Today is Sunday. To the early Christians every Sunday was a celebration of the resurrection. On Sunday they would not kneel, and prayers were said with hands raised, which was the position of the cross to the early Christians. (Different way of looking at hand-raising, isn’t it?)

Jesus’ death was celebrated once a year, on Passover.

We’ve made a pretty big change in modern times. For many Christians, Sunday is a day on which we hear a sermon about Jesus’ death, while his resurrection is celebrated once a year on Easter.

Easter is a replacement for Passover. When the Council of Nicea ordered that Passover would only be celebrated on Sunday for Christians, it slowly became a celebration of the resurrection rather than a celebration of Jesus as the Passover Lamb.

Note that the Council of Nicea only changed the day for celebrating Passover, an annual occurrence. The weekly meeting for Christians had been primarily Sunday among Gentile Christians from the beginning.

In the fourth century, and since the second century for churches in the western Roman empire, Passover had been celebrated on the Sunday nearest Nisan 14, the day on which the Jews celebrate Passover. Over time, however, due to reasons not worth explaining here, it became the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21. In the east, among the Eastern Orthodox Churches, April 3 is used rather than March 21. Yes, they often celebrate Easter on a different date.

The result is that things are a bit backwards today. Because we have also replaced the Gospel—which to the apostles was a proclamation of the entire life of Christ—with an outline of the atonement, our Sunday sermons often focus on the death of Christ. Thus, the weekly meeting now primarily focuses on Christ’s death, while his resurrection is celebrated annually on Easter.

Today I watched a powerful video, When the Rabbi Says "Come," for the second time. It’s one section of a video called In the Dust of the Rabbi.

Ray Vander Laan’s excellent portrayal of life in Galilee and the background of the Gospels is so helpful that I purchased a copy for my family even though it’s a bit pricey. I also got the study guide, so I could go over it carefully with the children.

But this blog is not about Vander Laan’s convicting and important teaching. It’s about the fact that even a man like Vander Laan, whose study of the geography and culture of the Bible has led him to strongly emphasize a life-changing discipleship, is confined by semantic taboos every bit as much as those less well-informed.

His study guide says:

Jesus and his disciples had a very different view of discipleship. They made no distinction between "being saved" and living in obedience to God. To be saved was to be totally committed to a life of obedience—to walk as the Rabbi walked, to become like him.

That’s clear, and no one who’s read First John—and believes that it’s God’s Word—could deny that what Vander Laan says is true.

Mark Twain once said, "Laws are sand; customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment."

What Twain says concerns society is no less true of modern Christianity. You can often say things that flatly contradict the Bible yet maintain an audience in the churches. Say something, however, that contradicts well-established tradition, and you will be quickly called to task.

To call Christians to discipleship is no violation of modern tradition, but to tie it to salvation … that’s another story. For Vander Laan to say "They made no distinction between ‘being saved’ and living in obedience to God" is to walk on thin ice despite the fact that he’s practically quoting 1 John.

So Vander Laan adds a line in honor to modern tradition.

They did not do this in order to be saved, but rather because they were saved. (emphasis in original)

We hate to say that we obey to be saved. In fact, custom forbids it.

But does the Bible forbid it.

If so, the apostles didn’t know about it. They had no qualms about tying obedience to salvation, nor about saying that we obey to be saved.

For example:

• "Therefore, brothers, be diligent to make your calling and election sure because if you do these things you will never stumble, for in this way an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1:10-11)
• "What benefit is it, my brothers, if a man says he has faith and does not have works? Can faith save him? … You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only" (James 2:14,24)
• God will repay everyone according to their deeds. To those who seek glory, honor, and immortality by patiently continuing to do good, [he will repay] eternal life. (Rom. 2:6-7)

Yes, yes, I know that modern Christians excel at rewording the apostles so that their words don’t violate modern tradition. James, for example, really didn’t mean "justified by works and not by faith only," they say. He meant "justified by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone."

Slick.

But clearly James wasn’t guarding his words the way modern custom prescribes. Neither was Peter. Neither was Paul.

James didn’t follow his statement with, "Oops, sorry. I’m not saying that we do works to be justified. Obviously we do them because we are justified."

Peter didn’t follow his words with, "I didn’t mean that we diligently do these things to enter the kingdom of Jesus Christ. I meant that we diligently do these things because we already have an entrance."

I highly recommend learning to quote the apostles, despite the fact that you will quickly be labeled a heretic. You may find that there’s a reason that between 80 and 95% of people who make a profession of faith don’t even attend church five years later. As you learn to say what the apostles said, I believe you will find that their words will change what you believe as well, slowly delivering you from the vise-like grip of unyielding custom.

By the way, the statistic I quoted in the last paragraph came originally from Ray Comfort’s Hell’s Best Kept Secret. I recommend the book because it describes the problem so well, though I strongly disagree with his solution. We have a Gospel that doesn’t work for the large majority—at least 4 out of 5—of the people who hear it.

In modern Christianity, it is common for a "Christian" who has been rebuked to say something to the effect of, "Don’t judge; we’re under grace."

That kind of statement is based on a very wrong understanding of grace. The very reason that we can admonish one another is because we’re under grace. "Sin will not have power over you because you are not under law, but under grace" (Rom. 6:14).

There are four main verses I like to use to define grace properly. You just saw one of them. Grace is the power from God that causes sin to lose its power over us. Here are the others:

Similar to Rom. 6:14, the following passage tells us that grace delivers us from sin:

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, godly, and righteously in this present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us so that he might purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. (Tit. 2:11-14)

This one talks about the fact that grace helps us in time of need:

Let us come boldly to the throne of grace so that we may find mercy and grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:16)

And finally, Peter tells us that grace is the power behind our spiritual gifts and services:

As each one has received a gift, serve it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracle of God. If anyone serves, let it be from the ability which God provides, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion forever and ever. (1 Pet. 4:10-11)

In today’s world, we like to confuse grace with mercy. We call grace God’s unmerited favor, which may not be a bad definition if we understand favor correctly. Grace is power, and if you have grace, it will teach you to live godly, break sin’s power over you, and make you an able servant of the gifts God has given you. In fact, whatever the need, if you come boldly to the throne of God, you can find mercy from God, and you can also find grace, which will help with anything you might have need of.

It gives a little different picture of the fact that we are saved by grace. God has kindly given us access to grace through faith (Rom. 5:2), and we stand in that power by faith. That is why Paul tell us that …

By grace are you saved through faith … (Eph. 2:8)

Freely, apart from works, with all our past forgiven, we can enter into grace through faith. When we do, just as Titus 2:11-14 tells us above, we become "his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do" (Eph. 2:10).

We are in desperate need of the grace of God, but it is not because we need God to overlook sin which he has never promised to overlook. If we practice the works of the flesh, we will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:19-21). If we live according to the flesh, we will die (Rom. 8:12), but we will never overcome the flesh on our own. We need the righteousness of God, those good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do, which we will only be able to do as we "by the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body" (Rom. 8:13).

I believe that God is far more merciful than we give him credit for. Day after day, as we repent and are taught and empowered by grace, we will find his mercies new every morning. But God is not mocked. It is only as we walk in the light that we will find fellowship with one another and experience the ongoing cleansing of the blood of Jesus (1 Jn. 1:7).

All of us have run across people who say they are saved but are not. In fact, for most "Christians," the teachings of Christ and the apostles play little to no role in their lives. Polls by George Barna confirm this regularly, from the mouths of church attenders themselves.

So those of us who are serious about the Gospel have looked for ways to see people really saved. We’ve told those who pray the sinner’s prayer to really mean it. We’ve emphasized follow-up. We’ve made our doctrines better. We’ve increased church activities, and we’ve even tried getting a little more worldly ourselves so that these Christians in name only might get a little more committed.

All to no avail.

I was reading a Christian drug rehab site today, and I realized that one problem is that nominal Christians don’t see that there is anything they need to be really saved from.

At a drug rehab center, there’s something to be saved from. You’ve either stopped brewing meth, or you’re still using it. You’ve either stopped smoking crack, or you’re still smoking crack.

If the drug rehab’s "Gospel" isn’t working, there’s no denying it isn’t working. We don’t usually use the word "saved" in reference to their work, but at a Christian rehab center, that’s exactly what’s going on. Either they’re being saved, or they’re not.

Since I don’t know all the details of what a drug rehab center does, nor how successful they are, nor how much follow-up they do, let’s switch to something I know more about.

U.S. prisons have very high "recidivism" rates. A recidivism rate is the percentage of criminals released from prison who wind up behind bars again. Standard statistics vary depending on how they’re calculated, but a 45% recidivism rate after three years is acknowledged by all. A Free Republic article says that if you track all prisoners for 20 years, then it’s 82% of inmates who return to prison.

The article describes a program that successfully reduced that recidivism rate to 61%, a minor but significant success. It involved counseling.

I have now met two men involved in major prisoner reform programs. Both programs take a prisoner from the prison to a counseling program, help them find a job, and follow up with them for at least two years. Both programs successfully cut the recidivism rate in half.

Now that’s salvation! It is at least for the men who never return to prison.

We have no such standard of measure for Christianity today. Anyone who can attend a meeting can be a Christian.

It was not that way in the beginning. To join the Christians was to join a new family. They shared their meals and even their possessions. They met every day in the temple, and they ate together in their homes. Their leaders taught them "night and day, both publicly and from house to house."

The "every day in the temple" part happened only in Jerusalem, but the rest happened everywhere for around 200 years.

An early Christian tract is still extant that made it into two early Christian writings, one the earliest church manual ever written. That tract urges Christians to "seek out the faces of the saints ever day." It tells them that if they share in eternal things, how much more should they share the things that are merely temporary.

As late as A.D. 200, we read about the Christians that "the family possessions, which generally destroy brotherhood among you [Romans], create brotherly bonds among us. One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us except our wives" (Tertullian, Apology 39).

A counselor who takes an inmate fresh from prison and guides him to a new life can tell you whether that inmate was successfully "saved." If the inmate went back to prison, the counselor knows that, at least for now, he’s failed. If the inmate is surrounded by wholesome friends, employed, and has a new life in front of him, then he’s succeeded.

When Christianity is again a family, rather than a set of weekly meetings; when we are again seeking out the faces of the saints every day; when our teachers are again teaching day and night and from house to house as well as publicly; when each saint is expected to stretch out his hand to give as well as stretching it out to take … when these things are happening, we may again be able to tell the difference between the saved and those who merely attend our meetings.

That would require a pretty radical overhaul, but don’t you agree we need it?

One happy note: I have run across a number of churches attempting to make exactly those kind of changes. Some are failing, but some appear to be succeeding.

If you’re in Sacramento or Atlanta, I can already put you in contact with people. Unfortunately, I didn’t get contact information from the elder of one church like this I met, but there are a couple others in the middle of these changes that I know about, too.

David Platt has a rather famous church doing these sorts of things in Birmingham, and if you’re in San Francisco, you ought to look up what Francis Chan is doing. Simple and brilliant.

Apparently, this post is not Innocence vs. Purity "Revisited." I thought I’d already written a post on innocence vs. purity, but apparently I haven’t. A great oversight on my part!

Today, a man I respect and like posted a very interesting post on Facebook, but it implied that God was not at fault for the defect of sin in us. (Which is an immense defect, see Rom. 7.) Perhaps there is some accuracy to that, but to be honest I have to say I don’t agree. The God who can create the universe and foresee all things could not have been ignorant of what would happen if he created man in the manner he did.

I want to argue that the fall of man was a good thing.

God’s plan was never innocence; it was incorruptible purity, and that required the loss of innocence. He always intended to sum all things up in Christ, to make us the sons of God in a more real way than Adam was, and to wind up with new creations that are incorruptible.

In the other post that I thought I wrote, but didn’t, I wanted to say that we should be the same way with our own children. Protecting their innocence is not the goal, though admittedly that innocence should be guarded for a time. Preparing them to meet temptation so that they will preserve their purity, that is the goal.

I got carried away and wrote a long email to a young man who wrote me. It covers evolution, church history, the apostles, the Word of God, the Scriptures, the Gospel, and what is central to Christianity.

I hate to see it simply languish in my sent folder, so here goes:

All Bible quotes in this post are from the NASB.

You wrote:>>Either you believe everything in the Bible is the inspired Word of God, being completely true, and that it is the standard for which Christians should live their lives, or you don’t.<<

To me you just made two statements, not one. The first, if I'm understanding your meaning correctly, is that the Bible is completely accurate historically and scientifically. That's a bit more narrow of a definition than "completely true."

Is the Bible “Completely True”?

There is no denying that I don’t believe the Bible is completely accurate historically or scientifically. I don’t believe the world is set on pillars (1 Sam. 2:8). I don’t believe that the sky is as hard as a metal mirror (Job 37:18). I believe that the earth moves, even though Psalm 93:1 says it doesn’t.

Of course, everyone–including you, your pastor, and everyone else you know–agrees with me on the three things I just listed. Oh, they have their excuses as to why that’s different than doubting the exact scientific accuracy of Genesis 1, but it all looks the same to me.

Do we really believe that God made plants before there was a sun? Do we really believe that there is a tree that if you eat from it, you’ll have eternal life whether God wants you to have it or not? That’s certainly what the story of the Garden of Eden suggests. God had to ban Adam … No, let’s not call him Adam. His name is Man. The Hebrew word Adam is used over 500 times in the Old Testament, and it is only translated Adam in the first few chapters of Genesis.

So, God had to ban Man and Life (Life was the name of Man’s wife) from the garden because if he didn’t, then Man would eat from the tree of life and live forever; apparently even if God didn’t want him to live forever!

Maybe that was meant to be an accurate description of the very first days of mankind, but I don’t believe that. And everyone I’ve read on the subject of how the Hebrews told stories agrees with me. To the Hebrews, “true” was not a matter of historically accurate. “True” had to do with whether it communicated truth.

I believe that the story of Man and Life not only communicates truth, but it communicates God’s truth. It’s not just a saying or a bit of human wisdom. It’s a message from God.

In that sense, I do believe that the Scriptures are completely true.

Is “scientifically and historically accurate” the correct definition of true? Well, that’s for you to decide, but I believe that is a modern, western definition that doesn’t apply very well to the Hebrew Scriptures. It was certainly not their mindset, according to every Hebrew scholar I’ve read.

Is the Bible our Standard

The other part of your statement was whether the Bible is “the standard for which Christians should live their lives.”

First, let me say that I definitely believe that the Bible is the standard for which Christians should test, though not necessarily live, their lives. If our lives disagree with the Scriptures, then we are in error. With that I completely agree, but the Scriptures teach us that we are to be led by the Spirit, not led by the Scriptures. The Scriptures can provide guidance, but we are to walk in the Spirit.

Today, we think the Bible is the center of the Christian faith.

I’m pretty certain that the apostles thought that Jesus Christ is the center of the Christian faith. I think they believed that the ultimate testimony of Christianity was that the Gospel they received from Jesus was “the power of God to salvation,” and that those who believed the Gospel received a real and powerful justification, becoming new creations.

Paul describes that concerning the Thessalonians:

“You became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. For the Word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything” (1 Thess. 1:7-8).

The Scriptures talk about the Word of God growing three different times in Acts (6:7; 12:24; 19:20). We tend to equate the Scriptures and the Word of God, but the apostles didn’t. They believed the Word of God is either Jesus or the entire message of God, in whatever form it came. One major form is that the Word of God lives in us, planted like a seed. It can grow because as the number of disciples multiply, the Word of God grows.

We can say that the Scriptures are the standard by which we must live our lives, but could the apostles’ churches say that? I’ve read all the writings of the second century church, and I can tell you–along with the agreement of pretty much every Christian scholar you want to check–that the New Testament writings were not gathered together until about a hundred years after Jesus died.

And do you know how they gathered the New Testament writings?

They were not gathering “inspired” writings. They were not gathering “New Testament” writings. They were gathering the writings of apostles and men who accompanied the apostles. They wanted all and any they could find.

It was the apostles who were inspired, not just their writings. (For example, see 2 Thess. 2:15 and verses like 1 Cor. 11:2 and 14:37.) The New Covenant has never been about a book. It has been about God pouring out his Spirit on all flesh, bringing them into the church, and making of them a family that would glorify his name by their love for God, their love for each other, and their disdain for the things of the world.

Boxing up God, the Scriptures, and the Gospel

I’m so sorry, dear reader, that writing like this is so limited. Today we’ve boxed everything up and made everything nice and tidy.

God’s never been that way. He’s always left questions and things we don’t understand. He doesn’t care about our fitting his grand plan into our limited human minds. He cares about our trust and obedience. He wants us to know him, for eternal life is to know him, not to pass a test on his plan of salvation (Jn. 17:3).

The Original Faith

My goal is not to convince you of things, but to let you look at the faith that’s been handed to us. The original faith consisted of a firm trust that God sent Jesus, Jesus sent the apostles, and the apostles raised up churches to preserve the truth. Those churches all had a basic “rule of faith” to keep them on the straight and narrow. The Apostles Creed is a 4th century “rule of faith.”

When you read the writings of the 2nd century church, it’s such a glorious thing to see the purity of original Christianity. They held firm to the foundation that “The Lord knows those who are his, and let those who name the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). They demanded that Christians accept the basic truths, the sort of things outlined in the Nicene Creed, but after that, “sound doctrine” was much more like what is described in Titus 2 than the sort of things we argue about today.

They honored those who lived holy lives. In fact, one early Christian said, “We don’t speak great things; we live them.”

When they defended Christianity, they spoke of the divinity of Christ’s teachings and how the Spirit of God empowered them to be delivered from greed and lust and to live lives of good conscience. Further, they stood gallantly during persecution, arguing that the bravery of the martyrs was proof of the power of the Spirit of God in the lives of Christians.

Misusing the Scriptures

I love the Scriptures. I hope, as you can see, that I study them thoroughly. I pattern my life after them, and I quote them in defense of all I say. If what I say can’t be found in the Scriptures, then what I say can be rightly rejected.

But we’ve done something awful with the Scriptures in the modern era. As I read today in a George MacDonald book, there are too many people who are “more desirous of understanding what they are supposed to understand than of doing what they are supposed to do.”

We argue and fight over doubtful matters. We make our determinations of what is true based on our intellectual interpretations of Scripture, when in fact Jesus (in Scripture) taught us to judge our teachers by their fruit and not by their confident interpretations (Matt. 7).

The Doctrine According to Godliness

We need to relearn the “doctrine according to godliness” as mentioned by Paul in 1 Tim. 6:3. Because our doctrine is according to intellect and argument, rather than according to godliness, we are what Paul describes in 1 Tim. 6:4-5:

He has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved minds and deprived of the truth.

Let us set ourselves to obeying Jesus Christ and honoring him by our lives.

Evolution and Doubtful Disputes

I have a web site on evolution. That is not because I think that Christians need to take a position on evolution, nor because I want anyone at all to agree it’s true. What I want is that men who have boxed up the Word of God and wrapped a book cover around him do not splinter the church of God into fighting factions over doubtful subjects.

The mark of a Christian is not that he agrees that Genesis one is literal … nor that it’s not literal. The mark of a Christian is that by the power of the Spirit of God he obeys Jesus Christ, living a life marked by the love of God.

We have enough work achieving that goal, but modern Christians have forgotten that it is a goal. They have become confused into thinking that Christianity is a mere understanding of and assent to the atonement.

Salvation is not a plan; it’s a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is another post that I need to hear.

With gentleness [correct] those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been help captive by him to do his will. (2 Tim. 2:25-26, NASB)

Repentance, according to this passage, requires revelation. God has to grant our opponents repentance that will lead to the knowledge of the truth.

This should be liberating for us. We do not have to make our arguments strong enough to convince the hard-hearted and foolish. We only have to make our arguments well enough, and with gentleness, to please God. God will take it from there.

Any of you who have ever had a word from God lodge in your heart knows how unshakeable the conviction of the Lord is. That word will pierce like a thorn until you either give in or make a conscious choice to turn your back on God and choose evil.

One final note. This is not the only place that says repentance must be given by God:

They quieted down and glorified God, saying, "Well, then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that that leads to life." (Acts 11:18b, NASB)

“It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”

For those of us who fancy ourselves apologists, it can be difficult to rest in the foolishness of the message preached. We want to be able to explain the reasonableness of the Gospel, and we hope to make the path to faith easier and the response of God more sure by our guidance.

It is true that the Gospel is a confrontation and an ultimatum, whether we like it or not. We cannot help God respond nor make the Gospel more palatable. Either what we preach is true and God will back it up with supernatural power or we need to find something different to preach. The true Gospel is powerful whether we can explain it or not. When it seems foolish to men that Christ died for sins, then God is all the more pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of the message preached.

Let us beware lest in our human wisdom and desire to “help” God that we become guilty of preaching a palatable but false Gospel that God must oppose.

“I will bring the wisdom of the wise to nothing.”

Posted from my iPhone

I sent an email today talking about the basics of walking with Christ and of dealing with weakness. I thought it was worth sharing with you.

Any of you that are mature in Christ, no matter what your background, will recognize the following as truth. You will also recognize that we all have to be reminded of this regularly, preferably every few days so we don’t lose sight of what we’re doing and begin walking in the flesh.

So here’s the email:

I get so caught up in correcting what I see as obvious error that sometimes I forget to make clear what I’m supporting. I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ really is good news.

I attack all sorts of doctrines. Often, if not always, it is not because I think they are wrong. Most or all of the time I am simply arguing that they are too important to us.

Faith Alone

There is one important thing, and that is Jesus Christ. There is one important act, and that is faith in and obedience to Jesus Christ, and those two things–faith and obedience–are interchangeable.

I don’t have to appeal to Greek to prove that. You know it’s true in English.

Let’s assume you’ve just told me that you’ve become a Hoganite. You have become a believer in Hulk Hogan. Then you hero gets on TV and says that if you want to be a real man, you will stand outside in mid-winter, in the snow, in public, and in daylight in only your All-Star Wresting, speedo-style trunks for four hours. You, rightly thinking that this is idiotic, decide not to do it.

I would have to commend your wisdom. However, I would also add, “You’re not much of a believer in Hulk Hogan now, are you?”

I am against being “not much of a believer” in Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, if you were to go out, shiver in the cold for twenty minutes, then race inside, unable to bear it any more, then I would again commend your wisdom in giving up and coming inside. But I would comment that though you’re loony, you are apparently a real, actual, true Hoganite.

I am for, with, in support of, given to, a servant of, and a prayer for real, actual, true Christians–people who occasionally fail miserably, but who avidly, joyfully, and humbly pursue everything Jesus Christ has called them to.

The One True Church

Everything else I say is just to help those avid, joyful, humble Christians know that they don’t have to pretend other people are Christians. They can love them, witness to them, and serve them. Then they can leave work and from hospital visits and dinners with the not-much-of-a-believers and devote their meetings and fellowship and life to other avid, joyful, and humble Christians who are their only true family.

And those avid, joyful, humble, and failing Christians, together, leaning on Jesus Christ are the one, true, and only church, the pillar and support of the truth.

And God can be trusted to be their God, and Jesus can be trusted to be their King, and the Holy Spirit can be trusted to be their teacher, and the Triune God, Two proceeding from One, can and will lead them into everything they need far better than any seminary graduate or any confident interpreter of Scripture.

We are in danger of deception when we seek to follow God alone (Heb. 3:13), but when avid, joyful, and humble Christians live as family to one another, feeling free to keep their fellowship with other avid, joyful, and humble Christians, then they can know everything that matters and their zeal, joy, and humility will not only spread, but will be backed powerfully by God.