Kindle Notes & Highlights
the church proclaims that the world has only one true Lord and Ruler over creation.
Nations have military forces, but the church lives as a people who have laid down the sword and taken up the cross.
The question is about what our primary identity is. I think the issue of primary identity is what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of going through a new birth.
The people of God must form their children as those who identify first and foremost with Christ and his people.
we don’t see the world as it is; we see the world as it is interpreted through our language.
Apocalyptic language is like a pair of glasses that allows the Judeans in exile to imagine Babylon, not as an eternal, benevolent, and life-giving force, but as a temporary and hideous beast headed for destruction and over which the Son of Man has and will have final authority.
the language we use as a family and the language we use as a church in worship were giving to Caleb a pair of interpretive lenses through which he could love and be proud of the country of his birth without turning it into the eternal kingdom.
what happens to the people in exile would become the source of salvation not just for Judah but also for all people on the earth.
Embracing exile may in fact be setting God’s people free to rediscover their true mission and the powerful reasons for their divine creation in the first place.
embracing exile should not be the end of the church’s purpose but may indeed be God’s intentional action to renew and reestablish the purposes for which he formed his people in the first place.
for Christians living in an increasingly post-Christian culture, revivalism is a failed evangelism strategy because it assumes there is something latent in the hearts of people that simply needs to be rekindled.
the post-Christian world remains unchanged and unreached.
a people who have embraced exile know that the Word is not just proclaimed but also embodied.
So the mission of the church in exile is not just to have a message but also to become the message.
a people who embrace exile must recover a fuller, richer, and deeper ecclesiology than has most recently been the case.
The church should be more than a place people go; it should be something that by God’s grace we are becoming.
The invitation is to come and, through baptism and faith, join in the family of exiles.
What demands the Spirit and requires a broken body and shed blood is for people from different generations, different ethnicities, different cultures, different tastes, different political perspectives, and different social standings to gather around the Table of the Lord and become one body.
We are good at fitting in. But that can be its own problem: we are good at fitting in.
our uniqueness should look like unconditional love, a commitment to peacemaking, a bent toward forgiveness and reconciliation, a concern for justice and mercy, a hunger after the things of God, and lives that seek first the kingdom.
we don’t go into the world and get our hands dirty in acts of mercy, compassion, and justice because it “works.” The church gets its hands dirty in the needs of the world because that is the kind of royal priesthood we are becoming. We are a people who love because we have been loved.
My hope is that in embracing exile the church might discover again the beauty of being able to live and thrive as God’s unique people in the world.
