passage to be about the Jewish experience (and not the gentile experience).
The story of Israel has become, in the hands of Paul, the story of Jesus who saves both Jews and gentiles on the basis of faith. The Torah has served its purpose; the Torah that divided the Jew from the gentile has now lost its divisive power. Paul is indwelling this story of a Jew and gentile church, a free and slave church, and a male and female church, and this church’s unity is found 100 percent in Christ alone. (That’s another sola for our Protestant theology: unity in Christ alone.)
Furthermore, Paul personally indwells this story because he’s died with Christ on the cross; so much has the cross become central to Christ and his story that he has climbed Golgotha and died with Christ. Yet more, the life he now lives is a resurrection life; so much has the resurrection penetrated his theology that the very Christian life he now indwells is a resurrection life that taps into the resurrected life of Christ. Thus, “Christ lives in me.”
His entire life is now a Christ-life. That story has so impacted him that his life is now indwelt by Christ and he indwells Christ, and his life is the Christ-life lived out in the Roman Empire for the sake of Christ. Paul’s life is thoroughly gospelized: he has learned the story and he is indwelling the story.
Embody the Story
Enough theory. What about today? How can we embody the gospel today? How can we make the story visible to our communities? I want to suggest that one word will tie this into a coherent whole for us, and that one word is witness. We are called to be witnesses.
But of what? That’s one of our problems. We are witnesses to so many things, perhaps too many things. Let me call attention to American Peoria for a minute. I’m sure that most people know about the Republicans and the Democrats, and you probably know that many evangelicals are Republicans, and if you listen to some—not all, mind you—you would think some evangelicals are witnesses to Republican politics. And we are witnesses also to, for many, a preferred lifestyle. We need to hear again the searching words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, not the least of which would be those found in Matthew 6:25–34, which probe us and say, “You are way too wealthy, you are holding on to too many things, and you are wearing fine clothing and jewelry, and you . . . you . . . you.” Power and money. All we need is sex and we’ve got the devilish trinity.
But I want to contend that the way we most embody the story is to witness to Jesus Christ:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)
Beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection. (Acts 1:22)
God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. (Acts 2:32)
You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. (Acts 3:15)
We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. (Acts 5:32)
We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross. (Acts 10:39)
He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. (Acts 10:41)
And for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people. (Acts 13:31)
You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. (Acts 22:15)
Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. (Acts 26:16)
Of all these statements, the first and last are the most important to me: We are witnesses and we are called to be a witness “of what we have seen and will see” of Jesus. We embody the gospel when we convert churches from lifestyle organizations and from political powerhouses into places where people can hear about Jesus, find Jesus, and learn to live under him, with him, and behind him. We are witnesses when the entire church becomes enraptured with the story of Jesus and lets that story shape everything: everything we think, everything we say, and everything we do.
Do you want to embody the gospel? Tell people about Jesus. Point people to Jesus. Live Jesus. With others.
Bibliography
Dickson, John. The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission: Promoting the Gospel with More than Our Lips. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013.
France, R. T. The Gospel of Mark. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
Gilbert, Greg. What is the Gospel? Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.
Gomes, Peter J. The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good about the Good News? New York: HarperOne, 2007.
Jenson, Matt, and David E. Wilhite. The Church: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: T. & T. Clark/Continuum, 2010.
McKnight, Scot, and Hauna Ondrey. Finding Faith, Losing Faith. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008.
McLaren, Brian. Everything Must Change: When the World’s Biggest Problems and Jesus’ Good News Collide. Nashville: Nelson, 2007.
———. The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth That Could Change Everything. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006.
Piper, John. God is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself. Wheaton: Crossway, 2005.
Wright, Christopher. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006.
1. See Gomes, Scandalous Gospel; McLaren, Secret Message; Everything Must Change.
2. See Piper, God is the Gospel, and Gilbert, What is the Gospel?
3. More precisely: Acts 2:14–39; 3:12–26; 4:8–12; 10:34–43 with 11:4–18; 13:16–41; 14:15–17; 17:22–31. If we add Stephen’s speech, 7:2–53.
4. Dickson, Best Kept Secret, 140, emphasis added.
5. Jenson and Wilhite, Church, 153–91.
6. Wright, Mission of God.
7. France, Gospel of Mark, 167.
8. See McKnight and Ondrey, Finding Faith.
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