We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

The Revolutionary Mission of the Church

9.11

Last week Greg tweeted the following:

YES! “[T]he mission of the church is to participate in a drama that has a cross for its climax…” K. Vanhoozer 

This quote from Vanhoozer summarizes a theme that is crucial to the warfare view of the church that Greg holds. The drama of the church is a continuation of Jesus’ cross-like love, but what exactly does this look like? In Myth of a Christian Religion, Greg explains this by using the image of a revolution, but one of a different kind. He writes:

_______________________

When people get serious about their call to follow Jesus’ example, it’s revolutionary. Literally. The Kingdom that Jesus ushered into the world is a revolution. It revolts. In manifesting the beauty of God’s reign, the Kingdom revolts against everything in the world that is inconsistent with this reign.

But the Kingdom revolution is unlike any other the world has known. It’s not a revolution of political, nationalistic, or religious ideas and agendas, for Jesus showed no interest in such matters. Indeed, these “revolutions” are trivial by comparison to Christ’s, and whenever people have tried to transform the Kingdom into one of these revolutions they have trivialized the Kingdom and denied its essential character.

The revolutions of the world have always been about one group trying to wrest power from another. The revolution Jesus launched, however, is far more radical, for it declares the quest for power over others to be as hopeless as it is sinful. Jesus’ Kingdom revolts against this sinful quest for power over others, choosing instead to exercise power under others. It’s a revolution of humble, self-sacrificial, loving service. It always looks like Jesus, dying on Calvary for the very people who crucified him. …

While ordinary revolutions advance by engaging in ugly violence as they sacrifice all who oppose them, the Kingdom revolution advances by manifesting the outrageous beauty of God’s love that leads people to sacrifice themselves on behalf of those who oppose them.

The radical Kingdom Jesus embodied and established is all about manifesting the beauty of God’s love and revolting against every ugly thing that opposes it” (19-20).

drp via Compfight

Related Reading

Have You Taken a Gospel Immunization Shot?

Why does being “Christian” in America make so little difference in so many people’s lives, when the kingdom movement revealed in the New Testament revolutionized people’s lives? This drastic difference is hardly surprising when you consider that the gospel that people are often given today is little more than a contract of acquittal that is…

Topics:

Lighten Up: Eat, Pray, Love

Our Real Battle is NOT with ISIS or any Other “Enemy”

There’s an old African proverb that says, “When Elephants fight, the grass suffers.” It expresses the important truth that when agents who have a domain of authority go awry, everything under their authority suffers. The “principalities and the powers” were given tremendous authority over creation. In western Christian culture, these non-human agents are usually called…

Commissioned

Here’s something to inspire you on this Sunday morning. Image by Megan Allen. Sourced via Flickr.

An Update and an Opportunity

Thomas Hawk via Compfight All around the globe we are witnessing more and more people catching the vision of a God and a kingdom that look like the crucified Christ. One of the goals of ReKnew is to help form this rising revolution into an identifiable movement by working with others to help raise up…

Spiritual Warfare: What is it?

The Kingdom is “not of this world,” and neither is its warfare. Jews had always believed that God confronted spiritual opposition in carrying out his will on earth. In the Old Testament, these evil forces were usually depicted as cosmic monsters and hostile waters that threatened the earth. For a variety of reasons this belief…