Ch 3 Worship Whole-ly

What is sacred about worship that makes it holy? As we center our focus on holy worship, there are likely assumptions that must be clarified and corrected. For example, what do you think about God when you sing the old hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy”? Perhaps you envision the throne scene from the book of Revelation where four fantastical creatures continually proclaim, “Holy, holy, holy….” (Rev 4:8). Or your thoughts may rest on God as transcendent, as pure (i.e. without any sin), and beyond comparison to humans. Certainly God is ontologically different from us, but it is important for us to go deeper in our thinking about God’s holiness. While these aspects of God’s holiness are not incorrect, they are only fragmentary; that is, they have been narrowed down by our biased lens, which then don’t take into account all of God’s self-disclosures—specifically those disclosing his vulnerable presence and intimate relational involvement in our human context.

We also need to understand that for humans to be holy in likeness of the holy God goes much deeper than the common notions merely of moral purity and behavioral restrictions in daily living; holiness is by far much more encompassing and integrally encouraging to fragmentary theology and practice. In fact, when God’s people embody holiness made whole, then the world would likely take note of the contrast, that is, the difference God and God’s people make in the human context. Therefore, we urgently need to undergo nothing less than redemptive change from common definitions of ‘holy’ and ‘holiness’ that are mere static attributes in narrowed-down views of God and ourselves, to wholeness of holiness.

In the above Scripture, holy (qādôsh, qādash) means to consecrate to God and thus make distinct from what is ordinary function and separate from what is common; holy thereby signifies what is uncommon. Any understanding of God as ‘the Holy One’ must distinguish God’s uncommonness definitively from the common; such understanding currently is struggling to emerge. Also, ‘holy’ must distinguish us in uncommon function in worship and all church practice in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole and uncommon God. Surely God is tired of and grieved hearing us sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” while ascribing to God static fragmented attributes. God is not pleased as we sing his praises, yet while we lack whole understanding that leads to uncommon worship involvement with God on the basis of God’s uncommon relational terms. I too am tired of and grieved by outer-in application of “be holy” in the church’s theology and practice that gives primacy to ‘what to (not) do’ as terms of a moral code—and I’m certain that there are many others who feel the same way.

Indeed, ‘holy’ and ‘holiness’ shaped by common thoughts and ideas from human contextualization are no longer ‘holy’ and ‘holiness’, but merely referentialized language in churchspeak (however sacred). In other words, just as God told the Levites in the OT, these words are addressed to us: “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common” (Lev 10:10), in order be uncommon, because I am uncommon” (Lev 11:44,45). To paraphrase God’s words for today, “Be both compatible in ontology and congruent in function to mine so that you can be in relationship together with me.” If we can’t distinguish between the holy and common in both our theology and practice, then we by default are living in the common of our human contexts. Accordingly, our worship cannot have relational significance to God because we don’t have uncommon congruity for compatible relationship together.

Unless understanding of God’s holiness is from God’s self-disclosures, then we have no choice but to come up with our own definitions, just as we do with God’s name and God’s glory (discussed in the previous chap.). Our own definitions derived apart from or as revisions of God’s self-disclosures—that God communicates in God’s uncommon relational context and relational process—can be nothing more than of God’s communication. Such referentialized definitions are also problematic as applied to humans when God tells his people to be holy because he is holy. It cannot be stated enough: In our theology and practice—and for this chapter’s focus—what ‘holy’ and ‘holiness’ signify to God must be rooted in God’s self-disclosures. Anything less or any substitutes for God’s self-disclosures render our views of God to epistemological illusion, resulting in idolization (idealization and stereotyping) of God. Accordingly on this basis, our worship practices are rendered to ontological simulation determined by our biases and preconceptions, including both our traditions and creative innovations, which we practice even with good intentions.

The perception, knowledge, and understanding of God’s uncommonness necessary for our worship to become uncommon are based on God’s relationally specific self-disclosures. Who, what, and how God discloses pivot on God’s uncommon presence and whole involvement throughout Scripture. Only God’s presence and involvement with us in relationship compose God’s relational context and relational processes in which God vulnerably communicates his desires by the Spirit. Without God’s presence and involvement in relationship together, all our “knowledge” and “understanding” must depend on what we come up with using our own means (e.g. based on Greek philosophy and science). How then does God demonstrate holiness in the human context so that we can know and understand what it also means for us to be holy/uncommon in God’s likeness?

God made the relational-specific response to us by vulnerably coming into our human context to directly disclose who, what, and how God is—and this includes how God is uncommon and therefore distinguished from the common. For this relational-epistemic purpose, the Father told Peter, James and John (and all of us) at Jesus’ transfiguration to “Listen to my Son” (Mt 17:5). Yet, as the disciples learned the hard way, listening to Jesus is not as simple as it sounds when we are predisposed to pay attention to certain things while ignoring other matters (cf. Mk 4:24; 8:18). All this is critical to understand how Jesus was different in the incarnation so that the uncommon was distinguished from the common. As discussed in chapter 1, our perception needs to be redeemed from its reductionist bias that focuses on secondary matter of what God does and has (e.g. divine attributes such as holiness), and is likewise focused on fragmentary parts of Jesus (i.e. his teaching, miracles, example).

Our perception is made whole then only as we are vulnerably involved in intimate relationship with the embodied Word of God (cf. Rom 8:6). Only as we are involved in the discipleship-worship relationship on God’s theological trajectory and relational path on God’s relational terms can we relationally know and understand God. And only in this relational reality can we experience transformation of our epistemic-hermeneutical means (interpretive framework and lens) to perceive what is whole instead of only fragmentary. This relational connection together with the whole of God constitutes the epistemic humility and ontological humility necessary for us to listen and receive God’s self disclosures, and thereby know and understand the uncommon God and what it means for us to be uncommon in likeness of God. This relational outcome is contingent on our involvement in this relational process.

Persons whose epistemology (how we know what we know) depends on human reasoning function as the so-called “wise and learned.” Jesus used the metaphor “wise and learned” in a vital scene with the Father and with the disciples (Lk 10:21, NIV) to refer to persons who cannot receive the Father’s disclosures (“you have hidden these things from”); such persons don’t function with the vulnerableness of their person in epistemic humility and ontological humility, and thus they maintain relational distance. On the other hand, persons who listen to, receive, and respond to God’s vulnerable self-disclosure function in such epistemic humility; these are persons who Jesus metaphorically describes as “little children.” ‘Little children’ acknowledge and accept their own epistemic limits and ontological constraints, vulnerably admit they are wrong and inadequate (cf. Job 42:3b-c), and function as subjects in compatible and congruent practice on God’s relational terms to be relationally involved in contrast to the relational distance of the “wise and learned.” Which are you—the ‘wise and learned’ or ‘little children’? Which do you think the global church is? Which are worship thinkers and planners? Which are persons in the academy?

In both Hebrew and Greek, “holy” (qādôsh and hagios, respectively), essentially means separate or apart from the ordinary and common. ‘Holy’ for humans or physical objects means ‘consecrated’ or, notably, ‘separate’, as in ‘set apart from common usage in service to God’. (By the way, this latter definition cannot be applied to God.) We need to reject the assumption that holiness merely means moral purity. This latter so-called holiness is achieved on the basis of what we don’t do or have (i.e. certain sins), which is the same reductionist basis as defining our person by the outer criteria of what we do or have, or don’t do and don’t have. Such holiness isn’t holiness at all, but the reduced practices of piety from outer in, for which Jesus used the metaphor in his rebuke to the Pharisees: “you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Mt 23:25). Holiness narrowed down to merely moral purity does not account from the sin of reductionism, but only reinforces it by its fragmentary focus. Our understanding of ‘holy’ and ‘holiness’ for humans must derive from what these words mean for God—that is, first and foremost in relational terms that Jesus embodied with his whole person.

When used of God, ‘holy’ is correctly defined as ‘uncommon’. Uncommon signifies that God is distinguished from the common on God’s own terms; God is not subject to any human terms, neither to define God nor to contextualize God in any way. I have fervently sung worship songs about God’s holiness to affirm that God’s holiness sets God apart from all else. Yet, these notions can subtly shift and thereby misconstrue a view of God who is not just ‘wholly other’ but also as ‘wholly apart’. However, God chooses not to remain apart, as the OT through the NT have attested, and the Spirit continues to attest. On the contrary, God’s uncommonness is distinguished from common function by his vulnerable presence and relational involvement.

Still, even though YHWH, the Holy One (Ps 22:3; Isa 40:25) vulnerably came into the human context for face-to-face relational involvement with us, YHWH came to us from beyond the common created context of the universe. It is critical, therefore, to understand and embrace that God is the only one who can validly distinguish what constitutes God as uncommon and thus distinct in ontology and function from the common’s human contextualization. This is vital for our own theology and practice in epistemic humility.

Jesus, the Uncommon Key to God’s Self-Disclosures

Interactions between Jesus and three persons in particular illuminate for us the differences between common and uncommon, with direct implications for worship in likeness of God: the former prostitute who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, Mary (Martha’s sister), and Peter. I have written about these three in other studies, and will again address them because they are so important as examples for us to take to heart for our worship theology and practice. I focus on Peter in this chapter, and the former prostitute and Mary in the next chapter. Notable for us to pay attention to is how Jesus was involved with each person, and then how they were involved with Jesus. Jesus and these three persons demonstrate for us the three issues for all practice in discipleship and worship that we are accountable for.

The three major issues for all practice were vulnerably embodied in Jesus’ earthly life, and provide a necessary framework by which to ongoingly examine our practice of who and what we are as worshipers/disciples (our ontology), and how we are involved in relationship (our function). These three major issues for practice help us to be very specific as we examine our actions and their significance in worship. If we are willing and committed to the LORD for redemptive change, the three issues for discipleship-worship practice are invaluable for clarifying the ways we need to change in order for our worship response to be compatible to God for congruent relational connection, to be uncommon as God is uncommon. God’s demonstration of the three major issues for all practice—and therefore how we need to live and worship in uncommon likeness—are as follows:

(1) The significance of the person presented, demonstrating the integrity of the whole person

(2) The quality and integrity of one’s communication necessary to make relational connection

(3) The depth level of relational involvement in God’s family love (ḥesed and agapē), defined as ‘how to be
involved’ in relationships, not focused primarily on ‘what to do’ (even sacrifice)

As God’s thematic relational-specific action to restore humanity and the rest of creation to wholeness unfolded in the human context, God made improbable strategic and tactical shifts by sending the Son himself into our “neighborhood” to meet us Face to face (e.g. Jn 1:14; 2 Cor 4:6). Immanuel (God with us) came embodied whole-ly for all to see and experience in the person of the Son—that is, a person embodying a subject for relationship, not an object to be observed or even worshiped and served. During his earthly ministry Jesus presented nothing less than and no substitutes for his whole person, inseparable from the Father and Spirit.

Persons witnessed and experienced in Jesus’ person the whole of God (the Trinity), who is vulnerably available to anyone for relationship together. And even though the whole of God embodied in the Son is not the entirety of transcendent God, who and what persons experienced was nothing less than and no substitute for God’s being, nature, and presence. Beyond the significance of the manger, cross and resurrection, the person Jesus ongoingly presented was who, what and how God is—signifying the incarnation principle of nothing less and no substitutes. This is how the person Jesus presented is the ontological, functional and relational keys to know and understand the whole and uncommon God, and for our own person that we present in relationships, notably to God in uncommon worship not shaped from human contextualization (‘in their way’).

What we need to pay close attention to is God’s enactment of his personal name YHWH in relational-specific involvement composing God’s self-disclosures. The following excerpt demonstrates God’s relational self-disclosures, not with a referentialized lens, but with the qualitative-relational lens perceiving the significance of the person presented in the incarnation:

In Matthew’s portrait of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus came to fulfill God’s covenant promise and the eschatological hope of Israel as God’s people, not as nation-state. Accordingly, Jesus’ kingdom of heaven had continuity from the OT (Mt 3:1-3; 4:12-17, cf. 25:34). Yet, there was also a clear qualitative distinction about this kingdom (Mt 5:3,10,20; 7:21; 12:48-50; 18:3; 19:14). While the kingdom of heaven was an extension of the old covenant and the fulfillment of its covenant promise, there arrived also directly with Immanuel—the vulnerably present and intimately involved “God with us”—a new and deeper covenant relationship together that he composed for the kingdom of heaven. In relational terms, Jesus fulfilled both the quantitative terms of the old covenant and its qualitative relational significance, which Jesus vulnerably embodied for the direct experience of this covenant relationship together in its new and deeper relational process.[1]

During his time on earth, Jesus ongoingly made known his intimate relationship with his Father, and made intimate relational connection with his disciples in order to bring them to the Father for their own relationship together in likeness of Jesus’ relationship with the Father. John’s Gospel highlights Jesus’ words revealing that the relationship between Jesus and the Father is so intimate that they are “one” (Jn 10:30,38; 17:20-26), such that to know him is to know the Father and to see him is to see the Father (Jn 8:19; 12:45; 14:7,9). Certainly Jesus’ uncommon presence and involvement were distinguished beyond anyone and anything in the common, which are perceived and experienced only in his relational terms (contrast the interaction in Jn 6:28-30, 45-60). As Jesus’ disciples would grow in deep relational connection with Jesus, this would bring them into whole relationship with the Father in the relational progression of discipleship to God’s very own new creation family. Jesus further revealed that the Spirit would be his relational replacement in whom the whole of God (the Trinity) would come to dwell in the hearts of his followers (Jn 14:15-21, 23; cf. Eph 2:21-22). Yet this new creation family is unlike what is common in the human context, just as Jesus presented in whole relational terms to distinguish his uncommon family (Mk 3:21, 31-35).

In all these disclosures, Jesus is the key who definitively illuminates how the triune God relationally responded to the human relational condition “to be apart” from God’s relational whole relational context and process. Nevertheless, the full significance of Jesus’ incarnation isn’t understood until we experience the relational outcome of being made whole in relationship together with the whole and uncommon God. This is why a commonly held incomplete Christology which views Jesus in partial terms (e.g. from manger directly to the cross) is just plain wrong and communicates a “different gospel” (cf. Gal 1:6-7); and still this narrowed-down Christology prevails in much of church theology and practice. This common view of Jesus fragments and reduces the whole of God’s self-disclosures, thereby functionally reshaping the God we worship in the process of “idolization of God.”

The relational process to depth of understanding and knowing Jesus—and thus the Father, as Jesus says (e.g. Jn 10:30; 12:44; 14:9)—can take place only in God’s relational context and by the trinitarian relational process of family love. This relational context and process determine the primary purpose and significance of discipleship (inseparably with spirituality), in which God’s primacy of relationship is nonnegotiable: to follow Jesus in this relational context and relational process, in the relational progression from disciples to friends (Jn 15:13-14) all the way to the Father; as we do, our experiential reality is face to face connection with the Father as adopted daughters and sons in the new creation family constituted only in uncommon likeness of the Trinity (Jn 17:21-26). This relational outcome is our ongoing relational reality in compatible reciprocal relationship with the Spirit (2 Cor 5:17; 4:6; Rom 8:15-16; Gal 4:4-7). The relational process by which we participate in this uncommon life together is the uncommon dynamic of family love in likeness of the trinitarian persons’ interrelationships, which Jesus vulnerably makes known to us.

How we perceive the person Jesus presented during the incarnation must perceive and understand all that Jesus disclosed through his relational words and relational-specific actions. We must stop fragmenting Jesus’ person by paying attention to only parts of the incarnation, such as his teachings, miracles, and sacrifice on the cross. As important as these are, they don’t constitute the whole of Jesus’ relational work in family love. John’s Gospel is vital for this qualitative-relationally heavy (as in “glory”) view of Jesus as having “made known” (exegeomai, to bring into full view, Jn 1:18; 17:6-26) the Father before the very eyes of our hearts (cf. Eph 1:18)—nothing less and no substitutes. To highlight this in Jesus’ words (paraphrased): to see me is to see the Father, to know me is to know the Father (Jn 14:7,9); the Father and I are one (10:30; 17:11,21-22); the Father is in me, and I am in the Father (10:38b; 17:21).

The Person Jesus presented, and that the Spirit’s person continues to present just as Jesus did, is nothing less than and no substitutes for God—the whole and uncommon Trinity who is vulnerably present now and intimately involved with us in reciprocal relationship person to person. Regardless of our worship context (e.g. liturgical, contemporary, alternative) he wants our whole person presented as subject-person, not presenting performers and passive objects; our God wants all of us together, to make intimate relational connection in worship as the new creation family God has saved us to be integrally whole-ly and uncommon.

Worship leaders, preachers, singers, and musicians can no longer hide behind performance of their roles or their credentials (e.g. education and training), and the congregation can no longer hide behind the former, can no longer depend on others to mediate their worship, and cannot take comfort in passivity or anonymity. All these ways in our theology and practice reflect the subtle influence of some common source in our surrounding contexts. If any of us present ourselves in those ways to God as our worship, we do not have the integrity of being whole, but rather only present parts of their person, if not some substitute. Such presentations certainly appear to be the common prevailing in most of our worship. While such presentations may be sufficient for those participating in these gatherings, the who, what and how of the persons that God gets have neither inner-out integrity nor relational significance to God.

Because God vulnerably embodies his heart to be relationally involved with us, anything less from our persons would not be compatible reciprocal response for congruent relationship together. But when we make ourselves vulnerable to God and God’s relational terms for our compatible and congruent reciprocal response in worship, this leads to the outcome of whole holiness in God’s image and likeness that indeed praises the whole and uncommon Trinity. This distinction reflects the difference between the holy/uncommon and the common; and this is what we are to distinguish and how we distinguish ourselves as the worshipers the Father seeks—that is, those who worship whole-ly, with vulnerable honesty of our hearts (Jn 4:23-24). Just as God told the Levites to distinguish between the holy and the common, now that all Christians comprise God’s “priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9), this is our person-al and collective family relational responsibility (Eph 4:20-25). If we are not willing to distinguish between the holy and the common, God will hold our persons accountable for the relational consequences (cf. Rom 14:12; Heb 4:13).

God has made it clear in his covenant (old and new) promises that the whole of God can be counted on in the covenant relationship with his people to be who God claims to be and to enact what God promises. God does not lie (Ti 1:2), mislead, deceive or communicate mere referential information, but communicates only in the relational truth of God’s relational language (discussed in previous chap.). Indeed, the incarnation presented nothing less than and no substitutes for the embodied Word of God into the human context for the purpose of relationship together.

God ongoingly communicates relational messages with the quality and integrity of who, what, and how God is, so that relational connection is always accessible on God’s side of the relational equation. To review, relational messages communicate the following: (1) What one is saying about him- or herself; (2) how the speaker feels about the other person being addressed; and (3) how the speaker feels about their shared relationship. The very fact of the incarnation is God’s relational messages vulnerably embodied for one relational outcome, so that through all of God’s relational provisions we may relationally experience and thus know and understand the whole and uncommon God. God desires and expect this of us (cf. Jer 9:23-24).

Additionally, the incarnation principle of “nothing less and no substitutes” composes the significance of the Person presented as God’s righteousness, more accurately rendered ‘relational righteousness’—to distinguish it from the common use of ‘righteousness’ as a somewhat abstract static attribute of God. ‘Relational righteousness’ signifies that God can be counted on in the new covenant relationship to be whole-ly who, what, and how God says he is—nothing less and no substitutes. Relational righteousness is essential for us to embody uncommonly the worship relationship. Relational message (2) is the one we Christians think we understand best: God loves us. Yet even this message has gotten reduced in our narrowed-down understanding of love as what God does (notably as just sacrifice), and not as the depth of involvement in ongoing relationship. The depth of involvement is clearly distinguished in many of Jesus’ uncommon interactions with persons, which certainly challenged and confronted the common religious practice in those times—not to mention in our time today. And relational message (3) is one that we as the new creation family must grow further in hearing from God, and will be increasingly blessed in as we enact in like involvement.

Worship is our compatible reciprocal response to God’s relational response of grace. Whether or not this communication has the blessed outcome of intimate relational connection depends on the quality and integrity of our communication. We learn something important from Moses. In his first encounter at the flaming bush, Moses heard his name being called, and Moses answered (Ex 3). Moses knew the ontological difference between this God and himself, yet “the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Ex 33:11; cf. Num 12:6-8). He complained to God about God, about the Israelites, and talked back too. Moses was just being Moses, that is, responding with his person—nothing less and no substitutes—no embellishment, no recitation of ancient creeds, nothing indirect. This is the relational dynamic necessary to uncommonly compose the worship relationship that God seeks from us (as Jesus summarized, Jn 4:23-24).

Can God count on us to be whole-ly (whole + holy) who we say we are—in uncommon ontology and function that is distinguished from how we commonly live? On God’s part, all the words Jesus uttered were congruent with the person he vulnerably presented, for the integrity and quality of all his communication. Any failure on our part to understand God’s language reveals more about us and the inadequacy of our epistemic, hermeneutic, and relational involvement.

Moreover, for communication to make relational connection, how the listener/receiver hears is inseparable from what the speaker utters. God doesn’t speak in a secret language that only “elite” Christians (e.g. mystics, scholars) can understand, nor does he speak only in theophanies (see Num 12:6-8). For persons (and traditions) to claim so are in error, simply wrong, perhaps elitist, certainly self-serving or exclusivist—the position assumed by temple leaders objecting to the children worshiping whole-ly (Mt 21:15-16). Church leaders, persons in the academy, and even many Christians in the pews continue to elevate referential knowledge in referential language, assuming, for example, more education better qualifies persons to interpret God’s Word, and to speak for God.

This attitude is no different from the temple leaders who assumed they knew who Jesus was better than the children who loudly praised Jesus after he cleansed the temple (Mt 21:14-16). To briefly summarize that scene, temple practice had, by Jesus’ time, become so distorted and narrowed down that women, Gentiles, and disabled persons were denied access, thus marginalizing them.[2] Jesus entered the temple and cleansed it of the practices and activities that had reduced the temple to “a den of reductionists” (v.13; cf. Jer 7:11). Jesus thus restored the temple to its primary function in wholeness as God’s relational context for relational involvement together as “a house of prayer” open to all persons (Mk 11:17; Isa 56:7). By his uncommon actions—which certainly cannot be denied of the use of physical force—Jesus restored access to God to all those who functioned inner out with righteousness (“who choose what pleases me…who bind themselves to the LORD…to love the name of the LORD, and to be worship him…who hold fast to my covenant relationship,” Isa 56:1-7, NIV). Accordingly then, the uncommon fight for wholeness (as in peace) requires the rigorous fight against reductionism (as in Lk 12:51-53).

The primacy that God gives to relationship above all else is unmistakable in Jesus’ relational action to “re-sanctify” the temple, that is, to redeem it by setting it apart from common function to restore the temple to its original purpose for relationship together. This restored temple function for relationship with God became immediately evident as blind and lame persons came to Jesus there and were healed and made whole from inner out. Then in uncommon function the children (paidas) responded by shouting in the temple “Hosanna to the son of David!” (Mt 21:14-15). The chief priests and teachers of the law became indignant when they “saw the children shouting in the temple area, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’” (Mt 21:15, NIV). These temple leaders confronted Jesus about the children proclaiming such worship in the temple; their indignation exposed their own fragmentary condition from their reduced theological anthropology (ontology and function), assuming that based on their knowledge and expertise they knew better than kids.

Whether in worship or in discipleship, the problem for us is that we can never adequately understand and receive Jesus’ relational language by using a referential language lens; and this was the disciples’ ongoing problem in understanding Jesus. “Do you still not perceive or understand?” (Mk 8:17), and “Have I been with you [pl.] all this time, and you still do not know me?” (Jn 14:9) Ears that fail to hear, eyes that fail to see, hearts that fail to understand (Mk 8:17-18) signify our person at a relational distance, who didn’t make relational connection with Jesus because his language is only for relational purposes and not primarily to dispense information, as referential language is designed to do. God’s relational language cannot be reduced by any form of our own dialect in ‘worshipspeak’ (referential language in worship, similar to referentialized church language as ‘churchspeak’) and still be God’s voice.

Therefore, whether we are speaking to or about God, or trying to speak for God, none of these sounds will have relational significance to God if we are not involved with God in compatible ontology and congruent function of our person. We are all faced with the need to die to trying to engage in relationship with God on our own terms—which includes using referential language from human contextualization—so that we can emerge in the qualitative integrity of whole and uncommon ontology and function. This involves emerging in God’s relational context and process and being “relationalized” in God’s relational language, in contrast and conflict with being de-relationalized by referential language. The Father seeks worshipers whose language he can count on to reflect our person honestly, with the qualitative integrity of who, what, and how we really are—nothing less and no substitutes.

The incarnation is the incomparable enactment of God’s relational-specific response to us in our human condition, the human relational condition summarized as ‘to be apart’ from the trinitarian relational context and process of God’s whole. John’s Gospel summarized the essence of this unfathomable relational response to us in our human condition: “for God so loved the world” (Jn 3:16), to redeem us and reconcile us together in God’s very own family—the new creation family. God’s family love as ḥesed and agapē are the depth and breadth of God relational involvement with all human creatures to such an extent that Jesus came and “having loved his own, loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1b). There is no other primary purpose for all of God’s enactments in the world than to gather persons into the trinitarian relational context (God’s whole), and on the basis of God’s relational grace. The relational outcome for us when we compatibly respond to God’s relational initiatives (composing the best news of the gospel) is for us to be adopted into this new creation family as beloved daughters and sons. This is our primary and uncommon calling, which must take precedence over ministry and service, and all other priorities that we self-determine with good intentions.

Jesus’ presence and involvement with persons was always accessible for deeper relational connection—and now ongoingly open and vulnerable for heart-to-heart relationship ‘behind the curtain’ and ‘with the veil removed’ (Heb 10:19-22; 2 Cor 3:16-18). Whenever Jesus’ deep involvement with persons was reciprocated and connection was made—in the redemptive process of dying to the old and receiving God’s relational grace to be raised up new—this intimate connection made persons whole in their ontology. Conjointly, whenever persons vulnerably reciprocated congruently from inner-out, their experiential reality was their whole function to make ongoing relational connection with the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—as members in God’s new creation family.

Mary (Martha’s sister) is the clearest example for us of the depth of congruent relational involvement with Jesus, whereas other disciples (notably Peter) had difficulty reciprocating. Jesus’ vulnerableness in his deep relational involvement with persons was evident throughout his earthly life as he experienced the range of responses from humans, from open reception (e.g. Jn 1:12-13), to relational distance (e.g. the disciples, Jn 14:9a), to rejection (Jn 1:11, 6:66). Jesus was ongoingly exposed to human sin (notably the sin of reductionism), and deeply affected by it (e.g. Lk 19:41-47).

Yet, without being influenced and determined by these human contexts—such that the uncommon would be compromised, diluted, and simply rendered common—Jesus unwaveringly embodied God’s relational grace and family love (agapē) to human persons with nothing less and no substitutes. Persons such as Levi (Matthew) and Zacchaeus experienced Jesus in this way (face to face, heart to heart) especially at Jesus’ table fellowship—a relational context whose process becomes for us the definitive expression of the depth of Jesus’ involvement with persons, and which needs to determine all participation in Holy-Uncommon Communion. Mary, Levi, and Zacchaeus are discussed more fully in chapter 4.

We need to understand that just as it was for Jesus, our own vulnerableness is necessary to experience the depth of uncommon family love; and vulnerableness is essential to embody and extend family love to others to gather and build with Jesus the whole and uncommon God’s new creation family. In human relations within the new creation family, we can be sure that this vulnerableness will bring frustration, pain, disappointments, and grieving to our hearts, all of which Jesus experienced to assure us of his ongoing empathy (Jn 14:27; 15:11; 16:33). This is an important aspect of the cost of being uncommon in likeness of the Uncommon (cf. Jesus’ grief, Lk 19:41-42, and Paul’s attitude, Phil 3:10). Yet, we must not fear pain, since we are not alone in it, and it is part of the territory of participating in God’s life in the depth of God’s family love. The sharing in the trinitarian process of family love—as Jesus embodied uncommonly and definitively for us (Jn 15:9; 17:26)—is how holiness and love are inextricably interrelated. It is only at this depth of relational involvement that we “share with” Jesus (Jn 13:8), that is, to participate in God’s uncommon life, which his footwashing for his disciples (Jn 13:1-8) initiates us into (discussed shortly below).

As our epistemological, hermeneutical, and relational key, Jesus has vulnerably embodied the three major issues for all practice to demonstrate ‘whole holiness’—that is, the whole (not fragmentary) and uncommon ontology and function of Jesus’ person vulnerably present and intimately involved in the primacy of relationship. Our discipleship-worship relationship must be in Jesus’ whole and uncommon likeness—that is, in likeness of Jesus’ whole holiness—to take us beyond merely a common likeness in a fragmented holiness (an oxymoron). The person we present to God, the integrity of our communication in worship, and the depth level of our relational involvement with God depend on whether we vulnerably receive and compatibly respond to the whole of the incarnation, or just selective part of Jesus (e.g. his moral teachings). The whole of Jesus or fragmentary parts will determine whether our Christology is complete or incomplete.

Will our Christology be made whole to enable us to hear the incarnation communicating whole-ly to us on God’s own relational terms in God’s uncommon relational language? Or, in contrast and conflict, will our incomplete Christology continue to limit and constrain the incarnation according to our common terms, constraining us at a relational distance in ontological simulations from human contextualization and referential language? These issues are what God says we must distinguish between—in both our theology and our practice.

What the global church has been choosing—likely by default, yet still accountable for—is evident in worship gatherings wherever there is constraint and distance in relationships, along with any “tribalism” (or provincialism) based on outer criteria of denominations, race, ethnicity, class, age, gender, special interests, and more. These are all conditions of the common (the profane) of human contextualization, and are antithetical to God’s new creation family. Chapter 4 discusses the new creation family in greater depth, but suffice it to say here that these fragmentations grieve the whole and uncommon God, and pervade the global church. And until the global church is transformed into God’s uncommon likeness, we cannot worship God whole-ly.

Peter’s Common Path of Good Intentions

Peter was unpredictably challenged when his life was intruded on by the whole Face of the embodied Word, the full profile of whom was difficult to embrace. In many ways, Peter’s relationship with Jesus is deeply enlightening for anyone who follows Jesus. Peter’s struggles and subsequent transformation from his common practice as disciple-worshiper to uncommon practice has been illuminating for my own unfolding relationship with God. As we continue to delve deeper into the significance of “worshiping God in likeness of God” with whole holiness, Peter’s life—who is representative of the other disciples—is also very encouraging and helpful to our own discipleship-worship relationship.

I have heard various teachings that Peter’s difficulties in his relationship with Jesus were due to mere character quirks, and leave his struggles at that. But so simplistic a response diminishes the depth of Jesus’ love for Peter, and reduces our own accountability to the “who, what, and how of the whole of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6) in our own discipleship-worship relationship. Peter’s struggles highlight key challenges and struggles with self-determination in reduced ontology and function for any of Jesus’ followers. These include issues that we’re not even aware we have, which are likely from underlying assumptions we live by, based mostly on a theological anthropology defining our person by the parts of what we do and have, thus are shaped by the common in surrounding contexts. It’s important that we understand how Peter’s common (read reduced) ontology and function were unsurprisingly incompatible and incongruent with God’s uncommon (holy) terms for Face-to-face relationship together. The relational consequence for Peter was that he often did not perceive nor receive the depth of Jesus’s presence and involvement, which he needed so that he could become whole and uncommon in his theology and practice, including his worship.

Just as we need to de-idolize God in order to be able to listen to God clearly on God’s relational terms, we also need to de-idealize Peter from our common preconceptions of him, and to allow him to get down off any pedestal we’ve put him on. Certainly Peter was significant: he was part of Jesus’ inner circle, the apparent leader among the Twelve, was named “Peter” by Jesus to signify “the rock [on which] I will build my church.” (Mt 16:18), and the first bishop of Rome (or the first Pope). Yet, we need to stop fragmenting Peter’s person into these “parts” of his title and roles. Only then can we listen carefully to Jesus’ relational interactions chastening Peter, and through these involvements receive the Spirit’s relational communications to us for our own discipleship-worship relationship.

As we more deeply examine Peter’s issues with a qualitative and relational interpretive lens, we begin to see that the heart of Peter’s difficulties with Jesus was his resistance to being vulnerable with Jesus. Moreover, we will come to appreciate with Peter (later in his journey) God’s call to uncommonness in God’s likeness: “as he who called you is uncommon, be uncommon yourselves in all your practice; for it is written, “You shall be uncommon, for I am uncommon” (1 Pet 1:15-16)—in uncommon compatible response to the whole and uncommon God. As we continue, pay attention to how common Peter’s issues are in your Christian contexts, notably how persons function in worship.

One area of Peter’s worship and discipleship that we tend to affirm him for are his sincerity and good intentions (e.g. Lk 5:4-8; Jn 6:66-69; Mt 16:21-23). We also sympathize with Peter’s impulsiveness, seeing it as a personality trait of spontaneity that simply got him in trouble at times—again, with good intentions. Are sincerity, good intentions, and a harmless character trait “enough” in God’s eyes, that is, for our ontology and function to be compatible and congruent with God’s?

Peter’s relationship with Jesus had ups and downs. The common thread of Peter’s ‘downs’ is that Peter’s practice stemmed from a comparative process of his self-determined terms (‘in their way’) for being Jesus’ disciples and worshiper. Specifically Peter used a biased lens through which he viewed persons, including himself and Jesus, in terms of fragmented outer parts of what he and Jesus did or had. On this quantitative basis, Peter engaged his common comparative process with Jesus. With his bias Peter constrained himself and Jesus to outer-in roles as student and teacher—Jesus the rabbi in a higher-better status, and Peter the student in a lower-less status. By making this distinction, he created a relational barrier between them. Peter’s fragmentary practice is evident in two key interactions with Jesus: the first was Peter’s worship at Jesus’ transfiguration, and the second interaction took place at the last table fellowship when Jesus prepared to wash the disciples’ feet.

At the transfiguration, Peter, James and John were confronted by the whole ontology and function of Jesus (along with Elijah and Moses), and fell down frightened (Mt 17:1-8). Controlled by his fear, Peter’s first impulse (his default mode) was the outer-in focus on doing something rather than to be involved with Jesus relationally in this defining moment. While the content of Peter’s communication was about his offering, what was really going on inside Peter was that he was frightened (par. Mk 9:6). Instead of admitting his fear to Jesus, Peter presented something less than his whole person from inner out, a substitute in the form of offering to make three shelters. Peter was reacting to the situation, functioning as an object rather than responding as a subject to Jesus’ Subject-person being vulnerably revealed. As an object, Peter focused on the secondary matter of ‘what to do’ in worship over being vulnerably involved with Jesus in his relational response of worship. This limited any depth of Peter’s relational involvement with Jesus to the shallowness of his relational distance during this exclusive moment of Jesus’ full self-disclosure as the whole of God.

It is critical for us today to learn from Peter’s common reductionist practice; we need to recognize the substitutes we too offer in worship, and that so much of our practice engages us as objects reacting in default mode to the ‘circumstances’ of worship (e.g. being prompted by worship leaders, functioning passively as observers of a performance). This default mode signifies the relational distance that is defining for what prevails commonly in relationships today, and that pervades worship practice today—even as offerings are lifted up in worship of God’s name. Who does God ‘get’ from us when we function in this mode of the common?

Peter’s heart was unfree to be vulnerably and directly involved in worship with Jesus’ person, and therefore his worship at best could only be something offered indirectly (i.e. apart from face to Face)—performing a service, not unlike Martha in the kitchen. We might want to credit Peter with having good intentions, but there is a crucial matter for us to understand here: Peter’s worship practice had no relational significance because he remained relationally distant from Jesus. Peter’s focus lacked relational clarity, and his indirect response and measured words emerged more from his guarded heart than relational involvement with Jesus. In terms of the relational dynamic, Peter worshiped with a relational barrier (the significance of the veil over his heart), not vulnerably with Jesus face to face, heart to heart. His worship response was incompatible and incongruent with Jesus’ presence and involvement with Peter (and the others). Theologically, how Peter worshiped Jesus reflected his “hybrid theology,”[3] and his practice was with a divided heart—both of which were composed without whole-liness in his ontology and function.

Notice that when Peter offered to build three shelters, the narratives of this scene make no mention of Jesus or the Father responding to Peter’s offer. In fact the Father interrupted Peter “while he was still speaking” with his relational imperative to “Listen to my son!” (Mt 17:5; Lk 9:34-35). Then Jesus responded to the disciples who had fallen down in their fear when he “came and touched them” (Mt 17:7). We can only conclude that Peter’s worship had no relational significance to God.

We often assume that sincerity and good intentions (Peter’s and ours) are always “good,” and impulsiveness (not to be confused with spontaneity) in itself is not necessarily “bad.” Yet we need to examine these assumptions in terms of the conflict between wholeness and reductionism—that is between whole persons in whole relationships together, and reduced persons in relational distance.

For example, for many of us, our intentions to use our musical and leadership talents/skills in the worship band may seem to be sincere and good (e.g. to serve God in worship, to use “my gift” for God). But if our real motive (even if it escapes our conscious awareness) is to gain attention or approval for ‘what I do’ (for self-worth)—especially in a comparative process with others—then our actions conflict with God’s relational terms of relational grace. God knows our hearts better than we do, and holds us accountable for our practice, and our implied theology. Moreover, our real motives are exposed every time we get defensive when given any negative feedback or criticism. Our implied theology is exposed for what it is: reshaping God into an idealized idol that gives primacy to what we do instead of our whole person in congruent relational response of worship. In this way, our theology is hybrid theology (like Peter’s) whereby we try to hold together our theology (saved by grace) and incongruent practice (self-determined)—which self-reinforces the status quo in the lex orandi lex credendi reflexive (prayer/worship determines belief/theology). This is how grace has become no longer about God’s relational provision for and response to our human condition, but rather some vague quantity used to exercise liberty. No wonder we can feel justified in our practice; and no wonder God claimed through the prophet Jeremiah that “the heart is devious above all else…who can understand it?” And “I the Lord test the mind and search the heart” (Jer 17:9-10).

As the Gospel narratives reveal Peter’s common fragmentary practice, John’s Gospel especially illuminates how Jesus continued to vulnerably pursue Peter’s heart with the depth of family love—along with the other disciples’ hearts at the last table fellowship before going to the cross. For Jesus, table fellowship signified the primacy of relationship together with him during his time on earth, which he made definitive for embodying the new (Lk 5:33-39). Jesus continued his relational work of family love, extended in his most vulnerable relational involvement with the disciples—even before he reached the cross—at his last meal with them (read Jn 13:1-18). At the evening meal before Passover, Jesus began to wash the disciples’ feet, which was customary for servants to do. Peter refused Jesus, and was sternly corrected by Jesus. Even after having been with Jesus for three intense years, Jesus’ vulnerableness still made Peter uncomfortable (i.e. threatened). This involves both the relational significance of Jesus’ act and Peter’s own theological anthropology. The following illuminates Jesus’ significance:

At their pivotal table fellowship leading to the cross, Jesus vulnerably revealed his whole person to his disciples as never before, and intimately involved the depth of his Self in deeper relationship with them by washing their feet (Jn 13:1-9). The gospel Jesus reveals here and its outcome [that] he unfolds are not about the primacy of serving but only about the primacy of relationship together that is transformed to be both equalized and intimate. The good news of who Jesus was was vulnerably revealed to them without the stratified relations that come with the title of “Lord”; and what Jesus was was intimately involved with them without the relational distance that comes with the role of “Teacher” (13:13-14). Jesus revealed the good news of the whole of God’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement in ongoing reciprocal relationship together.[4]

In relational terms, Peter’s message to Jesus was a refusal to engage with Jesus on

Jesus’ terms for intimate relationship together. Incongruently with Jesus, Peter was choosing to stay at a relational distance within his old constraints, resisting letting Jesus’ vulnerable heart touch his own. Heart-to-heart connection with Jesus would be the irreplaceable relational response of God’s relational grace to Peter, which would free Peter from the constraints of his old outer-in living, and would thereby redefine his person from inner out. As we must expect, Jesus continued to pursue Peter for communion together: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with [meros meta] me” (v.8). In other words, Peter needed to “die” to his old way of defining his person (cf. Jn 12:24; Rom 6:2-11; Col 2:20; 3:3; also “put to death,” Rom 8:13), and vulnerably let Jesus constitute Peter’s person whole from inner out by his relational grace (the significance of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet). This is how Jesus makes it possible for his followers to experience intimate communion together as the new creation family. “Share with me” only involves the relational experience of communion together with Jesus. Various other words signify this relational ‘sharing with’ together— koinōnia refers to the fellowship and participation together that Jesus’ table fellowship embodies and calls persons to (cf. Acts 2:42); koinoneō, to be a partaker in, share together in (1 Pet 4:13); koinos refers to what is shared in common by several persons (Acts 2:44).

This reciprocal relational process to “share with me” signifies the process of sanctification (making uncommon, setting apart from the common for devotion to God), for which we need Jesus to wash our feet. In much Christian practice, sanctification is just a vague theological concept. Many see sanctification as a unilateral process, an assumption that is corrected by Jesus’ interactions, which necessitated a reciprocal response from persons. To “share with me” necessitates whole persons who compatibly and reciprocally respond for ongoing relationship together. On Jesus’ part, he kept pursuing Peter for Peter’s part in the relational work together that was necessary for Peter to become whole from inner out. This pivotal interaction makes unmistakably clear the relational function of grace and family love being enacted by the whole and uncommon God, which are unmistakably distinguished beyond any common function in the human context.

Yet, Peter’s refusal to let Jesus wash his feet was with the same self-determined view of Jesus when he rebuked Jesus about going to the cross, because Peter’s “teacher” would not do such a disgraceful thing (cf. Mt 16:22-23). Even by the time Jesus was preparing to leave the disciples, Peter still related to Jesus on the basis of their socially-defined roles, due to Peter’s fragmentary and narrowed-down lens: Jesus was Peter’s master teacher, and thus ‘better’ than Peter in Peter’s comparative process. In Peter’s interpretive framework, it simply was not permissible for Jesus, the Rabbi, to lower himself to the position of the lowest class of servant and wash his feet. Peter hereby continued to function as an object that was defined and determined by his sociocultural context, explained here:

Peter had difficulty adjusting to Jesus the Subject, whose whole ontology and function made it uncomfortable for Peter to deal with. That involved Peter having to go beyond the limits of both a narrowed-down epistemic field and his personal comfort zone. So, Peter had the choice: either to reduce Jesus to an object shaped by Peter’s terms, or to accept Jesus the Subject and thus change to the relational terms of Jesus’ whole ontology and function. This ongoing choice is simply stated in relational terms, though certainly not simply enacted or readily made; and we all face this choice ongoingly. Theologically speaking, the choice is between either maintaining an incomplete Christology or embracing a complete Christology. While the former choice may hold in focus the Object of the Word, however fragmentary, the latter choice embraces the irreducible Subject of the Word.[5]

Given Peter’s final reply to Jesus (“not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 13:9), his relational posture still reflected his outer-in interpretive lens. Peter focused on the act of washing as an end in itself; thus Peter continued to avoid Jesus, whose vulnerable Face was presented to Peter’s face, eagerly seeking Face-to-face involvement without the relational distance created by titles and roles—that is, ‘with the veil removed’. Peter did not make the compatible relational response Jesus sought: to vulnerably receive and respond in relational trust of Jesus’ whole person who was presented for the most intimate connection in God’s relational response of grace to Peter’s person, thereby to redefine Peter from inner out to make him whole in the primacy of whole relationship together. This is the function of relational grace and the relational significance of Jesus’ footwashing, the relational outcome of which still eludes many worshipers today along with Peter. And this relational outcome remains unfilled until our relational involvement is composed by Jesus’ whole relational terms in uncommon reciprocal response to Jesus’ whole ontology and function uncommonly present and involved with us—whose likeness distinguishes our worship from the common ‘in their way’.

Until Peter underwent inner-out redemptive change (the transformation that is evident from his epistles), he functioned with a hybrid theology and divided heart (as Paul exposed, Gal 2:11-14). This issue is vital for us to understand and address in the global church because hybrid theology and divided hearts prevail in much of the global church today, rendering God’s witnesses to the world to common ontology and function. The evidence for these influences in our worship gatherings are those relational conditions expanded on in the previous chapter. With the urgency for our understanding, then, hybrid theology is seen clearly in the person Peter presented to Jesus, clarified as follows:

What we saw…unfolding in Peter—in contrast to what unfolded in Paul—is a pattern of his reshaping God’s self-disclosures on God’s whole terms, fragmenting the whole of Jesus and redefining his person in a narrowed-down epistemic field for a hybrid theology…based on the limits of Peter’s reduced terms. Hybrid theology not only divides theology but also separates theology from function, such that its practice can be neither congruent nor even compatible with its theology. The expected consequence reduces theology and practice to a fragmented condition, thus preventing whole theology and practice. This fragmented condition goes unrecognized as long as one remains within the limits of understanding from one’s knowledge or rationalizing. As Peter demonstrated, this fragmentation of theology may have doctrinal certainty and appear to be united, yet it is not whole. These are the results of epistemological illusion and ontological simulation from reductionism and its counter-relational work, which inevitably can only be in contrast and conflict with the whole of God (and God’s theological trajectory) and the whole ontology and function improbably embodied in Jesus (and his relational path).[6]

When we define our person (and others) by secondary parts of what we do and have, we conjointly hide or mask our hearts to be less vulnerable with others. This requires us to do a lot of rationalizing and justifying our self (the mode of self-determination) whenever questioned or challenged. This was precisely how Peter functioned with Jesus, which reflected that Peter’s reduced theology and practice (his theological anthropology) needed redemptive change from inner out (metamorphoō, e.g. 2 Cor 3:18).

Self-determination in Peter’s relationship with Jesus reflected that Peter had a divided heart, not the wholeness of an “undivided heart” (Ezek 11:18-19; cf. Jer 24:7; 32:39). One of the psalmists asked YHWH, “give me an undivided heart”, which is essential to “walk in your relational truth on your relational terms,” and to “relationally respond in worship…with my whole heart” (Ps 86:11). In contrast, Peter’s heart was not whole because it was divided (cf. double-minded, Jas 1:8). This condition of being double-minded and divided of heart goes beyond, for example, the simplistic notion of believing in God but having doubts, or just mixed feelings. The person with a divided heart wants, on the one hand, to follow Jesus, but on the other hand wants to follow Jesus on his or her own terms (cf. Jn 8:31-38). These are key issues for us as worshipers in order to be able to distinguish between the uncommon and the common; and these issues have direct implications on the significance to God of all our worship gatherings.

Peter’s good intentions were related to his self-determined efforts at relationship with Jesus. His good intentions with a divided heart and hybrid theology need to be further understood, for which the following helps us:

When sin and what’s good are conflated with the narrative of sin without reductionism and good [as in good intentions] without wholeness in human contextualization, then the human condition gets ambiguous and our human condition takes on a duplicity—in its depth perhaps analogous to a bi-polar disorder (highs and lows, ins and outs, unpredictable, even contradictory). Our prevailing narrowed-down condition has had a voice in what Scripture calls “double-minded/divided in heart” (se‘ep, Ps 119:113, cf. se‘ippiym, 1 Kg 18:21; and dipsychos, Jas 1:8; 4:8, cf. 3:9-12)….[A] fragmented mind or heart functions in duplicity, with ambiguity or shallowness of identity (as Jesus contrasted in ontology and function, Mt 5:13-16). And double-minded’s complexity composed from inner out by a fragmented heart requires redemptive change—not common changes shaped by human contexts (cf. Rom 12:2)—to be transformed to wholeness, distinguished by the relational process defined only in relational terms for this undivided relational outcome (Jas 4:7-10).[7]

Even after Jesus’ ascension, he continued to pursue Peter, to correct Peter’s hybrid theology and divided heart. In a vision, the Lord made definitive to Peter that he must no longer make distinctions among persons on the basis of any outer criteria (e.g. race, ethnicity, age, class): “What God has made clean [uncommon], you must not call profane [common]” (Acts 10:9-15). Though we may wish to credit Peter for devoutly following his Jewish upbringing, God persisted in making clear to Peter that he needed to reject his old bias about dietary laws (related to purity) and what constitutes the common. By this God was indicating that he extended salvation not only to Jews, but now to the Gentiles (see Acts 10).

That is, God was leading Peter in the process of distinguishing between the holy and the common (“profane and unclean,” v.14), and that God was the sole determiner of this distinction’s criteria. This was God’s continued pursuit of Peter for Peter’s transformation to whole theology and uncommon practice, which had yet to fully take place (e.g. cf. Peter’s self-concerns dominating his interaction with Jesus, Jn 21:15-22). Led by the Spirit, Peter then went to the home of Cornelius, a Gentile, and preached to the Gentiles there that the Good News was extended also to them, and baptized those who received Christ. On subsequent occasions, Peter proclaimed this same message (Acts 11:1-17; 15:6-11).

Yet, even thus having his theology corrected by God, his practice was not, which was evident when Peter contradicted his new theology and practice at the church in Antioch by making distinctions between Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles and separating himself from the latter. He thus persuaded other Jewish Christians to do the same, with the relational consequence of fragmenting the church (Gal 2:11ff), so that “even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy” (2:13). In family love, however, Paul confronted Peter about his hypocrisy (Gk. hypokrisis), for “not acting in line with the truth of the gospel” (2:14, NIV). As discussed previously, hypokritēs means one who outwardly displays an identity different from one’s own, as an actor, to give an illusion. Peter’s distinction-making in God’s family illustrates the lack of wholeness in his person (continued hybrid theology and divided heart). The relational consequence of such a presentation is always experienced by distance in relationships, without necessarily the deception commonly associated with hypocrisy.

For Jesus’ disciples today, this common dynamic of hypokrisis continues to have direct consequences for the person we present to others in our relationships—notably to God in worship and in the church family but also in the world. The primacy of relationship that God created us for will always be reduced to secondary importance when persons function with masks, even unknowingly and unintentionally. This reduced priority sets in motion a reshaping of relationships together whose appearance has no real significance (cf. Heb 9:9-10). In other words, masks function in ontological simulation in church practice by only simulating the new creation family with common alternatives in common terms.

To use a mask is to perform in a role from outer in, for example, be it as worship leader, musician, singer, preacher, and all gathered worshipers, all enacted to construct a drama of worship. Masks in worship give the appearance of worshiping God, of being relationally involved, of being devout, even spiritually mature. But mere appearance does not mean being vulnerably involved with God or each other with the vulnerableness of the child-person that Jesus clearly makes imperative (e.g. Lk 10:21; Mt 18:3). The outer-in performance of these roles draws attention and gives primacy to the outer presentation of what one does and has, for example, musical talent, eloquence, style in preaching, even demonstrative singing—performed even with the good intentions of worshiping God. Yet, the true or full identity of those engaged does not emerge as long as a mask is in place. Moreover, inseparable from performing roles is that the significance of one’s performance is always measured in a comparative process, whether in comparison to what others do and have, or by the comparative feedback we get from others who also focus on the performance (or that mask).

The hypokrisis in Peter’s life demonstrates for us the qualitative difference between outer-in change (metaschematizō) and inner-out redemptive change (metamorphoō). Jesus and Paul both warned against metaschematizō, and for the necessity of metamorphoō. Only by metamorphoō are we transformed from common ontology and function to uncommon. This is Jesus’ point in saying, “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). This redemptive change requires both dying to the old (reductionist ontology and function from outer in) so that the uncommon wholeness of the new creation can emerge, made possible by Jesus’ work on the cross and the experiential reality of ongoing intimate connection with the whole of God, now in compatible reciprocal relationship with the Spirit.

These are critical issues to face and thus to own in our theology and practice. The majority of global Christians not doubt will be offended by this statement, yet it must be said: Despite its good intentions, the global church in general and many local churches in particular epitomize a hybrid theology, and their practice is dominated by a divided heart. This is evident in church life and worship gatherings wherever there is distance and related lack of depth in relationships, along with all divisions based on outer criteria including the following: global South and global North, denominations, “tribalisms” that divide worshipers by race, ethnicity, class, age, gender, special interests, worship traditions and styles, and nationalism. These common divisions certainly represent our preferences and levels of comfort, composed by the limits and constraints within which we feel safe and secure. These criteria also give us a sense of identity and belonging, even though misleading and misguided, and lead us to practice exclusion by default. Furthermore, these identities from the common are self-determined, and in conflict with our new primary identity we have as God’s new creation family—the whole-liness of which is irreducible and nonnegotiable.

Given our human condition in the church, this hybrid process of trying to conflate the common with the uncommon will not go away in our theology and practice. Nor will our divided hearts be healed and made whole by addressing only the presenting issues without confronting their underlying human condition of reductionism and its counter-relational working. The breadth and depth of reductionism is the full composition of sin that we need to be saved from in order for the whole reality of what we are saved to truly to be constituted in the church.

Jesus challenges us to be vulnerable in the depth of family love with sisters and brothers who we feel are different from us: “If you relate only to persons most like you (e.g. who look like you), what more are you doing than the common?” (Mt 5:47) When, for example, we put preference for our comfort in particular worship traditions and styles above new creation family relationships with all sisters and brothers in Christ, we deny the relational truth and experiential reality of who and whose we are as God’s new creation family. All Christians in the global church desperately need to listen to Jesus’ chastening, which is further expanded here:

…Hybrid theology and practice…reflect a fragmentary condition that drifts, strays, wanders or is misled from God’s theological trajectory and Jesus’ relational path. If the global church maintains a hybrid or bifocal identity (conflating human context with God’s context), its identity in the world will be ambiguous or shallow (as Jesus made definitive [in Mt 5:13-15]). If the global church has a hybrid theology and practice, the global church and each local part of it will be reduced to fragmentary ontology and function. Here is where selectivity of Scripture is exposed as the defining issue for “the measure we use.” The OT clearly maintained a necessary distinction of God’s people from the surrounding human contexts of the common in order to be distinguished as the uncommon belonging to God (Ex 23:24; Lev 18:3; 20:23; Dt 12:30-31; Jer 10:2-3). The integrity of their identity was compromised by any element of the common, which Israel engaged when their practice of the law became merely identity markers in human contextualization. This clear distinction between what’s common and uncommon—thus including between what’s good without wholeness and with wholeness—was to be maintained by Jesus’ followers “not of the world.” Jesus called them “out of the world” to be whole in order to be distinguished whole “in the world,” so that they would make whole the human condition (as Jesus prayed, Jn 17:13-23). Yet, as discussed earlier, the disciples in general and Peter in particular had difficulty being distinct from their surrounding human context and distinguished in the whole of who, what and how they were—for example, “which of them would be the greatest.”^{^[8]}

There is ample evidence of our relationally fragmented condition of the global church’s theology and practice. Yet the church’s solutions for the problem of fragmentation have been ineffective because they never address the underlying source: the sin of reductionism. Ineffective, unfruitful approaches still make distinctions among us based on secondary criteria (noted throughout this study) by which we define persons on that fragmentary basis, and determine how we continue to ‘do’ relationships. The global church, moreover, cannot justify fragmentation by appealing simplistically to diversity (read pluralism) or a shallow multiculturalism without the depth of qualitative relational significance. We as God’s new creation family have one primary identity that takes precedence over all our secondary identities, including our identity of origin.

Therefore, the practice of this primary identity as the ‘global church-new creation family’ functions in relationships together without partiality (without the human-defined distinctions based on human differences, as Peter learned) or favoritism (i.e. personal preference) in uncommon equalized and intimate relationships—just in relational likeness of the whole and uncommon Trinity. This is how we fulfill Jesus’ injunction, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). We cannot continue to narrow down “perfect” (teleios) to a static divine attribute indicating merely the lack of sin; rather, we need to understand ‘perfect’ to signify being fully-developed, mature, and thus complete integrally in whole ontology compatible with the qualitative image of the Trinity, and in whole function congruent in the trinitarian relational process of family love. The uncommonness of God is integrally expressed in God’s agapē involvement for Face-to-face relationships with the veil of relational barriers removed (as in Eph 2:14-18).

For us to ‘be holy because God is holy’ means we are to be uncommon in our practice; and ‘to be perfect as our Father is perfect’ is to mature in our agapē-involvement in uncommon relationships together for the relational outcome of wholeness—the uncommon peace composed by Jesus (Jn 14:27). And while this statement—“The supreme manifestation of God’s holiness is his love”[9]—is correct, holiness is only sufficiently understood integrally as God’s uncommon ontology and function, and love must signify for us the depth of the Trinity’s involvement in the trinitarian relational process of family love. Uncommon relationships are equalized by God’s relational response of grace, which eliminates the comparative process of secondary criteria to determine our self-worth and identity. Uncommon relationships, having been equalized, then can be reconciled heart to heart for the relational intimacy necessary to respond to our human condition of being relationally apart.

If and when our theology is made whole, its practice will necessitate significant changes. Whole theology (not hybrid) and practice mean that corporate worship can no longer give primacy to outer secondary criteria to define and determine who will lead us in worship, what will be the focus of worship, and how we will worship God. For example, just because a person has more education (and referential knowledge), musical talent, eloquence in preaching, or any particular “spiritual gift”), this doesn’t qualify that person automatically or by default to lead others in worship in likeness of God. Yet, this was the argument the temple leaders raised in their objection to children leading worship (Mt 21:15-16). Those criteria must be deferred to persons who can lead us in worship that has relational significance to God on God’s uncommon and whole terms. Mary (Martha’s sister) is one such person (to be discussed in the next chap.)

‘Whole theology and practice’ eliminates from corporate worship any dynamics that cause vertical and horizontal relational distance. The subtlety of this relational distance should not be overlooked because it has immeasurable relational consequences. These fragmenting dynamics stratify relationships, so whole theology and practice calls for examining most if not all aspects of our current practices, including long-standing traditions. Every part of the global church is accountable to the whole and uncommon God for worship practices along the entire worship spectrum: contemporary, liturgical, alt; high church to low church; megachurches to house churches; centuries-old congregations to new emerging churches; global South to global North. You know the phrase “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater”—it is time to examine the baby to see if this baby is just a golden calf.

Only our uncommon practice on the basis of God’s whole relational terms constitutes us to be compatible and congruent in our ontology and function with the whole and uncommon God. This means for us as worshipers to worship God in likeness of God: to worship whole-ly (whole + holy) because God is whole-ly uncommon, the theology and practice of which are irreducible and nonnegotiable. As mentioned earlier, the wholeness of shalôm is the inner-out emergence of persons and their convergence in the primacy of relationships that have been specifically redeemed from reductionism and reconciled to God and each other in intimate and equalized relationships. Anything less and any substitutes do not constitute us as whole and uncommon in God’s likeness.

Worshiping with Washed or Unwashed Feet

We might wish to describe Peter’s response for Jesus to wash more of his body parts as just another expression of Peter’s good intentions, or perhaps his thick skull, even in a humorous sense. But here again, these attitudes diminish or ignore the seriousness of the sin of reductionism, and also eclipse the depth of Jesus’ vulnerable relational involvement with Peter that countered reductionism’s counter-relational workings. For us to try to justify Peter is indicative of our likeness of Peter, our own likely subtle relational barrier of avoiding Jesus face to face, who is kneeling before us to wash our feet also. Jesus in this way—his most intimate and vulnerable presence and involvement with us—disconcerts many of us. Some of you may inwardly be thinking: Surely the Son of God, the King of kings and Lord of lords wouldn’t stoop so low as to wash our sweaty feet—perhaps as a one-time example of servanthood for us but not as ongoing involvement in relational terms; we must not bring Jesus “down” to our level; isn’t keeping Jesus on his throne (read pedestal) the proper way to treat the transcendent Creator of the universe?—to which we must ask ourselves, isn’t our discomfort a large motivator behind this attitude, just like Peter’s?

Important for the often stated desire to experience God in our worship services, to remain in this relational posture of keeping Jesus at a relational distance has serious implications for our worship. We cannot have it both ways—that is, to worship with unwashed feet (in yet another way that we worship ‘in their way’), but to expect to experience God’s presence and involvement. In other words, this relational posture reflects the common in ontology and function, and thus indicates the necessity for Jesus to wash our feet in order to be ongoingly transformed to wholeness in our whole person (not our multiple parts).

Peter’s interaction with Jesus kneeling before him illuminates that Jesus is also kneeling before us ready to wash our feet if he hasn’t already. Just as Jesus told Peter “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me” (Jn 13:8), unless Jesus washes our feet, we have “no share with” him, including no share with him face to face in worship. Our worship cannot have relational significance to God if we remain with ‘unwashed feet’—keeping relational distance with the biased lens of our terms. What do we choose: Do we let Jesus wash our feet on his relational terms, or do we continue to impose our terms for relationship with God? The latter always includes our own terms for worship. We need to understand the deeper significance of Jesus washing our feet—on the basis of Jesus’ words to Peter.

That is, the significance of letting Jesus washing our feet goes beyond and deeper than the prevailing view that Jesus was demonstrating the humbleness required for servanthood and servant leadership. It is correct that humbleness is involved, but if we never identify and die to the sin of reductionism, humbleness can become an end in itself, and also merely an outer-in presentation of the self as in role-playing (ontological simulation in virtual humility)—even with our sincerity and good intentions. Moreover, without dying to the sin of reductionism, we cannot become uncommon in likeness of the whole and uncommon God, although our virtual humility may fool others. Likewise, many of our practices, including how we participate in worship need to be scrutinized with the interpretive lens that focuses on the primacy of whole persons in whole relationships. This specifically is vital to address who and what defines our ontology and determines our function in order to establish our full identity as God’s uncommon people.

Being made uncommon/holy is signified in Scripture as sanctification or consecration. In OT times, the cultic system for consecration (i.e. to set apart from the common and unclean, and devoted to God), involved ritual washing and sacrifices. These rituals composed necessary means in order for the Israelites to be set apart for devotion to YHWH. For God, these practices were intended to be engaged by persons relationally responding as whole persons—that is, with the qualitative-relational involvement of their hearts, as with all the other relational terms of the covenant. By foremost being involved with God with their whole persons from inner out, as the Israelites submitted to these whole relational terms of the covenant, they thereby fulfilled the terms for “sanctify yourselves…and be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:44). This outcome is the qualitative-relational reality of wholeness (shalôm) and uncommonness (qādôsh, holiness). Of course, this relational outcome reverted to relational consequences when they transposed God’s whole relational terms to their reduced referential terms that de-relationalized the covenant relationship.

The key to sanctification (becoming uncommon ontology and function) was always the vulnerable involvement of persons’ hearts in compatible reciprocal response to God. The primacy that God gives to the heart of the person also illuminates God’s vital qualifying statement about circumcision (an outward sign of the covenant relationship, Gen 17:10-11): “Circumcise your hearts” (Dt 10:14; cf. Lev 26:41; Dt 30:6; Rom 2:28-29). For God, physical circumcision alone never had relational significance. Indeed, all of the terms for covenant relationship with the whole and uncommon God gave primacy to the whole person. This was always the heart of God’s covenant of love (ḥesed, also “grace,” Dt 7:7-8, 12), not a covenant based on any outer-in criteria from human contextualization (e.g. “not because you were more numerous than any other people”). Covenant relationship with YHWH was never a quid pro quo contract, which was the prevailing practice of covenants in the surrounding contexts. God’s relational covenant was uncommon, distinguished from the common notably by God’s own vulnerable presence and relational-specific involvement with his people.

However, under the influence of reductionism, many Jews performed washing—along with dietary practices and circumcision—as merely outer-in rituals, as if the covenant relationship were a common contract. This fragmentary process commonized what was initially for the relational purpose of setting themselves apart for covenant relationship with God. And what this hybrid theology implied was in practice a covenant with the idolization of God reduced to human shaping.

In the NT, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their practice of ritual washing for purification as an end in itself, a practice that ignored the necessary inner-out repentance from the common (Mt 15:1-3; 23:25-26). Their outer-in practice precluded contact with persons whom they considered to be impure/unclean. These Pharisees were thus offended by Jesus for not complying with their purity laws as he freely associated with such persons. In their self-determined holiness, the Pharisees challenged Jesus for eating with “tax collectors and sinners” (Lk 5:30), and letting the ex-prostitute touch him as she washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and kissed and anointed his feet with perfume (Lk 7:36-50. Jesus definitively rejected their fragmentary practices of piety that was nothing more than ontological simulation, which was the content of “the tradition of the elders” (Mt 15:2; Mk 7:3-5) based on their epistemological illusion that they knew what mattered to God. Jesus also made sure to expose the relational consequences that the Pharisees’ practices had on others (Mt 23:4,13,15,23,34).

The Pharisees’ practices of piety (including ceremonial washings, circumcision, dietary restrictions) were their self-determined efforts to maintain their identity, undoubtedly believing their identity was holy. Certainly many Pharisees’ efforts differentiated them from persons who didn’t and couldn’t measure up in the Pharisees’ comparative process, yet their virtual holiness got no recognition from God (cf. Mt 6:2,5,7,16). They were wrong to think God viewed them as uncommon in God’s likeness. This only validates the stereotype most Christians have of Pharisees. Yet, their practice of Israel’s faith was rigorous and not lacking in direct effort. Their highly-engaged practice of faith, however, was misguided, and the subtleties of misguided faith must not be ignored by us because these subtleties also encompass our practice of faith today.

Their self-determined “sanctification” proved the complete inadequacy of common terms to bring about sanctification as inner-out transformation (metamorphoō). The latter is the only process of sanctification—signified by Jesus washing our feet for whole uncommon ontology and function of shalôm, that is, in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole and uncommon God. Jesus conclusively illuminated the relational consequences of anyone following Jesus on their own terms, as he declared through parables: “I never knew you; go away from me you evildoers” (Mt 7:23), and “I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers” (Lk 13:27, NIV). Does Jesus know you? Does Jesus know us—even as we “prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, and do many deed of power in your name?”

We need to examine our attitudes about sanctification and holiness further. The most common approach to holiness in Christian culture focuses on biblical injunctions to be clean, pure, blameless, and perfect. These words appear in Scripture often, but their meanings have been so referentialized by our quantitative interpretive lenses that they are understood only as moral-ethical behaviors, which includes our thought life (which doesn’t constitute the inner person as the heart does). For example, purity is associated with abstention from premarital sex (i.e. virginity, especially for females), and blameless (above reproach) is associated with marital fidelity or having no bad habits, lustful thoughts, or addictions (e.g. pornography, drinking, gambling). These injunctions need to be understood more deeply in the framework of giving primacy to the integrity of wholeness and well-being of persons and relationships, just as God does (notably in the Sermon on the Mount, Mt 5-7).

Ironically, our fragmenting notions of purity and blamelessness, while perhaps keeping persons from engaging these behaviors, in effect fragment persons after all. Outer-in practices in the name of holiness are what Paul says “have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship…but they lack any value for addressing the underlying sin of reductionism” (Col 2:23, NIV). Paul points us instead to God’s vulnerable presence and intimate relational involvement that constitutes us as uncommon: “I will live in them and walk among them….Therefore, distinguish yourselves from the common…. And I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters” (2 Cor 6:16-18). In God’s relational context and relational process, then, “reject those practices that reduce you [e.g. to fragmentary parts of sexual bodies and urges], making holiness whole in your compatible reciprocal response to God (7:1). What Paul further illuminates and echoes only have significance in relational terms, which are reduced to do’s and don’ts in referential terms.

When Jesus washes our feet, our whole persons undergo redemptive change from inner out and emerge in the experiential truth of uncommonness in likeness of the uncommon God—while the experiential reality of this relational outcome requires our ongoing choices in the primacy of relationship together. That is, sanctification is not a unilateral or one-time event in our lives. Being and living uncommon in God’s uncommon likeness is an ongoing reciprocal relationship that is conjointly compatible in ontology with the qualitative image of the person-al Trinity, and congruent in function in relational likeness of the inter-person-al Trinity. Uncommon ontology and function hereby give primacy to persons and relationships in the trinitarian relational process of family love.

Jesus comes before each of us to wash our feet, and as he does, he calls us to respond by letting him make heart-to-heart connection for intimate relationship together. This requires of us to die to our self-determined way of relating to God from outer in, from imposing titles and roles that we use to maintain relational distance from God, as well as with each other. As we die thus from our old ontology and function, Jesus washes our feet to make the deep relational connection with us, the depth of which is unfathomable yet our experiential reality that responds to our deepest relational need.

This brings us to an important issue about the common interpretation of Jesus’ words after the footwashing: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (Jn 13:14-15).

It is the norm in Christian teaching (in church and academy) that Jesus is talking about servant leadership. This interpretation focuses on Jesus humbling himself and not letting his role/title as Lord and Teacher keep him from doing “lowly” jobs. Rather, as the common interpretation goes, Jesus’ disciples (especially those who lead, but also any disciple) need to take on whatever jobs need to be done; that is, “lead by serving.” Many Christians (leaders or not) take serving to its logical end of sacrifice. All the focus essentially becomes on the work of serving—even sacrificing for—the church. No wonder there is so much burnout among pastors and others who “lead by serving.”

This clearly was not Jesus’ intention. The example that Jesus set is the vulnerable person presented without relational barriers (e.g. of roles and titles) for only the deepest relational connection together directly face to face (cf. also Jn 12:26). The primacy of intimate relationships together heart to heart that Jesus embodied with the disciples was to be the determinant for the disciples’ relationships with each other, because this is the likeness of the intimate relationships within the Trinity. Their relationships together needed to be on Jesus’ relational terms (the significance of 13:16), which also compose the relationships of the trinitarian persons. Therefore, these are Jesus’ words to us today also!

After washing the first disciples’ feet, Jesus went to the cross to complete the redemptive process to free us from our sin of reductionism, to open the relational way into the Father’s most intimate relational context and process signified by tearing away the temple curtain (Heb 10:19-22). With Jesus, then, we emerge in the vulnerableness of our person in wholeness for intimate and equalized relationships behind the torn curtain and with the veil removed—for the only relationships that compose shalôm (as in God’s definitive blessing, Num 6:24-26).

Having Jesus wash our feet is essential for us to follow him on his improbable theological trajectory and intrusive relational path in whole holiness (i.e. uncommon wholeness). When we let Jesus wash our feet, this will become evident in an inner-out transformation (in an ongoing process of change) such that we will give primacy to what God gives primacy to: whole persons and whole relationships. Whole holiness will distinguish worship whole-ly. And as we worship whole-ly, we fulfill the significance of the worshipers “the Father seeks…who worship him in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:23-24). Moreover, uncommon wholeness becomes the framework into which we integrate all the secondary issues (e.g. worship style, music, structure) to give whole perspective, thereby eliminating our “self-imposed worship.” And whole perspective must always give primacy to the wholeness and well-being of persons and relationships together in the trinitarian relational process of family love; this is the essential qualifier for all Christian ethics.[10] This is the significance of having our feet washed by Jesus, thereby to worship God with washed feet rather than feet standing, walking, jumping, or dancing ‘in their way’. Has Jesus washed your feet to worship whole-ly?

Washed Feet and a New Identity

Although we don’t have the details, the good news of God’s family love for Peter apparently led him humbly and vulnerably to eventually be made whole and uncommon. Peter finally let Jesus wash the feet of his whole person. This meant for Peter that his boasting shifted from what he would do, to boasting in relationship with God by God’s relational response of grace to him (1 Pet 1:1-2). His boast emerged from his truly new and uncommon identity, no longer boasting in his self-determined efforts, but in the whole of God’s distinguished relational context and relational process extended (1:3-4).

As Peter wrote to the various churches, he could encourage them further and deeper to uncommon ontology and function because he intimately knew the difference from his own experiential reality of God’s relational grace (1:13-16). The shift for Peter was clearly an inner-out transformation—no longer an outer-in change of behavior—such that Peter could justifiably talk about “new birth” (1:3,23). And just as God told the Levites, “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common” (Lev 10:10), Peter could now distinguish this difference in God’s whole terms. Moreover, Peter identified that this relational responsibility has been extended from the Levite priesthood now to all of God’s people—“to be a holy priesthood” (2:5), “a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (2:9). Clearly Peter identifies for us today who can echo God’s voice: “a people belonging to God on God’s relational terms…that you may declare the praises of God’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement in relational-specific acts” (2:9, NIV).

Peter vulnerably expressed his heart in his letters for us to connect with deeply for our own relationship with God. It is touching and edifying to consider Peter’s journey from commonness to uncommonness, on the basis of the Trinity’s relational involvement with him, knowing the struggles he went through for this change. This puts into whole perspective our understanding of sanctification, as noted in this quote:

“In some ways 1 Pet. is a summary of the NT view of sanctification: it has to do with God’s choice (1:2; 2:9), the work of the Spirit in applying the benefits of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection (1:2-3), and lived in obedience to God’s call to holiness (1:14-15; 2:5) and love (1:22; 4:8). Sanctification, in sum, is essentially a relational reality, completed in Christ’s death on the cross, experienced through the indwelling Holy Spirit and brought to its final goal when we see God (Heb. 12:14; 1 Jn 3:2-3).”[11]

And as Peter’s life attests, sanctification is a relational reality only when it becomes our experiential reality based on God’s whole relational terms—which is the reality Jesus embodied and prayed for his followers to whole-ly experience, that is, in his likeness in contrast to and conflict with ‘in their way’.

Having had our feet washed by Jesus establishes us ‘whole’ in our uncommon new identity as the Father’s daughters and sons in the new creation family. This identity will certainly have ups and downs, depending on our compatible and congruent relational involvement with God; it will be tested, challenged, and pulled at by reductionism and its counter-relational work to create relational distance. Yet on God’s part, our identity is secured. When we gather to worship God, this is nothing less than “family time” for God’s new creation family. We gather to celebrate the whole and uncommon God to boast in who, what, and how God is—integrally with who and whose we are in order to worship whole-ly together with nothing less and no substitutes.

God’s new creation family embodies the relational truth and relational reality of the “new song” (cf. Ps 40:3; 33:3; 96:1) in the intimate experience of uncommon worship without the veil—that is, without the relational distance common to worship. The song on the following page was composed for this very celebration and boast, and is included here for your encouragement to worship whole-ly, with the feet of your whole person washed by Jesus, in face-to-face, heart-to-heart, person-to-person relationship with the whole and uncommon Trinity! The veil is indeed gone!

[1] T. Dave Matsuo, The Global Church Engaging the Nature of Sin & the Human Condition Reflecting, Reinforcing, Sustaining, or Transforming (Global Church Study, 2016); online at http://4X12.org, 94, my italics.

[2] The outer temple courts were supposed to be for Gentiles but were jammed with vendors for persons to
change currency and buy animals to sacrifice. Craig Keener comments that Jesus’ action probably wasn’t
so much about commerce per se taking place but all this activity took up the space that was supposed to be
for Gentiles. Jesus’ reference to “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa 56:7) is significant for the issue of
who can rightly worship God in his temple. Keener also notes that the OT temple didn’t exclude women or
foreigners from the temple, but the architects of Herod’s temple extended Jewish purity laws to exclude
those persons from access. The IVP Bible Background Commentary, New Testament (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1993), 101.

[3] “Hybrid theology” is discussed in full in T. Dave Matsuo, Did God Really Say That? Theology in the

Age of Reductionism (Theology Study, 2013); online at http://4X12.org.

[4] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation: Distinguishing the Discipleship and Ecclesiology

Integral to Salvation (Transformation Study, 2015); online at http://4X12.org., 4-5.

[5] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation, 123.

[6] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation, 39.

[7] T. Dave Matsuo, The Global Church Engaging the Nature of Sin & the Human Condition, 87.

[8] T. Dave Matsuo, The Global Church Engaging the Nature of Sin & the Human Condition, 88. This study is an important resource for the global church’s transformation.

[9] K. E Brower, “Holiness,” New Bible Dictionary, 3^rd edition, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 478.

[10] For an illuminating and helpful discussion of “sanctified” Christian ethics, please see T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology: A Theological & Functional Study of the Whole of Jesus (Christology Study, 2008). Online at http://4X12.org., Chap.7 “Jesus and Culture, Ethics, and Mission.

[11] K. E. Brower, “Sanctification, Sanctify” New Bible Dictionary, 1059, my italics.