A Better Covenant

I think we know these verses very well but I am going to provide them again for easy refererce. This is the ESV (PSV the Piper Standard Version LOL).

Romans 12

 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

1 Corinthians 12:12-13; 21-26

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit………..21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

I wanted to call this post something like “Why a Cat Can Never Be Invited Into A Pack of Dogs and Vice Versa” but I thought is was corny! LOL.

Let me explain where I am trying to go. I am trying to communicate multiple truths in a blog post and this is very difficult. So I won’t be able to tackle every single area. I am a truth-seeker and I always have by theological radar up and my hand on the red button ready to push it at any sign of the enemy. Due to this I lean more towards theological knowledge. As Hutch told me yesterday, there are people wired by the Holy Spirit to be passionated about the word of God. They are passionate about theological truth, biblical faithfulness. These are the individuals that will go to the stake, dripping with gasoline quoting verses! They will not recant and they are more concerned with truth than anything else. They seem to have verses for everything and will rather spend their time reading The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, or Grudem’s Systematic Theology or some other heavy theological treatise. Only coming up for air to pour their unsolicited bucket of theological truth on others. I am this guy.

The problem is we believe others should be just as passionate and when they aren’t we become offended or I would rather say concerned. We don’t know why other Christians aren’t marching hand in hand with us to take the world with biblical truth. We would rather spend our time debating arguing working though complex theological systems and we love to see James White debate about Calvinism. Not to mention we own extensive libraries of theologians that most have never heard of. We know what superlapsarianism is, we use words like propitiation, substitutionary atonement, penal substitution, we understand the difference between Pre-mill, Post-mill, Post and Pre trib, Amill and mid trib. We have the Five Points glued to the inside of our eyelids, we know the latest debate between those of Credo-baptism and Paedo-baptism, we really did read Piper’s work “The Future of Justification” and enjoyed it.  We have all read the Holiness of God, Chosen by God and Knowing God. We can name more than 5 Puritans and their works. The problem is we believe that every “good” Christian should also.

Listen none of this is bad, and some of the greatest theological truth was developed by men and women who live for the stuff above. The problem is when we believe every single Christian should be as passionate as us. Now let me also add, that those who feel feeding the poor, and visiting the sick, and building wells in Africa, and helping those with AIDS, and those who are big on Community or believe we should give all we have to help others, or those who are passionate about the Gifts of Spirit all feel the same way. And guess what!? The blogsphere has only helps us in this.

Let me go on please for a few more short paragraphs if I may. I realized something over the past week. I want an eye to be a foot and I get mad when my eye doesn’t walk or want to play kickball. Also my eye wants my foot to see where it is going. Thus we have a problem! The eye begins to not want to see for the foot and the foot doesn’t want to walk for the eye and now my body is divided! And a body divided is dysfunctional just imagine someone walking on their face or looking with their feet! And the head is effected by it.

The blog outlet may contribute to the great divide of the body of Jesus Christ. You see what the blog helps us do is to congregate feet, hands, eyes, arms, ears, necks and hearts all to themselves! They congregate together and begin to want to become a body in of themselves and can care less about what the rest of the body is doing. This is critical so please track me here. This is why the blog can never be a true reflection of the Body of Christ. I believe it can be a good outlet but the danger is imminent! A blog is a land mine with a hair trigger the slightest shift in wind can destroy everyone in a 10 mile radius and there are many dead bodies to show for it.

Let me give an example. If someone with a leg gift comes here, they will say “he doesn’t care about the poor he just wants to talk about theology”. While I may see someone who is handing out food but they never question Olsteen’s theology or they can care less who Creflo Dollar is and I say there is no way they love Jesus! They only care about being the hands and feet of Jesus and taking care of the needy and I only care about truth. We both need each other for the body to function but because of our passions we write the other off and become divided instead!

The problem is this is limited to the blog world. It happens in churches all the time. We rally around things we are passionate about and because of that we look at others who are more passionate about other things with disdain, not knowing that a strategic God through the person of the Spirit purposely put us in each others lives to keep us balanced and committed to the head, namely Jesus Christ.

So KM, to answer your question, no I don’t think knowledge is the problem. The problem is we believe others should have a strong desire to be knowledgeable like us. We can’t understand why they don’t care about Dispensationalism, Covenant Theology and New Covenant Theology and funny part I have seen great leaders in the Church who have this same passion and are frustrated when their congregants say “I don’t really care about theology”. It isn’t that they don’t care, it is that they have a passion to be compassionate for the marginalized and the believe fighting over theology isn’t worth their time. Not knowing that this is their gift given by God.

I close with this. I apologize again that for many of you who have visited I have written you off because I didn’t believe you were “theologically sound enough”. My passion is theology, I live for it, the more I try to run from it the more it drags me towards itself. I think I know why. I am not a foot or a hand. If I try to be I lose all sense of purpose, just like a literal eye trying to be a literal  foot. But I am sorry for trying to make you an eye. I think I have hampered relationships with people due to my ignorance of this and I apologize for that also. Especially in my home. I have to tell my wife who has the gift of administration or something along those lines that it is okay that she is not passionate about theology, God doesn’t want her to be. That is why He puts us in community folks. Don’t ignore other parts of the body because they have a function that you think isn’t as important as yours. We can never be a cohesive unit if we continue to perpetuate such a mentality.