N. T. Wright on the Future of the World

[Music] [Music] and we're talking about eschatology about the effects in effect of jesus resurrection everything we want to say about the future depends on easter here we are in easter tide i have a story from a few years ago which brings this very sharply into focus for me i was in a taxi in london on my way from a to b actually i was in the process of missing a train because it was a traffic jam and the taxi was delayed he was stuck there and he turned around to me in the back seat and sort of expression of frustration but he had a smile on his face and he saw that i was wearing my clerical collar my purple shirt as a bishop and my pectoral cross and all the rest but he said oh bishop are you and i said yes he said what is this church of england i see a church of england oh he said i hear you're having some difficulty about all that women bishops business and i said yes we are having some difficulty about that women bishops business and he said he said what i always say is if god raised jesus christ from the dead everything else is basically rock and roll in it and i sat there in the backseat of the taxi i don't believe this this man is a genius and i i texted my episcopal colleague back in the northeast and said you'll never guess what i've just heard and i quoted this and i got a text straight back saying there's your sermon for easter sunday right there um and and sure i used that that line on easter morning that year you know that's what it's all about if god didn't raise jesus from the dead then we're all wasting our time if he did then we have to reconsider everything about everything in the light of that but we face a particular problem when we're trying to think through paul's thoughts in relation to eschatology to the promise of god's ultimate future many of you know i've tried to address this problem in surprise by hope particularly and i've said to one or two of you i actually get more phone calls and emails and letters and messages about surprise by hope than all my other books put together i'm i'm now no longer surprised by surprise by hope um it just seems that that for some reason it was quite accidentally to me a word which a lot of people seem to need to hear but despite my best efforts the great western dream of a detached or disembodied heaven as our ultimate destiny continues unabated i discovered in the green room behind this sanctuary this delightful and brute beautifully produced coffee table book by produced by time magazine discovering heaven how our ideas about the afterlife shape how we live today it's beautifully done wonderfully done and completely misses the point um the the whole book the whole it's it's very elegantly written the whole book just assumes that the word heaven denotes uncomplicatedly the ultimate destination of the people of god a destination which most people hope they will find right after their death and it's fascinating to see how powerful that tradition is because as some of you know it is completely contrary to what we find in the new testament in general and to paul in particular i'm going to start in a moment with a passage which is normally misrepresented misunderstood in that direction but which will explain what i mean but a few preliminary remarks as usual uh here as with all that i've said this week we will see once again that paul is teaching his people to think in new patterns so that they can discern who god is who god's people are and what god's future is for the world so that they may be the united and holy community that god intends and as with the previous two lectures all this theme bends back to integrate with the others eschatology revised around messiah and spirit is the direct result of paul's messianic and pneumatological reworking of monotheism and election you probably didn't expect to hear a sentence like that on a saturday morning but there we are it all fits together that's the point the jewish vision of god's ultimate future was never that people would leave this world and end up somewhere else called heaven in the company of god there are hints in the psalms of a life after the present one psalm 73 you will guide me with your counsel and afterward receive me with glory but when eschatology comes into full focus as for instance in the book of daniel it is all about god's kingdom being set up on earth as in heaven and indeed on earth by means of heaven there is a god in heaven and he is going to set up his kingdom on earth that's what daniel's all about as i've said in the bible heaven and earth are not a long way apart they overlap and they interlock particularly in the temple and in the great visions of daniel 2 and daniel 7 which are so important for the new testament the point is that after the terrible tyrannies of the wicked empires the god of heaven will set up a kingdom which cannot be shaken where why here on earth of course the jews were creational and covenantal monotheists it would make no sense to deconstruct that at the last minute that's why it's so dangerous to think about apocalyptic writing as dualistic it isn't it's about the way in which the true god is rescuing his creation from the usurping monsters the vision of daniel 2 and 7 thus dovetails with the prophecies of new creation of new heavens and new earth which we find in isaiah and elsewhere the reign of the coming king will see justice and peace abound with the wolf and the lamb lying down together i did hear that somewhere on the west coast they'd got a zoo where they'd managed to get the wolf and the lamb to lie down together the only problem being they found they had to have a new lamb every morning which rather defeated the point psalm 72 psalm 72 is especially important within this expectation the coming king in psalm 72 will have a particular care for the poor and needy and under his reign peace and justice will come down like rain and dew transforming and fructifying the present world one of the briefest statements of this is psalm 2 which paul makes central to his expositions of jesus messiahship and which universalizes the promises to abraham god declares to the messiah his son that he will give him the nations as his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the world for his possession this is an echo of the abrahamic promise but instead of it just being this piece of territory here it's the whole world the coming messiah will claim the entire world as his own and to give that up to abandon it either to the forces of human wickedness or simply to entropy and decay that would be to spoil the entire biblical narrative take the story forward and then like some post-modern short story deconstruct it all in the last two sentences so that you think what was that what was that about all the time no that's not how it works that would simply imply that god hadn't really meant it when he said that his creation was good and when with humans there bearing his image reflecting his image into the world that it was very good yeah god didn't really mean that he's going to tear it all down and send us off somewhere else and said no the ancient jewish vision even that the darkest hour was of a world put right that is part of the point of the constant cry in the psalms for god to judge not to judge in the sense of smash this place up once and for all but to judge in the sense of putting right and that by the way is how justification and eschatology play out together god puts us right in the present so that we can share in his work of putting the world right more of that and on so the ancient jewish eschatology was always about the creator god winning the victory over the forces of evil and this would mean the world entering at last upon the new existence which he'd always planned for it the project of genesis 1 and 2 would be complete at last genesis 1 and 2 isn't a tableau it's not there we are that's done nothing more to do to sit back and and enjoy no it's the beginning of a project which was then derailed by human idolatry sin wickedness rebellion invading powers goodness knows what god is going to get the plan back on track at the end of ezekiel where the city and temple become a new eden the end of isaiah 55 where the wonderful flowering shrubs will replace the thorns and the thistles i think especially of those great creational and eschatological psalms 96 and 98 and similar ones and the glorious picture of new heavens and new earth at the end of the whole book of isaiah oh okay not all jews of jesus and paul's day embraced this creational hope philo of alexandria mixed moses and plato in a ratio of about two to five resulting in something much more like greek speculation than biblical eschatology no doubt there was plenty of other confusion but the central vision and remember they read their scriptures they sung those psalms even if they weren't thinking straight this stuff would keep them on track by the way there's a lesson for today's church but that's another story um heaven and earth coming together redemptively and newly creatively that vision remained but how would this come about and what form exactly would it take here as with some other features of ancient judaism there's not much precision just as with resurrection in the resurrection hope in ancient judaism sometimes they vaguely arm-wavingly say that the righteous will shine like stars and other times in for instance 2nd maccabees 7 the resurrection hope looks as though people are just going to come back into another life exactly like this one it's only with jesus resurrection that the early christians grasp the idea that being raised from the dead doesn't mean shining like a star and doesn't mean exactly the same life as this one but is going on forward into a non-corrupting physicality something which it's very hard for us to imagine but which jesus found the way through into or god found the way through for jesus into now here's the point you might think when you're reading jewish visions of the future well yeah okay there's biblical visions about the new heavens and new earth about the wolf and the lamb about the fruit trees and all the rest of it are they just metaphors for a final spiritual bliss or should they be taken in some way literally will the new world simply be that one day there will be a coming king who will finally sort out all the mess and defeat all other empires and preside over an ordinary but just worldwide empire or what what are we talking about here is perhaps the most dramatic revision of paul's inherited theology utterly dependent on his revised monotheism and election the resurrection of jesus forms the model as well as the means for the future renewal of all creation the model as well as the means what god did for jesus at easter is what he will do for all his creation in the end and the resurrection of jesus which thus sharpens up the otherwise vague jewish eschatology translates both into what god will do for the whole creation and what god of course will do for his people in particular creation will be in one sense the same yet radically different it will be the same material it will not be a new creatio ex nihilo it will be a creoxio ex veterae a creation out of the old as it was with the body of jesus it will be the same material yet utterly transformed so there will be no more corruption no more decay how will god do this by the spirit as the wind blew over the waters of creation so now as in that wonderful poem by gerard manley hopkins and for all this nature is never spent there live the lives the dearest freshness deep down things and though the last lights of the black west went oh mourning at the brown brink eastwood springs because the holy ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with our bright wings will be the same yet utterly renewed this is redefined eschatology and because it is inaugurated and not yet consummated it has two moments the eschatology that has already been inaugurated in the messiah and spirit the eschatology that is yet to be brought about again through messiah and spirit and all christian living all vocation all holiness and unity and hence all mission is held in place between those two moments the messiah false the messiah spirit fulfillment that has already happened and the messiah spirit fulfillment that is yet to happen so to the little passage in paul regularly misunderstood in favor of the usual dying and going to heaven scheme this by the way it isn't just time magazine it continues to infect our hymns and songs yesterday we sang that jesus would come and take me home and today we sung till he returns or calls me home where does the bible speak of death as going home that's just 19th century dualism let me put this delicately if you can play around with the harmonies and the rhythm of those great old hymns please feel free to adjust the words as well when they're sub-biblical yeah i'm i'm i'm all for new music that's great i i i was once in london um found myself with an evening where i thought i'd have something to do and that was cancelled and suddenly what am i going to do look in the paper oh there's a performance of the magic flute just around the corner from where i was great phone up yes you got tickets fine okay i turn up not having a clue what i was going to expect and it was a a multi-racial south african troop doing the magic flute entirely on marimbas it was just amazing and for the first 10 minutes quarter of an hour i thought you can't do this this is mozart and then after about quarter of an hour i thought mozart would be thrilled it was brilliant a totally different magic flute but they didn't change the plot they didn't change the plot now in philippians 3 at the end paul once again echoes and applies the language of the poem in chapter 2 but this time more explicitly oriented towards holiness in contrast to those he says whose end is destruction whose god is the belly whose minds are set on earthly things paul says our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await the savior the lord the king jesus who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power which enables him to subject everything to himself now generations of western readers have heard that phrase and preached on that phrase citizens of heaven and have once assumed that paul is saying jesus is going to come from heaven and take us back there to be with him but that is exactly what he's not saying that's not how the language of citizenship works and it isn't how the language of jesus transforming power works either let me explain in philippi many people not all were roman citizens citizens of rome living in philippi it's not that far away the via ignacio goes across northern greece then it's not far across the sea to the heel of italy and then there's a high road to rome not far but they're citizens of rome living in philippi okay but the point of having a roman colony in northern greece was not that they were working there as ex-pats and looking forward to returning to the mother city when they retired far from it rome was already overcrowded and under resourced for food and water the last thing they wanted was citizens claiming the right to come back and live there most of those citizens would in any case be descended from military veterans after the wars of the previous century rome did not want old soldiers or indeed their descendants coming back to rampage around and grab people's farms that had happened before very dangerous so rome established colonies partly for those pragmatic reasons but also in order to spread roman civilization far and wide get it the point of being a citizen of rome in philippi was not that you were going back to rome one day the point was that you would bring the roman way of life to northern greece that's the image paul's got in mind citizens of heaven bringing the civilization of heaven to earth and if the colony got in trouble as would happen if the natives in the hinterland proved unfriendly or hostile then perhaps the emperor would come from the mother city not to take them away oh dear let's let's not do this come back to rome no the emperor would come from the mother city and establish his own peace and justice once more because he had the power to do that changing their situation from vulnerability to security again that too is the image paul has in mind and he develops that with psalms 8 and 110. jesus is the one who has the power to subject all things to himself and when he returns it won't be to take us back somewhere else it will be to transform this present world and us with it and this by the way is when we sing that last verse of that him how great thou art which i love i actually changed the words and one of the great things about being a bishop when i was in durham was i would say if we're going to sing that we're going to have this and the presenter would say can you change i'd say yeah i'm in charge of the liturgy here change those words i said when christ shall come with shout of acclamation and heal this world what joy shall fill my heart read psalm 72 again in the light of philippians 3 and celebrate the fact that the ancient jewish eschatology has come true in jesus own resurrection and will come true in the transformation of the whole creation and of us with it remember what is going on here in philippians is that paul is teaching them to think theologically in order that they can be the holy people who recognize that what they do with their bodies as well as with their minds in the present time matters because this is the body that jesus will transform when he returns exactly the same argument as in first corinthians 6. your body belongs to the lord he bought it with a great price therefore glorify him because he is going to raise us by his power and notice that philippians 3 actually runs on into the beginning of what we call chapter four four one as with first corinthians 15. eschatological rethinking is in the service of present steadfast christian living therefore he says this is how to stand firm in the lord now with this we have plunged right into the middle of the world of poor line eschatology in which we constantly find the now and not yet challenge god has done in jesus all that he promised and he will complete that task on jesus return and the way in which he will take us from the one to the other is through the spirit thus all the great themes of jewish eschatology come together well messiah obviously resurrection equally obvious the messiah now in the lead and the rest of us following in due course the present age and the age to come many many jewish writers apocalyptists rabbis lots of others talk about these two ages but they're not as used to be thought back to back now this now that with just a line between they are rather overlapping so that just as the spatial overlap of heaven and earth is where we are to live so the temporal overlap of the two ages is where we are to live all that is going on by the way in the temple in jerusalem in jewish ideology and of course the new temple in christian theology is jesus himself and the spirit creation in other words is already renewed in jesus own body and it will be renewed finally at his return the covenant has been renewed through jesus and the spirit that renewal will be complete at last when god and his people are one and are doing what they're meant to do in creation the new temple is already a reality in jesus and the spirit and one day as in the final chapters of revelation it will be a complete reality in the form of the new jerusalem and please note the new jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth the final scene in the bible is not saved souls going up to heaven it's god's heavenly life coming finally to birth on earth in particular the central feature of jewish second temple eschatology has been fulfilled and will be fulfilled that is as i was saying yesterday morning was it or even the previous evening the return of yahweh himself the notion of eschatological delay of people wondering when god was going to come back at last is a pre-christian feature much more interestingly than a christian feature though it is that as well as i argued yesterday paul and the gospel writers together see jesus himself as the living embodiment of israel's returning god but here too there is a now and not yet from one point of view the new testament picture of jesus second coming is an innovation no ancient jew thought of the messiah as coming twice why would they but from another point of view this is simply the result of inaugurated eschatology the second coming gains its momentum and some of its key phraseology from the expectation of yahweh's return the day of the lord in the old testament becomes the day of the lord jesus in the new and in both cases this means the day when god himself returns in person to judge and to save jewish eschatology rethought around the messiah but there is another strand to this revised jewish eschatology of the coming of god now the coming of the messiah in the old testament of course when god takes his power and rules over the nations the powers he displaces are both suprahuman powers and the human powers themselves the tyrants who have usurped god's rule with their babel-like wicked empires and now the word the early christians used for the coming or the appearance of god or jesus was parisian this isn't a biblical word in the sense it isn't in the septuagint but it has two meanings in particular if you look it up in an ordinary greek lexicon it's got these two meanings first it can mean the appearance or manifestation of a deity suddenly people are aware that a god is visible in their midst pagans use the word like that clearly paul wants it to carry that connotation the appearance a manifestation of the incarnate embodied divinity jesus himself but second it's regularly used and paul seems to want this echo as well for the moment when a king or a general who has been away from home will return to be present with his people who if they have any sense will not sit in the city with their arms folded waiting for him to come through the gate they will go out and meet him to escort him royally back into his city and this of course is what's going on in that famous passage in first thessalonians 4. paul draws on three metaphors at once that's why the passage is often confusing i hope you know that paul does this regularly he mixes his metaphors almost in the same way that john in the apocalypse mixes his imagery about the lion and the lamb and so on you're not meant to imagine this as a as a video a film clip um it's all sorts of images in ephesians 4 paul says that we shouldn't be little babies tossed to and fro on an open boat at the mercy of people playing dice you think uh excuse me what's that about and in first thessalonians 5 he says that the woman is going to labor and the thief is coming in the night so you mustn't get drunk but you must put on your armor and you think um no this is this is all too much but this is this is how biblical imagery works so in first thessalonians 4 he says the lord will descend with a trumpet blast that's like moses coming down the mountain with the law the dead in christ will rise and we still alive will be taken up on the clouds this is daniel 7 the son of man being vindicated after suffering to a place of authority and responsibility and we'll meet him in the air and the meeting is like the citizens going out to welcome the returning king what then will he then take them away no he's coming back he's coming to reign he comes to claim and rule over what is already his own to change our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body and to bring the whole creation to its new moment of redeemed and fruitful life this is the moment when the lord's prayer will finally and fully be answered that god's kingdom would come and his will be done on earth as in heaven it is staggering to think how many christians have prayed that prayer thousands of times and think of that phrase as only a temporary expedient until the time when we leave earth and go to heaven instead now there are as you probably know two other great poor line passages about the renewal of the whole creation first corinthians 15 romans 8. in each case they represent a further radical rethinking of the great jewish eschatological hope and looking at them that way may help us to get the true poor line meaning out of them come first with us to first corinthians 15. here we see the scheme laid out quite carefully paul's overall point is to affirm that as jesus the messiah has been raised from the dead then in terms of the scriptural accordingness which is going on we too his people will be raised from the dead that's the point of the whole chapter but he lays the groundwork for his explanation of what the resurrection body will be in verses 20 and 28 where he explains briefly the larger cosmic picture and here just to speak generally for the moment we see a peculiarity in our traditions because if we say or sing the great creeds we affirm that we believe in the resurrection of the body this book on heaven and many many many other books on heaven which i know of talks vaguely about resurrection but it seems to use the word resurrection as just a rather fancy flowery way of saying life after death which we all know will be somewhere else and um heavenly and disembodied and spiritual and so on so unless you and i mean okay some people by you the word heaven actually do mean new creation randy alcorn who's written lots of books on this when he uses the word heaven he uses it very much in terms of what i think the bible says as new heavens and new earth i think it's misleading not to be talking about the new earth as well but you can use the word heaven and mean that most people don't but if you don't have a vision of new creation then what is a resurrection body doing why would you have a resurrection body in this platonic heaven and so many christians and actually many modern jews as well have treated the word resurrection as i say just as a a flowery way of saying life after death meaning that in a non-bodily way and therefore making the word resurrection mean its opposite but if i heaven you actually mean something like the present world only much more so more beautiful more powerful with its corruption and decay removed then why call it heaven at all paul doesn't jesus doesn't why not regard it as the coming together of heaven and earth as in the programmatic statement of ephesians 1 10 why not regard it as here in first corinthians 15 as the renewal of the whole creation of god being all in all first corinthians 15 20 to 28 then paul brings together as he often does the messianic psalms 8 and 110 in order to emphasize with genesis 1 2 and 3 as the back cloth that god in the messiah has launched his project precisely of new creation as in philippians 3 as in matthew 28 god has given the messiah authority over all things there is even an echo of daniel 2 here where the messiah abolishes all rule and authority and power it's unusual for paul to echo daniel i'm inclined to think that daniel is in fact underneath more of what paul is doing um than we normally realize and what we have in this passage is another classic now and not yet picture the messiah is the first fruits he's raised already the rest of us will be in the future so how do we characterize the present time here is paul's vision of the kingdom of god at the moment the messiah is already reigning and he is doing so as the victorious warrior over all hostile powers and remember that often not in one corinthians but often when paul says this kind of thing he's writing from prison he knows perfectly well how paradoxical this is how it is visible only to the eye of faith and yet faith in jesus resurrection and ascension means that that is what you see when jesus present reign is complete with the final victory over death himself over death itself then the messiah will hand back the kingdom to god the father says paul so that god may be all in all get hold of the picture why did god make a world that was other than himself theologians and philosophers are puzzled about that for for generations answer out of sheer generous love and in order to fill it with his own love and life so that it remains both truly itself and yet infused suffused with god's own presence so that as isaiah says the earth may be full of the knowledge of the lord as the waters cover the sea this coming together of heaven and earth is another implicit temple moment as was genesis 1 itself when god inhabits his renewed creation this will be the ultimate truth towards which the ancient temple had been pointing the temple was a microcosm an advance sign of god's design in christ to bring heaven and earth together so in first corinthians 15 paul expounds this double kingdom which in ephesians 5 5 he can even refer to as the two kingdoms first the kingdom of the messiah then the kingdom of god this is how he does the inaugurated eschatology of the kingdom the present reign of the messiah the future ultimate complete reign of god himself and please may we be clear as many books i find aren't that when paul speaks of the defeat of death this doesn't mean dying and going to heaven that is not the defeat of death that is simply the description of death the definition of death the defeat of death means resurrection bodies for god's people and a new non-corrupting life for the whole creation and all this is kingdom theology that is it's about the one god establishing his re his rescuing and reordering sovereignty over the whole of creation not about him abandoning it to decay and despair and starting again to do something quite different somewhere else let's just be clear before we move on to romans 8 what we are saying then about the future life beyond the grave i have taken funerals i have attended funerals of people i have loved and lost and the question everyone wants to ask at funerals is where are they now where is she now where is he now that's a very natural question that is the question that love wants to ask and i honor that it's perhaps surprising therefore that the new testament has very little to say about that question has a great deal to say about where we're ultimately headed very little to say about the temporary thing if you believe in resurrection a new bodily life you are bound to believe in some kind of intermediate waiting period perhaps even an intermediate state the bible doesn't say very much about it we are free to invent our own metaphors john polkinghorn says that god will download our software onto his hardware until the day when he gives us new hardware to run the software again um well okay but get hold of it resurrection is not life after death it is life after life after death that is it is the new bodily life that will follow a period of being bodily dead that's how it was even for jesus himself in between his death and resurrection the only exception will be those still alive at the lord's return as paul says they will be changed that's another radical poor line innovation nobody had thought of that before which deals with the problem of what would then happen but which also makes it very clear that the present body and the future body are both continuous and different same for creation as a whole god won't throw away the present one and start from scratch he will as he did with the body of jesus himself give new life to the present body oh god can do new creation if somebody has been burnt to ashes and their ashes have been scattered whatever and the entire physical system is gone god is in the business of new creation god is going to make a new you which will be just like the present one only much much much more so there is a real you know i've often used this in preaching um you know when you see somebody who's been really sick and you haven't seen them for a while and they're really sick and you see them say poor old son so he's just a shadow of his former self the truth of the resurrection as for instance in second corinthians 5 1-10 is that if you are in christ and indwelled by the spirit you are just a shadow of your future self there is a real you which god is waiting to give you and it's so like you that it's amazing but it's more so and all the great things which god is doing in you will be enhanced and fulfilled in that it's extraordinary the extent to which the western tradition has been fixated on heaven a word which in the new testament is never used for the place where god's people go when they die let alone the place where they'll end up eventually never mind hell that's a different sort of problem again i get frustrated when i come to america and sometimes not here happily but some places i go whatever i lecture on the first question is what about hell and i say well what is it about this culture that wants to ask about hell all the time but when it comes to intermediate state paul talks about being with the messiah which is far better philippians 1 call it paradise if you like as jesus says to the dying brigand in luke 23 or the temporary dwelling the monai polli which jesus talks about in john 14. you can even call it heaven if you want the bible doesn't do that but the problem is this the church's mission is shaped by its eschatology whether it knows that or not and if your eschatology is all about leaving this world and going somewhere else called heaven your sense of what the church is there for will be completely different but if your eschatology is biblical not least poor line then you will realize that if we stand now between the resurrection of jesus and the renewal of the whole creation when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge and glory of the lord as the waters cover the sea and when we'll be given new bodies to live in and celebrate that new world then the mission of the church is something totally different new creation has begun and by the spirit we are incorporated into the risen messiah so that we can be part of that new creation already in our life in our unity our holiness our art our music our theology our preaching and praying practical kingdom work so why are we so fixated on that temporary in-between stage i've said it before but it's such a good line i'll say it again heaven is important but it's not the end of the world and and all this promised future will happen through the spirit when paul calls the future body a spiritual body in first corinthians 15 44 and 46 this does not mean as many have thought it means a body made of spirit some people have said there you are for paul it's a spiritual body so he doesn't believe in bodily resurrection or an empty tomb or anything like that no sorry that's just wrong that's not how that greek word pneumaticos works you can look it up in little and scott and see it's very clear the greek term spiritual pneumaticos doesn't mean made of spirit it means animated by spirit or filled with the spirit and this goes with paul's use of the same word earlier in the letter to distinguish the christians who are generally genuinely animated and led by god's spirit from the people who don't seem to have got the message at all yet if we are in christ we are already pneumaticos pneumaticoi so that as paul says in romans 6 we must reckon ourselves to be already dead to sin and alive to god in messiah jesus i am crucified of the messiah nevertheless i live yet not i but the messiah lives in me and that is both the motivating force the energizing principle and above all the directing life which means that we can be kingdom people kingdom workers right here and now and all of this brings us to romans eight having dropped mozart into the conversation before i should say that romans 8 is like the final movement of the jupiter symphony where all the themes that we've heard so far come rushing together and we realize that they actually are all made to work together in the western traditions of commentary on romans you often find that the crucial bit the climax of the passage is downplayed or is even a cause of puzzlement because people have assumed that this greatest of all letters is really about what the medieval church was interested in how do i get saved what happens after we die et cetera so people have assumed romans one to four you get justified romans five to eight you get sanctified and at the end of it you get glorified i.e you go to heaven few we've made it fit with what we wanted so why does paul then talk about creation groaning and awaiting its new birth oh people say must just be an odd bit of jewish eschatology which he hasn't quite fully assimilated that's what rudolph baltman said explicitly but actually many many evangelical expositors take exactly the same line without admitting it we hurry on to our favorite bit at the end twenty eight nine and thirty all things work together for good those he justified them he also glorified and then the great conclusion what shall we say to this nothing shall separate us from the love of god but my friends this romans 8 18 to 26 is where the whole argument has in fact been going we need to take a step back and have another run at it this is where the inauguration of eschatology and messiah and spirit and the forward look to what is yet to come are held together in paul's greatest statement of hope and hence of present purpose in anticipating that hope you recall that yesterday i stressed that the purpose of israel in the plan of god was not simply that god wanted to have some friends all to himself but that god wanted through israel to bless the world behind that again as some of us were saying in the dialogue afterwards there stands an even greater purpose that god made humans in the first place so that through humans he could bring his wise order to creation that's being made in god's image theologians have often tracked even that back to first principles the inner life of the triune god god makes his world in such a way that it will flourish and become the place he wants it to be under the wise stewardship of human beings so that he might himself come at the last and be the true image-bearing human being to whom all authority is given in heaven and on earth creation itself with humans at the middle of it reflects something about father and son that's what's going on in matthew 28 first corinthians 15 and supremely romans 8. see the problem with human sin this is the mega problem and also all our micro problems with human sin isn't just we humans are in deep trouble and under the wrath of god that's true but the problem is worse god has made the world so it will flourish under wise obedient human care stewardship and the humans have said thanks very much we'll play our own games with this world we will worship it and serve it because that way we'll have a lot of fun in the present and who cares about the future that by the way summarizes in particular the whole post-enlightenment western attitude to creation and that's not unimportant when we think how all this plays out but that's why we often miss the crucial little kingdom of god passage in romans 5. think how the letter works paul works through his initial argument about the revelation of god's faithfulness to abraham romans 3 and particularly 4 because of which god is created in the gospel a single family who will inherit the world whose sins are forgiven that already points on to romans 8 the family who will inherit the world then he gives us a glimpse of where all this is going in romans 5 1-11 and then he stands back in romans 5 12-21 and sums up the entire picture as in adam so in christ except usually it's how much more in christ and the central statement comes in verse 17 and it flashes by and the passage is so complex and the greek is so dense it's often missed if because of one man's trespass death reigned through that one man how much more dot dot dot what do you expect him to say at that point you expect him to say how much more will life reign through the one man jesus christ but he doesn't listen how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness how much more will they reign in life through the one man jesus the messiah the risen messiah is already reigning as lord over the whole world and those who belong to the messiah share that reign that's what paul's saying that's the larger vision which points on to the climax in romans 8. paul has taken the vision of genesis 15 which is itself the answer to genesis 3 in order to get the genesis 1 and 2 project back on track he's universalized the vision of genesis 15 through psalm 2 and he's seen this reaching out as in psalm 72 or isaiah 11 to the renewal of the whole creation under the wise sovereignty of jesus a sovereignty which all those in the messiah are called to share so the climax in romans 8 is not about us going to heaven at last being glorified in the sense of perhaps shining like stars it's about god's plan to renew the whole creation god is going to do for the whole creation at last what he did for jesus at easter the promise to abraham about this particular strip of territory in the middle east was always intended as a signpost pointing forward to the greater reality already sketched in those psalms and in isaiah remember in romans 6 7 8 paul is telling the story of the exodus the slaves come through the water and find freedom chapter 6 they arrive at sinai and wrestle with the problem of torah chapter 7 and then in chapter 8 the sacrifice is offered the temple the tabernacle is constructed the presence of god comes to dwell in the midst and the people are led by god to their inheritance this is an exodus narrative how does that work when we talk of going home or of the christians inheritance this cannot and must not mean heaven what is our inheritance the whole world is now god's holy land and if we are in the messiah indwelt by the spirit we share now and in a new way in that future in making that land flourish as god always intended bringing signs of hope and justice and beauty and joy and healing to bear on his world now at the moment paul insists however creation is in its holy week mode it is groaning it's in travail like a woman in labor the creation is therefore waiting with eager longing for the children of god to be revealed romans 8 19 because the creation knows in its bones that it's meant to flourish under the wise rule of human beings god has subjected the present creation to futility because he designed it to work properly under the image bearers and god is faithful he cannot deny himself and since this was always a plan for god's own use in the person of his son a plan to be shared with all his renewed humans in the re-enlivening work of the spirit god is not going to abandon that one day the creation will be set free he says from its bondage to decay and it will obtain what will it obtain some translations imply that the creation will share the glorious freedom of the children of god that's rather vague and it's not actually precisely what paul says the glory in question is the glory as in psalm 8 humans are to be crowned with glory and honor and put over all things the glory is the wise stewardly rule of renewed humans over creation the freedom is what creation will experience when the humans are thus glorified that is the poor line eschatology of new creation it's already been launched in the resurrection of jesus so nobody can say oh there's nothing much we can do about it till jesus comes again it's energized by the spirit so unless you're going to deny that we have the spirit there is no excuse for not being involved in the work here and now but what does this work look like i was doing a lecture in london recently in which i covered some of this ground and i was severely taken to task afterwards by a theologian who's worked a lot on ecological issues and has been overwhelmed with the sense that humans just have this amazing propensity to mess everything up to bring about wreckage in the created order whether it be tearing down the rainforests for a quick profit or polluting the atmosphere with our noxious gases or whatever it is and this theologian was concerned that an emphasis as i was putting on human responsibility for creation would just produce a new generation of well-meaning victorian entrepreneurs dashing off around the world thinking that they were making it a better place but actually trampling on its beauty and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and yes that is a danger but notice what paul then does if you want to know what inaugurated eschatology looks like in the present then read verses 26 and 27 of romans 8 a passage i mentioned in the question period yesterday the way we share the messiah's glory in the present is principally by sharing his suffering jesus became king of israel and lord of the world when he was crucified that's the point in all four gospels and now paul draws on this amazing picture of the whole creation in labor pains what does the church say oh that's easy we have the solution we'll come and fix it for you no we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we await for our adoption the redemption of our bodies the church is not a bunch of grinning fix it people with all the answers the church is the community that by the spirit is learning to carry the cross to share the pain to stand in the midst of the suffering world with the love of god in their hearts so that the pain of the church in the church is often in pain for all sorts of reasons the pain of the church resonates and jangles with the pain of the world this is not a triumphalist vision except in the radically revised sense of triumph that paul assigns with great irony and paradox to the cross of jesus and then the cross-bearing work of his followers look at two corinthians god's power is made perfect in weakness or read mark 10 where jesus says much the same thing and that weakness which all of us feel in our ministries some of the time and some of us feel in our ministries most of the time that weakness is not a sign that we are failing we may be but that's not the point we are called to be the people who stand in agonized prayer at the place where the world is in pain that is the primary way the primary way in which in the present we exercise the glory and dominion which we are given over creation prayer is the ultimate image bearing activity for us at the moment and often it's very painful prayer jesus said as the father sent me so i send you out into the world as he went out into israel to celebrate yes to bring healing yes to celebrate with those who are rejoicing fine but also to groan with the pain of the world and to suffer through confronting the powers of the world if we hope for what we do not see paul says we wait for it with patience and in that process the whole trinity is once again involved here is the world groaning in pain here is the church faithful to its calling groaning in pain sharing that pain where is god in the midst of that of all that sitting back saying wish you lot could get your act together no of course not god by his spirit is also groaning because the reason god wants the church to be in prayer at the place where the world is in pain is so that god himself may come and be at the heart of that pain that groaning so that the new birth for which the world longs the resurrection of the body for which the church longs will be the new creation for which god himself longs god the heart searcher says paul knows what is the mind of the spirit he's alluding to psalm 44 another great monotheistic psalm which he's going to quote a bit later for your sake we are killed all the day long counted as sheep for the slaughter part of the paradox of inaugurated eschatological monotheism monotheism election and eschatology all come together here not as an abstract intellectual exercise but as the very lifeblood of the thinking and praying and suffering and celebrating church in all these things he says we are more than conquerors through him who loved us yes and we say that and celebrate in the midst of the pain and the puzzlement our own pain resonating with the pain of the world and the pain of god so that our own joy may resonate with the joy of the world and the joy of god himself are we or are we not followers of jesus is this or is this not the way he told us it would be christian mission does not leave behind the carrying of the cross christian mission is carrying the cross one way or another and discovering as we do so that this is the power that moves the world and renews the world because it is the paradoxical power of the unconquerable love of god we have lived for too long between some christians saying that everything is dark and gloomy and there's nothing we can do till jesus comes back to take us away and other christians thinking that their energy and clever planning and strategies will simply bring god's kingdom by their own efforts you can't have the cross without the resurrection you can't have the resurrection without the cross the gospel is foolishness and scandalous to those who believe to those who who don't believe but to those who believe it is the messianic power of god and the messianic wisdom of god and that is how monotheism and election reworked around jesus and the spirit general generate an equally reworked eschatology of new creation and with that generate a new vision of the church's mission in which we go out in prayer expecting setbacks and suffering but knowing that we carry precisely at that point the powerful life-changing world renewing message of the gospel the good news not that we have a secret way to leave the world and go somewhere else but that god has the secret way to rescue the world and the secret is revealed in jesus and the spirit and is put to work through us even though we are suffering and silly and often muddled and messed up as we are the great argument about justification in romans is not simply there to assure us of salvation though it does do that we are just we are justified in order to be as in the beatitudes justice hungry people in an unjust world as i said before we are put right in order to be putting right people for the world and this is why in the middle of it all the church is called to live with this inaugurated eschatology as the united and holy community unity and holiness serve the mission of god which is the establishment of the kingdom of god let's be quite clear we don't build the kingdom by our own efforts only god builds god's kingdom but in the image i have often used we are building for the kingdom some of you have heard me say this before some of you read this before but this is such an important point because people often get muddled exactly here i have the picture in mind of the building of a great medieval cathedral here is the stonemason's yard where the workers probably illiterate unable to read an architect's plan are simply given their instructions for the day or the week you are simply going to carve this lump of stone with this pattern it will take you a while you may hurt your fingers with the chisel while you're doing it you won't have a clue what it's really all about but your job is to be obedient just do this little thing here it'll take you a while and then one day the master mason will come and we'll gather up all those lumps of carved stone and we'll get them hauled up on the rickety scaffolding that they had a thousand years ago and put into place and the stonemason from the stonemasons yard will come out blinking at the light and will gaze up at the west front of the cathedral and there to his astonishment will be his bit of carved stone there it is that's my bit joined with all the others in patterns and formations that he could never have imagined meaning something far more than he could possibly have known that my friends it's what it's going to be like when god does god's work of finally building the kingdom we here and now are working for the kingdom we're in the stonemasons yard we're illiterate we don't understand we couldn't understand what god's great design is even if he tried to explain it to us and we aren't responsible for building the whole thing any more than that one mason was for doing the whole cathedral but we are building and carving and planning and praying and suffering and weeping and groaning for the kingdom and one day we will emerge blinking into the light and we will see god's new day dawning a day full of beauty and justice and love and power and we will suddenly realize that our little bit of work and especially the work that we thought hadn't gone that well and the bit where we hurt our fingers or thought we made a botch of it so there was no pride just a sense of dogged obedience we will see our little bit of work as part of god's much larger pattern a design we could never have imagined and certainly could never have accomplished ourselves this is the truth of inaugurated eschatology that is why at the end of his great exposition of resurrection in first corinthians 15 paul doesn't say so we're going to be raised from the dead fine sit back and enjoy it and wait for it it's going to be fine when it happens no he says therefore my beloved be steadfast immovable always abounding in the work of the lord because you know that in the lord your labor is not in vain hallelujah not in vain that's an echo of the servant passage in isaiah and paul again and again sees himself and all god's people as now sharing in the servant work of the messiah sharing the suffering and also the glory sharing the tears and also the triumph and i hope you now see we're nearly done sorry i'm over time couple more minutes hope you now see that the task of theology the whole church spirit-led task of thinking about who god is who god's people are what god's future is they are all in the service of the unity and holiness of the church in order to set forward the mission of the church but it is a mission which is defined by that renewed eschatology and energized by that renewed monotheism taken forward by that renewed people united and holy anything less will get in the way of the mission and distort it so that it serves our own appetites and agendas i sometimes think when i think of the terrible debates we've had in my own denomination many other denominations we live in a world which is so full of amazing opportunities for the gospel amazing new possibilities new hopes is it any wonder that the dark powers that don't want us to embrace those things soak up all our energies in in fighting about this or that issue oh we've got to deal with the complex issues we can't just say well who cares let's not worry about them we've got to do that this is a distraction and we have to pray against it for the sake of the mission for the sake of the eschatology it is the mission in which the whole trinity is involved and which we therefore as image-bearing human beings are taken up in in new ways new thought patterns new hopes new loves there isn't time to say more about this now but it's within this context that the inaugurated eschatology of holiness and ethics makes sense in terms of a renewed spirit-led virtue ethic god doesn't why didn't god just say okay we'll save the world all in one bank jesus is raised in the dead ascended that's it game over answer because as i said yesterday god wants people not puppets and we have to take responsibility for becoming through our thought out strategies of our own lives and our mission the people who are fully responsible authentic spirit-led human beings and it's in this context as well that the inaugurated eschatology of the renewed mind learning to think through the big issues within this new creation makes sense in terms of our engagement with all the thought patterns and often distorted thinkings of the philosophies and wisdoms of the world this poor line vision of the complete theological task is i believe the necessary and god-given equipment that we need that every generation needs because we too as a whole people are called to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may discern and discover what god's will is not simply for our own lives so that we can stay out of trouble but much more for our own calling in mission and ministry whatever that may be going out into the world as god's son went out into the world to bear its pain and so deal with evil and bring god's new day to dawn my friends as i said at the beginning we are easter people this is the easter season the new world has already been born in jesus himself by the spirit we have promised that one day it will come to full flowering and in this present time of inaugurated eschatology of groaning in prayer of many vocations many ministries many visions and hopes let us be faithful to our calling and cheerful in our service so that we may be fruitful for his kingdom amen [Music] you

Channel: FULLER studio

Views: 55,364

Rating: 4.8510404 out of 5

Keywords: Fuller, Theological, Seminary, Studio, Story, Theology, Voice, Art, Film, Video

Id: BWNKp3jYyRo

Length: 64min 54sec (3894 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020