Course: Spiritual Life of the Leader

Lecture:4 Essence and Reception

Essence is who the Lord has created you to be. Biblically, essence precedes existence as oppose to Sartre's teaching that man is no more than what he makes of himself. God has given us the capacity of reception, to be able to hear God’s voice and follow it. The spiritual life that God calls you to live is based on what you receive from God, not on what you do for God.

I. Essence

We have talked about the Wesleyan Revival in the 1700s and about Christian Activism in the 1800s and how that set a mode of living and working that permeated broad sections of the church today. I want to try and give a further foundation to a certain important term. The church had a term which you will see come up conceptually in any number of places in the early church. There were people like John Cash, an early church father writing in the late 300s and early 400s. Where you really see it come into flower and explained thoroughly is in the theologian times of the medieval age, a person the church referred to as the dumb ox. This person was a very overweight person, yet a beloved man of God by the name of Thomas Aquinas. He had this word which was nothing really original to him; it is the idea of essence. It had to do with who the Lord created us to be. We will spend a lot of time discussing the image of God from Genesis, along with how we are being formed into the image of God in Pauline thought. So essence is who God created me to be. What they would write is that essence precedes existence. There is a lot of theology behind that this course doesn’t have time to unpack. From a Christian standpoint, we believe that the Lord holds every single person in his mind and heart, even before they were born. This is why we cherish human life and why we stand so firmly that nothing is a mistake or accident regardless of the circumstance of birth, regardless whether they know their parents. You now have people saying to their children that they were unwanted. I have students who have been rejected by their parents. Some don’t even know their birth parents. In regards to the doctrine of essence, the church fathers affirmed that we are held as cherished because I am created by God the Father, almighty. My deepest dignity is in God’s work in my life, not in what I do to create my own identity. This doesn’t take away from the responsibility that we have. This is important to understand in terms of being driven that many of us find in terms of the rise of Christian activism. It is also important in terms of getting the balance not only in terms of what Jesus does for us but what Jesus does within us.

II. What’s the Result if My Life is Defined by What I Do?

A. Jean-Paul Sartre

So when we talk about essence preceding existence, let’s move forward in terms of where things end up eventually; as to my life being defined by what I do. If my life is defined by what I accomplish or what I build or by what I accumulate or by whom I influence. These are all prime things in ministry. My wife and I have built buildings in ministry and accumulated things for ministry. If I get to the point of saying okay, the value of my life rises or falls on what I build or the influence or metrics that I measure myself by. It is very common in congregations to measure yourself by the number of baptisms or by the sheer attendance. There are many different ways in which we measure ourselves. If these statistics become my primary means of self-worth, then I am on really slippery slope in my life. Let’s look at where that slippery slope goes as we go into the 1900s. I want to look at a school of thought that was highlighted by a person named Jean-Paul Sartre. The book which I’m reading from is on existentialism and human emotion. Please keep in mind that Sartre was an atheist. He was an existential humanist, who said that there was no God and that the philosophical atheism discarded the idea of God. Well, people have discarded the idea of God for a long time. But, anyway, this gained a lot momentum in the 1800s, but not so much for the notion that essence precedes existence. To a certain extent, this idea is found everywhere. We find it in Voltaire and in Kant, both notable philosophers of the day. Man has a human nature and this nature is found in all people. This means that everybody is a particular example of a universal concept. Kant says that the result of this universality is that the natural person as well as the famous and rich person are circumscribed by the same definition and have the same basic qualities.

Atheistic existentialism, which Sartre represented, is more coherent. It states that if God does not exist, this is his presupposition, there is not God. Many people in church today don’t believe in God; they only believe in their own social agenda and not at all willing to submit anything to the Lordship of Christ. However, they do everything under the banner of the church. So, it states, if God doesn’t exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence. He is flipping it; a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept and that this being is us. So, what is he saying? This existence is what defines me, what I do defines me. So what is it that is meant by saying that existence precedes essence?

B. Thomas Aquinas

The church, since the time of Thomas Aquinas, says that my essence is what God created me to be. But the atheists say no, that is nonsense; I define my essence. I define who I am. Is this not the cry that we universally hear today? Not only do I define my essence, even today, we will see that we are now trying to define our gender! People have now started to define everything about themselves. It is all about self-definition. There is no given here as such. So, that which is meant by saying that existence precedes essence; first of all we exist and then only afterwards we define ourselves. You have to be a self-made person which is what defines ourselves and thus there is no human nature sense there is no God to conceive it. A person is nothing else but what they make of themselves. That is what a number of philosophers then and now. Humanity if nothing else but what we make of ourselves.

Let me suggest that kind of bent understanding has permeated Christian thought or more so permeated Christian action. It works itself out in all of those negative things we have been talking about. So, what is missing today in the church is a gap of understand just what the church is. We also have a gap of no anthropology; we don’t understand how the Lord made us and what he created us for and understanding of receiving the good gifts of God before entering into any kind of kenosis or self-living out of this. The same person who codified it for the church; Thomas Aquinas said that the soul seeks to give form to the body. In other words, God has created me in his image. I am an incarnated soul; I am made in the image and likeness of God. I am destined to be with God in eternity. Christ through his sacrifice has made that destiny possible for me through the interactions of the merits of Christ and the Holy Spirit within my life; I can now allow the Holy Spirit to lead all that I am to redeem me. This is what the new birth does; it restores the image of God within me. I don’t have to live by those red flag issues that I’ve pointed out earlier. I realize here that I am a child of the King.

C. Ministry Can Be a Shortcut to Hell

I have worth that cannot be measured because I am a child of the King. The Lord fills his purpose for us which may not be tied up in all the activity that I tend to think that will fulfill us. We need to hear a tough word from ancient authors and that is, ‘ministry can actually be a shortcut to Hell.’ If you don’t get some of this stuff grounded in your life about who you are doing this for, why you are doing it and who gets the honor and who is directing it all, it can be a shortcut to hell by entrapping me in layer upon layer of things that will undo my life. It will also bring harm into God’s kingdom.

D. John Ortberg

I want to put up a little schema here that comes from John Ortberg, a sweet man of God in the western part of the United States. He addresses these issues straight on, writing a recent text called ‘soul keeping, caring for the most important part of you.’ He gives us a good example and schema for the difference between letting Martha have it all her own way and being grounded in Christ in midst of the heavy demands of ministry. At no point have I ever thought that ministry did not press me at times and make very real requirements of me. I never try to get away from that at all. But what Ortberg points out, there is a difference between falling into the trap of which states that work determines everything. I am my work, in other words. You are not your work. Your work is an extension of your relationship with Jesus. When you get this out of balance, life begins to collapse. I am not my work. The definition of my life is not my work. When Martha has it all her own way, according to Ortberg and he isn’t even using the Mary/Martha outline here. He is talking about the same concept. Then, I end up hurried and when you are hurried, you are always pre-occupied and unable to be fully present. By that, anytime you are with someone or involved in doing work for the Lord, you are worried and anxious about what is next or what still needs to be done. You can’t be full present or fully relaxed in the moment to what the Holy Spirit is trying to do in that ministry moment. As a pastor having back to back services; three back to back services. Sometimes I felt that I needed a whip for the other staff and for myself. This hurried feeling became an inner condition of the soul, writes Ortberg; and it becomes so dangerous. And when this takes over, the same thing that happened with Martha will happen with us. It becomes spiritually draining. The spiritually presence of God gets drained and then what happens, you do ministry just to do it. It becomes rote as your heart is no longer in it. There is no longer anything there.

And then ultimately Ortberg writes: it causes me to be unavailable to God. He compares this; he admits there are times when we are busy, but there are times when we have to be un-busy. Ortbergs continues to say, I really can maintain a full schedule. There can be a lot of comings and goings; I can have in that sense many activities. But he makes a distinction that this is an outward condition and opposed to an inner condition of the soul. But all of this reminds me that I continually need God. Whereas I’m unavailable to God here, the schedule itself drives me and pushes me to this very sense of needing to be with the Lord.

E. Reception

A quick point that I want to make here; reception is the greatest capacity God has given us. When he made you as a living person in his image, part of that capacity that he has given each one of us is the ability for you to hear his own voice and to follow it. Reception is the greatest capacity he has given to you. The idea of essence, to be made in the image of God means that I can hear and I can respond. I have the capacity to listen and accept his word, his ongoing invitation to me and I can respond. I can be responsible with what he is asking of me. The spiritual life that we are called to live, is based on what we receive from God, not on what we do for God. I don’t want to be accused of being a dualist here. I want to explain this; the spiritual life that is sound and solid is based on what I receive from God. If you flip it and base your spiritual life on what you do for God, then all of the issues that we have been trying to cover began to collapse. You will not be able to do enough to earn God’s favor. Paul had a lot to say about this. Are you able to fulfill the Law? No way! It isn’t going to happen. Are you going to work your way to heaven? No, it doesn’t happen that way. It is a gift; I am here because of a gift of God. I am a gift of God and you are a gift of God. You are a redeemed gift of God. Reception is the priority given to us by the Lord himself. There were times with the Lord that the disciples didn’t even have time to eat. He would pull away and go up into Mount Herman just to get away from the pressing crowd. We are not talking about an unrealistic understanding of life. There will be heavy times of demands, but it is through all of this; in putting this priority that the Lord has given us that we sudden realize with Saint Augustine in his famous Easter sermon, you are what you receive. Blessed be the name of the Lord for allowing us to be what we receive from him. Amen.