What it means to live in the new creation, today.
Sitting in class today, something really clicked together for the first time — which, I suppose, is the purpose of school overall. If you’re not getting little breakthroughs, are you really getting educated?? Or at least, this is what makes education enjoyable and meaningful.
Anyway.
Today we were discussing the new creation and how the Bible talks about how we experience that new creation life now, today, here.
So of course, I asked the question, “Pastorally, what do we say to congregants who don’t feel like they are really living in a new creation? They feel very much like the rest of the world: stressed, anxious, bills, taxes, work, resentment, etc. The promise of a heavenly afterlife appeals to them, but they don’t really taste it yet. Is there a promise that we should feel this now, or is it really a promise to give us hope for the eschaton?”
His answer may seem simple, but it hit me in a fresh way.
“When the New Testament talks about the life of the New Creation, it is largely ethical. The church lives out the way that humanity should live, here and now. It can be an example, or a picture that appeals to the way we are all called to live.”
It clicked. Not just the New Testament’s explanation of what is meant by the new creation, but also an ethical imperative. It’s not just about behaving so you can get to heaven, or so God won’t be mad at you; it’s a much larger call to live out life as it will be perfectly in the new creation. We cannot live it out perfectly yet, but we can attempt to live out that sort of life now.
That’s the way the church influences culture: by demonstrating God’s picture of a perfect society of people, living humble, generously, justly.
“Walk in step with the Spirit.”
It makes so much more sense to me that a big part of the ‘already but not yet’ is not a feeling, not miracles, not a perfectly healthy body, but an ethical imperative to live like heaven is descended to earth. To treat people the way we will for eternity. To grieve the present pain and brokenness and fallenness of the world we still inhabit — there will always be that tension — but to try as often as we can to act out an ethical, moral picture of life in the kingdom.
(Of course this does not mean some sort of self-righteous, “we are better than them” type of utopian view, but a genuinely humble, loving, and selfless people. The way Jesus in John 13 told us that we will know we are His followers by our love.)
Thoughts?
e
Day 84 of 100 Days of Blog
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