Knowing One's Place

Recovering The Joy of Battle 

In our corporate experience there are plenty of faithful Christians who live conscience stricken.  They are sure that they are not obeying sufficiently well to satisfy the exhortations and injunctions that come upon them like a deluge every Lord's day.  The preacher has just completed an exposition of the Apostle's command, "pray without ceasing" and many poor saints depart certain that they have failed to obey that command and that they live miserable Christian lives, racked with general unfaithfulness.  So the saints perpetually mourn, with little gaiety and laughter. 

They have forgotten (or have perhaps never been taught) that most of the commands and exhortations, particularly in the New Testament, are given to the church corporate, of which the individual believer is one part--or to use a Pauline illustration, a single member of an entire body.  True, the believer must play an role--a role appropriate to their gifts and calling--so that the congregation as a whole can pray without ceasing. 

When Christians sort this out, the joyful release from false guilt can be palpable.  Theologian, John Frame provides a broader and deeper biblical argument for this reality.  He argues that each of us must prioritize God's commandments in the light of one's situation and, in particular, one's callings.

Even within the biblical canon, there are some norms that take precedence over others in particular situations.  For example, Scripture commands us to be subject to the ruling authorities (Exodus 20: 12; Rom 13:1; I Peter 2:13ff), but when those authorities command us to do something contrary to God's law, we must refuse (Exodus 1: 15-22; Daniel 3:6; Acts 5: 29; cf. Matthew 10: 35-37; Luke 14: 26).  Our submission to God takes precedence over our submission to human authority.  Consider another example.  Some rules that normally govern human life are suspended in cases of emergency (Matthew 12: 3ff.). And Jesus taught that mercy is more important that (sic) sacrifice (Matthew 9: 13; 23:23; cf. 5: 24).  Some matters of the law, then, are "more weighty" than others and so deserve more emphasis and attention.

Because we are finite, we cannot keep all of God's commandments simultaneously.  Often our inability to do this produces false guilt.  One sermon tells us to spend hours in prayer, another to feed the hungry, another to study the Bible intensively, another to evangelize our neighborhoods, another to catechize our children, another to become politically active.  All of these seem to be based on biblical norms, yet we often feel overwhelmed by such huge demands on us.  There simply are not enough hours in the day to do all that we are exhorted to do.

It is helpful here to remember that when God commands us to pray, to evangelize, to help the poor, and so forth, He is speaking primarily to the church as a whole and only secondarily to each of us as individuals.  These are works that the church must do.  Each individual in the church must contribute toward their fulfilment.  But how the individual contributes will depend upon his gifts and calling.  Not all of us are called to pray six hours a day or to ring doorbells in our neighborhoods or to start political movements.  Each one of us, then, must prayerfully, under the guidance of the Scripture, devise his own set of priorities among these communal norms.  That sounds dangerous.  How can there be "priorities" among ultimates?  And how can a human being choose for himself what priorities he will give to God's laws?  He can, because Scripture says that he can and must.

Many misunderstandings among Christians can be avoided if we keep these principles in mind.  An evangelistic pastor looks at a canon-lawyer type (one who spends much energy trying to implement proper procedures in his session and presbytery) and perceives the canon lawyer as violating the Great Commission.  But to the canon lawyer, the evangelist seems to be violating the biblical command to "do all things decently and in order" (I Corinthians 14: 40).  In this example, I believe that the evangelist is more nearly right than is the canon lawyer.  Just as mercy is more important than sacrifice, evangelism is more important, in a scriptural perspective, than ecclesiastical procedure.  But the canon lawyer is not entirely implausible when he replies that the Great Commission itself requires proper procedures: how often has disorganization hindered evangelistic efforts?

So a study of priority structures in Scripture itself may not be sufficient to break through the impasse, but in such debates, it is often helpful for each party to consider (as, unfortunately they rarely do) that the other is simply trying to follow priorities that are in part dictated by his own gifts and calling.  If we were more aware of the need for such personal priority structures, it would help us to understand one another better, and it would help to foster church unity. [John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1987), p. 138f.]

In the Biblical and Christian frame, the One and the Many are equally ultimate.  The One (the Church corporate) cannot exist or function without the Many (the countless diverse host of Christians and their families).  The Many are diverse in gifts and callings, precisely so that the One can be a unified whole.  The eye does not say to the hand, "I have no need of you."   Neither may the One say that all members of the body must be hands or eyes. 

The more Christians understand this particular glory of the Church of our Lord, the more they will be inoculated against false guilt.  The more the joy of battle will rest upon them.