Sunday, October 21, 2007
Self Promotion, New Covenant, and War
Accusations of self promotion seem to be one of the stimulating factors that lead Paul to write another letter to the community in Corinth. His response is to discuss the new covenant in what we know as II Corinthians, chapter 3. What is the connection? Is Paul blowing a smoke screen, bringing up a deep theological discussion to distract us from the sensitive issue of his self congratulatory comments? Just what is the significance of the new covenant?
That is the question. I have friends who have left Adventism over the new covenant and the perception that we Adventists have totally missed the mark. The perception is that since under the new covenant we are saved by Jesus Christ and His grace, Adventist's continued overemphasis on archaic, legalistic laws like the sabbath constitutes an effort to earn salvation. Unfortunately, there are enough legalists in every religion, Adventism included, that this view finds plenty of evidence for corroboration. However, it seems to me that this evangelical perspective grounded in the Biblical (though limited) substitutionary model of atonement and focused on personal salvation also misses the point of the new covenant.
Some background may be helpful. The old covenant has been described as a marriage document(1)between God and the Israelites consisting of some core commandments written by God on tablets of stone and numerous other laws written down separately. Jack Rogers gives this covenant context in his book, Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality.
He writes, "The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt; they had wandered in the desert, subject to attacks from other tribes, starvation, and infectious diseases. The needed cohesiveness, cleanliness, and order in every aspect of their lives. They wanted to keep pure their manner of worshiping God, who had brought them to this land. They were struggling for their own identity. Failure to form a tight knit community could threaten their long-term survival. They needed a code for living.
In response, they developed a Holiness Code to define their religious, civic, and cultural identity. The Holiness Code’s function was to achieve the “holy purity” they sought. Its underlying theme was that they must be separate, different from the Egyptians from whom they had escaped and unmixed with the Canaanite into whose land they had now come. How were they to achieve holy purity?" 2
This raison d'etre resonates with my own appreciation of the 10 commandments as primarily designed to maintain a community in relationship with God and one another. The old covenant then was an agreement between God and Israel dealing with community and relationships.
Then, moving us into the present, God incarnate lives, teaches, dies, and lives again and this changes everything, or does it? Jesus inaugurates the new covenant and sends the Holy Spirit. The results are seen in the gospels, especially Luke, and become increasingly evident in Acts. The narrowly defined holy community of Jews has the doors blown off and the line of demarcation between those in and those out keeps expanding until nobody is excluded.
The new covenant is not so much a change in substance as it is a change in dimension. The law previously written on tablets of stone for the Jews is now written on human hearts for the world. This good news prompts Peter Storey to write, "When Christ was nailed to the cross, he nailed us to our neighbors, breaking down the divisions between us. All Christians, whether pacifists or proponents of the "just war" theory, are bound to acknowledge that for those who follow Jesus, all wars are civil wars. All wars, everywhere, are a form of fratricide."
Every war whether fought for freedom, over borders, across pews, or from competing ideologies is a sibling rivalry. Those who we like to consider "other" (elderly, muslim, female, homosexual, black, etc.) could better be described as "brother" and "sister," possibly estranged but related non-the-less. This is the good news and the big change in the new covenant.
When there is genuine unity amidst diversity in a community, this is evidence of God's life-changing grace. Paul recognizes that and responds to accusations of self endorsement by pointing to the community in Corinth struggling with sin and fighting over theology yet growing in love and he says, "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (3)
1. Rob Bell, Sex God
2. I found this insightful quote in a discussion on the Spectrum Blog about a new documentary, "For the Bible Tells me So." Thanks Stephen!
3. II Corinthians 3:2-3 (NRSV)
That is the question. I have friends who have left Adventism over the new covenant and the perception that we Adventists have totally missed the mark. The perception is that since under the new covenant we are saved by Jesus Christ and His grace, Adventist's continued overemphasis on archaic, legalistic laws like the sabbath constitutes an effort to earn salvation. Unfortunately, there are enough legalists in every religion, Adventism included, that this view finds plenty of evidence for corroboration. However, it seems to me that this evangelical perspective grounded in the Biblical (though limited) substitutionary model of atonement and focused on personal salvation also misses the point of the new covenant.
Some background may be helpful. The old covenant has been described as a marriage document(1)between God and the Israelites consisting of some core commandments written by God on tablets of stone and numerous other laws written down separately. Jack Rogers gives this covenant context in his book, Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality.
He writes, "The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt; they had wandered in the desert, subject to attacks from other tribes, starvation, and infectious diseases. The needed cohesiveness, cleanliness, and order in every aspect of their lives. They wanted to keep pure their manner of worshiping God, who had brought them to this land. They were struggling for their own identity. Failure to form a tight knit community could threaten their long-term survival. They needed a code for living.
In response, they developed a Holiness Code to define their religious, civic, and cultural identity. The Holiness Code’s function was to achieve the “holy purity” they sought. Its underlying theme was that they must be separate, different from the Egyptians from whom they had escaped and unmixed with the Canaanite into whose land they had now come. How were they to achieve holy purity?" 2
This raison d'etre resonates with my own appreciation of the 10 commandments as primarily designed to maintain a community in relationship with God and one another. The old covenant then was an agreement between God and Israel dealing with community and relationships.
Then, moving us into the present, God incarnate lives, teaches, dies, and lives again and this changes everything, or does it? Jesus inaugurates the new covenant and sends the Holy Spirit. The results are seen in the gospels, especially Luke, and become increasingly evident in Acts. The narrowly defined holy community of Jews has the doors blown off and the line of demarcation between those in and those out keeps expanding until nobody is excluded.
The new covenant is not so much a change in substance as it is a change in dimension. The law previously written on tablets of stone for the Jews is now written on human hearts for the world. This good news prompts Peter Storey to write, "When Christ was nailed to the cross, he nailed us to our neighbors, breaking down the divisions between us. All Christians, whether pacifists or proponents of the "just war" theory, are bound to acknowledge that for those who follow Jesus, all wars are civil wars. All wars, everywhere, are a form of fratricide."
Every war whether fought for freedom, over borders, across pews, or from competing ideologies is a sibling rivalry. Those who we like to consider "other" (elderly, muslim, female, homosexual, black, etc.) could better be described as "brother" and "sister," possibly estranged but related non-the-less. This is the good news and the big change in the new covenant.
When there is genuine unity amidst diversity in a community, this is evidence of God's life-changing grace. Paul recognizes that and responds to accusations of self endorsement by pointing to the community in Corinth struggling with sin and fighting over theology yet growing in love and he says, "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (3)
1. Rob Bell, Sex God
2. I found this insightful quote in a discussion on the Spectrum Blog about a new documentary, "For the Bible Tells me So." Thanks Stephen!
3. II Corinthians 3:2-3 (NRSV)
Labels: Acts, Adventist, community, Corinthians, Epicenter, Jesus, law, religion, unity
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