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…

Do Justice To The Event: A Battle

- Where are you goin’?

- I’m goin’ to pick a fight.

One of the words not often associated with the death of Jesus is “battle”. N.T. Wright makes a good case for the importance of this association.

Wright is careful to highlight the consistency between Jesus’s death and his ministry up to that point. Jesus’s prophetic announcement throughout his career was “The kingdom of God is at hand”. In other words, “At long last YHWH is becoming king”. And if YHWH was becoming king, the present rulers of Israel (and the world) needed to be relinquished of their power; they needed to be defeated and dethroned.

Here is where a double twist occurs.

Jews saw Rome as the enemy, the pagan nation that needed to be defeated. If YHWH is to become king, they thought, then the Roman empire must be put to the sword. This was to be the task of the Messiah, after all.

Jesus thought differently, however, and as we saw earlier, that is part of the reason he was killed. For Jesus, Israel’s enemy in need of defeat was the satan; the evil one who went about stealing, killing, and destroying. The mission of Jesus, therefore, was to confront and defeat this enemy. It was the satan who had gripped the hearts of Israel and turned them against YHWH; it was the satan who caused sin and death to reign; it was the satan who made it always winter but never Christmas. But with the kingdom of God at hand, the satan’s time was coming to an end, his spell was being broken. Through Jesus, YHWH was bearing his teeth and winter was meeting its death. Through Jesus, YHWH was shaking his mane and spring was returning once again. The kingdom not of this world was replacing the present kingdom, but it would take a decisive battle to seal the victory.

This leads to the second twist, which is that the battle scene was in fact the hill of Calvary where Jesus died. Jesus went to pick a fight with the following vision: death was to be defeated through a death; victory was to be achieved by a righteous victim; the suffering servant was to be the surprising messiah who would conquer the reign of sin and death once and for all.

Rome was not the enemy, and triumph would not come by the sword. Jesus died because he envisioned a different sort of battle with an enemy even fiercer than ruthless Rome; and more than that, he died because he knew that only his own undeserved death at the hands of evil could complete his life’s work. N.T. Wright phrases it like this:

…Jesus took his own story seriously - so seriously that, having recommended his followers to a particular way of being Israel-for-the-sake-of-the-world, he made that way thematic for his own sense of vocation. His own belief about how the kingdom would come through his own work. He would turn the other cheek; he would take up the cross. He would be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. He would be Israel for the sake of the world. He would be the means of the kingdom’s coming, both in that he would embody in himself the renewed Israel and in that he would defeat evil once and for all. But the way in which he would defeat evil would be the way consistent with the deeply subversive nature of his own kingdom-announcement. He would defeat evil by letting it do its worst to him.

What Jesus talked about throughout his ministry, he demonstrated thoroughly on the cross. But although Jesus called his disciples to take up their crosses follow him, only he could do what he did at Calvary. The hopes of Israel and the hopes of the world rested on his shoulders alone. Neither Israel nor the world recognised this of course. Their human wisdom could not solve the mystery of the cross, so all that was left for them to do was either taunt “The king of the Jews” as he was crucified or mourn bitterly over the death of the one many had hoped would redeem Israel.

To both groups -- the mockers and the mourners -- the battle was lost. Rome had won again, and things would go on as normal. Though Jesus died for different reasons -- the selfish rule of Pilate, the upholding of justice by would-be Law observers, the sense of vocation he himself possessed -- the simple fact was that he died.

On Saturday, the question “Why did Jesus die?” was merely academic. Sunday, however, would change that. Sunday would bring the question to life, and offer answers to be given from that moment on; answers that would demonstrate Jesus to be who he said he was and to have accomplished what he said he would accomplish. One of those answers was given by Paul, who could write roughly two decades later that Jesus "loved me and gave himself for me".

Do Justice To The Event: Double Drama

Why did Jesus die?

We played the blame game in the first couple of posts by casting stones at the Romans and then the Jews. Jesus was executed under a Pontius Pilate looking out for number one, but he was brought to the attention of the Roman procurator by influential Jews who saw this pseudo-Messiah breaking The Law and who decided that the law-breaker needed to get got.

But events were not so simple. This law-breaker claimed to be the law-fulfiller, with his death being the finishing touch to his life’s work. So what can be said of Jesus’s mindset in the lead up to his crucifixion? Can we say that “Jesus embraced a worldview…within which his own death would make sense, and would indeed make more sense than anything else”? As good a place as any to find the answer is the final meal Jesus shared with his friends: the Last Supper.

N.T. Wright calls the Supper a “deliberate double drama”. Being a Passover meal, it retold the old Jewish story of the exodus from Egypt and looked forward to the future return from exile. But, in a shocking twist, Jesus now included himself in this story as its central character. Israel’s story was being incorporated into his own, with long-awaited benefits not only to Israel, but to the world. “Jesus saw the meal as the appropriate way of drawing the symbolism of Passover, and all that it meant in terms of hope as well as history, on to himself and his approaching fate”, says Wright.

All that the Supper symbolised -- forgiveness of sins, the enthronement of YHWH, etc. -- was happening through Jesus. The words spoken during the meal (which display complete disregard for the “No talk of religion or politics at the dinner table” rule) reinforced this kingdom-at-hand story. Jesus spoke of a “covenant” initiated through his death; a death which would bring about “the forgiveness of sins” (Mt. 26:28c). These words are clear echoes of biblical prophecies made during Israel’s exile in Babylon; prophecies which speak of “a new covenant” in which YHWH “will remember your sins no more” (Jer. 31:31-34).

What, then, was the intention of Jesus that night in Jerusalem? Wright has a convincing answer: “Jesus intended to say, with all the power of symbolic drama and narrative, that he was shortly to die, and that his death was to be seen within the context of the larger story of YHWH’s redemption of Israel”.

When contemplating his ministry, Jesus didn’t merely expect to talk; he expected to die.

Do Justice To The Event: Led Astray

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

That’s a mild way of saying that Jesus’s fellow Jews wanted him dead, deceased, demised. They were pining for Israel’s restoration via strict Torah observance and so given Jesus’s rambunctious ways they wanted him passed on, expired and gone to meet his maker; they wanted an ex-Jesus. (Not to be confused with ‘exegesis’).

The Babylonian Talmud says that Jesus was killed because “he led Israel astray”. According to Jewish Law -- e.g. Deut. 13 -- such national deception was punishable by death. Therefore given Jesus’s seemingly lax if not antagonistic attitude to what Wright calls “some of the most central and cherished symbols of the Judaism of his day”, and, moreover, “his replacing of them with loyalty to himself”, Jews thought they had no choice but to brand him as YHWH’s mortal enemy.

After all, look at his attitude and actions toward the Temple in his last days. He talked about its destruction, and even symbolically acted it out by turning over the tables within and pronouncing it corrupt. The modern day equivalent might be walking into the New York Stock Exchange and writing “Socialism is here to stay” in big red letters, or perhaps walking into St Peter’s Basilica and shouting “Luther was right!” repeatedly. Of course I’m not suggesting Jesus was a socialist, or Reformed for that matter. His criticism came from within Judaism. It came from one of their own, a fellow Jew, which is why it was so scandalous.

Of course the Jewish authorities presented Jesus to Pilate as a threat to Caesar, a disturber of pax romana, but they were not in the least bit concerned about his being such. In fact, if he was a genuine threat to the Roman Empire they might well have embraced him. Their Messiah was to be their great liberator from pagan oppressors. Jesus, though claiming Messiahship, did not fit the bill and so became a hindrance rather than a help.

I asked previously what Jesus’s crucifixion would have looked like to watching Jews. It would have looked like a false prophet getting his comeuppance. It would have looked like a man enduring the curse, the wrath, of YHWH, and justifiably so.

And yet, Jesus had said that he intended not to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it. He had said that doing YHWH’s will was his life’s work. What, then, are we to say about his death’s work? Was it somehow or another part of the Law’s fulfilment? Was it the will of Israel’s God? Why, according to Jesus, did he himself die?

Do Justice To The Event: Liquidating Undesirables

What have the Romans ever done for us?

One thing not contained on the list was crucifixion. At Calvary the story of crucifixion and the story of Jesus met. What, then, was the story told by the cross? According to Wright,

Crucifixion was a powerful symbol throughout the Roman world. It was not just a means of liquidating undesirables; it did so with the maximum degradation and humiliation. It said, loud and clear: we are in charge here; you are our property; we can do what we like with you. It insisted, coldly and brutally, on the absolute sovereignty of Rome, and of Caesar. It told an implicit story, of the uselessness of rebel recalcitrance and the ruthlessness of imperial power. It said, in particular: this is what happens to rebel leaders. Crucifixion was a symbolic act with a clear and frightening meaning.

What is often neglected is the light that this story sheds on the story of Jesus.

Jesus was executed as a rebel against Rome.

He was an undesirable who was liquidated, falling on the same sword as a political renegade. As Wright suggests,

When Jesus was crucified, the general impression in Jerusalem must have been that he was one more in a long line of would-be, but failed, Messiahs.

Here was the man who was supposed to redeem Israel from her pagan oppressors, the man who would usher in the age of Ross YHWH. But after his crucifixion, hope turned to bitter disappointment (Lk. 24:13-21).

However, was Jesus worthy of crucifixion? Was he a real threat to Rome? Though executed as a rebel, he was surely not guilty of the charge in the conventional sense of the word. After all, what kind of rebel insists on turning the other cheek and going the extra mile? Nonetheless, his announcement that YHWH was becoming king carried with it some sort of threat to all other kingdoms. YHWH’s kingdom may not have been a kingdom of this world, but it was a kingdom that Jesus prayed would be manifested on earth as it is in the heavens, to the detriment of present earthly kingdoms.

Pontius Pilate must have contemplated such things as he was warned by the Jewish authorities that do fail to execute Jesus would be to make oneself an enemy of Caesar. Pilate didn’t want to do what the Jews wanted him to do (apparently he never wanted to do what the Jews wanted him to do), but he also didn’t want to make Tiberius angry. He knew Jesus was innocent of the charges laid against him, he knew he wasn’t the rebel the Jews painted him out to be, but…

And so caught between a rock and a hard place, he washed his hands in an attempt to absolve himself, but the fact remains that under Pilate’s watch, Jesus was crucified. Therefore,

In terms of the Roman authorities, the answer to the question ‘why did Jesus die?’ is that Pilate not only put cynical power-games before justice…, but also, on this occasion, put naked self-interest before both.

Jesus died under the sovereignty of Rome, charged (rightly or wrongly) with sedition. To onlookers, his crucifixion was nothing less than his utter degradation and humiliation at the hands of the empire. The question now becomes, what did his crucifixion look like to those Jews who did their utmost to get him hanging on that cross? Why were they so desperate for Jesus to die?

Do Justice To The Event: Dealing With History

Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who announced to Israel that YHWH was becoming king, and who saw himself as having a special role to play in that inauguration.

This is the first 539 pages of N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God in a nutshell; this is the story into which the question at hand -- why did Jesus die? -- fits. It is no timeless question answered in timeless truths, but a question which transports us into “the fullness of time”, and a question which yields to us timely answers.

As Wright remarks, by asking “why” we are involving ourselves in the pursuit of human intentionality. There are four such humans to consider: The Roman authorities, the Jewish authorities, Jesus of Nazareth, and 1st century Jews who subsequently became loyal to their crucified Messiah - Jews who could confess not long after Jesus’s death that “he loved me and gave himself for me”. Why, according to these people, did Jesus (have to) die?

And given that he did die, who was responsible? The Romans? The Jewish authorities? What about Jesus? What role did this troublesome but non-violent prophet have to play in his own downfall? Was it an integral part of his vocation, linked with all that went before it? Or was it simply the inevitable consequence that would befall anyone who rocked the boat as much as Jesus did, nothing more and nothing less?

When dealing with these questions we are dealing with history. Real, human history. Not nice ideas or religious jargon, but actions and events within space and time. Of course as with all human history precision is not an option, but complete ignorance doesn’t make anything go away. The death of Jesus remains part of the human story whether we acknowledge it or not; it may even be the pivot, the point at which all that went before it converges and all that comes after it diverges.

Society is not served by suppressing truth or inventing falsehood. The stories must speak for themselves.

The next installment will chart the role Rome had in the story of Jesus’s death.

Do Justice To The Event

Why did Jesus die?

Roughly 1,980 years ago a Jewish man from the insignificant village of Nazareth in Galilee was put to death in a roman cross. Not long after, a tidal wave swept across the Roman empire as the message of Christ crucified began to turn the world upside down. What did these message bearers see in Jesus's death? Of all the would-be Messiah's on all the crosses in all of the Roman empire, why this particular one?

The historical, political and theological answers to the opening question might just provide the clues to why Easter Sunday continues to be celebrated by millions of Christians around the world.

With Easter Sunday not long away now, I thought I'd lead into it by doing some posts (roughly one a week) on a chapter in N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God that deals with the intentions behind Jesus dying a disgraceful, humiliating death.

It's impossible to extract just one chapter from Wright's magnum opus and retain all of its significance and depth, but I will try my darnedest to do justice to the text that is Wright's attempt to do justice to the event.

Love That Lasts

If I...have not love, I am nothing.

- Paul

I’ve been stealing other people’s thoughts can calling them my own thinking. The resurrection was not only the raising of Jesus’ body from death to life. For example, the raising of a cat from death to eternal life would not be the equivalent. The resurrection was a vindication of Jesus, and more to my point, a vindication of his kind of love.

One of the clear messages we get from the cross and resurrection is that love triumphs. The love that costs is the love that lasts; the love that leads to death is the love that leads to life.

Perhaps we spend too much time trying to find a way to "love" that keeps our hearts intact and our lives in order, when all the while it is the love which causes us to lose ourselves that helps us experience life to the full, and brings the kingdom of God to earth.

The resurrection of Jesus enfleshes those oft-quoted words of the apostle Paul:

Love never ends.

The death of Jesus forms the shape of that never-ending love; it is eternally cruciform.

In Its Light

[Jesus Christ's] resurrection is the supreme act of God's sovereignty; henceforth we are bound to live and think in its light.

- Karl Barth

Who Do You Say I Am?

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).

"Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him."

"'And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.'"

This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt I called my son."

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.'"

...and behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

At the end of a New Testament Survey class I took last year I asked my teacher, "What is the most important thing to take from the New Testament?" His answer (without even taking two seconds to consider the question): Who Jesus is.

In the first three chapters of Matthew we find this most important of things addressed. According to Matthew, Jesus is...

• The Messiah (or Christ)
• A son of David
• A son of Abraham
• A son of Joseph and Mary
• God with us
• King of the Jews
• A ruler over Israel
• The Lord
• YHWH's Beloved Son

All of these identity issues come to a stunning crescendo in the latter half of Matthew's gospel, when Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do you say I am?". Peter answers Him emphatically, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God".

This is the question that has reverberated throughout the centuries. Who do we say Jesus is? What dictates our answer? Interesting questions to wrestle with me thinks...

Missio Dei - #11: It's Climax Is Christ

The previous post in this series was left unresolved. In fact, each of the posts dealing with the realities we encounter in Scripture were left unresolved. We have looked at the reality of this God, YHWH, the Holy One of Israel. We have looked at the reality of this story, a story of creation, rebellion and restoration. We have looked at the reality of this people, the nation of Israel chosen by God to be blessed and to be a blessing.

All three of these realities are intertwined. God has chosen Israel to bring the story to a climax, and so bring glory to God's name and blessing to creation. As mentioned before, this is what Tom Wright calls God's-single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world. But Israel could not be all that YHWH called them to be. The name of YHWH was being blasphemed on account of them, and the story was looking hopeless. There is where the apostle Paul might say, "But God..."

But God's purposes would not go unfulfilled. The reality of God, story, and people would all come to a climax in Jesus of Nazareth.

"He is the image of the invisible God." What YHWH was and did throughout the Old Testament, Jesus of Nazareth was and did in the New. He was Emmanuel, God with us, putting human flesh on the Divine. We encounter the reality of God only through Jesus.

The reality of this story is also found in Jesus. As my former teacher likes to say, Our story became His story so that His story could become our story. On the cross He took upon Himself the story of the world, and secured for the world a new story - His story of victory over death and perfect fellowship with God and with one another. His resurrection is the first fruits of this new story and the guarantee that God's good purposes will be brought to completion. Through Jesus, restoration is at hand.

In Jesus, God has constituted a people for Himself. Our union with Christ makes us a part of a community of people called and empowered by God to be conformed to the image of His Son. The reality of this people finds its origins in the faith of Abraham, but finds its fulfillment in the seed of Abraham, which is Jesus. This is why Paul can say in Galatians 3 that,

in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

What has all of this got to do with mission?

We began this discussion on reality by examining the nature of biblical authority. Does mission exist because the Bible commands it in passages such as the Great Commission? Perhaps, but there is a deeper authority at work than the simple, "The Bible says it, I do it", a deeper authority which is actually expressed right before the command to go and make disciples. Jesus says to His disciples, "All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me." We must not think of this as Jesus merely saying that all authority to command has been given to Him, therefore do what I say or else. His authority rests in the realities He incarnates - the reality of God, God's story, and God's people. It is an authority which authorises His followers, which frees His followers and which empowers His followers to participate in missio Dei.

Mission begins not with an imperative but with grace. The mission of God does not flow from the power of His command, but from the power of His love. It is to this, and not to a lifeless text, that we respond.

"Lord, Lord"

In doing a study of Colossians 1:15-20 for my Biblical Interpretation class, I became very aware of the following: Jesus is Lord, and I am not. And to go even further with that, allow me to be so bold as to say "Jesus is Lord, and you are not".

This is the foundational truth of Christianity, but the truth of the declaration doesn't merely apply to Christians. Jesus is Lord, regardless of whether you think He is or not. Becoming a Christian doesn't involve "making Jesus Lord" as tends to be said in popular Christian-speak. You can no more make Jesus Lord than you can make a choice about who your birth mother is. You can of course deny your birth mother, and not acknowledge her status or her authority, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation. In the same way, we can deny Jesus, buy into the ideas that He never existed, or act like His existence was irrelevant, but that doesn't change what's true. We might like to think we can control our own individual worlds, but how much real power does something or someone which at one point didn't exist really have? Not as much as someone who is self-existent, that much is certain.

Which beings me to my point. Christians affirm that Jesus is Lord. Get us to complete the sentence "_____ is Lord" and hopefully we'll all get the right answer. However, though Christians acknowledge Him as Lord in theory, the practice of many lives doesn't appear to line up with the affirmation, which sadly is probably why a lot of non-Christians are skeptical about this fundamental truth.

When I look at my own life, and then the wider world of which I am a part of, I see masses of individuals who think of themselves masters of their own destiny - Christians and non-Christians alike. Yes we as Christians say that Jesus is Lord, but is that the reality on which we base our lives? Is that what we believe in our hearts and display with our actions?

I (and I'm sure I'm not alone on this) can think great things about Jesus. I can declare wonderful truths about Him, and even believe them to some degree. However, at the end of the day, my Christian walk still revolves around me. I have certain desires and goals, and because of how sufficient Jesus is, I'm sure He can meet my needs and help me to fulfill all of the things on my list.

My list can be a good list of course. It can consist of being a 'holy' person, being a good friend, finding a wonderful wife, discovering ways to use my gifts. We all have our lists, we all have needs that we want met and goals we want to accomplish. There is of course nothing wrong with any of those things, provided they are consistent with Scripture of course. (Despite what Creflo might tell you, one of the deepest human needs that God wants to satisfy is not that we get our hands on one of these, or one of these, or some of this.) God does want to meet needs, and to grant desires. He is a generous God, and He knows how to give good gifts to His children.

However, have you ever noticed where our "needs" come in the Lord's prayer? I think it is no coincidence that they come after we say "Your kingdom come, Your will be done". When we truly acknowledge Jesus as our Lord, we want what He wants above anything else. It's not that we shun our own personal happinness in exchange for a life of misery. Instead, our personal happinness becomes rooted in Christ. We are only happy when we are doing His will. We are only content when we are serving Him, when we are growing in knowledge of Him, and when we are growing the likeness of Him. None of this takes us out of the real world and into a monastery. Christ's lordship of our lives takes place in our homes, in our work places, in our churches, and wherever else He leads us. This is what it means for a Christian to be a "light of the world". We are a people who shine in darkness because we have submitted ourselves to the Light that is Christ Jesus. We are intimately joined to Him, and the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit makes visible the invisible. His kind of life shines through us to all who need it, even if they don't know they need it.

We face an uphill struggle for this to become a reality however, because in Christian culture today there is rampant expediency. And not just in the places you'd expect it, but in many unexpected places too. We are not wondering how better we might serve Christ, but instead we wonder when our lives are going to get "better" because of Christ. We wonder when becoming a Christian is finally going to pay off. Maybe you're not in this group, and that's wonderful, but I certainly am. I can carry an attitude that says something like "Well I know you saved me on the cross Jesus, but what have you done for me lately, eh?" The bottom line is that if all Jesus ever did for me was die on the cross, then He did more for me than any person ever can or will. When I lose sight of this truth, I lose both my love for Christ, my willingness to submit to Him, and as a result, my usefulness to Him.

The "willingness to submit" that is where the battle lies. We want the good parts of being a Christian -- hope for a future, occasional experiences of nice emotions, a sense of being forgiven, a community of similarly-minded friends, and if you're a guy, a very promising male to female ratio -- but we don't want the bad parts -- full obedience, rejection, lack of sensual fulfillment, a private religion that only God sees. Of course all that seems good to us isn't always good, and the "bad" things listed above don't have to be bad. However, the only way to embrace the "bad" parts of Christianity and thus fulfill our role as Christ's disciples is to live by the Spirit. The more of us we relinquish to Him, the more we will find ourselves delighting in obedience, in purity, and in our relationship with God (cultivated by prayer and Bible reading). We will submit to Christ's lordship not just because it's the right thing to do, but because nothing will make us happier. However, the more we live our Christian lives by the flesh, the more we will rely on what Christ can do for us rather than what Christ can do in us and through us. We will go about our lives in whatever way seems best to us, trying to make ourselves happy, and when we need it, we will try and tap into that sense of being forgiven, or that emotional experience of being truly loved. This may work for a time, but it will not last. Something must give, for we cannot serve two masters.

Therefore we must choose every day to serve Christ. We must acknowledge that He is Lord with both our lips and our actions. We will of course fail to please Him sometimes, for all fall short of God's glory. But we must to be quick to repent and to fall back in line again, and continually rely on His Spirit within us to produce hearts that delight themselves in the Lord.

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." - Matthew 7:21-23

Ashes for Beauty

I've mentioned Dallas Willard before, and even given you a picture of what I imagine he looks like. If you don't know what I'm talking about then visit a previous post here. I mention him again because I've started reading his book 'The Divine Conspiracy' again, having gotten to chapter 5 and then proceeding to cheat on it with some other books such as 'Holiness' by J.C. Ryle, 'Loved by God' by R.C. Sproul and 'Stop Dating the Church' by Joshua Harris, whose penchant for talking about 'dating' is rivaled only by R.C. Sproul's penchant for talking about 'election'.

Anyway, without further delay, here's a quote from 'The Divine Conspiracy' which really captures the Jesus we read about in the Gospels, and the Jesus Christians should be presenting to those with ears:

"Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it also is the basis of humanity’s enduring response to Jesus. For He always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands, and He has the resources to carry through with His high estimate of them."

By way of qualification, that's not to say Jesus thinks we're all perfect, nor does He treat sin lightly. The message here is that when our search for significance in things like money, sex, power and intelligence leaves us still empty, when we're on our knees crying out for help, Jesus treats our pleas with the utmost compassion and sincerity. When we come crawling to Him, He shows us the wounds on His hands and sides, tells us our sins are forgiven, imparts to us His very life, and bids us to stand and be recognised as sons of the living God. People are God's most prized creation, and it is only by joining ourselves with Him do we begin to know who we are and why we are here.

Oh, The Humanity!

I've been going through Charles Price's series on Colossians over the past few weeks (as I'm sure you have since my recommendation a week or two ago [?]). As always there is lots to chew on from his sermons, but one of the most thought provoking points he makes (which of course isn't restricted to mere thought, as you'll see) comes from verse 15 of the first chapter:

"He is the image of the invisible God..."

It's easy to see the deity of Christ in this passage, right? However, I don't know about you, but I completely missed the humanity of Christ which is contained in this little sentence. Charles Price says that many people are quite aware of the deity of Christ, but when it comes to His humanity there is not that same understanding.

If we look at the very beginning of the Bible we read:

So God created man in His own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. - Gen. 1:27

Adam and Eve were created in God's image. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. So when Paul talks of Jesus in this way, he is not so much speaking about the deity of Christ as he is about the humanity of Christ. Of course the pre-fall Adam isn't equal with the incarnate Christ. As we'll read soon, Adam was from dust, but Christ is from heaven, which is of course a significant difference with significant consequences for us.

Anyway, though man has been radically corrupted since the fall, there was once a point when mankind reflected the moral character of God. As Charles Price says,

If you and I existed apart from Adam and Eve and we wanted to know what God was like, we could simply go along to the Garden of Eden, hide behind a tree and watch the way Adam and Eve live and behave and act and react and you’d see what God is like. They were His image.

Of course as I've eluded to already, they fell, and they ceased to show what God is like. Having been made in God's image and enjoyed perfect union and relationship with God, man turned his back on God, with dire consequences. However, this was not the end of the road for human beings. 1 Corinthians 15:47 reads

The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.

Paul is describing Jesus here in terms of 'the second man'. So when we talk about the humanity of Jesus, we are not talking about humanity as we know it, in its corrupted and depraved state. We are talking about Him being the second true human being. Jesus Christ is what a real man is supposed to look like. Charles Price says that,

If you want to know what a human being is supposed to be like, if you want to know how human beings were designed to behave, look at Jesus. He is the image of what human beings were intended to be – the image of God.

We often think that Jesus was is disguised as a man. We think of Him as God with a man-costume thrown over Him in order to blend in (a doctrine known as Docetism). But in reality, Jesus is fully human. Fully God, but fully human also. He is as real a man as Adam was created to be, but unlike Adam, He is divine. While Adam was created in the image of God, Jesus Christ is the image of God.

So what's the implication of this for us? What does Christ becoming the 'second man' accomplish? Well in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul goes on to write

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

We have inherited Adam's sinful nature. All we have to do is look within our own hearts for proof of that. But now, through Christ, we can become "the righteousness of God". We can be restored to reflect the image of God. How? Well later on in the first chapter of Colossians, Paul calls this 'the mystery hidden for ages and generations', but is now revealed. And that mystery is:

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

That's the gospel. That is the hope that is offered to the world. Acknowledging your sin, repenting of it, and relying on Christ's work on the cross is not some kind of get-out-of-hell-free card. It's the beginning of a union with Christ. It's God actually indwelling in you by his Holy Spirit, and transforming you into His likeness. That's the beautiful goal of the Christian life.

The third part of Charles Price's series expands on this revealed mystery, but I won't go there just yet. The point of this is to show the profoundness and reality of Christ's perfect humanity. Where Adam failed, Christ succeeded.

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. - 1 Cor. 15:21, 22

As fallen human beings we have been given a second chance by the Second Man. "The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit." When J.C. Ryle wrote that though it costs to be a true Christian, it pays, this is the payment he is referring to - the hope of life, the hope of glory.