How the Gospel Deals with Conflict | Part 1

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Church Life, Practical4 Comments

How do you handle conflict? 

  1. You might be like one guy I know who quickly and rashly confronts everyone who offends him, so much so that his nickname is lightning rod because he attracts so much conflict.
  2. You might be like another one of my friends who stuffs any offense against him, never confronting the person, just letting it stew.
  3. You might be the one who blows up on anyone who offends you. Yelling and screaming is second nature to you. As a result, your house is complete with holes in the wall and broken vases.

While we should and must deal with conflict, we should not deal with it in these ways.

So, how should we deal with conflict?

In Philippians 4:2-3, Paul uses the gospel to deal with conflict between Euodia and Syntyche. Apparently, they were in a disagreement. We are not told what that disagreement was over, or even who offended who. All we know is there is conflict that Paul seeks to rectify. In doing so, Paul does not tell these women to duke it out. Instead, he brings the gospel to bear on their situation. His gospel-centered counsel is exactly what I hope to bring out in this series.

Before we actually deal with how to handle conflict in a gospel-centered way, there are several things I want you to see first, and that is:

(1) Where conflict can occur.
(2) Why we need to rid conflict from among us.

After we look at both of those, we will then focus in on the how by looking at:

(3) How we can rid conflict from among us.

Before we leave the subject of conflict, I want to finish by taking up the subject of the Book of Life. From that discussion I want us to see that:

(4) Even though there is conflict, we are secure in our faith.

Now that you have the roadmap for this series, let’s begin today by seeing where conflict can occur.

Where Conflict Can Occur

First, conflict can and does occur in the church among believers.

It is apparent from the text that Euodia and Syntyche are believers. In verse 2 Paul implores them to be of the same mind “in the Lord.” Then in verse 3, Paul says that they have their “names in the book of life”. These statements by Paul shows us that these two ladies were believers. The fact that they were believers informs us that conflict can and does occurs among believers.

But you already knew that. I am sure you have experienced conflict in your church in the past. Whether it was small squabbles or large church splitting fights. Conflict is nothing new and it certainly is not unheard of.

But conflict not only occurs in the church among believers, conflict also can occur:

Second, among solid believers who are laboring for the gospel. 

Paul tells us in verse 3 that these two women

“have labored side by side with him for the gospel”.

You see, Euodia and Syntyche were not your average back row Baptist quietly slipping in and out of church. They were involved. They worked side by side with Paul for the advancement of the gospel. They were in the trenches. Out proclaiming the gospel to their neighbors. They were probably persecuted, and maybe even jailed. And some commentators even considered them to hold places of leadership in the church.

All this tells us that conflict between Christians not only happens in the church, but it also happens among those who are working and laboring to advance the gospel to the community.

Conclusion

So then, we see that no matter our position, we must not think ourselves to be above conflict. It can happen to everyone. No matter how committed of a Christian.

Questions for Reflection

  1. How do you handle conflict? Do you resonant with any of the three scenarios in the introduction?
  2. Do you recognize that conflict does happen in the church?
  3. Have you ever thought that conflict doesn’t occur among committed Christians? Could that thinking be a form of denial?

Resources

A helpful resource to consult would be: Pursuing Peace: A Christian Guide to Handling Conflicts by Robert Jones

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Respectable Sins: Impatience & Irritability | Part 2

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Practical, Respectable SinsLeave a comment

Last time I took up the topic of impatience. Closely related to impatience is irritability, which is today’s topic.

Irritability Defined

“Describes the frequency of impatience, or the ease with which a person can become impatient over the slightest provocation.”[1]

This definition reveals that impatience and irritability are closely associated. So much so that we can say “the person who easily and frequently becomes impatient is an irritable person.”[2]

Irritable people are impatient most of the time. They are the type you have to tip toe around. The grouchy person, the one no one wants to be around those are who we would consider to be irritable people.

As Christians, irritable people do not serve as a good witness for the gospel. They are not able to lead others. They are not good accountability partners. For these reasons, and that irritability is a sin, we should rid it from us.

How do you respond to an irritable Person?

We have two options when it comes to responding to an irritable person:

(1) Jesus’ Example – In 1 Peter 2:23, “when he [Jesus] was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.”

Jesus did not retaliate and neither should we. Rather, we are to allow God to judge and deal with those who are criticizing or insulting us.

(2) Confront the Person – A conversation with the person who is continually impatient or irritable towards us is at times necessary. We must not be afraid to confront others about their sin, but we have to be cautious here. We should not confront the person until we “have resolved the issue in [our] own heart and can speak to the other person for his or her benefit.”[3]

Remember if we choose to follow step two and the person does not respond well, we should not blow up on them, or walk away seething. Rather, we should revert to step one and allow God to judge and deal with the person. As well as we should pray that the Holy Spirit would convict them and work in their heart to remove their sin.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Have you ever confronted an irritable person? How did it go? Where they defensive or did they respond well?
  2. Why is it important that we not be irritable people?

Resources

[1] Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins, 118
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.,119

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Respectable Sins: Impatience & Irritability | Part 1

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Practical, Respectable Sins11 Comments

This week we are going to take up the subject of impatience and irritability. In order to do them both justice, I will look at impatience today and irritability in my next post in this series. Let’s start by defining impatience.

Impatience Defined

“A strong sense of annoyance at the (usually) unintentional faults and failures of others.”[1]

Notice Jerry Bridges uses the word unintentional faults and failures. These are things that people cannot help given their life circumstances or physical limitations.

For example, if someone’s hearing is bad, we should expect to have to repeat ourselves, or that that they will misunderstand us. When those things occur, we should not become impatient.

There are other unintentional faults or failures that should not cause us to be impatient, but often do, such as:

  • People not running on your time schedule.
  • Traffic / Slow drivers.
  • Parents impatient with their children not learning what they want them to learn quickly.

The Heart Sin Impatience Reveals

The sin of impatience reveals our desire to be in control by desiring others to conform to our expectations. If that is true, then the events in our lives are not necessarily the things that cause impatience, they are just the means by which the sin of control is manifested in our lives.

The Environment Conducive to Impatience

Impatience often, but not always, manifests itself in our homes. While it is easy for us to be patient with those in public places, it can be difficult at times to exercise the same patience with those under our own roof.

Why is this so?

Our homes provide us with a certain level of comfort. The environment and the people are not new to us. We know them and what they think about us. We don’t worry so much about our appearance or even winning them over. Our increased comfort often allows our true character to shine forth. This is why, like it or not, the home is a great place for sanctification.

What does Scripture have to say?

There are several scriptures that speak to impatience. Let’s take a look at them now.

1 Corinthians 13:4

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant”

1 Thessalonians 5:14

“And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”

Galatians 5:22-23

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

Ephesians 4:1-2

“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,”

Colossians 3:12-15

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”

Scripture reveals impatience is a sin. When we are impatient, we are not loving, we are not manifesting the Fruit of the Spirit, we are not living in a manner worthy of our calling, and we are not acting as God’s chosen ones.

How to Deal With Impatience

We can deal with the sin of impatience by praying the Lord would convict us and empower us to rid this sin from our lives.

In addition, when we sense ourselves growing impatient, we should preach the gospel to ourselves. Reminding ourselves, as Paul did Timothy, that in saving us God exercised His patience toward us (1 Timothy 1:16). If God, the Ruler of the universe, exercised patience towards us while we were rebelling against Him, then we can exercise patience toward someone who is not running on our schedule.

Moreover, we need to remind ourselves that God is the One who is in control. The circumstances that occur in our lives are sovereignly brought about and are used by Him to teach us and grow us, even the ones that might give us opportunity to become impatient.

Questions for Reflection

  1. In what area(s) of your life are you impatient?
  2. How have things gone when you have confronted someone who is impatient?
  3. How do you react when people are impatient with you? If you have reacted negatively, what was the result?
  4. Can you think of a reason why in God’s sovereignty He would allow you to encounter an impatient person?

Resources

[1] Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins, 116

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What are the Ingredients for Proper Evangelism?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Evangelism, Pastoral, PracticalLeave a comment

Say you are planning to cook a chicken pasta dish tonight for dinner. In the process of cooking the meal, you forget to add the chicken. When everything is said and done, you will probably have a good pasta dinner, but you will not have the meal you set out to prepare. While our pasta dish will taste fine without the chicken, leaving out an ingredient in our evangelism might not turn out so well.

What are the ingredients to proper evangelism?

There are four main things we need to include in our message:

  1. God
  2. Sin
  3. Christ
  4. A call to repent and believe

Let’s look at these one at a time:

God

God is the Creator. As our Maker, He is also our Ruler. As our Maker and Ruler, He has absolute claim on our lives. We are not only to look to Him for guidance, but we are to also submit to Him and obey His commands.

Sin

Sin tells us that we have rejected God as our Creator and Ruler. In place of His rule, we seek our own.

Sin entered the world at the Fall mankind when Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s rule. As the head of the human race, all who come after them are also plunged into a world of sin and inherit a sinful nature. The result is separation from God. Since He is holy, He cannot have a relationship with an unholy people.

Sin is offensive to God. Not until we understand how offensive sin is to a holy God, and how utterly sinful we are, will we see our need for salvation.

Therein lies the problem of the human race, most people do not believe they are sinful because they measure sin by particular actions. It is easy to see that a murderer is sinful, but a good upstanding citizen, who doesn’t even have a parking ticket; why they are not sinful? The Bible tells us otherwise. In Romans, Paul says, “None is righteous, no, not one; (Rom. 3:10), which means even good people are sinners, whose sin separates them from God.

Sin not only explains why we can’t have a relationship with God, but it also explains why the world is the way it is. Disease, sickness, death, corruption, and all kinds of evil exist because of sin.

Christ

Christ is the Savior of mankind. In order to understand fully Christ’s saving action, we need to know about both His Person and Work. The reason for both is because His cross work was only possible because of His life.

Person: Jesus is the incarnate Son of God who lived a perfect life. Never transgressing one of God’s laws, which allowed Him to be the perfect sacrifice for mankind.

Work: Jesus offered Himself up as the perfect sacrifice for the sins of mankind. In our place He hung. As He did our sins were nailed to the cross with Christ. The Perfect One became sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

On the cross, Jesus suffered the wrath and punishment of God. Wrath and punishment that we deserve because of our sinful nature. Since He took our place, He made a way for mankind to be reconciled to God.

Jesus not only died on the cross for our sins, He also raised from the grave after 3 days defeating death. After 40 more days, He ascended into heaven where He know sits on His throne as the King over all. One day He will return to defeat Satan, judge those who did not believe in Him, sentencing them to eternal damnation, renew all things, and rule the world.

All those who believe these things about Jesus will be saved.

A Call to Repent and Believe

While repenting and believing is not a part of the gospel story, it is a necessary ingredient to evangelism because evangelism aims at conversion. So we must call people to repent and believe.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Do you believe God is our Creator, or do you believe we were created through an evolutionary process?
  2. How do you determine who is and who is not a sinner?
  3. Why is it necessary for us to know about both Jesus’ person and work?

Resources

Post adapted from: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, by J.I. Packer, 66-81

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10 Ways to Imitate the Godly

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn PracticalLeave a comment

In Philippians 3:17, Paul commands us to imitate him. What are we to imitate about Paul? We are to imitate his mindset and actions. Paul’s letter to the Philippians gives us a good picture of who Paul is, how he thinks, and what he does. So let’s look at Paul’s minset and actions up to this point in the letter. In doing so, we will see 10 ways to imitate the godly.

 10 Ways to Imitate the Godly

(1) Paul constantly and fervently prays for others (1:1-11)

  • He thanks God for the salvation and growth of the Philippians. As well as he prays for the Philippians growth and perseverance.

(2) Paul proclaims the gospel (1:12)

  • He knows the gospel is the only means to renewal and restoration, so he relentlessly and continually proclaims the gospel, even in jail.

(3) Paul’s all consuming passion is to glorify Christ (1:12-30)

  • He doesn’t care what happens to him as long as the gospel is proclaimed he rejoices, which is why he can rejoice even when he is in jail, beaten, or killed for the gospel.

(4) Paul holds others accountable (2:2;14)

  • He rebukes the Philippians of their disunity, urging them to be unified with one another.

(5) Paul takes up the mindset of Christ (2:5-11)

  • He humbles himself, counts others more significant than himself, looks out for the interests of others, and he takes up the Father’s will for his life.

(6) Paul knows God is the One who empowers him to work in the Christian life (2:12-13)

  • He does not seek to live in a manner worthy of the gospel in his own power. He recognizes God is the one who empowers him, which keeps Paul humble and not prideful, and it also keeps him from becoming discouraged and quitting.

(7) Paul watches out for others souls (3:2)

  • He warns the Philippians of the dogs in their midst, taking care to inform them of their behavior and their error, so they will not be deceived.

(8) Paul sees the gospel as the only means of salvation (3:2-9)

  • He does not trust in his own achievements. Instead he sees his achievements as rubbish, and he counts everything he ever gained as a Pharisee loss for the sake of knowing Christ.

(9) Paul doesn’t believe he has arrived (3:12-13)

  • He knows that he still has room to grow, knowing that he does not fully know Christ yet.

(10) Paul strives and strains forward to Christ (3:12;14)

  • He keeps his eye on the prize, removing all distractions. He does not allow others to beat him into submission. He is constantly moving forward towards Christ, constantly straining forward.

That is the picture we get of Paul so far in Philippians, and those are the qualities and actions we should imitate. Second to Jesus Christ, he is to be our guide as to how we are to think and live because he reflects Christ.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Does your life resemble Paul’s?
  2. Is your life one that someone could imitate?
  3. Do you know that if your life does not resemble Paul’s, the Holy Spirit will empower you to grow in your Christian walk, so you don’t have to despair or beat yourself up.
  4. Do you believe all Christians should strive to imitate Paul, or do you think living sold out for Christ is reserved for the super Christian?

Resource

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Evangelism Aims at Conversion

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Evangelism, Pastoral, Practical1 Comment

In my last post, I argued that the Holy Spirit was the one who closes the deal in evangelism. You can read that post here. Even so, knowing the Holy Spirit is the one who closes the deal does not mean we don’t call others to either accept or reject the message. We are not just presenting knowledge for knowledge sake. When we evangelize the lost we are challenging them to accept or reject our message. In other words, evangelism always aims at conversion.

Scripture

Let’s explore a few passages of Scripture to see that this is true.

1 Corinthians 9:19

“For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.”

 Paul desired to win others to Christ, and we should do the same.

1 Peter 3:1

“Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives,”

One of the reasons given for wives to be submissive to their husbands is so that they might win them to Christ. Through their submission they model Christ’s submission to the Father, presenting to their husbands a picture of Christ’s submission, which led Him to the cross to die for the sins of mankind, so that we might have life.

Luke 5:10

“and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.””

Jesus tells them their role is not to be fishers of the sea, but fishers of men. Their aim was now to be catching men for Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:19-20

“that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

Paul implores others as an ambassador for Christ to be reconciled to Christ. So then, his evangelism aimed at converting the lost to Christ.

Conversion is Still the Work of the Holy Spirit

Even though we implore others to be reconciled to Christ, challenging them and calling them to repent, we rest in the finished work of the Holy Spirit, knowing He is the one who ultimately brings about repentance. 

What Conversion is Not

Converting the lost is not calling them to take up our religious actions – We are calling for heart change, which only happens through the work of the Holy Spirit as they are converted from a life of sin to a life in Christ.

Converting the lost is not getting them to come to church with us – Again, we are after a real commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There are many God fearing, but unconverted people who attend church.

Converting the lost is not helping someone out of financial trouble – While that may give us inroads to present the gospel to them, helping someone get back on their feet doesn’t mean they have been converted to Christianity.

Converting the lost is not helping someone overcome an addiction – Even though that may help them get in the right mind to hear the gospel, getting clean is not a conversion.

What Converting the Lost Involves

Converting the lost involves calling someone to repent of their sins, turn from their rebellion against God, and trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It involves helping others recognize that their relationship with God has been severed because of their sin, and it cannot be reconciled apart from Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. So then, converting the lost aims at conversion to a life in Christ, which is always evangelism’s aim.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Do you believe there is another aim to evangelism besides conversion to Christ?
  2. How might you define conversion?
  3. Can you think of other things conversion is not?

Resource

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