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FOURTH IN A SERIES ON THE MATTHEW 13 KINGDOM PARABLESBy PHILIP L. POWELL A point of interpretationNow it’s at this point that we can so easily get confused. Jesus didn’t say that the kingdom of heaven is like treasure, or like a pearl. He said the kingdom of heaven is like discovered treasure or a pearl that is bought with the gross product of the sale of a person’s total possessions. So the debate that has raged as to whether the pearl represents Christ, or the church is irrelevant. Depending on the application can be either.From the initiating and divine standpoint, the Son of God traded everything — His glory, position, power and even His own life — to gain the kingdom, and that kingdom involves His church—you and me! As the apostle so marvellously expresses it: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” — 2 Corinthians 8:9 Equally, from the receptive and human standpoint, when Christ, who is both the centre and substance of the kingdom, reveals to us the inestimable worth of His person, we must be prepared to trade everything to gain Him. The other two parables of the man, who built a tower and the two kings, who went to war against each other, also bring these two ideas together. “And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said to them, If any man comes to me, and does not hate his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first, and count the cost, whether he has sufficient to finish it? Lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that see it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first, and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a long way off, he sends an ambassador, and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you that does not forsake all that he has, he cannot be my disciple” — Luke 14:25-33 From God’s perspective, Jesus is the builder and warrior King who will see the job right through to the end, but, and here’s the application to us, He enlists only those who are prepared to ‘forsake all’ (c/f vs 26, 27 & 33) as He Himself did. The missing messageUnfortunately, this truth of the cost of the kingdom has been one of the great lacks in the modern church. We have bought the idea that God changes the message to suit society. One of the cloaks to this lie has been a mistaken notion about the Greek word “rhema”. I’ve heard it said that the “rhema” of the day is no longer the old fashioned gospel of repentance and counting the cost. Now, they claim, the RHEMA is faith or prosperity or miracles or whatever. This is a complete misconception, as well as being a total distortion of the meaning of the Greek word “rhema”, and it ends in a perversion of the Gospel.The argument goes something like this— “Rhema and Logos express different ideas in the Greek New Testament. Both are usually translated as “word” but the rhema word is the inspired word, whereas the logos word is the written word. What we need is the added inspiration of the Holy Spirit to quicken the already inspired word of God so we know what God is emphasising in our time.” The conclusion is that “logos” is dead, passive and irrelevant whereas “rhema” is vibrant, alive and relevant. While this may be a simplistic explanation of this totally fallacious argument it’s a fair summary and explains the dilemma that we face in the Church. False teachers such as Tommy Tenny build their heretical ideas about the Scriptures being dusty love letters on this type of argument. Men such as Yonggi Cho, Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, Benny Hinn and the late Kenneth Hagin, the father of the “Word-Faith” heresy, do the same thing. I say “totally fallacious” because it is just that both in premise and in extension. Any careful New Testament word study will show that frequently the two words — rhema and logos — are used interchangeably in the Scripture to express identical ideas. Far from being inert and ineffective “logos”, as used in the New Testament, is powerful, effective, even demonstrative. The centurion who asked Jesus to heal his paralysed servant appealed to the agency of the “logos” (not “rhema”) of Christ when he said “speak the word (logos) only, and my servant shall be healed” (Matthew 8:8). In the same chapter we read of Jesus that, “He cast out the spirits with His word (logos) , and healed all that were sick” (verse 16). The New Testament bears abundant testimony to the fact that God’s Word is always full of life and power. The use of logos or its synonym rhema is irrelevant to this particular issue: “For the word (logos) of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” — Hebrews 4:12 “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word (rhema) of God.” — Romans 10:17 It is incorrect to say as some do that “logos” refers to the passive (recorded) word of God and “rhema” refers to the active (spoken) word of God. On the contrary both logos and rhema are equally applied to the written and spoken Word of God or of Christ as the following references prove: “But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word (rhema) that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” — Matthew 4:4 “Therefore whoever hears these sayings (logos) of mine, and does them, I will liken him unto a wise man, who built his house upon a rock.” — Matthew 7:24 Some say that “rhema” always means the quickened or inspired Word of God. However this is clearly not the case: “Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil (poneros rhema = literally “every evil word”) against you falsely, for my sake.” — Matthew 5:11 “But I say to you, that every idle word (rhema) that men shall speak, they shall give account of it in the Day of Judgment. For by your words (logos) you shall be justified, and by your words (logos) you shall be condemned.” — Matthew 12:36-37 Here the two Greek synonyms are used interchangeably, both being translated to the one English “word”. The idle rhema is what Christ warns about as being the logos, which will condemn us in “the day of judgment.” Acts 6:11 and 13 twice refer to “blasphemous words (rhema) ”, which quite clearly could not be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Paul applies “rhema” to the cleansing effect of the Word of God upon His people while Jesus uses “logos” to describe the same work and end result: “That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word (rhema) ” — Ephesians 5:26 “Now you are clean through the word (logos) which I have spoken unto you.” — John 15:3 So quite clearly there are occasions when logos and rhema are used interchangeably. As in all cases of correct interpretation, the test that must be applied is the test of context. No word, no matter what the language, has an absolute meaning. There will be nuances and shades of meaning that relate to the correct definition of the actual word, but in the final analysis we will arrive at the true meaning only when we take careful note of the context. In the Pentecostal and charismatic pursuit of the idea that the message can be varied to suit the time, there has been a tragic omission of spelling out the costs involved in obtaining the kingdom. As I once heard that graphic Argentinean preacher, Juan Carlos Ortiz, put it, “We have turned the church into a ‘bless me’ club. We have become the lords and turned Jesus into our servant. We say, ‘Jesus, you heal me... Jesus bless me... give me, give me, give me’. Then Jesus turns and asks, “Eh, who’s in charge here. Who is the Lord?” It’s a false gospel that invites you along for what you can get out of it - free salvation and diamonds and dollars along the way. Oh yes, there are temporal, as well judgment.” blasphemous as eternal benefits. The free gift of everlasting life and 100 fold of all that you give up in this life but that’s not the motivation. The motivation must be the inestimable worth, the infinite value, of gaining the kingdom, which from our perspective is the person of Jesus, the lovely Son of God, for He is the centre and circumference of the kingdom of heaven. When you discover that treasure, that pearl of great price, you immediately ask the question, ‘Can I buy it?’ And the simple answer is, ‘Yes, you can buy it. Everyone can buy it!’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘Everything — simply everything!’ Now I’m not talking about giving everything away. I’m talking about making everything available should the Lord demand it. Once, a lady asked us to give her our home. We didn’t, because it wasn’t the Lord who asked for it and really it was not ours. The bank owned a large part of it. But more importantly we were only stewards and the real owner hadn’t given us permission to give it away. If He had we would have. All our married life our home has been available; it’s not ours, it’s His. We’re just stewards. The same thing applies to our car, or anything else for that matter. And when you start seeing things this way, it takes away both pressures — the pressure of having and the pressure of wanting. There’s nothing wrong with having nice things — far better to have good things than bad things. Yet some Christians have a guilt complex about the value of the things they possess. Providing those things are lightly held and at the Lord’s disposal, there’s nothing wrong. On the other hand, there are some “Christian” people who have a complex of covetousness, for the things they don’t have. They have succumbed to the pressure of wanting. The fact is, ‘One’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses’ Luke 12:15 - little or a lot. The issue is availability. To gain the kingdom of God you’ve got to recognise that He (Jesus) is worth more than all you personally are and all that you own. Further, you have to make yourself and your talents and possessions totally available to Him. In the words of Matthew 16:24, you have to ‘deny’, literally, ‘disown’ yourself, take up your cross and follow Him. It is only by this means that you can buy the field and thus possess the treasure. There is no other way by which you can ever hope to gain the pearl of great price. NEXT: ‘THE DRAGNET — WHO SELECTS THE FISH? About the Author... [ TOP ] ... [ Part 1 ] ... [ Part 2 ] ... [ Part 3 ] ... [ Part 5 ] ... [ BACK ] Appeared in Issue 27 Volume 9.2 December 2003 |
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