Applying the Gospel

Your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faithfulness. (Psalm 26:3)

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20, italics my translation)

We know what it means to live vicariously through others. Parents do this instinctively when they see their children succeed in athletics or academics. We imagine ourselves in their lives. We feel their joys. We take pride in their works. Now, when parents do this, it’s often accompanied by evil. We pressure the children to perform well so that we can enjoy it, vicariously. That’s bad. They can’t handle that pressure, and they shouldn’t have to do so.

But Jesus can handle the pressure. He came into the world in order to do so. All our hopes and dreams ride on him. Our eternal life depends on him. And we must live vicariously through him, or we will not live at all! This means more than merely considering him as a substitute for us. It means imagining his life as ours, and because of the Gospel, this is actually true! He is in us, and we in him. Because we are truly united to him by his Spirit, we may live vicariously through him!

So his own life is in us, it is ours. His joy is ours. It’s his own joy… and it is ours! His own love is ours, because his Spirit is in us. His very humanity in the presence of God—one with God—is ours. It’s an alien righteousness, an alien peace, an alien strength in the face of temptation, an alien trust in the good care of the Father. But, as we live vicariously through him, it really is all ours. Everything that is his is ours. His relationship with the Father is ours. His prayer is ours. His compassion and mercy are ours. His victory over death, his inheritance, his destiny is ours. It is more than just our imitation of him in his life—it’s actually him living in us and through us, and we living in him and through him.

We were given our imaginations, at least in significant part, to be able to imagine ourselves in him, and him in us. To imagine living vicariously through him in all the circumstances of life. To imagine the perfect human being, the firstborn of the dead, the faithful witness, the beginning of the New Creation, and to imagine that, in him, this is us.

American Christians emphasize individual over corporate spirituality. One way this is really hurting the Church is in our view of the Lord’s Day. We hear, “Worship isn’t just what you do on Sunday mornings, it’s what you do with every moment of your life.” Many have taken this to mean that corporate Worship isn’t even necessary for the Christian life, as long as one “truly connects with God in a personal and satisfying way.”

It’s true that one’s whole life is to be dedicated to glorifying and enjoying God, but this is different from corporate Worship. “Worship is the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father” (J. B. Torrance, Worship, Community & The Triune God Of Grace). Biblically/theologically, “Worship” is more synonymous with “communion” than it is with “praise.” Ultimately, Worship is what the Community of God does.

The Community or Church of God is a central feature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The direct result of Christ’s atoning death on the cross was the creation of this new community, the reconciling of different persons and people groups in the one body of Christ (see Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians). It’s strange to our ears: “Good News! Because of Jesus, there is a Church!” This will sound less strange to us as we grow in our appreciation for the grace of God seen in one another in the Church. “It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s Word and sacrament” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together).

There is a sense in which corporate Worship is “more real,” or “more Christian” than what takes place in our daily lives outside the fellowship of the Church. Corporate Worship is a better place for discipleship and evangelism. Corporate Worship is a better picture of the New Heavens and the New Earth. Our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week; that’s why it’s called “the Lord’s Day.” It’s the Day that stands at the beginning of the New Creation. We worship together on the Lord’s Day because it is our Day, the Church Day, because together we are the New Creation. And as such is it the Christian Day. The whole week points to this Day, and the whole week flows from this Day. This is how the eyes of faith see it.

Since American Christians have moved away from this vision of the Lord’s Day, since we don’t see it as truly the Day for real worship, discipleship, community, mission, and service, we are compelled to find other times of the week “to really do those things.” We schedule community groups, bible studies, prayer meetings, midweek services, etc., because we don’t find these in the Church Day. Not really. How many times have you heard a pastor say, “If you really want to get plugged into the Church, you need to come on Wednesday night to our ___ meeting”? And we wonder why we have no time left in the week for friendships with non-Christians…

We need to make better use of the Lord’s Day. We can all probably do a better job of “doing Christian things” together on Sunday mornings. We can refine our liturgy, the order of Worship. More importantly, I think, we need to have a more robust vision of the Lord’s Day. Do you see corporate Worship as the primary place where you learn to live as a Christian? Are the Word and Sacraments where you find strength to live for God in the world? Are you really confessing your sins and professing faith in Christ with your brothers and sisters? Is your giving truly representative of your whole life offered to God as a response to his grace? Is Worship the place where your Christian life finds greatest expression in love and service? Do you prepare for Worship the same way you prepare for a bible study or choir rehearsal? Is corporate Worship the truest place where you live in community with sensitivity toward those who are outsiders? Does it shape your thoughts and conversations for the rest of the week?

The more we can answer “yes” to these questions, the closer we will be to the New Testament’s vision of the Church gathering for Worship on the Lord’s Day. We will value our time together more. We will be more refreshed. We will be thankful to God for his grace at work among us corporately. We will better stand together as unified in Christ and in his mission, and we will be of better service to the world, both during Worship and through the rest of the week.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20-23)

Sometimes John uses surprising language to refer to the Holy Spirit. He is “the anointing” who abides in us and teaches us that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Christ (1 John 2:18-27). He is “the truth” and “the testimony” that those who believe in the Son of God have in themselves (1 John 5:9-12). And here, I believe, the Spirit is “the glory” that the Father gave the Son, and that the Son gave to us (John 17:22, above).

Jesus is praying for believers’ perichoretic union with God. “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.” This happens as we are united to the Son of God in the Spirit. The Father and the Son are one in the Spirit. The Father is in the Son through the Spirit, and the Son is in the Father through the Spirit. The Spirit is God, given; the Father fully given to the Son in love, and the Son fully given to the Father in love. The Spirit is God, who is love. And he is given to us.

So when Jesus says that it is the glory that he has given us (which he received from his Father) that makes us one in the same way the Father and Son are one (perichoretically), he’s talking about the Spirit. Our unity is spiritual, that is, we are one in the Spirit. God is in us and we in him because he has given us his glory/Spirit. Lest you think it requires advanced theological trickery to arrive at this truth, here is a clear parallel statement from John: “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13).

It is utterly fascinating that Jesus refers to the Spirit as the glory the Father gave him. Why does he do it? What is the glory of God, that it is appropriate to call the Spirit “the glory”?

Rodney Whitacre says, “Glory refers to the revelation of God in all his beauty of being and character… Glory is a manifestation of God himself – not just a revelation about him.” The biblical concept of glory is one of substance, of weight, of essence – not just a glimmery halo of something shiny. God’s glory is more than just a good reputation being made known for intellectual awareness; it is himself being made known for delight. The Spirit is the glory of God because he is God, given to us, to make himself known.

Jesus prays for our perichoretic, spiritual union with God, “so that the world may believe” that the Father sent the Son, “so that the world may know” that the Father has loved us even as he loved the Son, so that the world would know the glory of the God who is love in the person of the Spirit.

After seminary I got a little burned out on reading big theological books, until 2013. Now I’m celebrating a renewed interest! These books were tremendously helpful to me, and I highly recommend them to you.

Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace (James B. Torrance)

I read this for a sermon series on Worship. It changed the way I thought about Worship, and led into a deeper interest in explicitly Trinitarian theology. So then I read…

Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith (Michael Reeves)

I don’t care who you are, I’m telling you right now, read this book. Reading it led me to preach a sermon series on the Trinity. The fact that God is one Being, three Persons; three Persons, one Being. Pow! It changes everything about how we view the whole world. And it led me to further pursue study…

The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Robert Letham)

This is strong stuff, and it took me and a friend several months of reading through it together to finish, but reading it will thoroughly ground you in the absolutely essential doctrine of the Trinity.

Dogmatics in Outline (Karl Barth)

I can’t recommend it highly enough. I read some of his (much larger!) Church Dogmatics for the series on the Trinity. But here, I believe, is a great summary and introduction to Barth’s thought that will surely help you think about the essentials of the Christian faith in a profound way. It’s tragic (exaggeration), but the binding is terrible and the pages are falling out. They smell amazing, though. If you can stand it, get the Kindle version.

Here are some books I’m excited to read in 2014…

The Father’s Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity (Thomas Weinandy)

The Humanity of God (Karl Barth)

The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons (Thomas F. Torrance)

Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Thomas F. Torrance)

Many Christians emphasize that the fundamental difference between Christianity and other religions is the “mechanism,” or way of salvation: by grace, through faith, in Christ as he is presented in the Gospel alone. But this is the way of salvation because of the God of our salvation. Because God is triune—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—we have a Gospel to believe by grace. And there is no god like our God. So the fundamental difference between Christianity and other religions is the God of our salvation, the Holy Trinity.

Thinking about the Trinity is hard, because this conception of God is so foreign to us. We have no categories for thinking this way about God. This is true, not just because we’re intellectually limited, but because of sin.

The Triune God is holy, that is to say, he is utterly distinct from us, particularly in his being love. God is love, because God is Persons who love One Another with Divine Love. This makes God entirely self-giving, ultimately Other-oriented within himself.

God created us in his image, to be in relationships of love with him and each other. That’s the way things are supposed to be. But instead we chose self-love, and broke the world. Now we are individualistic, self-centered beings who cannot imagine true community or divine other-orientation (love). Michael Reeves says, “When I ask atheists to describe the God that they don’t believe in, they describe Satan rather than the Trinity.” We can only imagine God to be like us – maybe bigger and better, but ultimately like us. We remake God in our image. God must be monopersonal and self-oriented, because that’s what I’m like, and anything else is incomprehensible (because, after all, I’m the best thing I know).

So, if we’re going to know God as he truly is – a Triune God of love – he’s going to have to make himself known to us. Robert Letham says, “The whole tenor of fallen man is the pursuit of self-interest, but God actively pursues the interests of the other.” Because God loves the other, even though we have distorted his image in us by our self-love, we have not stopped him from pursuing us. The Father sent the Son to reveal God to us, to reconcile us to himself through his life and death for us. And the Father and Son sent the Spirit to us to put the very love of God right into our hearts, to make us receptive to his Word, so that we can know him as he truly is. God has not left us alone in our self-centeredness. Because God is love, he has come to us and drawn us up into his life of love, even though we were his enemies.

“Adoption” is not merely a metaphor for the Christian’s relationship to God, not just one way among several to think about the relationship. God has revealed himself to be fundamentally Father, Son, and Spirit. Through the Spirit we enjoy the Son’s communion with the Father. By God’s grace, the divine life is opened to us, and we are caught up into it. We are in the very position of the second Person of the Trinity. Adoption into the Son’s place in the Trinity is the ultimate purpose for which we were created and redeemed.

God is eternal in his perfection; there was never a time when he didn’t know everything he would ever do. There was never a time before he loved his people. He has always planned to bring his people into the blessed communion of the Trinity.

The Son prayed to the Father: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (Jn 17:22-23)

The “glory” is the Holy Spirit. He is the one in whom we are united to the Son and to one another (Eph 4:3). He is glory because he is the eternal Spirit of love shared between the Father and the Son. The Spirit of Glory is given to us because God the Father has loved us even as he has loved the Son. The goal of all this? That the world may know God’s glory in Christ.