Listen to this message:
Edward Donnelly
We speak of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus as the pastoral epistles, but all of Paul’s epistles are pastoral epistles. He always writes as a pastor to the people of God, and he is always pastoring them. All his theology is pastoral theology.
Living in the “Not Yet”
If you can keep this title central in your minds I think this will give us the theme to hold us through the inevitable passage of a great deal of material: Living in the “not yet.” That’s what we need to teach our people. Paul once wrote of “my deep concern for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28), and certainly with respect to Corinth that was no empty phrase. Paul had given nearly two years of his life to building this church, and it was now causing him deep concern. The basic problem was that some of the members were being too influenced by the surrounding culture. Now that’s a problem with which we immediately identify: the culture from which they had come and the culture in which they still lived. Corinth has been described as “the Vanity Fair of the Roman Empire.” And that city in which they lived was having its impact upon some of these Christians.
Cultural Influences
What elements of culture were particularly affecting them? There was the Greek love of philosophy, of great mental systems, their fascination with knowledge, or as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 1:22, “The Greeks seek after wisdom.” This was their passion, this was their desire, and it was corrupting their Christian faith.
There was secondly,—and I think that this is the vital point in 1 Corinthians in many ways—the influence of dualism: the dividing of reality into the physical and the non-physical, the material and the immaterial, the bodily and the spiritual. And, the spiritual was exalted over the physical. They were taught that the spiritual is good and the physical is inferior. The Greeks had a contempt for the body in the Greek philosophy. They had a little phrase: “sōma-sema”—a cute little slogan. “Sōma” means body; “sema” means a tomb. And, that was their assessment: the body is a tomb. The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “I am a poor soul shackled to a corpse.” So that was the dualism, the exaltation of the spiritual.
Then thirdly, and perhaps more superficially, there was their admiration for what was brilliant, spectacular, prestigious, successful and powerful. They were drawn, as people still are, to that sort of thing, especially to rhetoric. They loved rhetoric. There was a Greek phrase in the first century world: Corinthian words. Corinthian words meant polished, rhetorical brilliance. And if anyone spoke with Corinthian words they were a superb, finished orator.
The Two Ages
These habits of mind were distorting their understanding of the Christian faith. How were they distorting their Christian faith? Quite simply, they were giving them a wrong idea of where they were in the history of redemption. The New Testament is structured around the overlapping of two ages. There are two ages: the present age and the age to come. The New Testament teaches us that in Christ the age to come has arrived. The age to come is here. The kingdom of God is among you. We have entered the age to come, and we are living in the age to come; and yet that age to come is not yet fully consummated. And in the meantime we are living in this present age.
So, we have a dual existence: we are living in this present age and we are living in the age to come. The two ages are overlapping for the Christian. And that creates tensions and difficulties and imbalances that we need to guard against. Sometimes we hardly know which age we are in. Sometimes we feel we are very much of this present age. Sometimes the Lord opens up to us the glories of the age to come, and we feel we are in that. And it’s the “already” and the “not yet.” We are already in the age to come, but we are not yet in it as we will be.
Now what had happened in Corinth was that, as Luke T. Johnson says, “The Corinthians had collapsed the delicate tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet.’”1 They had become unbalanced. They had lost the idea of overlapping. J.M. Robinson puts it well. It is perhaps a bit academic, but listen to what he says, “An already consummated eschaton for the initiated is behind the Corinthian excesses.”2 In other words, they focused on the “already.” “We have it all. We have arrived. We are the people of the age to come.”
Their Triple Self-Assessment
The great thing for them was that “they had received the Spirit.” Remember the dualism: the material is bad, the spiritual is good. They had received the Spirit; and having received the Spirit, they have received the ultimate blessing. They have reached the highest level—fullness of salvation is theirs. They had arrived. They were the spiritual men. The evidence of the Spirit of course was the spiritual gifts. They rejoiced in these and esteemed them, especially the spectacular gifts, and especially tongues, which they believed were the language of heaven. As Paul describes it, “The tongues of angels” (1 Cor. 13:1)—I think he is quoting these Corinthians. They were speaking with the tongues of angels. This was the sign that they were a select group. And as such, they were the possessors of wisdom and knowledge. They were the truly spiritual. The word “pneumatikos” (πνευματικός) occurs fourteen times in 1 Corinthians. Paul is concerned with who and what is the pneumatikos, what does it mean to be spiritual.
There is a particularly telling trio of statements. I describe it as “their triple self-assessment.” Paul says, “If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, if anyone thinks that he knows anything, if anyone thinks himself to be spiritual…” Well there is no “if” about it. That is what they did think, that is their mentality, and Paul is writing it out for them and for us. They thought that they were wise; they thought that they knew everything; they thought that they were spiritual. They were now living the life of heaven. They had nothing more to expect. They already had everything. Remember his statements in 1 Corinthians 4:8, “You are already full! You are already rich! You have reigned as kings…” This is what they were saying. This is what they were claiming. Paul is sarcastic here. He is demolishing it. But this is what they thought.
And certainly for these people, there would be no future relationship with the contemptible, degraded body. The resurrection would be nonsense in this mindset. The whole purpose of salvation was to escape the body! To say farewell to the body! To cast the body aside! And any idea that in the future your body would be raised was seen as an utterly retrograde step. So, in 1 Corinthians 15:12 Paul asks, “…how do some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” The body was a piece of garbage. We don’t want to see it again. And that meant that what was done in the body was irrelevant. A truly spiritual man could fornicate with a prostitute. It doesn’t matter what you do with the garbage. You don’t have to cherish the garbage, or polish the garbage. It’s going to be thrown away. It’s irrelevant. “If I use my body for fornication, well, that doesn’t affect my spirituality.”
In fact, not only did they not mind immorality, they were proud of it. A church member was having a sexual relationship with his father’s wife, and the Corinthians were boasting in this as evidence of their liberated attitudes. Listen to Paul, chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, “…a man has his father’s wife! And you are puffed up, ought you not rather to mourn…” They were talking about this saying, “This shows how emancipated we are, how advanced we are.” This was their pride, and their great statement was, “All things are lawful for me.”
I believe they were sacramentalists. I admit that this is slightly speculative, but I will try to validate it later. I believe that they thought of the sacraments as offering magical protection, that if you were baptized and if you ate and drank at the table, you had moved beyond the possibility of judgment: that this was the evidence of belonging to this new age. Because they were already in the kingdom, because they were already in the future age, the normal creation structures no longer applied to them. Male/female distinctions were abolished. They were no longer applicable. Women could take as public a role in worship and teaching as men because we are spiritual, and we have moved beyond this present age.
Because they were spiritual, they should not marry. Because they were spiritual, they should separate from their unbelieving spouse. Because they were spiritual,—and here one sees the mad illogicality of sin—if they stayed married, they should refrain from intercourse in the interests of the spiritual, angelic life. It’s okay to go with a prostitute, but you really shouldn’t make love to your wife. You can see how a horrible distortion of the Lord’s teaching could be grasped by these people and twisted to mean what they wanted it to mean.
Luke 20:34-36—imagine you are one of these Corinthians listening to these words, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage…for they are equal to the angels…” Can’t you see them quoting Jesus for what they are doing? They saw themselves as an elite. They looked down on the unenlightened. They said, “We have knowledge.” And this was divisive, and it was splintering the church into factions. Some of these people are saying, “You may be of Paul. You may be of Apollos or Cephas, but we are of Christ.” They believed that this spiritual life should be characterized by what is impressive, unusual, and spectacular. And most seriously, for our purposes, on these kinds the Apostle Paul did not match up, and he did not qualify. For, he was not impressive in his person, and he was not impressive in his preaching. And these people were beginning to say, “Is this really the sort of leader we want for a church like ours?” They were beginning to question his authority. This comes to fruition in 2 Corinthians.
The word “exousia” (ἐξουσία), or authority, is used sixteen times between the middle of chapter 6 and the middle of chapter 11. This is a discussion of authority. The very faith is at stake. This “already mentality” is at the heart of the pastoral crisis in Corinth. It underlies all the specific issues which are being dealt with. They are all outcroppings of one basic mistake. And Paul, as a wise pastor, deals with the basic mistake. He confronts it pastorally: these Christians who are saying, “We have arrived. We are in the ‘already.’”
Contemporary Parallels
What are the contemporary parallels? What is the relevance for us of this? Well they are quite close. We are not facing an exact parallel of course, but surely we can see instantly that there is abundant evidence of the same mentality in the world we live. This addresses itself to all the versions of the higher life approach; all the versions which say that there are two levels of Christians: those who have the secret and those who do not have the secret; those who are in and those who are out; those who have arrived and those who haven’t arrived. It may be the fool’s surrender mentality, victorious living, or the higher life. It may be the baptism of the Spirit. It may be the charismatic experience. It may be theonomy. It may be Reconstructionism. It may be lots of things. It is anything that divides the people of God into the “haves” and the “have-nots.” It may be reformed doctrine. It may be biblical church order. It may be a good thing which we take and pervert, which makes us Pharisees and arrogant and feeling that we are the people and we have the answer. It is anything which divides the people of God.
And coupled with this we see around us some of the same evidences of sin as in Corinth. We are familiar with arrogance, with ethical carelessness, with contempt for tradition, and a lust for what is new, self-centeredness, obsession with success and influence and prestige, a childish infatuation with what is showy and spectacular. Children like brightly-colored paper. Evangelical children like brightly-colored, patterned paper. How much of this spirit is in modern evangelicals? And it is something from which we may not be immune, and to which our people may not be immune. Some of you men have lost people to churches like this. How do you compete with those who offer everything? With those who offer the secret? With those who say, “We have it! We have it! Come to us, and you can have it all”? The spirit of Corinth is alive and well in the 21st century church. So we need to watch Paul at work.
Paul’s Approach
Let’s come now to Paul’s approach. This is the main body of our study. How does Paul deal with this? There is no one more adamant than Paul about the reality of the “already.” In the Colossian church, false teachers had come in and said, “Christ isn’t enough. There is more.” And Paul says, “No. No. Christ is enough. We have it all. We have everything in Christ. We don’t need any more.” Paul is committed to the reality of the “already.”
But the great thing about Paul is his balance. We have hobby horses. We become unbalanced. If you and I had seen what Paul had seen about the “already,” our whole lives and ministries would have been devoted about the “already.” We would set up an institute for the study of the “already;” and we would write books and make speeches and be known as experts on the “already;” and go all over the world and the thing that people need to hear is the “already.” We get blinkers on and we get on our hobby horses and ride them. We all do that. The great apostle doesn’t. Here is a different group of people. Here is a different situation. They don’t need to hear about the “already.” In fact, their problem is they are far too obsessed with the “already;” and they need to be brought a different medicine, and a different truth. That is not inconsistent, that is not contradictory, that is wise: the whole counsel of God. All he does in Corinthians here is to emphasize the “not yet” of the Christian life. And that’s really the one point I will be making. He is emphasizing the “not yet.”
Look at how Paul strikes the note at the beginning, chapter 1, verse 7, “You come short in no gift.” You can imagine the Corinthians preening themselves. What a complimentary statement, “You come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will confirm you to the end.” Do not think you have already arrived brethren. You are waiting. You are expecting. You are looking forward, and you need to be confirmed, and you need to be kept and held until the end comes—not yet.
The great section from 1:18-2:5 that we know so well: these Corinthians love polish, brilliance, and success. Paul makes three points: The message that you believed for salvation wasn’t polished and it wasn’t brilliant; it was the stumbling block and the foolishness of the cross. And the people to whom the message came were not polished, and were not brilliant, and were not successful. Not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble, but foolish, weak, and base. The message wasn’t polished, and the people to whom it came weren’t polished, and the manner in which it was preached was not with excellence of speech or wisdom, but in weakness and fear and much trembling.
The Corinthians’ Undeveloped Spirituality
The message of the cross condemns all human greatness, wisdom, and boasting. And Paul is saying, “The course in which you are now embarked is leading you in precisely the opposite direction from that which saved you. You are turning your back on everything that brought you into the kingdom.” These spiritual people are dividing the church. Isn’t that what happens today? The Holy Spirit is supposed to be the Spirit of unity. What happens when a charismatic group starts in a congregation? Disunity. But for Paul they’re simply proving how undeveloped their spirituality is. And we note in chapter 3, verse 1 and following, how stinging these sentences are, the whiplash of holy sarcasm. Paul says, “I’m sorry to say that I could not speak to you as to spiritual people. For you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?” They writhed under that. He is puncturing them. These are arrogant people. Paul is not sarcastic with broken people; never. But these are arrogant people.
They are beginning to doubt Paul. They are beginning to question Paul. Who is Paul? Look at chapter 4, verse 15, “Though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you have not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” “I am your father,” he says. And what sort of a father do they have earlier in the chapter? A spectacle to the world, weak, dishonored, poorly clothed, beaten, homeless, reviled; made as the filth of the world. Try that on your people the next time you ring one of them up. “Hello, this is the filth of the world speaking.”
So, Paul says in 4:16, “Therefore I urge you, imitate me.” These spiritual people are far above all earthly concerns. They are the people of wisdom and knowledge. They are living the life of heaven, and they are lifted far above all mundane, trivial, material matters. But surprise, surprise! Apparently, these people are involved in a grubby, little lawsuit. That sounds strange for such superheroes. Listen to verse 1 of chapter 6, “Dare any of you go to law before the unrighteous?” Here is one of Paul’s key statements, and, it’s a dagger thrust into their pomposity. He says it again and again. “Do you not know? You’re the guys who know everything, don’t you? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? We shall judge angels. And if we’re going to judge the world, can you not settle a hundred dollar dispute between you?”
They believed that for the spiritual the body is a contemptible relic. It’s worth nothing. So Paul says in 6:15, “Do you not know”—there it is again— “that your bodies are members of Christ?” And in verse 19, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit in you?” The Spirit, far from discarding the body, has made the body His “naos” (ναός), not even His “hieron” (ἱερόν), His “naos”: His inner shrine, His holy dwelling place. To be spiritual does not mean ignoring the body. It means exactly the reverse. And so he says in verse 20—and perhaps we don’t grasp how shocking a statement this is to these Greek dualists—“Therefore glorify God in your body.” Do you see the force of what he is saying?
How Paul Deals with the Corinthians
In chapter 7, he is starting to deal with their issues. They are basically saying, “Our new faith demands a new set of circumstances, new surroundings, a new lifestyle. We are new people. So therefore, we’ve to live in a new world.” And Paul says, “No. No. You live out the new life in the old world and the old circumstances. If you are married to a non-believer, you don’t walk away from that. But if they’re willing to live with you, you stay in that relationship, with all the gray areas, and the compromises, and the difficulties, and the heartbreak, and the moral decisions that you have to struggle with. You stay in that, and live out the life of Christ in that situation. If you’re a slave you stay in your slavery and live out your slavery in the old age, and show the power of the new age where you are.” Nobody likes to be a slave. That’s a very unsatisfactory position to be in. Yet that’s the whole argument of chapter 7: each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. We don’t run away to paradise. We live out the “not yet” of our faith, in the situations where we are. Isn’t that encouraging, brethren? Isn’t that realistic?
Passing over it quickly, his whole argument in chapter 8 is about the strong. And he says that the strong are to realize that there are people who have not yet arrived at maturity. The church is not composed of superheroes. They have to be sensitive and tender towards the weak, and care for and nurture them, and not be so obsessed with their own rights and their own self-fulfillment.
In chapter 9 he says, “I do this myself. I’m not asking you to do what I don’t do. I’ve got lots of rights, but I don’t claim them. I don’t claim them; that I might win them over. I’m in the ‘not yet.’ There are people who are not Christians. There are people who are weak in the faith, and I’m not living for myself. I’m not living in contempt of these people. I’m not living in the ‘already.’ I’m living among these people, and because of these people I limit myself. I make myself a slave.”
They may believe that the sacraments protect them from the judgment of God. Paul deals with this in chapter 10, “I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers…were baptized into Moses…all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. They all had the sacraments. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness…Now these things…were written for our admonition, on whom the end of the ages have come.” “I agree with you,” he says. “The end of the ages have come upon us.” And what does God say to people who are living in the end of the ages? “Be careful. I will destroy you if you are not a holy people.” Do you see the power of his argumentation?
He argues in chapter 11, “Certainly, men and women are equal in Christ. Of that there is no question, but that does not mean that the creation structures are abolished. They are not abolished. Headship and submission is still the pattern to be followed, and that has not been changed by their coming into Christ.” He takes them to the Lord’s Supper, the central ceremony of our faith, and how does that destroy dualism? As a young colleague pointed out to me on hearing me speaking about this before, the very salvation of ours is through the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. How can any Christian say the body does not matter? Destroy that and you destroy the very basis of our salvation. And when we meet together, we spiritual people, what do we hold in our hands? “This is my body. This is my blood.” And isn’t there in this central sacrament a sense of incompleteness, of looking forward to greater glory and blessing? “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Cor. 11:26). What’s this already nonsense? What’s this “we have it all”? He hasn’t come yet.
In chapters 12-14 he deals with spiritual gifts, the signs of the eschaton. Paul says, “How are these spiritual gifts to be manifested and exercised here and now? Not in an extravaganza of emotion or frenzy or self-fulfillment, they are to be exercised in love; in humble service. Let everything be done for edification.” And he argues that every member of the body is valuable, every member; the lowly parts, the shameful parts. There isn’t a two-stage-tier in the Christian life. There’s not the valuable people and the worthless people, the “haves” and the “have-nots.” There are no “have-nots.” We all need each other, and every member of the church belongs together.
Chapter 13 is not just a lovely poem. It is a pointed attack on the pretensions of the so-called spiritual. There’s a fine quote from Frederick D. Bruner in his book, The Theology of the Holy Spirit. It’s a first-class analysis of Pentecostalism. In it Bruner says, “Paul wants to turn the eyes of the Corinthians from the spirit of ‘huper’ which boasts, to the spirit of ‘agape’ which builds.” 3
Then he comes to the profound theology of chapter 15. This is a key chapter, and it is where I think Paul gets to grips with the issue most fully. Remember these Corinthians are convinced that they are already in full possession of God’s life, and Paul is teaching them to look forward. In verses 1 and 2 he speaks to these self-confident, secure people. He says, “‘the gospel…by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you.’ You may not be as secure as you think”
He then moves into his main subject. Remember that 1 Corinthians 15 is not primarily about the resurrection of Christ. It is about the resurrection of human beings. That is his subject: their saying that their bodies will not rise. He says, “Well if our bodies won’t rise, then Christ’s body didn’t rise, and the whole Christian faith is rotted into nothingness with His decaying corpse.” Look at how he works it out in verse 20, “But now Christ is risen from the dead.” They might have said, “Oh yes, he’s brought in the end. He’s brought in the fullness.” And he goes on to say, “…the firstfruits of those who had fallen asleep.” Not yet, not yet.
In verse 23 he says, “In Christ all shall be made alive, but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.” Not yet. Verse 24: “Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to the Father” [emphasis added]. Not yet. Verse 25: “For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.” Not yet. Verse 28: “When all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject…that God will be all in all” [emphasis added]. Not yet.
Paul imagines an objector, someone who finds the idea of a reanimated corpse absurd; and the Greeks really did find this a grotesque idea, a primitive Jewish superstition which no intelligent Gentile could accept. Look at verse 35. It is almost as if you could hear the laughter and the sneer in the voice, “How are the dead raised and with what body do they come?” You can imagine some objector sneering at Paul, “Paul you tell me that we’re going to have a resurrection of the body. Big deal: bald, wrinkles, double chin, round shoulders, fat belly, spindly legs, knocked knees.” (This is just a generalized portrait. I don’t have anybody in mind.) “We’re going to get this body back again! No thank you. I’d be glad to say goodbye to it.” Paul says, “Foolish one. You do not sow the body that shall be. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption, in glory and power. There is a spiritual body.” Don’t let your people believe that that means an immaterial body. It is a physical body possessed and indwelt and glorified by the Holy Spirit. There is a spiritual body. However, the spiritual is not first but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. Not yet. The whole chapter has got one message: Look forward to the great and glorious and certain “not yet.” We shall all be changed, even those who are alive at the end. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality then shall be brought to pass the saying, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
As he ends the letter at the close of chapter 16, Paul has several last blows to strike. These Corinthians were anticipating some of the modernists. They were not interested in the Jesus of history. They worshiped the Christ of faith. They didn’t care about the man from Nazareth who walked the earth; it was the reigning spirit they worshiped. So Paul says in 16:22, “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.” In other words, “If you have no Jesus in your Savior, to hell with you.” And then at the end, he demolishes the whole rotten edifice with one great, longing, passionate cry. How does he end? “O Lord, come!” That’s the answer to the “already” people. That’s the answer to the people who think we have it all. “O Lord, come!” Thank God for the “not yet.”
Four Practical Reflections
Let us take a few moments in asking ourselves, what benefits are there as pastors in following Paul? What can we learn from him? I want to make four points.
First of all, it will keep us honest. This is life as it really is: sweaty, messy, up and down, complicated, and untidy. This is life. And when we live like this we are handling the fabric of reality, as real men ministering to real people. We are not going around with silly smiles in our faces, spouting a lot of pious guff that has no relationship to who our people are, and how they are living their lives, and what they have to cope with. Our ministry is earthed in what our own people know from experience to be true. You don’t need to convince your people about the “not yet:” the farmer in the fields, the mechanic under the truck, the young wife with four children working in the kitchen (She knows all about the “not yet;” don’t worry about that. She is all too aware of the “not yet.”). And if you come in as a pompous, prating, idealist about ethereal glories, what is that saying to your people? They may think, “This man is just so divorced from…,” or else it makes them feel guilty: “I must be a terrible, unspiritual person. Oh, my godly pastor walks around on clouds all the time.” No, we must come to them as men who struggle and make mistakes and cry, whose hearts are broken. We are in the “not yet,” and we are ministering to them out of the “not yet.” There is a reality and a genuineness about our ministry. It’s true.
Secondly, it will inoculate our people against the peddlers of religious patent medicines, the quacks of every description who capitalize on the frustration and insecurity which God’s dear people often feel. They have fool’s gold to offer them: perfect health, abundant wealth, endless well-being, success, happiness; and you can have it now! They end up leaving wreckage behind them. Train your people to understand the “not yet;” to grasp it, to conceptualize it, to make sense of it. And when these characters come along with their promises, they will see them for the sham that they are. It’s preventive medicine of the best kind.
Thirdly, this will stimulate us and our people to our Christian duty. We are not saved to escape to paradise. Our rest is not here on this earth. We are called to pursue holiness. We are called to wait. We are called to watch. We are called to grow, to believe, to fight, to serve, and to suffer. We are called to fight the good fight. We are called to endure hardship. We are called to enter the kingdom through much tribulation. We have to teach that to our people. It will make us humble, courageous, zealous and energetic, and it will challenge and strengthen our faith. You don’t need faith if you are in the “already.” Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And if somebody says, “I’ll give you everything you’ve hoped for,” you don’t need faith anymore. You have it all. We live in days when the church is lazy, self-indulgent, and self-centered, and they need a good dose of this “not yet teaching.” We are the church militant. We need to rescue that word again. We are not the church triumphant yet, we are the church militant. We are good soldiers of Jesus Christ. We are going to get a crown, but the crown isn’t yet. Now is the time for carrying the cross. Paul helps us here.
Lastly, it is a most kind and encouraging doctrine. Now it doesn’t seem so at first; it seems harsh and discouraging. The “already” seems a far warmer, more inviting, more pleasant doctrine altogether. But brethren, appearances are deceptive, and behind the glowing promises of the “already” is a cold emptiness of disillusion. But behind the harsh, rugged exterior of the “not yet” there is love and there is comfort.
Illustrations from Pastoral Experience
Let me illustrate from my own pastoral experience. I know all these people. What good is the “already” to a young man standing with his four children around the open grave of his wife for me to come and say, “Brother, isn’t it wonderful what we have?”; or a woman crippled with multiple-sclerosis and cancer whose days and nights are endless, wearying agony; or a woman, I believe a Christian woman, who struggles with horrible, perverted, sexual desires that she hates with her whole being; or a man with a fine mind, a brilliant mind, being ravaged by Alzheimer’s who can ask his wife the same question 100 times on the trot; or an alcoholic for whom a beer commercial on television can stir up a turmoil inside him that he has to wrestle to the floor; or people who are lonely and depressed and exhausted and untalented? We have got people like that. Do they want a sleek, plump, grinning pastor exuding an air of self-satisfaction who says, “Praise the Lord, brother. Praise the Lord, sister. Isn’t it wonderful what we have? Isn’t it wonderful?”
To bring the “not yet” to them is to bring hope. “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). Put your arm around them. Understand who you are, and say to them, “The great thing is there is more to come.” That’s kindness.
There is More to Come
Brethren are we not glad of the “not yet”? Are you not glad in your own hearts that there is more to look forward to? Would you like to be for all eternity the way you are today? To think that you will never preach with greater unction than you have preached so far? That you will never love the Lord more intensely than you have so far? Are you not glad that we have only tasted that the Lord is gracious? We have only tasted! And as we look into our own hearts and read the story they have to tell us, surely we want to fall on our knees and thank God that there is more for us. We have only begun to receive the blessings of the Lord.
We must not minimize what has already happened to us. Remember Colossians. Remember experiencing the “already.” John says, “Now we are the children of God,” and that is wonderful. But he goes on to say, “There is something more wonderful by far. It has not yet been revealed what we shall be” (1 John 3:2). We are going to see each other again in great, great glory. And the Lord Jesus is speaking to us in our discouragement: “Not yet, dear brothers.” Let us exercise our ministry in the light of that approaching brightness. Amen.
Let us bow in prayer:
Dear God, help us to be balanced men. It is so difficult for us to keep the balance. We are temperamentally flawed. Some of us lean one way, some another. Some of us are too naïve, some of us are too downbeat. Lord, help us to learn from your servant, Paul. But Father, as we think this morning, we bless you for the “not yet.” We bless you, Oh God, that you have so much more for us, and for all your people. And we pray, Father, that you will help us to minister to them in truth and reality; to bring Christ to them; to enable them to look forward. Our prayer is: Come, Oh Lord. Amen.
1. Luke T. Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, Fortress Press, 2002, pp. 297
2. James M. Robinson, Trajectories through Early Christianity, Fortress Press, 1979, pp. 34
3. Frederick D. Bruner, The Theology of the Holy Spirit, Eerdmans, 1974, pp. 318
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