November 12, 2014
Discipleship
Recently we dined at an Italian
restaurant and our waiter Gavin introduce us to a trainee who was shadowing
him for the evening. Unfortunately, Gavin was not the best example of good
service. Rather than reaching around us to serve our food, he reached across
the table. He served the entrées and topped them with grated cheese, before
removing the empty salad plates and soup bowls. Thinking of church discipleship
in a similar manner to server training, it strikes me that many of us are just
like Gavin. We may know the Gospel message, but our example and the way we try
to teach others to serve it leaves a lot to be desired. However, we can take
comfort in knowing that the Apostle Paul also lacked a certain finesse. “When
he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid
of him, not believing that he really was a disciple” (Acts 9:26-27 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Sometimes I talk about the particular and the universal. An event is a particular; history is a universal. A thought is a particular; the heart is a universal. A person is a particular; mankind is a universal. I would stand accusable of nonsense if this pattern were not so extensive, real, and somewhat useful.
-----To me, “Christ is our example” is much an understatement. Though man’s eyes see places amongst things and stuff quite naturally, his mind sees countless places within a sea of patterns and innumerable beliefs amongst a flood of ideas. A man’s particular place in time is so lost in the universe of history that he can not know the beginning nor end of belief’s around him. And not having a theme before him, a man has no way to measure the full reality of any ideas. Surely, if not for Christ, the moronic child of the sixties’ generation would be correct: Who’s to say what’s true!
-----But God is the most real of reality. Being infinite, He is the universal. Nothing is beyond Him to the front or back, the sides, above or below, inside or outside, before or after; He is all. His Son does all that His Father knows. God plans; Christ does. From the Father’s universal knowledge comes the Son’s particular doings. He is faithful in truly reflecting the Father.
-----And He made himself to be a man, a particular. He became the universal particular to which all things in all places for all times would relate, for His spirit was God’s Spirit, so He fully relates to God. As a particular, Christ did many exemplary things, like John said, that would fill all the libraries of the world should every one be written. But every particular thing He did was initiated by His universal theme: destroy destruction, construct good. Then in the particular moment of His demise He became His own universal opposite; He became everything destructive, everything evil, sinful, or even simply errant that every last human had ever done, was yet doing, or would eventually do, know, think, or feel. In that particular moment He changed universes from what God is to man‘s encyclopedic knowledge of sin. And He buried it in its own destruction. Now any man who particularly desires God’s universe of righteousness can switch universes by Christ’s right as a man, choosing death over life, slicing from his own supplies and time and attention and sentiments for constructing good, so in particular he will be raised at the last Trumpet.
-----Then we who follow His pattern live into His theme of death to sin and of doing good to all in as much as we can, especially to those who know Him. Wherever He went He did what was good by His Father’s knowledge. As adopted children, we also are made alive to make everything we do in each particular situation good by our Father’s knowledge. This is where I see Christ as more than “What would Jesus do?” I see His life as a reasonable picture of my Father, so that through reason (Isa 1:18), His Word, and the seeing of good effects come from doing good, I can grow in knowing our Father, too. Christ became the universal particular so each of us can see to become particulars of His Father’s universal good.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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