The previous posts entitled “Identity Crisis” demonstrated that the church has lost its story, so it has lost its ability to be the church. The remedy to the church's identity crisis is not found in adopting a new method or structure; it is through reorienting our lives around the true story.
This next series of posts will address the second element of the thesis—the church's hermeneutic. Hermeneutics is a fancy word for “interpretation.” I specifically want to show how the church fails to correctly interpret Scripture when it doesn't account for the missional dimension of the Bible.
I will use Philippians 2.12-13 as the test case to show how Paul is misunderstood when a missional hermeneutic is not part of the interpretative process. This passage will also demonstrate an essential missional truth that grounds the church's mission.
Paul wrote his letter to the church in Philippi to instruct the young faith community to be faithful witnesses to the resurrected Messiah deep within a Roman province. He deeply cared for their well-being and that they would be faithful missionaries together of the resurrection of Jesus in their city. Thus, his letter was not simply an update on his life and a moral code he wished to reinforce within the church; instead, it was an occasional document centered on the exalted Christ, such that the church would lean in together by the power of the Spirit to learn how to be the church amid a warped and crooked generation (cf. Phil 2.15).
This is a crucial point. Paul did not write his letters to encourage churches to bunker down because the days are getting evil, to live holy lives, and to wait for Jesus to return. Nor did he write to provide a systematic theology for the church to discover and debate. No! He wrote to encourage the community to help them embody and enact the story of the Messiah in their respective cities.
Herein lies an important truth: the New Testament authors wrote letters to the churches to teach the people of God how to participate in the mission of God. The NT letters are not just systematic theologies followed by ethical behaviors to follow. They are letters to structure their life around the Messiah such that they would be a light in the darkness. Here is the difference. Is the Bible simply a list of rules to obey? Or is the Bible the unfolding missional narrative in which the church is called to take up their role?
Maybe you have heard the acronym BIBLE: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth? Implied of the many sub-biblical doctrines in this acronym is that the Bible provides just a list of instructions to obey after you get "saved." It becomes a rule book for the redeemed. (Yet, as we saw in the last post, if you just change the actions without changing the underlying story, you don’t actually produce genuine change.)
There is a fundamental misunderstanding about who God is and what God is doing in the world when we simply understand the Bible to be a moral guidebook for life. God is a missionary God and the Bible is a missionary document. The Bible progressively reveals the identity of the Creator God and what he is doing in and for the world. When the church does not account for this unfolding missional narrative, it cannot properly interpret the Bible. Therefore, to not interpret the Scriptures through this lens of mission is to miss a primary aspect of the Bible.
The Bible must be read missionally, not only soteriologically.
Soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, is the primary interpretative center for many Christians and biblical interpreters. This means that salvation becomes the lens from which they interpret the Bible. When the Bible is read this way the Scriptures become an instructional book of how to get and ensure one stays saved.
However, Paul was not simply concerned that his new converts would receive a 'get out hell free card,' nor was he concerned that they only obeyed new set of ethical rules. He wanted more than this. He was interested that they learn together how to embody and enact the Messianic story within their context. He wanted the churches to fulfill the mission that Jesus had commissioned them to embody in Philippi.
Thus, Paul's letters were missionary documents instructing the churches to be good missionaries together in their cities.
"I do not believe the New Testament was written in order to give a people a coherent set of ideas. It does that, but not as its main purpose. Rather, the New Testament was written in order to sustain and direct the missional life of the early church." (N.T. Wright, Reading the Bible Missionally)
The church in America needs to be awakened to this missional dimension of Scripture. The church is not simply a group of disciples whose eschatological hope entails escaping this wicked world to live forever in heaven while merely trying to sin less and less in this life. The church is so much more than a people who pray and invite Jesus into their hearts and then attempt to live differently than the world around us! This seems ironic since, if honesty prevails, many non-Christians possess a better morality and ethic than many Christians.
The missional hermeneutic is not necessarily antithetical to the soteriological. It subsumes it. In order for the church to take up its role within God’s progressive drama, it needs to be “saved.” To be the church, we need to be part of the church. We need to be transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light. However, after one considers the soteriological implications of a bible passage, then one must also ask what the missional implications are. In order for the church to become shining lights in the midst of a dark world, it needs to move beyond a salvation hermeneutic to a missional one.
This introductory post contains a lot of theoretical information, which may not seem immediately practical. However, missional hermeneutics is more caught than taught, as they say. Hang on for the next post. In the next post, I specifically show the difference between a missional and a soteriological reading of the Bible. It will be worth it! I promise!
And if you are really interested, I will use Philippians 2.12-13 as a case study.
"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to actin order to fulfill his good purpose."
Feel free to begin reading the passage and start formulating how you understand what Paul was saying to the church in Philippi.
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