Recovering Christianity’s Answer to Human Brokenness

Social and political revolutions have shown no tendency to transform the heart of darkness that lies deep in the breast of every human being. That is evidently true. And amid a flood of techniques for self-fulfillment there is an epidemic of depression, suicide, personal emptiness, and escapism through drugs and alcohol, cultic obsession, consumerism, and sex and violence—all combined with an inability to sustain deep and enduring personal relationships.

 

So obviously the problem is a spiritual one. And so must be the cure. But if the cure is spiritual, how does modern Christianity fit into the answer? Very poorly, it seems, for Christians are among those caught up in the sorrowful epidemic just referred to. And that fact is so prominent that modern thinking has come to view the Christian faith as powerless, even somehow archaic, at the very least irrelevant.

 

Yet even though the church’s track record for solving social and individual ills may not appear historically outstanding, we believe that it holds the only answer—still. What then is keeping Christianity from being that guide to life which it alone can be? Christianity can only succeed as a guide for current humanity if it does two things.

 

First, it must take the need for human transformation as seriously as do modern revolutionary movements. The modern negative critique of Christianity arose in the first place because the church was not faithful to its own message—it failed to take human transformation seriously as a real, practical issue to be dealt with in realistic terms. Fortunately, there are today many signs that the church in all its divisions is preparing to correct this failure.

 

Second, it needs to clarify and exemplify realistic methods of human transformation. It must show how the ordinary individuals who make up the human race today can become, through the grace of Christ, a love-filled, effective, and powerful community.

 

--- Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. 2009.

From Humiliation to New Hope

The turn from humiliation to new hope came about through two things, first through the Bible, and then though the encounter with other people. In the Scottish labour camp, together with some other astonished prisoners, I was for the first time given a Bible by a well-meaning army chaplain. Some of us would rather have had a few cigarettes. I read it without much comprehension, until I stumbled on the psalms of lament.

 

Psalm 39 held me spellbound: `I was dumb with silence, I held my peace and my sorrow was stirred' (but Luther's German is much stronger - `I have to eat up my suffering within myself')... my lifetime is as nothing in thy sight... Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; hold not thou thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were...' They were the words of my own heart and they called my soul to God.

 

Then I came to the story of the passion, and when I read Jesus's death cry, 'My God, why have you forsaken me?', I knew with certainty: this is someone one who understands you. I began to understand the assailed Christ because I felt that he understood me: this was the divine brother in distress, who takes the prisoners resurrection. I began to summon up the courage to live again, seized by a great hope. I was even calm when other men were `repatriated' and I was not.

 

This early fellowship with Jesus, the brother in suffering and the redeemer from guilt, has never left me since. I never `decided for Christ' as is often demanded of us, but I am sure that then and there, in the dark pit of my soul, he found me. Christ's God-forsakenness showed me where God is, where he had been with me in my life, and where he would be in the future.

--- Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life. 1997

 

The Essential Components of Slavery

As a matter of fact, the fundamental aspects of slavery are the very features of our redemption that Scripture puts the most stress on. We are chosen (Eph. 1:4 – 5; 1 Peter 1:1; 2:9); bought (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23); owned by our Master (Rom. 14:7 – 9; 1 Cor. 6:19; Titus 2:14); subject to the Master’s will and control over us (Acts 5:29; Rom. 6:16 – 19; Phil. 2:5 – 8); and totally dependent on the Master for everything in our lives (2 Cor. 9:8 – 11; Phil. 4:19). We will ultimately be called to account (Rom. 14:12); evaluated (2 Cor. 5:10); and either chastened or rewarded by Him (Heb. 12:5 – 11; 1 Cor. 3:14). Those are all essential components of slavery……

 

There are at least six Greek words for “servant,” and doulos is not one of them. For example, diakonos (from which our word deacon is derived) means “servant.” Oiketes speaks of a domestic servant. Pais denotes a young boy who runs errands. Huperetes (usually translated “minister”) literally signifies a low-level servant who pulls an oar on the lower deck of a large ship. Leitourgos, also meaning “minister,” designates someone who performs some kind of religious service. Therapon, used of Moses in Hebrews 3:5 (“faithful in all His house as a servant”), refers to a dignified kind of high-level service. And there are several more specific Greek words that describe service in terms far loftier and more respectable than doulos. 

 

Doulos speaks of slavery, pure and simple. It is not at all a hazy or uncertain term. It describes someone lacking personal freedom and personal rights whose very existence is defined by his service to another. It is the sort of slavery in which “human autonomy is set aside and an alien will takes precedence of one’s own.” This is total, unqualified submission to the control and the directives of a higher authority — slavery, not merely service at one’s own discretion.

 

As Harris points out, “there is an important difference. A servant gives service to someone, but a slave belongs to someone.” It is not merely a nuance. Scripture repeatedly and emphatically places Christians in the latter category: “Do you not know that . . . you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19 – 20). We have a Master who purchased us (2 Peter 2:1). To be specific, we were purchased for God with the precious blood of Christ (Rev. 5:9). This is the very essence of what it means to be a Christian: “For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rom. 14:7 – 9).

 

 --- John F. MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith?. 2009