God Of The Persecuted, Part II: Jesus Took Away Our Sins, Not Our Cross

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Pastor Foley

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There’s a popular worship song that I always hope doesn’t get sung before I speak in churches and at conferences, since the lyrics stand in sharp contrast to my message. The chorus goes like this:

This is amazing grace
This is unfailing love
That You would take my place
That You would bear my cross
You lay down Your life
That I would be set free
Oh, Jesus, I sing for
All that You’ve done for me

The discordance comes from the song’s idea of a Jesus who suffers so that we will not have to–a Jesus who, in other words, came so that we could be set free to live lives unlike his. The song celebrates the idea that Jesus bore our crosses–an idea that is very different than Jesus’ own statement in Matthew 16:24,

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Lest the meaning be unclear to us (or uncomfortably clear, as is more often the case), Peter restates it in 1 Peter 2:21,

For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.

According to Peter, Jesus did not take up his cross so that we would not have to. He took up his cross so that we would choose to do so also. 

Our cross-carrying doesn’t save anyone, unlike Jesus’. But our cross-carrying echoes his, points to it, re-presents it, makes it more than a platitude when we say to our enemies, “Christ died for your sins.” Because when the words are accompanied by our cross-carrying actions, we are really saying, “Believe me when I tell–and show–you that Christ died for your sins, for there is no other explanation for my actions toward you who are persecuting me.”

This hardly leaves the rest of the world “free” and us Christians burdened. Christ’s death on the cross shows us that our definitions of “life, and life abudantly” have been warped by sin. That’s why in Matthew 16:25, the verse directly after Jesus summons us to carry our crosses, he says,

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

This is Part II of our series, God of the Persecuted: What The Lives Of Persecuted Believers Teach Us About The Nature Of God. (Click here to see Part I.) In Part II, what we’ve learned is that the existence of two millennia of martyrs shows that the cross is intended as a pattern for normal Christian living, not a punctiliar event that exempts us from the pattern. The cross sets us free not from carrying it but from a cross-less life, which, as Jesus says, is–no matter how it may appear–the essence of burden, the definition of lostness.

To turn the language of the worship song upside down, Jesus did not come to carry our cross or to set us free from laying down our lives. He came to show us that carrying our cross and laying down our lives are not only the appropriate response to but also the means of grace by which we come to experience God’s amazing grace in deeper and more amazing ways.

The writer of Hebrews phrases it like this, in Hebrews 11:32-40:

32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak,Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames,and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength;and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were put to death by stoning;[e] they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins,destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40 since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

And then in Hebrews 12 he exhorts us to emulate them.

 

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The Story of Disgraced Christians Who Denied Christ

Posted on February 12, 2015 by tdillmuth

early christian martyr storiesPost by Pastor Tim – As I prepare to go to France (FYI – just a layover, no romantic Paris vacation for me), I was fascinated by the persecution that overtook the Christian communities in Lyons and Vienne in 177 AD.  It’s believed that Christianity came to this area through the evangelism of the churches in Asia.  Bryan Liftin, in his book Early Christian Martyr Stories said,

Faith in Jesus made the leap from the lands Paul and John had evangelized to a brand-new regions: a land of pagan Celtic tribes that had finally bowed the knee to the Roman Empire (pg. 71).

But we see that not only did a simple faith in Jesus make the leap from Asia, but also discipleship – Christians who were training for the heavenly contest – disciples who were fully prepared to give their lives for Jesus Christ.

Yet there were some, who in the words of Eusebius were “untrained and feeble” and who ended up shamefully denying Christ (Early Christian Martyrs Stories, pg. 72).

I half-expected that this would be the end of the story concerning the “untrained and feeble,” and that Eusebius would only focus on the heroic and victorious martyrs.  And while most of the account of the persecutions at Lyons and Vienne did focus on those martyrs who were trained and faithful, he devoted a few paragraphs to those who denied the Lord.

He starts off by noting how terrible it was for those who denied Christ.  He said that they were “dejected, ugly and full of disgrace.  Moreover, they were ridiculed by the pagans as despicable cowards (pg79).”  But what amazed me was not the shame that these people endured, but what happened next.

The deniers had been sent back to prison, but in God’s amazing plan they had not simply returned to rot in prison awaiting death.  Rather, God sent the faithful ones to intermingle with them in prison and restore them.

For through the martyrs, most of the deniers were reconceived and reimpregnated in the womb and restored to new life, learning at last how to confess.  Alive now and fortified, they came before the judgment seat so the governor could question them again.  And God, who does not desire the death of the sinner but shows favor to the repentant, made this moment sweet. (pg. 81)

Some of the Christians failed and denied the Lord.  They were perhaps dejected and full of disgrace because they knew the words of Jesus when he said, “Whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 10:33).”

And yet, God didn’t allow their story to end at that point.  Some of them were ready to die for the Lord and others were not.  But even the ones who denied Christ were still shown incredible grace and mercy from the Lord.

Pastor Foley has pointed out that martyrdom is repetition of the story of Christ’s suffering and death. But in the case of these French Christians, we not only see faithful Christians re-enacting the suffering and death of Christ, but also re-enacting the forgiveness and restoration of Peter as seen in John 21.  These Christians, who were nearing the point of death themselves, were still training failed Christians for martyrdom and assuring them of Christ’s forgiveness that was still available to them in their time of need.

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God Of The Persecuted: What The Lives Of Persecuted Believers Teach Us About The Nature Of God, Part I: Why We Don’t Venerate The Persecuted

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Pastor Foley

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Some people have a stack of unread books on their nightstand. I have a post-it list of books I would like to write on mine. This is not because I have so much to say but rather, as any credible author will tell you, because I see so much that I want to learn corporately with you and other believers, and that is what writing books forces us to do.

This blog post title, then, is a placeholder for a book-length treatment I would like to write after I complete my doctoral thesis, as it is a book that I believe very much needs to be written. I believe there are many excellent books already written about the lives of persecuted believers, and, no doubt, many more excellent books will be written about them until the full number of our fellow slaves and siblings are martyred.

But if we are not exceedingly careful, no matter how many volumes are written, we may miss the point of each page.

If a martyr story is to serve the purpose for which it is intended, then it will always and emphatically point beyond itself to Christ, whose life and love is re-presented in the martyrdom. If the martyr story does that, then there are two reactions it ought not to produce:

  1. “I don’t know if I could endure like that if I were persecuted.”
  2. “This story has really inspired me to be more serious about my Christian life.”

The reason a martyr story ought not to produce these reactions is because it obscures the very truth that God intends to make plain through the martyr story, namely:

God is the giver of every good gift. In every circumstance in our lives he provides what is needed for us to accomplish his perfect purpose for us and for the world. Circumstances of great pain and physical anguish are not exceptions. He provides there, too–even more lavishly.

In other words, the proper reaction to a martyr story is reassurance that God will supply our every need in Christ Jesus in every circumstance. It builds faith, not admiration. It buttresses the belief that when you as a believer face persecution, God will supply the grace commensurate to overcome it. What is needed is not your personal fortitude but rather your simple childlike faith. To say “I don’t know if I could endure persecution” is to say something about God and not something about ourselves. And what is said is not humble but, rather, faithless.

In the same way, martyr stories ought not to cause us to “get serious” about our Christian life, as if they are designed as a kind of curative to carefree and flippant Christian living. We don’t need martyr stories for that purpose, and, in fact, Jesus said that even testimony of someone coming back from the dead can’t fix that problem. Instead, martyr stories call the faithful farther forward, cross in tow. The message of such stories is: The God who has been faithful to you thus far will be faithful to sustain you to the end of the age, even should such come to you at the point of an ISIS halberd. So, advance.

In my years of interacting with persecuted believers, I cannot recall one who said to me, “If my story can inspire even one brother or sister to get serious about their faith or prepare more fully for persecution before it comes, then it will be worth it. I sure wish someone had warned me to take my Christian life more seriously before this happened.” First of all, I think that is a decidedly Western sentiment, which may explain why we Westerners are currently under-represented in the martyr count in comparison to our overall numbers. But even more importantly, what it overlooks is that persecuted believers and martyrs are rarely paragons of virtue distinguished by super-human prayer lives or valiant track records of self-sacrifice. They are surprisingly ordinary people, with feet whose clay quotient differs very little from our own. What they are are people who have received from God what was needed for the day, just as God has given unto us this day our daily bread. It is a different sort of bread that is needed on the day of persecution, but not a different sort of believer.

This is not to eschew the importance of training for the heavenly contest. It is, however, to clarify the kind of training that is called for; namely, not Marine-tough discipleship obstacle courses designed to leather up our holy hides but rather more reflexive and childlike responses of faith and trust in God given more promptly in the face of ever more harrowing life circumstances. We prepare for persecution and martyrdom by simplifying our faith, not by adding anything to it. And that is both harder and easier than it sounds.

If you say to authentic believers in the midst of persecution “You are an inspiration to me,” inevitably they will respond by deflecting your praise to the God who has supplied them even more in their persecution than he did in their prosperity. Good martyr stories ought to do the same. They ought to draw our eyes upward, cause us to relax and say, “Nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, I can advance toward the cross.”

That is why we don’t venerate martyrs. To venerate a martyr–or to admire them, or to praise them, or to only be inspired by them–is to raise up the recipient of the gift rather than the giver. It is a category error of the most egregious degree because it may cause us to walk away from what we read with exactly and precisely the wrong conclusion:

I could never do that.

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