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Lifeline Leadership Podcast Network. G'day, I'm Jo Keebs. Welcome to the One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel senate ministry every week. The One Thing's brought to you by Reach Australia. We're working and praying hard to see thousands of healthy,

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evangelistic and multiplying churches right across the country. Now we wanted to give you some resources and inspiration for your summer time. Last year we had Rory Shiner as one of our key speakers at National Conference and he's got a great new book out about the cross. This is the fourth book that Rory's written and it really is a great, right? Rory, really fantastic to have you on the One Thing. Great to be here. So, before we get into things, tell me what's the best thing about summer for you?

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Well, I am, I think I live in Perth, that's where homies and I feel like in some ways Perth is wasted on me because I'm generally not a summer person and I live in one of the best summer cities in the world. So we have essentially no rain from about November to about March and it's kind of hot all the time and I think I enjoy that for about the first month and then my pasty pale skin and you know, desired or wear warm clothes and be able to do and just take so

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over. So that's me and summer. Awesome. We've really put it in the mood for summer. Thanks, Rory. But for now, you press play on another episode of The One Thing for Given Forever. So, Rory, there are quite a few books written about the cross. Tell us why do you think we need another one? Yeah, that's a very fair question. I think the truth is there are lots of books written on the cross. Interestingly, I think there have not been a lot of books written on the cross

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by Evangelicals in Australia for the last 20 or 30 years. I think it's surprising kind of gap there given how central the cross is to the Christian faith and to the Evangelical understanding of Christianity. And that may be because the work has been so good. So in Australia, we've had people like Leon Morris who did very important work on the cross in the middle of last century and so on. And there's always that, I guess there's always that risk that

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I think that's kind of taken for granted can be assumed on and then abandoned. So there are a lot to books on the cross, although I would say not a lot to books by Australians in the last 20 or 30 years. But more to the point, I think the gap that I felt was a book on the cross that was really geared toward its livability. So lots of really great stuff on the cross about defending

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a penal substitutionary understanding of the atonement and lots of interesting work on whether the atonement is limited or universal and those sorts of things. But a book that I could give someone who was a fellow church member with a normal secular job and say this is why I think the cross is not only glorious and true, but also this livable thing that changes the way you live your life. So that's the kind of book I wanted to write. Thanks. And I think I really noticed that

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in reading it, the livability, so lots of application to our lives as Christians. But we're chatting before this podcast and saying, you've got a lovely ability to take timeless truths, make them clear for us, put it into relevant language for the Australian context. So yeah, I think you've done a great job. Thanks. So this is the third book in a series. So tell us how it interacts with the other two. What's happening there? Yeah, there's a there's a ended up accidentally writing a trilogy, so that wasn't the plan from the start, but wrote a book on union with Christ and that's a that is a

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book that is a topic that's underwritten on and because it is so central to the to the to the New Testament, which is the question, how do we receive the benefits of Jesus? What what is that relationship? And the Bible regularly talks about us being united with Christ as that that's our relationship with him where we're in him, united with him. And out of that, I wrote a second book on the resurrection of Jesus. And so the third book on the cross, I've essentially written a trilogy completely the wrong way around. So started with us and then went to the resurrection and then

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went to the cross. So you couldn't get it more wrong in terms of the logical order. But having thought about the resurrection and having thought about union with Christ, it felt like we'd accidentally hit upon a trilogy and wanted to finish that with the with the cross, which is really at the center of all of that. Yeah, yeah, okay. And you know, if Star Wars, you know, movies can do it out of order. You can do it out of order too. Exactly. Now, the book is really focused on being

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forgiven and almost understanding not only the application, the livability of the cross, but also the kind of the mechanics of it. Like you've done that in a number of chapters. What do you think it is about being forgiven that people find hard to understand? Yeah, there's there's lots of stuff going on there. I think there's in our in our culture, I think forgiveness is at a premium. Like I see less forgiveness in our culture, I would say even in the past 20 or 30 years that kind of that

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candle culture thing, we've got a culture with a lot of judgment and very little atonement. So in our culture, once you've once you're done, you're done and you're kicked out very few of our stories in our movies and films and so on. Very few of our stories are about someone coming back from having done the wrong thing and being forgiven and restored. So I think there's a in our culture, it's hard for people to understand forgiveness and even hard to celebrate forgiveness.

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To think it's a good thing that God wipes our sins away. And it's a good thing that we forgive each other's sins. I just think we've got a cop. We find that hard as a culture. We find that hard personally. So I'm going to very tender people with tender consciences and so on. It can be very hard to keep reminding ourselves that we have been forgiven and to live out of grace, not out of guilt. And then there are some kind of, I guess, more apologetic or evangelistic challenges to forgiveness.

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For example, the Muslim and sometimes secular objection is why does it require the death of Jesus? Like when we do forgive each other in the normal course of life, we're not calling on these sort of external sacrifices. And so there is a thing, especially if you've grown up in Christian circles and are familiar with the cross, we can sometimes forget how odd it is to think, well, why does God kind of forgiveness require the cross and an atonement?

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Yeah, I found myself in a conversation last week with a Muslim friend and her big question was, as we talked through Christ's work on the cross to forgive our sins, was why do I think it's effective? So we ended up going through all of these status. It really is a big thing for people to get their head around. Yeah, that's an absolutely great example of that. And for a Muslim person, that's a big thing. Like how does, why is it needed and how does it work, it's huge. Yeah. And you've touched on that area a little bit of assurance. And in your book, you pick up that idea of people sometimes overthinking in this area of assurance. What do you mean by that?

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So I've noticed in pastoral ministry, there's such a person, and I think I'd even say just between us that they're having times in my life where I have been that person, who you can get stuck in this kind of vortex where you think about, you're thinking earnestly to almost always earnestly people that fall into this trap. You're thinking earnestly about the death of Jesus and that it's paid for your sins, but then you think, have I really connected with that? I think there's a

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verse somewhere about the unforgivable sin. And what if I've done that? What if I've done that and no one told me and I'm here living this kind of useless thing? Because I've done the unforgivable sin and I'm already out. Or what if my faith isn't enough? I'm not holding on to Jesus tied enough or what about when a sin comes back to haunt me? That I thought I'd kind of got the better of and now it's got the better of me again. Am I unforgiven now? And there is a person, a pastoral moment where you get stuck in that and don't know how to get out of it. And that's

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a big concern for me pastoral. That's a awful situation to be in. And I was sharing with someone the other day. I think there have been points in my life and I think I've observed this in other people where being a Christian is emotionally kind of a net negative. You kind of feel worse. You think, oh, this is, my life is more complicated and I feel awful and doubtful and all that kind of thing. I really wanted to address that because I think the cross does address that and I think in that section of the book, I do just try to reach out pastoral and say, hey, look,

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you might be just overthinking things like Jesus really does love you. The assurance we get, assurance is not this prize at the end of the rainbow that if you try hard enough and think hard enough, you'll eventually get this thing called assurance. I think assurance, the kind of assurance the Bible offers is baked into the cross itself. It's about not pastoral, it's about not listening to yourself but speaking to yourself and speaking the truth of the cross into your life. And I really wanted to touch on that because I think it is a point of pain and an anxiety for

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lots of Christians. Yeah, yeah, I really is. And one of the other areas you touch on is shame. You give a whole chapter to the area of shame. You talk about our inner grandma, the voice of shame. Why the specific focus on shame? Because it's not an area that we typically cover in our evangelistic presentations. Why the focus for the book? Yeah, there's a few things going on there. So I think shame, there is a kind of folksy bit of misiology to say that Western culture is a guilt culture and Eastern culture is a shame culture. That's not that's a bit of a broad brushstroke.

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So Westerners know what shame is and Easterners know what guilt is and it's probably one of the things that so it needs so many qualifications is not that useful. But it is a little bit useful. It is true that other cultures are more the shame is a much more present experience than it is in modern Western secular culture. And so as we share the gospel of people across cultures, if we miss the shame bit, we're often missing both something that is true of their experience and

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something that the cross does address. And we also end up missing something that is bigger in the Bible than we realize if we're not looking for it. So for example, if you think about the stories, the way the death of Jesus is described so that not the the epistle was doing the theology of the death of Jesus, but the descriptions of the death of Jesus, which are also theological, but in the gospels, we think that the emphasis is on the pain of Jesus. And a lot about movies and a lot of

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the history of Western art really focused on the pain of Jesus. And certainly if you grow up, you can't stop thinking about the nails. Well, I certainly couldn't. I think, oh, that's just awful having nails in your hand. And I can't believe that Jesus coped with that level of pain. Now that's what happened. That is really awful. But the gospels don't actually mention the nails. Like we had that information from elsewhere. The the writers of the gospels don't think that's a salient detail. And the blood and gore far from being maximized is minimized because the emphasis

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in the gospels is not on the pain of Jesus, but on the shame of Jesus. So you go back through it and read it with those lends and you think, oh, yeah, that's right. They are they're spitting on him. They're putting him in a robe. They're humiliating him. And shame, just for a little rough definition, is shame is the experience of being thought poorly of in the estimation of people that matter to us. That's what shame is. So shame is social, whereas guilt is more internal. So with guilt, you you

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can feel guilty for a thing that no one else knows about, whereas shame is a corporate experience that you feel embarrassed. A really kind of obvious one is that if you're sorry to go here, but if you're using the bathroom and you've forgotten to lock the door and someone walks in on you, that moment, it's really weird, right? Because it's like it's something that every human has to do. And yet to have someone walking on you in the bathroom is quite is shameful because you used to feel like, oh, I'm now lower in your estimation. You've entered into something I feel like embarrassed and ashamed

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or whatever. That's what shame is. That's a non moral version of it. But in the death of Jesus, Jesus goes to the place of shame for us. And he takes our shame upon himself. So in the book of Hebrews has Jesus, you know, scorned the shame of the cross, not the pain of the cross. But it was very painful, but the shame of the cross. And I do think that's very powerful. It's a very powerful part of the message of Jesus that he deals with our shame and that Jesus, our older brother,

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he's, if I can use a kind of folksy word, he's like proud of us. He acknowledges us before the father. And that's how the opposite to shame is honor. And Jesus through the cross is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. And I think that's a very important part of the cross. And I think it increasingly so because I think social media in particular means that shame is much bigger for the coming generations that has been for the past generations. Yeah, I totally agree. In terms of that, like the communal nature of shame, social media, our lives are so much more public now.

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We could have been more individual in recent, in previous generations, but now shame is a much bigger thing. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. Regional context, cultural context of the gospel is written into a stronger shame on a culture. So it's in there. And I think in conversations with women as well, it's relevant for men and women, but I've noticed for women, this is a bigger aspect of the cross. Yeah, I was just going to ask you that, Joe, as I was giving you that answer, I wonder if there's a gender dynamic to that that we've also missed that that that I guess

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I'm asking you, if that's a bigger thing for women in past room ministries, that experience of shame relative to men. Yeah, I think it works for both men and women, but when you think about the context of abuse, there's a whole bunch of things happening in there where the cross speaks to the shame that comes from those things. But when you look at the stories of Jesus interacting with women, the woman at the well, the woman, people ready to stone her, there are so many shame aspects of that for women. Yeah. And it makes the gospel really good news in this context for women

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and for men, but yeah. The woman who is bleeding for 12 years, that's a quite example where we think of that medically, we think of that awful, which of course it was, but of course in the first century, the thing is the shame. It's like I haven't been touch by anyone for 12 years. I'm excluded from the temple for 12 years and Jesus is touched by her and receives her touch. I think there is a gender thing there that is relevant to the way that the cross has applied. Yeah, and a vertical

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acceptance that we have with God, but also a communal horizontal. We're now accepted. We belong and the family of God, the son of God, things about the cross. We could go into our alleys. So, Rory, in this book, you've included some issues that are more connected to the idea of church than you have in the other books. Why is that? Yeah, well, I guess the big running, I guess, thesis of the book is that the cross in the New Testament is super practical. So every time the cross is mentioned, I can't think of a place where the cross is talked about in purely

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abstract theological terms. It's always talked about in applied theology and people reach for the cross in a very wide range of, for a wide range of pastoral experiences. So they and community experiences. So what do you do if a church is having a split over leadership, one Corinthians one to three, Paul reaches for the cross in terms that's what you've got to think through and live out of. And in Romans 14, it's talking about how do you pull together a multicultural,

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multi-religious sensibilities church. So a church of Jews and Gentiles. And Paul says, you yield to one another. Why do you do that? And how do you do that? Through the example of the cross, how the cross is Christ giving up what was rightly his for the sake of the other. And there's a fight between two women, I think they're in the Paul's colleagues and in Philippians again,

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you know, the example of Jesus Christ, he made himself nothing and took on the very nature of a servant, humble himself to a bed is death even death on the cross. And leadership, so there is such a thing as leadership, I'm not, I don't think that the New Testament can't sort of out, leadership and says you're just supposed to, you know, not ever encourage anyone to do anything or set a vision and lead people towards it. But the way that we do that is cross-shaped. And so I didn't, there is a risk, I think, that we, the cross, when we apply, we only have

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a, apply it vertically to our relationship with God and the New Testament has a lot to say about how it shapes Christian communities, church planting and Christian leadership. And can we drill down a little bit more into that leadership question? Because we're all you've been part of our leadership development program at Reach Australia. And we talk about what leadership is, what's needed for healthy, effective leadership in the church. And in the book, you do a whole chapter on this. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, if you kind of, if I can frame it as too extreme, I think there are two, two extremes on a spectrum in Christian circles.

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There is a, on one extreme, there's this kind of pure, you know, purest thing of like we never, we never talk about leadership, we would never read a secular book on leadership, we would never think about strategy and implementation and we're just letting go and letting go and we, you know, God does the rest and we just, we just focus on our prayers and our preaching and all that kind of thing. So you've got one extreme over there where it's inattentive to, to, to leadership. There is another extreme where we're just uncritically adopt, we just

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become these kind of weird CEOs of churches and where forget that a lot of the secular stuff we ingest has baked into it, secular assumptions and assumptions that are not Christlike. Now I think the, the truth is that the world is full of wisdom and that wisdom is partially accessible to anyone, including people who don't know God because there are patents and principles in God's world that we need to discern. So I think we can raid the Egyptians, we can learn a bunch of

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stuff from a, from a wide range of sources about leadership and there are just sheer realities of that churches need to be layered and managed and, and well, well governed and, and, and strategic and all that sort of thing. The new testament is, is bang up for, you know, leading world managing world, applying wisdom to the task of ministry. It's not this big black box of you doing mysterious things and mysterious things happen. There is wisdom and strategy involved

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in it, but it is cross-shaped. It is, it is shaped by the, the death of Jesus and by this, this big towering example of the one who had everything and made himself nothing so that we could have life in him. And so you get that in, you get these things in the New Testament where, you know, Paul says in, in one Corinthians, he says, well, you know, what about being wronged, just being cheated? Like, what are the options that the cross brings online is just thinking is just like not

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answering back or taking something on the, on the chin because of Jesus and the, that whole orientation toward wanting others to be lifted up and being willing to, now, I know, the toll, a lot of stuff about burnout and stuff like that. So I don't want to underestimate our need to take time out and to do sustainable service, but ministry is a kind of, it's a kind of,

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it is a sacrifice. It is a death to certain things and it's a pouring out of yourself in sustainable but really costly ways, which again is the logic of the cross, the, the universe we discover in the cross is the story of the universe is V-shaped. It goes down and then up. So, you know, Israel go down into Egypt and then they're lifted up into the land and David goes out into the wilderness and then enters into his glory and that shape is, is

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culminated in, is fulfilled in the cross where the Son of God has a V-shaped career down to, to nothing and then raised up by God and it turns out we live in that kind of universe, the kind of universe where God is the kind of God who would give up everything that was precious to him for us and therefore the kind of universe where lives of sacrifice lives that are in tune with the universe. It's a really compelling vision of a leadership that is so countercultural.

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Yeah, yeah, and should shape, the cross should shape our leadership in so many different ways. Yeah, and not just in trivial way, it's not like, you know, I don't think it's just, it's not a thing that you just get to whack it on at the end of like, oh, better remember the cross and like here's how to do strategy. I think I want, my, my plea is for both. Let's, let's be the most strategic, resource, effective, like self, you know, know ourselves, do our minds, brings, you know, emotionally, intelligently. Yeah, yeah, all of those things, use all those tools well.

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Bring it in and but they're the tools for, but what are we trying to do? We're trying to bring glory to Jesus and glory is brought to Jesus through a thousand deaths and resurrections, you know, I mean, like through, okay, yeah, let's, let's do that. Let's go here. Let's give up this in order to do that. Let's, let's lead people through a difficult change because it's worth it, not because it's easy, but because it's worth it. And, and so the cross needs to in a non-trivial way,

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fundamentally shape, what it is we're trying to do and the methods we, we assume, which will sometimes be very countercultural. Yeah. Yeah. Now, chapter 11, I loved not just because of the title, it's something like how to use the cross in the event of a zombie apocalypse, great title. But I love how in this book, and I noticed it also in the world next door, that you bring to light the spiritual battle behind the cross, but the, the interaction between the scene and the unseen.

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Why are these emphasis? Because I really noticed it stood out to me, I'm not thinking about this very often. Why pop it in the book? Yeah. I think the, the, the spiritual battle, I mentioned of the, of the cross, the bit like the, the shame thing that you don't, you might not see it if you're not looking for it, and the moment you're alerted to it, it's a bit like when you can't, kind of, you know, you don't know if the Vegemites and the Friedja not, if you didn't go to the Vegemites, you know, the Friedja is looking for Vegemite, but if you do, you will find whether it's there or not. And if you go to the New Testament saying, what does the cross do spiritually, as in

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to the powers and print depalities to Satan and the demons and so on, certainly it's like, bang, whoa, it's not nothing. It's, it's, it's a huge feature of the work of Jesus. And it's brilliant. I think it's the most, kind of exciting and dramatic thing because it's, it's almost always catched in terms of this military victory that's about, you know, almost a bait and switch game with Satan where he, he kills the son of God, but in killing the son of God, accidentally brings about the redemption of the world and, and again, that's one of those things that is,

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I think it's important for all of us to know that the cross is the means by which God defeats the powers and print depalities. He doesn't just have superior firepower. He completely undermines the whole logic of the evil spiritual forces through the cross. So it's brilliant. I think the more you grasp it, the more you think, ah, I've bent it out. I love this. This is just so cool. And I think again, in our, in our world, vast majority of people are not, you know, white,

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western, secular people and they live with the realities of the spiritual world much more presently than, than, than I do. And for, for lots of people in the world, experientially at least, that's one of the best things the cross does. It liberates you from the, from ancestors, to worship and from fear, from fear of, of malevolent spiritual forces. And again, in our world, I think one of my little mortals is make Christianity weird again. I really think that the,

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the thing we should not do with the Christian faith is downplay. It's supernatural claims, but revel in them and just, you know, talk about the fact that the Bible says that such a thing is angels and the such thing is demons and Jesus has conquered both our, has conquered our spiritual adversaries. Well, Rory, can I say, it's been great having homework to read your book in preparation for this interview. Pete and I were talking beforehand about how it,

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it's really good to read a book on the cross every year. So I've really enjoyed that. Now we're on the one thing. So what's the one thing that you've learned about the forgiveness available to us through the cross? Look, I think that the one thing is that the forgiveness available to us through Christ is extravagant. So it's, it's over the top. It's not efficient. It's not like just enough to just get us over the line, but God abundantly pours out his love, mercy, grace and forgiveness in the cross in like an inexhaustible

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stream of richness and blessing. So I would, I would love the one thing for people to get out of the book and out of meditating on the cross is just the lavishness of God's love for us in it. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Great way to finish. So encouraging. Well, Rory's book can be found at Matthias Media and in all good book shops and we'll have a link in the show notes. Rory, thanks so much for joining us for this conversation. No, Rory is great to be here. Now if you've got a topic you'd like us to cover, please email us at resources at reachastrarea.com.au

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and joe Gibbs chat soon. This is the fourth book that Rory has written and it really is, you've put forth in there. It's a fourth or third. Oh, I can't, you're the point of truth. It was, it is fourth. So I think I changed it. Yeah. Okay, my mistake. Sorry. No, Rory's. Let's let's pick it up. Let's pick it up. But it's a trilogy, isn't it? Oh, you did. This is the third of the trilogy. That's right. Yes. That's where I go. Okay. Sorry. Do you want to pick it up from? This is the fourth.

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Okay. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you put yourself in the bloopers at the end of the thing. All right.