Three Weapons the Church Has in the World Today
Written by: Pastor Aaron Syvertsen
I think many people’s pictures of Jesus are in the past tense. They think primarily about the baby who entered the world through the womb of a virgin, the God who became flesh in the manger, wholly dependent on a mother who the world overlooked and who ushered in the upside down kingdom of God where the humble are exalted and the prideful are toppled.
Others picture the man who conducted a public ministry for three years while traveling throughout Israel. With a small group of followers, he performed miraculous healings and taught in ways that recaptured the true meaning of Scriptures while challenging the powerful status quo.
Still others picture the man on the cross, stripped and beaten with a crown of thorns upon his head. He was wrongfully accused, abused, and crucified because of his threat to the control and comfort of those in power. Yet, he endured the cross for the joy set before as the fulfillment to the Father’s plan to give a death blow to death itself, providing forgiveness of sin for those who put their trust in him and healing the ruptures of the fall that tore us apart from the Father and one another.
Those are all true pictures of Jesus, and are necessary to remember and reflect upon daily, but they are not the present-day picture of Jesus. What is your picture of what Jesus is doing, right now?
Jesus is risen, and he is ruling and reigning from the right hand of the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit, and he is interceding for those who are united with him by faith. The knowledge and affirmation of this truth is transformative for how Christians and the church operate in this world today.
The early church understood this and made it clear in its ancient creeds. Notice the change in verb tense within the Apostle’s Creed as it relates to the person and work of Jesus Christ:
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
Jesus was conceived and born, he suffered, was crucified, died and was buried, he descended, rose again and ascended to heaven. Past tense. True pictures, vital pictures. However, now he is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. He is ruling and reigning from the throne. His presence is made manifold in us and with us through the Spirit.
Now, what is the visual representation of his kingdom on earth today? How can we see his rule and reign?
Psalm 110, a Messianic Psalm that prophesied the rule and reign of the risen King 1000 years before Jesus was born, also prophecies about the kind of kingdom he will reign over in vv2-3:
The Lord sends forth from Zion
your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your enemies!
Your people will offer themselves freely
on the day of your power,
in holy garments;
from the womb of the morning,
the dew of your youth will be yours.
Jesus rules from his throne, and he rules across enemy lines. How is this possible? How can someone rule a people who offer themselves freely in holiness, while living in the midst of their enemies?
Enter the church. Jesus serves as head over the church, and each local church is an embassy, or outpost, representing one kingdom while located in another. The church is a people, with a purpose, on a mission:
A local church is a community of Christians led by qualified pastors and elders (a people) who gather together as an earthly embassy of Christ’s heavenly kingdom (a purpose), to proclaim and live out the good news of the gospel and the commands of Christ the King; and to display a love for God and neighbor (a mission).
A wrong picture of what Jesus is doing right now will lead to a wrong approach of how the church should interact with the world and culture around it. What does it mean to be engaged in this world while under the reign of a king in another world? To ask another way, how do we remain committed to the kingdom of God, made visible in the church, while being engaged in the world that is under a different ruler?
In his commentary on Psalm 110, James Boice, the 20th century pastor of Tenth Pres in Philadelphia, quotes the Apostle Paul who said to the Corinthian church, “Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds”, and then Boice goes on to share a helpful three-part arsenal of “divine weapons” the church has today: Participation, Persuasion, and Prayer.
1) Participation. The church needs to participate in the world and the public square rather than sit on the sidelines and critique what people are doing. The Psalmist writes that Jesus rules “in the midst of your enemies”, strongly implying that his people will be active participants in the world.
For all the good things the Quakers believed in the 17th century, they got it wrong when it came to the conviction that led to their separation from the culture, which share common roots with the present-day Amish practice. True believers are separated from the world in their belief and conviction, but not in their participation.
Russell Moore in his book Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel, writes “The gospel we have received is a missionary gospel, one that must connect to those on the outside in order to have life. Our call is to an engaged alienation, a Christianity that preserves the distinctiveness of our gospel while not retreating from our callings as neighbors, and friends, and citizens.”
2) Persuasion. The church is called to the work of persuasion, not coercion. We are informed by God’s Word, shaped by truth, and set out to persuade others to the truth by “becoming all things to all people” (1 Cor 9:19-23).
Seeking to develop Christian nations where all people are coerced to belong to a church and confess the same faith is not the kind of kingdom Jesus is ruling over. In this case, for all the good things the Puritans believed and contributed to church history, they also got it wrong when it comes to their civil coercion and marriage between church and state.
Over the course of the last two thousand years, far more people have been drawn to Christ and believed in him as their Lord and Savior through the witness of the sacrificially suffering church than the politically powerful one. The church ought to seek to persuade others to the truth of God’s Word, and we should care about litigation to the extent that we believe laws and regulations shaped by God’s Word will lead to human flourishing and the protection of the marginalized groups in our society, but the church should be first in line in affirming that civil laws that coerce others into a certain belief about God or membership to a certain church are damaging to the kingdom of God.
Again, Moore writes “If we see ourselves only as a kingdom, we will be tempted toward triumphalism. We are, instead, a church. We are a minority with a message and a mission.”
3) Prayer. Above all, we pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
We pray because we know even with our most active participation in this world and our best-informed persuasion tactics, it will come to nothing without God’s specific and supernatural intervention in this world.
The church is not meaningless, because Jesus rules and reigns as its head, but the church is powerless without the movement of the Spirit in and through it. We are channels of grace, not the source of grace, for we are instruments in the hands of a sovereign ruler.
Therefore, we pray passionately and persistently that God will bear fruit through the faithfulness of his people to be the hands and feet of his rule in enemy territory.
Final Word
As Psalm 110 concludes, we read and rest in the knowledge that Jesus will return to judge and rule over all the earth. There is a day coming where every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord, and all will come before him in judgement. Until then, we picture Jesus as he is today, ruling and reigning over and through the church, and the best way for the church to be a visual representation of his kingdom is to participate, to persuade, and above all, to pray.