I started by saying I’ve been struggling with figuring out which of the many good ideas about the nature of Christianity is where the church should be focused. As kind of an experiment, I thought I’d look for a path that would remove most of my own prejudices and the prejudices of current evangelical fashion.
The idea is to look at the baptism, Lord’s Supper, and gospel passages to see what lessons they emphasize, figuring that they were instituted to teach us what’s most important about our Christianity.
Now, I really can’t pretend that this is 100% objective. It’s not. But, to me, it’s been helpful — indeed, helpful enough to draw some interesting conclusions, which we’ll consider in future posts.
There’s so much material that it’s hard to see the patterns through the detail. And so, I’ve taken the conclusions from the previous posts and built a table of sorts tabulating the outcome:
| Baptism | Communion | “Gospel” |
| the journey from slavery to freedom in the Promised Land was a community journey. |
||
| repentance | ||
| not just elemental morality (niceness) but a willingness to share and to be content with what you have, indeed, less than what you have. |
Commit to sacrificial living | Commit to sacrificial living |
| ethics | Covenant relationship with God | ethics |
| Spirit (3) | Spirit | |
| grace | Grace — Jesus is the sacrifice | |
| make disciples | Proclaim Jesus’ death | |
| teach Jesus’ commandments | ||
| become disciples | ||
| devote selves to fellowship | ||
| meet daily | ||
| All things in common | sharing | |
| breaking of bread | Eat together | |
| eliminate ethnic barriers (2) | All nations | |
| Join in Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection | ||
| Dead to sin (2) | ||
| Unity of a congregation (2) | Unity of congregation | |
| Unity of church universal (3) | Unity of church universal | |
| Need each other | ||
| Rejoice and mourn with each other | ||
| Love each other | ||
| Allow God to bless the world through us | ||
| Turn people away from wickedness | ||
| No discrimination | ||
| Inheritance | Until he comes | |
| Unity of church in community | ||
| End of regulations | ||
| Powers disarmed | ||
| Citizenship in heaven, hence like missionaries | ||
| Commit to serve one another | ||
| Remember Jesus’ sacrifice | ||
| Assurance of resurrection | ||
| thanksgiving | ||
| Care for the poor (2) | Ministry to poor | |
| Ministry to those who mourn | ||
| Ministry to prisoners | ||
| Social justice | ||
| worship |
This is interesting and, I think, helpful, but it would work much better if the elements were lumped into useful categories.
There are three levels of entries — bold with underline are the the major captions. Just bold are subsidiary captions. For example, I see the gift of the Spirit as very entwined with the grace of God — but they are not entirely the same. Finally, small, plain type shows the individual entries borrowed from earlier posts.
Now, the classifications are debatable. I mean, the command to take the gospel to all nations is both about evangelism and about unity of ethnic groups. I’ve tried to pick up such elements in both places.
Grace |
| covenant relationship with God |
| grace |
| Grace — Jesus is the sacrifice |
| Join in Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection |
| Remember Jesus’ sacrifice |
| Assurance of resurrection |
| Inheritance |
| End of regulations |
| Until he comes |
| thanksgiving |
Spirit |
| Spirit (4) |
Unity |
| Unity of a congregation (3) |
| Unity of church universal (4) |
| Unity of church in community |
Community |
| the journey from slavery to freedom in the Promised Land was a community journey. |
| devote selves to fellowship |
| meet daily |
| All things in common |
| sharing |
| breaking of bread |
| Eat together |
| Need each other |
| Rejoice and mourn with each other |
| Love each other |
| Commit to serve one another |
Eliminate ethnic barriers |
| eliminate ethnic barriers (2) |
| All nations |
| No discrimination |
| Turn people away from wickedness |
Mission |
| Allow God to bless the world through us |
| Evangelism |
| make disciples |
| Proclaim Jesus’ death |
| Citizenship in heaven, hence like missionaries |
Make disciples |
| make disciples |
| teach Jesus’ commandments |
| become disciples |
Concern for those in need |
| Care for the poor (2) |
| Ministry to poor |
| Ministry to those who mourn |
| Ministry to prisoners |
| Social justice |
Ethics |
| repentance |
| not just elemental morality (niceness) but a willingness to share and to be content with what you have, indeed, less than what you have. |
| Commit to sacrificial living (2) |
| Ethics (2) |
| Dead to sin (2) |
Worship |
| Worship |
Political church |
| Powers disarmed |
Now, this is interesting! Ponder this a bit and we’ll discuss it in a couple of days. And here’s the really interesting question: what didn’t make the list?
