Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Gospel in the Gospels

All four gospels devote ample space to the crucifixion of Jesus, yet ‘atonement theology’ does not appear to be the major focus. There are hints and allusions, of course, but nothing quite as explicit or as universal as some passages from Paul’s epistles. And this in spite of the four gospels being written after Paul’s most robust letters.

One would expect Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to have engaged in a little historical revisionism. After all, they were probably writing for people who had heard Paul’s teaching either directly or indirectly, so a theological-heavy interpretation of Jesus’s death would have been well understood by the earliest gospel readers. What was the gospel, after all, if it was not a theology of Christ crucified that was good news?

Yet as I said already, this we don’t get. What we get instead are stories aimed not at merely shaping our theology, but at shaping our lives.

It seems the earliest churches had a particular focus, a telos they were headed towards - conformity to the image of Christ. To become a Christian was to start on this "process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others" (Mulholland).

No doubt the following question haunted the early church just as it haunts us today: What does it look like to look like Jesus? The value system of the 1st century was probably very similar to our own, with power, wealth, and prestige all being sought after religiously. A passage contained in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) illustrates this.

A dispute breaks out amongst the disciples as regards who is the greatest. Who will wield the most power in the kingdom? Who will have the authority and the prestige? Jesus answers them in an earth-shattering way. He knows the value system of the present regime, but this value system is to be turned on its head. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant,” says Jesus, “and whoever would be first among you must be slave to all”. We then get a statement which in isolation looks like straight-up atonement theology, but in the context of the gospel narrative is nothing less than a call to Christlikeness, which is a call to cruciformity: “For the son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

This is not only an example of Jesus’s understanding of his own death, but it is his understanding of the life to which his followers are called. “Imitate me”, says Jesus. The lengthy passion narratives give a paradigm for what such imitation entails - non-retaliation in the face of abuse, silence in the face of mockery, forgiveness in the face of sin.

The call to Christlikeness does not take the form of an exhaustive list of dos and don’ts. Most of the time we are not told what the right thing to do is in a given scenario. If you think the Christian life consists of following a set list of abstract rules, you are mistaken. In Christ, the law became a story. The word became a fleshly narrative, and dwelt among us. But it dwelt among us not as one to be served, but as one who serves. All four gospels tell this story in great detail. Why? Because it makes for nice bedtime reading? Because we need to know the correct information if we are to be saved? No. The story is told because the community of faith has been called to continue the narrative begun in Christ. The goal of the Christian life is for Jesus’s story to become our story. This doesn’t happen by dutifully obeying a list of commands in our own power, but by creatively incarnating Jesus’s story in our daily lives by the power of the Spirit. The details will look different in each of our lives, but the form will always be the same: it will be the form of a cross.

The four gospel writers knew well the significance of the cross not just as salvation history, but as salvation present and future. A closer look at Paul might yield a similar conclusion. This, after all, is the same Paul who could earnestly desire

…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…

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