John H Armstrong

Are You in the Redemption Business?

I recently read a quote on a Web site recently that struck me as provocative, if not altogether theologically accurate. The owners of a particular agribusiness described their purpose with these words: "We are in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture. Writing, speaking and farm tours offer various message venues."

Now I've seen a lot of mission statements, both for congregations and organization, but I've never read one quite like this. This one is unique for several reasons. But is it right?

Redemption is the central category of Christian theology. It explains the Christian proclamation of Jesus as the Christ, as our redeemer and savior. The English word "redemption" literally means a buying back. The term is closely associated, but distinct from, other terms like atonement, and reconciliation. Salvation might be the broadest term to describe all three: redemption, atonement and reconciliation. All of these terms refer to a gracious transition from one state to another: from bondage to liberation.

The underlying assumption of orthodox Christian theology is that redemption takes place by God's grace through Christ. It comes through what he has done for humanity. There are differing theories about the nature of this redemption, and how it is precisely accomplished, but there is no disagreement among serious Christians that this is Christ's work accomplished on our behalf.

Though the church has had debates about how Christology, justification and the eucharist affect redemption rarely has the word been explicitly defined. Read that sentence again. It is a remarkable statement and one generally agreed upon by academic theologians. We have sought to understand and define sin and grace, the church and sacraments, creation and eschatology and Christ and mission. Redemption includes all of these discussions yet most still conclude that it is fundamentally about deliverance from sin and death and the renewing of self and society through Christ alone.

The Hebrew uses two terms to describe redemption. One means "to purchase or ransom" while the other refers to redeeming relatives from slavery or the redemption of property from foreign owners. This last concept gets very close to the use made by the Web site I quoted above.

The New Testament spells out the meaning of redemption with a myriad of symbols, images and terms. These terms and symbols are cultic, legal, medical, cosmic, social and political. This underscores how rich and varied the term redemption really is, a fact lost on many fundamentalists. From these terms the church, both East and West, explored the idea of redemption over the centuries and developed a rich tradition related to this term.

If corruption and death are the primary effects of human sin then the primary effect of Christ's redemption will necessarily impact the whole created order. Human nature is deified by the incarnation, for by becoming human Christ restored the divine image in humans and therefore effected our deification. This language sounds odd to most evangelicals but it is historic, biblical language if understood and used properly. It is also magnificently expressed by the Orthodox Church far better than it is in the traditions of the West.

Sensing the importance of eschatology, properly related to Christ and his kingdom, the most famous theologian of the last century, Karl Barth, made eschatology the locus for redemption. He distinguished between reconciliation and redemption. Christ's life and death accomplished the reconciliation of the world with God but God's Spirit is still at work in the world bringing about redemption in both the church and society as we become the subjects of his grace.

This subject of redemption is vast thus a short blog cannot do it real justice. But the more I think about the mission statement that this Christian farmer made about his life and business the more I have to agree with it. It is provocative but it is deeply biblical, though it might at first glance seem odd to some. It is surely worth pondering by those who work for the glory of God in the redemption of all creation.

Seek God Obediently

We are regularly urged to seek God in and through the Bible. The problem is that we have turned this "seeking" into a type of passivity that passes for reasonableness and calm. I believe in reasonableness and calm but I do not believe in seeking God in any other way than obediently. John R. W. Stott says it so well: "This is the hardest condition of all to fulfill. In seeking God we have to be prepared not only to revise our ideas but to reform our lives."

Evangelicals seem to have forgotten that the Christian gospel has a moral challenge inherent in it. Since we stress grace alone we forget that grace, if it is real grace, is never alone. If the gospel is true then those who believe it, really and truly believe it, must act upon it. The moral challenges that one finds in following Jesus are not optional, or add-on extras, for those who want to get rewards in heaven.

Stott is again provocative and helpful when he says: "So God is not a fit object for man's detached scrutiny." You cannot seek God and say, "How interesting!" No, you have to seek God in order to hear him and obey him. I think this sums up the major problem in the American church. We want to discuss God, seek God's help in crisis, etc. We would be better to seek Santa Claus.

P. Carnegie Simpson has concluded:

We had thought intellectually to examine him: we find that he is spiritually examining us. The roles are reversed between us . . . We study Aristotle and are intellectually edified thereby; we study Jesus and are, in the profoundest way, spiritually disturbed. . . . We are constrained to take some inward moral attitude of heart and will in relation to this Jesus. . . . A man may study Jesus with intellectual impartiality, he cannot do it with moral neutrality. . . . We must declare our colors. To this has our unevasive contact with Jesus brought us. We began it in the calm of the study; we are called out to the field of moral decision (The Fact of Christ, 1930).

He is Risen

Without the resurrection Christianity falls apart. With it the Church has a clear word that marks it and equips it to engage the entire world with a message of hope.  I pray that you found today's celebration of his resurrection a time of incredible joy filled with the gospel of peace. It brings to a close a long phase of the church year and opens up to us a whole new season to follow.

All Christians, East and West, celebrated Easter on the same date this year, which doesn't happen too often. This fact, in itself, brought a sense of the unity of the church to my own mind today. May the Holy Spirit give all Christians a deeper experience of their inherent unity in the months ahead. Amen.

Jesus Changes Everything

Bishop William Temple once said, "Christ was not a man, but Man, he was not a god, but God." Pilate, when he looked at Jesus to examine him, concluded "Here (Behold) is the man" (John 19:5). There is more in this confession than perhaps he knew. Pilate recognizes, in ways beyond the ordinary, that this was not just any man, but rather this was: "The Man." He was not a man among many other men, a prophet, a great teacher or a moral leader among others. Jesus was Christos, the messiah, "the man of God's own choosing" as Luther put it. He was, and is, unique.

E. Stanley Jones, one of my favorite twentieth century writers, once wrote, "In him we see what man is and how far he has fallen, in him we see what God is and how far we may rise. He is the universal meeting us personalized. Since I am a person, the universal must meet me pesonalized." And Jones adds, "Jesus changes everything he touches. Call him a man, and you will have to change your ideas of what man is; call him God, and you will have to change your ideas of what God is. You can transfer every quality of Jesus into God without the slightest sense of loss or blasphemy. And when you set him up as man he appeals to universal man."

Yesterday's blog, March 20, elicited several excellent comments. Today's blog should remind us that if Jesus really is who we say he is then we ought to be lost in wonder at the feet of this amazing person who is both fully God and fully man. E. Stanley Jones again helps us see this point ever so clearly:

But if he is the perfect, he is also the progressive. We have discovered an Ultimate, but this does not stop progress, it begins it. We have a Fixed Point, but the point is not fixed. Jesus is not behind us in the past. He is the great Contemporary. More---he is ahead of us. "He stands on the further side of our twenty centuries," calling us into the new life. He has not been surpassed, not even approximated. He is no spent force. Jesus is God's final but unfolding word. More and more light breaks out from him. Since our code is a Character, we can never say we have attained. We are always discovering new meanings in him.

A religion founded upon rules is soon outgrown, for rules are temporary, growing out of temporary conditions; principles are never outgrown, they are the same yesterday, today, and forever; but principles meeting us in a Person are not only eternal, they are eternally concreted, kept close to life, always illustrated. Jesus did not give rules, he did not even give principles alone, he gave principles illustrated by what he was and did. Hence he is never outgrown.

Follow Me

The most consistent invitation the Gospel writers attribute to Jesus is found in the plain words: "Follow me." This command is often found in conjunction with references to "taking up the cross" and to "dying" to one's self. The implications are pretty plain if you know the place of the cross in the ancient world.

It never ceases to amaze me, over the course of decades of ministry in America, that so many preachers and everyday Christians miss this simple, frequently given, exhortation when it comes to inviting people to come to Christ. We have all kinds of formulas for telling people how to come to Christ but almost never do we actually tell people what Jesus plainly says about this matter.

N.T. Wright, in one of his frequent moments of insight into the text of the Gospels, suggests that Jesus' invitation to faith and discipleship could best be summarized, at least in our culture, in these simple words: "Give up your own agenda and follow me!" I agree. If you would follow Christ now, and in this New Year, this is clearly what is required. I have resolved that in 2006 I will tell everyone I can, in public and private, that this is the simple essence of real faith and personal commitment to Jesus. If you want to be a real Christian you must "give up your own agenda and follow" Christ as revealed to your soul through Holy Scripture.