after ordinary: anticipating the revolution
Everyone is driven in the present by an expectation of the future. According to the spirit of our age, we came from nowhere and are going to nowhere, but in between we can make something of ourselves.
Christians are driven by a different story. Our origins are extraordinarily noble, but we rebelled against this dependent glory. Not content to be the moon, reflecting the sun’s glory, we demanded to be the sun itself. And yet, some extraordinary events have occurred in history to redeem us — and our history — from sin and death. And the destiny on which we have set our hopes is anything but ordinary. It is nothing less than “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” One day, there will be no distinction between heaven and earth. Faith will give way to sight. Then we won’t live on promises anymore. There won’t be an ordinary day. The Next Big Thing is Christ’s return. Until then, we live in hope that changes our ordinary lives here and now.
Christ has already secured this glorious destiny for us as the “firstfruits,” but everything in our own daily experience seems to count against it. Our bodies decay, we lose our memory, and we seem to be falling apart just when we wanted to save the world. Apart from the surprising announcement of the gospel, we would vacillate between utopianism and nihilism. From everything we see around us and in our own lives, this gospel seems too good to be true.
The life we’re living right now prepares for everything after the resurrection of the dead. This event will not inaugurate the end of time, but the end of time as measured by the law of sin and death. It will not be the end of this world, but its rebirth. In Scripture, the Sabbath was to time what the Holy Land, with the temple at its heart, was to space. They were a preview, brief intimations, of coming attractions. In the kingdom that Christ inaugurated and will consummate at his return, every day will be the everlasting Sabbath and the whole earth — in fact, the whole cosmos — will be his sanctuary.
Measured against that sort of radical event, our lives seem exceedingly brief. Yet the age to come is not sealed off from our lives here and now. Instead, the picture we get dimly in the prophets and more clearly in the New Testament is that the age to come is already penetrating into this present evil age by the powerful energy of the Holy Spirit.
Working through the ordinary means of grace, the Spirit not only gives us good things. He is himself the gift of the Father and the Son. In many premodern societies, a person might surrender something valuable, like a cloak, to secure a loan. In extreme cases, one might offer a family member as a pledge or deposit until the full loan was repaid. In Scripture, however, we are told that God himself has been given by God as the deposit. The Father and the Son have given the Holy Spirit, “who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Eph 1:14).
It is the Holy Spirit who renovates and who tends the garden — both within us and between us and the other branches — ensuring that we bear the fruit of the Spirit: patience, love, burden-bearing, self-control, and other attributes appropriate to the “already-not yet” tension of our lives here and now.
It would be easier to live in an “either-or” world. We could be “dead in the trespasses and sins,” ignoring God’s claims and his saving work on our behalf. Or we could be glorified, perfected in body and soul, here and now. But both of these are delusions, if we are in Christ. There are no first-class Christians who have attained victory over all known sin and the curse that is common to humanity since the fall. Nor are there carnal Christians who are forgiven but devoid of the Spirit and his sanctifying power.
There are two kinds of prosperity gospels. One promises personal health, wealth, and happiness. Another promises social transformation. In both versions, the results are up to us. We bring God’s kingdom to earth, either to ourselves or to society, by following certain spiritual laws or moral and political agendas. Both forget that salvation comes from above, as a gift of God. Both forget that because we are baptized into Christ, the pattern of our lives is suffering leading to glory in that cataclysmic revolution that Christ will bring when he returns. Both miss the point that our lives and the world as they are now are not as good as it gets. We do not have our best life or world now.
However, the opposite danger is to ignore the good news that the new creation has already begun. Christ has already inaugurated his kingdom, even though he has not yet consummated it. If we wall off this coming kingdom as entirely future, we may easily confuse “ordinary” with this present age that is fading away.
The difficult place to stand is at that precarious intersection of this present age, which is captive to sin and death, and the age to come, which is the fruit of Christ’s victory that the Spirit is planting, tending, and spreading in our hearts and in our world through the gospel. The garden is growing, but like a bright patch weather-beaten by the conflict between these two ages. The hot winds blow hard against us, but the Spirit’s cool breeze of grace keeps the garden blossoming and spreading across the desert.
The Next Big Thing — No, the Real One
“Behold, I am making all things new!” (Rev 21:5). There is something in the revolutionary impulse that is borrowed from the gospel. The church indeed proclaims with the prophets and the apostles that our Lord Jesus Christ has inaugurated a kingdom that will, at its consummation, assimilate all powers and worldly regimes to itself. This proclamation is more radical concerning the guilt and misery of the human race than any pessimist and more joyful in the prospect of a completely transformed cosmos than the most cheerful optimist. Furthermore, it announces the complete forgiveness of sins and justification. The good news does not even terminate in regenerated individuals with God’s peace in their hearts. These marvelous truths give us confidence that in spite of how things look, God’s promise stands firm even now, while you and I still fall short of the glory of God. Yet the ultimate benefit of our salvation is that we will be like God, and that the whole creation will be renewed by the energies of the Spirit.
It is as if the whole world were crying out for the liberation Paul describes in Romans 8. Even the atheistic revolutionary feels the need to steal roses from the Christian garden to dignify his utopian vision. In fact, the modern dogma of progress is little more than a secularized version of the biblical promise of a redeemed world without deprivation, injustice, war, and strife.
As I have argued in an earlier chapter, the longing for the Next Big Thing has often been bound up with a view of salvation centering on a radical conversion experience and a view of the Christian life as punctuated by these radical moments. There is certainly a truth here as well. Who can dispute the radical character of a new birth that makes those spiritually dead alive in Christ?
The problem is not that we acknowledge with Scripture the radical character of salvation or the radical newness of the world in the age to come, but that we expect the consummation to come too soon. The passive believer has forgotten the newness that the Spirit has already brought into this world through the word of Christ. He or she may believe that things will be new in the future, when Christ returns. But instead of experiencing life now as the firstfruits of that consummation, he or she seems to view this life as relatively unchanged and untouched by God’s advent in Jesus Christ. The activist saint, however, may forget that The Next Big Thing in God’s timetable is the return of Christ. Only his return can bring about that absolute division in history between the time of death and the time of everlasting life.
The difficult but necessary location of Christian existence for now is that paradoxical era of the “already and not-yet.” The Next Big Thing is not another Pentecost or another apostle or another political or social cause. It is Christ’s return. In demanding an immediate satisfaction of our heart’s longing, we replace this event with manufactured spectacles. Ironically, the most faithful Christian life is one that embraces a pilgrimage rather than a conquest. The ordinary life — sustainable discipleship and disciple-making — is the order of the day, as we live each moment in eager expectation of The Next Big Thing on God’s schedule.
If You Knew Jesus Were Returning Tomorrow
What if you knew that Jesus would return tomorrow morning? That question was asked often in church as I was growing up. In case we didn’t have a ready answer, we were usually told what we should be found doing. The question was meant to light the fire underneath us for extraordinary undertakings. Who would want to be found grocery shopping or driving home from work? However, wiser Christians remind us that being found at our daily callings, glorifying and enjoying God in ordinary ways, is a better answer. Taking in the April scent and clucking chickens from his window, Luther is reported to have said, “Even if I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today.”
Even if this is one of the many spurious Luther quotes, it still expresses a biblical wisdom he often shared.109 After all, the apostle Paul answered this question directly in 1 Thes salo nians 4. As the day of the Lord approaches, he says, believers are “to aspire to live quietly, and to mind [their] own affairs, and to work with [their] hands” (4:11). It doesn’t sound very world-transforming. Yet it is precisely in the habits that make up a life like this that believers live “properly before outsiders and [are] dependent on no one” (v 12).
As we have seen, each of us is a branch of the Vine, as well as a worker in the vineyard. Paul spoke of this especially in reference to himself and other ministers of the Word. Some plant, some water, but it is the Lord who makes it grow. Isn’t that liberating?
What did you do for the kingdom today? How did you impact the world for Christ? Our tendency might be to hesitate at that point, trying desperately to recall something worth reporting. Yet every day, in all sorts of ways we’re not even aware of, the kingdom is growing and our neighbors are being served. There may be a quiet reference in the coffee room that provokes a coworker weeks later to ask a question about life and death, maybe even addressing it not to you but to another believer. You made lunch for the kids and got them to school on time. You worked well with your hands to supply neighbors with what they need and — oh, again, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18). Keep on point. Don’t lose the focus. Jesus has bound Satan (Mark 3:27; Luke 10:17). Now we are free to do the little things that matter, without anxiety about how it all turns out in the end. “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Last Call: Dying as a Vocation
Wise Christians in the past thought of life as in some deep sense a preparation for death. It’s replete in the Puritan literature, with popular books on “dying well.” We were not created for this death. It is unnatural to us, despite the upbeat way we trivialize it — mainly out of fear. Death cannot have a purpose, any transcendent meaning, according to many of our neighbors, because if it did, that might lead us to wonder if it was some sort of divine judgment on us. Our culture is pathologically committed to postponing and even denying the reality of death, because it does not know about the justification of the ungodly that removes the sting and the resurrection that gives our lives a happy beginning, not ending, beyond anything we’ve ever known. So instead of funerals, we have “celebrations of life,” with upbeat memories of the departed.
Because of the gospel, believers are free to embrace their final cross, death, as a calling from God. After years of various callings as children, parents, neighbors, employers and employees, and so forth, our last one is to face death not with Stoic self-confidence but with the assurance that it is indeed “the last enemy” and it won’t have the last word (1 Cor 15:26). God calls us first and foremost to cast ourselves into his care, safe in the mediation of his Son and sustained by his Spirit. From this confidence, he calls us to witness to our family, neighbors, and friends that we are not “passing on,” but dying. And yet our hope ultimately is to be raised in the glorious likeness of Jesus Christ.
Living each day in the light of this “last enemy” and the assurance of Christ’s ultimate victory over it, we weep but do not lose heart as we face suffering in milder forms. The apostle Paul could pursue the course that would lead ultimately to his martyrdom not out of vain ambition, but on behalf of Christ and in service to others. “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word” (2 Cor 4:1 – 2a). This is in sharp contrast with the “super-apostles.” They drew crowds because of their natural gifts.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. . . . So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Cor 4:7 – 10, 12)
A theology of glory looks at the outward appearance of things, but the theology of the cross is riveted to the promise that is heard: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” (4:16 – 18).
The contrast between seen and unseen is not Plato’s lower and upper worlds. It is not as if the visible world we know is a mere shadow compared with the invisible realm of pure spirit. Instead of two worlds, the apostles have in mind two ages: this world in its present form, under the reign of sin and death, and this world in its redeemed and resurrected form when Christ returns. Even now, the rays of the age to come are piercing this present age. As Paul teaches above, the final resurrection has already begun with Jesus as its firstfruits, along with the regeneration of the inner self. What we see and can measure visibly counts against this new creation, but we live by the promise.
Already the wall separating Gentiles from Jews, symbolized by the temple’s outer court of the Gentiles and the inner court, has been torn down in Christ. In Christ, we enter not only the Holy Place, but the Most Holy Place, where not even Jews could enter except representatively in the high priest. As we learn from John’s vision in Revelation, even the boundary between heaven and earth will disappear. God’s throne room will no longer be invisible to us, nor even visible merely in one earthly capitol, but it will be in the middle of us. His glory will fill the earth and renew it day by day.
Heaven on earth at last. It’s not a dream. It has been secured already by Christ’s victory over sin and death. Yet for now it is a promise, with an advance on our final treasure being given in regular installments.
The life that we live now by the Spirit is therefore already a down payment or security deposit on the blessings of the age to come. We can live with the ordinary world, with its common curse and common grace, with our ordinary growth in Christ through the ordinary means of grace, and with our ordinary callings in the family, the church, and the world. We can be content in the ups and downs, because we have every spiritual blessing in Christ and we share it with our fellow saints in the exchange of gifts.
Now we can see more clearly that the vices that have warped us are corruptions of original gifts. We were made to hunger and thirst for glory, but we wanted it apart from God — on our own terms. Yet in Christ we will be glorified far beyond the condition of Adam and Eve in the garden. All of our desires — and others of which we weren’t even explicitly aware — will be satisfied beyond our wildest imagining.
It is precisely because of this extraordinary hope, therefore, that we can embrace the ordinary lives God gives us here and now.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Rom 8:18 – 25)
That’s enough to make even our ordinary lives a foretaste of the extraordinary revolution that is on its way.
Exercise
1. How does the extraordinary hope of final redemption shed new light on our ordinary lives here and now?
2. We live as Christians in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” What does this mean? Is it practically relevant for our daily lives?
3. What would you do if you knew that Jesus was coming back today? Why?
4. Is dying a vocation? If so, how does that reorient our thinking about living each day?