Afflictions of the 'Body': The Early Church’s
Opponents and Its Prescriptions against Heresy; 1. Mission and Opposition
Introduction:
The
Church was born in the midst of great controversy. The Body of Christ, the Church, continues to
face external and internal afflictions. As
a messianic movement, its first two representatives, John the Baptist and
Jesus, were put to death. Other very early
proponents of Christianity were put to death: Stephen the deacon and James the son of Zebedee,
one of Jesus’ close disciples. Such opposition
came from outside the faith. Beginning
with Judas Iscariot, disciples of Christ have experienced internal afflictions
as well. In these studies, we intend to
examine the external and internal afflictions of God’s people in the days of
the early Church as well as in our day.
God’s Afflicted People:
Any
such study needs to begin with the observation that the early Church did not
see itself as a new religion without a history.
Believers saw themselves as the fulfillment of centuries of history and
prophecy that were recorded in the Scriptures (the Old Testament). Whether they were Jews or Gentiles, the
history of God’s people in Scripture was their history. That history was a history of God calling out
his people from the other nations (the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and
Jacob’s 12 sons), out of Egypt (Moses); separating his people from the nations
in and surrounding Canaan (Joshua, Judges, and the history of the kings of
Israel); living for God among idolatrous nations while in exile; and returning
to the land of Israel from captivity but only to find themselves more often
than not under foreign rule. God’s
people were ‘wandering Arameans,’ a wilderness people, a righteous remnant,
sojourners in the world whose citizenship was in heaven. Such a history is chock full not only of
external opposition and persecution of God’s people but also of betrayal,
misguidance, and rebellion.
No
wonder, then, that the early Church could read her own experience of opposition
right out of Israel’s own history. Jesus
began his ministry in Matthew’s Gospel with a warning about the opposition that
his followers would face because the unrighteous have always opposed God’s
people. He said,
Matthew 5:11-12 Blessed are you when people
revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on
my account. 12 Rejoice and be
glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted
the prophets who were before you.
As
he faced his own arrest and crucifixion in Jerusalem, Jesus predicted that his
followers would also face tribulation.
Speaking in particular regarding the scribes and Pharisees in Israel,
Jesus linked the opposition his followers would face to that the prophets of
old had faced from other Jews:
Matthew 23:31-35 Thus you testify against
yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of
your ancestors. 33 You
snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? 34 Therefore I send you prophets,
sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will
flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, 35 so that upon you may come all
the righteous blood shed on earth….
Jesus
repeated this as a warning to his disciples, noting that the threat would be
internal as well. The Church itself
would be harassed and persecuted by false prophets and supposed disciples who,
in reality, rejected God’s commandments (lawlessness) and who had grown cold in
their love of God and of faithful believers:
Matthew 24:9-13 "Then they will hand you
over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all
nations because of my name. 10
Then many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one
another. 11 And many false
prophets will arise and lead many astray.
12 And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of
many will grow cold. 13 But
the one who endures to the end will be saved.
In
speaking of the horror of persecution, Jesus used language from the book of
Daniel. Daniel had predicted a ‘desolating
sacrilege,’ a desecration of the altar in the most holy place of the Temple in
Jerusalem. This prophecy was fulfilled
in 167 B.C., when the Syrian ruler, Antiochus the IV ‘Epiphanes’ entered the
most holy place and had a pig sacrificed on the altar. During this time, Jews were compelled to
sacrifice to other gods or be put to death.
Moreover (and this is crucial to understand), Jewish religious
authorities would compromise the true faith in order to accommodate themselves
to the new situation. They would attempt
to retain power: the office of the high priest was even bought by the highest
bidder. Many Jews chose to adopt Greek
morals, right down to an operation to remove the signs of circumcision (so-called
‘epispasm’) so that they could exercise naked and appear to be Gentiles in the
newly built Greek gymnasiums! The story
of the righteous martyrs who remained faithful to God and withstood the lure of
their new, cultural context can be read in 1 and 2 Maccabees. These two books in the Apocrypha, like such
books as Daniel and Esther in the Old Testament, recorded heroic stories of
resisting culture in order to stay faithful to God. They were deeply ingrained stories in the
narrative identity of faithful Jews in the time of Jesus.
Such
a history was the Church’s history.
Jesus warned his disciples that his crucifixion would inaugurate a
period of tribulation that would define the Church’s existence in the same way
that Israel’s existence under Antiochus IV was defined: persecution, martyrdom,
false teaching, grasps for power in religious institutions, and compromise of the
true faith. Once again, God’s people
would find themselves facing a time of ‘desolating sacrilege’ as Daniel had
predicted. Jesus’ warnings were
fulfilled within the lifetime of his disciples,
yet their experience would also be the subsequent history of the Church to our
day: the Church regularly—sometimes more, sometimes less—faces persecution,
martyrdom, false teaching, grasps for power in religious institutions, and compromise
of the true faith.
The
history of the Church’s afflictions, however, would not be the history of a godly
nation surrounded by oppressive, idolatrous nations but of a godly people sent
out to the nations to bring them to God.
However much we can speak of Israel’s mission in the Old Testament, its
primary focus was on being God’s righteous people to which the nations would
stream (Isaiah 2.2-5). Matthew 24.9-13
was quoted above; in the very next verse, Jesus tells his disciples that
mission would now be to the nations:
Matthew 24:14 And this good news of the
kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the
nations; and then the end will come.
The
church’s history of persecution is a history of its mission in and to the
world. When Jesus predicted suffering
for his disciples, he did so within the context of a message regarding their
mission to the nations.
Mission with Opposition; Opposition with Mission
In his Missionary Discourse in
Matthew 10, Jesus describes the mission of his disciples in terms of
persecution and suffering: mission and suffering go together. Jesus’ message is not an ascetic message,
where people give up the pleasures of life for some monastic or solitary
existence, protecting themselves against the evils of society. He expects his disciples to engage the world
and warns that, as they do so, they will find opposition. Opposition without mission turns the Church
into a self-pitying community whose primary goal is to avoid suffering or even
to gain control within society, if possible, in order to exercise its own
version of righteous rule. Mission, on
the other hand, gives purpose to the Church.
The Church’s mission engages the world and therefore God’s people experience
persecution. Like Jesus, the Church
steps forward to present God’s reign in a sinful world, offering forgiveness,
redemption, salvation, and hope.
One of the great ‘dangers’
facing orthodox Christian communities—groups holding to historic Christian
doctrine and ethics (whether Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or certain Protestant
denominations)—is that they might affirm orthodoxy without engaging in mission
to the world. In particular, the danger
is that they maintain their orthodoxy and experience persecution for this without engaging in mission. Indeed, persecution might lead some to
withdraw from the world and pull back from mission to the world. Neither a bunker mentality nor a posture of
power and dominion are acceptable options for the Church in its mission to the
world. Thus, Jesus’ teaching that
opposition and persecution is a result
not only of following the faith but also of engaging in mission is a word
on target for the Church today. How many
churches have little or no missions budget, put inordinate amounts of money
into maintaining their buildings, campuses, and programs without supporting the
Great Commission of the risen Lord? One
of the primary purposes of the Church is to participate in God’s sending
labourers (missionaries) into fields ripe for harvesting (Matthew
9.37-38). Jesus’ missionary disciples go
into all the world with the authority of the risen Lord in order to make
disciples of all nations and teach them to obey Jesus’ commandments.
Evangelical churches that
bemoan the wayward direction of society and the increasing persecution they are
experiencing should stop and reflect on whether they are only experiencing this
struggle because of who they are or also experiencing it because of their
missionary engagement with the world.
This is the time to focus the Christian mission according to the Great
Commission (rather than make mission mean everything and therefore nothing). It is the time to engage more and more in mission. This
is the time to tell the world why it needs a Saviour. The instinct of some during increasing
persecution is to try to show the world that the Church is not a threat but a
positive factor in society. In many
cases in the West, the urge to be liked by tolerating, even affirming, diversity
ends in Universalism—the teaching that there is no hell, there are many ways to
God, and all will be saved in the end (if there is such a thing as sin at
all!). Such a theology undermines and
typically rejects a mission to the nations that proclaims Christ’s death on the cross to take
away the sins of the world. It seeks only
to have a positive acceptance in our diverse society.
Of course the Church is a
positive factor for the world. Of course
it is a loving community. But it is so
because it opposes the forces of darkness, proclaims the rule of God over all
of life, and turns the world upside down with the message of Jesus Christ
crucified for the sins of the world.
Such a message courts controversy, especially in an ‘I’m OK, You're OK’
society.
Mission as Extending God’s Rule
The nature of the disciples’
mission entailed curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, casting
out demons, and proclaiming the good news that God’s reign has come near
(Matthew 10.7-8). While we have no
reason to limit the Church’s mission today to this (we can speak of holistic
mission), we should note that this mission is not about our good works for a needy world but about the coming of God’s good reign to a needy world. The mission of the disciples was a
demonstration of the fact of God’s rule,
His overcoming evil through His power
and authority. Mission is not first
about how good God’s people are but about how good God is. It is about His activity in the world.
Churches that hold to a
Cessationist theology—the teaching that miracles ceased after the apostolic age
and do not occur today—have completely missed an essential teaching of
Christian orthodoxy: Jesus inaugurated the reign of God, and the Church
continues to proclaim and present the powerful rule of God (not its own institutions!) to the world until Christ comes
again. Evangelical churches that teach
Cessationism are unorthodox (and therefore should not be considered ‘evangelical’). Worse, they no longer proclaim God’s rule for the world. They offer a ‘theology’ (more a philosophy) of
God’s sovereignty without understanding much about God’s authority. The opposition they face from the world is
from persons who wonder how a sovereign, all powerful God could allow
suffering. Their static understanding of
theology cannot explain the dynamics of Christian life and ministry: the power
of prayer, the active ministry of evangelism, the transforming work of the Holy
Spirit, and the miraculous rule of God in our day.
On the other hand, the
Prosperity (‘Health and Wealth’) ‘Gospel’ has equally misconstrued the
Scriptures and the truth of Christian life and ministry. It understands nothing of the ongoing
struggle of life in a sin-ridden world.
Its overrealized understanding
of the coming of God’s rule leads people to expect nothing but a good life
(health and wealth), whereas, in fact, Christians face all the struggles of
humanity plus persecution in this
time before Christ’s return. (The
theology of the ‘righteous sufferer’ in the book of Psalms is still relevant to
the Christian life!) Extending the reign
of God in this world does not mean prosperity.
Healing is not a ‘state’—as though no one gets sick or suffers again; it
is rather a demonstration of God’s reign that awaits the complete rule of Jesus Christ when He comes again. The Christian life is about experiencing God’s
reign in a suffering and sinful world, not about being extricated from this
world before Jesus returns. Christian
life and ministry are about extending God’s reign in a suffering and sinful world, not about enjoying the good life
on some island while the rest of the world suffers on its way to hell. The Prosperity Gospel is antithetical to the
mission of the Church. Churches lured by
a message of prosperity (and this extends far beyond those associating themselves
with the Prosperity Gospel itself to many if not most churches in the West
today) will find a prescription for their affliction in Jesus’ call to
mission. And, be warned, as they do so,
they will be less prosperous, experience greater opposition, and yet see God’s
reign not for their own pleasures and amusements but for the world for which
Jesus Himself died.
Conclusion
The early Church understood
the opposition it faced in terms of the opposition God’s people had always faced
in the world—whether from outside or inside.
For Christians, opposition and mission go together: a separation of
these is probably a sign of bad theology and mission practice. Opposition and persecution came not only
because God’s people stood out as different from a sinful world (as particularly
in the Old Testament) but also because they engaged the world (as particularly
in the New Testament). Jesus made the
connection between the righteous sufferers of the Old Testament and the
opposition and persecution that He and His disciples would face. Yet He more closely linked the opposition and
persecution of God’s people, his disciples, to their mission in the world. Jesus inaugurated the reign of God in this
world, and this is what mission continues to be all about. A right understanding of this mission in the face of opposition will
keep believers from unorthodox, heretical teachings, such as Universalism, Cessationism,
the Prosperity Gospel, and a self-indulging notion of Christian life and
ministry.
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