leadership

The Gospel-Effect Upon Society

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:1–4 (ESV)

I keep hearing that the Church needs to do something to address the social issues of the day, and that this means it needs to do more than simply say that the gospel of Jesus Christ is enough. By this some imply that it isn’t. Social action is the desire, and the timing for that action is now.

But Scripture is clear, we sow what we reap (Job 4:8; Prov 22:8; Hos 8:7; Gal 6:7-8), and America has been sowing some nasty seeds for a long time. Add to this the failure of the American church to faithfully proclaim the truth of Scripture and its application to the life of the home and society, and we have a recipe for disaster. The culture has changed and the salt of Christians has in many places lost its saltiness (Matt 5:13; Mk 9:50; Lb 14:34). As a result, the Church in general has very little impact upon the culture today. We have traded our inheritance of influence for a bowl of political-alliance stew, as it were. The solution for when you find yourself in a pit is not to dig faster, but to stop digging.

The solution for the Church is not to engage in more social action, but instead to return to her charter: bold, faithful, gospel proclamation.

At the end of Ephesians 5 and following into chapter 6, Paul lays out the way that the Church is to “walk in the Spirit” in practical, everyday terms. The gospel life has an effect upon marriage and addresses the practical life of the wife and the husband. It reaches into the home further and makes clear the way that children are to live and how parents should raise them up. It also speaks about the relationship of servants and masters, who in the time of Paul’s writing, were house-servants. Although this could be applied to the employee/employer relationship today, in Paul’s day he was still addressing issues of life in the households of believers.

In the very next section, Paul then transitions to speaking about spiritual warfare. This isn’t an accident. Paul didn’t just lose interest and abruptly change the subject. He knew, as the Church once knew better, that to engage in spiritual battle begins in our homes and our communities. When we fail to parent as Christians, and we send our children off to school and they absorb the wisdom of the world because of the vacuum we have left in their souls, they will soon enough take on the lies and philosophies of the evil one. And as we forsake our marriage vows and live no different than the pagan world around us, indulging in the lust of the flesh and calling it “entertainment,” we will find our vows are crumbling. And when the love of Christ does not inhabit our homes so that husbands will not lead the family before the throne of grace, and wives will not lovingly follow her husband as he follow Christ, we are sowing seeds of destruction that the enemy will water and tend.

Why are we in such a state in our nation? There are many reason, some of which we cannot influence directly. After all, our God moves the nations by his sovereign hand for his good purposes. But we can be faithful to proclaim the gospel from our churches, into the hearts of God’s people, and repeatedly echo those truths in our homes with love and joy, so that our spouse, our children, our neighbors, and our community smell the fragrance of life lived in Christ. We will be salt and light as we are supposed to be. Salt will have its effect on the spoiling world around us, and the light will shine bright against the darkness.

We don’t need a revolution of society. We need a revolution of our souls. We need revival in our churches and homes. We need to return to the fundamentals.

The Challenge of Speaking Truth to Power

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?””

(Galatians 2:11–14, ESV)
Hugh Latimer preaching to King Henry VI

Walking faithfully in the Christian life is filled with challenges and plenty of opportunities to grow and mature. Of course, maturity includes learning from our mistakes as well as our successes. 

The Apostle Peter had made his share of mistakes during his time with the Lord Jesus. Even in his older years, having matured spiritually and having seen many victories, he was still prone to wander at times, as Galatians 2 tells us. We all can learn from Peter’s mistakes and see the need for humility in our own lives.

Likewise as Paul in Galatians 2 encountered, there are times when we must deal with those who are in sin and error. We may be the more mature (at least in this area) or the one who was not deceived by this particular error and weren’t caught up in the false teaching. It can be an intimidating thing to confront someone about their faults and sins, especially when they are influential or in a position of authority. We can sometimes imagine the outcome of our confrontation—maybe a backlash of anger, or a shouting match, or a challenge to our questioning their maturity or faithfulness to the Lord and Scriptures. Maybe we imagine a broken relationship and friendship, or the family leaving our church, or turning others against us. Compound this with other past experiences when some of these things did happen, and it makes it especially hard to do the right thing. It often seems easier to just let it pass without a comment. I have had this temptation happen many times myself.

There are some things that we should allow to pass. Love does covers a multitude of sins (1Pet 4:8). But there are also many things that we cannot allow to pass by without speaking up. As Paul demonstrated in his letter to the churches of Galatia, we cannot remain silent about any deviation from the core doctrine of justification by faith alone. So, while we recognize the need for humility and grace, we also must confess the need for courage to confront and speak boldly for the sake of the truth.

The dangers are two-fold: in the name of faithfulness, be angry and caustic with no love for people while upholding truth, or allow the desire to be liked by men and avoid confrontation to drive us to silence so that we can avoid conflict. Both are sin. May God help us all to grow in this area where we can speak body with love for the sake of Christ, knowing that we would desire that when someone senses error in our own understanding of doctrine, that we too would want to have them come to us in a similar Christ-like manner.

Men, It’s Time to Man Up

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”

(1 Corinthians 14:33–35, ESV)

Right now in American evangelical churches a war is raging regarding the place of women in ministry. For me, passages such as the one above and 1 Timothy 2:12 make it clear that there are definitely limitations to the roles women can hold in regard to teaching in the Church.

First Corinthians 14:25 is Paul’s response to the women in the Church of Corinth who were disrupting the worship of the church with questions, introducing confusion. His solution? Ask your husband at home.

But here is the rub. In many Christian homes, the husband couldn’t answer many of his wife’s questions because he knows less Bible and theology than she does. Many men are not readers, and even less study–unless it’s sport’s scores. Traditionally, many men have left the “religious instruction” of children to their wife, and the largest sector of church attendance across almost all denominations is female.

So, as we think about the battle of the sexes in church, and how those of us that are complimentarian desire to follow the instructions of male leadership we believe the New Testament teaches, we need to work on beefing up ministry to men and expect more from them. We need Christian men to man up. Men who will open their Bibles and read them. Men who will dig deep. Men who are working to be equipped to defend the faith. Men who are willing to sit down with their wife and children and teach them from Scriptures–and not be fearful of those hard questions our wife might bring to us.

Men, our wives and children deserve better. Our churches deserve better. The Lord deserves better.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”

(1 Corinthians 13:11, ESV)

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”

(1 Corinthians 16:13, ESV)

Help for New Expositors – Don’t Photobomb Jesus

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

photobombIsn’t it interesting that there are no physical descriptions in the Bible of what the Apostles or Jesus looked like. This is hard to believe in our self-driven culture where the Instagram selfie perfectly captures the ethos of our day.

There is one extra-biblical description of Apostle Paul found in The Acts of Thecla, where it says that Onesiphorus described Paul as “a man short in stature, with a bald head, bowed legs, in good condition, eyebrows that met, a fairly large nose, and full of grace. At times he seemed human, at other times he looked like an angel.”[1] It appears that Paul had a face for radio!

In our world, “image is everything” and yet, for those who stand before the world to proclaim the Word of God, we are simply called to be a faithful, unwavering voice of truth in a dry, wilderness of error and darkness (Mark 1:3; Amos 8:11).

When this is the case, we shouldn’t worry about being impressive or even whether anybody notices us. We shouldn’t be jockeying for prominence among the evangelical superstars or trying to be seen so we can move up the ladder of fame. This is exactly the opposite of what Jesus expects of his servants. Mark 10:42-45 shines brightly against the growing evil of popular Christianity and its longing for attention. It hurts to read Jesus’ words and think about how much modern evangelical Christianity ignores these words:

“And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:42–44, ESV, emphasis mine)

It is when we open our mouths, when we speak the Word of God that people should be amazed–not at us, but at our great and awesome God. If we draw attention, let it be to our Lord and Savior. If we thunder and rail, let it be against sin as we call men to holiness. If we speak with great authority and power, let it be from the Scriptures alone and not ourselves. And when we leave a room where we have preached the mighty deeds of our God, and people stand back and say, “What a mighty God! O, how I want to know Him more!” may we be content to slide out of the room and rejoice that our God chose to use us, sinners saved by grace, to bring more people into His presence. SDG

[1] The Acts of Thecla 3. Translation by Bart D. Ehrman in Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 114.


Who Will Be the Leaders of the Church in 10 years?

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“Knowing that fighting the good fight requires a multitude of leaders and realizing that leaders sometimes become casualties, Christian leaders must intentionally reproduce themselves and multiply. Some leaders are casualties by divine appointment, and unfortunately some are casualties by carelessness. But eventually all of us will be called home. Who will be there to take our place?…The church as the family of God must be committed to the reproduction and multiplication of leadership. One of the reasons the church falters in the next generation is because we do not pass on the legacy of Christian leadership and fail to disciple effective leaders who can take the church and its mission forward to extend the kingdom of God to the next level in the next generation.”—Harry L. Reeder III and Rod Gregg, The Leadership Dynamic