This was the last session and concluded with a nice little summary of how these thoughts can be used in meeting culture with the gospel.
Self-rule and self-mastery
If we are to exercise dominion over creation then that should start with the creature closest to us – ourselves. This is one of the things that distinguishes us from the animals. Animals don’t exercise self-control. We can train them, but they are driven by instinct. We are humans who are less than human because we do not exercise dominion over ourselves.
Esau, the hairy baby, is portrayed as a beastly human – a hunter who is at home in the wild. Jacob is more “ideal” – but he has to cover himself in goat skin, like an animal, in order to trick Isaac.
Esau lives on instinct, like an animal. He sells his birthright to satisfy his hunger. He’s not exercising self control.
This opens up some interesting angles on our culture – we define what it is to be human in degrading, instinctive, animalistic terms – “if it feels good do it” is the modus operandi of animals. Does our advertising sell the human experience or a sub-human experience?
Christian ethics – like abstinence before marriage – is decried as unhuman. It’s a case of exercising self-control.
We need a rich and diverse presentation of the gospel to reach our culture – because not every angle will hit every person.
The good news of the gospel is our hyper-restoration. We’re not just restored to Adam’s status but beyond. We go past the pristine. There’s a way out of our beastialised humanity. There’s a way for us to exercise dominion over creation, and ourselves. The gospel reconceives what it means to be human. The question “What does it mean to be human?” is a great way to address our culture with the gospel.
The good news of the gospel is not just about Christ – but about Christ and his Spirit. We’re often Christocentric in a way that forgets the Spirit. It can seem like evangelicals are a bit embarrassed by Jesus’ humanity – we like to focus on his divinity. Our definition of true and normal humanity is skewed – we talk about our reality, normal humanity, as though our fallen selves are the norm. Perhaps Jesus’ humanity is the norm – and is in line with our created identity (ie that which we were created to be prior to the fall). Jesus is the true bearer of the divine image. The true human (in his sinlessness). It’s not super humanity but true humanity. It’s where we’ll be in our resurrected state. Sin is the aberration. We say “to err is human” but that’s really a definition of what it means to be fallen humans.
Jesus may, in fact, be no more than humanity as it’s meant to be. The resurrected Jesus is as humanity was always meant to be.
The writer of Hebrews reads Psalm 8 as a prophecy about the Messiah. “We see him for a little while made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour.”
True humanity submits to God’s authority – which is what Jesus did, in the extreme, at the cross.
The writer of Hebrews doesn’t limit this picture of glorified humanity to Jesus alone – but puts it as the destination for humanity through Jesus – the purpose of Jesus’ resurrection is to bring many sons to glory. Jesus suffered, died, and rose again so that we might become like him as “sons of God” – not in a vague liberal sense that we’re all sons of god, but to be what Adam was supposed to be.
The doctrine of glorification (eg Romans 8) – we need to think about this doctrine as a now but not yet doctrine – yes, it’s our condition in the age to come, but the power that will transform us (the Holy Spirit) is already at work in us. Mostly it’s not yet. But that power of transforming us into glorified people is already at work in us. The Spirit’s work in us is to make us human in a way that God’s breath into Adam made him human. We’re being made a new people, now glorious.
When we are speaking about what it means to live as true humans Jesus should be our starting point because he is the “true human.”
Ethics
Living as true humans has to mean living in Christ. Once you come at it this way, Christian ethics are simply to live humanly (rather than animalistically).
If we are to understand our fallen humanity as “beastly” where we live without self-control and on instinct. Peter uses the analogy of “brute beasts” when describing those who blaspheme – “creatures of instinct born only to be destroyed”…
Our tendency is to live by instinct. We should, instead, be living via the fruit of the Spirit, a redefinition of what it means to be human (Galatians 5), where self-control gets a Guernsey. Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 9, with an athletic comparison, also uses self-discipline as a key for life as a Spirit empowered human. The new human is united to Christ and empowered by the Spirit and so is beginning to exercise the dominion that Adam was meant to exercised over creation.
Self-control is about every area of our lives – not just about sex. It’s about our tempers, about controlling our tongues, about controlling our diets, it’s about controlling our passions. This is counter-intuitive in our culture, which regards self-control as an unnecessary prohibition. Our world looks at self-control and calls it a vice (cf Romans 1).
When we look at the fruit of the spirit we should think “this is what it means to be human, no more and no less.”
Fresh angles on evangelism.
We live in a world where everybody is questing to be truly human.
Every religion and ideology, every political vision, is built on the question of what it means to be truly human.
Our political debate is just an expression of what it means to be truly human. The health care debate in the US is also underpinned by what it means to be truly human. The debate about gay rights, our popular culture (eg Twilight), just about every expression in our world is undergirded by this question of what it means to be truly human. We say that the definition of true humanity focuses on the question of Jesus Christ – who shows us what it means to be God, and also what it means to be truly man.
We say “consider Jesus” the one true human, defining humanity by any other starting point is defective. We, as Christians, should be modeling what it means to be human. We are the ones living the truly alternate lifestyle. Our task is to live humanly and model what it means to be truly human.
We are united to Jesus and have begun the process of becoming truly human. We don’t get up and pronounce that we’ve got something that others don’t – but we do model this fuller picture of humanity. As we become more “godlike,” as the Spirit transforms us, we become more human, and then we become advertisements for the gospel.
Our gospel message is redefining and modeling humanity in a way that is hopefully attractive to the people around us.
Deuteronomy – when Israel keeps the law the nations go “oh what a wise God you have…”
Australia is ahead of the US in terms of being a “post-Christian” society – the US is moving that way and grappling with the question of what that will look like.