Friendly Fire and Strange Fire

A controversial conference is taking place.  A controversy is always happening.  Many will be offended.  Many will be defensive.  Many will give a solid Biblical apologetic for the God pleasing continuation of the movement of the Holy Spirit in gifting the church with His "varied grace."  Some will react with a hurting rant.  This could cause a rant war.  Already the tweets fly like fiery-darts from camp to camp.  Others will do what they are compelled to do.  I admit that there is pain in my heart and a knot in my stomach when my Biblical convictions are questioned and judged.  We expect fire from unfriendly sources (world, flesh, and devil).  Jeus said we would experience trouble in the world (John 16.33).  Friendly fire hurts worse.

How does a Spirit-filled Christian respond to friendly fire?  Here are four convictions.

1. When a Spirit-filled Christian gets squeezed, the Spirit comes out.  Charismatic friends, the fruit of the Spirit are not for when we feel love, joy, peace, and patience.  When I don't naturally feel patience, it will have to be the Spirit's work to bear this fruit, because my flesh can only bear the rotten fruit of impatience and judgment.  (Galatians 5.22-23)

  

2. The Holy Spirit is the person who gives us koinonia with the Father and the Son and the rich love and grace that the Trinity and we, the trinitarian community, dance around, live in, and with which we respond to others.  When drawn out to a fight, we are often drawn, in a fleshly manner, to demand our way, to win, to exact a pound of flesh, to confuse who our enemy really is.  Our enemy is never a Bible -loving cessasionist.  A cessasionist loves truth (even though I disagree with their conviction about the Holy Spirit's current work), and the true enemy of the church hates truth.  A flesh fight must not draw us out from fellowship with the Trinity. (Ephesians 6.12 and 2 Corinthians 13.14)

3. God's dream for the Church is so clear, relationships with true brothers and sisters in the Church can not be disposable.  God has a dream for His church.  It is not a small dream.  Paul calls it "the mystery".  God has had it in mind since creation.  The reconciliation IN His Son, bringing together those nobody thought should ever sit next to, or serve next to one another.  What joy when master is sitting next to slave, man serving his wife, old and young being transformed by the same Gospel--THE Gospel.  To say nothing of Jew and Gentile--one new man--reconciled in Jesus.  FF Bruce calls the Church, "God's pilot scheme for the reconciled universe of the future."  Jesus prayed "that they may be one even as we are one."  So if the purpose of the Church in the will of God is to serve as prototype or pilot of what is to come, we must learn to dream God's dream.  Fellow redeemed brothers and sisters in Christ are family.  They are valuable and not disposible. (John 17 and the whole book of Ephesians)

4. The Church's witness to the world is weakened and unattractive when it sounds like "trade your politics for church politics, your differences for different differences, your judgment for different judgment, and your drama for different drama."  The Gospel sounds so different than this.  Hear it now!  Dear friend, the war is over.  God Himself has entered this wartorn world.  He is victorious over your sin because he has taken it into his body and died (and it with Him)--so you don't have to.  He is victorious over the enemy of your soul by coming face-to-face, taking every condemnation and accusation and letting it kill him--instead of letting it kill you.  He is victorious over death by entering it himself--so you don't have to.  Now, beloved, neither sin, death, nor the devil have the last word--and none of them can separate you from God's love in Jesus Christ.  God has the last word.  He says, "I forgive you."  "You are mine."  (Romans 8, John 8 & 10)

Everyone needs this word, including those brothers and sisters bearing arms.  John, Joni, Steven, RC, I love that you love the Word of God.  On this, we could not agree more.  For the painful words we have spoken, please forgive us?  I forgive you for the painful words you are speaking.

FF Bruce, The Epistle to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, page 321