The Unsubverted Gospel, part 3 of 3
What does “the Church as a forge for saints” actually look like, in practical terms?
What does it mean for the Church to mentor people in their “participation in the Divine Nature”?
(Note to reader: This article is significantly longer than usual, which is saying something, I realize. It’s not supposed to be read in one sitting and it has been divided into subsections that can function as stand-alone essays on their respective Progressive Quality of the Divine Nature. Taken as a whole, this article is intended to provide a practical guide to discipleship in keeping with the objective of the gospel as explained in the two previous installments.)
Step 0: Pre-Baptism Initiation
First, they must be properly initiated.
Peter’s exhortation was that we “must make every effort to add to (our) faith” those qualities of the Divine Nature.
So, everything is for nothing if we don’t begin on a solid foundation of genuine and informed faith. Without that foundation, our Christianity is just a cultural costume, a tribal identification, beneath which we are essentially no different than non-Christians.
As discussed more thoroughly in other articles of this blog, faith is not an epistemology – it is not a means of knowledge alternative to reason and evidence. It is a relationship orientation. It is personal trust and confidence in a Person. So, according to the Bible, we do not believe in God and Christ and the resurrection because we have faith. Rather, we have faith in God because we believe the resurrection happened. As in, the resurrection and the truth of God’s existence are matters of rational, objective fact rooted in evidence and reason, and faith is our response to those facts, once established. The resurrection is the basis for faith, not the object of faith.
They must be taught why Christianity is both true and merits their voluntary undertaking of baptism, and all that it signifies: Namely, death – death to the world, to one’s own mortal nature, to any and all competing loyalties and demands, in order to live to God. Being lowered in death with Christ is the necessary prerequisite to being resurrected to eternal life in him.
This is not an empty ritual or a mere symbolic initiation rite into a human institution. To submit to baptism should be an enactment of what the person is committing to undergo in practical terms: “I am giving up my life, such as it is, and identifying with Christ in his death, in order to be raised to a new life of absolute devotion to him and to his cause and kingdom.”
That is the level of commitment required to “make every effort to add to our faith” those qualities of the Divine Nature, and so we must ensure that commitment is genuine and well considered before baptism, lest we empty it of its meaning and make it into a lie (as is so typically the case). So, they must be made to understand that Christianity is true and merits such single-minded lifelong commitment.
This cannot be done through indoctrination. This can be faked by indoctrination, but for true understanding to inform genuine faith, the hard work of education is the only way, not indoctrination.
In other words, new Christians should be initiated with a basic course in apologetics.
This is exactly what Peter himself modeled for us in the epistle under study. After his exhortation to participate in the Divine Nature and thereby escape the corruption of the world, and his promise of the rewards of doing so and the dangers of failure, he went on:
“So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have …
“For we did not follow cleverly invented stories when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty …”
As in, all of his exhortations to avail themselves of the promises of God, to strive to add to their faith, were predicated on the historical fact of the glorified Christ whom Peter had personally witnessed.
That must be our foundation as well.
Our initiatory course in apologetics should be centered upon the case for the resurrection, but ideally should include as a build-up to that the basics of natural theology/classical apologetics.
According to Scripture, the knowledge of God is more fundamental and universal than Scripture itself. As in, Paul thought God’s existence and nature should be knowable to everyone from creation, and this was the consistent teaching of the Scripture from centuries before Paul.
So, if the Bible is true, God’s existence should be made evident from creation, independent of revelation, and then revelation (the resurrection, specifically) ratifies that evidence.
There are four basic arguments from classical apologetics that I always rely upon to demonstrate this. In so doing, this will give new Christians greater confidence in the truth of God’s existence and intervention, as well as in His practical relevance to daily life, which will reinforce their confidence in the Bible as well.
Those arguments are:
- The Cosmological Argument
- The Teleological Argument
- The Moral Argument
- The Argument from Consciousness
Then, of course, the focus should be on the case for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which will include discussion of the Gospels and other New Testament writings as valid historical sources (which, again, I explain more comprehensively elsewhere that this was the epistemological framework modeled by the early Church).
A brand-new Christian doesn’t necessarily have to be an expert in apologetics and be able to teach a class on it as a condition of being initiated into membership in the Church. But he or she should be able to at least pass an oral exam by demonstrating basic competence with these five arguments before being baptized. To be clear – the point is absolutely not for them to showcase their intellectual ability or expertise in apologetics or philosophy. It’s great if they do, but that’s not the point of the exercise. It is to demonstrate first and foremost that their faith is genuine and is the result of believing in the literal, objective truth of the gospel, and is not the result of indoctrination, superstition or suspension of disbelief motivated by a need for social belonging in the church. The point is to make sure their faith is real and they are sincerely committed to the demands of discipleship. The point is to make sure it is truly Jesus Christ whom they seek to follow, not a religion or a theological system or a social fad or a clique of Christian peers.
This will not only give them a sure footing in knowing why Christianity is true, but also establishes a foundation in basic theology as a practical discipline, which will be built upon in their later discipleship.
I’ve known far too many lifelong churchgoers who lack this basic understanding and whose conception of God and Jesus and of Christianity in general is largely unchanged from what they received in childhood, because so many churches just don’t place any value or emphasis on discipleship and spiritual growth and intellectual rigor, and especially not on apologetics. If it’s not a so-called “salvation issue” (i.e., directly related to getting them into heaven by way of indoctrination), it’s treated as optional, at best — and some are even hostile to apologetics and the rest as incompatible with “faith,” as they understand it. So, if ever these people are confronted with an exhortation to “make every effort to add their faith” those qualities of the Divine Nature, they not only lack the necessary commitment, but can’t even see the value and relevance of doing so within the paradigm of “salvation” they were taught.
Along with apologetics as a prerequisite for baptism, the initiate should be taught the basics of Christian doctrine as well, “laying a foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptism, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment,” and then tested on this knowledge. Again, this isn’t for mastery, but just for basic competence.
Step 0.5: ‘Always Two There Are: A Master and an Apprentice’
Upon completing baptism, the new Christian should be paired with a competent and mature senior Christian of the same sex to serve as a one-on-one mentor, under the supervision of the church’s leadership.
(And for the love of everything good and holy, please stop calling such a person a “discipler” or the act of mentoring people “discipling.” That’s the equivalent of calling a schoolteacher a “studenter” who “students” her class. No, she teaches them, because she is a teacher. Teachers teach. “Studenting” is not a word, and neither is “discipling,” and we sound like unserious tourists when we say things like that. Students are taught, and disciples are mentored.)
The mentor’s task will be to guide and instruct the initiate in the process laid out by the apostle Peter of adding to his faith those Seven Progressive Qualities of the Divine Nature: “You must make every effort to add to your faith:
- Arete; and to arete,
- Knowledge; and to knowledge,
- Self-mastery; and to self-mastery,
- Perseverance; and to perseverance,
- Godliness; and to godliness,
- Brotherly affection; and to brotherly affection,
- Agape (Love).”
It’s worth reiterating again that Peter’s prescription for our participation in the Divine Nature is the obverse of escaping the corruption of the world caused by appetites: to do one is to do the other – the more we participate in the Divine Nature, the farther removed we are from the corruption of the world. And, the only way to escape the corruption of the world is by participating in the Divine Nature. There is no other means of escape.
While there is some specific attention given to avoiding sin in the New Testament, the far more prevalent emphasis is on what we pursue than on what we avoid. As in, we cannot avoid sin by putting our focus on those particular sins to which we are inclined. That just amplifies our temptation. Just like if you want to break an addiction, you don’t just grit your teeth and white-knuckle it indefinitely while you deny yourself the cigarettes, alcohol or sugar that you cannot stop thinking about. That only delays an inevitable relapse. You must replace it with something positive, like exercise or some other constructive project in which to invest yourself, knowing that falling back into those bad habits will undo your investment.
Likewise, we avoid sin by focusing on the positive attributes that we want to pursue – we’re not trying to avoid angering God by denying ourselves the sins in which we are tempted to indulge. We’re not thinking about sin at all, nor about wrath. Rather, we are thinking about the grace of God and zealously embracing the Gift by striving to upgrade ourselves according to the promises we’ve been given and the New Nature we have inherited from our Father.
It helps to think of it like a video game (if you’re into that kind of thing), but with actual stakes and real-life benefits, in which we grow in XP and improve our stats and skills for greater power within the world, to better master the game. In the same way, we cultivate the skills and attributes of God Himself within ourselves and each other, each building upon the previous attribute, and over time, we grow in wisdom and strength and power, and eventually that growth overflows to others around us, and we thereby transform the world.
The role of the mentor is to aid in that endeavor. He (or she) is a servant to the disciple, whose task is to empower and build up and equip the disciple to become greater in strength and wisdom and godly qualities.
As in, it isn’t to control or impose discipline upon the disciple, nor turn the disciple into a dependent upon the mentor nor upon the institution of the church. It is the precise opposite and antithesis of the pattern characterized by a cult: It is to empower the disciple to grow into independence and maturity, so that he can go on to mentor others, and thereby advance the kingdom of God on earth.
Step 1: Arete
The very first quality Peter instructed to add to our faith is “Arete.” The word is typically translated “goodness” or “virtue” or “excellence,” but these all fall woefully short of the full meaning of the Greek term. It includes those qualities, but can hardly be limited to any one or even all of them.
The word’s first appearance in Peter’s epistle is in verse 3: “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and Arete.”
So, it is first introduced by Peter as a quality of God Himself, hence our striving for it in our participation in His Nature. Like all of the others that follow, we already have that quality within us, but in seed form, as a potentiality, if we have God’s Spirit dwelling within us; and so we cultivate it in ourselves as a matter of trusting Him and claiming His promise.
In Greek culture, Arete was a technical term that was the object of the Greek Paideia, the training and education program of an ideal member of Greek society. It is the etymological root for the word “aristocracy,” meaning “rule by the best.”
The term includes the quality of moral excellence, but it encompasses also an “excellence” tied to function and fulfillment of purpose: the arete of a horse is different than the arete of a human, and the arete of a woman is different than the arete of a man, and the arete of a warrior is different still from the arete of a craftsman or a politician or a builder or an artist. Each is to pursue arete through the perfection of their particular vocation and function in society.
It also included optimization of the body and the mind through athletic and academic excellence, physical discipline and philosophical training and the pursuit of knowledge and self-improvement in general.
For us as Christians, our arete in the moral sense and our arete in the sense of function/fulfillment of purpose are not identical, but they are closely related and overlap significantly. As God’s holy people in whom His Holy Spirit dwells, His virtue and moral excellence is to be our own. But also, as God’s image-bearers, our very purpose is to implement the divine order in creation. Our arete is in resuming the mission of Adam in the Garden of being the Presence of God in the world and the agents and embodiment of the divine order.
We are to pursue arete in that general moral and functional sense by studying the Bible, and the Law in particular, to train ourselves in righteousness by learning to love what God loves and to hate what God hates. We also pursue this in prayer by actively seeking this growth and internal transformation from God – by asking for it directly, and by confessing and repenting of our failures and sins, and by actively looking for opportunities to be God’s agents in the world and in the lives of the people around us.
And, of course, God made us with physical bodies – as physical beings. Physical training has value for Christians no less than it did for ancient Greeks, and all the more so because our bodies are God’s temple, and so there is no reason that arete in this sense shouldn’t include physical discipline and the pursuit of athletic excellence, barring any medical conditions that would preclude it.
That’s Arete in the general sense of the term, but there is also a more specific Arete that applies only to Christians, and to each individual Christian uniquely.
In Ephesians 4, the passage I cited at length in Part 2 of this series in which Paul outlines the basic structure and purpose of the Church, he also said:
“Now to each one of us grace has been given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. This is why it says: ‘When He ascended on high, He led captives away, and gave gifts to men …”
To each one of us, grace has been given, in the form of gifts given by Christ, Paul said.
I take this to mean that if you are a Christian – if the Spirit of Christ dwells in you, you have been given some spiritual gift or another. Possibly many gifts, but at the very least, one.
The purpose of that gift, Paul went on to explain a few verses later, is to serve and help build up the Church.
It is your job to find out what that is. It is your mentor’s job, and that of the church leadership to whom he reports, to help you find out what that is. And, the pursuit of Arete in the general sense should lead to the discovery of that arete in the specific and individual sense.
And, again – everyone who is a genuine Christian, who is truly saved by the indwelling of the Spirit of God – has been given such a spiritual gift, according to what we’ve read from Paul.
And you will know your gift by its fulfillment of three somewhat obvious criteria: 1) It’s something you are good at; 2) it’s something you enjoy doing (i.e., it’s a gift, not a burden or an affliction); and 3) it’s something that brings genuine edifying value to the Church.
Every single Christian who is a Christian has something of value to contribute to the Church, and something the Church would be poorer for not having. It’s not necessarily something flashy and exciting on its face, but only a very few gifts of any practical value are. And that gift is included in the grace Jesus Christ gives to us in salvation.
I don’t want to belabor this too much more, but it’s worth putting as fine a point on this as possible: if you don’t know what your gift is and your church isn’t actively helping you to discover and utilize it, your church is failing you. It is not doing its God-assigned job. It is negligent. And, you are failing your church if you do not bring this to their attention and give them an opportunity to repent of it.
“You must make every effort to add to your faith Arete,” Peter said, and finding and using your spiritual gift is a vital component of that. The Church needs you to get in the game.
Step 2: Knowledge
“And to arete, knowledge …”
This one is pretty straightforward. The Greek word here is “gnosis,” which just means “knowledge.” There’s no nuance to it or technical meaning that gets lost in translation from Greek to English.
In contrast, there is another word also translated “knowledge” that figures prominently in Peter’s epistle – “epignosis.” The prefix “epi-“ is an intensifier, meaning “at” or “upon,” which modifies the root “gnosis” to mean a personal, firsthand experiential knowledge – deeper and more intimate than mere head-knowledge. That’s the word in verse 3: “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness through our epignosis of Him who called us by His own glory and arete.” It’s also the word used in 2 Peter 2:20, which reads, “If they have escaped the corruption of the world through the epignosis of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.”
But, the “knowledge” Peter exhorts us to add to our arete and our faith is just the regular “gnosis” that means “knowledge” in the unspecified general sense.
Peter wants us to study.
Pursuing knowledge is a lifelong undertaking, and there is simply too much to know to ever expect to know everything so, obviously, we need to focus our efforts.
Knowledge of the Bible is our starting point. First and foremost, we need to read it in its entirety, from beginning to end, and then after that, we need to read it some more, and then when we’re done, keep going, because we’re never actually done.
To study the Bible is to grow in love for the Bible and all that it reveals, but I realize that not everyone takes to it immediately, and doing so can seem like a chore. But if you make yourself do it – out of faith that it will eventually pay off, I promise, it will gradually and eventually stop seeming like a chore. You’ll find it to be a wellspring of life and joy and power, the heights and depths of which you will never reach.
So, pursue knowledge of the Bible – of its contents and teachings. But also, pursue knowledge about the Bible – its composition and authorship and origins, its manuscript sources, its languages and translation history, its cultural and historical context, etc.
Doing this is immensely rewarding for its own sake, but it will also awaken curiosity about other topics – of history and philosophy and other religions (not to practice, but to understand as part of the cultural context out of which the Bible emerged), science and social issues and all of the countless other topics that the Bible touches upon.
The Bible is an inexhaustible source of knowledge, but it’s also a catalyst for intellectual curiosity and growth. It’s like a gymnasium for the mind that will make you stronger and wiser and more knowledgeable about subjects well beyond the Christian religion, and it is a gift of immeasurable worth for helping to awaken and cultivate the Divine Nature within.
And, a good mentor will guide you through the Bible to help you understand it, and will help you see what it’s teaching on its own terms, without imposing his own dogmas and biases upon it – i.e., he will educate you, not indoctrinate you.
Step 3: Self-Mastery
“And to knowledge, self-mastery …”
The Greek word is “egkratia,” and it is often translated “self-control,” but I would argue that this wildly understates the meaning of the word. It’s from the roots “en-” meaning “in” and “kratos,” meaning “dominion” or “rule.” It’s the same root used for different forms of government or rulership – democracy, aristocracy, autocracy, theocracy, etc. In this term, it is that same rulership, but applied within – it means to have dominion over oneself, a “selfocracy,” so to speak.
This goes back to a major theme of Part 2, which explored the nature of our corruption being that we are dominated by our appetites and animal natures.
Participation in the Divine Nature means mastering our appetites and impulses and animal instincts and being rulers of ourselves. That is at the heart of what it means to be “governed by the Spirit” and “not governed by the flesh.”
This is, of course, a deeply sensitive topic, but it’s one that must be broached: As we all know, our civilization suffers from an obesity epidemic, and Christians are as much entangled in that as anybody.
There is an obvious and visible problem of physical obesity, but I would contend that this is only a symptom of a deeper problem of mental and spiritual obesity.
Yes – the physical obesity problem has its own contributing factors in the form of the abundance of options for cheap, fast, metabolically-destructive and highly-addictive “food,” coupled with the ease of life and convenience of sedentary lifestyles.
But, all of that is part of an overall and more pervasive culture of mental and spiritual obesity that provides moral cover and encouragement to the physical aspect of the problem.
We are mentally obese in that we are overfed by information and social narratives and stories bombarding us from the screens and devices we are addicted to staring at for hours on end every day. We have immediate, unrestricted access to more knowledge than any other generation in human history, but we are more ignorant and thoughtless and devoid of wisdom than any previous generation as well. We have a constant stream of amusement and TV shows and “news” broadcasts telling us what to think, and all too many people who are strident in expressing those preprogrammed thoughts as their own, but it is a rare person who actually thinks for himself and can articulate those thoughts without falling back on canned slogans and sound bites. Yes, I am talking about the woke Left and the stereotypical feral, cliché-shouting “activists” and the prostitutes masquerading as journalists and pundits who agitate them and pull their strings. But I’m not only talking about them.
We are spiritually obese in that we have no shortage of churches and professing Christians, but the content they’re getting from the pulpit is so much superficial garbage that is masquerading as the word of God. “Jesus” is a very popular and widely-cited mascot for a lot of different belief systems and social causes that go under the label “Christianity,” but I believe I’ve already addressed all that at length in Part 1, that it would be redundant to belabor the point again here.
Both mentally and spiritually, we have an abundance of consumption, but very little lean mass of functional and practical use. It is mostly fat and we are being smothered under the weight of it.
Our abundance of options and ease of access have cultivated a widespread culture of laziness and self-indulgence and entitlement to stay this way, and so the physical obesity is just a visible manifestation of what we’re doing to ourselves mentally and spiritually.
There’s no reason to expect nonbelievers who are dead to God and enslaved to their fallen natures to resist the pressures of their appetites and of the widespread availability of cheap, unhealthy food and the lure of a sedentary lifestyle. Nor to resist the lure of morally imbecilic socio-political narratives that embolden them to virtue signal and try to lord it over their perceived political enemies. Nor the lure of being addicted to their screens and filling their heads with so much empty stimulation and noise while they outsource their thinking to “influencers” and TV personalities.
But as the sons and daughters of God who bear His Spirit and Nature within ourselves, we should be ashamed of ourselves if we do not heed the apostle’s exhortation to self-mastery.
And, indeed, we haven’t. His exhortation doesn’t even register with us. It’s not on our minds at all and is no part of our common “Christian” culture.
Not only must this change, but the Church itself should be the answer to this growing civilizational sickness.
We must make every effort to add to our faith self-mastery.
The aforementioned qualities of Arete and Knowledge should include becoming better educated about the world and integrating the gospel into our social and political philosophies, but we still must train ourselves to resist being controlled by the political and social narratives that are programming us into becoming the tools of other people’s agendas and active enemies to the divine order.
If any of us do suffer from screen addiction, we need to discipline ourselves to only use our screens at certain predetermined times (if at all). The mentor should be like an Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor in this and other regards – an accountability partner.
Also, and even more fundamentally and importantly, we must master our appetites and our physical impulses.
Practice regular fasting. It trains the will and robs our appetites of their power over us, and teaches us not to take feelings and physical impulses as guides to reality and truth. It teaches us to uncouple our behavior from our feelings. Early Christians fasted two days a week, as a matter of standard custom. We would do well to adopt the same practice today.
Also, we should all adopt a regular exercise regimen. Churches should include organized exercise sessions as a normal part of ministry, just as vital as regular Bible study and prayer gatherings. If they have the budget to build a gym, awesome. But there’s no real need for that. Bodyweight calisthenics, stretching and yoga (stripped of all the Hinduism, of course), running, martial arts training and plenty of other options require no equipment at all – just an open space on a flat surface will do.
A good mentor will learn the right mix of patience and compassion and accountability in the disciple’s pursuit of self-mastery: how much of a brutal and demanding drill instructor to be, versus how much of an encouraging and gentle fitness trainer to be, and when to switch it up.
We should not actively police church members’ weight and excommunicate people for obesity. At least, not without great reluctance and as an absolute final resort in the face of willful unrepentance. But we cannot treat obesity and other symptoms of a lack of self-control as if they are normal and expected and irrelevant to our faithfulness to Christ – as if they are any less sinful and contrary to the divine order than any other sin. Considering the aforementioned conflict between appetite and Spirit, these issues are at the heart of the gospel.
The Church should be at the forefront of addressing this societal plague. As long as we are not, and are as much a victim of it as everyone else, that exposes the lie of our profession of faith.
We must make every effort to add to our faith self-mastery. It’s not an option or a suggestion. To treat it as such is apostasy.
Step 4: Perseverance
“To self-mastery, perseverance …”
The Greek is “hypomone,” and it is sometimes translated “endurance,” “patience” or “steadfastness.” It’s from the roots “hypo,” meaning “under” and “meno,” meaning “to remain.”
“Meno” is the same Greek word from John 15, when Jesus said:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain (meno) in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
To point out the obvious – Jesus was quite emphatic in exhorting his disciples to remain in him. He drove the point home quite explicitly and repetitively.
“Mone” is the noun form of the verb “meno,” and means a dwelling place – a place where one remains. “Hypomone” is that quality of remaining despite opposition and adversity. It isn’t mere consistency over time, but consistency in the face of challenge and hardship – consistency when you don’t feel like it and want to quit and all the voices within you and outside of you are telling you your faith is misplaced and it isn’t worth the price and the struggle, and you’re starting to see their point, but you remain nonetheless.
And, we absolutely will meet such opposition to remaining in him. We are surrounded by it, actually.
And sometimes that opposition will come under a flag of Christian fellowship and piety and godly virtue.
The fifth point of Calvinism – the “P” in the acronym TULIP – is “Perseverance of the Saints,” otherwise known as “Eternal Security” by proponents and “Once Saved, Always Saved” by detractors. The doctrine is that everyone who is truly born again will inexorably and inevitably persevere to the end, having been predetermined by God to do so. Anyone who does not persevere to the end was never truly born again/saved to begin with, they say.
This is obviously and preposterously false on its face.
And, I would like to preface what follows with a caveat that, while I recognize the fact that this is a highly controversial topic among Christians, that controversy has everything to do with our widespread confusion and denominational groupthink and institutional indoctrination and absolutely nothing to do with any ambiguity within the text itself. I don’t even recognize this as a legitimate topic of debate among honest, biblically-literate Christians, because the Bible is abundantly and undeniably clear on this topic. There are innumerable explicit passages that plainly warn against the loss of salvation, while there are absolutely none that explicitly teach “Once Saved, Always Saved.” Every single passage that supposedly teaches that requires some elaborate chain of inferences from beyond the text in order to coax out that interpretation, but never just says in so many words that genuine salvation cannot be lost. And then, those dubiously-interpreted passages are set up as primary and then used as a justification to gloss over and ignore those passages that are explicit in their warnings. And, people go along with it because it coddles their wishful thinking and their weak faith, and congregations that teach this will socially reward and affirm conformity and ostracize dissenters (I have experienced this firsthand by getting excommunicated over this very issue).
Consequently, many do not persevere in the faith, because OS;AS inoculates them against any conviction that they would ever need to, having been assured by their trusted authorities that God Himself will ease their passage through any faith-threatening adversity they might encounter, so they fold when that adversity arrives. (Or, their faith is so shallow and ineffectual that they never encounter any opposition to it, because they live no differently than the world.)
If perseverance is inevitable by dint of having been born again, why would Peter have written to such people that they “must make every effort to add to your faith … perseverance”? If it was already guaranteed, why would any effort be needed at all? Or, for that matter, any instruction? If Peter thought that to be born again automatically meant “guaranteed by God Himself to persevere to the end,” why even bring it up? It can’t be argued that he was writing to people whose salvation was in question, because his entire line of instruction was predicated on them having been imbued with the Divine Nature in which they could participate, “therefore you must make every effort …”, he said.
By that same reasoning, why would Jesus implore his own disciples to remain in him if that was already predetermined? Quite obviously, he was not making any promise to them that he or the Father would ensure the outcome and sovereignly preclude their falling away. The burden was plainly on them to remain, hence Jesus’ promise of rewards if they do and destruction if they don’t: he wanted to motivate them, because this was clearly something that required their attention and intention and effort. And it cannot be argued that “if they fell away, they were never really a part of the vine to begin with.” You cannot “remain” where you have never been.
God does, however, ensure our perseverance, in a way: hypomone is already included in the very qualities we inherit from Him as His children. That does not preclude our need to make every effort to cultivate it. It is for this very reason, Peter said, that we must spare no effort. If we do not persevere, it will not be because God failed to give us everything needed to do so. It will be because we failed to make that effort.
Now, Calvinists are partly correct in the many passages they cite that speak of God sustaining us, that He will continue the good work He began in us, etc. It isn’t as if I’m arguing that God abandons us and leaves us to our own devices as soon as we’re born again.
But, every single one of those promises Calvinists cite are conditional, and they always ignore the conditions and even insist that there are none, and in so doing totally nullify exhortations like those of Peter and Jesus.
That condition is faith. As the entire epistle to the Hebrews amply demonstrates throughout, having faith today is not, in itself, any guarantee that we will have faith tomorrow. We must be on our guard against complacency, drifting away, being enticed away to idols and apostasy and false systems of justification. It absolutely can happen, and it does happen.
And, we see this in the very epistle under study. In the opening chapter, Peter wrote that it is “through our knowledge (epignosis) of Him” that we “participate in the Divine Nature and escape the corruption of the world.”
In the next chapter, he wrote, “If they have escaped the corruption of the world through knowledge (epignosis) of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.”
Calvinists always fall back on the canard that “they were never really saved to begin with, and their knowledge of Jesus Christ was only superficial and insincere.”
The text does not leave that option open to us. It wasn’t the general and unspecified word “gnosis” that Peter used, but “epignosis” – the firsthand, intimate and experiential kind of knowledge of which he spoke in chapter 1, which is the basis for participation in the Divine Nature. And, participate in the Divine Nature they did, as evidenced by their having escaped the corruption of the world by that knowledge. To escape the corruption of the world is to participate in the Divine Nature, and vice versa. The idea that anyone even could escape the corruption of the world in any other way is a heresy in itself.
These were born-again Christians, imbued with the Spirit of God, who fell away and were damned for it. If it could happen to them, it can happen to you and me and every other Christian. And the more lightly we take this warning, the more vulnerable we are.
Anyone who says otherwise is starting with their theology first, and then lawyering the text to accommodate it. They are not getting that from the text. “Perseverance of the Saints” is a lie straight from the mouth of the Devil to exploit wishful thinking and weak faith and to give people a license to gloss over and ignore the urgency and stakes of Peter’s instruction.
The late uber-Calvinist R.C. Sproul, in his book “The Work of Christ,” wrote:
“We have a doctrine called the perseverance of the saints. I do not like that name for it; while saints do persevere, it is not because they have the power of perseverance within themselves. If it were left to me to persevere in my Christian walk, I would fall and stumble in a moment. The One who really perseveres is God. He perseveres with His children and thereby preserves them. One of the chief ways in which God preserves His people is through the priestly intercession of Jesus.”
Clearly, nobody told the apostle Peter any of that, because he thought we do have that power within us. Either he’s wrong or Sproul is, because Peter clearly thought we have that power within ourselves, precisely because of the grace of God.
I suspect that Sproul’s dislike of the phrasing was because, on some level, he recognized the inherent contradictory absurdity of exhorting us to strive for something that is impossible for us, yet already predetermined. He didn’t like the word “perseverance,” as such, and so he qualified it to mean something else entirely, so that “perseverance” just means “God does it all for you by carrying you and expecting nothing of you, because you are a helpless wretch, and you will never be anything but a helpless wretch.”
In that regard, he missed the entire point of the gospel, which is for God to put His Nature in us, not to coddle us as His perpetual helpless infants or puppets, but so that we can grow up and learn to walk on our own two feet.
The greatest impediment to Christian perseverance today, I would argue, is perverse nonsense like “Once Saved, Always Saved.”
Once we dispense with that and take Peter’s instruction seriously and understand our own responsibility to persevere and remain in him, it isn’t difficult to understand what that means. The perseverance itself might be difficult at times, but it’s easy to understand what it means.
It means holding on to our faith – faith as defined in Step 0.
In his “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis wrote:
“Now Faith … is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off’, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.”
How do you “train the habit of Faith”?
Build a strong foundation in the first place. In those times when Christianity does seem unlikely – based on your mood, the weather, the day you’re having, something you ate – return to the anchor of your faith. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is that anchor, which God has given to the entire world as our proof. Think of the person of Jesus Christ himself.
Also, think of your own experiences of answered prayer and interventions by God. Contemplate the conviction you had at first that led to your baptism.
Pray. Pray, and then pray. God Himself is our Source for life and the One in Whom our faith is rooted. “Perseverance” means continuing to trust Him, and prayer is our direct line to Him. We have His promise that the line is always open to Him, and that (as R.C. Sproul rightly pointed out) Jesus himself is always interceding for us. It will, at times, seem like none of this is true. Trust Him anyway, and pray.
Seek the support of fellow believers whose faith you respect and whose wisdom you trust.
Also, a good mentor will train you in all of this and other ways to persevere.
Step 5: Eusebeia
“And to perseverance, godliness …”
The Greek word here is “Eusebeia,” from “eu,” meaning “well” or “good,” and “sebomai,” meaning “to worship.” It is sometimes translated “piety.”
As is often the case, the English translation doesn’t quite communicate the full sense of the word. Or, at least, the connotations we typically attach to “godliness” or “piety” don’t necessarily capture the meaning of “eusebeia.” Those terms make me think of Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” bit from Saturday Night Live, and the kinds of people he satirized by it: Paul spoke to his disciple Timothy about the corrupt people in the last days who will be characterized by “having an appearance of godliness (eusebeia), but denying its power.”
So, there is power in genuine eusebeia. Many will adopt an affectation of godliness, but it lacks that power, and they don’t even understand that anything is missing, because they lack genuine godliness.
“Eusebeia” means to worship what should be worshiped, to correctly revere what is worthy of reverence. It’s about rightly relating to God and the things of God with appropriate awe for the numinous quality of God’s Presence. It is the Fear of God, simply put.
Many commentators point out the distinction between “eusebeia” and the word more typically translated as “religion” in the New Testament – “threskeia.”
“Threskeia” speaks of any kind of religion or ceremonial observance, of God or of any other gods, without regard for the correctness or righteousness of it.
“Eusebeia,” on the other hand, speaks of rightly-placed worship and awe and respect for holiness.
Once again, the best way to cultivate this quality is to study the Bible. Particularly, the Torah and the instructions for worship. Pay close attention to how faithful people related to God, and what instructions God Himself gave for how to properly worship Him. What kinds of acts and behaviors provoked His wrath and punishment? What pleased Him?
The ultimate example, in my opinion, of this quality of Eusebeia – of the right way for a godly mortal to relate to the Holy One, the Most High God, and the outcome of that right relationship – would be Moses after spending time in God’s Presence. Being in the Presence of Holiness transformed Moses to make him holy. God’s glory radiated from his face after he left God’s Presence.
And that is exactly the kind of transformation we’re talking about.
In order to make every effort to add to our faith eusebeia, we should do what Moses did: Spend time in the Presence of God. Pray. Approach Him on His terms, with appropriate reverence and awe. Honor Him as holy in our conduct toward Him, and toward others.
Step 6: Philadelphia
“To godliness, brotherly affection …”
The Greek word here is “Philadelphia,” from “philos,” meaning “friend” and “philia,” which is the affection between friends, and “adelphos,” meaning “brother,” hence, “brotherly love” or “brotherly affection.”
This is the love we have for our fellow Christians, because they are our fellows.
There are four words for “love” in Greek:
- “Storge,” which is the love of family,
- “Eros,” which is sexual/romantic love,
- “Agape,” which we’re not talking about just yet, and
- “Philia.”
“Philadelphia,” then, is a sort of “adoptive brotherly affection.” It’s not “storge,” because that’s the natural love between actual, blood-related brothers and other relatives. “Philadelphia” is more of a “found family”-kind of love: you love one another because of what you have in common.
Specifically, as Christians, we love one another because we recognize that the love of God, the love from God, that we depend on as our very lives and identities and purpose for existence – it is the same love God has for other Christians. To honor His love for us entails that we honor His love in them. To love them is to love ourselves. We have the same Father, the same King we willingly follow and worship, the same cause, the same purpose. We share a tribe and identity, the same values and hopes, and the same enemies. That makes us brothers and sisters. That makes us family on a level far deeper and more profound and lasting than what we have with our biological families.
And, this should be the primary basis for our fellowship, if it is to be actual Christian fellowship.
To clarify: There is nothing wrong with a bunch of Christians with a shared love of golf going to the golf course together and golfing.
But if it’s their love of golf that is the primary basis for their mutual affection and fellowship, that’s not actually Christian fellowship and doesn’t qualify as the brotherly love we are instructed to cultivate as Christians. The fact that they all happen to be Christians is entirely incidental to their friendship. The basis for their friendship is golf, not Christ.
Which, again – that isn’t to say there is anything wrong with a bunch of Christians bonding over their shared hobbies, because that might provide the occasion for the bond to deepen and actually grow into genuine Christian fellowship.
But, I just want to caution against the kind of superficiality I often see in which a bunch of Christians within a congregation form a clique around their shared interests and so hang out together and call it “fellowship” with the connotation that it is “Christian” fellowship and they’re doing something the Bible tells them to do, when it has nothing to do with whatever faith they have in common, and neither Christ nor the Bible are ever discussed, and the direction of conversation might even run quite contrary to anything appropriate to genuine “Christian fellowship,” which – for our purposes, is worse than no fellowship at all in that it normalizes non-Christian behaviors among Christians, undermining their faithfulness and sanctification, and ultimately serves to trivialize the Christian faith they supposedly have in common, and to normalize such trivialization of what is most sacred, causing our “salt to lose its saltiness,” so to speak. (And, this is why Eusebeia appears first in the chain of Divine Qualities, as a prerequisite to Philadelphia.)
Sadly, the Church is so divided today and the “Christianity” we have in common is so shallow and vacuous that genuine Christian fellowship is a precious rarity. In my experience, getting a bunch of Christians together and opening the Bible or discussing theology or other related topics just as often leads to rancor and hostility as it does to brotherly affection, with the exception of when those Christians are all the products of the same indoctrination.
This is largely because, in keeping with the thesis of this article, the Church just doesn’t do what the Church is supposed to be doing.
However, I expect this will change dramatically if we implemented the practices I’ve proposed here, like pairing mentors with disciples to train them in their participation in the Divine Nature. Part of that process would be to facilitate genuine Christian fellowship to cultivate that brotherly affection.
Step 7: Agape
“And to brotherly affection, love …”
And now we come to the Main Event – the ultimate goal of all of our faith and effort and discipleship. As Paul beautifully explained in 1 Corinthians 13, love is the completion and perfection of everything else that is the Christian life – the telos of the gospel and of God’s plan for history. All of the Scriptures and miracles and spiritual gifts and everything else have been for this ultimate purpose, and without love, all of it is for nothing. The world will have been remade when its inhabitants are exemplified by love for God and by God’s love in them for one another. That is the ultimate objective of our transformation and it is what will transform our fallen world into a paradise.
The Greek word here for “love” is “Agape.”
Prior to and outside of the New Testament, the word was used somewhat rarely, and it just meant “affection” or “preference” in a general, non-specific sense. It has taken on its commonly-held meaning of “the highest form of love” and “divine, ‘selfless’ and ‘unconditional’ love” (and please note the quotation marks) entirely because of its usage in the New Testament. The biblical writers imbued the word with new meaning by their application of it to God.
“Agape” is the love God has for the world that is such that He gave His only Son to save us.
And it’s not just the love that God has, but it is the love that God is.
“God is Agape,” the apostle wrote.
Agape is God’s very Nature. It is the defining attribute of His character.
Because “Agape” didn’t have that meaning until Christians defined it as such centuries later, the word wasn’t used that way in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Its use in the Septuagint is consistent with its use in broader Greek society at the time in that it didn’t have any special theological meaning. So, the term from the Old Testament to which “Agape” (in the Christian sense) is most often compared is the Hebrew “Chesed,” which is often translated “lovingkindness,” “steadfast love,” “unfailing love,” or “loving devotion” – it is hardly ever rendered simply as “love” or “kindness” or any other simple term, but is typically a compound phrase to make it a superlative of love. It is the term used for God’s covenant loyalty to His people, and it was the quality of God often invoked by David in the Psalms in his most rapturous praise or most desperate pleas for help and mercy. In fact, God’s promise to David was that He would never withdraw His chesed from his descendants as He had from King Saul, and this promise was the foundation of God’s guarantee of the coming of the Messiah, the king who would restore the fallen dynasty of David.
And as followers of that Messiah and those in whom his Spirit dwells, that promise extends to us: God will never take His chesed from us, His agape, as long as we keep our faith in Him.
It is important to emphasize that Agape’s status as “the highest form of love” does not mean that it is like any of the other loves, just in greater measure. Agape is not different merely in degree from those loves, but is different in kind.
Those other loves are rooted in mutual need or benefit or commonality of interest. Chimps and wolves and rats have storge and eros for one another. Criminal gang members and terrorists and cell mates bear philia for one another. These are all earthly, mortal loves rooted in our glands and appetites and instincts and the social and emotional needs of those who exhibit them.
Agape transcends all of that. It is a love rooted in God’s own Nature. God loves us because of Who He is, and we love God because He first loved us.
As the defining attribute of God’s character and the ultimate objective of Christian discipleship, “Agape” is perhaps the most vitally important concept to get right. Unfortunately, though, it is probably – next to “faith” – the least well understood and most widely disputed topic within Christianity.
I actually struggled quite a bit with this section, because there are so many widespread and deeply-entrenched misconceptions about God’s love and what it means, that addressing all of them and providing a comprehensive definition of Agape soon grew into an epic behemoth of an article in itself, far beyond the scope of this article.
I’ve addressed some of that in another article (under the subheading “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”), but ultimately, a lengthy explanation of what Agape is will not, in itself, enable anyone to add to their faith Agape. “The world doesn’t need another sermon on love,” someone once said.
In his “Summa Theologica,” Thomas Aquinas defined love as “to will the good of the other,” and emphasized that Agape is a love not rooted in emotion, but in the act of the will.
I disagree with that, and I believe that, by now, I’ve demonstrated that the Scripture disagrees with that. Of course, he isn’t wrong in that it goes deeper than mere emotion and it certainly entails the exercise of the will, but it goes much deeper even than that. It is rooted in our deepest nature, as the daughters and sons of God, because it is rooted in His Nature.
Apart from that, no one can love – in the sense that we mean by “Agape” – by a mere exercise of the will. It is impossible to love on command.
It’s true that Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
But that has to be taken in context – in the immediate context, and in the context of the rest of his teachings.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reiterated the applicability of the Law, but made it even more demanding than it already was: If you are merely angry at your brother, you are liable for murder. If you look at a woman lustfully, you have committed adultery with her in your heart. If you need oaths to certify your word, you are a liar by default. And he said that if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, because it is better to enter life maimed or crippled than to have your whole body cast into eternal destruction.
The point of his sermon was not to give a set of instructions for how to behave in order to be righteous. The point was to drive home that we cannot be righteous. We cannot merely exert our will – even if we had the strongest will in the world – to make ourselves righteous under the law.
And we can no more obey Jesus’ command to “love one another” by an exertion of the will than we can obey the Law of Moses on those same terms. We might already love them — in the sense of philia or storge — for who they are, in which case, we hardly need to be commanded to do so. But if we don’t, a command to do so cannot move us to true obedience, no matter how hard we try, any more than we can white-knuckle our way through to compliance with the Law of Moses. The point of the command (at least, in the moment) was the same as that of the Sermon on the Mount.
The point was that it isn’t our right eye nor our right hand that causes us to sin. It is our heart that causes us to sin, and so … it is our hearts that we must cut from ourselves and cast away.
The good news is that God gives us a new heart through the Holy Spirit, which is the very promise to which Jesus was leading up when he gave his new command – Jesus knew they were incapable of keeping his command, as they were in that moment.
But, receiving the Spirit doesn’t immediately make us capable. This is why Peter exhorted us to make every effort to add to our faith those qualities of the Divine Nature, and there is a reason Peter didn’t lead with, “Make every effort to add to your faith Agape.”
We have to build to it. We have to grow up into it by cultivating all of the lesser qualities of the Divine Nature. But in doing so, the Divine Nature in us grows, and by that Nature, we become capable of loving God and one another and, even, our enemies, because it is God’s own Agape within us that animates us. We will understand in a way that surpasses mere intellectual comprehension that every single human being is made in His image, and He is jealous for them, and so we will be jealous for them, and in that jealousy and compassion, we will become His agents in saving them.
Step ∞
“If you possess these qualities and continue to grow in them, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Peter continued.
So, plainly, this is training that never actually ends. You won’t just add to your faith arete or knowledge or any of the rest as a one-time, completed task, and then move on. It is a lifelong process.
We can – and should – reach a level of maturity in which a mentor is no longer necessary nor advantageous, at which point, we should graduate to becoming the mentor ourselves, but we will never stop growing in each of these qualities. But, as we grow, we will overflow with new life – with new effectiveness and productivity from our knowledge of Jesus Christ.
And, I would venture to say that it’s an eternity-long process. I suspect that we will always be growing and learning and getting stronger and wiser and more and more like our Father, because however great we become, we will always be finite, albeit immortal and glorious as His sons and daughters.
On this side of Christ’s return, though, the alternative to that continued growth is to be ineffective and fruitless, which is no idle warning, as we have already discussed, and as Peter alluded, “But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. Therefore, my brothers, make every effort to confirm your call and election. For if you do these, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Indeed, and quite sadly, the Church of full of such ineffective, fruitless and blind people who have either forgotten that they have been cleansed of their past sins, or they never understood what that meant in the first place.
But if we, as the Church, would just believe what Peter wrote and take it seriously by implementing his instructions, God will be faithful to His promises and He will meet us in our efforts. We will see His kingdom on earth.
The Third Helix 