The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 11

In a biblical worldview, the emphasis of salvation is on community, not individuality. Individuals are saved only to become a part of the new society that God is creating, namely, the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed transforms relationships, values, and ethics. The idea in some Christian quarters that one can accept Christ as “Savior,” but not as “Lord” until some later time, is untenable. To become a Christian is to yield to Christ as the Lord of His Kingdom, repenting of being a part of the dark empire that destroys God’s intentions for justice and shalom and deciding rather to be a part of Christ’s transformative community in this world.

How do we enter into the Kingdom?

Jesus’ idea of the Kingdom was different from the Pharisees, the zealots, and even the Jews of Qumran. His Kingdom would not be found through strict adherence to man-made rules (Pharisees), by violent revolution (the zealots), or by separation from the wicked world (Qumran). (What are the contemporary analogues to these three?) Instead, God offers the kingdom by supernatural means as a sheer gift. “We enter not by good deeds or social engineering, but only as we repent and accept God’s forgiveness.” (Ron Sider, Good News and Good Works, p. 56)

The point of all the New Testament’s teaching about grace and mercy is that God accepts sinners. The only requirement that we have is to accept God’s supernatural gift. This was Jesus’ teaching:

• “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14)
• “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” (John 3:3)
• “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 18:3)
• “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

To enter the Kingdom, one must repent of the direction he or she has been going and decide to follow Jesus as the King for their deliverance—this is what we say when we call Jesus “Lord and Savior”(Mark 1:14). The only way into the Kingdom is to experience a supernatural rebirth, a conversion and regeneration from the way we were into the person we are meant to be (John 3:3). This is done by humbly submitting to the salvation and lordship of Jesus Christ (Matt 18:3). It is not a reward for what we do; it is a free gift, given to us by the Father (Luke 12:32).

Once we are in the Kingdom, what is our purpose?

The most popular articulation of gospel in evangelical circles has been one that emphasizes God’s forgiveness. It’s the gospel that says simply that each one of us is guilty of sin and will be damned to Hell unless we accept that Christ died on our behalf to forgive our sins and give us eternal life. I don’t want to seem derogatory to this expression of the gospel (for on one level, it is true), I just want to point out that I believe it’s not enough to change people’s lives. A truncated gospel leads to truncated transformation. When forgiveness and our entry into heaven is the framework of our gospel, it makes life in the here and now secondary. It makes our Christian existence only about evangelism and personal piety, looking forward to our heavenly reward, rather than the wholeness of who we are and the Kingdom life we are called to live in today’s world.

“In (a) typical day, look at how much time you spent on activities other than Bible reading, prayer, and evangelism. If Christianity speaks only to these personal acts of piety, then it does not address most of our lives at all. If life includes more than Bible reading, prayer, and evangelism, then the Christian life must include more as well.” (Mike Wittmer, Heaven is a Place on Earth, p. 20)

The point of this post is to explore the Christian life as Kingdom people. When we enter the Kingdom, we are called not to simply bide our time awaiting some heavenly bliss. That is not the call of the King for his people. The gospels do not end with anything that sounds like, “Jesus died and resurrected. Now you’re assured of forgiveness and your heavenly place is guaranteed. Don’t worry about justice and peace in this world, for it is all going to pot anyway. Abide your time, awaiting your heavenly bliss to come.” No, the gospels end with something more like, “Jesus has died and resurrected. Now you’ve got work to do!”

Look at how two of the Gospels end:

• “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt 28:18-20)

Notice a few things in this passage:
1. After Christ’s death and resurrection, Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” This is significant. The Kingdom is now inaugurated, and Christ is the King.
2. What we might expect of the Messianic King, is the pronouncement that he will now take down the evil rulers and bring justice and shalom to the earth through his power and might. However, this is not what he says. He instead tells his followers that they, yes they, will be the ones doing the work of the Kingdom, rescuing more from the dominion of darkness and making them disciples of the King.
3. And Jesus promises them that they will not be alone in this endeavor. He will be with them always, until the work is finally finished.

• On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
  Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:19-23)

Notice a few things in this passage:
1. It is the “first day of the week.” This is the second time John emphasizes this in chapter 20. The point: Easter did not just happen to be on Sunday and that’s why Christians now go to church on that day. No, the “first day of the week” harkens back to the six days of Creation. What we’re being told here is that, with the resurrection, God has initiated the New Creation. This is the new Genesis. God has begun “making all things new.”
2. Jesus’ first words to the disciples is, “Peace be with you!” This is not just some common greeting. The Prince of Shalom Peace is proclaiming that since he has been resurrected, shalom is now available in this new creation.
3. We might have expected Jesus to have said (with our American evangelical worldview that gobbles up the “Left Behind” series and thinks that the Christian hope is to escape this world and be in some heavenly bliss), “I’ve died but I’ve resurrected! The purpose of this is to assure you of eternal life with God in heaven!” (though this is partly true). But that is not what we find. What Jesus says is this: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you,” and he breathes on them the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower them for their Kingdom work.

The gospel stories do not end with “And so, you now have the promise of heaven. Thanks be to God.” No, they end with “Go, make disciples. I am sending you on a mission. I will be with you as you do it… but get to it!!”

So, as Christians we are called to a vocation.

“A prime citizen (of the kingdom of God) has been redeemed far down in her spirit, way downtown in her heart, so that she deeply loves God and the things of God…Because of her enthusiasm for the kingdom, she doesn’t merely endorse justice in the world; she hungers and works for it. She doesn’t merely reject cruelty, she hates and fights it. She wants God to make things right in the world, and she wants to enroll in God’s project as if it were her own. She ‘strives first for the kingdom’ in order to act on her passion. In short, she is a person with a calling.” (Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World, p. 108)

Our education, our jobs, our leisure time, our artwork, our raising of our children, our activism for social causes, our politics, our church life, our eating, drinking, and all that we do must be for the building of the Kingdom, for the glory of the King.

It is not enough to strive to be moral and honest in our work (though it cannot be less than that). It isn’t enough, either, to try to share with our neighbors or our friends at work about Jesus (though evangelism is a major part of it). It is seeking first the Kingdom in ways that will transform our work and our play, our duties and our passions, our tasks and our relationships. It is praying, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” and then doing what it takes to cooperate with God in his answer to that prayer.

“The core of Jesus’ radical ethical thrust is precisely his summons to begin living now in this fallen world according to the values and demands of the dawning kingdom…Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom does indeed produce a disturbing community. But it is a community that lovingly challenges the evils of the status quo and dares to strive now toward that wholeness in personal, socio-economic, and political life that Christ will bring in its fullness at his return.” (Ron Sider, Good News and Good Works, p. 71).

Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?

technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation

The Kingdom of God and the Atonement

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 10

So far, I’ve insisted we understand two inter-related “predicaments” in order to understand the gospel: (1) The cosmic dimension of the Fall, effecting all aspects of God’s good creation, and (2) the brokenness of relationships because of the Fall, shattering the Shalom that God intended for his good creation.

“It is all creation that is included in the scope of Christ’s redemption: that scope is truly cosmic. Through Christ, God determined ‘to reconcile to himself all things,’ writes Paul (Col. 1:20), and the words he uses (ta panta) preclude any narrow or personalistic understanding of the reconciliation he has in mind…The scope of redemption is as great as the scope of the fall; it embraces creation as a whole.” (Wolters, Creation Regained, p. 59)

So, how does the atonement work into this bigger understanding of the gospel? Well, there are a number of images painted in Scripture to explain the atonement. We can break these models of atonement into these basic categories:

“Exemplar / Moral Example”
This model of atonement says that Jesus’ teaching and ultimately his death serves as a moral example of what it means to be loving people. We find this teaching is Scripture: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). This model focuses on helping us overcome our ignorance about what really matters in the world. It pictures the importance of sacrifice to living out Kingdom ethics in order to transform the world. As opposed to the way those in the world seek to change the world (through power, through manipulation, through force), the way Christians influence for good in the world is through sacrifice (through "laying down our lives").

When I look at this atonement model, I find that it is more an outworking or result or lesson of the atonement than the actual heart of the atonement. If taken alone, it does not explain how a human being (who is naturally selfish and seeks his or her own power) would have the ability to follow Christ’s example. It inadequately understands the heart of the matter—that humans are sinful and need to be changed in a drastic way in order to live out the Kingdom mandates.

“Unfortunately, evil in the world lies much deeper than mere ignorance. It rests in radically self-centered persons who need not just knowledge but divine forgiveness and power to change. Evil also resides in demonic forces and the social structures they have helped distort. We need a powerful Savior who can conquer the forces that enslave us.” (Sider, Good News and Good Works, p. 96)

“Penal Substitution”
This model of atonement says that Jesus’ role is as our substitute, “the righteous for the unrighteous” (1 Peter 3:18) so that sinners that stand condemned before a holy God as guilty and worthy of death and hell can be declared “not guilty.” Through Christ, we can have our sins forgiven by way of the justification that comes through our individual faith. Because we are forgiven, our relationship with God is reconciled and we are assured of eternal life with God instead of eternal punishment in Hell. This too is taught in Scripture: “For there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (Romans 3:22a-25a). “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).

When I look at this atonement model, I find it critical for understanding how Christ forgives and justifies, but also inadequate to explain the entire gospel. It certainly explains the glory of Christ’s death on our behalf, but it does not explain how this relates to the gospel of the Kingdom.

"If you ask anyone from that 74 percent of Americans who say they have made a commitment to Jesus Christ what the Christian gospel is, you will probably be told that Jesus died to pay for our sins, and that if we will only believe he did this, we will go to heaven when we die. In this way what is only one theory of the ‘atonement’ is made out to be the whole of the essential message of Jesus. To continue with theological language for the moment, justification has taken the place of regeneration, or new life. Being let off the divine hook replaces possession of a divine life ‘from above.’" (Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p. 42)

“If one reduces the atonement merely to Jesus’ death for our sins, one abandons the New Testament understanding of the gospel of the kingdom and severs the connection between the cross and discipleship. The result is the scandal of professing Christians whose sexual practices, business dealings, and political attitudes are no different from those of non-Christians.” (Sider, Good News and Good Works, p. 97)

Evengelicalism has so focused on penal substitution as the sole understanding of the Atonement that we have truncated the holistic gospel to merely “forgiveness of sins.” While this is critical to understanding the biblical gospel, it alone too easily leads to imbalance in our faith and practice.


“Christus Victor” (the Classic Model)
As Gustav Aulen stated it in his book of the same name, this model of atonement says that Jesus’ role is as conqueror of evil – demonic beings, social systemic evils, personal sin that holds us in bondage, and the curse of death. The reason this is called the “classic” model by Aulen is that he says this was the dominant model in the early church. This model of Atonement, along with the others, is also one that is taught in Scripture: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8); Jesus became a human “so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

“The territory in dispute, the creation of God, has been invaded by God’s adversary, Satan, who now holds creation as an occupied territory with military force. In Jesus Christ, God launches a counteroffensive to reclaim his rightful domain. By the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the victory has, in principle, been achieved…The battle between the sovereignties is what Abraham Kuyper called the ‘antithesis,’ the spiritual warfare between God and Satan.” (Wolters, Creation Redeemed, pp. 69-70)

When I look at this atonement model, I am impressed with its overall dramatic description of the cosmic battle between good and evil. It definitely seems to me that this is the overarching story of the entire Bible.

However, those who hold to this model sometimes focus so much on the systemic and demonic evil forces that are at work in the world (which we need to have as a major aspect of the atonement) that they do not emphasize the personal aspects of sin. The “social gospel” that seeks for Christians to live out Kingdom virtues by defeating injustice wherever they see it is a major part of the gospel (and has been lost by American evangelicals in the last century), but it also needs to be based in a deep-rooted understanding of personal sin.

When sin is seen to reside primarily in social structures, “the result is utopian schemes for building a new person and a new society without realizing that the radical evil in persons undermines such dreams.” (Sider, Good News and Good Works, p. 98)

It’s not a matter of either/or (as the debate had been framed in the 20th Century among fundamentalists and liberals); it’s a matter of both/and. A gospel that does not both deal with personal sin and societal sin is not the whole gospel.

What I have been trying to do in this series is define the gospel in bigger terms than the usual atonement theories afford us. It has been my contention that when we understand that a LOT happens in the gospel, we keep from truncating it.

When we see the Atonement in terms of the Kingdom, we can capture all the aspects of the atonement in the models just described.

1. Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom (the beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, the parables) are meant to explain what Jesus’ gospel is meant to accomplish. It goes beyond the mechanism of atonement (forgiveness, victory, substitution), and embraces the purpose of atonement.
2. Jesus’ substitution for sinners is seen in light of his role as the messianic King. The Messiah is the Suffering Servant found in Isaiah, the anointed one who frees us from exile due to our sin and provides us an exodus from our bondage to sin, the evil one, and the curse of death. Forgiveness is not the end in itself; it is the means to inner transformation so that we can receive the Spirit’s power to live according to Jesus’ Kingdom principles in order to bring about justice and shalom to the world around us.
3. Jesus’ victory over evil, then, invites us into the battle that is still going on. As Oscar Cullmann said, just as “D-Day,” the 1944 invasion of Normandy, was the decisive battle that assured a “V-Day” of victory, Jesus’ death and resurrection assured the victory that will come when Jesus returns. We now live between “D-Day” and “V-Day,” assured of victory, but still fighting the battle.
   

The goal is to see the atonement as that which redeems the cosmic creation and restores shalom in all our relationships.

“The messianic approach to the atonement underlines the community-building aspect of Jesus’ saving work…Jesus not only preached the gospel of the kingdom, he formed a new kingdom community...establishing a reconciled community is central to God’s plan of salvation.” (Sider, Good News and Good Works, p. 99)

Today’s post draws a lot on the teaching of three of my favorite books on the Kingdom: Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel by Ron Sider (Baker Books, 2004, originally titled, One Sided Christianity? By Zondervan in 1993), Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview by Albert Wolters (Eerdmans, 1985) and The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God by Dallas Willard (Harper SanFrancisco, 1998).


Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?


technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation

The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 9

The Bible does not define the predicament we are in with legal terminology (that individuals are guilty before a holy God and thus need a penal substitution in order to be saved) in every passage of the Bible; in fact, when we look at the whole of the Bible, the problem can (and often is) defined in more cosmic and relational terms.

Leonard Sweet writes,

“Over a two-thousand year period, but especially in the last two hundred years, we have jerked and tugged the Christian faith out of its original soil, its life-giving source, which is an honest relationship with God through Jesus the Christ. After uprooting the faith, we have entombed it in a declaration of adherence to a set of beliefs. The shift has left us with casual doctrinal assent that exists independent of a changed life. We have made the Cross into a crossword puzzle, spending our time diagramming byzantine theories of atonement. How did the beauty of Jesus’ atoning work get isolated from the wonder of restoring an authentic relationship between God and humanity?” (Out of the Question…Into the Mystery, p. 5)

The four Gospels present us with Jesus proclaiming the “Good News” (the euaggelion, the “gospel”).

“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” (Matthew 4:23)

The “Good News,” according to Jesus, was his pronouncement of the Kingdom of God. This is no small matter. Christians must rediscover what Herman Ridderbos said, that the Kingdom of God is “the central theme of the whole New Testament revelation of God.”

What is the Kingdom?

“The term ‘kingdom of God’ or ‘kingdom of Heaven’ signifies God’s sovereign, dynamic, and eschatological rule. The kingdom of God lay at the heart of Jesus’ teaching.” (C. C. Caragounis in Green, McKnight, and Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, p. 417)

The Kingdom signifies God’s sovereign rule—God is king over all Creation. It denotes God’s dynamic rule—he is interactive with his Creation. And it means God’s eschatological rule—God’s rule has come to climax in His Son, and Christ has inaugurated the Kingdom and has become King through his death & resurrection, and Christ will consummate the Kingdom when he returns at the Parousia. And I would add that it means God’s saving rule—He is the King who delivers his people from the evil empire of the devil and from the bondage of sin and death. And it means God's perichoresis rule-the Kingdom restores relationships (between God and humanity and the rest of creation) to the way they are meant to be.

“The kingdom is the society in which the Jesus Creed (love God, love others) transforms life…It is important to understand that for Jesus the kingdom is about a society. Jesus did not come merely to enable specific individuals to develop a solo relationship with God, to run about the earth knowing that they, surrounded by a bunch of bunglers, were the only ones to get it right. No, he came to collect individuals into a big heap, set them in the middle of the world, and ask them to live out the Jesus Creed. If they live out that Jesus Creed, they will be personally transformed, and they also will transform the society around them.” (Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed, p. 127)

The Kingdom of God, then, is the society of Christians who love God and love others in order to transform the world.

The gospel I'd like to see Christians sharing is one that says this: God's purpose is to create a society of Christians who follow Christ's Lordship in such a way that they prayerfully seek to bring God's Kingdom rule onto earth as it is in heaven -- infiltrating every aspect of this world, transforming it all into what God wills it to be. This transformation process starts when God, through Christ, transforms individuals into a community that will love God and each other and will seek to transform the world around them. This transformation work is manifested when the community of the Kingdom use their gifts to further Christ's Lordship over all aspects of life on this earth.

When is the Kingdom?
In one of the most amazing verses in the entire Bible, Jesus says,
“The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20)

In our midst?! What is Jesus saying? According to Scot McKnight,

“This can only mean one thing: he expects his followers to live in the kingdom in their daily lives—right now.” (McKnight, The Jesus Creed, p. 128)

Jesus, by announcing the Kingdom, is saying that the sovereign rule of God was now coming “on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt 6:10). The long-awaited Kingdom was being inaugurated, and the King was now bringing redemption to his domain, all of Creation.

The rightful King has come, and the usurper, the Evil One, is about to be defeated. The rightful King has come, and the curse of death will be defeated. The rightful King has come to his Creation in order to bring the Shalom that has been promised through the prophets.

Jesus’ ministry -- teaching parables, his healing the sick, eating meals with sinners -- pointed to the fact that he was announcing that the Kingdom of God was coming.

And his death on the cross launched the Kingdom for his followers, defeating their ultimate enemy, Satan.

“Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die. (John 12:31-33)

Jesus understood that his kingly reign would be established through his death and vindicated through his resurrection. He knew that he would “give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28), and his death would be the means by which people’s sins could be forgiven (Matt 26:28).

Is the Gospel of the Kingdom different from the Gospel that Paul Preached?

The Apostle Paul preached the Kingdom as well (contrary to some who would say that Paul’s gospel was different from Jesus’ gospel). He said, “You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus…Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again.” (Acts 20:20-21, 25). It should be clear from this context that when Paul preached that people “must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus,” that he was “preaching the kingdom.”

The last verses of Acts records, “For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:30-31)

So we shouldn’t be surprised when we read in Paul’s letters triumphal language, “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians 2:15)

So, is the Kingdom "Good News"?

Absolutely. God's Kingdom means that things are now moving toward the way things are supposed to be. The “good news” or gospel is that through Jesus’ death, he has become King, and as King, he has freed us from the devil and is bringing about Shalom Peace.

As the writer of Hebrews tells us,
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Heb 2:14-15)

The Kingdom of God is the good news about the redemption of creation. Humanity is atoned for through the death of Jesus Christ (the next post), and the cosmos is being redeemed through the missionary ministry of God's Spirit-filled people (the post after that).

Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?

technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation

The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 8

In my last post, I looked at how the prophets had predicted exile for unrepentant Israel. Their prophecies were not just about warning, as you can read in the verses I cited. The prophets also promised a future when God would restore relationships between himself and his creation, especially humanity. This restoration of God’s Kingdom was the hope of Israel—the nation was constantly under the oppressive rule of other nations. They realized that, even though they had physically returned to the Promised Land under Ezra and Nehemiah, they were still, in fact, under God’s wrath. God had not forgiven their sins and therefore they were still in exile.

• “But see, we are slaves today, slaves in the land you gave our forefathers so they could eat its fruit and the other good things it produces. Because of our sins, its abundant harvest goes to the kings you have placed over us. They rule over our bodies and our cattle as they please. We are in great distress.” (Nehemiah 9:36-37, see also Ezra 9:8-9)

This is the milieu into which Jesus arrived. The Jews in Jesus’ day were looking forward to a Messiah who would deliver them from this bondage. At this time, it was the oppressive rule of Rome. Some zealots had tried, through aggressive means, to overthrow Roman rule, but all had been squashed. The Pharisees tried to create a pure nation through rules and regulations, but this was merely a veneer. The ruling class (represented by Herod) were compromisers with the Roman state. In this milieu, if someone could come on the scene and prove to the people that he was the King of the Jews, the Messianic savior from Roman rule, the people would sing “hosanna” and the Romans would legitimately see him as a threat (why do you think the sign above Jesus on the cross said, “King of the Jews”?).

But even more is at stake here. The Creator God had always planned to deal with the creation’s predicaments (the destruction of Cosmic Shalom and the alienation of Relationships between God, humans, and creation) through the nation of Israel. This is why this nation was elected in the first place—not to be some small band of people to haughtily claim special favor from God, but as a people ‘blessed to be a blessing.” The Kingdom of God manifested in Israel had always meant to be the vehicle for the salvation of the world. This would be accomplished when Israel’s history reached its climax in her Messiah, the “anointed one,” the King.

So, let’s look at a brief timeline of Jesus’ ministry:

• The angel appears to Mary and announces that she will give birth to “the Son of the Most High,” and that “the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” (Luke 1:32-33)
• In Mary’s “Magnificat,” she utters words that can only mean that through this ruler of the kingdom, God is going to do some pretty amazing socio-political things: He will favor the humble and poor, he will show mercy to those who fear him, he will scatter those who are proud, he will bring down rulers from their thrones but lift up the humble.
• Jesus is sent into the wilderness for 40 days (think the 40 years of exodus wanderings), and there he withstands the Devil’s temptations that seek to short-circuit God’s plan for Jesus to become the King.
• Jesus then went to the synagogue in Nazareth, and what happened there shocks his hometown. He opened the passage from Isaiah 61 (which I cited in my last post) — “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And then he boldly stated, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-21). Again (echoing the Magnificat), these words are Messianic Kingdom words—the restoration of relationships and Shalom to the people, especially to the down-and-outers, those who have not experienced much justice and shalom.
• From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” (Matthew 4:17) After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15). What I hear Jesus saying here is this: “The Kingdom of God is arriving. You must change your course: sin (both personal transgressions and systemic societal injustices) has put you in this predicament, but instead of contrition, you seek to overthrow Rome by force. My way is the way to be Israel; I have an agenda that will set you free. Change your ways and believe in what I can accomplish.” He will later reveal to them the way for Israel to live as the restored Kingdom of God: The way of the Sermon on the Mount, with instructions like, “love your enemies,” and “do not resist evil,” and “turn the other cheek,” and “go the second mile,” and “give to the needy in secret,” and “take the plank out of your own eye” and “build your house on the rock (that is, Jesus).” He will also later reveal the way he would set them free: through his death and resurrection.
• “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.” (Matt 9:35)
• Jesus begins to heal people—and we are told that this is the manifestation of the Kingdom. “If I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). And he also calls and sends his 12 disciples (when we hear “12” we should not miss that the disciples are the reconstituted 12 tribes of Israel) telling them, “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.” (Matt 10:7-8).
• Jesus then began to tell parables to explain the nature of the Kingdom. The parable of the prodigal son is often interpreted in individualistic terms for our personal application. However, the 1st Century Jews would have heard it differently: “The story about a scoundrel young son who goes off into a far pagan country and is then astonishingly welcomed back home is – of course! – the story of exile and restoration. It was the story Jesus’ contemporaries wanted to hear. And Jesus told the story to make the point that the return from exile was happening in and through his own work.” (N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus [InterVarsity Press, 1999], pp. 41-42)

Jesus’ ministry was a living, breathing object lesson explaining that the long awaited time of freedom from bondage had arrived. The exile was about to be over. This was the gospel of the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed.

“The theo-drama (of Scripture) revolves around a series of such exiles and returns. Israel’s is the most conspicuous historical example, though creation itself, ‘groaning’ from its bondage to decay, is also in exile (Rom. 8:22). An evangelical theology needs to keep this broader theo-dramatic horizon in mind in order to understand the central action of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” (Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine [WJK, 2005], pp. 51-52)

Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?

technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation

The Prophesied Kingdom of God

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 7

Our predicament is both COSMIC (all of Creation is fallen and in need of healing) and RELATIONAL (all relationships are broken – in all three directions: between God and humanity and creation).

But God is God, and he determined that he will not let this be the final lot for his Creation. God has determined to bring his sovereign rule to bear on this terrible situation. And the way he determined to do so was through his Son, the Messiah.

During the Exodus, God identified himself clearly to his people in a very specific manner (words that would be repeated for their entire existence): “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exod 20:2). Israel’s role was also clearly stated to them: “You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6). It was only after this point (after God has saved them and identified himself), that God gave them the Law – telling them how to live as worshippers and how to create a society marked by Shalom and Justice (with laws on how to share the land, how to care for the oppressed, how to enact fair laws, how to punish wrong-doers, etc.).

These laws were primarily about that first line of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” They were not a bunch of hoops for the people to jump through, as if God gave a bunch of laws that would be impossible to fulfill so that he could zap them with his wrath. These laws were about relationships. The first tablet of the Ten Commandments told them how to maintain and deepen their relationship with God. The second tablet told them how to maintain and deepen their relationships with fellow human beings.

So, when God shows anger for the breaking of these commands, it is not just the case of a vengeful deity casting damnation on people. It is the case of a loving God who wants Shalom and Justice for his Creation. It is the case of how sinful humans decide to break relationships instead of loving God and others. When Shalom and Justice are broken by the sinful intentions and actions of humanity, it must be dealt with. So, when Israel failed to maintain the society of Shalom and Justice, they were forced out the land – into exile.

The prophets of the exilic age were given the inside scoop of the plan to bring these people out of exile. They were given the vision of the future Messiah who would come and pour out God’s Spirit in a new way (Joel 2:28-29), transforming not only the people of Israel, but all of the nations. Relationships in all three directions (between God and humanity and Creation) would be restored.

Restoration of Relationship with God
The restored relationship with God is the core of the Messianic hope. The New Covenant that was revealed to Jeremiah harkens back to the covenant made during the Exodus, but it will be different. Why? Because the Old Covenant people broke relationship with God: “they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them” (Jer 33:32). You can hear the heart of God there - His yearning for the people to be in loving relationship with Him. So, in the messianic time of the New Covenant, God promises that he will “forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (33:34). This forgiveness is key to Israel’s restoration from their exile. They can only be liberated from exile by a savior who will first forgive the sins that got them there in the first place. But, even greater than temporary forgiveness of sins is the means that this New Covenant will permanently make forgiveness of sins possible: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (v. 33). Whereas the Old Covenant was written on stone tablets, this New Covenant will be written directly on people’s hearts. The point of doing this? It is primarily so that God can say, “I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (v. 33-34). It has been, and always will be, about restored relationships.

Restoration of Relationship among Humanity
The prophets also declare that relationships between neighbors will be restored when the Messiah’s Kingdom comes.

• “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4)

Micah foresaw that in the Messiah’s Kingdom there would be economic justice as well:

• “Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD Almighty has spoken.” (Micah 4:4)

The coming Messianic King will shine as a dawning light in our present kingdom of darkness, and he will be known as the “Prince of Peace,” and “of the increase of his government and peace (shalom) there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.” (Isaiah 9:2-7)

The coming Messiah will usher in the Kingdom time of Shalom and Justice for all of humanity:

• "The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor..." (Isaiah 61:1-2a)

Restoration of Relationship in All of Creation
The hope of the Messianic Kingdom stretches to the non-human part of Creation. God had created the world and it was “very good.” With the Messiah, he will reclaim the Creation as his own, and the Shalom of the Creation will be restored.

• “The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (Isa 11:8-9)

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Next: The New Testament’s proclamation of the Kingdom of God

Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?

technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation

Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 6

To begin with, we must understand that God is an inter-relational being, having existed eternally in the Trinitarian Community — Father, Son and Spirit. The church fathers of the Greek Church called this inter-relationship “the mystery of perichoresis” (perry-co-RAY-sis). Deriving from the Trinitarian passages in the Bible, they described God as three divine persons loving the others in the Trinity with complete selflessness. In a constant “dance” (perichoresis is in the same word family as “choreography”) of mutual love and acceptance, each enveloping and encircling the others. Therefore, at the center of God’s character is relational love. In this eternal communal love, God did not need to create a world of humans in order to have relationship. Nothing compelled God to create, for God has always been in perfect relationship. But, in God’s grace, God made room in the universe for other kinds of beings. And God’s pinnacle of Creation, humanity, was uniquely created to have the capacity to reflect that relational perichoresis.

God created this planet specifically to hold life — God created plants and animals and birds and fish after their own kinds. And then, at the pinnacle of it all, God created humanity. God loves his entire Creation, but there is a special love for human beings, who are not created after their own kind, but more after God’s kind (“‘Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life—the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals.’ So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them” [Gen 1:26-27]). God created humanity to be a community that would reflect his godly qualities into his Creation (the “imago Dei,” the image of God, in us). Mike Wittmer writes,

“God has given us godlike capacities…so that we might enter into three distinct relationships. It is these three relationships that are damaged in sin and restored in salvation. First…God created us in his image so that we might enjoy personal fellowship with him…Second, God created us in his image so that we might enjoy personal fellowship with others (“male and female he created them”)…Third, God created us in His image so that we might enjoy a right relationship with the rest of creation (“subdue” and “rule over” the earth).” (Wittmer, Heaven is a Place on Earth, [Zondervan, 2004], p. 81-82).

So, another way to explain humanity’s predicament is to say that the image of God in humanity is “cracked” (as Scot McKnight writes in Embracing Grace). Therefore, the relational capacity in humanity (in all three directions) has become deeply flawed.

“Theological textbooks will tell you that sin is “any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature.” This is right but just not right enough. Breaking God’s good laws is surely sin, as the act of Adam and Eve to eat the fruit is sin. But, sin is more than this and deeper than this. The reason such a textbook definition is not right enough is that it depersonalizes and de-relationalizes sin…Sin is a relational issue and as such transcends the legal issue. Infidelity is more than an offense of some contractual agreement; infidelity is the disruption or even destruction of a relationship… Sin is clearly the breaking of a law, but more deeply it is a violation of loving God and others. In short, the cracks in the Eikon are relational cracks.” (McKnight, Embracing Grace, pp. 48-50)

So, the FIRST predicament I presented in this series was that the FALL is cosmic—that ALL of Creation was meant to exist in Shalom. Shalom (quoting from Plantinga) is “universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight…the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight.” Shalom is the way things ought to be. But this universal Shalom was shattered by sin. Because of the sin of humanity, all of Creation is in need of redemption. Redemption needs to be huge because the effects of the Fall are huge. The reason Shalom continues to be shattered is because ALL of the Creation is in bondage, destroying the shalom between humanity and God, humanity with each other, and humanity with the rest of Creation.

So, here we have the SECOND predicament (though not really a distinct predicament, but related to the first): that these relationships are deeply damaged.

My point is this: I'm hoping to know and teach a Gospel that is true to Scripture - and the Gospel that I see in the Bible is COSMIC (big enough to redeem all of Creation) and RELATIONAL (getting at the root of the Fall—the loss of our relational capacities).

_____

Next: How the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus as the “Good News” offers the solution to these predicaments.

Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?


technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation

EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 5

According to the New Testament, Christ set us free from bondage through another "exodus." The God of the Old Testament, who freed the Israelites from bondage to Pharoah is the same God of the New Testament, who again frees his people from bondage.

At the Transfiguration Event, we read, "And behold, two men were talking with Him; and they were Moses and Elijah, who, appearing in glory, were speaking of His departure (the Greek word is exodus) which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:30-31)

Vanhoozer comments,

“The mention of ‘exodus’ in connection with Jesus’ death in the account of his transfiguration is hardly coincidental; it rather stands for the entire passion narrative section introduced by that episode. This new exodus, like the earlier one, is God’s mighty act.” (The Drama of Doctrine [WJK, 2005], p. 41).

It is also not coincidental that Jesus’ “Passion” (his suffering, death and resurrection) occurs during Passover Week. The Passover was the celebration of Yahweh’s liberation of the Israelites from the captivity of Egypt. The Last Supper is a Passover meal:

“During the Passover meal someone, usually the youngest son, was designated to ask the question “Why is this night different from other nights?” At this point the host would retell the story of Israel’s deliverance out of Egypt and the meaning of the various elements of the meal. As the host of the Last Supper, Jesus would have been the one who retold the story. Later, the parallels between the Passover and the Last Supper which Jesus was establishing would be quite apparent.” (R.H. Stein, “Last Supper” in Green, McKnight, Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels,[InterVarsity Press, 1992], p. 447)

Again (to harken back to my previous post), it is not coincidental that Paul uses the exodus paradigm of liberation to articulate the Gospel.

• “…giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. ” (Col 1:12-14)

Walsh and Keesmaat comment,

“This language of inheritance, forgiveness and rescue from one empire in order to be freed in another kingdom harks back to the exodus narrative. It was Israel who was rescued from the imperial captivity of Egypt. It was Israel who received the promised land as an inheritance. And it was to rebellious Israel that God revealed himself as a God of forgiveness (see Ex 32:7-34:10). Now, says Paul, we experience an exodus liberation in Jesus…In postmodern terms, this liberation is not in order to enslave us in yet another regime that would violently impose it ideology on us…the kingdom of the beloved Son is a kingdom won not through violence imposed on others but through violence imposed upon the Son.” (Walsh and Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, p. 110)

How does Jesus free us from bondage? The word is “ransom.”

• “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
• “Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” (Titus 2:13-14)
• “You were bought at a price.” (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23)

God’s plan of Redemption is for all Creation, and it is accomplished through the “ransom” of captive humanity from bondage. Leon Morris writes,

“Paul assumes the creation story which sees people as originally in right relationship with God. But the coming of sin made them slaves to sin (Rom 6:6) and liable to the sentence of death (Rom 6:23). One way of viewing what was done at the cross of Christ was to see it as the paying of a price (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23), specifically a ransom (1 Tim 2:6) that frees people from slavery or the death sentence. Releasing people from bondage with the payment of a price is just the sort of thing that the ancient world saw as redemption.” (Morris, “Redemption” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, p. 785)

___

Next: Tying it all together: How Redemption is about restoring Shalom between God and His Creation through the Reconciliation of Atonement.

Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?

technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation

EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 4

“The Exodus tradition lies at the heart of the faith of the OT. It is the supreme example of Yahweh’s saving activity on behalf of his chosen people, and as such it becomes a paradigm for all acts of salvation.” (“Exodus” by J. Gordon McConville in VanGemeren, General Editor, New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, vol. 4, p. 601)

To understand the gospel, we must understand the exodus. To understand what “salvation” is, we must seek to get into the mindset of a 1st Century Jew. The God that they knew from their Scriptures identified himself by saying, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" (Exodus 20:2). They understood their God as the deliverer from oppression, the savior from bondage.

Kevin Vanhoozer (in the book that won Christianity Today’s 2006 Book of the Year for Theology ) writes,

“The deliverance from Egypt is ‘theatrical’ in both its scale and its details and especially in its typological pointing beyond itself to the yet greater liberation to be accomplished in Christ” (Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine [WJK, 2005], p. 41).

Christ’s saving work is often presented in terms that harken to the Exodus:

• “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (Gal 1:3-5)
• “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:13-14)

The New Testament often describes the saving work of Christ in terms of freedom. Some don’t like to hear this, but the gospel is so vast that it takes many metaphors to describe it. Some want to give first place to penal substitution, denying the other ways that the Bible presents the good news of Jesus. However, when we look at the Scriptures, we find that one of the ways that the gospel is presented is as freedom from bondage – we are enslaved by sin, by the world (the present evil age), and by the devil.

Paul, “the Apostle of Liberty” (Longnecker), and the “Apostle of the Heart Set Free” (Bruce), often uses liberty and freedom language as the means to proclaim the gospel. According to Paul,

“The arch-enemy of liberty is Sin, a tyrannical ruler which holds all humanity in bondage (Rom 3:9; Gal 3:22)…Christ comes to liberate human beings from slavery to Sin and all the powers at its command. [J. K. Chamblin, “Freedom” in Hawthorne, Martin, & Reid, editors, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, (InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 313].

• “The Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin.” (Gal 3:22)
• “the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age” (Gal 1:3-4)
• “Don’t be enslaved by the world.” (1 Cor 7:23)
• “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Col 2:15)

Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?

technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation

Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom

The Good News that Conquers Our Predicament, part 3

In my last post, I made the contention that the gospel solves a predicament of cosmic proportions. The first cosmic predicament I suggested we look at in the Scriptures (I have more to come) is the LACK of SHALOM. God created the earth in perfect shalom peace—a place where there is justice, joy, universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen 1:31).

But then the next part of the biblical story happened: Evil entered into the place of Shalom. The earthly realm was unaffected by evil until the serpent (the embodiment of Satan) tempts humanity to sin. This is why we are in the predicament. Humanity was given the mandate to “rule” or “have dominion” because humanity alone is created in the “image and likeness” of God. Satan knows that if he can succeed in tempting these humans (God’s crowning achievement and the only ones with God’s authority to rule this Creation) to think they can be more than the glory of being God’s image and convince them not to trust God and his command to them (the serpent’s lie is this: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”), that he will destroy the Shalom that God has made. It is because humanity sins that the entire good earthly realm is subjected to futility and bondage (Gen 3:14, 17-18; Rom. 8:20-21). Satan gained control only by first controlling humanity. The earth’s fallen condition is the result of Satan's evil intentions and humanity’s failure to trust God’s good intentions. The fall is ultimately humanity’s responsibility, and it resulted in the triad evil that now holds the planet in bondage: The "devil" (an actual person who is the ruler of this present age), the "flesh" (our individual sinful nature), and the "world" (the systemic evil in society).

The reason the Creation no longer experiences God’s intention of pure Shalom Peace is that humanity’s sin has created a state of bondage for all of Creation. Bondage is a major issue in Scripture – where there is bondage, there is no shalom. (In this post, I am not denying other ways to describe the predicament that the Gospel addresses; I am just asking us to think within the flow of this storyline for a while.) Because of the sin of humanity, we forfeited our rightful place of authority on earth as God’s image-bearers and that authority was given to the evil one (Satan has been given the authority of all the kingdoms of the world [Luke 4:6] and is called the “god of this age” [2 Cor 4:4]).

C.S. Lewis understood this. In his classic children’s story, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the main plotline is that Narnia is held bondage to the evil one (in Lewis' story, it is the White Witch), and so in Narnia it is “always winter but never Christmas.” The rightful Ruler of Narnia, Aslan (the Christ figure), has been usurped by the evil one. So, the story is how Aslan ordains that four human beings (Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy) will be his instruments to overthrow the evil one’s grip on Narnia. A subplot finds that when Edmund betrays the others, Aslan sacrifices his life to redeem him (as his substitute). When Edmund is restored, he co-leads the battle against the evil army led by the evil witch. When the victory is won, the four humans are placed upon thrones to rule over Narnia. Lewis tells the story of the cosmic battle of Kingdoms -- Who will rule Narnia? The evil White Witch or Aslan and his vice-regents, the four humans? It is the story of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God that Jesus, the Messiah of the world, proclaimed.

So, here we have it. The key to understanding the Gospel is to truly understand the meaning of the Messiah. The Messiah, Israel’s Anointed King, has an ultimate purpose: that is, to free his Creation from its bondage to Satan, Sin, and the World.

____
In the next couple posts, we will explore how the Christ freed the Creation from bondage through another Exodus event, and how he reconciled the people to God thus re-establishing Shalom between the Creation and the Creator.


Links to the entire series:
1: Define the Predicament, and You Understand another Facet of the Gospel
2: Predicament #1: The Lack of Shalom
3: Evil Bondage in the Place of Shalom
4: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in Paul
5: EXODUS and the GOOD NEWS of FREEDOM in the GOSPELS
6: Another of Humanity’s Predicaments: Broken Relationships
7: The Prophesied Kingdom of God
8: The Kingdom of God Restoring Israel from Exile
9: The Kingdom of God Healing Broken Relationships
10: The Kingdom of God and the Atonement
11: The Kingdom and the Mission of God’s People
12: What is my view of the Kingdom of God?

technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation