vocation

“And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me – to keep me from exalting myself.” (2 Corinthians 12:7)

Why do we always wonder about someone else’s thorn? Theologians and Bible expositors have done that for years. What was Paul’s “thorn”? Was it his eyesight? Was it a mother-in-law? Was it some awful weakness he had in that fleshly part of his old nature? Those aren’t the questions we should be asking. The problem is not with Paul’s thorn; I think we need to be thinking about our own thorns.

What is a thorn, anyway? The Greek word for “thorn” is SKOLOPS (σκολοψ). It can mean anything pointed and is used as a metaphor for a thorn or a plague. And that tells our story. What is our thorn? Could it be a physical weakness, an ailment, a physical handicap, or could it be a weakness in our very nature – something like the “sin which so easily entangles us” that we find in Hebrews 12:1? You know, that sin of omission or commission that seems to war against us in our climb up that steep hill on our pilgrim journey to the Celestial City? Is it that sin we are exhorted to despise, lay aside and from which we should run? It unmercifully plagues us! Could it actually be our ill temper, our cursing, or some baser lust of our old, fleshly nature?

One thing is sure about Paul’s thorn: God allowed Satan to use it to attack Paul. The word “buffet” comes from KOLAPHIDZO (κολαφιζω). It can mean to beat with a fist (Jesus beating in Matt. 16:67), to treat roughly (Paul, in I Cor. 4:11), or to punish or treat harshly in general (I Peter 2:20). Those aren’t very comforting prospects, are they? But God in His providence allows it for good reasons.

In Paul’s case it was to keep him from getting the “big head” for learning some very special, heavenly, godly truths. The truths were great; but the beating he was getting from Satan to entice him to think of himself as a fantastically smart guy was something from which he wanted to be delivered. He supplicated the Lord three times for relief; but God gave him His remedy. It was the remedy that sustained Paul all the way the headman’s axe in Rome, under the sentence of that evil emperor Nero, in 67 A.D. God answered him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). [Read more…]

“Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” (John 20:21)

It is my firm conviction that one of the greatest faults of American Evangelicalism (and that includes those in emergent, non-denominational, main-line, and fundamentalist camps) has been to misinterpret the biblical mandate of Christian vocation.

I have written on this before; but I feel I must again take a stab at trying to get others to think seriously about this fault in the Evangelical Church.

I. Christ’s Earthly Mission

Jesus was quite clear in defining His mission to this world. To Pontius Pilate He declared,

“You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” (John 18:37)

Jesus bore witness to His Father. He was truth embodied in human flesh. He fulfilled the Law, and fulfilled His Father’s will, by giving His life to redeem His people. His death culminated His teaching. His resurrection vindicated that His mission was fulfilled.

Jesus vocation was God in human flesh to provide a propitiation for the sins of His people. Until the commencement of his public ministry, his avocation was that of a carpenter.

II. The Mission of Christ’s Disciples

But then Jesus spoke of another mission, that of His disciples -His followers: “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” Jesus, particularly as recorded in John 14 through 16, spoke much about the ministry of the Holy Spirit:

“When the helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me, and you will bear witness also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” (John 15:26-27)

Jesus, of course, was commissioning the disciples who were with Him at that moment. They were to become proclaimers of Him and His truth – God’s plan of redemption. He had called them at the beginning of His public ministry. They followed Him, observed Him, believed in Him, and spoke of Him.

We do not know the exact details of the lives of the early disciples – where they traveled, what all they accomplished as His witnesses. We have glimpses in the book of Acts – Luke’s record of the Holy Spirit’s work through the Apostles and other believers.

But we need to see the bigger picture. Its beginning is in eternity past in the sovereign plan and purposes of God. Paul distinctly reminded Timothy – his “son” in the Faith,

“God saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.” Paul’s message to Timothy was, “Do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me His prisoner; but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God.” (II Timothy 1:9 & 8)

And that message is the same to every individual born of the Spirit and indwelt by the Triune God. But somehow we have failed to see the connection between the vocation of Jesus Christ, as witness to His Father’s will, and the vocation of every professing believer in Jesus. My avocation may be that of a plumber; but if I have been chosen of God, my vocation is to be an ambassador of Heaven.

III. The Failure of the American Evangelical Church

The Evangelical Church in America has failed to be a faithful witness to our depraved, dying, damned culture. The “suffering of the gospel according to the power of God” resulted in the martyrdoms of the leaders of the early church.

Matthew – was slain with a sword about 60 AD
Mark – was dragged to death through the streets of Alexandria
Luke – was severely persecuted in Rome
John – sentenced to be boiled in oil, was banished to the prison mine on Patmos
Paul – was stoned, imprisoned, whipped, beheaded with a sword in Rome
James – brother of John, was beheaded with a sword by Herod Agrippa
James – the “Less,” was beaten and stoned to death in Jerusalem
Peter – was imprisoned, scourged, crucified upside-down in Rome
Andrew – Peter’s brother, was crucified, hung on a cross for three days
Jude – was crucified in Persia about 72 AD
Thomas – was thrust through with a spear
Stephen – dragged through the streets of Jerusalem, was then stoned to death
Philip – was imprisoned, scourged, then crucified
Matthias – was stoned, then beheaded in Jerusalem
Bartholomew – Nathaniel, was beaten to death with clubs
Simon – “Zelots” was crucified
Barnabas – was severely persecuted and died about 73AD

The early Church “got” Christ’s commission. We haven’t. Today’s Evangelical church, in many respects, is like a small, shriveled up, walled-in garden in the middle of a million acre desert and weed patch.

The failure is that of individual believers failing to be witnesses to their friends, relatives, neighbors, and work associates. Over 90% of professing evangelicals have never born a clear witness to a lost sinner. Less than 5% have ever led another person to Christ. We are not a witnessing body, proclaiming the Gospel to individuals, as individuals. We are not reproducing after our kind. And we have failed to raise a standard of righteousness by our witness to our devolving, dying culture.

We are the Loadicean Church. We think our “secular job” is our vocation. We have failed to get the big picture of God’s redemptive plan – the Resurrected Christ in every believer, witnessing the good news of the Gospel in the power of the Spirit.

The “afflictions” of the Gospel have not fallen upon us because we are little different than the children of Satan with whom we work, shop, and watch our entertainment culture disintegrate around us. We have failed to get the connection of our calling in eternity past to our true vocation as Christ’s witnesses to our present world.

Jesus Christ is building His Church; and He builds it by Spirit empowered disciples sharing His Word of Truth in the light of Christ’s glorious Gospel. As Methodist Bishop, Will Willimon (Chaplain, Duke University) declared,

“Churches have now become celebrators of and aggressive advocates for the present age. The eager discovery of ’the next thing,’ once the province of theological liberals, has now become the specialty of so-called Evangelicals. Theological minimalism and reductionism among Evangelicals, where every thing about the faith is reduced to ’the message,’ conspire to produce a naïve, enthusiastic embrace of the media of contemporary culture in worship with little worry that the content of Christian worship may be radically changed in the experiment…’New’ is the chief virtue of a church. What passes these days for new tends to be an uncritical capitulation to the culture, subservience to a ‘tradition’ of the past three decades under the guise of innovation….Church is forever in danger of degenerating into Rotary.”

Our pastors have failed to preach to us our responsibility to be Christ’s ambassadors. Embracing the pop cultural means of marketing, many of our leaders have swallowed the emergent cowardice of failing to preach against our sins of apathy, worldliness, and other sins of our carnality. Our pastors are preaching neither law nor grace, but a watered-down, dumbed-down message that fails to jar us from our lethargy and ignorance of what God’s Word actually teaches concerning our vocation as aliens and sojourners on this planet. Mediocrity and cowardice are a bane to any pastor’s ministry.

Tell me, when was the last time you heard a sermon or a prayer about the Church’s need for spiritual revival. Your answer to that question may prove to be a validation of what I’m saying about the Evangelical Church missing the connection of Christ in John 20:21.

A Thorn, You Say?

The Missing Connection