19: Three Pillars of the Kingdom Worldview

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail Podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Episode 19. We’re continuing today with a look at the Three Pillars of the Kingdom Worldview.

Hello, Father.

[00:29] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. It’s good to be together.

[00:31] Stephanie: Yes, always. I love your smiling face. I love being with you and I love this topic.

[00:41] Marcus: Yes, “three pillars” gives a kind of a weight to it. These are the pillars of a kingdom worldview.

[00:49] Stephanie: Yes. Well done. I’ve heard you preach on the kingdom worldview on multiple occasions and in true pastoral fashion, you’ve identified three points that all begin with one letter:  Sacred romance, Sovereign lordship, and Spiritual warfare. Where did you get these three?

[01:06] Marcus: It came from a kind of a combination of things I was listening to. I mentioned Joseph Stone in the last podcast. I loved the sermon series that he did for the ICBC conferences back in the early two thousands. He was talking there about his experience of studying at Oxford and getting his theology straight. He was essentially raised in a very reformed tradition that said that the sovereignty of God is the foundation of all theology. And so he was pondering that, and he was very convinced of the sovereignty of God. We all understand that God is the king and all things run through him, so God’s sovereignty is a core pillar. But [John Storm] made the argument that even deeper than that was what we call union with Christ.

Now, union with Christ is a term that was very popular a couple generations ago, but I don’t think most Christians today know what that is. So I took union with Christ and I borrowed John Eldredge’s term, sacred romance, from his first book and put those together.

The idea here is that the number one pillar of a kingdom worldview is that God loves us and that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us. And so that’s number one. So I agreed with him, that pillar number one of a kingdom worldview is that God loves us. He wants us to experience what John Eldridge calls a sacred romance. That’s intimacy with God.

The second pillar is the sovereignty of God. Now, these two pillars get taught a lot. I also put them together as the goodness of God and the power of God. But we all know there are some problems that come up if the only thing you emphasize is the goodness of God and the power of God. If the only thing you emphasize is that God loves us and that God is sovereign, and that leaves us with the problem of evil. What do we do with the problem of evil if these are the only two foundations?

And so that leads us to pillar number three. And pillar number three is spiritual warfare. You can’t really understand the world that exists if the only two pillars you have are that God is good and that God is sovereign. We have to understand that God created a wonderful, perfect world, but that sin has marred this world, it has warped this world, and we no longer live in that paradise.

We now live in a fallen world where there are all kinds of problems and where Satan has authority in this age. Jesus called him the prince of this world. Paul called him the god of this age. You can’t understand life until you understand spiritual warfare. So those are the three pillars: sacred romance, sovereign lordship, and spiritual warfare.

[03:46] Stephanie: Weighty indeed, and also very good. So, in your book, Toward a Deeper Walk, you use the image of what you call “a special backpacking shirt” to depict these three pillars of the kingdom worldview. Do you want to help us with this image? What makes the shirt special?

[04:01] Marcus: I know we’ve never actually made one of these shirts. We really need to actually. I know somebody who did. He made his own version of it, which was cool. The idea is that the pocket over your heart, right above that pocket where you usually put a logo, we put a heart. It all starts with the heart.

Heart-focused discipleship. We’re all about heart, and the idea that we need to make the heart our focus. And by that, we mean sacred romance. Let’s make the sacred romance, intimacy with God, our number one priority, the focus of our lives. So the heart represents sacred romance.

We need to make the heart our focus, because Satan is already making it his focus. So that’s the first thing, and then we put a square around[the heart. The square around the heart [represents] sovereign lordship, and that sovereign lordship elicits two fundamental responses from us. The first one is trust, and the next one is thanksgiving.

Because God is sovereign, because he works all things together for good in the lives of those who are called according to his purpose, we live with gratitude for God’s sovereignty in our lives. And it also means that we can trust him to work all things together for good in our lives.

Then around the square with the heart inside, we put a circle, and the circle is spiritual warfare. The circle is a reminder that we need to guard our hearts. As Proverbs 4:23 says, ”Above all things, guard your heart.”

So this is where we put those three together. It’s a reminder that our heart is the bullseye of this target, and we need to make it our bullseye, because Satan’s certainly making it his.

[05:46] Stephanie: Indeed. Let’s go ahead and just take a quick look at each of these pillars to give an overview. After this episode, we’re going to take an episode each to go into more detail on each pillar. With all of this in mind, let’s take a quick look at sacred romance, which many would call abiding in Christ.

The two most important perspectives of sacred romance are the way you see God and the way you see yourself. This also makes those two areas Satan’s greatest targets, as you said. So if he can distort the way that we see God, he can distort the way we see ourselves, and that results in a loss of intimacy and a whole bunch of worldview issues. Can you talk more on this?

[06:34] Marcus: Well, this is where we see the real importance of worldview and, that is, at a heart level, what do I really believe?

I remember as a professor, I was giving a test, and this guy got 100% on his systematic theology test. But in talking to him in person, he didn’t believe any of it. There was a huge gap between his head and his heart. I know that sometimes we say God is good, and God loves us, and we say all the right things about God, but in our heart level, we don’t really trust his love for us because there is a distortion in what we believe about God and what we believe about ourselves.

Pondering this, my view of God and my view of myself are the two sides of a coin. If I pierce one, I pierce both of them. Think about a coin. If I drill a hole through that coin, I am marring both sides of it. So my view of myself and my view of God are inseparable.

What helps me think about this is the analogy of the shepherd and the lion and the sheep. As Christians, we are sheep and Jesus is our shepherd, and the goal is to stay close to the shepherd. Sheep have literally no defense systems. The only reason that sheep still exists today is not survival of the fittest. The sheep didn’t outwit the wolves. They didn’t develop some kind of superpower against the wolves. They only survived because of shepherds.

In the same way, the only reason that we survive in this world of warfare is because of our shepherd. The wolves know this. The roaring lion knows this. Therefore, he wants to keep us away from the shepherd. Well, if you were going to [separate the sheep from the shepherd], and your core identity is that you’re the father of lies, what kind of lies do you tell?

You tell lies about who God is, the kind of lies that would keep you from trusting him, the kind of lies that would keep you from being too intimate with him. And then he tells you lies about yourself. Maybe you’re too bad for God to want you around. Maybe you’re not good enough for him. Maybe you haven’t performed well enough. Maybe there’s something fundamentally flawed about you, whatever it is.

[08:53] Stephanie: Or, on the flip side of it, he tells you you can be super-sheep.

[08:56] Marcus: That’s true. On the other hand it’s like you’re so good, God thinks you’re doing him a favor by hanging around. There are probably people who go that direction, too.

I think that we understand this is why these two things are inseparable. Because my view of God and my view of self are kind of the anchor for my relationship with God. And that’s why we talk about sacred romance and we’re saying that if that’s really the heart of the whole thing, then at the heart of sacred romance are these two key perspectives.

[09:32] Stephanie: Can you talk a little bit more in terms of John 15?

[09:36] Marcus: John 15 is kind of the definitive passage on sacred romance. Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. My father is the gardener, and every branch that remains in me or abides in me bears fruit.” It’s this beautiful picture of how the life of the vine, in order to get into the fruit, has to go through the branch and into the fruit.

You can have a couple problems with this. If the branch is too long, then all of that life in the vine just goes to the end of the branch and doesn’t get channeled into the fruit, so the gardener has to keep that branch short and he does that by pruning. The reason the gardener is constantly pruning the branch is to keep the life of the vine going into the fruit. When the branch is kept short, when the life is flowing into the fruit on a regular basis, the connection point between the vine and the branch begins to grow.

I love the image that the connection point on a grapevine can get to be the size of a human fist. The bigger that connection is, the more of the life of the vine can flow into the branch and thus into the fruit. And that’s what sacred romance is all about. That is that the size of my connection with God determines everything else, so because of that, it is the focal point of the war, and so it’s got to be the focal point of my journey.

[11:02] Stephanie: Excellent. Now that we have a picture of the loving attachment God desires to exist between us, from that foundation, let’s take a brief look at sovereign lordship.

[11:11] Marcus: Sovereign lordship starts with the idea that God is king. Now there are some extremes you can go with this. One extreme is fatalism, the idea that God has predetermined everything that happens and thus if something happens, it is God’s will.

I don’t know how you can land here when Jesus taught us to pray, “…may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” which seems to imply that his will is not being done here. In other words, I don’t pray for God’s will to be done if it’s automatically always done – that’s fatalism.

The other extreme is a level of free will that doesn’t really see God as being involved in life. It’s almost the deistic idea that he, the clockmaker God, wound things up, and now he just lets things play out.

When we’re talking about sovereignty, we’re talking about the idea that God is sovereign. He is the initiator. He has a vision. He has a plan. He has a purpose, and he is moving towards that purpose, and his purpose is related to sacred romance. He wants to have a family. He wants his children in heaven and his children on earth, which doesn’t just mean Christians who died and are now in heaven. We’re talking about the angels, the sons of God. That in becoming sons of God, we have joined the sons of God in heaven, and we are now one family united in Christ.

His purposes are these huge, enormous things that are all about love and all about our bonding to him. He is the initiator as a king. He’s also a judge, which means that we are all accountable and answerable to him for what we do. That’s why the Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

So if you think about it from that point, the fear of the Lord is really putting sovereignty first and saying, even if you don’t think God likes you, even if you don’t think he’s good, even if you’re not interested in a relationship, at least recognize that he’s the final authority and you’re going to have to answer to him. The reason I think that the Bible makes the fear of the Lord the key is because not everybody’s going to be drawn to love him and trust him.

[13:27] Stephanie: Well, trust takes time.

[13:28] Marcus: Trust takes time. Exactly.

[13:29] Stephanie: So you can choose to obey immediately, but trust takes time.

[13:34] Marcus: Exactly. I go back to the parable where Jesus talked about the guy who buried his talent. His point was, “Assume everything that you believed about God was true. You still knew you were going to have to give an account. You should have at least put the talent in the bank.”

That’s what I mean by the fear of the Lord being the foundational thing. It’s not that we build our lives on the fear of the Lord. It’s that even if you don’t have anything else, that should be enough to get you to say, “I’m not going to be a fool and live my life in a way that God is going to judge.” That’s part of the picture of the sovereignty of God – that we’re answerable to him. He’s the initiator.

There’s also this idea of God as a chess player God, which I’m sure we’ll pick up on more in a later. Our lives sometimes feel like a game of chess. I’m terrible at chess. I once was beaten in five moves. Life feels even more complicated than that, but God is this infinite person who is playing chess at a level I can’t even comprehend. Part of sovereignty is trusting the wisdom of God.

That’s probably enough for today, but that’s where we’re headed.

[14:49] Stephanie: Well, and I would just say, I think that the sacred romance is so important to the sovereign lordship because it’s also part of how you know that he’s good.

[14:58] Marcus: Okay.

[14:59] Stephanie: That’s how I see it at least.

[15:00] Marcus: That you know he’s good because he’s sovereign?

[15:03] Stephanie: No, because he loves you.

[15:05] Marcus: Because he loves you.

[15:07] Stephanie: That’s why I tie it in.

[15:08] Marcus: Well, the only reason we can trust our sovereign God is because of the sacred romance part. In other words, he could be sovereign and be completely evil.

[15:17] Stephanie: Yeah, exactly. Which is why it’s so important that he loves us.

So now that we have a better understanding of sovereign lordship, I think we can better approach spiritual warfare? Let’s take a brief look at that from a kingdom worldview terminal.

[15:34] Marcus: So spiritual warfare starts with the idea that we do not live in the world as God created it. We live in a present evil age. In the Garden of Eden, something happened that changed Satan’s access to our world, that gave him a whole other level of permission, and all of his whole kingdom permission to a place here in this world. And that is not going to change until Jesus returns and this present evil age is over.

The good thing about spiritual warfare is that it’s not eternal. And that separates our worldview from yin yang, Ahura Mazda, any kind of dualism that says there is an eternal good and eternal evil that are battling it out. Biblical Christianity says evil had a beginning and evil has an end. And that’s good news.

The next part of spiritual warfare is that we then have to have a theology of evil. Where does evil come from? Why does evil exist? What is evil? How do we reconcile evil with the goodness of God? It also means we have to deal with the evil one. That is, who is this evil one? What are his strategies and tactics? What is he trying to do in my life?

My dad, who fought in World War II, used to say that the first priority of the Christian life is to know God. The second priority is to know your enemy. Having been in battle, he says you need to know what your commander wants, but the next best thing you can know is how your enemy operates so you can avoid his snares and traps. Fundamentally, spiritual warfare comes down to those things.

[17:18] Stephanie: It helps on the big picture problem of evil, but it also helps on the practical levels of day to day life.

[17:25] Marcus: Exactly. So those are the three pillars: sacred romance, sovereign lordship, spiritual warfare. They are all intimately related, and they are all needed, because if you take any one of them out, the system falls apart.

[17:41] Stephanie: So next episode, we’re going to be looking more into sacred romance. For now, any final thoughts?

[17:48] Marcus: Well, I know that understanding these pillars helped me, first of all, just in priorities. It helps me sometimes to re-anchor my life when I’m starting to feel a little bit out of control, and I come back to, “God, you’re feeling distant right now. I’m not feeling a sacred romance. but I do trust your sovereignty and I take my stand against the enemy. I come back to you.”

I live out of these things every day, and when I’m getting lost, I come back to them. That’s why I think it’s important for us to really know what the anchors to our faith are, on which we build.  If we’re going to take a kingdom worldview further, these are what I would call the foundations that come from creation theology.

There are other foundational things that come out of what Jesus does specifically that we haven’t gotten to yet, and we’ll hopefully get to at some point. When you bring them together, you understand that everything that Jesus did connects to these three pillars. So we’ll have more to say about that later.

[18:57] Stephanie: We started off talking about how weighty they are, and I think that just goes to show the unshakableness of them. I have felt very grounded in my biblical worldview and just functioning in life because of them. So very important. Thank you.

And thank you all for joining us on the trail today. If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the Deeper Walk Podcast and share with your friends.

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Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.