The Gospel Union: Expressing the inexpressible

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Expressing the inexpressible

I am filled with awe that my niece was baptized into Christ this weekend and that she got to share in an exciting day of fellowship, singing, and good will with close to a hundred other believers from all over Southern California. It's amazing how joy in Christ can be so contagious. I tried to explain some of this to my kids the other day, but unfortunately words fall far short. After all, the emotions tied into our faith are inexpressible:

1 Peter 1:9 - ...even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy... (NIV)

Just because our joy is inexpressible doesn't mean we shouldn't try to express it, though. In fact, I've noticed that attempts to express the inexpressible are often the most effective at communicating our faith in the most genuine terms possible--from the heart.

I would say that it baffles me that some Christians stifle their own joy by thinking that emotions are worthless, except that I've been guilty of it myself. The truth is that God made us with both an intellectual, rational side, and an emotional side. Our response to the good news of Christ will be based on a combination of both. Some people are wired to respond to more of one than the other.

Perhaps some people confuse the cause with the effect or insist that our emotions only belong in one category. Are emotions the cause of our faith, or the effect of it? I would have to say both. One feeds the other. The people listening to Peter's words on the day of Pentecost were cut to the heart when he told them they had crucified the Son of God.

The deeply felt emotions of those first 3,000 souls, along with their newfound intellectual acknowledgement of who Jesus Christ was, caused a movement that has reverberated through all of human history for the last 2,000 years.

Just as we're cut to the heart and moved to action when we recognize how good the good news really is, that new faith also leads to deeper emotions (and intellectual knowledge, by the way) in a reciprocal fashion:

Acts 16:34 - The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God--he and his whole family. (NIV)

King David wrote extensively about the joy of knowing God:

Psalm 4:6-7 - ...Many are asking, "Who can show us any good?" Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD. You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound. (NIV)

Psalm 28:7- The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song. (NIV)

How much more joyful should we be now in the Christian era knowing that His Son came from heaven to earth to show the way for us? In fact, our joy and peace should be so full, we should be overflowing with hope:

Romans 15:13 - May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (NIV)

Always remember to relish your joy in Christ. Remember that no one can steal it without you letting go of it yourself. As one good friend put it, emotions aren't everything, but I've learned that they certainly aren't nothing.

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Choice scriptures:

Romans 15:1-7 - "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up...May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God."
(NIV)

2 Thessalonians 3:1 - "Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you."
(NIV)

Romans 1:16 - "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."
(NIV)

John 17:20-21 - "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."
(NIV)

Choice quotes:

Alexander Campbell - "We will not hearken to those questions which gender strife, nor discuss them at all. If a person says such is his private opinion, let him have it as his private opinion; but lay no stress upon it; and if it be a wrong private opinion, it will die a natural death much sooner than if you attempt to kill it."

Alexander Campbell - "But men cannot give up their opinions, and therefore, they can never unite, says one. We do not ask them to give up their opinions--we ask them only not to impose them upon others. Let them hold their opinions, but let them hold them as private property. The faith is public property; opinions are, and always have been private property. Men have foolishly attempted to make the deductions of some great minds the common measure of all Christians. Hence the deductions of a Luther, and a Calvin, and a Wesley, have been the rule and measure of all who coalesce under the names of these leaders. It is cruel to excommunicate a man because of the imbecility of his intellect."

Alexander Campbell - "Dear sir, this plan of making our own nest, and fluttering over our own brood; of building our own tent, and of confining all goodness and grace to our noble selves and the "elect few" who are like us, is the quintessence of sublimated pharisaism. The old Pharisees were but babes in comparison to the modern: and the longer I live, and the more I reflect upon God and man--heaven and earth--the Bible and the world--the Redeemer and his church--the more I am assured that all sectarianism is the offspring of hell; and that all differences about words, and names, and opinions, hatched in Egypt, or Rome, or Edinburgh, are like the frolics of drunken men; and that where there is a new creature, or a society of them, with all their imperfections and frailties, and errors in sentiment, in views, and opinions, they ought to receive one another, and the strong to support the weak, and not to please themselves. To lock ourselves up in the bandbox of our own little circle; to associate with a few units, tens, or hundreds, as the pure church, as the elect, is real Protestant monkery, it is evangelical pharisaism."

Alexander Campbell - "I have tried the pharisaic plan, and the monastic. I was once so straight, that, like the Indian's tree, I leaned a little the other way. And however much I may be slandered now as seeking "popularity" or a popular course, I have to rejoice that to my own satisfaction, as well as to others, I proved that truth, and not popularity, was my object; for I was once so strict a Separatist that I would neither pray nor sing praises with any one who was not as perfect as I supposed myself. In this most unpopular course I persisted until I discovered the mistake, and saw that on the principle embraced in my conduct, there never could be a congregation or church upon the earth."

Alexander Campbell - "I have no idea of adding to the catalogue of new sects. I labor to see sectarianism abolished and all Christians of every name united upon the one foundation upon which the apostolic church was founded."

The Gospel Union

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Expressing the inexpressible

Miscellany

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Choice scriptures:

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