155: Learning Christ with Col Marshall

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This file was generated by Descript <www.descript.com>
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Tony Payne: Christian living is being a daily disciple of Jesus Christ.
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And being a disciple is being a learner—an apprentice of Christ.
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It’s to learn to be like him—to live like him—to think like him—to love others like him.
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But being a learner or an apprentice of Jesus Christ is no simple thing; it’s rich and multi-faceted and extraordinary.
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It’s a lifelong process.
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And of course, it’s also a struggle: there are many obstacles.
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And many of us do get stuck or stalled in our apprenticeship to Jesus Christ, especially after being a Christian for a while.
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What would it mean to re-ignite your enthusiasm for learning Jesus Christ?
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That’s our topic in this week’s episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast.
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Well, hello again everyone.
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I’m Tony Payne, and welcome to another edition of the Centre for Christian Living podcast.
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And today, we’re going to be talking about a subject that is very central to or, perhaps, really just another way
of talking about Christian living, and that is, what it really means to be a learner of Christ—to learn Christ.
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And to do this, I’m talking with my old friend—someone who discipled and helped
me learn Christ and my co-author of "The Trellis and the Vine", Col Marshall.
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Col, welcome.
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Col Marshall: Good to be with you, Tony!
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Tony Payne: And you’ve gone and written a book without me, this time.
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Col Marshall: I did!
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You refused to do it with me.
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Tony Payne: Oh, that’s right!
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So I did.
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Col Marshall: You were busy.
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I understood.
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But you helped me get started.
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Tony Payne: But it is a book about this subject—about learning Christ—about being a disciple of Christ.
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In fact, you start the book by arguing that a Christian disciple is a learner, which is an interesting idea and perhaps not familiar to everyone
who’s listening, because we often think that disciples are followers: that’s what it means to be a disciple of Christ—a follower of Christ.
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: Why do you say that being a disciple is a learner?
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Col Marshall: I understand why people have a bit of a reaction to it, ’cause it
sounds very academic and impersonal, and not exactly what it means to be a Christian.
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But when you go back—I don’t want to be too nerdy at this point, but the word translated “disciple” in
our Bibles—in our New Testament—is actually the word for “learning” or “learner” in the Greek language,
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and refers to someone who is apprenticed—has the apprentice idea in it—of being apprenticed to a teacher.
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So it’s more than just sitting through a lecture; it’s actually learning with a view to following, in one sense.
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The problem with just starting with following as the idea of being a disciple is it leaves out that element
of “Have we really learned from Christ who he is—who God is—who we are—in order to follow?” So I like the
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idea of starting with the disciple being a learner. Discipleship, then, could be called “learnership”.
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And the actual language of disciple/learner is all through the New Testament.
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So Paul can say to Timothy, “Continue in what you’ve learned.” It’s exactly the same word—word for “disciple”.
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And at another point, he says something like, “Whatever you’ve learned from me, practise.” So that’s
the same Greek word for “disciple” being translated in the learning language, if you get what I mean.
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Tony Payne: It sounds like one of those situations where a Bible word—a word we’ve just become used to, like “disciple”—
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Col Marshall: Yep.
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Tony Payne: —which is just a fundamental kind of Bible Christian concept, has kind of just taken on a bit of a life of its own over the years.
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It just becomes a word we use—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —all the time, and we’ve maybe lost touch with how the readers and writers of the New Testament would have heard that word.
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When Jesus said to “Come and be my disciple” or talked about “making disciples” or when that
disciple’s—they wouldn’t have heard this sort of Christian word we have with all its connotations.
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Col Marshall: No.
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Tony Payne: They would have just heard “Be my apprentice.
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Come and learn from me.
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Be a student of me.
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Go and make students or apprentices of all nations” and—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —so on.
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And so, it’s really helpful that you’ve kind of refocused us on that in this book you’ve written—that the essence of being a
disciple—well, it is just to be a learner and apprentice of Christ, and what does it mean to learn or apprentice ourselves to Christ?
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Col Marshall: Yep.
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And you see it in Matthew 28 too, because there is the learning to obey everything that he has taught us.
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So there is the actual learning aspect, which flows into an obeying—a following, if you like—so the two are connected there.
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But it does start with actually “I’m going to obey everything that Jesus taught us.
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I’ve got to learn everything that Jesus taught us.” So.
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Tony Payne: Yeah, makes sense.
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Col Marshall: I think following’s a good image.
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But we’re not literally following in the same way as the first disciples, obviously.
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But metaphorically, we are following because we’ve learned, through the Scriptures, who Christ is and what he requires of us.
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It’s interesting: the Spirit becomes our teacher.
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Once Jesus has ascended into heaven, his Spirit becomes our teacher.
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So there’s all sorts of ideas caught up there in learning and following, and what all that means.
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Tony Payne: Well, that’s kind of what we want to explore in this conversation, I guess,
is what does learning Christ and learning about Christ and being a learner of Christ mean?
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Col Marshall: Yep.
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Tony Payne: But I guess, perhaps, a good place to start is why did you write this book in particular?
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Why this particular book?
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The book is called "Warriors of the Word", and we’ll come back to that title and why that title.
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But I guess what was the itch that you kind of wanted to scratch?
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What was the—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —presenting problem that caused you to say, “I need to write something about this?”
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Col Marshall: Yeah, partly it comes out of the kind of ministries I’ve done, which
haven’t been primarily the teaching/preaching ministries, but helping members learn.
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That’s sort of the ministry roles I’ve had.
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And two things: we spend a lot of time and money training our pastors and teachers, which we absolutely should.
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But we don’t spend enough time thinking about training our members as learners.
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One of the early working titles of the book I had was "We Have Good Teachers, but What
About Us Learners?" I think that became Chapter 3 in the book, but it wasn’t a great title.
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And we want our pastors to be trained—invest in them—go to MTS and college and all the rest of it.
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But how much in our church life do we spend helping the members become good learners?
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So that was part of what is motivating me.
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And things I’ve done in the past in church life.
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The other itch that I’m scratching is an observation generally in church life and just the different churches I’ve been in over the years
that in mid-life particularly, our members become stuck in their learning or stalled, or whatever term you want to use, and live off the
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fruits of the early learning, if they’ve become Christians earlier in life, but plateau and stagnant in learning through those middle years.
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And as I’ve led groups and so on over the years, I can feel that in myself and then I can see that in the generations coming through.
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So I wanted to push those in that stalled stage to re-engage in the whole learning of Christ.
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Tony Payne: I think that’s something that—well, I don’t know if I’d be a middle aged Christian now, Col; I think that’s perhaps behind me, sadly.
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But I can certainly identify not only in myself, as you grow as a Christian, and you live a longer time as a
Christian, you certainly identify with that sense of it becoming a bit humdrum and a bit normal and a bit stuck.
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: But certainly in churches and fellowship that I’ve been involved in, that’s certainly a
currently issue—an issue that’s certainly there that people, over time, just get into a kind of a familiar—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —life, and life is just comfortable and going along, and you’re busy with everything in life,
and the sense that you have the challenge of learning and growing in your understanding and apprenticeship to
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Christ, and that that’s something that you actively engage in as a Christian, it’s easy for that to fall away.
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Col Marshall: Yeah, yeah.
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That’s right.
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It came out a little bit in the book of, you know, the mid-life crisis—men and women, as they go into their
forties and so on, and they start a new hobby or I tried to get my golf game going and could never succeed
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like you did, Tony, or learn a new musical instrument, or something just to sort of energise those mid years.
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So this is the most important mid-life crisis and mid-life project to work on.
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So I’m saying that, I guess, quite explicitly in the book—to not plateau out and not lose that first love.
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Someone pointed out to me as I was talking about it that there is a right sense in which we
do just fall into good patterns of being Christian and being in church and all the rest of it.
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Tony Payne: It’s not all so—
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Col Marshall: Yeah
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Tony Payne: —new.
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You know, it’s not all brand
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Col Marshall: new.
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Yeah.
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It’s not all brand new.
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It’s a little bit like a romantic relationship, which is really fresh and exciting and vibrant, but
then you fall into the deeper, longer patterns of relationship, and so it is with Christ, in one sense.
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But to be going to church thinking, “Oh, I’m not sure.” Even in the back of our
minds thinking, “Is it really going to make any difference, going this week?”
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Tony Payne: Yeah, yeah.
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Col Marshall: That sort of thing.
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Or being in this Bible study group?
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Or is it just a pattern I’ve got into?
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And can I make more of it?
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Can I make the whole exercise of learning—both private learning and corporate learning—can I make that far more effective?
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I suppose the other thing in the back of my mind was the next generation.
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So I’m in the mid-70s now.
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And you think more about the next generation, including your own children or grandchildren.
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So how to keep those mid-life Christians going so that they’re investing in the next generation—not just themselves, but in the next.
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And seen some real fruits on that in small groups where the small group members, even in the recent group I’ve been
involved in, are really picking up the challenge to be the ones who are helping their families to learn—their children.
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Tony Payne: Yep.
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Col Marshall: So all of that.
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Tony Payne: It struck me to—you mention this in your introduction—in that sense, the kind of thing that prompted you to
think about this topic and write about it, was this sense of a mid-life faith crisis, as you call it, for some people.
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But it obviously therefore becomes a really vital and important book for newer Christians—not only for older Christians
to invest in younger, but this is the stuff to wrap your head around and understand at the beginning of your Christian—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —life—
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Col Marshall: Yep.
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Tony Payne: —that this is what the Christian life is really about.
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And I guess, in a sense, those Christians who are a bit stalled or stuck in mid-life,
perhaps, never quite learned that, or never quite understood that about the nature of the—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —Christian life.
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And so, it’s very much a book for also the newer Christian who wants get a shape of what it really
means to learn Christ, and how learning Christ—learning what it means to be a follower and believer
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in Christ—that learning process is a lifelong learning process and a great joy, as we’ll discover.
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What does it really mean, then, to learn Christ?
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I guess we should get down to that.
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What are you learning exactly?
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And what are the different facets of what you describe as learning Christ?
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Col Marshall: Well, there’s a learning of information—that is, sounds very dry, when it comes to learning Christ and God.
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But there’s a learning of the truth that’s been revealed in Scripture—the truth about Christ, which reveals to
us the truth, then, about God—Christ being his Son, who’s the final revelation of God, according to Hebrews 1.
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That’s a learning through the Spirit of the wonderful realities of who God is and who we are before God—God as creator;
us as his creatures, but also the redeemer and us as the redeemed ones—the adopted ones into his family—the forgiven ones.
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So we’re learning those truths.
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We’re learning information.
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Sounds very dry, but it’s the most exciting, wonderful information anyone could ever learn.
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But then, there’s submission.
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So information submission is the obedience part.
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I am thinking now of Matthew 28.
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Tony Payne: Yeah.
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Col Marshall: “Teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you.” That’s the mission of the church. So you’ve
got to know everything that he’s commanded, but then it’s obeying or keeping his commands. So there’s a submission.
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And so, that makes it very personal learning.
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We’re learning a person, and I go on quite a bit about this in the book: not just intellectual atonement or
intellectual information or that kind of thing, but learning the person of Christ in the sense of obeying him.
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But also, there’s another element when you read Ephesians and so on that actually, being
united with Christ in his person—being united with him in the salvation that he offers.
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So it’s not just learning about a person, but actually learning that we are in union with him and receiving
all the benefits of union with Christ—of being joined to him for our forgiveness, for our salvation.
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That might be a bit of a ramble.
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I can summarise it: information, submission and union.
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There you go.
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Tony Payne: Oh nice!
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Nice.
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The reason I like this aspect of the book very much—that we can fall down on either side of those things and often
Christianity is presented or, by default sometimes, becomes dominated by one of those things over the other three—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —can—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —imagine a more propositional knowledge-based informational form of Christianity
that doesn’t then penetrate into a lived life that flows from and is shaped by that knowledge.
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But you can just as easily, and we’ve certainly come across in our times, a form of Christian living
that just wants to be practical, just wants to talk about what to do, how do I live, what do I do next—
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Col Marshall: Yep.
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Tony Payne: —that just wants to talk about life without talking about the knowledge and understanding that drives our lives.
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And in a way, you're just talking about what it means to be a human person.
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: We’re thinking, knowing, understanding creatures who live our lives in
response to and shaped by that understanding and framework of the world all the time.
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And those things are constantly interacting and—
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Col Marshall: Yeah.
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Tony Payne: —constantly shaping each other.
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And so, to become like Christ—to learn what it means to be someone who seeks to be like Christ—who is in union with him and becomes
like him—it’s obviously going to involve some kind of learning of and understanding of knowledge and changing of our whole mind—
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Col Marshall: That’s right.
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Tony Payne: —as well as the learning of a new way of life that is integrated with that understanding and flows from that understanding.
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So—
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Col Marshall: Yep.
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Tony Payne: —I love the way you emphasise both of those things in the book—the information, the knowledge,
but also the submission and the life that comes as we keep and learn and obey what Christ has said.
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That’s fantastic.
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Col Marshall: Yep.
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Tony Payne: Those different facets of learning, then—of learning what it means to know him—let’s start there.
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How do we go about, or how would you recommend that we learn more about the knowledge of Christ?
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What different facets of that learning would you recommend?
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Col Marshall: Well, I had to think about this—what the Scriptures themselves
say about the about the sources of our learning, or how we go about learning.
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It is ultimately through the Spirit as our teacher: I was reaching John 16, I think.
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It’s a great chapter about the Spirit being our teacher and leading us into all truth.
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So we have to have that umbrella truth, which is why the coming of the Holy Spirit in
Acts and so on, and the promise of the Spirit in Jesus’ ministry, is so fundamental.
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That's how he continues with us—is by his Spirit, and continues to be our teacher beyond the first generation.
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And then, so what are the resources of the Spirit, in one sense?
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Tony Payne: Yeah.
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Col Marshall: And the thoughts I had were we’re learning the Christ revealed in Scripture, which is the 2
Timothy 3 kind of ideas of these Scriptures being the word of God—inspired the word of God, come from the Spirit.
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But the theme and the purpose of Scripture is to learn Christ, who is revealed in Scripture from Genesis 1 to Revelation 21.
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I was taught by the Navigators many decades ago to work on the memorisation of Scripture, the study of Scripture,
the reading and hearing, and in all of those, to learn to meditate on Scripture with a view to obedience.
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That was The Word Hand, they called it.
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And I’ve always remembered that.
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So am I hearing the Scriptures taught regularly?
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Am I reading them myself?
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Am I studying—not just reading in a more general, superficial way, but studying and thinking through the Scriptures.
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And then memorising: I found enormous help over the years–even remembering verses that I learned many decades ago.
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Maybe not remembering them as well as I used to, but meditating on the Scriptures as we take them in.
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So learning the Christ of Scripture.
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But then, one of the things that I’m pushing in the book is to learn doctrine, and arguing for doctrine not being a dry kind of intellectual
exercise, but if we learn Scripture without thinking theologically, we learn nuggets and fragments, but we don’t put them all together.
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We need a coherent framework to understand Christ and therefore, to understand God and his world.
00:18:05.440 --> 00:18:07.860
And so, I’m pushing the learning of doctrine.
00:18:08.350 --> 00:18:12.180
Also, talking about learning Christ through prayer and suffering.
00:18:12.190 --> 00:18:20.620
I brought those together in passages like Romans 8 and so on—that there’s a
learning ordained by God through the suffering we go through and through our prayer.
00:18:20.620 --> 00:18:24.510
But then, another big push is to learn in the body of Christ.
00:18:24.850 --> 00:18:30.379
Yes, we read privately, we have our quiet times, we have our one-to-one times, all the rest of it.
00:18:31.080 --> 00:18:40.770
But we are meant to learn in the body, because in the church, with our teachers and pastors, we are learning together the unity of the faith.
00:18:41.510 --> 00:18:43.960
And we can correct or appraise the ideas we have.
00:18:44.220 --> 00:18:46.840
We can also correct the crazy ideas the church might have!
00:18:46.840 --> 00:18:51.020
But we’re learning the unity of the faith—the oneness of the faith—by coming together.
00:18:51.809 --> 00:19:03.000
That’s the problem with internet church and COVID and all the rest of it: we can learn individually,
but then, get really skewed in our learning, because we’re not learning together as the body of Christ.
00:19:03.070 --> 00:19:05.250
So I’m doing a big push on that.
00:19:05.250 --> 00:19:11.889
So Scripture; doctrine; prayer, suffering; learning in the church, not just individually.
00:19:12.380 --> 00:19:15.579
I think they all relate to your question, if I can remember what your question was.
00:19:15.660 --> 00:19:16.289
How do we learn?
00:19:16.469 --> 00:19:29.720
Tony Payne: Yes, all those things are important, and I liked the way you tied them together in the book—that learning is multifaceted—learning Christ
is multifaceted—that it’s all based and comes out of Scripture, ’cause that’s where we meet Christ and that’s where the Spirit reveals him to us.
00:19:29.730 --> 00:19:35.340
But it intersects and kind of brings together all the aspects of our learning and understanding.
00:19:35.650 --> 00:19:43.440
And especially your push on theology, which people are often a bit sort of scared
about, or think is just for complication and for intellectual people, or something.
00:19:44.010 --> 00:19:45.379
But we all have a theology.
00:19:45.380 --> 00:19:49.439
We all do put the Bible together in our understanding in some way.
00:19:49.490 --> 00:19:49.740
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:19:49.849 --> 00:20:00.260
Tony Payne: And we can either have a poorly thought through kind of slightly shambolic amateurish
theology, or we can spend some time actually putting it together and understanding it more deeply.
00:20:00.260 --> 00:20:05.990
And the more deeply and the more profoundly we do put it all together in our heads, the more it shapes our whole mind and life—
00:20:05.990 --> 00:20:06.600
Col Marshall: Yeah, yep.
00:20:06.600 --> 00:20:07.290
Tony Payne: —to be like Christ.
00:20:07.299 --> 00:20:19.600
And I loved the way you argued for the value of drawing on the rich resources of Christian history, where
believers have put together the knowledge and understanding of Christ in ways that are profoundly helpful.
00:20:19.600 --> 00:20:28.869
I thought that was very good, Col. And I think there’s been a bit of slip away from Christians
reading and understanding and seeking to integrate their Bible reading into framework.
00:20:28.869 --> 00:20:44.720
Col Marshall: Yeah, that’s why I’ve got long quotations from various theologians and teachers throughout the
book—long in terms of a page or something—to show the value of learning from the teachers, both past and present.
00:20:45.060 --> 00:21:00.709
The authors who’ve helped us come to a coherent understanding of both particular doctrines, like creation
or redemption or revelation or whatever doctrines you want to name, but also biblical theology—that is, the
00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:07.150
understanding of how Christ is revealed from Genesis to Revelation, and how the whole Bible hangs together.
00:21:07.899 --> 00:21:09.650
So we’ve got to work on both of those.
00:21:10.150 --> 00:21:14.150
The technical terms, I guess, are biblical theology and systematic theology.
00:21:14.620 --> 00:21:29.430
I’ve tried to illustrate from various authors who have helped me, and then I’ve asked friends for their recommendation
of the ten most important books they’ve ever read to learn theology, and some of those I’ve listed in the appendix there.
00:21:29.430 --> 00:21:37.859
And I think you’ve helped me, Tony, to see that we need to learn to read slowly—both the Bible, but other teachers.
00:21:38.110 --> 00:21:46.560
And reading is not a great skill anymore in our community, because of all the impact of technology and so on, which we won’t go into now.
00:21:46.970 --> 00:21:59.960
Yeah, I’m trying to get people to see the importance of reading and not seeing that the reading of
human authors is in any way in opposition or a distraction from reading the Scriptures themselves, but
00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:07.460
how human authors are helping us to understand and have a coherent framework of Christian
00:22:20.800 --> 00:22:21.250
thinking.
00:22:34.949 --> 00:22:40.929
Tony Payne: As Christians, how interested and involved should we be in the political life of our society?
00:22:41.360 --> 00:22:44.710
Now, some of us couldn’t be less interested in politics.
00:22:44.740 --> 00:22:52.809
We ignore it as much as we possibly can, and try to just get on with what we see
as the important aspects of living the Christian life and ministering to others.
00:22:53.340 --> 00:22:56.550
Others of us are really much more interested in politics.
00:22:56.910 --> 00:23:04.210
We dive right into the online debates, we keep ourselves informed, and we think that Christians have a real contribution to make politically.
00:23:04.900 --> 00:23:09.509
Now, which of these two kind of approaches is the more faithful Christian approach?
00:23:09.549 --> 00:23:11.470
Or is it somewhere between the two?
00:23:12.280 --> 00:23:20.639
And why is it that when we do get involved in politics in some way as Christians
and we try to engage in the debate, we often feel that we don’t fit in?
00:23:21.290 --> 00:23:27.010
We’re not quite Left; we’re not quite Right; we’re kind of both and neither at the same time.
00:23:27.670 --> 00:23:32.930
Christians often feel marginal in the political life of our society, and wonder where we fit.
00:23:33.890 --> 00:23:43.369
I’m Tony Payne, and we’re going to be examining these questions at a Centre for Christian
Living ethics workshop on Wednesday, May 20th at Moore College, starting at 7:00 pm.
00:23:43.980 --> 00:23:53.300
The title of the workshop is “Left right out: The strange position of the political
Christian”, and I do hope you’ll join us to talk together about these important matters.
00:23:53.710 --> 00:23:59.580
You can get all the information, including how to register, at ccl.moore.edu.au.
00:24:00.649 --> 00:24:03.250
That’s ccl.moore.edu.au.
00:24:04.260 --> 00:24:08.250
I do hope you can join us on Wednesday, May 20th for this important workshop.
00:24:08.800 --> 00:24:10.860
And now, let’s get back to our program.
00:24:11.300 --> 00:24:22.030
This is very helpful, Col, and I love the way you’ve laid this out in the book very clearly and how these different
kind of modes of learning—you talk about The Hand—the old Navigator Hand of different ways of interacting of Scripture.
00:24:22.570 --> 00:24:27.010
But the picture you build up is that learning and shaping our mind is multimodal.
00:24:27.060 --> 00:24:27.260
Col Marshall: Yep.
00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:36.270
Tony Payne: It’s not just reading the Bible or hearing Bible or studying it or
theologically integrating it or memorising it or meditating it; it—it’s all of those things.
00:24:36.270 --> 00:24:36.400
Col Marshall: Yep.
00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:36.522
Yeah.
00:24:36.522 --> 00:24:37.790
Tony Payne: And they work richly together.
00:24:38.250 --> 00:24:48.740
And you’re certainly right that one of the problems for reading and learning and growing for
us is just how fast-paced and distracted we are generally in our attention and in our lives.
00:24:49.120 --> 00:24:57.709
And taking the time to slow down, to read at length or read slowly—and that’s what it means, in some ways, to meditate—is to just chew over—
00:24:57.709 --> 00:24:57.719
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:24:57.719 --> 00:25:09.270
Tony Payne: —and think over a small number of verses, or even one Psalm or something like this, where we chew it over—perhaps
multiple mornings on multiple days, and just read it and read it, and think about it and sink into it—it changes you.
00:25:09.270 --> 00:25:14.929
You see things and find out things, and it changes the way you think, just because you’ve given yourself time—
00:25:14.969 --> 00:25:15.239
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:25:15.350 --> 00:25:16.479
Tony Payne: —to sit in it for a while.
00:25:16.490 --> 00:25:16.630
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:25:16.699 --> 00:25:18.880
Tony Payne: And we tend not to do that so much these days.
00:25:18.910 --> 00:25:19.580
Which is a shame.
00:25:19.750 --> 00:25:26.930
Col Marshall: Yeah, I found that with Romans 8 recently: I’ve got in my head that Romans
8 is actually the most important chapter in the Bible, if you want me to go into that.
00:25:26.940 --> 00:25:27.999
Tony Payne: It’s not a bad candidate for that!
00:25:27.999 --> 00:25:28.929
Yeah, that’s true.
00:25:29.380 --> 00:25:40.379
Col Marshall: It’s because it’s a very personal thing for Jacquie and I, ’cause we get into our senior
years, there’s more challenges in life and health and everything else, and anxieties about stuff.
00:25:40.950 --> 00:25:55.260
The fruit of meditating on it and thinking about it and talking with Jacquie about it, and even recently, and she’s been doing studies on it—we’re
doing Romans at church, so it’s all, like you just described, we’re chewing over Romans 8 quite a lot in our church and household at the moment.
00:25:56.060 --> 00:26:00.899
And so, just goes deeper each time you chew it over and talk about it, and pray about it.
00:26:01.340 --> 00:26:07.070
And the whole idea of our adoption there: someone asked me what’s the big benefit to me in writing my book.
00:26:07.639 --> 00:26:13.920
I think the theme of adoption was the one that really, really grabbed hold of me—that we actually are co-heirs—joint heirs—with
00:26:16.090 --> 00:26:20.660
Christ—that we share in his inheritance, in his riches.
00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:26.290
We are treated by God the Father as if we were brothers and sisters of Christ.
00:26:26.990 --> 00:26:32.280
They even use that phrase in Romans 8: should be just “brothers”, but they do “brothers and sisters”.
00:26:32.840 --> 00:26:35.550
So yeah: you think about some big ideas like that.
00:26:35.920 --> 00:26:42.269
And this ties in with, if I think about “How I’ve learned over the years?”, it’s basically by teaching others.
00:26:42.679 --> 00:26:55.130
If you want to become an effective learner of Christ and the Scriptures and everything else, think
about who you’re trying to pass the message onto—whether it be in the family, reading around the table,
00:26:55.310 --> 00:27:02.030
answering the kids’ questions, the neighbour, the small group that you lead, the workplace Bible study.
00:27:02.730 --> 00:27:05.820
I’ve had quiet times and I’ve done personal study and all the rest.
00:27:05.840 --> 00:27:08.480
But you write a book, you really learn a lot.
00:27:08.710 --> 00:27:10.960
You teach a sermon, you really learn a lot.
00:27:11.520 --> 00:27:17.200
You run a Scripture class in school, you going to prepare for that, otherwise you’ll be really embarrassed.
00:27:19.360 --> 00:27:24.160
So just think about who you can be teaching and you’ll learn a lot.
00:27:24.790 --> 00:27:25.600
They may not!
00:27:25.900 --> 00:27:26.950
They may not learn much.
00:27:26.950 --> 00:27:27.430
But you will.
00:27:30.110 --> 00:27:30.430
Yeah.
00:27:30.770 --> 00:27:38.649
Tony Payne: Yes, when we learn something well enough to be able to articulate it—to
summarise it—in “This is a form in which I could pass it on to somebody else”—
00:27:38.670 --> 00:27:38.910
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:27:39.809 --> 00:27:42.390
Tony Payne: —that’s when you really feel you’ve started to master something, haven’t you.
00:27:42.680 --> 00:27:53.040
And that can be the case even if you’re listening to this and you don’t have lots of formal teaching opportunities,
there are still lots of opportunities to think through, write down, summarise, think about what it is you’re
00:27:53.040 --> 00:27:57.310
learning and understanding from the Scriptures and in theology and about the nature of the Christian life.
00:27:57.980 --> 00:27:59.360
How would I articulate that?
00:27:59.360 --> 00:28:04.060
And how would I pass that onto someone, even just someone in my family or someone in our Bible study?
00:28:04.110 --> 00:28:04.310
Col Marshall: Yep.
00:28:04.440 --> 00:28:15.680
Tony Payne: You’ve already mentioned, I guess, Col, a number of the ways in which we can learn Christ—to not only
learn the knowledge of Christ, but to learn in our experience what it means to live that out and to obey him.
00:28:16.270 --> 00:28:17.760
Why do we find this hard?
00:28:17.770 --> 00:28:23.520
We started by talking about how we get stuck or stalled, but what are the obstacles to learning Christ?
00:28:23.730 --> 00:28:23.990
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:28:24.020 --> 00:28:33.780
I just want to make another comment on the other thing there, because you are in the process of
writing and finishing a book on every member Word ministry, and our two books fit together really well!
00:28:34.070 --> 00:28:36.930
So I’ve just said the way you learn is by passing on to someone else.
00:28:37.480 --> 00:28:41.960
So we’re all looking forward to this every member Word ministry.
00:28:42.060 --> 00:28:42.900
What’s it going to be called?
00:28:42.950 --> 00:28:47.610
Tony Payne: Well, this is very kind of you, Col, to do a kind of reverse book plug in the middle of this conversation!
00:28:48.020 --> 00:28:51.339
The book that I’ve got coming out is called "Let the Word Dwell Richly".
00:28:51.679 --> 00:28:51.819
Col Marshall: That’s right.
00:28:51.829 --> 00:28:51.859
Yep.
00:28:51.859 --> 00:28:51.869
Yep.
00:28:51.869 --> 00:29:05.710
Tony Payne: "The vital power of the one-another Word." And you’re right: it’s about the fact that, as we learn Christ,
we do it together, and we have a profound effect upon one another, and we build one another up, and the whole body grows.
00:29:06.110 --> 00:29:07.619
How does it grow in Ephesians 4?
00:29:07.639 --> 00:29:09.259
As we speak the truth in love.
00:29:09.260 --> 00:29:09.340
Col Marshall: Yep.
00:29:09.629 --> 00:29:10.449
Tony Payne: One to another.
00:29:10.910 --> 00:29:20.869
That’s how the body builds itself—as every little sinew and aspect, and every ligament
of the body is speaking the Word—the truth of Christ—to one another in the midst of life.
00:29:20.869 --> 00:29:21.204
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:29:21.204 --> 00:29:32.030
Tony Payne: And of course, Ephesians 4, then, goes on, as you make a point in the book—it then goes on to use
this striking phrase, “learning Christ”. It’s the place where that phrase comes in Scripture—in Ephesians 4 there.
00:29:32.050 --> 00:29:32.250
Col Marshall: Yep.
00:29:32.590 --> 00:29:44.430
Tony Payne: And that learning is not just the truth that we speak to one another, but the life in which that truth is expressed—and in
which that conversation takes place—and in which we keep speaking the truth to each other as we grapple with the things of life together.
00:29:44.469 --> 00:29:44.679
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:29:44.730 --> 00:29:45.190
Tony Payne: Very good.
00:29:45.190 --> 00:29:46.970
Well, thank you for that reverse book plug!
00:29:46.990 --> 00:29:48.150
Col Marshall: Ties together very well.
00:29:48.190 --> 00:29:48.779
Tony Payne: It does.
00:29:48.780 --> 00:29:55.300
And it is very important that we think about it in those terms—as something we do mutually and together, and through which we help each other.
00:29:55.340 --> 00:29:55.570
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:29:55.960 --> 00:29:58.450
Tony Payne: But let me have another go at the question I was asking.
00:29:58.450 --> 00:29:59.550
It sounds fantastic.
00:29:59.559 --> 00:30:01.280
Like, why would we not do this?
00:30:01.280 --> 00:30:02.599
This just sounds brilliant.
00:30:02.670 --> 00:30:02.910
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:30:02.950 --> 00:30:04.109
Tony Payne: But we do find it hard.
00:30:04.119 --> 00:30:05.009
What are the obstacles?
00:30:05.109 --> 00:30:10.270
Col Marshall: Well, at the highest level, it’s because we’re in the learning wars with the devil.
00:30:10.590 --> 00:30:10.889
Right?
00:30:12.140 --> 00:30:17.620
The one thing that Satan does not want to happen is that people learn Christ.
00:30:18.370 --> 00:30:35.709
I think, from memory, I talk about this a bit in the book from Ephesians and so on—that the devil is at war with Christ, the
principalities and powers are opposed to Christ, and opposed to people learning Christ, and therefore, the church being built.
00:30:36.320 --> 00:30:41.320
This is a cosmic war that’s being going on ever since Genesis 3, as far as I can tell.
00:30:42.200 --> 00:30:47.640
So at every level, the devil is not wanting us to learn Christ.
00:30:47.640 --> 00:31:05.080
And so, that can be just through false teaching—people who say the wrong things about Christ, who deny Christ—right
through to us just feeling lazy about it all, being distracted or being anxious learners, or disillusioned, or whatever.
00:31:05.639 --> 00:31:12.929
But Ephesians 6’s very important there—that we’re in this battle—see, some people don’t like the title of the book: "Warriors of the Word".
00:31:13.070 --> 00:31:15.650
Sounds very aggressive, not warm and cuddly.
00:31:15.730 --> 00:31:16.470
Tony Payne: Militaristic.
00:31:16.549 --> 00:31:16.839
Col Marshall: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:31:16.839 --> 00:31:17.050
Tony Payne: Yes.
00:31:17.720 --> 00:31:27.450
Col Marshall: But we are to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, because
it is a battle for ourselves to learn Christ, and a huge battle for us to make Christ known.
00:31:28.060 --> 00:31:41.200
But this is how the church is built and how the church perseveres is by putting on the full armour
of God, the word of God being at the centre of that, and our faith and salvation, and so on.
00:31:41.890 --> 00:31:46.169
So that’s the overarching reason that we find it hard.
00:31:46.200 --> 00:31:49.750
It is a spiritual battle, to put it in those common terms.
00:31:50.080 --> 00:31:57.060
At a practical level, that can come out just in terms of the distractions of our age.
00:31:58.650 --> 00:32:10.100
Our pastor the other day made the astounding claim in a sermon that to be
entertained is not a human right or part of our constitution or something like that.
00:32:10.779 --> 00:32:13.350
And I thought, yeah, I just expect to be entertained.
00:32:14.010 --> 00:32:17.740
Whether it’s the television or the movie or the book or whatever.
00:32:18.310 --> 00:32:23.760
So we’re just spending inordinate amounts of time entertaining ourselves to death, someone said, I think.
00:32:23.900 --> 00:32:26.700
Tony Payne: Yes, "Amusing Ourselves to Death"—distracting ourselves to death.
00:32:26.700 --> 00:32:27.585
Col Marshall: Amusing ourselves to death.
00:32:27.585 --> 00:32:27.830
Tony Payne: Yeah.
00:32:27.830 --> 00:32:28.210
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:32:28.210 --> 00:32:45.139
And so, the thought of coming home from work and spending a couple of hours diving into a text to understand a text and meditating on it,
thinking about or reading Peter Jensen on the doctrine of Scripture or something, doesn’t even cross our minds in this age that we live in.
00:32:45.709 --> 00:32:53.140
Now, there’s exceptions and there’s wonderful exceptions, and we all know the exceptions—people who have got this vision.
00:32:53.620 --> 00:32:58.359
And they’re often the ones who are leading groups and teaching others, so the two go hand-in-hand.
00:32:58.950 --> 00:33:01.930
But I think increasingly, we’re all worried about it.
00:33:01.930 --> 00:33:12.740
I know you’re worried about it, Tony, too—just that loss of a reading, studying
culture, which leads us into deep convictions about the Christian faith, which
00:33:15.790 --> 00:33:18.340
we then are compelled to pass on to others.
00:33:18.349 --> 00:33:21.530
So I think there can be shallowness.
00:33:22.039 --> 00:33:39.210
And I think we just have funny expectations of our pastors: they’ve done all their training, and they’re our teachers, and we go along
and we expect to get some deep, deep benefits through their ten hours of study when we haven’t really engaged at all with the process.
00:33:39.650 --> 00:33:44.379
So we’re expecting to learn in a very passive way through a half hour sermon.
00:33:44.379 --> 00:33:45.940
It just doesn’t work like that!
00:33:45.960 --> 00:33:49.160
We might pick up some nice devotional ideas to get us through the week.
00:33:49.510 --> 00:33:53.949
I think sometimes that’s what we’re looking for in a sermon: I just need something to get me through the week.
00:33:54.460 --> 00:33:59.519
But that’s not good enough, in terms of deeply learning the Christian faith—deeply learning Christ.
00:33:59.519 --> 00:34:03.320
So all those basic things: read the passage beforehand.
00:34:03.330 --> 00:34:05.460
Have a question in mind before you hear the sermon.
00:34:06.190 --> 00:34:08.550
Write to the minister about some question you’ve got.
00:34:08.779 --> 00:34:10.779
Discuss it over morning tea.
00:34:11.309 --> 00:34:12.430
Talk about it in the family.
00:34:12.449 --> 00:34:12.860
Whatever.
00:34:12.909 --> 00:34:14.849
Tony Payne: And then pray about it the next morning, yeah.
00:34:14.920 --> 00:34:16.330
Col Marshall: Make the most of every sermon.
00:34:16.609 --> 00:34:17.569
Tony Payne: So, yes, exactly.
00:34:17.570 --> 00:34:35.010
There is this sense in which learning Christ is a struggle for us, because it’s a spiritual issue, and because we’re not in a neutral kind of learning
environment; we’re actually in a competitive learning environment, where we’re being discipled or apprenticed, if you like, either to the world—
00:34:35.010 --> 00:34:35.030
Col Marshall: Yeah.
00:34:35.080 --> 00:34:37.719
Tony Payne: —under the power of Satan or to Christ.
00:34:37.719 --> 00:34:37.880
Col Marshall: Yep.
00:34:37.880 --> 00:34:44.949
Tony Payne: And that’s the sense in which a battle, and the sense in which
being a Christian is being a warrior, and that’s what I liked about the title.
00:34:45.120 --> 00:34:57.310
It surprised me at first, but, like all good titles, it drew me in, and the more I looked at what the book
was doing and why, I saw it’s a good title, because it frames the learning of Jesus and our apprenticeship
00:34:57.310 --> 00:35:01.530
to Christ not as some kind like a hobby—like we’ve decided we’ll learn a new language or something.
00:35:02.050 --> 00:35:06.990
It’s a life and death question, and it’s hard because we’re in a spiritual battle, because of the nature of—
00:35:07.090 --> 00:35:07.320
Col Marshall: Yep.
00:35:07.389 --> 00:35:08.010
Tony Payne: —the world.
00:35:08.420 --> 00:35:17.870
But you also manage, and I loved this section of the book, to cast it not just as an
obligation or something we should do, or as a battle to do, or as a set of obstacles.
00:35:17.890 --> 00:35:23.310
You’ve got this marvellous section where you talk about the joys and the enormous privileges of learning Christ.
00:35:23.310 --> 00:35:26.239
And I thought that might be a good way for us to round off our conversation.
00:35:26.690 --> 00:35:28.839
What’s the joy and privilege of learning Christ?
00:35:29.359 --> 00:35:40.610
Col Marshall: Well, as I alluded to before, that the richness of our salvation in
some ways is captured by the idea of our adoption more than any other doctrine.
00:35:41.120 --> 00:35:41.290
I don’t know.
00:35:41.290 --> 00:35:58.330
JI Packer, and I think I mention this in the book, sort of compared the doctrine of justification and
adoption—justification in terms of the legal aspect of our salvation—that we are no longer condemned,
00:35:58.880 --> 00:36:06.029
that Christ has paid the penalty for our sin, and we are declared righteous by our faith in Christ.
00:36:06.719 --> 00:36:24.680
But adoption draws us into this very personal relationship of love and sharing in the riches of Christ for
all eternity, because we end up in our glorification, beyond our death, in our resurrection, with a new body.
00:36:24.680 --> 00:36:27.200
That’s why I love Romans 8, because we’re already adopted.
00:36:27.890 --> 00:36:39.379
But in the redemption of our bodies, the full adoption takes place, when we’re no longer
slaves of sin; we’re—we’re slaves of righteousness—perfectly in purity in the resurrection age.
00:36:40.219 --> 00:36:42.990
So it’s those privileges.
00:36:42.990 --> 00:36:43.920
It’s also the privilege of being chosen.
00:36:43.960 --> 00:36:54.429
I do quite a bit on predestination, which I know we all struggle with, in some ways—the
concept of, in God’s sovereignty, he has chosen before the creation of the world.
00:36:55.049 --> 00:36:59.259
But that’s what it means: I’ve been chosen before the creation of the world.
00:36:59.810 --> 00:37:01.880
This is not some accidental salvation.
00:37:02.160 --> 00:37:04.600
This is not just because someone mentioned the gospel to me.
00:37:05.280 --> 00:37:07.590
So the richness of our salvation.
00:37:07.650 --> 00:37:15.479
And then, I guess, the other privilege is that we are actually transformed in this life: we do become more like Christ.
00:37:15.559 --> 00:37:20.819
We do learn to love in a way that comes from Christ himself.
00:37:21.290 --> 00:37:39.900
The great new commandment of John 13 and so on: we experience that transformation from a self-centred
existence to another-person-centred life, which is what Christ has demonstrated to us in his death for us.
00:37:39.900 --> 00:37:49.290
So yes: so there’s a whole section on these privileges like mining gold that is far more precious than gold.
00:37:49.889 --> 00:38:01.150
Tony Payne: Col, thanks for … I was going to say, “Thanks for writing this book”; I feel like saying, “Thanks for a lifetime that’s
led to the writing of this book”, in a sense, because it’s a book that’s arisen out of your long-term learning of Christ yourself.
00:38:01.599 --> 00:38:09.570
And the wisdom that’s in the book flows out of that and is really encouraging and insightful and helpful in so many ways.
00:38:10.170 --> 00:38:21.060
In some ways, for me, as someone who spends a lot of their every day in the Bible and the Scripture and theology
here at Moore College, and has the privilege of teaching others, it was still a real challenge for me as to my
00:38:21.120 --> 00:38:27.499
personal habits of thinking and learning and application and learning what it means to live like Christ myself.
00:38:27.500 --> 00:38:38.280
It was a challenge to be that kind of warrior who continues in that process of fighting to learn
to Christ and not to be discipled by the world, but not to learn the world as Satan wants us to.
00:38:38.639 --> 00:38:49.720
It’s a very helpful book in so many ways, and Col, thank you so much for taking all the time and struggle it is
to write and to put all these things down for us, and I’d like to commend for everybody that they get hold of
00:38:49.720 --> 00:38:55.120
"Warriors of the Word" and dwell in it and chew over it over some period of time, because I think it will change you.
00:38:55.900 --> 00:38:58.879
Col, thanks so much for being with me today, and for having this conversation.
00:38:59.240 --> 00:38:59.999
Col Marshall: Thank you, Tony.
00:39:00.410 --> 00:39:02.520
And great to chat with you about it as always!
00:39:02.770 --> 00:39:03.569
Tony Payne: We’ll talk again soon.
00:39:03.570 --> 00:39:04.779
Col Marshall: We’ll do it again somewhere, somehow.
00:39:19.969 --> 00:39:24.759
Tony Payne: Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast from Moore College.
00:39:25.260 --> 00:39:38.909
For a whole lot more from the Centre for Christian Living, just head over to the CCL website: that’s
ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a stack of resources, including every past podcast episode all the
00:39:38.910 --> 00:39:45.060
way back to 2017, videos from our live events, and articles that we’ve published through the Centre.
00:39:45.710 --> 00:39:54.250
And while you’re there on the website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a
tax-deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre here at Moore College.
00:39:54.339 --> 00:40:02.510
We’d also love you to subscribe to the podcast and to leave a review so that people can discover our podcast and our other resources.
00:40:03.140 --> 00:40:07.630
And we always love and benefit from receiving your feedback and questions.
00:40:07.690 --> 00:40:08.710
Please get in touch.
00:40:09.020 --> 00:40:11.220
You can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au.
00:40:14.580 --> 00:40:27.790
Many thanks to Karen Beilharz from the Communications Team here at Moore College for all her work in transcribing and
editing and producing this podcast; to James West for the music; and to you, dear listeners, for joining us each week.
00:40:27.920 --> 00:40:28.749
Thank you for listening.
00:40:29.219 --> 00:40:30.010
I’m Tony Payne.
00:40:30.430 --> 00:40:31.040
‘Bye for now.