Emissaries of the Way
The text for this post is Isaiah 62:10-11 (NLT), “Go out through the gates! Prepare the highway for my people to return! Smooth out the road; pull out the boulders; raise a flag for all the nations to see. The LORD has sent this message to every land: ‘Tell the people of Israel, ‘Look, your Saviour is coming. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes.’’ They will be called ‘The Holy People’ and ‘The People Redeemed by the LORD.’ And Jerusalem will be known as ‘The Desirable Place’ and ‘The City No Longer Forsaken’.”
I am no supersessionist. I don’t believe that Gentile followers of Jesus the Messiah have superseded Israel or the covenant that God established through Abraham and directed through the Mosaic law. The people for whom Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are their ancestors have their own responsibilities and privileges. All of which are fulfilled in Jesus, whom they must recognise as their Messiah in order to find satisfaction for their millennia of yearning. As I noted in my previous blog post, we Gentiles are settlers to a well-established faith, the Jews (the blood line of Israel) are indigenous. We are grafted into their story. By Jesus’ blood, which has become our blood by faith, securing our inheritance. We are grafted, whangai, adopted, into that story. And the story of every ethnicity in Christ now interweaves with the biblical narrative, past, present, and future. It is the massive tree containing birds of every kind that began as a small seed. It is the increasingly large river that holds fish of every kind. It is the city of New Jerusalem that attracts and welcomes the nations. It is the New Creation.
Without the canon that has been collected by wise teachers of earliest Christianity and passed down to us by wise translators today, our faith is unmoored.
Each and all of the metaphors used in Scripture to describe New Creation are bounded. There is a border between what it is and what it is not. There is no escaping this. We cannot theologically or conceptually wish it away. Entrance to New Creation requires a valid visa in one’s passport of life to allow entry. Western liberal Christians who argue for open inclusivism would prefer this not be the case. For it not to be necessary, they need to disassociate themselves from the authority of Scripture. They make compelling arguments that seek to relegate the Judeo-Christian texts to a level of helpful historic anecdote that one can take or leave. But without the canon that has been collected by wise teachers of earliest Christianity and passed down to us by wise translators today, our faith is unmoored. We remain “immature like children… tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching… influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth” (Ephesians 4:14). Jesus becomes whoever we want Him to be. We might suppose we can create a Jesus from cherry-picked verses, but the result is about as substantial as cotton wool—it feels wonderful but doesn’t protect us from reality.
On the contrary, Jesus established Himself in Scripture as the monarch of an alternate reality—a Kingdom. He is the anointed ruler long prophesied by the seers and soothsayers of Israel. His first coming challenged (and successfully undermined) one of the greatest empires in history and continues to undermine every empire since—even those who would attempt to co-opt and exploit His name. In the text above, one of those prophets imagined the coming reign as a revitalised Jerusalem, a city bounded by a broad and high wall providing safety and protection but whose gates remain open to the north, east, south, and west (see also Revelation 21). People from every point of the compass may come in, find sanctuary, settle, and enjoy the blessings of the city and its ever-present King… so long as they have a valid visa. Once there, they must adapt to the ethic of the polis, the way of living according to the expectations of the King. There is no doing whatever you like, but once you’re in, what you will like to do is to please the King, and there is nothing despotic about the King’s will.
New Creation is the dreamed place, worthy of a harsh and hazardous journey of discovery, to find that place where our vision of the good life is fulfilled.
Emissaries of the King are told, in the passage above, to go out through the gates and make the way as smooth as possible for people from all nations to find their way to the city. They are welcome. Therein, they will find plenty. The emissaries testify to this because they are from there and can point the way to it. I am a sucker for dystopian fiction, and I confess to finding some brutal film depictions of post-apocalyptic worlds intellectually stimulating. Most sagas depict a universal human longing for safety and plenty (consider the attraction of Psalm 23’s still waters and green pastures). The hero(ine)s’ journey is the pursuit of a place that they have only dreamed about from whispers handed down. The best of these stories end with the promise of fulfilment, hope renewed. It is a plot as old as humanity, brought to followers of Jesus by ancient Hebrews in the manner of Genesis, Exodus and the history of Israel. A narrative that can be just as brutal as any dystopian movie, with the fall in Genesis 3 as the point of initial cataclysm. New Creation is the dreamed place, worthy of a harsh and hazardous journey of discovery, to find that place where our vision of the good life is fulfilled—a hero’s journey.
The promise of New Creation is of a transformed humanity. A safe and trustworthy society where all work for the common good in holy… matrimony. We are wedded to one another by a covenant more potent than the marriage bond. Our mutually intimate interconnection and eternal fidelity in the resurrected reality will eclipse all debates about sexuality and gender like waking from a restless dream. Hence the Apostles referring to the community of Jesus’ followers as the bride of Christ and other familial metaphors (consider also Jesus in Mark 3:31-33). We will be a holy people, rescued, redeemed, renewed, restored, revived, renovated… transformed. Human longing entirely fulfilled. But it is not a promise that we can lift out of Scripture and take as our own vision by way of progressive human evolution and leave behind the rest of Scripture that tells us how it plays out and how to participate in it. One must follow the instructions in order to achieve that outcome. The gates to the city of promise are open wide, but as Jesus himself said, “the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it” (Matthew 7:14 NLT). That’s why the emissaries have to go out and show others the way, which they have made appropriately smooth for every context even as it remains tight and tough.
Post-colonial sensitivities seem to have created a new breed of inclusivists, who refrain from requiring any great change from people.
In a recent conversation with a brother from Papua New Guinea, we were comparing and contrasting perspectives of what scholars call “inclusivists” over and against that of “open exclusivists”. Post-colonial sensitivities seem to have created a new breed of inclusivists, who refrain from requiring any great change from people—to obliterate any boundaries to faith in Jesus, to fell the walls of New Jerusalem, and erase the borders of New Creation. “Come one come all, fellowship with us as you are”, they might say. My brother wryly commented that if these types of Christians were the emissaries to first come to Papua New Guinea to start churches, his people would still be cannibals… but cannibals for Jesus. This is, of course, a caricature of the inclusivist’s view but it is not far from the truth if we assume that change is not required to enter New Creation. It most certainly is, but it is not a change that is enforced from without. It is a change that emerges from within, by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, made available only through allegiance to Messiah Jesus. Furthermore, it is a change developed as we participate in the holy community of the people of God, guided by the authority of the holy Scriptures as the arbiter of what is and is not acceptable.
We cannot enter the gates while carrying the baggage of our old allegiances. We might find our way to this good place, and even camp outside the gates without realising we haven’t actually entered yet. But we cannot go in unless we renounce our faith in former ways, former sources of hope, former dependencies for our life and wellbeing—our former gods. Whether such sources of spiritual sustenance are guardians of the physical world, principalities of cultural philosophies, or deep commitments to ideologies—like ngā atua Māori, Hindu darshana, or evidence-based empirical science. Such dependence must be relinquished in order to acquire a valid visa for entry into New Creation. That which supported our identity is exchanged for a new source, one which raises us to who we were born to be as bearers of the image of God. Far from our earthly identity being diminished, it is amplified as we are transformed from one degree of glory to another in ever increasing measure by our living commitment to Christ, the King of New Creation (see 2 Corinthians 3:16-18).
Everything has its purpose.
Does that render our former comprehension of reality invalid? No. But it transforms our understanding of it, and we become no longer reliant on how we used to live in it. For example, as Māori, I can still perceive, and respect ngā atua Māori (the Māori spiritual powers) as delegated authorities appointed to guard the oceans, forests, skies, waterways, crops, and living beings; but in Christ I am no longer bound to them, nor the law required to appease them. I do not need to pray to them or any other spiritual entity, let alone use wicked means to achieve power from them like cannibalism and other forms of what the Bible calls witchcraft. In my reliance on Christ alone, I give thanks to God for the physical world and all that it provides for me and my family. I can also give thanks to God for the spiritual order that Jesus has created and ultimately controls to sustain the physical. Everything has its purpose.
Similarly, I can still allow evidence-based scientific findings to inform my understanding of Jesus’ creation and marvel at the intricate harmony that God has woven together, trusting that we will find nothing that contradicts God’s revelation. Instead, it enlarges my sense of wonder and worship of God, even as it might force me to revisit some theological assumptions. Faith in science believes that all remaining mysteries will eventually be explained through evidence-based or empirically tested theories of the material world. Faith in Christ believes that all mysteries will eventually be revealed in an eternity of co-creative experience in a New Creation where the veil is lifted between the seen and unseen. But you won’t get that opportunity if you have not entered New Creation before you cross the death divide (or before Jesus returns). Don’t be fooled. Faith is a driver of everything we pursue in this world, whether it is recognised as a religion or not. Choose this day who you will serve.
Arohanui ki a koutou e haere ana ki te ao (love to you all as you go into the world),
Jay
