Cruciformity - How does the cross change and shape our lives? How does it connect us with God? - PART 1

* A lot of this post as well as the next 2 was taken from and built around some INCREDIBLE talks by Tim Keller. They are here.

Acts 8:26-39, the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch

The cross changes the structure of our identity, through a holistic grasp of substitutionary atonement...

Acts 8 is a vivid climax of the first 8 chapter of the book thus far: Jesus said to go and make disciples of all nations. In Acts 2, the sermon was in every language present, a clear indication that God was saying that no culture or people group had a leg-up... and yet the disciples still struggled with Jewish superiority. In Acts 8, persecution finally pushes them out, and the Spirit takes over. In any other circumstance, Philip would have nothing to do with this black, sexually altered, high-powered man. But the Spirit said, ‘stay with him!’ ... Jesus said that the Spirit would manifest His teaching when it came down. Why does the Spirit keep going after us to connect with others outside of our own people? the Cross. The Cross gives a new identity if you really get the implications of it. When the Spirit moves the very core of yourself to get the cross, then one sign will be that you will want to be with others you would have wanted nothing to do with before.

As different as “conservative” to “liberal”, “religious” to “secular” is, everyone has a works based righteousness system in place. In traditional, religious areas, people build their character on achievement - follow the rules and perform according to what is expected of you. In a secular area, in a relative, no-morality environment, there is enormous pressure to achieve. You have to make something of yourself. You have to show the world that you matter. In both areas, people build their identity on performance.

Everyone has an identity factor.

When you build your identity on something, you have to feel superior to others that don’t have your identity factor. That’s how you get an identity. That’s how you feel good about yourself, that’s how you feel valuable. Even if the way you feel good about yourself is that you are a hard working person. You then look down on others who are lazy. If education is your identity, you look down on those without an education... If religion is your identity, you look down on those without religion.

Conservative v. liberal. One will say, ‘those liberals are ruining my culture’, the other would say ‘those religious conservatives are narrow minded bigots.’

I think -- all identities demonize others who do not have their identity factor. All identities divide the human race.

What if there was another way of building your identity?

What if instead of the religious call of ‘God has given you all of the rules to follow Him into Heaven’... What if instead God has come down, fulfilling all of the requirements for us... Those that actually get this will say: ‘Well then, I am no better then anyone else. I am a sinner saved by God’s mercy.’ THEN this person will realize, ‘since God loves me through Christ (not because of what I have done to prove my worth, BUT what HE HAS DONE) I must change!’

IF the Spirit has really taken the cross so deep inside of you that you know that is why and how you have value, that is who you really are, why you have hope, THEN it removes the need and basis for feeling superior to other people.

The cross renews your identity, because Christianity is not the function of one particular culture. The cross transforms you from within your culture.

“100 years ago 9 percent of Africa was Christian. Today it is roughly 50 percent... How did this happen? The old religions provided rules rewarding good conduct and punishing wrong conduct. But they could not help us change. Christianity answered this historic challenge by a reorientation. People in Africa sensed in their hearts that Jesus did not mock their respect for the sacred, nor their clamor for an invincible savior. And so they beat their sacred drums for Him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies. And after that dance the stars were not little anymore. Christianity made Africans into renewed Africans, not remade Europeans.” -- Lamin Sanneh

What if Africans became secular?

Lamin Sanneh continues: “The idea that there are is no supernatural, no miracles, no demons, no angels, everything has a natural cause was destructive to our Africaness... Christianity says yes there is the supernatural... there are evil forces everywhere, but Jesus Christ on the cross triumphed over those evil forces. When Christianity comes into my Aricaness it does not turn me into a European or an American. I am no longer the African I was, but I am a renewed African. My identity is changed. I have a certain distance to my Africaness, making me look at non-Afircans differently... because I have an unshakable peace, I don’t have to fear the dark anymore. I have an invincible Savior.”

If this is true, then it is almost like every single people, every single culture, every single life, has its own story line, but only in Jesus Christ will the story lines of all these people ever find a happy ending... provided that you don’t just believe in the cross in some general way, but that the Holy Spirit takes it within the very center of your life and being.

How does that happen?

I think the key to real conversion happens when you get a holistic grasp of Jesus' substitutionary sacrificial atonement. Holistic meaning it has to makes sense coherently and it has to be inwardly gripping to you. This is when change can come.

Why was this man a eunuch in Acts 8? He was a high ranking official. If you were a commoner, rising up, working with the royal family, you would not be trusted unless you were sexually altered. If you wanted to be rich and get power, you would then have to say good bye to family and descendants (in a culture where family and descendants were everything!).

In New York City, it is almost impossible to maintain a family while you are on the fast track to the top of any of the high esteemed professions. It is almost impossible to get to the top without committing the same sacrifice the eunuch decided upon.

This eunuch, incredibly lonely and unfulfilled -- An Ethiopian going to Israel to worship! This is so far-fetched that some feel this disproves the accuracy of the Bible. The distance traveled was far!! This had to have been an incredibly long and dangerous trip. The only explanation (if we believe the Bible) for this man to make the trip was that he was spiritually hungry! He must have heard or read about the God of Israel and wanted to worship in His presence.. but he also must have been turned away from the Temple because Old Testament ceremonial law forbid any eunuch from going into the presence of God. He would have gone all that way, desperately seeking connection to the divine, and would have been turned away. He must have felt so deformed, so uncleaned.... But as he is riding back we see that he was reading Isaiah 53. Now if he were reading these ‘servant passages’ in Isaiah he would have certainly read:

Isaiah 56:3-5 -- “Don’t let foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will never let me be part of his people.’ And don’t let the EUNUCHS say, ‘I’m a dried-up tree with no children and no future.’ For this is what the Lord says: I will bless those EUNUCHS who keep my Sabbath days holy and who choose to do what pleases me and commit their lives to me. I will give them—within the walls of my house—a memorial and a name far greater than sons and daughters could give. For the name I give them is an everlasting one. It will never disappear!”

Just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Go get that guy!’ to Philip the Eunuch now reads in Isaiah 53 about the one who gets cut off. Somebody who has been excluded, “and who can speak of His descendants?” It seems like this person has been voluntarily cut off, voluntarily excluded. Somebody who has essentially become a eunuch, someone who has essentially become unclean, somebody who has been slain... Who is this?

Just at that moment... Philip is desperately trying to keep up by running along side the carriage:

“It’s Jesus.”

In Jesus Christ, God has come as a leper for the lepers, a eunuch for the eunuchs... He become unclean so that we can become eternally clean. He was cast out so that we can be brought in. He paid the penalty for our sins. He stood as the eunuch for us, so that we do not have to stand as a eunuch anymore in His sight. He took upon Himself our penalty... He took it! So that we can now walk into the presence of God, clothed as and seen as Jesus Christ.

God substitutes Himself for us. He pays the penalty that we deserve. Substitution is at the heart of it all. Once you understand that and it grips you, conversion and change can happen.

In the Tale of Two Cities -- the two main character look alike, but are very different. And in it all they love the same girl. One does not get the girl and the other marries her. At the end of the book, however, the one married is found guilty (the book takes place within the context of the French Revolution) and he is in prison waiting to be executed. He is in a hopeless situation. Except for that the other man sneaks into the prison at night, knocks out his friend in prison, others he was with take his friend away, and this other man puts on his friends clothes, awaiting to be executed. (if you watch, watch the clip to at least 1:40)



“Are you dieing for him?”

“Yes, and for his wife and child.”

“I am really, really frightened, but if I can hold your hand, a brave person like you, I think I will be alright.”

-- goes the dialogue between another waiting for execution and the other man. This man’s substitutionary sacrifice changed her, and it was not even for her! ... and so if this does that, even though it was not even for her, how much could Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice change us. What will it enable us to face? How will it change our ability to handle suffering? How will it change the very structure of our life??? ... IF you see that He did not just die for others, He died for you... for you!

When the substitutionary sacrifice gets to the very bottom of our being, becoming intellectually understandable and emotionally and physically gripping, it will change us. How else do you explain a Jewish man putting his arms around a sexually altered African man and calling him brother? That’s a sign of changed identity. That’s how the cross does it.

The cross will convert you and will keep converting you the rest of your life... to be continued...

thoughts on John 17:22-24 - only in Jesus, our true neighbor, is community possible - further defining 'gospel community'

John 17:22-24
22 “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. 24 Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!

Jesus’ disciples, those that desire to obey all the commands given by Him, that desire to live like Him, have been given a weight to be able to do so. A weight that is heavier than their very self, that can move their deeply rooted character. This weight or glory is the very glory that the Father gave to Jesus. It was the very weight and significance that Jesus had that made Him ONE with God, that characterized Him and spoke of His very essence as God. When His Followers are one, just as the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) are one, the fruit or the outcome is the very significance of God or why He matters. When His disciples are one, we bare His image (our very purpose for being made - Genesis 1:27) and when anything created accomplishes or works to accomplish its very purpose for being made, it works with utmost fluidity (e.g. a boat sails best on water, a lion lives most wild outside of a cage).

Jesus is in us, IF we are His, and so (we cannot forget this point) God is in us! The very creator of EVERYTHING... (I was really excited to talk to Tom Hanks when I ran into him in a crazy, random way where he had to strike up a conversation with me. I was so excited because he basically made Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan. I was awe struck - but so then, logically, how much more awe struck should I be then with the one who created my very life, my wife, sunsets, Cayuga Lake, laughing, sex, the very idea of a good picnic, etc.). And this Creator of EVERYTHING is in our very selves - IF we are one of whom the Father gave to Jesus. And we know we are His by the fruit of our faith (We will never be saved because of what we have done/our fruit, BUT we will never be saved by fruitless faith). Faith is real when it produces change. But what change and how can we really know we are His?

We are given the glory of God for a few very important reasons. First, so we honestly never have to take a class on street evangelism, on apologetics. This is done so we can live our lives as genuinely as possible as we bare witness of God. Jesus gives us His glory so our very lives will proclaim His existence to the world. He does this because it is only by it will we be able to live in any human community as ONE.

When I am hungry, I get cynical, then cranky, and then mad. My whole entire being, it seems, focuses on my need to fill my stomach because I hurt. Stomach pains hurt (And I am sure I have never even felt REAL hunger)! Sometimes I cannot even sleep a whole night because my stomach pains wake me up... When I don’t have clothes on I find clothes to put on. When I am in danger, my full thought is on survival... Basically I immediately and fully take care of my important needs... This is how we are called to act within the Church, in this community or “perfect unity” that Jesus calls those that are His to be in. If we are to be one we should act as though we are one. We are called to love our neighbor as our very self (Mark 12:31 and Leviticus 19:18). When our neighbor is hungry, it should wake us up in the middle of the night. Their pains should be our pain. We should feel it deeply, just as we feel our pains deeply, and we should act to relieve the pain, just as we act to relieve our own. We should act so we don’t have to hurt so bad... This is how we evangelize to the world. In 2009 we are drowning in information - argument, persuasion are around every corner. Apologetics do not work. In my 25 years I have not seen anything good ever coming out of a ‘Top 10 things to say to a ________’. It just does not work. It only puffs up the chest and reinforces the ‘back against the wall’ way of doing church - retreating and making sure to swing the first punch... But it is our very lives that Jesus means for us to speak with in this world. And we see that, especially today, that this is the only way to credibly speak. You cannot pull a fast one when your life is laid out as evidence - when all someone has, lives for, has sacrificed, is, and has worked towards speaks directly on their behalf... If we are honest with ourselves this should sober us up to how grave the situation is for church evangelism. If our lives alone, laid out on its own merit is all we have, our situation is quite hopeless...

But the good news (or in other words the Gospel) is that in this very real way to view reality, we can judge the true character of another, we see the character of Jesus, and that He is definitely for us. Because He gave us His very life (slaughtered it to take our punishment), so He could give our lives weight and purpose, making the hopeless hopeful. He took on the very things that made us weightless, our very guilt that blows us every which way in the never-ending turbulence of this world, and gave us His glory, or in other words, His anchor, that roots us down deep so we can be made unshakable. Only then will we be able to have enough stability in life to be able to reach out to our neighbor and become one with them. Only when we have the weight, glory, significance of God will we be able to do something as incredible as this - to live in community so completely as to be one as God is one, as God is whole... And when we experience this “perfect unity” it is assurance, evidence for our very selves and for others, because when we “experience” it we will know that (1) Jesus was sent by God, which would make His testimony of Himself true, and (2) we will know that the Father loves us as much as He loves Himself (Jesus)...

We love ourselves. We long for our own happiness, comfort and we do everything in our power to get it. It is our own concerns, worries, triumphs, and joys that consume us... Now if this is so for a created (imperfect) being, how much more would it be so for a (perfect) Creator, God. I honestly think I would love myself more if I were better looking, funnier, more athletic, more musical. How much more would this be for a God, who even created every good thing... Now if God were simply for Himself, as we are for ourselves (we hardly, if ever, love others when it is not a benefit, love to ourselves), there would be nothing we could do about it. I mean He is God our Creator! But our God is not for Himself because His very character is community (Genesis 1 “let us make man in our image” - God’s very essence is community, the Trinity - God in 3 persons). And His very character and person came down in Jesus, who lived the perfect life and died as the perfect sacrifice, so as to bring our very selves in community with Him and with each other. He loved us so much that our hurt was His hurt. And so He sacrificed His very self on a bloody cross so our pain became His pain, our sin became His sin, the death we deserved would became His death, and our deserved separation from the God of Holy, or in other words, infinitely unique and superfluous love and justice would be His separation and isolation on the cross... so that His glory/weight/significance would become our glory/weight/significance, that His perfect standing, or in other words, community with God would become our community with God, so that the very embrace of the Father that He deserved became the very embrace that we receive. If our very purpose is to bare the image of our God, a God in community, won’t He give this to us freely, IF we are those that Jesus speaks of in John 17...

When we experience this God-given gift of complete community, we “experience” God’s love, the very love He has for Himself. And this love is not a love that was earned or has grown because of what we have done or will do. This love was there for us even before our universe was created. We have done nothing to earn this! This love is unconditional. No matter what we have done or will do we are loved as much as God loves Himself. If we do not feel this love it is because we are not in this ‘gospel community’ that Jesus speaks of here (according to this prayer of Jesus). It is only when we are in perfect unity with each other do we “experience” the very love of the Father God for His Son Jesus, for ourselves. But if we are honest with ourselves, perfect unity with each other is impossible... AND YET the deepest parts of our selves long to be connected (random fact - human connection is THE number one deterrent of suicide). Something else is at war within ourselves that will ruin it every time (Paul speaks of this battle in Romans 7). But we should not lose hope even though we know fully well that by our own doing "perfect" community is hopeless (it has been tried over and over again in history and has not worked)... Our only hope is to look to our perfect neighbor, who came down to our level, and broke into our world. Because our situation was so impossible, Jesus came down to feel our pain and then bare it. Because of His communal love for us, He saw us hungry and thirsty for a great number of unfulfilled desires we sought to fill elsewhere outside of Him, or in other words, when we sinned. And so He sacrificed Himself so we could go to Him when we are consumed with the hunger pains that comes from this broken world. In Him we can be satisfied and given weight, given food so we do not collapse due to this hunger, so that we will be able to look towards our own neighbors and extend the same love we received from God to them. We will then fill them up as He filled us up. We will then embrace since He first embraced. Whenever desires for our own comforts become perverted and trump “perfect unity” with each other, we can now look to Him (who first sought us and remains in perfect community with us).

And all of this has been made so without us earning it! We were loved completely before we were ever made! (the idea slightly resembles declaring a favorite movie that will come out ten years from now). And so how can we live pridefully when the very thing that we were made for, the only thing that matters, that has weight/glory, that can only really move us towards community, was given to us without our say (even before we had a mouth to say). Our condition was and is completely helpless (and your right, it does feel like it is not fair we are in this place! Why would God make it so?? I think the short answer (with more behind it) is that it is what it is, just as if your head was inside of the closing jaws of a wild lion), but the good news, or in other words, the Gospel is that we were saved and loved more than we could have ever thought was possible. We were given the very significance of God that allows us to live in “perfect” community with each other so that we can “experience” the very love of God, the very love that He has for Himself and that He has for us, even before an action in us was and has been performed (because the Father's love for Jesus was reconciled and redeemed to us on the cross)...

And Jesus gives us this glory so that we can be where He is. In these ‘gospel communities’ we are put on a trajectory. In this oneness we look away from ourselves, our pride is slowly peeled away, because that isolates us from the one body of Christ, and love for our neighbor grows because it makes us one with the body of Christ, giving us purpose and affection for God. When His glory is given, it is called regeneration or spiritual rebirth. The Holy, or in other words, infinitely set apart in uniqueness and superfluous Spirit of God moves and reshapes the very deepest parts of your heart, in regeneration, so that you can fulfill your desires of real, deep, and sacrificial community. Our deepest desires are realized and we want to live in and for our very purpose. We can glorify God, showing His weight and significance to others when they see our unnaturally love-filled life for each other. We are shaped and given glory (moved and restructured) in regeneration for communal love...
BUT THEN the Romans 7 fight swings towards your rebellious, prideful, sinful nature, and your glory is drained. Within a 'gospel community', the very love of Christ is extended by another, at this time, you are in “unity” with, and God is given glory by you and those that see your life. Only in and through the love of the God of love is this possible. Only by His power and love are we given enough weight to stand so we can reach out a communal hand to our geographic neighbor. Only by looking to our perfect neighbor, Jesus, will our very pride and selfishness melt and ‘gospel community’ will be made possible. And in this our eternal fate will be decided. Our trajectory, our final destination with Him in unimaginable joy for eternity will be set (Revelation 21). It is then where we will “experience” His full embrace, because it is only then will we be able to live in “perfect unity” without messing it up. Because only then will His complete neighborly love, His perfect united love for Himself will be made one within us once and for all. Since He decided to come down and make us one with Him on earth, our future is set. The wedding supper of the Lamb of God is before us, where God and His people will become one for all time.

But we were not called to just to sit around and wait for our afterlife, wait for Heaven. We are called to live new lives, where we “experience” the very love of God here on earth. We can see God, start living in Heaven, feel and “know” His full embrace as we become "one" with each other. And this is only possible because He first initiated it. Initiated a love that was undeserved and all-satisfying (Psalm 103:2-5). Our perfect neighbor, our perfect God, came and loved us first, with ALL of our baggage. Since His love for us was complete, even before the world began, we are humbled. Since nothing can snatch us out of His hand (John 10:29-30) we are justified in the presence of a fully just God, even though we have sinned, rebelled, hated, replaced God in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

And so how again can this neighborly love exist with a God of Holy love AND Holy justice. Because we have all wronged others, we have all done evil to each other, we have all had our part in DESTROYING community... And the deepest part of ourselves knows that it all has to be accounted for under God, the Creator.

But the Gospel, or in other words, the great news is that the cost was accredited to our God. In perfect community with us He became the curse, He became our evil, on the cross, so we could live in community with a a perfect and Holy God. In this great exchange, He made it possible for us to become one with Him as He has always been with us. This was foreshadowed in the Old Testament when the Israelites set up the tent of God in the desert. And it was fulfilled when He came down to earth as Jesus. And doing so He made possible the trajectory towards a most assured ending in Revelation 21 where God dwells with His people and wipes away tears and sadness forever... Only in Him we are able to live as one with each other. With the glory of His Spirit out-weighing and replacing our selfishness, or in other words, our over-desires that lead us away from Him. In Him we are united to each other because He is most glorious, moving all obstacles out of our way. In Him is it only possible to love someone fully (who has and/or will hurt and offend you), as though they were your very self. This can happen because we are all forgiven, justified in Him. And if we really believe that, believe in His name, His glory will move our pride and we will be able to forgive and love... Only in Him is real community possible.