Ch 5 Who and What We Give, Get, and Celebrate

What images come to your mind when you consider what mature disciples look like, along with mature worshipers, and a mature church? How we picture these will depend on the criteria we use to define ‘mature’. For example, some among us may immediately think of mature in terms of age—of grey-haired persons, and those who have been church members for decades. Might mature Christians be senior pastors by virtue of their role/function, and be missionaries that have sacrificed to serve the church or to spread the gospel? Or persons that have a lot of knowledge about Scripture, such as preachers and teachers? Are mature Christians persons with advanced academic degrees in theology, biblical studies, worship studies, or spiritual formation? In other words, does maturity come with possessing resources and credentials?

Why is the issue of maturity important for worship? Maturity is important because the criteria we use to define maturity, and who we perceive as mature persons in our churches, will influence who and what we give, get and celebrate in worship corporately. Accordingly, to further elaborate on Jesus relational paradigm: The maturity you celebrate (i.e. boast in and about) will be the worshiping community you get, which includes the goals for all members. Moreover, who and what we boast in and about will be reflected in the church’s presence and involvement with its surrounding community, determining what others outside the church see and conclude about God. The integrity of the church’s identity is vital for its witness.

The word in the Old Testament for “boast,” hālal, means to celebrate and denotes rejoicing and praising God. Hālal is the word in the imperative Halelu Yah (hallelujah), “Praise the Lord.” “Boast” is given its definitive basis most clearly in Jeremiah:

“Thus says the Lord: “Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the capable boast in their abilities, do not let the privileged boast in their resources; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the LORD” (Jer 9:23-24).

This is not the shallow boast of cognitive information that fragments and reduces God down to God’s attributes and actions (the divine parts of what God has and does), but is the deepest possible boast of knowing and understanding God in our innermost by relational connection and involvement. This boast is to ‘sing’ (embodied boasting, if you wish) as God’s very own family who are qualitatively tāmiym (whole with nothing less and no substitutes) and who function in the primacy of relationship with sĕdāqâh (relational righteousness). We have been embodied new from inner out because God’s relational response loved us first (“first” as both in primacy and in the order of action), therefore our boast unfolds reciprocally ‘singing’ the new song in response to the whole and common God.

In English, boasting has both positive and negative connotations. The more common usage of ‘boasting’ is the overt negative sense of bragging, beating one’s own drum, and any other kind of self-aggrandizement—always about the fragmented parts of what persons do or have. Yet, this self-serving boasting takes on more subtle forms, such as embellishment of one’s self in the presentation to others of one’s life. Social media seems to flourish on this sense of boasting, which also involves enhancing one’s life by selective sharing or virtual sharing. Self-focused boasting is normative in the human context, because it is simply part of the competitive-comparative process of trying to establish one’s self-worth on the basis of outer-in criteria of what one does or has. On the other hand, the positive sense of boasting gets eclipsed in common usage, but positive boasting in worship is important for us to understand.

Yet, self-focused boasting is also normative in many worship services, because it is our default mode of boasting. What becomes problematic is that the significant difference between the two senses of boasting gets blurred in our understanding and practice. In this chapter, for the sake of clarity, I refer to the negative sense of boasting as ‘immature boasting’ and the positive sense as ‘mature boasting’.

There is a direct correlation between maturity as God’s people, our identity as God’s new creation family, and ‘boasting’, which is vital for us to understand in order to corporately undergo the inner-out change necessary to embody new the worship relationship. At stake is whether or not the boasts we make in worship have relational significance to God. Also at stake is nothing less than what we are building together as the church.

The boasts we make in worship, if they are mature (uncommon, holy) rather than immature (common), will distinguish our celebrations with our whole identity of both who we are and, inseparably, whose we are. Our boasting will either reveal whose we are as relationally belonging to our transcendent triune Creator God who Jesus vulnerably embodied and disclosed, or as ‘belonging’ to some undistinguished God of our shaping (which we previously identified as the idolization of God). Therefore, we begin this final chapter discussing the interrelationship between boasting, maturity, and our new identity, and thus, who and what we give, get and celebrate wherever and whenever we come together to worship the whole and uncommon (holy) God.

The Vulnerable Process to Mature Celebration

The Gospels narrate that the journey to maturity for the disciples was an up and down process, and so it is for us today. Likewise, the glimpses we have of the nascent churches in Acts, the epistles, and the book of Revelation also tell us of the up and down process to maturing as Christ’s body, that is, the new creation family in the ‘already’. In chapter three of this study, we discussed the surprising and counter-intuitive conclusions about what ‘mature’ means to Jesus, to Paul, and to the writer of Hebrews (to review, see pp. 56-67).

Briefly, when the disciples were asking about “who is the greatest…,” they were engaged in a comparative process (Mt 18:1). Jesus told his disciples then (and now) that we must “change and become like child-persons” or else we “will never participate in God’s life” (Mt 18:3). Jesus also made a surprising statement in his praise and thanks to the Father “because you have disclosed yourself to little children” but “have hidden your self-disclosures from the wise and learned” (Lk 10:21, NIV). Little children, as mature child-persons, represent the ontology and function necessary to perceive, receive, and compatibly respond to God’s vulnerable self-disclosures, according to God’s relational terms. The implicit message in Jesus’ words is two-pronged: (1) Immature persons that Jesus refers to as ‘wise and learned’ give primacy to quantitative outer-in criteria by which they define persons (themselves, God and others), and on this basis they function in relationships; (2) in contrast and conflict, mature persons have vulnerably received and responded to God’s relational grace as the only basis to define their person and others in the primacy of relationship with God and others. Maturity has nothing to do with our resources and credentials, nor does our stature based on these have any significance to God.

Although our thinking may affirm the above distinctions, our intuition may resist. Common intuition shaped from our human contexts tell us that we should become like the ‘wise and learned’ in order to mature enough and have the needed resources to participate and be productive in God’s life, just the opposite of the vulnerableness of child-persons. Isn’t that the impression we get in church, for example, as to who are the most qualified persons to teach, preach, lead worship, and nurture the church family? Aren’t the wise and learned the persons who Paul wrote about, the ones who have the gifts necessary to serve as prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, in his letter to the Ephesian church “to equip the saints…for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph 4:11-13)? How do we address this apparent contradiction?

To help our thinking about the above questions, we need to understand what Paul also says about what constitutes wisdom in his first letter to the Corinthian church, part of which is paraphrased as follows:

“In the wisdom of God, the human context did not know God through its own wisdom…. God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength…. God chose the child-persons who are regarded as ‘less’ or unqualified to shame the wise and learned, to nullify human-determined qualifications, so that no one might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor 1:21,25,27-29).

For Paul, the ‘wise and learned’ (per Jer 9:23; cf. Lk 10:21) have wisdom from the common’s human context, which is fragmented information about God as an object to study, attained with the common’s interpretive framework (1 Cor 1:22; 2:8; cf. Rom 8:5-8). This human wisdom is not the wisdom that comes from intimately knowing God by heart-to-heart (i.e. face to face) relational connection (cf. Col 2:2-4,8). Paul could speak first-hand from his personal experience about the different processes/sources of wisdom, for he had excelled in his former context of Pharisaism, which was characterized by scholarship in Torah and oral law (tradition of the elders), and intellect. According to the standards of his human context, he had much to boast about (Phil 3:4-6). Yet, once Paul experienced, received, and compatibly responded to Christ Face to face (2 Cor 4:6), his heart was set free.

Paul came to understand that all his efforts and achievements that had formerly defined his person and constructed his identity, were barriers to knowing Christ intimately. This is why he considered all his former achievements and status as worthless compared to the experience of knowing Christ in relational terms (Phil 3:7-8; cf. 1 Cor 1:8). Paul’s person, his theology and practice were made whole from inner out, which demonstrates the transformation (metamorphoo, 2 Cor 318) of a member of the ‘wise and learned’ to the ontology and function of the child-person. Paul, along with Mary (Mk 14:9) and the children praising Jesus in the temple (Mt 21:15-16), illuminate irrefutably the whole theology and practice required of all of us in order for our worship to mature in new wine, to emerge and flow.

Wisdom, in God’s terms, is the understanding of the whole that we gain only in relationship with God; this is the relational outcome that includes by necessity our compatible reciprocal response in faith (relational trust)—just as the OT makes clear (e.g. Dt 4:6; Ps 111:10; Prov 1:7). Only this relationship together composes the boast that has any significance at all to God, and this singular boast is that persons “know and understand me” (Jer 9:24). This relational boast is also Jesus’ definition of eternal life (Jn 17:3). Moreover, it is for the maturity of this relational boast to be our ongoing experiential reality that the Spirit has been given to dwell in us now, to continue in the compatible and congruent relational connection necessary to know and understand God (1 Cor 2:6-13).

For clarification, Jesus did not (and does not) disparage persons in the academy. The issue that Jesus made definitive is that when persons define their person (and others) on the reductionist basis of outer-in criteria of what they have/do (e.g. knowledge, degrees, and titles), this in turn determines how fragmentary they engage in relationship; that is, they inevitably engage in a competitive-comparative process because they need to determine how they measure up compared to others. The academy commonly values ‘civility’ in its discourses and dialogues among its participants, ongoingly stressing the need to be irenic. Yet, without addressing the underlying reductionism that fragments persons (to parts of what they do/have) thereby reducing the whole person, relational barriers are the inevitable consequence of the competitive-comparative process; and civility only creates an illusion in discourse and simulates so-called good dialogue, without penetrating relational barriers and vulnerably engaging each other for relationships to come together.

As it is, the academy prepares future church leaders (including worship shapers and leaders), unknowingly nurturing them in the competitive-comparative process of the wise and learned. Child-persons, of course, don’t have the stature requiring higher-level credentials. These future leaders bring this mindset to the churches and, in turn, nurture the churches in the same. For this reason, my husband and I have been praying deeply to God to transform to wholeness the academy’s interpretive framework and lens. For example, those who teach (or are preparing to teach) subject matter that pertain to God’s relational priority and the church’s ontology and function can provide important and needed experiential resources to help build up the new creation family (cf. Mt 13:52) in the new relational order of intimate and equalized relationships. Certainly there are such educators available, but the competitive-comparative process of the theological academy is systemic, notably because the Christian academy increasingly is shaped by (and competes with) secular higher education on the latter’s terms. The relational consequence is further reinforcing and sustaining the embodying old of who and what we give, get, and celebrate.

What the persons who function as the ‘wise and learned’ engage in, and this is why Jesus and Paul clearly reject it, essentially amounts to boasting in themselves, about what they (or their respective institutions, even churches) do or have. Overt boasting (bragging) is not the usual mode for Christians in corporate worship (though they may brag in private) because we Christians know we ought to be humble. However, the person who only gives the outward appearance of humbleness without the inner substance of it is involved in a masquerade (hypokrisis, assume a role, like an actor), which both Jesus and Paul warned against (Lk 12:1; 2 Cor 11:13-15, cf. Galo 2:11-13). Hypokrisis is antithetical to relational righteousness, so the person functioning in hypokrisis (i.e. hypokritēs) cannot be counted on to be the person they present in relationships, the integrity and content of their communication, or the depth of relational involvement they appear to engage. That is, hypokritēs is not the worshiper who worships in spirit and truth (with honesty of heart) the Father seeks (Jn 4:24). So, for Christians, boasting generally will not be bragging, but indirect and subtle. This presents problems worse than outright bragging because of their masked forms (as displayed in 2 Cor 11:13-15). Whatever its form, immature boasting has unavoidable relational consequences.

Indirect and subtle boasting have familiar forms. For example, subtly putting someone else down through joking or snide remarks is an indirect way of engaging in the comparative process to make oneself look ‘better’. The purpose of putting others down (however light the comment may seem) is to put oneself up, that is, to boost-boast about oneself. Moreover, to try to pass off put-downs of others as joking only adds to the hurtfulness of the comparative process, and harms relationships. And laughing reinforces and sustains the relational condition “to be apart.”

The degree of boasting—overt, indirect, subtle—has no significance; it is the same underlying dynamic from reductionism in various forms. Therefore, as our qualitative-relational interpretive framework and lens mature, we will perceive more readily the subtle boasting that often seems minor and harmless. We also need to fully understand that the inevitable relational consequence of this self-serving kind of boasting—even if very subtle—is relational distance caused by its comparative process, which stratifies relationships whereby persons are considered as better or less. Any degree of immature boasting in worship is particularly alarming because worship is relationship specific to God; the relational purpose is to boast about and celebrate who, what and how God is (not fragmenting his person from his actions). Yet worship is also a time to build up the new creation family in intimate and equalized relationships together in God’s likeness—a time to boast in God, in the reality of who and whose we are.

A few more examples of immature boasting in worship will help us recognize the underlying reductionism, which is often not apparent to us. For example, during corporate worship, church and worship leaders often boast in and about the criteria of, for example, celebrity and popularity (e.g. celebrity pastors, scholars, popular writers, celebrity worship leaders), and titles (e.g. presidents of Christian institutions and organizations). The boasting about these persons is usually not so subtle but ‘disguised’ as expressions of respect and honor. They may receive applause or even standing ovations—a response that sadly is less frequent for God but to be expected when who and what are celebrated take this form.

On the subtler side, church and worship leaders may—and even without realizing they are doing so—shift the focus to either themselves or others, and away from God. Some pastors tend to mention their own accomplishments, as well as the successful results of their ministries—usually success is described in numbers. Pastors also praise congregations for meeting or exceeding fundraising drives, about which the congregation applauds heartily for themselves. We can all think of many more examples of subtle and overt boost-boasting in worship that takes the focus away from God, thus diminishing relational clarity of whose we are and thus who we worship. We should be alarmed at our participation in the comparative process inherent in such boasting because it always comes at the expense of God and others implied as less.

For these reasons, Jesus opposed any practice that even unintentionally composed fragmented function, which Jesus simply referred to as the ‘wise and learned’. Jesus singled out the ‘wise and learned’ because ever since the primordial garden, humans have given priority to the human reason and referential knowledge by which to define their person as ‘better’ (cf. Gen 3:5-6)[1] in a comparative process with others (cf. also Jas 3:13-17). We can substitute ‘wise and learned’ with any other outer-in criteria of human distinctions by which we boost-boast, all of which reflect the deeper issues summarized here:

When our theological anthropology defines the person by what they possess and can do, then boasting is both expected and necessary to establish our identity, worth and comparative standing in relation to others, including God. This is the expected self-determination and the necessary self-justification which ongoingly emerge from the scope of reductionism’s presence, influence and workings unless recognized, redeemed and transformed in our theological engagement by ‘the presence of the whole’ for the relational outcome of whole theology and practice. Moreover, this relational outcome emerges in the presence of the whole only from the relational imperative of epistemic and ontological humility—just as Paul functioned in his practice and made definitive in his theology.[2]

Immature boasting in corporate worship is not a neutral harmless character flaw. This function of boasting is insufficient for and antithetical to the following: (1) the relational involvement (i.e. as child-persons) necessary to know and understand God, and thus to participate in God’s life on God’s relational terms; (2) to build up the church to maturity in family love (Jn 13:35; Eph 4:16; Col 3:12-16), the distinguishing indicator of which is intimate and equalized relationships together (Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 12:13; Col 3:11) in relational likeness of the Trinity (as discussed in the previous chapter).

The challenge to us is to redeem this immature boasting, essentially implying subtly “Hallelu us” or “hallelu me”, to mature boasting of both Hallelu Yah and embodied boasting as the new wine family involved together in intimate and equalized relationships. This challenge requires us to become vulnerable with our whole person, which then makes imperative our epistemic and ontological humility acknowledging who and what we really are—not in comparison to others but openly with others in relationship together. Yet, to meet this challenge, redemptive change from immature boasting (i.e. common boasting defined and determined by human contexts) to mature boasting (which composes shout-in, discussed earlier) is not a matter of reforming by degrees. Rather, the nature of redemptive change requires dying to the old so that the new can emerge. We must die (individually and as a corporate body) to our old interpretive framework and its lens that boast in and about (celebrate) those secondary outer-in criteria. This is nonnegotiable if we are to emerge as the new wine family who are composed of intimate and equalized relationships, without the unavoidable relational barriers in a comparative process and its stratified relationships.

This redemptive change transforms from and to the following: from fragmented reduced persons to whole persons redefined by God’s relational grace; from constrained old wine function as ‘wise and learned’ to new wine function as shout-in child-persons; from boost-boast in quantitative outer-in boasting in competitive-comparative process to mature boast in inner-out qualitative criteria in qualitative-relational involvement in intimate and equalized relationships together; and from fragmented individualistic celebration to reconciled whole persons in whole relationships to ‘be one as we are one’ that Jesus prayed for (Jn 17:11,21-23)—composing the relational outcome of embodying new the discipleship-worship relationship. To apply Jesus’ relational paradigm further: “The boast you make in worship is the church’s relationships you get.”

This is a core issue for all who follow Jesus: persons relationally involved to be ‘where I am’ and participate in the Father’s new wine family behind the curtain without the veil, who worship the Father in spirit and truth (i.e. with vulnerable honest hearts).

The Threat of New Wine

We saw that maturing was an up and down process for Peter, as reflected in his boost-boasting (Mk 9:5-6, 14:29-31), and so it is for us today. As long as the immature boasting of reductionism remains in place in our worship, whole persons will struggle to emerge and grow. This condition, however, is not an issue merely about the individual worshiper but is a corporate issue involving the entire congregation—that is, it is a vital family matter. It is not adequate to think that only select persons need opportunities in corporate worship to express their shout-in to the Lord free from constraints and self-consciousness. All the members need to be encouraged, nurtured, and even challenged to grow in this way. And all the members need to affirm each other, and enact together embodying the new wine, from inner out (cf. Eph 5:15-20). This is essential “for building up the body of Christ, until we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity [teleios, complete purpose and outcome], to the measure of the full stature of Christ’s wholeness” (Eph 4:12-13), which Paul’s relational work fought for in family love while jointly fighting against reductionism.

Church and worship leadership in particular have the relational responsibility to take the lead in the steps necessary for transforming our worship practices, with the resolve and determination of kûn (as the psalmist demonstrated, Ps 108:1). This requires them to lead with their own vulnerable shout-in worship in the inner-out function of their whole child-person, thereby embodying new the worship relationship distinguished with their discipleship relationship. For this inner-out function as child-persons, this would require them to undergo the redemptive change of dying to the old so that the new wine can vulnerably emerge and flow. (The words from Isaiah come to mind here: “a little child shall lead them,” Isa 11:6). My husband and I have been praying for these church leaders, wherever they are, to make this uncommon relational response.

Everywhere in the global church, church leadership especially is challenged for this most important relational responsibility, thereby “to equip the saints” (katartismos, Eph 4:12). Whole understanding of this is thus summarized: “Their definitive purpose and function is katartismos (from katartizo, to restore to former condition for complete qualification) of church members to embody the whole ontology and function of God’s new creation family. Paul assumes for church leaders in their purpose and function in katartismos that their own persons have been and continue to be [restored to being new again, Col 3:10] and [being made new from inner out, Eph 4:23].”[3] Paul was distinguished whole in his uncommon ontology and function from inner out in God’s relational primacy, and is therefore the model for church leadership to pay attention to—along with Mary’s leadership.

Great care needs to be taken that the persons taking the lead by vulnerably embodying the new wine (as Mary did in her discipleship-worship relationship) are not rebuked, ridiculed, put down, teased or constrained in any way. Rather, church leaders must intentionally, with family love, affirm and encourage the inner-out expressions of worship by all persons. Remember Jesus’ affirmation of Mary as one who embodies the gospel (Mk 14:9). Church leaders also must take the lead to correct (in family love) persons who react negatively, just as Jesus corrected Martha and the other disciples who hassled Mary. Again, persons who worship shout-in with vulnerable hearts freely give who and what are God’s, his daughters and sons who worship in spirit and truth (i.e. with vulnerable hearts), and who delight our Father’s heart (Lk 10:21). May these expressions come to delight all our hearts as well.

Building each other up in family love is the family relational responsibility—first and foremost of church leaders, but also of worship leaders and all the members—that Paul illuminated in his letter to the church at Ephesus, paraphrased here:

To correct and nurture all the members in the vulnerable ontology and function of child-persons, for the new wine to emerge and flow in worship, for encouragement in building up the new creation family into wholeness in the qualitative image of the whole of God (nothing less and no substitutes), and in the intimate and equalized relationships in relational likeness of the Trinity—to embody the wholeness of Christ (cf. Eph 4:12-13; Eph 2:22-23; Col 2:9-10).

Our identity as God’s new wine family depends on our resolve of kûn to bring forth the new wine, which can only happen in compatible reciprocal relationship with the Spirit. Otherwise, we will end up trying to be new by our own efforts (e.g. innovations), thus the new wine will be constrained by old wineskins, and everyone will go back to thinking the old is good enough or better (cf. Lk 5:39).

The presence and example of shout-in of child-persons will threaten many persons—especially church leaders, but also worship leaders and church members who define their person by secondary outer-in criteria (a narrowed-down and fragmented perception of the person that ignores the qualitative-relational function of the heart). This outer-in mindset biases their perception of God by narrowing God down, for example, to static attributes God has, like transcendence, holiness, majesty, glory, omnipresence, omniscience, and contemporary ascriptions like wonderful and awesome—in superlative terms in a comparative framework.

The narrowed-down mindset and lens also define God by what he does, such as his actions in creation, miracles, and other great demonstrations of power—all perceived apart from their relational significance, that is, de-relationalized from God’s whole relational purpose. Accordingly, this fragmented and reduced definition of God determines how worship should be designed with the bias toward what is worthy of such royalty. Many derive their vision of worship from the images of worship in the book of Revelation, which John saw in visions: The visions of worship in a great throne room in the book of Revelation (Rev 4-5, 7), with elders falling prostrate before his royal throne, the whole diversity of humanity, angels, and creation praising God in incomparable worship. What many Christians take from these visions is the huge gap between God’s superlative worthiness and our relative unworthiness in a comparative process (cf. Peter refusing Jesus’ footwashing). We then construct our vision of what worship is worthy of this God, in outer-in terms. This dynamic echoes Peter’s definition of himself and Jesus by their roles in the comparative process of ‘better’ and ‘less’, and on that basis determined how Peter related to Jesus with the relational barrier of the veil still over his heart.

The point in all of the above is this: church and worship leaders, and church members who define themselves and God in the above ways, will resist and constrain expressions that challenge their preconceived notions of what God wants from us, which are determined by their narrowed-down mindset. Such resistance will likely be promoted as the correct ‘belief system’ about God, but this reasoning has not yet vulnerably received the Father’s relational imperative to “listen to my Son” (Mt 17:3)—thus gives priority, for example, to the Rule of Faith over the primacy of relationship together. Nor has this reasoning paid attention to Jesus’ relational imperatives to “consider carefully what you hear from me,” which includes “unless you humble yourself and become like child-persons….” (Mt 18:3; cf. Lk 10:21).

Because of this resistance, they will make it very difficult for persons functioning with the vulnerableness of child-persons. They will somehow communicate that these child-persons are “different,” or anomalies, which is another way of communicating the distinction of ‘less’. Recall that in a similar though more direct way, Martha and other disciples harshly rebuked Mary’s whole person as she stepped out to respond to Jesus with her vulnerable involvement (Lk 10:40; Mk 14:3-5). This constraining dynamic directly conflicts with the new relational order of intimate and equalized relationships that Jesus embodied in relationship with persons, notably at his table fellowships and his washing the disciples’ feet, to establish persons together in the new creation family.

The negativity toward Mary was not unique to Mary, and cannot be attributed only to sexism, because sexism is but one expression of the underlying fragmentation and reductionism from an outer-in interpretive framework. Other persons who functioned in wholeness and similarly received negative reactions (for the same reason that Mary did) include Levi, Zacchaeus, the shouting children in the temple, and the ex-prostitute who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears (Lk 7:36-50). Each of these persons responded to Jesus with the compatible reciprocal response and congruent relational connection necessary to embody the new relational order to whole-ly compose new the worship relationship. In their responses to Jesus, they embodied the celebration of who and what they were in compatible reciprocal relationship, inseparably celebrating whose they were. In their various ways, these persons model for us the whole ontology and function in the new relational order of intimate and equalized relationships engaging the Father’s family love, in spite of the negative reactions from others that so often limits and constrains our involvement to the status quo.

Yet, the reality is that wherever and whenever the new wine emerges, the presence of the sin of reductionism will seek to constrain it, put it back into an old wineskin of self-concerns and self-consciousness, and thus self-constraint. The consequences will always be place on the other person(s), either to hassle the person, as Mary experienced with Martha and the other disciples (Lk 10:40; Mt 26:8-10), or to actually get the person to withdraw in some way, that is, to diminish the person by conforming to what’s common.

To any among us who suppress (if only in our private thoughts) those functioning from inner out as child-persons, Jesus opposes us. Jesus opposes our fragmented and reduced ontology and function (that of the ‘wise and learned’) that tries to constrain wholeness of persons, just as he opposed and corrected Martha and the disciples who tried to constrain Mary in her whole ontology and function, discussed earlier (in chap.3). Reduced ontology and function in no way is able to make relational connection with the whole and uncommon God. It is indispensable for our maturity also to understand that Jesus nonnegotiably opposes the presence and influence of fragmented and reduced ontology and function, including persons who impose their reductionist practice on others (also discussed in chap. 3; cf. Mt 18:6-10; Gal 2:11-14). These are incompatible and incongruent for our discipleship-worship relationship to make relational connection with God, insufficient for our immature boasting to be transformed to mature boasting, and fatal to our identity as the new creation family in whom God can dwell by the Spirit. When the churches we build are constructed from reduced ontology and function (expressed in immature boasting), then we are engaged in the subtle practice of ontological simulation with epistemological illusion. The unavoidable relational consequence is the experiential reality “to be apart” from the wholeness Jesus embodied new for his church family.

Therefore, for those of us who are like Martha and the other disciples, we need to receive Jesus’ hermeneutic correction seriously, in humbleness and with fear (cf. Phil 2:12-13). We also need to learn from child-persons such as Mary that negative reactions and relational consequences come with the territory of following Jesus on his uncommon relational path. It is only as we are equalized together in intimate relationships—behind the curtain with the veil removed—will we embody the new relational order that is the distinguished outcome of being relationally reconciled with each other (Eph 2:13-22; Heb 9:8).

Whenever others tell us we should not be like Mary, but be more like so-and-so (add the name of someone having distinction from their achievements, reputation or renown), we can and must count on the Spirit to encourage our hearts with Jesus’ relational words to ongoingly give us light and understanding (Ps 119:98-100, 130). Jesus’ whole person—involving all his relational words and actions with persons throughout the incarnation—is the key to our whole function. Certain words in particular will be vital to our hearts’ whole function with nothing less and no substitutes (such as Lk 10:21; Mt 18:3), behind the curtain with the veil removed. Yet, we can’t be selective of his words but simply must “listen to my Son” and “pay attention to what you hear, the measure you give will be the measure you get.”

With Jesus as our hermeneutical, epistemological and functional-relational keys, who and what we give to God and each other in these intimate and equalized relationships constitute the new wine family. These are the relationships in which we as new wine must corporately be involved, in the dynamic of family love (in relational likeness of the Trinity), wherever and whenever we come together corporately in our family times of worship. In these distinguished worship times, there can be no distinctions made on the basis of human differences. Rather, we need to see ourselves and each other and function together, compatible and congruent with how God is involved with us, showing no favoritism, but vulnerably present and intimately involved with us.

We need the resolve of kûn, such as Mary demonstrated, to stay compatibly and reciprocally involved with the Spirit for all the relational work we are called to embrace together—nothing less and no substitutes!

Whose We Are!

How would you describe in family terms your experiences in corporate worship? On the one hand, it is not unusual to hear pastors refer to their churches as “family.” They often quickly add that there are always difficult persons and oddballs in every family, and they might also say matter-of-factly or tongue-in-cheek that family relationships are always “messy.” Generally these comments are made lightly, even in a joking manner, and the congregation chuckles in agreement. On the other hand, most churches give greater priority to the biological family unit. Based on this appearance of priority between the church family and the biological family, the overall message is that the local church need not take itself too seriously as family. What then are we communicating to our Father about who we are, and more important, whose we are? How is this compatible and congruent with our identity as God’s new creation family—the family Jesus saved us to and Paul made conclusive as the only relational outcome?

It is vital for us to transpose our thinking about church to new creation family, because Jesus’ purpose in coming into the human context was to reconcile persons into an uncommon (holy) family in which the whole and uncommon God would dwell ongoingly by the Spirit (Jn 14:16-21,23; Eph 1:4-14, 2:14-22). Jesus came to establish us together to be the whole and holy (uncommon) family in which God is our Father, and we are the daughters and sons (Rom 8:14-17, 29). In unmistakable relational terms, Jesus spoke of the primacy of his Father’s family over the secondary place of the biological family, not to diminish the latter’s importance but to put it into the larger context of God’s relational whole (e.g. Mt 12:48-50; Jn 19:26-27). This also makes secondary and subordinates the specific identity of any particular local church to the global church, the experiential truth of which may be difficult for many independent churches to accept given the fragmented experiential reality of the global church.

Throughout his time on earth, Jesus consistently used family language (as did Paul) because he was vulnerably involved in nothing less than the relational work of establishing the Father’s family. Jesus said that his followers would extend his relational work even further (Jn 14:12). Paul took up this relational work with the vulnerable depth from his innermost, and we are likewise challenged to continue building together this new creation family above any other priority (Gal 6:15; Eph 4:24). Embodying new the discipleship-worship relationship is why our mature boasting is so important to God, and irreducible to anything less and nonnegotiable to any substitutes.

Our corporate identity needs to emerge in wholeness so that corporately ‘what we give’ in our boasting (Mk 4:24) will truly mature in likeness of the whole and uncommon God. For our boast to fully mature, we need to understand the integral relational work Jesus accomplished while on the cross—beyond his sacrifice for atonement our sins. Consider carefully the following excerpt from an important discussion that corrects our narrowed-down view of the cross. The common narrowed-down view of the cross misses the fuller disclosure of the Trinity’s relational work to reconcile us into the Father’s family:

The prevailing cross still used today needs to be reconstructed with Jesus’ whole person building his kingdom into his church family. When the second criminal asked Jesus to remember him in his kingdom, Jesus equalized him and embraced him in whole relationship together. This was not a unique circumstance but an integral extension of the whole person and relationships Jesus embodied. In his whole ontology and function on the cross…Jesus was building his church in the primacy of whole relationship together as family when he connected his mother Mary and his beloved disciple John in new creation relationship together distinguished by family [Jn 19:26-27]. Our cross must, by the nature of his cross, also be constructed to build his new creation family.

His new creation family…certainly requires redemptive change…for this reconciliation to be composed in the primacy of whole relationship together. Redemptive reconciliation requires hard choices and deep changes from inner out. This unavoidably necessitates epistemic and ontological humility, just as Jesus made requisite in the first beatitude for the identity formation of those belonging to his family…. To build his family Jesus clearly distinguished the primacy of his family over what is only secondary, and which cannot be used to displace or be a substitute for the primary position and function of his family. For example, “Who is my family…persons who respond relationally to my Father is my family” (Mt 12:48-49). Biological family represents only one of many ways that preoccupation with the secondary reduces the primacy of his family (as Paul made definitive, Rom 14:17), all of which require redemptive change. These of course are hard changes to choose, likely getting to the roots of our own identity or self-worth. All of this by design converges on the cross, that is, when whole-ly constructed.[4]

The significance of the cross is that Jesus accomplished the integral relational work of family love that was necessary for full soteriology—saving us from the human condition ‘to be relationally apart’ and embedded in the sin of reductionism, to relationally belong as daughter and son in the Father’s family. By establishing John and Mary (Jesus’ mother) together, Jesus subordinated the biological family to the Father’s new creation, thus composing our primary identity in Christ into which all our other identities are contextualized by the process of reciprocating contextualization (mentioned earlier). All secondary matters must be integrated into this primary in order for the primacy of the new creation family to emerge and mature.

The cross’ full significance is given greater clarity by the fact that ‘the cross serves the Father’ for his relational purpose to establish his uncommon family (us), in which the Trinity can “come to them and make our home with them” (Jn 14:23) and “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one family” (Jn 17:21,23). In relational congruity then, the cross we claim must, by the nature of Jesus’ cross, constitute God’s new dwelling. As long as our boasting in the cross remains narrowly focused on Jesus’ sacrifice, we will (continue to) fail to mature in our boasting, because we will not have anything further to boast about other than Jesus’ sacrificial death. Yet, as stated earlier, the writer of Hebrews urged his readers/listeners to move beyond such basics to maturity (Heb 6:1; cf. v.6).

What, then, are we building when we come together to worship? That is, are who and what we boast in about the integration of who we are and whose we are as the new creation family, or merely a simulation of it? Jesus gave priority to the Father’s family above all other identities to illuminate the primacy of relationship together in wholeness and what has primary significance to God. Is this the measure we use to determine the measure we give? Who and what we give will be who and what we get and celebrate.

Our new and whole identity as the whole and holy God’s very own family becomes distinguished only in intimate and equalized relationships that we engage together. In view of our new and whole identity, let’s consider what our worship relationship communicates. Does our corporate identity as God’s new creation family have relational clarity whenever we gather in corporate worship beyond merely a disembodied-derelationalized concept in our theology? Do we function in our new identity from inner out on the basis of God’s relational grace, or is there immature boasting? Is the primacy that God gives to his distinguished family clearly embodied in our worship? Is our compatible relational involvement with the Spirit evident by our vulnerable involvement with each other without the veil of relational barriers (Eph 2:14,22)? In other words, does our boasting in the Lord embody new our corporate identity by making who and what we boast in and about (whose we are) evident in the depth of relationships of family love we engage in worship—as Jesus made imperative in his new command (Jn 13:34-35)?

If we answer ‘yes’ to all of the above, then we are corporately embodying the wholeness (peace) of Christ (Col 2:9-10, 3:15-16) in which all the members have wholeness and well-being (šālôm, biblical peace), fulfilling God’s definitive blessing (Num 6:24-26). Now that is something distinguished to boast in and about with joy-full shout-in! If our hearts are not stirred up by this experiential truth, then this relational outcome is not an experiential reality but, at best, a referential affirmation.

Contrary to many theologians, worship thinkers, spiritual formation mentors, and even Christian psychologists, identity formation in wholeness does not take place by outer-in change—which only mirrors change shaped from the surrounding context (syschematizo, Rom 12:2). That is, we do not undergo inner-out redemptive change necessary for transformation (metamorphoō, Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18) by the following: merely by attending worship services over time; by cognitively learning the Christian vocabulary (‘churchspeak’) and “sacred” actions (kneeling, prostrating); by even raising hands and shouting praise; by practicing spiritual disciplines; as the outcome of baptism and Communion (though these last two have deep relational significance to our corporate life together as the new creation family when participation is vulnerably involved from inner out in relational terms over referential terms). Rather, the process of identity formation in our innermost as our Father’s daughters and sons is a function only of compatible and congruent relational connection with God in Face-to-face relationship on God’s relational terms—the relational outcome of which in reciprocal relationship together is the distinguished identity of God’s new creation family.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus illuminated for us the relational-functional process of identity formation of who we are as his disciples and, inseparably, whose we are as the Father’s children, in the Beatitudes (Mt 5: 1-12). In essence, the Beatitudes take us through the relational work of bringing our heart vulnerably exposed before the Father, and dying to the self-determination by which we constructed our competing fragmented identities upon secondary outer-in criteria. We must bring these before the Father with our heart fully exposed in its deepest need. From this critical point forward, our hearts go through a process with the Spirit’s deep working that frees our hearts, heals and makes them whole by reconstructing anew our identity in relational trust and wholeness. While this is an individual process we each must go through, it is integrally what we share together in the new creation family.[5]

Jesus then clarified the necessary ongoing qualitative-relational function in our new identity that would distinguish us as the Father’s own daughters and sons. Jesus used the metaphors of light and salt (Mt 5:13-16) for the clarity and depth of our identity, which must be reflected not just in our theology, but inseparably in our practice, summarized as follows:

Wholeness of identity as Jesus’ followers is a relationship-specific process engaged in the practice of the contrary culture clearly distinguished from prevailing cultures (including popular Christian subcultures), which Jesus made definitive in his sanctified life and practice and outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. Clarity and depth of his followers’ identity is rooted in the following: what we are in the relational progression of reciprocal relationship with Jesus, and thus who we become intimately with the Father in his family together, as we also reciprocally work with the Spirit in how we ongoingly function.

The clarity of the light and the depth of the salt are the relational outcome of this ongoing intimate relationship with the Trinity. Any identity formed while distant from this relationship (which happens even in church) or in competition with this relationship (which happens even in Christian subcultures) diminishes the basic identity of being the whole of God’s very own (“the light”) as well as deteriorates its qualitative substance (“the salt”). Certainly, then, the whole presentation of self to others is crucial to the identity of Jesus’ followers. This is the importance of Jesus interrelating identity with righteousness in conjoint function. While identity informs us of who, what and how we are, righteousness is the functional process that practices the whole of what, who and how we are. Identity and righteousness are conjoined to present a whole person in congruence (ontologically and functionally) to what, who and how that person is—not only in Christ but in the whole of God, the Trinity. Righteousness is necessary so that his followers can be counted on to be those whole persons—nothing less and no substitutes, and thereby distinguished from reductionist practice (Mt 5:20).[6]

When our identity has clarity and depth, it functions as light in distinctive wholeness and as salt in its qualitative presence. Light and salt express the distinguished identity of who we belong to. When not made ambiguous or diminished, light and salt ‘boast’ by reflecting and giving witness to the whole and uncommon God. Therefore, whenever and wherever we come together in corporate worship, our identity as God’s whole-ly created new wine family must function as light and salt in order to be distinguishable from common function of stratified/hierarchies in relational distance. Remember that persons’ hearts are kept distant or hidden (even from themselves) when they are fragmented and defined by only quantitative parts (what they do or have), and are therefore not whole-ly available for intimate connection with other hearts.

Who, what, and how we function compose our relational righteousness that God can count on us for, a vital aspect for our identity to be whole and uncommon, in likeness of God. Any relational distance diminishes our functioning identity from God’s new creation family in intimate and equalized relationships and shifts us into something much less, or some poor substitute that effectively creates a competing identity that is not able to illuminate whose we are. Rather, in this competing substitute identity, we have created an ontological simulation (with epistemological illusion) of who and what we are as (1) Jesus’ followers and thus (2) God’s church, both of which re-shape God in the process of idolization of God, which we noted earlier.

Competing identities unavoidably result in immature boasting in worship. Relationally, when we corporately present a competing identity to God, God cannot relationally count on us to be his uncommon family, the relational implication of which is the point of the first commandment in the OT (see Ex 20:4-5). Whenever we compromise who we are and whose we are, we can only expect our identity as salt to be reduced to a shallowness and our identity as light to be fragmented into ambiguity—determining the limits of who and what we give and thus can get and celebrate. This critical condition lacks our relational righteousness, whereby we engage in both hypokrisis and all kinds of boost-boasting to try to make up (or cover-up) for our lacks. Even with our best intentions we often present competing and compromising identities to God in worship, which of course continues to limit and constrain who and what we and God gets and thus can celebrate. And we should not expect anything more if this is the script narrating our discipleship-worship relationship.

Maturing to wholeness certainly goes far beyond what I had imagined, requiring of me not what I expected (vulnerable inner-out change), along with not requiring of me what I did expect (easier outer-in change to measure-up in a comparative process). An unexpected necessary change was from my immature boasting in worship, as just discussed, to mature boasting. Looking back on my long journey, I had often felt that something deep and significant was missing in my worship experiences and relationships, even as part of music teams and as a worshiper in the pews. That ‘something’ was that God usually seemed far away from my heart. I also sensed that my identity as God’s daughter did not go very deep (I can be honest about it now, but I wasn’t back then).

Yet, this did not make sense to me, given that I was worshiping God, or so I assumed and thus believed. Once in awhile I “felt” God’s presence, yet worshiping (as well as praying) did not adequately bridge the experiential gap between God and my heart, but I kept trying. Now I understand the reason for the experiential gap: God wasn’t far from me; rather, my heart was far from God (and I’m not referring to the misleading presence of mere emotional affect), keeping relational distance though I abundantly “honored” God with my lips. My immature boasting (from defining my person, God and others by outer-in criteria) reflected the lack of wholeness in my person, which played out somewhat like an actor in a play. This is exactly the hypokrisis that Jesus exposed in some Pharisees (discussed earlier, Mt 15:8), and that Jesus warns us against (“the yeast of the Pharisees,” Lk 12:1).

Hypokrisis is playing out the masquerade of immature boasting in worship, that is, the ontological simulation and epistemological illusion that immature boasting hides behind—as if wearing a mask that presents a different identity of who and what we are. We may look as if we’re really boasting about and worshiping God by coming to worship, singing, serving, doing all these church things, even at some sacrifice to ourselves. These simulations and illusions are always substitutes for whole persons in whole relationships that are intimate and equalized in Face-to-face connection with our Father without the veil. We all engage in this hypokrisis-masquerade, at one time or another, not for the purpose to simply deceive but as a convenient substitute. We cannot necessarily discern this in our own practice, yet God always does because he sees behind it into our hearts (Acts 1:24; 15:8; Rev 2:23).

It is my view that immature boasting is far more pervasive in worship (and all of our church practice) than we would want to admit. This isn’t unique to Christians but just mirrors what is common in our surrounding contexts. I hope readers are willing to examine honestly the presence of immature boasting of the hypokrisis-masquerade that you hear (or that you yourself engage in) in worship; or, at the very least, I hope you will be open to even considering its presence. If our identity is not clearly distinguished by wholeness of persons and relationships, then we cannot escape the reality of substitutes and secondary matter occupying our worship practice. So much of corporate worship today participates in immature boasting that it is normative, and has shaped Christian worship culture to a great extent. That is, much of worship is embedded in convenient substitutes and secondary presentations of who and what we are, especially with subtle forms that are convincing and appealing to a common lens.

I suggest that—and I say this from understanding my own hypokrisis—hypokrisis in worship has figured largely in the church’s diminishment (either quantitatively or qualitatively) in the global North. If the church is not actually dying in the global North, or if evangelical churches can look beyond their large attendance, they have certainly become undistinguished from the common sociocultural context in its relationships. The light and salt of the church’s witness by our identity as God’s (e.g. Jn 13:34-35; 17:21,23) does not have much clarity and depth; and this identity often seems to merely be one part of our identity along with all the other identities that we present to others that are based on human distinctions.

Besides the role functions in church practice already mentioned, other frequent bases for Christians’ primary identity (in actual practice if not in theology) are denominations, race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, nationality/patriotism, political views. If our primary boasting (whether by our words or actions) includes any of these distinctions, then we are inadvertently creating or maintaining relational divisions—the fragmentations and reductions that diminish who and what we give, get and celebrate in worship. Everyone loses out because the church’s identity is ambiguous and lacks depth: God, who does not receive who and what are his; ourselves, who don’t experience the blessed relational outcome in the truth of whose we are; and the rest of the world, left with little understanding of God’s response to its relational human condition ‘to be relationally apart’ because they do not see in us or experience from us the wholeness of who we’ve become and whose we are.

Despite all of our good intentions and desires to worship God faithfully—as well as to proclaim the gospel effectively in worship services and beyond—there persists the heart of the matter. This persistent issue involves where our heart is and thus the primary focus in our practice, in spite of correct theology. An unexpected irony for us to understand is this: God’s heart is more available to us for intimate relational connection than our hearts are available to God. This is why Jesus keeps knocking at the door of the church’s heart (Rev 3:20).

When we ongoingly are involved in Jesus’ relational context and process for reciprocal relationship together, then our identity as his followers and the Father’s new creation family can grow in clarity and depth of whose we are. And only on this relational basis can we embody new the discipleship-worship relationship. The lack of clarity and depth in identity prompted Jesus to address some of the churches in his post-ascension discourse in the book of Revelation. To each of the seven churches, Jesus essentially paraphrased “the measure you give”: “Let anyone who has an ear listen with the vulnerable heart of a child-person, listen in the primacy of relationship together to what the Spirit in compatible reciprocal relationship is saying to the churches about the ambiguity-or-clarity and shallowness-or-depth of your identity as mine” (Rev 2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22). We need to learn from his relational words to them (and us) by listening carefully, paying attention with our compatible relational involvement with the Spirit, with our clarified epistemology and corrected hermeneutic...

Jesus Chastening the Churches

Whenever we come together to corporately worship God, we either function in our whole identity as our Father’s very own beloved ones, or else we function with a competing identity as something less (perhaps a social organization with a religious language and culture) or some substitutes. Accordingly, our boast is either the mature boasting of shout-in in the former, or the immature boost-boast of the latter. Something less and some substitutes are precisely what Jesus addressed in his post-ascension discourse to some of the churches (Rev 2-3), while affirming other churches for their compatible and congruent practice. The issue for the churches receiving Jesus’ clarification and correction was that their ambiguous and shallow identities reflected the common’s criteria by which they came to redefine themselves, which was no longer God’s relational grace for the primacy of relationship.

Jesus chastened the churches at Ephesus, Sardis, Thyatira, and Laodicea. He began with uncovering the church at Ephesus because “you have forsaken [abandoned] your first love” (Rev 2:4, NIV). Their “first love” acknowledges their previous compatible relational involvement with God in family love (cf. Eph 1:15-16), but it also implies another love (a substitute) that had taken the first love’s place. The church at Ephesus had shifted from the primacy of God’s relational terms to giving primacy to being doctrinally pure, which on appearance seems to be correct and what God would want. That’s the subtlety of reductionism. Whoever or whatever we “love” (give primacy to) is what we celebrate in worship, what we boast about and exalt. The three others similarly substituted for the primacy of relationship with something less, some secondary outer-in criteria by which they came to define themselves, and thus boast about in a competing identity.

This study will not fully discuss all these churches. For the present discussion, however, the following excerpt summarizes the competing identities that reflect how they defined themselves; their underlying criteria were all secondary matter that were given primacy in place of God’s relational terms for relationship together. Their criteria and terms for their identities determined their theology and practice, which embodied old the discipleship-worship relationship.[7]

These churches were not unique in church formation and they cannot be considered exceptions in church history. Each church has a counterpart in the contemporary church that must be taken seriously because of Jesus’ critique for his church to be whole:

4. Church at Laodicea—the traditional status-quo church or consumer church of convenience.

All these churches have in common what continue to be critical interrelated issues needing epistemological clarification and hermeneutical correction: a weak view of sin not including reductionism, and a fragmentary theological anthropology reducing ontology and function.

It is crucial for the clarity and depth of our identity to learn from the above churches and Jesus’ challenges to them. Immature boasting based on outer-in criteria of secondary matter had displaced the primacy of relationship, thus clouding whose they were. Even though their specific contexts are located in ancient history, the relational issues are indisputably recognizable and relevant to our churches today; they are us. In his discourse, Jesus expressed his displeasure with them, holding them accountable for their practices that gave God ‘something less and some substitutes’ in place of their hearts being vulnerable and available to him. Yet, Jesus continued in loving pursuit of their hearts for intimate relationship together in whole-ly communion (Rev 3:19-20).

Our identity in wholeness as whose we are has to be relationally rooted in the depth of our ongoing relational involvement with God in our innermost. Jesus’ words to the churches speak to us today because how God did relationship back then is how God does relationship always. God is vulnerably present and intimately involved with us today, which is communication to us through his relational words and the reciprocal involvement of the Spirit. Our part is indisputably first to listen to the Spirit with vulnerable hearts (and minds), which may involve first dying to keeping our hearts unavailable to really listen to God’s heart, and dying to our old interpretive framework with its biases and preconceived notion about who and what have relational significance to the whole and uncommon God. In other words, embodying new the discipleship-worship relationship requires the whole theology and practice that emerges, unfolds and matures only from our epistemic and ontological humility, giving primacy to God and letting God speak for himself.

Growing into the Dwelling of God

It is simply beyond words and human understanding that the transcendent and holy God is vulnerably present and intimately involved with his human creation: he has loved us immeasurably, has long desired to respond to our human relational condition ‘to be apart’ since creation, and has persistently sought persons to respond compatibly in reciprocal relationship together to compose “a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph 2:22, NIV). Part of what is so remarkable is the vulnerability of God in all his dealings with humans. In Moses’ time under the first covenant, the dwelling for his presence was the temple, in the Most Holy Place behind the curtain (Ex 25:8, 29:45). God’s unmistakable desire was intimate relationship together, as he vulnerably communicated to them, “I will place my dwelling in your midst…. I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Lev 26:12). Yet, intimate relationship together was accessible only behind the curtain of God’s dwelling (Ex 26:33).

When the new covenant replaced the old covenant by the relational work of the Son (Heb 10:19-22), something even more improbable and remarkable came into being: the Father established that his family dwelling was now to be in our hearts corporately together (Jn 14:23; Eph 2:22), thereby composing his new creation family with the veil removed (2 Cor 3:18). To make our corporate innermost his dwelling is surely risky based on our susceptibility to distance our hearts from him; yet reciprocal relationship involved that risk to which God makes himself vulnerable for the sake of having whole-ly communion together, Therefore, by God’s family love and relational grace, God’s ongoing vulnerable presence in us by the Spirit has become our improbable and remarkable inheritance already today (2 Cor 2:22). Now we belong to God, and God belongs to us.

For this improbable and blessed relational outcome—composing “who and what we get”—the Spirit is present in our hearts for ongoing compatible reciprocal (not unilateral) relational involvement together. If this experiential truth of the Spirit (Jn 16:13) is referentialized, the Spirit’s presence and involvement will not be our experiential reality in reciprocal relationship. Without the Spirit’s presence in/with us for this relationship, we could not experience belonging to the Father’s family as daughters and sons who have been freed to uncommon Face-to-face, heart-to-heart relational connection without the relational barriers of the veil (Rom 8:15-16; 2 Cor 3:18). To reciprocally respond vulnerably, our hearts deeply need the Spirit to help us corporately make the intimate relational connections in wholeness together—with the Father and each other as sisters and brother—for the relational reality of belonging to each other in whole-ly (i.e. integrally whole and holy) communion.

Clearly, the Spirit is present not for us to remain isolated in our individual relationship with the Lord, but to grow and mature together into an uncommon relational dwelling context for God. This is how our identity as whose we are becomes clearer, deepens in its qualitative substance, and emerges to flow as the new wine family to celebrate whose we are.

The Spirit for Relational Belonging

If what we are growing together relationally when we gather for worship is indeed the new creation family, then the Spirit is indispensable to integrally distinguish our persons, relationships and this relational outcome—integrating into wholeness together by the Spirit. There is no other purpose for the Spirit to dwell in us. Without the Spirit’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement with us in our innermost, and without our compatible reciprocal involvement with the Spirit, what we may build together might as well be just another tower of Babel, or just another socio-religious group. That is, in terms of our relational experience in corporate worship (and beyond), without our reciprocal relationship with the Spirit, what we build together functions essentially as a relational orphanage—a place to come and have membership but not relationally belong together as family. When we gather together and relational distance characterizes how we are (vertically with God and horizontally with each other), then any appearance of or talk about being church-as-family can only be an ontological simulation promoted by epistemological illusion.

God’s very own Spirit is here with us now, dwelling in our hearts for compatible and reciprocal relationship together (Jn 14:26). Yet, the church (local and global) still needs epistemological clarification and hermeneutic correction for how we see the Spirit’s person, and how that determines how we function with the Spirit. Just as we must not fragment the Father and Jesus to mere parts of what they do or have, so also we must not fragment the Holy Spirit’s person to just an aspect of his “power,” as a force for us to use. The trinitarian persons equally share God’s being as heart, God’s nature as relational, and God’s presence as vulnerable; the Spirit as person is one in ontology in the whole of God (the Trinity)—nothing less and no substitutes. Jesus’ relational paradigm continues to correct us: “the measure you give in relationship with the Spirit will be the measure you experience relationally belonging to us” (Mk 4:24).

The two major ways we fragment and reduce the Spirit are familiar to us. First, we think of the Spirit as an impersonal power, the ‘it’ that bestows spiritual gifts, which we commonly misperceive in reduced terms of enabling what an individual has or does (e.g. teach, preach, heal, serve, speak in tongues). With this fragmented view of the Spirit, we pray for manifestations of the Spirit to enhance our preaching, our worship leading, our ministry, and bring forth fruit of our evangelism—all to witness to God’s power.

Jesus, however, made it clear that the Spirit’s relational purpose is for the whole of God to dwell in our hearts (Jn 14:16-23), thereby to compose us as God’s intimate dwelling (Eph 2:22). In the primacy God gives to relationship together, the Spirit is vulnerably present and intimately involved with us corporately—just as Jesus was with his disciples during his incarnation. The Spirit is Jesus’ relational replacement for this ongoing dynamic relationship together, yet, in a sense, more so. That is, the Spirit is intimately involved with our innermost to help us bring our innermost to the Father, by which we make face-to-face, heart-to-heart relational connection with our “Abba” (Rom 8:14-16; Gal 4:6-7). This is the relational belonging that Paul experienced to make his person whole, and what we need to and can experience also (2 Cor 3:16-18). The Spirit of truth (Jn 14:17; 16:13) herein extends Jesus’ relational function as the relational Truth by both connecting our hearts with our Father’s heart and sealing our belonging relationally to God’s whole family (2Cor 2:22).

For the maturing of our identity as God’s new creation family, distinguished by our uncommon function in intimate and equalized relationships together, we need to pay attention to Jesus’ disclosures about the Spirit and Paul’s whole knowledge about the Spirit’s central function for our ecclesiology to be transformed to wholeness.

Just as Jesus identified the Spirit as the integral key to what unfolds after his ascension (Jn 14:16-18,26; 15:26; 16:8-15; Acts 1:4-5, 7-8), Paul confirmed the Spirit as that key and affirmed his reciprocal relational work as the innermost of God’s presence and involvement (1 Cor 2:9-16; 12:3-13; 2 Cor 3:17-18; Rom 8:9-16; Eph 1:13-14; 2:22). The synthesis of Jesus into Paul and their gospel of wholeness and its relational outcome of the new creation family unfold only in our whole understanding of the Spirit. Accordingly, as we transition from ‘God’s relational context and process to transformation’…to ‘the relational outcome of wholeness’…, the composition of this outcome pivots on the Spirit—the irreplaceable replacement person.[8]

When intimate-equalized relationships is our experience corporately in worship, we are together all affirmed, all comforted, all encouraged, and further built up in the clarity and depth of our identity, unmistakably belonging to God’s very own family. This matures who and what we boast in and about, because who and what we get in wholeness frees us to celebrate God’s whole. Furthermore, the primacy of relationally growing together our Father’s family in family love as persons who relationally belong together, also must become the integrating context for all the spiritual gifts that are given to us by the Spirit. These are gifts to the family, not to individuals for self-promotion; and churches need to stop highlighting the individual possessing spiritual gifts. Paul illuminated this definitively in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 12), with special emphasis on the Spirit’s relational function for the primacy of relationally growing into wholeness God’s family. Paul further put into necessary perspective that being intimately involved together with the Spirit in family love (agapē) is how we are “rooted and established together” by relationally bonding us into wholeness (1 Cor 13; Eph 3:16-17, NIV; cf. 4:3; Col 3:14). This relational outcome certainly involves synergy (whole greater than sum of its parts), and yet it unfolds not as a mysterious process but from the vulnerable relational work of the Spirit in reciprocal involvement with us, ongoing and not unilaterally.

This brings us to the second major way we fragment the Spirit, which is to expect the Spirit to do all the relational work unilaterally. The Spirit does not engage in unilateral relationship, even within the Trinity (cf. Jn 16:13-15). Yet, we often, especially in Eucharistic prayers, invoke the Spirit for such various purposes: to be present in our midst; to make the sermon/teaching of Scripture come alive and speak to our hearts; to come upon and bless the Communion elements; to be poured out upon the congregation to unite us together. These invocations are for important relational functions, but when we pray this way, I doubt many of us are even thinking about our reciprocal involvement with the Spirit and our share of the relational work for this outcome. We need to address the assumption among us to think the Spirit will unilaterally do these things. The Spirit, as Jesus’ relational replacement, does not unilaterally cause things to happen and thereby contradict Jesus’ key words about our relational responsibility: “the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Mk 4:24).

We are challenged to take up our relational responsibility for the three major issues for all practice with the Spirit: the person we present to the Spirit, the integrity and content of our communication, and the depth level that we engage in relationship with the Spirit. Any relational distance, which we have discussed throughout this study, that dealt with our relationship with Jesus also applies to our relationship with the Spirit. For example, when Jesus foretold that he will say to some persons who prophesied and did ministry in his name, “I never knew you” (Mt 7:23), the Spirit could say the same. The Spirit of Jesus is affected in the same way when we are not compatibly involved with him in our innermost where he dwells (“grieve,” Eph 4:30; cf. “quench,” 1 Thes 5:9; “outrage,” Heb 10:29). The person of the Spirit gets deeply affected, just as Jesus did/does. We grieve the Spirit when we maintain relational distance by de-personizing the Spirit to an impersonal power, or by keeping our hearts hidden or masked, or when we function in fragmented and reduced ontology with something less and some substitutes for the vulnerability of child-persons (Heb 10:38 with v.29).

Just as I needed correction and redemptive change from functioning in hypokrisis, I have needed my interpretive framework and lens (phronēma and phroneō) regarding the Spirit to be redeemed to wholeness (Rom 8:5-6). I have perceived and treated the Spirit as some impersonal power source to be invoked as needed, depending on the situation and need. With my wrong de-personizing and de-relationalizing view of the Spirit, I tried to engage with the Spirit on my fragmented terms. Accordingly, I ignored the Spirit’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement for compatible reciprocal relationship together. Instead of reciprocating in relationship together, I would, along with many other worshipers, essentially ask the Spirit to do something, such as to make the words of Scripture come alive and speak to our hearts, or to make Christ’s presence felt during Communion. I wanted so badly for the Spirit to do something powerful, even miraculous in us to change us.

Other familiar ways we pray narrowly to the Spirit is to empower us to preach, for ministry and evangelism, or even to know what to say in various situations. The focus of such prayers is usually about the results and outcomes we want to see happen; that is, our prayers inadvertently become about what we want to experience, and even quite subtly, centered around ourselves even though we might be praying for others at the same time. Such prayers to the Spirit are less about (or not at all about) the primacy of mature boasting in whose we are and helping persons grow in God’s relational grace to be whole, and for the integral relational outcome of our relationships together as God’s family. In this way, our prayers to the Spirit miss the Spirit’s person. These prayers become ontological simulations that are engaged in role-playing as an incomplete person (hypokrisis), which is contrary to the truth of the whole gospel (just as Peter functioned, Gal 2:11-14).

My ignoring the Spirit grieved him (Eph 4:30); it exposed my need to undergo redemptive change where the old (my determining the terms for relationship with the Spirit) had to die from inner out so that the Spirit could bring forth the new from inner out. The new embodies the vulnerableness of my heart for compatible reciprocal relationship with the Spirit as a child-person, only in qualitative-relational terms, not in quantitative terms of what I do or have. The Spirit has been persistently pursuing my heart for my compatible reciprocal relational involvement together. The deeply blessed outcome is that I now experience in my innermost relationally belonging to my Father in his very own family. In my Father, with the Son and by the Spirit I boast!

Belonging—how do you feel about relationally belonging in God’s very own family? In my life following Jesus, from the beginning point through many years, as my heart slowly emerged from behind masks of hypokrisis, I became aware of my deep loneliness—not about being physically alone but “to be apart” in whole relational terms—and my inner need to belong. The whole of God (the Father, Son, and Spirit) has deeply responded to my relational condition by freeing me from sin of reductionism, to my place in his new creation family distinguished inclusively as daughter. Moreover, I’ve been growing in reciprocal relationship with the Spirit—even during the writing of this study. He has matured my boasting during this exciting time! I also anticipate expectantly, if not always assuredly, the further relational outcome in all willing churches of the emergence in new wine of intimate and equalized relationships with other sisters and brothers, so that God can receive all who are his and we can celebrate new the discipleship-worship relationship together.

Paul deeply experienced belonging to God, not as a static position or label, but in the dynamic relationship with the whole of God who transformed his whole person from inner out. His transformation (not a conversion) changed Paul from merely having citizenship in Israel as God’s people to the ongoing relationship together in wholeness of belonging to God’s new creation family now distinguished as son (Gal 4:4-7). Paul therefore fully understood all the relational dynamics involved in God’s relational response to our human condition ‘to be apart’ and need to belong and thereby be made whole. It was Paul’s particular relational responsibility to nurture this dynamic family reality of belonging together in the new creation family, and he was resolved with kûn in his life (and writings) to thus nurture, grow and mature God’s new creation family, helping us today to understand that what we are save to is nothing less than belonging to God and each other.

For Paul, the relational dynamic of adoption involves the integrated outcome of belonging as possession, relationship and ontology. Those adopted ‘in Christ’ now belong to God, who “put his seal on us” (2 Cor 1:22) as the identification of ownership as God’s possession (peripoiesis, Eph 1:14). More importantly for Paul, in distinguishing God’s relational whole from the human shaping of reductionism, those adopted into God’s family also relationally “belong to Christ,” the pleroma of God, thus relationally belonging to the whole of God (“belong” rendered in the genitive case, 1 Cor 3:23; Gal 3:29; 4:4-7). Equally important in this relational dynamic, since “Christ belongs to God” both relationally and ontologically, by relationally belonging (not ontologically) to Christ those adopted also relationally belong to each other as well as belong ontologically to each other in wholeness together (1 Cor 3:22; 12:15-16; Rom 7:4; 12:5, belong also rendered by ginomai, verb of becoming, and eimi, verb to be).

What unfolds in this theological dynamic ‘in Christ’ is the integrated outcome of belonging. The emphasis of the theology of belonging for Paul in his theological forest is on relational belonging and ontological belonging to signify the new covenant relationship and the new creation. Relational belonging dynamically interacts with ontological belonging in the new creation, and their interaction is the relational outcome of the full soteriology in being saved to wholeness in God’s family together (2 Cor 3:18; 5:16-17; Col 3:10-11). Furthermore, conjoined with the integrated outcome of belonging, the relational outcome of adoption in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes (the theological dynamic of wholeness) is the relational ontology and identity of the new creation of God’s family as the church (Eph 1:22-23).[9]

Dynamic relational belonging (“in Christ”) is signified by baptism. Baptism only has relational significance to God if we are baptized with our hearts vulnerable to God, expressing our compatible response in relational trust (faith) to Jesus’ call to “follow me whole-ly.” Being baptized is a step (one of ongoing steps) with the resolve of kûn to becoming a member who relationally belongs to the Father in his new creation family. In this relational process on this relational path with Jesus, being baptized embodies a mature boast celebrating the embodying new of the discipleship-worship relationship in wholeness together. Furthermore, as if relational belonging to God and each other were not enough to boast in, the further blessed outcome for us to fully receive and boast in is that God relationally belongs to us—the significance of who and what we get reciprocally from the significance of who and what God gets. Our hearts can know this as our experiential truth as we grow intimately with the Spirit, who dwells in our hearts as the experiential Truth for this relational outcome to be our experiential reality.

As we continue with the resolve of kûn to be vulnerably involved with the Spirit and with each other—that is, as we mature in our vulnerableness as child-persons together—we can anticipate the deep satisfaction of experiencing the Father Face to face (cf. Mt 5:6-9; Heb 12:14)). We can anticipate becoming distinguished (whole and uncommon) in our discipleship-worship relationship that stands in qualitative contrast to the common fragmenting of our surrounding contexts (cf. Jn 13:34-35). This happens because in this relational epistemic process with the Spirit, we become aware of what is qualitative (innermost) in ourselves and others, including God, and increasingly aware of the relational. Relational awareness and qualitative sensitivity mean recognizing and taking the opportunities all around us for making relational connection with others by making our hearts vulnerable to them in family love. Relational awareness is also sensitive to relational distance that indicates the need within the family for loving correction in some way. This is who and what we by necessity give as individual persons, but more so together as new creation family.

The relational epistemic process in intimate relational connection with the Spirit frees and transforms our focus (2 Cor 3:17) from the secondary of outer-in criteria (of what we do/have, e.g. of the ‘wise and learned’) in the comparative process. Our focus becomes sensitive to the qualitative in persons (starting with our own person) and aware of relationships (cf. Phil 2:4b). That is, our heart is freed from the self-concerns of self-determination and self-consciousness (cf. Phil 2:4a) to being vulnerable (like child-persons), which means making our hearts ready and available to God and each other for heart-to-heart connection in intimate relationship together, equalized without the veil of human distinctions.

Vulnerable hearts for relationship together is what Paul was asking of the Corinthians in place of their outer-in immature boost-boasting (1 Cor 4:6-7; 2 Cor 6:11-13). He made this plea with his own heart extended vulnerably to them, thereby demonstrating for us to learn that family love initiates as a subject (even in difficult situations), and doesn’t wait conveniently as a passive object for others to initiate.

Belonging, growing together, and celebrating who and whose we are corporately find their fullest expression whenever and wherever we gather for worship. Belonging, growing together, and celebrating are inseparable because these are all dynamic functions of relationship. Our mature boasting as this distinguished uncommon family isn’t measured in referential terms by outer-in criteria, but only by the clarity and qualitative depth of our relationships together—that is, by our relational righteousness that God can count on to be compatible and congruent with who, what, and how the whole and uncommon God is. Who and what we give, get, and celebrate—this is the new creation family in which God dwells whole-ly and is present uncommonly to the whole world!

The depth of this intimate involvement in family love is the function signified in

Jesus’ relational language in the Sermon on the Mount: “be vulnerably involved in family love as your Father is vulnerably involved, including with you” (Mt 5:48). Family love involves making ourselves vulnerable to each other, whereby we become aware of each other in specific ways, involved in the depth of our hearts—that is, growing in both sensitivity to the qualitative and awareness of the relational. Vulnerableness with each other necessitates listening well, responding to the other person as needed, allowing ourselves be negatively affected and still reciprocally sharing ourselves openly, even with critique (cf. Col 3:16-17). Vulnerableness also means growing increasingly in the depth of caring for others in their persons from inner out.

Relational language is an irreplaceable dimension in these relational connections of family love, which Paul illuminated beyond a list of virtues in order to mature in whole ecclesiology (e.g. Eph 4:25-32; Col 3:8-9). We must remove language (both spoken and through our nonverbal actions) that creates relational barriers (e.g. false presentations, hiding one’s whole person, composing overstatements or illusions with words), and let family love compose our relational language to grow together (Eph 4:15; Eph 5:18b-20; Col 3:12-17). In and for family love, Paul urges the church in corporate life, notably in worship: “with your whole person be relationally involved with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18b), and extend family love to each other to compose mature boasting, paraphrased thus:

“Speak only in relational language that communicates whole-ly from inner out in psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 5:19-20; cf. Col 3:15-17).

Here Paul illuminates the vital function about music as the unique inner-out idiom of qualitative-relational language for worship. It is first important for us to understand that Paul is able to speak for God in God’s relational language because Paul himself has been made mature in wholeness from inner out by God’s relational grace (2 Cor 12:9). As a mature child-person, Paul uses his hermeneutical means (aisthētērion, Heb 5:14) in reciprocal relationship with the Spirit, who has transformed Paul’s interpretive framework and lens (phronēma and phroneō, Rom 8:5-6). On this basis, Paul urges the churches to build each other up in family love, for which music plays a vital part. We must never let music be reduced to just a form or style and become a divisive issue among us.[10]

Relationally belonging to the Father’s new creation family includes our corporate relational responsibilities that we might not want to embrace, but they are a necessary aspect of maturing in the clarity and depth of whose we are. The poet of Psalm 149 summarized for us our integral relational response of worship that God seeks from those who worship in spirit and truth (honesty of heart requiring the heart’s vulnerableness). This integral response is the conjoint effort to mature in wholeness and fight against reductionism. Along with the imperative Halelu Yah (boast in the Lord, vv.1,9c) in our mouths (v.6a, NIV), there is a “double-edged sword” in our hands” (v.6b). Worship can never be sufficient and whole in its significance to God unless our praise is accompanied also by our opposition to and rejection of reductionism, first in our midst before we can address it in the world. And this will often necessitate penetrating the outer layers of immature boasting to get to the heart of our worship practice.

A double-edged sword in Scripture is a metaphor for God’s Word (though the latter can be even the sharper of the two, cf. Heb 4:12). God’s Word, like a double-edged sword, pierces deep into our innermost, where only God can see what lurks there. Not even we ourselves always know what we hide deep in our hearts. Exposing reductionism was/is the necessary function of the embodied Word’s sword in order for wholeness to emerge (Mt 10:34-36). For God’s people to hold this double-edge sword in our hands is to engage in the fight against reductionism—which is always conjoined with the fight for the gospel of wholeness, as Paul clearly illuminates for us. Our relational responsibilities that come with belonging in God’s uncommon family converge in the reciprocal relational work with the Spirit in this integral fight both within our individual selves and among God’s people. God’s people take this conjoint fight into the world, but we cannot adequately, nor legitimately engage in what we do not practice ourselves. Thus the issue of being and living whole needs to be ongoingly addressed.

Certainly we humans aren’t the judge who can compose judgment (cf. Mt 7:1). Yet, “to carry out a legitimate sentence” (Ps 149:9) means that God’s people are to speak out and hold accountable each other according to God’s judgments of sin as reductionism. The word for “sentence” is mišpāṭ, technically denoting justice, law, judgment, or verdict. Since God himself is the only judge, we as his people have the relational responsibility to represent him by the depth of relationship we engage in relationship with each other (the third major issue for all practice)—which requires the sword in order to compose whole theology and practice.

Sharing family love whenever we corporately come together means to be involved with each other for cultivating the wholeness of each member and wholeness in our relationships together, that is, wholeness of persons growing in God’s relational terms of grace. This is the relational imperative made by the Hebrews writer (Heb 12:15; 13:9), and the basis on which Paul started and/or ended his letters to the churches with “grace and wholeness [peace]” (e.g. 1 Cor 1:3, 16:23; Gal 1:6, 6:18). Only on the basis of God’s relational response to us by his relational grace are we able to be whole-ly his very own family, composing the basis of our mature boast—the nothing less and no substitutes of our “Hallelujah Whole” new song (p. 83 of this study).

We are the new creation family of the new covenant, God’s relational dwelling context, a compatibly vulnerable people composed of hearts joined together in family love both in corporate worship and beyond. This is what Jesus prayed for (Jn 17:23). Family love, engaged face to face jointly in intimate and equalized relationships, will be the evidence of our maturity, and embodies new who and what we are as new wine family (as Paul made definitive for the church, Eph 4:13-16). Therefore, it is vital to establish in our understanding that we cannot think that the curtain still exists in God’s dwelling, which would create a division of those going behind the curtain from those still remaining as if in front (which some still function as). To clarify, throughout this study, going ‘behind the curtain’ refers to the only access to intimate communion with God in the new covenant. While the curtain no longer exists in God’s dwelling, however, whether the veil is still present or removed from our persons and relationships continues to be an ongoing question only we (both individually and corporately) can answer in reciprocal relationship with the Spirit. Who and what we give will determine who and what we get and can celebrate.

Embodying ‘new’ our worship-discipleship relationship as the new wine family is the ‘singing’ of God’s new song, as mentioned in the first chapters of this study. It bears repeating this essential relational dynamic for our worship-discipleship relationship to mature:

‘Singing’ is the integral relational dynamic of life that clearly distinguishes God’s family in the tune of the new song composed in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole of God, the song of which worship is the chorus. And, worship is the integrating focus and the integral relational convergence of our (both individual and corporate) reciprocal relational response and vulnerable involvement in relationship together with God—the ongoing primacy of which is the sound of consonance significant to God’s ear.

‘Singing’ the new song is the mature embodied boasting that Paul urged of the church in Corinth: “Let those who boast boast in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:31), which was his own boast. ‘Singing’ the new song fulfills the mature boast that we “relationally understand and know” who, what, and how God is (Jer 9:24-25).

There are no outer-in ‘how-to’s’ for celebrating our God, only corporately bringing before him our whole persons and relationships—nothing less and no substitutes—in compatible and congruent relational involvement together. This is why there are no prescriptions for worship in the Gospels and epistles because the Spirit knows our susceptibility to want to know ‘what to do’. Embodying new the worship-discipleship relationship is only the uncommon relationships—intimate and equalized together—in the new creation family that Jesus prayed for so that we “may be relationally one and thus whole” in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity (Jn 17:21-23).

Embodying new the worship-discipleship relationship requires whole theology and practice: (1) whole understanding of what God gives primacy to and therefore what has relational significance to him, that is, whole theology (not a fragmented theology of referential information about God); and (2) whole practice that involves us corporately together in intimate and equalized relationships, which can only be engaged from inner out to compose persons and relationships in wholeness. These are the uncommon relationships that Jesus, Paul, and Mary illuminate for us to learn and grow from. For our vulnerable response in worship in particular, we need to learn from our sister Mary’s lead as disciple-worshiper that, as Jesus affirmed, exemplifies the blessed relational outcome and compatible congruent response of the whole (not fragmented, reduced or re-shaped) gospel—the gospel of wholeness irreducible to anything less and nonnegotiable to any substitutes, whereby we also are transformed to shout-in child-persons whole-ly together.

In summary relational words, let’s listen to the worshiper who was faced with two choices in a human (in this case hostile) context (Ps 137:4). When Israel was in exile in Babylon, their captors asked the Israelite worshipers to sing some songs. The conflict this raised for him is relevant for us today, or should be.

“How could we sing the Lord’s song apart from God’s relational context and without God’s relational language and terms?”

To just sing (as requested, v.3) is just singing, without any relational significance to God, even though the songs are worship songs. This reduces God’s worship songs to common function, to entertain or make persons merely feel better. To sing to the Lord, however, is communication (mature boasting) composed only in God’s relational context by God’s relational terms. Moreover, as Jesus has made clear throughout this study, to give singing is to get performance. But—to give ‘communication’ is to get relationship together. We can only give communication with communion when we ‘follow me whole-ly’ and ‘remember me whole-ly’, whereby we embody new the worship-discipleship relationship to celebrate together in wholeness.

Any challenges ahead in this journey to whole theology and practice in our worship relationship—whether overt or subtle—come with the territory of being the uncommon family of the whole and uncommon God. Thankfully, we do not face them as relational orphans; we have the whole of God dwelling in us by the Spirit! We need to understand, however, that a major aspect of the challenge for us is whether we are willing to recognize, acknowledge, and die to the influences of the sin of reductionism in our gathered worship (indeed in the entirety of our Christian practice).

When churches take the steps with resolve (kûn) to embody the new creation family—beginning with humbling our hearts to vulnerably receive Jesus’ whole person, beyond only his teachings and ethical example—many persons will no doubt resist or even become hostile and leave (cf. Jn 6:66). Jesus will ask every one of us, “Do you also wish to go away?” (v.67).

For the rest of us who are willing to change and be transformed to wholeness, who and what God gets whenever and wherever we come together to worship him will delight God’s heart, and make congruent relational connection with God that will satisfy our innermost—no longer “to be apart,” with the veil removed. Remember, God’s face has already turned to shine on us, to meet us eye to eye, heart to heart (Num 6:24-26) for an improbable and deeply blessed relational outcome.

Consider the following song for your mature boast in the whole and uncommon God, in whom we are deeply loved and made whole. Theologically and relationally, we can always count on the Face of God for his vulnerable presence and intimate involvement with us! We can celebrate this experiential Truth only as our response is distinguished by this whole theology and relational reality.

[1] For an essential discussion on the pivotal interaction in the primordial garden, I urge you to read T. Dave Matsuo, “Did God Really Say That?” Theology in the Age of Reductionism (Theology Study, 2013). Online at http://4X12.org. 22-27.

[2] T. Dave Matsuo, “Did God Really Say That?”, 37.

[3] T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology: Theological Interpretation in Relational Epistemic Process (Paul Study, 2010). Online at http://4X12.org, 238.

[4] For the full discussion from which this excerpt was taken see T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation: Distinguishing the Discipleship and Ecclesiology Integral to Salvation (Transformation Study, 2015). Online at http://4X12.org, 316-17.

[5] For the in-depth discussion of the Beatitudes and rest of the Sermon on the Mount, I recommend T. Dave Matsuo, Jesus into Paul: Embodying the Theology and Hermeneutic of the Whole Gospel (Integration Study, 2012). Online at http://4X12.org, Ch. 8 “The New Wine and Old Wineskins,” 211-247; or, T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation, chaps. 5 and 9.

[6] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation, 199.

[7] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation, 314. I strongly urge all church leaders to read the complete discussion from which this is excerpted.

[8] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation, 260. For vital in-depth study of the Spirit, please see chap.6 (259-84) from which this excerpt was taken.

[9] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation, 211-12.

[10] For a fuller discussion about the unique relational function of music in worship, see my study A Theology of Worship: ‘Singing’ a New Song to the Lord (Theology of Worship, 2011). Online at http://4X12.org, Verse 4.