Following the Lamb Wherever He Goes (2)
Ch.1: The DNA of
the Church in the Biblical Story
I preface our study
of Revelation with a survey of what I call the “dna” of the church in the
biblical story.
The
Story
A God who is love is a God who has a story.
For love is but the story of how the lover intends and acts for the good of the
beloved over, against, around, and below the obstacles to his achieving that
good. This is the story the Bible tells us. It unfolds like a drama in six acts.[i]
Creation
(Gen.1-2)
God created the world out of nothing to
provide a habitation where he can live with his creatures in well-being and
flourishing. In the cultural setting of the Ancient Near East the creation
accounts in Gen.1 and 2 portray the building of a palace-temple. Where
else would a deity dwell but a temple
The prototype we find there is modelled on
Israel’s temple. The Holy of Holies, where God dwelt, is the garden in Eden
where God would walk and talk with Adam and Eve (Gen.3:8). Eden itself is the
Holy Place where sacrifices and worship were offered. The larger world outside
Eden, which is watered and nourished by the four rivers coming out of Eden
(Gen.2:8) so that it may be habitable as well. Adam and Eve are styled as the
first priests in the Holy of Holies. They are given dominion as divine
image-bearers for the settling and shaping of this palace-temple (Gen.1:26-28)
and its protection and nurture (same word pair used to describe priestly duties
elsewhere in the Old Testament).
The human vocation is to be royal priests,
children of the Great King who represent him throughout creation reflecting his
character and will and priests charged with the protection expansion of this
primal palace-temple to the very ends of creation itself.
That’s the vision we have here in the
beginning. We see its full and final form in the last vision of the book of
Revelation concerning the New Jerusalem (chs.21-22). Here we find the new
creation has become not simply the temple but indeed the Holy of Holies the
place God dwells and meets with his people.[ii]
Here in these first two chapters of Genesis we
also find the other benchmarks of the story besides the Temple. Adam and Eve
are symbols of humankind, the people of God. God’s covenant with these his
children, his family, and his rule as the Great King in his Kingdom are present
by implication. Neither need to be spelled out at this point.
We
have the beginning of God’s dream and the picture of its realization. They are
the great bookends around the Bible’s story and must always be kept in mind as
we proceed through the story. They give it its plot line and rationale.
Catastrophe
(Gen.3-11)
Between Gen.1-2 and Rev.21-22 the biblical
story shows us how God deals with the unfathomable and inexplicable revolt
against him. Gen.3-11 unfolds a primal litany of the dashing of God’s dream for
his creation. Each of what we have come to call the Seven Deadly Sins find
their first instance in these stories. More importantly, the royal priests God
commissioned as agents in the extension of God’s palace-temple have become
saboteurs of that very project.
Humanity has turned its back on God living now
from its own resources. Its heart has become rather Grinch-like, at least two
sizes too small. Men and women are no longer at home with themselves or with
each other. Society is in chaos. And God’s good creation is coming apart at the
seams.
-The family God wanted is in shambles rent by
violence and all manner of malady (the implicit covenant is broken).
-Humanity has been exiled from God’s presence
(the Temple of Garden of Eden).
-The rule of God has been challenged and
resisted (the Kingdom of God is contested).
The catastrophe of sin begins in the garden
with Adam and Eve, engulfs their children Cain and Abel, creates cities and
cultures opposed to God, and finally ends with the de-creation of the flood.
God starts over again with Noah and his family but with the same sad result.
Covenant/Israel
(Gen.12 – Malachi 4)
God never acquiesces in this human revolt,
however. After the Babel fiasco, he begins yet again. This time with
another couple, Abraham and Sarah, whose family will be the community through
whom he resolves the problem of sin. This strategy of using a particular entity
to achieve universal consequences is God’s way of working henceforth. The universal
horizon of Gen.1-11 narrows to the particular horizon of this one people.
Gen.12:1-3 classically expresses this strategy. God promises Abraham and Sarah
that through them
-he will raise up a great new family,
-he will bless and protect that family, and
-he will bless all other peoples through that
family.
Abraham’s people will henceforth bear the
destiny of the whole world. What happens to them matters for everyone else!
This is the people God has chosen to be his
Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement (SCRM). God
-unilaterally commits to them in covenant
with Abraham (Gen.15,17).
- gathers them from Abraham’s family in
Genesis (12-50).
-rescues them from slavery in Egypt in Exodus
(1-15)
-creates a nation, his people, and makes
another covenant with Moses through which Israel demonstrates to the
world the life God intends for all humanity (Ex.19-24; Deut.4:5-8).
-guides and disciplines this disobedient and
often idolatrous people even making a further covenant with David promising
a Davidic ruler on Israel’s throne forever (2 Sam.7).
-as king after king fails from the two
kingdoms into which the people have split, the prophet Jeremiah promises a new
covenant, a better one, which will succeed where the former covenants have
failed.
-paralleling
this covenantal history, the kingdom of God ebbs and flows with the
people’s obedience (or lack thereof). The high point in exhibiting this kingdom
is with David. The low point is exile, a condition that exists beyond the Old
Testament, through the intertestamental period and into the time of Jesus.
-the
Temple likewise develops from ad hoc altars with the patriarchs,
a Tabernacle for the people on the move from Exodus to Solomon’s
building and dedicating the Temple in Jerusalem. This Temple was
destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6th century B. C. and rebuilt by
those who returned from exile. Though rebuilt, the glory of God never returned
to this Temple, foreshadowing its rejection by Jesus and final destruction by
the Romans in 70 A. D.
|
Covenant
|
Kingdom
|
Temple
|
|
Abraham
|
-
|
ad hoc altar
|
|
Moses
|
Israel becomes a nation
|
Tabernacle
|
|
David
|
United
Kingdom under King David, Davidic successor promised, low point in exile
|
Temple
built by Solomon, destroyed by Babylonians
|
|
New Covenant
|
New kind of kingdom promised
|
Temple
rebuilt but not claimed by the glory of God
|
Our three benchmarks all follow a similar
trajectory in this period. A build up to the time of David with a subsequent
tragic fall somewhat buffered (for some but not for all) by God’s promise to
David of a perpetual heir on Israel’s throne and Jeremiah’s promise of a new
covenant.
Israel has failed its mandate to be God’s
“pilot project,” his prototype of what God intends for humanity, his SCRM.
-Instead
of a people who lived gratefully under his kingship, this people lusted for a
human king so they could be like all the other nations.
-Instead of practicing Jubilee (Lev.25), the
most profound and radical social legislation anywhere, which would have
provided for an unprecedented social and economic levelling every generation,
Israel chose to play by the “one who dies with the most toys wins” ethic all
the peoples around them played by.
-Instead
of trusting God to be their warrior, Israel trusted in a professional army,
military might, and political alliances for its security.
In other words, Israel egregiously broke the
covenant God graciously made with them. They rejected his Kingdom for one just
like every other nation. And they forfeited his glorious presence for a
domesticated and manipulable deity like the ones they accused the “pagans” of
worshiping. Israel failed miserably as God’s chosen SCRM, kicked dirt on his
name in the world, and stalled his project of reclaiming and restoring his
wayward creation. They became part of the problem God called them into
existence to solve.
Now God has to deal with their failure as well
as that of Adam and Eve. The people God intends to be his agent or vehicle of
blessing the rest of the world have to be remade. And through them salvation
will come to all others. Whatever God does will have to resolve both issues.
Yet our God is infinitely resourceful. He is
not stymied nor his plans brought to naught by our faithlessness.[iii]
He will play the hand we deal him with grace and finesse and will finally
prevail.
And that leads us to next act in the drama,
the decisive and climactic one, to which we now turn.
Christ
We have arrived at the center of the biblical
story with Jesus Messiah.[iv]
Messiah is not only the figure expected to resolve the issues having to do with
Israel but also, as Israel’s Messiah, the ruler of the world. As such Jesus is
uniquely situated to deal with both the problems we just noted.
But there is more to it than that. Far more.
Here we meet that second mystery on which the Christian faith is founded.
Theologically we call it incarnation. More popularly we call it Christmas.
Astonishingly, it means that God himself has come among us, as one of us.
Again, there no way to explain how this can be. We can only acknowledge it for
it is as the Bible bears witness to it.
-God
in Christ will do for us what we will not and, hence, cannot do for
ourselves.
-And God in Christ will do as us
what we ought to do as truly human creatures.
In, with, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth God has come
among us showing us what God looks like in human flesh, but also what humanity
looks like filled with God’s life.
A Declaration of Faith nicely summarizes the first part of that
statement in these words:
“Jesus' involvement in the human condition is God's
involvement.
His compassion for all kinds of people is God's compassion.
His demand for justice, truth, and faithfulness is God's demand.
His willingness to suffer rejection is God's willingness.
Jesus' love for the very people who reject him is God's love.”[v]
His compassion for all kinds of people is God's compassion.
His demand for justice, truth, and faithfulness is God's demand.
His willingness to suffer rejection is God's willingness.
Jesus' love for the very people who reject him is God's love.”[v]
It
also captures the last part in these good words from ch.4, ll.36-44. Though he
bore our own sinful flesh[vi]
(Rom.8:3)
“Jesus was what we should be.
He served his Father with complete trust
and unwavering obedience.
He loved all kinds of people
and accepted their love.
In constant dependence upon the Holy Spirit,
He served his Father with complete trust
and unwavering obedience.
He loved all kinds of people
and accepted their love.
In constant dependence upon the Holy Spirit,
Jesus allowed no temptation or threat to keep
him
from loving God with his whole being
and his neighbor as himself.”
from loving God with his whole being
and his neighbor as himself.”
What God looks
like as a human being and what human beings are supposed to look like as his
good creation reads like what I am calling God’s subversive
counter-revolutionary movement. Continuing with A Declaration of Faith,
we learn that Jesus “overthrew evil powers,” “healed,” “commanded loyalty to
him(self) above loyalty to family and country,” “taught” with “authority,” and
“forgave sinners”[vii]
He does this by making “no use of power” himself, by not avoiding “pain and
suffering,” by living as a “servant,” by “submitting to humiliation and death
without a word” of protest, by allowing himself to be “counted among sinners.”[viii]
This is how God is among us as a human
being and how as a human being he is filled with God’s life. And how God models
and enables his SCRM in the world.
In Jesus the three benchmarks of
covenant, kingdom, and temple find their fulfilment – in his person.
-In the upper room the night before his death
Jesus hosts a covenant renewal meal for his disciples where his own body and
blood are the meal (Matt.26:28), the covenant renewed.
-“But if it is by the finger of God that I
cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Lk.11:20).
- “Jesus
answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The
Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of
his body” (Jn.2:20-21).
Jesus claims
that he is God’s covenant with Israel for the world. That he is the Kingdom of
God in person. And he is the temple, the presence of God, in bodily form. The
story thus brings its main theme, the presence of God with his people, his
family, and his subjects, to a climax in Jesus. In and through his life as
described briefly above God triumphs over the powers which have hijacked his
creation and raised up a people who will live in the freedom Christ has won for
them for the sake of the world.
Jesus’ earthly
ministry focused on reconstituting the people of Abraham as the people through
whom God would bless the world. He was that one faithful Israelite through whom
God fulfilled his promises to Abraham and Sarah in Gen.12.
-He gathered followers who were to be the nucleus of that new people of Abraham.
-He blessed them with his presence and the time he spent training them.
-He tells them to take the blessing of God to
the world (the so-called Great Commission in Matt.28:16-20; the call to meet in
Galilee to continue ministry in Mk. 16; the preaching of repentance and
forgiveness of sins in Lk.24:47-48; and /in receiving the Spirit and the
commission to preach forgiveness to everyone in Jn.20:22-23).
So we can say that in his earthly
ministry Jesus called together and equipped the new people of Abraham. He then
sent them out to bless the world after his resurrection.
These people went
out in a wider Jewish and Gentile world as commissioned and they shared the
good news of Jesus, in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, as the central
event of all creation and history. In their message that Jesus lives for us in
victory today is our source and hope. That we live in him in his victory today
is the assurance and power of our ongoing service in God’s SCRM.
To that life in
Christ living out his victory we turn in the next act of scripture’s drama.
Covenant/Church
Jesus came to renew and reestablish the people
of Abraham in his earthly ministry. In his risen Lordship he indwells, equips,
leads, and makes his SCRM victorious in the power of his Spirit poured out at
Pentecost.
In the life of these earliest Christian communities
we are afforded an invaluable glimpse into how they incarnated their new life
as God’s SCRM in their 1st century world. The New Testament leaves
us with roughly these seventy years of church life as stories, teaching, and
insight that orients us to being God’s people and fires our imaginations to
improvise our way to faithfulness in the very different world we live in. Our
task is to perform the basic insights, dynamics, and practices of their story
into insights, dynamics, and practices that exhibit that same story under new
conditions.
The apostle Paul is our chief (though
certainly not the only) instructor from whom we take our cues for improvising
faithfulness in our communities. We will focus on him, though, because we do
not have space to do more than that here.
I’m going to focus on one remarkable letter. A
letter than in recent years has come to challenge Romans as the chief of Paul’s
letters. A letter that I title “The Making of God’s Subversive
Counter-Revolutionary Movement.” A letter[ix]
named “Ephesians” in our Bibles. Ephesians deals with no particular problem in
that church and is a survey of Paul’s understanding of God’s “eternal purpose”
(3:11). In this letter Paul[x]
lays out in an ordered way the “big picture” of what God is up to from eternity
past (1:3) to eternity future (2:7) and where he taking this world he created.
Further he structures it in such a way as to show us how we can live into this
vision and play our roles in its unfolding. Here’s a diagrammatic breakdown of
the letter.
Ephesians: The Making of God’s Subversive
Counter-Revolutionary Movement
1:1-2 Greeting
1:3-3:21 “Sit”
(2:6) ` Rhetorical Direction
Mystery 1:3-23
1:10 – God’s Plan
Memory 2:1-22
2:10: What We are Saved For
Mentor 3:1-21
3:10: The Church’s Task
Divine Warfare Pattern
Kingship/conflict-victory/celebration/temple-building
(1:19-2:22)
4:1-6:9 “Walk”
4:1-6:9 Membership
toward Maturity
4:10: Gifts
5:10: Aim of Life
6:10-20 “Stand”
6:10-20 Mode
6:10: Stand in Strength of the Lord
Paul structures Ephesians with three posture
images: Sit, Walk, and Stand. They are filled out with what I call the five
“M’s” of Ephesians: the mystery of God’s gracious plan, the memory
of God’s victories, the mentor who guides us into living into God’s
gracious plan, membership in the community of faith growing toward maturity,
and the mode of our life in the community of faith.
Paul designs this letter rhetorically to move
toward its climax at the end – the armor of God and spiritual warfare![xi]
The arrow in the diagram indicates this.
Under the “Sit” image Paul provides the
community everything it needs to receive from God’s grace to be faithful and
effective participants in God’s SCRM. Sitting points to receptivity as the mode
appropriate to this moment in Christian growth. It all starts with God and what
God has done for us and that exactly where Paul begins. He expounds the mystery
that envelops us and the world: that Jesus Christ is the one under whom God
will gather and order all things (1:10). Paul next recalls for us God’s “skins
on the wall” – his victories over the power that divide us from God and one
another and keep us from living as God desires (2:10). Finally, Paul presents
himself as our mentor in living into God’s SCRM. He even identifies the task of
the SCRM: proclaiming in word and deed God’s liberating wisdom to the powers
that have held humanity captive that their days of misrule are over (3:10).
Once we have sat under and allowed God’s grace
to overwhelm us, we can “Walk.” In this section of the letter Paul addresses a
wide variety of issues for members of the community who live together and seek
to grow to maturity. He deals with the gifts (4:10) of apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors, and teachers and how they equip the church for its maturity
and ministry in the world. Then he deals with how we seek to please the Lord
(5:10), community builders and busters, and relations within the community
(husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves).
Finally, Paul reaches the point of his
exposition – to “Stand” against the spiritual powers that oppose God. This is
the mode of existence for God’s SCRM. In this struggle God gives us his very
own armor to wear. With his word and prayer as weapons we sally forth into the
battle to do the “violence of love”[12] as God’s SCRM.
Non-violent peacemaking and reconciliation are the hallmarks of this “violence
of love”[xii]
and the character of our warfare. And that, as I have said, is exactly what
Paul wanted the Ephesians to embrace.
From 1:20 -2:22 Paul employs a pattern found
in the Old Testament and elsewhere in ancient Near Eastern cultures, a divine
warfare pattern. This was a way of asserting Kingship through acclamation,
rehearsal of the King’s victorious conflicts, celebration, and climatically,
temple-building. Tim Gombis shows how this works out in Ephesians.
“The author’s concern is to assert the
lordship of Christ over the powers and authorities that rule the present evil
age (1:20-23). This lordship is vindicated by a rehearsal of the triumphs of
God in Christ throughout Ephesians 2, where God in Christ has freed people from
bondage under the control of the powers, raising people from death and seating
them with Christ in the heavenlies (2:1-10). Further, he has overcome the deep
division within humanity created by the law. The evil powers hijacked God’s
good gift of the Mosaic Law and perverted it into a source of alienation,
bitterness and division. In his death, Christ conquered this enmity by uniting
both Jew and Gentile in Christ in one New Humanity (2:11-16). Because of these
triumphs, Christ has the right to build his temple, which he has done in
creating the church, the place where God in Christ dwells by the Spirit
(2:19-22).”[xiii]
Consummation
The
final act of the biblical drama is found in the last vision of the book of
Revelation, chs.21-22. Here we find what we saw in embryo in Gen.1-2 fully
realized. Sin has been dealt with and has no influence here. The long narrative
of Gen.3-Rev.20 has finally reached its goal.
-creation
is purified and renewed – it is new creation (Rev.21:1)!
-the
covenant is fulfilled and God is at home with his family (Rev.21:3 – the
covenant formula).
-the
Kingdom is also fulfilled, God is in charge (see “throne” 21:3,5; 22:1,3).
-there
is no temple but the entire new creation has become a Holy of Holies where God
and his people live in fellowship forever (21:22).
-humanity
“reigns” forever (22:5) as we were always intended to do.
We are no longer an SCRM, the days of battle
and struggle are over. Peace reigns. All is as it should be.
As we read Revelation this is the story line
it climaxes and brings to completion. Here we learn the “big picture” toward
which God is working and of which Christ is the centerpiece. This story will inform our interpretation of Revelation all
along the way.
[ii] The
New Jerusalem is cubic-shaped. The only other structure so shaped in the Bible
is the Holy of Holies (1 Kings 6:20).
[iii] “God
comes to us on God’s own terms and is able to do far more than we think or
ask.” A Declaration of Faith, ch.1, ll.12-13.
[iv] Christ
is the Greek word for Messiah. I use the latter to remind us that Christ is not
Jesus’ last name but his title, his role.
[ix] Because
early, reliable manuscripts of this letter have no addressee where our Bibles
have “in Ephesus,” and the letter lacks the personal greetings Paul usually
appends to his letters (esp. to a church where he spent a great deal of time
like Ephesus), and there is no particular theological or practical problem
dealt with, it seems likely this was intended to be a circular letter to a
group of churches in Asia Minor. It would serve admirably as a survey of the
apostle’s understanding of what he calls God’s “eternal purpose” (Eph.3:11).
[x] Many
New Testament scholars do not believe Paul wrote Ephesians for various reasons.
The letter does say some things Paul did not say in the letters everyone agrees
he wrote. But it does not say anything he could not have said. Even if it was
written by an associate, perhaps shortly after his death, to preserve and pass
on his legacy, it can still fairly be called “Pauline” because it reflects his
vision and practice of the gospel.
[xi]
Andrew Lincoln, "Stand, Therefore ... ": Ephesians 6:10-20 as
Peroratio,” Biblical
Interpretation,
Volume
3, Issue 1 (1995), 99 – 114.
[xiii]
Timothy G.
Gombis, “The Triumph of God in Christ: Divine Warfare in the Argument of
Ephesians,” Tyndale Bulletin 56.1 (2005), 159.
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