Dan Sheed is the founding co-pastor of Central Vineyard Church in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. He recently released a new book, Drift No More: An Exploration of Tethered Faith. This punchy, beautiful read urges followers of Jesus to pursue a life that is tethered—anchored—able to resist the kind of drift that has badly affected the Church over recent decades. He explores four anchor points: Christ, Church, Tradition and Gospel, showing how these ground and allow faith to flourish and move in a world of flux. We’re stoked to be able to bring you the second chapter of Dan’s book, reprinted with the author’s permission. If you like the excerpt here, you’ll love the whole thing—head to Central Vineyard’s website to buy a copy. And check out our short interview with Dan in this edition of Common Ground to learn more about this project and the author—Ed.
So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 6:18-20
“Be like Mike”
There is a pressure moment in sport known as a “clutch play”. This is a moment on which the whole game hangs, often in the literal dying seconds. And in these moments, a clutch player is someone who—when everything is on the line—comes out under all that pressure and succeeds.
They sink the basket.
They kick the goal.
They hit the final runs.
They win the game.
I grew up as a kid of the 90s and in watching the sports news I often saw clips of a hero of the clutch play: Michael Jordan.
Jordan is one of the all-time basketball greats and one of his records that still stands is his number of clutch play buzzer beaters. Nine times he heroically beat the buzzer to sink the winning shot in finals. When the clock is running down, and a basket is needed, get the ball to Mike. What sportsperson doesn’t want to be like that? He was the best. Mike was becoming a hero to a generation. So, the marketing department at Gatorade caught on to this and, cleverly, came up with an ad campaign: “Be like Mike.” Aspire to be like him and do as he did. Oh, and drink some Gatorade.
But why? Because when the pressure is on, he is the one who can do the job. He will succeed. He is the best. No one else compares. He is the GOAT. Greatest Of All Time. He is the one worthy of the adoration and worship of the crowd, the one to emulate and aspire to be like. “Be like him.”
A wonderful thing happens because of superstars like Jordan, or others in various sporting fields (think Lionel Messi in football or Serena Williams in tennis): the whole game can lift. Kids all over the world see a superstar, and they want to be like that star. So, at schools and playgrounds all over the world in the 1990s, not only were kids buying Gatorade, they were playing basketball, practising and growing in skill, wanting to be like their hero. The game surged. It created a swell all around it, and thousands and thousands of little Michael Jordans all over the planet were wearing Bulls singlets with the number 23 (or, in my case, a knock-off Bulls Starter cap from a market) and wanting to emulate the greatest of all time.
Don’t settle for anything but the best
In the wider context of our Hebrews text, we find the author making a case to not settle for anything less than the best. And for the author, this is all found in Jesus Christ. He is the greatest, we can be sure of his work and he is worthy of emulation. We find something that has happened, that is assured and that is valid. We find the superstar of the story. We find the One who is showing us what greatness is—not on a basketball court, but in the matters of life. A life lived in this world at the attention of the Kingdom of God. His good news: “The new reality of the Kingdom of God is at hand among you! Turn and look, see and believe!” (author’s paraphrase of Mark 1:15). And in Hebrews we find the author conveying the priestly work Jesus has done. He has done the heavy lifting and he is the one we are to be like. The author of Hebrews is like that Gatorade commercial, conveying to us greatness—not of Jordan and the call to be like Mike, but that “Christ is the greatest, and you can be like Christ.”
At the core of the Christian faith is not just a set of beliefs, or attendance of a certain programme, or a life that behaves a particular way. At the core of the Christian journey is a person to know and to emulate.
To be a Christian is to be a little christ.
It’s to love Christ and love as he did.
It’s to hope in Christ and hope in what he did.
It’s to have faith in Christ and be faithful as he was.
Too often our “Christian” life becomes about other things. But let’s be clear and remind ourselves of the central message: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” To use that term is to say he is like Caesar was. He is at the top, he is the best. And Christ is the only one worthy to be like, because he has done great things already. And it is here we find one of the great tethering points of our faith.
An anchor in the wrong place
So, let’s zoom in a little to our text. Here is the passage again:
We have this hope like an anchor, secure, solid, and penetrating into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone in ahead of us and on our behalf, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 6:18-20 (New Testament for Everyone)
Let’s talk about the anchor.
The New Testament only mentions an anchor twice, when Paul is shipwrecked in Acts (see chap 27) and here in Hebrews 6. But there is a weird thing going on here. The author is mixing metaphors—the anchor is going behind a curtain. Now, I’m not much of a sailor, but this is not where anchors usually go. Anchors go in the sea. Not behind curtains. Why is the author doing that? Because this is a book heavily using temple language. It’s full of priests and sacrifices and curtains. It’s full of courts and a priest named Melchizedek. It’s a book about worship, and worship happened at the temple (see Hebrews 9 and 10).
The temple had different spaces: outer courts, inner courts, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. Each place had different things, altars, furniture, lampstands etc. All of it was for certain purposes and sacrifices and rituals. But in the centre was the most important part. The Holy Place had a curtain that created another space behind it, the Holy of Holies. In the Holy of Holies was the place of God’s special dwelling.
Now, the outer courts were busy—it was where people bustled about with offerings of all sorts. But if you tracked inwards through the next court spaces it became more and more exclusive for the few people who were able to be in there. The temple had people who worked there all day long. These people were called priests and they worked from the outer court towards the centre of the temple. But at the centre—that place behind the curtain—there was only the high priest, who had a very special job. Once a year, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, and sprinkle blood on the Ark of the Covenant. And this is where it gets interesting in relation to our Hebrews text.
There is a Jewish traditional story that says when the high priest went in, he would have a rope tied around his leg and other priests would hold on to it. The tradition speaks of two possibilities: By being in the presence of God, the high priest may die, and they would need to drag him out. Alternatively, if he didn’t die, the high priest would have a way to follow to get back out. While it’s only tradition, it helps us think well about what is going on in Hebrews 6 with all this anchor talk. Jesus is the High Priest, and has been placed in the presence of God, not temporarily, but to stay, like a firm anchor. And we—like those priests outside the curtain—are tethered to what he has done and invited to hold on to the great work he is doing in God’s most holy and wonderful presence, right now.
To summarise, the writer of Hebrews is saying Christ has gone in to be the great High Priest forever and for all. Christ has done something not just for a mere moment—it is forever. And all of us can take the rope and be anchored to what he did. You can grab this rope and be secure. As the author says again later in the letter, “Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise” (Hebrews 10:23).
The first tether: Christ
As we explore drift, this is our first and most important tethering point: Christ himself.
Have you grabbed the rope? Have you experienced salvation and said, “Yes, I am grabbing on.” (I’m going to assume that if you read on, then you are indeed saying that). But equally important questions include:
Are you still grabbing the rope?
Are you pulling on it tighter?
Have you loosened your grip?
Or, have you let go?
Are you holding on to something else instead?
The truth is this: God has already offered the rope and we have been offered something to hold on to. But we must hold on with two hands.
A two-handed grip
Jesus said these words, which many of us will know, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). But have you really stopped to think about how this works?
First, the way. A “way” is a direction of existence in reality. A posture. A type of being. For a Christian, this is an existence of the Spirit and its fruit. We become a person who is loving and displays all the facets of love, by being joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and in control. Power is upside down for a Christian, because the way of power has changed to be an embodiment of compassion and servanthood.
Next, the truth. Truth is reality, and to quote Dallas Willard, it’s “what we run into when we are wrong”. Truth is a way of believing that which is right. A way of not being deceived, but thinking well and soberly about how reality works. Truth is the correct path among so many deceptive ones, and the one that leads to life that is flourishing.
Last, the life. Life is all of the above incorporated together. It’s the middle section of the Venn diagram sandwiched between “way” and “truth”. Truth lived in a way of love, love lived in the reality of truth. Life is the merging of beliefs and actions, of words and deeds. And the byproduct? You get to do life in the presence of God, and you get to know the Father.
So, here’s the kicker. The way of Jesus + The truth of Jesus = The life of Jesus. Right action plus right belief leads to the right life. Theologians have words for this: orthopraxy is right action and orthodoxy is right belief. When we have orthodoxy and orthopraxy, we are on the way to a flourishing life. The thing is, though, we must hold the two in tension, allowing them to exist as two entirely true realities at the same time. The Christian who wants to experience the life of Jesus does not let the two go. The life of Jesus is found by having both hands on the rope. Orthopraxy and orthodoxy. Right action and right belief. That is the grip of a tethered faith, holding on firmly with both hands. Two hands. Not one.
The danger of a one-handed grip
When either of these becomes more important than the other—if we turn one up above the other or discard one entirely—we are gripping the rope one-handed. Time and time and time again, I have witnessed this as a common problem causing people to drift. A person starts messing with their grip, taking one hand off the rope. And when we grip something for a long time with just one hand, what can happen? The weight gets heavy and we can either be swung in one direction or, worse, we eventually lose the other grip too.
As an example, let’s elevate orthopraxy first. What’s it like when we hold on with just this hand? “Jesus’ ethic of this or that, it doesn’t actually have to be that black and white does it? I thought Jesus was loving. He was accepting. He didn’t judge.” So, let’s just soften up orthodoxy a little. Let’s let that truth slip into a half truth. Let’s turn down that expectation of personal holiness a little. “Surely it doesn’t matter if we relax what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, as long as we behave in a loving way, we’re all good, right?” As author Mark Sayers says, we “want the kingdom without the King.” We want to have the things of the Kingdom through action in justice and equality and diversity and freedom, but we’ll turn down a little of what Jesus has said about moral truths behind those things.
We may not even realise it, but we are taking a hand off the rope. When we turn orthopraxy above orthodoxy, we’re starting towards drift. If you are holding with one hand on this rope—right action over right belief—please, hear the words of Jesus: “You will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32).
It can happen with orthodoxy, too. “Let’s be sure we are believing the right thing. Let’s tighten our grip on that, and squeeze tighter. Let’s make some judgement calls of what is right and what is wrong. Let’s draw some lines of who is in and who is out.” So we get to the very bottom of the original Greek words and tenses and discuss deeply, for years and years and years, what Jesus might have meant by this or that. We argue and debate, and show how well we know the Scriptures. We hold on tight with the grip of right belief, but at the expense of realising that somewhere along the way we stopped being merciful or kind or loving. We’ve become modern Pharisees.
When we turn orthodoxy above orthopraxy, we’re letting go with the other hand. If you are holding with one hand on orthodoxy—right belief over right action—please, hear the warning words of Jesus: “You call me Lord, Lord. But I never knew you for your hearts were far away from me” (Matthew 7:21-23). We need both hands on the rope, or we will not live the full life of Jesus.
Keeping them in dynamic tension, not in a fight
When we break the dynamic tension of the way of Jesus and the truth of Jesus, we are not going to experience the life of Jesus. To experience the life of Jesus, we have to keep both these realities in mind, both fully playing out in their best entirety.
And this is really, really hard. Very real topics like sexual ethics or racial diversity or gender equality or human freedoms can all tempt us to take a hand off the rope. The one-handed biblical arguments have been had over and over again. The conservatives bang on their Bibles. “This is what it says here, here and here …” The one-handed activists have their slogans prepared and petitions at the ready. They point at the barriers and gaps and divisions and inequalities in society with conviction. “Justice must be done here at all costs!” they proclaim. Instead of two hands helping us to be attached to the life of Jesus, they have become fists fighting. We are at loggerheads, both have collided, it seems we will never find a winner. And so many have left the faith because of the discouragement and discontentment of their side not being able to win over the other.
So many have left the faith because of this culture war. Left versus right. It has made its way into our church story. One hand above the other. One hand on the rope, the other hated or despised or feared. And among the fight, the words of Jesus call out again: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” If you want to live a flourishing life, you are going to need both: The Way of the Kingdom and the Truth of the Kingdom. We need to trust that Jesus’ vision for our lives is the one for true flourishing and motivated by love. Our “yes”, our trust, is to have two hands on the rope rather than trusting in our culture. Christ beckons us to discover order from our chaos and a new way to be human.
So, the important question: Is it possible?
Lives of those who have hoped well
To answer this, I turn to experiencing older saints in my life. And they have shown me how it looks to have life with two hands firmly gripped on the rope of Christ’s tether. These are not perfect people, but their lives do look a certain way. Their lives have become like Christ’s so much more fully than if they had just held on with one hand.
They are kind, gentle, patient and merciful. Yet they are not pushovers, believing deceptive ideas or lies from culture or the devil.
They don’t live in half-truths.
They don’t rush into the newest fads.
They have built beautiful orthodox ethical frameworks for flourishing.
They know what wisdom looks like.
They are humble.
They haven’t disengaged their minds.
They have read, and read well.
They know their Bibles, which are tatty and tired.
They don’t leave their hearts behind.
They worship, and pray and cry.
They are compassionate towards the broken and lost.
They give themselves generously to causes that heal the world.
They are wholly engaged.
Christ the Life-giver has been their anchor and in holding on closely to him, his life has become theirs more and more every day.
They are saints who are well known and saints I have witnessed who you have never met or heard of. People who, no matter the culture war, have something quietly stable and humble still in them. They are being a certain way among it all. These great saints who have not been lost in drift, who have remained well tethered and faithful to the end, have lived their faith with two hands on the rope. They have lived what they hoped in. They have lived a taste of the future with God, now. They have let that be their vision and that vision has steered the course of their lives.
And that is what the Hebrews scripture is conveying. We can live in the tastes of hope, now. We can live in the tastes of Christ in God’s presence, now. Though we have to wait for the full meal, we don’t have to wait for the opening courses. We can taste the presence of God’s future, now.
And how? Only in tethering to Christ, who has been anchored there. And their firm gripping of that, with both hands, in their experience and emulation of Christ. We are to drift no more, by being tethered to the great High Priest who has gone and placed himself like an anchor forever in the presence of God for us to hold on to.
So grab on, with both hands.
