Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say "Amen" to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.
(Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, 14:13-19, ESV)
How is it that we edify one another? We edify one another through the mind by speaking the gospel to one another in a language that is propositional, engaging, and understandable!
Paul
does not diminish one’s personal spiritual
time of prayer, gratitude, and praise of the Lord, whether in communicable
language or not. However, he also notes
that the Church is not edified through such experiences, but is only edified
through the work of understanding, intellect, reasonable thought communicated so that others can hear and
understand.
Thus,
this passage is about speaking, communicating, announcing the particulars of
the message of God’s great reconciliation through Christ Jesus and all its
glorious motifs, so that others hear, understand, and are exhorted to act and
persuaded to hope in Christ, for this is what humanity was created for and in
what they flourish in eternal life. This
type of proclaiming/hearing theme is the common methodology of Church life
together. It is the means of prophecy,
instruction, praise, teaching, and growth in the Scriptures. This was particularly true in cultures where
many people did not read (thus needed to hear the Word proclaimed) or in
languages where the written Scriptures did not yet exist. In fact, the potency of the Word proclaimed,
rooted in the Word written or as the (at that time) yet-to-be Canon, is
evidenced by the commands to proclaim, witness, testify, announce, herald, and
praise. These are all verbal terms dependent upon the speaker, not experiential terms dependent upon the hearer.
Yet,
along with the verbal terms (but never apart from them) we must not diminish God’s
revealed symbols of meaning, words pictured by enactment, dramatized through
festivals, rituals, dramas in blood and odors of fire, waters sprinkled and
beautiful stones set in breastplates of a mediator. In the preaching and hearing of the gospel the imagination is engaged and enlivened, making the contextual artistry of proclamation in the preacher's targeting of the imagination all the more emphatic. All of these biblical images and symbols have meanings
which supersede and fulfill their telling.
The blood of the lamb pre-images the story of the Son of God whose blood
reconciles God and Man. The beautiful
stones set in the High Priest's ephod display the treasure of God whose heart delights in His chosen people,
whom He redeems through the Mediator, Jesus, the same Son whose blood was
spilled. The Passover preaches through
drama narrated by the haggadah and played upon the senses by the elements upon its actors, finalizing its fullness in the bread as the Christ's body broken for His people and the wine as his blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. The smoke of the altar proclaims
the prayers of the saints and the sufficiency of Christ. Every element chosen by God to display and
exhibit the message which the prophets spoke, the priests players in the
preaching. In like manner, the
celebration of the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, graces us with the constant
retelling of the climax of the story, the Cross, through the tactile script of
taste, touch, smell, and sight as our ears hear the message of God reconciling
sinners to Himself at His own precious expense.
Through the Word preached and enacted we understand more and more the
glory of God’s insurmountable grace towards those who believe in Jesus.
This
relationship between understanding of the mind and the hearing of the Word is a
constant in the Scriptures. Romans
10:12-17 clearly reveals that people believe in their hearts what they have
heard with their ears and understood with their minds (v19). It is the word of Christ preached, heard, and
believed upon by those whom are sent to proclaim a message, a collocation of
historical facts of what God has done through Jesus Christ.
Thus,
the work of the Church is not to be manipulative of emotions, as if the
experience of emotional conditions were the goal. There are methodologies which appeal to the
emotional experience of men, which seek to move emotions by worldly means to
attain some kind of experience. I
denounce that as not only unbiblical, but harmful to the Church. It does not edify. In fact, I would argue that it harms the
Church by teaching as the confirmation of God the means, methods, and
manipulations of man. Gaining a
“decision” for God by means of self-centered affections and worldly promises is
not the regeneration of heart and God-delighting humble faith which is revealed
to be of God in the Scriptures. By
manipulating emotions and experience to seize the will of the heart, we have
strayed from the mind of truth, the proclamation of God’s works and worth,
avoided the offensive revelation of God’s Word like original sin, eternal
judgment, the universal inability of man breached by the sovereign grace of
God, and the hope of justification through faith alone, in Christ Jesus alone,
by God’s grace alone. These glorious
truths engage the mind and convict the hearts of men, not by their emotional
consequence but by their claims of truth and submission to God as the final
Truth-revealer.
Now, this does not
mean that the Christian’s walk and experience is to be without emotion, a stoic
display of disconnected, dispassionate headiness. That has more aligned with Buddhism and its
destruction of personality by attempting to loose oneself from all
attachments. No! We are profoundly attached to God, to one another, and to Creation in an ever dependent way. Christianity engages the emotions of these attachments because God has engaged Himself, by sheer grace, to attach Himself to us. God experiences joy, sorrow,
wrath, and delight; affections which are rooted in His very character and
expressed as He relates to others. Our
emotions, however, are not always rooted in what is true, but merely in what we
believe to be true. God’s emotions never
rule Him like ours do us. His are never
because He has believed a lie, as ours often are. Yet, a Christianity where believers are detached from one another, not
patient and kind, a Christianity where believers are characteristically proud and boastful, rude, and keep a record of wrongs is no
Christianity at all.
I
must serve the Law of God with my mind, even as my desires are prone to
unbelief. I must, by the Spirit of God
applying it, hear the Word of God reasonably so that its Truth may correct the
lie which my heart is believing. For
example, if Tom stole my lunch and wrath is flowing up from within me, I am not
feeling merciful. How can I love like 1
Corinthians 13, with kindness, loving mercy, not keeping a record of
wrongs? I must identify why I am angry in terms of what I am
believing to be true. What do I feel
that I have to have right now to be OK?
Maybe I believe that I need lemon yogurt and a bologna sandwich to be
OK? More likely, my heart believes that I must
have respect to be OK. I am angry, not
because I am not receiving bologna, but because I am not receiving respect,
honor, and power. Thus, I am believing
that without Tom’s respect, I will be nobody, a withering worthless nothing. Yet, what does the gospel teach (catechize)
to me? What honor do I have in
Christ? What respect do I possess in
Him? God has “raised us up with him and
seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the
coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness
towards us in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2:6-7)
What must I receive from
Tom? Can I show him mercy when I believe
that my seat is in the heavens with Christ?
What more honor do I need now?
What respect? What position?
So,
you see, the gospel proclaims to our minds the great truths of God’s work, the
historical (both past, present, and future history) facts of God’s “great and
glorious works” so that we might eulogize
(speak good words about) and eucharist
(give good thanks to) Him as we hear and believe such precious truths (v16) and lay
aside the unbelief of them which so easily entangles our feet and trips us up as we attempt to walk in line with the gospel. In this manner, with the gospel holding the
center, we behold the urgent need to create a Christian community that is
profoundly counter-cultural and dependent upon God's grace towards us in Christ Jesus. What does
this love say about inter-generational relationships? About race?
About forgiveness and reconciliation in our personal relationships? About how we think of our brothers and
sisters in our highly diverse corners of our heavenly Father’s world?
This
truth, that God transforms our hearts and affections by the renewing of our
minds through the proclamation of Christ, the eternal Word of God, is the
guiding principle of the philosophy of ministry at EBF. Every endeavor, from the cradles of the
nursery to the caskets of the funerals, is rooted in the ministry of the Word
of God proclaimed and exhibited.
Sometimes it’s one-on-one, the commands, exhortations, encouragements,
promises of the gospel spoken and applied to the personal situations of a life
stretched thin in a world of broken shalom.
Other times it’s the broader applications of the gospel truth to small
groups, whether Bible studies together or home groups. Finally, it is the Word of God preached to
whole Church on Sunday mornings, in the celebrations of Maundy Thursday or
Christmas Eve, etc. In each of these
ways, our goal is to minister the Word of God in a way that is heard,
understood, and believed, so that the Body of Christ is built up into the
knowledge of the eternal Son of God, thus unified in the incorruptible faith,
to the maturity befitting the always and ever sons and daughters of the holy
God.
We
do not believe that one can persuade people to the truth by means of attracting
them with the attempt to meet the world's felt needs according to the world’s values, the Flesh’s desires, or the Enemy’s tactics. D.A. Carson relates a story from an Ivy
League colleague about what drivers most of the young women whom she disciples
every week:
“She mentioned three things. First, from parents, never get less than an A. Of course, this is an Ivy League campus! Still, even on an Ivy League campus, grades are distributed on a bell curve, so this expectation introduces competition among the students. Second, partly from parents, partly from the ambient culture, be yourself, enjoy yourself, live a rich and full life, and include in this some altruism such as helping victims of natural disasters. Third, from peers, from Madison Avenue, from the media, be hot – and this, too, is competitive, and affects dress, relationships, what you look for in the opposite sex, what you want them to look for in you. These demands drum away incessantly. There is no margin, no room for letting up; there is only room for failure. The result is that about 80 percent of women during their undergraduate years will suffer eating disorders; close to the same percentage will at some point be clinically depressed. The world keeps telling them that they can do anything, and soon this is transmuted into the demand that they must do everything, or be a failure in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. Even when they become Christians, it is not long before they feel the pressure to become the best Christians, as measured by the measurable like attendance at Bible studies, leading prayer meetings, faithfully recording their daily devotions. But where is the human flourishing that springs from the gospel of grace, God’s image-bearers happily justified before God on the ground of what Christ has done, powerfully regenerated so that they respond in faith, obedience, joy, and gratitude? The conventions and expectations of the world are pervasive and enslaving. The gospel must be worked out or these women, and demonstrated in the life of the church, so that its issues in liberation from the wretched chains of idolatry too subtle to be named and too intoxicating to escape, apart from the powerful word of the cross.” (Prophetic from the Center)
We believe, with our 1st generation
brothers and sisters, that “the gospel is the power of God for salvation, for
the Jew first and then for the Gentile.” (Rom 1:16). We believe it is the gospel, proclaimed and
applied by the Holy Spirit, which produces fruit in believers, as Paul teaches the Colossian believers in very
similar emphasis as the Corinthians:
“We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing-- as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, 7 just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf…” (to the Colossians 1:3-7)
We must
labor earnestly, not to derive relational values from the gospel, as if the gospel laid a foundation upon which we
must build, and still less by focusing on the vanity of sounding spiritual with
unintelligible groaning or the mystical murkiness of inner experience, but by
precisely and prophetically preaching and teaching and living out in our
churches the glorious good news of our precious Rescuer.