The Indispensability of Old Testament Theology: The Insights of Otto Eissfeldt

God has presented a complex text to the human race: roughly three-quarters of it is in a Semitic language and set in a Hebrew context, while a quarter of it is Greek set in the context of the Roman Empire.

Scholars have long wrestled with the task of seeing a whole composed of these two parts.

The term “Old Testament Theology” appears in academic literature. What does it mean? Otto Eissfeldt suggests that it describes “the revelation of God as it has occurred and occurs ever anew for faith in relation to the Old Testament,” and “can never take the form of a historical presentation, because faith has not to do with things past but with the timeless present.”

To fully explore the phrase “Old Testament Theology” would take a long discussion. For the present, it will suffice to indicate that the Old Testament is not secondary or ancillary to the New Testament. The Old Testament stands on its own as a theological document. Neither Testament is complete without the other, as Otto Eissfeldt writes:

Of course, this kind of Old Testament theology, structured on the basis of faith, is influenced throughout by the central faith experience of its author and his religious community, but it is not required that every assertion must be expressly related to this. In other words, Old Testament theology does not always require “fulfillment” in New Testament theology. There are elements in the Old Testament - for example, the psalms that praise God’s majesty as it is unfolded in creation - that can also be direct revelation to the Christian, all the more since such are almost wanting in the New Testament. In this case, the otherwise self-evident schema of placing the religion of the New Testament above that of the Old must be replaced by a schema that sets them alongside each other. Here the Old Testament serves to complement the New.

The Old Testament — or Tanakh — represents a number of absolutely unique developments. On a social level, it placed women on a higher level than had previously been documented in any ancient text; it asserted that even slaves were human beings, and as such had certain rights, and that their masters did not have limitless arbitrary power over them; it expressed a humane attitude toward, and legislated decent treatment for, the poor, the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan.

Indeed, it expressed a privileged status for, and God’s favor upon, the poor, the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan. This was a revolutionary overthrow of the existing hierarchies in the ancient nations of that time.

On a spiritual level, the Old Testament was positively iconoclastic vis-a-vis other ancient religious texts, pronouncing that the possession of earthly and material blessings was not necessarily a sign of God’s favor, and that enduring earthly and physical hardship was not necessarily a sign of His wrath.

The Hebrew word anawim can be rendered as the “needy” (Psalm 9:18), the “afflicted” (Psalm 10:17, 22:26), the “humble” (Psalm 25:9, 147:6, 149:4), or the “meek” (Psalm 37:11) — depending, of course, upon translation. These are the people for whom God has special favor.

The concept of the anawim blossoms in the New Testament in the teachings of Jesus (Matthew 5:3-12; Luke 14:7-14), and in the letter written by James (2:1-9). So it is that the Old Testament is foundational for the New, according to Otto Eissfeldt:

This applies above all, as Karl Holl has justifiably stressed (“Urchristentum und Religionsgeschichte,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 2 [1924/25] 387-430), to conceptions regarding the relation of God to sin and the sinner. The New Testament idea of a God who offers himself to the sinner is actually foreign to the Old Testament. But it is equally correct and worth noting when Holl adds this conclusion: “Indeed, in the question of evil, Judaism came to a similar recognition never attained elsewhere among humankind. Recalling only Isaiah 53 and the anawim in the Psalms - Judaism broke through the conventional wisdom which held that the best person must also be the most fortunate. Just the reverse: precisely the most pious can suffer the harshest troubles. The unfortunate one does not necessarily despise God; he may stand closer to God than the one who gains everything.” With respect to overcoming evil, the Old Testament must here be placed alongside the New.

Eissfeldt outlines a mode of thought which he calls “religious pragmatism” or “theological pragmatism,” a view in which “the way of the world can be evenly calculated in such a way that piety and fortune, conduct pleasing to God and success - or the reverse, sin and suffering - always go together.” Eissfeldt argues, convincingly, that such a view “corresponds in no way at all to what can be recognized at the high points of Old Testament religion as the nature of faith. There, faith always entails struggle and daring, and precisely where an incongruity between piety and fortune is discovered and must be overcome, faith displays itself in its full power.”

Thus, Eissfeldt urges the reader to

Compare Holl’s statements with what was said above concerning the religious pragmatism of the Old Testament’s historical books.

It is high praise indeed to say that the Old Testament contains, in chrysalis state, but also in a more developed concept, the Theologia Crucis which is both an essential part of, and an enduring mystery regarding, the Gospel as presented in the New Testament.

The Creative Tension Inside Theology

One of the mysteries confronting the reader of the Old Testament is a question about the status of the assertions it makes - assertions made more often by implications rather than by explicit propositions: not the assertions made about concrete history, but rather the assertions it makes about spirituality, about the relation between God and man, assertions which are often indicated rather than stated, assertions which are indicated by the structure of the religion of the ancient Hebrews.

Is the Old Testament showing eternal truths, or truths that were true only for that time, or showing that it was true that those things were presented as truths - whether or not they actually were truths? In these questions lurk both a slippery slope toward the heresy of Marcionism, and another slippery slope toward a woodenly dogmatic and hyper-literal reading of the text.

Phrased another way, one can ask if the faith of the Old Testament is the faith of the New Testament. Or is it a separate faith? Exploring this question, Otto Eissfeldt writes:

The tension between absolute and relative, between transcendence and immanence, is the current problem of theology. For biblical scholarship, this general problem is reduced to a particular one: history and revelation. It is with this problem that the study of both Testaments, of the New just as of the Old, has to grapple, and a new solution must be found that applies fundamentally to both. However, particular matters in the Old Testament differ from those in the New, so that a treatment restricted to the Old Testament is legitimate. The question, then, is whether the religion of the Old Testament is to be understood and presented as a historical entity like other religions of antiquity, and thus in terms of the history of Israelite-Jewish religion, or as a religion which is, even if in some limited way, the true religion, the revelation of God, and thus - so the term will be understood here - as “Old Testament theology.”

So there are two approaches. The first approach looks at the text as a source regarding the history of religion: What did people believe? What were the doctrines and practices? Did that belief change or develop over time? The second approach sees the text as a source of theological truth: Which spiritual insights can the reading find in the Old Testament? How does God reveal Himself in the text?

Obviously and fittingly, the historical approach tends to use past tense verbs, while the theological approach tends to use present tense verbs.

The two approaches certainly interact with each other. Can they be harmonized? Otto Eissfeldt suggests that, finally, they can even be united:

Despite every distinction between the two approaches, the historical and the theological, it is nonetheless finally the case that, seen from a higher vantage point, they form a unity - and they do so not just to the extent that its importance to us as the source of revelation, rather than only or even primarily as the object of historical knowledge, accounts for the extraordinarily urgent historical investigation of Old Testament religion. Rather, beyond all this, we are confident that it is the one identical truth for which knowledge strives and by which faith is grasped. Knowing and believing belong, as we have seen, to two parallel planes, and they must meet each other in infinity - but only in infinity. Within the finite realm the two approaches form a unity only to the extent that one person can master them.

Eissfeldt seems, perhaps, to suggest that the wisest course is to pursue both approaches, and to strive to discover the organic unity of which each displays an aspect.

Not Theomorphism, Not Anthropomorphism: The Metaphysical Status of God in Early Hebrew Thought

It can be difficult for the modern reader, or for the postmodern reader, to peel back the centuries of accrued worldview in order to understand the conceptual framework of ancient Hebrew writers. The typical 21st-century eye will approach the text with one of two viewpoints: either modern metaphysical Cartesianism, or modern materialism — the latter available in various versions, from, e.g., David Hume or Karl Marx.

The reader who fancies herself or himself to be postmodern is still probably operating out of one of these two options.

Neither of these frameworks would have been familiar to the Hebrew author writing anywhen between 2000 B.C. and 500 B.C.

The conceptual pigeon-holes into which the ancient Hebrew slotted his thoughts did not distinguish as sharply and rigidly between physical and metaphysical as does the modern thinker. But the ancient Hebrew would have drawn a more distinct boundary-line between the divine and the worldly than his modern analogue.

Generally, the ancient Hebrew might have been more comfortable with fuzzy and indistinct boundary-lines than 21st-century folks. While the modern reader is inclined to dissect the human being into a physical body on the one hand, and on the other hand into parts which are spiritual, mental, emotional, psychological, and soulful, his Hebrew counterpart might have said that a human being is not a “body and soul” but rather the intersection of body and soul — that “body and soul” are not two parts, like nut and bolt, or like nail and wood, or like shirt and pants, but rather that body and soul are like the flour and sugar in a cake: stirred together, joined with a liquid, and baked into an indivisible unit.

Reaching for another metaphor, it may be said that the ancient Hebrew looked at the human blend of body and soul like the blend of two colors of paint, which the artist mixes on his palette, the black and the white mingled to form a shade of gray, and it would be hopeless to speak of the “white” as somehow distinct from the “black” once the two are mixed.

While the Hebrew therefore made less of a distinction between the physical and the metaphysical, he made perhaps more of a distinction between the divine and the commonplace.

The modern metaphysician calmly adds “God” to the list of other objects which he classifies as “metaphysical” — metaphysical objects include thoughts, ideas, emotions, memories, minds, abstract numbers, geometrical forms, mathematical formulas, angels, demons, etc.

The Hebrew was more inclined to see God as absolutely and utterly apart from other types of existence — from other types of being, or, with Heidegger, from other types of Being — Sein or Dasein.

When the interpretive question is then posed, does Scripture speak of God in an anthropomorphic manner? The answer is a clear and decisive “Yes and No.” As scholar Frank Seilhamer writes,

Much of the Old Testament conceives of God in a highly anthropomorphic fashion. Yahweh is no far-off, abstract idea, but a person who in many ways is much like a man, thought greater, mightier, etc. He is not seen as “absolute Being but as the ‘living God,’ active in this world of time and space … ” Not only is God one who has a body, enabling him to walk in a garden in the “cool of the day,” but he is capable of exhibiting the whole gamut of emotional and psychical states. God can feel anger, hate, love, and mercy and compassion, just as he can be jabbed with sorrow, and even be bargained with. In all, Yahweh is a deity who communicates and feels and acts “personally” with and in his creation.

The Hebrew author was quite comfortable in writing of God using thoroughly human vocabulary. But this does not necessarily imply ‘anthropomorphism’ as the term is often understood. The difference between God and man is not one of metaphysical category, but rather one of spiritual category. All of this will be quite uncomfortable for the metaphysician trained in a cartesian or post-cartesian pattern.

For the ancient Hebrew, God can enjoy a walk in the garden during the cool part of the day while still being utterly different from a human being — especially from a post-Fall human being.

The difference between God and man, in the ancient Hebrew mindset, is not the difference between metaphysical and physical; it is the difference between divine and commonplace, as Seilhamer notes:

This is not to say, however, that there were no essential and basic difference between God and man other than degree in early Hebrew thought. As Aubrey Johnson points out, even in the earliest Biblical records Yahweh, though pictured in the formof a man, was, nevertheless, thought of as a Being of a different substance than the latter.

While the modernist emphasizes the distinction between metaphysical and physical, between mind body — and then comfortably places both ‘mind’ and ‘God’ into a categories which includes a variety of other ‘metaphysical objects’ — the authors of the Tanakh emphasized the distinction between God and everything else.

This is perhaps why most forms of the gnostic heresy had to wait for the Greek conceptual framework to enable their appearances. Gnosticism would not have been intelligible, much less plausible, to the ancient Semites.

Among other Hebrew vocabulary, Seilhamer examines nefesh and basar.

“Though there was nothing in Hebrew thought that made the ‘body’ or ‘flesh’” sinful in and of itself, such a sense of “body” or “flesh” was still somehow incomplete, or not complete enough, to capture the divine presence. Such body or flesh is not “a substance too ‘base’ to be the ‘person’ of the divine,” But it is insufficient to be the fullness of the deity.

“God’s ‘person’ usually was spoken and written of in terms of being of a light and rarefied substance, sometimes explained as being like ‘fire.’” This might perhaps be read as vaguely analogical to, or foreshadowing of, the type of metaphysical objects which appear in the writing of the Descartes or Leibniz — a Platonic idea(l) or an abstraction to which is attributed some ontological reality. But we cannot read the ancient Hebrews as being dualists, or substance dualists, in the sense of the Cartesians and other early modern philosophers. When the early Hebrews describe God as “spirit,” they are not working in the conceptual framework which categorizes things as either physical or metaphysical.

This difference between God and the rest of his creation is pointed up in the well-known oracle of Isaiah uttered by the prophet against his contemporaries who looked to Egypt for help against Assyria.

In Chapter 31, Isaiah notes that “the Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not Spirit.” Perhaps a tentative reconstruction of ancient Hebrew ontology may be ventured. In the juxtaposition of ‘men’ and ‘God’ — and of ‘flesh’ and ‘Spirit’ — Isaiah is not organizing his thought around the early modern distinction between physical and metaphysical. Rather, Isaiah is operating with these two categories: God and everything else.

The “parallelism” in Isaiah “points out the contrast between the substance of God and the substance of his creation.”

In contrast to what he has made God is not “flesh,” he is “Spirit,” and in this sense different in essence from man and animals. It is not that this passage, or ones similar to it, attempt to indict “flesh” as being essentially evil or corrupt. The intent of the text is to show that God is not of the same fragile substance as man. Where man is limited God is not. God is infinitely beyond man in “being,” while continually in communication with man “personally.” God is not an unidentifiable unknowable glob floating around in space! He is a “person.” Yet, while God is a “person” he still is essentially “Spirit.” Therefore, while God can be, and so often is, spoken about in an anthropomorphic framework, it must never be forgotten that for the early Hebrews at least God’s psychical functions have a “Spiritual” basis in contrast to man, whose psychical functions have a physical basis.

The 21st-century reader must therefore be careful not to read into these words — spirit, soul, body, flesh, etc. — a modern ontology.

Prepositions and Prayer: The Syntax of Spiritual Communion

Prayer is a complicated and mysterious process. Without exaggeration, hundreds of books have been written about this topic.

People use language, both to pray, and to talk about prayer. To be sure, there is an aspect to prayer which exceeds language, as Paul writes: “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

Even so, language is central to prayer.

Consider the following examples:

We can pray for someone, we can pray with someone, and we can pray over someone.

We can pray against something and we can pray about something. We can pray concerning something, regarding something, or with regard to something.

We can pray on behalf of someone.

Some of these phrases may be purely synonymous: a distinction without a difference, then, would exist between some of these linguistic formulations.

The difference between some of these expressions may also be, e.g., the difference petitions and intercessions. Likewise, we can distinguish between praise, thanksgiving, and adoration.

Reflecting on the language we use to talk about prayer can lead us toward insights and toward an enriching diversity in our practices of prayer.

A Task Accomplished in a Variety of Settings: Discipleship

Any gathering of Christian leaders will manifest a variety of styles and structures. There is a sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, competition between various congregational models, from the mega-church to the house-church, and everything in between.

God is certainly able and willing to work when “two or three are gathered in” His name (Matthew 18:20), or when “thousands of people had gathered together” (Luke 12:1).”

The rivalry between big groups and small groups is not a true dilemma or dichotomy, as Bob Roberts writes:

Global pastors don’t get into this argument. They see the value of both the small scale and the large scale. They believe in starting small, but they also realize the impact large services can have on a community. To them, it’s not one or the other; it’s both, and it starts and continues with cells. In Paul’s letter to the believers in Ephesus, we see his description of relationships in organic cells, as well as the local congregation in the city, and the broader, universal church (cells: Eph. 4:14-17; congregation: Eph. 4:7-13; universal church: Eph. 4:1-6).

Whether in a small home group of a dozen people, or in a mega-church of thousands, there are key roles to be filled. These are listed in the New Testament. Bob Roberts lists five of the: apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists.

When apostles and prophets are the foundation of the church, the other roles Paul identified later in this letter — pastors, teachers, and evangelists — take their God-given places in the scheme of things. Their collective role is to deepen and extend the DNA of the church, not to establish it. All of these roles are necessary for cells to thrive.

The purpose of any church or congregation is to find its collective role as a group, and to find individual roles for its members.

If a congregation has been established initially and primarily as a large, Sunday morning gathering, then to impose upon that congregation a structure of small groups as its main identity will be a somewhat forced and affected measure.

A congregation that has a history of being identified mainly as the large Sunday morning experience cannot, and should not, suddenly attempt to act as if it were really a collection of small groups. The inauthenticity of such a move would be clear.

A congregation which identifies itself as a congregation should delight in that identity, and strive to live it out well.

If a network of small groups in fact began as small groups, and only later merged to form a congregation, then such a church should cheerfully identify as a collection of groups, and not attempt to see the large congregation as its main identity, as Bob Roberts writes:

In many churches in the West, socialization is the primary characteristic of small groups. Pastors sometimes say, “We’re not a church with small groups; we’re a church of small groups.” That’s the right language, but getting people to gather isn’t the full story. For one thing, many of these groups are birthed long after the church is established, so the DNA of the church is primarily about the worship hour and people volunteering to make it successful. And many of these groups are little more than gatherings of friends, with little, if any, vision for making a difference in the community. In some churches, programs are offered for target groups such as men, women, and singles, and the church also has a program for discipleship. That’s the wrong metric. God hasn’t commanded us to make target-group ministries; he has commanded us to make disciples.

In either type of church — and here the thoughts go beyond, and even contrary to, what Bob Roberts wrote — the goal is discipleship. A congregation which began, and identifies as, a network of small groups needn’t seek to build an identity as a large Sunday morning experience.

And a congregation which began as a large Sunday morning experience needn’t try to do the mental gymnastics to recast itself as a network of small groups.

Both forms can be God-pleasing, and both forms can be used by God to build His kingdom.

Discipleship can be carried out in a wide variety of settings.

Whichever type of structure happens to be the inherited shape for a group of believers, they need only ask how they can go about the business of discipleship within that structure.

Toward a Theology of Lent

Worship during Lent is often in danger of losing its identity, perhaps more so in the twenty-first century than in previous years. The music, liturgy, and sermons can drift away from the peculiar characteristics which distinguish Lent from other parts of the year.

This is true regardless of whether one holds to more traditional or less traditional worship styles, regardless of which modern songs or ancient hymns one prefers.

We can be thankful that many congregations properly express the characteristic aspects of Lent, and do so in a way that correctly expresses Lent’s essential and singular message.

Perhaps the most common risk is that Lent turns into a sort of slow-motion Good Friday.

The season - whether one calls it Passionszeit or Fastenzeit - should be kept distinct from Good Friday, yet exactly that distinction is the one most often blurred.

A concrete example of such confusion can be seen in the selection of Biblical texts for worship. It is not uncommon to experience Lenten worship services including the Words from the Cross and other Crucifixion passages. Yet such readings are more at home in Good Friday service than a Lenten service.

The pieces of music chosen likewise manifest a conflation of Lent and Good Friday: songs normally associated with latter appear during the former, e.g., O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden or O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.

On the other hand, Lent is sometimes diluted by the anticipation, and preemptive celebration, of the Resurrection. While a follower of Jesus always lives in the awareness of the Resurrection, Lent is not merely an anticipation of Easter.

If Good Friday seeps too much into the observation of Lent, not only does this detract from the unique character of Lent, but it also robs Holy Week of its specialness. If the congregation has been singing Go to Dark Gethsemane for forty days already, Good Friday may seem like merely an extension of Lent.

To properly formulate distinctively Lenten worship, an understanding of Lent must first be articulated. What is Lent? How is Lent different than Good Friday?

Lent is a time of reflection and self-examination. The sequence of Ash Wednesday, Lent, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter is a logical progression.

For many people, the primary significance of Lent is fasting. The physical act of fasting is related to a broader set of spiritual disciplines. Whether one refrains from food for a certain period of time, or engages in another spiritual discipline - e.g., works of charity, increased prayer, etc. - such actions can be good, but are not the primary meaning of Lent. Rather, they reflect Lent’s deeper purpose.

The familiar distinction between Law and Gospel may help to explain the distinction between Ash Wednesday, Lent, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. Ash Wednesday and Lent are Law: they are about us as we examine ourselves. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter are Gospel: they are about Jesus and what He did, i.e., die and come back to life.

To be sure, there is some overlap between Lent and Good Friday. The difference may be, in part, one of emphasis. Both present Christ’s suffering because of our sin. Lent may emphasize our sin; Good Friday may emphasize Christ’s suffering.

Identifying key themes in Lent, Ralph Spears writes:

The beginning of Lent starts with a Wednesday of ashes for repentance.

Repentance is conceptually connected to other themes and to spiritual disciplines, as Spears notes:

Since a least the Fourth Century, Lent or Lenz (Gr.), possibly relating to the lengthening days of Spring meant to Christians a period of fasting, penance, and inward looking, relating to the forty days of Christ in the wilderness (and Moses’ as well). Lately this has included for some a restricted diet and the replacing of meat with fish for a lighter body to properly contemplate Christ's suffering – the road less traveled. For this, the giving up of more worldly things and habits come to mind.

We tend to bypass or ignore the time without some liturgical or personal observation which takes us out of the everyday world into the mind of Christ.

Spears properly notes the Germanic etymology of the word ‘Lent’ and more importantly, its themes, and how those themes are reinforced by the liturgical calendar.

Lent emphasizes the repentance and painfully honest self-evaluation. Good Friday emphasizes the price of the failures which Lent uncovers. The points at which Lent and Good Friday overlap are mentioned by Scot Kinnam:

It was seen as a time of repentance and denial of self. All Christians were to examine their lives according to the Ten Commandments and other Christian ethical precepts and repent where necessary. They were to remember what it cost their Savior to save them.

Lent searches the soul and finds the sin. Good Friday pays the price for that sin. Kinnam quotes Luther on the value of Lent:

At the time of the Reformation, some Christians wanted to eliminate Lent since Scripture didn’t command it. Luther, however, urged that it be kept, for he saw Lent as an opportunity for the strengthening of faith. “Lent, Palm Sunday, and Holy Week shall be retained, not to force anyone to fast, but to preserve the Passion history and the Gospels appointed for that season.”

Luther saw the flow of the liturgical calendar as manifesting a spiritual process. Kinnam continues:

Here Luther instructs that Lent should be preserved, in part, because it reminded Christians of the Passion (suffering and death) of Jesus and encouraged them to meditate upon it. However, no one should be forced to participate. It should be voluntary.

Lutherans retain Lent to this day, because we see it as a salutary outward discipline that gives Christians a wonderful opportunity for spiritual renewal. As Lent begins, we are invited to struggle against everything that leads us away from love of God and love of neighbor by exercising the discipline of Lent: repentance, fasting, prayer and works of love (almsgiving). These may become specific occasions and opportunities for spiritual renewal during this season of renewal as we come face to face with the sin that hinders our walk with Christ. Living out a discipline takes our Lord’s words about self-denial seriously (Matthew 16:24). In the Lenten discipline, we come face to face with the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we focus (or refocus) on His self-sacrificing passion, death and resurrection, which has brought us acceptance, forgiveness and redemption by God. Through that same discipline, we make a loving response to God who gives us the power to live anew.

Ash Wednesday and Lent form one half of a dialectic; Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter are the other half. The believer spirals through them in a Hegelian fashion. Even as we distinguish between them, they point to each other.

It is part of the yearly task of the liturgical calendar to separate the two halves of this dialectic, even as their inherent bond is revealed.

God’s Script: History Unfolds Like a Screenplay

Life is confusing. It’s part of the human experience not to understand entirely what’s happening to oneself, around oneself, or in oneself.

Imagine for a moment that you’re a character in the middle of a novel, film, or play. Neither at the beginning, nor at the end, you might be in the middle of unintelligible action, or in the middle of a long expanse of actionless waiting. You're not sure about the purpose of the action; you don’t know for what you’re waiting.

You can be frustrated or disappointed with what’s going on around you. You can be even more frustrated or disappointed with yourself.

Yet God remains the screenwriter. He knew and knows what you’ll do before you do it, and He’s already incorporated it into his script.

Yes, we’re frustrated with ourselves, but God has accounted for our shortcomings and integrated them into His plot, as Zach Zehnder writes:

God sent Jesus not because He expected perfection from us, but simply because He loves us. However, God sent Jesus knowing that even after His death and resurrection we would fail Him.

The life we live is one of surrender. We surrender to God. We surrender our ideas and ideals, our plans and projects, our vision of the way things ought to be. We want to be perfect - for both good reasons and bad reasons. But we must surrender that ambition.

God uses us to carry out His will and His plans. Ironically, He uses us best and most when we’re not trying to be perfect. What makes His followers effective and attractive is not their perfection. It is their peace.

We want to be perfect so that we can be more effective as God’s people. But His plan is to work in our imperfections. He uses flawed people as His instruments on earth.

Shortly before his death in 2013, Byron Porisch marked the following passage in a book co-written by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay:

God has always wanted a ­people that would be exclusive to him holy, set apart, distinct, and beautiful to the world he is trying to redeem.

It’s a bit counterintuitive to realize that what makes the church amazing is not that it’s filled with such perfect people, but rather that it manages to communicate God’s love best by communicating through broken people.

As we “boast” about our weakness, God’s powerful intervention becomes more clear to those watching us (II Corinthians 12:9).

It seems odd to say that it is our brokenness which makes us “holy, set apart, distinct, and beautiful.” Yet we see this in Scripture: people like Jeremiah and Jonah were both broken and yet powerful prophets.

Byron also marked this passage in the book:

Church is something everyone should be a part of, but it’s different than being a faith community. Church happens when a group of ­people decide to go on mission with God together.

The authors are making a distinction between “church” and “faith community.” You might make the same distinction with other words, but here’s what it boils down to this: On the one hand, there’s the gathering of believers, those who share a creed, who meet to encourage one another, to worship and pray, and to study Scripture together. On the other hand, there are task-oriented groups who meet to go into action.

Both are good. Both are necessary. Both are important. Halter and Smay point to a cycle of gathering and sending, sending and gathering - a sort of dialectic.

Jesus gathers broken, sinful, flawed people together as His church. He’s under no illusions about our continued imperfections. He gathers us, blesses us, and builds a community of mutual support among us. Then He gives us assignments. He sends us on missions.

When we come back from our missions, we are still broken people, and we gather to worship Him and receive from Him, and the cycle begins again.