He is Risen, He has Conquered, He Rules!

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

A joyous Easter to each of you.  This is the day when we celebrate Jesus' victory over the powers and their grip on the world, for in raising Jesus from the dead, the Father achieved victory over the ultimate weapon of evil - death and our fear of death.

I was thinking this morning in church. . .we often look at the Genesis story of the fall as being the point where death entered the world, and to some extent we are supported in that view by Paul's comments in Romans 5.  However, if we look at the biology of life, can we really say nobody would have died without the fall?  I wonder if perhaps Tolkein had it right (though he was writing fiction) when he portrayed death as God's GIFT to man:  to be the transition whereby man passes from earthly life into a newer and closer existence with God, but that death itself became corrupted when man chose his own path to immortality instead of God's.

I wouldn't take this too far, in that we really don't know all the details, but perhaps it wasn't (and isn't) biological death that is or ever was the enemy, but rather that death of that sort got corrupted along with everything else in creation and thereby became our enemy as it became a tool for separation from, rather than approach to, God.

This would make sense out of the fact that we still die, even as believers, but we need not fear death because in Jesus, death is not the end of the story.  The grave has not been eliminated, but it HAS been defanged:  "O death, where is thy sting?"  This is why John of Patmos was able to write in Rev. 14:13:  "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. 'Blessed indeed,' says the Spirit, 'that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!'”

So rejoice in the knowledge that your king defeated the enemy's ultimate weapon of mass destruction--death as separation from God--and now invites us to live in, and work for his Kingdom from now until that Kingdom overtakes the entire fallen world.

The Kingdom of Jesus Christ - Rebels Wanted!

One aspect of the Kingdom of God that we often misunderstand, is that this Kingdom is at war.  The Genesis creation story teaches us that God originally created the cosmos as his own domain, and specifically on Earth, he placed his image-bearers as viceroys--rulers in his stead--and stewards of that domain.  However, a deceitful enemy tempted humans to disobey their creator, and through a process we describe as "the Fall," seized control of God's good creation.  Since that time, through various tactics and strategies, God and those forces loyal to him have been engaged in warfare with the enemy, fighting to retake God's lost territory.

Citizens of God's Kingdom are soldiers in that battle; not with conventional human weapons, but with weapons nonetheless (2 Cor. 10:3-6), pulling down strongholds and taking territory for the Kingdom.  But just as our weapons are not of the flesh, the strongholds we attack are not ordinary land territory, but rather "every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God" (v. 5), so more subjects of the kingdom of this world, will place themselves in subjection to the True King.

For what we are really trying to do in evangelism, is not to "save souls from hell," but rather to recruit for the resistance!  It is when those enslaved to the Powers renounce their allegiance, are freed from their chains, and place their allegiance in the True King, that the Kingdom advances.  Those new recruits are naturalized into citizenship in the Kingdom, renounce their former allegiance, and bear new (different) arms for their sovereign King.  They, like we, become ambassadors and soldiers of the King, waging war against the Powers by ministering to the Powers' subjects with the paradoxical weapons of love and peace and kindness and justice.

Kingdom citizens, we are living in enemy territory!  From the Bible Belt of the United States to the steppes of Siberia to the jungles of Myanmar to the deserts of Saudi Arabia, this world is the territory of the Prince of this world (Lk 4:5-6), and that Prince is the sworn enemy of the Prince of Peace!  There is not, never has been, and never will be a Christian nation.  The Christian nation, the Kingdom of God, knows no national boundaries, fights no earthly wars, but seeks recruits from all men everywhere to again acknowledge and serve the one God and his anointed king, Jesus Christ.

An interesting take on incarnation and God's chacter

I just came across an interesting article by Greg Boyd at Christus Victor during my lunch break.  In it, Greg outlines several points that he is finding helpful in an attempt to reconcile the peaceful, self-giving portrait of God painted in Jesus Christ, with the violent and even nationalistic God portrayed in the Old Testament.  I was particularly struck with Greg's first point, which I quote here:

The Principle of Incarnational Flexibility. If Jesus reveals what God has always been like, then God didn’t start being “incarnational” with the Incarnation. Rather, God has always been willing to humbly “embody” himself within our fallen humanity and has always “borne our sin.” The portrait of Yahweh as a nationalistic, law-oriented, violent-tending warrior god is the result of God condescending to “embody” himself within our barbaric and deceived views of him in order to work toward freeing us from them.

That rings true to me, at least in part.  I'm not sure it fully grasps the times in the O.T. where God appears to command violence, however.  I still tend to see those more as the result of humans (whether cynically or ignorantly) co-opting God's mantle to promote their own objectives.  What do you think?

Easter Should Make Rebels of Us All - a sermon link

Over a late lunch today I listened to a podcast of a sermon from a minister whose page I found through another blog, and I want to share it with you. Andy Croel, over at The Pulpiteer, preached a good sermon this past Easter on the notion that death is NOT part of God's plan, that Easter shows it, and how we ought to respond. I recommend it. Here is a quick excerpt:

In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see God's plan for dealing with death...In the resurrection, mothers are not told why their children died: mothers are given their children back. In the resurrection, we are not told why disease is secretly good: we are healed. In the resurrection the effects of evil and death are undone. Death is shown to have no ultimate effects at all, because God can undo it in the blink of an eye...

Easter should make rebels of us all...when we see evil and injustice, when we see death and destruction, when we see natural disasters that wipe out villages and leave hundreds dead, we are not to be a people that try to come in and explain some ultimate meaning and purpose behind horrible tragedy and death. Instead, we are to speak of a God of salvation who came back to rescue his good creation: A God who doesn't explain the tragic death of innocents, but rather raises them back to life.

He then goes on to challenge us to feed the hungry and minister to the suffering and dying, precisely because their hunger and suffering and death are the work of our enemy...death...defeated though it is by Jesus' resurrection. If I may paraphrase, working for justice, in Jesus' name, is an act of war.

The full sermon is here.

Penal-Substitutionary Atonement--It has God's Role Wrong

I want to highlight a thought my friend Ben just posted over at his blog, that I think adds an additional dimension to the (mis)understanding of atonement which we have been discussing. This is the role of God the Father in the whole process.

As Ben proposes the analogy, we look at atonement in an (appropriately) law-court setting. In classic PSA, God is both plaintiff bringing the accusation against humanity, and judge deciding the case. God proposes and finds man guilty, and as he is pronouncing sentence, Jesus volunteers to accept the sentence in our place. In CV, as Ben proposes it, God is judge, but not plaintiff. That role is the role of Satan and the Powers (appropriately, as Satan is named the "accuser" in scripture). It is the accuser who seeks the death penalty for the defendant (humanity), and the accuser is all-too-glad to accept the judge's son in place of the defendant. When the judge then trumps the sentence by raising Jesus from the dead, the enemy's design is foiled.

Like all analogies, this one can be carried too far (and we have yet to unpack the loaded terms of "sin" and "atonement" so we still have a long way to go. But I think Ben is correct in re-directing our attention to who, after all, is the accuser and who, after all, is demanding the sentence.

Atonement and the Warfare World View

My good friend Ben and I have the greatest theological discussions by cellphone text message. This is both a blast and a pain. . .a blast in that an ordinary, underwhelming day can be interrupted at any moment by a question or a thought about stuff that really counts, and a pain in that it can be really hard to encapsulate a nice juicy thought in 160 characters or less!

Being that as it may, we have been trading thoughts recently over some questions related to the purpose and effect of Jesus' death, ignited (this time) by a great post over at my friend Kurt's blog. I want to get some of these thoughts down in greater detail here. . .and I must start with the caveat that while the words here are mine, the thoughts are very much a product of this back-and-forth we have been having, so thanks to all of you.

Regulars will recognize that we've been over some of this territory already, and will know that several of us have pretty serious issues with the Penal-Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) framework for understanding Jesus' death. Most of us have agreed that the Christus Victor (CV) view explains vital elements of the redemption story that just aren't covered in PSA. Where we may differ is in just how much to keep or discard, in PSA.

The prevalent notion, of course, is that Jesus' in his death took on the wrath of the Father (who demanded death in payment for our sin ¹). A major problem with this theory is that it is (I am beginning to suspect) largely extrabiblical. I am doing a study right now on the use of, and teaching regarding blood sacrifice in Scripture. My initial observations suggest that God never demanded blood sacrifice as payment for sin in the first place. . .but more on that once my study has progressed further. But if (as Ben and Kurt and I have all suggested at different times) Jesus' death wasn't primarily (or mostly, or at all) a payment for sin, then what was it? Just a necessary prelude to resurrection? No, biblical texts still suggest it was more than that. What then?

The key that is starting to tie this together in my mind, was ignited for me when Kurt commented that Jesus did, in fact, die in our place--a "substitutionary" death--but not necessarily in the "penal" framework usually posited. That clicked a connection for me with the "Warfare World View," (WWV) which holds that, rather than God controlling--and even planning or mandating--everything that happens, in fact the cosmos suffers under a grand battle between God and his servants on one hand, and the "principalities and powers" (which I will refer to simply as the "Powers") at work against God throughout creation (Greg Boyd has a nice intro to WWV here). I don't know if Boyd (or other WWV proponents) would agree with this or not, but WWV has the potential to profoundly affect our understanding of Jesus' death, and that matter the broader notion of atonement. The concept is this:

God didn't demand death as payment for sin, the Powers did.

Death, remember, is an enemy. Rev. 20:14 tells us it's the last enemy to be destroyed, and Rom. 5 tells us that death "reins" as a result of sin. In other words, humanity's choice to rebel against God handed authority, as it were, over to the Powers. The Powers' ultimate weapon is death (and humanity's fear of death); therefore, the rein of death is the consequence of the Powers' authority.

What Jesus did in the incarnation, and culminating on the cross, was to voluntarily submit to the Powers' ultimate weapon. In this sense, he died "in our place," in that although he "knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21), he submitted himself to the consequence of sin (death at the hands of the Powers). Of course, they didn't know that his submission wasn't the end of the story. When he was raised from the dead, he defeated the Powers' ultimate weapon, thereby becoming the first fruits of God's restoration of his corrupted cosmos. (If this sounds an awful lot like the climax of Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, don't blame me. Obviously Lewis thought of this long before I did).

So yes, Jesus' death was "substitutionary" for us. But not because he was absorbing the Father's wrath--but rather because he was dying for us so that he could then rise for us, and in so doing defeat our slave masters and raise us into his renewed kingdom. The Lord is Risen Indeed!

1) I am avoiding, for now, a study of the word "sin," which itself requires further parsing. I will get there, Mom, I promise! ;{)