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I found myself angry at this depiction of Judgment Day. Was it really so simple as “Christians go to heaven and everyone else goes to hell”? Was my role as a witness to Jesus’ sovereign authority and saving mercy really centered around getting people to pray a magic prayer?
Was stopping men from raping children really secondary to saving souls?
Where they brought confusion, Jesus brought conviction.
Stories are important. They make sense of the people, places, and plots within them. If we get the broader story wrong, we’ll be rightfully confused when the people, places, and plots within them don’t make sense anymore.
If our storyline of salvation is severely distorted, we are going to be confused understanding the appropriate place of judgment.
Jesus’ cross brings peace to the war we’ve waged on heaven. His atonement heals the rupture wrought by our rebellion. Jesus’ blood reconciles creation to God. The cross and resurrection may accomplish more than this, but they do not accomplish less. Jesus is the Savior who reunites heaven and earth.
God’s purpose is not to get us out of earth and into heaven; it’s to reconcile heaven and earth. God has given Jesus authority, as his resurrected King, to establish this kingdom reality on earth as it is in heaven.
To pray Jesus’ prayer that God’s kingdom would come “on earth, as it is in heaven,” is to pray implicitly that all those powers that stand unrepentantly opposed to God’s kingdom be sent packing, that sin, death, and hell be banished.
To long for the dawning of the light is to long for the casting out of darkness. To hope for the resurrection of life is to hope for the banishment of death. To dream for the healing of the body is to dream for the excising of the disease.
God’s agenda is to get the hell out of earth.
In the gospel story, heaven and earth are currently torn by sin. Our world is being ravaged by the destructive power of hell. Sin has unleashed it into God’s good world, and God is on a mission to get it out, to reconcile heaven and earth from hell’s evil influence to himself through
there are some things I want out of God’s world forever.
We are the ones, not God, who unleash the destructive power of hell in the world.
Hell gains entrance into God’s good world through us.
world. As a man, I need to come to grips with the fact that lust is not allowed in the city where all God’s daughters are treated honorably, with respect, and lifted high. As an American, I need to understand that nationalist superiority will not be allowed in God’s kingdom, where the nations are healed, where Iraqis and Afghans are at the center of the celebration, where we rejoice together in God’s presence. As a pastor, I need to accept that self-righteousness and hypocrisy will not be allowed in Jesus’ city, where religious folks seem to have a harder time getting in
Darkness is more than the absence of God’s kingdom. It is the absence of God the King. For those who prefer it that way.
