The Remedy (2 of 2)

This is the last post in the blog series "A Gospel Stripped of Power". Read the intro., part one, part two, and part three.

With Christ leading the church, we can no longer begin our evangelism with the thing that separates a man from God. Christ himself is within himself the answer of why we cannot. In Christ, we see that God confronted man in his heathenism, in his folly, darkness, and separation from him. But also in Christ, we see that God himself took the initiative to look past these things. God views this man to whom we are speaking from the perspective of what he has already accomplished in Christ.[1] In other words, we cannot obscure the "yes" of God in Jesus Christ, with a "yes-but".[2] We must consider our fellow man on the same ground on which we stand, delivered from the wages of sin and reconciled back to God because of Christ. We cannot start with condemnation, Jesus doesn't.

Therefore our message in no way can be condemning. The word that comes from Jesus' lips are God's "yes" in the face of the mankind's "no".[3] And so should our message be. We view this man as one that Jesus died for, who has ownership of the freedom found in Christ, but does not yet know it. Our work is the joyful proclaiming of this paradox of man, that he be awakened of his freedom in Christ, that he lives as he now can, and find his true individuality in finding Jesus Christ. In his awakening he embraces God, a God of flesh and blood that meets him where he stands. He meets this God in Jesus Christ.[4]

Thus is the reality of the Christian within the Church. And how much more joyful is this message, a message carrying the hope of truly experiencing life by experiencing the fullness of all reality in God. This life is the witness of the members of the Church to the world. The world, blind to the freedom they have in Christ confronts him when they confront the church. This confrontation with Christ is the thing that will lead the lost to repentance, for in confronting the holiness of Christ, one can only see what is wrong within himself. Only in this way can we understand the missional nature of the Church. Anderson puts it this way:

"The Church's mission is not to build up an empire or kingdom that it controls but to experience and express the kingdom of God through the lives of its members as well as the various groups and organizations that they form."[5]

When we gather in worship, when we celebrate Christmas and Easter, when we live life, we are in fact witnessing to the truth of Christ.

It seems to me that when considering the good news of Christ, the idea of spreading the word is all the more exciting; the way that we understand the Gospel of Christ will affect the way that we view those that we outreach to. The conversion of an individual into Christianity is not just a change of mind or simply a prayer for eternal security. No, this conversion is an awakening. It is a complete renewal. Becoming who you are as a child of God isn't just gaining the power to do better and sin less. Rather, what is gained is completely new life.[6]

This conversion is the Spirit, guiding the person into a place where he or she sees and understands what God has done for him. This conversion takes place in the entire being of the person; it is life, as Paul said, apart from the vice of sin. It is truly life, because life is only truly life when it is life with God. And how beautiful is it to witness this work of Christ! Sin's power is broken; this life made new is life in the sense that it need not be influenced by sin. In other words, this life is life as it was meant to be, restored to God, in communion with him, and finding its identity in him. In this new life, we are free to worship as we never could. This new life is empowering. We have been given the privilege to take part in this awakening in others; this is how we are to understand evangelism.

With the understanding of the gospel as we have just discovered it, we experience perhaps a new sensation. It is liberation. It is liberation at not feeling as though we need to carry the weight of Christ's work on our shoulders. It is liberation at participating with him in his work. It is liberation at being in communion with a dynamic living savior in a vibrant and progressive faith.

More so, we do not have to worry as much about the question of pluralism in the modern age. In fact, we may embrace it. The gospel of Christ we have learned meets man on their own level. This is the crux of the gospel, God became man. The solidarity he shown is the same solidarity that we show our fellow man, understanding them in the framework of both our own humanity and the lens that God views them. The fear of pluralism is that the truth of the gospel is compromised. But as we have learned, the Church does not carry Christ and his news around in a briefcase, confronting people and opening its contents. The Gospel of Christ is not boxed in. Instead it seeks out man, on their own level. The story of redemption seeks to permeate time, age, and race. [7] With Christ at the helm we need not fear this confrontation of cultures. [8] In the True Church, under the Lordship of Christ, Christ takes our briefcase from us and invites us to follow him.

And we follow him to the corners of the world. We can escape the religious exclusivism created out of fear for reaching the people of the globe with the redemptive love of God. [9] We are already familiar with Christ's command, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations."[10] Jesus Christ could have left the believers of the world as just that, simply believers. But he didn't. Instead, he defines the church with this great task; we are not left as bumbling beings wandering around in a meaningless euphoria. Rather, we are unified in our belief, set apart for the purpose of the spreading of the Good News. So in essence, this task defines us a collective unit under Christ. And this church, not being able to be separated from it, can only be measured by it.[11] But now we understand the fullness of our message, "He, Jesus Christ…in totality and fullness [is] the content of this task. His person, His work, His revealed name, the prophetic Word by which he proclaims himself within it, is the matter at issue in its task."[12] We proclaim the name of Jesus, not because he is the means to an end, but because within him only we are made righteous and reconciled to God.

I cannot help but feel, with all of the joy that the Gospel brings to me, that this reveals a certain failure within the church. This essay should have never had to be written. It reveals in some sense a misuse of the great joy that we carry, a misuse that extinguishes the joy for most. It shows us our effort to contain and steal the gospel of Christ from Christ. And a gospel without Christ is an idol. It becomes minimized, trivialized. People loose interest, and get bored. The hope in sanctification is lost, reduced to "trying harder". Philippians tells us that the gospel, even when presented not in its proper way will still hold power; indeed, I saw grace even in the version I was presented. But how empowering would it be to truly understand the Gospel as new life, in daily communion with God? How empowering would it be to a congregation?

May we begin to see the Gospel of Christ as a living powerful gospel. May we seek his face when we wake and pray our thanksgiving when we sleep. Let us begin to see the world, man and nature as one bound to God in Jesus Christ and may we continue to worship, discover, and share God as we now can.

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[1] Barth. CD. IV, 3.2. Pg. 805

[2] Ibid. Pg. 801

[3] See Barth. CD. IV, 2. Pg. 580

[4] See Anderson, Ray. (2004). The Soul Of God. Eugene, Oregon. Wipf and Stock. Pg. 74

[5] Anderson, Ray. An Emerging Theology for an Emerging Church. Pg. 99

[6] Barth. CD. IV, 2. Pgs 553-560

[7] See Barth. CD. IV, 3.2 Pg. 822

[8] Ibid. Pg. 819-823. This is far from synchretism as Barth will point out. Indeed the truth of the Gospel is not and should not be a truth that is compromised. This is far from a form of liberalism that conforms the doctrine to a place or time. Rather this truth of the Gospel confronts the time and place, not in a mode of western assimilation or destruction, but permeates the culture with the reality of the redemption and freedom found in Christ. Christ himself, and his message in this way will critique the culture in whatever follies it may have the same way that when he confronts the individual, the individual can do nothing but see the unholyness in his life in contrast to the holiness of the Son. The reaction from a culture must respond to this, not to our attempts at assimilation.

[9] See Anderson. An Emerging Theology for an Emerging Church. Pg 149-150. Anderson relates the work that we are blessed to do as the "law of love." I would add, if he didn't already implicitly, that Christ's solidarity is found most prominently in this fashion.

[10] Matthew 28:19

[11] Barth. CD. IV, 3.2 Pg. 795. Although Barth here doesn't spend much time on this one fact, he emphasizes the fact that the church, by definition is set apart for the sake of the world. The "task" as he calls it, the work of Jesus Christ and the presentation of the gospel seems to me to become the measuring stick to show the life of the church, not in the sense of a number of people, but the life, livelihood, and contagiousness. And likewise, these attributes display the evangelical effectiveness of a given church.

[12] Ibid. Pg. 797