Jesus Christ is the culmination of God’s eternal choice to be
God-with-us, to be God-in-relationship. As
such, the only way we can understand the redemption of the
world, the reorientation of apostate creation towards God, which
is the result of this divine choice, is to look to the life,
death and resurrection of Jesus. The
only appropriate object for us to consider in coming to an
understanding of God’s redemptive decision, is Jesus Christ.[1] Attempts
to consider our redemption, which is realized in the wonder of
our relationship with God, by other means than Christ, prove
deficient and depend on arbitrariness at best, and negligence at
worst.[2] Therefore,
because Jesus is the revealed fullness of that relationship, we
must also remember to approach him, the one who is Emmanuel,
God with us, on the terms in which God has chosen this
revelation to occur.
Though many attempts have been made to abstract God’s decision
in Christ, these end up mired in speculation,[3] and
point not to the Jesus who reveals God’s choice for us, “but a
Jesus who develops some ideal, or justifies some cause of the
writer.”[4] It
is reasonable to fear that this is the risk of anyone who sets
out to write about Christ, and wonder at God’s redemptive
choice. Therefore,
to avoid this fate, I will focus on one particular claim about
Jesus, attributed to himself: “I am the way, the truth and the
life. No one comes
to the Father except through me. If
you know me, you will know my Father also. From
now on you do know him and have seen him.”[5]
This brief passage from John’s gospel is as appropriate a basis
as any from which to contemplate our redemption in Jesus
Christ. It is
particularly appropriate, in that the names Jesus
self-applies—Way, Truth and Life—are themselves arbitrary,
abstract and subjective, if Christ is not the ontological basis
of each. In choosing
one passage as the primary text for the following
considerations, it should be acknowledged that the argument
exists that scripture itself is the theological work of the
writers, and is therefore at the mercy of the individual
writers’ subjective whims. But
the claim of faith is that in the employment of scripture, we
trust implicitly in its reliability to impart the truth of the
gospel.[6] To
deny the primacy of scripture as the basic interpretive
framework for all theological and Christological ventures
demands that we substitute and give primacy to a secondary
interpretive framework of our own, which will end in
idiosyncrasy and insufficiency.
Therefore, with this text as an interpretive framework, I will
suggest three things regarding our redemption in Christ: first,
that it is at once complete and ongoing; second, that God’s
choice is mutually binding; and third, that it is the foundation
of all creation’s hope, and the beginning of our understanding
of God-in-relationship. I
will use Jesus’ initial three part claim—Jesus is the Way, the
Truth, and the Life—as the stepping points for further
consideration of the broader gospel claim of our redemption in
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the Way
This claim points to both to the ongoing experience of Christ’s
redemption in the life of faith, and to the completed act of
redemption in the eternal choice and historical specificity of
the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In
the living experience of faith, the Way provides us with an
image of a literal way, a pathway, a mode of getting from one
place to another: in terms of redemption, the path is from
broken and apostate creation, to the fullness of the Kingdom of
God. However, this
pathway image on its own is open to any number of abstractions,
and can become not an act of God, a divine choice, but a
personal choice of direction, endlessly subject to the singular
fancy of the individual. We
therefore need to understand Jesus as the Way in which God comes
to us: the Way in which our redemption is completed, is Jesus
Christ. Thus, there
is at once, a paradoxically eternal and completed aspect to our
redemption—the Easter victory is the completed moment, the
eternal election of grace[7]—and
at the same time, our lives are a continuous working out of and
response to God’s choice for us in Jesus. As
St. Paul writes: “Not that I have…already reached the goal; but
I press on to make it my own, because Christ has made me his
own.”[8] Christ
has definitively made us his own, redeemed us; now we continue
to strive to respond fully to the profundity of that fact.
Paul’s declaration in his letter to the Philippians, points
necessarily to the first choice of God, and then to the response
in recognition of that choice. Both
the divine choice and the faithful response in turn, point to
the eschatological nature, function, and hope of Christ, as
indicated by that title. The
Christ is the Messiah, the Chosen of God, the one in whom we see
and get a foretaste of the Kingdom of God—the definitive Way. Two
things are implicit in the title of Christ, which are important
as we contemplate redemption: first, the divine choice revealed
in Jesus is eternal, free and irrevocable; apart from this
revelation, God would be a different and alien God.[9] We
can therefore say that God has chosen, in divine freedom, to be
bound eternally to us and to all creation in the particular man,
Jesus Christ. Secondly,
the proclamation of Christ as the Way means that the choice of
God-for-us “gives fullness and concretion to the general
proposition that the God of Israel is the meaning
and direction of
[our] life.”[10]
Moreover, in proclaiming Christ as the Way, we are thereby
committed to that meaning and direction, both ontologically and
practically, in lives of discipleship. As
God has chosen to be bound to us in Christ, so we are bound to
God through Christ’s Way. Furthermore,
accepting the Christ figure as presented to us throughout
scripture, we find that, immersed in the Way of Christ we are
“[mobilized to] set forward afresh, hoping in God.”[11] As
such redemption is eschatological: our redemptive direction is
ever forward, ever working and hoping toward the new heaven and
new earth[12] as
we look to the new creation that is in Christ Jesus.[13]
That Christ is the Way, then, is indeed the source of our hope. For,
we are constantly offered many alternative “ways;” myriad
options for individuation, most of which try to convince us that
the Way of Christ denies us autonomy and freedom. Any
such Christ is a fictitious “Christ”—often the product of
secular imagination or programmatic religiosity. These
alternatives fail to understand and live within the “law of
liberty;”[14] the
submissive obedience that reveals the fullness of our capacity
for freedom.[15] Far
from denying our freedom, Christ as revealed in scripture, as
well as in the lively experience of the Trinity, is the one
whose “self-giving sets man up as a subject [as opposed to an
object or plaything], awakens him to genuine individuality and
autonomy, frees him, makes him a king, so that in his rule the
kingly rule of God Himself attains form and revelation.”[16] The
Way of Christ is the way that finds us in reciprocal, living,
intimate relationship with the One who inspires the whole earth
to make joyful noise.[17] Christ
as the Way assures that “Knowing God through impersonal
abstractions is ruled out, knowing God through programmatic
projects is abandoned, knowing God in solitary isolation is
forbidden.”[18]
Jesus Christ is the Truth
The claim that Jesus is the Way is dependent upon the second
proclamation, “Jesus is the Truth”—at least intellectually. Proclaiming
Jesus the Way is widely understood to be a personal choice—not
God’s choice—and is therefore dependent solely on personal
faith, on the personal belief that Jesus is the Truth. The
Christian experience is reduced to just that: personal
experience—which is, in terms questions of truth, often a
pejorative expression. The
reduction of metaphysical truth to personal experience is
largely predicated on the post-enlightenment tendency to trust
exclusively that which is empirical, observable and objective,
and the further assumption that science is the only legitimate
access to “truth.” Lesslie
Newbigin writes:
Religious experience occurs in the sanctuary, but its claim to
truth has to be tested in the public world of facts where
scientific disciplines operate. Individual
religions may have value for those who prefer them and are to be
respected as such. But
claims to truth have to be tested in the public world where the
principles of modern science operate. Here,
pluralism is not accepted…the response of the Christian
churches—or at least Protestant churches—to the challenge of the
Enlightenment was to accept the dichotomy and with draw into the
private sector.[19]
Two reactions in light of the withdrawal of Christian churches
into the private sector seem especially common: the desperate
search for the “historical Jesus”—that is, the Jesus that lived
and breathed outside of the theological meditations of the
gospel writers—in an attempt to demythologize scripture, and
gain secular credibility. However,
“to speak of the historical Jesus as if he were not yet the
Christ…is to offer a historical reconstruction. It
is to abstract the historical Jesus from the actual symbols with
which we have to work. It
is to pursue speculation.”[20] The
pursuit of speculation is definitively to abandon the pursuit of
truth, in favor of something more palatable. Of
course, understanding the historical contexts in which scripture
originated inspires richer readings. Also,
historical Jesus studies help to remind us that our Christ was
in fact a man who walked among the people—a good corrective for
Gnostic interpretations. But
the flesh and blood Jesus cannot be abstracted from what
scripture tells us: that he was Emmanuel,
God with us.
The second common reaction to the withdrawal of the Church when
provoked by the questions of science and secularism is to
embrace doubt and criticism to such a degree that everything in
the gospels that is presented as fact—miracles, the
resurrection, for example—is reduced to mere metaphor. Like
historical Jesus studies, doubt and critical reading play an
important role in exegesis and theology. However
they must “function as tools for discovering and dispensing with
idols, for unmasking and disempowering those images of God that
make God only one more component of the mundane world.”[21] Regrettably
many critical readings succeed in cleansing Christianity of its
conceptual idols, but at the same time, like uprooting wheat
with the weeds,[22] eliminate
belief in the true God.[23]
These are but a few among many concerns to bear in mind as we
consider what it means to call Christ, the Truth. However,
when we say with Christ that he is the Truth, we state as
foundational, that any genuine pursuit of truth will not lead us
away from Christ.[24] The
pursuit of truth then, is the desire to know more of Christ, the
desire to understand the fullness of Christ—a lifelong pursuit,
as St. Paul well noted in the passage from Philippians, above. Moreover,
Christ is the measure of Truth: indeed he embodies it.
I noted above that assenting to Jesus as the Way is widely
thought to depend on the primary acceptance of him as the
Truth—but, this is not the order in which they are stated. I
do not believe that this is merely authorial preference. Rather,
it seems that the Way precedes and supports the pursuit of
truth; for, the revelatory nature of the Way always points
beyond itself. The
Way of Christ, understood as a particular way of living, is the
life consistently oriented towards, grounded in, and enveloped
by the presence of God. In
the second sense of Christ as the Way of God to us, or
revelation of the Father, we see clearly that the Truth of God
cannot be fully known apart from how God chooses to
self-reveal. Again,
outside this revelation, God is a different and
unknown—untruthful—God. Thus,
while Christ is definitively the full Truth of God’s redemptive
choice, faithful living in the light of Christ as Truth, is a
process of ongoing discipleship and of deepening relationship
with God.
Our understanding of God’s Truth is enriched by, and rooted in,
Jesus’ proclamation—“If you know me, you know the Father.” Our
pursuit of truth and the faithful revelation thereof are
necessarily mutually bound. The
thrust of scriptural experience is witness to God as a God of
relation, God-with-us, fully revealed in Christ, and so we rest
in the faith that this revelation is trustworthy. If
it is not trustworthy, then to quote Paul out of context, but
with like-minded irony, “of all people, we are to be most
pitied.”[25] Jesus’
words assure us that the Truth that God has revealed is wholly
true, that God’s decision for us is indeed complete and this is
the source of our confidence; in Jesus, we come to know God.
So, if we trust in the truth that God would not self-reveal in a
deceptive way, we must return always to the fundamental
assertion that any consideration or pursuit of truth will not
lead us away from the Way and Truth that Christ embodies. We
are bound of necessity to look to Jesus of Nazareth, the
crucified and risen Christ as the locus and measure of all
truth. In
proclaiming Jesus as the Truth, we affirm our submission of our
own truths to God’s; we relinquish the freedom to apply
truthfulness arbitrarily. If
in response to the divine choice of God-for-us we live as though
that choice has not been made, as though that Truth is
expendable or an insufficient foundation for our lives, then we
turn our backs on the very redemption that it assures.
Of course, in our sinfulness, we continually turn our
backs—choose a different truth, pursue an idol, seek our own
redemption. Yet, our
infidelity is merely a denial of the God’s Truth, not an
alteration or undoing of it. Moreover,
because the Truth of Christ is eternally the choice of
God-for-us, we are continually welcomed back, as prodigal sons
and daughters.[26] This
is the hope that we have: where relativism is the truth of the
world, and though it is indeed seductive despite the
ever-shifting sands of its foundation, the sure foundation of
the Truth revealed in Christ is eternal and unchanging. It
provides us with a way of knowing, a framework that is
independent of the vicissitudes of personal fancy, and which
directs us beyond ourselves. The
Truth of God, the logos made
flesh,[27] is
the one who reveals the Truth of God’s love, who is our meaning
and direction—the one who lives our redemption “into reality in
our death-ravished and sin-decimated world.”[28]
Jesus Christ is the Life
This is the full claim of Jesus in John’s gospel: He is the
Life. Often we treat
things Christological principally as matters of metaphysics.[29] In
one sense, redemption is a metaphysical issue—to deny that
outright is to deny the deepest part of our nature, that part
which makes it possible to be in relationship with the Triune
God—namely, our soul. This
metaphysical awareness directs our attention to that aspect of
redemption which is eternally elusive to scientific valuation
and unknowable outside the realm of faith. It
is this which serves to remind us that our redemption is at once
a continual act—ongoing within our lives and experience—as well
as a verifiable historical event.
Yet, to leave the Christological claim that Jesus is the Life to
the realm of metaphysics is to speak as though every aspect of
life were not involved. But
bringing redemption back down to earth often causes us to
stumble over it. Regrettably, we often see and hear the gospel
preached as though it is the particularities of the preacher’s
life—his or her political alignment, lifestyle, or theological
preference—that serve to demonstrate the consummation of the
Christ-Life. Newbigin
cites this overly-personalized gospel as one of the primary
concerns of any evangelism: in our enthusiasm for critiquing
another culture or lifestyle through our Christian lens, we fail
to remember that the gospel “calls into question all cultures,
including the one in which it was originally embodied.”[30]
At least as dangerous as claiming our own lives as the
fulfillment of the Christ-Life, is the attempt to make the
gospel “relevant,” which most often gives rise to a watered-down
gospel devoid of its radical power, and involving an
understandable God who is easily understood and manipulated, and
who is easily applied to “my situation.” In
this case, “The message is simply absorbed into the existing
world-view and heard as a call to be more pious or better
behaved. In the
attempt to be ‘relevant’ one may fall into syncretism, and in
the effort to avoid syncretism may become irrelevant.”[31] This
is a constant peril facing gospel-preaching and living. The
danger arises primarily from the modernist and post-modernist
belief that life is that which is constituted by any given
individual, and the singularity of her or his experience. It
is to this desperate individualism, self-righteousness and
self-seeking that Jesus cries out, “Yet, you refuse to come to
me for life!”[32]
The abundant life[33] that
Jesus comes among us to offer does not have to do with
individual sanctity or individual redemption—the Life of Christ
eschews such things. Attempts
to live as though this were the case result in, “sinful and
fatal isolation…this isolation is not intended for man [sic] in
the divine election of grace (in Jesus Christ).”[34] The
Life of Christ is fulfilled in community; it is Life as God sees
it; it is the Life of relationship as revealed in the
perichoretic Life of the Trinity. We
must avoid formulating a Christ-Life that is predicated on a
vision of Jesus as “my personal Lord and Savior,” not because it
is not true—our salvation and redemption is for each of us as
adopted children of God[35]—but
because this vision tends to stand over and above the Christ who
is our redeemer, our Lord
and Savior, the one who is God’s choice for all creation.
Moreover the personalization of grace directs focus away from
the demands of living discipleship, in that, the profession of a
“personal savior” tends to constitute an afterlife insurance
policy, or stems from the zealous cultivation of consumers of a
God-product.[36] It
removes focus from the fact that our redemption is for our lives
now—belief otherwise verges on, or engages fully in Gnosticism.[37] We
must remember that, “Not ‘Thank God, I’m in!’
but ‘How long, O Lord?’ is the prayer of the saved.”[38]
This distinction is important, because the cries of “How long, O
Lord?”[39] acknowledge
both the decisive redemption of Christ, and the continued and
lived hope of that event. It
allows us to look around, to see the “death-ravaged and
sin-desiccated world”[40] we
live in, to proclaim death and sin already and decisively
defeated and to deny the power they claim over us. The
prayer of the saved allows us to “let endurance have its full
effect.”[41] Also,
in reminding us that all is not perfect, the prayer ought to
drive us into community that we might “bear each other’s
burdens, and in this way…fulfill the law of Christ”[42]—that
law which is our liberty. As
we live out this liberty, in freedom-revealing obedience, we
discover that “Jesus provides the energy for life.”[43] We
are empowered to respond to the completed act of redemption,
that eternal outpouring of grace, with lives of energized
witness with all the saints until the promise of Calvary is
revealed in all its fullness.
We respond in this way because we recognize that in Christ, the
singular choice of God to become Emmanuel,
God has chosen to be bound to this life, to this creation. God
eternally offers himself as the very source of Life abundant,
and the foundation of its meaning. Still,
we can choose to ignore this, or to project other visions of
full life, to seek out other sources of meaning. But
“as long as we find our life’s meaning totally or exhaustively
in terms of this world—in terms of the language, concepts, and
values of our culture or social location or even our
religion—then the only result will be idolatry.”[44]
God is the source of meaning and energy for Life, and because
God is revealed fully as God-in-relationship, we must always
return to the hope of the redemption of community. For,
community denies the possibility of worshiping God, of living
out our discipleships in the isolation of our own preference. It
demands that we see others as those created in God’s image, that
we engage all of creation as integral to the revealing love of
God. Inevitably, as
we come to understand redeemed Life on God’s terms, our
community grows to include not just those with whom we agree, or
who appeal to us. Rather,
the full Life of God is the one that expands to include
prostitutes and tax-collectors, Pharisees and Samaritans, Rich
and Poor, Jews and Gentiles, Sparrows and Lilies and on and on. We
must not mistake people or any aspect of creation for God, but
we must embrace these people, this whole creation as the very
thing that God, the one whose righteousness is proclaimed in the
heavens,[45] has
chosen as a covenant and relationship partner. This
is the Life of Christ. This
is the Life that allows us, compels us, to sing the “new song”[46] of
redemption.
In conclusion, it must be noted that this is not an exhaustive
contemplation of our redemption in Christ. There
is likely much that has been overlooked. I
have chosen not to discuss inter-religious conversations, for
example, though there is light to be shed on our understanding
of redemption from such endeavors. I
am also wary of speculating about the particularities that
constitute the redeemed. I
believe that the proclamation of Christ as Lord, as the Way,
Truth and Life, is foundational to full understanding of
redemption and the wholly appropriate response thereto. Still,
we are always called to humility and self-criticism in the light
of the gospel. Our
responsibility in the light of Christ is discipleship, and
adhering to the commandment to “Love one another.”[47] Jesus
himself warns us against self-righteous judgment, and reminds us
that many will be at the table with him who those that claim the
promise for themselves would turn away, while the self-righteous
are the ones cast aside.[48]
Thus, it is the very statement, our joining with Jesus in the
faithful proclamation that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life
that must inspire in us the humility, service, love and wonder
that the grace of redemption demands. It
is this proclamation which assures us that our redemption is
complete in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and that
we are called to live in the light of that redemption—that light
which no darkness can overcome;[49] it
is this which assures us that the Triune God, the Creator,
Redeemer and Sustainer of all things, has chosen once and for
eternity to be bound to us, and to “make us his own”; it this
which assures us that we have profound hope in the face of evil,
that we will find ourselves one day singing “Blessing, glory,
wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, power and might be to our God
forever and ever!”[50] in
the company of the multitude of saints, returned and redeemed to
the glory of God.
Endnotes
