BLOG 12/4/13. GOD’S INCARNATION AND OURS: KNOWLEDGE

BLOG 12/4/13. GOD’S INCARNATION AND OURS: KNOWLEDGE

 It is not sufficient for us who call ourselves by the name of Jesus Christ, to allow our observance of Advent and Christmas to be a brief remembrance of the “Holy Child of Bethlehem,” with our candlelight and (often) ‘unreality’ worship services. Rather, we need to remember that the purpose of the incarnation of God in Christ was to inaugurate a whole new creation, and to call forth a new humanity of women and men all conformed to the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. Yes, and one of the dimensions of that new creation of God in us is that we are to be “renewed in knowledge after the image of [our] creator” (Colossians 3:10).

Please remember also that when God chose to reveal himself to his creation that he sent his Son, he took on flesh and blood. Jesus was not a concept, nor was his revelation of God a kind of intangible spiritual thing, but rather, Jesus unabashedly declared that he was the truth. Our modern world has been intimidated by so much of the Enlightenment protestation that if something is not scientifically verifiable, then it can’t be called ‘true.’ But God’s truth is more than a concept, it is meta-conceptual, it is huge and acknowledges the Reality beyond the reality. It declares that Jesus is the reason all things exist. Jesus left people in awe by his miracles, by his death and by his resurrection, by his familiarity with One whom he called: Father. Jesus taxes our minds and our imaginations. Jesus speaks of the divine purpose for this creation.

Part of what makes the church, in its better expressions, such a transforming force is that it reveals the mystery hidden from the ages but now made know in Christ. It speaks of what is not seen, and it stretches the imagination. It is enchanted because it sees and knows beyond what is seen and what is knowable in merely human terms. As the late J. B. Philips rendered Colossians 1:9: God’s new creation people are to “see all things from God’s point of view.”

This is all to say, that we who are called by faith into God’s new creation in Christ are never to be mindless—and unfortunately, the church is quite too often just that: mindless. Mark Noll wrote a book, a few years back, entitled: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and his opening remark was that the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no evangelical mind—that evangelical Christians are too often mindless, with their minds in neutral just parroting familiar Christian jargon. The obverse of that would be the late Dallas Willard, who was both a wonderful herald of a profound understanding of Christian discipleship, but also the chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Southern California. I asked him on an informal occasion how he related to his faculty colleagues who were not believers in Christ. I loved his modesty. He acknowledged that he had much to learn from them, but that he also was aware that there were dimensions of intellect that he possessed because of his Christian faith that he had to share with his colleagues.

On this Advent Christian observance, we need to remember that God’s incarnation in Christ also means for us that he calls us to be renewed in knowledge as his disciples. To be a mindless, albeit professing, Christian is an oxymoron. We can never be satisfied with simplistic and mindless pulpit pep talks. We are God’s ongoing incarnation in Christ. God’s love for the world in which we live is far too important for mindless Christianity.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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