Army of Priests

I am convinced that the Cross of Christ is the solution to all the decay in this world. I don’t think it is just the means by which we can escape the earth to the safety of heaven whilst it descends into hell. I think Jesus died to redeem us, to fix us, to cleanse us from sin, heal us from pain, fill us with love, and make us what we were made for – beings that glorify God. This is the “missio dei” or “the mission of God”.

As part of this I have moved beyond thinking of our role as Christians as being merely that of evangelism – to convert people from one idea to another; and have come rather to think of us as participating in what is known as “Kingdom Mission” – the transformation of our lives, our communities, and our worship in real, meaningful ways. This is what being missional is all about and why I have the “friend of missional” link on the side of my blog.

In thinking about Kingdom Mission I have found it helpful to split it into two parts: being in places where it is dark and then bringing light to these places. Contextual and Incarnational Living.

Contextual Living

I have written on this before. Contextual living is nothing more than “being there”. It’s the first rule of evangelism: show up.

I can’t remember where I saw it but I once read a quote that goes: “You can’t change what you don’t see.” It’s terribly true. There is so much pain, loneliness, hopelessness and evil in this world. But it’s ‘out there’. It’s not sitting where it is comfortable for you to reach it. It’s very tempting to sit back and church and wait for God to dump an easy opportunity right in front of us that is nice and easy and doesn’t require any dear grace on our part. In fact, this is what charity does. Charity is great but it is dangerous – it allows us the ability to feel good about ourselves when really we have placed a proxy between us and the people who need us. We must invest with more than money, relationships are needed also.

I grew up in the religious ghetto. I was born into a Christian Cult called Revival Centres (aka Christian Assemblies). They were extremely wary about any contact with anyone outside the church. Fortunately, my parents moved on whilst I was still quite young and we started going to AOG churches. Now there is a very strange thing about growing up in Church – it separates you entirely from the culture around you.

See, when you get heavily involved in Church you end up devoting all your time to Christian activities. I would go to church on Sunday, Have prayer on Monday, Youth Leadership team meeting on Tuesday, Bible Study on Wednesday, might take Thursday and Friday off, and have Youth on Saturday. Many Christians never have contact with non-Christians, and if they do they rarely develop deep, meaningful relationships.

Church’s would do much better if rather than engaging their congregations in endless spiritual activity they cut back and encouraged them to spend one day a week spending time in a ’3rd place’ with non-Christians. 3rd places are where people play. A 1st place is somewhere like home, a 2nd place is work, a 3rd place is a bar or sports field. People relax and open up in 3rd places. It’s where relationships are formed.

We have to be very intentional about meeting darkness head on in this world. Weather that means going next door to confront the loneliness in our suburbs or heading to Africa to fight starvation amongst children. Do anything short of sin to get where it hurts in people’s lives. If that means swearing then swear. If it means disruption then disrupt. If it means giving then give. God came all the way across the universe to live in our gutters and our suffering and the result was our eternity.

Incarnational Living

Then once we are in dark places it is our duty to bring light to those places. To transform these places and drag them into the kingdom of God. Go into darkness and bring with you the light. Go and Do. Heal pain, show love, teach truth. This is where we get to be Jesus and introduce people to Him.

Incarnational Living looks differently in different situations. To the waiter’s union in inner-city Brisbane it means holding problem solving sessions for issues in the community and then revealing to people they chose and successfully implemented where following the principals of Christ. For Mother Teresa it meant serving the poorest and most helpless in the community. For Martin Luther King it meant confronting social injustice head on. For xxxchurch it means going into sex shows to tell porn stars that Jesus loves them. For Shane Caliborne it means holding a juggling act when the kids in the community start a fight. For someone else it may mean cooking a meal for a sick neighbour, taking in a young girl who chose to have a baby rather than an abortion, mentoring a high-risk kid, or daring to pray for a sick work mate.

All these actions shine light into dark situations. They deal with the real problems and effects of sin in practical ways. None of them are easy but this only serves to make them more significant. Whilst the ways God works are various can think of a few things we should all be doing: Praying, Sharing, Fasting, Teaching, and Celebrating God’s work.

Incarnational Living serves to introduce people to a concrete, present-day Christ, not an abstract, 2000 year-old, dead guy. As lives are transformed they’ll be swept up into the arms of God as well. Let’s “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12)

Reach into the Darkness

“Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light.” – Norman B. Rice

We’ve been told to be in this world but not of it (John 17 – Contextual and Incarnational Living), but so often I feel like we Christians are of the world but not in it. Like we have wrapped the world’s addictions to safety, comfort, greed, pride, dishonesty, and loneliness in new religious garb whilst also retreating to safe spaces surrounded by holy walls. I’m as bad or worse than anyone.

Yet I believe that the Cross of Christ is the solution to all the decay in this world. I believed that God, the king of history, reached into our darkness – even surrendering himself to the disgrace of death by torture just to give a hand that pulls us into the light. I look at much of the darkness in this world – the hunger, the wars, the greed – both right in front of me and a million miles a way. But Christ died to give us hope of something more and it is our duty to share that hope with people who need it most.

God created this universe. He flung stars into space. He spins galaxies on His finger tips. There is nothing He cannot do, no life He cannot save. Our arguments and fears mean nothing in the light of His glory. He merely needs us to go. Go and be Truth and Love.

Change the world.

Given some of my comments previously I thought it would be appropriate to clarify my position on penal substitution. Penal Substitution is one of many “models” of the atonement which has become more controversial over the last few years as many Christians (particularly those from the emerging conversation which I consider myself a part of) have begun to challenge its long standing (since the middle-ages) position as the core of Christian doctrine.

As a starting point I believe that the cross is multi-faceted in the way it deals with sin and heals our world. As such I do not believe it is a case of choosing one model at the expense of the others. I believe all (or most) “models” of the atonement should be taken into our understanding. However, I also believe penal substitutionary atonement has been over-emphasised at the expense of the other “facets” and needs to be put back in its appropriate place. I believe this emphasise is damaging in that penal substitutionary atonement has the potential to distort our view of wrath if not analysed properly.

An explanation of Penal Subsitutionary Atonement (aka Satisfaction Theory or Propiationary Atonement) goes as follows: The wages of sin are death. God, because He is just and cannot go against His own nature requires that all sin must be paid for (thus the existence of hell). Jesus death satisfies God’s justice thus allowing Him to forgive and enables us to escape the penalty that was waiting for us. In essence, Jesus death allows God to be both just and merciful at the same time.

My Problems with this View:

1. Penal Substitutionary Atonement changes God instead of Man

In this view it is God who has a problem that must be dealt with in order for us to escape hell. Jesus death changes God, enabling Him to pardon us from our sin. But this is counter-intuitive: surely the problem is with us and not God.

2. Penal Substitutionary Atonement separates the Father from the Son

In this model Jesus is a separate entity to the Father who, by dying, can satisfy the Father. The Son has come to earth to save us from the Father.

3. Penal Substitutionary Atonement separates Jesus death from His life and resurrection

According to this idea Jesus came merely to die as His death alone could satisfy His purposes. Different meanings must be given to His life and resurrection in order for them to have purpose. The incarnation is no longer viewed as a single ‘package’.

Biblical Basis

What is biblical about this view is that Jesus death was the result of Him bearing the consequences of our sin so that we don’t have to. This idea is threaded throughout the New Testament so I wont bother listing verses here. It should be noted that this idea doesn’t need to be carried on the back of this model.

What is unbiblical about this view is the idea that God’s wrath requires satisfaction. This view is based around the thought that our actions can earn favour from God and is inherently pagan in origin. In Pagan mythology people would sacrifice animals to the gods so that they would avert disaster or have good crops. This is what we call propiation.

But Hebrew sacrifices (and the bible in general) emphasise expiation. Expiation is the process by which we are cleansed of sin as opposed to changing God’s view of that sin. The change is in us instead of God.

Justice

However, the big issue here is our understanding of Justice. We in the western world have a very stage idea of justice. Our court systems are based around the idea of punishing someone so that their pain will satisfy the victim’s (and nation’s) vengeance. Courts are meant to insure that the perpetrators of a crime suffer as much as their victims have. “An eye for an eye” is the basis of the idea.

But as Gandhi said, continuing Jesus tradition started in Mathew 5:38-42, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” Our legal system suffers from the logical fallacy that two wrongs make a right. Perpetrating evil in an attempt to destroy evil only ever leads to ever growing spirals of violence. War cannot create peace. It is based on the flawed myth of redemptive violence.

We western Christians, coming from a modern world view, then read this warped understanding of justice back into the biblical text. This is a mistake. God’s justice, rather than being the execution of his vengeance, is focused on redemption and reconciliation. Earthly (or vigilante?) justice is executed when a young man who killed a family’s son is sent to jail for life for what he has done. God’s justice is executed when that grieving family takes that broken man under their wings as their new son. It happens when wounds are healed and relationships are restored to their Godly standing – based in mutual love and respect. Justice happens when relationships are “justified” – put into right alignment.

Consider the close relationship between mercy and justice in the following passages: Isaiah 1:17, 30:18, Jeremiah 21:12, Zechariah 7:9, and Matthew 12:18-21. And read Jesus own mission statement in Luke 4:18-19: “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 favour.” You’ll notice that the entire statement is about reconciliation. To release prisoners rather than put them in jail. To fix things rather than make them worse.

However, I wouldn’t want to make the mistake of forgetting God’s wrath. It is not something I fully understand. But it is real. Sin is serious. I am convinced however that it is a part of justice – not all of justice. Perhaps Mathew 25:31-46 is a clue to understanding this.

This concept of justice runs right through the New Testament (and much of the Old). It is the reason the early Christians were strict pacifists requiring new Christians who were soldiers, along with prostitutes or judges to leave their profession (Tertullian wrote, “The divine banner and the human banner do not go together, nor the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil. Only without the sword can the Christian wage war: for the Lord has abolished the sword.” Origen wrote, “You cannot demand military service of Christians any more than you can of priests. We do not go forth as soldiers.” It should be noted however that around 160-70 AD some Christians were soldiers going against the general will of the apostles and church fathers but were not excluded from communion). Jesus death teaches us that there is something worth dying for but nothing worth killing for.

It is also why Christians had to be hospitable to even the lowest members of society. As Christ’s ambassadors they has to execute God justice and love which was reconciliation.

From this perspective we see that Christ’s death, rather than satisfying God’s sense of Justice, actually executes God’s justice by repairing the broken relationship between God and man.

For further resources on this topic I highly recommend this sermon on the atonement by Bishop Ware. My notes can be found here. Also Sharktacos at The Rebel God frequently discusses this issue.

PS: I will be trying to post something every Friday from now on (Australian Eastern Standard Time). Though with my previous record I could miss a few!

In my previous post I discussed how I felt contemporary Christianity’s popular gospel message had reduced the good news to just another consumer product. I also pondered how to evangelise a gospel which was much more demanding and, I believe, true to the original message. The next few posts are my fractured part-answers to my questions.

The Cross of Christ

I think Christians often underestimate the power of the cross. Many times I have heard people ask “Why did Jesus have to die?” If you believe He died only to provide for us a means of forgiveness from sins it is a valid question. God doesn’t need blood to forgive. He is absolutely in love with you. He begs to spend every moment with you. If He slept He would dream of you. He is your one true father. He wishes to lavish you with attention. He isn’t looking over you waiting for you to stuff up so that He can punish you. And He certainly doesn’t need payment to satisfy Himself (the oft-taught dogma that God’s wrath needs to be satisfied before His love can forgive does not appear in the Bible; God justice is not vengeance). The son did not come to save us from the Father.

But if Jesus died for our redemption we have a different story. You see, God didn’t need Jesus to die – we did. Whilst God would forgive us in a second without Jesus I doubt we would turn to Him. And sin has done much more damage than just to put a few black marks against our name. It has consistently and cruelly destroyed the image of God that was once in us. Over the centuries it has turned us from glorious beacons of God into awful monsters. It is this fate – being monsters – that hangs in the balance. I believe God came to redeem us from this reality and to turn us into fulfilled, living people who will glorify Him the way we were made to.

How does the cross do this?

The Cross reveals our Sin

The Pharisees accused Jesus of blaspheme against the temple for His statement that “not one stone will be left here upon another” (Matthew 24:2). Jesus was telling the truth. They taunted His majesty by giving Him a crown of thorns. Jesus is the king of the heavens. With whips they tore the skin of His flesh. Jesus comforted the poor. They spat on Him. Jesus feed the hungry. They shamed Him before crowds. Jesus healed the sick. They nailed His hands to the cross. Jesus never sinned.

Christ’s death represents the greatest injustice of human history. Jesus let himself – the only truly pure and righteous man – be killed upon a roman torture device. In so doing He proves once an for all that we are evil. The fact that my sins resulted in the death of the most beautiful thing in the world teaches me how far I have fallen. And His death exposes for once and for all the prince of this world for what he is – disgusting. As Colossians 2:15 says, “having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Christ, by His death exposed those powers and authorities, and their exposure is God’s victory.

This revelation leads to conviction which leads to humility and fear which leads to repentance. A deep, life changing form of repentance birthed in brokenness before God. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17) This form of brokenness is a far cry from the usual consumerist response we often try to use to get people to convert.

The Cross reveals our Beauty

The fact we killed Christ proved we are ugly, but the fact Christ let us proves we are beautiful. Jesus, the king of the 160 billion galaxies in the known universe, made Himself nothing – even going so far to submit himself to our scorn and death on the cross (Philippians 2:6-8)! And He did it entirely because of love (John 3:16). That shows just how valuable we are.

There are two types of value an object may have. Firstly, it may have instrumental value – we value it because of what it can do for us. Secondly, it may have intrinsic value – we value it because of what it is. If a fire burns in your house you would grab your birth certificate and drivers license because they have instrumental value. But you would grab the family photos because of their intrinsic value.

One of the great problems with sin is that it emphasizes people’s instrumental value at the expense of their intrinsic value. Lust, for instance, is the focus on a person’s ability to bring you pleasure whilst degrading their instrumental value as a person with their own needs and feelings. So often do we make this mistake. How many times have you become frustrated with the slowness of a checkout chick, as though she were just a machine, without ever considering that perhaps she is having a bad day herself.

By exposing our evil Christ’s death strips us of our instrumental value – we are worth nothing to Him for what we can do for Him. But it elevates our intrinsic value to new heights. The fact that even though we can never repay Him, but He still died for us shows that He did it just because He values us for what we are. That is true love. And where conviction brings us to our knees, His love brings us into His arms. Without Christ’s death we would never truly know how much we mean to Him.

The Cross reveals our Option

I remember in a sermon hearing the story of a solider, who after several battles in a hard war collapsed in a church – hopeless and depressed. As he lay there he saw a spider trying to climb the glass, yet constantly slipping to the floor. But each time it would fall it would try again, and again, and again, and again. The determination of that spider inspired the soldier to get up and march off to war once again.

It seems no matter how hard we try we continue to sin. We continue to be that monster formed more by sin than by love. Inevitably the situation can seem hopeless. Christ’s death however gives us hope.

There is something about the cross which is more than symbolic. Love is not just a nice feeling. It means something. When you love someone you change them. And as Christ loves us absolutely, so we should be changed absolutely.

When we are in the gutter the cross tells us that God’s hand is there waiting to lift us out of it. When we are ready to give up being disciplined in our holiness the cross urges us to go just a little bit further. When we think we are lost the Cross shows us there is a way, there is always a way, to follow God and be the person we were made to be.

The Cross reveals a greater reality than we can see with our eyes. It shows us an option: either we can reject Christ’s help in serving Him, or we can follow Him and learn that redemption has arrived not on the back of a war horse but on the back of a cross. It shows us another way. It shows us a kingdom way. And by showing us these things it empowers us to make this choice.

I’ve looked at the message of the cross here more than its power. But through the cross Christ does for us what we ourselves can never do – He pays our ransom and washes away our sin (expiation). The fact that God’s option exists is revealed in the fact that He died to make it happen.

If we are going to reach the lost without selling them a commodity I believe our message must focus on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It is a story, which through its own power, transforms people’s lives.

I have an evangelical background. As such my zeal to ‘change the world’ always brings me back to conversion, or salvation, or my zeal to change a world. But as I have grown more committed and have come to understand the real cost (and joy) of following Christ I have become increasingly uncomfortable with a gospel message and presentation that, I feel, sells out on God.

I feel like we are coming to a generation of people addicted to comfort and security, who are literally dead on the inside for all their self serving motivations, and saying “Hey, for only a little faith you can spend eternity in this really cool place called heaven, and if you sign up now we’ll be sure to make your church experience as unchallenging yet entertaining as possible.” And whilst it is true (for us salvation is cheep and it is the best ‘product’ in the world) there is a greater truth: Your salvation – your relationship with God, your healing, your transformation into Christ-likeness – is the most expensive and difficult and disciplined thing you’ll ever work for. Your life after death will cost you your life before death.

How do you get people to sign up to that?

How do you preach a gospel that goes something like this: You must stop trying to save yourself, to make yourself the god of your life, to find meaning in fruitless things, to compete with your brothers and sisters over trivial things, to seek comfort and security over love or courage. Because you’ll never find fulfillment in anything when your first motivation is yourself, and you hardly know what you want anyway. Instead there’s this guy from Nazareth, an outcast, who was killed on a Roman torture device, who said dangerous things about giving all our money to the poor, praying for our enemies, becoming last to be first, and taking up our cross so we can join in His suffering. And, despite it being completely backwards, following this guy (the son of God no less) is the only way you’re going to get the satisfaction (the salvation) you’ve been looking for all along. He died to make this possible. But you can’t make that your primary motivation – because even if (impossible as it is) following Christ does not lead to the fulfillment and redemption of your life it is still the right thing to do…

When it comes down to it, that is the gospel. But it doesn’t sound too appealing. So we want to tone it down and split it into a few points and make it about us getting something from God as opposed to giving back to God what we stole to begin with. Jesus never lowered the bar like that. He told a rich guy he had to give away all he had and when he turned to leave Jesus didn’t run after Him confessing it was just an allegory. And if you think James is big on the action-accompanies-faith thing you should read 1 John: “No one who lives in him [Christ] keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” (3:6) The early Christians had the bar so high we protestants would call them heretics! The bible seems to make it clear enough that discipleship is a part of salvation, not an optional extra that comes after it.

My question is: how do we effectively ‘evangelise’ that?

I have a collection of haphazard thoughts that I have been collecting but certainly nothing even approaching anything the 3-point-plan which I would love to have (even if I know it doesn’t exist). That makes things challenging, but challenge is what moves us forward. I’ll be posting more of those ideas as I have time (much sooner that the time since my last post I promise!)

But in the mean time how have you presented the gospel in a way that lead to long term meaningful transformation as opposed to offering just another spiritual good? There are people who get ‘born again’ every year yet never change, and there are people who see God and never look away again. How have you worked to see the later kind?