Monday 14 June 2010

Who are the Church... really?

Q: What do you do if you reckon you've found out that the Church has been systematically reading a bit of the bible wrong...
A: You stand up and tell everyone on Sunday morning...

Following that... this is Ephesians 1-2:10 rewritten based on a number of sources... who all make the key suggestion that we (the Western Church) might have been reading it wrong... and point out that the Church isn't the focus of a plan hastily put together by God to save the world after his original plan to use Israel was hijacked by Satan and mankind's sin, but rather the firstfruits of His original plan... that he brought to fulfilment through Messiah... from Israel... to save the world.


"So… I was telling you about the plan that God had all along… to save the world through the people of Israel… How he chose us as a nation, making a covenant with our Father Abraham to bless him and his children… and how he told him that his children would be a blessing to other nations… this was God’s plan… to adopt one nation, and through that nation, to save the world… 

That was the plan that he originally set in place… and he never wavered from it… that was the plan that took Jesus to the cross – his death as a symbol of him voluntarily entering into Israel's experience of purifying exile – and it was the same plan that was in operation when he raised Jesus, our Messiah, from the dead – as a symbol that the exile was finally over… 

For us Jews… this is a natural conclusion to a long story… a longing to be brought back from Exile so that we would know that our salvation had come… and it reflects glory back onto God… because he did what he promised to do. 

But, Messiah’s death – for us – wasn’t just for us… it was also for you gentiles… That was God’s bigger vision… not just salvation for one people… but salvation for all people… Jew and Gentile… bringing them all together and raising them up with the God/Man Messiah… 

What an amazing picture that paints… Jews and Gentiles together, one family… one ‘Church’… under God the father… who raised our Messiah from the dead… and then brought us all together, as his body, to share in his glory… 

It’s a picture that we’re quite used to… after all, our prophets have been talking about it for centuries… It’s a picture, actually, that we got very wrong… we thought that salvation was only going to be for us… we thought God would use Messiah to destroy the gentiles and flush them out of our land… establishing Himself back in the temple like in the old days… 

In fact, God used the legal agreement that he had made with us to do something far more powerful… he did destroy our enemies… but in a way that we didn’t expect… How amazing is his love for us that he should use us as a nation to produce Messiah when we weren’t even out of exile… How much more amazing then that he should use us – without us even knowing – to bring salvation to you… 

He destroyed our enemies by making them our brothers… How great is his wisdom… how great, and how far beyond our understanding… it’s such an odd… and perfect solution… that it’s taken us all by surprise…  from enmity, we find ourselves seated next to each other… in love… with Messiah in glory… 

And how astonishing is that for you too… to be brought into God’s family… graciously… not driven by a legal commitment, but simply by a Father’s love… adopted into our family… without reason, generously… ridiculously… to be God's Kingdom plan."

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