Prosperity teaching and Mission

Piper has an excellent and challenging sermon here on the complete contradiction between the prosperity gospel and gospel-centred mission.

Here are some excerpts...

"At the heart of true biblical missions is the willingness to die to the cravings that prosperity preachers exploit. At the heart of true biblical missions (both for the goers and the senders) is an eagerness to live simply and give lavishly. At the heart of true biblical missions is suffering, not merely as a result of proclamation, but also as a means of proclamation—a means of making the saving sufferings of Christ known to the world. As Joseph Tson says, “Christ’s sufferings are for propitiation; our sufferings are for propagation.....”

".....Of course, contrary to what the Prosperity Gospel teaches, wealth is not usually a blessing. It is usually a curse. Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25). Wealth is a mortal danger for those who have it. It does not make us generous and humble. It makes us buy more stuff, and it numbs our conscience because we have to blind ourselves to our inconsistencies with the Calvary road.

Paul said to the prosperity preachers of his day, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs” (1 Timothy 6:9-10).

No, it isn’t for lack of money that there are 1,568 peoples with no missionaries. It’s because we have so much. The comforts of the West have made us soft and cautious and fearful and indulgent and self-protecting, instead of tough and risk-taking and bold and self-controlled and self-sacrificing. When prosperity preachers fly their personal jets to the Two-thirds World and promise the poor that if they believe in Jesus, they will get rich, they are not doing Christian missions. They are destroying its foundations. That is not the gospel that saves and produces sacrifice...."

Sabbatarian Gospel

No, this is not a heresy! Following on from the sermon last Sunday and BIble study this week (Luke 13:10-17), I've been thinking a lot about Sabbath and its impact on our grasp of the gospel. Several things have struck me afresh about Sabbath....

1. Sabbath is easily formulated as restriction and is often formulated by what you can't do. But Sabbath is about liberation (cf. Deut 5 where Sabbath celebrates the exodus) and freedom (Luke 13:12, 16). It is about being set free from what enslaved you. It is revolutionary. It challenges the oppressive status quo.

2. Sabbath is about the reign of the Lord Jesus. He is the Lord of the Sabbath and Sabbath is the experience of the kingdom: rest, liberation, healing and new life. It is about the healing of the withered hand and the mending of the crippled back, both physical and spiritual. It is holistic - the experience of new creation and the rest that comes from the presence of the Lord Jesus.

3. On the deepest level, as a colleague instructed me, Jesus is the Sabbath (Matt 11:28-30). To know Him and be with Him is to live in continual Sabbath. This is what we are looking forward to in the future (cf. Heb 4).

So we might put it like this: the promise of the gospel is the true Sabbath. Has the Sabbath influenced our theology (other than just thinking it's about a day of rest)? Do we preach a Sabbatarian gospel? Do we take the gospel to be promising us peace, rest and healing (understood with a right eschatology)? Do we take the gospel to be promising us liberation and restoration? Do we have a holistic, Sabbatarian message?

Excellent videos!

Here is some great videoed discussion between Carson, Piper and Keller on a whole range of issues from mercy ministries to ministerial character. Great stuff!

What does not change when you are born again

I was very intrigued by reading 1 Cor 7:20 "Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him" this morning. In that passage Paul is arguing that there are a number of things that should not be changed when you become a Christian. This is very interesting because so often I, and perhaps others as well, would naturally stress everything that does change when you are born again. Yet, here, Paul is saying that there are things that do not change, such as what you do, your social position and your marital status. Of course, this is in many ways obvious. But, as I thought about it, it struck me that it is theologically important to say that some things do not change when you are born again because that helps define what being born again actually means.

So, if my social position changes then being born again is political revolution. If my marital status changes then being born again means that I have already been resurrected in the new creation. If my culture changes then being born again is a tool of imperialism. Saying what being born again does not change actually helps to define what being born again does mean. It hinders confusion, distortions and add-ons. That is why Paul says circumcision (v.19) does not matter. It is irrelevant. Whereas if you argue that being born again does mean circumcision then essentially you must become a Jew to be saved.

This obviously has lots of spin-off implications for evangelism, mission and church-planting.

What does the Spirit do?

Rom 2:29 He circumcises our hearts

Rom 5:5 He pours God’s love into us

Rom 7:6 He gives us a new way of serving God

Rom 8:2 He has set me free from the law of sin and death

Rom 8:5 He gives us new desires

Rom 8:9 He steers us towards righteousness

Rom 8:9 He is a sign of our belonging to Christ

Rom 8:11 He is the promise of future resurrection

Rom 8:13 He enables us to put the sinful nature to death

Rom 8:14-16 He brings the reality of adoption into our lives

Rom 8:26 He helps us in our weakness

Rom 8:26 He prays for us

Rom 14:17 He brings us righteousness, peace and joy

Rom 15:13 He gives us power

1 Cor 2:10 He reveals God’s wisdom to us

1 Cor 3:16 He lives in us and makes us into the Temple

1 Cor 6:11 He washes us, sanctifies us and justifies us

1 Cor 12:3 He enables us to say “Jesus is Lord”

1 Cor 12:7 He is working for the common good of the Church

1 Cor 12:8-11 He distributes spiritual gifts to the Church

1 Cor 12:13 He baptizes us

1 Cor 12:13 He quenches our spiritual thirst

2 Cor 1:22 He is the deposit of things to come

2 Cor 3:6 He gives life

2 Cor 3:8 He brings a glorious ministry

2 Cor 3:17 He is Lord

Gal 3:2 He is received by faith

Gal 3:14 He is the promise offered to Abraham

Gal 5:5 He will bring us future righteousness

Gal 5:17 He is opposed to the sinful nature

Gal 5:18 He sets us free from the Law

Gal 5:19 He enables spiritual fruit in our lives

Eph 1:13 He is the seal of our salvation

Eph 1:17 He gives us wisdom and revelation

Eph 2:18 He enables access to the Father

Eph 2:22 He is God’s presence with us

Eph 3:5 He reveals the purposes of God to us

Eph 3:16 He strengthens us

Eph 4:4 He gives unity to the Church

Eph 5:18 He fills us

Phil 1:19 He is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus

2 Tim 1:14 He helps us to guard the deposit of the gospel

Titus 3:5 He brings rebirth and renewal

Trinitarian Spirituality

What a snappy name for a blog post!

The God we know is trinity: one God - Father, Son and Spirit. This isn't just meant to be a theological point but it has deeply practical implications for how we practice our spiritual lives. Our relationship with God is structured along 3 lines:

1. Knowing the Father means that we are adopted and have become sons of God.

2. Knowing the Son, Jesus Christ, means that we find ourselves "in Christ" - with the salvation and infinite number of blessings He has for us.

3. Knowing the Spirit means that we are born again and "walk according to the Spirit" and not according to the flesh.

Now, the fact that our God is One means that all these relationships are a unity and cannot be understood apart from one another. This means that we need to hold together all these relationships if we are to have a right relationship with God. When you read the Scriptures the one relationship through three relationships is seen everywhere and is intertwined. Salvation is a trinitarian work and we neglect the different aspects of it to our peril. This is implied by the whole reality of three persons and oneness, and particularly by the doctrine of perichoresis.

The fact is, though, that we, and our various subcultures and churches, regularly become less than trinitarian in practice and in our spirituality. We start to focus on certain aspects of the one relationship and ignore other aspects. So, we focus on the Spirit but ignore Christ, or we ignore the Father and focus on Christ, or we focus on the Father and ignore both Christ and the Spirit. The result is that our spirituality starts to veer off in a wrong direction. Our assurance disappears, or our trust in God's providence disappears, or our prayer life disappears or our sanctification disappears. One needs to be properly trinitarian in one's knowledge of God to practice a proper spirituality.

The Magician's Nephew: Evil

The Magician's Nephew (CS Lewis) is a brilliant distillation of the nature of evil and probably my favourite Chronicle. In the book you have basically two kinds of evil presented to us: foolishness/ignorance (represented by Uncle Andrew) and pure wickedness (represented by Queen Jadis). It is fascinating to see how Lewis gives us insight into evil in its different shapes and forms.

Uncle Andrew is selfish and conceited, but also foolish and silly: “Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true; most right and proper, I’m sure, and I’m very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys - and servants - and women - and even people in general, can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory,. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.” He is unable to hear Aslan at the creation because of his unbelief and so he only hears roaring. And throughout he is unable to relate to Aslan or any of the talking animals. He only sees animals, not talking animals. He reduces reality to empirical truth. His naturalism makes him, ironically, not wiser but blind to reality, "the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." Aslan laments such human foolishness,“Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good.”

Queen Jadis (the white witch) is, on the other hand, a depiction of real wickedness. She is very attractive and very strong. She demonstrates the unity of aesthetics and cruelty and reminds us of how attractive and seductive evil can be. She demonstrates a character that has lost all conscience and that has become absorbed in itself. Jadis is essentiallly pure power gone evil - she sees herself as living beyond the moral law. She kills all who stand in her way, using the "deplorable word" in her home of Charn, even killing her own family. When Polly objects to her killing everyone “Don’t you understand?.... I was the Queen. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will?” (p.42). People exist essentially for her. She is beyond all moral accountability, “You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I.” Charn had been a great and powerful city and yet had become incrediby twisted. Its civilization/culture/power were incredibly developed and yet had also become horribly wicked and violent. One can't help seeing a picture of Western culture here with our own version of the deplorable word (nuclear weapons).

Yet, powerful and frightening as she is she is also self-deluded. She fails to see that her own power is sovereignly limited. 1. It is limited in other worlds, not working on Earth (when she tries kill someone with a spell nothing happens and the intended victim thinks she’s mad or drunk) 2. She does not understand the deeper magic 3. She is no match for Aslan. When in Narnia she encounters something frightening for her, “Ever since the song began she had felt that this whole world was filled with a Magic different from hers and stringer. She hated it. She would have smashed that whole world, or worlds, to pieces, if it would only stop singing.” She tries to kill Aslan by throwing a metal bar at Him “The bar struck the Lion fair between the eyes. It glanced off and fell with a thud in the grass. The Lion came on. Its walk was neither slower nor faster than before; you could not tell whether it even knew it had been hit. Though its soft pads made no noise, you could feel the earth shake beneath their weight.... The Witch shrieked and ran...” Up until that point in the story the Witch was the most powerful and intimidating figure but then Aslan comes and she seems very small. What a wonderful reminder: Christ has absolute power over all evil. The iron bar becomes the lamp-post and becomes the source of light to Narnina!! The Witch’s evil deed turns against her. Evil is absorbed and transformed by the power of Aslan/Chrsit.

Atonement

Check out this amazing clip from ER (first saw it on Christ Church Earlsfield blog).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nNuSBGa1mLM

How often do I meditate on the wrath of God?

It's one of those topics that we know about it, believe in and mention - but I wonder how much I ever really think about it properly? The wrath of God often becomes for me one bit in a gospel presentation (box 3!) which I then move on from. I wonder whether, perhaps strangely, this leads me to be both legalistic and superfical at the same time. I haven't really gone down into the depths of the wrath of God in my own spiritual thinking so I can only 'use it' as something to scare myself and others with, rather than to use it to convict us of sin. It would seem to me that the main purpose of the Bible's teaching on God's wrath is not 'run-because-you-will-be-punished-and-you-don't-want-that' but 'your-sin-is-heinous-and-God's-anger-tells-you-just-how-bad-it-is.' I fear that we think of God's anger only as something to escape from rather than as a mirror to who we are. I know it sometimes takes people to get angry with me before I'll see that I'm doing something wrong. How much more true this is of God! Surely, as Christians we can meditate on this with great profit because we will see more of the holiness of God, the awfulness of sin and the wonder of salvation?

The Subversive Christ

A meditation on Col 1:15-20 by Brian Walsh

"In an image-saturated world
a world of ubiquitous corporate logos
permeating your consciousness
a world of dehydrated and captive imaginations
in which we are too numbed, satiated and co-opted
to be able to dream of life otherwise
a world in which the empire of global economic affluence
has achieved the monopoly of our imaginations
in this world
Christ is the image of the invisible God
in this world
driven by images with a vengeance
Christ is the image par excellence
the image above all other images
the image that is not a facade
the image that is not trying to sell you anything
the image that refuses to co-opt you
Christ is the image of the invisible God
the image of God
a flesh and blood
here and now
in time and history
with joys and sorrows
image of who we are called to be
image-bearers of this God
He is the source of a liberated imagination
a sub-version of the empire
because it all starts with him
and it all ends with him
everything
all things
whatever you can imagine
visible and invisible
mountains and atoms
outer space, urban space, and cyberspace
whether it be the Pentagon, Disneyland,
Microsoft, or AT&T
whether it be the institutionalized power structures
of the state, the academy or the market
all things have been created in him and through him
he is their source, their purpose, their goal
even in their rebellion
even in their idolatry
he is the sovereign one
their power and authority is derived at best
parasitic at worse
In the face of the empire
in the face of presumptuous claims to sovereignty
in the face of the imperial and idolatrous forces in our lives
Christ is before all things
he is sovereign in life
not the pimped dreams of the global market
not the idolatrous forces of nationalism
not the insatiable desires of a consumerist culture
In the face of a disconnected world
where home is a domain in cyberspace
where neighborhood is a chat room
where public space is a shopping mall
where information technology promises
a tuned in, reconnected world
all things hold together in Christ
the creation is a deeply personal cosmos
all cohering and interconnected in Jesus
And this sovereignty takes on cultural flesh
And this coherence of all things is socially embodied
in the church
against all odds
against most of the evidence
In a "show me" culture where words alone don't cut it
the church is
the flesh and blood
here and now
in time and history
with joys and sorrows
embodiment of this Christ
as a body politic
around a common meal
in alternative economic practices
in radical service to the most vulnerable
in refusal to the empire
in love of this creation
the church reimagines the world
in the image of the invisible God
In the face of a disappointed world of betrayal
a world in which all fixed points have proven illusory
a world in which we are anchorless and adrift
Christ is the foundation
the origin
the way
the truth
and the life
In the face of a culture of death
a world of killing fields
a world of the walking dead
Christ is at the head of the resurrection parade
transforming our tears of betrayal into tears of joy
giving us dancing shoes for the resurrection party
And this glittering joker
who has danced in the dragon's jaws of death
now dances with a dance that is full
of nothing less than the fullness of God
this is the dance of the new creation
this is the dance of life out of death
and in this dance all that was broken
all that was estranged
all that was alienated
all that was dislocated and disconnected
is reconciled
comes home
is healed
and is made whole
everything
all things
whatever you can imagine
visible and invisible
mountains and atoms
outer space, urban space, and cyberspace
every inch of creation
every dimension of our lives
all things are reconciled in him
And it all happens on a cross
it all happens at a state execution
where the governor did not commute the sentence
it all happens at the hands of the empire
that has captivated our imaginations
it all happens through blood
not through a power grab by the sovereign one
it all happens in embraced pain
for the sake of others
it all happens on a cross
arms outstretched in embrace
and this is the image of the invisible God
this is the body of Christ."

CS Lewis - the Great Divorce (Part II)

CS Lewis's "The Great Divorce" has an amazing picture of heaven (new creation). It grasps the world to come with poetry and story, and not simply abstract concepts. Surely this is a good lesson for all our theology!

"I had the sense of being in a larger space, perhaps even a larger sort of space, than I had ever known before: as if the sky were further off and the extent of the green plain wider than they could be on this little ball of earth. I had got 'out' in some sense which made the Solar System itself seem an indoor affair. It gave me a feeling of freedom, but also of exposure, possibly of danger, which continued to accompany me through all that followed." (p.20)

"It was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison..." (p.21)

"...all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that it [Hell] contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good." (p.138)

CS Lewis - the Great Divorce (Part I)

Another great book I read (or re-read) over Christmas was "The Great Divorce" by CS Lewis. This is a really interesting view of the after-life and what it is like. It's not meant as a systematically correct understanding of the life beyond death but it is very though-provoking. It's basically the (imagined!) experience of a man who sees both heaven and hell after death and how they operate. Both are presented in very striking ways.

A qualification first: though I love this book in lots of ways there are a few things about it which are left very unclear. For example, Lewis views Hell (and Heaven) very much as an extension of individuals' personal choices into all eternity. This is very insightful on many levels, but it's inadequate if made into the central principle for understanding heaven or hell. The danger is that God's grace and judgement disappear into a karma-like after-life, where my destiny hangs more upon my good or bad choices rather than upon God. A further problem is the tendency towards a Platonic view of the afterlife where the notion of resurrection on a renewed earth is marginalized.

That said, I think there is much here that is very thought-provoking. Heaven and Hell are basically seen as the ultimate extensions of life in this world. Both echo this world but in opposite ways. Lewis's narration starts with his character in Hell. It is strikingly described as a kind of empty, dark and formless town where people live, "the grey town" (p.8). It is a huge, shadowy, dark place - and seems very deserted, "the parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?...." He is told, " "Not at all", said my neighbour. "The trouble is that they're so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he's been there twenty-four hours he quarrel with his neighbour." (p.10)The 'town' is so big because people cannot get on with each other. They quarrel with neighbours as soon they move in. Everyone is trying to get away from everyone else and so they move away from one another. Thus, the 'city' is always expanding but feels increasingly empty because everyone is trying to get away from everyone else. This town is not a place of gathering, rather it is an incredibly lonely place. Lewis gives us a depiction of individuals who are totally self-absorbed and foolish, unable to form relationships but constantly seeking to dominate one another. The irony of the place is that "they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course) by just imagining it." Hell, counter-intuitively, actually brings the satisfaction of of our desires in a way that never really satisifes. We get what we want but find that it was never what we wanted. The essence of Hell is made clear as the book goes on. Hell is really an insubstantial place, incredibly small (though it seems big when you are there), dark and self-absorbed. Some of the characters from Hell get, in the story, to 'visit' heaven and they find as they get there that they can't walk on the grass and the lightest stone weighs tonnes for them. They are simply too insubstantial, "one had the feeling that they might fall to pieces at any moment if the light grew stronger." (p.17) Above all, Hell is depicted by Lewis as cursed and nightmarish, but the nightmare is a self-imposed, self-centred prison. Evil essentially makes people mundane, irrelevant and ghost-like.

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Check out this fascinating article by Walter Wink on the violent myths underlying our culture and the way we think.

Here comes the millenium?

Rushing in where even fools fear to tread, I have some thoughts on the interpretation of Revelation 20:1-6. This has to be one of the most hotly-contested passages amongst Bible-believing Christians and, rather bizzarely, large theological edifices are built upon it.

"1Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. 2And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.
4Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. 5The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years."



What is it all about? Let me suggest an interpretive framework/approach to it.

My first suggestion is that the 1000 years is not a literal period of time. This makes sense because of 1. given the genre of Revelation which revels in symbolism 2. the idea that in Jewish thinking world history lasted 6000 years with the final 1000 years being a Sabbath before the consummation. Thus the 1000 years could well be seen as a Sabbath day (see also Ps 90:4) of rest.

My second suggestion is that the main focus of the passage is on the symbolic (non-temporal/non-geographical) reign of the martyrs (v4) who have died for Christ. This first 'resurrection' is about them. The focus is upon their reign and victory over the devil and evil itself! Satan being bound is really about their victory over him. The symbolic reign of the martyrs is pre-emptive of the final reign of Christ in the new creation (see 2:26 - is this referring to this kind of reign?). They pre-emptively enter into a Sabbath rest of '1000 years' with the Lord Jesus (with the concomitant 1000 years of humiliation of satan). So Revelation 20 is about giving hope to Christian martyrs - positions are exchanged, satan is imprisoned, they are vindicated, given rest and made into kings. Their 'defeat' in death is turned into victory with Christ. The passage plays out the first part of the drama of Psalm 2, which concludes in v.7f - satan and the nations are finally crushed.

N.T. Wright

Here is an interview with the man himself (linked to by several blogs now!). It's a good interview because it asks all the good questions and raises all the issues that have been raised by people who've read his stuff. While he has written a lot of really interesting stuff (see the link to his material on the right), he also, in my opinion, comes out with perspectives that sit very uncomfortably with evangelical theology. John Piper has just written a critique of him as well which you can get here. It will be interesting to see what Piper and Wright make of each other here.

Meaning and History

Some thoughts based upon Leslie Newbigin's book "The Open Secret"......

Given the reality of death, a big problem for us is to know how to keep together the meaningfulness of both our own personal histories (i.e. me) and big public, world history (i.e. humankind). How can both matter and have meaning at the same time? For example, you can choose to abandon public history and just care about myself. In religious terms, this means that my hope is for individual life after death in another spiritual reality or world. Many religious ideas cater for this and focus on this. Of course, this means that public history is meaningless. What happens in this world is not really significant as it's all 'going to hell'. Society, institutions, politics, world events, the body - none of these things really matter. On the other hand, I can abandon personal, individual meaning and history in favour of Progress. What matters is humankind, poverty, society and the world. The problem with this is, firstly, that I am cut out of the imagined future by my own death. I won’t enjoy it! Secondly, though, the danger is that individuals disappear in the grand scheme of things. The personal and individual no longer matters. It has no value - only ‘mankind’ counts. This is basically where you find Marxism, for example.

Now, the wonderful thing about the gospel is that it holds both the personal and the public together. The gospel of resurrection deals with both. It gives us the hope of a new body/life but also the hope of a renewed world. My personal history and longings matter. But public history also matters. God is working to transform both. Death is not the end of either of them. They are kept together by Jesus. The resurrection, then, lays the foundation for the meaning of the world.

The Cross and the Return of Christ

I've been struck, in my musings on the return of Christ this week, by the great need to constantly connect the doctrine of Christ's return to the doctrine of the cross, and vice versa. If we see Christ's return without the cross we may well tend to legalism. We will emphasize the final judgment and assessment of our lives and the need to live well. The danger is that we will basically become Islamic in our understanding of the final day - it will all be about living a good life. We need to know the grace of the cross to look hopefully to Jesus's return. Further, the cross also tells us Who is coming back. The One who has gone away is the Lord Jesus, my crucified Saviour. He is one who is coming back to judge and rule the world.

On the other hand, we must also view the cross in light of the return of Christ. As I've posted below, we must see that the cross is stepping stone to a new creation. It is the means to the end - and the end is the return of Christ. If I don't have the return of Christ, I will essentially be living 'forgiven' for this life and this world. The cross will lose any sense of hope and will tend to become individualized and spiritualized in its implications for my life.

So: we need both - the crucified Christ and the returning King - to live properly and relate properly to the future.

Matthew 25 and the return of Christ

A few more comments following on from the last post....

Matt 25 contains three parables Jesus tells just before the cross. They all focus, surprisingly, not upon the cross, but upon Jesus's return. This is somewhat surprising as one might expect Jesus to teach here on how one is to live in light of the cross, yet as the cross approaches he seems to focus more and more on His coming again. The pattern of discipleship that is laid out here is all in light of His return. He is going but He will return - and that fact leads to a distinctly different lifestyle.

It reminds us that the gospel does not end with the cross or even the resurrection/exaltation - it is concluded by the return of Jesus. It is only when Jesus has come back to restore all things and bring in the fullness of the kingdom that God's plan has been fulfilled. It is only then that all things are brought back under one head. It is, therefore, amazing that no real gospel presentation I have heard (or made myself) has ever mentioned the return of the Lord Jesus. It is normally something like Jesus has dealt with our sins so i can be forgiven and have a restored relationship with God. What do I lose by this? I lose Christ-centredness and I individualize the plan of God. The gospel is really about ME!

The fact that Jesus speaks like this also reminds me that the cross is not the goal, but the means to the goal. It is not the end, but the vital step towards the end. The point of the cross is a positive one: salvation in every sense of the word in a new creation and kingdom under the rule of the 'returned' Lord Jesus. If liberals want to remove propitiation from the gospel, then we can be in danger of reducing the gospel to propitiation. How often I hear something like "Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins" as a summary of what Jesus did on the cross. That is an absolutely wonderful and fearful truth, but He died for much more than that! The focus on the return of Jesus reminds us of that.

The Return of Jesus

I'm doing a series of talks on the return of Jesus on Saturday and it got me thinking about why we speak of this so little. It's ironic because in many contexts, end times is massive. But in my context we speak very little of the return of Jesus. It kind of gets lost between the doctrine of the cross and the doctrine of eternal life. Perhaps there's a sense that it seems pointless to us. After all, won't we meet Jesus when we die anyway? Why is it so important whether or not He comes back - it's simply pre-empting something that we're gonna personally experience sooner or later.

Given that the NT speaks so much of the return of Jesus and seems to think of it as massively important, there must be something wrong with my/our thinking. What's the relevance, then, of the doctrine of the return of Christ?

1. Our hope is not to escape to 'heaven' (i.e. ethereal, spirit existence in another reality) but to live in a renewed creation with the Lord Jesus. He 'must' come back to re-create and restore justice, goodness and peace. We are not escaping to another world, but He is returning to judge and renew this one.

2. The return of Christ is about the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. It reminds us that, wonderful as our salvation is, the gospel is mainly about Him and His Kingship. His return means his ultimate vindication and the recognition of Him by the whole creation. The return of Jesus is, then, about His glory.

3. It is very striking to see how much Jesus makes His return a key element in the life of discipleship - particularly as He goes to the cross. He doesn't say so much about living in light of the cross, but He says an awful lot about living in light of His return. Why? It must be that His return is the endpoint of the gospel - it is the conclusion of the gospel. If we stop at the cross (even the resurrection) we truncate the gospel. The danger will be that we seek our ultimate fulfilment in this life with Jesus. we settle for less than is promised....

This has certainly challenged me to think more deeply about the difference the return of Jesus makes to my daily life.

The Poor and the Gospel

The middle class gospel says this:

I'm basically good and I can sort out my life by making free choices and working hard.

But Jesus said that to be saved we must be poor in spirit. In other words, we may be outwardly wealthy, but we must become like the poor if we are to be saved.

In other words:

I'm not basically good. I can't just sort out my life by trying hard. I don't have the power and there are lots of things that enslave me. I need a Saviour to come and rescue me.

The poor teach us the gospel and this is why the gospel is for the poor. The rich can only access it by becoming like them, by realizing their need of Another's spiritual wealth to help them.