A
Biblical Look At “Optional Extras”
Ted Jungkuntz
"Extras optional,” – When you’re thinking
of buying a new automobile, you may consider the “stripped down” model only or
you may consider buying one with at least some of the optional extras. It seems
as though this mentality has crept into the Christian Church and many Christians
want a “stripped down” version of Christianity - one which will do the basic job
of transporting a person in due time to the safety and comfort of heaven but
with-out any of the supposed optional extras which simply seem to push the
price of the trip out of the range which a person is willing to pay.
When Jesus promised his disciples that
they would be “baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:4-5, 8), it didn’t
sound too much as though he was offering them an optional extra to take or to
leave, depending upon whether they merely wished to “get to heaven” as cheaply
as possible or whether they wished the optional equipment which could be used
for witnessing to others while on the way.
Or was Jesus’ command to “make
disciples of all nations” optional - one we are free to take or leave
depending upon how the “spirit” moves us? And was his promise, “lo, I am
with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20), optional on
both his part and ours?
Come to think of it, I can’t find the word
“optional” in my Bible, although that by itself proves little, since I can’t
find the precise words “Trinity,” “infant baptism,” or “baptism in the Holy
Spirit” either. We must be careful in the way in which we sum up or paraphrase
biblical truths in our own words, but it certainly is permissible and necessary
to do so, as long as we do so accurately. Otherwise we would be limited to
quoting verbatim the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek original versions of the Bible
with no translations being permissible, since they too would be our attempts to
repeat in a new form what the original texts of the Bible say in a different
form.
So we have to ask whether the idea found
in our English word “optional” is one which is taught in the same way in Holy
Scripture. Webster’s dictionary says that optional means “involving a
choice: not compulsory.” Is this idea found in the Bible? Well, wasn’t
Joshua offering the people of Israel an “option” when he said:“ And if you be
willing to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the
gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the
Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the
Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)
We would certainly have to admit that Joshua
was giving the people an option – but what an option! It was an either-or.
Either the Lord or the gods of the heathen. It was not the option of a little
of each, of a both-and. And the consequences are also clear-cut: “If you
forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and
consume you, after having done you good” (Joshua 24:20). That’s an option, alright!
In the New Testament Jesus continues to give
us that same sort of option: “No one can serve two masters, for
either...or...” (Matt. 6:24) Again, he says: “If any one comes to me and
does not hate...he cannot be my disciple.” (Lk. 14:26) And then twice more
Jesus submits conditions, which, if they are not submitted to, have as
consequences that a person “cannot be my disciple.” (Lk. 14:27,33)
There’s your option: you can either be Jesus’ disciple and render him complete
submission, or your can choose not to do so, but then you cannot be his
disciple, even though you might “come to him.” (Lk. 14:26) Jesus allows
no one to remain his disciple merely “up to a point,” a kind of
“so-far-but-no-further disciple.” It’s either-or. You can’t “come” to Jesus without
“going” where Jesus goes - and that is always to the cross where the old self
with its “options” dies and the new self begins, which wants nothing but the
Lord’s “options” to be done in its life.
The Apostle Paul, says: “If we live by
the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25) But maybe this is
just an option. Per-haps we can live by the Spirit but at the same time have
self-conceit, provoking of one another, and envy of one another. (Gal.5:26) But
Paul says: - no way! "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for
whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh
will from the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will from
the Spirit reap eternal life.”(Gal. 6:7-8)
Your option is not to live, and then to
either walk or not to walk. But rather, your option is either to live and to
walk, or it is not to walk and to die.
The Bible, in other words, is full of
options, but not the options for which our flesh yearns - the old “to-eat-our-cake-and-have-it-too”
option. The options of the Bible deal with life or death, heaven or hell, cold
or hot. “Would that you were cold or hot! So, be-cause you are lukewarm, and
neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:15-16)
Jesus does not give us the option of becoming Christians and then of either
maturing or not maturing. Rather, either we are Christians and therefore people
who will mature more and more into the perfection for which that calls, or we
will not mature and thereby risk ceasing to be Christians (Heb. 5:11-6,8).
Are the fruit of the Spirit, then,
optional –something we are free to produce or refuse to produce? (Gal. 5:22-24)
Paul does not see them as optional but as necessary. Either we produce the
fruit of the Spirit or we do the works of the flesh. But if we do the latter, he
says, we “shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Gal.5:18-21) That’s
our option.
Or are the gifts of the Spirit optional –something
we are free to pray for or to disregard if we are so inclined? (1 Cor. 12:27-31;
14:1-5) In no way does Paul suggest that they are optional extras for an elite
cadre of Christians only.
The mission which the Lord Jesus has given
to his body (the Church) is a mission which calls for “varieties of gifts,
but the same Spirit” and “varieties of service, but the same Lord,” and
“varieties of working, but...the same God.” (1 Cor. 12:4-6) We should
not try to crowd God off his throne by dictating which gifts we will find acceptable
and which we find stupid and unacceptable, given our “natural” capabilities. (1
Cor. 12:7-11) Perhaps there is a sense in which we can say that these gifts are
not necessary for salvation, if by salvation we mean that which is begun in us through
justification by faith alone. But faith, though it alone receives
and effects such salvation, never remains alone, but it is always busy
expressing itself in obedience to its Lord; and its Lord says, “Ask, and it will
be given you...how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to
those who ask him.” (Lk. 11:9-13)
How could “faith” at this point refuse to
ask or how could “faith” take matters into its own hands and say, “I’ll gladly
take those gifts which match my intelligence and my sense of proper decorum,
but I will never ask for anything so inappropriate to my personality, nor so
useless to the “body” as a whole, as the so-called “gift of tongues.” What kind
of a “faith” would speak thus to the Lord who alone calls faith into being?
What is at stake when “faith” claims such “options”
for itself is nothing less than the lordship of Jesus Christ. Whether or not we
receive the gift of tongues or any other gift is an option lying not with us
but with the Lord. Yet “faith” will discover its Lord’s options not by
passively waiting for the Lord to thrust a gift upon it, but by asking,
seeking, knocking, and earnestly desiring “the spiritual gifts.” (Lk.
11:9-13; 1 Cor. 12:31; 14;1) Not to yield that option specifically to our Lord
by asking as he has commanded us to ask is to claim options for ourselves which
our Lord has never granted to us. “Options and the Bible.” – The option which the
Bible offers us is either a blessed submission to him who is already our Lord or
a disastrous rebellion against him. The option does not include the possibility
of only partial submission, but only full submission (which requires repentance
and forgiveness) or denial. Ignorance, of course, is not denial, but how much
longer will our Lord allow us to plead ignorance? To choose to remain ignorant
is not an option our Lord gives us - not when through his holy apostle he with
great insistence says: “NOW CONCERNING SPIRITUAL GIFTS, BRETHREN, I DO NOT
WANT YOU TO BE UNINFORMED” (1 Cor. 12:10).
This is no mere “optional extra.”
Dr. Theodore Jungkuntz
2614 Page Court
Ann Arbor, MI 48104