I found myself in a rather disturbing conversation today. The circumstances behind the conversation were the sudden and tragic death of a young man known to a friend and me. My friend was concerned about what to say in regards to this young man’s fate. The young man was, as far as either of us know, someone who firmly trusted the promises that God makes to us in Christ Jesus. My friend felt quite uncomfortable affirming that this young man would be raised to life and blessing in the new creation (not his description but one I prefer). His chief concern was, “we don’t know who the elect are” so it is better not to speak as if we do.

I have to say that I was rather taken back by this remark. Some might be dubious about my understanding of election from things I have written on this blog but surely if the Reformers taught us anything (not to mention the Apostles) it is that those who hear the call of God our Father and are given the gift of saving knowledge are the elect. If those who trust the promises of the gospel can’t consider themselves the elect then who can? As Paul write:

 

Gal. 3:14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

 

Now we know that no one can say Jesus is Lord save by the Spirit (1Cor.12:3) so therefore anyone who can confess that Jesus is Lord must be able to consider themselves as having received the blessing of Abraham - the gift of righteousness and therefore a filial place among the elect.

Here’s another theory. The contemporary preoccupation with loud music in church meetings is actually the expression of a latent desire for transcendence - that is for the transcendent to be immanent. In the past various aspects of a formal liturgy were designed to symbolize immanent transcendence - that God was in the house. This is particularly important when the architecture of the building reflects transcendence - high vaulted ceilings, flying butresses etc. In these building the size of the pipes on the organ meant a huge sound to fill the available space. If that wasn’t enough then incense would do the rest.

The contemporary building has a lower roof to reflect an emphasis on the horizontal “fellowship” of the believers as they meet to encourage one another. Of course as the buildings grew larger - for whatever reason, usually pragmatic - the size of the sound of the band was already there pressing the walls apart and the ceiling up.

Now the sheer bigness of the sound is the means by which the transcendent may be immanent and the individual believer may experience something comfortingly bigger than themselves.

 

Here is another theory. The issue of election in the Biblical story comes down  - at least at the horizontal level - to a question of legitimacy. Whether it is a people group, a promise, a king or even a practice, all these things in the context of election revolve around issues of legitimacy. So, do Israel have a legitimate claim to the promises of YHWH? Are the promises made to Abraham legitimate? Does the Messiah have a legitimate claim to the patronage of God? Is the practice of faith in promises a legitimate way to relate to God? Are those who trust in these promises made through Jesus legitimately the people of God?

In each of these instances there is an alternative option that challenges the claim to God’s choice. Are Israel really the people of God? Are the promises made to the patriarchs sufficient warrant for leaving Egypt? Is David really the king of Israel? Should we not keep the law in order to relate rightly with God? Would God really want to incorporate the Gentiles into his kingdom?

 

Into all this comes God’s choice of Jesus as the Christ - the chosen one par excellence. The son of Adam, the son of Abraham, the son of David  - the Son of God and the son of man. He is God’s chosen one who eclipses all other claims to legitimacy.

What do double decree theories of predestination, sacramental systems (especially the more elaborate), and notions of intermediate states after death (purgatory or saints around the throne), what do all these three things have in common? Personal assurance. That’s my theory for today. All these systems have elaborate mechanisms for giving an individual some kind of certainty about their future. Now craving certainty about existence in the realms beyond is hardly a new thing but what does it do to one’s understanding of the gospel of the person and work of the Lord Messiah Jesus?

 

Well the first one - double decrees - diminishes the sense in which the Lord Jesus accomplished anything substantial in his ministry. After all every thing was decided before the world have been made.

 

The second one - elaborate sacramental systems - diminishes the sense in which the Lord Jesus accomplished anything substantial in his ministry. After all if sacrifices need to be repeated or whatever, then the effectiveness of what the Messiah achieved for God’s people is compromised.

 

The third one - intermediate states - diminishes the sense in which the Lord Jesus accomplished anything substantial in his ministry. After all if ‘human souls’ can float off the heaven or sink down into rather uncomfortable transit lounges, the resurrection and ascension of the man, Messiah Jesus is un-necessary.

 

So then perhaps we ought to look to the Lord Messiah Jesus himself to give us an assurance of the quality of God’s promises - I think that’s what Paul might have said:

 

2Cor. 1:20 For every one of God’s promises is “Yes” in Him. Therefore the “Amen” is also through Him for God’s glory through us.

Article 2

The beloved royal Son is also the head of the body, of the church: he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might become preeminent in all things. Because in Christ Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself, whether things on the earth or things in heaven, through Christ Jesus, making peace through the blood of his cross. (Col.1:18-20)

 

Such is the love of the Father for his royal and eternal Son that by the power of His Spirit, God raised Jesus to life after his death – as King David foretold in the Spirit, God did not “abandon his holy one to the grave” (Ps.16:10 Cf. Acts 2:27).  The risen Lord Jesus is the first fruits from the dead (1 Cor.15:20) and the beginning of God’s new humanity, who by the power of God’s Spirit are the body over whom Christ Jesus is the head (Cf. Eph.4:4).  The resurrection of Jesus by the Spirit and his subsequent ascension to the right hand of God as the Son of Man (Cf. Dan.7:14) represents the confirmation of the Messiah’s dignity before God. Now the royal and eternal Son awaits the subjection of his enemies (Cf. Ps.2; Ps.110), the day when “at the name of Jesus, every knee will bend…and every tongue will confess that Christ Jesus is Lord” (Phil.2:10&11). In raising Jesus to life again God rejects sin, death and evil, the pervasive distortions of His creation. He rejects any and every barbarous act that distorts or frustrates the inherent dignity of His creatures and therefore the right of human beings to righteousness, life and goodness.

 

Not only is God’s righteousness gloriously reasserted in the risen and ascended Lord Jesus, the wonder of the gospel is that God constitutes a body for His Son, by His Spirit, from His enemies. So great is the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus that despite the assault on his dignity that sin, death and evil are, he not only came into the world that was made through him and for him, but he also came to reconcile this world to his heavenly Father. In fact,  “he bore our sicknesses and carried our pains” (Is.53:4); those elements of our frustrated world that rob us of dignity. Not only this, “he was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities” (Is.53:5). For the eternal Son came to his world but his own creatures, in fact his own people did not accept God’s royal son (Jn.1:11).  They abandoned the dignity with which God had made them having become “alienated and hostile in mind because of their evil actions” (Col.1:21).

 

However, God, the Father of our Lord Christ Jesus “is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love and truth” (Ex.34:6). Thus God made Christ Jesus publicly available as propitiation for sin through faith in Jesus’ blood to demonstrate his justice. For God had overlooked the sins previously committed by human beings against him and against each other (Rom.3:25 Cf.1:18-32). Those who by the power of God’s Spirit answer God’s call to trust in Jesus are given authority to become God’s children (Jn.1:12) and in the power of that same Spirit call on God as Father; as co-heirs of God’s promises in Christ Jesus (Rom.8:14-17). Through the preaching of Christ Jesus in the Spirit, God is building a body for whom Christ is the head (Eph.4:12).  In this body God is actively perfecting different gifts, different ministries, different activities that enable both Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free to be conformed to the image of the one through whom they were created – Christ Jesus (1 Cor.12:4-6; Col.3:10). Yet this conforming action into a single image is not a process of homogenisation for that would detract from the uniqueness of the eternal and royal Son. Instead by the Spirit, God mutually constitutes the parts of the body by their interaction in such a way as to preserve the uniqueness of each even as they are united. Thus “God places the parts, each one of them, in the body just as he wants them. If they were all the same part, where would the body be?” (1 Cor.12:18&19) In various times and particular places, the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of humanity that were previewed in the righteousness of Christ Jesus are manifest in his body as each part constitutes the others. What is more, this organic context of giving and receiving, of communion, is the context in which God our Father has given human beings not only the language of human dignity and rights but also the promise of participating in them. The strength of the promise is founded in God’s victory over the rebellious powers in heaven and on the earth. This victory was achieved when the eternal and royal Son suffered the violence of the cross.

 

The cross of Christ Jesus marks the ultimate act of barbarity between humans. Not because crucifixion is the worst thing that one human being can suffer at the hands of others but because at the cross creatures staged the ultimate act of rebellion against their creator. At the cross the Lord of glory was “despised and rejected by human beings” (Is.53:3), they pierced his hands and feet” (Ps.22:14). Many who saw God’s royal son mocked him saying, “He relies on the LORD; let Him rescue him; let the LORD deliver him…” (Ps.22:8 Cf. Mat.27:41-43).  Yet it was God’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer for “the Lord made his life an offering for sin” (Is.53:10). In fact, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor.5:19). Christ Jesus died as the atoning sacrifice “for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn.2:2). He was handed over to death for our sins – both those done directly against God’s person and indirectly through barbarous acts that degrade the dignity of his creatures – idolatry, lying, stealing, bitterness, anger and wrath, insult and slander, sexual immorality, greed and so on (Eph.4:17-5:14). These acts of violence and violation – in any form – represent disregard and contempt for the inherent dignity of others made in God’s image and an assault upon their rights. This disregard and contempt that led human beings to commit “barbarous acts” was the ultimate reason for Christ Jesus being nailed to a cross and suffering death. Yet the eternal and royal Son submitted himself to the forces of envy and violence so that they might spend themselves upon him thus bringing about their defeat and the restoration of peace.

 

In the death and resurrection of the Christ Jesus, God both reasserts His right to rule and rejects human kind’s rebellion against him. Yet because of his amazing grace, God does this in a way that “we have peace with Him through our Lord Christ Jesus” (Rom.5:1). What is more, God rejects the hostility with which humans treat each other because the rule of God in the Holy Spirit is righteousness, peace and joy (Rom.14:17).  Christ Jesus, as the beginning of the new humanity, is our peace with God (Eph.2:14). In his cross Christ Jesus wiped out the certificate of death, the record of our contempt and barbarity, that was against us and has taken it out of the way by nailing it to the cross (Col2:14). In him and by the Spirit, God has broken down the barriers of the Law and the hostility of ethnicity that separate Jew and Gentile granting access to himself to both. Thus by His Spirit and through the Lord Jesus, God restores citizenship in His kingdom to “foreigners and strangers;” household membership and fellowship to his enemies (Eph.2:12ff). More so, by the Spirit, the Lord Jesus dwells in and among his body as he preaches peace (Jn.15:7). This Spiritual word restores to Christ Jesus’ body the right to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness goodness, gentleness and self-control (Gal.5:23).  Such rights as the reflection of the dignity that is found in Christ Jesus are not something to which we can aspire but rather something which we humbly and patiently anticipate.

 

This reconciling work of God will be completed when Christ Jesus hands over his kingdom to God the Father having “put all His enemies under His feet.” Then the righteous Messiah of God will be completely vindicated and the last enemy, death, will be nullified (1 Cor.15:24ff). Creation will be made anew without sin, death and evil (Rev.21:1-6). Until this time, God will continue to sustain His creation by His Spirit and through His Son “causing the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sending rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Mat.5:45).  Because all things are for His royal and eternal Son and in him all things hold together, God by His Spirit will preserve faith, hope and love in the world as aspects of the inherent dignity of humanity and inalienable rights of all human beings.