The place of God was understood in relation to the place of authority in the cultural context. Just as authority rested in the supremacy of distant church and state supreme leaders, so the imagined place of God was as a distant supreme being. Likewise, the place of the self was seen as fitting within the feudal hierarchy. One knew one’s place as each individual held a static station from church and state royalty down to the landless peasant class. The place of others was seen in terms of their place in the overall social competition for survival as cities and states vied for control of precious resources. The place of creation in the premodern mindset was on equal par with the self and others in the seasonal struggle for survival. People competed with animals, disease, and whether to survive. Morality was governed by the power of the ruler of the day through his rule of law. And the whole of premodern life was lived by individuals and their communities for the glory of sovereign human rulers and their state and religious institutions.
The Premodern Worldview
The worldview of western premodernism (before the 17th Century and the Enlightenment) was dominated by superstition. The overarching popular imagination of the premodern person was one filled with ideas of supernatural causes for natural events. Meaning was understood through tradition and myth. The Constantinian age ushered in state support for the Church. The Church had later become institutionalized in the Holy Roman Empire. In this feudal world, with hundreds of European kingdoms vying for wealth, resources, and dominance, the final authority for life and faith was the Church, represented by the reigning monarch. Truth was officiated through the governance of church and state leaders. Papal decrees and kingly edicts were instantly and unquestioningly understood as supreme law. This was a time of the assumed divine right of kings to rule their servile people. Life was governed by fear-filled obedience to the reigning leadership. Order was kept through the rule of the state and church law.
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The Biblical Christian Paradigm
First, the biblical worldview is a theistic one. One must begin with God at the center. He is radiating out from the center, his revelation of his character and will to his whole creation. This is the overarching imagination of the biblical Christian perspective. God is preeminent in all things. Everything fits together into his plan for life and faith.
Final authority in all matters of life and faith, then, is God. But the Church must be more specific and say that all final authority is in Christ, who is the visible revelation of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). God has given him all authority in heaven and earth (Matt. 28:18). Here the Church must be even more specific, for neither Christ nor his authority is known apart from his revelation, which is recorded for us in the Scriptures. These must all be put together for a proper biblical perspective. Final authority rests in Christ, revealed through the canon of the Holy Christian Scriptures. These Scriptures must be the arbitrator for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Next, it must be noted that life is governed by theology. Theology must be understood as “God (theos) understanding (logos)” rather than merely the ideas and philosophies of theologians, preachers, or religious leaders. How is “God understanding” gained? God has revealed everything his people need to know for life and faith in the Scriptures. Therefore, the Word of God must be studied to understand his character and will. This “God understanding” is proper theology, and it must guide all Christian thinking and living.
Following this, the place of God must be seen as supreme in all Christian thinking and living. He is at the center, not any individual or philosophy. Christians recognize him in both individual and collective imagination as the center of all things. It follows, then, that the place of self (personal opinions and feelings) is under God and peripheral to his revealed truth. The human cries of “who am I?” or “Where do I fit in?” are only answered as one finds one’s place in the periphery of God’s being.
As the place of God and the self is understood in light of biblical revelation, the place of others and of creation follows. The place of others is that others are there for the self to serve (Matt. 20:25-28). Christians are to relate to one another in light of God’s generosity to us. He has freely given. Believers can freely give. He has freely forgiven. His followers can freely forgive. He freely serves. Christians can freely serve. Likewise, it is understand from God’s revelation that all of creation is his, and humans are here as caregivers.
In the biblical Christian paradigm, morality is governed by virtue. Morality is something God does by his Holy Spirit in and through individuals. They are not under religious law. They do not perform good deeds for God. Their best efforts are as filthy rags to him. Rather, his Holy Spirit resides with Christian believers and he produces his fruit in them and through them (Gal. 5:22-23). His Law is written on their hearts. Finally, in the biblical paradigm, life is lived for the glory of God. He alone is sovereign. All things are by him, with him, in him, and for him.
The Clash of Ideologies
To understand the issues of the western, postmodern paradigm, one must see it in its juxtaposition with western modernism. Likewise, western modernism itself can only be understood in its contrast and reaction to western premodernism. Finally, all these patterns must be contrasted with the biblical paradigm. Below is a chart showing the differences between each of these paradigms when contrasted with each other in their approach to nine seminal issues.
The first thing to consider is the “worldview.” This is the overarching way of seeing the world, which dominates the imagination of culture. The second consideration is what constitutes the “final authority” for each era in question. This is the issue of how truth is understood and mitigated. The third thing to consider is the issue of what people see their “life governed by.” This is the issue of how social structure is ordered. The fourth consideration is the “place of God” in the social structure of each given era.
ISSUES | BIBLICAL | PREMODERN | MODERN | POSTMODERN |
Worldview | Theistic | Superstitious | Secular / Naturalistic | Pluralistic |
Final Authority | Christ in the Scriptures | Church / Monarch | Reason | Feelings |
Life Governed by | Theology | Fear | Principals | Personal Preference |
Place of God | Over All | Distant Ruler | Distant / Absent | Replaced by spiritualities |
Place of Self | Under God | Within Feudal Hierarchy | At the Centre Under No One | Unanchored / Responsible to No One |
Place of Others | There for Self to Serve | Competition | For Mutual Benefit | There for Self to Use |
Place of Creation | To be Cared For | Equal to Self | Under the Self | Over the Self |
Morality Governed by | Virtue | Law | Ethics | Personal Choice |
Life Lived for | The Glory of God | The Glory of Rulers | The Glory of Man | Whatever |
The fifth thing to consider is the “place of the self.” This is the question of where the individual fits within the structure of society. Sixth is the consideration of the “place of others.” This is the question of how individuals relate to other individuals and to the larger community. The seventh consideration is the issue of the “place of creation” in the governing of life in each era. Creation would consist of everything in the natural world besides humans and their social and technological structures. Eighth is the question of what “morality is governed by” in each era. This is the way that the rules of social interaction are understood and regulated. The ninth and final consideration is what “life is lived for.” This is how the purpose of life is understood and followed. This grid can help us understand the clash of ideologies. One must consider each of these issues in light of biblical Christianity.
The Context of Spiritual Formation: A Cultural Shift
There may be an impending crisis for the future of the evangelical Church in the West. The western Church is grappling with the effects of the major cultural shift in popular culture from a modernist worldview to a postmodern one. We use the term “postmodern” to describe the predominant, contemporary worldview in the West, which has arisen in the collapse of the “modern” worldview since the mid-twentieth century. As contemporary pastors, congregations, and denominations grapple with the radical impacts of postmodernism on western culture, a new generation of pastors is reinventing church life and practice. This reinvention may include a growing abandonment of the exposition of the Scriptures as a central aspect of Spiritual formation.
Roy Clements writes, “Evidence is mounting of a growing disillusionment with expository preaching.” David Hilborn claims that expository preaching was merely a product of the modernist Enlightenment age. He writes of several “contemporary evangelical leaders who are convinced the expository age is coming to an end.” One young Christian leader told me, “I hate preaching.” He went on to say that he especially hates the performance that typically takes place in his church-going experience, wherein a pastor gets in front of his congregation, puts on his “preaching voice,” and prattles on about “religious” ideas that have little to do with the “real world” where we passionately live. This leader loves God, and he desires to personally know the Lord and his will. But he is voicing a common sentiment towards what the word “preaching” has come to mean in the postmodern age.
In contemporary western culture, the word “preaching” can have the reputation of being long, boring, and rationalistic. Doug Pagitt calls this modernist style of preaching, “speaching”. Contemporary church leaders are engaging a culture that sees little value in listening to the Scriptures presented in this manner. Hadden Robinson’s book Expository Preaching is being used today as the textbook for teaching authentic church practice “in 120 seminaries and Bible Colleges” and has recently been re-released for a new generation of Christians with the only real update being an exploration of “narrative preaching.” There is an apparent disconnect between what church leaders are being taught as important in 120 seminaries in America, and what is being perceived as important in these postmodern, emergent churches.
Dan Kimball states, “Even people’s view of preachers has changed. What once was a respectable role in society is now unfavorably stereotyped. Even the word, preach, is now a negative one.” John Stott, lamenting the decline of expository preaching, observes that in the late 20th century, the “tide of preaching ebbed, and the ebb is still low today. At least in the western world the decline of preaching is a symptom of the decline of the Church.” Stott also writes, “The prophets of doom in today’s Church are confidently predicting that the day of preaching is over. It is a dying art, they say, an outmoded form of communication, an echo from an abandoned past.” Stott, along with many others would argue that there is a fundamental approach to receiving and transmitting God’s Word, which is the essence of authentic Christian Spiritual formation and which transcends any generational context.
The instructive Word of God has been the essential instrument of individual and corporate Spiritual formation for the entire history of the faith community of God. But, in this postmodern age, “instruction” itself is in disrepute. Biblical preaching has had a central role in the life of the Evangelical Church for centuries. During the modernist era, however, the sermon may have taken on some of the enculturation of the times, often being rationalistic, deductive, lecture oriented, propositional, authoritarian, and analytical. For some, the notion of the “sermon” (and “evangelicalism” as well) has become synonymous with the modernist paradigm, and so, they would argue, it must be abandoned, or, at least, so radically reoriented that it becomes something quite different.
Some would argue that this has had a detrimental effect on the life of the Church in the West. D.M. Lloyd-Jones writes, “Is it not clear as you take a bird’s-eye view of Church history, that the decadent periods and eras in the history of the Church have always been those periods when preaching had declined? What is it that always heralds the dawn of a Reformation or of a Revival? It is renewed preaching.”
One can also see that preaching is in crisis for the contemporary western Church when T.D. Jakes is called “America’s Best Preacher” on the cover of Time Magazine. Inside the magazine he is quoted as saying, “The rules are, Get (sic) the message over any way you can. The more tools you have, the better it is.” Unfortunately, Jakes may have more “tools” than “message.” The article includes a transcript of part of Jakes’ sermon on Genesis 1. It is encouraging that he uses a biblical text. But one can quickly see that he misuses the actual text to teach his own ideas of self-awareness and self-actualization, and even his own version of modalist heresy.
Is Jakes any kind of authentic model for Christian preaching? His passion is evident. He seems to be touching a popular nerve in his particular audience. But, if he is teaching modalism and eisogeting rather than exegeting the Scriptures, it can be argued that he is not actually communicating God’s Word. Meanwhile, 23 percent of responding subscribers of Leadership Weekly voted Jakes (tied with Chuck Swindoll) as “The number one effective preacher today.” One must ask: “effective” at what? The vital question that needs to be asked of any Christian leader, in any culture, in every generation, is: Does he effectively expose his people to the true Word of God?
Listening to the Logos
The high call of Christian leadership is to find one’s place in listening to and passing on God’s Word, so that Christians will all grow in works of service and corporate character. In 1 Timothy 3, Paul writes that if anyone wants to be a Christian leader “he must...be able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:1-2). The job of the Christian preacher is to exegete God’s revealed texts and expose the message of that revelation to his contemporary audience. Doing this properly will involve a serious effort to understand the meaning of the texts of God’s Word, as well as a serious effort to understand the culture and language of the listening audience to whom the preacher must expose God’s revelation plainly. Understanding God’s Word has always involved a careful observing of God’s action, listening to him speak, asking critical questions of the Word, understanding him through Holy Spirit illumination, and proclaiming it clearly and boldly. In his seminal work on the history of Christian proclamation, Edwin C. Dargan demonstrates that this is what the early Church Fathers continued to do as faithful imitators of the apostles.
God appointed patriarchs, the lawgiver, judges, prophets, wise ones, and apostles to first hear, and then preach, his Word. This Word is recorded for the Spiritual formation of the faith community. These are the “lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder” that burst from the throne of God. The Holy Christian Scriptures clarify God’s general revelation through creation, point to God’s specific revelation in history, and ultimately his incarnation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As an apostle, John shows how this revelation is engaged: "Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, "Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?" But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals."…And they sang a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth" (Rev. 4:6, 4:9 – 5:10 NIV).
How is this revelation perceived and received? By receiving the written Word of God (the scroll 5:1), revealed by Jesus (the Lion of Judah and the slaughtered lamb 5:5-6), exegeting it (paying careful attention to what it actually says and means), and preaching it (proclaiming that original meaning to the contemporary community context, in their language, history, and culture). This is what John was doing in Revelation. He is exegeting the whole of the written Word and teaching it to his flock in a new contextualized language. He is listening to the text of God’s Word and preaching it to God’s people under his care.
It is only by the revelation of God himself that the Word is revealed. The Word is the self-initiated speech of God. The Word goes out in God’s perfect, breathing revelation to the world (the number seven is the number of perfection in apocalyptic poetry). The Church’s response is to listen, receive, understand, worship, and proclaim. He has made the Church his community of kings and priests in the world, and the way the Church reigns and presides is by leading people to pay attention to God’s Word read, sung, prayed, and preached. This is like the voices of the many messengers (Rev. 5:11),
The logos of Christian Spiritual formation is the exposed Word of God. Authentic Christian preaching of the Word of God, will always and only be, in every generation, the act of God’s representative messenger, paying attention to the texts of God’s Word and then boldly proclaiming the meaning of God’s Word to his contemporary cultural context. Only then will the congregation truly hear the voice of God, be transformed, and then God will be glorified. This has always been the case. This has always been the true practice of the authentic covenant people of God; whether in the tabernacle or the temple, in synagogues or sanctuaries, churches or cathedrals.
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" The four living creatures said, "Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped (Rev. 5:13-14 NIV).
This is a beautiful picture of “God’s throne,” given through John’s Scripture-soaked imagination, his love for God, his skill with words, and his love for his parishioners, to whom he writes by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What he gives them is a picture of “what is to happen” – the invisible reality of God being adored by his people through the “open door” of worship. God is revealed in concentric circles. Beginning with the rainbow and jewel-lit throne, God’s person radiates out through the four living creatures (his creation), the elders (his prophets and apostles), and the angels (his revealing message). The “Lion of Judah” (the incarnated Christ) opens the scroll (Holy Scripture) and the sacraments (baptism in the “glassy sea” and the Lord’s supper through “a Lamb...who had been slain”) amongst the seven lamp stands (God’s people assembled in church communities).
Here the action of worship is revealed. This is the picture of the invisible context of the Church at worship. In the midst of feeble attempts at serving God, his people are caught up in the world-shaking events of God’s eternal throne room. In the public reading, praying, preaching, singing, and sacraments, God’s people are involved in the heavenly drama of this cosmic transformation, whether they realize it or not. In the midst of weekly, Sunday church service, the elders fall on their faces and lay their crowns before the throne. All of creation sees and proclaims his glory. The thunder and lightening of his revelation comes from the center of his throne. The creatures, elders, and angels all sing his praise, which culminates in the triumphal “Amen!”
God appointed patriarchs, the lawgiver, judges, prophets, wise ones, and apostles to first hear, and then preach, his Word. This Word is recorded for the Spiritual formation of the faith community. These are the “lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder” that burst from the throne of God. The Holy Christian Scriptures clarify God’s general revelation through creation, point to God’s specific revelation in history, and ultimately his incarnation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As an apostle, John shows how this revelation is engaged: "Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, "Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?" But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals."…And they sang a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth" (Rev. 4:6, 4:9 – 5:10 NIV).
How is this revelation perceived and received? By receiving the written Word of God (the scroll 5:1), revealed by Jesus (the Lion of Judah and the slaughtered lamb 5:5-6), exegeting it (paying careful attention to what it actually says and means), and preaching it (proclaiming that original meaning to the contemporary community context, in their language, history, and culture). This is what John was doing in Revelation. He is exegeting the whole of the written Word and teaching it to his flock in a new contextualized language. He is listening to the text of God’s Word and preaching it to God’s people under his care.
It is only by the revelation of God himself that the Word is revealed. The Word is the self-initiated speech of God. The Word goes out in God’s perfect, breathing revelation to the world (the number seven is the number of perfection in apocalyptic poetry). The Church’s response is to listen, receive, understand, worship, and proclaim. He has made the Church his community of kings and priests in the world, and the way the Church reigns and presides is by leading people to pay attention to God’s Word read, sung, prayed, and preached. This is like the voices of the many messengers (Rev. 5:11),
numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. (We) encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice (we sing): "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise” (Rev. 5:11-12 NIV).
The logos of Christian Spiritual formation is the exposed Word of God. Authentic Christian preaching of the Word of God, will always and only be, in every generation, the act of God’s representative messenger, paying attention to the texts of God’s Word and then boldly proclaiming the meaning of God’s Word to his contemporary cultural context. Only then will the congregation truly hear the voice of God, be transformed, and then God will be glorified. This has always been the case. This has always been the true practice of the authentic covenant people of God; whether in the tabernacle or the temple, in synagogues or sanctuaries, churches or cathedrals.
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" The four living creatures said, "Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped (Rev. 5:13-14 NIV).
This is a beautiful picture of “God’s throne,” given through John’s Scripture-soaked imagination, his love for God, his skill with words, and his love for his parishioners, to whom he writes by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What he gives them is a picture of “what is to happen” – the invisible reality of God being adored by his people through the “open door” of worship. God is revealed in concentric circles. Beginning with the rainbow and jewel-lit throne, God’s person radiates out through the four living creatures (his creation), the elders (his prophets and apostles), and the angels (his revealing message). The “Lion of Judah” (the incarnated Christ) opens the scroll (Holy Scripture) and the sacraments (baptism in the “glassy sea” and the Lord’s supper through “a Lamb...who had been slain”) amongst the seven lamp stands (God’s people assembled in church communities).
Here the action of worship is revealed. This is the picture of the invisible context of the Church at worship. In the midst of feeble attempts at serving God, his people are caught up in the world-shaking events of God’s eternal throne room. In the public reading, praying, preaching, singing, and sacraments, God’s people are involved in the heavenly drama of this cosmic transformation, whether they realize it or not. In the midst of weekly, Sunday church service, the elders fall on their faces and lay their crowns before the throne. All of creation sees and proclaims his glory. The thunder and lightening of his revelation comes from the center of his throne. The creatures, elders, and angels all sing his praise, which culminates in the triumphal “Amen!”
The Radiating Revelation of God through People: 8. The Apostles
Finally, the apostles represent the final witnesses of God’s accumulative revelation in Jesus Christ. Jesus was the Word of God in the flesh (Jn. 1:1-18). He is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament means of God’s revelation to man. He called the apostles to be his sent ones, to witness his works and words, and then preach his message. They were constituted by Jesus to receive the revelation of the Word, exegete and understand the revelation of the Word, proclaim the revelation of the Word, and worship the revelation of the Word (Lk. 24:36-53).
The apostles themselves consciously understood their unique task as end-time preachers. The author of Hebrews plainly writes, In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word (Heb. 1:1-3a NIV).
The apostles exegeted the living Word, Jesus. They observed him, listened to him, and asked him critical questions. When the Holy Spirit came upon them, he gave them understanding of the Word (Jesus and the Old Testament), so that they understood the Word and proclaimed it clearly and boldly. The Apostolic gospel preaching was the exegesis and exposition of the words and works of Jesus (the text of the Word in the flesh). They also exegeted Old Testament texts, exposing God’s meaning to their contemporary contexts in their language, culture, and history. This is the main way they did the work of Spiritual formation.
Paul makes it quite clear that the preaching ministry of a Christian leader is the primary task for the Spiritual formation of the church community. In Ephesians 4, he shows how God initiated in giving the Church the gifts and means of his revelation in a specific order. Paul writes, It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:11-13 NIV).
The apostles themselves consciously understood their unique task as end-time preachers. The author of Hebrews plainly writes, In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word (Heb. 1:1-3a NIV).
God spoke in the past “through the prophets” (the Old Testament), but now (“in these last days”) he has spoken through Jesus, whom the Church knows through the testimony of the apostles (the New Testament). As the gospel of Jesus Christ was revealed to be the new law of the new covenant, the apostles were the new prophets who were God’s designated spokesmen to form the new covenant community through applying this new law to the everyday life of the community of God. Through their preaching and teaching (recorded in their epistles) the Church was Spiritually formed. Later, like the Old Testament wisdom literature, the whole of the Scriptures is summed up in a new work of poetry and song in John’s “Revelation.” The apostles, like the prophets, were not to speak on their own authority (Matt. 23:8, 1 Thes. 4:9, 1 Jn. 2:20-27). The apostles, like Jesus and the prophets, also demonstrated their authority to speak revelation directly from the throne of God by providing miraculous signs as proof of authentic authority.
The apostle Paul is especially self-conscious of his commission as God’s uniquely designated spokesman. He is conscious of his authority as an apostle to declare his writings as formative Word of God (1 Cor. 2:6-13; 4:1-3, 6-7; Gal. 1:6-9; Eph. 1:9; 2:19-20; 3:4-5; Col. 1:25-29; 2 Tim. 3:10-17). The apostle Peter declares Paul’s writings as “Scripture” (2 Pet. 3:15-16). He also claims this authority for himself and his own formative teaching (2 Pet. 1:12-21).
Paul Barnett makes a convincing case that the tradition of accepting the New Testament writings of the apostles and their contemporaries as Scripture (the Word of God on equally authoritative footing with the received canon text of the Old Testament) was well established within the lifetimes of the apostles and within fifteen years of Jesus’ death. During the Apostolic age, there was a mix of both oral and written Word of God, which was the live preaching of the apostles and the written record of their sermons.
These texts were from the beginning self-consciously Sacred Scripture. Because they belong to the apostolic age and enjoyed the endorsement of the apostles they were always regarded as “Scripture” and located within the Canon (“yardstick”). Shorter written texts (Luke 1:1) and oral “proclamation” and “pattern of teaching” have now been gathered up for us in the written and canonically recognized texts of the NT. The chief work of the “pastoral ministry” is to read, teach and apply the Scriptures of the OT and NT to the congregation.
Paul also instructed his apprentice, Timothy, to carry on this ministry of formative preaching (2 Tim. 4:1-5). Timothy was instructed to guard the preaching of Paul (2 Tim. 1:14), and to preach Paul’s preaching to reliable people who would faithfully preach it to others (2 Tim. 2:2). He was instructed to “cut straight the Word of truth”[ (2 Tim. 2:15). That is, carefully exegete the texts of the Scriptures. He was to be disciplined in never deviating from the received Word of God like a good soldier, a competitive athlete, and a hard-working farmer (2 Tim. 3-7). Paul considered anything less “godless chatter” (2 Tim. 2:16). As a Christian leader, Timothy was not to expect to personally receive new revelation from God. He was to pay attention to God’s Word recorded in the biblical text (including Paul’s and the other apostles’ writings), and he was to concentrate on his highest goal as a Spiritual leader: to set an example to his congregation by reading, preaching, and teaching the text of Scripture: Command and teach these things...but set an example for the believers...devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching...Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers (1 Tim. 4:11-16 NIV).
The apostles exegeted the living Word, Jesus. They observed him, listened to him, and asked him critical questions. When the Holy Spirit came upon them, he gave them understanding of the Word (Jesus and the Old Testament), so that they understood the Word and proclaimed it clearly and boldly. The Apostolic gospel preaching was the exegesis and exposition of the words and works of Jesus (the text of the Word in the flesh). They also exegeted Old Testament texts, exposing God’s meaning to their contemporary contexts in their language, culture, and history. This is the main way they did the work of Spiritual formation.
One example of the apostle Paul doing exegetically based, expository preaching is in Acts 13:14-43. In this passage, Paul was in the synagogue on the Sabbath day (Saturday), and the specific text of the Word of God (from the Law and the Prophets) for that day (as it was systematically read each week) was read aloud. The synagogue rulers asked Paul and his companions if they have a “message of encouragement (a sermon) for the people” (Act. 13:15 NIV). Paul then stood up and preached. His message was not a random, topical speech. It was an exposition of the text just read. He expounded upon the recorded text of the Word. He knew the text. He exegeted its meaning. He listened to it read out loud with the gathered congregation. He then proclaimed the meaning of the text of God’s Word to the gathered faith community.
Paul makes it quite clear that the preaching ministry of a Christian leader is the primary task for the Spiritual formation of the church community. In Ephesians 4, he shows how God initiated in giving the Church the gifts and means of his revelation in a specific order. Paul writes, It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:11-13 NIV).
The order is unmistakable; first God initiates, through his “apostles” (Jesus’ sent ones) who spoke God’s Word, then “prophets” (preachers) who exegete and expound that Word to the covenant community, then “evangelists” who proclaim that Word to the lost, then “pastors” who apply that Word in shepherding the flock of God, and “teachers” who explain the basic doctrines of that Word to their flock. The purpose of all of this is that through the hearing of God’s Word (read sung, prayed, and preached) the covenant people of God are “built up,” reaching “unity in the faith,” growth in “knowledge of the Son of God,” and becoming “mature.” This is authentic Spiritual formation.
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