Ascension and the Great Exchange

Since last summer I have been preaching a series of sermons at Exile Pres (creatively) titled "Jesus." Ever the brilliant planner, I preached on the resurrection last Sunday (which was Christmas day), and this Sunday I will be expounding upon the ascension. As theologians like Douglas Farrow and Michael Horton have been highlighting recently, the ascension of Christ is a more important part of the historia salutis than many are wont to recognize.

In a word, the ascension of Christ is more than merely an exclamation point at the end of the resurrection. It's also more than the undoing of the incarnation, as if Jesus is like one of those Disneyland employees who dons a costume for the duration of his shift only to remove it before clocking out. No, the ascension is much more mysterious and profound than this.

As philosopher Peter Kreeft has suggested, the incarnation was like a hunting expedition whose purpose was for Christ to capture a trophy and bring it home, and that trophy was humanity. By assuming human nature and human flesh, glorifying it in the resurrection, and then ascending bodily to heaven, Jesus has forever placed humanity in the sphere of the divine family that is the holy Trinity. Since Jesus is no less man than he is God (being homoousios with the Father with respect to his Godhead and with us with respect to his manhood), our humanity is forever united to the Son, and he is forever united to us.

This means (among other things) that we who are in Christ can now participate in the very life and worship of the Trinity, rendering sacrifice to the Father that is acceptable because it is united to Jesus' flesh. And if this were not enough, we participate in the divine nature to the point that the age to come is subject not to angels but to us, the former being mere servants over whom we will sit in judgment.

Any understanding of the gospel that stops short of this is deficient, if for no other reason than that it fails to explain why the incarnation was necessary in the first place. It is conceivable that God, if his goal was merely to forgive mankind, could have just created another merely human Adam under an arrangement according to which his obedience could have been imputed to us. But what makes the incarnation unique from a mere forgiveness-focused gospel is that which the early church fathers called the "great exchange": Jesus participated in our nature so that we could participate in his. As Athanasius put it, "God became man so that men could become gods."

Even better are the words of the beloved apostle: "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called sons of God (for so we are). And while it does not yet appear what we shall be, we know that we shall be like Christ, for we shall see him as he is."

The Treason for the Season

I don't know how it is where you live, but in this neck of the woods there are loads of evangelical churches that are canceling their morning worship services on Christmas Day this year.

Now, sociologists tell me that my generation is really into irony, and if there's one thing I hate, it's debunking sociological theories. So in order to not disappoint them, I'd like to point out just how ironic it is that the same churches that are constantly waging war in favor of "keeping Christ in Christmas" are nonetheless closing their doors on the one day above all others that Christ is supposed to be acknowledged.

My wife is surprisingly scandalized by all this (I haven't seen her this riled up since Arrested Development was canceled). Anyway, she reminded me of the parable where the guy plans a wedding party for his son, but all the invitees give lame excuses why they can't attend, so the father crosses their names off the guest list altogether. It reminds me of the church sign I saw that read, "Think you may be going to hell? Skip church this Christmas and prove it!"

So there you have it: all these intrepid culture warriors have just lost all credibility and bragging rights, not to mention demonstrating once and for all that it's not really Jesus they love as much as the nice, safe, Christian America that he (allegedly) promises them.

A bit like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, don'tcha think?

Love and Some Verses: Concluding Thoughts

Over the past several posts I have tried to identify a pattern in the NT according to which the New Covenant gift of the Spirit of the risen Christ enables in believers love of God and neighbor, which in turn results in eternal blessings. This pattern was taught by Jesus and reiterated in various ways by Paul, James, Peter, and John.

What I would like to do by way of conclusion is to make some final observations and put them forward for discussion.

1. Any version of covenant theology that relegates the two greatest commands of the law to merely pedagogical duties intended to highlight the believer's inabilty to obey them and thereby drive him to Christ, is woefully deficient and betrays an under-realized eschatology.

2. What made the scribe "not far from the kingdom," according to Jesus, was not his stopping short of admiting his native powerlessness to obey, but rather his not yet having received the Holy Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

3. Paul and James do not contradict one another with respect to their teachings on faith and works. When James says that we must be "doers of the Word, not hearers only" by obeying the royal law and loving our neighbors as ourselves as evidenced by our refusal to show partiality, he is saying the exact same thing as Paul when he said that "it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified."

4. Moreover, when James says that Abraham was not justified by faith alone, but that "his faith was active along with his works," he means the exact same thing as Paul, who said that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision count for justification, but "faith working through love."

5. There is a direct connection in Peter's mind between our becoming "partakers of the divine nature," our supplementing our faith with love, and our entrance into the eternal kingdom of God.

6. Tradition says that John's final sermons in Ephesus consisted of little more than his repeating the refrain, "Little children, love one another as God has loved you." That may be the best summary of the gospel available, especially for its beautiful simplicity.

Love and Some Verses: John and Judgment Day

In this brief series I have been arguing that a pattern runs throughout the NT beginning with Jesus and being developed by Paul, James, and Peter, according to which Spirit-wrought love of God and neighbor leads to eternal blessings. The final NT writer to be examined is John, and his adherence to this pattern is so obvious that it needs little explanation:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (4:7, 11-13, 16-21).

I hope to draw together some concluding remarks in the next post, but suffice it here to simply point out that John explicitly roots his desire for confidence on the day of judgment in the love of God that is reproduced by the Spirit in us and exhibited to our brothers and sisters.

Stay tuned....

Love and Some Verses: Peter on Participation

Continuing our series titled Love and Some Verses, we read in II Peter 1:3-11:

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We see here Peter following the pattern that Jesus, Paul, and James taught: Christ's ascension --> New Covenant gift of the Spirit --> divinely-wrought love of neighbor --> eternal blessings.

According to Peter, God's divine power has granted to us all we need for life and godliness by making us participants in the divine nature (which is Peter's way of situating our Christian living in the context of the New Covenant). He then instructs us to supplement our faith with the fruit of the Spirit, the supreme of which is love. Finally, he states that such Spirit-wrought, fruitful living will be the way by which an entrance into Chist's kingdom will be richly provided for us.

So again (and not unexpectedly), the progression taught by Christ and echoed by Paul and James is also repeated by Peter.

Love and Some Verses: James on Mercy's Triumph

Over the last couple of posts I have been seeking to identify a recurring pattern in the New Testament that goes something like this:

Christ's coming --> gift of the Spirit --> divinely-enabled love of God and neighbor --> eternal reward.

We saw Jesus answer the scribe's question about the greatest commandment by highlighting the dual command of love, and when the scribe recognized the superiority of love to all the sacrifices of the Mosaic law, Jesus told him that he "is not far from the kingdom of God." We saw next that Paul carried this idea further by insisting that when it comes to justification, it is not circumcision that matters, but "faith working through love." He then cited the command to love one's neighbor and echoed Jesus' assessment that this is what fulfills "the whole law." This love can only be exhibited as a "fruit of the Spirit," and that if we "sow to the Spirit" we will "reap eternal life." As expected, Paul both follows and develops the progression that Jesus taught.

What about the other NT writers? We would expect that if this pattern is indeed given by Christ, it would be found throughout the writings of the apostles. Consider the words of James:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.... But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing (1:22, 25).

James here is clearly echoing Paul's words in Romans. There Paul says that it is not the "hearers" but the "doers" of the law who will be justified (2:13), and that it was the "law of the Spirit" that had set him free from the "law of sin" (8:2). James continues:

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well.... So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment (2:8, 12-13).

Not surprisingly, we see the exact same pattern here that we discovered previously in Jesus and Paul. All three cite the command to love our neighbor, all three situate the command in a new covenant context, and all three allude to an eternal reward for doing so ("You are not far from the kingdom"; "You will reap eternal life"; "Mercy triumphs over judgment").

Well? Convinced yet? Or do I still have more work to do?