August 24, 2011
Ripe
This year we planted a few different varieties of small round and pear
shaped tomatoes. Now I know a ripe red tomato when I see one, but I’m still
trying to figure out these little yellow-orange fruit guys. Every couple of
days we’re picking and eating a small handful of fruit, but we continue
discussing what constitutes ‘ripe’. Should I pick the fruit when it’s yellow or
when it’s golden? After I’ve eaten it I wonder if it would have tasted better
had I waited another day or so. I think we sometimes have a similar problem in
the church. Figuratively speaking, a believer will sometimes be picked for a
ministry before he’s spiritually mature. If he’s too green we can no doubt let
him ripen on the window sill, but you have to wonder how much better he would
have been if we had left him to ripen on the vine.
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2 comments:
This is good. What a fine way to try to address a problem in the church of drafting people too early. Green tomato fruit. I love it.
Grace and peace.
Gail;
-----Paul agrees with you. He told Timothy not to ordain novices lest they become puffed up. James intimates the mechanics of the problem saying, “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness. For we all make many mistakes, and if any one makes no mistakes in what he says he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also.” (James 3:1-2) Every believer has a personal relationship with Jesus guided and shaped by his best understanding of the Word. At the core of God’s ambition is this shaping being made according to the Word itself.
-----But a person can only acquire concepts through his understanding, that same understanding which distorts and destroys besides straightening and building. A human’s understanding, like his humanity, is a mixture of good and bad, right and wrong, true and false. God saves and keeps the individual by grace, regardless of bad, wrong, and false. So, part of the new life is the repentant attitude, and by it the bad, wrong, and false are being rejected from understanding over the years. But repentance discards only what it sees, and seeing is the responsibility of the same humanly frail understanding which does not itself see all its own faults.
-----The church is then the gathering of partially fallacious believers for mutually influencing one another’s frail understanding towards God’s perfect understanding. How is it that mutual influence does not turn their understanding fallacious instead? It doesn’t because fallacy as well as correctness reside in different aspects of each person’s character and personality. This makes everyone unique, which in turn makes each of us an influence upon at least one other. The desire for righteousness by which all believers call upon Christ favors the corrective nature of this influence rather than the corruptive. So this more corrective, mutual influence is one of many ways we all hold hands to steady one another through these deceitful times.
-----Then a person learns good, right, and true regardless of his bad, wrong, and false. And by this his understanding begins to grasp God’s understanding (a small beginning of it indeed is even the furthest of finishes.) At the core of God’s desire is that His understanding of the Word be ours. Love is holding hands for support, and Christ is love, Who is also the vine. So, metaphorically this hand holding is the vine and is necessary for the ripening of understanding.
-----Consider the Biblical nature of “ministry” - preachers, evangelists, elders, teachers, and deacons. These are people who not only have academically learned the Word, but also have practically learned it from both hands always being full of other hands. What true ministers are does not come by academic preparation. It does not come by the mutual influences of a collective. It does not come by one’s own reasoning. It comes through all of these being framed by and threaded into God’s concepts revealed in His Word. If ever one of His is plucked from the vine, it will not ripen, it will rot. I wonder; would ripening on the window sill be analogous to going off to seminary?
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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