The Household of God (12)

Pulling the Threads Together

I want to return now to that uncomfortable chair I spoke about earlier.  We have positioned ourselves with a view to eternity past and to eternity future; to the time before God made the first Adam and created the time-space-matter world and to the time after the second Adam is married and getting on with his new life when the time-space-matter world is no more.  We have settled and quieted our spirits for God to enlighten us with His truth.  Where does that leave us?

The rope coil: from eternity past, through our long history of salvation, redemption, righteousness and justification and on to eternity future we perceive as sequential history, but to God it is ever before Him – and so are we.  We were always on His mind, ever present to His consciousness, His will and His love.

You may recall that much of what is here began with the basic question, ‘what is God doing?’  My preliminary answer to that question is that God is establishing His kingdom, building a household, and making a ‘future’ for His creation.  The Household of God is central to all He is doing – always has been, always will be.  And the core business and the four pillars of that household are salvation, redemption, righteousness and justification.

If you are anything like me, all of this will leave you in a place of seeing many things very differently.  It’s like removing an old, limited pair of spectacles and replacing them with a new pair specifically made by God for viewing things from His eternal perspective.  Many things – perhaps even most things – don’t just look different, they are different.  I am no longer satisfied with the limited view of the old spectacles.  In fact, I find myself wanting to only ever use the new spectacles.

The view I am talking about is the view that drives Frank Viola to write From Eternity to Here and other works like Reimagining Church.  It’s the view that inspires Paul Vieira to write Jesus Has Left the Building and Neil Cole to write Organic Church and Floyd McClung to pen You See Bones, I See an Army and for Greg Boyd to write The Myth of a Christian Nation and The Myth of a Christian Religion.

And it raises so many questions.  So many things we have seen as fairly fixed and certain are fundamentally redefined by God when we allow Him to give us His perspective – the eternal perspective.  In fact, I think there is nothing of any real importance left untouched by God in this process, including our definitions of pretty much everything we have become familiar with.

The first things that come to mind for me are questions like ‘what is this thing we call “the church”?’ … What is ecclesia then? … What is evangelism? … What can I say to my neighbour that is good news?  Fundamentally, what happens is a God-inspired disconnect between God, church and religion and a reconnect between us and God’s household and the core business of that household.

I find that now, when I go back over the things I have been doing and writing about in recent years – probably since the mid-1990s – they come clearly into perspective and into proper alignment.  For instance, ecclesia really is a minimum of two or three Jesus-disciples gathered in His name going about our Father’s business.  I can’t and won’t call it ‘church’ because that word means something entirely different.  I am happy to call it the household of God.

His household does not, in fact, contain any denominational sub-groups – a household divided against itself cannot stand!  The ecclesia is not in a fight for survival as ‘the church’ is; rather, it stands strong as a bastion against the gates of hell.  Members of the household of God can voluntarily be part of human organisations, including ‘churches’, so long as that in no way compromises their commission to be about our Father’s business, the core business of the household of God, as defined by God, not humans.

In particular, it leads to an understanding that ‘the church’ has a long history that stretches all the way back to the fall of man.  And the core business of ‘the church’ is to build a tower that suits us and meets our specifications to reach God without having to encounter God directly and personally; to construct a religion that satisfies man’s perceived needs while using the language and ‘theologies’ of the bible.

Now since the bible doesn’t actually talk about ‘the church’ – least of all as a relevant part of the Jesus-inaugurated New Covenant – we are under no obligation to support it or to entertain the guilt it imposes on those who choose to go about the Father’s business without it.  Indeed, if you trace the persecution history of disciples of Jesus, the biggest and most severe problems have always come from institutional religion, whether in the form of governments or of State-sponsored ‘faith-based’ organisations.  For instance, the ecclesia of Jesus and Paul was persecuted by the Jewish ‘church’ and, to a lesser extent, by fanatics of other religious persuasions, including secularists.

The Roman authorities sought to put down what they saw as rebellion among the ecclesia.  They blamed these ‘christians’ for setting fire to Rome, they sacked Jerusalem, then they subsequently got into bed with ‘the church’ to enforce their mutually beneficial legal code.  Hundreds of years later (and many thousands of lost lives later), this adulterous relationship between church and state produced a bible, authorised by the English King, that contains deliberate obfuscation in that the King ordered the translation team to make sure they inserted the word ‘church’ into the text where the word is not in the original language, and that the correct translation of various words (including ecclesia) did not make it into the finished product.  So much for our insistence on the verbal inspiration of the bible!

Somewhere along the line of history, they even produced a word for this exercise of binding up free people and making them submit to church authority: religion.

Briefly, let’s take a look at some of what Paul wrote to the ecclesias of Galatia in his day.  You may recall in chapter one of Galatians he said this:

Paul, an apostle (not from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead), and all the brethren who are with me…

To the ecclesias of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.  I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

What was the distortion that Paul was referring to that would make him profoundly disturbed that his beloved disciples were so quickly and easily deserting God the Father for a “different gospel”?  Take a look at the next chapter of Galatians.  I’m not going to reproduce it all here – you can look it up or perhaps follow this link:

http://nasb.scripturetext.com/galatians/2-1.htm

The short version:  “But not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.  But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.”

This adulterous relationship was evident from the earliest days of the ecclesia.  Paul fought it arduously.  The distortion Paul was referring to is the same distortion the ecclesia faces today: the persistent insertion of law into the gospel of the kingdom of God.  At one stage it was about circumcision; at another stage it was about paying tithes; at yet another stage it was about compulsory attendance at a ‘temple’ of some sort.  How does it happen?  False people secretly brought in to spy out the freedom of the saints and return them to bondage – the meaning of the word religion.

Revisit the story of William Tyndale – the man who did the one honest translation of the Greek words agape, episkopos, presbuteros and ecclesia and who was murdered for it!  He couldn’t get his translation printed in England, so he went to continental Europe.  He met with Luther and Melancthon and others and ended up in Antwerp.  But even there, the spies had followed him.  When he visited his printer in Antwerp, a spy just happened to be getting his printing done at the same time!  He is invited to dinner and a spy ingratiates himself into Tyndale’s life then betrays him to the security guards at the host’s meal hall.  And, as they say, the rest is history,

Think about it.  A vicious fight to make sure the word ‘church’ is in any and all translations of the English New Testament instead of the word used by Jesus and Paul.  And that corruption, among others, still exists today!  The adulterous murderous church won!  I wonder if, when Paul was murdered, the rot set in almost immediately.

But here’s the thing: I don’t believe the ecclesia itself can be corrupted.  It is a creation of God in eternity; it belongs to God; it is God’s household; how can it be corrupted?  The church has not corrupted the ecclesia.  The ecclesia is not corrupt.  Jesus Himself is the door of the sheep; he is the keeper of the household; the ecclesia is his bride whom he is cleansing and keeping clean.

I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.

Jesus used this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them.  Therefore Jesus said again, I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. (John 10:1-16)

Revisit Ezekiel 34 and see if this doesn’t match.  There is an eerie correlation between the ‘shepherds of Israel’ in Ezekiel 34 and the ‘hired hands’ of John 10.  And the descriptions in both fit with what is today called ‘the church’.  In Ezekiel’s day, in Jesus’ day and in our day there are corrupt false shepherds.  But more importantly, God is taking care of His own; He will not abandon them; He will keep them and feed them and bring them to His bosom.  Absolutely!  Totally!  Without fail!

Our problem is not a corrupt ecclesia.  Our problem is a corrupt church pretending it is the ecclesia – and this has been going on since the year dot.  It is the primary strategy of God’s chief enemy – the angel who rebelled and took a third of the servants with him.  But do we really believe God hasn’t got it all in hand?  Nothing can or will stop His plan with His ecclesia, and nothing takes Him by surprise.  Sure, what we do can delay the plan, but it can’t terminate it.  If we are seeing corruption, we are not looking at ecclesia.

In the next series, I hope to take this up further and develop the theme of “This Gospel of the Kingdom”, taking the words of Jesus as noted by Matthew in chapter 24 of his gospel:  “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (v.14)

If the ‘end’ hasn’t yet come (as most of us believe), why is that?  Has it come and we missed it?  Has the gospel not gone to the whole world?  Or is it perhaps that we have not been preaching Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom but “a different gospel” – one like Paul was writing about to the Galatians – one infested with church and religion?

I suspect the latter, and I will develop this in the subsequent series.  One of the things that raises my suspicions is that an inordinate amount of the practices and the theologies of ‘the church’ comes from the Old Testament.  And you won’t find any support for this practice from either Jesus or Paul.  The Old Testament is an entirely Jewish set of documents designed as law, to act as a tutor to bring the Jews to Jesus – which, in large part, didn’t seem to happen since many still do not accept Jesus as the Messiah and Lord.

The Old Testament system is organisational, institutional and law-based – and so is ‘the church’, since it builds itself on the patterns of old Jewry and of secular religions throughout history.  For instance, the word ‘cathedral’ means the home of the bishop’s throne and imitated secular practice.  Ecclesia doesn’t have bishops but overseers who are elders who don’t have thrones or cathedrals; and ecclesia is a band of brothers with but one Lord, Jesus, not a hierarchy of position and prestige.  Ecclesia’s thrones are eternal in the heavenlies; eternity where God resides is His ‘cathedral’.  If you are not so sure about this, try reading the Viola/Barna book Pagan Christianity, Tyndale House Publishers.

What’s more, if we actually believed apostle Paul, we would get Romans 9-11 – where it is clearly set out what is the part and place of the Jew in the plan of God, and the part and place of the non-Jew.  As far as Paul is concerned, since the new covenant in Jesus, there is one way to be righteous before God and it is open to both Jew and non-Jew alike and it does not involve religion, whether Jewish, Christian, secular or of any other persuasion.  In Paul, there is no connection between the gathered disciples (ecclesia) and any form of establishment religion and there is no place for Judaism, ‘church’ or religion in the gospel to be preached.  In fact, Paul sees these things as the complete antithesis of ecclesia – as I believe we should.

As I said, the history of ‘the church’ stretches all the way back to the fall of man and his desire to get to God on his own terms.  Ecclesia, on the other hand, stretches back to Jesus as the inaugurator of God’s new covenant with man.  Here, man realises that neither his own best efforts nor the religious efforts of others can bring him to God.  Instead, one comes to God on Jesus’ terms, and those terms are neither religious nor irksome.

Cheers,

Kevin.

The Household of God (11)

Four Key Concepts

Justification (verb: justify/justified

[Graphic from http://pewtopractice.wordpress.com – Brent Osterberg]

“But now, apart from law, a righteousness of God has been manifested (being witnessed by “the Law and the Prophets”), even a righteousness of God that is via faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe – for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation by his blood, via faith.  This was to demonstrate His righteousness (because in the forbearance of God, He passed over the sins previously committed); for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.  Where then is boasting?  It is excluded.  By what kind of law – of works?  No, but by a law of faith.  (Romans 3:21-27)

Whether we like it or not, God is both Just – and The Justifier of those who have faith in Jesus.  And whether we are prepared to admit it or not, many of us humans have a problem with God overlooking sin – or, more accurately, “passing over” sin.  We are scandalised and our sense of human fairness and justice is offended.  If you analyse what many who call themselves ‘christians’ believe, it is a Western form of karma: just deserts; come-uppance; pay-back

Even though God ended “an eye for an eye” as just treatment two thousand years ago, many people (and indeed many peoples) still adamantly live by that code, thinking it is God’s justice.  And the most profound thing it does is make a complete mockery of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus because that old code says our sin is not removed from us and transferred to Jesus.  We say Jesus’ life and mission does not mean what God says it means; we make ourselves the arbiter of forgiveness, mercy and redemption; we end up with god made in the image of man, instead of being man made in the image of God.

Many reject God – even the idea of God – because, in their arrogance, they determine that God doesn’t live up to their expectations or definitions or wishes.  It never occurs to us that maybe it’s the other way round: we don’t live up to His expectations, definitions or wishes.  Indeed, that is one of the bible’s definitions of ‘sin’: falling short of the mark, as Romans 3:21 above says.

Two important references need to be made here to things well known to us that come from the old covenant.  First, the idea that “a leopard can’t change its spots” (Jeremiah 13:23) – which was their way of saying one accustomed to doing evil cannot also do good.  This corresponds to Proverbs 27:22, “You can grind a fool in a mortar and pestle, yet his folly will not depart from him.”  The second is one of the most important festivals in the Hebrew calendar – the Passover.  God Himself set the whole idea of “passing over” (overlooking and forgiving) the sins of the people into the fabric of the life and culture of the Hebrews.  Remember He said, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our sins from us.” (Psalm 103:12)  And He said, “I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34)

The problem has long been one law for the law-makers and a different law for the ‘plebs’, the serfs, the masses.  The law-makers want to be both just and the justifier – a role that uniquely belongs to God: yet another case of god made in the image of man, instead of the other way round.  One of Jesus’ problems with the Scribes and the Pharisees was that they did two things well: one, they insisted they were without sin (after all, they kept the law flawlessly).

The second thing they did well was they put religious and legal burdens on their subjects that they themselves did not carry, neither did they lift a finger to help.  Listen to Matthew’s record of Jesus speaking: “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them; they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.” (Matthew 23:3-4)

And note how Luke records the same thing: “Jesus replied, ‘And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.’” (Luke 11:46)

What was Jesus’ approach?  “Come to me all who are weary and heavily burdened and I will give you rest.  My yoke is easy and my load is light.”  The Pharisees were scandalised and insulted by such ideas!  Enough to want to kill him – now!

Because of the salvation prepared and delivered by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; because of the price paid for the redemption of mankind to his proper place; because of the grace gift of righteousness to all who put their faith in Jesus … God, as just justifier, makes the pronouncement of “not guilty”, acquitted, the charges dropped.  By acquittal from guilt, a person is actually just.  It is fitting therefore that the just justifier makes the pronouncement.  That is justification.  Listen to how Paul put it in Romans 8 – “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns?” (verses 1 and 33)

Justification is a concrete expression of righteousness; it is a declaration that a person or thing is righteous.  For us humans, it comes back to the fundamental importance of the nature of the relationship we enter into with the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is an organic union, not a functional contract.  Since it is an organic union, we are in Christ and Christ is in us.  The Father calls us sons, Jesus calls us brothers, and we are marked with God’s Spirit as the seal of our inheritance.  We are justified – declared right and acceptable – by means of that relationship and because of that relationship.

One of the most persistent problems I have encountered over 40-plus years of the disciple life is that so many of us do not see or experience the relationship as a close, intimate, organic union (of the same order and quality as marriage), but rather as an external contractual agreement with the CEO and Board of Heaven Inc.  This of course fits with the style of things under the old covenant.  We often fail to realise that, since Jesus, all such contractual arrangements ceased.  God now relates to us intimately as father and son, but if we don’t (or don’t want to) relate to Him in the same way, it is a dysfunctional relationship.

So many times and so often, He is waiting like the father in the gospel story of the prodigal son, while we grieve for our dirtiness and our hunger, worrying what His response will be if we attempt to return home.  Or we pride ourselves in our self-righteousness and see no reason to return home.

As far as God is concerned, everything is finished and prepared; there is nothing left to be done – except for us to do what the prodigal son finally did.  He eventually saw himself as unfit and unworthy to be called a son or to be treated as a son.  He thought he could return home as a household servant.  But remember the earlier analogy of Prince Charles and the palace servants?  Servants never become sons and sons never become servants.  The father greets with open arms a son who is returned to his proper place (saved, redeemed, righteous and justified).  The father throws a party and prepares the best food and the best clothes for his returned son.  He effectively says to the returned son, you are not guilty; you are acquitted; you are righteous; and I am going to throw a party for you, even if your ‘old covenant brothers’ are scandalised by what I am doing.

Is God fair to do this – is He just?  It doesn’t seem to be ‘fair’ as we humans understand and define fairness.  After all, everybody knows that you have to pay for your sins.  Wrong!  Everybody should know that Jesus has already paid the price and the sins have been transferred to him.  Should we then continue in sin so we can see more of God’s grace?  Paul can answer that one:

“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:1-4)

If we think of salvation, redemption, righteousness and justification as pieces of theology to be debated and believed or disbelieved, we will never comprehend this or find a satisfactory answer to this scandalous thing.  But, you see, salvation, redemption, righteousness and justification are not theologies.  They are, first, the core business of the household of God and, second, the four pillars of that same household.

They are not theological abstracts that God decides to implement for the sake of us humans, they are the very heartbeat of God and the throbbing pulse of His household.  God in His being and nature is saver, redeemer, righteous and just – in ALL His ways.  It is His nature and character, therefore it is what He does.  And if He is just in all His ways (Psalm 145:17) how could He not act consistent with His nature and character?  If He did not act consistent with His nature and character, He would not be God, but a fraud and a pipe-dream.

If God is “the judge of all the earth” (Abraham in Genesis 18:25), his judgement is final and everlasting.  If He is not … well, I’m not even going to go there.

The judge’s decision is final; and his decision is that He justifies frail, faulty human beings.  In Jesus Christ, we are acquitted; we are not guilty; we are righteous – indeed, if Paul is to be believed, we actually become the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.  We are not failed sons who return home to be put on probation to see if we qualify to regain son status.  Is He fair and just to do this?

I believe God is eminently fair and just to do this.  If He didn’t do it this way, some would be able to qualify on the basis of their own assessment of themselves, their own righteousness (Romans 10:3), and their ability to convince God that He would be doing His household a favour by accepting them but not others.  If you read Romans 9, 10 and 11, you will see that this is how Pau describes the attitudes and actions of the Jews.  And as the reference as the head of this post says, He does it this way for two reasons: one, so it is not performance-based (a law of works) but faith-based (a law of faith); and, two, to rule out any boasting on our part!

This is justification.  This is our justification.  But unlike the other three concepts, justification is not a past, present and future concept, it is a once-for-all legal pronouncement; a declaration that stands for all time and, more importantly, it stands in eternity.  But like the other three, is does remain ever in His purview.

Angels, we are told by Peter, long to look into these things (1 Peter 1:12).  But we humans – well, we have this global philosophy that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  So we tell ourselves it is all myth and fairytales.

The problem as I see it is that critics and non-believers alike are responding to a profoundly weak and effete story of God, man and salvation – a story that is barely believable to one who is not predisposed to religion.  So often, salvation, redemption, righteousness and justification are droned on about as theological ideas, doctrines or philosophies that can be analysed and rejected or accepted.

I believe the chief responsibility for this poor state of affairs rests with the global institution that has come to be called ‘the church’.  In public discourse in many parts of the world, as soon as you mention God, people’s thoughts go to church and religion.  And I find that not just sad, but deeply offensive.  I believe it is a gross misrepresentation of God – but that is for another post.

Whether one accepts the pre-supposition of God or not; whether one starts from the pre-supposition that man is basically good or that he is basically evil; justification makes sense.  And justification requires righteousness, righteousness requires redemption and redemption requires salvation.

Whether our standard of right is human or divine, we don’t function properly without being justified according to that standard.  And even if our starting point is that man is basically good, we are burying our head in the sand if we refuse to acknowledge and address the persistent presence of evil in our world and in our relationships.  And the presence of evil demands redemption and therefore salvation, even if it is about being saved from ourselves.

In the next couple of posts, I will attempt to draw all the pieces together - a bit like making a mosaic I guess.

Cheers,

Kevin.

The Household of God (10)

Four Key Concepts

Righteousness (verb: right/redress/correct)

It is very difficult to find a graphic of righteousness – at least until its meaning is made very clear.  And to make its meaning clear, we need to consider both the root Greek word and the English word that has come down to us through our particular history.

However, I want to introduce this subject with two pictures I found using the search-word ‘righted’.

In this photograph, a truck is ‘righted’ by the use of a heavy-lift tow-truck, after slipping and then flipping on a wet road.  In its ‘unrighted’ position, the truck is not going anywhere and it unable to function in the most important of the purposes for which it was made: transportation.

And this artist’s graphic is intended to illustrate the plan to ‘right’ the cruise ship Costa Concordia and refloat it.  It is both useless as a cruise ship and a hazard to many in its ‘unrighted’ state.  Righted, it may be able to resume duties as a cruise ship – or it may be unable to be salvaged and put to another use.

These two illustrations also demonstrate two of the main reasons things ‘go pear-shaped’ – go very wrong: treacherous conditions, and human error.  In terms of righteousness and the condition of man, both of these come into play.

The Greek word used in the New Testament translates well into the English word righteousness.  But what did the word mean when it was written two thousand years ago?  And what does our word righteousness mean?

Let me hyphenate the word so we can dig a little deeper: right-eous-ness. 

The syllable ‘ness’ is simply a suffix that turns an adjective into a noun.  For example, dark (adjective) becomes darkness (noun).  It can be understood as ‘state of being’: thus darkness is the state of being dark. 

The syllable ‘eous’ comes from the Latin eus and does the same thing as ‘ous’ on the end of a word.  In today’s English, we also use the suffixes ‘wise’, ‘wards’ and ‘ways’ to do a similar thing.  For instance, clockwise (in the direction the clock goes), backwards (in the direction of back) and sideways (in the direction of the side).  What it does to a word is indicate a ‘way of proceeding’ or ‘in the direction of’ or ‘characterised by’ (like in virtuous: in the direction of virtue or characterised by virtue).  Righteous is therefore in the direction of or characterised by right.

‘Right’ is an adjective, but it is also a verb.  And as you can see in the two pictures above, the truck and the cruise ship can be ‘righted’ – set to right.  It means ‘to bring or restore to an upright or the proper position’; ‘to set in order or put right’; ‘to redress’ (Macquarie Dictionary).

But, before we finally string it all together, we need to consider one further thing.  For us humans, ‘right’ is variable and subjective and open to interpretation.  In order to measure human rightness, we may need to find an unchanging, objective and ‘fixed seat of truth’ (as we saw in an earlier post) to act as canon – a yardstick – to compare with.  That yardstick is God Himself.

God is righteousness

God is the personification of righteousness.  Wherever He goes, whatever He does, He is righteousness.  In one sense, it could be the family name.  Like the original Smiths were smiths by occupation – metal-workers – God’s name is His occupation.  He does right because He is right.  Paul wrote that God’s intention in making Jesus to be sin for us was so that we humans might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

According to Psalm 112 (and others), His righteousness endures forever; in Psalm 48, His right hand is filled with righteousness; in Psalm 71, His righteousness reaches to the skies [heavens].

God is righteous

He acts righteously because He is righteous.  If you like, the righteous family and household acts righteously because they are righteousness.  You could even say the ecclesia is the righteous brothers!

Job 37:23 – “…in His justice and great righteousness, He does not oppress.”

Psalm 9:8 – “He will judge the world in righteousness; He will govern the peoples with justice.”

Psalm 89:14 – “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.”

Psalm 96:13 – “He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His truth.”

Isaiah 26:9 – “When your judgements come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.”

Isaiah 51:8 – “My righteousness will last forever, my salvation through all generations.”

So, righteousness is two things simultaneously: the state of being characterised by right as defined by God and exemplified in the attitudes and behaviours of His household; and the process of being righted to match the character of God and the standards of His household.

Why is this important?  For two inter-connected reasons: first, it is a key part of the process God is using to make us like Christ, sons outfitted for His household (that is, it is the substance of our salvation); second, it is the key to growing up spiritually, since not understanding the teaching about righteousness is testament to our immaturity according to Hebrews 5:13.

The act of rebellion by Satan and his entourage brought extreme chaos into the picture and created treacherous conditions for man should he become separated from his anchor of truth and right.  His rebellion also brought about the temptation that led to the human error factor coming into play, resulting in that potential separation becoming a reality.  This resulted in the situation and condition of UNrighteousness.  Like the truck and the cruise ship on their sides, unable to fulfil their destiny and continue their mission, mankind was flipped and run aground and unable to fulfil his destiny or continue his mission.  This was partly by human choice, partly by Satan’s treachery – but all, nonetheless, within the purview of God.

But I have left the good news til last.  Knowing all too well our inability to redeem ourselves or to pay the price to redeem each other, God in His unconditional love, took the initiative and granted His righteousness as a grace gift to humans.  This was to render totally ineffective Satan’s strategy of temptation and treachery.  Just like with salvation and redemption, this righteousness is “by faith from first to last” (Paul in Romans 1:17).  And again Paul, writing to the Galatians, powerfully makes the point that “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing” (Galatians 2:21)

Many – perhaps most – of us humans seem to think that through having laws and obeying those laws, we become righteous – ‘good people’.  We take that to the next level when we also think that God rewards good people and that ‘heaven’ is made for good people and ‘hell’ is made for ‘bad people’.  Few things could be further from the truth, so is it any wonder we are in one unholy mess as a human race.

We fail to get the significance of Jesus and of his role as the inaugurator of a new covenant.  Those ideas are how the old covenant operated and it is no longer in force.  God doesn’t justify anybody based on those principles.  Indeed, the old covenant can only deliver the opposite of justification: condemnation.  Apostle Paul made that very clear, yet we still like to attempt the impossible, trying to live in the new covenant under the terms and conditions of the old.

Law kills – plain and simple.  Law brings knowledge of failure, followed by guilt and condemnation.  It is unable and unfit to deliver righteousness.  And what’s more, if it could, those who don’t know the law (or are incapable of understanding or keeping it) would be lost.  In God’s new covenant, righteousness is a grace gift from God, through the Spirit, by the work of Jesus so that it is accessible to all regardless of how ‘sinful’ we think we are or are not.  And that very faith itself is available to us as a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Grace operating through faith delivers the only righteousness God accepts – end of story.  All other visions of righteousness are pipe-dreams.  Paul teaches us that what God’s character and will and reputation demands, God supplies in that the only righteousness satisfactory to Him comes from the “provision of grace and the free gift of righteousness” in Jesus. (Romans 5:17)

This is righteousness.  This is our righteousness.  And, like salvation and redemption, it is a work of God ever in His purview – always present to Him, but worked out for us in the past, the present, and the future.  At a point in time, in response to faith, God grants us the free gift of righteousness; as we live life in partnership with Him, He increasingly works that righteousness into the fabric of our lives (1 Peter 2:24); and, according to Paul to the Galatians, “by faith, we eagerly await, through the Spirit, the righteousness for which we hope (Galatians 5:5)    And again, what He asks of us is that we honour respect and trust His promise.  And, as apostle Peter said, “in keeping with this promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.” (2 Peter 3:13)

It is only fitting to end with another quote from Paul”

“What then shall we say?  That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it – a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not obtained it.”  (Romans 9:30-31)

Now, you will notice that, a few paragraphs back, I introduced the idea of justification.  This is the fourth of the key concepts I am addressing.  Let me restate my earlier point: God doesn’t justify anybody based on the principles of the old covenant.  I could have said, God doesn’t ‘make righteous’ anybody based on those principles.  To justify is to make righteous, or to put the case for a finding of righteousness and declaration of “not guilty” based on all the evidence and on the ultimate knowledge and good will of the judge.  As you can gather from this, justification is a legal idea and a legal term.  Next post!

Cheers,

Kevin.

The Household of God (9)

Four Key Concepts:

Redemption (verb: redeem/redeemed)

Statement of availability: Call number 326.92 S857p (Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Redemption is a practice common to many societies throughout history.  It often refers to matters of land title and ownership.  It is also a part of what has been, throughout history, one method of borrowing money and raising capital for some particular purpose.  An item of value (often land) is given up in exchange for cash or in payment of a debt.  When the original owner of the item of property is ready to reclaim it, he approaches the one to whom it was surrendered for a price to ‘redeem’ his property.  When the price is paid, the item is released from its bondage and returned to its owner.  This process is sometimes called attestation.

In the bible, Ruth 4:7 says this: “Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter: a man removed his sandal and gave it to another; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel.”

In addition, in ancient Israel, the legislated practice was that such an exchange could not be permanent when it came to land.  In the “Year of Jubilee”, all land reverted to its original owner, outstanding debts were cancelled and slaves released.  A central reason for this practice is that, without it, life can spiral into poverty and the inevitable injustices that come with it.  Leviticus 25 explains a lot of the detail of this special part of old Hebrew society.

This is the root of the concept of redemption – whether the price is paid or the obligation cancelled because of the ‘Jubilee’.

Inspired by this ancient practice when debts were cancelled, slaves freed and land redistributed, many people around the world have joined a campaign called the Jubilee Debt Campaign.  The UK office has a website by the same name: www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk.  They are calling for a new debt jubilee in response to today’s global economic crisis.

If you visit the website of Jubilee Australia, www.jubileeaustralia.org, you can read this: “We are driven by our relationships of solidarity with civil society groups, networks and peoples movements in the Global South who are at the front line in the struggle against extreme poverty and environmental degradation, and who call for economic justice, not just charity.”

These are campaigns for redemption: cancellation of debt, freedom for slaves and the redistribution of land based on some form of “native title” rather than on an everlasting title bought with money.

And this is the idea that comes from the heart of God not just in matters of human labour, monetary debt and land title, but in terms of the spiritual health and well-being of the human race.  Unfortunately, this aspect of redemption has been relegated to the zone of ‘religion’ and is not taken seriously by most people based on the (I believe false) assumption that God and Jesus and the relationship we have with them are fiction and ‘fairy-tales’.

Perhaps one of the problems is revealed to us in Psalm 49.  The Sons of Korah put to the harp this piece of wisdom:

Hear this, all peoples; give ear, all inhabitants of the world, both low and high, rich and poor together.  My mouth will speak wisdom, and the meditation of my heart understanding.  I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will express my riddle on the harp.

Why should I fear in days of adversity, when the iniquity of my foes surrounds me, even those who trust in their wealth and boast in the abundance of their riches?

No man can by any means redeem a brother or give to God a ransom for him—for the redemption of his soul is costly, and he should cease trying forever—

That he should live on eternally, that he should not undergo decay.  For he sees wise men die; the stupid and the senseless alike perish and leave their wealth to others.

Their inner thought is that their houses are forever; their dwelling places to all generations; they have called their lands after their own names.  But man in his pomp will not endure; he is like the beasts that perish.  This is the way of those who are foolish, and of those after them who approve their words.

As sheep they are appointed for Sheol; death shall be their shepherd; and the upright shall rule over them in the morning, and their form shall be for Sheol to consume, so that they have no habitation.

But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, for He will receive me.

Do not be afraid when a man becomes rich; when the glory of his house is increased; for when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not descend after him.

Though while he lives he congratulates himself—and though men praise you when you do well for yourself— he shall go to the generation of his fathers; they will never see the light.

Man in his pomp, yet without understanding, is like the beasts that perish.

How much of the story of the Old Testament and old Israel in particular carries this refrain of injustice: why are the righteous punished and the wicked, seemingly, rewarded for their wickedness?  Have a second look at Job: this is the apparent injustice that gnaws away at Job and drives his so-called comforters to high-sounding homilies on the nature of God, His ways and His justice.

Man, according to the Sons of Korah, cannot afford the price of redeeming a fellow-man, yet God can and will receive man and redeem him.  The redemption of man – by God – is central to human life and justice.  Man’s attempts at redemptive justice are – and must always be seen as – secondary to that.

From one perspective, creation itself appears to be an act of redemption.  From chaos to order; from uninhabitable to inhabitable.

Romans 8:19-22

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time

But of course, the premier act of redemption is God, in Christ, paying the price to ‘buy back’ (the literal meaning of ‘redeem’) his creation so badly sabotaged by Satan and his followers.

What was the price?  Well, God Himself established that: “the wages of sin is death”, the bible says, meaning, in modern language, that sin demands death.  And we know from Hebrews 2 that the Devil holds the power of death.  But as we also noted earlier, Jesus drank the cup of death on behalf of all mankind.  He drank the cup; He paid the price; he finished what was necessary on God’s part to set the human race free from the power of death.

[It is for another post to correct a popular myth on the subject of sin.  For the moment let me simply say that the popular misconception is that sin is acts of misbehaviour; being naughty; doing wrong.  They are sins (plural) which come from the sin ‘tree’.  In the same way as lesions are a symptom of some underlying disease, acts of sin are a symptom of the underlying disease of sin innate in man.  Our emphasis and focus should be much more on the disease, than the symptoms.]

But to whom was the price paid?  In a way, Satan.  Clearly – if the temptation stories in the gospels are to be believed – this whole affair is a grand drama that brings to a climax the act of rebellion by Satan and his followers that permanently stained mankind with the sin disease.  With echoes of the deal done between God and Satan over the life and worship of Job, Satan issued a series of challenges to Jesus: ‘worship me and I will give you the kingdom of man’.  But Jesus had other ideas.

It’s like Jesus accepted the challenge to re-take the kingdom of man, but His way and on His terms, and those terms did not include bowing down before his arch-enemy to satisfy his hunger.  Jesus’ response to the temptations laid down the gauntlet and thereafter it was ‘game on’.  Satan had the power of death and was confident that the death of Jesus would end it all.  In one way, it did end it all – but for Satan, not for Jesus and us humans!  Jesus agreed to pay the price; Satan thought it was a done deal and that he had finally neutralised the attempts to re-take God’s possession.

But he miscalculated badly.  He did not understand what Jesus said as recorded by John: “I lay down my life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my Father.” (John 10:17-18

What Satan saw as Jesus’ final act of desperation and capitulation, was, in fact his defiant act of redemption for humankind and a cyanide pill for Satan.  The price was paid; the duel was fought and the fate of both humankind and Satan was sealed – IN HIS BLOOD.

This is redemption.  This is our redemption.  And, like salvation, it is a work of God ever in His purview – always present to Him, but worked out for us in the past, the present, and the future.  What He asks of us is that we honour respect and trust the huge yet simple truth that Paul expressed like this:

Ephesians 1:7

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.

[To deal with the trespasses (the sins), Jesus wiped them from the record AND opened the door to a state of being disease-free.  This is the brilliance and the superiority of the new covenant established in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.  In the old covenant, the best people could hope for was for the sins to be ‘carried away’ (overlooked by God) in the animals sacrificed for this purpose, a special ceremony performed by the High Priest once a year.  In the new covenant, Jesus’ one sacrifice, offered once, for all mankind, for all time, gives us our entrée into God’s good graces and destroys the sin virus.]

Romans 3:21-26

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Let’s close this section by taking a few minutes to consider some of the treasures in what Paul said to the Romans in this section.  Consider the highlighted words and phrases above.

Our redemption came by Jesus Christ (in particular his death and resurrection) – because he, and only he, was able to pay the price.  Remember the old Hebrew teaching: “No man can by any means redeem a brother or give to God a ransom for him—for the redemption of his soul is costly, and he should cease trying forever” (Psalm 49)

Remember Paul’s words to the Corinthians in chapter 15: “the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law.”  Satan was and is master and commander in the realm of law, sin and death.  Sin’s fatal blow is death, and it gets its power from law.  What Jesus did, as Paul powerfully notes, was “apart from law”.  Satan has no power or authority in the realm where Jesus was operating.  In fact this is precisely where Jesus does have power: the realm of the grace of God.

We humans can choose law and code and religion – all the pillars of the old covenant.  But, since Jesus, that will get us precisely nowhere!  It is a dead end now.  A new highway has been built – which Satan and his dark followers cannot travel.  It is the grace of God; it is Spirit, not law; it is love, not code.  It is the new covenant.  And, as Paul reminds us, it is available to “those who have faith in Jesus” as against having faith in oneself, or a fellow-human, or an institution, or a religion.

And then note that this quote from Paul introduces the two other key concepts I will be discussing here: righteousness and justification.



Cheers,
Kevin.