Jesus won the victory so we could talk to each other in church

The work of Jesus Christ is one event and a sequence of events. At its heart is the cross, with its cries of abandonment ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!") and of victory ("It is finished!"). There at the Cross, the true Man committed himself decisively and finally to the path of 'obedience unto death', and in so doing overturned the act of disobedience of the other Man in whom we all died. 

But the cross, while central, is not the totality. Evangelical theologians have sometimes had less to say about the resurrection or ascension, but these are vital scenes too, as the victory is confirmed and published and rewarded. Sin and death and hell will not have the final say; Satan will not have the victory. The resurrection is the first roar of Judgement Day, God's mighty 'No!' against human injustice and all that raises itself up against him. That 'No' declares the end of sin; that 'No' announces the Judge. 

But then, the King ascends. He has the victory, he takes the spoils, and he sits down at the heart of the majestic glory. As High Priest he enters the heavenly Holiest Place on our behalf and intercedes for his people. And as Prophet, he speaks. 

Those facets of his ministry are all visible in the final once-and-for-all act of his earthly work – the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost. The one who has won the victory over sin has the right to redeem sinners from their captivity, to bring them into his victorious army, and to empower and enable them to serve. He intercedes with the Father and the Spirit is poured out. The initial chosen few begin to speak, and the last battle begins. The church makes war by the Word; the church understands, believes and speaks because the Spirit has come; the Spirit has come because Jesus Christ has won the victory. 

That is the reason for the crucial but often overlooked or skipped-over section in Eph 4:7-10. 

Paul wants to give the Ephesian believers every reason not to drift back to their former life as pagan occultists. As it is for every Christian, the most common temptation is to slide back to what they were before they met Jesus. Backsliding is generally exactly what it says – sliding back. In the Ephesians’ case, it happens to have been a life of magic, Spiritism and esoteric religion.

Every part of the letter is geared to stopping them slip back to that – to show that what they enjoy in Christ is infinitely bigger, better and more thrilling than anything they had before in their occult groups. Nowhere might that be more of an acute challenge than in the Christian meeting itself. Compared to drunken sacrifices of bulls, and to nakedness and orgies as a means of experiencing spiritual awakening, groups of people meeting to eat, pray, and to talk and discuss the Jewish scriptures must have seemed rather tame.  

It isn’t tame, says Paul. Any communication of the gospel, any pre-echo of the voice of Jesus that will be heard on the last day, any Spirit-driven word... all is the result of Jesus’ decisive victory. That applies to the once-and-for-all laying down of the definitive revelation of the gospel, through the apostles and prophets. It applies to the ongoing work of proclaiming and applying that gospel, by the evangelists and shepherds-and-teachers. And it applies to the work of every believer as all of us, in conversation and fellowship, encourage and help one another to grow in our faith.  

When Christian people meet and speak the truth – the real truth, the actual gospel – to each other, we are seeing the spoils of Jesus’ war. What we are seeing is the product of a divine invasion, an incursion. A powerful One came from outside and supernaturally intervened in a dark empire. Citizens who had been comfortable in this world were turned into rebels against this world – for they are now citizens of a new and as yet not-fully-seen kingdom. Jesus turned sinners into saints. He made the ignorant into the knowing and blasphemers into preachers. The gathering of these rebel forces is called “church”. 

The way in which this rebel movement grows is called evangelism – speaking the truth about Jesus so that other people are convinced and join up. And the way the passion and purity and power of the lives of the rebels is built up is by… talking to each other. Hearing pastors and teachers explain and apply the apostles’ and prophets’ teaching, discussing that and applying that to one another, that is the battlefield diet of an advancing and powerful army. In re-telling the gospel and its implications is nutrition and life and energy and transforming power. Mutually teaching each other the Bible is the essential basis for spiritual warfare – the battle for holiness.

Don’t be taken in by the suggestion that words are peripheral – whether to evangelism or to the life of the church. If Francis of Assisi really said “Preach Jesus – if necessary, use words!” he was no saint – but then, he never said that! Don’t be taken in by the idea that images or actions are central to our meetings. Words are. In the Salvation Army we rejected the two officially sanctioned faith-feeding visual actions early in our history; ironically the resultant vacuum has made us so hungry for the visual and physical and so inventive of secondary symbols and sacraments that the word has been at a disadvantage among us ever since. I don’t know if we will ever be able to reinstate baptism and the supper as catalysing co-workers of the word; I don’t doubt that the dethroning of the word is one of the things that is killing us. As a church we are dying of starvation. The Salvation Army is rejecting the gifts that its Saviour paid for!

The Authorised Version used the word “conversation” to describe something much broader than “talking” – it was the whole lifestyle of believers. And yet the word made a profound link between word and life: a church in its living will never rise above the quality of its talking. You have to walk the talk, but you can’t not talk. Jesus died and rose and ascended so that we could talk in church. Never underestimate the wonder of that. The Christian meeting is the counter-cultural, subversive, perturbing sign in this present world of his victory won – and of his coming return. 

See you on Sunday! 

Doctrine versus practice?

Mark 3:20-35 NIV

²⁰Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. ²¹When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

²² And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

²³So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? ²⁴If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. ²⁶And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. ²⁷In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. ²⁸Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, ²⁹but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

³⁰He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

³¹Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. ³²A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

³³“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

³⁴Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Mark chapter 3 gives us a first watershed moment in the tensions that surrounded Jesus early on in his ministry. Teaching and miracle-working are not neutral activities; people will want to own you or disown you, and both reactions are dangerous. In this passage – a typical "Marcan sandwich" – we see the family of Jesus coming to "take ownership" of him, followed by a section on the official teachers' opinion of him, and closing with the actual arrival of Jesus' relatives. The final words, "Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother" are seen by some as a strong call to correct practice as over against the sterile theologising of the intellectual authorities in Jerusalem. Is that right? 

The passage is, of course, a notorious one for its central difficulty: the teaching on blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But it is that difficulty that gives the lie to the idea that "it's not what you think or say, but how you live, that matters."  

Jesus' family think he's mad. That may have its roots in genuine concern for his wellbeing, as his life seems overwhelmed by so many demands that he and his inner circle can't even eat. However, the language of "madness" and of "taking charge" shows a mix of lack of understanding and a paternalistic sense of ownership. Perhaps there is also a desire for the kudos that comes from that ownership being seen and admired. Whatever their motives, they are not 'reading' Jesus right. They have not understood, and are acting/reacting in ways that reveal their non-understanding. 

As for the teachers of the law from Jerusalem, their opinion is just perverse, as Jesus shows in his sequence of 'kingdom' and 'house' sayings. When they say that Jesus is possessed by the devil, they are deliberately, obtusely, wilfully, wickedly refusing any openness to the most obvious explanation of Jesus’ ministry: he is the Strong Man from God who has come to destroy the Evil One and all his works. Such a deliberately obtuse refusal to countenance the truth about Jesus is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; it is a locking of the door against the gospel and against any hope of salvation. 

When Jesus is told that his family has arrived outside the building, his reaction seems cool, even harsh. This is not the only time that he reacts with apparent coldness or rebuke when people close to him get things badly wrong about who he is or about his purposes. "Who really is my family?" he asks. 

And he looks at those sat round him and says, "Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” And out of context, that might seem to say that right living is all there is to it. But how do we do God's will? How do we understand it? How do we hear it? 

The key is to see who he is speaking to. The Greek construction is so emphatic and repetitive it is almost funny – he looked around him at those seated in a circle around him. Here are the people who are recognising him for who he is, and having recognised him, are soaking up his words. They are physically close to Jesus, gathered round him, because they have seen something in him, love him and want to hear him. And of course, when we take that emphasis on the “gathered circle” seriously, Jesus’ words at this point are a breath-taking statement of who he is. “Who is my family? Those who do God’s will – which starts with listening to me!” He is either appallingly insane, arrogant, or the revelation of God.

Here is a world where those who should know better through the closeness of family life or the depth of theological training and privilege are dismissing Jesus as mad or demonic. But in that world some people recognise him for who he is and are listening to his every word. Recognition of Jesus as the Strong One who comes from God, and therefore careful attention to his words as being the revelation of the will of God – these are the prerequisites for doing the will of God. Doing God’s will is essential – it is the mark of the Family – and it starts with truth about Jesus. Obedience to the will of God starts with right thinking about his Son. Right thinking makes us listen to Jesus in humility as he describes himself and his work, and thus how we should live. Being in Jesus’ family IS good theology being worked out in practice. And as the gospel of Mark goes on, right living is spelled out in ever stronger and clearer terms – and always in relation to the person of Christ and the nature of his death as a ransom.

There is a tide of hatred towards orthodox thinking that loves to pit doctrine and praxis against each other. Such talk has the aim of preserving Christianity and carrying it forward in the post-modern and post-post-modern generation. But it is as wrong-headed and destructive as “He is mad!” or “He is of Satan!” No one can truly love and live for God and despise the Son he has sent or the work that he achieved through him. Doctrine and life are twins – Siamese twins – inseparable and interwoven. Despise either and you will kill both.

Recognise Jesus, love his person, his words and his work, walk in his ways, and you can be assured: You are part of his family, now and forever!

Whole lotta shaking going on

It is arguable that the UK is now in its biggest mess since the last World War. The difference being that then we were, by and large, united. This time the mess is in the disunity. The Tories and Labour are both torn apart, with the opposition in particular disarray and carrying the can for what was really a Tory row. People say that they don't know who they can look in the eye in the street. Families are divided, with the traditional alliance between teenagers and their grandparents under special strain. And immigrants and transients feel insecurity and fear as at no point in most of their lifetimes. 

The most striking thing to me is the degree of disruption that has also occurred in relations between Christians, and church leaders particularly. At a General Election, very few ministers come out strongly and publicly in favour of one or other party. Still less is there an attempt to theologise the vote, in the sense of bringing arguments that claim a biblical basis for a particular choice. This time though, between a sudden attachment to, for instance, "the biblical concept of the nation state" and the discovery of the "vital role of the EU in preserving freedom for gospel work in Europe", we were pushed this way and that by strongly worded claims. It was all too easy to imply that, ultimately, only a Leave, or only a Remain, vote would have God's approval and blessing.

And strongly-worded we were. At a time when we were undoubtedly being lied or spun to by politicians on every side, Christian ministers were also going for the jugular, and the strain in relationships was and is visible. Some have had to get out of social media. Others have dropped or blocked brothers and sisters in Christ. To the best of my knowledge, the only friend I have lost was a Christian woman with whom I remonstrated for her apparent willingness to let anger turn to physical assault on a public figure. It's been rough, hasn't it? 

It is time to calm down, breathe deeply, look at ourselves, and deal with some issues. Above all, we need to think biblically and in a way that sees the Kingdom and the power and wisdom of God in all of this. 

1) God rules over the nations. He directs the heart of the king as a gardener directs the hose onto his prize roses. He does that for voters too. This referendum has surprised and shocked a lot of people - including, it would appear, some of the victors! Our sovereign Lord wasn't surprised. If you are happy with the result, don't let your happiness simply flow from a sense of "we did it."  Give thanks to God. And if you are unhappy, or very unhappy, let your unhappiness be tempered by the awareness that God is sovereign over this mess too and he has his purposes in it. 

2) Christians are to submit to the authorities. In this case, in any democratic process, that means submission to the will of our fellow voters, unless we are being forced along a path fundamentally inconsistent with our faith. That is surely not the case here. The issue was important, but not actually one where Christian faith itself was at stake. So, submission must now be our principle. We argued hard beforehand precisely because we knew that every individual's mind mattered and we wanted to win minds. I can tell you, whinging after a vote has gone against you ain't going to win any minds. The only way to change things is through proper democratic process - we are at liberty to work within democratic mechanisms to effect change, but I don't see that we are at liberty to simply refuse to submit to the decision as taken. 

3) The Kingdom of God is the real and lasting kingdom. Essential to our understanding of it is that, while nations, alliances, empires and civilisations come and go, Jesus' kingdom will endure and grow and dominate at last the entire created order. And the other kingdoms HAVE TO come and go for that to be seen. Think about the rise and fall of empires as seen in Daniel's prophecy. Think about the smoke of Babylon rising for ever in Revelation - and the fact that the smoke of destruction is the subject matter for a neat little worship song. Think of every knee bowing at the name of Jesus. It of the essence of Christian faith that the British empire (like all the others) did not last for ever!

We are citizens of another kingdom, and the mighty hand of God lifting up and casting down countries and politicians is to be a reason for praise, not fear. We need to take into account the possibility that God is actually in the process of dismantling much of what we have regarded as normal. The preservation of that "normality" or even its transformation in a direction that we want cannot be our highest priority. 

4) The biggest issue facing all of us as individuals, and the root cause of the spiritual bankruptcy in our society is our citizenship, or lack of it, in that kingdom and our relationship with its King. In the light of that overriding issue, I have been alarmed by the level of passion applied by Christians in arguments re Brexit. The question certainly has arisen - are we as fervent in persuading when it comes to the good news of Jesus? It has staggered me that gospel ministers of maturity and repute have weighed in so heavily on social media when talking to complete strangers of whose spiritual standing they know nothing. One suspects they may not be used to talking to people who actually think differently from them. I felt I had to write to one prominent conservative evangelical leader who had been arguing in a thread on my Facebook, just to give him a heads up regarding some of the people he was talking to. I received no reply and I saw no change of tone in the argument, still less any use of the moment to communicate anything related to the kingdom of Christ. 

When people bump into strangers on the Internet, they often get into heated arguments. We all know what social media can do to usually mild-mannered people. But a Christian must not hide in the anonymity of the internet. We are going to give account for every idle word. And there is no such thing as a "random stranger", for Providence is behind every conversation. There is no one who we will never meet again, for one day we will all give account at the judgement seat of Christ. All will meet there. Every internet conversation forms part of our story and of the story of those we "meet" in this life. How will we give account for our passionate persuasion re Brexit and our indifference to people’s ignorance of God, his commands, his judgment and his grace?

5) The referendum has both revealed the frustration, disenfranchisement and anger that already affected a vast number of people in our country, and has increased the division, turmoil and uncertainty that our society faces. We are in an appalling mess. 

At the political level that tells us that we had better be listening, talking and engaging in real conversations with struggling people who feel that an elitist system has let them down. There has never been a better time to get involved, but it had better be with a genuine, honest open-handedness and readiness to help people. They will know if it isn't. 

And at a spiritual level, we are seeing a meltdown of the things that people have relied on. There is a great shaking happening - within our nation, and between nations. Things are very disorientating. Where can people turn for any higher certainties and values than the dross of false promises and dashed hopes that have come from politicians? At such a time, the church needs to be united, loving, understanding and clear in its proclamation of grace. 

I am accustomed to the fact that some liberals have drifted from the urgency and overriding priority of the eternal, eschatological gospel; I am really disconcerted when conservative evangelicals let a political agenda usurp the place of the gospel in their conversations. 

For my part, I apologise for any and every interaction where I have failed in balance, kindness or understanding over the last fraught weeks. I want to appeal to you, especially to gospel preachers, to make a conscious effort to examine yourself, put right any relationships that words and attitudes have strained, and do all that is within you to preserve and demonstrate the unity we have in the Spirit. This is for our good as individuals, for the good of the church, and for the good of a hurting, lost, blind and fragmented world. 

I am strangely excited about the present situation. Not because I have come round to thinking Brexit was a good idea politically, but because I can recognise that in uncomfortable times, God is at work. I think that a much more radical breakdown is entirely possible, with potential for terror and violence on an unprecedented scale. I can also see Islam going through death throes, with a new openness to the grace of Jesus Christ already being seen amongst many who have fled from (let's face it) persecution by other Muslims. No wonder they are open!

 

But I can also see new waves of hate, and more readiness to show it. If British streets run red with Muslim blood, will you and your church be ready to stand between the immigrants and the mob? Will hospitality and love to strangers be the hallmarks of your religion? 

If the post-modern tide reaches its peak and the church really is persecuted, will you stand firm? Or if an anti-post-modern, anti-political-correctness backlash should take hold, will you be ready to stand equally against that tide and with the newly-oppressed? 

We don't know which of those futures it will be. But we do know who holds the future, and we know that he has work for us to do still. Let us plead with him for his Spirit to be poured out again, for his church to stand firm again, for holiness and love to mark us out, and for an as yet unimagined harvest to be brought in. The hope for Europe isn't the EU, or Brexit, Dexit, Frexit or any other Exit. It is God, in Christ, reconciling people to himself by the Spirit's power. 

Kicking back on Good Friday

Today's the day. We get our chance. Someone once said that given half a chance we'd kill our creator - and today we're going to. 

All that perfection. All that love. All that holiness. Everything about everything that man says and does makes me feel like a little s***. And I'm sick of it. I want shot of him!

Just think - a couple of stiff beatings, a few nails - job done. I know it seems a bit barbaric, but think of the freedom! Imagine: with him gone... No hell below us! Above us only sky! Then we can get on with living for today. 

A whole world of possibility opens up for us going forward. This, friends, is where we've been heading ever since we got the Knowledge. We are now utterly free to choose EVERYTHING for ourselves. With no rule-maker and no judge, with the king dead, there is no one there to tell us what to do. Nothing is absolutely wrong anymore - just wrong when it offends. There is no "truth" out there, so make your own. 

From now on, we just have... from now on. This moment. Now. This. Love it. Live it. Breathe. Enjoy. Give yourself to it. No one is there who will ever judge anything you do! Free at last! We're free at last!

Mind you, if he ever comes back from this, we're stuffed. Don't give me that happy Easter crap. If after THIS God makes him alive, then what's he going to appoint him? And having killed him, what will he do to us? And all this freedom of ours... what will he have to say?

I hope death can hold him. Cos, if it can't, we're going to need a rethink. 

Why care? The theological foundation of social action

A friend of mine who has worked in development work in TSA for a number of years said to me a few months ago that he felt he didn't really have a theological basis for what he was doing. My impression is that he has dipped a little into various theologies, principally of the more Progress or Liberation type, but he has never felt that he has a coherent and comprehensive understanding from which to work. Specifically, I think he has never been strongly exposed to the broader evangelical history of social action nor its theological base. I believe that the SA, with its glorious history of social action, needs to rediscover its own theological roots in just this area, and so to place evangelism and social action in close coordination within the Army's holistic mission. 

You don't need a Liberation Theology to have a holistic vision for social action. The Christian social reformers of the 19th Century would not have agreed with an LT reading of, say, Exodus, and yet their call to social action WAS grounded in their classic, evangelical theology. What are the distinct elements of such a theology as it touches on social, compassionate and developmental issues? In one sense a "holistic" vision is one where all thought-streams are interconnected, so that every aspect of theology has a social outworking, but I think it is possible to identify three key theological taproots of evangelical social concern.

1) The Image of God: Common humanity flowing from common humanness. 

We recognise and honour the image of God in every human being. This image is present and underwrites the value of human life after the Fall - it is present in all, regardless of gender, age, colour, class, age or ability. Admittedly, among the various lines of discussion regarding the nature of the image of God, it has been an evangelical stream - the Lutheran - that has tended to say that the image was lost completely in the Fall, but Reformed theology, with a few exceptions, has argued for a damaged and yet still present image, which is still the basic measure of human value. This position has dominated British evangelical theology.

The logic of this, once seen, or allowed, is inescapable. If the measure of human worth resides outside of ourselves, in God himself, then a respect and honour is due to one another which precludes all racism, sexism, classism and ageism.  And how can I allow my fellow image-bearer to starve, be mistreated, abused, trafficked or killed? 

In honouring all human beings as being made in the image of God, I honour the One who is THE image of the invisible God - the Man for whom and by whom all things were first made. This leads to the second point...

2) God's kindness and compassion in Jesus Christ

In a broken world under judgement, social concern is motivated by - we might say made possible at all by - the grace of God in Christ. The human race has fallen - we are corrupt. At one level we don't deserve any good. Hunger and pain, struggle and failure, chaos and unfairness, are all woven into our lives. But what God has done in Christ means that we cannot adopt a "grin and bear it" approach. He has shown kindness and mercy and condescension when we were dead in our sins. He has stooped to help us. We live in a helped world. 

This help has come to us holistically. Though the centre and goal of Jesus whole ministry was to PREACH the gospel of forgiveness of sins and then to BE that gospel through his dying and rising, nevertheless, along the way of the Word and the Cross, he did good at the most practical level. Maintaining the spiritual message of the Cross at centre is totally consistent with vigorous attempts to ease the physical burden of our fellow human beings because that is exactly how Jesus demonstrated his love as he travelled along the same road. If sin is the cancer and suffering and injustice are the symptoms, I will not take my eyes off the need for a cure from sin, but I will want to help with the symptoms. I will recognise that to preach the message of forgiveness to a man with an empty stomach is to deny the love at the very heart of the message I preach.

It is striking how the NT letters, as they come to practical application, repeatedly bring us back to the cross of Jesus as our motive.  Love your wife, give to the poor, be kind and tolerant towards each other in the church, submit to your boss - all these and more are to be driven, for the Christian, by a constant awareness of God's love in Jesus.  Amongst all the rediscoveries of which the church is in need, the rediscovery of the link between Cross and lifestyle is amongst the most important. 

3) The coming age of Christ 

The gospel of Christ is more than simply a spiritual message of forgiveness in itself, of course. In justification we hear the verdict of the future judgement day brought into the present; that great "Not Guilty" is the opening fanfare of our entrance into eternal life, and eternal life is enjoyed now and forever, in a new world which the scripture presents consistently as physical and solid. 

The future world will be a place of justice and peace, of integrity and prosperity. All that is corrupt and unjust in the present system will be swept away into the rubbish bin of eternity. Some Christians, including some evangelicals, have tended to say, "Well - that's for the age to come - no need for us to do anything now." I think the opposite - we are to live as citizens of the coming kingdom. This world may be passing, it may be destined for judgement, and yet it is groaning for its future redemption and we cannot live as if it had no value at all. The powers of the age to come have already laid hold of us, and we have to demonstrate the values of that age in the here and now by pursuing the same goals. We are to show the characteristics of the future reign of our dear King, Jesus, in this age. Indeed, it is precisely the certainty of his coming justice, of judgement in the light of the transcendent moral values of this King, that makes the pursuit of justice in the present evil age so utterly imperative. 

One of my favourite characters from British church history is James Montgomery the hymn writer, who gave us the carol "Angels from the realms of glory".  He was imprisoned on more than one occasion for his radical, socialist-leaning views. He cared passionately about the plight of the poor, and helped in the fight against the slave trade. All of that was rooted in his Moravian spirituality - the same source that John and Charles Wesley had drunk from so deeply. My favourite hymn of his is the well-known paraphrase of Psalm 72...

1. Hail to the Lord's Anointed,

great David's greater Son!

Hail in the time appointed,

his reign on earth begun!

He comes to break oppression,

to set the captive free;

to take away transgression,

and rule in equity.

2. He comes with succour speedy

to those who suffer wrong;

to help the poor and needy,

and bid the weak be strong;

to give them songs for sighing,

their darkness turn to light,

whose souls, condemned and dying,

are precious in his sight.

3. He shall come down like showers

upon the fruitful earth;

love, joy, and hope, like flowers,

spring in his path to birth.

Before him on the mountains,

shall peace, the herald, go,

and righteousness, in fountains,

from hill to valley flow.

4. To him shall prayer unceasing

and daily vows ascend;

his kingdom still increasing,

a kingdom without end.

The tide of time shall never

his covenant remove;

his name shall stand forever;

that name to us is love.

That is eschatological hope, clearly breaking out into present social concern. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

I am not rejecting every insight that has come through Liberation Theology. I am saying that a broad-based commitment to social action was built into the Christian movement way before LT. In the Salvation Army there are many who have a genuinely deep love for Christ, and a deep love and concern for people, which have been come into being through a traditionally evangelical but theologically impoverished preaching. As those who are involved in social action look for a deeper foundation, they seem to be offered mainly non-Evangelical models. We need to go back to our roots, with greater confidence that we have what we need in classic Evangelical thought.



*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

For a helpful and thorough historical and theological survey of the relationship between Evangelism and Social action in the SA, please see here. I think it ends up a tad too positive about the impact of post-modernity, but I think the authors may not have been aware of (or imagined) the way that post-modern thought would invade evangelical theology over the last decade.

 

Threads

In a recent post, I referred to the two threads of judgement and salvation that come together in the gospel accounts of Jesus' baptism by John. It strikes me that the "threads" concept is such a powerful tool for understanding the Bible, and yet one which is not always appreciated.

To use that particular example, and explore it a little more deeply: the synoptic gospels refer to Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40 as they describe John's ministry. In Mark 1 the two passages are actually glued together, and introduced as if both by Isaiah, but on looking closely they are two quotes. The NIV does the work for us with carefully separating punctuation:

Mark 1:2-3 ... as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:“I will send my messenger ahead of you,who will prepare your way”— “a voice of one calling in the wilderness,‘Prepare the way for the Lord,make straight paths for him.’” 

What is striking is that the two verses quoted are the sections of the two passages which are most alike, and Mark weaves them into a virtually seamless whole.  But when we look at the context of the two verses, the contrast is stark: 

Malachi 3:1-5 “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. 
But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. 
Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years. 
“So I will come to put you on trial. 
I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers,
against those who defraud laborers of their wages, 
who oppress the widows and the fatherless, 
and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, 
but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty. 

Isaiah 40:1-5 Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God. 
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, 
and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. 
A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 
Every valley shall be raised up, 
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain. 
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” 

Both prophets speak of a voice or messenger, preparing the way for the Lord's coming. But that is their only point of similarity: Malachi's coming is terrifying, full of burning judgement against immorality and hypocrisy; Isaiah's is full of comfort and the assurance that punishment is done with. 

I don't know, and I don't know if anyone knows, whether any thinker or movement had put those two texts together before Mark did, but what is clear is that in drawing them together and making quite obvious that he sees them as referring to John and (more importantly) to Jesus, Mark is "doing theology" on a grand scale. He is joining threads, linking themes from past revelation and affirming that they both come to fulfilment in Jesus.

Those two threads, Judgement and Salvation, go way back, of course. At the very beginning of the Bible we see them under different names - they are Cursing and Blessing, which seem to alternate as themes in early Genesis. It is only as the universal nature of the curse of judgement is revealed in practice that blessing becomes inextricably linked with salvation - blessing can only be experienced when the curse is lifted, when sin is paid for, when judgement is removed. This is why Isaiah 40's promise of comfort is because sin is paid for - in the context a reference to exile, but illustrating a broader principle. 

Ultimately we may say that God has only two ways of dealing with the world: salvation and judgement. Extend those into eternity and you get the names Heaven and Hell.  The gospels draw those themes together and say that Jesus is God's agent in bringing both; he is Lord of both. 

The point is that there are many such threads, of greater and lesser prominence. Others could include the Presence/tabernacling of God with his people, or sacrifice, or the Son of Man, or the Shepherd, or the Servant, or the Messiah, or the Rock, or the Word, or Wisdom. It is the gathering of these threads into an interwoven whole in the coming of Jesus that constitutes a specifically Christian reading of the Old Testament. We could go so far as to say that whoever brought together the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 and the Terrifying Messiah of Psalm 2 invented Christianity. And the evidence is that this was Jesus himself.  

Contemporary criticism has often dismissed the idea of any unity of thought in the Bible. We are told that the book is a collection of incompatible theologies, and that any idea of an overarching theme or truth is an unworkable construct. Such an approach, it seems to me, rides roughshod over the Bible's own awareness of its internal diversity and yet its affirmation of unity. The New Testament's testimony to Jesus is precisely that he is the One in whom all those diverse and apparently opposing threads come together.