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Here's Part 2 of my biblical theology and philosophy of evangelism. Hail to the King Jesus, baby. :)
A Review of Definitions
A conversation
about evangelism will not make much sense without clarification of what is
meant by the euaggelion itself, the
Good News which the People of God proclaim.
Out of that definition will arise a dynamic definition of what
evangelism timelessly is and might look like in the contemporary North American
culture.
The
Gospel
The good news
isn’t just a propositional morsel of succulent atonement theology which we must
digest, but a story that happened in ancient Palestine which we must accept and now
improvisationally implement where we now are.
The gospel preached by Jesus is that the Kingdom of God
is at hand, among you, among us
(Matthew 4:17).
If Jesus’ gospel
is the inbreaking Kingdom
of God, it must be asked
just what that phrase may have meant to Him and to His earliest hearers. Chilton has concluded that the phrase “kingdom of God” likely derived from the Targum
paraphrases of Isaiah. In its use there,
“the language of the kingdom […spoke] of God intervening actively on behalf of
his people. … The
emphasis is on the dynamic, personal presence of God – not on the nature of God
in itself, but on his saving, normally future activity.” It connotes the delivering, reconciling,
oppression-crushing, exodus-echoing work of Yahweh God.
For Jesus to use
such language was revolutionary in first-century Palestine.
His gospel of deliverance from Roman oppression was a direct, if sternly
nonviolent, threat to those powers and persons that were so responsible for
keeping God’s dream for creation, from creation, and indeed from his covenant
people. It was a way of being God’s
People which commanded faithful obedience of all and above all. Yet this Way he taught, epitomized in the
Sermon on the Mount and manifest in the Passion narratives, was not the kind of
revolution the Jews expected. Rather
than fight back when Romans struck you, Jesus taught them to neuter the
imperial logic of domination by turning the other cheek and blessing the
oppressor. In place of eradication of
enemies, he advocated and actively demonstrated love of enemies. Instead of
scorning sinners, he brought them as equals to his Father’s table. The Way was revolution through reconciliation,
a “little revolution of love.” Thus,
Christ’s gospel of the inbreaking kingdom was one of a God-empowered new way of
being the dispersed People of God, the community chosen by the Creator God to
set the world aright and so be a light to the nations.
Paul rephrases the
gospel in Romans 10:9 to be that “if you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is
Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved.” He says it a bit differently every time, but the core themes are that
“Jesus is Lord and risen.” As with
Jesus’ message, Paul’s word choice in explaining the good news is very
politically charged. The “good news” in Paul’s day was the word
for the announcement of the accession of a king or emperor. It was the word for going throughout the
empire that Caesar (possessing both political-imperial and religious-cultic
lordship) had arrived and was spreading salvation and freedom to all peoples. Faithful obedience was declared to Caesar by
uttering “Caesar is Lord.” So for Paul
to present another gospel and declare faithful obedience to a different King is
extremely politically dangerous. He
subverts and neuters the oppressive theological-political logic of the empire
with an alternate King and deliverer of liberation: the risen and regnant Lord
of Hosts, Messiah Jesus – the Slain-but-Risen Lamb!
Thus Paul’s gospel
formula (“Jesus is Lord and risen”) is a prophetically imaginative contextualization
of Christ’s word and work of the liberation of God, the revolution through reconciliation:
the Kingdom of God at hand. Therefore paraphrasing “the kingdom of God”
as “the revolution of God” is a useful and fair way to capture the political
charge and scandal of Christ’s message. This
Revolution of Christ challenges all power claims – personal, demonic, political,
and private – for it is “the judgment of
God upon the present order and the imminent promise of another one.” It is a challenge to every heart, every
ruler, every principality and power; it delivers humanity from every captivity (bondage
to sin, under Satan, in Egypt, under Rome, etc.) and makes us instead slaves to
the one who’s been King and Lord all along – God.
This definition
does not reduce the gospel to a political campaign – far from it! That is in a sense what Christendom has tried
to do for over a thousand years, and to utter disaster. Indeed, the aim of the faith should not be the
acquisition and wielding of worldly power, but rather a wielding of the
patient, nonviolent power of God as exemplified in Jesus. Instead of a “Christian” political campaign,
the gospel involves receiving and entering into Christ’s revolutionary campaign
for creation: the politically-charged missio
dei of the just and compassionate Lord of Hosts setting the world aright.
This reevaluation
of the gospel does not diminish the role of Christ’s death and
resurrection. Rather, it exemplifies it
as the most epic expression of God’s Revolution thus far in God’s story. The cross and empty tomb are not the totality
of the Revolution, but they are certainly its apex so far.
Summarily, gospel
is not primarily how to go to heaven after you die, but more centrally about subversively
letting bits of heaven break into history before
you die. In the vernacular of the
Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in
heaven.” It is that God’s dream and
God’s future are already miraculously rushing in to the present in the person
of Jesus (now his Church), and we can be a part of that miraculous reality,
part of that reconciling Revolution.
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