Is the Oikos Principle Biblical? (Part Two)

Review: At least 95% of the time, people who give their hearts to Jesus actually give their hearts to Jesus because of the primary influence of someone in their oikos. That’s a flat-out staggering number. And, evidently, an important reality to recognize. But I lived 23 years before I ever heard that.

During those 23, I grew up in a great ministry family, attended a well-respected Christian university and seminary, and served in a vocational ministry role for several years. So, yeah, I understand why people wonder if the oikos principle is biblical. Hearing about it 45 years ago, for the first time, was even a shock to my system. I mean, being immersed in “church world,” my entire life, you’d think I would have discovered it much earlier, if it indeed was that big of a deal.

Beginning last time, I dedicated three posts to people who question the biblical veracity of the oikos principle. Maybe you’re one of them. If so, in my last post, I invited you to hear me out. Thanks for coming back.

“Then King Darius wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language in all the earth: “May you prosper greatly! I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end. He rescues and he saves; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.”—Daniel 6:25-27

God’s historic purpose, to redeem the world from sin, indeed bleeds through every part of Scripture. It’s in every story and every precept.

For example, when you consider the Daniel narrative, you quickly notice that the man who wrote the book isn’t really ever the center of attention. His experience frames the course of the narrative, so we (those of us who grew up in church) have been taught to simply focus on what happened to him. Granted, he and his three Jewish friends are sup- posed to represent us, but what happened to those four God-fearing men is not the reason the stories are so compelling. Their experiences were simply the means to the greatest end of all, the people around them were changed. When the dust settled at the end of each of their stories, it’s what has happened to the people in their oikos networks that clearly mattered the most. For example, Chapter 3 is not about God saving Daniel’s three friends from the fiery furnace any more than Chapter 6 is about God saving Daniel from the jaws of the lion. Those are simply events that set the table for the real story, which is about God turning lost people into saved people.

I cannot overstate this. We tend to look at the Bible in such a self-focused way. We look at the trials of our lives and say, “Oh Lord, save us like you saved Daniel from the lion’s den” or “Lord, save us like you saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace!” We say those things because we’ve been trained to say those things. I mean, how many times have we heard, even taught, with that as the big takeaway. “God saved those guys from their crisis, so God can save you from your crisis too”? It’s so easy to find a way to spin the Bible into something that’s always makes life easier for us.

I believe God actually can save us from our crises, and often will. So, understand, I’m not saying that’s not also a key theme for many of those stories. But we’ve all read them a hundred times without perhaps noticing that the spotlight actually shines on Ashpenaz, the chief of the royal court officials; Nebuchadnezzar, the undisputed ruler of the known world; Arioch, the commander of the King’s guard; the Queen Mother who was the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar; Belshazzar who was the last King of Babylonia; and Darius who was the King of Medo-Persia. (Okay, that’s not 8 to 15 people, but Daniel’s trying, so let’s be patient with him!)

Once you open your eyes to the oikos principle, you never read the Scriptures the same way again.

The week after preaching from Daniel 6 (this has been a few years ago), I received an email from a member of our church family who, after a very emotional day, took the time to share this. I have his permission to share it with you.

“My dad was diagnosed with colon cancer recently and had to go through an aggressive surgery to remove a large tumor in his colon. In the two months that have followed, he’s been back in the hospital several times for more surgery and words such as “metastasized” have begun to be verbalized by physicians, much to our disappointment. Because I am the oldest child, it falls on me to lead in prayer when our visits with Dad are over, so as we walked into church and my wife mentioned that we were at the part about the lions in the study today, I began to formulate in my mind a prayer about my Dad’s cancer. That the cancer itself was like the lions and my Dad, being a faithful Christ follower, like Daniel, and that God could close the mouth of the cancer and heal him. Well, the presentation on Sunday brought me to my knees. The challenge of being humble before the Lord our God and learning that it hasn’t been and never will be about us, but about what our influence is going to be to the unbelieving around us.

So later in the day when our family of ten were standing around my Dad’s bed in our yellow gowns and blue latex gloves, singing hymns of the faith, using a grandkids ipad to make sure we got the words all right, and leading my Dad in a worship of praise service, all I could think of was who we were supposed to influence for the Kingdom through this seemingly overwhelming challenge my Dad is going through right now, and who were watching while it was all going on as our voices were wafting into the hallway of the hospital wing with words more powerful than most had heard that day.

Later, when it was time for me to lead in prayer, even though I did ask God to intervene physically for my Dad, most of what I could pray was for us to be humble before the Lord and, even though confused and maybe a little scared, that we would be more concerned about praying for the doctors and caregivers that would be involved with our family and them seeing the power of our relationship with Jesus Christ (in dealing with what I feel is a very worldly disease), and who was going to be impacted for Christ because we have allowed ourselves to be impacted by Him along the way.”

I was humbled and amazed by his words. Oh, the power of purpose! Yet we so quickly default to seeing our experiences, and reading Bible stories, through that lens of, “How does this benefit me?” instead of seeing that opportunity through a “How can this fulfil God’s purpose in the world?”

For years, I’ve been on record as saying there are no non-oikos passages in the Bible. That’s still my take, and I’m sticking to it!

But there’s still more to say about all of this, so we’ll pick up this same theme, once again, with our next post.