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
Costly Discipleship
Bob AuBuchon via Compfight Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus is doing a series of posts called “Blogmatics” in which he fleshes out the theological assumptions that inform his blog posts. A couple of days ago he discussed discipleship and the life that believers are called to in a post entitled Blogmatics: The Cost…
The Right to Remain Silent
A reader (Thanks Adam) sent us this reflection written by Jason Hess on how we as Christians sometimes use the freedom of speech in ways that are in opposition with our call to love. How we live is infinitely more important than what we say, and sometimes our free speech is a detriment to bringing…
Resignation to Evil: Not an Option
One lucky guy via Compfight While few Christians would deny that Satan is in some sense the ruler of this world, since it’s so clearly taught in the New Testament, many nevertheless insist that everything Satan and every other free agent does fits into a divine plan that is governing every detail of world history.…
Is Hell Eternal Punishment?
The end of time, according to the Bible, is marked by hope, the hope that God’s will shall someday be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” The hope is that however terrible our present circumstances may be, before long they will all come to an end. Then creation will be what God always…
Radical is in the Eye of the Beholder
Josias Hansen is a Brazilian-born, Charismatic Mennonite student at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Together with Third Way Church, Josias enjoys experimenting with what it looks like to take Jesus seriously as a jolly community of kingdom disciples. Was Jesus a radical? Did he do and teach radical things? What if I were to tell…
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…