“A too little appreciated benefit of justification by faith alone is that it liberates man to fulfill his calling in the earth without introspective obsession over his eternal destiny.
If you’re forever anxious whether your good works will be sufficient to merit eternal life, whether you can forfeit your salvation, and whether you’ve done enough to win God‘s favor, you’ll have time for little else in life.
But if you stand boldly in the confidence of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, you are set free to fulfill your calling in conquering your area of the world for Jesus Christ.
There are few biblical doctrines as liberating as justification by faith alone, and not just liberating from the penalty of sin.”
Be liberated from introspective paralysis, imposter syndrome, regret, insecurity, and anxiety.
Be completely accepted by God as a free gift, freely received, locked in, bear-hug-secured by even the weakest of faith.
Then charge forward, blast ahead, sprint onward, Hulk-smash your sin and put the petal to the metal for the kingdom of God.
I am not bothered by traveling between digital geographies.
I want the freedom to do so. May there be many to choose from.
Granted, when you step inside the theme park of a Big Tech oligarch, it is not a public domain sidewalk. Nor should you force him to make it one.
No digital territory is neutral. When you set up shop on a platform you are necessarily under their company’s jurisdiction. Their rules. Using their infrastructure. Adding to their bottom-line.
It’s good for digital pilgrims start their own colonies. It is fitting that communities with fundamentally worldviews stake out their own digital property or town squares: social media, video-sharing, microblogging, podcasting platforms, marketplaces, job boards, news outlets, moderation systems, etc.
Much like a union of states, citizens can freely travel between the territories. But they should know the rules of the land they are operating in.
Perhaps in your community I can’t always use natural pronouns. Perhaps in mine you can’t promote puberty-blockers.
A friend asked me: “Why isn’t anyone trying to create a liberal Parler/Gab?”
It can be anything from “I have a strong God-given holy desire to accomplish something to the glory of God” to “I am spiritualizing, baptizing my extraordinary aspirations without regard to prudence or counsel.”
It also seems very … modern to think chiefly in terms of adventurous desire, without speaking much of duty or stewardship or domestic plodding or ordinary, quiet, hard, painful paths of sanctification and investment in the kingdom of God.
Faithfulness sounds boring to the modern ear:
“Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” (1 Timothy 2:15)
You cannot receive the glory of never having received glory.
You cannot become the kind of God that never became a God.
You cannot inherit the status of never having inherited your status.
You cannot be given the right to say, “I was never given any rights.”
Anything you inherit, anything you receive, anything you are given, and anything you become will never be worthy of the kind of worship due to a God that never inherited, never received, never was given, and never became who is.
God is special.
Of man we say, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7)
But of God we say, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” (Romans 11:34-35)
He gives, and we receive.
He bestows, and we inherit.
“It is more blessed to give than it is to receive.”
A parable for who pray, “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like those who do not wear masks.”Designed to grate against metropolitan snobbery.
A low-income family in a rural flyover country trailer park prepares for Thanksgiving.
To them this means BBQ.
They have a giant Trump flag. Their front lawn has disassembled old cars. They avoid vaccines due to conspiracy theories. Almost everything they share on Facebook has an automatic “disputed” attachment and has a corresponding Snopes article. They spend much of their discretionary income on lottery tickets. They drink mass-market beer and smoke. They think the virus is overblown. To them, mask-mandates are a conspiracy to encroach upon basic liberties so that their guns can be taken away.
Joe lives down the road and is a recent widower. He has always been a cranky man and has never been polite. He doesn’t socially contribute in any positive way and is awkward to be around. He scowls at kids who cross his lawn. Since his wife died he has been even more sullen, miserable, and isolated.
So they send one of their kids to invite him over for Thanksgiving. Inviting him over violates a local gathering mandate. The boy who knocks on Bubba’s door isn’t even wearing a mask.
He arrives and they put some cheap beers and BBQ in his hands. He sits in Dad’s nice chair and they watch NFL football. They yell at the TV together and snicker at commercials. They see him sorta-maybe smile for the first time. They send him home with a big bowl of leftovers and give him a very sweaty handshake on his way out.
Because they love him.
The big point: We can’t judge someone’s neighbor-love based on them not sharing mainstream sensibilities about the pandemic.
“Imagine, now, that we are going to be introduced to someone whom we feel to be ‘above’ us…Think of meeting the queen of England or the president of the United States…we would like to get to know this exalted person, but we fully realize that this is a matter for him to decide, not us.
“But if…he starts at once to take us into his confidence, and tells us frankly what is in his mind on matters of common concern, and if he goes on to invite us to join him in particular undertakings he has planned, and asks us to make ourselves permanently available for this kind of collaboration whenever he needs us, then we shall feel enormously privileged, and it will make a world of difference to our general outlook. If life seemed unimportant and dreary hitherto, it will not seem so anymore, now that the great man has enrolled us among his personal assistants. Here is something to write home about – and something to live up to!
“Now this, so far as it goes, is an illustration of what it means to know God. Well might God say through Jeremiah, “Let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me” – for knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s heart.
“What happens is that the almighty Creator, the Lord of hosts, the great God before whom the nations are as a drop in a bucket, comes to you and begins to talk to you through the words and truths of Holy Scripture. Perhaps you have been acquainted with the Bible and Christian truth for many years, and it has meant little to you; but one day you wake up to the fact that God is actually speaking to you – you! – through the biblical message. As you listen to what God is saying, you find yourself brought very low; for God talks to you about your sin, and guilt, and weakness, and blindness, and folly, and compels you to judge yourself hopeless and helpless, and to cry out for forgiveness.
“But this is not all. You come to realize as you listen that God is actually opening his heart to you, making friends with you and enlisting you as a colleague… It is a staggering thing, but it is true – the relationship in which sinful human beings know God is one in which God, so to speak, takes them onto his staff, to be henceforth his fellow workers and personal friends.” (J. I. Packer, Knowing God)
This might mean the exact opposite of how you’ve heard it used:
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:20)
This is not about casual, ad hoc churches that, like vapors, emerge briefly and then disappear. Neither is it about the mere universal church that spans the globe, inclusive of all Christians, expressed in unplanned intersections of believers at a coffee shop.
The context (18:15-20) is more serious. It describes a protocol of increasing escalation of confrontation that eventually arrives, if necessary, at excommunication. Let’s read it:
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
It refers to identifiable, regular, governed gatherings that are organized enough to recognize leadership and implement, in a church-wide coordinated way, church discipline.
The verse is about Jesus putting his divine stamp of approval, as though bodily present, on a properly administered act of church discipline.
Paul uses similar language referring to church discipline:
“For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 5:3-5)
It’s the kind of thing that would be exercised on “anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler.” (1 Corinthians 5:11)
Or someone who, though having called themselves a brother, has (via persistent bad behavior or undue absence) separated themselves from the local church they were once committed to.
So if you’re inclined to think that the passage means you don’t need a well-regulated church, submission to elders, church discipline (e.g. excommunication), or a regular, identifiable gathering, or some semblance of church membership (at least defined as identifiable, mutually affirmed recognition of Christian faith and belonging), then you’re taking the text in the exact opposite direction.
Churches are outpost-embassies of a kingdom that are marked by authority, governance, corporate unity, and regular gatherings. If you find yourself needing restoration from sin, but refuse the gentle (and then increasingly firm) pleadings of your local church, you just might find your name announced at a church members meeting.
And if you have refused to attach yourself to a local church, it’s as though you’ve preemptively excommunicated yourself from God’s people.
Sober up and fear God. That act of discipline (Paul favorably called it “judging” and “purging” in 1 Corinthians 5:13), rightly administered, is given as though Jesus sits bodily on his throne at the local church. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:20)
I Am Aaron Shafovaloff 