God is the source of knowledge "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding" (also see Proverbs 1:7), therefore he is the one that is true sanity, or the Rational One. According to the Christian worldview, humans know anything due to our created capacity to interpret the mind of God as he reveals himself to us, or to put it another way, we know by thinking God's thoughts after Him. The fall had a huge effect on this in that due to sin, we are now incapable of correctly interpreting the revealed mind of God, our epistemological element has become dysfunctional.
This is one reason why humanity is so desperate for Christ, because in Christ we receive the mind of Christ. It is important here to attend to the truth that Jesus was a man, the second Adam (Rom.5). Humanity was given the responsibility to rule creation in God's image as his stewards (Genesis 1:28). They were able to do this because they had the mind of God as their own. In Christ, humans regain this most fundamental trait that defines the very essence of humanity. So we can see Paul's main point in his letter to the Colossians: that Jesus restores to us our humanity.
In John's gospel we read an account of Jesus teaching his disciples. Jesus again is telling them that he must "leave" or die in order to fulfill his vocation. Thomas asks a very natural question, "Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" (John 14:5). Jesus gives a very tightly packed answer, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also".(vs.6) This verse has commonly been interpreted to mean the way one can get to heaven, that through Jesus is eternal life. This is not a false interpretation, but I believe that such a profound statement also has more to teach us. One of my heroes Cornelius VanTil has seen an epistemological element to this teaching of our Lord. An epistemological element Paul would later expand for us in his letters. The argument can be put as follows:
1. Since sin has disabled our ability to properly interpret the revealed mind of God, we are consequently ALL born naturally irrational (evidenced by the fact the we willingly sin, a most insane and inexplicable activity). 2. As irrational creatures, we must be given back our rationality in order to regain our humanness and proceed with our purpose of thinking God's thoughts after Him and ruling his creation to his glory. 3. The Man, Jesus is the means through which humanity and therefore rationality is restored. Jesus has, through his work, filled the vacant spot left by Adam, due to sin, after the Fall as a rational representative of the human race. Knowing Jesus then allows us once again to know the Father. To know the Creator is to begin to know his creation. In Jesus we have the Way back to knowledge of God (rationality) the Truth about who he is, who we are and what our purpose is in this creation. And we have true Life; we again have our humaness and can now live fruitful lives in the freedom offered in the Gospel.
Friday, November 17, 2006
The Great Event
One of the most influential childhood memories I have is of my grandfather, "Pop-pop". Toward the end of his life he was very sick with cancer in his brain. I saw this first hand living in his house during this ordeal due to my parent's divorce. I remember being very disturbed by the change, both in his physical appearance and in his mood. He was a very handsome man with a charming and gentle personality. The cancer had ravaged his body into a fleshly skeleton and he was very grouchy and short most of the time. I was only eight, but I remember being very nervous around him so as not to incur a verbal onslaught, God forgive me, I did not really understand then what he was going through.
I remember also being very frustrated with everything. My family as I had known it all my life was suddenly gone. My happy life in the suburbs of Kansas City would never be again and in fact was only the beginning of what would be a very downward spiraling eight year experience.
One day after school, about a month before Pop-pop's passing, my grandmother (Grandmommy) told me that he wanted to see me. "Me?" I thought, "What did I do?" My stomach turned as I creaked up the stairs toward the forbidden master bedroom where Pop-pop was. "Come over here boy" wheezed my dying patriarch, sounding as grouchy as ever. I was wondering what was to happen to me, no one was here but him and me, no one to help me. I was truly scared as I stood there at his bedside. Then the event that would forever stay with me and even give me strength at very dismal times in my near future; With the speed and strength of a healthy and younger man, he picked me up and tickled me in his deathbed. He held me and I was reminded of the man he really was; A man that though in great pain and in the shadow of death would still see to it that his grandson knew his love for him. After that I was always at peace concerning Pop-pop. This event will forever be with me.
I write this though not to exhibition myself, for I do not share this with many, but to bring an example of an event in my life that assures me of something and brings me hope and strength so that in a way I am always in that event. Here it is my experience with my grandfather and that event assures me that my grandfather was a great man with a great love for his family. It brings me that hope that my family will stay strong coming from such strength and it commissions me to be a strong and loving man for my family.
The Great Event
There is an even greater event I have to gather from though. It is an event which took place long before my existence on this earth, and yet is so pivotal and relevant to my life today. Two thousand years ago Jesus decided to become the solution to the human problem. He would be the one to reconcile God to humanity; he would be the one to put this world again to rights. The event through which he would accomplish this was his own death and resurrection.
This event in fact is not only important for my life but for that of the whole human race, whether we individually acknowledge this or not. We all long at times for a greater world, the religious and non-religious alike. We all have an idea of what justice is and in different times and degrees decry the situations in which we do not see it. We wish it to be more prominent, we desire that beauty overcome the grotesque.
When Jesus spilled his life and blood on a Roman cross it was not just an honorable action of sacrifice. Indeed we all see it as at least this and respect all who for some cause or another give their lives. Jesus gave his life as more than just a protest however, he gave his life in order to actually accomplish liberation and freedom for his people.
A Great Dilemma
Israel was in exile and had been since their Babylonian captivity. Throughout the generations the only real change was the different pagan nations to rule over them. They were the people of God, how is it that they were to be subject to other nations for so long? What of the promise that they would inherit the earth? Jesus grew to a place where he understood that Israel was in captivity due to their failure to carry out their assigned vocation: to be the nation through which ALL the nations would come to the true God. They were to be the ones to usher God's vision of Shalom upon the whole world. This is the thinking behind the Genesis story. Adam and the human race had failed dismally to reflect God's glory in his creation and actually had fouled things up. In Genesis, Israel is the hero that will change this, they are the new humanity that will do what Adam and the old humanity failed to do, namely glorify God through obedience to his covenant and vision for his world.
Israel was actually acting out the drama of all humanity through their history. The Exodus for example was a historical picture of the bigger Exodus that humanity was in need of since being exiled out of Eden. Jesus came to a conclusion that he was the one through whom this ultimate Exodus would come about. He would lead his people out of bondage to sin and death back into right fellowship and standing with the Father. They would become the citizens of his new world.
That is what the event of Jesus' death and resurrection did it established a new humanity ruled by him and it inaugurated his Kingdom, the new World that was to replace the old and rebellious one. The Kingdom of God is now here and it is coming. The Jesus event of history has now made today a day that is part of this new time, a time in which the old world is struggling to stay afloat as the new one is expanding. His work has made it so that all of humanity is forced to acknowledge the truth about the world and themselves. This world belongs to God and they are in great need of forgiveness and rescue. Jesus is the one, through his death and resurrection to bring these about. He is the one that restores us back to Eden and inaugurates a new world for us to live in, a world where justice is prominent and beauty is clear.
A Great Ministry
This great event defines for us as well our purpose as members of God's family. We are to carry out the ministry that Jesus began, and indeed is still performing. That ministry is the one of reconciliation. Oppression and injustice are still the order of the day in the old world, as citizens of the new we have been given the commission to usher in our better Kingdom and replace the dying one. We do more than hear a whisper here and there of what should be, we have experienced justice in Jesus and we have the Spirit by which to reveal this to the world. "What Jesus was for Israel, so the Church is to be for the world" (N.T. Wright).
It is as we learn more of what Jesus intended and actually did accomplish that we will better understand our role in this world. Love, justice, peace and beauty can really only thrive in the world he has established. The Christian must take this to heart and therefore be dedicated to the building of the Kingdom of God. For then we will see all peoples living in the world God intended for them, and indeed will bring them back to, the world we all long for deep within, the world established and inaugurated at that great event: the death and resurrection of Jesus.
I remember also being very frustrated with everything. My family as I had known it all my life was suddenly gone. My happy life in the suburbs of Kansas City would never be again and in fact was only the beginning of what would be a very downward spiraling eight year experience.
One day after school, about a month before Pop-pop's passing, my grandmother (Grandmommy) told me that he wanted to see me. "Me?" I thought, "What did I do?" My stomach turned as I creaked up the stairs toward the forbidden master bedroom where Pop-pop was. "Come over here boy" wheezed my dying patriarch, sounding as grouchy as ever. I was wondering what was to happen to me, no one was here but him and me, no one to help me. I was truly scared as I stood there at his bedside. Then the event that would forever stay with me and even give me strength at very dismal times in my near future; With the speed and strength of a healthy and younger man, he picked me up and tickled me in his deathbed. He held me and I was reminded of the man he really was; A man that though in great pain and in the shadow of death would still see to it that his grandson knew his love for him. After that I was always at peace concerning Pop-pop. This event will forever be with me.
I write this though not to exhibition myself, for I do not share this with many, but to bring an example of an event in my life that assures me of something and brings me hope and strength so that in a way I am always in that event. Here it is my experience with my grandfather and that event assures me that my grandfather was a great man with a great love for his family. It brings me that hope that my family will stay strong coming from such strength and it commissions me to be a strong and loving man for my family.
The Great Event
There is an even greater event I have to gather from though. It is an event which took place long before my existence on this earth, and yet is so pivotal and relevant to my life today. Two thousand years ago Jesus decided to become the solution to the human problem. He would be the one to reconcile God to humanity; he would be the one to put this world again to rights. The event through which he would accomplish this was his own death and resurrection.
This event in fact is not only important for my life but for that of the whole human race, whether we individually acknowledge this or not. We all long at times for a greater world, the religious and non-religious alike. We all have an idea of what justice is and in different times and degrees decry the situations in which we do not see it. We wish it to be more prominent, we desire that beauty overcome the grotesque.
When Jesus spilled his life and blood on a Roman cross it was not just an honorable action of sacrifice. Indeed we all see it as at least this and respect all who for some cause or another give their lives. Jesus gave his life as more than just a protest however, he gave his life in order to actually accomplish liberation and freedom for his people.
A Great Dilemma
Israel was in exile and had been since their Babylonian captivity. Throughout the generations the only real change was the different pagan nations to rule over them. They were the people of God, how is it that they were to be subject to other nations for so long? What of the promise that they would inherit the earth? Jesus grew to a place where he understood that Israel was in captivity due to their failure to carry out their assigned vocation: to be the nation through which ALL the nations would come to the true God. They were to be the ones to usher God's vision of Shalom upon the whole world. This is the thinking behind the Genesis story. Adam and the human race had failed dismally to reflect God's glory in his creation and actually had fouled things up. In Genesis, Israel is the hero that will change this, they are the new humanity that will do what Adam and the old humanity failed to do, namely glorify God through obedience to his covenant and vision for his world.
Israel was actually acting out the drama of all humanity through their history. The Exodus for example was a historical picture of the bigger Exodus that humanity was in need of since being exiled out of Eden. Jesus came to a conclusion that he was the one through whom this ultimate Exodus would come about. He would lead his people out of bondage to sin and death back into right fellowship and standing with the Father. They would become the citizens of his new world.
That is what the event of Jesus' death and resurrection did it established a new humanity ruled by him and it inaugurated his Kingdom, the new World that was to replace the old and rebellious one. The Kingdom of God is now here and it is coming. The Jesus event of history has now made today a day that is part of this new time, a time in which the old world is struggling to stay afloat as the new one is expanding. His work has made it so that all of humanity is forced to acknowledge the truth about the world and themselves. This world belongs to God and they are in great need of forgiveness and rescue. Jesus is the one, through his death and resurrection to bring these about. He is the one that restores us back to Eden and inaugurates a new world for us to live in, a world where justice is prominent and beauty is clear.
A Great Ministry
This great event defines for us as well our purpose as members of God's family. We are to carry out the ministry that Jesus began, and indeed is still performing. That ministry is the one of reconciliation. Oppression and injustice are still the order of the day in the old world, as citizens of the new we have been given the commission to usher in our better Kingdom and replace the dying one. We do more than hear a whisper here and there of what should be, we have experienced justice in Jesus and we have the Spirit by which to reveal this to the world. "What Jesus was for Israel, so the Church is to be for the world" (N.T. Wright).
It is as we learn more of what Jesus intended and actually did accomplish that we will better understand our role in this world. Love, justice, peace and beauty can really only thrive in the world he has established. The Christian must take this to heart and therefore be dedicated to the building of the Kingdom of God. For then we will see all peoples living in the world God intended for them, and indeed will bring them back to, the world we all long for deep within, the world established and inaugurated at that great event: the death and resurrection of Jesus.
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