The first few things I would want to affirm will be fairly straightforward, as I hold pretty orthodox views on the basics of Christianity. These are things that, for the most part, are not really contested within Christianity, and I would go so far as to say that these cannot be laid aside without abandoning Christianity. As such, I'm just going to toss all of these into one post and then focus on more secondary and/or controversial topics for the remainder of the series.
The Christian faith stands or falls on the resurrection of Christ, and this is where I started when I began my deconstruction phase. I did not consider anything short of a literal, physical resurrection from the dead to be acceptable; if Christ was dead, or never existed, then I was prepared to throw the whole religion out as baseless and false. If Christ did not exist, then all of Christianity is built on a lie; if He died and stayed dead, He failed to prove Himself to be God in flesh, and therefore Christianity is built on a lie. A symbolic or metaphysical resurrection is not even worth considering, as it cannot be verified and means essentially nothing. I recently saw a tweet where someone asked, "if it was absolutely, undeniably, 100% demonstrated tomorrow that Christ was still dead in a grave, how would that affect your faith?" and I read through response after response of people saying it wouldn't do anything to their faith. I don't know what their faith is, but it isn't the one Paul declared would be in vain if Christ had not been raised. I looked at the gospels as historical documents, because that's fundamentally what they claim to be. I could go into detail in another post, but I was convinced that they were faithful recollections of real events, with Luke and John having the most convincing lines of argument for me. Luke because of his research; the number of details that Luke includes that support his claim to be operating from eyewitness interviews was staggering. Luke stated outright that his goal was to ensure his reader(s) could have confidence in the teachings they've received, and he makes sure to name sources, include stories that other gospels didn't include that show Christ interacting with people beyond the disciples, provide geographic and cultural details that improve clarity, and (as he continues into Acts) distinguish between the things he personally witnessed and the things he didn't. John stood out to me for his honesty and intimate familiarity with the story, how he really turns his focus to who Christ is and lets the person of Jesus stand out on the page even more than the specific things Jesus did or what order exactly He did them. The bit where John and Peter run to the tomb and John is the only writer who records that, well actually, he won that race, but that's an aside; details like that drove home that this was a real person telling real stories about his own real experiences, show a bit of the character of a man who wants to note that he ran faster than his friend, but is willing to admit hesitance to actually enter the tomb. Incidentally, and this isn't a core doctrine, it's just a side note here, but John is also why I believe in a very early dating of the gospels, which was important to my acceptance of their claims. There is no dispute among scholars, Christian or secular, that John was written after the synoptic gospels, and almost certainly after Acts. Everyone agrees that John wrote last. A great many people, however, put John after 70 ad, and I don't. My reason isn't historical or based on any specific papyrus or anything--so take it how you will--but rather it's literary. As a writer, I am struck by the fact that John has no apparent sense of dramatic tension. He shows throughout his writings that he is a writer who cannot allude to something and then wait to reveal what he's alluded to. Consider this segment of John 2: The Jews then said to Him, "What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?" But He was speaking of the temple of His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken. |
The Living Word | |
First, that God is three eternal persons. He is not three separate beings, and He is not one person presenting in three ways. Christ affirms God the Father as the creator of all things, prays to Him as the Eternal Source, follows His leading as the Great High King, speaks His words as the Author of all things, and points to Him as the Ultimate Glory. It is the Father who holds the ultimate right to determine and deliver judgment, who welcomes us as His children, who we come to know in salvation, and who we will ultimately glorify for all eternity. Christ declares Himself to be God the Son, the speaker of the Father's words, the enacter of the Father's will, and the one true means of access to the Father. Christ promises the arrival of God the Spirit, the One who delivers truth, the catalyst that unites the body of Christ, and the source that empowers the work of salvation in the life of the Christian and the church. Second, that mankind is severed from our proper relationship with the Father, enslaved to sin and unable to reunite ourselves to Him. Mankind, created to serve as image-bearers of God, instead serve from the womb as image-bearers of fallen Adam. God is making all things new, and our only hope to be reunited with Him is to be made new as well. This new creation is only available through the work of Christ on our behalf, which begins immediately when we are adopted as sons and will be fully realized when Christ returns to deliver final judgment on the world and completes the great work of redemption. |
God as Judge
Abraham calls God "the Judge of all the world," and rightly so. But which person of the Godhead sits as judge? In John 5:22, Christ declares that the Father is not the Judge, but has given that function to Christ. But in John 8:15, Jesus says He judges no one, and 1 John 2:1-2 describes Christ as our advocate standing before the Father, who is presumably (given the nature of an advocate) sitting in judgment. Within parables, the role of judgment is carried out variably by characters who represent either the Father or the Son. Consider what Jesus says later in John 5. In verse 30, Jesus says that He does nothing without direction from the Father, including judgment. I present this, and my statement above about the function of the Son, as the unifying theme; God the Son reveals the just will of the Father (the declaration of the Judge's ruling) and realizes the material truth of that just will by bearing the full weight of the Father's judgment on the cross and standing before the Father to plead the application of His work to our case as Advocate. That is, all ultimate judgment finds its origin in the Father and its expression in the Son. |
These, I believe, are the basics of the Christian faith. Everything else stems from them or explains them in more detail. All our models, all our atonement theories, all our theological frameworks and terminology find their soul here. Here we have creation, fall, and redemption; here we have God and man and our need for Him and His love for us. Here we have the Bible, in which God the Son reveals God and ourselves and what God has done and how we respond to that work, which can have no falsehood without sacrificing its essential purpose. In these things we must have unity and unwavering adherence; any deviation from this, any different Christ, any other gospel, any allegiance placed equal or higher than God, any ultimate source of truth other than the Father revealed through the Son through the lens provided by the Holy Spirit, is not Christianity. It may share many things with us, but it is not of us.
Our pastor is currently doing a series inspired by Dane Ortlund's book, Gentle & Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers which I would encourage you to check out (it starts with this sermon from February 27). I say 'inspired' on purpose; he isn't preaching the book as though it was scripture, but looking at the concepts being discussed in the book and exploring what the Bible says about them. The initial claim of the book is based on Matthew 11:28-30, which in the NASB reads:
"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." |
This past Sunday the pastor was away, and I was given my first opportunity to preach at the Chapel. I was given clearance to choose my own passage and topic, though we did discuss what I'd chosen beforehand. I felt drawn to do a parallel concept to the sermon series, and as such set out to explore what the heart of Christ means for us as Christians. I built it out from Colossians 1:15-23. I preached from the ESV, but due to the legal statements I've chosen to use on this site, I quote it here from the 1995 edition of the New American Standard Bible:
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach-- if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister."
Colossians 1:15-23 (NASB)
St. Paul the Apostle, Public Domain, from Wikimedia Commons
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Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.1 Corinthians 11:1 (NASB) While there is some dispute about the value of it, there is no argument against the claim that the church, as it exists today, is stamped with the theology of Paul of Tarsus. Regardless of denomination, there is a certain degree to which every church is an imitator of Paul, even when we disagree heavily about what that means. But if we are imitating Paul as he is imitating Christ, the question that must be asked is who he believed Christ to be.
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There is a surprising lack of material on Paul's understanding of Christ, considering this is the very foundation upon which everything else we have of him is built. In seeking resources for this, I found only two books that spilled any ink on Paul's understanding of Christ, and one was citing the other. If there are journal articles that handle this matter in any detail, they were lost in hundreds of pages of results that seemed to exclusively contain more doctrinal arguments than anything. Paul urges strangers to encounter Christ, he tells his readers to look to Christ in all they do, he strives to live a life that can be rightly said to be Christ living through him. If we treat Paul as a theologian writing doctrine in a vacuum, we will get a lot of very good theology, but we will miss the point of what Paul was trying to communicate. In all things, Paul is writing about Christ.
“Pauline Christianity forms the heritage of western Christianity to this day, and therefore it is all the more important to understand as fully as possible Paul’s conception of Jesus Christ.”
Also, while I identified a host of passages about the work of Christ and His current status in regards to the present age, this post will focus entirely on the actual nature of Christ, whether eternal or incarnational. I am hoping to cover the other passages over the course of summer break, and now that I think about it I'd like to do a similar study as this with other Bible authors. May God grant me time on this Earth to write everything I want to write about this.
Christ as Lord | |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The fact is, Paul almost never says the name of Jesus without appending a title, either Lord or Christ in our translations. This is the most fundamental truth of who Jesus is as far as Paul is concerned: he is God, and every mention of Him is apparently lacking if it does not in some way acknowledge that fact. This is, in fact, the first thing he learns about Jesus during his conversion; in Acts 9:5, Paul recognizes that whoever is speaking to him is certainly the Lord, but asks for further identification. When he receives the answer that this Lord is none other than Jesus, he immediately obeys Him. This fact will inform everything else Paul ever says or does concerning Jesus. Clarifying what it means for Jesus to be Lord, then, will tell us a great deal about everything else.
“What is perhaps even more noteworthy, however, is that there are a number of passages where Paul appears to apply Old Testament passages referring to the Lord to the figure of Jesus Christ.”
Image of the Invisible God | |
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
The claim that this God has fully revealed Himself, in the accessible form of a human being no less, was a revolutionary claim. This is not like Zeus, stepping down from a mountain to sleep with some randomly noticed maiden. That God, who cannot be known except at a great distance, who cannot be approached without extensive ritual and shedding of blood, should take on our mortal flesh and walk on our dusty roads is insane. The depth of what this would have meant for the first Christians may be lost on us, who have always known of Jesus in this way.
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For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.2 Corinthians 4:6 (NASB) |
Character of God | |
“In that sense images of Christ are for Paul also in some ways images of God.”
Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day-- things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.
Son of God | |
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
This is no light language, either. A lot of the terminology Paul uses for Jesus play into positions of authority across the full spectrum of time. Whether this is about preeminence or calling Him firstborn or heir of God (Romans 8:16-17, 29; Colossians 1:18; etc.), describing Him as the head/husband of the church and all things (Ephesians 1:19-23, 4:15; Romans 12:4-5; etc.), or the supreme judge and ruler at the end of the age (2 Thessalonians 2:8; 2 Timothy 4:1, 8; etc.), Paul regularly views Christ as bearing the full authority of God.
But the work the Father had for the Son was not to take place entirely on a throne in Heaven.
Incarnation | |
Jesus was the fulfillment of a great number of promises, and two of them relate to His ancestry. The first is that He was to be a descendant of Abraham, which Paul identifies as true of Him (Romans 9:3-5, Galatians 3:16). The other is that He was the son of David that would sit forever on the throne (Acts 13:22-23, Romans 1:3-4, 2 Timothy 2:8). His specific family is noted in Galatians 1:19, where He is stated as the brother of James.
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And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.Galatians 3:29 (NASB) |
The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
Summary | |
“In summarizing this passage, we can see that several of the Pauline christological images are maintained. He uses the composite name, Christ Jesus, to describe both earthly and exalted status and events, with the figure moving between them. Although he is seen to be in the appearance of God, and equal with him in some way, Jesus Christ also is subordinate to him, being obedient to the point of death and consequently being exalted by him to a position of preeminence in the universe.”
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