It
is interesting to note that Jesus’s story, just like all stories, has many
angles by which it can be viewed, and in searching all the available angles,
the student can develop a more robust understanding of the gospels, that will
not only help us live like Jesus in regards to our main work of evangelism, but
in all areas of life, which helps round us out as mindful Christians in
whatever area of decision making we find ourselves in. If we cannot live like
Christians in any one area of life, we cannot live like Christians in any, for
Christianity is not a limited set of principles, but a way of living.
As
an example of the diversity of these angles, take a look at the circumstances
that dictate the beginning and end of Jesus’s “natural” life, that is His birth
and death.
If
we want to highlight the supernatural nature of the Christ, we could take a
divine view, and examine the revelation that Christ both entered the world and
existed in the world in dependence upon the Spirit of God. He was conceived by
the Spirit (Matthew 1:18) and went to the grave with faithful confidence upon
the fact that the Spirit would raise Him from the dead (Romans 8:11). This
certainly sets Christ apart as special and more than a mere human.
On
the other hand, if we want to highlight the fact that Jesus came into real
human history and His life was subject to real human realities, because,
although He was not merely human, He was fully human, we can note that the
circumstances of His birth, such as its happening in Bethlehem, were, at least
in part, dictated by an Empire under which His people, the people of God, were
subject (Luke 2:1-7). We may also note that His death was administered at the
hands of the same Roman government, as well as His own local government (Luke
23:13-25).
So,
while He lived under the direct influence of the Spirit, He also lived and
moved with the culture around Him, including the government.
In
looking at these two events out of many others just like it, we come to see a
fuller view of Christ’s experience in which Divine and human will shape His
experience, so that He may empathize with our own human experiences as they are
pushed and pulled by the natural and supernatural. Just as was the case in the
life of Joseph, God shows His sovereign rule in that, while the push and pull
upon Jesus life by human authorities might have had an effect, their nefarious
purposes were thwarted, because what they intended for evil, the Father used
for good.
Contextualizing Messiah
We
have presently considered what good can come out of continuing to search the
provided angles of a biblical story until we have a robust view, but what
happens when we do not, and instead focus too heavily on one aspect of a story?
We end up with a warped theology.
For
example, what if we stopped short of looking deeply into Jesus’s nature and
circumstances, His being divine and living day-to-day by full submission to the
Spirit of God and His being fully human, genuinely interacting with the culture
around Him. When discussing which of these facets we most often over emphasize
at the expense of the other, N.T. Wright states:
We have been so concerned to let the gospels tell us that the
story of Jesus as the story of God incarnate that we have been unable to listen
more carefully to the evangelists telling us which God they are talking about
and what exactly it is that this God is now doing… For far too long now
Christians have told the story of Jesus as if it hooked up not with the story
of Israel, but simply with the story of human sin as in Genesis 3. (1)
In
other words, we do not take serious enough the fact that Jesus in fact belonged
to Israel, and all that came with her, including government and politics. When
we blow the nature of Christ so far outside the realm of humanity, we lose the
ability to relate to Him. His injunctions seem ideal, unreachable goals to give
us a sense that the world should be better, even though it is decidedly not. We
give up on the call to live holy and perfect lives as our Father is perfect,
and we make the seeking first of the Kingdom about keeping our theologies in
the clouds instead of about practical, ethical ways of living that are in
direct and stark contrast to the norms of the world and culture around us so as
to witness to the nature of our Kingdom yet to come, as we live as resident
aliens in a foreign land. It is as if, instead of a providing us a way to live
now and on into eternity as His people, Christ came to provide a fire escape
that we will only follow when our lives are over.
It
is certain that if we had to err in our understanding, we would rather devalue
His humanness for the sake of His divinity than the other way around, (although
we should not think this is without a very high level of theological danger). In
the end, however, it is best not to be confused at all. Jesus is the very real
Messiah of Israel, and His cultural belonging to that nation, and not just to
humanity in general, helps us better understand God, since Israel has always
been the people through which God works to bring about His blessings. Israel’s
experiences open the doors to all sorts of theological quandaries that are only
answered in Christ, from the most important of issues to the most seemingly mundane.
Therefore, how Jesus chooses to fulfill this long expected goal of Israel’s
Messiah, with all its very specific objectives, should teach us something of
His nature and, therefore, more about our own as His people seeking to follow
His leadership.
Mediating change through example and
not force
Jesus
enters an Israel, not at the peak of her existence, as in the times of David,
but perhaps at her lowest. Even while there were many setbacks due to various
disobediences, from the time Moses marched the nation out of Egypt to the time
of David, the nation was on a general trajectory upwards, from a slave group,
to a nomadic tribe, to a settlement of tribes, to a monarchy. But, after David,
the trajectory of Israel spiraled downward, beginning with civil war under
Rehoboam, to divided monarchy and on to exile first for the northern tribes
then for the southern, and even though the Persian ruler, Cyrus, allowed Israel
to return to their land, they were constantly under the administration of
various super powers, never again being their own sovereign nation. At the time
of Christ, Israel was ruled by Rome.
It
is not without warrant that Israel’s religious leaders believe Messiah would
come and deliver Israel from the political bonds of their oppressors, in this
case Rome, and any future oppressive nation for that matter, forever and ever.
In fact, this was promised time and again to the people: A Messiah would come
whose rule would be from everlasting and He would rule over Israel with
complete authority (See Daniel 7). Where Israel was mistaken was not in what He would do, but in their
understanding of how the Messiah
would overthrow the powers of the world. They thought it would be a political
upheaval, most assuredly leading to military action. Jesus, though, never
raised an army, and they hated Him for it. Instead of imposing violence on man,
the Son of Man allowed violence to be imposed on Him. To those who believe,
this is the wisdom of God, and to the disbelieving world, it is foolishness.
At
this point, we might find even more reason to dismiss the human Jesus living
within a particular cultural milieu, because, on the surface, and as far as
Israel’s leaders were concerned, Jesus was unconcerned with mundane politics
and the cultural goings on of Israel, because He does not fulfill the
expectation of Messiah as a rebellion leader. We might mistakenly follow their
lead here. We might assume that, because He did not use force, Jesus was
unconcerned with politics of His day. Is that not how politics are won, through
the imposition of will through law or war? Was not Jesus merely concerned with
the preserving of souls for the afterlife, and not the everyday life of His
people (as if the two are very unrelated)? If so, we might conclude we need not
consult Him in our decisions involving our own cultural interactions,
especially in our modern context that He could not possibly understand.
It
is not that Jesus does not care; instead, He simply wishes to address such
issues with a different approach than the normative human response of resorting
to force. For Jesus, social change cannot be imposed to any lasting effect, but
must be imparted. Instead of actual soldiers, He calls for priests, mediators
of grace to the needy. And so all of the Christian community is called out to
be a priestly nation, we are all mediators, and a sign of God’s grace. If we
are the mediators of God’s grace, we must ask, “To whom?” We look to the first
revelation of the purpose of God’s choosing to have a people, when He reveals
His plan to Abraham. Through the children of Abraham, in particular the
spiritual children of the promise, which now includes the grafted in branch of
the church, God will bring blessing to the nations (see Genesis 12:1-3).
A social mission of exemplary evangelism
So,
how does Jesus envision His people will continue this mission? As I have
mentioned elsewhere, Jesus gives us a vision for His community in Matthew
5:14-16 that is social in scope and political in nature. Reliable and
realizable change happens, not just as individuals go and tell the good news
(although this is necessary), but also when the church collectively lives as an
alternative to the way of the world. When we live as other, we give those whose
imaginations have been captured by the things of this world, an alternative way
of life, through the example of Christ. This is a threat to the world and even
the worldly nations. When Christians proclaim their allegiance first to Christ
and His way, this indicates to the worldly powers that we might not always
comply with their wishes. Our Lord compares us to a city upon a hill, a polis.
Christ envisions us as a community that performs good works, divine directives,
that in turn mediate grace to the world, and, as those with eyes to see begin
to recognize the radical nature of the church, they turn to God.
You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot
be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on
the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let
your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give
glory to your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16)
This
is His great plan. When the church lives together and lives in harmony with
God’s will, the church will thrive and God will add to their number daily those
who are being saved, as we see with the church in Acts 2, a perfect example of
Christ vision. When we lose that collective vision, when it no longer captures
our imagination, but we seek alternative ways of “changing the world,” we
forget the vision of Christ.
He
sets standard for how this community is to think about change. It is to be in
the heart and not just on the surface. Legislation can only go so far,
according to Jesus; it cannot get to the heart of the issue. For example,
Christ speaks of murder and states that the law fails to prevent the heart
issue of hate. Seeking a life of honoring our Father and King, means a life in
which we reset our horizons of possibility.
The law’s prohibition against murder, and the social
structures that had been put in place to enforce that prohibition—to move
murder as far as possible to the edge of possibility—had not addressed the
deeper issue of anger and insults, which remained all too possible. Jesus’
response is not just to offer a different set of horizons—one in which judgment
will eventually be meted out to the angry as well as the violent—but to offer a
cultural solution, a new set of practices embedded in the life of worship and
the courts…his prescription for changing the heart involves changes in
culture…The followers will begin to demonstrate a new set of horizons for human
life to their neighbors and even to their enemies—the horizons of shalom, the
horizons of true humanity living in dependence on God.
In
other words, the good works Christ mentions in His description for how the
church will mediate blessing outward, as seen in Matthew 5:14-16, are not
ethereal ideals, but described in what follows as Christ challenges the culture
through the repeated refrain: “You have heard it said…but I say…” These were
not simply instructions for individual lives, but for collective lives.
Remember the primary audience here is Jesus disciples, a group Christ
purposefully called to live together so as to carry His ministry forward.
His resurrection would launch a political
movement like no other. The miracle of Christ’s victory over death drove
countless people to the church. The church continues to influence the movement
of history. As a movement, the church has power. Sometimes we have failed by
abusing our power, but more often, without the notice we gain when we abuse our
power, we have made differences in whole communities, and we have changed
countless lives here and now, as well as for the eternal future.
Not world changers, but Church
growers
It
seems today that we have forgotten Jesus description and prescription for
social change. While He clearly demonstrated the failure of legislation as a
means of change, Christians on both the right and left, but especially on the
right (at least our voice is the loudest) continue to feel defeated each time
our leaders fail to enforce a code that would hold people outwardly accountable
for immoral action.
Over
the years as various legislative decisions have failed to go our way, I have
heard lament from my fellow Christians. If we are disappointed that our nation
is not as collectively unanimous on holding to traditional morality, this would
be okay, but when we proclaim we have lost hope, because the church has lost
legislative control, I wonder where our hope is located in the first place. The
church is not here to serve the world, but to serve as an answer to the world’s
failings. We are not here to continually patch up the mortal wounds of the
world, but to call people out of the sinking ship, but not so that they merely
have a fire escape, but so that even today they can begin to seek the Kingdom
in their everyday lives.
The
grace of God that helps people find their way in following the will of God, according
to Christ, is not to be mediated through the government, but through a cultural
alternative, the church. While this is certainly a political challenge, Christ
calling us to live as an alternative to the ways of the world, it is not by
force (through legislation or war).
In
the end, when people ask for my reaction to various failures of our governmental
leaders to uphold morality, I often respond that I am hopeful that this will
lead the Christians who still put hope in national causes to turn back to the
church as a means to initiate change. The world will always be the world, and
as soon as we patch up one wound the stitches of another will pull open. Trying
to strong-arm the world to act right will fail. However, a real victory can be
won when we live as a social alternative to the ways of the world, and because
of this testimony, people leave the world in exchange for the church, at least
this is what our Lord thought would happen. This is a threat to the world
indeed. This is political indeed. This is exciting indeed.
(This
is not to say we are to give up on participating in the political process. We
should vote. We should fight for what is right. The church should provide a
voice, especially as it relates to righteous causes that combat horrid injustices
such as abortion, but the point to see here is that if we lose the vote, we do
not lose the war. We still can provide moral solutions, social alternatives
such as adoption, to those looking for hope. If we again get to a place in
which laws can help remind us what is moral, that is well and good, but as long
as people see them as limitations to what they truly desire to do, we have a
bigger issue to fight.)
Moral decline as a church problem, not a
political problem
In
the end, I do not think a moral decline should be an indication of the failure
of the nation and its leaders alone, but should be an indication that the
church might not be living up to its calling either. If Jesus is correct in His
assumption that, as we live as the light, our city on a hill will grow, because
it is changing hearts, then the decline of Christianity (and the morality
associated with it) in America should not cause us to blame the immoral world
for seducing people away from the church (the world has always been fighting
this fight as it always has, and we cannot pretend it is just now savvy enough
to beat us).
Instead,
we should ask ourselves if we still believe in Christ’s vision. We need to examine
whether or not we as the church are living so radically different as a community
that the people around us have no other option but to recognize the grace by
which we thrive. When we forget Christ came to show us, not only the priceless
path to eternal life with Him, but also how to live and navigate in the world
we now find ourselves in so as to demonstrate the glory of God through our
collective lives together, we forget that He is not just the hope for the
future, but is a present hope. Every time we outsource our cause to the
government and do nothing within the church to bring social alternatives to the
issues we see, we show we have lost the imagination to envision Christ’s call.
When we lose the vote, we still have a body that can work to solve problems.
There
are many Christian who are holding out hope for a rebound in the social
conscience of America. I will stake my reputation on this: If a true renewal in
the social conscience ever happens, it will not happen because a small majority
elects an individual or group of individuals who can sway our nations outward
actions through policy. It will happen when and if we experience another great
revival of faith. Yes, this could even be such a great revival that it impacts
our national policies, but it will be revival that will impact policy, not
policy that will impact revival.
1. Wright, NT, How God Became King (New York: Harper One, 2012) p23
2.Crouch, Andy, Culture Making (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2008) pp138,139
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