Chapter 9

The Way of the Lord: Four Guiding Beliefs

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Four Beliefs that make sense of this crazy world

I am proposing four theological ideas to serve as guiding beliefs in the mental model of the Way of the Lord. 

Here are the four guiding beliefs we will discuss in this chapter: the supremacy of the kingdom of God, the primacy of Grace, the sufficiency of the power of the Holy Spirit, and finally, the transforming path of the cross.

These four guiding beliefs organize your experiences and help you make sense of the confusing complexities of life in your world as a disciple of Jesus. These four biblical and theological concepts enable you to see what you would otherwise not be able to see, such as the activity of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.

While the world we live in today is still God’s world, it is under enemy occupation. We are surrounded by propaganda that supports and reinforces the enemy’s hold on those around us.

To live successfully as an intentional disciple of Jesus, you must learn to recognize the propaganda and set it aside for the truth that “sets you free.”

For example, if your core belief is that God is a human fantasy and science is the only way to know reality it’s not likely you would be able to say, as Jesus did,

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. (John 5:19)

But if you believe what God says to be true you can see what He is doing and, like Jesus, do it with Him. Self-examination and personal reflection on what you believe is essential for living as an intentional disciple of Jesus.

The point I am making in this chapter is this, Self-examination and personal reflection on what you believe, is essential for living as an intentional disciple of Jesus. What you believe largely determines what you can see ,and therefor, what you can know. As Saint Augustine said, “we believe so that we may understand.”

Let’s work through the following four biblical ideas and see how they can help you know better who you are, who God is, and the life you were created to live.

Guiding Belief #1: The Supremacy of the Kingdom of God

Jesus and His disciples assumed the reality of the kingdom of God and believed that God was supreme over everything. In contrast, in the prevailing worldview of our culture, the God of the Bible is minimized and marginalized. We are taught to assume that if God does exist He is irrelevant to the issues and concerns of real life. God has nothing to say and certainly does not seem to control anything.

The biblical records show that God’s rule has been contested from the beginning, but when all is said and done there was no contest. We call this core belief the Supremacy of the Kingdom of God and we find evidence for it throughout the bible. It’s the foundation for living with God as Jesus did and learning to function as the image-bearer you were created to be.

The main points of this first guiding belief can be summarized in the following statements. 

1. God, the Sovereign Creator, created everything. He was not Himself created by anything or anyone and therefore He has a unique place in the cosmos relative to everything else.

2. As the creator, the One True God has always been the ultimate authority and power in the world He made and in the affairs of humanity.

3. God is supreme over the kingdoms, governments, and ambitions of mankind, whether they are benign or despotic or whether they acknowledge Him or not.

4. God is supreme over the kingdom of darkness, those spheres of influence among humans by spiritual entities who contest God’s rule and will.

5. As the one true supreme authority in the universe, God alone had the responsibility and the power to resolve the Crisis begun in Eden.

6. The Sovereign Creator’s resolution of the crisis came to completion in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah or King of Israel and the Lord of the whole earth. (Colossians 1:15-20)

7. The proclamation of the good news about Jesus as King is a hope-filled announcement that God has decisively acted in Him to save humanity and creation.

8. At the same time, the gospel is a summons to each of us to return to One Allegiance to the one true God, the sovereign creator.

9. While the rule of God through Jesus will be contested right up to the end, the denial of His supremacy and resistance to His will and purposes will prove futile.

How to get the most from the preceding statements.

I suggest you read each of these nine statements slowly and let them settle in your mind. What do you feel when you consider each point? Is there a voice in your mind whispering, "This is just religious fantasy; we all know this isn't really how the world works." Or maybe, "This sounds too good to be true. If only this were so." If any of the nine statements above don't ring true in your heart, it is probably an indication of how deeply the beliefs of our modern culture have been integrated into your conscious and subconscious mind.

Don't be alarmed; this isn't a pass or fail test. My goal is to help you detect the presence of modern, western cultural beliefs so you can expose and deal with them. The solution is to think clearly and pray earnestly. The one true God revealed in the Bible and made known to us most clearly in and through Jesus is not shy about truth or afraid of our efforts to be sure of those things we are asked to "take on faith."

How does belief in the Supremacy of the Kingdom of God guide your life as an intentional disciple of Jesus?

Our lives are filled with experiences and situations that need to be seen through the lens of belief in the Supremacy of the Kingdom of God such as when bad things happen to you or to those you love. When your plans don’t work out as expected. When facing people’s needs that are greater than you can handle. Or when you think God is asking you to attempt something you do not feel capable or qualified to take on.

What does this first Guiding Belief help you see?

1. You can see that God is not absent, as though bad things or bad people have brushed Him aside and taken over.

2. You can find the solid place to stand in the middle of chaos, the unmovable reality that God is supreme in authority and power over whatever circumstances or situations are the current threat.

3. You can see that despite the arrogance of evil, God has set boundaries and restraints on it and the time will come when its time is up.

4. You can see that you are not a helpless victim. You represent the one who is the sovereign and supreme authority and power in creation. As such, you address your requests to Him and listen for His voice so that you might know what to say and do to manifest and manage His good will and purposes on earth as in heaven.

5. Furthermore, the Supremacy of the Kingdom of God allows us to make sense of other things the bible says, such as the following three guiding beliefs of the Way of the Lord.

Guiding Belief #2: The Primacy of Grace

Suppose we accept the premise of the Supremacy of the Kingdom of God. In that case, God is the unrivaled authority over everything in the universe. The next question is, what would a God like this do with absolute power and authority? 

In 1887, a British historian, Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Is this true of God as well? Should we look over our shoulder in fear and insecurity not knowing God’s intentions toward us?

No, the bible gives us an essential insight into what God is like. We call this the Primacy of Grace, and it’s an integral part of the Way of the Lord.

What do we mean by the Primacy of Grace?

The first word, Primacy, means that God’s grace is primary; it comes first. God’s grace comes before our best efforts to please Him, before our failures and mistakes, and before we have done anything. God’s grace is not about who we are, what we have, or what we can do; it’s all about who God is and what He does.

Now, let’s look at the concept of grace in the Bible. The word grace, like love, can be a little fuzzy in how we use it in everyday conversation. We might say the ballerina dances with grace and beauty, meaning she shows skill and control of her movements artistically. We might be sarcastic and say that he graced us with his presence. Or someone may say grace over a meal.

But in the Bible, God’s grace is presented as what you can expect from the one who holds all power and all authority. The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible says the doctrine of grace pertains to God’s activity rather than His nature. The essential meaning of grace in the Bible refers to God’s disposition to exercise goodwill toward His creatures.

The second guiding belief, the Primacy of Grace, tells us that God is love and can always be counted on to act lovingly, that is, graciously, with humans.

This is what we find in the Bible. The sovereign creator’s goodwill toward fallen humanity was the driving force of the rescue plan that began with Abraham and ultimately led to Jesus, the King who saves.

In John’s introduction of Jesus in his gospel, John insists that Jesus is God’s grace in full measure.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth¦ For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Fathers side, He has made Him known. (John 1:14)

John wants us to recognize Jesus, the lamb of God and the world’s Savior, as the fullness of God’s grace in action. When we welcome and receive Him as Lord swearing our One Allegiance to God in Him we receive the fullness of God’s goodwill.

How does this second guiding belief help you see God and your life as a disciple of Jesus more clearly?

First, no matter what is going on in your life, good or bad, you can rule out any suggestion that the one genuinely all-powerful being is out to get you. As Paul said,

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31)

Second, this guiding belief is particularly important as you learn to minister with Jesus as an intentional disciple. No matter what happens or does not happen, it is not about you. You are not God, the Savior, or the hero of the hour. You are the delivery person who gets to bring the grace of God to someone else for their benefit.

Jesus set this principle in place with the first disciples, telling them,

Proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. (Matthew 10:8)

Guiding Belief #3: The Sufficiency of the Power of the Holy Spirit

The first guiding belief, the Supremacy of the Kingdom of God, helps you see how God is present and at work in your world despite the mess it may be in. The second guiding belief, the Primacy of Grace, helps you maintain faith and hope knowing that God’s good intentions toward you, and others, are steady and reliable even despite appearances to the contrary.

The third guiding belief concerns the Sufficiency of the Power of the Holy Spirit and helps you see that in our world God can do what He wants when He decides to do something. This is important because our culture has taught us to think of God, if He exists at all, as powerless even if He is well-intentioned.

The Sufficiency of the Holy Spirit

To explore the insights to be gained from this third guiding belief, we will organize what the Bible says about the sufficiency of the power of the Holy Spirit under three main headings: The power of God in the past, the power of God in our present, and the power of God in what comes next.

What does the Bible say about the sufficiency of God’s power in the past?

The Bible describes the creation of earth and Eden as the result of God’s desire to have a human family and to share a bountiful and blessed life with them. Despite the crisis in Genesis (see Genesis 1, 6, and 11) and the tragedy that resulted, God continued to show that He could do what needed to be done to help and bless His people.

With sufficient power, God called into being a new family through whom He would work to resolve the crisis and restore all of creation. He brought Abraham's descendants out of slavery in Egypt. He defeated the Egyptian gods with the power of signs and wonders and compelled Pharaoh to release the people of Israel to leave his domain. As the armies of Pharaoh chased them, Moses struck the Red Sea, and God’s power parted the waters and made a way of escape.

God’s power enabled His people, not much more than escaped slaves, to defeat large armies and take fortified cities until they were safely established in God’s promised land. God’s power was also sufficient to keep His covenant commitments with Israel. He fulfilled His commitment to bless them if they were faithful to Him. He was also more than able to follow through with His commitment to curse them if they turned away from their One Allegiance and worshipped other gods.

God’s power was sufficient to fulfill His promises to Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets. He had promised to defeat Israel’s enemies, to atone for Israel’s sins, and to regather the nations and make them His own again.

All this God did with more than sufficient power when Jesus, the son of the living God, endured the cross and atoned for sin by willingly laying down His life. Jesus broke the power of death by taking up His life again in the power of the Holy Spirit at His resurrection.

What does the Bible say about the sufficiency of God’s power in our present?

First, the Bible says the Power is Sufficient for Fulfilling the Mission. Jesus promised that the same power at work in His ministry would be at work in His disciples.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will He do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. (John 14:10-12)

Try not to stress too much over the greater works part of Jesus’ statement. This may mean greater in terms of quality, that is, doing even more amazing works of power than Jesus Himself did. Or, more likely, it means that together, His followers would do greater works in quantity. What is important is that either way, you can expect to be part of this as you learn how to participate in the principles and practices of ministry with Jesus.

Second, the Bible says the Power is Sufficient for Living the Life. Paul said the same Power that raised Jesus from the dead is now working in us so we can be transformed and learn to operate as image-bearers fulling our roles as worshipers, disciples, and members of Jesus’ body.

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4)

What does the bible say about the sufficiency of God’s power for what is coming next?

Of course, we can’t claim that God’s power is sufficient for what He hasn’t yet done, but based on what He has done in the past and what He is doing in our present, there aren’t any good reasons for lowering our expectations now.

What has God promised to do in the future that will require power sufficient to the size of the full expression of God’s grace for humanity?

1. There will be Sufficient power for resurrection.

God has promised that Jesus disciples will be resurrected from the dead into new bodies. Their new bodies will be just like the body Jesus showed them after his resurrection. And if they are still alive when Jesus returns as promised, their bodies will be instantly transformed. (First Corinthians 15:51 to 54. )

2. There will be sufficient power for judgement.

He has also promised to bring every single human who has ever lived before Him in judgment (2 Timothy 4:1). Furthermore, He has promised to judge the principalities and powers, those spiritual forces of wickedness which now oppose Him and His people (Psalm 82:6 to 8).

3. There will be sufficient power to restore the physical creation.

God has promised to set the fallen and corrupted creation back to the order He originally intended (Romans 8:19 to 22). Thus, his power will be sufficient to achieve the final stage of the plan begun with Abraham. this plan will end with a New Heaven and a New Earth (2 Peter 3:10 to13; Revelation 21:1 to 5, 18 and21; Isaiah 65:17 to 19; and Isaiah 66:22).

How does guiding belief number 3 clear away the confusion and give us focus on the reality of our lives with Jesus?

Humans today may have a lot going for us, but we will never be or have enough for what God has in mind. As image-bearers, we were designed to draw upon God’s more than sufficient power as the source for living and working with God. In Jesus, we learn to live out of the Sufficiency of the Power of the Holy Spirit.

One unexpected revelation about God’s power in the Bible is the value of trouble. This is counter-intuitive to our culture and at cross-purposes to our self-interests and preferences. And yet, as Paul learned, when it comes to how God’s power achieves the objectives of His grace in our lives, sometimes the harder way is the preferred way.

In a time of deep personal anguish and struggle, Paul heard God say to Him,

…my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

What Paul learned about God’s grace and power leads us to the final guiding belief of the way of the lord, The Transforming Path of the Cross.

Guiding Belief #4: The Transforming Path of the Cross

The first three guiding beliefs show us a view of the world that looks quite different from what can be seen through the mental models of our culture. The Bible lets us see the Sovereign Creator in charge and involved in His creation. God alone has all power and authority, yet His intentions are always loving and full of grace toward His creatures. His absolute authority and unwavering intentions of goodwill are equaled by His power which is sufficient to do the good that His love compels Him to do.

How We Are Changed as We Follow Jesus

The fourth guiding belief shifts your focus to the human life you experience as you follow Jesus. To summarize what we will see in this fourth guiding belief, the Bible shows that as Jesus’ disciples follow Him, they will exchange their old life for a new one. But we shouldn’t expect this process to be painless or easy.

As Paul described his own experience, He said, 

I have been crucified with Christ. it’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

The fourth guiding belief, the Transforming Path of the Cross, enables you to see the process God uses to make this happen in your life. Your life as a disciple of Jesus can at times seem crazy and you need a way to filter out the noise and see the hand of God guiding you with wisdom and loving-kindness. The fourth guiding belief does just that.

Jesus’ Experience Provides a Pattern

A concept inherent to the ideal of living as intentional disciples of Jesus is that there is a process by which those who follow Jesus enter into His experience as they are united with Him.

The result is that His life becomes their life and He becomes the “firstborn among many brothers.” (Romans 8:29)

To see how the fourth guiding belief works, let’s go back to Paul’s summary of the gospel in I Corinthians 15, where He said that the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus was the core of the Gospel message. In these events in Jesus’ life, God’s grace was at work to resolve the Genesis crisis and save the world from sin and death.

Seen from another angle, these three events also suggest a pattern and a process every disciple will experience as they follow Jesus. This is what I mean by the Transforming Path of the Cross. To show how this pattern works out in the life of a disciple, I need to clarify what I mean by death, burial, and resurrection and how you experience each one in your daily lives.

Let’s start with Death

On the cross, Jesus died as the representative for all of us who are descendants of Adam and Eve and who have followed them into sin. Jesus did just what was prophesied by Isaiah an Old Testament prophet who saw what God was going to do.

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6)

The good news in the gospel, is that Jesus death directly impacts the lives of those who become His disciples.

By the sufficient power of God Himself, somehow Jesus death becomes ”our” death. The death of our old life, that broken life that was the consequence of the crisis in Eden.

Jesus’ example shows us that death is the end of one life, and is necessary to make room for another.

Again, to see how Paul explains it,

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20).

I think of death as the necessary precondition for the new life promised by the gospel.

Now, let’s consider Resurrection

Resurrection is the beginning of new life that comes after the death of our old life. Resurrection is not an upgrade or rehabilitation of the old life; it’s a complete replacement.

Paul repeatedly explained this to the new believers in the churches He helped establish. It’s easy to forget just how radical the revolution of God’s saving grace is in Jesus. For example, to the disciples in Rome He wrote,

…for if we have been united with Him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. (Romans 6:5-9)

We realize that death and resurrection are both things that only God’s power is sufficient to accomplish, and His loving grace includes us when we put our faith in Jesus and follow Him. He includes our old life in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross so that it’s put to death. And He includes us in Jesus’ resurrection so that we are born again to new life in the kingdom of God to live by the power of His Holy Spirit from now on.

Burial is the Bridge

How do we define this third term, burial, in the process of following Jesus?

Burial is what you do with the dead body. Furthermore, burial is the bridge between death and resurrection in our experience with God. And even more importantly, while death and resurrection are up to God, burial is “our” responsibility.

If you believe that a person is dead, then bury the body.

I think of burial as a bridge of faith whereby I believe God so much that I act as though what His word says about me is true.

Burial is the appropriate thing to do with a dead body. You don’t keep the body around. You don’t include it in your day-to-day activities or rely on it as you did in the past. It no longer has any rightful place in the life you are living.

The Bible describes what Jesus’ disciples are to do if they believe that God has included them in Jesus’ death on the cross and in Jesus’ resurrection that followed. Burial is our responsibility.

For example, Paul wrote to the Romans,

…don’t present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:13,14)

To the Ephesians Paul said,

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!” assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:17-24)

We said that the fourth guiding belief of the Way of the Lord would help you see better what is going on in your day-to-day life as you follow Jesus. Life can be crazy and very difficult, filled with challenges and hardships of all kinds.

Without the benefit of the fourth guiding belief, it is harder to see God working in all the chaos. But when you look at life through the lense of the Transforming Path of the Cross, you can see how God is leading you, step-by-step, out of your old life and into your new.

Resurrection does not precede death, it follows it. Many of the hard things we experience are opportunities to face up to parts of our old life still hidden that we haven’t given up. Think of them as opportunities to die to your self-sufficiency, pride, independence, and unbelief.

In some of your most difficult experiences, you discover the power of God’s life bursting forth and changing you. This is the primacy of God’s grace and the sufficiency of the Power of the Holy Spirit helping you bury the body. The five daily practices we describe in the next chapter will be very important to making this process the ongoing experience of your life.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have provided an introduction to four guiding beliefs; the supremacy of the kingdom of God, the primacy of Grace, the sufficiency of the power of the Holy Spirit, and the transforming path of the cross.  I recommend that you use them as a baseline against which you can compare the beliefs of the culture around you.

Additionally, you will find that these four guiding beliefs organize your experiences, and help you make sense of the confusing complexities of life in your world as a disciple of Jesus.

Through these theological concepts you are able to see what you would otherwise not be able to see and understand about God, yourself, and the life you were created to live.

Here are some questions for consideration and discussion. 

1. When you read the summary statements (on page 123) about the Supremacy of the Kingdom of God, what did they show you about your heart and the degree to which you have genuine confidence that God is in charge?

2. Which of the five insights provided by a belief in the Supremacy of the Kingdom of God is most important to you?

3. How would you explain to someone your belief in the primacy of God’s grace?

4. How have you experienced God’s grace for you, and how have you seen God’s grace given to others through you?

5. How would you explain your belief in the sufficiency of the power of the Holy Spirit to someone else?

6. What, in your thinking, is the power of God for?

7. What do you find most challenging about the statement “while death and resurrection are up to God, burial is our responsibility”?

8. Read Romans 6:13,14 and Ephesians 4:17-24; what can you identify that has been a regular part of your life and is seen as perfectly acceptable in our society but should be seen as part of the “dead body to be buried?”

Chapter 9 Daily Scripture Readings

How to spend some quality time listening to what Jesus would like to say through the scriptures:

1. In preparation, acknowledge the Lord’s presence and love for you and settle yourself before Him (in your mind and heart).

2. Read the day’s text carefully; take your time.

3. Reflect on what you have been reading with a listening ear – what word, phrase, or sentence speaks to you from the text?

4. Now, talk to the LORD about what you hear from this text. What has Jesus stirred in your heart?

5. If you were with Him walking from one Galilean village to another, what would you say to Him about this?

Chapter 9 - Day One – John 13:1-37

Chapter 9 - Day Two – John 14:32-50

Chapter 9 - Day Three – John 15:1-27

Chapter 9 - Day Four – John 17

Chapter 9 - Day Five – Hebrews 5:1-10

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There are two ways you can go deeper with this material, if you are finding this helpful.

First, read How to get the most from this book. I offer some suggestions about how to do more than skim the pages and move on with minimal impact.

Second, read How to use this book with a small group. This material was formed and proven in a small group setting that has been very effective at helping participants engage with Jesus at a much deeper and transformative level than is typical in our churches today.