BIG “C” CHURCH

The Covenant
On President’s Day weekend (13-16 February) West Point will be hosting the “All Army Navigator’s Conference” near Albany, New York. At this conference I will have the privilege of presenting a short workshop on “Understanding the New Covenant or Making Disciples the New Covenant Way.” My hope is to help the participants study what God’s word has to say about this often overlooked “regulation” regarding our discipleship ministry. You see, “He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit produces life” (2Cor 3.6). A covenant (diatheke) is a pact or agreement between individuals regarding the disposition of one’s livelihood. Therefore, we are ministers of a new pact, an agreement that specifies how we are to live our lives. The question is: are we living by this new covenant or do we still practice the old, dead life of the letter?

The Church
The first time this word appears in Scripture is in Matthew 16.18, “And I tell you that you are Peter (rock), and on this rock (petra) I will build my church.” A defining cross-reference is Eph 2. 19-22, “You are… fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” It doesn’t take an English instructor to recognize the connection between God’s use of the word “church” and our definition of it as building. But it is ironic to this English instructor that we still can’t build a connection between the New Covenant, discipleship, and “church.”

You see Jesus is the cornerstone of the Church, the standard by which all members must be measured. To become “a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit” we must obey His commands just as He obeyed His Father’s commands (John 15.9). He says, “If anyone loves Me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love Him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14.23). We become His home, His church, His dwelling, because we obey His commands. And what does our Lord Jesus command of us? “Therefore, go and make disciples…”

The Command
Jesus presents but one new command to His New Covenant Church, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13.34). How do we love His body as Jesus loved His disciples? We must build them into God’s temple. The Greek word for “build” or edify as found in Ephesians 4.16, “From Him the whole body… promotes growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part,” is oikodome. This word is also found in Ephesians 2.21, “The whole building (oikodome) is being fitted together in Him and is growing into a holy sanctuary in the Lord in whom you also are being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit.” The command to love is the command to build God’s Church.

Peter emphasizes this concept in his epistle to those “set apart by the Spirit for obedience” (1Pt 1.2) when he wrote, “You yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1Pt 2.4). Not only are we commanded to build the church of God, we are also called to be His priests so that we might sacrifice that which is acceptable to God. The new Church begins with a covenant, is founded on one-on-one discipleship, and is commanded to build the walls of its edifice out of disciples of Jesus Christ. But God needs “priests” to labor in his fields.

The Clergy
“What are you, some kind of minister?” I often get asked this when I attempt to share my faith with others (though not here at West Point) because the assumption is that only those who get paid to talk about Jesus will (or perhaps, should) talk about our Lord. But if the new covenant is true, that is Christians are not only the temple of God but also the priests serving in it, then maybe my answer to that question should be “yes,” rather than the “No, man, I’m just a Christian” I usually provide as a retort.

In 2Corinthians 3.6, “He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit produces life,” the word “minister” is the Greek diakonos from which we get the English word “deacon.” It’s more consistently translated as “servant,” meaning that just as Jesus came not to be served but to “serve” (Mark 10.45) so also are we called to be ministers and not ministered to. And yet why do we set apart a select group of the religiously educated to be our “ministers” rather than accept the fact that we are all called to do what we pay them to?

“I have been called to pastor this church,” is a phrase I’ve come to respect because I understand the difference between the old and new covenant. In the new covenant, this would be like one dude saying to another, “Friend, I’ve been called to minister to you.” But we don’t minister like that today, do we? The word poimen is translated only once as “pastor” and 17 other times as shepherd (i.e. one who tends sheep) and yet it is the title we deem most appropriate for those who have taken on the priestly duty of administering our faith. Perhaps it is because we are truly all like sheep who’d rather follow in herds than lead by example.

The Commission
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” applies only to those called to minister to the Church. If you are not called to be a minister of the new covenant, then you are free to attend religious services, sing spiritual songs, and tithe your excess to those willing to make disciples for you. It’s rather telling to note that Jesus did not give this commission until after the disciples received the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem and “traveled to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed them” (Mt 28.16). The Holy Spirit is, after all, the key to understanding the new covenant Big “C” church.

Jesus told the Pharisees that “no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins…. And no one, after drinking the old wine, wants new, because he says, ‘The old is better’” (Luke 5.37-39). The same is true of the covenants for the writer of Hebrews says, “When He said, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear” (Hebrews 8.13). We see signs of this every year as “home groups” replace Sunday school classes and “lay leaders” replace the archaic “deacon” or as “pastors” become “teaching elders” or “churches” become “sanctuaries.” But until the new covenant becomes our wineskin for discipleship, the old wine of Sunday preaching, service through the tithe, and love by song will inevitable taste better than the new wine of one-on-one discipleship, training disciples to teach obedience, and sacrificing our lifestyles rather than our pocket books.

The Holy Spirit teaches us everything Jesus has commanded Him. If we have Him, then He is indubitably teaching us about discipleship. How you involve yourself in the disciple-making process will reveal which wine you find most tasteful.