“and you shall call his name . . .”

Matthew 1:20-23

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us).

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

The two names together [Jesus, or in Hebrew Joshua from v. 20, and Immanuel from v. 23] express the meaning of the story [Matthew is about to tell, i.e., the gospel]. God is present, with his people; he doesn’t “intervene” from a distance, but is always active, sometimes in most unexpected ways. And God’s actions are aimed at rescuing people from a helpless plight, demanding that he take the initiative and do things people had regarded as (so to speak) inconceivable. . . . This is the God, and this is the Jesus, who comes to us still today when human possibilities have run out, offering new and startling ways forward, in fulfillment of his promises by his powerful love and grace (8).

A “Political” Genealogy

Matthew 1:12-16

And after the exile to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Messiah.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

For most of the time after the Babylonian exile, Israel had not had a functioning monarchy. The kings and queens they had had in the last 200 years before the birth of Jesus were not from David’s family. Herod the Great . . . had no royal blood, and was not even fully Jewish, but was simply an opportunist military commander whom the Romans made into a king to further their own Middle Eastern agendas. But there were some who know that they were descended from the line of true and ancient kings. Even to tell that story, to list those names was therefore making a political statement. You wouldn’t want Herod’s spies to overhear you boasting that you were part of the true royal family (3).

Prayer is Answering Speech

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles

We want life on our conditions, not on God’s conditions. Praying puts us at risk of getting involved in God’s conditions. Be slow to pray. Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests. And when we realize what is going on, it is often too late to go back. Be slow to pray (44).

. . . prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the primary word. Prayer is answering speech; it is not primarily “address” but “response.” . . . Prayer is answering speech. The first word is God’s word. Prayer is a human word and is never the first word, never the primary word, never the initiating and shaping word simply because we are never first, never primary (45-47).

Pastoral Pelagianism

Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology

Apart from union with Christ, ministry is cast back upon us to achieve. This is a recipe for failure, for we all fall short of the glory of God. The understanding and practice of pastoral work in this case is a burden too heavy to bear and follows a path that denies the gospel. We do not heal the sick, comfort the bereaved, accompany the lonely, forgive sins, raise up hope of eternal life, or bring people to God on the strength of our piety and pastoral skill. To think that these tasks are ours to perform is not only hubris, but also a recipe for exhaustion and depression in ministry (45).

The effect [of developing “an imitative rather than a participatory approach to ministry”] is to cast the pastor back upon his or her own resources – thus it can be defined as pastoral Pelagianism, a ministry by works rather than a ministry through grace (xxx).

The professional pressures on ministers today are immense. At the level of practical theological argument, the case can be made that to understand the burnout rate among ministers and the lack of vocational fulfillment that many experience we must also recognize the decision we may have made to turn away from this theological and practical foundation for ministry in general, and preaching in particular. [That foundation being, as Barth wrote, that the sum and substance of all pastoral work is the declaration of Him who proclaims Himself.] We must consider this turn because it signifies…the introduction of a countergospel basis for ministry and means here that preaching becomes something we do, something that we must make effective. Preaching becomes the minster’s burden, a new law, the consequence of which is a kind of ministerial Pelagianism in which there is now a strictly human, albeit religious or churchly, criterion of success. Bluntly put: this turn means that it is up to the preacher to make preaching effective (158-60).

Union with Christ & the Christian Life

Andrew Purves, Reconstruction Pastoral Theology (pg. 84)

To be clear: union with Christ does not lead to an imitation of Christ, a life spent following Jesus’ example in the hope that we will become better people. The Christian life is not to be understood as obedience to either an ethical imperative or a spiritual ideal. Rather, the Christian life is the radical and converting participation in Jesus Christ’s own being and life, and thus a sharing in his righteousness, holiness, and mission through the bond of the Holy Spirit.

Note, too, the emphasis I place on the work of the Holy Spirit. Union with Christ is entirely a work of God. Our human acts, beliefs, and decisions are powerless to effect a relationship with God. John Calvin understood that our deepest self had to become reconfigured and reconstituted or, to use his words, “regenerated” or “vivified,” through related to Jesus Christ. … God must reorder us be turning us in a new direction be uniting us to Jesus. So our being and becoming Christian is a divine initiative and not something that can be worked out through heightened religiosity, morality, activity, will, or spirituality. We are conjoined to Christ by the unilateral work of God though the Holy Spirit – to effect what Calvin called a “mystical union.”

The “Self-Effacing” Spirit

J.I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit

In [the Holy Spirit’s] new covenant ministry (for this is what Jesus was talking about [in the Upper Room Discourse from John 14-16]) the Spirit would be self-effacing, directing all attention away from himself to Christ and drawing folk into the faith, hope, love, obedience, adoration, and dedication, which constitute communion with Christ. … Thus the Spirit would glorify the glorified Savior (16:14), acting both as interpreter to make clear the truth about him and as illuminator to ensure the benighted minds receive it. Jesus, the Lord Christ, would be the focal point of the Spirit’s ministry, first to last (56-57).

Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology

In the context of the ministry of God [that is, God’s ministry toward us, not our ministry toward each other], the Holy Spirit is the personal presence of God by whom God bring us into communion with himself through relationship with Jesus Christ. According to Karl Barth, the Holy Spirit “is the power in which Jesus Christ is alive among [people] and makes them His witnesses.” Christian doctrine teaches that the work of the Holy Spirit is a Christ-related event; as such it is a God-glorifying, person-empowering, and church/mission creating event. … There is no dissociating of the Holy Spirit from Jesus Christ; rather…the Holy Spirit has a diaphanous self-effacing nature, showing us the Son and joining us to him, so that in and through the Son we have communion with and serve the Father (39).

According to Karl Barth, the Holy Spirit is the power in which Jesus Christ is alive among people and makes them his witnesses. That is, Christian doctrine teaches that the work of the Holy Spirit is a Christ-related event, and as such, it becomes a God-glorifying, person-empowering, and church/mission creating event. … The Spirit calls the church into existence to be a community of worship and ministry through union with Christ. Thus when we speak of the communion of the Holy Spirit we mean the communion-creating work of the Holy Spirit – communion with the Father through our Spirit-led union with Christ and, consequently, communion with one another as we are formed into the missionary body of Christ, the church. For this reason we do not speak of communion in the Holy Spirit, but the communion of the Holy Spirit, meaning by this, communion in Christ (124).

Participatio Christi, not Imatatio Christi

Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal (pg. 73-74)

Redemption is participatory, not imitative. It is grounded on grace appropriated through faith, not merely on obedience. Spiritual life flows out of union with Christ, not merely imitation of Christ. … The individual Christian and the church as a whole are alive in Christ, and when any essential dimensions of what it means to be in Christ are obscured in the church’s understanding, there is no guarantee that the people of God will strive toward and experience fullness of life.

Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology (pg. 40)

Through the communion of the Holy Spirit the Christian life is participatio Christi, not imatatio Christi.

The Gospel & Pastoral Ministry

Romans 6:17

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were entrusted…

Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology (pg. xvi)

Paul does not have it backward. One might think that doctrines are to be entrusted to believers, but believers are entrusted to doctrines, meaning by this the reality of God in Christ for us. It is the gospel that possesses ministry, not ministry that possesses the gospel. ...[T]he actuality of the gospel is the basis for the possibility of our ministry. It is not Jesus Christ who needs pastoral work, it is pastoral work that needs Jesus Christ. Just as faith lives not by human effort, but solely by the grace of God in, through, and as Jesus Christ, and through our incorporation into his life, so also ministry must be understood to be built not upon human striving for growth, well-being, and health but upon the grace of God which is understood now as a participation in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, on earth, in heaven, and as the one who will come again. The focus of pastoral theology, then, is on God’s extrinsic grace in Jesus Christ, on the gospel that is verbum alienum, a Word from beyond us, and to which gracious Word and to that Word alone pastoral theology and pastoral practice must submit in order to be faithful to the gospel.