan is primarily for God’s glory. It seems to me that the traditional Reformation view focuses much more on the individualistic soteriology and reduces the larger social, eschatological and ecclesiological view of salvation that Wright puts forth in this book.
I found the book very easy to read (for an N.T. Wright book!) and his polemics very convincing. He spends a lot of time defining all of the key words used in the language of justification, both Greek and Hebrew, and his exegesis of the key scriptures were very easy to follow. I found his exegesis of Ephesians ( which he strongly thinks is of Pauline authorship) and Roman especially compelling. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has been interested in the New Perspective on Paul or who has been following the debate on justification. I think that the clarifications that Wright puts forth should allay the fears that many, although of course not all, of his detractors may have of his views on the subject. I gained a much deeper understanding of the subject of justification and will probably read through this book again sometime in the future.

Filed Under: Book Review
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