Here’s The Darndest Thing About Sin: When Forgiven, It Still Does Not Disappear

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Pastor Foley

There’s one particular Scriptural insight about sin that will prove to be crucial in our understanding and carrying out the Work of Mercy of ransoming the captive:

Sin, even when forgiven, does not disappear.

This is a subject about which we’ve written before, so please take a quick second to click over to this previous post and read it through before continuing on. (Go ahead. I’ll wait.)

OK, done? Then let’s continue.

Here’s the relevance of this whole idea to the subject of ransoming the captive:

Ransoming the captive isn’t just a metaphor for setting people free from whatever binds them. The reason why is that what binds people doesn’t just disappear–*poof!*–into thin air when people are set free. It has to go somewhere and be borne by someone.

No modern author has illustrated this truth better than Walter Wangerin in his achingly beautiful short story, The Ragman. Please make sure to click that link, too. It’ll be worth your quick read.

But there’s another aspect of the Ragman tale and, more importantly, another set of Scriptures related to the subject of sin not disappearing that is awfully central to this Work of Mercy of ransoming the captive. You can see it in Scriptures like 2 Corinthians 4:10 and Colossians 1:24. (Yep, more clicking. Please–by all means–click away. I’ve got all day. Really.) They remind us that while only Christ’s suffering is salvific, our suffering–our serving as a ransom–is one of the key ways Christ draws the world’s attention back to the only suffering that ultimately changes anything, i.e., his own. In his masterful Blood of the Martyrs (yep, please click on that one, too), theologian Nathan Pitchford puts it like this:

Christ had to suffer in order to purchase our eternal life; and now we as his witnesses have to suffer in order to spread the effects of that fully-accomplished redemption…  By God’s design, the blood of his Son is the only source of life for the Church; but… [i]t is the blood of the martyrs that gives an undeniably powerful testimony of the truth of Christ’s life, joy, and peace, operative no matter how adverse the circumstances.

That’s why ransoming the captive can’t simply be about helping people stop smoking or chewing their nails (or smoking their nails, for that matter):

Because it is in our serving as a  ransom–our willingness to bear the cost, pain, and loss racked up by others or on others, in Jesus’ name–that Christ’s serving as a ransom is mirrored into the world, and people are forced to reckon with it again. 

Consider, for example, Stephen in Acts 6 and 7. (Clickety click. Linkety link. We have a lot of ground to cover. Don’t skip over the links or we’ll fall in holes of misunderstanding.)

Ransoming the captive, in other words, is going to cost more than Christ.

It’s going to cost you, too.

Better scroll back up and click on that Ragman link so you can see what you’re getting into.

Posted in Ransoming the Captive | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Our New Book on North Korean Christian Persecution Is Now Available!

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Pastor Foley

We’re punctuating this month’s study of ransoming the captives with the release of our new book, These are the Generations: The Story of How One Christian Family Lived Out The Great Commission for More than Fifty Years in the Most Christian-Hostile Nation in Human History.

Mr. and Mrs. Bae and their children once enjoyed a prosperous existence in North Korea, but their life was decimated following the North Korean government’s investigation of Mr. Bae on suspicion of Christian activity. Mr. Bae was held without charge in a North Korean jail for more than a year, but during that time his faith grew even as his health faltered. Mr. Bae is the first 3rd-generation North Korean Christian known to have defected to South Korea. He carries a wealth of previously unknown historical information about the unique ways the North Korean underground church lives, worships, and evangelizes in the most Christian-hostile conditions in human history.

Mrs. Bae is a former North Korean schoolteacher who met and married Mr. Bae during his university studies. She unknowingly inherited the family’s faith. During her marriage she came across puzzling clues about her husband’s outlawed beliefs, until his imprisonment led to her own costly journey of faith with her mother-in-law.

Though Mr. Bae was ultimately miraculously released from prison without being charged, the Baes were reduced to the life of vagabonds by the stigma of his imprisonment. They lost their home, job, friends, and health but gained something infinitely more valuable: deep, unshakable faith in Christ. While continually on the move ahead of the authorities, they raised their children in the faith and led other family members and former friends to Christ.

They eventually responded to God’s call to leave North Korea in order to share their family story with the world. The Baes cautiously tell all they can about this previously unknown part of the body of Christ. Their identities are protected so as not to further endanger those they left behind, including Mr. Bae’s parents who are currently imprisoned in a North Korean concentration camp because of their own evangelistic activity.

I wrote something in the conclusion of the book that is particularly germane to our discipleship about ransoming captives. It goes like this:

An estimated thirty thousand of today’s North Korean Christians—Mr. Bae’s mother and father among them—are living out their faith in concentration camps. Our first instinct is to work tirelessly to free them. But our second instinct ought to be to remember that God does not look at freedom the same way we do. An estimated one hundred fifty thousand to two hundred thousand North Koreans are prisoners in those camps. Many will end their days there. How could a God of boundless love not reach out personally to comfort those people, assuring them that they are not forgotten? And, if he did reach out, why wouldn’t he do it the way he always has—through people he has specially trained for the task, in barren fields and temporary exiles, whom he has walked with daily and who he speaks to as his friends?

I am humbled by all I learned about ransoming captives while writing this book with the Baes. I hope reading the book can convey some of that same learning process for you. You can purchase These Are The Generations today through amazon.com.

Posted in Ransoming the Captive | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Here’s What Makes Ransoming The Captive The Hardest Work Of Mercy To Understand

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Pastor Foley

This month we focus on what is typically the hardest Work of Mercy for Christians to understand and thus put into practice: Ransoming the Captive. We begin with Pastor Foley’s Heuristic Helper for the month:

If something is hard for Christians to understand it is usually because: (1) we haven’t studied the fullness of Scripture on the subject; (2) we did study the fullness of Scripture on the subject but still felt something was missing, so we took it on ourselves to fill in the blank; and/or (3) Scripture seemed to be telling us to do something so contrary to good common sense that we assumed God would of course never ask us to do such a thing, and so we walked away shaking our heads and muttering. (I like to call this The Rich Young Ruler Syndrome.)

All three confusion causers are operative with regard to the subject of ransoming the captive. As we’ll see this month, folks teaching on this subject often:

    • miss some of Scripture’s most crucial verses about ransoming and captives;
    • are tempted to speak where the Scripture is (purposefully) silent on the subject;
    • overlook the fascinating stories in church history of Christians who put this Work of Mercy into practice at the cost of their lives, finances, and reputations.

The one thing that’s for sure is that it’s going to take a good month of posting to identify and then work through the misunderstandings on this subject. The payoff is, of course, that  once we have a solidly Scriptural grounding in the matter we’ll be confronted with the kind of call to life-disrupting practice that will leave us longing for the days of gentle confusion where we could just shrug our shoulders sheepishly and not let the whole thing bother us too much. After all, there is one thing harder than not knowing what God wants from us; namely, knowing what God wants from us.

But, profoundly convinced of the boundless grace of God, let us be wise men rushing in where fools fear to tread as together this month we tackle the subject of Ransoming the Captive.

Posted in Ransoming the Captive | Tagged , , | 4 Comments