A MUCH NEEDED CORRECTIVE TO MY LAST BLOG-POST
I am so very grateful for a comment on my last post (1/22/14)—beside the fact that some thoughtful folk are reading these blogs. You may recall that I was proposing that tomorrow’s church would be more in the form of versatile and mobile colonies of the Kingdom of God/New Creation than the formidable, permanent, and traditional church institutions that have been so normative for the last millennium and a half.
This reader posted a comment/response in which she asked the question: “Where does the Cross fit into all of this?” What a beautiful question! Yes, if I were to attempt to single out the major macro force that would determine the fruitfulness of any alternative narrative for the church in the coming generation, it would be that these colonies of the Kingdom of God, or colonies of God’s New Creation in Christ, … would reclaim the church’s priority focus on the reality that Jesus made all of this possible by his reconciling work on the Cross—on the atonement. It is easily discernable that when the church’s focus becomes its own communal prosperity and survival, rather than on what God has done in Christ, when such a community ceases to be thrilled by that love of God displayed on the Cross, and when it becomes totally captive to something less than Christ and him crucified … that such a community begins its own demise as an effective agent of God’s mission to make all things new—for God’s Kingdom to “come on earth as it is in heaven.”
But the two themes: 1) the inauguration of the Kingdom of God (New Creation), and 2) the centrality of the cross, are both essential. Note that Jesus came, on one hand, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God, i.e., he preached that in himself the Kingdom was being inaugurated. One the other hand he also knew that his destiny was the cross, and he “set his face to go to Jerusalem” knowing that there he would be arrested, be brutally tortured, and then executed. That was his divine mission. It would seem that the design of the prince of darkness (Satan) in his three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness was to deflect him from whatever he had come to do, … all of which Jesus rebuffed knowing that it was his purpose to obey his calling to reconcile the world to God by the blood of his cross.
As we have the records of the early church, we have such a giant figure as Paul the apostle asseverating that he is determined not to know anything among his hearers except Jesus and him crucified. Paul taught that it was Jesus and his cross was that event that gave us the key to the mystery hidden for the ages, but now made known in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:8-10). It was Paul who would continually remind us that we are reconciled, forgiven, justified by the blood of the cross. That event, as some have so clearly described it, is the center of time and eternity.
Does that all mean that Paul had a different gospel than the gospel of the Kingdom of God? Not at all. The two themes are inextricably linked. The one depends on the other. Note that at the end of the Book of Acts there is Paul, a prisoner of Rome, in the shadow of the Roman Forum, and of Caesar’s imperial power, doing what? “ … welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God, and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness …” (Acts 28:30)
Such a hasty attempt to hold up both of these essentials is quite inadequate and worthy of a much more extended conversation. But, again, I am so thankful for the response of the reader who raised this question. Any attempt to project, or prophesy what the authentic church must include (or to project the macro forces that will form such a church) must absolutely include the holistic understanding of the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and that infinite act of love which makes such a Kingdom possible, which act of love was Christ’s obedience in bearing the sins of the world by his own atoning death on the cross.
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