This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 3.
“Which part of ‘thou shalt not’ did you not understand?”
This church sign, smugly berating the morning traffic, communicates an important perception of Christian ethics: it is fundamentally negative and considerably holier-than-thou. This view seems almost as common among Christians as it is in the wider public. Many of us seem to hold the idea that we get in by grace, and then there’s a list of things we can’t do. We’ll be fine as long as we don’t do stuff the Bible explicitly forbids.
Either that, or we fail to see that the gospel changes our lives at all. After all, we’re okay spiritually, and Christ has set us free from all that legalism. We’re free to get the same jobs, buy the same houses, send our children to the same schools, and vote for the same parties as everyone who lives near us. At the end of our lives, when God asks us why we should be allowed into his heaven, we’ll just tell him that Jesus died for us, and everything will be fine.
What this article proposes is that the gospel, properly understood, shouldn’t allow us to recognize ourselves in either of these caricatures. The gospel carries within it a way to live—that is, it’s not the kind of message which we can believe merely ‘academically’, without it changing our lives. This is because the gospel speaks of God’s powerful activity in the world and in us; it is a message that concerns the fate of all humanity and, indeed, the whole creation (e.g. 2 Pet 3:10-12). By the gospel, we are set free from sin’s penalty and power. We are enabled to live as God intended—kings and priests whose lives are committed to serving and blessing our creator’s world (e.g. 1 Pet 2:9-12). Therefore our morality can’t be exhausted by a list of ‘thou shalt not’s, but is marked by the freedom positively to do good (Titus 2:11-14).
But before we develop these ideas, we need a definition of ‘the gospel’. At its most basic, ‘the gospel’ is a proclamation, the message that Jesus is the Christ and the Lord. However, we find the New Testament writers using the word in a broader sense to mean something like ‘the body of teaching about Jesus’ (e.g. Gal 2:2-5, Eph 1:13, 1 Pet 4:17). I’ll use the word ‘gospel’ in a loose sense, to refer not just to the message, but to the events themselves—the whole life and work of Christ (his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, baptism with the Spirit, ongoing intercession, and return to judge the living and the dead). Each of these ‘gospel moments’ will have some bearing at different times on how we live as Christians. Fundamentally, though, the reality that ‘Jesus is Lord’ has real consequences for us and for the world more broadly. It is not just a doctrinal box to tick; it changes the orientation and actions of our lives in all their detail. With this in mind, let us explore firstly what God has done in the world through the gospel, and then what he has done in us.
Jesus Christ is Lord
If we are to make sense of God’s activity in the world, we must see that he has made Messiah Jesus the world’s ruler. By his death, Jesus has conquered God’s enemies and ours (John 12:31, Col 2:13-15, Heb 2:14). His resurrection from the dead has made him king not just of Israel, but of all the nations and, indeed, of the whole creation (Matt 28:18, Rom 1:1-4, Col 1:15-23). With his lordship comes the authority to judge (Acts 17:31). To live rightly in this world, we need to recognize this world’s ruler. We must also acknowledge the debt we owe to Jesus, the one who bore God’s wrath for us. This is the gospel, revealed by God, and reviled as blasphemy or foolishness by those who don’t know him (1 Cor 1:23).
Gospel and created order
This gospel affirms God’s good ordering of his world. I argued in my first article that God has stitched a moral order into his creation: the world is governed by moral laws, even as it is governed by physical laws. The world is not just a convenient stage where God could enact a great drama in the events of Jesus’s life. Rather, God’s love for his world is the very reason for the Christ event (John 3:16). That is, the gospel shows us God’s passionate care for his creation: Jesus has overcome those things that spoil the world—the devil, sin, and death (1 Cor 15:54-57, 1 John 3:8). Jesus didn’t come to do away with creation; he came to set God’s twisted world to rights, to restore the moral order.
The gospel and history
Therefore the gospel is the high point of history: it fulfils God’s plans and promises, and it establishes what’s to come. Many of our contemporaries read history as the march of human progress, or as an endless parade of meaningless events. But in truth, God has his own purposes for the world’s history: it is a salvation-history. He is the director and the principal actor: he “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11). History’s goal is to see all things, whether on earth or in heaven, come under the headship of Messiah Jesus (Eph 1:10, Col 1:16).
Furthermore, Jesus Christ is the man who fulfilled God’s original purposes for humanity. God’s intention was to bless his “very good” world (Gen 1:22, 31, 2:3) through the agency of humans. Humanity had a dual role: to rule (Gen 1:26), and to perform the priestly task of bringing God’s blessing to the creation beyond the Garden (Gen 1:28, 2:15).1 The Fall frustrated those purposes to an extent (Gen 3:16-19), but God promised to undo the Fall’s effects by bringing blessing to all the families of the earth through the seed of Abraham (Gen 12:1-3).
We see this promise partially fulfilled in the nation of Israel, which was like a new Adam. They were placed in an Eden-like land of fruitfulness and rest, watered and blessed by God, where they could enjoy God’s presence (Deut 3:20, 8:6-10, 11:10-12, 12:5-10, 26:15). Israel had the task of fulfilling Adam’s kingly and priestly roles (Exod 19:6; cf. Deut 4:6). As in Eden, God’s continued blessing in Israel depended on their obeying his word. God warned that when Israel disobeyed, they would be expelled, just as Adam had been (Deut 28:1-68). Clearly it was not until Jesus Christ appeared that an adequate new Adam was found.
Christ’s life resumed Israel’s history, and he became God’s means of bringing blessing to the world. Although Jesus didn’t need to repent of sins, he was baptized in order to identify himself with faithful Israel: he was declared to be God’s son (Matt 3:17), just as Israel had been (Exod 4:22-23). However, where God’s son, Israel, failed (e.g. Hos 11:1-2), Israel’s new representative, God’s son Jesus, triumphed (Matt 4:1-11). He was the new Adam, the ultimate king and priest, and the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham of blessing (Gal 3:29). In this way, the gospel is God’s final and decisive word on the life of humanity’s first, fallen representative.2
That is, because of Adam’s sin, God could have left the sentence of condemnation and death on humanity. But by his grace, God in Christ broke into history to bring forgiveness and life (Rom 3:25-26, 5:17, 1 Cor 15:21-22). When he says that his purpose now is to sum up all things in Christ (Eph 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:28), he is also pointing to a new creation where he will be present in blessing, even as he was in Eden (Rev 21:1-5, 22, 22:1-5). Moreover, through the Christ event, the life of that new age has irrupted into our present reality.
If we want to live rightly in the present, we have to recognize that this world groans in the overlap of the old age (of sin and death) and the new (of forgiveness and life; e.g. Eph 1:21, Heb 4:9-11, 12:18-25, 1 Pet 1:3-7, 13). We must live in a world where we see some of God’s blessings already poured out, and yet we know that a thoroughly renewed created order is still to come.
Thus the gospel provides the key to the whole of history. It causes us to look both backwards to God’s creation and forwards to Christ’s return and the new creation, while we seek to live rightly now. The question immediately arises, then: precisely what effect does this salvation-history have on God’s creation?
The redemption, vindication, and transformation of the created order
It is time to draw together these threads of thought on history and the created order. We must notice that the historical gospel doesn’t dismiss or overwrite God’s purposes in creation. On the contrary, it redeems, vindicates, and transforms the created moral order.
‘Redemption’ is an aspect of salvation which is usually tied to Christ’s death (e.g. Rom 3:24-25, Heb 9:12, 15, Rev 5:9). Christ’s perfect life meant his death could pay to rescue humanity from sin and death (Heb 7:26-27). Again, this isn’t merely some abstract idea: the New Testament writers are emphatic that Jesus was a truly human part of the real created order (Heb 2:17, 1 John 4:2-3). He could therefore be a legitimate substitute for humanity (Rom 8:3, Heb 10:4), and he could also act as representative head of the whole creation (Heb 2:5-15). For while the notion of ‘ransom’ or ‘rescue’ is primarily applied to humanity, sold as a slave under sin, God’s plan has always been to redeem all that belongs to him—the whole sin-affected creation (Rom 8:19-23; cf. Acts 3:21, Col 1:20, Jas 1:18; cf. Lev 25:23-24, Isa 35:1-9, 44:23).
This, along with the fact that Jesus was raised with a body, vindicates the creation. God has fulfilled his purposes for his creation; he has not abandoned his world to decay! Christ’s resurrection is the proof that God has accepted his redeeming work (Rom 4:25, 1 Cor 15:17). It is also the firstfruits that guarantees the new creation (Acts 26:23, 1 Cor 15:23, 42-53). All of this gives us reason to work for the Lord now, in this world (2 Pet 3:13-14): serving the redeemer will mean living redeemed lives, being “zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).
In the early church, some people thought that there was no point doing good in the world because Paul had said that Jesus was coming back soon (2 Thess 3:11 with 2:2). Perhaps they thought Jesus had condemned the creation to oblivion. Some of us can fall into the same way of thinking. But this is precisely the opposite of the apostle’s intention: the news that Jesus Christ is coming soon is a call to action in the here and now (1 Cor 15:58, Col 3:1-17, 1 Thess 5:2-15, 2 Thess 3:12-13). The task of Christians is not merely to wait, but also to serve (1 Thess 1:9-10). Our goal is not to escape earth for some supposedly immaterial heaven; we are in heaven now (Eph 2:6)! So we must let our present heavenly life inform and shape our present earthly existence (Col 3:1).3
For the redemption and vindication that we see in the gospel have not just restored the created order, they have transformed it. It was still possible to sin in the ‘very good’ creation; in the the new creation, it will be impossible: there will be no more curse, night, or chaotic sea (Rev 21:1, 22:3, 5).4 Moreover, some purposes of the original creation will be fulfilled and superseded in the new.
Let’s consider again the example of marriage. Jesus is clear that there won’t be any marriage in the new creation (Luke 20:35). Knowing this will affect the way we live in this time of overlap. Thus, Paul could make some notoriously positive statements about singleness (1 Cor 7:7, 27-32), even though the Old Testament reveals God’s very high view of family and children. (After all, Adam’s aloneness is the first thing God declares to be “not good” in Genesis 2:18).)
We might see this as an example of the new creation affecting our present reality. In the present creation, marriage has special functions: fellowship, a unique and faithful love, creating a new family, and filling and subduing the earth. Presumably, in the new creation, these will be either unnecessary or not confined to marriage. If it’s possible and even ‘good’ to be unmarried under the new covenant, it must be because God’s people can supply, say, social conditions, encouragement and fellowship that allow them in some ways to be a substitute for marriage.5 In my circles, at least, I feel we are failing single (and all manner of ‘family-less’) people rather badly on this front! We must learn to expand the boundaries of our families beyond biology. When we talk about ‘our brothers and sisters in Christ’, it should be more than empty jargon.
Meanwhile, it’s important for new-covenant believers to participate in the moral order in the light of the transforming power of the gospel. Various aspects of our lives will be affected differently by the gospel’s salvation-history. It shall, therefore, require serious, sustained and prayerful reflection on Scripture and the world to come up with concrete applications in this era between Christ’s ascension and return. Further guidelines will be explored in the next article. For now, however, having surveyed the difference the gospel makes the God’s world, we turn to consider the difference it makes in us as we seek to do good in that world.
New spiritual life in and with Christ
The moral order has been transformed by Christ’s activity in the world and its history; likewise, the way we participate in that order is transformed by Christ in us. By the Holy Spirit, we receive a new capacity to know the moral order, and to act accordingly. We have been set free from both the penalty and the power of sin. We have also been given corresponding freedom and authority to order life towards its proper purposes. Nevertheless, as we await the final revelation of God’s kingdom, the righteousness of our lives shall consistently fall short of our Lord’s.
When we are included in Christ, we undergo a radical, spiritual rebirth. In this overlap of the ages, we experience salvation because God dwells in us by his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the agent of the resurrection (Rom 8:11). This means he is also a sign of the judgement and salvation of the Day of Yahweh (Acts 2:16-33; cf. John 16:7). Therefore it is a mistake to think that the New Testament’s word ‘spiritual’ (πνευματικος) means ‘immaterial’; rather, it is better understood as a synonym for ‘of God’.
So for Paul, the Spirit’s arrival is one way to describe the beginning of God’s new age. He gives us a series of contrasts: all humanity is either in Adam or in Christ (Rom 5:12-21, 1 Cor 15:21-49); believers have moved from being an ‘old man’ to a ‘new man’ (Rom 6:6, Col 3:9-10, 4:22-24); we once were fleshly (Rom 7:5, Eph 2:3; cf. Gen 6:3, 12, Jer 17:5, Isa 40:6) but now are spiritual (Rom 7:6, 1 Cor 3:1). This new life with Christ is characterized by forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, holiness and joy (Rom 5:1-11, 2 Cor 5:18-19, Col 1:14, 3:12; cf. Acts 2:38). Having been adopted and raised with Christ in the power of the Spirit (Rom 8:9-11, 15), believers are now said to be seated with him in the heavenlies (Eph 2:6, Col 2:12), waiting for the full revelation of our salvation—including new bodies (Phil 3:19-21, Col 3:1-4). Our resurrection bodies shall be imperishable and incorruptible (1 Cor 15:53). No longer merely ‘natural’ or ‘earthy’, they shall be ‘spiritual’—that is, not ‘immaterial’, but ‘animated by the Spirit’—and suitable for the new-heavens-and-new-earth creation (1 Cor 15:47-49).6 In short, redeemed humanity is remade in the image of God (Rom 8:29), now fit once more to fulfil God’s purposes as kings and priests in the created order.
New hearts and minds
Through the gospel, we learn what pleases God. The first thing we need in order to live rightly in God’s world is a new insight into the moral order. For previously the twisting power of sin prevented our perceiving or understanding reality properly. Humanity under sin is completely helpless: sin is a kind of slavery (John 8:34, Rom 6:17) and death (Eph 2:1). Our whole being is corrupted: sin makes our thinking futile, and our hearts foolish, dark, and hard (Rom 1:21, Eph 4:18). Unregenerate humanity is also susceptible to ungodly passions (1 Pet 1:14), following the course of this world, or the prince of the power of the air who blinds us to the truth of the gospel (Eph 2:2, 2 Cor 4:4). Fallen people in their ‘natural’ state, then, are ignorant enemies of God, subject to his wrath. We have no idea how to please God, as well as no desire to do so. We are so far gone, we can’t even see how badly off we are (Rom 3:10-18, Eph 2:3).
In the gospel of Christ, however, the effects of the Fall are undone: there is freedom from sin and death (Rom 6:17-18, Eph 2:4-5); our minds and hearts are renewed in the power of the Spirit (Rom 12:1-2, 2 Cor 4:16, Eph 4:22-24); we may resist the wiles of the Satan and the lures of the world (1 Cor 10:13, James 4:7); we can embrace the gospel and be reconciled to our heavenly Father (2 Cor 4:6, 5:17-18). Finally, by his grace, we want to please God, and we can discern how to! The third article in this series will explore how the gospel shows us the shape of God’s moral order as, with the Spirit’s help, we dwell in the Scriptures and observe the world.
The obedience of faith
The Holy Spirit not only allows us to know the moral order, he also helps us to live in line with it. Under the old covenant, even the faithful Israelite who wished to obey God found that he couldn’t because of his fleshly condition (Rom 7:18-23). In Christ, however, we have been rescued from this body of death (Rom 7:24), and, having received the Spirit, we are given power to obey God in a way that was impossible before (Rom 8:4-9). Thus God is not an angry, unpredictable judge, nor an impossibly oppressive taskmaster. Instead, he’s a loving creator and redeemer who shows us the best way to live in his world, and who empowers us to please him. For the New Testament insists that when we obey God, it is because he is at work in us to transform us (1 Cor 12:6, 15:10, Phil 2:12-13, Col 1:11, 1 Thess 3:12-13, Heb 13:21). We are no longer slaves to sin; we have been freed from its power. So when God commands us to obey him, he can expect that we’ll be able to do so (Rom 6:11-13). We are called to act in a certain way because of who we are—who God has made us to be.
This truth saves us from two momentous errors: firstly, that being Christian makes no difference to godliness, and, secondly, that being Christian makes us immune to sin. So some of us cling faithfully to the soul-satisfying truth that Christ has died to save us from God’s wrath (the penalty of sin), but we don’t see ourselves as saved now from the power of sin. We continue to consider ourselves miserable sinners, no more capable of doing good than we were before we knew Christ. This flies in the face of God’s promise that he has given us new life, and that his Spirit is at work in us to empower us to do good. We are slaves no longer of sin, but of God (Rom 6:4-7, 17-18); we are no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit (Rom 8:9). Becoming Christian is painted in stark terms: it is the difference between death and life (Eph 2:4-5), between dark and light (1 John 1:5-7), between enemy and heir (Rom 5:10; 8:17).
This should change the way we approach the world. We should expect to see God transforming us powerfully “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:14) so that we come to resemble the Lord Jesus more and more. That is, redeemed people can now live as God intended for humanity: kings and priests who bring order and blessing to the world correctly (1 Pet 2:9; Rev 5:10). We have been made free to live with purpose in conformity with the shape of the created moral order. If our goal is simply to ‘not sin’, we are selling ourselves—and God—very short indeed. We have been given freedom and power to live the best life possible under God, actively doing good in his world.
For example, if I am looking for a marriage partner, I shouldn’t just find the scriptural boundaries of not-sin and tick them off: Christian, opposite sex, not a close relative, not already married. I also need to ask, “Who shares my passion for Jesus? With whom can I best be a blessing in the world? What new ways of serving are opened up through this relationship?” (By the way, in a fallen world, physical attraction’s important too!)
None of this is to say, however, that sin will no longer be present in our lives. Even John (who writes so that we may not sin—see 1 John 2:1) reminds us that we will still commit sins. Thankfully, Jesus is our advocate who also cleanses and forgives us (1 John 1:8-10). The notion of the Christian life as ‘walking in victory’, completely free from sin ourselves and from its effects in this fallen world, is a wicked, dangerous fiction.
Many of us will be tempted to think either that we are still enslaved to sin, or that we are completely finished with it. Both of these extremes can prevent our striving for godliness—on the one hand, because we think it is impossible and unnecessary, and on the other, because we don’t take the sin in our lives seriously. But living rightly in the overlap of the ages requires a different view: when we notice that we are doing good deeds, we should thank God for his work in us. When we fall short, we should repent—that is, change not just our attitude but what we do (Luke 3:8-14, 2 Cor 7:10-11). And we should pray that he will continue to so give us of his Spirit that we are able to change.
In brief, a right understanding of the gospel should affect the way we live in the present. God’s activity in Jesus Christ has vindicated, redeemed and transformed his creation. He is also at work in us to transform us into Christ’s likeness, so that we might do good now as a kingdom of priests. Working out from this gospel foundation, it remains for us to examine in greater detail what it should look like to do good in the Christian life.
(This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 3.)
Endnotes
1 The Hebrew words translated ‘work’ and ‘keep’ in the ESV are words commonly used for priestly service in the tabernacle or temple (e.g. Num 3:7-8, 8:26, 18:5-6). For a fuller discussion, see GJ Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word, Dallas, 1987, ad loc.
2 I owe this insight to O O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An outline for evangelical ethics, 2nd edn, Apollos, Leicester, 1994, p. 13. This book has been a major influence on much of my thinking for this series of articles.
3 NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, SPCK, London, 2003, p 355.
4 While we may not have a definitive answer as to why God created a world where sin was possible, we must note that through his redemptive work in history, God has had occasion to display his glory (Rom 9:22-23, Eph 3:10, Phil 2:5-11).
5 O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, p. 70.
6 Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 351.
