Alienation, Participation and Mediation: The Eucharistic Axiom of Human Destiny (A Phenomenological Christology)

The Jesus who we encounter as a distinctive phenomenon in the haze of ineffable religious experience is mediated by a retrojected interpretation of the radical prophet and mystic of Nazareth in light of the resurrection. This retrojection is a reversed historical projection: the identity of Jesus is established by his return from the realm of death into the sphere of the living and ascension into the life of God rather than by his birth. The assembly of his life-events construct a portrait that resurrection completes, producing what we call the Christ Event. Jesus only finds a singular identity within the totality of this event.

So what fundamentally occurs in the Christ Event? This question is primarily phenomenological, i.e. it concerns itself with the social impact and personal/experiential significance of the event. I will attempt to answer this through the categories of alienation, mediation, and participation. 

I. Alienation

In Paul's Adamic interpretation of the Christ Event, we find binaries of obedience vs disobedience, old man vs new man, etc. What we can retrieve from this is the fundamental distinction between two kinds human beings, primal and eschatological, as well as the role of the Christ Event in making the transition.

The primal human is the original human prototype of evolution, along with all of his/her imperfections and deficiencies. This type of human is caught in between the ground and the sky. Animals walk on all fours and belong to the earth. Angels have wings and inhabit the heavens. Humans walk upright and bridge the gap. They are caught in between two spheres of existence. They are also genetically caught in between base instincts and transcendence. Our base instincts, inherited from the sphere of basic organic and sentient lifeforms, demand that we protect ourselves, feed ourselves, survive, reproduce, perpetuate, and guard our own. This is predicated on natural selection and "survival of the fittest," paradigmatic of nature as "red in tooth and claw." On the other side, our drive toward transcendence is rooted in the emergence of self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, and awareness of the distinctions between things, others, and the finite & Infinite. We naturally tend toward the Infinite. Knowing we are finite, we experience a fundamental sense of alienation, caught between our animal finitude and our tendency toward transcendental integration with the Infinite (which is theologically personified as God). Unfortunately, the majority of efforts made by primal humanity to transcend their finitude have resulted in nothing more than the will to power--institutionalized by religion, legitimated in theology (through the ideological projection of grandiose images of the human ego onto God), and fully rooted in base instincts. Thus, our efforts toward escaping alienation have only doubled it over on itself. 

In contrast, the eschatological human is the human being who has successfully transcended the animal sphere and achieved the actualization of human desire in distinction to base instinct. The fundamental paradigm of incarnation in the New Testament establishes the identity of Jesus as the eschatological human through the unfolding events of his life that culminate in the resurrection, i.e. transcendence beyond finitude. The accomplishment of transcendence that culminates in the resurrection begins to unfold in the activity of Jesus' life and can be described within the category of mediation. 

II. Mediation

Jesus has always been understood in Christian thought as a mediator between God and humanity. Unfortunately, Western Christianity has couched this term in legal metaphors, almost always interpreting "mediator" as one who defends another in court.  However, Jesus is enabled to mediate through incarnation in the New Testament. Thus, it is important to begin with a brief overview of the meaning of incarnation before explaining what mediation means.

Recalling that Jesus' identity as the incarnate Son of God only comes together within the totality of his being and activity, affirmed and consummated in resurrection, incarnation cannot begin with a narrowed focus on the particulars of Jesus' birth or even the descension/condescension of the Divine presence onto him at his baptism by John. Both of these are useful as symbols, whether true or not, but they do not demonstrate how Jesus' identity ultimately came together in the memories of his followers. Without the resurrection they would have regarded him as just another failed Messiah. The resurrection retrojects an incarnational understanding onto Jesus in conjunction with his vocational activity: the resurrection, affirming the embodiment of the Divine presence in Jesus, reinterprets his words and actions as demonstrations and manifestations of that presence. Thus, Jesus incarnates (i.e. puts into flesh and blood) the Divine character.

The central metaphor for incarnation retrieved from the New Testament is the Logos of the opening poem to John's Gospel. The Logos is the divine principle that binds the cosmos together, the mediating logic within reality, the ground of order and form, and the "world-soul." The proclamation that the Logos has become present in Jesus borrows literary themes and terminology from Jewish wisdom literature, associating the Wisdom of God in Jewish literature (personified as a woman) with the Logos of Greek philosophy/cosmology. Paul also refers to Jesus as the Wisdom of God. The question then becomes, what is this wisdom?

Paul refers to this wisdom as weak and foolish in this world. He categorizes the world (better trans. as age), or the realm of darkness, as greedy, murderous, selfish, and hedonistic. He quantifies the Divine character through what he calls the fruit of the Spirit, which include generosity, self-control, and love. Jesus radically practices these virtues throughout his life, abandoning the ego/will-to-power in favor of loving everyone (including enemies) and generously giving to the needy. This is the wisdom of God mediated through Jesus by the Divine presence in him.

This incarnation/mediation is only made possible when Jesus distinguishes himself from God -- not my will but your will be done, not my will but my Father's will -- so that in obedience toward God, recognizing his creaturely finitude before the Infinite, he may participate in the Infinite life and consequently mediate it -- when you have seen me you have seen the Father, I and my Father are one.
Thus the human body of Jesus is a finite, creaturely temple for the Infinite life to dwell and empower, enabled when the creature recognizes its own finitude and self-distinction in perfect obedience and submission to the will of God--summed up in the character of Divine wisdom.

III. Participation



Jesus incarnates the Way -- the new existential mode of being for humanity, constituted by obedience to Divine wisdom and grounded in a basic re-cognition of finitude and creaturely distinction before the Holy ineffable Infinite. This is the new existential mode of being-in-the-world for the eschatological human being, enabled by two distinctions: the humble self-distinction of the creature from the Creator and, consequently, the new distinction of the eschatological human being from the primal human being.  The self-distinction of the creature from the Creator is a reversal of primal humanity's deficiency--symbolized by Eve and Adam's downfall through their will-to-power and desire to erase this distinction. This reversal accomplishes the creation of the eschatological human being. Christians hold that Jesus accomplishes/inaugurates this through perfect(ed) self-distinction. Jesus, in the full acceptance of his finitude and in submission to the Infinite ground of his being, imitated the love of God by extending it to others, thus eradicating horizontal alienation.

To participate in Jesus' way of being-in-the-world is to act in the absolute dependency that saturates the open-minded consciousness, to walk in that humility before other humans and God, and to imitate the love of God as disclosed in the historical activity of Jesus Christ. This mimetic participation (mimesis=imitation of human action) in Jesus' existential mode of being is the re-enfleshment of the Logos embodied by Jesus--that is, the Logos that is the world-principle of unifying love and creativity. This re-enfleshment of the Logos constitutes another body of Jesus, the body of Christ spoken of by Paul. Thus the human community as the body of Christ is the eschatological community -- a taste of the new creation that is always arriving from the future into the present. The human community's re-embodiment of Jesus' way of being is symbolized in the church's centering sacrament -- the Eucharist. The bread and wine are the body and blood of Jesus Christ transformed into a new ontological existence. As Paul says, because the whole community eats of this one bread and drinks of this one cup, they are all one body and one blood. Again, the Logos as a world-principle of unifying love is at work here, realized and actualized by the community as a preview of its creative transformation of the cosmos in the future. This unification saves us absolutely from our primal alienation by bringing us into a recognition of absolute dependency, finitude, and self-distinction that opens us up to God and the Other in such a way that we must relate and therefore love. This is a freedom from independence into interdependence predicated by mutual embrace. The Christ Event then can also be called the Eucharistic Event that repeats itself through our mimetic participation of the way of Jesus yielding the re-embodiment of the world-principle of unifying love. Thus the Eucharist is salvific, enabling our transcendence by inviting us into the mutual embrace of the Trinitarian community.

IV. The Eucharistic Axiom



Eucharist consists of a conjunction of the Greek Eu meaning "good,""well-being," or "happiness," and charis meaning grace or "gift." Thus the Eucharist in the joy of the Gift, the goodness of the Gift, our well-being in relation to the Gift. This Gift is the Gift of Presence. This Presence is the Divine Presence that we discover in the healing of our alienation and experience of unifying love and mutual embrace. Thus Divine Presence incarnates itself in human presence by unifying humans together. The joy of the Gift of Presence is the joy of the Gift of Love in human community, healed of its division, pride, and violence.

If we begin with the Eucharist and look at how it re-organizes and re-rationalizes our world, we will discover the foundation, axiom, and promise of a future and a hope beyond our always schizophrenic ways of being that opens up other possible worlds in which grace and love transform and nourish human life. We will discover the unfolding of a new destiny for human beings in relation to the unconditional love that holds this world together.

V. Conclusion



What we can conclude is that Jesus' identity follows and is constituted by his agency and not the other way around. In other words, Jesus' agency and activity culminating in the self-sacrificial love of the cross constitute his identity as the mediator/embodiment of the full Presence of the Logos that is the world-principle of unifying love that takes form in his way of being-in-the-world. This allows him to carry forth a salvation into the world that rescues us from our alienation and brings us into humble fellowship with other creatures through our mimetic participation in his way of being. This new way of being constitutes a new kind of humanity -- the eschatological human being.

Being-Toward-the-Other: the Ontological Constitution of Salvation in Christian Soteriology

In the salvific transfiguration of being that results from an encounter with the Sacred vis-à-vis the symbolic medium of Jesus of Nazareth, a fundamental reorientation of self radically alters the path of the individual's vocation. The will is no longer fundamentally oriented toward Ego but toward the Other. Along with Heidegger's ontological constitutions of being-in-the-world and being-toward-death, along with Ricoeur's being-interpreted, another existential configuration comes into focus: being-toward-Other.

Through this traumatic encounter, the Gaze of being finds dissatisfaction in the objective horizon of its consciousness -- a field of idolized phenomena violently assimilated and reduced to objects of personal gratification. Under the vocationally tyrannical and objectifying Gaze of being the Other is mutilated and reduced to an enslaved other, no longer an Other but another shadow that is otherwise than Other, otherwise than being, a mere icon idolatrously mistaken for the Real. So this horizon of consciousness is realized as a killing field populated by shadow objects of Ego, fenced off from that which is beyond the perceptive horizon of consciousness -- the traumatizing Real, the Other, the irreducible and ineffable, along with its penetrating Gaze that commands our attention, sinking into the black voids at the centers of our eyes, invisibly crossing our Gazes in an ineffable and commanding commonality, soliciting our attention and reverence and caution.

So the traumatic encounter with the Sacred Other leads to a reverence for every other Other, a being-toward-Other which demands that we draw out of ourselves under the Gaze of the Other and respect and love the ineffability of the Other, symbolized in the black and bottomless commanding abyss at the centers of their Gaze, which is the locus of their irreducible singularity. 

But how does the Sacred Other function within the symbolic medium of Jesus Christ? How does it succeed in reconstituting our being? First, in the teachings of Jesus. Through the medium of evocative parable we are drawn into the experiences of the Other -- the desperation of the prodigal, the suffering of a man mugged and left in a ditch. But more importantly, the unconditionality of love behind these stories -- the celebratory love of a father for a son who took away his livelihood and destroyed his honor and fortunes, the dishonorable and scandalous love of a hated enemy who helps his enemy out of a ditch and pays for his healthcare anyway. Love draws us out of ourselves and beyond the boundaries Ego selfishly establishes. But what about the actions of Jesus? He heals the sick, raises the dead, and loves his enemies, embracing those who have been othered by the elites. He is unjustly murdered and crucified, and when we stand before the image of this figure in our minds, we stand before a naked and bleeding body, bearing the scars of our selfish world on his own flesh, a world we have contributed to ourselves. His blood cries out to us, his wails and cries screaming at our injustice, calling us to crucify our own Egos that crucify his body. And as the bleeding body of the Other, reduced to a mocked and derided other, he calls us toward himself to embody this cruciform love, to go out toward the body of the Other, lift it from the ditch, pay for its healthcare, and forgive it of what it has ostensibly taken from us.
 

Heaven and Hell in Narrative Perspective

If you call yourself a follower of Jesus, there may be a few things you want to consider. For one, if God’s love is not strong enough to draw followers apart from the threat of hell, how can that love be real and Divine and truly at the heart of your faith? The fear of hell cripples and weakens our faith, and hollows out its core, leaving only a shell. And the core of Christ is Agape – unconditional love – not wrath and fear. To be “in Christ” is to live and walk within the paradigm of this divine love. This is why, as John says, “God is Love” and “perfect love casts out all fear.”

Heaven and hell occupy the same space – earth: the terrain beneath our feet, the air we breathe, the cultures we live in. Every choice we make is an opportunity to bring heaven or hell to this world. And for the early Christians, the ultimate hope is the victory of heaven here, or the “Kingdom of God,” and “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” John says that to join the Reign of God is to pass from “death to life,” or from hell to heaven.

Heaven constitutes anything integral to the Reign of God and the story God is telling – the story of reconciliation, redemption, and transformation – and God is calling everyone everywhere to repent. To repent of hell – the stories we tell ourselves, the lies and illusions and fictions we live in. The illusion of inequality, the illusion of class, the illusion of merit and entitlement, the illusion of injustice as just – these fictions constitute the kingdom of this age and all things outside the realm of God. Those who live within a fictional paradigm of reality will find them selves miserable and disconnected at the realization of the Reign of God. Those who allow God to retell and rewrite their story, and to take heed to the story God is telling, will find them selves more fully integrated with reality at this manifestation at the end of the age.

Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Jesus – the God who took on flesh and suffered, who drank the cup of the victim, who befriended the outcast, the unclean, and the Other. The God who stood alongside the victim at a time of oppression, who condemned the Roman Empire and the kingdoms of this world, who overturned tables of economic oppression occupying the Gentile court, who called for justice and compassion and love, and was brutally murdered for it. This Jesus was vindicated at the resurrection, and will vindicate humanity. This God is Lord over the creation. All will see the glory of this reality of love at its coming, and all will be saved.

However, “each in his own season.” Some cannot bear to embrace this vision of God’s benevolent society among us – a society where the unwanted workman at the end of the day receives the same wages as the one who came in the morning. A society where people don’t get what they deserve, that doesn’t operate on the principle of merit. A society where the least are the greatest and the greatest are the least. A society where those with a name suddenly have no name, but those without a name become great. A society where those who humble them selves are exalted, and those who exalt them selves are humbled. A society that knows no war. A society whose citizens love each other unconditionally and “share all things in common.” A society where envy, malice, greed, and lust have no place. A society where the religious Other is welcomed into the “holy of holies” behind the veil, and yet the religious Elite find them selves suddenly cast out.

Because some will see this society come into being, and they will remain close-fisted for a time, suffering the consequences of their obstinacy. But then there are those who come to an end of them selves; who deny them selves; who take up the cross of shame, humility, and servanthood; who stand against the empire and against oppression; who care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan; who give up much to see this benevolent society become a reality for everyone; and they will see the glory of Christ when the Kingdom comes. They will shine like the stars in the Reign of God. This is the story God is telling – the coming of heaven to earth and the conquering of hell. Which story do you want to live in, which version of reality will you tell yourself, which do you find most compelling?

Why People Are Afraid of Universalism, or the Possibilities of "Love Wins"

Our reality is wired to a state of action and consequence, and this sequence is abstractly referred to as “Karma.” From our vantage point within a historical cycle within historical cycles (think of Ezekiel’s wheel within a wheel), we often feel as if we are trapped within what Hindus call “Samsara,” the great wheel of life. In Buddhism Samsara is a vicious cycle, only escapable by Nirvana – the total detachment from self, identity, and the world. Christianity often mirrors this reality rather than challenging it. Salvation comes through a detachment and disenchantment with this world, in hopes of transcending it and reaching another higher world.

Even the Eschaton presented in our theology does not see this world as becoming redeemed from Samsara, but being destroyed along with it – marking a break between “time” and “eternity.” Because of our Karmic understanding of reality, we have a difficult time imagining a reality where all would be redeemed and the ultimate consequence of destruction for evil would be defeated for all.

We yearn for the destruction of evil, and leave grace only a marginal area for ourselves and our tribe. We struggle to imagine a reality where Karma is totally and completely defeated and not just marginally curbed.

Many people claim they cannot understand why God would be gracious at all, and this illustrates why it is that they cannot envision a reality where grace reigns over all. They want at least some punishment and consequence, either for the worst of us (Catholics) or those of us who don’t repent (Protestants). And some of us cling to the penal substitution theory of atonement, which makes a way for grace to cease from interrupting and making even one small dent in the Karmic cycle. The solution is rather that grace is an alternative satisfaction of this blood-hungry Karma beast, opening a small tunnel out by redirected consequence while leaving the beast happy.

Universalism would mean the end of Karma and the Reign of Love in every crevice and corner of creation. It would require that the totality of Grace would rule, reign, and abolish Karma in its totality in every corner and crevice. Apparently, this scares some people.

Jesus, the Gift, and Inclusion

What we need is a Christian quasi-pluralism, a new kind of inclusion, one that transcends the borders of soft inclusion, something more robust and authoritative than a weak anything-goes pluralism or relativism, and also far stronger, more powerful, more robust and authoritative than any kind of exclusive Christianity. It must be narrow enough to exclude from within and broad enough include from without, a true embodiment of Jesus’ own paradox that “he who is not for me is against me” and “he who is not against me is for me.”

It must be rooted in the person of Jesus, not the mere name which is a mask rooted in context, a linguistic code. The name of Jesus, the fleshly body of Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, the historical events of his life, his history—these are all texts and contexts, contextualizations and embodiments of the true person, nature, and fundamental truths of the Divine. They are the lenses through which we encounter the Divine as Christians.

There is a River of Truth that runs through and underneath these texts and contexts, embodied and revealed in Jesus.

This River of Truth is born out of Gift—the reality and source within which the creation finds its flow, harmony, and balance. When Gift becomes substituted by economy, economy throws everything off balance. Economy involves merit. Gift requires that nothing can be earned or should be earned. Gift requires endless grace and love, a sort of blind reciprocity based on endless gratitude rather than entitlement. Economy breaks the flow and harmony with delay. Delay occurs when there is expectation rather than expectancy, a waiting for the Other to reciprocate. Economy throws off the balance because there is more weight on one side than the other at any given moment, always a debt which must be reciprocated.

Earning, debt, economy, merit, calculated reciprocity—Paul condemns these and excludes them from grace, from the “Law of the Spirit.” He says that there is no condemnation for those who walk by this law. When we subscribe to a system of economy and debt, or any “system” for that matter, we break the flow, harmony, and balance of creation and lose our integration, psychologically accruing a debt and falling into disintegration. This is condemnation. This is the “Law of the flesh,” because it belongs to the realm that has fallen into disintegration and that has been wrecked by the Curse of economy, the realm which is not fully integrated with the realm of the Spirit, and with the ultimate reality of all things – the Gift.

It is with the awareness of the Gift, the rejection of merit, and the consciousness of the River of Truth that is (dis)embodied in the texts and contexts of dogma and doctrine that we can begin to move toward a new kind of inclusion.

True Faith and Holistic Salvation

What is salvation? Redemption from punishment? Living forever? Could it be more?
What is true faith? Is it simply believing the gospel? What is the gospel?
These are all important questions that should be asked from time to time to help us broaden and deepen our understanding of our faith.

Some people say that believing in Jesus' atonement and resurrection is what gets you your ticket to heaven. That whole statement is full of gaps.

When Jesus or the apostles talk about faith, it isn't just faith in the power of God to forgive sins, although this is very important. Jesus only taught forgiveness of sins as a part of a composite of teachings commonly referred to as the message of the Kingdom of God. I think Jesus is asking us to believe in more than just salvation from legal condemnation. Jesus was (and is) inviting people into a better way of life. When Jesus taught the beatitudes and about bearing the fruit of love, he was speaking of the way we enter into by faith.

Many times faith is metaphorically spoken of as sowing seeds or abiding and bearing fruit. Faith is believing what Jesus says and then choosing to enter into his way of life. It isn't just about a ticket to heaven, but about representing paradise in God's earthly kingdom right now. It is about doing his will on earth by loving others in his name.

The letters of James and 1 John are great arguments for this. According to James and John, we know we are in the faith if we love one another. According to Paul, we walk in the spirit, not the flesh. The spirit is grace and the flesh is law. We do not live by a set of rules and regulations, but we operate according to grace and love, not judging (in the condemnation sense) but loving and submitting and forgiving one another.

Salvation is holistic when it integrates both the work of the cross for us and the work of the cross in us. We must enter into a transformation by love and grace.

This isn't to say that simply following the way of Jesus is good enough. Forgiveness of sins only comes through the atonement of the cross, and transformation is essential to our paths.

The best way to know whether or not you know Jesus is not by simply asking yourself if you've believed in the gospel, but by examining yourself to see if you are loving others in the way of Jesus. I am not saying we should live in fear, but that transformation is the mark of a believer, and that loving others is the mark of transformation.

It's funny how we come to God praising him for his love and asking for his joy and peace, and yet isolate ourselves from our neighbors sometimes. According to John, loving God isn't a personal, individualized experience; it means loving others (1 John 4:20-21). If we want to experience God and live and move and breathe and have our being within his love and grace and peace and joy, we need to do good to others daily. This will really help us to understand God better and what his love and grace are really all about. This is where true joy and faith are. Paul calls the fruit of the spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is interesting how he groups all those together in one fruit (and contrasts them to the works of the flesh - again, flesh vs. spirit, law vs. grace). The feelings and experiences (joy, peace) are intertwined with good deeds (being kind, faithfulness which is perpetual faith, being gentle, being patient, etc). It is also interesting how according to John 15, faith is abiding in Christ in order to bear fruit. In other words, true faith means following Jesus' way of life which is loving others in gentleness and humility in order to experience God's peace and joy.

The Kingdom of God Movement: From the Elite to the Outcast and Foreigner

In Palestine during Jesus' day, the temple had become corrupted by the ruling elite (scribes, priests, pharisees) and they were oppressing the rest of the Jews (peasants, outcasts) and collaborating with Rome for their own wealth. Jesus, having grown up as a stone mason (not carpenter - wrong definition of Greek word within the historical context) with his father Joseph building Herod's city, approaches the temple in Mark 11 to condemn the ruling elite and the temple system they had created.

Jesus starts to overturn the money tables which are being used to the gain of the priests on Passover, and then he quotes his famous line. The first part says "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations". This is found in Isaiah 56 when God is calling the outcasts of Israel and the foreigner into his house. This is emphasized in 56:6-7 when God says that foreigners will be included if they serve him and 56:8 when it says that He gathers the outcasts of Israel. The ruling elite were keeping this from happening with their greed and legalism. Jesus then accuses them of making it into a den of bandits. The background to this is found in Jeremiah 7:1-15 when the priests murder, steal, and harm the Israelites and then take refuge in the temple for security. Jeremiah then condemns them. This is what the elite were doing, and Jesus is prophesying their condemnation.

In Mark 11:12-14, Jesus curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit in season to never bear fruit again. This is before the temple incident, so it is like he is prophesying of the temple system's condemnation. After the temple incident, the fig tree is withered to the roots. Jesus then says that if you have enough faith, you can say to this mountain, "Be taken up and thrown into the sea", and it will be done. When he said "this mountain", he was probably referring to the mount that the temple stood upon. This was all prophetic of the destruction of the temple system and condemnation of the ruling elite.

After this Jesus tells the parable of the tenants. The workers of a vineyard do not do their job, and when the owner sends his son, they kill him. The vineyard is of course taken away from the people who work it. The vineyard is the kingdom of God, the workers are the ruling elite (priests, scribes, pharisees), the owner is Jesus' Father, and the son is of course Jesus. This is prophetic of the kingdom of God being taken away from the elite, because they are not keeping it and bearing fruit, which means loving and serving their neighbors equally - which is what Jesus' teachings are many times about.
He teaches these things to the outcasts of Israel (tax collectors, prostitutes, etc) because the kingdom will be given to them. The idea of the vineyard is taken from Isaiah 5, where Israel is described as a vineyard, and because it doesn't bear fruit, God plans to destroy it. These passages provide the context and basis of John 15. This I will discuss in an upcoming blog. It also helps explain Romans 11.

Matthew 11 says that until now the kingdom suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. Matthew 12 says that Jesus will bring justice to the Gentiles, which means inclusion in the kingdom as prophesied in Isaiah. Matthew 22 tells the parable of the wedding feast, where the elite are not allowed into the feast because they do not wear the proper garments, which refers to putting on Jesus' righteousness, so instead the outcasts are invited.
Luke 13:28-30 and Matthew 8:11-12 says that many will come from the east and west and north and south and recline at the table in the kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It says that the sons of the kingdom will be casted out where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The people from the east and west are the foreigners and outcasts, and the sons of the kingdom are the elite.

As Matthew 5:3 says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The Diamond of the Gospel

Several scholars today are starting to see the gospel like a multi-faceted diamond.
They say we've been focusing too much on atonement models which only make up one facet of the gospel. They say salvation is more holistic, integrating multiple facets. I agree there is more than one facet and I'm going to explore some.

The first facet is simple: The Atonement. The model I'll choose on this one will be the New Exodus model because I believe this is what Paul used to interpret Christ's atoning work (1 Co 5:7).
Just as Israel was enslaved in Egypt, even so mankind was enslaved in Sin. Just as a passover sacrifice of a lamb for protection from death combining shed blood and meat consumption was the means of freedom from Egypt, even so Christ's shed blood and our symbolic consumption (John 6:54-55) is a means of freedom from Sin and Death. Just as Israel passed through the sea and the waters closed in on Pharaoh's army, even so we passed through hell and destruction from death into life and the way was closed behind us so that we cannot go back. Just as God met Israel at Sinai in 50 days to establish a covenant with them and make them his chosen people, He (in the form of the Holy Spirit) met us at Pentecost (50 days after the Resurrection) to establish a new covenant and make us His chosen people and bride. It is by faith that we opt into the atonement, not by works since Jesus did that for us.

I would call the first facet "the work of the cross for us", so I'll call the second "the work of the cross in us". God wants to save us not only from the condemnation of sin (permanent effect), but from it's temporary effects on our lives (Gal 5:1). Jesus wants us to not be conformed to His image, but transformed into His image. It's not about looking pretty on the outside for everyone to see, but the inner spiritual formation of the new creation. We are being weened from our old nature and turned into our new man (or new creation) through the new nature given to us by the Holy Spirit. Paul calls this the phronesis, meaning a pattern of living. We are to take up the Christ Phronesis and be transformed. The most basic image of this is the central law of all laws - to love God and love others (Mark 12:30-31, Mat 5:43-44, Lev 19:17-18, James 2:8, etc). The fruit of the spirit is also crucial.

There are other facets also, such as "the example of the cross", which exemplifies forgiveness ("father forgive them", etc), martyrdom, heroism, love (John 15:13, 1 John 3:16), etc.
The important thing to remember is that EVERY facet is important and needs to be examined and analyzed.

1 John 1:9 - A Fresh Perspective

Have you ever wondered why if Jesus paid for all of our sins on the cross, and we only have to accept that one time, we have to continue to ask for forgiveness?

If you have, then you're normal. It just doesn't make sense, does it? I mean, Jesus dies on the cross, takes care of our sin and God's wrath, accomplishes forgiveness once and for all, makes peace with us and God, and all we have to do is have faith and it's ours. So why do we have to continue to ask for more forgiveness? It's like asking Jesus to die again (Heb 6:4-6). If we have to ask for it again, this means that forgiveness depends on our asking. This means that if you don't ask, God doesn't forgive. If God doesn't forgive, He's angry. If He's angry, Jesus' death (being the satisfaction of God's anger) means nothing anymore.

So then, if Jesus only had to die once for all sin, and we only have to partake of it once, we do not need to ask for forgiveness, because forgiveness continues according to the cross, not continual confession. So then, what does 1 John 1:9 mean?

A lot of teachers 1 John as being about fellowship with God and other believers. This is because they probably don't know much about the history behind it. They see it as a divine fiat, a pie out of the sky book. 1 John is a letter written to Christians way back a long time ago. The group of Christians John wrote to were known as the Johannine Community. Within their midst, their were Gnostics, specifically a branch known as Docetists. Now I could go into Gnosticism right now, but I'd never finish. So, to make things short, the Docetists didn't believe they had any sin. They essentially believed that all flesh was sinful (hence, they believed Jesus was pure spirit and not in flesh), and they believed that all spirit was good. Therefore, they were in a sinful flesh, but they were good. For this reason, they didn't believe that Jesus died for our sins. So, John is addressing everyone in the church. The letter could only be hand-written (no typewriters), so it would be read before the whole church at once by an elder. So, again, John is addressing everyone. So, he states a few conditional clauses to show people who knows Christ and who doesn't. 1 John 1:9 is one of these. 1 John 1:8 and 1:10 are crucial to understanding 1:9. This isn't a list of separate things, it's a flowing stream of thought. According to 1:8 and 1:10, if we say we don't have any sin, we are lying and calling God a liar since he charges us with sin. Also, we don't have God. So, he's saying, God has charged the whole human race with sin, and anyone who says different is calling him a liar and doesn't know Him. In 1:9, he uses the term homologeo, which we tranlate confess. It can also be translated acknowledge, agree, affirm. So, John is saying that if we (anyone, any man) affirms or acknowledges his sin, he count on God to take care of all of it. This is a conditional clause to say that if you've done this, you're good to go, and if you haven't, you're in trouble. Make since now?