BLOG 5/9/17. GOD’S CALLING INVOLVES RADICAL CHANGE IN US
I don’t know whether it is some kind of mindlessness, or is downright humorous if one looks at it carefully, but we folk who profess faith in Jesus sometimes get lost in a kind of spiritual euphoria that has not much to do with what Jesus has in mind for us. We blithely sing: Just as I am without one plea … I come to Thee, and then don’t always look carefully into what responding to that call involves. Or we quote Paul on: all things work together for good, as though that is some kind of a carte blanche promise that covers all of our fate and foibles, … but then never go on to read the whole passage in its context.Yes, absolutely, Jesus calls us “just as we are” … but he doesn’t leave us there. Radical change is in store. One doesn’t forsake his/her autonomy easily! Repentance is a huge act of will.
When Jesus told the twelve that upon the foundation of what he had taught and demonstrated before them, namely, that he was the long-awaited promised one from God, … that upon that reality he was calling out a whole new people (church) to be is New Humanity community, … that is not some pleasant cruise into spiritual experience, or a casual approval of Jesus as a wonderful person, not at all. He has already demonstrated in his own life that he was in continual conflict with the dominant religious and political order. He has incurred the wrath of the pious leaders of Israel. And, he has warned those who would follow him that unless they were willing to lose their lives for his sake, that they weren’t worthy of him.
No, Jesus came to initiate in the here-and-now a radical new creation, and at the threshold of one’s entering it is the command to repent, i.e. to have a radical change of mind. It requires one to lose one’s life for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. He would be described by his apostles later on, as the first fruit of the New Creation. There is a cosmic shifting of gears in the coming of Christ. This is never veiled. That very passage (quoted above from Romans 8:29 in loc) says that all things work together for good (note) to those who are called “according to his purpose.” And exactly what would that purpose be? That text says that God has an eternal plan to reconcile his rebellious creation unto himself, a plan to make all things new, a plan to call forth a new humanity. Then (watch this): the way this redemptive design works itself out, is that he calls out a people (in the mystery of how that takes place through the heralding of Christ), and the consequence is that those who respond to that call are then, by the power of God, to be (check this) “conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
Still with me? Unpacking the meaning of that “image of his Son” in other apostolic writings, it has at least three clearly defined components: we are conformed to the Son in (1) knowledge, (2) righteousness, and (3) holiness (Ephesians 4:24 & Colossians 3:10). God’s Spirit in us recreates us so that we have the mind of Christ, that we (as one paraphrase states it) “see all things from his point of view.” Those responding to Christ’s call are always being formed and refined by knowledge, by the word of Christ. Then we are being recreated to live out the behavior, the righteousness, of God’s New Creation—Sermon on the Mount kind of stuff. And ultimately we are being recreated as those “reconciled, restored, forgiven” to dwell in the intimacy with the Holy God through his Son, Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, that’s nothing if it’s not radical.
And God’s people over the centuries have learned that it is not cheap, but costly. Think twice. God’s people are always counter-cultural, and in “missionary confrontation” with their context. Even so, they are also the light of the world and the salt of the earth. To be continued …
http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html
