I wanted to do a kind of epilogue to Sunday’s talk (12/02/2017).
I talked about Tom Wright’s assertion that the church has “paganised” God (portraying him as an angry deity who needs to kill someone to be placated) and that our eschatology (heaven and earth and how it all ends) has been “platonised” (reflecting the views of Plato, not the Bible, by making it about “going to heaven when we die”) and the result is that we end up with a Christian idea of a “moralised” life.
What do I mean by that?
If we are focused on getting to heaven as our goal and we “have our ticket”, then what difference does it make how we act? It’s not a salvation issue, because we have our ticket and everything is “all going to burn anyway” (I have actually heard a British Vineyard pastor say that!), so it is really not relevant how we act, as it is all about what happens after we die.
In an attempt to make it relevant, we end up “moralising” life. In other words, we try to impose a code (based on the Bible) of behaviour onto people just because it is how we should act but without it being grounded in any reason. The result of that is that often, the outside appearance is all good, but sin becomes secret – because we cannot be honest with people any more – as we must appear good.
BUT…
Getting to heaven when we die is not the point. It is not what Jesus talked about. It is not what the apostles talked about (for more on this point, listen to the talk from 12th Feb 2017). What they talked about was the coming of the kingdom of God – the rule of God – coming here; restoring, healing, regenerating and renewing all creation. Getting back to the garden.
If the good news is about the kingdom coming here, then that changes everything. In the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matt 5-8) Jesus talks at length about what life is like in the kingdom (under God’s rule).
You see, the kingdom is about justice and love and mercy and hope and joy and living in a way that produces these things. Living in a way that is contrary to this produces injustice and hatred and fear and sadness. This is called sin – which literally means “missing the mark”.
We sin because we want to feel whole. If we do not feel love, then we turn to things that we think will make us feel better about ourselves. We, as believers, know that this is just an illusion. The high lasts seconds and does not fulfil us at all. But we are “In Christ” – married to him and so we do not need to sin anymore. He offers us everything that we could ever need to feel whole. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
Does he forgive us when we mess up? Of course, he does. Then, does it matter if we don’t do anything about changing our patterns of behaviour? Why not just carry on doing that, and not bother changing?
For one thing, it will kill us!
Paul says that “the wages of sin is death”. This does not (as many evangelicals assert) mean that the punishment for sin is death, but that the consequence of sin is that it kills you; robs you of life.
More than that, though, we are called to be part of this restorative revolution; transforming and healing and making things better. Sin always has a victim. Someone always suffers.
If we gossip, someone is the victim.
If we lie, someone is being cheated.
If we are greedy, someone goes without.
If we are ambitious, someone’s dreams are crushed.
If we sit at home on the internet looking at porn, someone is being degraded and abused to make us feel better about ourselves.
If we allow ourselves to entertain thoughts of extra-marital relationships then, depending on how far we take it, we will invariably hurt someone. Perhaps our own kids.
If we decide to ignore the ethics of how we live or consume, others suffer – children in sweatshops, families living under oppression.
There is no sin that you can commit that will not have a victim.
So, why allow God to transform us and free us from sin? Because we are part of a revolution that is setting people free, not enslaving them. Because we want to bring justice and hope. Because we want to bring life and not death. Because we want to treat out neighbour as we would have them treat us.
The kingdom is coming. The kingdom is here.
We should let go of the “moralising” rules for living that come from a “gospel for death” and we need to embrace life, the way that we are meant to live it. Life of the coming age, right now, empowered by the Spirit of God in us. Life that will be full. Life that will make others’ lives better.
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