All Things New

For the church to be an agent of cultural transformation, we need to provide people with a kingdom vision for their work, communities and families. These are the places we spend most of our time. We need to recapture a vision of the church scattered, infecting each workplace and each sector of society with kingdom values.

Our story is far greater than a message of escapism to another realm where God lives. Our story is of God making his home with us, healing and restoring every aspect of brokenness in this world he has given as our home. The narrative closes with a vision of heaven descending and God making his dwelling place amongst humanity on earth, just like he had done in Eden. Then, seated on his throne, indicative of his work being finally complete, the Creator declares, ‘See, I am making all things new’ (Rev. 21:5 ISV).

Terence Fretheim advocates what he calls a ‘Three Worlds Approach’ to reading Scripture. He argues that when we read Scripture, three worlds are colliding: the world of the text, the world behind the text and the world in front of the text.

To ask if Genesis 1-3 is true, or if Adam and Eve really existed, is to impose Enlightenment categories on a premodern text. That is not to say Adam and Eve didn’t exist, only that Genesis 1-3 is not addressing such a question. In the study of mythology, a myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form. Myths are ‘true,’ not in the way that scientific data is true, but in that these stories answer the big questions about the nature of God, humanity and the world around us.

The logic of Matthew 25 seems to be this: what you naturally do for your own children is what God wants to do for his children. If your son were homeless, you would give your best energy to finding him suitable accommodation. If your daughter were starving, you would do anything to provide food. If your son were addicted to drugs, you would try to find a pathway to rehabilitation. And what you would do for your own children is what God wants to do for his children: rescue them in order to lead them to life.

the mission we have been entrusted with is not about adding value to something worthless but restoring value to something priceless. Likewise, the mission of God is to restore people, not just to their royal identity, but also to their royal vocation.

In this encounter at the burning bush, Moses was confronted with three questions: Where do you stand? Where is your land? What is in your hand?

The Ten Commandments make clear much of what we know intuitively—that human flourishing is only possible where murder, adultery, theft, jealousy, and lying are absent from the community.

Obedience to the Law was first and foremost about honouring the marriage vows in order to enjoy a healthy and life-giving marriage. But for God to be truly loving, he has to give his ‘treasured possession’ free will to choose obedience or unfaithfulness.

Matthew’s opening words—‘a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ’—are perhaps better translated ‘a book of the genesis of Jesus Christ’ (1:1). Any reader of these words in the first century would hear the parallel words of Genesis 2:4: ‘this is the book of the genesis of heaven and earth.’ Interpreted this way, these opening words of Matthew’s gospel are more than just an introduction to the genealogy that follows. If Genesis 1 and 2 provide the story of creation, then Matthew is suggesting that his book provides the story about the new creation that takes place in and through Jesus Christ.

There are seven recorded sermons in the book of Acts: 2:14-39; 3:12-26; 4:8-12; 7:2-53; 10:34-43; 13:16-41; 17:22-31. Each of these gospel sermons focusses on the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, rooting these events in the Old Testament and the wider story of Israel, before issuing a call to repentance and to receive forgiveness of sins. None of these seven sermons mentions hell, only one mentions justification and there is no full articulation of substitutionary atonement. These central doctrines, more fully unpacked in Paul’s letters, explain how this story and these events save.

Put simply, the gospel is the news that through the life, death and resurrection of King Jesus, the kingdom of God and God’s new creation has broken in, and all things are being made new.

Some of us have a theology of the cross that is big enough to forgive sin but too small to restore creation; big enough to cover the offence but too small to repair the damage; big enough to pardon the crime but too small to transform the criminal. But the good news of the cross is that Jesus has more than just forgiven sins, he’s overcome all that would stand in opposition to his kingdom purposes to restore all things.

In Romans 1, Paul not only emphasises the reality of God’s wrath but describes the primary method of its operation. The key word that appears three times in this passage is the verb paradidonai, which means ‘to hand over.’ Humanity is ‘handed over’ to sinful desires (v. 24), shameful lusts (v. 26) and to a depraved mind (v. 28). In this context, judgement is not primarily the retributive inflicting of punishment from outside, but is instead God allowing his people to experience the inbuilt consequences of their refusal to live in relationship with him. In other words, to rebel against God is to rebel against life.

If God’s wrath is experienced as alienation, then Christ entered that alienation to overcome the curse, bringing reconciliation and enabling blessings to flow through Israel to the Gentiles and to all of creation. The punishment here is not primarily retributive, but restorative. It’s a punishment that does more than just pardon criminals by cancelling out their sin; it restores the covenant between God and his people through which he wants to restore all peoples in all places for all of time.

As Paul highlights in his letters, Christ didn’t die so that we might escape death, but instead shared in our death that we might share in his.

A beautiful exchange takes place at Calvary. Christ takes what is rightfully ours (judgement and death) so that we might take what is rightfully his (righteousness and life). He reverses disorder in order to establish right order. In Jesus’ life and death, he fulfils Israel’s calling in perfect obedience to the Father, and by doing so reverses humanity’s ‘No’ to God.

In the world of ancient Greece, an ekklesia was an elected civil assembly that helped govern a city. Such a gathering had been called out to play a critical role in overseeing the affairs of the city to enable the people to flourish. For the New Testament writers to use the language of ekklesia to describe their gatherings is deeply subversive. They were claiming there was a new political assembly, called out by God himself, to govern over the affairs of the city.

‘Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing’ (Heb. 10:25).

To follow Jesus is to love what he loves, and he loves the church, despite its hypocrisy, brokenness and dysfunction. St Augustine captured this sentiment well when he said, ‘The church is a whore, but she’s my mother.’ Such language acknowledges the brokenness of the church and how it has failed to be faithful to the teaching of Jesus. And yet the church is where we find life, nurture and are named as the children of God.

The question of what it means to be human, being made in the image and likeness of God, is replaced with the question of what it means to be sinful and how one could be saved. The story then ends with the cross and resurrection, guaranteeing heaven when we die for those who believe in Jesus. The restoration and renewal of all things gets cut from the narrative. Heaven coming down, and God making his dwelling place with us on earth, gets replaced with us ascending to the heavenly realm to escape the sinful world around us.

Within the full story, the job of a banker isn’t simply to tell other bankers about Jesus and to be a good witness; it’s equally to work towards the renewal of the banking industry and to infect this industry with the values of the kingdom of God.

Theologians often refer to this as the now and not-yet of the kingdom. The kingdom is both present and future. The new creation has been birthed, but we await its full arrival. Living in this tension is hard, and it’s easy to see why some church traditions seek to break the tension either with an under-realised or an over-realised eschatology, or end-times theology. The former states that we shouldn’t expect the signs and wonders of the kingdom anymore, and the purpose for the present is to cling on and remain faithful until Christ returns. The latter states that the entirety of the kingdom is accessible by faith, so if healing hasn’t come and provision hasn’t arrived, it must be because of some hidden sin or lack of faith. The pastoral damage from this approach is enormous.

Jesus made it clear in John 9:3 that sickness doesn’t necessarily mean hidden sin. He also raised Lazarus from the dead, and dead men don’t tend to have much faith. This doesn’t mean holiness and faith aren’t key ingredients in our partnership with Jesus in his mission—they very much are. But kingdom breakthroughs are a gift, not to be earned though moral endeavor, religious activity or spiritual intensity, but to be freely received.

To anchor people in the Scriptures is to anchor them in the story of God.

The writer Richard Rohr says a significant part of spirituality centres on what we do with our pain. He states that there are essentially only two options: allow God to transform it or transmit it instead. When pain is not transformed, it bleeds out and the De-creation spiral continues. The church is intended to be a place, a community, where people are encouraged and empowered to let their pain be transformed by God. It is a shelter for the poor, the broken, the ashamed and the sick.

we are more than just dreamers, we are also builders of that future. We can live in the moment because we know what is to come. By living in the story, we live out the story, pushing forward God’s purposes while waiting for his return. This dreaming and building requires a prophetic imagination. What would the arrival of the kingdom look like on your street? What would it look like in your workplace? How would it change your family dynamics? We imagine and then pray to one who can do far more than all we could ever ask for or imagine, according to his power at work within us.

The disciplines of abstinence are the ones that enable us to deny ourselves of something good for something greater. Willard suggests that these disciplines help us to counteract the ‘sins of commission,’ which are the sins we often gravitate towards, such as gossip, pride, greed, lust, gluttony and laziness. The disciplines of abstinence therefore include solitude, silence, fasting, simplicity, chastity, secrecy and sacrifice. We say no to food, noise, company or shopping so we can say yes to Jesus.

In these practices we are using our bodies to lead our hearts, minds and spirits towards Jesus. We are redirecting our desires towards the kingdom. These disciplines often focus on emptying, but it is critical to understand that emptiness is not the end goal. The end goal is to be filled with the presence of Jesus. We let go in order to grab hold of what he has for us. We deny ourselves so that we can give ourselves wholly and completely to him and his purposes.

Again and again in the gospel accounts when you read that Jesus had compassion, you can guarantee a tidal wave of kingdom activity is about to be released.

Incarnational mission means ‘suffering with.’ By definition it has to hurt. It’s not clicking a button to like a cause on social media, and it’s not charitable giving from the safe distance. It’s wedding yourself to the wellbeing of your neighbours, your community and your city. When they hurt, we hurt. When they suffer, we suffer. It is this connection that brings comfort and motivates us to partner with God in bringing freedom to his people.

if you were to do a biblical word search for ‘heaven hell’ to find the number of verses and passages where these two ‘future destinations’ appear side by side, you may be shocked to find the answer is zero. Heaven and hell never appear together as counterparts in the same verse. More than that, in the seven gospel sermons in the book of Acts, hell is never mentioned.

Jesus outlines the pathway towards this future reality: it’s not just about banishing murder and adultery; it’s about driving out anger and lust. They create a fire that destroys God’s good creation, and try as we may to put some boundaries around these fires to limit their destruction, the fire rages on.

Hell gains entrance into God’s good world through us. We are the agents of destruction, the architects of demolition. God is not the architect of hell, the creator of its soul-destroying power; we are. We unleash its wildfire flame into God’s good world.

God and Israel were wed at the covenant of Mt Sinai, but sin led to separation. God eventually spoke through the Prophets of a time when he would return as a husband to take back his bride. But prior to that hell, the Valley of Ben Hinnom was the place where Israel went to cheat on God with other lovers.

When Jesus talks about gehenna with imagery of fire and the language of ‘your whole body going to hell,’ the mental pictures of human sacrifice in the Valley of Ben Hinnom would have flooded the mind, serving as a warning. We are all free to worship whatever we want, but when we worship the wrong things, we start fires that begin to destroy us. Jesus says repent. Turn around. Run from the fire.

Hell is not primarily a place of torture, but a place outside of God’s city containing evil so that it can no longer violate God’s created order.

Eternal conscious torment therefore only makes sense if you ignore such passages and assume the soul is immortal, which is what Augustine did in carrying on some of the ideas of his Platonic past.

It is therefore an ‘eternal fire’ not because it burns forever but because it destroys forever.

‘we don’t have a map because we have a guide.’