Welcome to the Gospel Reverb podcast. Gospel Reverb is an audio gathering for preachers, teachers, and Bible thrill seekers. Each month our host, Anthony Mullins, will interview a new guest to gain insights and preaching nuggets mined from select passages of Scripture in that month’s Revised Common Lectionary. The podcast’s passion is to proclaim and boast in Jesus Christ, the one who reveals the heart of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now onto the episode.

Anthony: Hello friends, and welcome to the latest episode of Gospel Reverb. Gospel Reverb is a podcast devoted to bringing you insights from Scripture found in the Revised Common Lectionary and sharing commentary from a Christocentric and Trinitarian view.

I’m your host, Anthony Mullins, and it’s my delight to welcome our guest, Dr. Matt Pandell. Matt is the president of Global Grace Seminary, where he’s also a professor of Trinitarian Theology, Counseling, and Spiritual Direction. He’s a trained behavioral psychologist and theologian, but is first and foremost a communicator.

He holds terminal degrees in theology and psychology, as well as undergraduate and graduate work in education, ministry, and family therapy. Matt is the author of the upcoming book, Fractured Witness: Reflections on the Redemption, Reformation, and Reclamation of the Church. Matt, you’re a busy dude. Welcome to the podcast.

And since this is your first time — and what took you so long — we’d like to get to know you a little bit, your story, and especially what has you experiencing delight these days.

[00:01:44] Matt: I appreciate the invite. It is always good to get to connect with new folks who are on this same journey of reclaiming what has been lost terrain.

I think it’s Karl Rahner that makes the comment that one of the travesties of the 20th century into the 21st was we could almost have Nicaea go the other direction and reaffirm solely a fatherhood of God with no inclusion of the Son and the Spirit, and it wouldn’t change much of how theology is discussed today.

And that is a tragedy. But yeah, I’m thrilled to be here with you. Every time I’m on a podcast, I get this question, tell us a little bit about yourself. And I try to put this in the lens of what do people actually want to know that’s relevant to what we’re looking at today.

I think to understand how I come to things really is a starting point of I am fiercely ecumenical. That’s by choice, but it’s also just the nature in which I was brought up. I was raised Methodist, but primarily educated Lutheran. Most of my seminary and university studies were in Lutheran schools.

Now a more contemporary understanding of Lutheran theology but still very much Lutheran in orientation. But then my ordination vows were actually within the Anglican tradition, only to then spend 18 years teaching mostly in finished work, neocharismatic institutions. It’s only been in the last six or seven years that I’ve transitioned back more toward the Anglicanism of early ministry.

But yeah, I do believe there is one vine but there are multiple branches that come forth from that vine and that the Church, capital C, is at its best when it focuses much more on what it holds in common with one another, and in its uniform place in the world that is different from any other institution, any other organized system, rather than focusing on the various ways in which we disagree over the jot and tittle of Scripture or theological points.

[00:04:04] Anthony: Yeah. It makes me think about that passage in Ephesians 4. We have unity already and we work to keep that, don’t we, to maintain that? And I just think it does something to the testimony of the Church when we are finding the common ground together. And it’s one of the reasons in my local church, like we, we always want to go back to the creeds and reflect upon the story that’s being told for centuries that brings us together, not tears us apart.

But I am fascinated by you. I made the comment that you’re a busy man and your background is fascinating to me. So, what do you consider, based on your experience, to be the intersection of theology, psychology, and spiritual direction? How does that work together for you?

[00:04:54] Matt: I’d probably start by saying that I reject the idea of compartmentalization that there’s this secular and spiritual divide. And so, we have our spiritual selves, we have our secular selves, we have our public personas, our personal personas. We’re all one composite being that has been inhabited by the Spirit of God that dwells in a body, that still has a psyche or a “soul,” from which we get our word psychology. We are all of those things.

And to me, it’s the most natural thing in the world to inform my theology by an understanding of how my soul, and the soul of humanity in general, interprets the world around them. But vice versa. I would say that my theology informs the construct I create when working with a patient or when even contemplating my own emotional or cognitive wellbeing.

These are interrelated things — that one discipline significantly informs another, that it takes Tom Torrance writing on science and the nature of time, not something we typically associate with theology, to really put in context for theology what does it mean for the Incarnation where God steps into human time?

So yeah, I’m a big believer that the disciplines should interact far more than they typically do. For me, it’s a somewhat seamless transition. I’m not really able to differentiate where one begins and the other starts.

[00:06:29] Anthony: What I hear you saying at least in part is that it’s the both / and. It’s not the either / or. It’s not the compartmentalization of things. And we do that so often, don’t we? And all the problems that has caused and this is why for us, theology matters so much that we see a united front in the person and work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So, let’s get to it. We have several texts to dive into today. Our first passage of the month is Romans 4:13–25. I’m going to be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, the updated edition. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 5 in Ordinary Time, June 7.

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵ For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.¹⁶ For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, ¹⁷ as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. ¹⁸ Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So shall your descendants be.” ¹⁹ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰ No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²² Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ²³ Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone ²⁴ but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵ who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

All right, man, we come to Holy Scripture seeking to bear witness to the living Word of God, Jesus Christ. What does this passage tell us about the God revealed in Jesus?

[00:09:09] Matt: There’s a few things that really stand out to me with it. The first is really centered on verse 16. Faith is something that’s bequeathed to us. It’s not something that we’re capable of attaining.

There’s a unique phrasing here in this particular translation to those who share the faith of Abraham. The sharing of the faith there within the Greek is specific to something that’s been handed to you and you partake of it or participate within it. Think of it as you’re at a family dinner and grandma lays something down in front of you. You didn’t choose it, you didn’t help make it, but it nevertheless is being served to you. It’s grandma’s food. She made it, but it’s being presented to you to participate in, to engage with.

That is the nature of faith. The recurring theme, I think, in most of Romans is this idea of, whose faith is it we’re talking about? Is this my faith that originates independent of anything else? Or is this the faith of Jesus Christ lived out in, for, and as the human condition in general that then is bequeathed to me and I reside in this?

The beginning of verse 16 includes this idea of the promise depends on faith but that in order that it may rest on grace. So, grace is the means by which faith comes to us.

I spend a great deal of time teaching on the nature of spiritual practices throughout the history of the church. I think formation is a valuable thing. But at the end of the day, all it does is awaken us to what is already true. It doesn’t produce anything other than awareness. I can’t change the innate nature of it is finished in my life. I can just see it more clearly.

So that’s the primary theme that recurs for me throughout this passage, but it spills over in, into the remainder of the Book of Romans as well. But I do, this verse, in verse 19, speaking of Abraham, “he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body.” It doesn’t say he didn’t consider his own body.

He considers it. The triune God is not into denial. We don’t stick our heads in the sand and pretend there’s not problems happening around us that don’t seem to align very well with what this promise is.

We consider those things but we rest on the promises, that those things are out there and impact our perceptions at times, does not change the validity and the solemnity of the promise itself.

[00:11:51] Anthony: That’ll preach. Seriously, Matt, just thinking about that and here we are in a world that is broken, warmongering, it’s dark on so many levels, and it could look like darkness has won the day, but what you’re saying is circumstances don’t dictate the reality. Is that right?

[00:12:11] Matt: Absolutely.

[00:12:11] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:12:12] Matt: Absolutely. And I, this is, again, I think one of those moments where the psychology jumps in to inform the theology. Neither is it healthy to pretend everything is okay. The fact that it is finished does not nullify the fact there’s a variety of misery in the world.

And I don’t know that it’s constructive to … I think of it this way. When Jesus encounters suffering, he weeps. He weeps with others and he sits in that pain. He doesn’t deny the pain is there. He assumes the pain. And if we are to exist in the world that as he is, so are we.

I really come up frequently against this idea that we should almost just ignore the things in the world that seem to be assaulting the promises. I would submit that really is just saying that we don’t believe the promises and we are that defensive, that we can’t let anything come against those promises. We can’t set our gaze on those things because if we do, it’s going to make our belief in the promises collapse. The promises in my own life and my own church are really a byproduct of having looked square in the eye, those things that stand in contradiction to it.

[00:13:31] Anthony: Yeah, that’s really helpful. And I’m, as you were talking, I’m thinking about this inaugurated kingdom in Jesus Christ, the already / not yet aspect of it, that all things are being made new, that’s where it’s all heading, but we’re not there yet.

Matt: Yeah.

Anthony: And in the meantime, what I also hear you saying is that it doesn’t give us permission not to engage, you know, and not to be honest about where things are, that we can lament while also trusting in the hope that is eternal in Jesus Christ. Amen and amen.

And you’ve already touched on this, but I want to dig a little deeper. It says he’s hoping against hope. And is there anything you would want to say maybe on a personal level to people who are struggling to trust God’s promises in light of what they’re seeing about them? Because again, it could seem like darkness is winning the day. What would you say?

[00:14:25] Matt: The first is to be fair with yourself. Acknowledge that trust is not a light switch that’s either on or off but it’s something that grows over time. I think there’s a reason … whenever scripture uses metaphors or similes to try and explain the nature of Christ in the Church and that relationship, I really pay a lot of attention to those metaphors. They’re given to us for a reason.

The nature of the Church as a bride and Christ is the bridegroom, this marital relationship — I have been married for 23 years this coming November. I trusted my wife the day we married. The depth of that trust after 23 years of life together, of all the highs and lows and disappointments and successes shared mutually together, the trust I have in, with, and for her today is infinitely greater than the trust I had when I began the journey with her 23 odd years ago.

We, particularly those of us who have been heavily influenced by any variant of fundamentalism, there is this all or nothing belief. You believe God or you don’t. You trust God or you don’t. That’s not, first, that’s not how the Greek of the words themselves work, but even in the writings of the early church, we don’t encounter that type of concept.

Instead, we see this as something that’s meant to be like a mustard seed that’s going to grow. It’s going to mature and not linearly. It’s not as if it just consistently goes up. Now, you’re going to hit bumps along the way where it plummets a bit and then escalates back up again.

So, that would be my biggest thing, just giving yourself space to be human. But by assuming the human condition and ascending with his physical body Jesus makes clear there is nothing wrong with being human. It is a condition he was perfectly pleased to take with him and have as the remainder of our concept of human time. He is now human and always shall be a human.

Anthony: Yes.

Matt: He is still divine, but now possesses humanity. If that’s his attitude toward humanness, I think we need to give ourselves a little, cut ourselves a little bit more slack.

[00:16:41] Anthony: Yeah, for sure. I’m thinking about Matthew 28 and Jesus had told the disciples who frankly were kind of locked in the panic room.

He tells them to go to a mountain and Scripture tells us that they worshiped Jesus when they saw him, but some doubted. And sometimes we can be so hard on people shaming them for doubt. And I do not think doubt is the opposite of faith. It’s actually quite useful to faith that we wrestle with things.

And just like you said in terms of your trust of your wife, these things have a way of maturing and growing over time, but allowing ourselves to say faith sometimes looks like two steps forward and a step back sometimes, and you’re just wrestling with things, and that’s okay because Jesus has already overcome the world, right? Isn’t that in part what you’re saying as we wrestle through this?

[00:17:30] Matt: Absolutely. And this is where I think formation is a remarkably helpful idea, as opposed to a purely discipleship perception of faith. Discipleship — and I’m pro-discipleship; I don’t want to be misunderstood. But discipleship tends to be along the lines of like catechesis where there’s some type of a catechetical or ordered understanding of the faith that is, instruct and you’re just told, “Believe this.” And you’re given a lot of great proof texts that, that explain that, maybe even some personal stories from the person teaching. Nothing wrong with any of that.

But it is instructional rather than formative. There’s something in us that has to see the light for ourselves.

Anthony: Yeah.

Matt: When I was first practicing clinically, most of my clientele was 20-somethings who are at that point in life where it’s not your parents’ faith anymore, it’s not your parents’ politics anymore, it’s not your parents’ outlook on the world, but you’re distancing from that and figuring out what you actually believe about these things.

I often interpret discipleship as this is what I feel, Matt Pandell, you should believe. Formation is, okay, you were given all that through the discipleship model, but now allow the Spirit to work within you and inform. Okay, what of that are we to hold and what of that maybe do we need to rethink or put through a new prism to ensure that what we are, the theology we’re building looks like Jesus.

[00:19:01] Anthony: Good stuff.

All right, let’s transition to our next pericope. It’s Romans 5:1–8. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 6 in Ordinary Time, June 14. Matt, would you read it for us, please?

[00:19:19] Matt:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³ And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. ⁶ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

[00:20:07] Anthony: Hallelujah. There’s a lot contained in that passage. So, if you were preaching this text to your local congregation, what would you proclaim?

[00:20:15] Matt: I think the first thing would be what we alluded to a little bit before this — who’s faith idea. In verse one, since we are justified by faith the human predilection is to try to put our effort into something.

[00:20:27] Anthony: Of course.

[00:20:59] Matt: That by adding our intelligence, our experience, our fortitude, we can somehow make something better. And sadly, a lot of the English translations, particularly those that base itself off the King James, do tend to focus a lot of this emphasis on it being the faith of us that impacts and changes us rather than an external faith that’s given to us by God, and in which case it actually is a triune faith that’s imparted to us. The big theme of this passage for me at least, is this idea that divine action and intervention is not conditioned on our conduct or on our capacity to understand.

[00:21:12] Anthony: Come on.

[00:21:14] Matt: This learning for the purpose of somehow manipulating the will of God to our own human will really has to be jettisoned for the garbage theology that it is.

That’s not how love works. If the nature of God isn’t just to be loving, although he is, but is love in its most expressed, perfect, truest form, all that Father, Son and Spirit do within their interactions with Creation through that perichoretic union, it has to be synthesized down to love.

And throughout this passage … verse eight, “but God proves his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We focus a lot on the sinners part of this, which is an accurate presentation, but I think the bigger theme here is when humanity is at its worst, we do the most vile and evil things to one another to the Creation itself, that is the moment where we’re looked at and God says, “Yeah that that’s a people worth loving, that is a creation that is worth the surrender of the most meaningful thing that any of us have, life itself, and being willing to lay down that life on behalf of this very broken, confused, distorted creation.”

I get the question a lot from students, especially … And it seems the question’s asked … the earlier in their academic journey, it’s asked, I can gauge what branch of fundamentalism they went through. But the question always comes up of this, why did Jesus have to die? And I’ve heard lots of great answers. Brad Jersak has a wonderful perspective on this, but where I’ve settled is right within this verse. It’s the means by which God proves his love.

[00:23:14] Anthony: Yes. Come on.

[00:23:16] Matt: We had nothing to prove to him. At the cool of the day, after Adam and Eve consumed the forbidden fruit, they start hiding themselves and try to cover themselves. God still shows up in the cool of the day, well aware of what’s happened, yet nothing changed on God’s front. He still shows up at the same time they always met.

It’s man that hides. It’s man that needs something to cover what we perceive as sinfully standing in the way of our relationship with God. I don’t know what more a person can do to prove love than be willing and following through on, giving up the thing that we as humans value the most, life.

[00:24:02] Anthony: Stated, sir. So, given what you just said, that he proves his love for us while we were sinners, why suffering? And here’s the thing, suffering is universal, amen. None of us get through this life unscathed. We all experience affliction.

And in any church on a Sunday morning, when the gospel’s being proclaimed, there are people who are knee deep in suffering, they’re hurting. And so, I’d like to invite you, if you’re willing, to make this personal, how have you experienced suffering which leads to hope, as pointed out in the Scriptures here? And again, I’m grateful in advance if you’re willing to share.

[00:24:42] Matt: Sure. Yeah. I’m happy to. If I could, I’d like to just throw a general request out there to the pastors and preachers who are listening to this. It can be very uncomfortable when you are ministering to people and you know they are hurting and so you want to be there and step into that with them and that’s a wonderful cruciform thing to do.

But to try to make it better by downplaying the suffering. It is not effective. It is not Christlike. We don’t see Jesus do that. Right before he resurrects Lazarus, he’s weeping with them that his friend is dead. He acknowledges the pain that they’re in. It would be wiser to say nothing than to attempt to sugarcoat or explain away suffering.

[00:25:33] Anthony: Yes, preach.

[00:25:33] Matt: So, sit with them in it. I think specific to your question — many years ago now, my youngest brother died by suicide.

[00:25:43] Anthony: Oh, I’m so sorry.

[00:25:44] Matt: And that carries all kinds of baggage with it and I don’t want to nullify anybody else’s experience that’s similar to it. But when you are a psychologist, there’s an added guilt that comes along with it: how did you miss this? You knew he was not well, but you didn’t believe it was this severe, under the impression he was getting some kind of help.

That event, the most — I’m in my mid- 40s and still the most difficult thing I’ve ever seen in life has been my parents try to move forward. And they did. It took time. It took a lot of healing to be revealed within them. But that was hard to watch. It was hard to not … I’m the oldest of three brothers and so there’s this sense of being the one to say, “Okay, we’re going to … here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got to plan.” And to not have a solution to that other than time and inertia letting the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit was going to do in the timeframe my parents needed it in rather than in the timeframe I would’ve preferred, yeah, of my own choice or volition. But that changed, that was …

I had a theology of suicide.

[00:27:10] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:27:11] Matt: I had a theology of death in general. I had a theology of death that, that seemed to deviate or delineate between individuals who had some type of salvific experience and those who did not. But then I also had a specific concept of theology based on suicide, the act of death itself.

It’s funny, theologies are interestingly formed when they’re academic. When there’s no skin in the game.

Anthony: Yep, preach.

Matt: This wasn’t close to me, right? That this was something that I was almost in an ivory tower. Most of my career has been in academia more so than the pulpit. And I’m in my ivory tower and I had structured a theological rubric based on various proof texts I had selected that seemed to fit the mold.

And all of that came crashing down with an experience where the theology I had formed in no way aligned with how I saw the Godhead revealed in Christ. So, I had to rethink that belief. And that led to rethinking a variety of things. I’m not a fan of the term deconstruction. I understand its basic logical use and I don’t criticize when it’s used. But I really do prefer rethinking, or even reconstructing, renovating, identifying those things that do not align with the rubric we’ve been provided as to who God: Jesus Christ.

If it doesn’t look like that, it has to be reevaluated. And that began that for me. It really hasn’t stopped. It’s something that’s, I think, a lifelong journey of looking at the beliefs we hold most dear and then allowing our encounters with Father, Son and Spirit to reset the lens, like going to the optician.

And yeah, the prescription that I used to wear doesn’t work anymore. I can’t see clearly with it anymore. I need the prescription adjusted and allowing the Holy Spirit to do that. So, honestly, the majority of what I do professionally today is remarkably informed by that experience.

It sounds, it’s an odd statement to make, and I hope it’s understood in the context I mean it. It has birthed remarkable fruit. Still a tragedy. I miss my brother every day. I still wish he was here, but it doesn’t, it does not nullify what came out of it, the beauty for ashes that was able to come out of it.

[00:29:50] Anthony: I’m humbled that you shared, and I’m so sorry for the loss of your brother, and we give thanks to God that he’s good, he’s great.

Matt: I know.

Anthony: And this is why even thinking of that line: suffering is universal. Yes, it comes to us all, but it’s also meant to be experienced by others.

I think it’s one of the reasons God in his wisdom placed tear ducts in our eyes, because it’s meant to be seen and shared and experienced with others. We mourn with those who mourn and we sit with them and we know that, as you pointed out, Jesus crying at Lazarus death, even though he knew he was going to raise him to newness of life and a resuscitation, he still weeped.

The death is, man, that doggone death. It’s still there. There’s no spiritual sting any longer, but it sure hurts on this side of the veil, doesn’t it? And …

Matt: Yeah.

Anthony: … it’s meant to be shared together in the body. And another beautiful thing I hear you say is how certainly God was not the Genesis or the cause of your brother’s pain, but boy, is he at work in it to bring about goodness where there was such deep pain and suffering. And I just think there’s so much we could dive into there in terms of the way that we experience this life, but thank you for sharing.

[00:31:09] Matt: Absolutely.

[00:31:14] Anthony: Let’s transition to our next passage. It’s Romans 6:1b–11. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 7 in Ordinary Time, June 21.

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? ² By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? ³ Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. ⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷ For whoever has died is freed from sin. ⁸ But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰ The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. ¹¹ So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Verse 6 tells us, Matt, if the old self has been crucified, that’s been done. So why does sin persist? If we are no longer slaves to sin, why do we often feel, at least on a very subjective level, enslaved to sin? What’s going on here?

[00:32:52] Matt: I think to answer this, if I can tell a quick story. The War of 1812 — which frankly no one knows anything about — we’re post American Revolution. The British start to reassert some authority. They’re like, impressing American sailors into the British Navy. And the US, and there’s some shipping issues with taking cargo off boats. And the US government gets fed up with it, starts setting some ultimatums, and it results in the War of 1812, a second American revolution.

The most significant battle in the War of 1812 is the battle of New Orleans. It’s what makes Andrew Jackson famous. It occurs on January 8th, 1815, and the date is important. I’m going to say that again. January 8th, 1815. The treaty that ends the War of 1812 is the Treaty of Ghent in the Netherlands. It’s in modern-day Belgium. The treaty signed on December 24th, 1814. So, the war ends December 24th, 1814, but yet the most significant battle of this war is two weeks later on January 8th, 1815. How does that happen?

[00:34:03] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:34:04] Matt: They didn’t know. It takes a long time to get an update from a treaty convention in Ghent Netherlands to the North American continent. The battle happens because none of the parties involved in the conflict were aware the war was over.

People don’t know is I think my first answer. I have two answers to it. That’s the first. People don’t know. They’re not aware that sin has been defeated. Our entire culture is inundated with good and evil paradigms that speak of them as one equal, as if good and evil are thrown into a boxing match and you’re not quite sure who’s going to come out. Sometimes it’ll be good and sometimes it’ll be evil.

But our theology, particularly in North America, is heavily influenced in this idea that you are still a decrepit, vile creation sitting before a God who, much more so a judge than a Father, can barely look at you but somehow because of Jesus as Advocate, he can now look at you in a fondness or a toleration. That is just going to skirt you through to heaven.

When you inundate people with that message through television, through sermons, through its infiltration within our culture as a whole, even those who don’t necessarily hold to a Christian faith — it nevertheless is Christendom versus Christianity — that’s a tough nut to crack.

And so, that would be my first response. I think the vast majority of even Christians are not aware this is done. And so, we do tend to behave in a manner in keeping with what we believe to be true.

Anthony: Yes.

Matt: So, if you believe that you are just a miserable wretch for whom every moment is a cataclysmic choice that you better make the right one or else there are substantive post-death penalties as opposed to the penalties that just naturally exist in life without God’s intervention —God’s not directing those penalties. It’s just the innate nature of cause and effect. If you own a business and you routinely are scamming people, eventually you’re going to lose your business because no one wants to do business with you. That’s not God punishing you for being a crook. That’s just the natural consequence of being a crook in the world.

But the other answer would be trauma. Wounds remain long after actual wounding is over. I had surgery about a month ago and the surgical cut that produced pain I was knocked out for, I didn’t feel anything. That was but a moment, probably took the surgeon 10 minutes at most to make the incision, but the process of healing from that, of the pain associated with that cut, took two to three weeks. It’s not that he was cutting me that entire time. But the shadows of that wounding were still present.

We, even among those who maybe have some awareness that sin truly has been defeated, that the tether that bound it to the creation has been severed, still tend to believe the shadows. We still tend to give our agreement to again this belief that we are in control of our destinies, that our actions are the means by which the world moves. And I, again, I think this is where an element of formation comes in that lets us learn how to hold two things as true at once, that we can objectively be completely and totally disconnected from sin and subsequently then the outgrowth of sin — death, and yet there are still parts of us that have not seen the light of Christ. And we remain in need of encounters with the great Physician.

Salvation, as a concept again, this fundamentalist argument that it’s a one and done light switch moment, you say a prayer, you are now saved, and nothing is now capable of touching you — it does not seem well-versed within Scripture itself, but certainly not even within the first exegetes of Scripture within the early church.

They tended to view salvation as this accomplished act, that you nevertheless live out in every moment of your life, that every moment of your life, you are in need of a deliverer. You need your creators sitting with you in that moment, navigating life with, for, and as you … we are not truly free.

I can use a movie reference. Shawshank Redemption …

Anthony: Oh, come on.

Matt: … features these guys. What, there’s never a wrong time …

Anthony: Never.

Matt: … to make a Shawshank Redemption reference. But I think about the character Brooks Hatlen. Brooks is a librarian in the prison. He’s a man of importance. He’s educated. And he is in prison for killing someone when he’s very young. We are encountering him in the movie. He’s quite elderly. He’s in his late 70s at the youngest. He’s been in there almost 50 years. He’s released. The parole board lets him out. He is free. The second the parole board signature hits that form, he is a free man.

Yet, we find him really struggle with assimilating back to a world that in 50 years had changed dramatically, and is nothing like the regulated world he had been living in for the past half century. What I ask students when this subject comes up is, okay, was Brooks Hatlen free? And the only right answer, honestly, is yes and no.

He is free objectively. The parole board signed, it’s done. That is the finished, accomplished work of Christ within our analogy. It is settled. It is done. And yet there is a subjective experience with this that each and every person has to journey in order for it to feel and be real to them.

Creation has been pulled into the salvation of God. In that sense Karl Barth’s statement — a student asked him, “When were you saved?” And his response was, basically, he says it much more colorfully, but it’s basically, “When Jesus was crucified, that was the moment.” A Thursday, 2000 years ago or something, Friday, 2000 years ago — that is true and yet I can still live a life that is nothing but misery and confusion and distorted thinking and horrific, self-destructive decisions because I can’t see it. And so, to me, until our objective fact and truth align with our subjective experience, we are missing out. To overtly place focus on the objective and deny the need for subjective wholeness too leaves us with a very interesting theology, but it also puts all of our hope in an afterlife heaven and we’re just trying to survive day to day.

[00:41:34] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:41:35] Matt: Rather than being truly whole.

[00:41:37] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:41:37] Matt: Truly.

[00:41:38] Anthony: This whole conversation reminds me of a quote out of the book, Prophetic Imagination, from Walter Brueggemann, and he said, “When we live according to our fears and our hates, our lives become small and defensive lacking the deep, joyous generosity of God.” And I just think if our subjective experience doesn’t align with objective reality, this is what can happen.

Our lives just get really small and defensive, just trying to protect ourselves from all the outside forces. And ah, it’s so beautiful when the light comes on, when we, when the light, what I mean by that is, when a person comes to know what has already been true about them from eternity past to eternity future, that they are loved and God is inviting us just to come on and join him in this good work, that we’re no longer slaves to sin, but also recognizing as Martin Luther said that old wretch has a way of swimming even though he died, he didn’t always drown and we see sin pop up its head.

So, what, Matt, what is it theologically and practically — and by the way, good theology is always hyper-practical; I don’t see a distinction in the two — but what does it mean to consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus?

[00:43:10] Matt: I think it means to really lean into Galatians 2:20 and this idea that we have been consumed enveloped, adopted into the fullness of Christ’s humanity that we are now overshadowed. There is now a new sheriff in town. There is a new governing order of the world that frankly enjoys our participation, but is not dependent on our participation, that God is capable of being God without us, but doesn’t want to be. I think to put it just in, in a sentence, it’s to so completely identify with the humanity of Christ Jesus that our being can only be found in him.

[00:43:40] Anthony:

[00:43:41] Matt: That I can’t look at my behavior as being the core tenet of who I am. I can’t look at my education. I can’t look at my relationships. I can’t look at my family. All I can look to is that I am found in him, that whatever life I perceived myself as having apart from him has been crucified with him, and that the life I now live in this fleshly human body is his, not just as possessive, but as participation, that it is me participating in the fullness of who he is. The more I have sat with that idea, that principle, the more I have seen my own rough edges gently be sandpapered away, without, and honestly, without a lot of conscious effort …

[00:44:38] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:44:39] Matt: … or even focused awareness but just the simple, as I emphasize and get a better understanding of who I am in light of what Christ has done, the more I am able to see what is actually true of me, and that, that’s basic CBT therapy. As my awareness changes, it spills over into my conduct. Theologically metanoia, right? There’s this change in perception. You don’t see the way you did before, you see something new, but it doesn’t stop there. I don’t just see a new way, but continue to do everything the way I did before when I saw differently. No, it informs my conduct now, often subconsciously.

[00:45:23] Anthony: Yeah. Amen and amen.

We’re at the home stretch, one passage to go. It’s Romans 6:12–23. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 8 in Ordinary Time, June 28. Matt, read us for it, please.

[00:45:44] Matt:

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. ¹³ No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. ¹⁵ What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶ Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷ But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted ¹⁸ and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness. ¹⁹ I am speaking in human terms because of your limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. ²⁰ When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. ²¹ So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. ²² But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

[00:47:12] Anthony: Amen. Paul uses a language of slavery, Matt. And we’ve already talked about sin and righteousness. Help us apprehend a Christological Trinitarian way to consider enslavement to righteousness. Is it just some sort of behavior modification program? How does that get expressed in the ways that we live in love?

[00:47:33] Matt: I think it starts in just acknowledging a cold, hard fact that comes to us from none other than Saint Bob Dylan: “You got to serve somebody.”

[00:47:45] Anthony: Yes.

[00:47:47] Matt: I spend a lot of time with folks from a variety of traditions and experiences who are on this journey of seeing the triune God is greater and better and kinder and more depictive of love than what they had traditionally believed.

And it always alarms me a little bit how quickly some folks will turn off the idea of service specific to God, but even service to the Creation as if all slavery is the same. I love Paul’s use of love slave language throughout his writing. This is voluntary. No one is forced to be enslaved to God.

It is a conscious choice that is made. Specifically, the way I am going is not productive for me, it is not productive for my family, it’s not productive for the world around me. And so, I want to go a different direction, but like Dylan told us, “you got to serve somebody.” There has to be some direction that you lean into because we are not independent actors in the world.

We are not capable of creation in and of ourselves. We’re not capable of producing the destiny outcomes that we want independent of ourselves. We are only capable of leaning into the order and design of that which is greater than us. And by holding the world together, by being … I take the view of the Ascension that when Ephesians references Christ as having filled all, he ascends and fills all things with himself, we find in everything, the silver thread of redemptive glory that essentially places Christ in this position of being the fabric that holds everything together — not just our spirituality, but everything. It is what holds, keeps the air flowing into our lungs. It’s what keeps the sun rising. It’s that he is the mechanism — to the degree that one can refer to the Uncreated as a mechanism — the means by which the world keeps in motion.

And so, from that perspective I think the opposite of legalism is actually hedonism. Interesting. That, I can simply live for myself. I can do whatever I want because I’m free. One of my mentors years ago used to use the phrase that the law will kill you, but license will kill you quicker.

And I think there’s wisdom there …

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: … that I am free to “do as I please,” but it can still lead to very destructive ends. I was freed for a purpose. I was freed in the hope that I would voluntarily choose a posture of love, a posture of voluntary loving enslavement to the only master who does not force subjugation, but only accepts service voluntarily.

[00:50:58] Anthony: Yeah, that’s … I want to chew on that. As you look at this text, Matt, what else would you want to proclaim from it? Because so much has been shoehorned in here, but what else do you see?

[00:51:09] Matt: I think the theme as a whole — and this is true for a lot of Paul’s writings, but I think it comes out in Romans the most and probably nowhere more so than this particular passage — is this notion of kenosis.

[00:51:20] Anthony: Yes.

[00:51:20] Matt: What I found is a lot of Christians can get on board with the idea of Christ being kenotic that he is self-emptying, that he empties all of his personal desires, all of what he may want, feel entitled to as God, whatever, and uses service and putting the interests of others ahead of his own as the metric for what his kingdom looks like.

[00:51:47] Anthony: Yeah. Go God. Don’t let it touch us.

[00:51:50] Matt: Yeah. Oh, that’s it exactly. We’re okay with that being him.

[00:51:53] Anthony: Yep.

[00:51:54] Matt: And we’ve even created — it breaks my heart — we’ve got a whole branch of folks out there who have pretty much decided that anything written before the crucifixion in the gospels is an irrelevancy because that was pre-cross.

Yeah, but they’re written after the cross, they’re even written after the epistles. So obviously there’s something there we’re supposed to be seen, or else it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to write it down just to tell me it’s not pertinent. The Sermon on the Mount is specifically what comes to mind with this — we’re now told what the kingdom should look like. We’re told the value of meekness, the inheritorial worth of putting the interests of others ahead of our own. In the Magnificat, the prayer that Mary prays when the angel visits her, that the high are brought low and the low are raised up, that the rich are sent away empty and the hungry are given bread.

That — and not twisted into some kind of weird class warfare thing, because that’s a whole, that’s the other swing of the pendulum that goes the other extreme — but that there’s an equalizing within the gospel where if all of us are truly living this modeled in, through, and as Christ, we are going to engage the world in a kenotic manner where we are putting the interests of others first. Imagine a faith community, a local church where every single person present is actively putting the interests of others ahead of themselves. Yeah.

[00:53:26] Anthony: Man.

[00:53:27] Matt: Imagine the challenges you’re not going to face. You’re not going to need arbitration, mediation. You’re not going to need a full-time marriage counselor on staff. There’s a lot of things you’re not going to need because everything shifts toward the other. There’s a book. It just came out. It’s priest and poet Malcolm Guite …

[00:53:50] Anthony: Yes.

[00:53:51] Matt: … has a new book out Galahad in the Grail. It’s a length, and this is, I think, part one of five, and this part’s 345 pages. It is a, an epic poem looking at Arthur and the Holy Grail and that story.

But he has this section, if I can read it here. It’s in the beginning and he’s talking about Galahad. And the only two characters relevant to the reading here are Galahad, who’s a kid at the time, and his mother, Elaine. And the text reads here, “He asked the lady, fair Elaine, what will become of me? Oh, you will be a knight, my son, the flower of chivalry. So many knights just draw their swords to shed blood on the land. They lust for might and mastery. They only pray of courtesy and keep a code of chivalry they scarcely understand. But when the sword of destiny is holdened in your hand, then you will not bring violence, but healing to the land.”

In a way that only Malcolm Guite can …

Anthony: Yep.

Matt: … that is the gospel. That is the summation of the gospel. Not that the powers that be knock the swords out of our hands and eliminate our participation, but that we voluntarily lay them down and instead choose to proceed in a new manner, actually operating as if we actually are a new creation rather than just a retread of what always has been.

Until — and again I don’t believe this is an inherently partisan or even political idea — until we are as aggrieved by what is happening to our neighbor, whoever that neighbor may be or what whatever their nationality, race, political persuasion, income — until I’m as alarmed by injustice to them as I would be with injustice that comes to my doorstep, we are still living out of an old covenant.

[00:55:43] Anthony: Preach.

[00:55:45] Matt: And again, I think what’s most challenging for me right now is how — what I interpret that as just, that’s just the gospel. I don’t see it as controversial at all. And yet there are certain circles within the Christian faith, and not just Christendom, but within the legitimate Christian faith that views that very controversially, where they still seem very centered that the Jesus who is coming back is coming back to kick butt and take names, and he will look nothing like the Jesus that came as a lamb. And I don’t overuse the word heresy very often, but that is heretical.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Jesus who returns in bodily form, the Jesus who is presented to us with every revelation, every time the light burns a little bit brighter, every time we see love and kindness in the world — that is a coming of Jesus. But to the degree that there is a “second coming” — that Jesus must be identical to who he was when he came the first time.

[00:56:48] Anthony: Amen.

[00:56:48] Matt: Or else God changed it.

[00:56:50] Anthony: Oh, there’s a lot there and I’m grateful for you, Matt. As we come to a close, I’m grateful for the myriad ways that you are a minister of the gospel, and it came out loud and clear in your articulation of the good news. And friends, the gospel is just that it is good news.

If it’s not good, it’s not gospel. And I wanted to end with a quote from the book, Tell It Slant by Eugene Peterson, because so many folks in our audience are preachers and teachers and pastors. He says, “Preaching is proclamation. Preaching announces what God is doing right here and now at this time and in this place.”

It also calls hearers to respond. Preaching is the good news that God is alive and present and in action, and because that is true, we can love our neighbors well. And I just thank you, Matt. I thank our team that works behind the scenes to make this podcast possible and as is our tradition here on Gospel Reverb, we like to end with a word in prayer. Matt, if you would please pray for us, we’d be grateful.

[00:57:55] Matt: I’d be honored to.

Gracious and merciful God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are grateful that you have pulled us into your life and that you do this in such a way that we don’t lose personality or distinction, but we’re engrafted into the very heart of who you are. Thank you that there’s no such thing as an outsider. There’s no such thing as someone who has been separated or secluded out from your love, but that your love shines everywhere, that there is nowhere the rays of your countenance doesn’t touch. And so, Lord, we are grateful that we get to participate in this with you, that you could have been God all by yourself without any participation from us, but you opt to include us. You chose us for your very own. Thank you, Lord, that we are able to see you more clearly, more genuinely, and that the veil is being lifted from our sight more and more every moment of every day. I speak blessings, Lord, over everyone who is listening to us today who has engaged these beautiful texts with us and to the preachers who are going to be taking these texts and speaking to the hearts of your people, Lord, that they would receive not a new word, not a novel word, but that you would speak to their hearts specifically what is to be heard by their congregations and parishes, by those you’ve placed in their life, their family, and their own hearts, that Lord, you gave us a wonderful text of Holy Scripture, but you animate it, you enliven it by your Spirit, and we are grateful for the Comforter and Teacher that is ours this day and forevermore. In your name, we pray. Amen.

[00:59:33] Anthony: Amen.

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