On Christian Complacency

               I went to an Eastern Orthodox monastery at the very beginning of this month.  My experience was very, very wonderful and it will be something that I will always look back on and be challenged by.  I must admit that this experience changed me in a way that I didn’t quite expect.  I came back a different man, so to speak, and I now see Church and “doing Church” differently than I did before.  There were many wonderful aspects to the monastery that were very significant to me, such as the gorgeous scenery, the wonderful hospitality, the great conversations, the deep times of prayer, and the overwhelming sense of peace.

                However, I am still trying to pin down what it was, exactly, that impacted me so deeply, what it was that changed me and my view of things, what it was that has now made it extremely difficult for me to participate in the worship services back here at home.  Perhaps this is the best place to begin in trying to articulate what it was that changed me:

                “One of the best known of the Desert Fathers of fourth-century Egypt, St. Sarapion the Sindonite, travelled once on a pilgrimage to Rome.  Here he was told of a celebrated recluse, a woman who lived always on one small room, never going out.  Skeptical about her way of life—for he was himself a great wanderer—Sarapion called on her and asked: “Why are you sitting here?”  To this she replied: “I am not sitting, I am on a journey.” 

                                                                                                                -Kallistos Ware

                What moved me so deeply was the notion that the monks that I encountered at the monastery in the middle of the desert were also on a journey.  And from my conversations and experiences with them it was evident enough that they had traveled quite a ways. 

                This brings me to my point: there was a seriousness in their prayer life, in their love for one another, and in their worship that, for me, could not be paralleled by anything I have ever seen with my own two eyes.  They had an evening service each day that lasted for 2 hours and a morning service (starting at 4am) that lasted for 3 hours.  It was during the morning service that I especially was overcome by the notion of, “I am so weak.”  My body was literally fatigued from the fasting I had undergone the day before, from standing for 2 straight hours on a tile floor during the worship service the night before, and from having to get up at 3am to go to a 4am worship service!  It was also at that point that I realized that I come from a Christian tradition that is very weak.  Oh, how frail we Protestants are!  To many people today, just the thought of a 3 hour long worship service each and every day sounds ridiculous to them, especially one that would start at 4 in the morning!  If you add the evening liturgy each day as well, you are looking at a solid 5 hours each and every day for worship services alone.  Most Protestants would laugh at such an opportunity thinking it to be ridiculous but those monks cherish it more than anything on the face of the planet. 

                Oh, how weak we are.  We’d much rather comfort ourselves rather than challenge ourselves whenever it comes to our worship styles and habits.  Worship has become something that is solely bound up and focused upon our comfort in our churches today.  We have to make sure we have a snack bar.  We have to make sure we have coffee.  We have to make sure we have comfortable seats (the monks stand the whole time, by the way), we have to make sure the music is to our tastes and likings (without ever asking: “What music honors God the most?”).  We have to make sure the sermons are catered to us.  We have to make sure that we are “seeker friendly”. 

Who are we coming to worship again: ourselves or God?  What is the point of worship again:  to be comfortable or to be transformed?  It seems to me that we do our very best to further enslave our people to their passions rather than seek to liberate them from them.  We cry and we wonder why Christians today are so egocentric.  It is because our “worship” feeds their egocentricity.  Worship for us is me, centered.  To prove the point…when is the last time you sang a song not just about, but to the Trinity?  How many Trinitarian songs do we sing in our churches today?  When is the last time you sang a song that just had to do with God and not how you feel and how you are saved? 

We wonder why people aren’t making “the journey” towards God and His Kingdom.  It is because our worship doesn’t take them on it.  Perhaps, instead of saying to our visitors and congregants, “Come and be comfortable,” we should be saying, “Come and die.”  Which is more Biblical in your mind? 

On Judging Others

              Currently, I am unpacking my thoughts on ecclesial personhood; a personhood which is fulfilled in the eschaton.  In other words, to be human…i.e. the image of God…and the essence of humanness is not to be found in our created state, nor our fallen state, nor our current state, but it is to be found in our future and deified state.  This distinction has massive, massive implications if you think through it and it is one of the larger factors that distinguishes Eastern from Western Christianity.  In the West, we tend to define our humanness by our fallenness and human ontology is worked out from there whereas in the East, ontology is worked out of what we will become.  Currently, I wish to focus on one of the fore-mentioned implications: an implication for judgment.

                We are told by our Lord not to judge others.  For, in the measure that we judge others we to will be judged.  Judgment is a problem because it does not operate out of love.  It does not see what the person might become but it decides for itself what it assumes the person might become…which is inhuman.  It measures someone’s personhood according to their fallen and current state, not the eschatological state.  Judgment makes the decision in advance who is “in” and who is “out,” according not to what will be, but to what seems evident for time being.  It assumes that the person will never overcome his natural inclinations to sin and the passions.  It assumes that the person will never realize his ecclesial being within the Church and within participation in the divine Trinity. 

                Christ did not come to condemn the world bit to save it if we remember correctly.  He has made it possible for humankind to escape condemnation.  Whenever we pass judgment we are saying that this person will never fulfill his/her personhood, that he/she will continue to be a slave to his/her sinful passions. 

                Judgment divides.  It separates.  Division and separation is the exact opposite of God’s saving action because it leads to death while God leads us into life and, thus, communion.  Life is communion with God.  We will be judged according to the measure we judge because, the more we judge, the more we break up communion and individualize ourselves.  In other words, the more we judge, the more we will set ourselves up outside the walls of God’s city…a city where His people will eventually dwell in unity. 

What Christianity Is

              Christianity is not a moral code.  It is not a system of beliefs.  It is a matter of being.  It is a mode of being.  Nor is it about going out and witnessing.  It is about being witnesses.  It is not about thinking about life.  It is a matter of having it and having it in abundance. 

                The secular world is right to reject us.  For we have not presented Truth to her.  A truth which is merely proclaimed and not lived is no truth at all.  Truth is personal, not merely logical in the scholastic sense.  Truth comes to us in the form of a person who proclaims Himself to be “the Truth.”  Truth comes to us today through the form of persons; persons who fellowship in and through His Holy Spirit.  Whenever Truth is not personalized, it is no truth at all because Truth has a person as its origin.

                We desperately need today to forsake the idol of doing church and we need to start being the Church.  For, it is not about what we do, per se, but about who we know, and who we are.  Our doing happens within the dynamic of a relationship that is freedom.  Outside of this relationship with the One who is Truth, all our doing merely leads to stark individualism.  Individuality and Christianity cannot coexist because not even God exists as an individual…for He is triune. 

                Christianity is the taking up the choice to be, to exist, while everyone else makes the choice for individuality.  Christianity leads to existence, leads to being, because it leads to love; and to love is to exist in the truest ontological sense.  Where love is not, existence is not.  Where love is not, individuality reigns.  Where individuality reigns, so does death.  Death is the outworking of individualism to its natural and immanent conclusion. 

                Thus, Christianity is freedom; the only freedom that can be found and realized.  True freedom is not to be found in the capacity to make one choice over another.  True freedom happens when death no longer has a hold upon you.  True freedom happens whenever we are not slaves to our sins, our passions and the “natural” order of this world.  True freedom happens whenever men and women are no longer slaves to the world and the idols therein but whenever they transcend the “natural” order of the world in the truest ontological sense.  He is free who is truly in the world but not of it.  He is free who has no fear of death.  He is free who belongs not to the habits and practices of this world, its lusts and desires.  He is free who, in his being, does not reject the world nor its goodness but transcends the ways of the world through communion, through love, through the God who is love.  A free person is one who communes with God.  For, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

                What is Christianity?  It is relationships that give us our existence; relationships with one another, the world, and the God who is a relationship in His being.  It is, thus, love.  Since it is such, it can’t be anything other than freedom; freedom to be.  Christianity is being because being is communion.

Man as a "Little Universe"

               The ancient Church used to view man as a little universe, or a microcosm.  From what little of him I have read thus far, this seems to have been a very central theme for the great theologian St. Maximus the Confessor.  I read this theme in him about a year ago now while I was sitting on a beach in Sarasota, Fl.  Initially, I was quite intrigued by the thought.  However, I must confess that I didn’t necessarily understand what he meant by it; not that this is a theme that anyone could ever fully wrap their head around this side of transfiguration/new creation…and possibly even beyond that. 

                Each person is a little universe.  I have gained great clarity in this notion after reading Kallistos Ware’s phenomenal book, “The Orthodox Way.”  In it he says this:

                “According to the Orthodox worldview, God has formed two levels of created things: first, the ‘noetic’, ‘spiritual’ or ‘intellectual’ level, and secondly, the material or bodily.  On the first level God formed the angels, who have no material bodies.  On the second level he formed the physical universe—galaxies, stars and planets, with the various types of mineral, vegetable, and animal life.  Man, and man alone, exists on both levels at once.  Through his spirit or spiritual intellect he participates in the noetic realm and is a companion of the angels; through his body and his soul, he moves and feels and thinks, he eats and drinks, transmuting food into energy and participating organically in the material realm, which passes within him through his sense-perceptions….Man stands at the heart of God’s creation.  Participating as he does in both the noetic and the material realms, he is an image or mirror of the whole creation, imago mundi, a ‘little universe’ or ‘microcosm’.  All created things have their meeting place in him.”

                To gain the significance of this, we must ask the question: “What is existence? Or “What exists?”  We can answer with: “the heavens and the earth and all therein.”  The created realm contains both the “physical” and “spiritual” realities.  What Ware is saying is that man, in his person, contains both realities.  “Man, and man alone, exists on both levels at once.”  He is both a spiritual and physical being.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he is a physical being who is meant to gain the spiritual reality in its fullest sense.  Contrary to modern thought, the Church teaches that humanity is more than just a physicality, an evolved species.  As the author of Hebrews states, he is created in a state that is “lower” than the angels yet, though Christ, he is meant to be king over everything.  And, one day, when all is said and done, there will be those who have acquired freedom through Christ and will reign with Christ. 

                “It is not to the angels that He has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking.  But there is a place where someone has testified:

                ‘What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?  You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honor and put everything under their feet.’

                In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them.  Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them.  But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” (Hebrews 2:5-9)

                It is man’s calling not to escape the world but to transfigure it by and through the grace of God.  Jesus’ reality is to become our own as well.  He has welcomed us as brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2:11-12) and we will share in His victory. 

                This is also the place, and the only place, where thoughts on miracles make sense and are even remotely appropriate.  Since the reality is that God is going to bring about His new creation in the future where He is going to transfigure the cosmos, through Christ’s Incarnation we begin to participate in this future reality here and now.  This is our “heavenly calling” (Hebrews 3:1).  Since this is the case, we shouldn’t do anything less than expect that miracles would happen amidst communions who are seeking to bring this glorious future into current reality.

On Healings and Miracles

Healings and so called “miracles” (nothing is miraculous to God): these things are the outworking of the future state of creation; the fulfilled aim of God’s creation.  The goal of creation is realized in the culmination of all things, or, the recapitulation of all things in Christ Jesus…the eschaton. 

                In the end, there will be no death, sickness, disfigurements, or demon possessions.  Healings and “miracles” are a transfiguring of the present reality into the future state and realization…a creation free from sin and death and all subsequent consequences thereof.  These things are realizations of the life to come that is now already here and now as well.  They show us a glimpse of the life to come, a life that exists in the fullness of communion with God. 

                The goal of creation is not found in the beginning of, but at the end of all things.  We know this to be true not only of humanity but the whole of creation as well.  It is in this regard that healings and the miraculous make sense and only in this regard.  We know that salvation has come upon us because natural laws are transcended beginning particularly with the Incarnation of the Savior.  Such happenings are the breaking into of history and nature that Kingdom which is to come.  We see this is true especially whenever we compare these miraculous happenings with Jesus’ resurrected state.  His resurrected body, while in communion with the created order, was not subject to it.  His resurrected body transcended the barriers that are normally placed upon the human condition.  For one, He rose from the tomb.  Second, He was not immediately recognizable.  He also walked through walls and appeared and disappeared at will. 

                All of this points to the fact that, although man is a creature, he does not have to be a slave to “nature” and the calling of the Christian and the Church is to transcend natural necessity.  It is to acquire true freedom through our communion with God.  It is to be free as Christ is free in His current state.  Healings and “miracles” point to a reality which is greater than the one which we now live in.  It points to a reality where man will no longer be a slave to, nor struggle against, his nature and passions, which are rooted in the biological hypostasis, not the ecclesial one. 

                Healings and “miracles” point to the immanent reality where true freedom exists; freedom in communion….freedom as communion.  They are signs of a world that is both set free from sin and death and of a world that has actualized the goal that its Creator had for it from the beginning.

                They are an unveiling in the same sense that the Transfiguration was an unveiling, but only to a lesser degree.  The transfiguration displayed the consummate reality of the Kingdom coming in its fullness as Christ was receiving it atop Mt. Tabor (Daniel 7).  Healings and miracles display the effects of that consummate Kingdom reality on the present state.  Healings and Miracles occur on a micro scale, so to speak, while the Transfiguration is on a macro scale.  Transfigured reality is the fulfillment of that which healings and miracles are set out to achieve.  Healings and miracles occur in the present reality as the world progresses towards transfiguration; they are the outworking of a cosmos that is being transfigured. 

Why I am a Christian

              Why am I a Christian?  I am a Christian because I don’t want to be a slave.  I don’t want to be a slave to anything evil or to myself.  I am a Christian because I don’t like the feeling of losing control of myself and my perception of reality.  I am a Christian because, left to my own devices, I would hurt people in order to benefit myself, my wants and desires.  I am a Christian because I have realized to the core of me that life is only found in the Way of Christ.  All other modes of life consist in nothing more than just breathing.  I have found as the ancient wise prophet taught, that all physical life is utterly meaningless. 

                I am a Christian primarily because I value freedom and not just the shabby perception of “freedom” that is found in Western Democracy.  Freedom of choice isn’t true freedom.  It can’t lead you to freedom of being.  For you will only choose what you can’t help but choose.  Democracy is nothing more than people getting to decide for themselves one form of slavery over the other because democracy cannot free people from themselves or their own selfish and individualistic desires.  In fact, Western Democracy celebrates individualism and self centeredness.  Without such things, democracy wouldn’t work to begin with.  Democracy needs selfishness to operate.  It needs people who believe that their voice and their desires are more important than their neighbors.  It thrives self centeredness and self definitiveness.  It needs the heresy of individualism.

                I am a Christian because I believe in freedom and I hate slavery.  Our Lord said that “everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”  The one who believes that he has acquired freedom because he has severed himself in his thinking from any notions of God, or the divine, is a fool.  We are all slaves, we are all servants.  There is no created man who is truly free because we are all created.  As created beings, we are subject to our created natures because of sin.  In other words, we are subject to natural necessity.  The one who seeks to liberate himself from God only enslaves himself to himself.  His own desires become the master of his person.  The goal of the human endeavor isn’t to be slaves to our desires but to learn how to use them and direct them appropriately.  The godless man can never come close to remotely accomplishing this because he can never transcend himself, he can never see or live beyond himself.  In his own eyes, he is the only ontological source of being in his little world.  As such, he will do nothing more than seek to impose his will upon others.  He will never be able to selflessly love others from the heart because, again, he will never be able to see beyond himself and transcend his natural inclinations towards self gratification and self definition. 

                I am a Christian because I have learned that self-definition only leads to death and misery where communion with God leads to life.  Communion with God is life because God is life.  And, God’s life is free.  He is not bound to createdness because He is not created.  He is not subject to His own nature but He wills freely and truly.  It is only through communion with such a God that true freedom and life can be found.  It is also the only place where we can learn to love.  Love, for God, is not a natural necessity.  He loves because He chooses to not because He has to.  We, as selfish things, can never grasp the notion of love entirely.  Our version of love has alternative motives.  We pursue others for selfish gain.  We do things for others so that we would get something in turn, whether it comes in the form of the beloved paying us back or a fuzzy feeling within ourselves.  Doing loving things, for us, is more about feeling good about the fact that we are doing loving things than it is about the love itself.  It is always ultimately about us, not the other person.  We do it so that we would feel good.  We don’t do it to genuinely love the other. 

                It is only through communion with God that we are set free to love as He does.  It is only through Him that we can gain the Way of life that He has.  It is only through Him that we can enter into his Way of existence (not into His essence, or the “what” of God, but the “how” of God).  While we still remain servants, we will be servants of a different communion, of a true communion.  Paul says it well in Romans 6:17-18:

                “But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.  You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”

                Paul is echoing our Lord.  In parallel to His saying that “everyone who sins is a slave to sin,” He said, “If you continue (or hold on to) in my word, you are truly my disciples.  Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”  -Jn. 8:31-32

                There is a “pattern of teaching” (or, “tradition”) that our Lord Jesus has laid out for us that has been passed down to us and Paul praises the Romans for following this pattern.  It is a Way of life that is being talked about here, not just intellectual beliefs.  It is about more than just tipping our heads in consent to rational Biblical propositions or doctrines.  It is about living the Way, living according to the “pattern.”  For, this is the pattern that leads to freedom because it is the Way of the life of God Himself.  It leads us into the “how” of God’s existence.  It is the Way that transcends self centeredness and self definition.  It is the Way that leads to the transcending (not negating or rejecting) of oneself in the ontological sense. 

                This is a way of life to be followed and not just thought about.  According to Jesus, and this is a point that is terribly overlooked by most Christians and non-Christians alike, it is only through living in Jesus’ Way of life that we can come to know the truth.  We hold to (practice) the teachings of Jesus first, “then” we will know the “truth.”  For some reason, we have made it out to be the other way around.  We have said, “truth comes first, then following,” whereas Jesus says, “follow me, then you will learn truth.”  According to Paul, this following also leads us out of slavery and into life. 

                I am a Christian because I believe in Jesus.  I believe that the Way of life that He received from the Father (“I only do what I see my Father doing…”) is the only way that makes sense in and of our world.  Existing as the Triune God does, not in the “what” of God but in the “how” of God, is the only Way that leads to freedom, to life, and to love.  This is what it means when we claim that, “God is love.”  He is free and He has no need to love but, rather, He chooses to.  I am a Christian because I choose love, a choice that no non-Christian can make in the truest sense.

Becoming Human

              “It is finished” was the poignant sentence that Jesus uttered as He was dying on the cross.  What a profoundly evocative question which causes a stirring in us and brings us to the question: “what is finished?”  The aim of this article is to set out to discover the “it” that is “finished.”

                Before we get there, though, I propose that we take a second to ponder a deeply philosophical question: “Are zombies human beings?”  In other words and hypothetically, if I were to be bitten by a zombie in a zombie apocalypse and I eventually turned into a zombie, would I still be considered a human being in my zombified state?  Would I still be a “person” or would I lose my personhood, my humanness?  It is an intriguing thought, isn’t it?  In nearly every zombie movie or T.V. show I have ever seen, there is always that scene where a person from the surviving group gets bitten and turns into a zombie, and one of the frazzled members of the group refers to newly converted zombie as a “him” or “her” and is sharply rebuked by the others for doing so.  It is no longer a “him” or a “her” anymore but an “it.”  Pondering all of this is so intriguing for us because as we think through all of this we are immediately faced with the question: “What does it mean to be a human being?”  This is a question that we in our day think far too little about. 

                I am going to propose (in alignment with several others and John and his disciples) that the “it” that is “finished” is the formation of the first human being in the truest sense.  Before we get there, though, we need to examine how humanness is usually defined within Christian contexts. 

                There are many people out there who claim that our humanness is primarily defined by the fall of man into sin.  In their minds, we are pretty much sinful pieces of crap, and even though Jesus saves us, we will never really be much more than this.  Thus, to be human is to be sinful. 

                There are others who propose that humanity is ultimately defined by the way Adam and Eve were in the garden before the fall.  In other words, to be human is to exist the way that Adam and Eve did before the fall and the aim of salvation is to take us back to that pre-fallen state.  It means to take us back to the garden, so to speak. 

                Others claim that our humanity is mainly defined by the present reality in which we live.  It is defined by the love that Christ has for us in the present, and not much is going to change for us.  In this sense, we’ve already reached the fullness of our humanity at the moment that we are “saved” or “regenerated.” 

                All of these views seem to be insufficient for me and some more than others.  While all three of these views contribute a partial truth, they fail to lead us to the whole truth it seems.  Yes, we are sinful, but is that all there is to us?  What about Christ’s work?  What about pursing holiness?  Yes, human history did involve the garden and we are one day going to commune with God like Adam and Eve did in the garden.  However, there was a second Adam to which the first pointed as Paul tells us.  Plus, in the Bible, we start off with a garden and we end with a city.  There is a sense of progression in the Scriptures and never a sense of coming back to the way things were before.  And yes, we are in communion with God now and saved through Christ.  However, is Christ’s aim to simply meet us where we are at and leave us where we are at or is His aim to change us, to transform us? 

                We need to ask the question, “What is God making us into?”  The answer that the ancient Church fathers gave us is this: “God is making us into human beings.”  In other words, in their minds, we are not human yet, but we are to become human.  To them, humanness is not something inherent at birth but we become human gradually over time.  This is a radically different notion of what it means to be human than the ones we have today.  Today, we consider ourselves as human beings already.  For us, humanness is not something acquired but it is something we are born with. 

                The Church Fathers, particularly Irenaeus and Ignatius of Antioch (both came from John’s line of discipleship) had a much different view, though.  Hear what Ignatius says:

                “I am God's wheat and shall be ground by the teeth of wild animals. I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way. I plead with you: show me no untimely kindness. Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God. No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.

The time for my birth is close at hand. Forgive me, my brothers. Do not stand in the way of my birth to real life; do not wish me stillborn. My desire is to belong to God. Do not, then, hand me back to the world. Do not try to tempt me with material things. Let me attain pure light. Only on my arrival there can I be fully a human being. Give me the privilege of imitating the passion of my God. If you have him in your heart, you will understand what I wish. You will sympathize with me because you will know what urges me on.”

                In this letter, he is urging his fellow Christians to abstain from interfering with his impending martyrdom and from seeking to dissuade him from following through with it.  Then, he goes on to say something quite shocking: “Only on my arrival there can I be a fully human being.”  Only on his arrival to God through martyrdom can he be a fully human being. 

                Irenaeus says something profoundly similar:

                “The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God.”

                The first half of the saying would fit rather well into modern philosophical thought.  We like the notion of being alive and living life to the full and this phrase, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive,” seems to cater to the notion of “being true to oneself.”  However, the last part of the phrase will not let us go there because he goes on to say that “to be alive consists in beholding God.”  In other words, the more we behold God, the more alive we are and the less we behold God, the less alive we are.  We are not alive; we are not human, unless we behold God.  This parallels Ignatius’ thought significantly because no one fully beholds God until they have passed through death.  Thus, we do not gain the fullness of our humanity in this life but the fullness of humanity is something which yet awaits us in the future. 

                Now, we can come full swing back around to our starting point and address the saying which Jesus uttered from the cross right before He died: “It is finished.”  Here we will explore parts of the book of John, who discipled Ignatius of Antioch and the man who later was disciple by another of John’s disciples, Irenaeus.  We are also going to look at parts of the book of Genesis.  Let us explore the possibilities of what Jesus meant by His saying upon the cross.

                Did He mean that His suffering on the cross was now finished?  Did He mean that our salvation was now finished?  Usually, people translate the phrase as referring to one or both of these things.  However, I don’t think this paints the phrase in adequate light.  It seems like John is seeking to show us something bigger in what Jesus is saying here.  It is not just about His suffering coming to an end or the plan of salvation reaching fulfillment, even though both of these things certainly fit into the scenario.  We need to remember that John frames his gospel in a very creation-narrative sort of way.  He parallels Genesis in many respects.  There is much more that can be said on this, but this is a fairly well known fact and much has been written on it, so I am not going to delve into it too much.  I will just provide one example.  Both books, Genesis and the Gospel of John begin with the saying, “In the beginning…”  John didn’t choose these words by accident but was using them to point to something.  He is showing us that Christ fulfills what the creation story set out to achieve.  It is this that “is finished.” 

                In Genesis 1, God said, “Let us make a human being in our own image, after our own likeness.”  This is interesting because in the rest of the creation story, God makes a command, “let there be,” and things spring into existence.  With humanity, however, we see something quite different.  To quote John Behr:

                “He announces His own project, no with an injunction, but He announces it in the subjunctive….God doesn’t just say, ‘Let there be,”  but, ‘Let us make,.’  It is the only thing that is not followed by the words ‘and it was so.”  It is a project.” 

                  God’s project is to make a human being and that project is one that apparently does not reach completion in Genesis 1, even.  If I am correct in my Greek studies, the “make” in “let us make” in 1:27 is a first aorist active indicative verb.  This is significant because the aorist signifies here an action that has yet to be fully completed.  So, this would mean that the “image of God” here would serve more as a template, not as a completed action.  It’s not that Adam was made into God’s image but that Adam was shaped after God’s image; that, Adam is shaped in accordance with God’s image.   This is even further enhanced by the words (Kat’ eikona), made “according to the image” or “down from the image.”  This is very significant: Adam and Eve were not made into the image of God.  They were made in accordance with the image of God.  The creation of humanity into the image of God should be seen as a progressive thing in the Scriptures.  Mankind was meant to progress towards image-bearingness.   

                  Now, we can finish with the Gospel of John.  As I said earlier, there is a lot of symbolism in John as he parallels the creation-narrative with his Gospel-narrative.  Both Genesis and John begin with the phrase, “In the beginning…”.  John is being quite intentional with his language.  Where the Apostle Paul points us frequently to the fact that Jesus was the fulfillment of Israel in many of his letters, the Apostle John here is pointing us to the fact that Jesus was/is the fulfillment of humanity, of the image of God.  Where Paul tells us in Galatians 3:16 that the promise given to Abraham did not involve many people but one “seed,” so to John is telling us in his Gospel that God’s promise to make an image bearing human being, a true human, is fulfilled in one man.  Both promises pointed forward to one man, one “seed.”    

                  We find the most startling evidence for this in a few verses in John in particular.  The first is the startling proclamation given by Pilate to the angry mob. 

                  “One more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, ‘Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.’  When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, ‘Behold the man!”

                  I don’t think these words, “Behold the man,” (or, “behold the human being”) are accidental.  John is placing them in here on purpose.  John is using Pilate’s words to reveal to us that Jesus is the true human being.  He is the true image bearer.  Furthermore, I don’t believe it to be accidental that the quote that we looked at earlier from Irenaeus seems to echo John so much here.  John points to Pilate’s words and says, “Behold the human being,” and Irenaeus says that a human being is one who “beholds God.”  Irenaeus was a good student of John’s and there is a definite connection here. 

                  Finally, we’ve come back to Jesus’ saying on the cross, “It is finished.”  What is finished?  I believe that John is saying, “the project of God to make men and women into true humans, into image bearers, is finished”  The human project is that which is finished in Christ’s life and death.  The endeavor that God undertook in order to make a true human being finds its recapitulation in Jesus’ dying and last words on the cross.  Certainly, it also means that our salvation is also won and that Christ’s agony has come to an end.  However, the “it” which was “finished” spans further back than Jesus’ own human life and it is certainly broader than just our salvation.  It is the summing up of the project that God started in the beginning.  It is the fulfillment of the creation narrative, John tells us.  Jesus is the fulfillment of the human endeavor.  This bears even greater significance whenever we look to the verse which follows Jesus’ cry from the cross:

                  “When he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’  With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.  Now, it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath.” 

                  Earlier on, Jesus said to His accusers in John 5:16-17 that, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”   He said this in response to the Pharisees’ persecution.  They were ridiculing Him because He was working on the Sabbath.  Just like God in the Genesis account, Jesus tells us that He, to, was working.  After Jesus let out His cry from the cross, John is showing us how Jesus rested as God did in Genesis.  The Sabbath day immediately followed Jesus’ statement and death.

                  Lastly, and succinctly, we are going to look at what this means for us.  Jesus certainly isn’t the only human that has or ever will exist but He has opened up true human existence for us.  To delve into this would require another work for another time; one which will take a second look at the theology of the saints and reexamine the true meaning or holiness.  Now, though, it will suffice to say that through Christ, we have the opportunity to truly be human!  I would like to give two exhortations to close.

                  First, for us to seek our humanness, we must do what both Pilate inadvertently and Irenaeus directly tell us to do: “Behold the man!” and “Behold God!”  If the human being fully alive consists in beholding God, we must seek Him, then, with everything that we are and everything we have.  We must pursue Him with all of our might not just so that we will be “saved” but so that we can start becoming human here in now.  We must acknowledge that in pursuing God we fulfill our humanity and in neglecting God we diminish our humanity.  The denial of God is the loss of personhood.  So, “behold the man!”

                  Secondly, Jesus said in John 14 that anyone who loves Him will obey what He commands.  What does He command?  Well, He sums it all up with love.  Love God and love one another.  What did it look like for Jesus to fulfill His humanity, to love both the Father and us?  What did it take?  It took the denial of His very self.  It wasn’t until the cross that His humanity was fully fulfilled.  Like Christ, we to must deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Him if we wish to be true human beings.  Why is this the case?  Why does it have to be this Way?  Why is the Way of the cross necessary for all of us in order for us to become true humans? 

                It is necessary because God is love.  In Christ, in His life and actions, we see the Way of the Triune God’s existence revealed to us.  He gives us a glimpse of the Way in which the Father and Son and Holy Spirit have always existed together.  He shows us that self-denial and the Way of love is the Way God exists in Himself and we are being made in accordance with God’s image.  Jesus is showing us how to exist as God does, to be as God is.  He both enables us and teaches us how to be love in the Way that God is love.  To be human is to fully bear God’s image.  To fully bear God’s image we must be love as God is love.  In order to be love, we must live as Christ did.  In order to live as Christ did we must respond to His commands and follow Him.  So, again, “behold the man!”