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
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).
Category: Q&A
Tags: Kingdom Living, Kingdom Revolution, Myth of a Christian Religion, Warfare Worldview
Topics: The Church
Related Reading
Living Jesus’ Prayer for Forgiveness
Luke 23:34: Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Could anything be more shocking and yet more beautiful than this prayer? After being whipped, beaten, crowned with thorns, repeatedly mocked, spit upon, sneered at, and pierced with spikes through his wrists and ankles, while slowly suffocating as he…
How Are We To Love the Soldiers of ISIS?
Over the last several weeks I’ve received some form of this question almost every day. In some cases the question is asked rhetorically, as though the very question exposes the absurdity of suggesting we are to love this terroristic group. Other times the question is asked with a pragmatic twist. One person recently said to…
Does God Still Heal?
In the ancient world Jesus was known first and foremost as an exorcist and a healer. These two activities are mentioned in every summary of Jesus’s ministry found in the Gospels. It’s common for Western Christians today to accept that infirmities (sickness, disease, injuries, disabilities and deformities) are part of God’s mysterious plan for their…
New Testament Support for the Warfare Worldview
Warfare in Jesus’ Ministry The theme of God striving to establish his sovereign will (his Kingdom) on earth over and against forces that oppose him is prevalent in the New Testament. In keeping with the apocalyptic climate of the time, there are many references to angels at war with God, demons that torment people, and…
How to Overcome the Flesh Mindset
Unless you have taken intentional steps to change, the way you presently experience yourself and the world around you was mostly chosen for you, not by you. Think about that. You inherited a way of interpreting the world. Your brain has been in the process of becoming programmed by factors outside your control from the…
Jesus & Racial Reconciliation
Lorenia via Compfight If you were to read an account today of a white man offering his front row seat on a public bus to an elderly African American lady, you’d probably think this was a nice gesture, but nothing more. However, if you learned that the event happened in Birmingham Alabama in 1955, you’d…