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The Relevance of Christ to All of Life

Nicky Gumbel begins his bestselling introduction to Christian belief, Questions of Life, with the following threefold critique of Christianity: Boring, irrelevant and probably untrue. However, both he and I discovered at conversion that there was definitely something real and momentous out there. This left us marked men but I have to admit I am still grappling with the idea of how Gospel applies to all of life.

Is Christianity Just Escapism?

A typical conception of Christianity is that of Escapism: Christians are fervently trying to believe in a heavenly life after death in order to escape this tiresome and troublesome world. Well, there is truth in that critique and I myself have, in the not too distant past, thought fondly of death as a gateway into paradise and wondered why on earth I should remain here in this sweet but ultimately imperfect life.

But the idea that Christian beliefs are only relevant in some spiritual sphere with no overlap in the “real” world was first challenged when I began too look seriously at arguments for and against the veracity of the Bible’s claims. Although I was seriously challenged by non-Christian beliefs, arguments and persons I found without exception that these attacks were lacking in substance and that Christianity is a rock solid case with some seriously bad PR.

Gospel as Key to Life’s Problems

Next I began listening to Tim Keller, a Presbyterian preacher in New York City, talk about the idea of Gospel-centred ministry. According to him, and he gets this from Martin Luther, failure to believe the Gospel is at the heart of most, if not all, of our personal and global problems. But, if everything from the macro-vices (e.g. 3rd World Debt and the Arms Race) to the micro (e.g. addictions and self-hate) is tied to mankind’s failure to believe in Jesus we need to take a serious look at what Jesus was all about and ask ourselves, believers and unbelievers alike: Have we really understood what this man stood for?

Idolatry in Modern Times

Think of a sin, any sin, and ask yourself what is the motivation behind this? Sooner or later you will arrive at some form of idolatry. Making money, sex, power, entertainment, technological progress or even security your ultimate goal, your Ultimate Good (Summum Bonum) is just another way of making it your idol, your god. When you do this you are, as Paul puts it, “falling short of the glory of God” in that you were made to reflect His Glory in becoming fully human and in worshipping false idols you lose your humanness. We become like what we worship and we all worship something.

Behind every evil in our world therefore is idolatry, says Luther, and behind that, says Keller, is failure to believe the Gospel. Now the Gospel, as preached since Jesus appeared, is simply this:

Good News:
God is back and His plan
for restoring creation
is being revealed by his Chosen King
Jesus.

Gospel as the Announcement of Messiah

Think of that, the creator of the universe is not sitting idly by and watching creation go to wrack and ruin but has called his Chosen King from a tiny state of Israel, a peasant named Jesus of Nazareth! No, his surname is not “Christ”, that’s his title – “Christ” just means “Messiah” or “Chosen King”. Jesus was crucified by the Jewish authorities because he claimed to be Messiah and by the Romans because he was a would-be rebel King rapidly gathering support in the mutinous masses.

And that’s where the story would have ended. Jesus was not the only Messiah-claimant in the first century (there were a dozen or more contemporary within a hundred years or so) and yet no other claimant even remotely gathered such a following. Jesus did not at all meet the Jewish expectation of Messiah – he had no major military victory, was not a powerful earthly King, like David, did not crush the pagan oppressors (Rome), did not restore the temple and was not crowned in glory. Jesus was what first century Jews would have called a failed Messiah. He was a poor pacifist who chased a few money-changers out of the temple and then got scourged and crucified wearing his underwear and a crown of thorns. An ironic end to his brief public career.

The Mystery of the Christian Movement

Indeed, the story should have ended there – it did for many other messiah-claimants – but instead a worldwide movement was started which, although brutally persecuted, continues in strength to this day. Any theory that the institutional church made a small sect into the world religion it is today simply cannot take on board the historical fact that the church was an underground oppressed and powerless movement which only gained official Roman support in the middle of the 4th century some 300 years after it’s leader was crushed.

Relevance for Today’s World

How is all this relevant today? We have plenty of religions and self-help books – how is Christianity supposed to help the world in it’s current enlightened (yet somehow darkened) state? To understand this we need to understand what happened when Jesus arrived on the scene and how the 1st century was the turning point for all of history and for all creation.

Briefly summarising what otherwise takes a whole Bible to explain, Christian and Jewish thought is based on 3 key events:

1. Creation: God made the universe and it was good
2. Fall: Mankind rejected God’s rule and fell from grace
3. Salvation: God rescues mankind and restores creation

Whilst modern Jews are still waiting for the Messiah and Salvation, Christians have identified Jesus of Nazareth as the one through whom God has and is working to “put the world to rights”.

It is important to note that point 3, like point 1, is a process with a beginning, middle and end. The world was made in 6 days or eras (the Hebrew word “yom” can mean both) and then God rested. Mankind then messed things up and God called Israel to be a light for the world, the means by which salvation would come. Israel rebelled in spectacular fashion, rejected the calling until the true “Son of Man” arrived from within their ranks and took the world’s woes upon himself. Jesus came not only to pay the bill mankind had racked up in destroying their planet and degrading their humanity, he came to initiate it’s restoration. Jesus did not come to solve all problems but to initiate the restoration of creation in an unexpected way. This is manifest in 3 ways today:

1. The Fullness of Life

We all experience life as a bitter-sweet symphony of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow and wonder how we could obtain happiness and fulfilment and why nobody has figured it out yet. We see technological progress improving some areas of life whilst making others worse than before. We see resources unfairly distributed and the situation only worsening. Bad news clouds in on every side. Yet a 1st century peasant called Yeshua (Jesus), from a tiny backward corner of the Roman empire, claimed to have come “that [we] may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

Now, either Jesus was crazy, a conniving con-man or the Christ the Jews were waiting for and we need to take another look. Christians today speak of the indescribable peace and fulfilment their life has since they have encountered God through what Jesus did. Sure, Jesus is not physically here but he’s moving and working in a way which is in some ways more real than what we experience in the physical world. Jesus kept his promise and we experience life in a new and joyful dimension. We can’t show you Jesus except what he has done in our lives.

2. A New World Order

Christian’s having dreamy religious experiences is one thing but what does that mean for the world? As Christians we recognise that Jesus life and death were ultimately unique in the history of humankind. Not only did Jesus make claims no one else had made, he backed them up with deeds, natural and supernatural which were unprecedented and unrepeated. Nowhere in history do we find a comparable combination of outrageous claims, humble compassion and purported miracles and resurrection. You may find one or even two of these things if you search the myths, legends and asylums of this world but you won’t find claim, compassion and credibility coming together in this one-time climax of history.

What this means today is that we have reason to believe that the creator God has chosen humility, compassion, servitude and suffering as opposed to escapism, military might or comfy compromise, as the vehicle for the ushering in of his new world order. God the creator is at work again and it is no accident that Jesus’ resurrection was the first day of the week. The Sunday we call Easter was the first day of a New Age and the Friday on which Jesus was hung out to dry the last day, the 6th and final day of the old broken creation.

As Christians we believe that Jesus work and teaching were the one-off announcement of God’s reign returning to earth – the thing for which Jews prayed and, for centuries, anticipated. God has no favourites and offers each person, regardless of social, ethnic or class a share in this inheritance, a place in the new order which is being established. Christianity is relevant here and now. The Gospel is an invitation to all to get on board.

3. Personal Salvation

This is the point which is usually emphasized and I hope by moving it down the list to have put it’s importance in perspective. We are not Christians because want to escape the world and go to heaven. We are Christians because we want to shape the world in accordance with God’s plan and have his heavenly rule come down here (“Thy Kingdom come”).

The personal aspect is key and should not, however, be neglected. God is creating a new world by first dealing with the heart of the problem: Man’s Heart. The Jews expected a Messiah who would come and slaughter the pagans and put Israel on the map as a political force to be reckoned with. God has other plans. God rained down judgement on the nation which was brutally crushed in a last-ditched attempt at military rebellion in 70 AD. But God does not only judge an destroy; at the same time God was spreading the good news (Gospel) of Jesus’ resurrection through people like Paul of Tarsus and other apostles. People’s hearts were being changed from stony ego-centered organs to spirit filled other-centered love machines. God’s new world starts with a changed heart – yours and mine.

Conclusion

Unless we are severely mistaken God has chosen a surprising and subversive way to solve the worlds problems. If there is a God, He’s not a magician who can snap his fingers and dissolve the worlds evils. Indeed if he did, who of us would be left standing? Instead the creator God is a being so vast and transcendent that he cannot fit into the neat frameworks we expect reality to conform to even though, so often, it does not. If God is real we should expect that He is surprising and that there is no racial, intellectual or ethnic barrier to Him other than the choice we make to seek Him or hide from Him. God’s world is broken but under construction and the project manager is a poor Jew who was betrayed by his friends and hung on a tree. It all began in a garden around a tree and that’s where it ended.