Come, Lord Jesus

Advent and Christmas is the season of Christ's first appearing. We celebrate the mystery of God taking on flesh and becoming one of us. In light of all that the Incarnation means, this season fills our hearts with joy and hope.

Christ has come. Light has descended into a dark and cold world. Life, peace, and righteousness have landed and the work of liberating the world from the forces of sin, death, and chaos has begun in earnest.

Christ has taken all that is wrong with you and with me and with all the peoples and the powers of this world and nailed it to the cross. By entering life in this fallen world and then suffering Calvary, Jesus has claimed for his own experience all the trials and travails we have experienced and will experience, all the failures of justice and truth and love that mar our lives and our societies, all the pain and hunger and sickness that is our lot as human beings.

In His life, suffering, and death, Christ has told us that we are not alone. God is not some remote, disinterested observer of our struggles and pain but our humble and loving Lord who deigned to leave His place on high and become our partner and companion in suffering.

Christ has not only bodily suffered on the cross all that each of us has unjustly suffered but He has suffered the just penalty and the holy wrath that our own sins deserve. He has declared His solidarity with the victim and the victimizer, sharing the unjust pain of the innocent and the just penalty of the guilty, offering Himself up to the Father for their redemption and reconciliation, both with God and with one another.

Christ has risen, defeating death and hell. He has justified those who would believe in him, being justified Himself by His obedience to the will of the Father.

Christ has purchased a people, ransoming them from the Fall, killing their corruption and stain, and raising them to the life He eternally shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the fellowship of the Trinity.

Christ has ascended to sit on His throne at the right hand of the Father, leaving behind His presence in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit-empowered Church. He is our Head in heaven and we His Body on earth. Within the arms of the Church, we see the Kingdom of God already being realized here and now, for there sinners are reconciled to God and to one another. There, we are bathed in the river of living water and we feast on the body and blood of Christ together with all the sons and daughters of the King. In the Church, choirs sing the praises of God in every tongue, and humans are made into angels. In the Church, the lions lie with the lambs and the warriors beat their swords into plowshares. There, we encounter the Word and He transforms us, teaching and encouraging us to be like Him. From the Church, the Kingdom is colonizing the earth, freeing captives from sin and death, striving for peace and justice for all, changing the hearts of nations, and bringing food to the hungry and clothes to the naked.

This is a look at what we commemorate at Christmas and, in a real way, participate in. It is about God's great work that began with the miraculous birth of our Lord at Bethlehem 2000 years ago, and it is about what Christ is doing in the present.

This season is also about the future. Advent is about anticipation. Not only are we commemorating and participating in the mystery of Christ, but we are awaiting His second appearing. When we think about the Child in the manger, we must remember that this Child grew up and returned to heaven to join His Father so that He could come back and finish what He started here below. His first coming means that the invasion has begun and His death and resurrection means that the decisive blow has already been struck. His second coming, however, means final and overwhelming victory.

In a world where the vision of Christmas has not yet been fully realized, we desperately need the hope that it will be soon. Though the redemption of Creation and humanity is furiously underway, our world is still broken. It is still a cold and dark place at times, and it may even seem like the powers of evil are winning. Disease continues to steal away the life from our bones and death strikes down the young in the prime of life. The powerful still oppress the weak and the corrupt still get away with injustice. In the face of all this heartache and grief that is so common to our experience, we must remember that Christ has already overcome the world. It is a foregone conclusion that the powers of light will be victorious. Heaven is coming to earth. Christ is coming. Christmas is the glorious down payment and guarantee of that hope.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Controversial Ecclesiology

I admit it. I got into my Christmas gifts a little bit early this year. I found the prospect of reading this book so exciting that I just couldn't wait the last three weeks before the big day. I haven't been disappointed so far. Peter Leithart is becoming my best friend already. He challenges presuppositions and questions foregone conclusions. He is therefore controversial, even heretical to some in the Presbyterian Church in America.

I give you a brief sample from Against Christianity. Is he here challenging the fundamental nature of "Christianity" or simply our Western conception that individuals constitute societies? If we instead conceive that this is backwards—that societies in fact constitute individuals—are Leithart's words still so shocking?

Ask the average Christian about the relationship between "church" and "salvation," and you are likely to get one of two answers: either (if the Christian is a rather old-fashioned Roman Catholic) that the Church is the reservoir of salvation, to which one must repair to receive grace; or (if the Christian is a rather common sort of evangelical) that salvation occurs apart from the Church, though it is a help along the way.

Despite the apparent differences between these two views they are fundamentally similar. Both conceive of "salvation" as a something (almost a substance) that can be stored in a reservoir or infused into sinners directly by God. Both believe that the whole point is the salvation of individuals: for the Catholic, the Church is an essential conduit of grace: but salvation is what happens to the individual; for the evangelical, the Church is a nonessential aid to individual salvation. In both cases, Christianity is looming in the background.

Biblically, however, salvation is not a stuff that one can get, whether through the Church, or through some other means. It is not an ether floating in the air, nor a "thing," nor some kind of "substance." "Salvation" describes fallen creation reconciled to God, restored to its created purpose, and set on a trajectory leading to its eschatological fulfillment. Ultimately, "salvation" will describe the creation as a whole, once it is restored to God and glorified. Grammatically, "salvation" is a noun; theologically, it is always adjectival.

Nor is salvation adjectival merely of individuals. If salvation is the re-creation of man through Christ and the Spirit, then salvation must be restored relationships and communities as much as individuals. If Christ has not restored human community, if society is not "saved" as much as the individual, then Christ has not restored man as he really is. Salvation must take a social form, and the Church is that social form of salvation, the community that already (though imperfectly) has become the human race as God created it to be, the human race that is becoming what God intends it to be.

The Church is neither a reservoir of grace nor an external support for the Christian life. The Church is salvation.

One Flesh with Christ

I must admit I have run with this "high church" ecclesiology stuff with a bit less exegesis from Scripture than I should have. Granted, I have spent a good bit of time in Scripture and a high ecclesiology seems to have answered logically those passages about the Church that typically stymie evangelicals. Not to mention, it effectively shows the unity of the covenants in a way that a totally spiritualized "low church" ecclesiology never can. In other words, from my past knowledge of Scripture, it makes sense in a broad, systemic sense.

This is interesting since the basic argument I have used with evangelical friends who reject a "high" view of the Church and the sacraments is that they are relying far too much on systematic theology and not allowing the specifics of Scripture to speak for themselves. It's funny that we sometimes think as if (unconsciously, I hope) the arguments we apply to other people do not apply to us. I have to go back and let the Scriptures speak for themselves.

I've been carefully studying Ephesians to flesh out its understanding of what the Church is and how Christ is related to it. I'm running across a couple lines of tension that are featured prominently in this Pauline letter. As far as Christ's relation to the Church, I have noted a basic tension between the idea of Christ as Head of the Church and the idea of the Church as Christ's own Body. Talking about the fact that God has raised Christ from the dead and placed him over all things in heaven and on earth, Paul writes in 1:22-23, "God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way" (NIV). Christ is "head over everything for the church," but the Church is also his Body, "the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." It seems as if Paul is simultaneously maintaining a hierarchical distinction between Christ and his Church and a sort of identity between Christ and his Body. Christ is over the Church but the Church is also part of him. And it is just not any part; it is "the fullness of him who fills everything in every way."

We see this paradox again in chapter 4. Paul is exhorting the Ephesians to set aside their divisions, to stop being "tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching" (v. 14). Instead, they should speak the truth to one another in love, so that together with all Christians they will "grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up and love, as each part does its work" (v. 15, 16). Christ is not only at the top of the pyramid in the Church, he is also the principle of unity from the bottom up and in all of its parts, even the most elementary and minute. The Church, from its foundation to its peak, is permeated through and through with Christ. We could then say that the Church has a fundamental "Christ-ness" about it.

Later in this epistle, in chapter 5, Paul analogizes from Christ's relationship to his Church about the proper relation between husbands and wives, bringing into sharp focus ideas he has only hinted at thus far. Clearly, in this section Paul establishes the headship of the husband over the wife based on the headship of Christ over the Church. Of course, the husband is not to abuse his position of authority but to love his wife "just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (v. 25).

Paul solidifies his argument that the husband is to love his wife and give himself up to her on the basis of their marital union. He writes, "In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body" (v. 28-30). Paul then makes recourse to the institution of marriage in the Genesis account (2:24): "' For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'" (v. 32). Paul is speaking first and foremost about the marriage relationship in this passage but he also means to teach us something about the mystery of Christ in his union with his Church, as he tells us in verse 33: "This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church."

I don't think Paul could put forth what he is trying to teach us about Christ and the Church in clearer or more eloquent terms. Just as the husband is to regard himself as one flesh with his wife, so too does Christ regard the Church as one flesh with himself. Certainly Christ is our Head, Lord, and Leader just as the patriarch in Greco-Roman society was head of his household, but, like the wife and children of the head of the household in ancient times, who exercised authority in the household in the name and authority of the patriarch, the Church exercises authority in the lives of believers in Christ's name and in his authority.

The Christian Church is one flesh with Jesus Christ. We are his body and he feeds and cares for us because we are found in him and he is found in us. When we encounter his assembled Body in public worship, we are encountering Christ himself through his glorious bride. She is "the fullness of him who fills everything in every way."

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.