A Humbled Resistance

A Response to The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President

 

Theology (cont.)

 

Who is Jesus?—Incarnate Word and Sovereign King or Super Gandhi?

 

Whenever anyone says or implies that theology is unimportant and says, “just give me Jesus,” they need to be asked “who is Jesus?”  With that one question we’ve taken the conversation directly to the most important theological question that can ever be asked. 

As an example of what Christianity understands from Scripture about Jesus Christ, I’m going to borrow the text from a randomly selected14 church Web site’s page entitled “Who Is Jesus Christ?”

Jesus Christ is central to everything we are, as well as everything we do. We believe that Jesus Christ is God, the 2nd Person of the Trinity. He is the Son of God; fully man, yet fully God. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary. Though begotten, Jesus was not made. He lived the perfect holy life that we could not live; then Jesus died the substitutionary death on the cross, as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the elect. Jesus actually physically rose again from the dead on the 3rd day, and after validating His resurrection through many convincing proofs to His disciples and many other followers, He ascended into heaven. Jesus shall come again in glory, to judge all the living and all the dead.

Without Jesus Christ, there is no Christianity. The foundation of what Christians believe rests in the Lord Jesus Christ. According to the Bible (Acts 4:12), there is no other name but Jesus, by which men and women may inherit eternal life in heaven. Because all of us are sinners (Romans 3:23), every person in the world deserves to go to hell. But God, in His great mercy, sent Jesus to earth to pay the penalty of sin with His blood for millions and millions of people (Revelation 5:9). For this enormous group of people, the elect (Ephesians 1:3-12), through imputation, Jesus took upon Himself their sins and gave to them His righteousness (2nd Corinthians 5:21). After God regenerates us, we are finally aware of our sin and repent over our spiritual crimes against the Lord. When we confess our sins, God hears us, forgiving our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Along with repenting in sorrow over our countless sins, the Christian also places all of his/her trust in Jesus as well, (Mark 1:15). No longer are we king over our own lives; Jesus is now the highest authority. He reigns as king on the throne of our lives. Jesus is now #1, not we ourselves. Because of this, whether we are new Christians or whether we’ve been following Jesus for 50 years, all that we do is a continual cycle of repentance and faith. We repent again and again, and re-believe again and again in the gospel of the grace of Christ. Even our spiritual maturity is based solely on how closely we, through the strength of the Holy Spirit, remain connected with Jesus Christ in our everyday life (John 15:1-11).

 

The crux of Christianity is Jesus Christ!15

 

Readers with a rudimentary Christian education should find most of that pretty familiar.  Let’s compare this with the Jesus of TIR and JFP.

 

Jesus was not simply a missionary to the poor. He was poor—born a baby refugee from the badlands of Nazareth, wandered the world a homeless rabbi, died the rotten death of insurrectionists and bandits on the cross, executed by an oppressive empire, buried in a borrowed tomb.  Jesus was crucified not for helping poor people but for joining them.  That is the Jesus we follow. (TIR 144)

 

…Jesus did not set up a program but modeled a way of living that incarnated the reign of God. (TIR 159)

 

For Jesus did not seek out the rich and powerful in order to trickle down his kingdom.  Rather, he joined those at the bottom, the outcasts and undesirables, and everyone was attracted to his love for people on the margins. (We know that we all are poor and lonely anyway, don’t we?)  Then he invited everyone into a journey of downward mobility to become the least. (TIR 127)

 

I find these descriptions more applicable to Gandhi than to Jesus Christ, but elsewhere I was able to find a reference16 to Christ as God and as executed and risen.

 

I went to Iraq in the footsteps of an executed and risen God. (TIR 207) 

 

What does it mean “He died for joining the poor?”  Was modeling a way of living His reason for coming?  What was accomplished by His death?  In his attempt to demonstrate his belief that the cross is more than people take it to mean, does he make it less?

 

It’s not that the cross is just some necessary step to accomplishing some religious plan of salvation—an abstract scheme that leaves Jesus politically meaningless. (JFP 131) 

 

^ESV Acts 2:22 "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know- ²³ this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

 

^ESV Ephesians 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, ⁸ which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight ⁹ making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ ¹⁰ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

 

If we abandon the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, we abandon the gospel.  That is a strong claim, so I’ll attempt to back it up with a brief explanation of the centrality of substitutionary atonement.  Here is a description of “penal substitution” from Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology:

 

Christ’s death was “penal” in that he bore a penalty when he died.  His death was also a “substitution” in that he was a substitute for us when he died.  This has been the orthodox understanding of the atonement held by evangelical theologians, in contrast to other views that attempt to explain the atonement apart from the idea of the wrath of God or payment of the penalty for sin.17

 

^ESV 2 Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 

The Apostle Paul explains how we can be justified before God or “be at peace” with God (that’s a good theological explanation of what we call “saved”):

 

^ESV Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it- ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

 

^ESV Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Then Grudem helps us with the definition of “propitiation,” a word we don’t see every day:

 

Three other crucial passages in the New Testament refer to Jesus’ death as a “propitiation”: Hebrews 2:17; 1 John 2:2; and 4:10.  The Greek terms (the verb hilaskomai, “to make propitiation” and the noun hilasmos, “a sacrifice of propitiation”) used in these passages have the sense of “a sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God—and thereby makes God propitious (or favorable) toward us.”  This is the consistent meaning of these words outside the Bible … These verses simply mean that Jesus bore the wrath of God against sin. 18

 

Without Christ’s substitutionary atonement, there is no turning away of the holy wrath of God, no justification before God, no peace with God, no salvation.  Theology matters.

 

Jesus Christ is the Passover lamb who was slain (1 Cor 5:7), a once and for all fulfillment of the Passover of Israel in Egypt.  To characterize Christ’s atoning death (the most important event in human history) as “the rotten death of insurrectionists and bandits” is a gross reduction.  Claiborne also reinvents the Passover to exclude the lamb, the blood, the judgment of God, and even the meaning of the word “Passover.”  Compare Claiborne’s description with the Biblical description and observance. 

 

Passover was an anti-imperial Jewish festival in which the Jews celebrated their ancestors’ coming out of Egyptian slavery and “passing over” to a land of promise. (TIR  281 footnote 9)

 

^ESV Exodus 12:3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household…

⁷"Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. … ¹¹ In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD's Passover. ¹² For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. ¹³ The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. ¹⁴ "This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

 

Why don’t Christians celebrate Passover?  Or do they?19   Theology matters.

 

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