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 Inescapable Issues Accountable in All Christians

 Integral Theology and Practice for Viable Faith in Everyday Life

 

 Chapter 7

  ISSUE 7:     The Theology and Practice

                       of Our Discipleship and the Church

 

Sections

 

Distinguishing Discipleship as Unfolded from the Gospel
   
The Relational Progression of Jesus’ Disciples
Progression as Disciples and Church or Regressing?
Church Identity Transitioned
Church Function Transitioned
Church Witness Transitioned
The Church Transitioned as Equalizer

 

Introduction

Chap.1

Chap.2

Chap.3

Chap.4

Chap.5

Chap.6

Chap.7

Chap.8

Printable pdf 

(Entire study)

Table of Contents

 

Scripture Index

 

Bibliography

 

  

One of you says, “I follow…”; another, “I follow…”;

another, “I follow…”; still another, “I follow….”

1 Corinthians 1:12, NIV

 

“Follow me, and where I am…be also.”

John 12:26

 

“That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you,

that they also may be in us.”

John 17:21, ESV

 

  

 

            The current condition of Christianity in the U.S. is likely best described as in a state of transition. Transition to what is an open question that all Christians need to address, if they haven’t already answered it for themselves. More and more Christians have left the church, which the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated but only by amplifying faith issues Christians had already. Some have left the faith altogether, but most have realized that the church was unnecessary or even irrelevant for their faith. Younger generations have also identified themselves increasingly as unaffiliated with a formal faith, while some others are demanding more from churches by their activism. At the same time, there is an increase in pastors who have left their role in the church or who want to leave—primarily because of the shortcomings Christians’ practice in their faith. Add to this that in a new report the Barna Group finds over 30% of Christians distrustful of how their churches handle finances, and limit their giving accordingly.

            All of this helps make inescapable the issues of who we follow and what the church is. Who and what will always be in transition until Christians (individually and collectively) are rooted in the theology and practice illuminated and embodied by the whole-ly Word. Therefore, I pray that you are prepared to “Listen and learn” more than ever, because now the challenge before us is the widest and the path calling us is the narrowest in order that our transition is constituted according to the embodied experiential Truth, relational Way and whole Life.

 

 

Distinguishing Discipleship as Unfolded from the Gospel

 

 

            In a relatively recent study on the existing condition of discipleship in the U.S., Barna Group researched Christian adults, church leaders, exemplar discipleship ministries, and Christian educators. “The clearest insight from this study [on ‘What is discipleship?’] is that it’s unclear!”[1] Such a study makes evident both the variable involvement by Christians with the Spirit and the diverse understanding Christians have of the gospel, both of which have left us in a condition lacking a manifesto definitive for all disciples and discipleship. Either there isn’t such a manifesto signified by the gospel, or we are not paying close attention to what and who is disclosed by the Word.

            Implicit in the identity formation and integral to the relational outcome of Jesus’ new wine fellowship (Lk 5:33-39) is the relational process of discipleship. Along with identity, however, discipleship easily becomes ambiguous or shallow, lacking the clarity and depth of this relational process. For this reason Paul interjected “As for those who will follow” to his message of the new creation (Gal 6:16), thereby challenging those to follow in progression within Jesus’ qualitative and relational framework for discipleship. Otherwise, the whole process becomes fragmentary and subject to our shaping from the variable influence of surrounding contexts—contexts that also have been shaped by the fragmenting influence of reductionism.

            While God certainly responded to save Noah from the human condition, this was situational and did not establish God’s full relational response. That good news (or gospel) of God’s full relational response first emerged with the formation of the covenant with Abraham (Gen 17:1-11). The nature of God’s response is essential to understand for composing the truth of the gospel that the Word embodied in the incarnation. The covenant God established was not based on an exchange framework that formed a contract of exchange between the parties involved (a quid pro quo); this would amount to fake news, not good news, though many still see covenant with God basically in exchange terms. Historically, the faith of God’s people in response to the covenant has often been reduced to such exchange terms, thereby essentially revising the gospel with alternative facts; and misleading or misguided practice has been used to evoke such responses to the gospel, which includes misrepresenting “by faith alone” (sola fide) and promoting diverse discipleship.

            God stipulated terms for the covenant, initially for Abraham and later expanded with Moses in the Torah. These nonnegotiable terms unfolding from the gospel devolved among God’s people as the relational terms were reduced to a behavioral code that served a covenant of exchange—for example, keeping the commandments to reap God’s benefits. Various scenarios renegotiated the covenant with alternative facts, essentially under the assumption ‘do this and God will do that’; and this assumption basically continues today to define God’s terms unfolding from the gospel (e.g. with a consumer gospel), though Christians may not admit to ulterior motives for being obedient in the faith.

            God’s terms, however, are distinguished only as whole relational terms—composing also the new covenant—all of which converge in God’s declaration to Abraham: “Walk before me and be blameless” (Gen 17:1); that is to say, “Be involved with me in relationship together and be tāmiym [complete, whole] in your person and involvement.” The nature of God’s response is the essence of relationship—the relationship constituted in who, what and how the Trinity is—therefore the covenant (including the new covenant) can only be distinguished with the truth of the gospel as the covenant relationship composed by the Trinity’s relational response of grace. Furthermore, God’s unwarranted, unmerited response constituted the covenant relationship only as the covenant of love (Dt 7:7-9). God’s love has always been good news, yet fake news and alternative facts have misrepresented this gospel distinguished by the depth of God’s relational involvement (the significance of love) and the covenant relationship of love that unfolds in the whole gospel.

            From this beginning, the gospel of God’s relational involvement ongoingly unfolds in God’s definitive blessing (Num 6:24-26), and what is further disclosed is the face (paneh) of God. Paneh signifies the very front of the person’s presence, not an oblique, opaque or obscure view of the person, thus involving the vulnerable disclosure of the person. The good news of God’s definitive blessing is that the figurative face of God (who has no literal face) is vulnerably distinguished by God’s depth of involvement in face-to-face relationship together—as Moses experienced (Num 12:6-8):

 

“The LORD bless you…make his face to shine upon you in face-to-face relationship, and be gracious in relational response to you…lift up his face to you eye to eye and give you peace.”

 

This blessing is still good news today when heard in its relational terms. Yet, it is commonly repeated in a perfunctory way (as in a benedictory blessing) that has lost its relational significance, rendering the face of God to a still portrait for us to display and remember. Perhaps this is the extent of the good news that persons are comfortable possessing.

            If we indeed embrace the truth of the gospel disclosed in God’s definitive blessing, the reality is that the face of God is intrusive (face to face) and thus confronting (eye to eye)—in contrast to the norm in human interaction and in conflict with what dominates social media today. Therefore, what is distinguished unfolding from this gospel is intimate relationship together, both with God and each other; and, if we are honest with ourselves, in reality we are neither accustomed to such depth of relationship nor even willing or capable to be vulnerable for this intimacy together. God understands our condition better than we do; and on this basis what unfolds from this gospel must clearly be distinguished to constitute our faith and practice: “…and give you peace.”

            “Give” (siym) can be rendered and has been presumed in various ways—think again about a covenant of exchange. Siym in the good news of God’s face in relationship together unfolds in these relational terms: ‘to establish a new relationship’, which then requires a change from the old (notably our fragmentary relational condition), so that persons and relationship together will now be constituted in wholeness (the peace of shalôm). Nothing less than and no substitutes for this new relationship together in wholeness (siym with shalôm) distinguishes what unfolds from the good news of God’s face; and this is the truth of the whole gospel that cannot be revised by fake news or renegotiated with alternative facts. In other words, speaking for God’s relational terms, what does this say about our diverse interpretations and our diversity of practice that are presumed to flow from the gospel?

            The gospel of God’s face unfolds further to be disclosed face to face and eye to eye as never witnessed before. Now we come to the incarnation and the face of Jesus, who embodies the depth of the whole gospel and fulfills the whole of God’s relational response of love to our human condition (as Paul summarized, 2 Cor 4:4-6). What is this new relationship from the face of God? And what is this wholeness of the covenant and how are we to understand this to define our faith and determine our practice?

            Parallel to the gospel, and often in open contrast to if not in subtle conflict with it, the diversity of Christianity has evolved since the early church, as the Word (with the Spirit) exposed in his post-ascension critique of the church (Rev 2-3). Both within and outside the ancient Roman Empire, diversity in theology and practice may in fact have been more the rule rather than the exception, at least more than often presumed.[2] So, the diversity that continues to exist today in Christian theology and practice indicates an insufficient or lack of connection with the gospel of God’s face—that is, relational connection, not doctrinal connection, as the Word clarified and corrected for the church in Ephesus (Rev 2:2-4).

            If we are to distinguish the nature and significance of discipleship unfolding directly from the gospel, this gospel can be neither just any gospel nor even the truth of a gospel (a portion of good news). But this gospel must by its nature be the experiential Truth of the whole gospel enacting the relational Way and whole Life in order to compose the complete significance of “Follow me.” The other versions of the gospel yield the diversity existing from past to present. The foremost priority, therefore, for our identity, theology and practice as Jesus’ disciples (assuming we follow Jesus) must first be to understand the whole identity of Jesus and the effect his whole person had on other persons to make them his followers. Not only is this critical to fulfill his commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19) but to fulfill in our own life what it means to be his disciple (Jn 12:26).

            The whole identity of Jesus (not fragmented by his teachings, miracles, example, etc.) is both at the heart of the gospel composed by God’s face and thus central to the text of Scripture. The relational terms of Scripture provide the text composing the narrative history and inspired testimony about Jesus remembered by his distinguished first followers, which ironically includes his identity as seen by his enemies.[3] How we interpret his identity from these accounts is antecedent to and defining for our identity as disciples and is determining for how we follow. Or, to use the Word’s axiom (Mk 4:24), the gospel we use will be the disciples/discipleship we get. Once again, then, with the diversity existing among Christians throughout church history—not solely but notably from the Reformation for us today—what does this say about our gospel? Besides related issues about the integrity of Scripture, what does this say about the identity of Jesus we follow and, unavoidably, about our interpretation of Scripture composing our theology and practice? Moreover, how is all this diversity compatible with the view of the authority we affirm for Scripture alone (sola scriptura) by our faith?            

            Our existing condition raises the questions of where we can find integrity in theology and practice and how it can be restored in who, what and how we are. For the only response able to fulfill this need in transition we turn to the whole gospel embodied by Jesus’ whole person, from whom unfolds the whole theology and practice that distinguishes his disciples from the diversity in Christian theology and practice existing globally.

            The relational outcome ahead will unfold with the gospel of the whole and uncommon God’s face to distinguish an irreducible and nonnegotiable manifesto for all Christians that is not subject to any of our diverse theology and practice. This manifesto is outlined definitively by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (as in Mt 7:14,21-23) and summarized in the book of Hebrews (see Heb 5:11-6:1). Yet, the wholeness composing this manifesto does not mean and should not be confused with conformity to homogeneity and with precluding the God-given diversity of persons composing his family—those persons together in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity. At the same time, the gospel of God’s face is intrusive, and Jesus along with the Spirit may clarify, correct and convict more than you can anticipate or may want disclosed. Whoever is willing (cf. Lk 13:34), however, to “Be still and desist from human determination” (as in Ps 46:10), they will experience the relational reality of intimately knowing God in the new relationship together constituted by wholeness , and thereby converge in the church (not a or any) reconciled and intimately involved together as God’s new creation family.

            The ongoing involvement in the primacy of reciprocal relationship together is a continuous challenge for Jesus’ followers. If you are as I am, I have to consciously work on not being distracted from this relational involvement. Whether in theology or practice, it is common for Christians to become preoccupied with secondary matters (not necessarily unimportant) at the expense of this primacy. The experiential truth and relational reality we have consistently failed to grasp are that we cannot conflate the secondary in our life with the primary in God’s life and still experience the significance of relationship together. Perhaps this is most evident today in the context of modern worship, notably with the augmented reality used to enhance our worship experience.

            What we need to learn and mature in is following Jesus with this relational imperative: To always integrate the secondary into the primary—not the converse, and also not to equate them—in order for our everyday, ongoing involvement to be in the primacy of reciprocal relationship together on God’s whole relational terms. “Where are you?” and “What are you doing here?” continuously face us with this challenge, so that in our discipleship we will not be faced with “Don’t you know my whole person yet, after all this time as my disciples?”

            The NT provides narratives of various disciples who struggle with this challenge (as noted previously for Peter). They demonstrate how imperative it is for disciples to integrate their secondary involvements into the primary of their reciprocal involvement with Jesus, and thus not to allow their discipleship to be distracted, occupied, defined, shaped, preoccupied and determined by anything less or any substitutes. Since this diversion is a common practice among Christians, it is indispensable for all Christians to integrate the secondary into the primary by ongoingly engaging the process of integrating priorities (PIP).

            In human life and practice, including for most Christians, the surrounding context (namely culture) commonly establishes the priorities of what is important, thus what should receive our primary attention. To the extent that our identity (even as disciples) is shaped and our function (even in discipleship) is determined subtly by these priorities, we have to recognize that we are products of our context and times—and are not engaging in PIP but in a state of transition.

            The early disciples demonstrated an ambiguous, if not shallow, discipleship that focused mainly on what they did in serving with minimal relational involvement with Jesus. This reflected the prevailing focus on the secondary that emerges from reduced ontology and function. While discussing what is primary in life, Jesus disclosed the defining paradigm for serving him: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also” (Jn 12:26). Jesus’ relational imperative has some parallel to Copernicus’ presentation of a new model of the world. That is, embracing Jesus’ new model for discipleship (in contrast to a prevailing rabbinic model) required a paradigm shift: a radical reordering of one’s beliefs, way of living and perceptual-interpretive lens—a shift from the quantitative work to be done (the focus of diakoneo, serving) to the qualitative function and primacy of relationship (the focus of akoloutheo, following), and accordingly a shift from a view and function of the person from outer in to a view and function of the person from inner out.

            In Jesus’ framework for discipleship, his paradigm for serving implies both the primacy of relationship (making the work secondary) and defining the person and determining their discipleship in qualitative terms from inner out. That is to say, to distinguish his followers, Jesus assumes a change to whole ontology and function in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole-ly God (“where I am, there will my servant be,” eimi, verb of existence). Anything less or any substitutes of this whole ontology and function—no matter how well-intentioned and dedicated to serve Jesus—is transitioning in reduced ontology and function based on shaping and constructing discipleship by human terms, which may be the prevailing model even in churches (cf. Rev 2:2-4; 3:1-2); such terms no longer follow Jesus only on his whole relational terms.

            This is a common reduction of discipleship that prevailed in Peter’s life and signified the gap in relationship the early disciples had with Jesus (Jn 14:9). His followers’ primary identity cannot be reduced to serving, which is the prevailing identity practiced or, at least, perceived by Christians and churches today.

            This provides the whole understanding—the interpretation of syniemi for the full picture—for the integral truth and reality essential to compose our theology and practice in everyday life, with this ongoing understanding: (1) We don’t choose to be Jesus’ disciples but disciples emerge from the gospel’s chosen relational outcome, whether we want it to be or not; (2) however, the disciples we are and the discipleship we engage are contingent on our choice of the gospel we claim and its outcome we embrace, whether we are aware of it or not. These direct, unalterable and thus unavoidable connections define the truth and determine the reality of our persons and relationships. In the competing influence of our surrounding context today, we are faced with if not shaped by post-truth and alternative facts, as well as alternative, augmented and virtual realities. The extent of this influence on our truth and reality will depend on the gospel we use.

            Since the incarnation there have been various forms and shapes that discipleship has assumed. In “Follow me,” however, following is nonnegotiable to our terms and his person is irreducible in ontology and function. On this integral relational basis, Jesus’ relational imperative for discipleship to be involved ongoingly with his whole person becomes intrusive, penetrating, provoking for our person—and perhaps no longer good news commonly associated with the gospel—because it requires the unmistakable relational connection face to face to distinguish discipleship as the relational outcome of the whole gospel and thus integral to salvation.

            The light of Jesus and his gospel becomes hazy (even obscured) when it is refracted by a biased lens that is unable to focus on Jesus’ whole person. The reality of relative darkness remains for Christians when they exist in a theological fog emerging from an incomplete Christology of merely parts of Jesus; this then locates them in an obscure outcome and ambiguous practice from a truncated soteriology (saved only from partial sin). In other words, the gospel encompasses not remaining in the relative darkness of our diverse condition of fragmentary theology and practice and its underlying condition of reduced ontology and function. These are critically urgent conditions that have not undergone the relational progression with Jesus as long as they undertake following a different relational path from the essential relational progression of his whole person.

 

 

The Relational Progression of Jesus’ Disciples

 

            It almost seems elementary to talk about believing Jesus at this stage of discipleship. In terms of Jesus’ relational progression, however, this is the compelling challenge of the writer of Hebrews in his discipleship manifesto: “Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and progress to maturity, not remaining focused on the foundation of our faith” (Heb 6:1, NIV). In this manifesto the writer pays close attention to God’s communication in the Son (Heb 1:1-3) and our urgent need to follow Jesus’ whole person—the person enacting the whole gospel in his essential relational progression in order to compose the relational significance of what he saved us whole-ly from and to (2:11-12; 8:13; 10:1-10). In God’s whole relational terms, Jesus’ relational progression presents the whole who, what and how of God that is essential to account for the experiential truth and relational reality of the presence of God’s whole-ly face—without whom there is no valid basis to claim relationship together face to face, presumably the gospel of our faith.

            In our theology and practice we have to distinguish between what Jesus presented as the main Object of the Rule of Faith (composing our faith as religion), and who Jesus presented as the primary Subject of the Relationship of Faith (composing our faith only as relationship). At the heart of the issues of the person presented is the integral reality of presence:

 

That is, the person present beyond the fragmentary referential terms of the embodied Object—who can only be observed within the limits of those terms—to have the presence of Subject in whole relational terms, who is vulnerably involved to be experienced within the context of relationship, and therefore who is inseparable from the distinguished Face engaged in relationship Face to face (cf. paneh, presence, face, Ex 33:14).

 

 How the person Jesus presented is defined and how Jesus’ person’s presence is defined both directly involve a relational process that has issues needing to be clarified, which emerges with responses in relational terms to these interrelated questions:
 

  1. Is there the significance of presence in the person presented?

  2. Is there the integrity and quality of presence in the person communicating?

  3. Is there the depth of presence in the person relationally involved? 

 

            The integral reality of presence does not emerge from the Object, who is neither vulnerably present nor relationally involved but embodied simply to be observed and be the object of any faith and theological or biblical study. In pivotal contrast, it is the Subject’s vulnerable closeness and relational involvement that ongoingly defines this integral reality; and the experiential reality (neither virtual nor augmented) of his presence only has significance in relationship face to face, which then necessitates reciprocity compatible with his presence—as opposed to mere belief in the Object. This may require reworking our theological anthropology of defining the person from outer in to inner out and of restoring the primacy of relationship. Moreover, the Subject-person’s face-to-face presence opens to others an integral reality beyond what may appear probable, seem logical or exceed the limits of convention. This is problematic for narrowed-down thinking in a conventional mindset (e.g. from tradition, a quest for certainty, or even just habit). Consequently the depth of his presence is often reacted to by attempts to reduce it to the probable, the logical, and to renegotiate it to familiar (and more comfortable) referential terms,[4] or reacted to simply by avoiding his presence—all of which refocuses the primary attention to secondary things about his person at the loss of his real presence. All such reaction redacts his gospel.

            Thus, openness to his presence requires a compatible perceptual-interpretive framework and lens that are conjointly qualitative and relational, which are not the common practice found among Christians. Turning to the primary qualitative-relational focus on Jesus’ presence necessitates ongoing engagement in the process of integrating the secondary into the primary (PIP).

            On this basis then, ‘presence’ is least observed by those at a relational distance from the person observed, and is most experienced by those relationally involved with the person presented. The limited, constrained or absent experience of presence is evidence of the human relational condition, our relational condition. This is the reality that Jesus made definitive in Luke 10:21, which we need to take seriously for the epistemic process if we truly want to know and understand God.

            Christians have commonly depicted Jesus’ face in diverse ways, notably with the bias of their dominant surrounding context (social, cultural, economic or religious, not to mention political). For example, there are idealized portraits of a white, well-groomed man (as by Warner Sallman in 1940), or different snapshots of Jesus’ face in various situations—the most prominent, of course, is his profile on the cross. None of these faces, or their sum, provide the full profile of Jesus’ face. In fact, the alternative facts composing the profile of these faces distort the reality of Jesus’ face with the alternative reality of something less or some substitute. After Philip responded to Jesus’ call to “Follow me,” he told Nathanael that they found the Messiah, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Based on that profile of Jesus’ face, Nathanael rightfully questioned the significance of this portrait of Jesus’ face: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:45-46).

            Until Christians see the full profile of Jesus’ face, we all need to question the significance of Jesus’ portrayal in our theology and practice. If we do not have in our embrace Jesus’ whole face, how do we have face-to-face relationship together? Without the full profile of Jesus’ face, with whom can we claim to have relationship of any significance? Without Jesus’ whole face, we are relationally not connected with the essential person of Jesus. And if we are relationally disconnected from his whole person—even though our theology could be doctrinally sound—how can we profess to follow Jesus and on what basis is our discipleship formed? All of Jesus’ disciples need to answer these questions. Our discipleship is challenged to follow nothing less and no substitutes but the relational progression essential to the full profile of Jesus’ whole-ly face.

            Implied in the compelling challenge from the Hebrews manifesto is the call to follow Jesus’ whole person beyond what in effect has become convenient in our faith (Heb 10:19-25). The comfort, certainty or security of convenience in theology and practice has been influential in misdirecting us to not be on the same intrusive relational path of Jesus’ relational progression. Further, this misguided focus has been an instrumental distractor to maturing as the whole persons who constitute Jesus’ disciples. Deeper still, it has been a common barrier to intimate involvement in reciprocal relationship together face to face, both with the whole-ly Trinity and with each other as God’s new family.

            Christians have been slow to recognize that the existing reality (whether real, alternative or virtual) of comfort, certainty or security from convenience in theology and practice has been consequential in both defining and determining ways:
 

  1. Convenience in theology and practice is formulated with diverse     alternatives, all of which become defining as fragmentary substitutes for whole theology and practice—most notably as a reduced theological anthropology and a weak view of sin.
     

  2. Therefore, what these fragmentary substitutes determine are persons and their relationships in subtly reduced ontology and function, unable to be whole and live whole together among themselves, much less make whole in the human context—thus always transitioning contrary to the relational progression.

These consequences are contrary to the distinguishing faith of relationship (not the faith of religion) as distinguished in Hebrews 11, and they counter the relational progression of God’s purpose and outcome unfolding from the whole gospel: “God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would we all be made completethe new relationship together in wholeness” (Heb 11:40, NIV).

            The relational purpose and outcome of the relational progression—which is essential in order to complete the Trinity’s relational response of love to us in our human relational condition—is face-to-face relationship together in wholeness as God’s new family. The ‘grace alone’ (sola gratia) of salvation cannot be taken out of this relational context and process, or it reduces God’s grace to a virtual commodity that God dispenses for our consumption. In God’s relational response distinguishing grace solely, there is no other purpose nor outcome for the Trinity’s relational progression, who transforms us to be whole in likeness of this essential relational progression. The relational purpose and outcome of the Trinity’s progression further required the intrusive relational path of Jesus to penetrate deeper into our human condition; and this penetrating intrusion was neither convenient to receive nor comfortable to respond to in relationship together face to face. This depth of the gospel is seldom proclaimed, which should make us question the profile of Jesus portrayed in the so-called Good News (or perhaps fake news?).

            We need to account fully for what unfolds in the relational progression to distinguish his followers and what counters it. It is always more convenient and comfortable to keep relational distance from Jesus in relational progression, and thereby, in effect, remain in front of the temple curtain without having to intimately connect face to face with the whole-ly Trinity. Therefore, those who truly “Follow me in my whole person” have to undertake the relational progression to be on the same relational path together “where I am.”

            For Jesus’ disciples to experience following him “where I am,” they have to be involved directly in the full relational progression the embodied Word enacted vulnerably, as outlined below.

 

Strategic Shift: 

            The essential relational progression emerged with the strategic shift of the Trinity’s response in the whole-ly person presented vulnerably by Jesus to the Samaritan woman. This marginalized person received him as she also vulnerably responded in the tension of face to face (Jn 4:4-26). The relational terms that only the complex Subject of Jesus’ whole person made definitive in this interaction (4:23-24) are neither optional nor idealized terms, and certainly cannot be understood as mere referential terms. Jesus’ relationship-specific terms embody the whole-ly God’s integral relational response of grace in the gospel and constitute the only terms by what and how God does relationships for the gospel’s reciprocal relational outcome. Understanding the qualitative significance and relational significance of the gospel, however, does not stop with the strategic relational shift. Further shifts unfold in the relational dynamic of the gospel distinguished by the relationship-specific progression to deepen our understanding and to fulfill our experiential reality for its whole relational outcome—as Jesus made definitive in his family prayer (Jn 17:20-23,26).

            And in a further shift by the irreducible Subject of the Word, this gospel will be characterized as more of the improbable and intrusive, thus neither a common nor popular gospel. For all who follow Jesus, this progression is essential to define their persons and to determine their discipleship.

 

Tactical Shift:

            From the moment the Subject of the Word established the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of whole-ly God—“I am he, the person who is communicating face to face to you” (Jn 4:26)—the full profile of God’s face was distinguished unmistakably for only new relationship together, never to be merely observed. What people needed, however, was often not what people wanted (as in Jn 6:60,66, cf. Mk 10:17,21-22); and the desire and pursuit of the latter continues even today to shape theology and practice, notably prevailing in a selective process of consumption (as in the commodity of grace). This was the human condition in Judaism that confronted Jesus to his face, and that the face of God embodied whole-ly in Jesus confronted in all our human condition.

            As the whole ontology and function of Subject-God’s relational work of grace (not as referential Object) made a strategic shift with the incarnation, Subject Jesus’ relational work of grace makes a tactical shift for deeper engagement in the relational progression. With this shift, only the whole ontology and function of Jesus makes evident the gospel further in the improbable, and deeply distinguishes his intrusive penetration into the human relational condition.

            Jesus emerged in the midst of a religious context pervasive with messianic and covenant expectations, with the surrounding context prevailing in cultural, economic and political stratification. He also encountered the interacting effects of these contextual pressures in his public ministry, yet these effects neither defined nor determined what emerges in the tactical shift of the gospel. The presence of these and other contextual influences, pressures and related problems, however, have importance in the life of Jesus, and accordingly for his followers, and are valuable in our understanding of the gospel, for the following purpose: (1) They help define the pervasive common function from which Jesus’ function was distinguished; and (2) they help identify the prevailing common function from which persons needed to be redeemed—both of which are indispensable for the identity of his disciples. This purpose is realized with the tactical shift. The relational dynamic enacted by Jesus in the tactical shift conjointly distinguished his relational involvement in progression with persons, and distinguished those persons in their reciprocal relational response in relational-specific progression with his.

            Intrusively as complex Subject and vulnerably as whole person, Jesus’ tactical shift enacts the relationship-specific dynamic in this relational progression for marginalized persons like Levi to go from a disciple (and servant) of Jesus to his intimate friend (Jn 15:15), and then to be whole together as family (Jn 14:23; 17:21). As persons, our discipleship must by this nature account for this intimate relationship together; and collectively, our ecclesiology must by this tactical shift account in our church practice for this new relationship together as family—not just friends but sisters and brothers in the primacy of God’s whole-ly family. Anything less and any substitutes in our discipleship and ecclesiology deny the relational outcome of the intrusive Subject’s tactical shift and disconnect us from the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of the whole-ly Trinity’s strategic shift. Thus, the question of what kind of news (good, bad, fake) composes our gospel keeps emerging, which the whole-ly Subject (Jesus, Father and Spirit) holds us accountable to answer.

            Past or present, the existing relational condition also deepens and broadens our understanding of sinners and the function of sin. In the trinitarian relational context and process vulnerably enacted by Jesus, sin is the functional opposite of being whole and sinners are in the ontological-relational condition “to be apart” from God’s whole (the “not good” of Gen 2:18). When sin is understood beyond just moral and ethical failure displeasing to God, sin becomes the functional reduction of the whole of God, thus in conflict with God as well as with that which is and those who are whole. Sin as reductionism is pervasive; and such sinners, intentionally or unintentionally, reflect, promote or reinforce this counter-relational work, even in the practice of and service to church. This is the salvation people needed and yet didn’t often want, because to be saved from sin as reductionism includes by its nature to be made whole and thus to be accountable to live whole—an uncommon life in contrast and conflict with the convenience of the prevailing common, which unfolds only on a narrow path.

            What we are saved to and what relationship is necessary together with the whole-ly Trinity to make us whole directly involve Jesus’ tactical shift for further and deeper involvement in the relational progression of God’s family. It is this relational function of family that the full profile of Jesus’ face made unmistakable, irreducible and nonnegotiable by the trinitarian relational process of family love. This points to the functional shift of Jesus’ relational work of grace to constitute his followers whole-ly in the consummation of this relational progression distinguishing the gospel—the irreducible Subject composing in relational terms nothing less than its relational outcome transforming to wholeness. This shift and its outcome make it more inconvenient in our theology and more uncomfortable for our practice to “Follow me” in the relational progression essential to who we are and whose we are.

 

Functional Shift:

            In the relational progression essential both to Jesus and his followers, the functional shift is inseparable from his strategic and tactical shifts. They are integral to the relational purpose and outcome of the gospel, yet the functional shift of the Trinity’s relational response is often either commonly minimalized or simply overlooked.

            The strategic and tactical shifts illuminated the face of only Subject-God, clearly distinguished from an Object. These shifts make evident the ontology of the Subject—the whole of who, what and how God is—which is inseparable from the Subject’s function. As accessed in these shifts, the Subject’s ontology and function are most notably distinguished in relationships, both within the whole-ly Trinity and with others. To emphasize again, the Trinity is not distinguished by each person’s title or role, which would create distinctions causing stratification and relational distance between them. Rather the whole-ly God is always distinguished by the ontology and function of the trinitarian persons inseparably being relationally involved in intimate relationship together as One, the Trinity as family (Jn 10:30; 17:21-23). Subject-God’s vulnerable self-disclosure constitutes the ontology and function in likeness that distinguishes his followers as whole, and his followers in whole relationship together as family (his church). This relational outcome will fulfill Subject Jesus’ prayer above as his functional shift becomes an ontological and functional reality.

            In God’s strategic and tactical shifts, the whole of God’s thematic relational action integrally converges within Jesus’ relational work of grace in the trinitarian relational context of family and by the trinitarian relational process of family love. This coherence of relational action is completely fulfilled by Jesus’ whole person with his vulnerable relational involvement in distinguished love—the love that is further distinguished by this process of family love, of which, for example, Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-10) and Levi (Mk 2:13-17) were initial recipients. With the qualitative significance and relational function of family love, Jesus (only as Subject) enacted in whole relational terms the gospel’s functional shift—the function necessary for the innermost involvement in the relational progression in order to bring it (and his followers) to relational consummation (not yet to full conclusion). What is this family love specific to the trinitarian relational process?

            During their last table fellowship, Jesus intimately shared with his disciples-friends “I will not leave you orphaned” (Jn 14:18). While Jesus’ physical presence was soon to conclude, his intimate relational involvement with them would continue—namely as the palpable Word and through his relational replacement, the Spirit (14:16-17). This ongoing intimate relational involvement is clearly the dynamic function of the trinitarian relational process of family love, which directly involves all the trinitarian persons yet beyond the sum of their persons (Jn 14:16-18,23,27). However, the full qualitative significance (in relational terms not referential) of this dynamic of family love is not understood until we have whole understanding (synesis) of the relational significance of Jesus’ use of the term “orphan” and his related concern.

            In their ancient social context orphans were powerless and had little or no recourse to provide for themselves, which was the reason God made specific provisions for them in the OT (Dt 14:29, Isa 1:17,23, cf. Jas 1:27). This might suggest that Jesus was simply assuring his disciples that they would be taken care of. This would address the contextual-situational condition of orphans but not likely the most important and primary issue: their fragmented relational condition separated from the whole of relationship together. It is critical to understand that Jesus’ sole concern here is for the relational condition of all his followers, a concern that Jesus ongoingly pursued during the incarnation (e.g. Lk 10:41-42; Jn 14:9; 19:26-27), after the resurrection (e.g. Lk 24:25; Jn 21:15-22), and in post-ascension as the palpable Word (e.g. Rev 2:4; 3:20). Moreover, to understand the qualitative and relational significance of the gospel is to have whole understanding of the gospel’s relational dynamic unfolding the depth of the Trinity’s relational response to the breadth of the relational condition of all humanity.

            Orphans essentially lived relationally apart; that is, they were distant or separated from the relationships necessary to belong to the whole of family—further preventing them from being whole rather than living fragmented. Even orphans absorbed into their extended kinship network were not assured of the relational function of belonging in its qualitative relational significance, assuming it had such significance. The relational condition “to be apart” from God’s whole and to not experience the relational function of belonging to the whole-ly God’s family would be intrinsic to orphans. This prominent relational condition—the subtlety of which is also innermost to the human condition—defines the relational significance of Jesus’ concern for his disciples not to be relational orphans but to relationally belong. And the primary solution for what addresses an orphan’s relational condition is the process of adoption. Without adoption, distinguished in the primacy of whole relationship together as family, this relational condition remains unresolved and irremediable to all other alternatives (including church membership). Therefore, Jesus’ relationship-specific work of grace by the trinitarian relational process of family love enacted the process of adoption, together with the Spirit, to consummate the whole-ly God’s thematic relational response to the human relational condition (Jn 1:12-13, cf. Mt 12:48-50; Mk 10:29-30). Paul later provided the theological and functional clarity for the triune God’s relational process of family love and its relational outcome of adoption into God’s family (Eph 1:4-5, 13-14; 5:1; Rom 8:15-16, Gal 4:4-7).

            The reality of adoption may appear more virtual than real experience, and that would depend on whether adoption is constituted by the experiential truth of the Trinity. In referential terms, adoption either becomes doctrinal information about a salvific transaction God made, which we can have more or less certainty about. Or adoption could be merely a metaphor that may have spiritual value but no relational significance. Both views continue to lack understanding of the qualitative and relational significance of the gospel enacted by Jesus’ whole ontology and function, and further misre-present the gospel’s relational outcome in the innermost of persons and their belonging in relationship together.

            The qualitative relational outcome from Jesus’ intimate involvement of family love constitutes his followers in relationship together with the Trinity as family, so that Jesus’ Father becomes their Father (Jn 14:23) and they become “siblings” (adelphoi, Jn 20:17, cf. Is 63:16; Rom 8:29). If the functional significance of adoption is diminished by or minimalized to referential terms—or simply by reductionism and its counter-relational work—the relational consequence for our life and practice is to function in effect as ‘relational orphans’, even as visibly active members of a church. In the absence of his physical presence, Jesus’ only concern was for his followers to experience the ongoing intimate relational involvement of the whole-ly Trinity for the experiential truth and relational reality of belonging in the primacy of whole relationship together as family (beyond church membership)—which the functional shift of his relational work of grace made permanent by adoption. This irreversible relational action established them conclusively in the relational progression to belong as family together, never to be “let go from the Trinity as orphans” (aphiemi, Jn 14:18) as Jesus promised.

            Functional and relational orphans suffer in the human relational condition “to be apart” from God’s relational whole, consequently they lack belonging in the innermost to be whole. While this is certainly a pandemic relational condition, it can also become an undetected endemic functional condition among his followers and in church practice—obscured even with strong association with Christ and extended identification with the church. Its absence can be subtle and elude awareness, yet the dissatisfaction from its relational distance or disconnect is certainly experienced when the heart is vulnerable. This critical condition requires urgent response from the global church, with particular care directed to areas of expanding church growth today. Its seriousness among participants is an undetected condition when it is masked by the presence of ontological simulations and functional illusions from reductionist substitutes—for example, performing roles, fulfilling service, participation in church activities (most notably in the Eucharist) and membership (including baptism), but without the qualitative function from inner out of the whole person and without the face-to-face relational involvement of belonging together vulnerably in family love. When Christian life and practice is without this integrating qualitative-relational significance, it lacks the qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness of wholeness because it effectively functions in the relational condition of orphans, functional and relational orphans.

            This then suggests the likelihood that many churches today (particularly in the global North) function more like orphanages than family—that is, gatherings of members having organizational cohesion and a secondary identity belonging to an institution but without belonging in the primary relationship together distinguished only in the innermost of family, that is, the Trinity’s family. This exposes the need to be redeemed further from the influence of reductionism in the human relational condition, most commonly signified by the human shaping of relationships together, which the relational function of family love directly and ongoingly addresses for relationship together as family in likeness of the Trinity. And the penetrating depth of the Trinity’s response and involvement converge in the relationship-specific process of adoption.

            Adoption, therefore, is indispensable for making accessible the Trinity and for helping to distinguish the ontology and function of the Trinity, which do not prevail in our diverse theology and practice. Adoption simply is irreplaceable in our theology and practice in order to be compatible with the functional, tactical and strategic shifts of the Trinity’s ontology and function. This compatibility requires being on the same improbable theological trajectory and uncommon intrusive relational path as the Trinity, which then may require corresponding shifts (notably Jn 4:24) in our theology and practice—for example, a shift from a theological anthropology of reduced ontology and function, from an incomplete Christology and truncated soteriology, and essentially from the fragmentary religious traditions and reforms prevailing in our contexts. The experiential truth and relational reality of adoption cannot justify anything less and any substitutes in order for our theology and practice to be whole. While adoption may not be familiar to your background, we all readily understand the experience of belonging and the relational consequences of not belonging. Hence, nothing lacking the relational significance of belonging can replace adoption for constituting our discipleship integrally as a whole person and collectively as church family together.

            In its innermost function, the trinitarian relational process of family love can be described as the following communicative and creative action by the whole-ly Trinity:

 

The Father sent out his Son, followed by the Spirit (as in Jn 1:14; Mk 1:10-12; Jn 17:4), to pursue those who suffer being apart from God’s relational whole, reaching out to them with the relationship-specific involvement of distinguished love (as in Jn 3:16; 17:23,26; Eph 1:6), thereby making provision for their release from any constraints or for payments to redeem them from any enslavement (as in Eph 1:7,14); then in relational progression of this relational connection, taking these persons back home to the Father, not to be mere house guests or to become household servants, or even to be just friends, but to be adopted by the Father and therefore permanently belong in his family as his very own daughters and sons (made definitive for the new creation church family in Eph 1:4-6; 2:13-22).

 

This is the innermost depth of the Trinity’s family love, which vulnerably discloses both the relational significance of God’s relational work of grace and the qualitative significance clearly distinguishing Jesus’ relational involvement from common function, even as may prevail in church and academy. This integral qualitative relational significance discloses the whole and uncommon God, who penetrates with an intrusive relational path that we must account for in our theology and be accountable to in our practice—as inconvenient and uncomfortable as that could be. This God, the whole-ly Trinity, is present and involved in no other terms, and thus can be experienced in no other way.

            By the relational nature of the Trinity, the trinitarian relational process of family love is a function always for relationship, the relationship of God’s family. These are the integrated relationships functionally necessary to be whole in the innermost that constitutes God’s family. That is, distinguished family love is always constituting and maturing God’s family; therefore, family love always pursues the whole person, acts to redeem persons from their outer-in condition and to transform them from inner out, and addresses the involvement necessary in the primacy of relationships to be whole as family together in likeness of the Trinity. In only relational terms, family love functionally acts on and with the importance of the whole person to be vulnerably involved in the primacy of intimate relationships together of those belonging in God’s family.

            When the trinitarian relational process of family love is applied to the church and becomes functional in church practice, any church functioning as an orphanage can be redeemed from counter-relational work to function whole as God’s family together. Then its members will not only occupy a position within God’s family but also be involved from inner out and experience the relational function necessarily involved in belonging in the innermost of God’s family that integrally holds them together—together not merely in unity but whole together as one in the very likeness of the Trinity, just as Jesus prayed for his church family (Jn 17:20-26).

            In this functional shift enacted for the gospel, Jesus’ relational function of family love vulnerably engaged his followers for the innermost involvement in the relational progression to the whole-ly Trinity’s family. This integrally, as well as intrusively, involved the following relational dynamic: the shift of being redefined (and redeemed) from outer in to inner out and being transformed (and reconciled) from reductionism and its counter-relational work, in order to be made whole together in the innermost as family in likeness of the Trinity (as Paul made definitive, 2 Cor 3:18; Col 1:19-20).     Theologically, redemption and reconciliation are inseparable; and the integral function of redemptive reconciliation is the relational outcome of being saved to the whole-ly Trinity’s family with the veil removed to eliminate any relational separation or distance (as Paul clarified, Eph 2:14-22). The irreducible and nonnegotiable nature of this integral relational dynamic of family love must (dei) then by its nature be an experiential truth having qualitative-relational significance for this wholeness to be the relational reality of consummated belonging to the Trinity’s family. Family love also then necessarily involves clarifying what is not a function of God’s family, and correcting misguided ecclesiology and church practices, and even contending with notions that misrepresent God’s family, which includes confronting alternative and virtual realities of the church. The integrity of God’s whole is an ongoing concern of family love, and this relational involvement certainly cannot be enacted without first experiencing its relational reality in face-to-face relational progression with the Trinity.

            Also intruding, however, on Jesus’ relational path specifically for the relational progression of his disciples, is reductionism and its counter-relational workings. The ongoing influence of reductionism is more commonly subtle, which imposes limits and constraints on our persons and relationships that counter the relational progression. Therefore, Jesus made this relational contingency for his true disciples:

 

Integrated with the irreplaceable relational structure in John 15:1-11 for all his disciples, Jesus made nonnegotiable our reciprocal involvement in the primacy to “dwell [meno, abide] in my relational terms for relationship together; and you will know the embodied Truth in face-to-face relationship, and the Truth will set you free from your limits and constraints” (Jn 8:31-32).

 

There is no relational progression to belong in the whole-ly Trinity’s family without redemption, and there is no redemption to be reconciled together as family without relationally receiving and responding face-to-face to Jesus’ family love in his functional shift (Jn 8:35-36). This transformation, however, is the relational outcome only of following Jesus’ whole person behind the temple curtain to have the veil removed for intimate face-to-face relationship together with the whole-ly Trinity and with each other as family in the Trinity’s likeness (2 Cor 3:18; Eph 2:14-18, cf. Heb 10:19-22).

            Jesus certainly understood our human relational condition—specifically our tendency to labor in ontological simulations and functional illusions of God’s family (as in Jn 8:33,35,39,42; 14:9), which he (as the palpable Word) exposed in his post-ascension critique of churches (Rev 2-3). This further raises the penetrating questions: “Where are you?” “What are you doing here?” “Don’t you know me after all this time?” They get to the heart of our condition and the status of its direction.

 

 

Progression as Disciples and Church or Regressing?

 

 

            To be relationally involved face to face with the whole Word (i.e. in relational terms, not referential terms), and thus to relationally know the embodied Truth only in relational terms, are both indispensable for the complete Christology necessary that constitutes the full soteriology of what we are saved to. Therefore, the relational progression does not and cannot stop at just being a disciple, or end with liberation as it did for many of God’s people in the OT. The prevailing influences from the surrounding contexts—most notably present in the human relational condition shaping relationships together, yet existing even in gatherings of God’s people—either prevent further movement in the relational progression or diminish deeper involvement in its primacy of relationship. God’s salvific act of liberation is never an end in itself but an integral part of God’s creative action for new relationship together in wholeness—the distinguished Face’s relational work of siym and shalôm that brings this relational outcome (Num 6:26).

            Our human bias (contextualized and commonized) towards the secondary preoccupies or embeds us away from the primary composed only by relationship together. This subtle bias is evident where church practice overemphasizing deliverance and other liberation theories are found lacking in this primacy, and thus which promote, reinforce or sustain a truncated soteriology. For example, when the people of Israel were frequently seeking deliverance by YHWH, they usually pursued neither it nor God for the purpose of deeper involvement in the primacy of relationship together in wholeness. Then, for what purpose are we delivered or liberated?

            The embodied Truth (of the Way and Life) in the trinitarian relational process of family love is the fulfillment of the whole-ly Trinity’s thematic relational response, nothing less than the strategic shift and no substitutes for the tactical and functional shifts of the Trinity’s relational work of grace. And the full profile of God’s vulnerable presence and relational involvement distinguished within the Truth as Subject are solely for the primacy of this relational outcome. If our gospel is based on ‘the Bible alone’ (sola scriptura) but does not encompass this whole relational outcome, then the good news is selectively composed, not on the basis of the whole Word (cf. Jn 5:39-40). From the beginning, liberation (redemption, peduyim, pedut, pedyom, Ps 111:9) was initially enacted by YHWH for the Israelites in contingency with the Abrahamic covenant’s primacy of relationship together (the relational outcome of shakan, “dwell,” Ex 29:46). To be redeemed was never merely to be set free as an end in itself (cf. Gal 5:13) but freed to be involved in the relational progression together. And all our secondary matters, however important, need to be integrated into the primary purpose and function of this primacy.

            Moreover, redemption is conclusively relationship-specific to the whole-ly Trinity’s family together on just this God’s whole relational terms, which are the trinitarian relational context and process the Truth embodied. Jesus’ relational words must be understood in the whole context of the Trinity’s thematic relational action as well as in their immediate context. By the strategic, tactical and functional shifts of the Trinity’s relational work of grace, the Subject of Jesus’ person fulfilled whole-ly God’s relational response to the human condition, thereby also defining the contextual contingency of the familiar words (Jn 8:32) of his relational contingency. Jesus’ relational language is unequivocal:

 

The embodied Truth is the only relational means available for his followers to be liberated from their enslavements to reductionism (or freed from a counter-relational condition, Jn 8:33-34), for the innermost relationship-specific purpose and outcome, so that they can be adopted as the Father’s own daughters and sons and, therefore, be distinguished as intimately belonging to his family permanently (meno, 8:34-36; cf. shakan above).

 

Yet, and this is a crucial distinction for the church, belonging in family together has significance only in likeness of the Trinity; and the Word and Truth embodied the relational Way and the whole Life of the Trinity in order to intimately disclose in face-to-face relational progression this likeness for family together (Jn 14:6; 17:26), so that there would be no confusion about the nature and identity of the church family (cf. Jn 8:38-39,41,47).

            Therefore, Christians and churches are faced with this provocative reality, which is jolting to our existing condition and its direction: With the Good News of this essential relational progression to wholeness together, there is only one exclusive whole relational outcome that emerges and unfolds from the whole-ly Trinity’s relational response to our human condition. Accordingly, we are accountable to be distinguished integrally in our theology and practice for what we are saved for and to.

            It is an ongoing issue and problematic for Jesus followers when the relational progression of these integral shifts is condensed into our theology, and thereby limits, constrains or prevents its function in our practice. Such condensed theology and lacking functional practice are subtle indicators of reductionism shaping our theology and practice. This was the critical issue for the doctrinally-sound church at Ephesus, whose primary focus on theology in the Rule of Faith rendered their practice without the primacy of relationship—thus “you have abandoned the primacy of the love you had at first” (Rev 2:4). Abandoned (aphiemi, to leave, let go or quit) is the relationship-specific condition of orphans, which directly counters the relational reality of adoption that Jesus constituted in the relational progression (Jn 14:18; Heb 2:11-13).

            The relational reality of the whole-ly Trinity’s family constitutes the maturity that the Hebrews manifesto challenges us to embrace in the relational progression of the Relationship of Faith (as in Heb 11); this progression will require ongoing clarification and correction from the Father in order for his family to fight against reductionism and grow in wholeness together (Heb 12:1-11). Therefore, whenever church practice is not involved in the primacy of relationship together in wholeness (not any kind of relationship) as the Trinity’s family, that church is engaged essentially in the counter-relational workings of reductionism. In the fragmentary condition of the church today—a misguided diversity in the global church on a wide variable relational path from whole-ly Jesus (cf. Ps 106:35)—we are faced inescapably with the church family’s responsibility (as in Paul’s oikonomia, Col 1:25) to account for what the whole-ly Trinity saves us for. Until we account for what we are saved for, we will not progress and mature in what we are saved to. In further reality, life is not static but dynamic, as is relationship. Accordingly, if we are not progressing in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes, then our persons and relationships are regressing in something less or some substitute. This is the hard reality facing us today that we cannot avoid by rendering it virtual—though we certainly can (and have) deny it with alternative facts.

            As emerged and unfolds in the relational progression, the primacy of relationship essential to the Trinity and essential for us is composed only by face-to-face relationship together in the irreducible and nonnegotiable dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes. Face to face is the intrusive relational function that makes our persons uncomfortable at the least. The common response among Christians and churches is to diminish or minimalize such involvement—even if they know what God saves them for. The subtlety of this common response is to maintain relational distance—for example, in virtual or augmented ways that only simulate connection—which then essentially rejects Jesus in relational progression behind the curtain and remains engaged in practice in effect in front of the curtain. The reality of this subtle condition exists in the function of disciples with veiled faces who lack transformation—those followers likely laboring in ontological simulations and functional illusions of God’s family.

            This brings us back to convenience in theology and practice and to the distinguishing significance of Mary (Martha’s sister) for us today. What did Jesus magnify in Mary, which also should continue to be magnified by all Christians in the global church today? In the relational progression of Mary, we see the face of Mary’s whole person unfolding to its full profile. She certainly had culturally sanctioned basis to veil her face and to be measured in her relational involvement according to her tradition and culture. Rather than maintain any relational distance, she seized opportunities to present her whole person in face-to-face relationship together with Jesus. Disregarding the common limits and constraints prevailing among the other disciples, she engaged the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes to be intimately involved without the veil, directly with Jesus’ whole person as family together—even before this theology was composed for practice. In other words, Mary involved her whole person (nothing less) without the veil (no substitutes) in direct face-to-face relationship together with Jesus’ whole-ly person; and she thereby enacted the relational outcome of the whole gospel even before Jesus completed his relational work in the relational progression behind the curtain to demolish the holy partition and remove the veil. Are you impressed yet with Mary as Jesus was?

            The full profile of Mary’s face progressed face to face only because the Good News of whole-ly Jesus penetrated to the heart of her person. Her relational progression, therefore, distinguished the gospel’s whole relational outcome of what the whole-ly Trinity in the relational progression saves us for and to—in contrast and conflict with a gospel of truncated soteriology. The face of her relational progression, unfolding only from the relational outcome of the gospel, is the whole who, what and how of Mary that Jesus magnifies (Mk 14:9) for (1) all who claim the same gospel, and thereafter (2) who follow his whole-ly person face to face in the same dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes. Is there justification, then, for Mary to be magnified today to distinguish whole disciples and their discipleship from the diverse condition of other disciples and their discipleship, just as the other disciples experienced in Mary’s face-to-face presence?

            The other disciples in Mary’s narrative were influenced and shaped by the surrounding context, which biased their theology and practice in the disciples they were and how they followed Jesus. Mary was distinguished from them not because she was exceptional; Jesus expects from all his followers this relational outcome composed by the gospel. Her person and discipleship were distinguished, however, beyond what commonly existed and even prevailed in the surrounding context. That is, Mary embraced the uncommon composed by whole-ly Jesus, thus, unlike the other disciples, she was freed from the bias of the common. The effects of the others’ bias on their theology and practice limited how they saw Jesus’ person and their own persons, which was consequential for the state of their direction. Accordingly, with this skewed and fragmented perception, they constrained how they engaged their relationship together—most notably not giving primacy to face-to-face relationship together and thus not integrating their secondary matters into the only primary (as in PIP) that has significance to whole-ly Jesus (i.e. to the Trinity). Like the two disciples heading to Emmaus in a different direction than Jesus’ relational path (Lk 24 13ff), the other disciples from Mary were on diverse paths that neither involved their whole persons nor connected with Jesus’ whole person in face-to-face relationship together. Consequently, contrary to Mary, the other disciples (and all those in likeness) were not progressing in the primary but subtly regressing in the secondary.

            The difference between progression and regression is immeasurable, and the gap distinguishing progression from regression cannot be quantified by referential terms in our theology and practice. This makes us susceptible to opening the hermeneutic door (“Did God say that?”) to alternative facts and realities—as in diverse interpretations and proof-texting—that are merely substitutes in subtle regression. For example, the subtlety of regression also emerges from a modern bias in discipleship today, which confuses progression with innovation—apparent especially in worship practice that gathers many in eventful celebration with little (if any) relational significance. Innovative alternatives are unique substitutes for the relational progression and have the same relational consequences experienced as if in front of the curtain—all of which counters the new wine Jesus constituted.

            As Jesus intimately told Peter face to face later at his footwashing, therefore, “Unless you are relationally involved with me face to face, you have no share with me in my whole person and thus in relational progression with the whole-ly Trinity” (Jn 13:8). Still a yet-to-be distinguished disciple in his discipleship, Peter was at the pivotal juncture of what relational path he would follow:

 

Will he be involved face to face with Jesus in the primacy of the relational progression, and progress in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes?

Or will he be engaged, occupied, even preoccupied in the secondary of his theology and practice, and thereby regress in the limits and constraints of anything less and any substitutes?

 

The pivotal juncture, in other words, is either progression in or regression from face-to-face relationship together, which is further defined by the essential question: To be whole or not to be?

            This pivotal juncture is critical to the human condition and essential for the defining ontology and determining function of all persons and their relationships. The human condition, our human condition, is the basic relational condition “to be apart” from God’s whole (as constituted in Gen 2:18); and this prevailing relational condition has become increasingly subtle and pervasive in the spectrum of human relationships—including among Christians and in churches. Therefore, all Christians and churches are confronted by the reality that, like Peter, we are all at the pivotal juncture of progression or regression, and what relational path we will follow either to be whole with nothing less and no substitutes, or not to be, with anything less and any substitutes.

            The inescapable reality also facing us at this pivotal juncture is provoking not only for the diverse condition of our theology and practice but for all those with good intentions practicing more of what amount to the secondary:

 

The focus on the secondary always relegates us to regression in anything less and any substitutes of wholeness. In ways not always recognized, understood, or is just ignored, the relational consequence for Christians and churches is “to be apart” from the whole-ly Trinity and from each other as new family together in wholeness. This relational condition “to be apart” in all its subtle diversity, then not surprisingly, reflects, reinforces and sustains the human condition of all persons and relationships, even as the gospel is proclaimed.

 

This reality is obviously difficult to accept in the context of our faith, but the burden of proof rests in our practice of faith to distinguish our persons and relationships beyond the human condition and thus deeper than what is common in our context.

            “Follow me” certainly has been oversimplified in our theology and practice—even with affirming Jesus Christ as the only mediator between God and humanity (as in solus Christus, Christ alone). This oversimplification is reflected, reinforced and sustained in the diverse condition of disciples and discipleship. In his essential relational progression, Jesus integrates all his followers together by declaring “I will not leave you as orphans.” His penetrating call to us today is to gather together all the relational orphans occupying, prevailing and serving in the global church to be adopted into the Trinity’s whole-ly family by relationally belonging to nothing less and no substitutes.[5]

            “Listen! I am standing at the church door, knockingwith the Spirit: (Rev 3:20,22). When our response to Jesus’ call (1) integrates his essential relational progression with the whole-ly Trinity and (2) encompasses our relational progression to the new church family in whole-ly likeness of the Trinity, we then experience the relational outcome of the whole gospel to be transformed as his whole disciples following him in whole theology and practice by the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes. And like Mary, we progress in the uncommon identity of whole-ly disciples.

 

 

Church Identity Transitioned

 

 

            What the church is has been rooted in the Word, and the church grows when who we follow also is rooted in the Word. But church identity keeps evolving in transition when it is not transitioned whole-ly in the theology and practice illuminated and embodied by the whole-ly Word. Transitioning widens the path that Christians can take, which is evident today in the less orthodox theology that more and more evangelicals believe—a trend even about Jesus and the Bible. Obviously, such Christians dilute the church’s identity, assuming they even remain in the church. This urgently amplifies a wake-up call for the self-examination by Christians and churches, so that transitioning among Christians and churches will be transitioned.

            The whole of God’s theological trajectory and relational path in response to our human condition unfold for only one purpose: our redemptive reconciliation to new relationship together in wholeness. This outcome rooted in the Word has been perceived as the kingdom of God, the church ‘already’ and the new Jerusalem ‘not yet’ (Rev 3:12; 21:2). Whether its reality is understood as in the present or to come, its discourse in referential terms has been a source both of diminishing our theology of primary matter and of reducing our practice to having little experiential significance—specifically of God’s relational response to our human condition. It may be difficult to accept but any such good news composed in referential language can only have a referential outcome, which would not be rooted in God’s trajectory and relational path and thus not have the primacy of the relational significance distinguishing the gospel’s only outcome.

            As we concentrate our focus on the gospel’s only relational outcome, our theology and practice will be challenged, may also be threatened, and perhaps will be resistant to going beyond re-formation to transformation. On the one hand, limiting our focus to what we are saved from is both comforting and comfortable. Extending our involvement to be inclusive of what we are saved to, on the other hand, makes us vulnerable from inner out, requires our whole person in whole relationships, and demands our ongoing accountability for nothing less, without substitutes. The Spirit is present and involved for the reciprocal relationship necessary to take us through this relational process together to complete the relational outcome of wholeness.

            Knowing relationally who came remains elusive for the gospel if its experiential truth of whole relationship together is not based on the complete Christology of the whole-ly God. Likewise, understanding what has come remains ambiguous for the gospel if its outcome does not have the same relational basis. For Jesus, the what he saved to focused on the kingdom of God, which was the relational realm of his qualitative focus from outside the universe (cf. Jn 18:36) that encompasses the whole-ly God’s uncommon wholeness. As he delineated his kingdom, he also by necessity clarified misperceptions and corrected misunderstanding of the kingdom (as in Lk 17:20-21)—all vital for his gospel and its outcome. Distinguishing and understanding what has come—that is, distinguishing it from our human shaping—has been problematic and necessitates the whole knowledge and understanding from complete Christology. An incomplete Christology is insufficient to distinguish the relationship of God from human shaping, which is necessary to delineate the kingdom in other than referential or quantitative terms.

          What emerges from salvation and being born again (from above), and is synonymous with eternal life and the eschatological hope, is the kingdom of God (or heaven, used by Matthew to be indirect in reverence for God for Jewish readers). The relational outcome of the kingdom Jesus proclaimed always raised questions and related issues. The primary questions involved in the interpretive issue of the kingdom are inseparable: (1) what is the kingdom that has come? and (2) when does the kingdom emerge? As much as the imminence of the kingdom has been debated, I contend this cannot be adequately answered until the kingdom itself is sufficiently defined and understood. When this is understood, I further emphasize that the question of its imminence becomes secondary—not unimportant, only less significant in the eschatological plan of God’s strategic action.

            The term “kingdom of God” is not found in the OT, yet the reality and expectation of God’s kingship and sovereign rule as vested in Messiah are embedded in the OT. The issue then and now is how the Scriptures are approached, and thereby how God’s kingdom is perceived and responded to.

            When the Pharisees questioned Jesus about the coming of the kingdom of God (as noted in Lk 17), he could have replied as he did in the above communication and with Nicodemus: “You study and teach the Scriptures but do you not understand this?” (cf. Jn 3:10) Yet, the clear implication of such a reply came in response he gave: “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:20-21).

            The focus of Jesus’ response tends to be on “is within you.” Before, however, this can be understood, we need to address the issue Jesus raised about ‘observation’ (parateresis, watching closely), which includes the implication his reply involves. “Careful observation” (NIV) characterized the rigorous practice of Pharisees observing their covenant code of behavior, which, more importantly, reflected the lens of their perceptual-interpretive framework operating in their approach to the Scriptures and their eschatological hope—which also reflected their underlying theological anthropology defining the person from outer in by what they do. Jesus implied (as with those in Jn 5:39) that their careful observations through the lens of their perceptual-interpretive framework only focused on the quantitative aspects of the kingdom—a process somewhat analogous to the Enlightenment’s scientific method.

            Accordingly, the issue Jesus addressed about the kingdom “within you” (en) is less about any measured-temporal sense of the kingdom—that is, “among you collectively,” and thus is present (‘already’, realized eschatology), or “within you,” understood as merely an inward (spiritual) nature pointing to the future (‘not yet’, future eschatology). More significantly, I affirm, Jesus addressed the issue between reductionism of the kingdom to mere quantitative terms as opposed to the qualitative integrity of the whole of the kingdom’s relational significance. This is the major issue of the kingdom in its past, present and future—in Israel’s past, in Jesus’ present, in the whole-ly God’s strategic and tactical actions in relational progression  to the future—which directly involves how the Scriptures are approached, how God’s kingdom is perceived and responded to. When we also adequately address this major issue, we more congruently follow Jesus on his relational path for the outcome of what has come.

            The kingdom of God cannot be reduced to quantitative aspects, though it certainly involves them in secondary ways that can never be made primary to determine God’s kingdom. The kingdom can only be defined in whole by qualitative terms, which vulnerably involves the whole person (signified by the heart), though the whole of the kingdom is contained neither in the individual person only nor spiritually within us. Integrated with this definition, the kingdom can only be determined in function by qualitative relational terms directly involving the relationships together necessary to be whole, the whole-ly God’s uncommon wholeness in likeness of the Trinity.

            This was the qualitative significance that the whole-ly Word embodied to disclose vulnerably the whole-ly God for covenant relationship together in “the kingdom of God has come to you” (Lk 11:20). Luke’s Gospel narrates Jesus’ salvific communications and work with the emphasis of the kingdom of God for all peoples. A Jewish bias, particularly in a reductionist hermeneutic of their Scriptures, would reduce the whole of the kingdom and preclude access by all, or at the very least stratify the access for others. Thus, it is important in Luke’s narrative accounts to interrelate Jesus’ communications about approaching the Scriptures integrally with understanding the relational significance of the kingdom of God that has come (cf. Lk 10:21).

            When Jesus illuminated the kingdom, it unavoidably involved the redemptive change implied in “repent” (Mt 4:17, cf. 3:2)—the process from old to new, the old dying and the new rising, which necessarily involved deconstructing human shaping of God’s kingdom. We need to embrace this change in order for his kingdom to clearly emerge from any of our shaping, and thereby distinguish God’s dwelling in our midst—dwelling vulnerably and intimately. This certainly may require changes in both our theology and practice.

            In Matthew’s portrait of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus came to fulfill God’s covenant promise and the eschatological hope of Israel as God’s people, not as nation-state. Accordingly, Jesus’ kingdom of heaven had continuity from the OT (Mt 3:1-3; 4:12-17, cf. 25:34). Yet, there was also a clear qualitative distinction about this kingdom (Mt 5:3,10,20; 7:21; 12:48-50; 18:3; 19:14). While the kingdom of heaven was an extension of the old covenant and the fulfillment of its covenant promise, there arrived also directly with Immanuel—the vulnerably present and intimately involved “God with us”—a new and deeper covenant relationship together that he composed in the kingdom of heaven. In relational terms, Jesus fulfilled both the quantitative terms of the old covenant and its qualitative relational significance, which Jesus vulnerably embodied for the direct experience of this covenant relationship together in its new and deeper relational process. And Jesus appeared to further associate this relational significance with his church (ekklesia, gathered body, Mt 16:18-19), which involved building (oikodomeo, to build a house, v.18, whose root is oikos) his household family (oikos and kingdom together in Mt 12:25). Building “with me” is in the trinitarian relational context of family and by the trinitarian relational process of family love to “gather with me” (synago, Mt 12:30, the root for synagogue, the counterpart to ekklesia) the family of God, both signifying and constituting “the kingdom of God has come to you” (12:28).

            Therefore, after Jesus disclosed to his disciples “the secrets of the kingdom of heaven” (mysterion, hidden, hard to understand because undivulged, Mt 13:11-51), he made the following definitive for every teacher of the covenant relationship who has been made a functioning disciple (matheteuo, rendered inadequately in NRSV as “trained”) in the kingdom of heaven: As persons belonging to the household family of God, they openly share the qualitative relational significance of the new covenant relationship together as well as the fulfillment of the old (Mt 13:52). This involves the full soteriology of both what Jesus saved from and what he saved to—the conjoint function of his relational work of grace only for new covenant relationship together, and thus for only the transformation to wholeness of persons and relationships.

            Yet, the mysterion of the kingdom can remain hidden even though they were vulnerably disclosed by Jesus and made directly accessible even to “little children.” This happens for two important reasons, which Jesus identified at the beginning of the above communication with his disciples (with the parables of the kingdom directed to the crowds, Mt 13:13). First, Jesus the Messiah and the kingdom of heaven were disclosed only for covenant relationship together, not for the quantitative aspects and functional implications of his kingly rule. The latter become the focus determined by a reductionist perceptual-interpretive lens, which Jesus identified as an ongoing issue in Israel’s history (vv.13-14). Predisposed by reductionism, what they paid attention to and ignored precluded their understanding (syniemi, denotes putting the pieces together into a whole) and prevented them from perceiving deeply (horao, not merely to see but to pay attention to a person to recognize their significance, encounter their true nature and to experience them). Furthermore, their whole person had been reduced (signified by “their heart has grown dull,” v.15) to function without the critical significance of both qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness, thereby biasing what they paid attention to and ignored. This had a direct relational consequence “to be apart” from the whole-ly God, to which God’s strategic relational work of grace in Jesus’ tactical action of love would respond if they opened their heart.

            This points to the second important reason the kingdom remains hidden despite Jesus’ vulnerable disclosure and intimate accessibility. Jesus began this communication saying “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not” (v.11). This was not a selective bias by Jesus showing preferential treatment to some while denying access to others, which he appeared to embed in a system of inequitable distribution (v.12). The significance illuminated here rather was about relationship and its reciprocity, distinguishing the involvement in the relational epistemic process that Jesus made clear (Lk 10:21; cf. Mk 4:24-25). Jesus was pointing to the terms necessary for the nature of the relational process he was defining, and to the relational outcome or consequence of its ongoing experience or lack thereof. “To know” (ginosko, experience) was not mere referential information, for example, of propositional truths to quantify in a belief (or theological) system—which is the typical composition for evangelicals, likely speaking to why dissatisfied evangelicals have left some of those beliefs. In strong contrast, this was experiential Truth that “has been given” (didomi in Gk perfect tense, passive voice), hereby illuminating the experiential reality of Jesus’ relational communication of this kingdom knowledge in relational terms “to you” and stressing his ongoing relational process for his disciples to respond back to and be involved with him in for their experience of the Truth of the relational Way’s new covenant relationship together. This reciprocal relational involvement in his relational process is the nothing-less-and-no-substitute terms necessary for whole knowledge and understanding of the kingdom of heaven—the qualitative relational terms Jesus illuminated, which he affirmed the disciples engaged, however imperfectly, while the others did not (vv.16-17).

            These terms for relationship are the terms for adherence that Jesus defined for his disciples (mathetai). These terms for adherence to Jesus are inherent in being his disciples (matheteuo), not only for teachers of the covenant relationship (in his above definitive statement, 13:52) but for all his followers to have qualitative relational significance in the kingdom of God. Matthew’s Gospel takes matheteuo very seriously, given the evangelist’s emphasis on discipleship.[6] Moreover, Matthew is the only Gospel to record a specific imperative in Jesus’ Great Commission, to “make disciples (matheteusate, imperative of matheteuo) of all nations” (Mt 28:19). This further composes the nature and integrity of reciprocal relationship in his kingdom.

            These are the qualitative relational terms necessary for new covenant relationship together with the whole-ly God and for the experiential reality of God’s kingdom to emerge. Without the function of whole relationship together in Jesus’ relational context and process, there is no experiential truth of the kingdom of God, regardless of whether the kingdom is ‘already’ (present) and/or ‘not yet’ (future).

            When Jesus initiated the Lord’s supper for the ultimate table fellowship, he illuminated that the “cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Lk 22:20). The disciples had not yet understood the significance of the new covenant for relationship together in the kingdom, since immediately after the supper they disputed about which of them was the greatest (Lk 22:24-30, cf. 13:29-30). While Jesus exposed their reductionism and constituted their relationships in the relational whole of his kingdom, the disciples exposed their need to be changed (cf. Mt 18:1-4)—that is, the process of redemptive change in which the old dies so the new rises. Earlier Jesus pointed to the significance of the new with the parable of new wine (Lk 5:33-39). As previously discussed, this tends to be used incorrectly to emphasize new forms and practices, but the new only involves changed persons experiencing new relationship together (the focus in vv.34-35) that distinguished the new wine communion together of God’s kingdom (Lk 13:29-30).

            The process to the new is what Jesus’ salvific work saved us to: the kingdom of God, or its equivalence in John’s Gospel, eternal life. John’s Gospel replaces “kingdom” language with eternal life, possibly in part to avoid any conflicts such language could create with Gentiles, yet more importantly to provide the further and deeper significance of the kingdom in the relational context and process of the whole of Jesus. The kingdom that had come came embodied in Jesus, the whole-ly the Word. As he told Nicodemus, the qualitative relational shape of the whole-ly God’s kingdom was “born from above,” not by human shaping but born new by the Spirit as the new creation in the image of the relational ontology of the whole-ly God, thereby made whole in new relationship together in likeness of the Trinity—just as Jesus asked the Father in his formative family prayer (Jn 17). On this basis, the kingdom of God indeed signifies more than God’s kingly rule; and Jesus embodied that significance and constituted the kingdom in the trinitarian relational context of family by the trinitarian relational process of family love for this new covenant relationship together—functioning beyond the quantitative limits of the old to intimate relationship together in the very likeness of the relational ontology (zoe) of the Trinity.

            Therefore, Jesus’ salvific work and the kingdom must be understood in this further and deeper relational context and process. The whole-ly God and God’s action are only about relationship, relationship together, covenant relationship together in the whole-ly God’s uncommon wholeness, which certainly then is only on God’s qualitative relational terms. And if God’s terms for relationship are interpreted only as kingly rule, this would reduce the qualitative relational significance of Jesus’ relational work of grace in agape involvement to fulfill God’s thematic relational response to the human condition. Historically, such rule has been wrongly imposed on others in the name of God for the sake of God’s kingdom—evident in the West’s theology and practice globally. Relationship, by the nature of the relational ontology of the Trinity, however, cannot be decreed, legislated, otherwise imposed, nor can it be unilateral, all of which are assumed in the primacy of kingly rule. In contrast, God’s kingdom is qualitatively defined irreducibly and relationally determined nonnegotiably by the whole relationship of God, and thereby functions in whole relationship together in likeness of the Trinity. And this relational basis renders our shaping of who came and what has come in our theology and practice to fragmentary terms without significance, therefore without the experiential reality of this whole relational outcome.

            The shape of the kingdom of God as the whole-ly God’s vulnerable and intimate dwelling cannot emerge from reductionism. Reductionism always counters the relationships of the whole, separating or distancing persons in the relationships to be whole—for example, by stratifying relationships in a system of inequality, which Jesus found operating in the temple and throughout the surrounding context. Revisiting the disciples’ dispute about which of them was greatest, Jesus redefined the significance of ruling in relationship together in his kingdom by composing their relationships in unstratified intimate involvement together (Lk 22:24-30)—the relationships equalizing each other from their secondary distinctions. His clarification and correction both pointed them back to the function of “little children” and the need for redemptive change for the new relationship together in God’s kingdom (Mt 18:1-4), and pointed ahead to relationship together with the veil removed (as Paul distinguished, 2 Cor 3:18; Eph 2:14-22). This was the kingdom that Jesus embodied and distinguished for his followers, which was incompatible with reductionism and its counter-relational workings.

            Reductionism reshapes the kingdom of God into ontological simulations, and distorts its shape with functional illusions, most notably evolving in unequal persons in unequal relationships. Consequently, we need to fully understand Jesus’ relational context and process for the whole of his kingdom to expose the presence and influence of reductionism. The only shape constituting the kingdom of God emerges from the whole of Jesus embodying the whole relationship of God for new relationship together in likeness, thereby fulfilling God’s strategic and tactical relational  actions in response to the human relational condition “to be apart” from the whole-ly God’s whole family. Church identity is transitioned by nothing less and no substitutes, which is why the identity of churches keeps transitioning.

 

 

Church Function Transitioned

 

 

            For the church to be transitioned in its identity is contingent on its existential function also being transitioned. This transition can only be constituted specifically in the Trinity’s relational context, by the Trinity’s relational process, with the Trinity’s relational outcome. The integration of these constituting bases converges whole-ly in the Word’s intimately equalizing church family. Therefore, only for this whole-ly relational context, process and outcome did the Son pray to the Father (Jn 17). This is the challenge and the path facing all churches and their persons and relationships gathered in them.

            When the kingdom of God’s dwelling is understood as unfolding in his church, the basis for the church must be defined and determined by complete Christology. That is to say, Jesus’ whole person and his relationships (both within the Trinity and with others) are definitive for the church’s theology and practice, and therefore determinative of its identity and function. Nothing less can be compatible with the vulnerable theological trajectory of God’s relational context, process and outcome responding to our human condition; and no substitutes can be congruent with Jesus’ relational path.

            The prominent human distinction among God’s people, which fragmented them and stratified relations, was between Jew and Gentile, with the former seen as better and the latter less. Paul made unequivocal that “Christ is our uncommon peace” and illuminated its relational significance for the church family composed by his uncommon peace (Eph 2:14-18). Peter, as we discussed, struggled with uncommon peace both in his theology and practice, and he maintained a common peace until he could not deny the experiential truth and avoid the relational reality that “God has made no distinction between them and us” (Acts 15:9). The truth and reality of human distinctions facing us today are that all such distinctions emerge from human construction, the constructs of which we can neither ascribe to God nor have legitimated by God. Paul was instrumental in Peter’s transformation to uncommon peace, just as he needs to be for the church’s transformation today for the redemptive reconciliation of human distinctions pervading the church and shaping its persons and relationships.

            What unfolds from Christ as the church’s uncommon peace is the relational significance of persons redeemed from their distinctions, and relationships together freed from the relational barriers keeping them in relational distance, detachment or separation. However comparative relations may be structured, Paul declares in unmistakable relational terms: “Christ has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of fragmenting differences” (Eph 2:14, NIV). The relational significance of this uncommon peace is not for the future but for its existential relational reality to unfold now in the church. This is the pivotal breakthrough in human relations that will transform the church to the new creation of persons redeemed and relationships reconciled in the new order uncommon for all persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their relations since ‘from the beginning’. “Christ’s relational purpose was to create in his wholeness one new humanity out of their fragmentation, thus making them whole in uncommon peace” (v.15). When this becomes the relational reality for the persons and relationships of the church, they can claim salvation from sin as reductionism and salvation to wholeness together; and just on this relational reality, they can proclaim and whole-ly witness to the experiential truth of this good news for human relations. Any other basis for the gospel claimed and proclaimed is something less of the whole gospel.

            Furthermore, and most important, this pivotal breakthrough in relationships also includes and directly involves relationship with the whole and uncommon God: “In their wholeness together to reconcile all of them having distinctions to God through the salvific work of the cross, by which he redeemed them from their fragmenting differences” (2:16). It is indispensable for us to understand what Paul unfolds for the church here is that reconciliation is inseparable from redemption, so that the church is transitioned by redemptive reconciliation. Redemption is integral for reconciliation in order for relationships (including with God) to come together at the heart of persons in their ontology and function from inner out, which then requires those persons to be redeemed from outer-in distinctions that prevent this relational connection. We cannot maintain distinctions among us and have this breakthrough in relationships for their reconciliation. All discussion about reconciliation must include this reality or there will be no redemptive change in our relationships, only evolving simulations and illusions. In other words, from the Word redemptive reconciliation encompasses the irreplaceable constituting process of redemptive change, in which the old in us dies first so that the new can rise in our person, our relationships and our churches as nothing less than the new creation.       

            Therefore, the relational significance of redemptive reconciliation is for the heart of persons now to be vulnerable to each other (including God) and come together in intimate relationships. Only intimate relationships are the relational outcome constituted and thus distinguished by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace. With God, intimate relationship involves going beyond conventional spirituality and a spiritual relationship to the following:

 

The relational reality of the whole person vulnerably involved ongoingly with “God in boldness and confidence” (Eph 3:12), rooted in the experiential truth of being redeemed from human distinctions, from their fragmentation and the deficit condition of reduced ontology and function, and then reconciled in wholeness together belonging in God’s family—“the intimate dwelling in which the whole-ly God lives by his Spirit” (Eph 2:22, NIV; cf. Jn 14:23).

 

Accordingly and indispensably, to have this relational outcome with God and with each other requires existing relations to be transformed to intimate relationships constituted by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace—the relational context and process integral to the Trinity by which the church is transitioned in likeness.

            The relational significance of intimacy in church relationships should not be idealized, or even spiritualized, because this indeed uncommon relational outcome is at the heart of what Christ saves us to (integrally with what he saves us from). There is no good news unless the church is being transformed to intimate relationships together. This was the only relational purpose for Jesus when he cleaned out his house for all persons, peoples, tribes and nations to have relational access to God (Mk 11:15-17), for which the church is accountable to clean out its own house in order to “gather with me and not scatter.” Completing his only relational purpose for his house, on the cross Jesus also deconstructed his house by tearing away the prominent curtain to open direct relational access face to face with the whole and uncommon God (Heb 10:19-22). This irreversible breakthrough in relationship with God included removing the veil to transform relationships both with God and with each other to intimate relationships together (2 Cor 3:16-18). The church and its persons and relationships are accountable for tearing down any existing curtain that allows them to maintain practice with relational distance as if in front of the curtain torn away by Jesus. Inseparably interrelated, we also are accountable for removing any existing veil over our face in order to be vulnerably involved face to face in the intimate relationships together that Christ saved us to today and not for the future—the relational outcome of redemptive reconciliation.

            Equally important, implied in what Paul already illuminated and now continued to make explicit (Eph 2:19-22), there is one other involvement necessary to complete the relational outcome of transformed relationships together. Common peace allows (even affirms) human distinctions to operate as long as there is no conflict or disharmony in relations—which can only exist as an illusion or simulation. Uncommon peace, however, negates those distinctions, removes their significance and does not accept their fragmenting presence in God’s family. “Consequently, you are no long defined and determined by distinctions like foreigners and aliens but are whole persons as full citizens with God’s people and whole members of God’s family.” The experiential truth of this relational outcome is not referential or just doctrinal, but composed in whole relational terms for the relational reality of transformed relationships together to also involve equalized relationships integrally with intimate relationships—integrally for the church to be transitioned.

            God’s family has become the vulnerable dwelling of the whole and uncommon God (as Jesus also made clear, Jn 14:23), yet this relational outcome has no relational significance as long as the curtain and veil are still present. God is vulnerably present and relationally involved for intimate relationship together. While we cannot be equal with God (perhaps the purpose for some in the practice of deification), we have to be equalized to participate in and partake of God’s life in his family together. That is, we cannot be intimately involved with God from the veiled basis of any of our outer-in distinctions. Those fragmenting distinctions have to be redeemed so that we can be equalized from inner out and thereby reconciled in intimate relationship together; and this equalization is necessary to be transformed in relationships together as God’s whole and uncommon family in relational likeness of the Trinity. The transformed relationships that distinguish the church family must then be both equalized and intimate. Since intimacy is distinguished only by hearts opening to each other and coming together, this relational bond cannot come together or be constituted unless equalized from inner out. This relational context, process and outcome are not only challenging but threatening to churches, whose persons likely rather have the comfort and convenience of measured relational distance.

            Do not be misled or misguided: There can be no complete intimate involvement together in likeness of the Trinity as long as the veil of distinctions exists. Distinctions focus our lens on and engage our practice from outer in, unavoidably in the relational distance and inequity of comparative relations, which is incompatible with intimate relationships and incongruent with equalized relationships. Therefore, the experiential truth and relational reality of the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace involve the church in the integral transformed relationships together of equalized persons in equalized relationships, who are vulnerably involved in intimate relationships face to face, heart to heart as God’s whole and uncommon family. The church keeps transitioning with anything less.

            Indeed, based on the uncommon peace of Christ, nothing less than equalized relationships and no substitutes for intimate relationships compose the new-order church family of Christ, whose wholeness distinguishes the church’s persons and relationships in their primacy of whole ontology and function. What emerges from the church’s uncommon peace is the experiential truth of uncommon equality, which is the good news transforming the fragmentation and inequality of all persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their human relations. The relational reality of this uncommon equality unfolds from the church family as it is ongoingly involved in equalizing all persons, peoples, nations and their relationships—equalizing in whole relational terms composed by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace. Emphatically therefore, church function is unequivocally transitioned when it emerges, unfolds and grows as the intimate equalizing church—which becomes equivocal with anything less and any substitutes.

 

 

Church Witness Transitioned

 

 

            Like all Christians, all churches are always witnessing. Whether in passive witness or active witness, their witness loop keeps working. When the world observes Christian witness in transition, what it observes includes both what Christian individuals and churches give out. There is one aspect of Christian witness, however, that only the church can give out, and this function emerges only from church witness transitioned into the intimate equalizing church family. Only the church as equalizer can distinguish this new order for humanity in the world, which is distinguished just on the narrowest path for church identity and function. This challenges the global church the widest.

            Equality and equalizing may raise questions and concerns that this makes being equal the top priority for the church and the highest purpose for the gospel. My short response is yes and no. No, it doesn’t if we are talking about ‘common equality’, which emerges from common peace and from social justice without righteousness that don’t account for sin as reductionism and an underlying theological anthropology of reduced ontology and function. Yes, it does because we are focused only on uncommon equality, which unmistakably and undeniably emerges from the uncommon peace of Christ and his justice with righteousness—“He will proclaim justice to the marginalized…until he brings justice to victory” (Mt 12:18-20) and thereby “making peace” (Eph 2:141-17)—in order to save us from sin as reductionism and save us to his family composed by transformed relationships together both equalized and intimate, so that persons and relationships are distinguished in their primacy of whole ontology and function and thereby belonging to the new relational order of God’s whole and uncommon family (Eph 2:18-22). Yes, the church in uncommon equality fulfills the relational significance of its identity (who and whose it is), and the equalizing church fulfills the relational purpose of its function (what and how it is)—fulfilling by its uncommon peace of whole ontology and function in likeness of the Trinity (Col 3:9-15). Do you have a better gospel and a greater function for the church?

            Various conversations have taken place in the church and academy about wholeness and being whole. Yet, I am not aware of deeper understanding in theology and practice emerging from this conversation. Paul and his witness to “the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15) give substantive significance to wholeness for the church and holds the church and its persons and relationships accountable to be whole, just as he did with Peter. If we don’t want to hear Jesus weeping over us and saying “If you, even you, only knew today what would bring you peace as wholeness” (Lk 19:42, NIV), then we need to pay full attention to the person Jesus transformed to witness to his uncommon peace and to help unfold his equalizing church in his uncommon equality for his gospel’s relational outcome distinguished integrally by equalized intimate relationships together as the new creation church family. As we pay full attention, Paul takes us further and deeper with the palpable Word—likely “immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20).

            The significance of the uncommon emerges only when it is distinguished clearly from the common—which the Son unmistakably distinguished in his formative prayer for his church family (Jn 17:14-16). What uncommon equality, uncommon relationships and the uncommon church family share together with uncommon peace is the innermost of life centered on the very heart of persons and relationships in whole ontology and function—in likeness of the whole ontology and function of the whole and uncommon God (Eph 4:24; 2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:10). What all persons, peoples, tribes, nations and all their relations have in common is reduced ontology and function. What all anthropologies, whatever their variation, have at their core is this shared ontology and function. Thus the global church needs to keep this central in its theology and practice in order to respond to the heart of such concerns as Goethe’s Faust inquired, “What holds the world together in its innermost?”

            Paul illuminated the good news, “the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15, cf. Isa 52:7), for the innermost of all human life (encompassing the universe) that gets to the very heart of persons and relationships, and that cosmologically “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:16-17). The wholeness of Christ is the definitive key to understanding the dark matter and fragmentation of human life, and the only solution to make whole the very heart of their ontology and function in the innermost of life together in wholeness (Col 1:19-20). What emerges from this gospel of wholeness is the good news of human equality, yet not the common equality composed still with the innermost fragmented and thus still of reduced ontology and function—a critical issue for those working for equality. The equality emerging from the gospel of wholeness is uncommon because (1) it involves the innermost of the fragmented human condition and (2) it restores that innermost condition at the heart of all persons and relationships to their new shared primacy in whole ontology and function. Anything less cannot be equalized from inner out but only simulated from outer in, which various Christians commonly have illusions about—perhaps thinking that anything is better than no change at all.

The relational reality of what emerges from the experiential truth of the whole gospel is rightly just the uncommon equality composed by the uncommon peace of Christ in nothing less than wholeness of ontology and function. Anything less than wholeness is no longer whole at its heart but reduced, or remains reduced, in ontology and function, in which any degree of reduction is still not whole. And what is contrary to and in conflict with this wholeness of uncommon equality are human distinctions. Directly addressing this defining issue is the basis, reason and purpose for Paul making definitive without equivocation the following in his conjoint fight for the whole gospel and against its reduction:

 

“For in the uncommon peace of Christ Jesus you are all in your innermost together the family of God…transformed from inner out at the heart of your ontology and functions to the wholeness of Christ. At the heart of your whole ontology and function, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are whole together in your innermost in the wholeness of Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26-28)—whole-ly new persons and relationships together “being re-newed and made whole [anakainoo] on the basis of experiential knowledge specifically [epignosis] in likeness of the whole ontology and function of its Creator. In that new and whole condition there is no longer Greek or Jew, and any other human distinction, but the wholeness of Christ determines all persons and relationships together in all whole ontology and function” (Col 3:10-11, cf. Eph 1:23).

 

            Human distinctions are a fact of human life, the prevailing reality of which has fragmented persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their relations from the very beginning. The reality of this fact, however, is that this fragmenting fact has emerged only because of the human construction of distinctions shaping the course of human history. Human distinctions are not a formative fact of the shared ontology and function in all humanity—that is, basic to that shared ontology and function that was already fragmented. Human distinctions have evolved from this common human ontology and function, and the global church must account for this evolution in its theology and practice.

            I like to ask Christians what color they think they will be in heaven. Assuming our resurrected bodies will be the same as our earthly bodies, except they will be whole like Jesus, my opinion is we will have our earthly color as given or allowed by God (evolution notwithstanding). That means also that we will certainly not all be white because there is no valid basis to think that white is whole like Jesus. OK, assuming our color, then my next question is what race or ethnicity do you think you will be in heaven? If you also said what you currently are now, that would be incorrect. Existing race, ethnicity, and other such distinctions are human constructs, which, as discussed, have been ascribed a distinct value (including for gender) measured by a comparative scale—that should not be confused with God’s measuring line and plumb line (Isa 28:17). God neither makes such distinctions nor allows us to use them to define and determine our ontology and function, as Peter and the early church learned and had to undergo redemptive change. Therefore, no such distinctions or their value attached to color and gender will exist in heaven, nor are they compatible for God’s earthly family (cf. 2 Cor 10:12) to be distinguished in the church’s function and witness as the new creation. Accordingly, irreducibly and nonnegotiably, the church and its persons and relationship cannot continue to reinforce, sustain and work to continue to maintain distinctions—even with good intentions for affirming diversity and supporting differences—and expect to compose God’s whole and uncommon family on the basis of reduced ontology and function.

            Yet, we have to understand the often subtle reality that human distinctions are substitutes for the innermost of humanity, substitutes which fragment human life at the heart of persons and relationships in their ontology and function. This inequity is the default condition and mode for all humanity. These substitutes also serve as subtle simulations and illusions of ontology and function assumed to be in their primary condition, when in fact and essential reality they only compose in secondary terms the reduced ontology and function for persons and relationships. Race-ethnic relations, for example, cannot be expected to be resolved beyond a simulation or illusion from common peace, as long as those distinctions are maintained to prevent getting to the heart of the problem. The most that emerges amounts to a virtual reality, which doesn’t unfold in existential reality—a struggle still existing in U.S. race relations since the Civil Rights Movement. The consequences of human distinctions, as discussed above, emerge along the spectrum of the human condition in its common ontology and function, with inequality the defining consequence for all persons in relationships ‘to be apart’—whether individual, collective, institutional, structural or systemic. Inequality in race-ethnic relations exists because of these distinctions, thus equality cannot be achieved with these distinctions. The solution is not to be colorblind but to address what such distinctions signify, define and determine for human life. For the church, this involves redemptive change so that this old dies in order for the new to rise.

            What underlies all human distinctions and their consequences of inequality at all levels, which they all have in common in the innermost, is the inescapable fragmentary condition of reduced ontology and function. There is no substitute, simulation or illusion that can alter this condition and therefore resolve the existing inequality of persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their relationships. At the center of all this fragmentation of persons and relationships is the defining practice of human distinctions; and at the heart of human distinctions are fragmented persons and relationships in reduced ontology and function needing redemptive reconciliation for transformed relationships together—the relationships composed only by both persons being equalized without distinctions and thus vulnerably involved intimately from the heart of the whole person. We should not be misguided to work for equality while distinctions are still used, which at best can only result in a common equality (1) that lacks wholeness at the heart of persons and relationships, and (2) that functions with a veiled equity lacking existential depth. The distinctions of persons we use will be the equality in their relationships we get in the church—nothing more and maybe even much less. Only the church in relationships together can witness to the whole gospel and its relational outcome, yet that witness must be transitioned. The good news from uncommon peace is that the pivotal breakthrough in the human relations composing the human condition, our human condition, has emerged with the gospel of uncommon equality in order for the heart of all persons and relationships to be transformed (not simply reformed) together in their primacy of nothing less than whole ontology and function. As Paul called forth the new-order church family to proclaim ‘the gospel of uncommon equality from uncommon peace’, the equalizing church must itself be determined by the relational reality of uncommon equality; this specifically involved transformed relationships both equalized and intimate, so that the church family can whole-ly witness to the experiential truth of this whole and uncommon gospel (Eph 6:15). Furthermore, as the context of Paul calling forth the equalizing church indicates (6:10-18), the equalizing church will not be equalizing unless it also fights against any and all reductionism: first, against anything less and any substitutes for ‘the gospel of uncommon equality from uncommon peace’, and next, against the inequality inherent in human distinctions that fragment persons and relationships at the heart of their ontology and function. The latter overlaps with the church’s constituting body parts and spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12), and thus must never be the basis to define the person and determine the relationships in the church or else the church will not be transitioned in its function and witness.

            The integral fight both for the wholeness of the gospel and against all reductionism is not optional for the equalizing church, because the relational outcome of wholeness for its own persons and relationships and for all persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their relations depends on it. The good news is not that we have been saved from ‘sin without reductionism’ and saved to ‘good without wholeness’, and this fake news needs to be exposed in church witness.

            The global church is urgently faced with professing the whole and holy (uncommon) God, claiming the whole gospel and its uncommon relational outcome, and

thereby proclaiming the experiential Truth of God’s presence and involvement and the relational reality of relationship together in wholeness. Or we of the church can profess something less of God to idolize, claim an incomplete gospel, and settle for its common result, whereby we can only proclaim the truth of God and the reality of our life together without the relational significance of their primacy in wholeness. If we profess the latter, there exists an inequality about God shaped by common terms; and therefore there is an existing inequality common to all of our persons and relationships that we have to accept, resign ourselves to, or simply have no significant basis to change. Is this what many segments of the global church are going through today, knowingly or unknowingly?   Yet, the reality is that the global church cannot expect equality when its God exists in inequality.

 

 

The Church Transitioned as Equalizer

 

 

One qualifying note should be added to clarify the intimate equalizer church. As the new-order trinitarian church family, the intimate equalizer church is still the body of Christ. That is, the functional order that Paul outlined for the church to compose its interdependent synergism is still vital (1 Cor 12:12-31), just as synergism is essential to the interpersonal Trinity. The uncommon equality composing the church infrastructure in the intimacy of uncommon wholeness does not mean that all its persons do the same thing and equally have the same resources, nor does everyone engage their practice (including worship) in the same manner. The new-order church is neither a homogeneous unit nor a monotonic composition. Diversity as nonconformity in what persons do and as nonconformity in the resources they have are basic to the body of Christ. The key issue is not differences but distinctions associated with differences (or imposed on them) that limit and constrain persons and fragment the relational order of the church family from wholeness together. Having this nonconforming-nonuniform diversity in the church is important for the church’s interdependent synergism, but each difference is secondary from outer in and must be integrated into the primary of the whole church from inner out, that is, the vulnerably intimate church in uncommon peace/wholeness and uncommon equality (Eph 4:11-13,16, cf. Col 2:19). When differences become the primary focus, even inadvertently, they subtly are seen with distinctions that set into motion the fragmenting comparative process with its relational consequences that persons and relationships with those distinctions have to bear—the consequences Jesus saw in the temple before he reconstituted it.

            The defining line between diversity and distinctions has disappeared in most church theology and practice (including the academy’s) today, such that the consequences are not understood or recognized. In whatever way those consequences emerge in the church (local, regional, global), they all converge in inequality of the church’s relational order—if not explicitly then implicitly. This unequal relational order of distinctions is contrary to and in conflict with the uncommon wholeness of Christ, therefore incongruent with the Trinity. As Paul made definitive Jesus’ salvific work for the church, Jesus enacted the good news in order to compose the uncommon equality of his church family at the heart of its persons and relationships in whole ontology and function, and therefore unequivocally transformed them (1) to be redeemed from human distinctions and their deficit condition and (2) to be reconciled to the new relational order in uncommon transformed relationships together both equalized and intimate in their innermost, and thereby congruent in uncommon likeness with the wholeness of the Trinity.

            Redemptive reconciliation is not optional but essential to the uncommon whole of who, what and how the church and its persons and relationship are to be. This is the gospel of wholeness Jesus enacted to constitute the uncommon trinitarian church family as the intimate equalizer.

The church as equalizer holds us accountable for our distinctions and confronts us in our self-determination because the choices for both imply and are consequential of the following:

 

  1. They are incompatible with the uncommon peace and equality of Christ, who saved us from reduced ontology and function and saved us to wholeness together in the heart of our ontology and function.
     

  2. They are incongruent with the new, uncommon, whole relational order of the transformed church family of Christ.
     

  3. They are contrary to the good news for all the ages of persons, the diversity of all peoples, the differences of all tribes and nations, and all their relationships to experience wholeness in their primacy from inner out.
     

  4. They are in conflict with the redemptive reconciliation needed for the transformed relationships together, both equalized and intimate, composing the relational outcome of this gospel of wholeness and uncommon equality.

 

Therefore, the church as equalizer by necessity confronts us and holds us accountable, because this is the relational outcome of the experiential truth of the uncommon God’s vulnerable trajectory and the relational reality of the whole of God’s relational path to respond to us in whole and uncommon relational terms—which we do not have the freedom to reduce or renegotiate. Thus, Paul is emphatic about our choice for globalizing the church: “pursue [dioko, follow eagerly, endeavor earnestly to acquire] what makes for wholeness and for mutual upbuilding of the transformed global church family” (Rom 14:19).

            The experiential truth of this uncommon equality of persons and relationships in their primacy, and the relational reality of the equalizing church for its persons and relationships in wholeness integrally converge to embody the church as equalizer in likeness of Jesus as the equalizer. Equality distinguishes the innermost of the whole and uncommon God and is at the heart of God’s relational response to our human condition. The church as intimate equalizer distinguishes the innermost of God’s likeness and extends the heart of God’s relational response to the fragmentary condition of all the persons, peoples, tribes and nations in this pluralistic, globalizing world—just as Jesus prayed for his church family.

            As the global church emerges on the relational basis discussed above, by these whole and uncommon relational terms the global church and all its churches, persons and relationships unfold transitioned in wholeness together—nothing less and no substitutes. 

 

            Take heed: The trajectory that composed the experiential Truth of God’s vulnerable presence in the human context and the path that composed the relational reality of God’s relational involvement, and the relational outcome of God’s vulnerable trajectory and relational path, are all at stake here. That is, God’s righteousness, which kissed uncommon peace to integrate justice with righteousness in wholeness for the foundation of his kingdom church family, is at issue here—which also unavoidably includes our righteousness as Christ’s followers and as church that distinguishes the whole who, what and how we are for others to be able to count on in the scope of relationships. Therefore, the integral theology and practice whole-ly embodied and enacted by the Word is not optional for his followers and his church, but it is inescapable for us to be held accountable!

 


 

[1] Barna Group, The State of Discipleship (The Navigators, 2015), 19,24.

[2] For examples of the diversity that evolved in early Christianity, see William Tabbernee, ed., Early Christianity in Contexts: An Exploration across Cultures and Continents (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).

[3] For a discussion of this identity of Jesus, see Chris Keith and Larry W. Hurtado, eds., Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Histo    H          His    HHisistorical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

[4] In life in general, Iain McGilchrist locates this activity in the dominance of the left brain hemisphere. The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 140.

[5] An expanded discussion on the global church is found in my study The Global Church Engaging the Nature of Sin and the Human Condition: Reflecting, Reinforcing, Sustaining or Transforming (Global Church Study, 2016). Online at http://www.4X12.org.

[6] In his study of the term mathetes (disciple), Michael J. Wilkins makes a case for calling Matthew’s Gospel a manual on discipleship in Discipleship in the Ancient World and Matthew’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), 126-172.

 

 

 

© 2022 T. Dave Matsuo

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