by Mark Bonnington

It has been a great privilege this Autumn to be involved in preaching through one of the great charters of Christian freedom, Paul’s letter to the Colossians. One of its great themes is the freedom of the Christian from the rules set out in the law of Moses.

Just as there are many things an omnipotent God cannot do, so there are many things that are biblical but which have no place in Christian life and discipleship. God cannot lie, or be untrue to his word or fail to keep a promise. So too in discipleship there is no place for circumcising our children, tithing our goods or keeping a day of rest. All these are commanded in the Bible, but could be better described as biblically non-Christian. But it’s worse than this: they are biblically anti-Christian because they are denials of true Christian freedom. The gospel plus circumcision is the gospel minus grace, the gospel plus tithing is the gospel minus true freedom in Christ. In essence they involve legalism because they add to the gospel certain practices that are regarded as incumbent on believers and by which their true spirituality is judged when in fact these very things are a matter of Christian freedom: ‘these have the appearance of wisdom...but they are of no value...’ (Col 2.23)

This freedom from the Law is absolutely vital but also quite subtle. Paul will have no truck with those in the Galatian churches who insisted that his converts add circumcision and keeping the law of Moses to faith in Jesus. He goes as far as to say that he wishes they would castrate themselves (Gal 5.1 - not a verse for those who think that pastoral sensitivity is final arbiter of good theology!). In accepting these obligations the Galatians would be falling away from God’s grace (Gal 5.4). But the same Paul is quite happy to circumcise Timothy as a matter of Christian missionary strategy (Acts 16.1ff). What matters about circumcision for the apostle is that it doesn’t matter. This is his consistent principle: circumcision and uncircumcision are nothing what matters is the new creation in God’s love (Gal 5.6; 6.16). That way you can do it or not do it. But insisting on it misses the point altogether – it is and must remain a morally and spiritually neutral act.

Perhaps circumcision is not much of a temptation today, but thinking that we should Keep Sunday Special or tithe our income is the sort of legalism that we might allow ourselves to come under if we are not careful. One preacher asked about keeping a day aside for God preached a sermon series called Keep Monday Special about the grace of God in the ordinary things of our lives. That rest is holy is a great biblical principle (it’s on the first page) but when people are approved or disapproved for what they do or don’t do on Sunday (or Saturday) we’re coming under legalism.

Other preachers instruct people to tithe and even try to use the NT to justify it. They even argue that because Jesus told the Pharisees to be consistent and tithe their herbs Christians should too. I’ve noticed that pastors whose salaries or projects are dependent on tithing seem especially keen on the idea. One even told me bluntly that if he stopped teaching tithing people would give less and his salary would be in danger. Asked if would tell his congregation that this was the real reason for teaching tithing he went very silent. I felt sure that I heard the faint lowing of sacred cows being led to slaughter. Beware any church or leader who thinks that your generosity or spirituality can be judged by whether you give over or under the 10% mark. Such teaching kills the grace of the gospel and takes away from Christian freedom.

Occasionally I hear of a dogmatic or exclusivist evangelical preacher who suggests that charismatics are adding to and thus subtracting from the gospel, by ‘adding’ spiritual gifts to the ‘pure’ gospel. I only wish I were making it up. One came from another northern city a few years ago and spoke in Durham on enemies of the cross of Christ in Philippians 1. He quoted charismatics as those who added to the gospel and a senior Churchman of his own denomination as one who subtracted from the truth of the gospel. The latter comment was spectacularly and publicly ungracious about one of those whose authority he has sworn to obey. It was also said in front of bunch of young people who were mainly unconcerned with the politics of his particular denomination. His comments on charismatics seemed to suggest that speaking in tongues and the like were some kind of imposition by one group of Christians on another of legalistic ephemera to the gospel. He seemed not to have noticed that the same apostle who wrote of the freedom of God’s grace also wrote ‘I would like all of you to speak in tongues’ (1 Cor 14.5). Inconvenient, but true. Paul also teaches that the gifts of the Spirit are precisely gifts of God’s grace offered to his people for their edification until the day of the full unity and maturity of the church (Eph 4.13).

Are believers then without obligations? Not at all. Quite the reverse. There remains a fundamental obligation to live in a way that pleases God. As Augustine put it: ‘love and do what you will’ – Christian freedom is limited not by Moses law but the law of Christ, not by human rules but by the law of love. But this new way stems from God’s grace and our relationship with Christ. The story of Jesus has become our story – we have died with him and been raised to a new life. Christian obligation is real but it flows not from rules but relationship. The great Welsh preacher of the last century Martyn Lloyd Jones said that our preaching of grace ought always to prompt this question: doesn’t it sound like you can do what ever you want? It ought, he said, to sound dangerous otherwise we haven’t seen the full force of radical grace.

by Mark Bonnington

Part of the programme at Kings is regular and systematic expository preaching through Biblical books. But in the Autumn we took four weeks out and did a preaching series on the Church’s core values. It was a good exercise but I felt we could give only scant treatment to some important matters. One of the questions that arose in passing was the question of what we mean by the term ‘apostolic’. I mentioned it briefly, got some puzzled faces and a few questions afterwards but just didn’t get time to deal with it properly. There it was, staring at me in my notes, but it just didn’t make it off the page and into the sermon in the time available.

Traditionally, not least in the creeds, the word ‘apostolic’ has been regarded as one of the marks of the true Church (together with ‘one’, ‘holy’ and ‘catholic’). ‘Apostolic’ is the term that describes the authenticity of the Church in terms of its claim to continuity with the apostles. Exactly how then is any Church ‘apostolic’?

The Catholic view

On a ‘Catholic’ view the word means something very specific: the Church is ‘apostolic’ because it is in organisational continuity with the apostles. On this theory, after the first generation, the bishops of each locality replaced the apostles as those with authority in the Church. They had authority because they received the laying on of hands from the apostles. Later generations of bishops have been authorised by the laying on of hands of their predecessors, making a kind of chain of touching hands going back to the apostles. This theory is usually called ‘tactile’ succession because it identifies ‘apostolicity’ with the touching of the hands of one generation on the next. This is also the view of ‘catholic’ Churches including the Anglican Church. Only ministers ordained by the laying on hands by a bishop in the tactile apostolic succession are Anglican ministers. To be an Anglican is to accept this theory of authorisation of ministry: my bishop right or wrong. The Roman Catholic Church holds this view too, though they also give a special place to the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, who occupies Peter’s place and is the supreme representative of Christ on earth.

It is of course open to serious objections. One is historical: the first generation of Christians just didn’t work like this. Leadership in the early Churches was plural (elders), no singular (‘monarchial’). The Church at Rome was neither founded nor led by the apostle Peter (though he died there). In fact Paul’s letter to the Romans shows that even though Paul claimed jurisdiction over a gentile Church, he knew that he had not founded it and that it had existing leadership. The theory of tactile succession has been described as a stack of boxes with the bottom few missing. In other words, it rests on fresh air and little else.

But the bigger problems are theological. Whilst the catholic view is long on unity and continuity, it falls woefully short in its ability to guarantee truth. The tactile succession of bishops simply failed to guarantee the authenticity of the gospel preached in the Churches overseen by ‘apostolic’ bishops.

The Evangelical view

At the Reformation evangelical theology rediscovered apostolicity: to be apostolic the Church must preach the authentic message of the gospel. The Church is truly in continuity with the apostles when it preaches their message of free grace and the forgiveness of sins through the finished work of Christ. It is the true gospel not traditional bishops that make the authentic Church. For evangelical Christians this is the heart of any Church – it is the Church under the Word of God. Above every minister, every preacher, every leader and every bishop stands a higher authority – Scripture. Paul wonderfully foreshadows this doctrine when he writes so vehemently: ‘if I or an angel from heaven preach a different gospel, let them be anathema’ (Galatians 1.8). Here is a truly apostolic principle: authentic gospel makes authentic church and not vice versa. But the price of this high view of apostolic truth has usually been paid in the currency of the doctrine of the Church: a tendency to a low doctrine of the Church and its leadership, which lacks the valuing of continuity and unity evident in the Catholic view.

The Charismatic view

Some charismatics today urge a new language of apostolicity - it lies neither in apostolic bishops nor solely in apostolic truth but in a form of ministry. A ‘charismatic’ apostle is someone who exercises an apostolic ministry – preaching the gospel, planting Churches and teaching the faith. Although there is no claim that such apostles have the same authority as the 12 or Paul, the NT apostles are the model for contemporary missionary ministry – though the details of qualifications for ministry vary. Such a designation is not entirely new: outside Durham cathedral the largest memorial is to the late nineteenth century Anglican Bishop Albert Tucker who went from being curate of St Nic’s in Durham to be a missionary bishop and ‘apostle of Uganda’ (according to his epitaph). According to Robert Wagner (Churchquake: the New Apostolic Reformation) this is the shape of the Church to come: the emergence of new groupings under the leadership of ‘apostles’ – pioneering leaders who are the founders of new mini-denominations.

Like the Catholic view of authority, charismatic ‘apostleship’ identifies the authenticity of the Church with authoritative leaders. And so it shares the same kind of weakness: allowing the emergence of authoritative preachers of false gospels, like those whose health, wealth and prosperity message is very far from the authentic message of the NT. But unlike the catholic view it holds up a missionary, pioneering form of ministry as central to the authenticity of the Church. Such ministry is vital to the Church in a post-Christendom age. The origin of this authentic ministry is not found in inherited ecclesiastical structures, but rather in the gifts and call of God to new leaders in every generation. These are the marks of an authentic Church and its leadership. No wonder I’m an evangelical and a charismatic.

by Mark Bonnington

The idea of calling Christian leaders or ministers ‘priests’ has had a long and somewhat controversial history in Christian theology. Against the medieval Catholic and entirely post-biblical idea of calling ministers ‘priests’, evangelicals have insisted since the Reformation on the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. In response, some denominations, rather than a full frontal attack on the priesthood of all believers, have undermined it instead by addition - insisting that there exists a ‘special ministerial priesthood’ of Christian ministers.

To avoid this kind of theological sleight of hand perhaps we should also insist just as firmly on a corresponding and balancing doctrine: the doctrine of the laity of all believers – since the word laity comes from the Greek laos (=people) and refers to the people of God to which every believer belongs. I remember one minister friend visibly blanching at the suggestion that they ought to consider themselves one of the ‘laity’. Their reaction revealed the fact that they actually believed themselves to be different to other Christians, not just in function or ministry but in status and in kind.

In fact there is not much at all in the NT material on the matter of ministers as priests. That the early Christians didn’t think of their ministers as priests is quite understandable. They knew what a priest was: a priest was a person who offered a sacrifice. And the early Christians were famous precisely for not doing what other religions, both Jewish and pagan, did in their temples: offering animal sacrifices. Jesus Christ was the new Temple and the final sacrificial death for the sins of the world. And so priestly language is rare in the NT except in connection with priestly ministry of Jesus, of which Hebrews is such a powerful exposition.

Nevertheless, in one text Paul does speak explicitly of his ministry as priesthood. He writes in Romans that his ministry by God’s grace is ‘to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified (made holy) by the Holy Spirit’ (Romans 15.15). The idea is very simple: the apostle’s mission to the Gentiles was priestly service, the offering of a holy sacrifice to God. When the gentiles turn to Christ through Paul’s preaching, their lives become an offering made by Paul to God. The offering is made holy or acceptable to God by the fact that they are given the Holy Spirit when they respond to the gospel. Now because of this work of winning obedience from the gentiles (15.18) ‘by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God…’, his gentile converts are a fragrant offering to God.

To put it most briefly: mission in the power of the Spirit is a priestly ministry. When people respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ and they are sanctified by the Holy Spirit, their lives are being offered to God as a sacrifice.

The same theme is, of course, found in Paul’s more famous appeal in Romans 12.1 that the Roman Christians present their bodies as ‘a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship (latreia)’. If I have heard this verse referred to or preached on once I’ve heard it a hundred times. On all but one occasion that I can remember the preceding context was completely ignored. The opening conjunction of the verse (‘oun’ in Greek - ‘then’ or ‘therefore’) ought to give us a clue that the preceding context is important, especially amongst Christians so keen on the little saying that ‘a text without a context is a pretext’.

Although Romans 12.1 is often applied to Christian discipleship in general, it actually focuses on the response of the gentiles to Paul’s gospel. He begins Romans 12.1 with: ‘Therefore by the mercies of God…’. These are not mercies in general, but the divine mercies upon the gentiles of including them in the covenant, mercies that Paul has been recounting and explaining in the previous three chapters, Romans 9-11.

What follows after Romans 12.1 confirms that Paul was writing specifically of the Roman believers as part of the offering of the gentiles in the same way as in Romans 15.15. Romans 12.3 reads: ‘for by the grace of God given to me …’. This is exactly the same wording he uses in Romans 15.14. It is the same grace which he speaks of in Galatians 1.15-16: grace that not only brought about his conversion on the Damascus Road, but was also his commissioning to preach Christ amongst the gentiles.

The emphasis in Romans 12 is different to that in Romans 15. In Romans 12 the emphasis is on the sacrifice: the life of faith which we gentile believers live in every generation is a sacrifice to God - lives made holy by the sanctifying Spirit at work in us. In Romans 15 the emphasis is on the priestly work involved: to preach the gospel among the nations is to engage in a truly and properly priestly task.

Just as in the OT the priests in the Temple mediated between heaven and earth, so in mission we mediate between heaven and earth. Just as the Temple was the place where earth touched heaven, so in mission, heaven touches earth when people’s lives are transformed in the power of the Spirit. Just as the Hebrew priests stood in the place where God deals with human sin, so in mission we proclaim the death of Jesus as the place where sin is dealt with and people sanctified.

It is common today for the priestly task of the people of God, their work of intercession, to be seen in terms of prayer for our world. Such prayer is essential – it is a Christian work which we are instructed by Scripture to undertake. But what Paul suggests to us in Romans 15 we need to hear with great clarity: the priestly work of today’s Church is not principally done in prayer, but in mission. In the living and proclaiming of the gospel amongst the nations we are involved in the priestly task of mediating heaven to earth. Mission is priesthood – the priestly work of calling the nations to the worship of the living God.

by Mark Bonnington

Those new to Church often discover that believers enjoy the unfamiliar experience of engaging in corporate singing. This is hardly in tune with our culture, where only a big sports event or a drunken night out provides a context for corporate singing. By and large neither tends to be particularly edifying (I’m told…). When new people are getting used to Church, being expected to sing with others can be quite strange and it can take a while to adjust.

One influential theory of how the earliest Churches developed is that they modelled themselves on synagogue worship. As far as I know there is no evidence that early synagogue worship involved singing. Bible readings, sermons and prayers were all part of synagogue worship and had parallels in early house church worship. The importance of singing in early Christian worship had no parallel in the synagogues. Within Judaism you have to look to the Levitical worship of the Jerusalem Temple for a precedent for singing in Church.

There is clear evidence that the earliest Churches sang when they came together for worship. Paul says to the Corinthians that ‘When you come together each has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation’. Not a bad agenda for Christian worship. To the Colossians he says that they should teach and admonish one another ‘…singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs…’.

It seems that wherever the Holy Spirit is at work people love to sing. Movements of the Holy Spirit are often accompanied by a new release of song in worship to God. Conversely songs often contribute to the renewal of God’s people, their spiritual life and their worship.

On holiday in the Scottish Highlands one year we drove into the local village at twenty past ten one Sunday morning looking for a Church. Seeing a young family with several kids go into a small chapel, we followed. Inside we sat behind the other visiting family we had just followed and realised that we had just stepped into a one hour cross-cultural experience. The women in our two families were the only ones without patterned dresses and hats and the men the only ones without black suits and ties.

We were welcomed warmly and graciously and treated to a forty-minute long exposition of a passage in Isaiah. We stood to pray (no evangelical hunch here) – but I was used to that and I found the hymnbook useful to help me resist the temptation to follow the biblical injunction (1 Tim 2.8) and raise my hands. But it was the singing that was the most strange. We sat to sing the metrical Psalms following a cantor with a tuning fork standing in a box below the elevated pulpit. As a celebration of the human voice in praise of God the singing was sublime. The range of tunes and words was - how should I put it? - very limited. Under my breath I prayed ‘Thank you Lord for Isaac Watts’.

Isaac Watts almost single-handedly delivered many evangelical Christians from singing only the metrical Psalms. Watts did two wonderful things – he provided Christian paraphrases of the Psalms that brought out their NT and Christian themes. He rightly saw a significant danger: that the mere repetition of psalms, without the interpretation of the Christian gospel preached and sung from them, leads in the direction of Jewish and not Christian faith. And later Watts introduced hymns that celebrated the glories of the Gospel, thus liberating us to worship not just with the psalms but with hymns and spiritual songs. On the way home in the car I hummed Watt’s Join All the Glorious Names and gave thanks for that brave young man who three hundred years ago in Southampton said to his father that it was about time they had some new songs in Church. From his courage has flowed the great evangelical tradition of singing hymns to worship God, build one another up and learn the faith.

Now some of the new songs that are around on the scene today are shallow and repetitive and amount to no more than what Mike Pilavachi memorably called ‘Jesus is my girlfriend’ songs. There are ditties of such crass theological, poetic and emotional shallowness that they amount to not much more than a love-struck teenager’s doggerel. Simplicity and repetition have their place (see Psalm 136, for example) but what the Church needs today is a healthy combination of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs – the biblical, the theological and the contemporary inspirational conveyed with a good tune and with the imagery of excellent poetry.

Isaac Watt’s own When I Survey the Wondrous Cross is so good that even Charles Wesley (who wrote more than a hymn a week for fifty years) said he would give up all his hymns to have written this one. The first line of this great hymn is a poetic and theological masterpiece in miniature – it suggests the majesty and power of what God has done in the cross of Jesus. This work of the cross has been painted on such a vast canvas that, like a landscape from a hilltop, just noticing it or seeing it is not enough - we have to survey it. Only when we stop for a while to drink it in for as far as the eye can see have we begun to appreciate the cross’ power and majesty. The new popular ‘O Waley Waley’ folk tune has given Watts’ theological and poetic masterpiece a new lease of life.

Of course, excellent songs for worship are not confined to old hymns. There are life-giving new tunes for old hymns (Before the Throne) and many excellent new songs (My Jesus, My Saviour). Traditionalists often look down their noses at the likes of Redman and Kendrick (‘Hugh’ Kendrick according to one not-so-in-touch clergyman). We need to remember just how many of Wesley’s 6000 hymns have been filtered out in 250 years to get us down to today’s collection of half a dozen masterpieces. Kendrick’s The Servant King has had wide circulation and bears the hallmark of longevity (‘Hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered…’ – genius). Matt Redman’s Blessed be your name has had millions of Christians in the school of worship-despite-suffering with Job. In churches tempted by a gospel of health, wealth and success this is a welcome and biblical antidote that deserves plaudits for its life and worship-transforming potential.

The worship leader fit for the task brings out treasures old and new. Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs make for worship that glorifies God and builds up the Church.

by Mark Bonnington

Tom Wright once famously described reading the Bible in translation as drinking fine wine through a tea bag. Many ordinary Christians can neither afford nor have the stomach for the fine wine of learning Greek and Hebrew and so they are more dependent on their translations. From time to time a translation really makes a difference.

Romans 16.7 is a potential bombshell of a verse tucked away in the list of names that people don’t usually read at the end of Romans. In the New International, New Revised Standard and English Standard Version it reads:

Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. (NIV)

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. (NRSV)

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles and they were in Christ before me. (ESV)

Writing from Corinth to Rome, Paul’s letter lists four reasons for greeting and honouring them: they are his kinsmen, they have been fellow-prisoners, they are ‘prominent amongst the apostles’ and they were believers before Paul.

Three aspects of this verse are interesting but uncontroversial. First, in calling them ‘kinsmen’ Paul probably meant only that they were Jewish (cf Rom 9.3), not that they were his close blood relations, though the latter is possibly what he had in mind. Secondly, it’s clear that at some point Andronicus and Junia have been imprisoned for their faith. It’s hard to tell whether Paul describes them as fellow-prisoners just because they have been in prison like him or more specifically in prison with him. Either way they had suffered for their faith as Paul had. Thirdly they were Christians before Paul. Since Paul was converted less than 18 months after the resurrection we may take it that they were among the earliest followers of Jesus. Being ‘prominent amongst the apostles’ must mean at least that they were revered in the earliest and most influential early Christian circles, the apostles. So Paul mentions them in dispatches as worthy of his greetings.

Three other aspects of the verse are more difficult or controversial: (i) Is Iunian a man (Junias) or a woman (Junia)? (ii) Who were the ‘apostles’? (iii) What does ‘prominent amongst the apostles’ mean?

What then of Iunian, man (Junias) or woman (Junia)? The name is a Latin one translated into Greek. The Greek is accusative and therefore could be male or female. The evidence that the name Junia is that of a woman, despite the habit of earlier English translations making her a man, is almost overwhelming and rests on two grounds. First the early Church took it to be female. Fitzmyer gives a whole list of Patristic commentators who took Iunian to be a woman and the first certain reference to Junias (male) is from the thirteenth century. Since some of these commentators wrote in Greek we may take their word for it that the name is a woman’s. Especially so since most did not think that women could be Church leaders and thus would presumably not have called her Junia if they could have avoided it. Secondly the name Junia occurs frequently as a female name in Rome around the time of the NT and never as a man’s name. Conclusion: Iunian is a woman’s name and should be translated Junia. If so then it is quite possible that she is Andronicus’ wife.

What does apostle mean here? The word apostle is used in three ways in the NT. The Gospels and Acts confine its use to the twelve – the men who Jesus chose to be represent Israel like the patriarchs and who like other disciples travelled with Jesus during his ministry (Mark 3.14; Acts 1.15-26). The second meaning is that of emissary – a messenger from one church to another in the days before daily post, telephones and email (Acts 14.14; 2 Cor 8.23; Phil 2.25). Finally Paul speaks of the apostles as those who have seen the risen Jesus but who are a wider group than the 12. In 1 Corinthians 15.5-8 he lists in order Peter, the eleven, James (Jesus’ brother), the rest of the apostles and more than 500 others who have seen Jesus alive. The apostles then do not include everyone who saw Jesus alive, nor are they limited to the 12 (or the eleven). They are an intermediate group – they have seen Jesus alive but have also have some recognised status in the early churches, almost certainly as travelling missionaries. In particular Paul teaches that they are they most senior of leaders in the Church whenever he lists the gifts or ministries in order of precedence (1 Cor 12.28; Eph 2.20; 4.11). It is this third and last sense that the word ‘apostle’ is used in Romans 16.7.

Finally, what does ‘prominent amongst the apostles’ mean? It could have a meaning that excludes Junia from the group called apostles: ‘well known to the apostles’ (ESV) or one that includes her in the group called apostles: ‘outstanding amongst the apostles’ (NRSV). That the inclusive meaning is the possible is clear from a very close parallel to Paul’s phraseology in Josephus’s Jewish War 2.418. Josephus writes of ambassadors to Agrippa ‘prominent among them were Saul, Antipas and Costobar.’ Again the witness of the earliest commentators is instructive. They take her to be one of the apostles, not just know to them. John Chrysostom said of Junia: ‘Think how great the devotion of this woman must have been that she should be worthy to be called an apostle.’ Such a conclusion fits perfectly with the reason Paul knows them yet writes to them in Rome. They are from the very first group of believers who have now spread out across the Roman Empire preaching the gospel even as far as Rome.

I won’t say much about the implications of Junia the woman apostle as they should be obvious. Although most of the leaders in the NT Churches were men there are persistent pieces of evidence like this that women could be acknowledged in the earliest Churches as significant leaders. A small revolution wrapped up in that obscure verse at the end of Romans.

by Mark Bonnington

I’ve been wondering for a while about a peculiarity in Paul’s theology of the atonement. This is the apostle’s insistence that the resurrection is essential to the Atonement. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul not only says that ‘Christ died for our sins...’ (v3) but also, ‘if Christ has not been raised your faith is futile and you are still in your sins’ (v17). Put simply, without the Resurrection, there is no atonement.

Paul doesn’t explain his logic, but in Romans 4.25 he writes again ‘he was delivered up (to death) for our trespasses and raised for our justification.’ It seems reasonable to conclude that any view of the atonement that speaks exclusively of Christ’s death as dealing with sin doesn’t do justice to Paul’s understanding of atonement. Bluntly a dead saviour is not enough to take away our sins. Why does Paul think that the resurrection is essential to the atonement?

Two explanations are helpful but not enough. One is that Paul’s thinks of the death and resurrection of Jesus as a victory over the powers, including the power of sin. I’m sure Paul thinks of Jesus’ work like this (the so-called ‘Christus Victor’ view of atonement) but it doesn’t seem to be what he is talking about in Romans.

Another explanation of the place of the resurrection in the work of Christ is that the resurrection is the vindication of Jesus, indicating that God accepts Jesus’ sacrifice. Certainly Isaiah 53 influences Romans and it says that the one who dies for the sins of the people is also rewarded for his sufferings (Is 53.10b, 12a). In one form or another I’ve heard this preached quite often as a kind of afterthought on the cross and I’m not unhappy with it as far as it goes – it just doesn’t seem enough to bear the theological weight that Paul places on the resurrection.

The context preceding Romans 4.25 gives us two better clues for integrating cross and resurrection in the atonement. One is roughly objective (an inference from the work of Christ) and the other roughly subjective (an inference from the nature of faith).

First let’s look at the objective work of Christ in Romans 3.21-26. This text has a good claim to be regarded as the heart of Paul’s gospel – it’s the first place in this crucial letter where Paul explains the good news of the gospel. It includes Paul’s explanation of how the Christ saves: it is ‘through the redemption in Christ Jesus whom God set forth as a hilastērion by his blood.’ (Rom 3.26)

There have been long arguments over whether this special word hilstērion should be translated as ‘expiation’ (Jesus’ death deals with sin in us) or ‘propitiation’ (Jesus’ death deals with the offence caused to God by our sin). But actually hilstērion means ‘mercy-seat’ (‘place of atoning sacrifice’), a fact confirmed by the reference to the ‘blood’ of Jesus. This language that takes us right to the heart of the work of Christ. It also plunges us into the language of sacrifice in Leviticus – often not the most familiar bit of the OT.

Leviticus 16 prescribes the ceremony for the most solemn of all Jewish festivals – the Day of Atonement, when the High Priest enters the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the sins of Israel. He offers two goats as a single sacrifice: one is slaughtered and its blood sprinkled on the hilstērion ‘mercy-seat’, the other has hands laid on it and is chased away into the wilderness as a ‘scape-goat’, carrying away the sins of the people. The two goats – one living, one dead - form a single sacrifice of atonement, bearing away sins. The sacrificial ritual emphasises both aspects of atonement. A sacrifice to God is required to deal with our sins before him (the dead goat signifies propitiation) and our sins are taken away and we are left righteous (the living goat indicates expiation).

When we think sacrificial language we usually think of an animal being sacrificed and thus specifically of sacrificial death. But on the Day of Atonement both sprinkled blood and a live sacrifice together make a single work of atonement. So it is with Jesus, both his death and his raised life together atone for sins: ‘he was handed over for our sins and raised for our justification’.

The second clue to Paul’s insistence on the importance of the resurrection is more subjective – it comes in the example of Abraham’s faith. Paul doesn’t say that Abraham is justified through ‘faith’ in general. Rather Abraham believed in the living God – the God who performs his promises, even confounding death by giving life to the dead (4.17). In Abraham’s case this meant believing that God would give him an heir even though his body was old and ‘as good as dead’ – thus life ‘from the dead’.

So for us too the faith that renders us righteous is faith in the God who raises the dead, in this case raised Jesus. Paul concludes: as with Abraham, so with us. Faith will be counted to us as righteousness ‘who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord…’ To be justified we must put our trust in the living Lord and the one who raised him from the dead.

What might we conclude about the relationship between atonement and resurrection? I’m tempted just to say ‘that we need to know our OT better’ and leave it at that. But here are some (other!) simple observations. First that the language of ‘the cross’ can only be shorthand for all that God did in the death and resurrection of Jesus that first Easter weekend. Secondly, Jesus dying for our sins is neither real or effective without the resurrection and we can never fully preach the cross without the resurrection being part of that proclamation. The same Paul who insisted on knowing only Christ crucified was also clear about the centrality of the proclamation of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 2&15). Thirdly when we press to the heart of what Jesus has done for us we hear the language of sacrifice. But it is the language of a specific sacrifice - the sin offering of the Day of Atonement which requires both a dead and living victim to bear away sin: ‘if Christ has not been raised you are still in your sins.’

by Mark Bonnington

Some Christians seem to have developed an allergy to describing what we do at Church on Sundays as ‘worship’. The idea is that when we gather on a Sunday it is not principally for the ‘vertical’ act of addressing God in ‘worship’ but for the ‘horizontal’ purpose of building one another up. And so, the argument goes, the word ‘worship’ is better kept for our daily service of God. Being a daily sacrifice is where ‘worship’ is to be focussed.

Ideas don’t usually come out of nowhere and as ideas go this one is relatively recent. It sprang originally from a Churchman article by Howard Marshall in 1985. Gathering momentum in certain circles, it has led to some rather bizarre linguistic games. One is refusing to call Sunday Church gatherings ‘worship’. Another is calling singing in meetings merely ‘a time of musical praise’ on the basis that ‘the whole of our lives are worship’, as if the latter wasn’t obvious and agreed anyway.

Marshall is a great scholar and it’s not that he and others have made no good points. But there are really two problems with this rather dubious theory: as Don Carson has pointed out, it is too narrowly based on analysis of the use of words for ‘worship’ in the NT; and consequently it lacks historical imagination about what went on in NT worship, in particular how the language of worship worked then and works now.

We have only one substantial NT description of a Christian ‘worship’ gathering and that is Paul’s corrective teaching in 1 Corinthians 14. Here we discover:

(i) that psalms were sung in Church (14.26). The psalms vary in content – but over the years Christians have recognised those that praise and adore God as amongst the most suitable for corporate singing. Psalm 95 is a good example: ‘Come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord out maker’. This is the essence of worship, for the main NT word for worship is proskuneō, literally to ‘kiss towards’, not a kiss of intimacy but, as Matt Redman puts it, ‘face down’ at the feet of our Lord and our God;

(ii) that it would be good if we all spoke in tongues (14.5 with interpretation for others, of course - even better if we all prophesied, but that’s for another time) and that speaking in tongues involves ‘singing praise’, ‘blessing’ and ‘giving thanks’ to God (14.15-16). We may reasonably infer from this that much of the vernacular speech of the Corinthian assembly consisted of singing praise, blessing and thanksgiving.

(iii) that if there is prophecy then when unbelievers/outsiders hear the secrets of their hearts revealed they will fall down in worship and acknowledge God’s presence (14.25). It would be a bit odd if only non-Christians come to Church to fall down in ‘worship’.

Of course Paul writes all this also in the context of building one another up. Paul’s main concern in the text is to ensure that people can understand what one another are saying so that their mutual ministering is edifying. But it’s important not to miss the difference between content and function here: when someone prophesies they bring a message addressed from God. It is to be weighed. Its result is to edify, encourage or console (14.3) but this does not mean that this is the content of the message – it may, for example, reveal the secrets of the heart (14.25). Similarly those who speak in tongues address God (and themselves) in prayer or praise but the effect is to build themselves up (14.4).

Not all forms of communication are direct. Sometimes I discipline my kids in front of the others, so that they learn. What is a rebuke for one is a warning to another, a form of indirect communication. When I sing a hymn of praise I may actually be addressing myself (Praise my soul the king of Heaven, to His feet thy tribute bring) or others (Shout to the Lord all the earth let us sing, Power and Majesty, praise to the King!). But the point is not just to talk to others or myself but to exalt and glorify God, celebrating his character and action in response to his self-revelation.

It is true that our whole lives are worship – the NT has a word which covers this too, it is latreuō, to serve. Nonetheless this service needs ‘face down’ worship to focus and strengthen it. Perhaps a married person knows this instinctively, for they know that they love their spouse every day, all day. But what wife or husband would not think it strange if that love never came to specific expression in a gift, a quiet moment, or just saying ‘I love you’? Such events are more than a continuing of everyday love - they also enliven it and deepen it by bringing it to focus and expression – they epitomise love. So worship events epitomise and enliven our worship of God.

We live in a generation that desperately needs to learn to worship. We are so easily tempted to treat ourselves and our fellow humans, their achievements and their needs as the sum and measure of all things. Our view of the world is too readily limited to what we can see and touch and taste. At the heart of biblical worship is God’s self-revelation and action in Jesus Christ. When we come to Him ‘face down’, we acknowledge that God is God – the beginning, sum and end of all things. The fundamental, unchanging and determinative element in the whole cosmos is one that we cannot see, Almighty God himself. In worship we acknowledge him and anticipate that day when every knee will bow. Worship gets life, the universe and everything into perspective. Which is why, when we gather Sunday by Sunday, the first thing (though far from the only thing) we do is to acknowledge the one true and living God in adoration and praise. I for one would have it no other way.