Christian Theology in a Thumbnail: Church (17)
God chose/elected humanity in Christ
from before the foundation of the world (Eph.1:3f.). Thus, God has determined not to be God
without us! He could have been, God lacked nothing and needed nothing to be
God. God, the one triune God, is an
eternal communication, communion, and community between the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Spirit. Creation then
is not a necessity for God to be God; it is a free act of his love extending
his inner-trinitarian fellowship to those other than himself.
We
creatures went astray and botched God’s design for us and for creation but
good! This primal rebellion of creature
against Creator messed everything up.
When God launched his counter-offensive against this revolution, he
called a pagan idolater out of Ur and promised to make through him and his wife
a great people, to bless that people, and to use that people to bless everyone
else (Gen.12:1-3).
Abraham’s
family, then, is the “vehicle” God will use to reclaim and restore his erring
creatures and heal his damaged creation.
Since we too, though faith in Christ are also made a part of Abraham’s
family (Rom.4; Gal.3), the character of this family is of utmost concern for
us. I suggest the best way to describe
this family in all the forms it has taken through history – slaves freed and
fugitive, wandering nomads, a loose confederation of clans, a united and then
divided state, a people in exile, a transnational community in Christ – is as a
Subversive/Counter-Revolutionary/Movement.
-Subversive because
they are to be a living protest against the ethics, ethos, and environment of
the fallen world they inhabit.
-Counter-Revolutionary
because they not only protest but also live a different way of life aligned
with God’s will and way.
-Movement because
they are “sent” by God to take his subversive counter-revolution to all the
world.
We could use more
traditional language and describe the church as “sign, foretaste, and
instrument” of God’s kingdom (Lesslie Newbigin), or in the language I prefer, a
“sign, sacrament, and servant” of that kingdom.
In either form, I think, this language hides through familiarity or
piety more than it reveals. Biblical
thought about the church only regains its “edge” and gives the church the sense
of urgency and passion it needs to faithfully participate in the subversive,
counter-revolution God is waging against the powers of sin, evil, and
death.
These latter, defeated by Christ on the cross and at his resurrection from the dead, are not yet fully and finally vanquished. Implementing and extending Christ’s victory in subverting their foul designs and living again as God desires is his agenda for his people. And in doing this, they discover the way God always intended them to live and serve him.
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