A Node in the Web of the Emerging Church

Grace and Giving

Posted Oct 20, 08:50 PM | 0 comments | by Editor | Link

By Ross Wagner, cross-posted from ReclaimingPaul.org:

Just a few more days until the Reclaiming Paul conference. I share the sense of excitement and expectation that Tim Keel expressed in his post last month:

I am excited and hopeful that by talking about Paul and what he believed and what he said we might be infected by the same Spirit that animated and generated such a remarkable life. I am hopeful that the power that flowed from Christ through him and into his world might in some small way empower us in our short time together to go and do likewise.

As a person who spends a lot of his time in the study and in the classroom but who also serves as part of a local body of disciples seeking to reach out in the love of Jesus to our community and around the world, I am very much looking forward to spending a few days listening closely to the apostle Paul together with a group of people who are passionate—like Paul was—about embodying the gospel in their lives.

What is most compelling for me about Paul’s vision of Christian community is that it grows directly out of God’s being and character as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. In his second letter to the Corinthian community, the apostle writes:

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. (5:17-19)

God is a “missionary God,” a God who graciously turns toward the creation to reconcile a broken and hostile world to himself. Foundational to Paul’s gospel is the claim that it is God who has taken the initiative to redeem and restore a sinful and rebellious world. But reconciliation involves far more than God’s simply “not counting their trespasses against them,” as wonderful as this is (5:19). At the heart of Paul’s soteriology stands an asymmetric interchange in which Christ comes to share our humanity—taking on himself our sin and dying our death—in order to triumph over these enemies through his cross and resurrection, so that we in turn may come to share in Christ’s own life with God.

For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them … For our sake God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (5:14-15, 21).

So world-shattering is this interchange that its actualization in us can only be described as the in-breaking of the “new creation” (5:17). And this, like the first creation, is the freely chosen, unconstrained act of the sovereign Creator, whose Spirit strips the veil from our minds (3:16-18) and enlightens our sin-darkened hearts:

“For it is the God who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:6).

Paul envisions here not merely the bestowal of a new cognitive capacity, but the transformation of the entire human person by God. The Holy Spirit who liberates us by uniting us to Christ continues to work in us, conforming us increasingly to the likeness of Christ.

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror [i.e., “in the face of Jesus Christ,” 4:6], are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit (3:18).

Because it is transformation into the “same image,” that is, the image of Christ, the life of the new creation takes on a very particular shape and a very definite purpose:

“He died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (5:15).

To “live for him,” as the apostle makes clear, means living in the power of the Spirit as an active participant in God’s ongoing work of reconciliation through Christ. Twice in the space of a single sentence, Paul links the experience of reconciliation with commissioning to be a bearer of the message of reconciliation:

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us (5:18-19).

God has appointed us “ambassadors on behalf of Christ,” entrusting to us God’s urgent appeal to the world, “Be reconciled to God!” (5:20).

One might think that with such an exalted sense of calling—God’s ambassador!—Paul probably had a correspondingly big ego. Yet no one is more deeply cognizant than Paul of the fundamental paradox of being a bearer of the message of reconciliation. For, as Paul writes, the “surpassing glory” of “the ministry of the Spirit” (3:7-11), “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:6), is a treasure carried about in earthenware jars, “so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” (4:7).

In the present time, Paul and his associates embody this paradox in themselves in their service of the gospel, “always carrying in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in [their] bodies” through God’s empowering presence precisely in their weakness and suffering (4:10 NRSV alt.). Yet they are sustained in all of this by the firm hope that, just as their lives are daily being conformed to the pattern of Christ’s death, so too they will one day share in Christ’s resurrection—and not by themselves, but in the company of those whom they have served for Christ’s sake (4:13-14). Their bearing of the pattern of Christ’s death and resurrection is outward-directed in the same self-disposing love for others, to the glory of God, that marked Christ’s life: “So death is at work in us, but life in you … Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God” (4:12, 15).

Although Paul draws a distinction here between “us” and “you,” it is nevertheless evident throughout 2 Corinthians that Paul presents himself as an example for the Corinthians to imitate (cf. 1 Cor 4:16; 11:1). As those who have been reconciled to God, they too are bearers of the message of reconciliation. In a complex imaginative figure of speech, Paul pictures them as a “letter of Christ” written by “the Spirit of the living God” on human hearts, a public testimony to Paul’s gospel that is “known and read by all” (3:2-3). On behalf of Christ (1:5), the Corinthians “patiently endure the same sufferings” as Paul (1:6); likewise, with Paul they experience the consolation of Christ in the midst of these afflictions (1:7), and they cherish the same hope of sharing in Christ’s resurrection (4:14).

The Corinthians’ partnership with Paul in the mission of Christ takes the very concrete form of participation in a project that powerfully symbolizes the universal scope of the reconciliation effected in Christ, the collection of money by Paul’s predominantly Gentile churches to relieve the poverty of their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Such generous giving replicates the pattern of Christ’s own life poured out for others:

“For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (8:9).

Their embodiment of Christ’s unstinting generosity is, in fact, the “proof of [their] love” (8:24) and their “obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ” (9:13).

And now we come full circle. For while the Corinthians themselves are most certainly active subjects in this grace of giving, Paul makes it clear that God remains the primary actor in, with and under all of their own activity. God, “who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food,” is the one who “will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness” (9:10). Their generous giving flows from “the surpassing grace of God” first showered on them (9:14). As the superfluity of God’s own life floods these Gentile churches, they find themselves taken up and impelled along by the torrent of generous self-giving that constitutes God’s very being. To such a superabundance of grace Paul offers the only fitting response: “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” (9:15).

Learn more about the Reclaiming Paul event in Kansas City, October 22-24.

Also, Jake Bouma will be liveblogging from the Reclaiming Paul event starting on Wednesday (#evpaul08). If you’re blogging from the conference, drop Jake a comment on his blog and let him know so he can link to you.

Ross Wagner is Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.