The Future at the Center
The New Covenant has Jesus at the center. He is the mediator and the initiator. He gave his body and blood as bread and wine, for the salvation of God’s people. That salvation is more than a metaphysical, or spiritual truth. It does not exist on some ephemeral plane that we cannot see and touch. The salvation that Jesus offers has a major affect in reality, today. There is no question what Jesus did changes our future, our ultimate destiny in God’s Kingdom when it is fully manifest. However, that future also manifests now. The future is at the center. Both, when we think of judgment day, and today.
If we look at Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, chapters ten and eleven we see him talking about not ‘drinking’ of the cup of the Lord and of idols. Our future judgment hinges on who we are attached to. We know that it is the real us, the bodily us, that inherits the Kingdom. We are not remade. We will not be someone else. Our ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ will not be put in some other body. Rather our true selves, body and all will be resurrected. When we drink of the Lord’s cup, to partake the New Covenant as Jesus enacted on his Passover Supper, we join ourselves to Jesus. Since he is raised, we will be raised. Paul warns the people not to be joined to idols by drinking their cup or offering sacrifices on “the table of devils” (10:21). What does this have to do with the future and today? Who we trust in and who we consciously decide to align with determines where will be raised on that day. Because who we are continues into the Kingdom age. If we don’t look like the Kingdom age now, why will we when the Kingdom comes? The future is at the center of today. In many ways this would not be an entirely new thought to a first century Jewish audience. They knew how they acted had consequences on their fate. But in Jesus, God did do something extremely new.
Being in Christ involves a new creation, a new creation of the future. Everything about that new creation comes from the future Kingdom age, but it comes crashing into today. In the hebrew Scriptures the holy spirit fell on certain individuals to accomplish a certain purpose in God’s story of Israel. The spirit empowered them to be God’s representative, in a way, a more true ‘image of God’ as in the first creation. When Jesus became Lord ascending to the right hand of God, he poured the spirit out on the Church. That spirit now falls on everyone, to be God’s representative, a true ‘image of God’ as in the first creation. Though all of humanity is in the image of God, because we have sinned we are all cracked. This new creation through the spirit heals those cracks, reforming us into the mirrors of God we ought to be. And it is done distinctly with God’s Kingdom in mind.
When we look at the preaching of Jesus on what the Kingdom age values in character and attributes we see precisely what the epistles tell us the spirit brings to us; charity, love, meekness, forgiveness, humility, and joy. When we look at Jesus’ actions we see how those Kingdom values play out in real life. We see the Church acting in this very same way, carrying God’s story of salvation to the world. All these values of the future Kingdom age crash into the present through the Church. The witness of the Church today is all about the future Kingdom, and that goes for all the individual members of the Church as well. If the witness becomes about our local church, our members, our children’s program, our preaching, or our church band it doesn’t have much to do about the Kingdom, or about God’s new creation. The amazing thing about that new creation is that it is taking place now.
Events like resurrection were always destined for the end of this present evil age. Make no mistake that Jesus did not merely get up from the dead – he was changed such that he belongs to the future Kingdom age, just as we shall all be changed. Only it did not happen at the end, it happened right in the middle of God’s story. This should inform how we think about the future Kingdom. It isn’t all for the future, some of it is for today. As I said the future is crashing into today, because Jesus was raised from the dead. New creation happening today is the future being realized today. Entering the New Covenant, being in Christ, and new creation, are all the realization of the Gospel message about that future Kingdom today.
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8.37-39
We conquer because we are in Christ, because we experience this new creation that separates us from sin, and from satan. We are freed from the true oppression that we cannot escape. This is what Jesus’ audience failed to understand, and sometimes we fail to understand today. We are not conquerors because we win the battle. Not because we are successful. Not because we have money. Not because we have 2.1 kids and a white picket fence. Not because we have all the answers. Not because our emotions obey our every command. Often times we lose the battle, we fail, we do not have the money, or the American dream. We definitely do not have all the answers, and our emotions surely get the better of us at times. We conquer because Christ conquers, because the Kingdom conquers. But Jesus did that by dying. This inescapable fact has to inform what we think the Kingdom is going to be like, and consequently what we ought to make today. The Kingdom is certainly not going to be what the Zealots thought. Their whole plan was to bring the Kingdom in by killing off the Roman opponents silently. Often times we can be guilty of making the Kingdom fit our own pattern or ideas about what the best thing would be. But the cross has to make us reconsider that we might be wrong. Other than Jesus no one expected the Messiah to go to the cross and come out the other side in victory. Yet, he did it. And because he did it, we can be conquerors. It will never look like we, or our neighbor, or our co-worker would ever expect it to look like. That new creation needs to happen for us. The future Kingdom needs to crash into the present. God has done it, and will do it again.
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