Claude R. Alexander Jr. Archives

Necessary Christianity, Claude R. Alexander, Jr. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022.

Summary: In a culture of options, focuses on the necessities of the Christian life by looking at the “must” statements in the gospel associated with Jesus.

Bishop Claude R. Alexander, Jr. makes a trenchant contrast between our culture and a vibrant Christianity. We like to think about our options, our possibilities. Alexander contends that the mature follower of Jesus is shaped by the necessities of undivided loyalty to Jesus. Alexander organizes his book around the “must” passages associated with Jesus, six in number that lead to six “musts” for the maturing disciple of Jesus:

1. I Must Focus. (Luke 2:40-52) “I must be about my Father’s business.” Jesus was intentionally focused on his mission and his relationship with his father from the age of twelve. He pursued his calling as one who would teach about the Father’s way even as a young man, declaring implicitly that carpentry would not be his life.

2. I Must Progress. (Luke 4:38-44) “I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also…” Life with Christ is dynamic. It is life lived on assignment, no matter the context.

3. I Must Be Directed. (John 4:1-30) “He needed to go through Samaria.” Jews ordinarily avoided Samaria. Jesus needed to go through Samaria because God directed him to do so to encounter the Samaritan woman, and through her to see a town believe. We learn that we may be directed to those others shun and called into things others don’t understand.

4. I Must Be Clear. (Matthew 16:13-27) “…Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” The maturing disciple is clear that following Christ may entail suffering and that God’s purposes may be unpopular and will face opposition. The disciple also embraces the whole plan and purpose of God, not only suffering and death but also resurrection and glory and is not deceived by the enemy.

5. I Must Be Diligent. (John 9:1-5) “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day.” Jesus discerns the moment and meaning of his encounter with the man born blind. He acts with urgency, realizing it will not always be day, maximizing every moment. He challenges us to live in this way. Even on the cross, Jesus forgives and promises paradise to the thief, arranges for the care of his mother, quenches his own thirst with God’s word, takes on himself the judgement of God against sin, and accomplishes our redemption, and can declare “It is finished.”

6. I Must Yield. (Matthew 26:46-54) “Don’t you realize that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and he would send them instantly? But if I did, how would the Scriptures be fulfilled that describe what must happen now?” Jesus refuses to avoid God’s purpose for his life, even when able, he has exercised patience from age 12 to his death, knowing all that time this was God’s purpose. Jesus took God’s way as his and accepted that only he could walk it–others would flee. The assurance is that God will stand by us. He raises the Son and he will raise us up as well.

Alexander has this way of writing in simple declarative sentences that convey the sense that “this is just the way it is for those who set themselves to follow Jesus.” There is neither bombast nor subtle nuancing. It’s simply, “this is what Jesus knew were the “musts” in his life, and so they are for us. We often “complexify” our lives and use that to evade the call of Jesus. This book strips discipleship down to the necessities. And therein is life.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Becoming the Church, Claude R. Alexander Jr. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022.

Summary: Studies of the first six chapters of Acts revealing the purposes, practices, and principles that led to the transformation of a loose group of individuals into the church.

Bishop Claude Alexander loves the church. This doesn’t mean he is blind to the ways its people and institutions fall short of its purpose to be Christ’s visible body in the world. Rather, it is that he realizes that God has decided to reveal his purposes and power through the church. In this book, he takes us through the last chapters of the gospels and the first six chapters of Acts, speaking sometimes in the voice of Thomas, Matthew, Peter, or Luke, and other times in his own voice.

Through Thomas, we learn that it is through the church that Jesus confronts and convicts us–if we get Jesus, we get the church. Through Peter, we hear Jesus as the Lord of the second chance to put love for Jesus at the heart of his life, expressed in sacrificial care. Matthew speaks of the mission of the church as making disciples with one who assures of his everlasting presence. Luke reveals to us a people “steadied by the purposes and promises of God.”

All this sets up the study of Acts, which begins with the divine assignment of witness in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, empowered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and repentance, baptism, and belief in his name. The conversion of three thousand form a community of commitments to the Word of God, fellowship, the Lord’s Supper and the cross, prayer, and joy.

In Acts 3, Alexander once more narrates in the voice of the lame man in the temple, transformed by the power of Jesus and welcomed into fellowship by Peter and John. This leads to proclamation. Alexander emphasizes that this is a word for others, one that brings glory to God, that explains the working of God, and invites people into relationship with God and his people. As Peter and John are called on the carpet in Acts 4, their boldness, wisdom, and knowledge is evidence that they have been with Jesus. This is also evident in determination to persist in our testimony in the face of persecution. Alexander observes that the tension doesn’t come because of good works, but rather the Name in which they are done, the Name they are proclaiming. It comes down to asserting the integrity of our experience–it is Jesus that has worked transformation in lives, not our social or self-help programs.

In the latter part of Acts 4 we see the church at prayer. It is a church that understands the God to whom we pray, that takes seriously what God has said and promised, and seeks to exalt the name of Jesus. We see the church at its best and worst–sharing possessions out of the understanding that we are conduits of God’s blessing, and turning this into deception and people pleasing, in the case of Ananias and Sapphira. We see God nipping this in the bud, revealing how deadly this is to the genuine love and unity of the church.

And so we come to Acts 6, a church facing growth pains from its exponential expansion. Conflict arising from growth leads to prayerful discernment, changes in structure, and the entrusting of power to a wider circle. And when the church faces the worst about itself honestly and makes discerning structural changes, sharing power, it presses beyond the worst into new growth.

The chapters have the feel to me of pulpit messages. They ring the changes on the centrality of Jesus, transformation in his name, and baptism into a people called into prayer, sacrificial and joyful love for each other, bold witness before the world, and integrity, even when the church acts at its worst. We see a church “doing the stuff” of Jesus and how dynamic that can be, instead of a church that has lost its way in success schemes, struggles for power, and sex scandals. Alexander offers hope for the church rooted in God’s purpose for and continued work in her.

[This review is time to coincide with InterVarsity’s Urbana 22, at which Bishop Claude Alexander will give four messages from the book of Acts beginning on December 28 through December 31, 2022. The messages will be livestreamed from urbana.org each evening at 7:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (US).]

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.