Here Is The Bible Study Method We Use, Better Known As DOTW

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Pastor Foley

There are literally thousands of methods that have been created for Bible reading! Behind each one is an understanding of what kind of book the Bible is and what it is designed to do.

For example, in the popular lectio divina method, the Bible is understood as a “living word” that the reader “enters” in order to commune with God. In the lectio divina method, Bible readers are trained to read slowly, carefully, and repetitively, and then to meditate, pray, and contemplate. Through this process the reader is encouraged to enter into the text as if he or she were actually a part of it.

No doubt many Christians have found such Bible reading methods fruitful, and yet…

What would happen if we read the Bible not as a word that we enter, but rather as a word that enters us?

In other words, what if the Bible is a read as a revelation of God’s character? What if it is designed to reveal God’s actions toward us and to reveal how God calls us to respond to him and to others? What if we could train ourselves to read the Bible so that the emphasis of our reading was not creativity or mystical experience but instead careful attentiveness to what each scripture reveals about God’s character, his action towards us, and the response he commands from us?

Such a method would approach each passage of scripture something like this:

Hear

1. What does this reveal about the Character of God?

2. What is the context?

3. How does the Nicene Creed shed light on this?

Do

4. What action does God take in this passage toward others?

5. What action does God call me to take toward God? Toward others?

6. What actions did I take?

It’s really the most basic kind of Bible reading of all. We call it the DOTW Bible study method. DOTW stands for Doers of the Word. That name reminds us that all our Bible study is foolishness unless it leads to do the wise word we have heard!

That’s why the method is divided into two parts: Hearing the word and doing the word. Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:24-27 that if we hear the word without doing it, we are foolish and our lives will be thrown into turmoil by every problem we face. We’ll always be crying out, “What should I do now?” Jesus says that if we hear the word and do it, we’ll be wise and our lives will be steady in the storm.

As regards what order to read the Bible in, each method has its own recommendation to that question as well. Following the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) is one used by many churches in many different traditions, and so we follow it here as a way of keeping in communion with and seeking to serve with as much of the faithful church around the world and across the ages as we can.

So each week we’ll be applying our DOTW method to the RCL reading from the Gospel and offering two posts: One post will be designed to help us hear the word, using the first three questions noted above. A second post will be designed to help us do the word, using the final three questions noted above.

We hope you’ll find the method helpful and the weekly posts fruitful. Please check out our first hear the word post and then our first do the word post, and then look for updates each week thereafter!

Posted in Discipleship, Lectionary Year A | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Church is More Like Its Persecutors Than Its Lord (Introduction to Preparing for the Underground Church, Part III)

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Pastor Foley

(Part III of VII of Pastor Foley’s introductory essay to Rev. Richard Wurmbrand’s Preparing for the Underground Church. To order a print or electronic copy of the bilingual Korean/English edition of Preparing for the Underground Church, including Pastor Foley’s introductory essay and a foreword by Voice of the Martyrs historian Merv Knight, visit Amazon or click here to visit the bookstore page on our website. For Part I of Pastor Foley’s introductory essay , click here.) 

Homosexuality and transgenderism are expressions of sexuality which Christians (rightly) identify as sin. But the sin of self-creation–the idea of the body as modeling clay shaped by us according to our wills and attractions–is one many Christians engage in daily without protest. As the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 2:3-4, God brings us to recognize sin not first so that we may judge it but rather so that we may recognize that same root at work in ourselves and earnestly repent of it, in full assurance of God’s forbearance and patience.

As Christians, we must become aware of how we ourselves treat our own bodies as blocks of clay. This is especially true for us in Korea, where plastic surgery—the epitome of treating the body as a block of clay to be shaped according to our desire to be desired—is so common that it is given as a graduation present to high school girls.

But there are far more prosaic forms of self-design that come from the same root, even going to the roots of our own hair. “Gray hair is a crown of splendor,” we are taught in Proverbs 16:31; “it is attained in the way of righteousness.” We are called to wear our age as a crown—a martyr’s crown testifying to a Christ-centered life given for others, in fact—but we hide our age in in an effort to portray vital energy. But the Bible does not call us to amaze and attract the world with the vital energy available to Christians. Instead, it calls us to soberly accept in our bodies the reality of death, not as something to be feared or avoided or denied, but as something to be remembered and meditated on daily so that our focus remains on the new creation, not the present one. As the Apostle Paul says, “We who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.”[1] Our Christian bodies, in other words, are not intended to serve as lifelong deceptive advertising for the vitality of this world. Instead, our appearance is designed to openly display that all human beings are mortal creatures whose confidence is not in the vitality of this world but in the vitality of the world to come.

The Bible is actually far more direct in its admonitions against displaying this-worldly vitality—through, for example, braided hair, gold, pearls, and expensive clothes[2]—than it is about gay marriage. But we pay almost no attention to these instructions, even though it is through following these that we learn to be faithful to the greater matters concerning the body. Thus we fail to see how these desires come from the same root as the sexual expressions that concern us far more. The great early Korean church father Kim Kyo Shin, upon discovering his daughter’s bottle of imported cold cream, smashed it against a rock in a rather vivid reminder of the importance of Christians seeking to adorn ourselves with good deeds rather than makeup. He challenged her, “Since the rock is covered with cream, do you see the natural appearance of the rock?”[3] It is hard to imagine that Kim Kyo Shin would not find many such things in our lives to smash against rocks today.

Even our contemporary understanding of Christian marriage draws its nourishment from the same root as gay marriage, based as it is on spiritual companionship, mutual fulfillment, and romantic love. But as Stephen Adubato notes, it is not the romance in marriage that mirrors the relationship between Christ and the church but rather the martyrdom:

[This is what] man and woman are called to do in their marriage: ultimately, to die to themselves, and become united to Christ through their spouse. In this sense, they are replicating the heroic act of the martyrs, who literally die for the sake of union with, and glorification of, Christ. Thus, perhaps in a less dramatic way, the married man and woman are giving witness to the fact that the value and meaning of their marriage, and of human life as a whole, belongs to Something other than themselves.[4]

Even children are molded from the clay of our individual design and desire today, rather than received when and as God gives. Sociologist Paul Yonnet explains:

[T]he essential giftedness of life has today become instead the product of human will: children are conceived, brought to term, and then given life in the world, according to schedules and means ordered by the parents, and not necessarily through the physical engagement of the biological mother and father of the child. Thus, to be a child is now legally defined by being “desired” rather than by being “given.”[5]

Children are birthed by our design into a society we Christians have had a hand in designing—here in Korea, a “seven give-up” society[6] where children grow up into increasingly insurmountable barriers to finding fruitful work, supporting themselves in marriage, or having a child, let alone several. It is no wonder that, blocked by the flaming swords of our own selfishness from even the consolations granted to us east of Eden, they consider as worthless and repressive the identities given by God and instead fashion themselves from the clay made of KPOP and Korean drama. The result is a birth rate so low that the Korean population decay to half its present size in the next hundred years, with even half of that remaining half over the age of 65.[7] Only Muslims, who still regard childbirth as sacred gift and duty, will be around to puzzle over the fruits of a society bent on the self-destruction of self-creation.

[1] 2 Cor. 4:11, NIV.

[2] “I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.” —1 Timothy 2:9-10, NIV.

[3] Recollections of Kim Kyo-Shin. http://www.biblekorea.net/articles/Recollection_of_Kyo-shin_Kim.doc, p. 200.

[4] Stephen Adubato, 2016. “A Revolutionary Attraction.” Homiletic and Pastoral Review. http://www.hprweb.com/2016/06/a-revolutionary-attraction/.

[5] Ephraim Radner, 2016. A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of a Human Life. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, Loc. 2291.

[6] Hyung-A Kim, 2015. “The seven-give-up generation: The crisis facing South Korea’s youth.” APPS Policy Forum. http://www.policyforum.net/the-seven-give-up-generation/.

[7] Yoon Ja-young, 2016. “Population to halve in 100 years.” Korea Times. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/common/vpage-pt.asp?categorycode=488&newsidx=219771.

Posted in gay marriage, marriage, marriage equality, persecution, Preparation, Rev. Richard Wurmbrand | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why was it Necessary for Jesus to be Baptized?

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Editor

Matthew 3:13-17

Jesus tells John that his baptism is necessary to fulfill all righteousness. But what does Jesus mean by all righteousness? In the Bible, righteousness is all about setting things right—that is, fixing something that is broken. But what does Jesus’ baptism fix?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He made trees, chickens, and human beings. But God also made seeds, eggs, and babies. Life on earth is always in motion. An egg becomes a chick, and a chick becomes a hen. Movement is natural. When God says that human beings are “good,” God does not mean that human beings are complete.

Like seeds and eggs, human beings are constantly in motion. That motion is not only physical but also spiritual. At every moment, we are either advancing toward or regressing away from God. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God. They walked with God and they talked with God. But God did not live inside of them, and so they were not complete.

Why would a loving God create incomplete human beings? If human beings had been created complete, they would not have turned away from him! But a loving God does not force his presence into his creation. Because he is a good God, he waits to be invited into created beings. Human beings only become complete when they invite God to dwell within them.

Adam and Eve had the opportunity to become complete in the Garden of Eden. There was a tree in the garden called the Tree of Life. This tree was Christ. If human beings ate the fruit from this tree, God would live inside of them. But Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil instead. Because they ate from this tree, they set themselves permanently in motion away from God. The word for “moving away from God” in the Bible is ‘sin’.

We sin when we contemplate and partake of creation without simultaneously contemplating and partaking of the God who created it. Creation is not evil. When God looked over creation, he said it was good. This is why Christians teach that God’s character may be seen in the creation. But creation was designed as a place for communion with God, not as a substitute or replacement for that communion. Because human beings regard creation as a substitute or replacement for God, this is why Romans 8:22 says that all of creation is groaning. The place designed for communion with God has become a place of seclusion from God.

When our focus marginalizes or excludes God, we begin to rot. Acts 17:28 says that we live, move, and exist in God. We cannot live, move, or exist outside of God. When we move away from God, our lives lose purpose and no meaning. We begin to decay and disappear.

We are saved from nothingness by Jesus’ baptism.

Through his baptism, Jesus made it possible for human beings to invite God to dwell inside of them. How is this possible? Human beings have one nature: human nature. However, Jesus has two distinct, unmixed natures: he has a human nature and a divine nature.

Because Jesus is God, he is always in the presence of the Father and the Holy Spirit. But readers of the Bible are often confused when they read that the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus after his baptism and the Father’s voice says, “This is my beloved son in whom I am most pleased.” If Jesus is always in the presence of the Father and the Holy Spirit, how can this scene make sense?

Because Jesus is one of the three persons in the Trinity, he is never separate from the Father and the Holy Spirit. But when Jesus became a human being, he also takes on a human nature. This is important because all of human flesh can only be fixed if Jesus has a human nature that is not mixed with his divine nature.

John tells Jesus, “You do not need to be baptized,” because as God Jesus does not need to be baptized. Jesus’ nature as God is already complete.

But Jesus also has a human nature, and this human nature is just like ours except without sin. Jesus takes that human nature to the Cross, laying it down unto death as a sacrifice for our sins. This is what is revealed in his baptism, as he goes down into the waters of death and is raised up to new life, where human beings can become indwelled by the Holy Spirit. In other words, Jesus is not being baptized for himself. He is being baptized so that every human being can become fixed.

Through baptism, the Holy Spirit rests on Jesus’ human nature, which becomes our nature, too, when we are baptized into his death and resurrection. The Holy Spirit can then rest on us also. We human beings who through sin became to focus only on the visible creation have now had our focus lifted up again to the heavens. Our creation as human beings is completed through our indwelling fellowship with God the Trinity.

When we are baptized, we are imitating Christ who not only showed us the way but who is himself the way. Baptism is a change in spiritual motion: instead of moving away from God, we return to him. Through Baptism, our human nature is rescued and restored from the decay of sin. When we ascend from the waters of baptism, we do not abandon our body. We do not become spirits. Instead, God lives within us. His presence begins to change even our physical body.

Never forget the glorious victory Christ has won through your baptism. And never think of it only in terms of the past or the future. Christ lives and reigns in your body now. The Holy Spirit rests upon your body now. The Father’s voice speaks to your body now. Forevermore, God lives within your body.

And it is very good.

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