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The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us. The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.
A God who suffers pain, injustice, and death for us is a God worthy of our worship.
CHAPTER 11 OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD’S WORLD
Who is my neighbor? By depicting a man helping his enemy and saying, “Go and do likewise,” Jesus is telling us in the strongest terms that anyone at all in need, regardless of race, religion, values, and culture, is your neighbor.
What does it mean to “love my neighbor”? In answering that question, Jesus depicts someone meeting the most practical physical, material, and economic needs.
Christians cannot think that their role in life is strictly to build up the church, as crucial as that is. They must also, as neighbors and citizens, work sacrificially for the common life and common good.
things that benefit the entire human community, rather than only the selfish interests of some individuals, groups, or classes. It may refer to:
Churches in the U.S. in the early nineteenth century that did not speak out about slavery because that would have been “getting political” were actually supporting the slavery status quo by staying silent.
Individual Christians can and should be involved politically, as a way of loving our neighbors.
Nevertheless, while individual Christians must do this, they should not identify the church itself with one set of public policies or one political party as the Christian one.
It confirms what many skeptics want to believe about religion, that it is not a genuine spiritual truth and encounter but only one more political constituency and voting bloc, one more way to get power over others.
Political parties will offer Christian churches, organizations, and leaders heady access to power, support, favors, and protections. All this can be theirs if they support the whole political agenda and look the other way on matters to which Christians ought to object. The spiritual danger here is very great.
if we are only offensive or only attractive and not both, we can be sure we are failing to live as we ought.
The gospel gives us the ability and the resources to love people who reject both our beliefs and us personally. Think of how God won you over. Not by taking power but by coming and losing power and serving you.
The Good Samaritan risked his life and sacrificially loved someone who was not merely a stranger but a member of a racial group that the Samaritan would have seen as dangerous and even responsible for much suffering in his own community. The Jewish man deserved the Samaritan’s wrath but instead received sacrificial, practical love, the meeting of his physical and material needs.
So complete inclusion is, in the end, impossible to practice. Everyone ultimately believes in some moral absolutes. Once we realize this, the new question becomes: Which set of beliefs and moral absolutes leads us to embrace most fully those from whom we deeply differ?
Jesus tells us to “greet” all people, and in his time one did this with the word shalom. To wish someone shalom—the word for full flourishing, health, and happiness—was to want their good.
Jesus is acknowledging that some people are indeed opponents, even persecutors. He does not say that everyone is equally right and good, but he does insist that their needs as human beings are equally important, regardless of their beliefs.
Christians still have the same jobs, the same families, the same racial and ethnic backgrounds, yet God’s love in Christ now becomes the most fundamental source of our self-worth. This displaces, but does not efface or remove, our other identity factors.
Being a Christian gives you some distance and objectivity so you can see both the good and the bad parts of your culture more clearly than many who are still relying on it for their fundamental self-worth.
When he is embraced in love by an Other whom he thought was an enemy, it transforms him and enables him to welcome others who are deeply different from himself.
And on what basis did Jesus command such a thing? Christ tells us we must be gracious to others because we have received grace ourselves. In his parable of the Unmerciful Servant, he tells us that Christians who know they live wholly by God’s undeserved mercy must be generous, forgiving, and welcoming to all others, even those whom they see as opponents (Matthew 18:21–35).
every believer is called to go. It means to be willing to leave safety and security in order to share the good news of Jesus with others. This may or may not entail leaving physical and social locations, but it always means risk and vulnerability.
God called Abraham to leave his familiar culture (“your people”) and his personal and emotional security (“your father’s household”). That is, he is called to abandon everything he has relied on for meaning and security. Here’s an outline of his life: “Go.” Where? “I’ll tell you later. Just go.” (GENESIS 12) “You will have a son.” How? “I’ll tell you later. Just trust.” (GENESIS 15) “Offer up your son on the mount.” Why? “I’ll tell you later. Just climb.” (GENESIS 22)
“By faith [he] . . . obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” Why did he do it? Verse 10 answers: “For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” It is only God’s kingdom that has “foundations” that will last. It is only God’s approval, God’s protection, and God’s eternal inheritance that are permanent.
we are answering the same call away from security that God gives to all who believe.
When God is arguing about why he should be deeply concerned for Nineveh, he cites its population figure as a reason for the city’s significance to him and uses the term adam—
Many people simply do not like cities, but if we care about people, and if we believe that the deepest human need is to be reconciled to God, then all Christians must be concerned for and supportive of urban Christian ministry in one way or another.
Ironically, both assimilation and tribalism are radically selfish. There is no love for the city—in both cases the city is being used to build up wealth, status, and power. God rejects both assimilation and tribalism for his people. He forbids both blending in and withdrawal.
This model—of exiles seeking the common good of their city—is also the model given to the New Testament Church.
The Old Testament prophets regularly declared that while you may be religious and fast and pray, if you don’t do justice, your religion is a sham (Isaiah 58:1–7). Isaiah said that if we don’t care for the poor (Isaiah 29:21), then we may seem to honor God with our lips but our hearts are far from him (Isaiah 29:13).
When the world sees the church doing evangelism, making converts, it only sees us increasing our tribe, adding to our numbers and increasing our power. When it sees us sacrificially serving the needs of our neighbors whether they believe as we do or not, then it may begin to see that believers are motivated more by love than by the desire to accrue power.
In the eyes of those outside the church, it is Christians’ doing justice that makes belief in the gospel plausible. Doing justice for our neighbors, whether they believe in Christ or not is, paradoxically, one of the best recommendations for the faith.
This is one of the great contradictions of our society today. It insists that all morality is relative and then it demands moral behavior.
These modern beliefs—that we must all be committed to equal rights and justice but that there are no God-given moral absolutes—undermine each other.
Modern secular education teaches every child that they must be true to themselves, that they must identify their deepest desires and dreams and pursue them, not letting family, community, tradition, or religion stand in their way. Then it calls for justice, reconciliation, and benevolence, all of which are basic forms of self-denial, even as it encourages self-assertion. It teaches relativism and calls people to be ethical. It encourages self-seeking and calls people to be sacrificial.
If Jonah failed to understand the mystery of God’s grace, it is most certainly possible for us. Ignorance of the depth of God’s grace causes our most severe problems.
Such confidence and knowledge of God’s grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.1
If you believe that—that God just forgives us and overlooks sin with a shrug—then you will take sin lightly because apparently God does too. However, if you realize that our salvation cost Jesus his glory in heaven and his life on earth, that it entailed unimaginable suffering for him, then you begin to understand that grace is not cheap but costly (Philippians 2:1–11).
All other religions put on people the burden of securing their own salvation, while God provides unearned salvation through his son (cf. Isaiah 46:1–4). While the gospel must lead to a changed life, it is not those changes that save you.
Whatever your problem, God solves it with his grace. God’s grace abolishes guilt forever. You may be filled with regret for the past or you may be living with a sense of great failure. It doesn’t matter what you have done. If you were a hundred times worse than you are, your sins would be no match for his mercy.
So many of our deepest longings to succeed are really just ways to be for ourselves what Christ should be for us. Really we are saying, “If I achieve this, then I am acceptable!” But when we stop trying to steal self-acceptance from other sources, we lose our fear. We become fearless without becoming defiant.
We know from history that Assyria eventually destroyed the ten northern tribes of Israel. So Jonah was not unrealistic in his fears. Yet God was calling him to put his Word and the spiritual good of people ahead of Israel’s interests.
Whatever you live for actually owns you. You do not really control yourself. Whatever you live for and love the most controls you.
The gospel holds out to us the prospect of a self-worth not achieved but received.
While we maintain all our identifications with our race, nationality, gender, family, community, and other connections, the most fundamental thing about us is that we are sinners saved by grace.
Something he loved withered and died. Why did God do it? Because he was being merciful and therefore was doing spiritual surgery on the idols of Jonah’s heart.
“Lord, why is this,” I trembling cried, “Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?” “Tis in this way,” the Lord replied, “I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I employ, From self, and pride, to set thee free; And break they schemes of earthly joy, That thou may’st find thy all in me.”20
It is a painful process to find our all in him, but it is the only real path to joy. So let us not feel sorry for ourselves. Jesus trod an infinitely more painful path for “the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2)—for the joy of delighting his Father and redeeming us, his brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2:10–15).
The book of Jonah is a shot across the bow. God asks, how can we look at anyone—even those with deeply opposing beliefs and practices—with no compassion?
