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Therefore, when we tell others about Jesus’s kingship we are following Jesus.
to be a disciple of Jesus, to follow his pattern of life, means accepting the gift of Jesus’s kingship while bearing witness to it. To share the gospel is not separate from discipleship but is part of its substance.
The gospel of his kingship is the premier grace, the fundamental gift that God has given to the world. We accept this gift by pledging loyalty to this King by becoming his disciple. Discipleship includes choosing the path of the cross, aiming to God-please rather than people-please, becoming a living expression of God’s law, staying single-minded, obeying Jesus, loving God and neighbor, and attesting to Jesus’s kingship.
The power of sin, law, and the old order had to be decisively broken within history by Jesus on the cross. Only then could his disciples follow by taking up their crosses too. The King has ushered in this new era. We enter it by giving allegiance.
(2 Cor. 3:18, AT). Notice the necessity of first attaining an unveiled face. The presence of Jesus’s flawless image alone is not what causes transformation. It is only effective for those with unveiled faces.
the veil is removed when a person repents from self-rule and acknowledges Jesus as Lord, for then the Spirit of the enthroned Lord begins to reign—and we are set free
We must participate by actively viewing Jesus’s image:
intentional gazing for the purpose of change is key.
When we actively gaze on Jesus’s glorious image, we are transformed together into his image.
We must continue staring at Jesus’s image together in order for our own images to be transformed increasingly into his glorious image.
The key to our final transformation is seeing the Christ fully. When he returns, that will happen. We shall see him as he is, and we shall be changed so that we are like him.
Once the King returns, we will see him face to face. That will cause a full knowing that will coincide with a final conformation to his glorious image.
worship itself is a form of gazing—attending to the truth about King Jesus. Worship is not without transforming effect.
We are transformed as we stare at the radiance of the King.
the end, humans will remain in conformity to the image of the Son as they continually worship. Creation will experience the glory as we rule over it with and under King Jesus.
memorize Scripture
It was more transformative than I could have imagined. I started out slowly and tentatively with short passages. My appetite grew. Eventually I memorized whole books of the Bible. What occupied my mind more than anything during that year was Jesus’s teachings and the apostle Paul’s moral injunctions.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was doing image-replacement therapy.
Some “nones” are hard-line atheists. But most are agnostic. They are unsure about God, gods, or religion. Many are vague I-am-spiritual-but-not-religious types who think there is probably a higher power but find themselves unwilling to commit to a specific religion. They feel science and technology provide the real solutions. Religion is perceived as irrelevant for everyday life.
This chapter analyzes why the church is failing to attract outsiders and is losing insiders, and it offers suggestions to help reverse the trend.
Scripture shows us that this book’s central question—Why the gospel?—and the most pressing question today—Why be a Christian?—have one and the same best answer: because that is how honor is being restored for humans, creation, and God.
While Jesus’s light repels everyone, because everyone sins, Jesus’s light is also pulling everyone in, even nonbelievers.
Both Jesus and Paul affirm that when nonbelievers opt to view it, the King’s resurrection life is capable of rousing them.
it is inappropriate—indeed rude—to assume that non-Christians opt to remain in that category simply because they want to wallow in sin.
They find Christians to be hypocritical, too political, too focused on getting converts, antihomosexual, sheltered, and judgmental.2
King Jesus requires all humans to realign their sexual appetites and practices in light of Scripture—those who self-identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or celibate—so that they conform to his directives. When allegiance is prioritized, the accusation that the church is antihomosexual fades, since homosexuals are not singled out.
1. Hypocrisy
Replace trusting a savior with giving allegiance to a king. Both ideas are biblical. But the shape of the gospel and the meaning of our “faith” with respect to “the Christ” in Scripture indicate that loyalty to a king should be the dominant image, whereas trust in a savior should be secondary. We need to make this switch because as stand-alone ideas, trust leads more readily to hypocrisy than allegiance.
unlike trust, allegiance demands your entire self.
On the other hand, giving allegiance to a king implicates your mind and body entirely.
Allegiance includes trust but is a bigger category. Allegiance is less likely to devolve into hypocrisy than mere trust because it requires not just a select portion of your mental life, but your entire self—mind, body, and spirit.
Trust in Jesus as Savior wrongly assumes that the primary salvation problem is that we are sinners in need of forgiveness. We do need forgiveness. But Scripture indicates that the primary problem that God is trying to solve is not the erasure of human guilt per se, but rather the human failure to distribute God’s glory to creation (see chapter 3).
When we mistakenly make “trust in Jesus for forgiveness” primary, then Jesus’s chief function is to serve as the cosmic forgiveness machine.
Over time it is easy to arrive at a dubious conclusion: forgiving sin is Jesus’s main job, and so as long as I say “sorry” once in a while, ongoing sin is not a big deal.
Allegiance to Jesus as King puts the focus not on Jesus as the cosmic forgiveness dispenser, but on his appropriate rule over me and all others. I understand that Jesus is my King.
When kingship is foregrounded, I’m more likely to think about allegiant obedience. I’m less likely to think about what I can get away with while still finding forgiveness. In other words, I’m less likely to be a hypocrite.
2. Too Political
outsiders sense Christians are more committed to the left or right political camp than to Jesus.
The announcement “Jesus is King” is at bedrock a political claim.
Jesus’s reign over everything is presently noncoercive.
If Christians are to follow their King’s policies, they must allow nonbelievers to hold faulty allegiances, while testifying persuasively to Jesus’s ultimate kingship.
The church is the church only when it is the King’s citizen body. Our political and social hopes are rooted in the King’s community.
Christians also should participate in politics outside the church. But their political footprint outside the church should mostly be oriented toward supporting policies that aid the vulnerable and encourage submission to Jesus’s kingship within the church—while testifying that a better alternative politics extends into the world only from that source.
If Christians are busier pointing right or left than they are gathering with others to confess “Jesus is King” and submit to his rule, then they’ve been inappropriately captured by partisan politics.
2. Counting Converts
Within a distorted gospel framework, you make your decision to trust—and that is perceived as your true moment of salvation. Who you are is irrelevant; just trust the message that “Jesus died for your sins.”
God, robot-like, slapped a “forgiven” label on you that can never be removed.
ongoing allegiance is the transformative process through which God continues saving you. Who you are and who you are becoming—your person, character, and virtues—absolutely do matter for your final salvation. The true gospel’s purpose is full recovery.
The true loyalty-demanding gospel of King Jesus changes the focus within conversion from quantity to quality. The shift is from counting the number of souls saved to the quality of restored humanity.
Previous insiders who no longer self-identify as Christians most frequently describe their upbringing and church experience in one (or several) of the following ways: overprotective, shallow, anti-science, repressive, exclusive, and leaving no room for questioning or doubt.
