The Story of God: Our journey

As Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films, is fond of saying, "Tell me a fact and I'll learn; tell me the truth and I'll believe; but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever."

How true (as every good teacher knows). Jesus, the Master Teacher, often made his point with a story. His stories pointed people to the greatest story of all: The Story of God.

At the center of this story is Jesus who, as Andrew Purves notes,"is the mediating center of revelation, whereby all of our knowledge of God is controlled" ("The Shape of Torrance Theology," Theology in Scotland, vol XVI, p26).

Because Jesus, who reveals God as God, has united himself to all humans through the Incarnation, his story is the story of all humankind. Thus our history is his-story.

The story of Jesus as our representative and substitute, is the gospel. It's the story of creation, fall, re-creation (redemption), leading to humanity glorified and dwelling with God in a new heaven and new earth. This story is thus of an unfolding journey - not one merely facilitated by God on our behalf, but one of God-with-us (through Christ, in the Spirit).

Some (nonbelievers) journey with God quite unknowingly. Others (believers) journey knowingly and (as sung by Michael Card) experiencing "joy in the journey." May that joy (the joy of Jesus himself, given to us through the Spirit), be yours.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, 

so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

(Romans 15:13, NRSV)

The church's apostolicity (Nicene Creed #11)

This post continues our examination of the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined by the Nicene Creed (for other posts in this series, click a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

We come now to the church's apostolicity, which Thomas F. Torrance (in The Trinitarian Faith) defines as follows:

In its simplest sense the apostolicity of the Church refers back to the original foundation of the Church once for all laid by Christ upon the apostles, but it also refers to the interpenetration of the existence and mission of the Church in its unswerving fidelity to that apostolic foundation (p285).

The Apostles were chosen and sent by Christ as a link between himself and the church. They would be this link by both teaching and embodying the truth of the Gospel (the deposit of faith), which is "the unrepeatable foundation on which the Church was built" (p286). This deposit includes the content of the Gospel found in the Apostles' writings (the New Testament, which points back to, and thus includes and interprets the Old Testament). However, this deposit is more than information on a page, for the Gospel itself points directly to the life-giving reality of Christ himself. This is vital to understand, for as Torrance notes:

It is only in Christ and not out of itself, and only through union and communion with Christ in its faith and mission and not through its own piety, that the Church is continuously sustained....That the Church is apostolic as well as one, holy and catholic, signifies, therefore, that it is ever one and the same with the Church once for all founded by Christ in the apostolate... That is to say, apostolicity has to do with the continuing identity of the Church as the authentic Body of Christ in space and time (p287).

To be truly apostolic in both its belief and ministry, the church must focus continuously and faithfully on the interpretation, exposition and application of Holy Scripture, which contains the apostolic witness to Christ...

...For it is through faithful transmission of the preaching and teaching of the apostles that the Church is itself constantly renewed and reconstituted as Christ's Church (p287).

The bishops and theologians of the Church who assembled at Nicaea grounded their deliberations in careful exposition of Scripture, even though, at times, they had to coin new terms to adequately express and thus faithfully convey the deposit of faith contained in Scripture. This was particularly needful in formulating statements concerning the triunity of God and the Incarnation of the Son of God. According to Torrance:

[The bishops and theologians attending the Council] were concerned in wrestling with the Holy Scriptures to express what they were compelled to think and hold within the context of the apostolic tradition under the impact of God's self-revelation through the Word and Spirit of Christ, and on that basis alone, to confess their faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And thereby they sought to provide continuing generations of people in the Church with an evangelical and apostolic framework within which continuing interpretation of Holy Scripture, proclamation of the truth of the Gospel, and instruction in the faith could be carried out (p289).

We are richly blessed to have inherited this "evangelical and apostolic framework," which defines and thus defends the deposit of faith once and for all given to the church by Jesus through his Apostles. By remaining true to this framework, the Church remains connected to Christ himself, who is the one Apostle in the absolute sense. That connection includes faithfully reading, understanding and teaching the deposit of faith given in Holy Scripture, and it includes faithful participation with Christ in his ongoing apostolic mission to the world, through his body, the Church.

The Creed's declaration of the church's apostolicity provides the basis for its concluding statement concerning the church's one baptism and issues pertaining to eschatology (the resurrection and the life to come). We will look at these when we next return to this series.

The Mission of God: The Bible's grand narrative

In The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative (IVP 2006), Christopher Wright leads us on a journey through the Bible using a "missiological hermeneutic." Concerning this journey, he asks...

Is it possible, is it legitimate, is it helpful for Christians to read the whole Bible from the angle of mission?  The immediate challenge that bounced back was: it all depends on whose mission you mean. If by "mission" we are thinking of "missions," and the great and laudable efforts of cross cultural missionaries, then we would be struggling to defend an affirmative answer to the first question. While our human missionary endeavor can find ample justification and explicit textual imperative in the Bible, it would be a distorted and exaggerated hermeneutic, in my view, that tried to argue that the whole Bible was "about" mission in the narrowly defined sense of human missionary activities.

He continues:

The Bible renders and reveals to us the God whose creative and redemptive work is permeated from beginning to end with God's own great mission, his purposeful, sovereign intentionality. All mission or missions which we initiate, or into which we invest our own vocation, gifts and energies, flow from the prior and larger reality of the mission of God. God is on a mission, and we, in that wonderful phrase of Paul, are "co-workers with God."

Wright demonstrates that throughout Scripture, God reveals himself as the God whose driving purpose is that humanity have with him a knowing relationship. The consistency and universality of this message throughout Scripture is striking. For example, in the Old Testament...

Yahweh presents himself as the God who will to be known. This self-communicating drive is involved in everything God does in creation, revelation, salvation and judgment. Human beings therefore are summoned to know Yahweh as God, on the clear assumption that they can know him and that God wills that they should know him.

Wright presents the Bible as constituting the revelation of this mission of God. Furthermore, as we embrace this revelation, we have in our possession the hermeneutical key that unlocks the Bible's purpose as a grand narrative that gives shape to a biblical, God-centered worldview.

For Wright, this grand narrative stretches from creation to new creation, and accounts for everything in between. It is The Story that tells where we have come from, how we got here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we ultimately are going. It is the story of the mission of God revealed to us in Scripture as Father, Son and Spirit. It is the story demonstrating that the mission of this triune God is the heartbeat of all reality: all creation, all history and all that lies ahead.

Wright then notes that this biblical, missional worldview is disturbingly subversive in that it relativizes our place in the grand scheme of things. We tend to ask, "Where does God fit into the story of my life?" But the real question is, "Where does my little life fit into the great story of God's mission?" We tend to want a purpose that has been tailored just right for our individual life. But a biblical worldview sees our life's purpose as wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation. We tend to argue about what the church's mission should be. But the real question is this: "What kind of church has God formed for his mission to the world?"

Sometimes our motivations for mission are inconsistent with the Bible's grand narrative. We tend to want numerical results ("nickels and noses"), emotional highs, amazing experiences, or personal respect and fulfillment. However, when our worldview is shaped by the revelation of who God is and what he is doing on mission to the world, then we see ourselves as part of what he is doing to call all people to himself, When our identity is conformed to this reality, then we are able to act in harmony with God's design as co-workers with him in his mission to all humanity.

For a more detailed review of this helpful book, click here.

Epiphany Sunday

Sunday, January 8, 2012 will be celebrated in many churches as Epiphany Sunday. This post about Epiphany repeats one that appeared here in 2008.

January 6 (the 12th day of Christmas) is designated by church tradition as "Epiphany." It is celebrated by many churches on the following Sunday, known as "Epiphany Sunday." 

The term epiphany means "to show," "make known" or "reveal." In some Western churches, it remembers the coming of the Magi (wise men) bringing gifts to the Christ child, who by so doing "reveal" Jesus as the Lord and King of all humanity (Jews and Gentiles included). 

In some Eastern Churches, Epiphany also commemorates Jesus’ baptism by which he was consecrated in his mission as the God-man, sent from the Father, anointed by the Spirit, for the benefit of all humanity - indeed, for the benefit of all creation. 

Epiphany powerfully presents the Gospel of the inclusion of all people (and all creation) in God's triune love and life through the substitutionary and representative (vicarious) humanity of the Son of God come to us, as one of us, through incarnation as the Son of Man (including his birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, continuing session from heaven, and promised return when he is revealed in all his glory at the final consummation of this age). 

The Magi who brought gifts to the infant Jesus were the first Gentiles to acknowledge Jesus as "King" and thus they were the first to "show" or "reveal" Jesus to a wider world as the incarnate Christ. This act of worship by the Magi, which corresponded to Simeon’s prophetic statement that this child Jesus would be "a light for revelation to the Gentiles" (Luke 2:32), was one of the first indications that Jesus' vicarious life embraces all people, all nations and all races. 

The work of the Father, in Jesus, through the Holy Spirit for humankind's salvation is truly for all. Therefore, Epiphany is also a good time to focus on the mission of the church to participate in the ministry that Jesus is now doing through the Holy Spirit to reveal God and his salvation to all people. It is also a good time to focus on Christian fellowship, especially in healing the divisions of prejudice and bigotry that we all too often find between God’s children.

For a helpful GCI article concerning the season of Epiphany, click here.

A brief word for a New Year

To all Surprising God readers: Happy New Year! Here is a brief word for 2012: Jesus is alive!

By this I mean that Jesus is not merely...

• A concept to be studied
• An historical personage to emulate

We are well advised, of course, to study and emulate Jesus. However, my prayer is that in 2012 we will experience and express even more fully the all-encompassing love and life of Jesus, our living Savior who is...

• The incarnate Son of God - fully God, and fully human. When Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he did not shed his humanity. He remains human (now glorified) forever.
• Our Mediator. As both divine and human, Jesus continues to be the "go between" - the one who, in his own Person, unites humanity with God. Jesus is the Atonement. 
• Our High Priest. Jesus the God-man lives forever to make intercession for humanity.
• The One who sends the Holy Spirit to educate all humanity concerning who Jesus is, and thus who we are because of who he is.
• God at work in our world through the church. God is not absent and aloof from life on earth. He is present with us and for us in Jesus who, through the Holy Spirit, is actively at work in our midst. As the church formed and sent by the Holy Spirit, it is our high calling to participate in what Jesus is now doing in the world. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer was fond of saying, we are called to be "place-sharers" with Jesus - sharing the life that he is now sharing, through the Holy Spirit, with each person on earth.

In 2012, may we experience great joy as we share the love and life of God, in Jesus, through the Holy Spirit.