Get Up

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.



In this final video where Rowe closes up the S.W.E.A.T. Pledge, I find what is maybe the most important of all the principles. It will make or break all of the others we have examined in this miniseries.

Most people (but not all) will be able to “show up” for life to do what is necessary. But there is an intangible quality to the fact that a much smaller group demonstrate an internal fire and personal commitment to “get up” long before what is necessary and do what it takes to be excellent.

Angela Duckworth calls it “grit” in her well-known TED Talk.

And Rowe is right. This commitment is about choices.

It is not about talent; it takes no talent to get up earlier and work harder than anybody else. It is not about education; you cannot teach this to others in a lecture hall. It is not something that can be medicated or consumed as a product.

This commitment is an internal commitment to be a part of something (to use the cliche) “bigger than yourself.” For many from the secular perspective, they find this fire by being internally committed to themselves. Others find this in their commitment to the larger team, community, or group of “others.” I am assuming that for some, this internal fire is even dysfunctionally fueled by guilt, insecurity, and fear.

Appropriately placed (in my mind), this fire comes from a deep and abiding belief in what is most true about the world: a belief that God is putting the world back together, that this project is deeply meaningful to lots of other people and a planet that suffers from all kinds of brokenness. It is a belief that God is looking for partners and an unbelievable gratitude that we get the opportunity to be a part of these restoration efforts.

We have the opportunity to get up every day and be a part of what the Jews call tikkun olam, or “the repairing of the world.” If this opportunity doesn’t inspire us to be deeply committed to personal growth and hard work — not for ourselves and our own Towers of Babel, but for the wholeness of the universe — then I don’t know what will.

But getting up and working hard is the piece we can control that has the ability, when used by God, to turn morsels into miracles. When neglected, it is also the thing that has killed more potential than any other problem we have ever encountered.

Of all the principles we looked at in this series, if there is one thing I could magically give to each of my students, it would be this principle of hard work and dedication combined with a healthy understanding of identity and a true rest of the Spirit that comes from knowing we are loved as we are. It should be a beautiful mixture of work and rest — work finding its appropriate place, and a healthy human being at rest in the love, value, and acceptance of God.

And the bummer is that you cannot manufacture this in a blog post any more than you can in a classroom.

But the combination of those two realities can change a world — your world. And when enough of our worlds are changed, it helps us be a part of changing the big one. This is why I work with college students: I have a deep, abiding belief that if you can mentor this in enough students, you can change the course of history. If you Impact the U, you Impact the World.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Model

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

We’ve covered our definition of discipleship as being imitating a mentor who imitates Jesus, and we’ve even hinted at the fact that, for years, we’ve had a mission statement that serves this end by providing us a roadmap to discipleship. For a long time, we have said ICM exists to pursue, model, and teach intimacy with Christ on the American university campus, in the context of Christian community. In our last post we spoke of the first word on that roadmap — pursue. We spoke of having an intentional pursuit of God and defined the word pursue as intentionally engaging spiritual practices.

But is this enough? Is it enough to pursue God, creating space for Him and letting Him bear fruit?

On one hand, yes! If we truly pursue God in a way that resembles the “abiding” of John 15, the idea would be that God will call us to do what He wants us to do. The “fruit” is a natural (or supernatural) byproduct of our intentional pursuit of God — without a doubt.

But God also told us to do a lot of things. The Bible is a big book full of a lot of big ideas, so there are probably a few more things we can use to give us guidance. Of that whole big book of God’s dreams for this world, which ones do we use to give us direction?

Fortunately, this is where our purpose of making disciples and our definition of discipleship serve our mission very well. If we are to make disciples who make disciples, and we have defined that as a process of imitation, then the next word to come is only natural: MODEL.

If we really believe that pursuing God will lead to intimacy with God (what we define as success), and if that intimacy with God is what He uses to bear fruit that will last in our lives and ministries, then discipleship is the process of teaching our students how to do this well. Our job becomes one of pursuing sustainable spiritual formation. In this regard, it is not enough to simply pursue God and create space for Him in our lives. We also have to show our students how to do this. We’re going to show them in a very literal fashion… by modeling it.

ICM’s Vice President, Jeff VanderLaan, has one of my favorite sayings in relation to this topic. He likes to say, “Just because you’re wearing clothes, doesn’t make you a model. A model is somebody who wears clothes in front of others for the purpose of being seen.” This is a fantastic metaphor and drove us to define the term ‘model’ as pursuing God in front of others.

This is also a natural progression from the rabbinic idea that discipleship is about mimicry and imitation. You cannot imitate a rabbi or a mentor if you don’t have a model to mimic. I would never have learned how to tie my shoes without a model to follow and a teacher to imitate. I would never have learned how to do a load of laundry without imitating my mother’s example. Why do we think others can learn ideas like memorizing scripture or taking a sabbath by merely talking about it? Aren’t these things that need to be seen?

Now, some very astute Bible students will be quick to point out, “We aren’t supposed to do our spiritual deeds to be seen by others! We’re supposed to pray and pursue God in secret, without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing.” And this desire for secrecy is a good point and certainly worth addressing. The reference comes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6) and reads as follows:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

But we would be wise to remind ourselves of words Jesus spoke as part of the very same teaching in the previous chapter:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

So what gives? Obviously Jesus taught us that the way in which we live is to be seen by others so they can know and glorify God. But what we have to be careful of is our motivation. Jesus says not to do these things “to be seen.” If this is the reason you are doing them, you are going to be disappointed in the reward you receive. You’ll end up with the praise of others as your reward, but not the mission of God (i.e., disciples).

And so we model our pursuit of God on purpose in front of our students. We pursue God in front of them so they can see what a healthy pursuit of God looks like. We do not do this in order to be seen, but to instruct them and help them develop as maturing followers of Jesus.

But speaking of instruction, is pursing and modeling the whole of the process? Is it enough to merely mimic our instructor? Or is all of this imitation a part of something bigger?

JAMES: Mitzvoth

So then we come to the book of James. In a lot of ways, we’ve done all the intro work for James back in Galatians. While I’m not going to spend all my time trying to parse the different perspectives and details on exactly who the author is — by that I mean which James wrote the book — I am going to work off of the generally accepted view that the author of James is one of the members of the triumvirate — Peter, James, and John — who followed Jesus around. As we mentioned in the Galatians series, I believe this is also the “brother” of Jesus.

James was the leader of what is sometimes called the “Jewish church” in Jerusalem. As Peter had charge over the entire Christian movement, church history tells us (also corroborated by the Text) James stayed to oversee the church in Jerusalem. This is where the early church had its beginning — and a very Jewish beginning it was. As the church got pushed out, relocated its “headquarters” to Antioch, and as Paul began to spread this movement into the Greco-Asian world of the Greeks (which would eventually be led by John, thus giving us the roles of the “three pillars,” Peter, James, and John), James took up the mantle of leading this very Jewish church centered in Jerusalem.

As we mentioned before, most progressive scholarship is going to say there was massive disagreement (even evident in the New Testament) between James and Paul. In fact, many will say they were enemies and there were two different “churches” — the Jewish church in Jerusalem (led by James) and the Gentile church in Asia and Asia Minor (led by Paul). I disagree with this assessment based on the witness of Luke in the book of Acts (and Paul in Galatians). I do believe James probably leaned a different direction than Paul, but I also believe the early church led them to a union that preserved the church of the New Testament.

So why bother you with all these details? Because this is essential to understanding the context of the letter from James.

People have, for centuries, tried to bring synergy to what appear to be opposing arguments from Paul and James about the role of obedience and faith. While some claim no contradiction exists, it certainly seems like James is trying to “correct” Paul’s arguments about justification by faith.

However, realizing James is playing a role as the leader of the Jewish church in Jerusalem is incredibly helpful. Consider the opening to the letter:

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:Greetings.

James writes to “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.” This is clearly a reference to a strictly Jewish audience in the world of Asia and Asia Minor. It appears to me that James is wanting to speak as the Jewish leader of a Jewish church to the Jewish participants in a rapidly changing world. James is not trying to usurp Paul’s authority; James it trying to be who God has called him to be and let Paul do what God has called him to do.

James is writing to Jews about what it means to live in a Gentile culture and follow Jesus.

This matters, because when James talks about “works” or “deeds” (also known as the mitzvoth to Jews), he is not talking about miqsat ma’asay haTorah like Paul was. When Paul talked to a Gentile church about “works of the law,” he was referring to the parts of the law that make you Jewish. But for Jews, this part of the law was never up for debate. In the New Testament, the Jews never argue about whether Jews should follow the Law. This is never a question! What they argue about was whether or not Gentiles would follow the Law.

What this means is when James talks about “works” and “deeds,” James is talking about obedience.

The letter of James is written to plead with a Jewish presence in Asia and Asia Minor not to lose their distinctiveness amidst a bunch of Gentiles who live with a freedom that Jews are not called to — at least not in the same way Gentiles are. Consider how this would affect the way the audience reads the central passage of James:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? 

Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

Considering the difference between Paul and James when it comes to their definition of “works/deeds” is critical to wrestling with James’s message. I also find the reference to Rahab (a Gentile prostitute) at the end of this passage to be interesting. I believe James is insinuating that this truth is true for all of them — Jew and Gentile alike.

While I don’t believe James is usurping Paul’s message of faith and justification, I do believe James is offering his Jewish perspective to the conversation to make sure this early church doesn’t lose its distinctiveness.

As we consider this letter, may we also be moved to remember that words mean very little unless they are incarnated in our actions. May this be true in all of us — Jew and Gentile