Author: Bryan Jay

In trying to apply this event in Jesus’ ministry to our current situation, I found myself wondering what the equivalent behavior to the selling of sheep, oxen and pigeons and exchanging of money would be.  If a youth group is selling brownies in the church lobby to raise money to build an orphanage in Africa, would that be similar?  What about Christian publishers who make loads of money off the sale of Christian books?

These merchants and moneychangers were facilitating the rituals prescribed by the law.  People needed to buy the animals in order to offer the sacrifices and evidently they needed to change money in order to buy the animals.  

I find it difficult to draw a direct parallel between the actions of the merchants in the temple and certain practices/activities in the church today.  In other words, on the basis of this passage, it’s difficult to make statements like, “it is wrong to make a profit on anything that derives from the church’s ministry and practice.”  Or, “it is wrong to transact any kind of commerce in a church building.”

Of course, the modern equivalent of the temple that Jesus cleansed is not our church buildings, but the Body of Christ, the spiritual temple.  So by analogy, could one say that it is wrong for a Christian publisher to make money on the sale of a book of theology that facilitates the religious practice of Christian people?

I don’t think the application is that cut and dry.  Jesus is correcting wrong heart attitudes here, and the passage only hints at what these were when Jesus refers to a “house of trade”.  This implies that for these people who are being disciplined, trade had become the most important reason for being in the temple.  For them, the temple was not a place to go to meet God in prayer and worship, but a place to go to make a buck.

If a Christian publisher is in the business primarily for the money–in other words if it is profit, pure and simple that drives the business–then that publisher is guilty of the same sin as these merchants.  If a church is only concerned about growth in numbers, status in the community, size of the budget, etc. then that church is also guilty of this sin.

But we should be careful not to miss the primary emphasis of this passage in our efforts to apply the sin of the merchants to our current situation.  The most important truth taught here is not that we as God’s people should avoid the sin of the merchants and moneychangers.  Rather, it is the authority of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus has authority to take up the whip of discipline in the church and purify it of any sin that may be distracting it from its purpose of glorifying and worshiping God.  Our response to this passage should be to ask the Lord Jesus to do this same purifying work in us as his people today, whether the sin is the same sin as these merchants or not is beside the point.  Jesus has authority to cleanse and purify the spiritual temple which is his church and we should desire this and seek it.

When Jesus is asked to give a sign showing his authority for this cleansing of the temple, he prophesies about the destruction of his body and his subsequent resurrection.  Because Jesus died and rose again he has authority over all temples, whether it be the temple of the old covenant, the new covenant spiritual temple which is his Body, the Church today, or the coming age in which the dwelling of God will be with man, and the entire new creation will be a temple in which Jesus will be worshiped and praised for all eternity.

So, yes, we should apply this passage by seeking to avoid repeating the sin that these merchants committed, but the way we will effectively do that is not only by identifying that sin and repenting of it, that’s only the first step.  The other side of that coin is worshiping the One who has authority over the temple–worshiping the One who is supreme over all and whose glory and greatness should be what motivates us in everything we do.  As we worship him, offering our lives to him as living sacrifices, we will not be guilty of making his house anything other than the house of worship that it is to be.

Usually my posts are either book reviews or simple expository posts on a certain Bible passage.  This post will be a bit more thematic in that I want to evaluate an approach to discipleship called “obedience-based discipleship.”  I’ll close with some thoughts from Jeremiah 9 that are appropriate to this topic.

For those unfamiliar with this approach, you can read a blog post by David Watson describing the basic philosophy here:

You can see an example of “obedience-based discipleship” curriculum here:

Even if you are not aware of this approach to discipleship, I encourage you to keep reading.  Thinking through the issues will help us all to better grasp what our role is as proclaimers of the gospel, as disciplers, and as church-planters.  Besides, the corrective that I would like to propose to the “obedience-based” approach is a corrective that needs to be applied to many other discipleship methods as well, including those that the “obedience-based” approach is reacting against!  The issue isn’t whether or not an approach is training people to obey, but more deeply, where obedience comes from.  What makes disciples walk in submission to Christ?  Is the problem that we aren’t teaching them to do so?  Is the problem in our methods? Our approach to scripture?  Or is it deeper than that?

Before talking about what I consider to be errors of emphasis in the “obedience-based” approach that need to be corrected, I want to briefly state what I see as some tremendous positives…

1.  Disciples are being made with THE BIBLE!  Novel idea, huh?  I think the process of teaching people to turn to the Bible first is absolutely essential.  The developers of the approach are using the Bible as their curriculum rather than someone’s course material.  To me, this is the biggest positive of this approach.

2.  Disciples are being taught to be not just hearers of the word, but doers (James 1.22).  The Great Commission calls us to teach disciples “to obey.”  I celebrate the intention behind this approach that seeks not just “right belief,” but also “right practice”.  It is a worthy goal and a necessary corrective on approaches to discipleship that emphasize only head knowledge and not a life lived in conformity and obedience to Jesus.

3.  Disciples are being taught to meditate on and think about the passage they are studying.  Disciples need to be taught to feed themselves from the Word of God.

3.  The Bible story being studied is repeated to make sure that disciples firmly grasp it.  This repetition of the story being studied shows a high regard for God’s inspired Word.

4.  Disciples are encouraged to share the story with someone else.  We receive grace that we might share it with others.

I celebrate these tremendous positives!  But here is my fundamental concern concisely stated:

In emphasizing obedience to Jesus as the core of discipleship, we run the risk of failing to adequately communicate that the gospel provides the only road to a transformed life.

The blog post I referenced above makes the connection between love for Jesus and obedience to his commands, but what the author fails to do is to even mention where that love comes from!  He does not mention the love that flows from a heart that is part of God’s “new creation” (2 Cor. 5.17).  He does not talk about a view of the glory of God in the face of Christ that transforms us from “one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3.18)

In fact, the author in my opinion incorrectly understands John 14:15, making the gift of the Holy Spirit, our adoption as sons, our vision of Christ, God’s father love for us, and Christ’s love for us and his revelation of himself to us, all the result of obedience.  In Watson’s own words…

This passage from the Gospel of John gives us tremendous insights into the results of obedience for individuals and groups. Examine this list of benefits.
• Jesus will ask the Father to give us a Counselor (the Holy Spirit) who will be with us forever
• The Holy Spirit will live with us and be in us
• We will not be abandoned as orphans, but Christ will come to us
• We will see Christ even if the world cannot see him
• We will live because Christ lives
• We will be loved by the Father
• We will be loved by Christ
• Christ will show Himself to us

Watson goes on to equate “abiding in Christ” only with obedience to his commands.  In this post (see his rebuttal in comments below), he appears to miss the fact that abiding in Christ is a Spirit-wrought faith relationship uniting us to Christ that results in obedience.  He appears to be making obedience the foundation of our being “in Christ.”

To stress obedience to Jesus’ commands without helping people understand and apply the gospel is to preach “another gospel”.  This is what the judaizers were doing:  they stressed “obeying” the mosaic law and being circumcised.

That being said, obedience obviously is a fruit of the gospel.  The book of James teaches this and people should be taught to apply the word and be “doers and not hearers only”

…but only in the context of living in the gospel!

To teach people that they need to “DO” without grounding them in the gospel can be soul-destroying.  The essence of our Christian walk is living by grace, and living by the gospel–learning to live each moment with the knowledge that our obedience doesn’t make us more acceptable to God–we already ARE acceptable to God because of what Jesus did for us.

How should we read the Bible?

Related to this problem is the way the “obedience-based” material (and I’ve heard others do this too) speaks against “knowledge-based discipleship”.  That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  If people are not applying and obeying the knowledge they receive, the answer is not to trash the impartation of knowledge!  Granted, I don’t think the “obedience-based” approach necessarily is doing that, but I think that discipleship/learning God’s Word/growing in grace can’t always be boiled down to a simplistic:  “What is God telling me to do?”  There are pieces of knowledge that we get over time and they work their way out in our behavior in complex ways not always related to a simplistic one-to-one relationship to specific truths.  I would argue that knowledge of God and of his person, his character, his acts in history, and his redeeming purposes in the future and in eternity is essential, but much of what you learn in that process can’t easily be boiled down to an “I will do such and such…” Sometimes God teaches us truth and it is only later that the Holy Spirit speaks to us about an area in which we need to obey, drawing upon that truth.

Let’s not pit “obedience-based” approaches against “knowledge-based” approaches, but recognize that truth is what transforms our lives, and if it isn’t transforming us, then perhaps we aren’t fully grasping it as we ought.  As Jesus himself said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8.32)

Jeremiah 9:23-24 says,

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

In order to boast about something, we first have to devote ourselves to it.  If we want to boast that we are a great author, we have to devote ourselves to learning how to write.  If we want to boast of our physical, athletic prowess, we have to train hard.  If we want to boast about how we are making a difference in the world, then we have to devote ourselves to whatever cause it is where we feel a difference needs to be made.

So when God tells us here in verse 24 that we are to boast in this:  “that he understands and knows me.” it means that we have to devote ourselves to understanding and knowing the Lord God.  I’m grieved that many times I see Christian workers devoting themselves to serving others and perhaps even sharing the gospel, but yet they are not going deeper and deeper themselves in the knowledge and understanding of who God is and what he has done through Jesus and what he has revealed to us of himself.  Of course that knowledge of God is not just a list of facts that I know without any life transformation, it is a personal encounter with God as he revealed himself in holy history, recorded in the Word of God, that transforms me from the inside out.

Verse 24 also gives us a basic outline of what that knowledge of God looks like:  “that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth.  For in these things I delight.”  God is telling us that as we get to know him, we will see his steadfast love (his mercy toward undeserving sinners), his justice (expressed in his condemnation of sin, but also in his willingness to judge Jesus in our place), and his righteousness (which is God’s acting in accordance with his character).  Where do we see these things most clearly?  Where has God revealed himself to us?  If we are going to devote ourselves to him, we have to know how to go about it.  It is in his Word that God reveals himself this way.  I’ve just recently read 15 chapters in Jeremiah that are all about judgment, judgment, judgement.  It can be easy to say, “I don’t like this… it’s depressing.  How could God say such things?!”  But it is his revelation of his character and I must wrestle with it.  If I don’t then I’ll never understand what Jeremiah means later on in the book when he talks about God by grace delivering his people from the judgment that they deserve.

Does this mean I just learn facts about God? about doctrine?  No, as I spend time getting to know God, it is going to make me a person who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness as well.  Just as God does, I will delight in those things as well.

In John 6:28-29 the crowd that had been fed by Jesus asked him…

“What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

Teaching disciples to obey isn’t the same as teaching them to follow rules.  It is teaching a lifestyle of submission to the Jesus as the source of all true life.  The disciple’s task given to him by God is “to believe in him whom he has sent.”

If there is any problem that I see right now in the church at large it is a failure to understand the power of the Gospel, not just to “get us in”, but to sanctify us, preserve us, and to bring us to the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4.13).  My challenge to those who are using “obedience-based” approaches to discipleship is simply not to neglect the gospel which is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe.

A college student recently interviewed me regarding how to prepare for Christian ministry.  Here are her questions and my responses.  I’ve had to change some answers due to the public nature of this blog.

1. What kind of ministry are you involved in?

Our objective is to bring  migrant workers here in (our city) to Christ, disciple them and equip them to return to their home countries to start new churches and strengthen existing ones.

2. What is your role in the ministry where you serve?

They are various:  I am involved in language learning (yes, it’s important to see that as a ministry, not just preparation) personal evangelism and discipleship, informal mentoring of church planters, prayer, leadership of other international workers (IWs).

3. What does your typical week look like?

I have meetings with other IWs and other individuals, typically 3 to 4 meetings a week.  I also spend at least one half day in prayer and fasting each week.  I have regularly scheduled times for language learning which will continue to be a major emphasis for the next year.  I also try to get out regularly to meet people in shopping centers, bazaars, etc.

4. In our class, we have talked about spiritual gifts and God’s calling. What do you believe are your God-given spiritual gifts and what is your call to ministry?

My gifts are in the area of teaching and preaching.  I do not preach, however, in my current roles, but one of the reasons I focus so heavily on language learning is that I want to be able to teach the people I work with sound doctrine.  This is my long term goal, even more so than evangelism, which I see many people doing.  I believe God has called me to take a few of these people deeper in their faith and their understanding of God’s Word so that they can then make an impact on the larger church among their people group.

If the question refers to my original call to ministry, I had a very strong sense in 5th grade that God was calling me to surrender my entire life to him and it was in the context of hearing a missionary story (Through Gates of Splendor), so I concluded it was a call to be a missionary.  God has reaffirmed that call many times through the years by opening the doors for me to serve him in various overseas ministries (three countries on three different continents)

5. What are the threats/pressures you feel on your ministry? 

Something that is often not fully recognized is the satanic opposition to work among unreached peoples.  I believe that there is an increased attack from satan against families and individuals who are challenging satan’s territory.  For example, in our organization we have four families who work among this people group, and in every family, the wife struggles with some sort of serious physical difficulty (for my wife it is migraine headaches).  I don’t think this is by chance.  I believe that God is sovereign over satan and could heal these women with a word, but in his divine wisdom he allows us to push through these things so that his name might be glorified in some way, perhaps not fully understood by us.

Another pressure would be the inability to accomplish a lot of work due to the constraints of language and cultural differences.  We have to realize that small victories and accomplishments need to be celebrated and that we will not “produce” as much in terms of sheer volume, as what we would in our own language and culture.

Political tensions between the country I live in and the US are also a pressure.  This puts emotional strain on our staff.

In individual interactions, there can be an anxiety when talking to a new person.  I never know how that person feels about their religion and whether what I am going to say about Jesus is offensive to them or interesting to them.

6. How has being in full time ministry enhanced your spiritual life?

• It has taught me to be dependent on God rather than on myself and my own gifts/abilities.
• It has helped keep me humble since my abilities are minimized as I depend on God.
• It has helped me avoid being overly attached to this world.  I own no home and don’t have a lot of material possessions.  This frees me to focus on “a better country” as it says in Hebrews.

7. Has being in ministry been a detriment to your spiritual life? If so, how? 

Absolutely not.  I don’t see how obeying God could ever be a detriment to one’s spiritual life!

8. What pressures do you face that tempt you away from serving with your God-given strengths? 

There are always people who want to make demands (requests) on one’s time and availability.  I have to be careful not to try to meet every need that comes along, but do what is a good stewardship of the gifts and calling that God has given me.

9. How has your understanding of ministry “success” changed over the years.

It has radically changed.  When I was first starting out, I was much more focused on  visible results.  I started a church in the U.S., and success for me was basically a large, self-sustaining congregation that could pay my salary!  In my first country of service, our goal was an increasing number of cell groups.

Now we are focused on contributing to the growth of God’s church in the region we are trying to impact, whether or not we or others can see that growth or not.  Most of the people we work with within a year will no longer be in our reach, but will have returned to their home countries.  If the spiritual life God pours into them through us results in the growth of his kingdom in the hearts of his people, that is success.

Another response I would give is that I think all of us, mostly subconsciously, work for the approval of others.  We want to prove ourself to our leaders, to our supporting churches, to our colleagues in ministry, or even to ourselves. The more I am conscious of this tendency and strive against it, the more I can be truly successful.  Success is pleasing God by being obedient to what he has told me to do… today!  That may or may not result in visible fruit, either to me or to others.

10. What suggestions do you have for me and my fiance as we prepare for following God’s calling on our lives? (This can apply to full-time or lay ministry.) What should I make sure I understand, think through, be sure of, be able to do, etc?

I think for many people in my denomination, and for others who are from an environment where international work is held up as the pinnacle of Christian service, it is important to recognize that being an IW doesn’t give you any brownie points with God.  I have observed many, many individuals head toward overseas service because they assumed that it was what they should do.  People often say that we have to be willing to “go”, but I think for those who come from circles where IWs are put on a pedestal, it is also important to be willing to “stay”.  I often tell young people when I am in their church that a call to ministry is not something that one experiences in a moment, but a direction in one’s life that the Holy Spirit will constantly be reaffirming.  I told my son once, I’m glad that C.S. Lewis and N.D. Wilson didn’t become missionaries!  I’m glad John Piper didn’t become a missionary.  The important thing for you guys is having a heart that is completely surrendered to his will.  For those (like you guys and like me when I was your age) with a strong desire to go, there has to be a willingness to stay.  For those who don’t want to go wherever God might lead, there has to be a willingness to go anywhere, even the moon, if God should lead you there.

I would also want to really stress the importance of understanding and living by the gospel, which sets us free from having to prove ourselves to God.  Some IWs are trying to prove themselves to God and to others, and I myself struggle with this.  We have to be willing to be insignificant before we can ever do anything truly significant for God.  We have to be willing to give up our own grandiose plans of what we are going to do for him before we can correctly perceive the wonderful plans that he has for us.  We have to be willing to give up our own desire to build something great for him so that he can build his kingdom through us.

Another piece of advice would be to “bloom where you are planted.”  This is advice that was given to me when I was church planting before I became an IW.  It’s important not to be always looking ahead to “the next thing” that I want to be doing, but to do what God has given me to do today with all my heart.  Focus on the roles that God has given you now and do those to the best of your ability.  We have no guarantees about the future.  This may be my last week on earth to serve the Lord, or my last month, or my last year.

As far as competencies to develop, much depends on what role you are aiming for, but I think in terms of missions, gone are the days where you can prepare to be a “professional international worker” (like me, whose training is in “missiology”)  In order to get the gospel to the ends of the earth we are going to need workers with broad skill sets that include professional qualifications that can insert them into the contexts where we most need workers today.  But theological acumen and preparedness should not be sacrificed either, so the demands are great.