The Power of Teams

I stayed with my friend John Stevens a couple of weeks back. We talked for hours. I was particularly riveted by his testimony to do with teams. He has kindly reproduced some of it here. Basically this is the issue. Teams have a great supernatural power. Things happen in teams that never happen quite any other way. Peter Stott takes teams with him. The early apostles always made sure there were at least a couple of them and often others too.
One can put a hundred to flight, but two can put ten thousand to flight!
There is something beautiful about a whole team focussed on one goal and working on it together. And it gets especially interesting when it is evangelistic.
Para church movements were frowned upon in the days of “submission and authority and redefining the vision of the local church.”

This is what I think. Firstly until such time that local churches become more balanced expressions of the whole counsel of God, (does this relate with the phrase the 7 spirits of God?)…remember my vision /picture of the Word as a suspended orb between all the Biblical aspects of God’s nature and character)….. we need specific teams and ministries to make up the lack….

Secondly, I have noticed already so far that the Melchizedek order has little human frame of reference. For instance God suddenly sets apart Paul and Barnabas to reach the Gentiles. The rest of the church at Antioch stayed put. In 1969, Arthur Blessitt was minding his own business of preaching to street kids on the Sunset Strip, when God breaks through and sets him suddenly on a 38 year journey to traverse every country on earth – even the closed ones- carrying the Cross. So, I guess there will always be teams called to specific jobs in specific callings….just as it was also for Mel Tari in the Indonesian Revival. The theory that everything will issue logically and smoothly out of local churches, as we thought in the 70s and 80s….well It clearly isn’t so. Perhaps it was good that Morris Cerullo never listened to anyone!!!!Eh!?


John’s piece is so much more though. It is an encouragement that we will never feel right for the job and God understands this as well.
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What works in reaching out with the gospel?

Is it a valid question to ask ‘what works’? As if there is a methodology out there that guarantees success.

I think that it is true to say that presumption the classic fault of the rational man. Once we land on a workable thesis we test it beyond its endurance and suffer the inevitable disappointment when y doesn’t follow x .

One of the most encouraging paragraphs in the New Testament is 2 Cor 4v7-14;

‘But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us…’ That’s verse 7. That’s true revolution. That’s taking the rational western liberal man and consigning the invention of the enlightenment and modernity and post-modernity to ‘an earthen vessel’. For all this progress you are still an earthen vessel. The real secret, hidden from those brilliant thinkers, those philosophers, is the treasure within.

Our fault is when we detach the two and over emphasize our humanity or diminish our humanity in the light of His divinity. The treasure has no value in itself. Only when it can be transported, and for that an earthen vessel is all that is required.

‘We are perplexed but not in despair’ v 8. If verse 7 is revolution verse 8 comes as a shock. Surely, our rational minds feeding on verse 7, say, surely if verse 7 is true it follows that all we have to do is ‘be’ and the treasure will make itself known through our calling, our gifting, our serving, our giving and so on. And yet the apostle is perplexed as is his team. That I find hugely encouraging and liberating!

I’m often perplexed but if the apostle was then I’m reassured.

Story One. I’d been a Christian for a matter of months. I was 18. A friend offered me a lift home. On his car key-ring dangled a picture of a beautiful girl. I asked him who she was. He said ‘My fiancé. But she doesn’t look like that now’. It turned out that she had anorexia nervosa and was close to death. We were both lab technicians for a pharmaceutical company. Our lab leader was compassionate and allowed my friend to spend hours researching anorexia in an attempt to save his girlfriend. Meanwhile God stirred in my heart to offer to pray for her. I spoke to my friend and he agreed and so a few of us at church prayed that weekend. The truth is in fact that having plucked up the courage to say to my friend ‘I believe God loves your fiancé and wants to heal her, will you let me pray for her?’ I forgot all about it. But on the next Saturday morning I was due to go with a small evangelistic team handing out tracts in a local market. As we were praying just before going out, the heavens opened (get literal) and the rain was so loud on the roof we couldn’t hear each other’s British prayers – so we took a very important decision and decided not to do the evangelism. Our leader asked a question. Has anyone got anything from God? I piped up, embarrassed that I had forgotten to pray during the week. I remember praying something like ‘God would unblock the barrier preventing her from getting up and eating’ and everyone said Amen. On Monday morning back at work my friend came in almost jumping with joy as his girlfriend had started eating. She had suddenly got out of bed on Saturday morning at the same time that we prayed. Now that is verse 7.

My rational response was ‘so now everyone will ask me about Jesus and we’ll have revival in the lab…who’s first…’. It didn’t happen. No-one became a Christian. No-one asked about it. Not one soul. I was disappointed, a little angry perhaps, certainly perplexed.

Later that year at Exeter University and in the maelstrom of meeting many people, I often shared my faith sometimes with roomfuls of people pumping me and other Christian friends with questions. I witnessed to a large number of fellow students. I probably told people Story One. Not one jettisoned their agnosticism, atheism, or spiritual lethargy.

I was worn out. I had all this treasure. I was perplexed and more or less I gave up witnessing. The years rolled by. I spoke in tongues. I prophesied. I saw a few miracles of healing. But no fruit from my witnessing. Deep down I was crying to God. ‘This should work. This should work. God what is going on?’

I felt the impact of failure. Then in 1985 I had a fresh encounter with the Holy Spirit and ‘felt’ the anointing in a more tangible way than before. When the Holy Spirit falls on people He often speaks and I had a few verses that came to mind, two from Isaiah and one from the Psalms.

One of the Isaiah verses contained the line ‘and I have given Him to be a witness to the peoples…’ This verse (Is 55v4) refers to the Messiah but on this occasion the Holy Spirit fired it into me – I was the target. And it created faith where presumption had previously been trying and failing to get a foothold.

Within a few months I joined a Christian team taking (mostly non-church) teenage boys on Activity Holidays. The leaders were all baptized in the Holy Spirit and were more or less of one mind in terms of the overall vision for the team and that it must be run by the Holy Spirit.

My particular role was to lead worship and hill-walking. But when some of the lads responded to the gospel in meetings they were passed on to some of the leaders – including me – and we led a number to the Lord. I was underway.

A year or so later, with my young family, we went to Roffey Place Christian Training Centre in Horsham Sussex.. For those of a certain vintage you might know Colin Urquhart. He and Bob Gordon led Roffey. I left the relative comfort of a ‘charismatic’ church and teaching career to go to Roffey because I was hungry for the reality of what we were preaching but rarely seeing. I loved my church and am indebted to many in that church for their witness and their love. Without them I would not have given Jesus a second glance. But hunger is hunger.

At Roffey I was immersed in an army looking for a battle.

Bob Gordon would often say that we’d been invited to participate in a corporate anointing and that there was no place for any of us to do our own thing.

On missions, sometimes on the streets of villages and towns, sometimes in tents or churches, we were taught not to hand out tracts but to be praying, trusting that it was God who would stimulate conversations and ultimately it is God who saves, heals and so on. All this is great in theory. In practice 2Corinthians 4v7-14 is the reality.

Story Two. Mission in Basildon,Essex. (I apologise if you live in Basildon but it is not a place I would choose to live in. For different reasons it could well have been Monty Python’s substitute for Basingstoke). Nevertheless to Basildon we went. A team of about twenty, for a week culminating in a three large evening services at the hosting church. I was billeted with a Ugandan Christian. We both prayed early in the morning separately before heading down for breakfast with out hosts. At some point he looked up and asked me with a smile, ‘John how many will be saved this week?’ I screwed up my ‘faith’ and said, ‘maybe 10?’ He laughed and said, ‘No John there will be more than this, there will be 120’. My only experience of church mission was maximum effort and minimum fruit, his experience was much fruit. 120 individuals came to the Lord that week.
Few if any were saved in the Meetings, nearly all were through the team on the street. A Catholic member of our team had very little confidence in witnessing about Jesus. But he had felt God calling him to wait in a certain spot. And there he had returned day after day. He was about to give up when one day he stopped a woman to talk to her and her story came tumbling out. She was on her way to a shop to buy a knife to murder her son-in law! She ended up giving her life to Christ. ‘We have this treasure in an earthen vessel that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us’. The week dismantled my defeatist thinking and created a new level of personal expectation but in the context of working in a team. Basildon!

I return to my opening sentence. ‘What works?’ I’m sure the Roffey experience I had is the same that many believers have when they devote their time to a team that is led by the Spirit of Jesus.

What works is hunger. What works is being led by the Spirit. ‘Jesus after He was baptized was led by the Spirit into the desert…’ The Greek for ‘led’ is ‘ekbalo’ and is later translated in the same chapter in mark for ‘driving out’ a demon! It is a forceful word. It can be used to describe kicking a ball. In one translation it says the Spirit drove into the desert’. It’s like that. Something you cannot deny, insistent but good.

Up to that point for 30 years the Spirit had not descended upon Him or driven Him into the wilderness. This is important too. Jesus had a long period of apparent inactivity. We are not called into fleshly busyness. Sometimes saying no is the greatest challenge.

‘…they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia…they tried to go into Bithynia but the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them…’ Acts 16 v 6-10

Paul and his team had come to the edge of the world at Mysia. Somehow they knew the Spirit would not let them travel East or West. South was where they came from and North was Sea of Marmara in the corner of the Med. That night Paul had a vision of a man in Macedonia saying ‘come over to Macedonia and help us’. ‘Immediately we sought to go to Macedonia concluding that the Lord had called us to preach to them’. Across the Med they went.

This aspect dovetails in with “Life In the Order of Melchizedek” series. Morris Cerullo calls revelation a supernatural burst of advanced knowledge. This is very much the realm Nicholas and Pam move in, and it is the hallmark exhibited over and over again in Arthur Blessitt’s picture autobiography The Cross to be reviewed soon. Time and again he finds himself in the midst of world-changing pivotal circumstances….a real life version of the fictional Forrest Gump.

Ship Propulsion Unit Vision and The original Word as a suspended Orb vision

Re-issued in Facebook: Prophetic Voice - last week.

I am not sure how to respond about the recent news of Todd Bentley regarding his 2nd marriage.I do pray that he be restored...but on a very deep level. I just pray we're not into quick fixes in order to "preserve some face" with the world. What is interesting is that God allowed the release of a word in the last Key of David meeting in Havant. And last night Jose encouraged me to share it here. It came originally 9months ago while I was at an HMS Sultan open day while Florida was still ongoing - 21st June last year. Like a lot of things that came during the Florida Outpouring they began life in Dan Bowen's Life On Wings blog. see http://ern-baxter.blogspot.com/This is how it appeared
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Ship's Propulsion Unit
I've just returned from a day at HMS Sultan.Great time with my son Ben who is 8.There's always plenty of stuff going on. but , uncharacteristic for me, not being too engineery, we stopped off to look at just one stripped down frigate propulsion unit. (There can be 4,6 or 8 on one vessel)A sailor took us right through how it worked. When we got to the burners I noticed they were a group of cylinder type things, about 12 or 20 or something positioned in a circle. Then at the side of all this were 2 small ignition burners on the left and on the right. Don't switch off artist types- or non engineery girlies!!!I asked how often did they have to be stripped down for maintenance? He said after around 600 hours all the cylinder burners were completely changed. OK..got all that? This is what God said. All that we have seen up until now...from John G Lake, Smith Wigglesworth through the one man pioneers of the 50s through to Morris Cerullo Rheinhardt Bonnke...(maybe Todd Bentley)far from being the main show...were just ignition burners for the Kingdom. The real Kingdom ministry as pioneered by John Wimber and later Toronto and hopefully Florida is a faceless affair. Its the whole Body moving into overdrive. Men like the aforementioned were called men, ahead of the game, but now in secret,all over the world,the Body has been growing. So i felt God say that many would be used as simultaneous burners at full throttle, but then they would be put aside for another set of burners. In the navy example the burners are thrown away...but in God's Kingdom,people are not discarded after use, they experience a reassignment!! So imagine...if what we look up to now are just the ignition burners, the fire starters, what does the Kingdom look like when all the rings of 12 or 20 burners come on working simultaneously and in parallel??????Only to be replaced immediately by another set, then another set.And one ship can have 4 or 8 of these propulsion units!!!!To a world fed on church comedy like the 60s "All Gas and Gaiters" through to the 90s "Father Ted" and "Vicar of Dibley" they won't know what has hit them. "Where did they come from?"21 June, 2008 20:45
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I would now only add to this further confirmation that what I am saying is accurate. Here are some obvious examples of "rings of burners" rather than one man shows. On the day of Acts "Peter stood up with the other 11!!!"The pattern was seen immediately on the day the church was born.In 1974 some incredibly significant London meetings were held by another set of ring burners...that for a few months held it together. They were Gerald Coates, Dave Mansell,Maurice Smith,John Noble,John McLauchlin,and a handful of others...including at one point the Galloping Gourmet Graham Kerr. I was in that one age 16, and it was a fantastic move forward for the UK. Sadly this was so shortlived.In the early 70s up to the Dales Bible Weeks the UK was affected by another set of "ringburners". They grouped around Fort Lauderdale. They were Don Basham, Derek Prince, Bob Mumford, Ern Baxter and a few others. For a brief instant while under the anointing...the stuff they were bringing was in the Holy Spirit...and actually fathered the birth of nearly all our churches...indirectly or directly. This too did not last.The point of my blog (http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/ )is to say that in order to get longer burn from sets of "ringburner ministries"...more like the initial 12 apostles in duration....(though this period admittedly itself was cut short by persecution and death...not by adultery and leaders falling out!!!)leaders need to be of the same mettle as the apostles. St John calls this the "Father" stage of growth...what I am calling the 3rd Level. It is absolutely distinctive in the Holy Spirit and often comes after amazing high profile failures. See St Peter. So maybe Todd is in with a chance!The Key of David meeting did not emphasize leadership. The Holy Spirit was particularly emphasizing churches of faceless people all moving in their giftings, and that collectively something greater than the sum of all the parts is produced in terms of anointing and power.
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Suspended Orb Vision (original)- relayed in email to John Stevens Sep 07
My latest revelation goes something like this. Truth as we know is many sided, like a brilliant cut diamond. But this is what I have seen...only I cannot describe it exactly...something like this. Imagine in a science lab, some sort of orb, suspended electromagnetically in space, say surrounded by electromagnets.
Well imagine turning off the electrics, and yes, you still have the orb, now come to rest on a bench, just sitting there.Now, a lot of Christians think they have the Truth, because they have the Bible words, but in reality they have an orb on a bench.
The Truth, the real truth is a Person, the Living Jesus, expressing Himself here and now through the lovely Person of the Holy Spirit.Now, in the Old Testament, they were instructed to build the Holiest Place exactly as instructed, which included The Ark and the two golden Cherubim above it.When everything was done exactly as instructed, then God humbled Himself to come and dwell above the Ark between the cherubim.His real presence suspended (like the orb) between the cherubim, needing nothing of man for support...He is who He is, and we can like it or lump it.
So when we act on the Word, which contains the extremes of:

1. Fearing the Lord and respecting His codes of behaviour
   yet all the while acting with grace towards those who act and live otherwise
2. Living and moving by the Word of faith on our lips yet still doing a good job of day to day stuff, towards our families and employers,
3. Praying with believing for the sick yet all the time suffering and bearing with those for whom nothing at the moment is changing.
   
   After 35 years of living with the divided notions of Christians in this country, I am starting to have sufficient clarity in my spirit to begin to take people to task, but only because, I myself am such a failure, and Jesus has been building stuff in me, to give me more stability. God is not pleased that evangelicals remain unbaptized in the Spirit, or that baptized in the Spirit people so called, are not reaching out, both practically and in the gospel message.It just is not good enough that Anglicans are not taken to task, that Methodists are so blase about being born again in this country.
   So to recap...Watchman Nee said nothing less than the whole Bible makes a whole Christian.
   It seems, there is none among us who can naturally hold the whole of Truth, so our secular brains need to yield to the Spirit,
   who transforms us inwardly , the spirit of our mind changes, the whole of our insides stretch, to take in more of the extremes of His Word.
   When I came to Emsworth, David McCulloch senior prophesied Enlarge the place of your tent;Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not;Lengthen your cordsAnd strengthen your pegs.
   Each one of those pegs hurts our former way of viewing things.
   Somehow , as we submit to His Spirit doctrines , God humbles himself to stretch His Presence over us, like a covering.
   It is not good enough that some say, I like praise. Others say, I like prayer and intrcession. Others say I like those, but don't talk to me about giving money, and sowing seeds. Others say, I move in the anointing and the Word of faith, but I am not interested in the three stages of growth:1st level, 2nd level and third level.One brother has recently left us to devote himself to evangelism in a local very fast growing church, which is great,but I knew in my spirit that I could never talk with him at this stage about Christ living our life as us. So he will learn the hard way, as people come in the revolving door, and leave by the opposite one, because the very crunch point of how sin operates in our lives has never been addressed or communicated properly.
   But as we in the Spirit raise each one of these pillars (of Truth), we create a venue, that God delights to dwell in, like between the Cherubim.It's something like a series of electromagnets
   which holds His Presence like that orb, in tension between all the points.But those electromagnets are themselves God things, they are revelations of His Word.

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The 1978 Aeroplane Take-off Vision

This has been one of two or three compasses for me giving overall direction for my life. This passage features first of all during the Lakeland Outpouring on Dan Bowen's site here in the comments section May 21st 2008 11:23pm

"Never before in history, have we had the technological means to literally stand together globally in a Psalm 133 setting of unity, to await a supernatural enduement from on high , to fulfil the calling in of the Gentiles in unimaginably large numbers.In 1978 I had a very strong Word come to me as I was in a 12 seater aeroplane waiting to lift off.Up until now I have only related it with the time period between then and now. Today I also related it with Florida itself. The pilot went through 3 prophetic phases before lift off. The first 2 seemed to take an age. Phase 1. He spent ages fastening himself in, checking and re-checking all the dials, switches and levers in the cockpit.You can see it all on a 12 seater. Phase 2. The engines are revved faster and faster and faster, but still nothing actually happens. Then, when you think nothing will ever happen, phase 3 is when he effortlessly removes the brake!!! And the plane feels like it is catapulted into the air. At which point the Body of Christ will fly like it has never flown...full of the very glory of God.

Bonhoeffer says it!

In between making a Revell Star Wars "Y Wing Fighter" with Ben and reviewing a booklist I'm compiling, I came across Chapter 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Cost of Discipleship". Another suss for Jamie.

In Hadron III I describe "the Willing Christ who wants to fulfil the Law through me." Chapter 8 is called the Righteousness of Christ and says the same stuff, in more traditional language and with greater eloquence..... But if you get your Holy Spirit XRay specs out, you should find it is exactly the same spirit underneath that I am wishing to convey. As I've said many times from Song of Solomon the real Truth is something like a "Dance between two armies". It is the picture of the suspended orb (3rd 07000INTUNEpost) The problem is you get both armies after you at once! Once you are firmly established in the 3rd Level, you can like Jesus, or Stephen,or Paul, with the Pharisees and Sadducees set the two onto each other, to remove the heat from yourself!!!!
But you'll find this with virtually every Bible Truth....Predestination/freewill. Grace/Law. Word/Spirit. The Truth who is a Living Person steps out from the shadows of 2 opposing Left-brain statues.
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The Righteousness of Christ - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, all things be accomplished. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5.17-20)

IT is not at all surprising that the disciples imagined that the law
had been abrogated, when Jesus made promises like this. For these
promises reversed all popular notions of right and wrong, and
pronounced a blessing on all that was accounted worthless. Jesus
spoke to his disciples and described them as men who now pos-
sessed all things through the sovereign grace of God, as heirs-
apparent of the kingdom of heaven. They enjoy perfect com-
munion with Christ, who had made all things new. They are the
salt, the light, the city set on the hill. The old life is dead and done
with. How tempting then to suppose that Jesus would give the
old order its coup de grace by repealing the law of the old covenant,
and pronounce his followers free to enjoy the liberty of the Son
of God! After all Jesus had said, the disciples might well have
thought like Marcion, who accused the Jews of tampering with
the text, and altered it to: 'Think ye that I am come to fulfil the
law and the prophets? I am not come to fulfil, but to destroy.'
Many others since Marcion have read and expounded this saying
of Jesus as if that were what he said. But Jesus says: 'You must not
imagine that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets....'
And so saying he vindicates the authority of the law of the old
covenant.How is this to be understood? We know that Jesus is speaking
to his own followers, to men who owe an exclusive allegiance to
himself. He had allowed no law to act as a barrier to his fellowship
with his disciples; we saw that when we were dealing with Luke
9.57 ff.Discipleship means adherence to Jesus Christ alone, and
immediately. But now comes the surprise - the disciples are bound
to the Old Testament law. This has a double significance. First, it
means that adherence to the law is something quite different from
the following of Christ, and, secondly, it means that any adherence
to his person that disregards the law is equally removed from the
following of him. It is, however, Jesus himself who points to the
law those to whom he has granted his whole promise and his
whole fellowship. Because it is their Lord who does this, they are
bound to acknowledge the law. The question inevitably arises,
Which is our final authority, Christ or the law? To which are we
bound? Christ had said that no law was to be allowed to come
between him and his disciples. Now he tells us that to abandon
the law would be to separate ourselves from him. What exactly
does he mean?
The law Jesus refers to is the law of the old covenant, not a new
law, but the same law which he quoted to the rich young man
and the lawyer when they wanted to know the revealed will of
God. It becomes a new law only because it is Christ who binds
his followers to it. For Christians, therefore, the law is not a
'better law' than that of the Pharisees, but one and the same; every
letter of it, every jot and tittle, must remain in force and be
observed until the end of the world. But there is a 'better right-
eousness' which is expected of Christians. Without it none can
enter into the kingdom of heaven, for it is the indispensable condi-
tion of discipleship. None can have this better righteousness but
those to whom Christ is speaking here, those whom he has called.
The call of Christ, in fact Christ himself, is the sine qua non of this
better righteousness.
Now we can see why up to now Jesus has said nothing about
himself in the Sermon on the Mount. Between the disciples and
the better righteousness demanded of them stands the Person of
Christ, who came to fulfil the law of the old covenant. This is the
fundamental presupposition of the whole Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus manifests his perfect union with the will of God as revealed
in the Old Testament law and prophets.
He has in fact nothing
to add to the commandments of God, except this,
that he keeps them.
He fulfils the law, and he tells us so himself, therefore it must be
true. He fulfils the law down to the last iota. But that means that
he must die, he alone understands the true nature of the law as
God's law: the law is not itself God, nor is God the law. It was
the error of Israel to put the law in God's place, to make the law
their God and their God a law. The disciples were confronted
with the opposite danger of denying the law its divinity altogether
and divorcing God from his law. Both errors lead to the same
result. By confounding God and the law, the Jews were trying to
use the law to exploit the Law-giver: He was swallowed up in the
law, and therefore no longer its Lord. By imagining that God
and the law could be divorced from one another, the disciples
were trying to exploit God by their possession of salvation. In
both cases, the gift was confounded with the Giver: God was
denied equally, whether it was with the help of the law, or with
the promise of salvation.
Confronted with these twin errors, Jesus vindicates the divine
authority of the law. God is its giver and its Lord, and only in
personal communion with God is the law fulfilled. There is no
fulfilment of the law apart from communion with God,
and no communion with God apart from fulfilment of
the law.
To forget the first condition was the mistake
of the Jews,
and to forget the second the temptation of the disciples.
Jesus, the Son of God, who alone lives in perfect communion
with him, vindicates the law of the old covenant by coming to
fulfil it. He was the only Man who ever fulfilled the law, and
therefore he alone can teach the law and its fulfilment
aright. Thedisciples would naturally grasp that as soon as he
told them, forthey knew who he was.
But the Jews could not grasp it as long
as they refused to believe in him. It was thus only to be expected
that they would reject his teaching on the law: to them it was
blasphemy against God, because it was blasphemy against his law.
Jesus, the champion of the true law, must suffer at the hands of
the champions of the false law. He dies on the cross as a blasphemer,
a transgressor of the law, because he has vindicated the true against
the false.
The only way for him to fulfil the law is by dying a sinner's
death on the cross. There he embodies in his person the perfect
fulfilment of the law.
That is to say, Jesus Christ and he alone fulfils the law, because
he alone lives in perfect communion with God. It is Jesus himself
who comes between the disciples and the law, not the law which
comes between Jesus and the disciples. They find their way to the
law through the cross of Christ, Thus by pointing his disciples to
the law which he alone fulfils, he forges a further bond between
himself and them. He must needs reject the notion that men can
cleave to him and be free from the law, for that spells enthusiasm,
and so far from leading to adherence to Jesus, means libertarianism.
But this allays the disciples' anxiety that adherence to the law
would sever them from Jesus. Such an anxiety could only spring
from that self-same error which cut off the Jews from God. Instead
the disciples now learn that genuine adherence to Christ also
means adherence to the law of God.
But if Jesus comes between the disciples and the law, he does so
not to release them from the duties it imposes, but to validate his
demand that they should fulfil it. Just because they are bound to
him, they must obey the law as he does. The fact that Jesus has
fulfilled the law down to the very last letter does not release them
from the same obedience. The law is fulfilled, that is all. But it is
precisely this which makes it properly valid for the first time.

That is why he who obeys and teaches the law will be great in the
kingdom of heaven. 'Do and teach': we are reminded that it is
possible to teach the law without fulfilling it, to teach it in such
a way that it cannot be fulfilled. That sort of teaching has no
warrant from Jesus. The law will be obeyed as certainly as he
obeyed it himself. If men cleave to him who fulfilled the law and
follow him, they will find themselves both teaching and fulfilling
the law. Only the doer of the law can remain in communion
with Jesus.
It is not the law which distinguishes the disciples from the Jews,
but the 'better righteousness'. The righteousness of the disciples,
we are told, exceeds that of the scribes. That is because it is some-
thing extraordinary and unusual. This is the first rime we meet
the word Trepiaaeveiv, which is so important in verse 47. We
must ask, how exactly does the righteousness of the Pharisees differ
from that of the disciples? Certainly the Pharisees never imagined
that the law must be taught but not obeyed: they knew their
Bibles better than that! No, it was rather their ambition to be
doers of the law. Their idea of righteousness was a direct, literal
and practical fulfilment of the commandment, their ideal was to
model their behaviour exactly on the demands of the law. Of
course they knew that they could never realize that ideal, there
was bound to be an excess which needed forgiveness of sins to
cover it. Their obedience was never more than imperfect. With
the disciple also righteousness could only take the form of obedi-
ence to the law. No one who failed to do the law could be
accounted righteous. But the disciple had the advantage over the
Pharisee in that his doing of the law is in fact perfect. How is such
a thing possible? Because between the disciples and the law stands
one who has perfectly fulfilled it, one with whom they live in
communion. They are faced not with a law which has never yet
been fulfilled, but with one whose demands have already been
satisfied. The righteousness it demands is already there, the right-
eousness of Jesus which submits to the cross because that is. what
the law demands. This righteousness is therefore not a duty owed,
but a perfect and truly personal communion with God, and Jesus
not only possesses this righteousness, but is himself the personal
embodiment of it. He is the righteousness of the disciples. By
calling them he has admitted them to partnership with himself,
and made them partakers of his righteousness in its fulness. That is
what Jesus means when he prefaces his teaching on the 'better
righteousness' with reference to his own fulfilment of the law.
Of course the righteousness of the disciples can never be a
personal achievement;it is always a gift, which they
received when theywere called to follow him.
In fact their righteousness consists
precisely in their following him, and in the beatitudes the reward
of the kingdom of heaven has been promised to it. It is a righteous-
ness under the cross, it belongs only to the poor, the tempted, the
hungry, the meek, the peacemakers, the persecuted - who endure
their lot for the sake of Jesus; it is the visible righteousness of
those who for the sake of Jesus are the light of the world and the
city set on the hill. This is where the righteousness of the disciple
exceeds that of the Pharisees; it is grounded solely upon the call
to fellowship with him who alone fulfils the law. Their righteous-
ness is righteousness indeed, for from henceforth they do the will
of God and fulfil the law themselves. Again, it is not enough to
teach the law of Christ, it must be done, otherwise it is no better
than the old law. In what follows the disciples are told how to
practise this righteousness of Christ. In a word, it means following
him. It is the real and active faith in the righteousness of Christ.
It is the new law, the law of Christ.



from Memoir at the beginning of the book:" We know that Dietrich Bonhoeffer,who was never tried (by the Nazis) went steadfastly on his way to be hanged, and died with admirable calmness and dignity