Effective leaders understand the big-picture perspective of their mission, so that they can lead the way and stay motivated to fulfill their mission. As we understand that big picture for Christian men, sometimes called the meta-narrative of Scripture, it fuels our passion to fulfill our part in God’s story. The resurrection is more than a guarantee that death is not final for Christians; it reveals to us a lot about the greatness of our mission as Christ-followers.
The fact that Jesus’ resurrection was not just a spiritual resurrection but the resurrection of Jesus’ physical body is so important that when the Council of Nicea convened in the 4th century, it intentionally refuted this belief (decetism) in the creed it wrote so that they could insure that believers understood that Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection took place in real, physical flesh. The importance of this truth is still recognized today, in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and in the life everlasting.”
One of the reasons that belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ is so important is that it tells us that God has begun to redeem his whole CREATION from the decay of sin. Although today’s Christians do affirm the resurrection of the physical body, many have lost the understanding of its significance. God’s original intent to have man rule over and develop the potential of CREATION, and the biblical teaching that the second Adam will ultimately restore all of CREATION are inadvertently left out of the gospel story by many Christians today. They would define the gospel as these two fundamental truths: 1) I must recognize that I am sinful and broken. 2) I cannot fix my own brokenness, so I need a savior, Jesus, to redeem me.
While sin and personal salvation are undeniable realities, they are not the complete gospel. They are not the gospel of the kingdom, which, as we saw last week, is the only gospel that Jesus proclaimed. Our sin and Jesus’ death to atone for those sins are two chapters of the gospel. If that is all that is important to Christians, we have settled for a two-chapter gospel: 1) the fall, 2) redemption.
If you think about it, this gospel doesn’t require Jesus’ physical, bodily resurrection. Jesus could have just risen spiritually and ascended to heaven, where he stands at the gates of heaven and admits into the holy presence of God those who have trusted in his atoning work at the cross and turn away those who trust in their own works for salvation. However, the resurrection of Christ’s physical, material body tells us that God’s story from Genesis to Revelation is a four-chapter gospel about his creation: Here is a summary of the whole gospel:
1. CREATION (the way things were, along with God’s intention for Adam & Eve to develop its potential, rule it for God, developing culture that reflects God’s image)
2. FALL (the reason the world is so broken—Adam’s kingdom rule usurped by Satan, sin, and death)
3. REDEMPTION (God’s people set free by King Jesus from slavery to Satan, sin, and death—tasting and showing the world the way things could be)
4. RESTORATION (the way things will be—creation renewed with no more sin, sorrow, coronavirus, or pain.)
The four-chapter gospel answers the questions of meaning, origin, and ultimate purpose. It restores to Christians raised on the two-chapter gospel the importance of creation. Tim Keller writes:
Some conservative Christians think of salvation as the fall, redemption, heaven. In this narrative, the purpose of redemption is escape from this world; only saved people have anything of value, while unbelieving people in the world are seen as blind and bad. If, however, the story of salvation is Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, then things look different. In this narrative, non-Christians are seen as created in the image of God and given much wisdom and greatness in them (cf Ps. 8) even though the image is defaced and fallen. Moreover, the purpose of redemption is not to escape the world, but to renew it…It is about the coming of God’s kingdom to renew all things. (cited in All Things New, by Hugh Whelchel.)
Much of the Bible-believing church today has its historic roots in a form of Christianity that held a two-chapter view of the gospel. Here is what results from that devaluing of creation. You might recognize some of these strains.
A. The two-chapter gospel doesn’t give a clear picture of our true destiny. Instead, it puts the emphasis on “going to heaven” when the complete story is that heaven comes down to renew the earth. King Jesus comes down from heaven to overthrow the tyrants ruining Adam’s kingdom, Satan, sin, and death. Those who have died before Christ’s final return will be united with their physical bodies and we will dwell eternally with God himself on a renewed earth where there is no more sin or decay.
B. The two-chapter gospel doesn’t give a full picture of what we were created FOR—our mission. Christian discipleship often completely ignores God’s creation mission for Adam and Eve. A true understanding of redemption is that Christians recover their creation calling to “secular” vocation—to develop the potential of God’s creation. God created humans in his image to be workers, just as he is. Sin corrupted our work ensuring that humans toil and sweat in their labor. Our redemption in Christ means recovering our original calling to our vocation—knowing that salvation is not escaping from this earth but being a part of God’s four-chapter plan to renew creation. T. M Moore describes the four-chapter gospel view of work:
So the creation has been “subjected to futility,” Paul says, and we who have become the sons and daughters of God, who understand his purpose for his work, have been called in our work to repair, renew, and restore the original beauty, goodness and truth of God….Our work only takes on full significance when we see it in this light, as part of God’s ongoing work to bring everything to a higher state of goodness (Rom 8:28). So, no matter what our job, or whatever your work may be, God intends that you should devote your labors to something greater than personal interest, economic prosperity, or social good, alone. God intends your work to contribute to the restoration of the creation, and the people in it, to raising life on this planet to higher states of beauty, goodness, and truth, reflecting the glory of God in our midst. (TM Moore, “Work, Beauty and Meaning: A Biblical Perspective on the Daily Grind.”)
C. The two-chapter gospel creates a false sacred/secular divide. By ignoring the significance of creation, the two-chapter gospel creates a divide between what is spiritual and what is secular. Hugh Whelchel, in his booklet, All Things New, writes, This divide is responsible for the popular mindset that our relationship with God is compartmentalized to church-related events and activities. Quite the contrary, our response to God should reverberate into every facet of life: at home, at work, in our families, in our communities and at church. Christ claims every part of our lives and every square inch of creation as his and wants us to pursue his righteous rule there. That is what seeking first the Kingdom of God means.
D. The two-chapter gospel leads to an escapist view of redemption. The two-chapter gospel views salvation as private, personal salvation only. It is a bus ticket to heaven. Christians are left without a very clear understanding of what they are supposed to do while they wait for the bus. But they do know that they are to love not the world, neither the things of the world. This verse mistakenly translates into a negative attitude towards non-Christians and towards the culture. Understanding creation (chapter 1) and the restoration of creation (chapter 4) confronts believers with the value of God’s creation, including unbelievers who bear the image of God. Understanding the mandate to develop culture causes us to partner with non-believers who, through common grace, have much to contribute in God’s work to repair, restore, renew, and develop the glory of his creation. Our help is vital because sin damages all relationships, the fabric that holds culture together. Corbett and Fikkert, economics professors at Covenant College, describe the devastation brought about by Adam and Eve’s sin.
Their relationship with God was damaged, as their intimacy with him was replaced with fear; their relationship with self was marred as Adam and Eve developed a sense of shame; their relationship with others was broken, as Adam quickly blamed Eve for their sin; and their relationship to the rest of creation became distorted, as God cursed the ground and the child-bearing process…because the four relationships are the building blocks for all human activity, the effects of the Fall are manifested in the economic, social religious, and political systems that humans have created throughout history (When Helping Hurts).
Jesus’ mission was to overthrow sin’s reign everywhere in culture, not just in the personal lives of believers. That is what it means to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. That is what it means to be salt and light in the culture—as salt, to retard decay, as light to expose injustice and show the kingdom of righteousness to the world. It is to join in God’s redemption of his glorious creation right now. God has strategically placed each of us in our specific family, job, church, neighborhood and community so that we can repair, restore, renew, and develop the glory of his creation right there.
E. The two-chapter gospel reduces our mission as Christian men to sin management. If your vision of Christianity is sin management, how much does it capture your heart? Although fighting for righteousness in our own lives is a high calling and central to our mission, battling personal sin is not a big enough vision to capture the hearts of men in the same way that the four-chapter gospel does. Dave Murrow, in his book, Why Men Hate Going to Church points out, Every man wants to be a hero, to become a great man. Boys do not dream of sitting in a cubicle; they dream of slaying the dragon, rescuing the princess, and absconding with the treasure. Males want to be engaged in a mission that is worthy of the best they have to give. Buried in men’s hearts is a willingness to make great sacrifices for a mission that is worthy of their full devotion; but too often in our churches the remnants of the two-chapter gospel are producing a vision of discipleship that fails to engage that capacity. If discipleship is primarily about our personal struggle with sin, it will not capture their hearts.
In contrast, the four-chapter gospel has the power to connect the dots between men’s willingness to fully devote themselves to a great cause and the great cause for which Jesus came to planet earth—the overthrow of Satan, sin, and death—and the establishment of his righteous kingdom over the planet. Jesus began his ministry by calling attention to the cataclysmic intrusion of the kingdom of God into time. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand (Mk 1:15). Jesus came into the world to recover Adam’s kingdom from the usurpers of Adam’s throne—Satan, sin, and death— and reverse the curse brought upon the cosmos because of sin. In the same way that the curse spread decay, brokenness, and death throughout Adam’s entire kingdom, so Jesus’ mission to bring healing and restoration is cosmic in its scope.
As Christ-followers, we enlist in the great cause of our master, seeking the reign of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness over every square inch of life. King Jesus has come to reconcile to himself all things (Col 1:20). He is putting into right relationship everything he has created. He is using his power to fix everything in the universe that was broken by sin. Tim Keller writes, The kingdom of God is the renewal of the whole world through the entrance of supernatural forces. As things are restored under Christ’s rule and authority, they are restored to health, beauty, and freedom (Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road). The four-chapter gospel is the reason that this ministry, Mission Focused Men for Christ, defines our threefold mission as Called TO Christ—to whole-hearted loyalty to our king’s rule in our lives, Called TO BE LIKE Christ—to surrender to Christ’ righteousness in our heart attitudes, and Called TO EXERCISE DOMINION FOR CHRIST—to seek, in every sphere of our lives, to bring about kingdom righteousness and kingdom flourishing. Our mission is a little bigger than overcoming our personal sin.
Christopher Wright, in his book, God’s Mission: The Key to Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, summarizes the four-chapter understanding of our mission as: Our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation…This is The Story that tells us where we have come from, how we got to be here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we are ultimately going.
The resurrection of Christ’s physical body calls us not just to a private, spiritual relationship with Christ, but to do our part in Christ’s cosmic mission to fix everything in creation broken by sin.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
1. Celebrate the fact that your calling from Christ is to part of the biggest enterprise in the history of the world—Christ’s overthrow of Satan, sin, and death and establishment of his kingdom of righteousness over nook and cranny of earth.
2. Meditate on what you might do to stay better focused on living out this mission in your own life and relationships.
