Beware of Reductionism

Article 12 of the Belgic Confession (AD 1561) highlights from Scripture the Creation of All Things by the Father through Jesus Christ, as does Hebrews 1:2; Colossians 1:15-20; and John 1: verse 3 and 10. 

Intriguing to me, in that context that emphasizes the Creator of it all being also the Savior of the world, Article 12 addresses the demonic realm in some detail: “The devils and evil spirits are so corrupt that they are enemies of God and of everything good.  They lie in wait for the church and every member of it like thieves with all their power, to destroy and spoil everything by their deceptions.”

So we contrast the expansive, abundance-producing Creator (300 sextillion stars in the universe!) with the corrupting and counterfeiting (but never creating) influence of the devil and his fallen angels.  The devil is a diminisher.  His evil spirits “lie in wait for the church and every member of it like thieves…”.  The enemy of our soul is a taker, deceiving the church into “shrinking thinking”. He steals health.  He robs resources.  If we let him, by being unaware of his schemes, he reduces our true calling and identity in Christ.

Finish these familiar verses in our Bible: “Be alert and of sober mind.  The devil prowls around like a roaring lion…__________________ (looking for someone to devour.). 1 Peter 5:8

“The thief comes to…­­­­­­­­­­________________________(steal, kill and destroy; but I have come that you might have life, and life in abundance.”)  John 10:10

Jesus brings us abundant life; the adversary “who lies in wait for the church and every member of it”...steals, kills, destroys, devours.  Sounds like that is making less of us, diminishing us, minimizing us.

We are exhorted by the Bible to know our enemy and resist his evil schemes/attacks.  A great strategy of the kingdom of darkness is REDUCTIONISM.

Let me highlight some ways I have seen the enemy steal and diminish our identity in Christ and our high calling in the world as ambassadors of the Kingdom of God.  Even in good conservative, evangelistic churches, there are marks of the enemy’s scheme of reductionism.  Let’s resist these together.

Reduce the Trinity.  Not in actual effect, which is impossible, but reduce our relationship to the full nature of God, persuading us perhaps that the Father is to blame or is untrustworthy (because maybe an earthly father fell short and wounded us) or that God is cold, distant, judgmental, or harsh.  Or minimize our relationship to the Holy Spirit, in terms of his true nature (to be another Counselor just like Jesus as John 14:16 says, fully God, indwelling us) with his divine presence, power, gifts, love, and wisdom.

Reduce the Gospel of God.  Instead of the fullness of the message of the Father for all nations and generations, wrapped up in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, pouring out of the Holy Spirit and second coming of Jesus…we get into shrinking thinking that focuses on perhaps the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and going to heaven when we die, but forget so much else communicated to us in Christ.  How are the three years of his public life in the power of the same Holy Spirit, given now to us, a model for our ministry life as disciples who follow him and obey his 50 commands (in the Great Commission)? What does the ascension mean in terms of an authority revolution in our world for every sphere of human life?  And so much more.  When the fullness of the gospel is not centered in our churches life and preaching, or saturating our mission in the world, our churches get weaker and diminished.  If we allow our experience and grasp of the Trinity or the Gospel to shrink, our churches shrink too.

Reduce the Equipping Leadership of the Church.  One of the ascension ministries of Jesus to our day (he is the same yesterday, today, forever) according to Ephesians 4 is calling forth and empowering five kinds of equipping leaders to train the saints for ministry…apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.  If we play small in the kingdom and only understand or appreciate one or two of these types of equipping leaders, who all have Jesus as their best model of leadership, we reduce the growth and potential of the church in our context.  There are other blogs at www.arc21.org/articles to expand on this more if it seems new to you, though it permeates the New Testament church on nearly every page.

Reduce the nature of the true Church. This could include diminishing three marks of the true church to two or one (forgetting to actually do in a Christlike way right discipline, or right preaching of the Word of God.). But also the word “ekklesia”, meaning, the true church, that Jesus says he will build to overcome the gates of hell, shows four dimensions in the New Testament passages in more than a hundred uses.  The Alliance is being built around this design with the local Church, the local Hub (church of the city or locality), the regional Network and the global Alliance.  20 other words in the Bible for the church (like Body, Bride, people of God, flock, etc.) also have these four dimensions appearing when read in context.  If we just focus on local Church, that is a true part of the church, but incomplete, reduced.  Something has been stolen or diminished from our true nature and capacity.   The vision of Jesus in Acts 1:8 for the first church in the first city of Jerusalem was told to be clothed with power from on high and then they would be witnesses of Jesus HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. The key word might be “and”. Four dimensions of the ekklesia shaping the welfare and direction of the world around it, at the same time, simultaneous, not as a multiple choice.

The list could go on for a while, giving examples of many ways the devils and evil spirits “lie in wait for the church and every member of it like thieves….”.  Have you ever seen a reduced list of the gifts of the Holy Spirit for every believer?  Some gifts are relegated arbitrarily to a different century than ours, contrary to Scripture, which teaches us from Jesus own mouth that the Holy Spirit is just like him (John 14:16), and so is also the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). 

Does the Bible encourage us to worship God with “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” in Ephesians 5:19 and elsewhere, but have you ever seen a church line up just around one of those three as the only way they will worship God?  This is playing small again, shrinking thinking, being robbed by the enemy of sound doctrine and sound living.

Have the disciples of Jesus in our generation and our part of the world reduced the job description of followers of Jesus to just be going to worship services, giving offerings, and maybe serving in a ministry of some kind?  What about our calling to make disciples of Jesus among all nations, teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded us…to the third and fourth generation of intentional multiplication of disciples?  (2 Timothy 2:2). This reductionism, of not reproducing generations of new disciples of Jesus, will get us into a babylonian captivity of the church, where paganism can outrun the gospel’s life-giving influence in a society.  When the natural birth rate outpaces the new birth rate in a culture, the decline and diminishing of that culture is underway.

In contrast, the Bible urges us to embrace FULLNESS in Jesus, abundance of true life, not scarcity.  “For in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form, and we have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.”  (Col. 2:9-10).   “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”  (Eph. 1:22-23). The equipping leaders of the church, building up every saint in holy ministry, leads to unity, maturity, and fullness in Christ.  (Eph. 4:10-13)

 So like a football team in the fall season, the devil and his fallen angels play hard on both offense and defense.  They wear the other jersey every day, not the white robes of Christ’s righteousness, but filthy rags of wretchedness.  They don’t wait for game day to attack. They cheat and lie and accuse and poison and maim.  But you are more than conquerors through Christ who gives you strength if you stick to his total game plan and example.  You are fighting the good fight of faith from victory and toward victory. 

You are with the Creator of all things and against a mere corruptor and counterfeiter.  It is God’s sovereign grace against the fall of humanity, good vs. evil, and God is infinitely stronger.  Jesus has the right to redeem and restore and reconcile to God all that he created, and he is doing just that through the gospel which is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first the Jew, then for the Gentile.  (Romans 1:16). We are not ashamed of that gospel.