I have tried to point to a problem within the evangelical understanding of salvation; this problem stems from an inadequate understanding of how to read the Bible. We have inherited the lenses of our age* (reducing all knowledge to its smallest parts; dividing disciplines into an ever greater diversity of study; assuming that the whole is the sum of its parts) and we wear these lenses when we read our Bibles. It is, quite simply, inappropriate to think that we can pick and choose which words of Paul to use to define our understanding of certain ideas, or to do the same thing to the words of Jesus, or to do the same thing to the Bible as a whole.
This fragmented approach to the Bible, as well as the person and teaching of Jesus, is what has led us to understand the gospel in such a way as to actually exclude the teaching of Jesus from the message. Our hermeneutic forces us to ignore the many passages that refer to Jesus “preaching the gospel” because we do not believe Jesus preached the gospel. We believe the gospel is that “Jesus died on a cross to get evil people into heaven;” how then could Jesus preach such a message if He had yet to die on the cross? This forces us to ignore many passages of the four Gospels, and to do great violence to other passages as we continue our hermeneutical and exegetical gyrations.
Here comes the fun part…
We have spent a post and a half talking about what isn’t the gospel, now let us begin to describe what is the Gospel of Jesus!
Jesus message was one of the present availability of God’s presence; from his inaugural address (Luke 4) to his description of salvation as “living water welling up from within,” from his life of compassion and power to his death and resurrection, everything about Jesus words and deeds screams out “God is here and present, available in a way that He never was before!” Jesus very words, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand,” could be seen as the summation of the gospel message; “God is available to you here and now, your black heart is no barrier to his love, turn from yourself and your ways, give yourself to Him and His ways, step into His Presence, His Authority, His Rule, His Realm of Influence!”
The Gospel
God exists!
God is a being so pure and real that He is a unity, and yet so loving and alive that He is a plurality. God is a community of divine love and selfless submission; the Father who is, the Son who reflects His glory, and the Spirit who proceeds forth; and all seeking the glory of the other, a glorious dance.
God is Beautiful! He is unlike anything else in holiness and righteousness, beauty and power, justice and mercy, energy and creativity! His very being screams out life! His words drip with unimagined realities, his breath is the sweetness of life itself, his activity is the world made – unmade – and remade in an instant…
He is the source and fountain of all goodness, He is the source of all existence, He simply IS!
God made man in the very image of Himself. Man was created to be with God, to be loved and known by Him, and to love and know Him. Man was created to be like God and to take care of the creation that God spoke into being. Man was the regent who ruled in the king’s stead; given charge to rule and bear responsibility as God’s representative.
God is heartbroken over man’s desertion of his place in creation. God is sick with grief over the decision to forsake Him. We have chosen to abandon our responsibility to creation, but even more, we have cast aside the imago dei, the very imprint of our creator, His DNA, and have thrust ourselves into the maelstrom of abyss. We exist apart from He who provides existence and so share in the part of that which does not exist; we are the “once-men” who were and no longer are. And God weeps…
…into this world steps Jesus. He lived a life that revealed who God is, He healed the sick, chastised the self-righteous, protected the helpless, raised the dead, proclaimed freedom to those in bondage, declared love and compassion upon those who suffered, brought justice and mercy to all who would receive it; and for this we destroyed Him.
God was willing to risk everything, and pay any cost, to redeem all things. By way of the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus (who was the Christ, the Son of God) all things have been reconciled to God, things spiritual and physical, heavenly and earthly. In the person of Jesus is restoration of God’s image to mankind, and the created order put right as man steps into his rightful role as regent over the earth. In Jesus can be found the restoration of friendship with God, as He once walked in fellowship with mankind, so does He desire to do today.
Jesus offers us this restoration, a renewed fellowship with the God of All Things, a restoration of His image, a re-commissioned responsibility over the created order. By rejecting ourselves and the death we had become, and by accepting His life and choosing to live it, we can regain what had been lost. By simply trusting Jesus enough to receive what He desires to give us, we can once again experience life on God’s terms, free from the chains we have shackled ourselves with. By way of simply accepting what Jesus said as true to the point where we are willing to act upon it, we can share in the very nature of God (which was destined to us); namely hope, righteousness, peace, love, power, faith, eternity, truth, justice, abundance, beauty, infinity, purpose, and mercy.
3 comments:
I would agree that the gospel, as it is written, is a gestalt entity - a physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements, so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts. [My particular training in the social sciences directly effects my word choices and thought process, and as of yet I have not found the perfect ‘bridging mechanism’ for the specialized jargon in theology. So please forgive me if my interpretation (hermeneutic) is malformed by my past.] The bible, and the gospel in the bible, is simply more than the sum of its parts. However, if we choose to deconstruct these writings in efforts that are loaded not only with the pursuit of God, but Gold and Glory, we get a great many suppositions expressing how our own little island is the right one. When I look at the works piled up around this text behind thick stone walls, and I reflect on Jesus teaching 12 men on the road (one of which wasn’t really listening), I often begin to laugh as I see Sigmund Freud telling me, “Some times a cigar, is just a cigar.” I am so glad that God got a hold of me so that I might know He is God, and not me - or that other guy (you know the one).
I would say that Jesus flies in the face of how we do life. He did not simply impart knowledge of the availability of the Father’s Kingdom here and now. He showed us this kingdom while we were in his presence. My ‘salvation’ is that I am not holding a gun to my head, in a forgotten hotel room along interstate 40, with empty liquor bottles at my feet. My salvation is the unique opportunity I have to feel not only my heart, but the heart of others in relationships that express God’s will to claim His Kingdom here and now. Salvation, as I have come to know it [and I would suggest quite a few others, as I am not tragically unique by any means] has nothing to do with going to heaven. But is has everything to do with getting out of hell (this is the part where you say AMEN). So now that I am free, I will be compelled by the Spirit that has freed me, to help my brother. The message of the gospel, as it has quickly unfolded in my life, brought me from utter despair to a place of imperfect obedience to His will in my life. None of this would have been possible without the direct connection and relationship to saints here and now.
Jesus still works like he did on the road. And I bet near one out of 12 won’t be listening, but still trying to follow their own will. They will not know how they can be saved from the hell they are in now, and often look to a heaven to be achieved later. Isn’t this why they call them ‘lost’? They really don’t know where they are. Let’s go find a few. Maybe 12 or so, Jesus did it for you. I have no idea why you would not be compelled to do at least the same if you have been delivered into God’s Kingdom (aka ‘saved’). God is good, I am flawed, and Jesus teaches me.
amen, and AMEN!
I visited a church website from the Acts 29 network (a church-planting group?) from Mars Hill in Seattle and it had a link titled "R U Saved?" Well, who wouldn't want to know if they were among the elect, so I clicked it and...
http://www.getsaved.com/
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