We continue a devotional journey focused around portions of Carl E. Braaten’s book “Justification.”
Braaten writes that a theology of the gospel can be developed only within a cluster of supporting concepts. This week will look at a few.
A common error in understanding the gospel is to isolate it from the entire sweep of reality from the beginning to end. We usually fail to reach far enough back or far enough forward. We restrict the gospel to the person and the work of Christ and assign to him a role solely in the realm of personal redemption, and thus lose his intrinsic connection with the creation of the world, the covenant with Israel, the mission of the church, and the future of the cosmos. The gospel reaches backwards and forwards all along the line from creation to consummation, because Christ is the eschatological revelation of God already at the beginning of things. The world was created through Christ, and all things will ultimately reach their end in him as judge and Lord. That is the biblical meaning of calling Christ the alpha and the omega.
The end already at the beginning…the beginning breaking into the end, which ever way we say it, we are beginning to reach into the depths of the gospel. How many times have you heard people say the gospel is in the Christian scriptures…as though some other word is in the Hebrew scriptures? And yet, the good news – the gospel is the word of new life that rings from the opening scene of Genesis and carries us through to each age within the life of God’s people…and then some. Of course the gospel rings out with news about how Christ is for us the redeemer…but the gospel is also about the renewing of all things and the reconciliation of that which is broken and separated. Too often we look at the gospel with blinders that do not let us see the complete panorama of God’s gracious Reign. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,” is meant to pull us beyond the wall and barriers and boundaries we attempt to set up as the final word for what is and what can be. Once we lift our eyes to that vast expanse that has no end, the gospel’s power for new life is magnified for all of us.
Connection: In the middle of our need to judge, our Lord expands the day to include that which we would not have previously entertained. Does that mean we let anything go, no…it means we are invited to enter life that is beyond our own expectations.
Lord of all time, it is within the vision of your gracious Reign that we tumble onto the scene of your loving kindness and begin to be open to the possibilities of love as we have yet to experience it. Lift us up that we may see that the horizon is the starting line of life beyond the place in which we reside and you will be there waiting for us to come to life. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment