Author: GCI Media

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Tammy and I returned home a few days ago from GCI’s joy-filled Denominational Conference in Orlando. Over 1,000 members and friends attended, coming from 29 countries. Together we celebrated the theme, We Are GCI. In the “selfie” picture below, Pastor Doug Johannsen and I stand on stage at one of the sessions. For more about the conference, click here.

Leadership changes

During the conference, I announced that on January 1, 2019 I will be retiring—stepping aside as President of Grace Communion International. On that date, GCI Vice President Greg Williams will become GCI President. After retiring from GCI employment I will continue serving as Chairman of GCI’s Board of Directors and Russell Duke will continue serving as Vice Chairman.

These changes in our leadership, recently approved by our Board of Directors, will be accompanied by the move in April 2018 of our Home Office from Glendora, CA, to Charlotte, NC. We’re thankful to God for the way he has provided our next generation of denominational leadership, both in our Home Office and in our other GCI offices around the globe. Thanks for your prayers about these transitions!

Humans in relationship

As I near retirement, I often find myself rejoicing that God in his goodness has created us to be humans in relationship. The topic of the nature of humanity has fascinated people down through the ages (and has sometimes led to fanciful speculation). Often, the focus has been on what is called the human “soul.” Heraclitus of Ephesus (535-475 BC) thought the soul was a bodily agent composed of an unusually pure or rare form of matter such as air or fire. Thales of Miletus attributed the soul to magnets because seeing magnets move iron, he assumed they were alive. Plato reasoned that the soul has three parts: “reason” (λογιστικὸν), “spirit” (θυμοειδές) and “appetite” (ἐπιθυμητικόν). In today’s modern (scientific) era, many view the soul as nothing more than the result of electro-chemical activity in the body’s neural networks.

In Genesis 2:7 (KJV), a person is said to become a “living soul” when God breathes into them the “breath of life.” The Hebrew word translated “soul” is nephesh (נֶ֫פֶשׁ‎), sometimes translated “living being,” “creature” or “life.” The Old Testament uses nephesh in reference to both humans and animals (e.g. Gen. 1:20-30; Ezek. 47:9) and describes death as the cessation of breathing (Gen. 35:18). The Old Testament thus sees the “soul” as the life-possessing quality of humans and animals with God being the source of that life. Indeed, it is God who gives life to all living things.

The Old Testament then differentiates between animals and humans by declaring that humanity has, uniquely, been created “in” or “according to” the image of God. This is further explained in the New Testament where Jesus is shown to be the original image of God—the archetype of the first Adam (Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15). We are told that all persons were created in, through and for Jesus Christ (Col. 1:15-16). Thus we learn that we were created to be images of The Image, Jesus, the eternal Son of God incarnate.

The New Testament also shows that the Son of God upholds the universe and all that is in it (Heb. 1:1-3). Were he to forget about the universe for even a nanosecond, it would cease to exist. Thus we understand that existence itself involves a real (though impersonal) relationship of the Creator God with his creation through the Son. But that’s not where the story ends. As we know, from the beginning humans cut themselves off from God out of distrust and pride, which bore the fruit of disobedience and alienation. God himself would have to personally intervene to reconcile humanity and redeem us back into personal communion and communication with him so that his original purpose would be realized.

So out of love, the Father sent the Son to grab hold of us down to the roots of our nature so as to free us from bondage to guilt and the power of sin and thus restore us to communion with himself. Because of what Jesus Christ did for us, we now can personally and individually grow in relationship to him and become conformed to his image. This is possible only because of the ministry of the Holy Spirit who enables us to share in the human nature that the Son of God assumed then reconciled, renewed and regenerated through the whole of his incarnate life—from conception through life, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. The Son of God is not only our Creator and Sustainer—he is our Redeemer!

Through Jesus, we learn that the triune God (Father, Son and Spirit) have existed in a relationship of loving, knowing and glorifying one another before there ever was a creation. Knowing that God is relational, and that Jesus is the eternal Son of the Father, in the Spirit, we understand that we have our being and freedom in that image of being-in-relationship, which starts with Jesus, the Lamb who was slain on our behalf from the foundation of the world. The Bible shows us that from the moment the Triune God spoke everything into existence, we were created by him, for him and in his image to be relational beings—relating to ourselves, to others, and to God. It is no wonder then that Jesus points out that the greatest commandment is to love God and that the second, following that, is to love others.

Whole, complete persons

Noting that the apostle Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, uses the words spirit, soul and body in describing our humanity, some have mistakenly concluded that these are three separable components. While these terms do refer to distinct aspects of our human selves, they refer to the whole person in different relationships as noted by theologian N.T. Wright:

Just as, for Paul, soma [body] is the whole person seen in terms of public, space-time presence and sarx [flesh] is the whole person seen in terms of corruptibility and perhaps rebellion, so psyche [soul] is the whole person seen in terms of, and from the perspective of what we loosely call the “inner” life…. Paul can use the word pneuma [spirit] to refer to the human “spirit,” by which he seems to mean…the very centre of the personality and the point where one stands on the threshold of encounter with the true god. (The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 283)

Spirit, soul and body are thus to be understood as descriptions of the various relationships we have with God and one another as persons in relationship. Our spirit involves our relationship to God, our soul is our inner life (relationship to or within ourselves) and our body stands in relationship with the world at large. Theologian Tom Smail explains it this way:

The word psyche plays a different part in Paul’s tripartite description of our humanity than it does in the bipartite approach implied in [Matthew’s] quotation from Jesus [Matt. 10:28], where body stands for our relationships with the world and this present age and soul for our relationship with God and the age to come, and the point is that we can lose the former without losing the latter…. In other words, the terms body, soul and spirit are meaningless apart from the relationships to the world, other people, and God in which the self stands. We are body, soul and spirit as persons and not as individuals, because…we image the God whose own being is not that of a solitary individual, still less of three such individuals, but of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in inextricable relationships with one another, three persons, and one God. (Like Father, Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity, p. 152)

Becoming like Jesus

Understanding our humanity in these holistic ways, I take great delight in Paul’s statement:

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 5:23, ESV)

Paul understood that God orchestrates our sanctification as whole, complete persons, in spirit, soul and body. We are children of God by nature as well as by adoption who, by the Holy Spirit, are becoming like Jesus, the true image of God. Our Triune God is loving us to perfection so that one day, when glorified, we will receive fully and share completely in all that Christ has accomplished for us, and so become “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4 ESV). We thus embrace and rejoice in God’s loving work of sanctification by his Word and Spirit.

Forever thankful that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith,

Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the messages dominating the media are often opposed to what Scripture teaches. It’s rare to see a commercial on television encouraging us to reach out in self-sacrifice to serve others. Instead, the media constantly repeat materialistic, self-focused messages that say Me first! My wants! What I can have! That is one of the reasons I don’t like watching TV commercials. Tammy and I dislike them so much we record everything we watch on TV so we can fast-forward through the commercials.

Scripture teaches us to minister to others in self-sacrificial ways—giving away our time, talents, energy, finances and commitment. But the biblical message of self-sacrifice often is drowned out by the “noise” of a consumeristic culture. I can hear the self-indulgent jingle now: You deserve a break today!—a message often heard as “abandon responsibility and think only about yourself.” It is the opposite of the self-sacrifice lived and taught by Jesus: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25, ESV).

 

Please don’t misunderstand. Self-sacrifice is not about abandoning all desire for good and enjoyable things. I chuckle when someone, having been asked what they have denied themselves in order to follow Christ, reply with a list of sinful behaviors they have given up. Is it really self-sacrifice to refrain from murder or adultery? No, authentic self-sacrifice is grounded in the realization that life isn’t all about the self—it’s about being in relationship with the Father, Son and Spirit. It’s about knowing who God is, and who he is in relation to us and others. It’s about acknowledging the invitation we’ve been given to participate with the Father in what he is doing through the Son and by the Spirit to fulfill his mission for the sake of the world that he loves. Self-sacrifice is about following Jesus’ New Commandment to love others just as he loves us. It’s about being willing to give up whatever is necessary in order to share God’s love and life with others.

Ultimately, self-sacrifice is more about a who than a what. It’s about God the Father sending his Son in the power of the Spirit to show us who God is and what he desires for all humanity. In that regard, we should not miss how Jesus honored small acts of self-sacrifice. Think of the boy who gave up his lunch and more than 5,000 were fed. Or consider the widow who gave her last coins as an offering. We should see these acts for what they are—sacrificing the self to serve others. Such acts reflect the heart and mind of God the Father who, in order to give us eternal life, sacrificed his only begotten Son at infinite cost to himself. The cross of Christ proves that God loves us so much he is willing to suffer loss for our sakes. In his self-sacrifice to serve us, God did not lose any of his dignity or worth. His self-sacrifice is one of the reasons we sing that he is “worthy of worship.”

British systematic theologian Colin Gunton (pictured above) was fond of saying that to properly understand Christian doctrine, we must learn to think trinitarianly:

If you want to understand how God works in our world, then you must go through the route God himself has given us: the incarnation of the eternal Son and the life-giving action of the Spirit. Let me repeat: the Trinity is about life. Irenaeus is the writer of that great sentence, often heard from him: “The glory of God is a human being truly alive.” The Trinity is about life, life before God, with one another and in the world. If we forget that God’s life is mediated to us trinitarianly, through his two hands, the Son and the Spirit, we forget the root of our lives, of what makes for life and what makes for death.

Thinking trinitarianly informs us about God, about human nature, and the nature of the church. When the Bible tells us that we are created in God’s image, it is not talking primarily about an innate human capacity. Rather it is telling us about the form of human existence corresponding to God’s relationship to us. To be authentically human, we are to image (reflect, correspond to) who God is in all that we are.

As an echo of the life of God, the church should reflect the kind of being God is—a being in relation—a communion. Jesus came to reveal what God is doing and what he has in store for us. He came as a true human being and took on human nature—our defective, fallible flesh; yet, he remained sinless. Sometimes I ponder how Jesus did that. It was not from a built-in divine programming, but because he freely and totally relied on the moment-by-moment guidance of the Holy Spirit in his human life. Even while living in human flesh on earth, Jesus’ relationship with God the Father and God the Spirit remained in unbroken communion. As the apostle Paul explained, “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9).

Gunton wrote about what it means to be a human person:

Among the great achievements of those who have thought trinitarianly is the concept of the person as a living whole rather than as a mind encased in matter. How it came about is a complicated and difficult matter to describe, but it is one of the fruits of the trinitarian teaching that God is three persons in one being. By thinking about the Trinity, the early theologians came to realize that they had come across an entirely new conception of what it is to be personally. To be is not to be an individual; it is not to be isolated from others, cut off from them by the body that is a tomb, but in some way to be bound up with one another in relationship. Being a person is about being from, and for and with the other. I need you—and particularly those of you who are nearest to me—in order to be myself. That is the first thing to say: persons are beings who exist only in relation—in relation to God, to others and to the world from which they come.

The real truth of human nature is found in Jesus Christ and in him alone. We must see that God’s affirmation of humanity as “good” is fully realized only in Jesus. T.F. Torrance put it this way:

Jesus Christ is the Word by whom, for whom, and in whom we have been created in the image of God, so that in his Incarnation as Immanuel, God with us and for us and in us, he is the secret of our creation and redemption―in him we may now penetrate through all the distortion, depravity and degradation of humanity to the true nature of man hidden beneath it all.

As we follow Jesus, responding to God’s call in our lives, the Holy Spirit leads us in a “Christomorphic” direction—the way of self-sacrifice. Indeed, the true nature and dignity of humanity is established and disclosed in the human nature of Jesus. True self-sacrifice is giving up our autonomous self and self-will in order to more fully live in Christ. Our true personhood, our true dignity, thus lies not in ourselves alone, but in union and communion with Jesus. In Jesus, by the Spirit, we think and we live trinitarianly.

Enjoying the life that is ours in union and communion with Christ,
Joseph Tkach

PS: Because our publications team will be at the GCI Denominational Conference in Orlando, we will not be publishing Weekly Update the next two weeks (August 2 and August 9). Our next issue will be published on August 16. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at the conference!