And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.

— Genesis 1:11

Apostle Paul tells us “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies”. Seeds are buried, they die and they sprout and they give fruits. God made the fruits for man to enjoy. That the mankind may have life, so they’ll find the nourishment for life through it. But don’t fail to see the irony here - What sustains our life began with death. This truth is as old as the universe and yet it evaded the senses of the unspiritual man. They buried prophet after prophet with the hope that the kingdom of God may fade to oblivion. But they didn’t know they were sowing seeds that bore the fruit that is church.

As the hearts of men darkened and their minds sank further into murky depths, they did the unthinkable. The most sacrilegious deed that split the history as we know it into two - the son of man was buried. But unbeknownst to the unbelieving mind, they had sown a seed. His resurrected body was the true and better sacrifice of Abel. He rose on the third day becoming the first fruit of Resurrection.

Not only did he sprout bearing fruit, he is the soil in which we die and we sprout out of him. Those who die in him have life in him.

A wheat seed is sown to bear wheat which we turn into bread. This bread nourishes our body. Yet Jesus who died and resurrected is the bread of life. We eat him to nourish our soul and spirit. That makes the bread we hold transcendentally magnificent.

Our folly is that we think the Manna from heaven was so special and overlook the heavenly feast we have week after week. What you hold in your hand is the mystery that the angels and prophets eagerly looked forward to. When we hold this bread and wine in our hands we proclaim with one voice,

The mystery of faith:

Christ has died!

Christ is risen!

Christ will come again!

To The Father,

With the Son and the Holy Spirit,

Be all honor and glory,

Now and forevermore.

Psalm 23:5 (KJV)

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”

The Lord prepares a table for you and anoints your head. But the Lord does it in the presence of our enemies. When the guns are cocked, and the laser designator from the snipers illumine our forehead, Jesus prepares a table for us. He puts out the tablecloth and presents an exquisite cuisine before us to dine from. The enemies who look through the crosshairs and binoculars are confused. What strange counterattack is this?! They wonder - what strategy is this? And this is not strange news, when the kings of the earth rage against Christ and come together and say let’s break their bonds - Christ laughs in derision.

Christ is seated in the heavenly realm with a perception of reality that’s actually real. From the heavens, earth is a dot. The plans of man are insignificant in the heavenly realm. The earthly realm looks to the heavens and sees celestial spheres much bigger than itself as but small discs. Kings are certain that they can rebel against the king of kings and win. They think all men can be enslaved with fear or pleasure. And they are intimidated and frustrated by anyone who can’t be.

The Christian ascends to mount Zion, the Holy Jerusalem, to God’s Holy inhabitation. From there he perceives the reality of reality. He sees that the affairs of the earth are insignificant. So when the table is set in the presence of the enemies he joins Jesus for the meal. When seated with the king who defeated death he’s not bothered by those looking at him through the crosshairs.

Church militant, in a world where the people of God are threatened. The Christian world view is constantly suppressed and prophets ridiculed, Jesus has set a table for you. He brings the most exquisite meal to you - his body and blood. This is a meal from the heavens. From where reality is perceived as reality. It nourishes you not for the earthly affairs but for the heavenly affairs. It nourishes your soul and spirit.

Apostle Paul calls it a cup of blessing. Good blesses you through this. He gives you a taste of heaven through this. This meal proves that you belong to a different kingdom, a greater and eternal kingdom that is beyond the grip of authoritarianism, death and earthly weaknesses.

Come lets eat the heavenly meal

The bread is his body which was broken for us

The wine is his blood which cleansed us of our sins

But that’s when a wider fellowship and network of churches comes handy. A good discussion with pastors who have been in office for a much longer time would reveal that the common course of the church involves conflicts. Much of church history also bears witness to it. Also let’s not forget that almost all the new testament epistles including the letters within Revelation were written to churches with issues.

Often, after a season of managing problems at church, we discuss what could have been done differently or better from the end of the leadership. And one of those important things is setting the culture and expectations from the church up front.

When people are not told what to expect from the church, every person comes with an expectation that they expect to be met. Similarly when the culture of the church is not defined people expect the church to run according to what they seem appropriate. This gets rather cumbersome in seasons when there’s a sudden influx of new people to the church or when a group of people plant a new church.

It is vital to train the church members such that they know how things run in the church and why it is done. Now I don’t believe this is an easy thing. The difficulty of this task varies from member to member and family to family. But it is key that the elders of the church set the tone of the church and how things are done in the church. When left unclear, it becomes open to interpretation.

The culture fit has to start with the leadership. The elders, pastoral assistants/trainees and deacons of the church should be one cohesive unit. Especially the elders should be on the same page with regard to the doctrine and culture of the church. There are good pastors we know of who we believe are wonderful and able men who are qualified according to 1 Tim 3:1-7 requirements and yet we’ll not have them serve alongside us due to doctrinal and cultural differences. This is not to say that we won’t share a pulpit with them for a conference or support them in any way we can or even have them preach at our church occasionally.

Some of the key areas where setting the culture is important are discipleship, how men and women should relate to each other, how the church views the family and marriage dynamics, how the church plans to engage the culture and politics, etc. It is important that the church is clear on these things and doesn’t bend over backwards to accommodate the views of everyone. Such multiculturalism only accomplishes no one being served or discipled. It is completely okay for the church to be clear on how they run with their biblical convictions and the culture becomes a filter that prevents some people from joining the church. This saves the church proactively from church splits and the emotional impact it leaves on the people. Also it saves countless hours of elders’ time that’s spent on putting out fires that could otherwise have been spent in discipling people. Now of course this is not to say that good advice has to be rejected. Elders should use their wisdom and discernment to make those calls.

Discipleship is both what is given to the members and what is expected out of them. People get accustomed to models they have previously experienced and tend to find other models lacking and often not intentional enough. This is something we have viewed with both people who come in with their discipleship expectations and also people who go out to other churches hoping to find the discipleship model in the new church to match ours. Also, people may feel the leadership of a church is too demanding or on the other extreme not intentional enough relative to their discipleship experience from the previous church. Either way, the church should be clear on what they do and why they do it and should explain it to the people who come in. Our consumeristic society teaches us to expect institutions to fit our likes and expectations. Elders are to at all times know the actual spiritual need of the church and disciple according to that. The emphasis is on need and not what the congregation wants to do or assumes is their need. Again, goes without saying, this is not to say never to listen to the voice of the congregation.

How men and women relate to each other is an important aspect. This again is something that can vary from state to state and city to city. These things have to be taught and have to be grounded on scripture. What is appropriate and inappropriate. What should be our demeanor with church members of the opposite sex inside and outside of the church. What are the proper channels to pursue someone for marriage. These shouldn’t be left undiscussed and up for grabs. Similarly the expectations from the sexes should also be clear. In our church we encourage men and women to marry early under the right circumstances and have as many children as the Lord would give. When you walk into a church where young men and women are married early and have several children, older singles generally feel the heat and left-out. Couples who willfully and foolishly (unless in certain providential cases) choose to delay having children will also feel the brunt of it. Women who want to prioritize careers over the family will be intimidated by women who are joyfully married and pour out themselves for their families. All of these things have the potential to be perceived as unspoken personal attacks. But clarity is important. It is important to set the tone of things to let the exceptions be exceptions and not the norm. I’ll give you an example for this. In a reformed church when a couple has been married for over a year or two it shouldn’t be abnormal for loving church members to come and ask “Hey, have you guys been thinking about having children”. This is the hot water that many don’t want to touch and burn their hands. There could be legitimate cases, say the couple is trying and can’t have children, or the wife has a medical treatment that requires the couple to wait and so on and so forth. It could be a sensitive subject to a certain family and they may get hurt over the question. But the point is that the couple should know that it is not a taboo to ask. Now if someone in the church comes to know about infertility and could caution others about not asking. But the point is that it is the kind of thing you want your church to know and help you think and pray through rather than hide. Also, we need to know that exceptions are exceptions and we shouldn’t build our church culture around exceptions. When we become part of a church, we are committing to be involved in each others’ lives. It does get a bit of what the world calls nosy. But there is a certain level of the western understanding of privacy that we have to shed when we become part of a church. Individualism and church community don’t go hand in hand. How husbands and wives relate to each other in marriage. How parenting looks. All of it has to be taught and shown by example. If the elders don’t take charge and teach these things, the culture will be up for grabs, then the vacuum can produce all sorts of conflicts within the church.

Politics is a biggie. There are the pietists who believe that the church should be completely disengaged from politics and cultural engagement and others who look unto the politicians more than Jesus. Where the church lands on its engagement with these matters and how she views the role and duties of civil magistrate is something that the church should be clear on.

Vacuum creates assumptions and expectations. Assumptions and unmet expectations create misunderstandings and conflicts. Can the elders of a church avoid every conflict? Of course not. But we sure can mitigate some of it and sometimes some practices help us avoid big ones.

One recurring pattern in new church plants is that a few months or years in it experiences a church split or the elders part ways. A good reason for it is that when new churches are planted they often start with an agenda of “what not to be” and not “what to be”. And the “what not to be” criteria might unite several otherwise incompatible people. Many churches come to an end simply because they don’t have a system to manage issues. A church that’s clear on its doctrine and culture has made an important step in the direction of stability. It is worthwhile to notice that the systems and culture would prove ineffective if not for the aid of the Spirit. But when done trusting God’s providence it could go a long way. Initiatives such as adopting a historically vetted detailed confession of faith that the church agrees on, like the WCF, 3 Forms of unity or 1689LBCF can help immensely in this direction.

Being organic and spontaneous has its places. But making our entire lives organic and spontaneous is not for human beings but for unintelligent animals. God has made us in his image and given us rational minds, not so that we live according to the whim of the moment. But we make smart and godly decisions. When we set the culture of the church and build the community around it, we make a statement that we care for God’s people and their growth in obedience to Christ.

Polity has its effects on the architecture of the church building, the clothes worn by the elders, the decoration on the walls and to use a Gen-Z word - the general vibe of the church. One could perhaps identify a correlation-causation fallacy in my argumentation and point it out in the comments and I’ll be open to it. This is not one of those Contra Mundum type of issues.

The priesthood of the believers in New Testament is a very biblical idea (1 Peter 2:5 ) but in what way has also to be understood rightly. If left unhinged, it can flatten the priestliness of the office of the elders to just glorified counsellors. Pastor becomes a bro and Lord’s supper is replaced by crackers and grape juice that dads can give out to kids during online services.

The more one flattens the office of the minister, the more one diminishes the value of typology and symbolism. The scripture shows us that worship always ascends. God is in the heavenly places and all consecrated things journey upwards. Incense, burnt offerings, lifted hands and erected altars (Exodus 29:18; Leviticus 1:9; Hebrews 9:23–24). In the New covenant dead sacrifices are replaced by living sacrifices who live as burnt offerings and their offerings of praise and worship ascend producing a sweet aroma in God’s throne room.

The priestliness of the saints ought to elevate them to see the heavenly in all hierarchies and orders and symbols by bringing them closer to the heavenly realities (Colossians 3:1–2; Hebrews 12:22–24) . But if it is understood as mere generalizing of the office, then all hierarchies get flattened and the congregation loses the sight of the heavenly in the material things.

Even those with good intentions who remove the elevated dais in the church to imply that worship is not a stage performance fail to see that the dais is symbolizing not a stage but a Holy place where the burnt offerings (songs of worship), Word and sacrament are administered.

Same goes for the architecture of church. The steeples of the churches pointed up towards the heavens back in the day. But now the church buildings are built more with the intention of serving the utility of people. Churches are built like malls or government offices where utility or getting stuff done is prioritized more above everything. Church building ought to represent the nature of God and not the nature of man. Instead of looking heavenly and ethereal they are built more in line with what’s trending on the latest architecture magazines.

There is a danger of unhinged thinking in the other direction too. How priestly is the elder? How about we make one elder more priestly than the other? How about we have a super priest in a region and call him a bishop and give him bigger cloaks and shiny rods to assert his greater priestliness? How about there’s one mega priest above everything and we call him the pope and give him a magnificent hat to stand out among all the other hierarchies. You see where I am going with this?

We have entire cities like Vatican that has some of the most beautiful artwork and symbolism in the entire world but is yet spiritually dead. But as protestants we are not to do the opposite of what the Roman Catholics or some Eastern churches do, but instead do what the bible asks us to do.

As priests of the New Covenant, the congregation should train to develop a taste to see the heavenly in the material. Elders are to train the church to do this with discernment. Our church buildings and houses should be full of symbolism that develops a taste in us for the heavenlies. The heavenly things are beautiful and we need to display that beauty to the people around as citizen of heaven.

In the post modern world all thought is convoluted, and man-centered. We live in a clown world where everyone tries to normalize the absurd. We can stick a banana to the wall with a duct tape and men will spend hours looking at it in an art gallery. Paintings look messy like someone tumbled over a bucket of paint and it spilled on the canvas. Though the paintings themselves are great reflections of the mess in the minds of the painters behind them. When church buildings are built, often the planning goes only into parking spaces and coffee machines. Even reformed churches that preach against consumerism and the service being centered around Christ should stop and think if their church hall makes it look like a place built to serve them.

This has its effects on all kinds of things. Clothing, demeanor, what congregational singing looks like - all of it. When picking clothes for a Sunday morning, when sharing testimonies in the congregation, the way we carry ourselves all have to reflect the heavenlies. Now a push back to this that I can expect in this day and age is that wouldn’t that make the church no different from those old traditional churches that have beautiful symbolism but most people are spiritually dead? To which, the answer is simple. Don’t be spiritually dead. Of course the elders are to keep preaching hot gospel from the pulpit and calling men and women to obedience.

Somehow people assume that adopting one means having to let go of the other. Also, it is misleading to say God just wants us to be authentic. It is more appropriate to say that you are not supposed to lie about your spiritual status before God and should be open about your sin so that you can receive pardon. But the same way it is common sense to not show up for a funeral in a cocktail dress, it is not sensible to show up to church looking casual.

The heavenly chorus sings praises about the chief shepherd Christ who is seated before them. The elders likewise who are under shepherds stand at the holy place and lead the congregation to praise the chief shepherd as one voice (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:1–4) . Throughout the service they see the elders administer grace to them as priests on behalf of the high priest Jesus Christ. The elevated dais, the centrality of the pulpit from where the word and sacraments are administered - all act as a microcosm of the heavenly Holy of Holies.

The material anticipates the spiritual. Symbolism when done by redeemed men is a very spiritual thing. But it gets often associated only to outright Pharisaism. Sin is like a parasite, it needs a host to survive. Similarly, sin can latch on to good symbolism and corrupt it. Symbols lose their value when men lose sight of God. But the folly of man is to think that symbols are the issue. The issue was, is and always will be man. Hence all the more need to use symbolism rightly to train the hearts of men.

Baptists and other credo-baptists (Christians who administer baptism only to those who have repented of their sins and confessed faith in Christ) would say that “household” here is an umbrella term used by Luke to refer only to non-infants. This kind of baptism occurs repeatedly in Acts, such as the cases of Lydia (Acts 16:15), the Philippian Jailer (Acts 16:33), Crispus (Acts 18:8), and Cornelius (Acts 10:47–48). The paedo-baptists (those who baptize infants of believing parents in addition to confessing believers) would argue that the “households” in the texts actually mean the entire household, including infants. But these arguments do not take us anywhere in and of themselves.

In order to understand baptism, we have to study the framework in which baptism sits within Scripture and the assumptions the NT authors make when they write. The NT authors were not 20th or 21st-century American or European scholars. They were not pagans finding Christianity and figuring it out from scratch, but Jewish authors who had thousands of years of passed-down heritage and a cultural understanding of sacraments and covenants in a much more experiential sense than we moderns may ever have. We see the New Covenant and are tempted to use a surgical knife to rift a divide between the old and new, because what is “New,” after all, if not absolute discontinuity? But this comes in contrast with the words of Jesus himself, who says that he had not come to abolish the law and the prophets which are the covenant documents of the old covenant, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). In fact, we find many in Jesus’ time having this same confusion regarding an absolute cut-off. As he was building the new covenant community and explaining the true heart behind the moral law, he clarifies that he has not come to abolish what was there formerly by saying, “Do not think...”

Covenant Continuity

Our discussion about baptism cannot be had without discussing the Abrahamic covenant first. We will focus on the following aspects: whom the promises of the covenant are for, what the sign is, and what the “expiry date” on the covenant is. Genesis 17:7–9 gives us the following information: (i) the covenant beneficiaries are Abraham and his descendants, (ii) Abraham and all his male descendants have to be circumcised, and (iii) the covenant is an everlasting covenant. Let us focus on the “everlasting” aspect first. How can an everlasting covenant end? It cannot. In which case, does it continue today? If it does, does it continue in the exact same form?

When Jeremiah and Ezekiel promise the New Covenant, the promises to the children are seen to echo the Abrahamic language: “And I will give them one heart and one way... for the good of them and their children after them” (Jeremiah 32:39). When the New Covenant is inaugurated, we find Peter taking these promises and applying them immediately. At the temple in Jerusalem, he iterates to the Jewish people how the promises are to them and their children, extending these promises by saying it is also to “those who are far off” and “everyone whom the Lord our God calls” (Acts 2:39). This shows that instead of an absolute replacement of the promises to Abraham, they have been expanded and made better and bigger in the New Covenant. Furthermore, Paul explains how the true heir of the Abrahamic covenant is Christ (Galatians 3:16), showing the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant in Jesus, i.e., the New Covenant.

To further speak to the continuity of the covenants, let us see how the NT authors use OT covenants in their discourse to the church. Paul tells the Roman church how they have been grafted into the same Olive tree that the Jews were part of in Romans 11:17–24. The olive tree is used repeatedly in the OT for covenant imagery (Jeremiah 11:16, Hosea 14:6). Paul shows us how the Gentiles, who are from a “wild olive” (one not tended to by God) are grafted into the tree God had cultivated. The original branches (unbelieving Jews) are cut off, and the Gentiles are grafted in. Notice again: it is not a different olive tree altogether, but the same tree with new branches grafted in. Paul also warns that the same stipulations of being cut off for unfaithfulness remain for the newly grafted Gentiles.

When the New Covenant is promised, it does not come with a new set of statutes but an ability to keep the law by the aid of the Spirit. Jeremiah 31:33 says, “I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts.” The law here is the Law handed to Moses, not a new law. Likewise, Ezekiel 36:27 says, “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances.” It does not say “future” statutes, but the existing ones.

I do not think any passage is as explicit as 1 Corinthians 10:1–12 when it comes to covenant continuity. Look at the way the Apostle Paul easily goes back and forth between the Old and New covenants. To the Gentile Christians, Paul says “our fathers were all under the cloud” (v. 1). “Our fathers”? Very casually, the Gentile Christians are being counted as the descendants of the Israelites – not by the flesh, but by covenant. Paul then retroactively applies the Christian ordinance of baptism to the Jewish forefathers: they were “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (v. 2). Then come the heavy statements: “They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink” (vv. 3–4). This language of “spiritual food and drink” is not accidental, as Paul discusses the Lord’s Supper later in the same context. Further, it says the rock they drank from was Christ himself. The people of the Old Covenant were sacramentally connected to Christ.

Paul argues that God was not pleased with most of them. It is vital to notice that the sacraments were not administered because everyone was genuinely regenerated, but because they were part of the covenant. Then, in verse 11, comes the warning: these things happened to the Israelites as a warning and example for the Church. Paul’s argument is: “Want to know how God deals with the people of the New Covenant? Look at the people of the Old Covenant who ate and drank of the same Christ and were symbolically baptized.“ This shows massive continuity.

The Case for Infant Baptism

Circumcision was administered to the Covenant People of God. Paul tells the Ephesian church: “remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise...” (Ephesians 2:12). Separation from the nation of Israel meant separation from Christ. As established, these people were required to administer circumcision to their children because the Abrahamic covenant was for them and their descendants.

What does that mean for baptism? Romans 4:11 tells us that circumcision is the “seal and sign” of righteousness. Colossians 2:11–12 further links the two, calling baptism the “circumcision of Christ.” Baptism is presented here as the New Covenant counterpart to circumcision.

Now the question remains: there was a covenant people, and there remains a covenant people. Both have blessings and severe warnings of apostasy; both have promises to the people and their children. Romans 4:11 also clarifies that circumcision was not the seal and sign of a righteousness of faith that the individual Israelites inherently possessed, but a righteousness that Abraham had. It was a seal of the promise that the descendants of Abraham received. Similarly, baptism is the seal and sign of the New Covenant. Here, the “righteousness of faith” is not the righteousness of the child, but that of Christ. In Christ, the covenant is not less inclusive; it is more. It is for you and your children, and to those far off; the sign is no longer restricted to male descendants but is for females alike.

1 Corinthians 7:14 even states that the children born to a believing parent are “holy.” The logical conclusion is to administer the sacrament that is due to the children of the New Covenant. We need to baptize them. We must hold on to the promises of God’s faithfulness to the generations of believers and add our children sacramentally to the covenant community of God. Baptism is not an individual expression of faith, but the sign and seal of our ingrafting (as seen in the Olive Tree of Romans 11) into Christ.

So go ahead, Christian parents. Baptize your little ones. Don’t look at the fragile cries of your infants or the tantrums of your toddlers for validation. Instead, look to our Savior Christ and his everlasting, unmoved, unchanging promises (Hebrews 6:13–18).

“But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children.” – Psalm 103:17

The psalm goes on, “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds His people from this time forth and forever” (Psalm 125:2). Jerusalem sits tucked into a basin of hills, cradled and protected. That is the picture. God is not a celestial emergency response team who rushes in after disaster. He is the ever present defensive line. He surrounds His people on every side, always and forever. Psalm 139 puts it this way: “You hem me in behind and before, and lay Your hand upon me” (Psalm 139:5). This is where we falter. We affirm sovereignty on paper but often live as if God is absent in our daily troubles. We ask where He is in the long nights of financial strain, family conflict, church tension, or work headaches. The psalmist’s point is that He is right there, hemming you in, not merely in theory but in real time. He shows His greatness by displaying your weakness. He is glorified in providing when you cannot provide for yourself.

But this stability does not mean an absence of trouble. The psalm says, “For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest upon the land of the righteous, so that the righteous will not put forth their hands to do wrong” (Psalm 125:3). That means it will visit, but it will not stay. Sometimes Babylon builds towers in the middle of Zion. Sometimes wicked rulers rule over righteous land for a season. But God governs even their reach. He sets the boundaries, and He keeps His people. So if you find yourself in a season where wickedness seems to be winning, Psalm 125 says it will not last. The rod of the wicked is temporary. The King’s rod is coming.

This psalm is not the anthem of the strong willed or the naturally steady. It is a war song for weary pilgrims. It was not sung at the summit but on the climb. Surrounded by enemies and uncertainty, the people of God lifted their voices in covenantal hope: “Do good, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are upright in their hearts. But as for those who turn aside to their crooked ways, the Lord will lead them away with the doers of iniquity. Peace be upon Israel” (Psalm 125:4–5). Trust makes you unshakable. God surrounds you. Evil has an expiration date. Peace is your inheritance. And that is why Zion. Not because it is Everest, but because God chose it as His dwelling. And that is why the man who fears God stands unshaken. Not because he is iron willed, but because he belongs to the covenant keeping Lord. If you are in Christ, you are unshaken because He is unmoved. “Peace be upon Israel” (Psalm 125:5).

We need to aspire to and also encourage men and women around us to live heroic Christian lives. Don't give me that “Jesus is the only hero” slogan now. That's not what I'm talking about at all. The visible church has found its comfort in inaction and passivity by hiding behind a superficial kind of Christocentricity. We read Psalm 1, declare that Jesus is the only blessed man, and shut our Bibles. That’s all we want. We know enough theology to know the scripture is not about us but Jesus and that’s where we decided to stop learning. These days “urging brethren to live their lives as holy living sacrifices” can land you on podcasts for preaching against “gospel sufficiency”. We only sign up for easy, non-confrontational, all welcoming congregations with elective midweek meetups, gospel preaching with no application, and occasionally throwing abstract references like “looking unto Jesus” and “seeking his face”. Many of our lives have very little to do with the Cost of Discipleship Jesus mentions in Matthew 10 and that should deeply bother us. How much of our lives are spent chasing the “Well done” of people around us? How many of us stay away from any confrontation or any difficulty in life altogether? How many of our lives are such that when we read in the bible about being disliked for our faith, we can’t relate with it? If we belong to any or all of these categories, then we are no heroes.

There are times when suffering comes to us not as a consequence of our actions. This is good and ordained by God as means of our sanctification. There are times when we invite suffering through our actions. This could be good or bad. Heroes invite the good kind of trouble. But most people would rather avoid it. A young woman in my congregation was once asked by an older woman not to rush having children after marriage citing the reason that she would suffer, and in response she asked the right question, “Okay, but what is wrong with suffering?” Now we could quickly say, “Everything is wrong with suffering and that’s why Jesus will get rid of it.” True, but if we pause to catch the true sentiment of the question you will see how profound the question is. It is basically this, why shouldn’t I invite the right kind of trouble?! Profound question.

Christians often end up playing the Pharisee game. Where they categorize things as “unwise” and “immature” when people do things that make them guilty of their own inaction. People who are often easily manipulated by the well-dones of the world would use it as a means to try and manipulate the godly troublemakers. But those well-dones are precisely what we want to avoid. For Jesus says:

“Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.” (Luke 6:26, NASB95)

Now it is only right at this point that we discuss the nature of this good type of trouble. The good kind of trouble comes from the natural outworking of your Christian faith and practice. Christians can evoke trouble by simply being fruit bearing Christians. They can evoke trouble simply because they are good slaves to their master who is Jesus Christ. Our Lord said “A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you;”. You might be in a college band and be hated or mocked for refusing to sing a pagan worship song. You can be hated and persecuted for simply meeting as a church when you were asked by the authoritarian authorities not to. You can be hated as a woman choosing not to build a career at the expense of your household or having children. You can be hated for telling others that all men are sinners and that Jesus died on the cross so that you and I may believe in him and be pardoned for our sins on behalf of his propitiation and have life eternal.

Brothers and sisters, you have but this life to live and die for him. A maximum of 80-90 years. Or maybe you wake up one day and unexpectedly breathe your last. Make sure what you do today is what the Lord expects you to be doing before you meet him. Here’s an irony: there are Christian parents out there who would applaud at the videos of brave men like Kirk going head to head with evil ideologies, and yet when it comes to their children, they’d shield them from ever inviting trouble. They would rather them be obedient church kids. Their only plan for their children is to send them abroad for masters and get them settled there (Not that any of these actions are innately or always sinful). They’ll applaud the Kirks of the world as long as their kids don’t become one. So many people are comfortable to live on and ignore the ideological war on God’s kingdom that is so rampant. Everything in their life is about avoiding trouble, so they simply whistle past the graveyard, pretending nothing is wrong. And how do you stay out of trouble? By earning the well-dones of the ones waging the war. Our lives can slip by while we stay busy posting food, gym, and travel pics on Instagram and earning the well-dones of men. Or the better alternative, we can be troublemakers today who get to hear the “Well Done” on that last day.

Kirk was 31, with a loving wife and two small children. Those kids will grow up listening to their mother recounting to them what a troublemaker their dad was and how he died a hero standing up to vile men and evil ideologies. I too am 31, with a loving wife, a baby, and another one joining us in less than a month. Far be it from us that our family should be all about comfort and leisure. My prayer is that my children grow seeing their parents being troublemakers. My prayer is that my children themselves would also grow up to be troublemakers.

Looking forward to meeting Kirk on the other side!

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Psalm 8:1-4

God has set His glory above the heavens, in a realm unreachable by man. We can only look up, we can only gaze at the stars and wonder what lies beyond. But for God, it is not distant. It is accessible, near, and effortless. The heavens are described as the work of His fingers—not the strength of His arm or the sweep of His hand, but His fingers. That is how easily He creates and sustains all things.

And this same God does not ordain praise merely from the seraphim or heavenly beings—though they do so perfectly—but from babes and infants. He takes the weak, the small, the ones who cannot articulate eloquence, and makes them His choir. This stands in stark contrast to the proud who crave validation for trivial deeds. God needs no validation. When He calls for praise, it is not because He is insecure, but because He is mindful of us.

Your praise is not accepted because it is strong, flawless, or sinless. Angels worship far better than we do. They are in harmony, they are holy, they never miss a note. Yet your voice is heard because His listening does not rest on how mindful you are of Him, but on how mindful He is of you. And He is always mindful of you.

When my daughter said “Daddy” for the first time, I was overwhelmed with joy. Not because she said it with perfect clarity, but because I love her and I am mindful of her. That is what fathers are like toward their children. And if that is true of an earthly father, how much more of our heavenly Father, whose love is unstained and whose omniscient mind is never distracted?! He is more mindful of you than you are of Him at all times. He loves you more than you could ever love Him at all times.

Your weakness doesn’t keep you from worshipping. In fact, it puts you in a better spot. God is more mindful of you in a way that he’s not of the holy angels for this very reason. So, church, worship in your weakness. Lift up your weak arms, raise your countenance to the heavens and shout “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!“

Whenever I read the fast-paced gospel of Mark, I often wonder what it was like for the disciples to be around this Word of God. There in front of them stood the Son of God, perfect in every way. The incarnate Christ’s every thought, deed, and desire was God-glorifying and untainted by sin. In spite of the limitations of the flesh, the God-man that stood in front of the disciples was very different from them. When Christ mixed His spit with mud (Mark 8:22-26) to heal the blind, His very act of spitting was more devotional than the biggest sacrifice made by the greatest saint on His earth. Often, we find TV actors being lauded for playing the part of Jesus on TV and how Christ-like they were in their performance. But there is no performance that can possibly capture what the Son of Man was like. He was distinct from the disciples around Him. At every moment in His life, His greatest concern was the glory of God. Not only was this Jesus visibly distinct, but also, He made claims that carried divine authority. He didn’t claim to be a door, a vine, a bread, or a beam of light, rather He claimed to be the door, the vine, the bread, and the light. Everything from His demeanor to actions to His words indicated the authority He carried.

Often when we talk about the I am sayings of Christ, we talk about the 7 I am sayings which are I am the Bread of Life (John 6:35), I am the Light of the World (John 8:12), I am the Door (John 10:9), I am the Good Shepherd (John 10:11,14), I am the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25), I am the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) and I am the Vine (John 15:1,5). But apart from that, in chapter 18 of John’s Gospel, there’s an I am saying that’s slightly different from the rest.

“When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.” — John 18:6

Here He doesn’t compare Himself to anything, nor does He have a parable to offer, rather He merely introduces Himself to the ones who had come to arrest Him. Yet the reaction we get from the soldiers who had come to carry out the arrest is strange. What we have is the Son of Man opening the flood gates of His majesty and glory and authority ever so slightly that the soldiers have to fall back in awe and dread. When a man is arrested, it is a clear display of authority of the ones arresting over the one who is arrested. But when Christ was arrested, He made it very evident as to who was in control and whose plan was actually being carried out. Christ makes it abundantly clear that He is like no other man that the Romans had ever arrested and put behind bars. About this passage, John Gill says “but to give proof of his deity, and a specimen of his power at the great day; and to let them know, that if he had not thought fit to have surrendered himself voluntarily to them, though he was an unarmed person, they, with all their men and arms, could never have laid hold on him;”.

This display of Christ’s authority and control over His destiny is very important for us to understand. Christ says I am He, thus invoking His covenant name and thereby displaying His deity and matchless authority. Christ’s humble estate was truly His choosing (Philippians 2:8-10). He was under no coercion to die on our behalf, nor was He forced into it. Our great savior volunteered for this, and the love He displayed was no “reckless love”. Jesus knew the cost and He emptied Himself for us. This image of Christ displaying His authority momentarily to the soldiers is important for us to keep in mind as hours later we find this same Jesus being tortured and mocked. There’s a famous quote from the great Puritan Thomas Watson that says, “Jesus Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace”. We Christians who have the great privilege to commune with God are often lazy to go to God and find comfort in worldly things. But Christ on the contrary marched to the cross willingly for us.

A good comparison that can be made to help us better understand the humility and humiliation of Christ is between God’s throne room in Isaiah 6 and the crucifixion of Christ. Christ in His throne room is at the center with Seraphim flying around His throne. Christ’s robe gloriously fills the temple, and the heavenly creatures cover their face and feet to shield them from the glory of Christ. Now as opposed to this, Christ is crucified on a cross between two sinners. The one whose robe filled the temple lay naked and bruised. While the seraphim had to cover their face and feet with hands and legs crossed, on the cross Christ was surrounded by thieves who had their hands stretched wide apart without being affected by His glory.

Beloved, the one who advocates for us in heaven today (1 John 2:1) is the one who willingly humbled Himself for our redemption. Our life is completely secure in this savior’s hands who shed His blood and suffered the father’s wrath for us. God is in complete control of our redemption and salvation and at no point was He helpless beyond His control. This gives us hope and strength in the fact that our lives are truly in His control and that the one who doesn’t sleep, or slumber guards our feet from slipping (Psalm 121:3-4). May we find our hope and strength in Jesus.

(Originally Posted on Equip Indian Churches Blog)

The gold particularly brings out the irony here. When gold returned to the Creator, it didn’t meet with radiant glory but a helpless newborn wrapped in two feet of linen in a manger in front of them. The gold was brought not into a palace but to a place surrounded by cattle and animal excreta. The One who would bring "peace on earth and mercy mild" lay unrecognized by His own people, only to be betrayed by them in a few decades. Yet it was a few pagan astrologers who saw the glory that was well masked by the forlorn surroundings.

This was the King of all creation. He did what no other king did. The King of kings humbled Himself by putting on the frailty and weakness of humankind (Philippians 2:7) in order to redeem His own.

More Precious Than Gold

The greater the stature of a person, the more precious the gift you give him. And to kings, you bring gold. Gold is the purest, most precious, and glorious gift you can give a king. When you bring gold to a king, you add to his possession. While the magi were right to bring gold, as it indeed was a fitting gift to recognize the glory of King Christ, all the gold (Haggai 2:8) and everything in this world (Acts 17:24-25) is already His. With this context, it is interesting to look at what God does to His children. Peter tells us that we are refined by fire to be made like pure gold (1 Peter 1:7). He takes earthen vessels and cleanses them (2 Timothy 2:21), and places the treasure of the Gospel in them (2 Corinthians 4:7). God richly blesses and molds the believer and makes him the fitting gift for Himself — "...a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God" (Ephesians 5:2).

We, unworthy sinners, were made worthy gifts because God sent us the most precious and "...indescribable gift" (2 Corinthians 9:15) — Christ. The greater the stature of a person, the more precious the gift you give him. Yet look at God's majestic plan. The lowly man received the priceless Christ as his gift. And the lowly man is exalted and made a priceless gift unto God in Christ, whom Christ will present to Him blameless in the last day (Jude 1:24).

A day will come when every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Christ is King (Philippians 2:10-11). On that day, every nation and tribe will honor Him and bring gifts unto Him (Revelation 21:24-26). In the New Jerusalem, made of gold, Christ will sit on His throne wearing His golden crown—not withholding but revealing His full glory (Revelation 22:1-5). And yet, we need not wait until that day to draw near to Him. We are already citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20), and He is always with us, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

We are the living sacrifices (Romans 12:1) Christ desires more than gold (1 Peter 2:5). As we, who are made gold, are being washed by the stream of Christ's blood, let's draw closer to Him to lay ourselves at the feet of the King of Kings.

Let’s honor and delight in our priceless gift more precious than gold, our King Christ: "For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

(Originally Posted on Equip Indian Churches Blog)

Joe Rigney, in his book Strangely Bright, writes, “Created things make eternal things perceivable. God’s own power and righteousness and beauty and wisdom and mercy are invisible attributes. We can’t see them directly. But when we see a tornado tear across the plains, we see his power. When we stand on a giant mountain, we feel the firmness and stability of his righteousness. When we watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean, we see his beauty. When we witness the magnificent intricacy of the food chain—deer eating grass and then being eaten by lions—we see his inscrutable wisdom and mercy over all that he has made. Made things make invisible attributes visible.” We live in a world filled with meaning, where countless stories and lessons point us to spiritual truths. Regardless of what utilitarian materialists say, the world around us is not merely chance, matter, and atoms in aimless motion. When a father catches his falling daughter, it is more than just a collision of matter—it is a dim glimpse of our heavenly Father’s glorious fatherhood. Scripture gives us a direct example of this: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:13, NASB95). Here, Jesus helps us understand the greatness of God’s fatherhood by using human fatherhood as an analogy.

This analogy works both ways. We are also to understand fatherhood by looking to God as our example, for we are called to be imitators of Him (Matthew 5:48; Luke 6:36; 1 Peter 1:16). Let’s consider some of the virtues of fatherhood that earthly fathers can learn from our heavenly Father.

Protection

"But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one." (2 Thessalonians 3:3, NASB95)

Earthly fathers are to protect their children just as our Heavenly Father does. God models His protection in various ways:
(i) God physically protects us from harm (Psalm 91:11-12).
(ii) God protects us from spiritual harm (John 10:28-29; John 6:37).

Likewise, fathers should protect their children from both kinds of danger. They are to guard them from physical harm and, more importantly, from spiritual harm. While there is no explicit passage commanding fathers to protect their children, the duty is implicit in God’s example. Fathers must protect their children spiritually by being their primary mentors, leading and guiding them according to the Word (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Provision

"Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:31-33, NASB95)

Our Heavenly Father not only provides for our needs, but He already knows them beforehand. As fathers, we are to imitate Him in this. We should be so involved in our children's lives that we understand their needs even before they express them. Just as God, in His loving care, anticipates and meets our needs, earthly fathers should be attentive and discerning, ensuring that their children are provided for both physically and spiritually. We are called to model Christ to our children by sacrificially loving them and providing for them. It is a great privilege to reflect the provision and care of our Heavenly Father in the way we provide for and care for our children.

Comfort

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NASB95)

Fathers are to be a source of comfort to their children. Paul writes in Colossians 3:21: "Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart." He says this knowing very well that fathers can, and often do, exasperate their children. Yet, our Heavenly Father does not do this; instead, He comforts us. Earthly fathers are not meant to replace God’s comfort but rather to be conduits of it.

Presence and Involvement

"...and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:20, NASB95)

God is always with us. He is available to His children at all times and never forsakes them. As the psalmist declares:

"He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." (Psalm 121:3b-4, NASB95)

Unlike God, earthly fathers are not omnipotent or immutable; they need sleep and rest (Psalm 127:2). Yet, from a human standpoint, they should strive to be present and involved in their children's lives. A father’s involvement is crucial to a child’s godly upbringing. His actions set the course for the household, and in his absence, his absence determines its course.

Discipline

"But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons." (Hebrews 12:8, NASB95)

Hebrews 12:8 uses a human analogy to illustrate a spiritual reality. The verse does not imply that God has illegitimate children but contrasts the way fathers discipline their own sons with how God disciplines us. Because He loves us, He disciplines us for our good.

Likewise, fathers must imitate God in disciplining their children to maturity. Proverbs 13:24 says, "He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently." This teaches that discipline is an expression of love, not hatred. A father who refuses to discipline his child, in effect, abandons him to his sinful inclinations. Yet, our Heavenly Father never does this. Even when He disciplines us, it is always for our ultimate good.

It wouldn’t be right to take a very pietistic position and say that ultimately the father doesn’t matter and all that matters is that the believer has the heavenly father. That’s because God has made it such that the father matters in the upbringing. While God is very well able to allow a child to be raised well in the absence of a father, in most cases he doesn’t. There is a deep father hunger in our culture. Most pastors, if they have done enough one-on-one counseling, can testify that, in most cases, a person’s brokenness can be traced back to an irresponsible or absent father figure. Fatherhood is of supreme importance, and that reality should make us tremble at the weight of this calling. Left to themselves, earthly fathers—being sinners—would surely fail to meet the requirements of this task.

But what a great delight that we are not left to ourselves! Our heavenly Father not only models true fatherhood for us but also strengthens and aids us in the pursuit of being godly fathers. And for those who carry wounds from fatherlessness or brokenness, the Spirit of God is able to heal their hearts, bringing restoration and wholeness. As the psalmist declares, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3, NASB95). Fatherhood is a sacred calling—let us pray that God enables us to carry out this responsibility well, all the while learning to be good fathers from the perfect example of our heavenly Father.

(Originally Posted on Equip Indian Churches Blog)

Risk is part of manhood. No one is ever truly ready for anything. Take marriage, for example. No one enters it with perfect knowledge. Whether it’s your job, marriage, pastorate, or parenting, all of it requires taking the hard step first and then being trained on the job. Let’s look at how this plays out in a few real scenarios from our context.

Divorcing Ministry from the Church

I know several Reformed men who are dissatisfied with their local churches because of serious errors taught in them. Every time you meet them, they’re willing to talk for hours about leaving or reforming the church. But no action ever comes out of it. Like kids returning home from Bible camps, they lose their vigor in a week. The reason for the perpetual wait is often the blowback they get from society and relatives. Instead of seeing this as Christian suffering, they treat not causing offense as the highest virtue. It is worth examining whether the real fear is the blowback from family and society. Many end up doing itinerant Bible studies and ministries on the side, where they claim “true spiritual work happens.” While I don’t deny that some people are genuinely helped through such efforts, at a higher level they do great damage. Instead of fulfilling the God-given mandate of being attached to a church and channeling their work under the guidance and accountability of a healthy body, they become lone Christians who generate more lone Christians. They add to the invisible church without adding to the visible church. Many, if not most, continue attending their churches disgruntled—just enough to partake in the Lord’s Supper—only to bad-mouth the church in the compound right after the service. They have problems with the ministers, the sermon content, discipleship, and the mission of the church. Yet they do everything except the one thing that would actually address the problem—leave and commit to a healthy church.

Often, when these men are questioned about their decision not to leave, they speak of the larger influence they believe they can have as the lone beacon of light in a big church. To them, I urge: stop relying on man-made strategies. Trust God's providence. Take the leap. Obey simply. He will provide. You may equip a few, but without the local church, you’ll win battles and lose the war.

Work and Marriage: Foundations of Manhood

Men have to work. From the garden (Genesis 2:15), to Proverbs (Proverbs 12:11), to the instructions given to the new covenant church (1 Timothy 5:8), we see this running theme. Lazy men are headed toward sure destruction (Proverbs 21:25). In fact, we see the apostle Paul asking the church at Thessalonica not to eat with those who aren’t willing to work (2 Thessalonians 3:10–12). Lazy men render themselves impotent and ineffective. As soon as men are done with their basic education or job training, they should strive to find a job and start earning. Whatever job they get into, they must get good at it and establish themselves.

There have been times we’ve asked seminary students at church to work a secular job for a year before taking up full-time ministry. This is mainly aimed at getting them accustomed to the real world outside their comfort zones and making them face the difficulty of standing on their own two feet. Another trend we see is men wasting years chasing competitive exams. Whether they succeed or not, it often robs them of years in which they should have been working, maturing, and preparing for marriage. It costs them years of maturity to secure a government job or title that often isn’t worth the years it drains.

So that takes us to the next thing—Marriage. In most cases, it is not okay for a 30-year-old man to be single. In all the talk about finding a job and settling down, we should also not let the pendulum swing to the other extreme. Settling down is not the same as being rich. Having a competitive salary and comfortable lifestyle shouldn’t precede marriage. Marriage is not an institution just for the rich. Unless there is a clear calling to celibacy confirmed by your local church, you should be putting in every effort to get married early. It is not good for a man to be alone (Genesis 2:18; 1 Corinthians 7:2). Celibacy is not the norm—it is the exception.

There are ways in which marriage builds and matures a man that no other institution can. As Spurgeon once said, “When husbands and wives are well yoked, how light their load becomes!” God, when creating man, said that it’s not good for him to be alone and created him a helper. Delaying marriage is going against the Word of God and is a sure recipe for spiritual ruin. When men are not securing the right kind of dominion—i.e., getting married to a godly woman, raising children in the faith—they get their fill from shallow substitutes like pornography, video games, and binge-watching. Which, in turn, again makes them compliant to the androgyny project. Like I mentioned earlier, the devil hates it when men and women act out their God-given roles. A man who is not called to celibacy and delays marriage plays right into the devil’s playbook. Getting married to a godly woman and starting a godly household is one of the ways you build the kingdom and resist the clown world’s attack on godly masculinity.

Seminary Men Without a Mission

Another concern is the growing number of seminary men without a mission. A good number of them don’t know why they enrolled in Bible College in the first place. The M.Div. track in many Indian seminaries has shifted from a pastoral to a generic academic focus, with almost zero emphasis on ecclesiology or sound missiology. Men go from B.Th. to M.Div. to M.Th. to Ph.D., seldom stopping to ask why. Many keep studying because they simply don’t know what to do next, and academics becomes a comfort zone that offers a fleeting illusion of purpose. Most pastors and evangelists don’t require an M.Th. or a Ph.D. for effective ministry. The need for an M.Div. itself has to be reevaluated in recent times, given the amount of information and resources that are available online.

At our church, we don’t entertain the notion of men being stuck for a long time in the “figuring things out” phase. Men need to know their mission and pour themselves out towards that goal. It need not be a hyper-specific mission, but it can’t be super generic either. I can totally get behind the notion that the circumstances of life can change and suddenly we may find ourselves at crossroads where weighty decisions need to be taken. That’s not what I’m addressing here. For example, you don’t enroll in seminary and then sit and wonder what your mission is. Instead, you join seminary in the first place to get the necessary tools and training you need to aid your mission. It is also alarming that most Indian seminary grads don’t think with reference to the local church. Often they want to do counseling and youth ministries, and whether or not it is done as part of a local church is completely optional. The spiritual ambience and appearance of holy pursuit that seminary provides can mask and even justify a man's indecisiveness in the eyes of those around him.

Another trend worth addressing is that of men going abroad for quality seminary education. There’s a sad pattern where men go abroad to study, only to end up staying back, never returning. Now, I’m not saying God can’t call men to serve abroad, but a good number of times you can often tell ahead of time— “this guy is not returning”. Often it’s the ones who leave without a clear sense of mission, without knowing what they’re really seeking from seminary. That aimlessness, combined with the comforts of life abroad, compared to the low-glamour, high-personal-cost ministry work in India can be pretty enticing.

If you are untethered to the Scripture and your mission, then, big and fancy pulpits, huge sanctuaries with stained glass, conferences with the top Reformed speakers, and a private library packed with commentaries you’ll never actually read can start to look like ministry success. It’s easy for our focus to drift from people and the kingdom to the externals i.e. what looks like ministry success. But manhood is the sacrificial assumption of responsibility. We are called to die every day—to our self, to our selfish ambitions, to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life (1 John 2:16). How often do we see men in church with people right in front of them in need of care, yet their thoughts are consumed by some future ministry and some future group he imagines helping? How often do we come across men who claim to have a burden for this vague, undefined category called “people,” but have no intention to serve the actual community right in front of them? The term burden has been mystified enough to strip it of all clarity and groundedness often just to excuse indecisiveness and avoid clarity of mission.

Here’s my charge to the men of God, plain and simple:

Pray fervently. Learn your Bible deeply. Join a healthy local church. Get a job, work hard at it, and become excellent at it. Marry and have as many children as the Lord gives in His kindness. Lead your household in godliness. Wage war daily against the sins of the flesh. And be unapologetically biblical in everything.

And to the men in ministry, I want to say this: love thy neighbor. You won’t find your mission at the end of a degree, but by pouring yourself out for the people immediately around you. When you take the next clear step of obedience with intention, the Lord will be faithful to reveal your mission in due time. That applies whether you’re in vocational ministry or not. Trust the Lord, and do the clear, immediate acts of obedience set before you. The Lord will open the right doors, lead you, and guide you.

Do this, and though you may wander far from comfort, you will draw near to maturity, becoming the kind of man who stands as an extraordinary asset in the kingdom of God.

This is the third in a series of articles titled A Christian’s Guide to Living in the Clown World.

Gaslighting: “the process of making somebody believe untrue things in order to control them, especially that they have imagined or been wrong about what has really happened.”

The culturally prevalent evangelical idea that the penultimate of the virtues is niceness has really left the church defenseless against this. When the push comes to shove, and men with stubble on their faces wearing dresses tell you that they are women, how is the church to deal with it? Niceness has prevented the church from dealing with absurdity as absurdity and has made it go along with the premise of those making the false claims. Let’s pause for a second and take this in—we are living in the clown world today. What does that mean? It means that we live in a world where absurdity has become the norm. Muscular men wearing girls’ clothing get to enter athletic events and win prizes. Serious grown-up lawyers go up to the court and argue that marriage can be a union between two men or two women. There are countries that punish the parents if they don’t meet their five-year-old’s demand of getting on hormone blockers and surgically altering their bodies to transition into the opposite gender. Even within the evangelical world, feminism has made deep inroads and men are stripped of their masculinity with soft power plays. The term servant-leader has become akin to the men holding an honorary title of leader and practically exercising only the office of a servant. It’s a matter of great disgrace that the Indian evangelical scene parades a confused man who thinks he’s a woman and calls himself “Pastor” Esther Bharathi as a symbol of pride. He’s ordained by the Evangelical Church of India and was invited as one of the guests at the inauguration of the 75th anniversary celebrations of the CSI Madhya Kerala Sthreejana Sakhyam in Kottayam. What a painful sight. The traditional churches are anything but traditional anymore and have bought into the nonsense of the world. We are looking at church impotent here. It has been neutered and can have no impact in the Kingdom of God, for it has put on a mask and joined the circus.

The church today is in need of men who will stand up to emotional manipulation and are stable enough not to get shaken by the philosophies of this day and age. There’s so much pressure all around to give in. If you don’t comply with the homosexual agenda, transgender madness, or abortion, then your colleagues, college mates, and friends would single you out. And for the vast majority, evangelicals sadly don’t know what they believe or why they believe it. Even within the church, virtue-led emotional manipulations are employed by the enemy using compromised people to make the church impotent. In this day and age, it is difficult in most churches for the older folk or the elders to advise the younger men and women to get married in their early twenties and have as many children as possible. Dare you say that women should not pick up jobs that put strain on the household work. The church has become so worldly, and affected by individualism and pietism, that godliness has been confined to quiet times and Sunday church attendance. Mothers have to know that being around their children and training them in godliness is more important than the pursuit of wealth while handing over their children to be raised by caretakers and TV. And the same with fathers. When these conversations come up in church contexts, people make laughably bad arguments such as “Should the education go to waste?” Well, that’s sad on multiple levels because the whole notion of education there is something to equip a person for a job and not the world. It is a matter that both men and women should equally take to heart that building careers and amassing wealth are very poor goals to live for. Families need to pause and reconsider whether Christ and His Kingdom are the pursuits of their family, or if they too have joined the grand circus. We need a strong evangelical church culture where sin is addressed as sin and people are taken to task as much as they are loved. A healthy church should have a culture where there’s always a pressure for sanctification. That’s right, I used the word “pressure.” Before you use the gentle and lowly grace card with me, let me clarify what I mean by it. It means that ungodliness shouldn’t be ignored in the church. If a young girl sits in the pew with a deep-cut blouse, the older church members shouldn't have to tiptoe out of fear of backlash to ask her to wear a modest top. The church members have to be involved in active discipleship where, both through the examples of their lives and through instruction, they are building one another up. When the church mistook niceness for love, they walked straight into the trap of the enemy. Like my co-elder Pr. Michael often says, “It is iron sharpens iron and not feather sharpens feather.”

We have to train ourselves to be unfazed by the pressures of the world and actively apply the biblical worldview to all of life. You need to have a biblical reason behind why you eat, watch a movie, go for work, get married, and what not. It is the need of the hour to build such a culture in this day and age. Churches should be willing to take the hit at any cost to not compromise on the gospel and also on the gospel being actually lived out. This would mean hurt church attendees walking away, being disliked by the wider church circles, being branded with every slur in the book, and above everything being labelled as unloving. All the men and women we try to please will die and become dust of the ground, and none of their approvals would matter on that last day when standing face to face with Christ.

May we look to that day, and run the good race, laying aside all the weight and sin that clings to us. Pick up your armor and sword, ye Christian soldiers—don’t slumber, for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed (Romans 13:11). There’s a war to wage.

This is the second in a series of articles titled A Christian’s Guide to Living in the Clown World.

It’s become normal, even inside the church, to talk like our bodies are optional appendages needlessly attached to the soul. Like they’re the shell, and what really matters is somewhere floating inside, in the mind or the soul. We’ve baptized this thinking with Christian language. We talk about "the spiritual life" as if it has nothing to do with legs, arms, hormones, bone structure, chromosomes, or blood. But Christianity is stubbornly bodily. The whole drama of the Bible happens in flesh and blood, not in abstract space.

Human beings are sexual creatures. Not just sexual in the sense of attraction or desire, but that in essence we are male and female, and that design is not peripheral. It is central to our existence and purpose. We were created body and soul, not just soul. The image of God in us includes our embodied nature. You are not a ghost with a meat suit. You are a body-person. What you do with your body is what you do with your soul.

The dominant philosophy at the time of Jesus' birth was called Platonism. It entertained the idea that the soul is the true essence of the person and that the body is a prison. And even now Christians think that the material is impure and salvation is an escape out of it. But Christianity cuts against all of that. Jesus did not float down in a spirit cloud. He did what was countercultural. He was born of a woman, in a body, into real human history. John 1:14 — "And the Word became flesh" — is the death blow to every Gnostic impulse we try to sneak into our theology.

And yet here we are, with churches that believe male and female are negotiable categories. You have pastors who think gender is a spectrum. You have entire denominations that treat sexuality like it’s morally neutral as long as you tack on a rainbow cross at the end of it. But Scripture is clear: God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27, NASB95). The distinction of the genders is one of the oldest distinctions God has made.

Our sexuality is central to our calling. Adam was called, as a man, to till the field and cultivate it. Eve was called to be a helper to him. When God tells humanity to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, He is not talking to generic people. He is talking to embodied, gendered image-bearers, where one gender makes the other one pregnant and the other gender delivers a baby. If the world and the devil can get you to doubt these basics — what you are — then they can make you live in rebellion against your own design.

This is why Satan always goes after the body. He always goes after creation. He is a vandal of reality. In the garden, he doesn't tempt Eve with something totally foreign. He takes what is there and twists it. That strategy hasn’t changed. Now he tells boys they might really be girls. He tells girls they are gods of their own identity. He whispers into pulpits and seminary classrooms: “Did God really say… male and female?” “Did God really say women can't be pastors?”

Satan tries to make men and women androgynous so they can be useless in their calling, thus making the church impotent. If you convince a generation of men to get on hormone blockers, cut off their privates, and pretend to be women, then there’s no longer a threat of godly masculinity to challenge the tyrannical forces of Satan. If women are fed the false narrative that they will find their fulfillment in building careers and not bearing children, then there’s no longer a threat of godly matriarchs raising godly offspring or opening homes for hospitality. In turn, that means fewer godly covenant communities.

While the Christian church is confused about gender and easily carried away by every wind of worldly doctrine, Satan precisely knows where to attack. And the modern church, by and large, is left without any defense.

More to come…

This is the first in a series of articles titled A Christian’s Guide to Living in the Clown World.

You Need a Church

The New Testament knows nothing of a discipleship that happens outside the local church. Not at EU, not at YWAM, not at YFC, not at seminary, not at workshops, seminars, or conferences—God has instituted discipleship to happen within the local church. We’re not called to make disciples in the abstract. We’re called to do it among the people we actually gather with, sing with, pray with, and submit to. So if you want to grow as a disciple or help others grow, start by showing up. Not once in a while. Not when it's convenient. But as one who belongs to the people of God.

And of course, this includes church membership. Yes, that unpopular, old-fashioned, very biblical idea that says: I’m committed to these people, and these people are committed to me. Church membership is not a modern invention—it’s a biblical necessity. Infact in these modern times when people have severe commitment issues, the need for formal memebrship has really increased. Membership formalizes what Scripture already assumes: a believer’s commitment to a specific local body for the sake of discipleship, accountability, leadership, and mission.

Let me show you this from the scripture:

• The early church had a countable, known number (Acts 2:41). People were not added to nothing, they were added to the church. Someone was keeping track. They weren’t unaffiliated believers floating around; they joined the people of God.

• They kept lists (1 Timothy 5:9). Paul references a list for widows, implying clear knowledge of who belongs and who doesn’t. Discipleship thrives in that kind of clarity.

• Elders are accountable for specific sheep (Hebrews 13:17). If elders are going to give account for souls, then there must be some way to define who is part of the flock and who isn’t. Membership clarifies that.

• Church discipline assumes a clear “in” and “out” (1 Corinthians 5:12–13). Paul distinguishes between those inside and outside the church. That distinction makes no sense without some formal recognition of who belongs.

• The metaphors demand it: the church is called a body, a household, a flock, and a temple. None of those images work if people are only loosely associated. They only make sense if there is meaningful, mutual commitment.

• Submission to leadership presumes defined relationships (1 Thessalonians 5:12–13). You’re not called to submit to every Christian leader on the internet. You’re called to submit to those over you in the Lord—which only makes sense in the context of membership.

• Church unity requires covenantal commitment (Ephesians 4:1–3). Biblical unity isn’t just a vibe. It’s worked out in real life, with real people, over real time, in a real church.

Membership is not about bureaucracy. It is not about showing off the numbers or a means to exercise control on the people. It’s about discipleship. It’s about being known. It’s about making it plain that you are part of a people. A local church is its membership. I or my co-elders don't have any say in the lives of the people who occasionally visit the church and disappear. Or even the regular attendees who don't intend to become members of the church. We have no authority to disciple, or discipline them. But also, they don't get to take part in membership meetings, discipleship activities, receiving elder care (to the degree the members get), etc. If we don’t want to belong, we shouldn’t want to disciple either.

You Need Elders

Discipleship is elder-guided.

“Shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight... not under compulsion but voluntarily, according to the will of God.” — 1 Peter 5:2 (NASB95)

Pastors and elders are shepherds. They are called to oversee, to teach, to correct, and to care. They are personally accountable to God for the souls under their care (Hebrews 13:17). This means the church cannot be healthy unless the elders are actively involved in the discipleship of the flock. This includes both discipling the members themselves, and also equipping the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:12). Discipleship is every member’s responsibility, but elders set the tone, guard the truth, lead by example and oversee all the discipleship activities from a high level.

You Need the Gospel

The most important of them all is the gospel. Many might pelt stones at me for what I am about to say next. To some extent you might get by even without formal membership and clearly defined elders. It's not at all recommended and definitely is a denial of God’s grace. But also it is nowhere as important as getting the gospel right. To some extent you don’t need a discipleship manual if you have the gospel. The gospel is what restores, corrects, comforts, confronts, heals, humbles, and strengthens. And if your membership is clear on the gospel and its impact on their lives then most of the burden is lifted and many things will automatically fall in its place. When the gospel is central we'll be able to speak truth in love, call people to repentance, remind them of Christ’s sufficiency, and help them walk in obedience. If we have the gospel, everything else falls in place. Conversations become natural. Confession becomes normal. Repentance becomes expected.

You Need a Culture not a Plan

Churches often try to replace real relationships and culture building with structures. But discipleship is deeply relational.

“Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” — Galatians 6:2 (NASB95)

Programs have expiry dates. Culture lasts. You can launch a discipleship initiative and kill it in six months. But if your church actually believes that every member is responsible for every other member’s growth, that will last. Plans can be made in no time. On the other hand culture grows slowly. When the culture is gospel-shaped, it grows strong. That doesn't happen in a two-hour event. It happens in the messy, repetitive, vulnerable life of ordinary believers who are willing to walk together. You need to be the kind of person who will sit across the table and ask real questions. The kind of member who follows up with someone’s sin—not for gossip but for their good. You need to be in each other’s lives enough to notice when someone is drifting. You also need to be vulnerable enough so that others can notice you when you are drifting. If your idea of discipleship is just a midweek group with snacks and surface-level discussion, you’re aiming way too low.

You Need the Ordinary Means of Grace

This isn’t optional. This is the heart of it. You need the Word preached and read. You need prayer. You need the Lord’s Supper. Paul calls it the cup of blessing (1 Corinthians 10:16). You need confession and repentance. You need the local church gathered under the authority of Christ, sitting under the authority of Scripture. The Scripture doesn't present them as optional items but we find them at important places like the Great Commission and early church gathering mentioned in Acts 2. That’s where discipleship happens. Not in your private spirituality, but in the ordinary, weekly, covenantal life of the church along with other church members.

Some of you are attending a church faithfully, but have no intention of being known. No intention of joining. No intention of submitting. Let me say this clearly and with love: that posture will not produce fruit. It may give you a sense of control, but it will not give you growth. You need the church. And the church needs you. Not your curated, self-protected version, but your real, struggling, growing, gospel-needing self. You want to grow in grace? You want to see discipleship happen? Then gather with the church. Build relationships. Submit to the elders. Open your Bible. Open your life. Eat together. Pray together. Repent together. It’s not at all complicated, but it will cost you time and effort and the occasional hurt. And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

This is the fourth and final article in a series of articles on Church and Discipleship.

In the New Testament, discipleship is not a department. It’s not a class. It's not an elective. It’s the ordinary work of the church, and that means every member is involved. Discipleship is not a professional’s task—it’s a Christian’s calling. Look at this exhortation from Hebrews for example:

“Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together... but encouraging one another.” — Hebrews 10:24–25 (NASB95)

The writer to the Hebrews is not addressing pastors. This isn’t a job description for church staff. It’s a charge to the whole church. The word “consider” implies intentionality. Think about how to do this. Plan it. Pray about it. Actually pursue it. It’s shocking how many believers are willing to attend a Sunday service faithfully for years and never intentionally encourage or disciple another soul. You’re not here to warm the pew. You’re here to build the body.

The Assumption of Competency

“And concerning you, my brothers and sisters, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able also to admonish one another.” — Romans 15:14 (NASB95)

Paul isn’t writing this to an MDiv batch. In fact, I'll trust normal church members — of a healthy church who have sat under expository preaching and regularly partake in worship and communion — with the discipleship of others than the MDiv and MTh grads from most seminaries (Article for another day). Paul is writing to the regular saints in Rome. He assumes they know enough, have enough, and are good enough— not perfect, but able—to admonish one another. You don’t need a degree to speak truth to your brother. You don’t need a title to comfort your sister. You don’t need a course certificate to call someone back to obedience. What you do need is the Word, the Spirit, and the church. To the Colossian church, Paul says

“Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another...” — Colossians 3:16 (NASB95)

The Word is not supposed to dwell only in the pulpit. It must dwell richly in the pews. Because when the Word lives in the whole church, the whole church becomes a teaching church. And this doesn’t mean everyone grabs a mic. It means your lunch conversations become theological. It means your prayer meetings overflow with encouragement. It means you stop talking about ministry as something the pastors and deacons do and start doing it yourself. Because the bible says

“...from whom the whole body... causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” — Ephesians 4:15–16 (NASB95)

i.e. the body builds itself! Not the pastor alone or the staff alone. But the whole body contributes to the growth of the whole body. So if you are part of the body, and you are not contributing, then you’re not just passively disconnected. You’re withholding something the body needs. And you're stunting your own maturity in the process.

This Normal Church

“Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you also are doing.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NASB95)

This is what normal churches do. They build each other up. They carry each other’s burdens. They restore those caught in sin (Galatians 6:1–2). They meet after the service to talk about how the sermon landed, not just what they’re eating for lunch. If that sounds unfamiliar to you, maybe your idea of “church” has been shaped more by consumerism than the New Testament. Churches are full of opinionated men and women who think that church growth has to do with the growth in numbers, tech, flawless liturgy, evangelistic events and the overall worship experience a visiting audience goes back with. Often when believers talk about discipleship what they mean is handouts and charts on the whiteboard. While they have their right place, a lot of it is about being vulnerable about your spiritual state and seeking help. Here's another example of the members engaged in discipleship where the exhortation is for the older women saints to train the younger ones.

“Older women... are to encourage the young women...” — Titus 2:3–5 (NASB95)

What's the qualification here? Ministry title? Seminary Degree? No, Paul assumes that since the woman is older, she's accumulated enough spiritual wisdom to help the younger women.

So in the light of this, what’s holding us back? Insecurity? Laziness? A wrong understanding of “calling”?

Discipleship doesn’t begin with a ministry title, it begins with conversations and meals. It’s not a complicated system. It’s a culture more than a system. You’re not being asked to disciple perfectly. You’re being called to disciple faithfully. And in the providence of God, your presence matters more than your accolades. So take someone to lunch. Pray with someone who’s suffering. Read a book with someone who’s spiritually drifting. Confess sin. Ask hard questions. Offer the gospel.

Now, if what worries you is the potential misuse of this. That is, immature believers trying to usurp authority and teach the wrong things, then that's where the need for a healthy church with godly elders become vital. It is not either extremes. It's not passive members and active elders, neither is it passive elders and active members. It's active members and active elders. Of course, when members of a church are engaged in discipleship of others, things could potentially go wrong. But this is not supposed to happen in hiddenness or secret. The elders are expected to have the spiritual oversight over everything as the overseers. But we are to refrain from avoiding bible mandated responsibility in the fear of potential misuse. That's as ridiculous as a church prohibiting marriages to prevent potential spousal abuse.

Do you want to see real spiritual growth in your church? Do you want people to be helped? Stop waiting for someone else to do it. You are the someone else

This is the third article in a series of articles on Church and Discipleship.

Jesus didn’t say, “Go into all the world and host worship services.” He didn’t say, “Go to the ends of the earth and plant itenerant ministries.” He said,

“¹⁹Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” — Matthew 28:19-20

The text says make disciples and it also says what to do with them (baptize, teach them to obey). So if this is the mission of the church, then Discipleship seems to be at the center of it. It indicates that discipleship is not someting that comes in the aftermath missions. Discipleship is the mission.

What is Missions, Really?

Missions is the church doing what the church has always been called to do—make disciples by proclaiming the gospel and planting churches.

We often reduce missions to sending. But missions is also staying. Every church that is not discipling is disobeying. Whether in a megacity or a rural town, the call is the same: baptize, teach, and build the church on Christ. If your “mission” does not have a church in view, it is not a biblical mission. The modern church has grown strangely uncomfortable to the word “obedience.” We talk about grace, love, inclusion—and all those are glorious truths. But the commission is not merely to convert. It is to teach them to obey all that Christ has commanded (Matt 28:20).

Discipleship is slow work. It involves teaching, walking with the person, encouraging them, confronting their sin and life choices etc. We are not just trying to make people understand Jesus. We are teaching people to follow Him.

If you are a Christian, you are in the Great Commission business. This isn’t for missionaries only. This is not a full-time ministry category. The church is the missionary society of Christ. And that means every member has been called into the mission of making disciples.

“Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds...” — Hebrews 10:24 (NASB95)
“Admonish one another...” — Romans 15:14
“Teaching and admonishing one another...” — Colossians 3:16

These are not suggestions for the super-spiritual or the office bearers. This is the air the church breathes. The call to discipleship is not something that can be outsourced to a discipleship pastor or an app with pre-loaded video content. Discipleship cannot happen without the church.

Planting Churches, Not Just Producing Converts

Jesus did not send out apostles to gather crowds. He sent them to plant churches. Churches where baptism, preaching, discipline, fellowship, and communion happen. Churches where elders are appointed. Churches that carry out the “one anothers.” Churches that display the manifold wisdom of God (Eph 3:10). Everywhere the disciples went they planted churches. The goal of missions is not to produce statistics of how many people groups were reached. The goal is not to screen the Jesus movie to hundreds of people and move on to the next village. The goal is healthy, local churches where discipleship takes root and grows fruit over time. We do not want mission fields full of decisions and no disciples. If a community comes to faith but is abandoned by the missionary to move on to the next community, then you have left them defenseless against false teaching, spiritual temptations. The would be without teachers and guides left to fend for themselves.

The local church is the greenhouse where disciples grow. That’s why the church must not be reduced to a Sunday show. The preaching of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, the presence of pastors, and the fellowship of saints—all of this is the structure within which discipleship happens. You do not need a new curriculum or a viral social media plan to make disciples. You need a church that believes the gospel, teaches sound doctrine, and loves people enough to walk with them in weakness, sin, repentance, and hope. And you need Christians who know that discipleship is not optional. It’s the Christian life.

You don’t need a plane ticket to make disciples. You need to walk across the room after Sunday service and have a spiritual conversation. You need to read Scripture with someone who’s struggling. You need to open your home and your heart. Because the church doesn’t need more experts. The church needs ordinary Christians obeying an extraordinary Savior, doing the ordinary work of discipleship—which, in God’s wisdom, is how the kingdom advances.

This is the second in a series of articles on Church and Discipleship.

Discipleship is not something we do alone. From the starting, Jesus called His followers into community. He gathered twelve disciples, not twelve isolated individuals pursuing personal spiritual growth. The early church in Acts "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" (Acts 2:42, NASB95). The community side of discipleship isn’t accidental; it's foundational. Paul's epistles are full of "one another" commands: love one another, bear one another's burdens, encourage one another. These commands cannot be fulfilled in isolation. They presuppose active participation in a community of believers.

The local church is not a human invention but God's ordained means for nurturing and sustaining disciples. It's within the local church that believers are taught sound doctrine, participate in the sacraments, and are held accountable in their walk with Christ. Hebrews 10:24-25 exhorts believers to "consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together" (NASB95). Neglecting regular fellowship with a local body of believers is not a trivial matter; it's a direct disobedience to God's command. Attempting to follow Jesus apart from the local church is a dangerous path. Without the accountability and oversight provided by church leadership, believers are susceptible to doctrinal error and moral failure. Proverbs 18:1 warns, "He who separates himself seeks his own desire, He quarrels against all sound wisdom" (NASB95). So the question is then "can't I get accountability elsewhere?". And the reason you shouldn't get it primarily from elsewhere is because God has given the foremost responsibility of teaching you and shepherding you to the elders (Acts 20:28–31). Moreover, spiritual gifts are given for the edification of the body (1 Corinthians 12:7). Isolating oneself deprives the church of the unique contributions each member is meant to provide.

If you claim to follow Christ, you must commit to His body, the church. This commitment involves more than mere attendance; it requires active participation, submission to leadership, and a willingness to serve and be served. In an age of consumer Christianity, where personal preferences often dictate church involvement, we must return to a biblical understanding of the church as a covenant community. It's within this community that discipleship flourishes, and believers are conformed to the image of Christ.


This is the first in a series of articles on Church and Discipleship.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

Psalm 42:5

The verse above employs a Hebrew literary device known as apostrophe. This is when the author addresses himself in the third person, as if speaking to someone else. Consider the verse, for example—the author questions his own soul, asking why it is downcast, as though his soul were another person!

When we go through turmoils and difficulties, our heart brews up a lot of emotion: bitterness, anger, discontentment, cynicism, indifference, etc. Many come out of a season of bitterness and unwise actions and justify it by saying, “that was unlike me.” But the truth of the matter is that—that is exactly who we are. It was not a part of us detached from our body and soul that was responsible for the actions and thoughts; it was us—our whole self. When we think of ourselves in the third person and accuse that concocted entity for our sins, we are both in denial and we rob ourselves of the grace of correction. When people go through pain, they expect empathy, which is alright. But we should be careful not to expect people to empathize with our sins to the degree that we feel justified in all our actions by the merit of our hurt. Basically, “I did it because I was hurt” doesn’t justify a wrongdoing.

"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."

Hebrews 4:15

If we are to take the example of Christ, He was tried and tempted beyond anyone else, and yet He was not shaken. While it is true that we are weaker and we will fail from time to time, it is still true that we are to follow Christ’s example!

While we are more tempted to step out of our bodies and blame the aforementioned concocted self-entity to justify our wrongdoing, the psalmist does something different. He steps out of his body to take up the responsibility for his downcastness by objectively viewing the situation and discipling himself. “Why art thou cast down, my soul?”—Really! What gives? You ought not to be cast down, my soul! —says the Psalmist; as opposed to what the world teaches us to say: “How can I not be cast down?” “Hope thou in the Lord”—yes, you are not helpless! The Lord is at hand.

Christian discipleship in the post-postmodern era will have us come across several such situations where men and women will justify their sins by the merit of their hurt. They will also expect the ones correcting them to offer no correction but rather approve of and validate their actions and every emotional fluctuation. This is also something we need to be careful of with ourselves. Look at the apostle Peter, for example. He looks at the suffering Christians in dispersion and exhorts them, encourages them, and brings them out of their pain. But he doesn’t stop there; he follows it up with some correction (1 Peter 1:14-16, 1 Peter 2:1). The shaking and disorientation that comes from pain and hurt can often leave a person irrational for a season. The one counselling should be careful not to melt into a puddle and merge into the sea of troubles that the counselee has, but rather should be the solid ground on whom they can stand, pointing them to the true solid ground who is Christ Himself.

Now, it goes without saying that the point I am trying to get across is not that you or I should be ungracious to the suffering or that no wisdom should be employed in picking and choosing words. But you or I shouldn’t enter the counselling space—whether to the self or to others—without knowing the battlefield and the obstacles that will come across us.

1. Complementarianism has become a very flexible term over time, and to many, it simply means “men and women are the same in every sense and merely have different roles. Both can carry out each other's duties just as well if they wanted to.” I believe it's a poor take on anthropology and it stems from the somwhat incomplete definition “men and women are equal in essence and value, but have distinct and separate roles to play”. But there’s more to it. Men and women are different in temperament, tastes, how they view the world, physical strength, attitude towards the same issue, etc. It's not just the roles, but we are built differently to effectively carry out those roles.

2. Patriarchy means father rule, and God has always dealt with his people through male federal headship (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Kings, Prophets, Priests, Christ, Apostles, Elders). Father rule is everywhere throughout the redemptive history.

3. For those who are convinced of not using the term "patriarchy" for wisdom reasons, I believe it is infact unwise not to use the term. There is an ongoing war on the dictionary and utter confusion everywhere. We live in a world where people have been attempting to establish that words like man, woman, gender, love, etc., don't mean anything or can mean anything you want them to mean. Wicked men always move the Overton window through gaslighting and emotional blackmail. If you give in to the pressure of giving up the word "patriarchy"—which has a good and valuable meaning—then you help them move the overton window further left. All treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ (Col 2:3, Prov 2: 6). Christ is the Lord over all words. Don't give in to the pressure!

4. It is all the more important to display what true and good patriarchy is because there are very few good patriarchs. With gender confusion and homosexuality on the rise, those with vile and corrupt motives try to make men and women androgynous. As Christians, our roles and purposes are inseparable from our gender. Making people androgynous is a way for those in power to make people inert and weak. Such people are easily controlled and manipulated. A society with strong men can’t be manipulated. But men are easily corrupted by comfort, materialism, pleasure, and guilt. These have been extensively used to control and manipulate men to become inert. Men are guilted for being “men” and made to feel sorry for everything wrong in the world. If they don’t become biblical patriarchs in response, they either explode from pressure and turn to toxic patriarchy as in the likes of Andrew Tate, or they give in and become docile.