Me. My. I. Our. We. Us. It’s all in the pronouns.
Have you ever noticed the “Jesus and me” mentality that clings to much of Christian America like cobwebs to a door jamb? Is “Lone Ranger” faith biblical? Is it how the early Christians thought?
Take another look at Matthew 6:9-13 for instance, the model prayer the Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples. Pronouns are key:
“Our (not my) Father… Give us (not me) our (not my)… Forgive us … as we … lead us …”
As Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (A.D. 250) observed, “Our prayer is public and common, and when we pray we pray not for one but for the whole people, because we, the whole people, are one.”
Likewise, the Apostle Paul doesn’t seem consumed with “Jesus and me.” Again, it’s all in the pronouns. In his epistles to the early church Paul refers to Jesus as “Our Lord” 53 times. He uses the expression “my Lord” just once (in Philippians 3:8). What does this say about the priorities of the great apostle?
For one thing, it says that Paul’s central concern wasn’t his own spiritual journey or that of his individual converts. Instead, Paul’s passion was to establish what Talbot School of Theology NT Language and Literature Professor Joseph Hellerman calls “spiritually vibrant, relationally healthy communities of believers in strategic urban setting throughout the Mediterranean world” (emphasis added).
Jesus and me vs. Jesus and we. A divine blueprint for the 1st century as well as the 21st. It’s all in the pronouns.
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