24.1 Practicing Christ
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
What I have called the seventh most important verse in the Bible is, on the one hand, the verse of jeopardy, “we are partakers of Christ IF,” and on the other hand, the verse of the practical expression of resurrection life. This is the verse we DO.
Yet this doing of our confidence is the bold faith of speaking Christ as the only life we are – until we know that it is true. And in knowing, we go out from our continuous rest inside the refuge of the Holy of Holies, never leaving that rest, but always taking it with us wherever we go. It is very fitting, then, that this verse corresponds to those places in a home that connect the inside to the outside.
The Argument of Hebrews. I want to put the Hebrews portion of this “verse” in front of us before we bring in the pattern of home called “Places in Between.” As I shared, the writer of Hebrews had one point to make. Everything else simply serves, either to drive towards that one point or to draw out from that one point. In essence, that point, stated in simple terms, is this. Enter into God with all boldness and confident speaking and live only inside all of His holiness entirely by faith and without consciousness of sins.
Technically, as far as the argument of Hebrews is concerned, Hebrews 10:19-22 is just a focused and more completed repeat of Hebrews 3:6/14 and its context of entering into the rest of Christ.
Jeopardy without Assurance. In my early years in the fellowship of Christian communities of which I was once a part, the primary ministry of that fellowship, Sam Fife, presented before us the practice of boldness of faith and the confident speaking of Christ. The brother who filled that place of leadership after Sam Fife was killed in a plane crash in 1979, Buddy Cobb, then turned that entire fellowship away from any confidence in Christ and towards the continual doubt of always falling short of God, that is, to full-bore Calvinism. Buddy Cobb taught jeopardy without assurance, using the biggest jeopardy verse of the Bible, Hebrews 3:6/14 – BUT, without ever going beyond the IF to see what follows – in actuality, NEVER ONCE.
Led Always in Triumph. But just as confident boasting in Christ our life is not found in any form of Calvinism, or the Roman Catholicism that Calvinism simply intensifies, neither is our being led always in triumph. For that reason, it seemed to me that, being led always in triumph and confidently boasting that we are part of Christ as the great “IF YOU DO THIS” part of the New Covenant should be fitted together into one “verse” as my own personal and public rejection of all the serpentine hopelessness of an utterly worthless “struggle against sin.”
Yet by attaching “led always in triumph” to that extraordinary confidence by which we apprehend everything that is God, we find ourselves spun entirely around and now going out with Father to set all creation free.
Two Different Arrangements. Now, in the pattern of mystery, it is entirely necessary that this verse of walking in confidence, as we are the very life of Jesus revealed as us, be found as the third part of the means of God by which He commits His great crime of living in and revealing Himself through humans. And in that pattern of mystery, the actions by which we place ourselves utterly into the confidence of Christ, that is, speaking Christ, asking and believing we have received, and giving thanks, are our practice of knowing God. But the patterns of home require this “verse” to be moved, a move that places this one word, parrhesia, speaking bold statements of faith in public, on both sides of living in love and looking out on creation.
Boldness and Confidence. And so here is how we now see it. – Enter boldly into love one another, that is, into God, and there, in that place of liberty, look out at the weeping of creation. Now, in that same confidence by which you apprehend all that is God, go forth with Father, led always in triumph, and through the same practicality, set creation free.
And so this practical expression of our confidence in Christ becomes ever more practical in its place in the local Church, for here is where we place our daily WORK in life together. In essence, we are practicing Christ; that is, we are practicing being as Christ in outward ministry towards all. With that understanding, let’s bring in Patterns of Home.
Places In Between from Patterns of Home.
Every house needs places that allow you to inhabit the edge and offer enough exposure to make you aware of your surroundings and enough protection to make you comfortable.
A good house… needs places that are in between, half in and half out.
In-between spaces can take many forms: porches or balconies, large bay windows or tiny window seats, alcoves or sunrooms tacked onto the side of the building. Their defining quality is that they exist in addition to the major rooms of the house; they are not essential to the function of the house but complement it.
Working with the Pattern
Every house needs places that fall between the inside and the outside—places where we can experience the outdoors at the same time as we enjoy the comfort and protection of the indoors. To really allow us to experience being in between, the spaces must encourage stopping, not simply passing through.
- Design places in between as cul-de-sacs, quiet pools with no through traffic. Equip them with seats, make them comfortable to invite lingering, and keep traffic flow to the edge.
- Make sure that interior places in between feel truly surrounded by the outdoors; otherwise they’ll be just another room. When you are within them, your connection to the outside should be as strong as to the inside. Accomplish this by actually popping the space out from the building’s walls, as in a dormer or a bay window, or by making the edges of the space transparent enough that the outside appears to be barely held off, as in sunrooms or porches.
- Exterior places in between must provide some of the security and comfort associated with being indoors. Use structural elements—columns, roof, elevated flow—to imply enclosure and to create a sense of containment. Add furniture, finishes, and lighting to offer an indoor level of comfort.
- Although places in between vary widely in size and comfort, they must remain as secondary spaces, adjuncts to the primary rooms (inside or outside) they are associated with.
- Design in-between places to suit the local climate and the seasons of use. For warm-weather use, create rooms or areas that have roofs to keep the rain out, but keep the walls open or lightly screened so that the temperature and breezes can be felt. Where rain is not a concern, consider a room surrounded by walls but open to the sky. For colder seasons, create indoor places that feel as if they reach outside the walls of the house and connect them directly to the outdoors through windows and skylights.
- Pay attention to the boundary. Defining the edges between the interior and the in between creates a change in awareness. Create thresholds, soffits, or frames to emphasize the change of place.
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Using this Pattern. That makes six points. Let’s bring it to seven with my own wording.
- Begin your places in between with the front porch as the primary place of greeting and interacting with neighbors and passers-by, out from the same place into which friends are invited to enter.
Perfect Balances. You see, full “self-sufficiency” is just another method of poverty in more ways than one. To maintain a healthy, vibrant, and living community, filled with the love of being together and the joy of individuality, two pairs of things must be kept in perfect balance, all and all. On the individual side, perfect liberty must always be complete even while utter commitment is also complete. And on the community side, the integrity and value of family life must always be full even while interaction with the general public is also healthy and giving.
We could say it like this. A pool (a community) without water flowing in (family) dries up; a pool without water flowing out (ministry to others) becomes stagnant.
Bad Ideas. Many potential means of making a living in community work against that balance between family inside and the public. Specifically, having everyone work at separate and outside places of employment works against the life of the family.
Any kind of manufacture cannot succeed for two reasons. First, to compete in the manufacture of anything would require a ruthless efficiency that will destroy family life as well as a pursuit of selling that, while necessary, cannot be part of any ministry of Christ. The worst kind of manufacture for making a living is agriculture, that is crops or livestock. If you try this way of making a living, you will be poor and because you are poor, you will be hardly capable of any outreach or testimony.
The Tithe to God. I do not see the entire population during the Age of Tabernacles living together in community as I describe in this text. I do not see the majority of Christians living together in full community as I am describing. However, I do see all Christians involved with their local Church much more than is typically practiced in today’s “churches.”
In Kingdom, I set out the possibility of “ten percent” of the population living in this manner, a tithe to God in a similar way as the tribe of Levi among all the other tribes. As the tithe to God among the peoples, then, the Christian Communities scattered all across the earth serve a very important role in society and culture, as well as in commerce and governance.
Making a Living. What I am doing, now, is taking the strong and focused thesis of the last session, “The Proof of Christ,” and specifically, the true witness of Christ and the pattern of the new creation, and showing how this very thesis is our means of making a living.
You see, the best way to enjoy a healthy and productive work life is to make a living doing what you love, what you do best. My favorite outward thing to do is to teach writing. I make far more money per hour teaching writing than anything else I have done for income in my life. At the same time that I am having a blast while making lots of money, my students are not only learning quickly how to write effectively, but are also being exposed to the river of life always flowing out of me!
A Biblical Concept. The outward ministry of Christian Community and the manner by which we make a living, then, are the same thing. And this concept is entirely Biblical, Old Testament and New. In fact, it is God’s intention that He pour out upon us His full abundance (making a living) through our ministry of face-to-face interaction with the peoples of the world. This is entirely the model of the Levites as priests unto God among the tribes of Israel.
And so, by showing you how we make a living in Christian Community, I am also showing you how we, as the source of LIFE, order and transform all society and culture, all commerce and governance into the ecosystem of God.
Seeing this Pattern. Now, before re-iterating the action points of the pattern of places in between, I want to share with you exactly how I am seeing this pattern.
The “places in between” are those spaces on the outskirts of the Christian Community where we interact daily with the general public, on the one hand being a blessing to them and on the other hand earning our living. There must be private places that are family only; there must be public spaces that are public only. And then there are the spaces in between, spaces in which we interact with the public while being part of the family and spaces where we work together as family while interacting with the public.
Seven Action Points. The “places in between,” then, are where we together practice being the witness of Christ outwardly – practicing Christ.
1. Design places in between as cul-de-sacs with traffic along the edges. 2. Make sure the places in between are fully connected with the outside rooms. 3. Make sure the places in between are fully connected with the inside rooms. 4. Design the in-between places as spaces in which to linger, not to live. 5. Fit these spaces to the climate and seasons of life. 6. Mark clearly the boundary of these spaces. 7. Make the place of welcome the first and most prominent in-between.
The need to make a living inside of community has filled my pondering over many years. Every good idea I have is marked by these seven points into the full expression of Father.
Hospitality. Hospitality, then, is our living AND our ministry. Hospitality is our massive influence on all of society, on all human culture, on the flow of commerce, and on the governance by which people order their lives. Hospitality is how we practice Christ.
And how do we practice hospitality? With exuberant confidence that we ARE the revelation of Father to all, led always in the celebration, after the fact, of the full and complete victory of love uplifting all.
Alas, these lessons are getting much too short for me, and so we must save the seventh most important verse for the next lesson.