Skip to main content

The onside rule

on side
The notoriously hard to grasp offside rule in football states that if you’re on the attack and you’ve run ahead of the ball and there’s only one member of the opposing team between you and the goal (normally the goalkeeper) then you’re offside and no-one can pass to you.  But if two or more members of the opposing team are ahead of you then you are onside.

The rule works all too often in my Christian life. If I can think of two or more examples of people ‘ahead of me’ in sin then it plays me onside.  I think of Christians who (I judge) are more compromised, more self-indulgent than me and that makes me feel ‘onside’. ‘They’ are on the opposing team – the really bad guys.  And they have played me onside.

And the rule works all too often in preaching as well. If I can think of two or more examples of terrible false teaching (preachers selling miracle oil, cures for AIDS, blessings with an MPESA number attached, churches refusing to bury members who die before 70 years) then it plays my ministry onside.  If I can think of some hideously extreme examples of the prosperity gospel (and maybe drop their names into my sermon together with a fierce or mocking denunciation) then I must be on the right team. ‘They’ are the bad guys and my preaching (even though it has little of Christ, little of the Cross, little of grace, little of eternity) must be faithful Bible teaching.

In fact, none of us are onside. There is no ‘faithful team’, no ‘super sound squad’.  All our preaching, together with all our living, is deeply fallen.  As Tim Keller has said, “He who by preaching is righteous shall die every Sunday.”  That’s why we need Jesus to come on the pitch as our substitute and live and preach in our place.

To change the sporting metaphor, we need to raise the bar.  If we set the bar of Christian living at outward faithfulness we may well reach it and we will be Pharisees.  If we set the bar of preaching at good rhetoric peppered with a bit of Bible then we can reach it and we will be Pharisees.  If we allow the Kanyaris of this world to define the new low then it won't need a very long pole to vault over that bar.

But if the bar is Christ and the Word of Christ then... we despise ourselves.  And then... we rejoice that we are in Christ – righteous not by our living or preaching but in Him.  And then our preaching (to ourselves as to others) becomes an act of pointing to the ‘bar’ – pointing to Christ and His Word, pointing to the God lifted up on a bar, and saying, “Look – there he is – your saviour, your righteousness, your life.”

Luther-Predigt-LC-WB

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

10 things servant leadership is

Having cleared away 10 things servant leadership is not , here are 10 that it is. Credit to Harrison Mungai for his help in observing many of these features and helping us to think through this really important area. I used to think that all that was necessary in gospel ministry was faithful Bible handling. Preach the Word carefully and surely everything else should follow? But I was wrong. Sadly it is possible to have high quality expository preaching and ungodly leadership. It shouldn’t be possible but it is. And it’s a very ugly thing. Peter Mead has written  on the danger that can be done to a church or ministry when appointment of leaders values ability over character. So here are ten aspects of biblical servant leadership, specifically in relation to gospel ministry leadership, from 1 Thessalonians, especially chapters 2 and 3: Servant leadership is, wherever possible, Plural . A lot of articles and books on leadership assume that it is a personal project. Search Google

4 combinations of workplace relations

Ephesians 6:5-9 gives a beautiful picture of healthy workplace relationships: servants who serve and leaders who serve . But that mutuality is not the only combination.  Here are 4 different models of interaction between leader/boss and servant/employee: OPPRESSIVE LEADER AND SUBMISSIVE SERVANT This tends to be the pattern in settled traditional societies and modern totalitarian societies. Here hierarchy is strong – the pyramid model. Those at ‘the top’ very much see themselves as ‘above’ others and those at the bottom know their place and submit. Leaders are dictators who cannot be questioned, ‘strong leaders’ who make harsh demands and place heavy burdens on the people ‘under’ them, accumulating resources, power, control and status for themselves (1 Sam. 8:11-14; Neh. 5:15; Eccl. 5:8-9). In this model, leadership is the privilege and ability to make things better for yourself or to push your own agenda. It is certainly not servant leadership. This pattern ‘works’ in a sense in that

The ancient roots of mentoring

The idea of an older person helping in the development of a younger person is an ancient pattern seen across many cultures. In warrior societies and castes such as among the Japanese samurai and the European feudal knights there would be an 'apprenticeship' stage. Among the Maasai there are the morans - living apart from their families in the bush, learning the wisdom of the elders and strengthening themselves physically and spiritually. The ancient pattern is that a son learns the trade of his father by being next to him, day after day, seeing everything he does, working alongside him. That was true in the harvest field (2 Kings 4:18), in trades like carpentry (Matt. 13:55), it was how the Law of Yahweh was to be passed on (Deut. 6:7), it is even seen in the relationship between the eternal Father and Son (John 5:19-20). Harrison Mungai, founder of iServe Africa , has often pointed to the success of Asian businesses where there is often  high intergenerational family