You go to a church and you find it full of people who profess to know God but they are all liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons. What do you guess is the problem? And what is the solution? Presumably these guys need to be told, “Look you know God and you’ve understood the gospel but now you need to learn that there are some important rules and principles for the Christian life – stop associating with sinners, stop stealing from God and indulging yourself – take responsibility for yourself and get with the serious discipleship programme – praying, fasting, tithing, serving.”
The funny thing when you look at the first century church in Crete the apostle Paul makes a completely different diagnosis. The problem is actually they don’t know God. They say they do but their lives are evidence that they don’t actually know him (Titus 1:16). The medicine is to ‘know the truth’ that he is fundamentally a Saviour God who promised us eternal life before creation (Titus 1:1-3). And the ‘serious discipleship programme’ – don’t eat this, don’t touch that, don’t go there – is actually part of the problem (Titus 1:14-15 cf. 1 Tim. 4:1-3; Col. 2:16-23). True discipleship is rubbing our faces in the gospel truth of who God is and what he’s done (Titus 2:11-14).
That’s one reason why we studied the doctrine of God, the Cross and salvation at our last iServe Africa ministry training (Doctrine of God MTC3 2012) and it’s why it’s so important that the preaching and teaching in our churches is centred not on us or our issues but on the Saviour God, Jesus.
What do you think?