جمعه ۲۳ شهریور ۰۳ | ۲۰:۵۵ ۸ بازديد
And when we glimpse God in the face of Jesus, all we
know of religion must be readjusted. In most cultures,
the gods were but monstrous amplifications of human
power, violence, and vindictiveness. Yet in a Galilean
Jew, divinity becomes small and humble.4
God becomes a Jewish peasant, and his lineage
proves the purpose of calling forth this family in the first
place. Through the Law and Prophets and all who went
before, the Creator was cultivating a culture in which the
work of his Son might be made intelligible. Jesus comes
as an Israelite, but in another sense, he comes as Israel.
He is the true Israel, the Suffering Servant, the true
representative of all humanity. He is the Second Adam,
and he must do what God’s people could not do alone. He
must face down sin and death, absorb them in his broken
body, and reveal what it looks like for God’s kingdom to
come on earth as it is in heaven.
Through the broken-and-resurrected body of Jesus,
God wins the decisive victory over sin, death, and the
devil. In his life, death, and resurrection, the entire
narrative pivots into a whole new phase. In this phase,
evil still lives but as a kind of death-row criminal whose
time is short. Its fate is sealed as we glimpse our future
in the resurrection of the Messiah.
By living as a peaceful revolutionary, Jesus reveals
what our own lives must look like. We must be advocates
for justice and compassion. We must confront the three-
fold evils of religious pride, pagan self-indulgence, and
imperial arrogance. We must spend ourselves on behalf
of others and in so doing we must imitate the way of our
Savior. We must be his body.
5. Church
There is, however, a problem with being God’s body. We
are not like God. We are sinful, and we tend to act more
like the dysfunctional family of the Old Testament than
the carpenter from Nazareth. We may be forgiven, but
we are still broken. And most days, the brokenness is
readily apparent. In other words, we have a tendency to
become a part of the problem too.
For this reason, the fifth movement in God’s plotline
is about the gift with the power to transform ordinary
fishermen, plumbers, and gym teachers into entirely
new people. The gift is God’s Breath. Or, if you prefer, his
Holy Spirit.
Through the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, the
Jesus community is empowered to reach out to a world
that does not know the news about King Jesus.5 We are
made new (over time) both internally and externally.
As believers, we are blown by this Wind toward a more
loving and generous existence. The Bible calls this “holi-
ness.” And as it did for the first disciples, God’s Breath
compels us to set aside our prejudices in favor of a
new reality: the ever-expanding family of God. While
membership in this family used to involve an ethnic and
national identity, now there is but one stipulation: alle-
giance to King Jesus.
Just as it did for the early Christians, God’s Holy
Spirit compels us to speak the language of outsiders, to
be bold yet humble, and to invite even the most unlikely
folks to join the revolution. In this way, the church is
not a business, but a body. We are not a corporation, but
the corpus Christi here on earth. As Christ’s body, our
mission is not just saving souls for heaven, but joining
the Spirit of the Creator-God in renewing the totality
of creation here on earth: everything from economics
to agriculture, foreign policy to after-school programs.
In these and other ways, the Spirit goes about the quiet
work of making all things new. And just as it was within
the book of Acts, this humble work of restoration often
goes unnoticed by the powerful and proud. But it is no
less real because of that.
6. New Creation
We are motivated to live this life of reckless love because
we believe in the resurrection—not just that of Jesus,
but of ourselves and of our world too. While some may be
content to hunker down under the protective bubble of
the Christian subculture until a time when Jesus beams
us up, the Scriptures speak of something quite different
with regard to the final chapter in God’s Story. In addi-
tion to being with Christ (spiritually) upon death, the
Scriptures also speak of a day when God’s kingdom will
come fully on earth as it is in heaven. The earth itself,
as Isaiah said, “will be filled with the knowledge of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea” (11:9). And on this
day, all things will be made new. This is the hope of new
creation.
We await the return of Jesus, not because it provides
a chance to be whisked away from this evil world, but
because it promises the redemption of God’s broken
creation. Evil will be judged, and truth will be vindicated.
As Paul states: “the dead in Christ will rise” and “we will
be with the Lord forever” (1 Thess. 4:16–17).
History will end in the embrace of loving commu-
nity. There will be a celebration. Wine and worship will
flow together at a marriage feast. And we will praise the
Creator who brought beauty out of chaos and crafted the
greatest drama of them all: the Story of redemption.
We read the Scriptures to find our place within the
messy masterpiece. But just knowing the movements
isn’t enough. The goal is not accumulating answers for
Bible trivia. The goal is living in such a way as to join
the Hero in seeing things end well. Because whether we
know it or not, the Author is moving the composition to
its beautiful conclusion.
When that happens, our common hope will be real-
ized. The same ache that once drew us into stories of
all kinds will be healed. The deep human fissure will be
mended. And on that day a greater story will begin. The
page will turn in God’s grand novel, and we will spend
our days in headlong pursuit of the One who “reconciles
the ill-matched threads of our lives and weaves them
gratefully into a single cloth.”6
NOTES
Introduction
1. Our word for “Bible” comes from the Latin: biblia (liter-
ally: “books”).
2. Though we use this analogy quite differently, it was
Brian McLaren who first introduced the Bible-as-puzzle
metaphor to me in a live talk I attended in 2008.
3. The idea of Scripture as a “script in search of actors”
is drawn appreciatively from the many works of N. T.
Wright.
4. This six-chapter model is not entirely unique to me,
nor is it sacred in and of itself. There are other ways
of dividing up the Story that may work just as well.
The current model owes much to the more in-depth
work of N. T. Wright, as well as the other thinkers
and theologians cited as follows. For a slightly more
academic rendering of the six-part drama, see Craig G.
Bartholomew and Michael Goheen, The Drama of
Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story, 2nd ed.
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014).
Chapter One
1. The story in question is a Babylonian creation myth
entitled Enuma Elish. It dates (according to some
scholars) to the second millennium BC.
2. To be fair to Job’s wife (or at least fairer than most
Christian commentators have been), no one would
likely suffer more from Job’s death than she. Thus,
when she commands Job to “curse God and die,” we
cannot be sure of her true motives. Did she blame Job
for her children’s deaths? Did she merely want to end
Job’s pain? Or was she just playing out the script that so
many of us have at one time or another: hurting people
hurt people?
3. The Old Testament scholar John Walton argues that
the very language that is used of Eden and creation
in Genesis is meant to evoke the idea of an ancient
temple. Just as the presence of a deity was seen to
“rest” (or inhabit) a temple via his “image” (idol), so too
God “rests” and inhabits his creation, in part, through
his image-bearers (humanity). See especially John H.
Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology
and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009).
4. It is somewhat controversial in theological circles to
refer to the Trinity as a “community.” The understand-
able fear in such language is that it tends inherently
toward tri-theism (the belief that there are three gods
to be worshipped). While this danger must be avoided,
there is precedent in the Christian tradition for speaking
of the one God as an eternal koinonia “communion.”
This is so especially in the Cappadocian Fathers of the
fourth century—who helped the church to articulate
the doctrine of the Trinity: One God, existing eternally
in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
5. For more witty insights on faith, life, and circus side-
shows, see Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
(Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004), 61.
6. On the distinction between guilt and shame, see the work
of Brené Brown. A helpful introduction to this work can
be found in her (viral) TED Talk, “Listening to Shame.”
Chapter Two
1. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan,
1952), 46.
2. John Milton, Paradise Lost. Book IV, Line 370.
3. This is close to a famous (and perhaps apocryphal)
quote from the theologian Karl Barth. When asked by a
woman whether the Genesis-serpent actually spoke, he
was reported to have replied: “Madam, it doesn’t matter
if the serpent spoke. What matters is what the serpent
said.” As with the parables of Jesus, God-breathed truth
does not always have to come by way of rigid literalism.
Cited in N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity
Makes Sense (New York: Harper One, 2006), 183.
4. For whatever it’s worth, Genesis never claims that the
talking serpent is perched within the branches of the
fateful tree. The scene is just easier to paint this way.
5. Deuteronomy 21:22–23 hints at the ancient practice
of desecrating the bodies of convicts by hanging them
from trees. The fact that the Scriptures take time to
discourage this practice only corroborates the historical
and anthropological evidence that such things were
occurring among neighboring peoples. It also bears
noting that some Old Testament judges (namely
Deborah in Judges 4) would set up court under a
prominent tree. I am indebted to my Torah professor,
Dr. Gordon Hugenburger, for pointing out this textual
possibility as it pertains to Genesis 3.
6. This is how the prophet Jeremiah describes it: “[God’s]
people have committed two sins: They have forsaken
me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own
cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (2:13).
7. As we’ll see in later chapters, this does not mean that
keeping God’s commands is what makes us right with
God. Only grace, poured out through Jesus Christ, can
do that. Nor does it mean that the Law does not have
some shady side effects when it comes into contact with
our fallen human nature. Stay tuned.
8. G. K. Chesterton, As I Was Saying, ed. Robert Knille
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 160; cited in
C. John Collins, “Adam and Eve as Historical People,
and Why It Matters,” in Perspectives on Science and
Christian Faith, 62 (Sept. 2010), 158.
9. Exactly how the effects of sin spread to humanity at large
is somewhat disputed among theologians. Some think
that it was simply passed on genetically, from Adam to
his offspring. Another view, however, sees the result of
sin as a kind of spiritual radiation that spread outward
from the blast, and enveloped the whole cosmos. Either
way, the Christian view is that the whole world is now
fractured, despite its abiding goodness and beau
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