What is a “Messiah”?

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gospel, jesus, messiah, new testament, politics, resurrection, salvation, sin, tyler stewart

My friend Tyler recently posted on “messianic expectations” in the first century and it got me thinking of a description of what “messiah” means I’d put together for one of my leaders at Real Life. (Of course I’m describing the word through my Jesus-lens.) Here’s how I’d describe it:

“Messiah” (mashiach in Hebrew, christos in Greek) literally means “anointed one” and typically refers to prophets, priests, and especially kings. In Jesus’ day, many Jews hoped God would send a “messiah” – a kingly figure like David – to rescue Israel from her enemies, purify the Temple, and re-gather God’s people so that they might worship faithfully. They were looking for a new exodus with a new Moses – a deliverer to save them from oppression and lead them in the ways of God. They believed this Messiah’s victories would usher in a golden age of justice and peace. To call Jesus “Messiah” is to say that he is God’s appointed King who came to save the world (beginning with Israel) from sin and evil.

But he did so in a surprising way. For one thing, he didn’t mount an attack against the Romans; he staged a deeper confrontation with and defeat of Sin/Death itself. And for another, the coming of God’s golden age (or “kingdom”) didn’t happen all at once – Jesus the Messiah inaugurated this new world and called together a people to continue his work until a future day when he would bring it to full completion. The early Christians would never have made such ridiculous claims – crucified would-be messiahs were by definition failures – were it not for the fact that God raised him from the dead.

Whadd’ya think? Anything you expected to see but didn’t? Anything you didn’t expect to see but did? What would you have put differently?

If Jesus is the only way… (3 of 4)

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apologetics, gospel, grace, jesus, missions, new testament, obedience, old testament, salvation, world religions

Thanks for some great discussion on part two of If Jesus is the only way, what about people of other faiths and those who never hear the gospel? The question we’re dealing with is who can be saved and how that happens. Specifically, is it possible for people to be saved apart from Jesus? If not, is it possible for people to be saved through Jesus even if they don’t know he’s the one saving them? More than ever after the discussion on the last entry, I’m convinced that this whole debate gets muddied up because we’re unclear on what “being saved” actually means. I include myself in this, and I admit that whatever answer I offer now probably suffers a bit from this lack of understanding or clarity. Nevertheless, here’s how I’d answer the question:

I do believe that no one can or will be “saved” apart from Jesus. I think he alone broke the stranglehold of sin under which we were all enslaved. But does God save people apart from conscious faith in Jesus? Even if no one can be saved apart from Jesus, can they be saved apart from knowing they are saved by Jesus? I don’t know that God has told us this will happen, so I can’t say yes with great confidence. But based on what God has revealed in Scripture (as laid out in part 2, including some of the comments), I do believe it might happen. I’d even say I think it will happen (IMHO!). I do not think it would contradict the character and ways of God revealed in Scripture’s witness to Jesus Christ.

So does God save people apart from explicit faith in Jesus? We don’t know, but we don’t know for sure that he doesn’t and we wouldn’t be shocked if he did. Most importantly, we believe that God has come to all of us in Jesus, offering salvation in both the next life and this one. Our task is to faithfully respond to what we believe God has revealed.

I also promised to deal with objections to this position (technically called inclusivism), first from Christians and then from non-Christians. There are three primary objections that I’ve heard from Christians against the possibility that God might save people who never identify themselves as Christians in this life.

Liberated Imagination

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discipleship, gospel, kingdom of God, politics

From Walsh and Middleton’s Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be:

It is only when we can imagine the world to be different than the way it is that we can be empowered to embody this alternative reality which is God’s kingdom and resist this present nightmare of brokenness, disorientation and confusion.

…

A liberated imagination is a prerequisite for facing the future.

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If we cannot have such a liberated imagination and cannot countenance such radical dreams, then the story remains closed for us and we have no hope.

If Jesus is the only way… (2 of 4)

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apologetics, gospel, grace, hell, jesus, new testament, old testament, salvation, world religions

If Jesus is the only way… what about people of other faiths and those who never hear the gospel? (read part one here)

The Bible witnesses to God’s universal love (Jn 3.16; 1 Tim 2.4; 2 Pet 3.9) as well as a particular path to salvation. How do we resolve this tension? Scripture teaches that this particular path comes to a head in Jesus. But is this unfair to those who never hear of Jesus, or only receive an unfaithful witness, or grow up in a different faith system? What about them?

In part one I shared some preliminary points. Today I’ll offer ten “theses” and follow it up later (today or tomorrow) with a summary conclusion. Enjoy. :)

1. This debate often rests on and feeds an unbiblical portrait of salvation. See more on this in the last post here.

2. “Judgment” on this level is God’s call and God can be trusted to do the right thing. It’s not our job to figure out who will “go where” at history’s end. It is God’s, and whatever God does will be loving, gracious, and just.

If Jesus is the only way… (1 of 4)

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apologetics, gospel, grace, jesus, salvation, theology, world religion

For the rest of the week I’ll be blogging on a very important question: If Jesus is the only way, what about people of other faiths and those who never hear the gospel? In our world the claims of Christianity seem very exclusive and arrogant. Are they? More importantly, what exactly has God revealed about these issues? I’ll be sharing my thoughts in four posts. For now, two preliminary points:

(1) Salvation is about more than what happens to us after we die.

Our question assumes that God is most concerned about getting individuals into heaven when they die. But is this really biblical? Two quick points: First, salvation is God’s plan for the entire universe – not just human beings. Salvation is about all of God’s creation being rescued from the disastrous effects of sin. Second, even from a human perspective, salvation isn’t just about “where we go” in the end. That is obviously important, but salvation is about freedom from the power of sin and death right here and now. Please understand, I’m not trying to deny the importance of the future, but I am trying to remind us that asking whether a person is “saved” has as much to do with how free they are from sinful ways of thinking and living as it does where they’ll go when they die. As my friend Tyler puts it, “Following Jesus isn’t about getting out of hell and into heaven. It is about joining God in his project to reclaim of all of creation for his kingdom.” This whole debate is fairly thoroughly infused with an unbiblical portrait of salvation. Just keep this in mind.

(2) We must all ask ourselves if we’re willing to submit to God’s authority and trust the witness of Scripture.

Like all hot-button issues, many of us come to this question with our minds already made up. And if they’re not made up, we at least know what we want the answer to be. Some of us sense our culture’s negativity toward “evangelism” (or our own distaste for it) so we look for excuses not to have to share our faith. This is not okay. Others of us feel that Christianity is under attack and we have adopted a posture of defensiveness and closed-mindedness. This is not good either. We will all be tempted to make Scripture say what we want it to say (or set it aside altogether). This is no less true of me than anyone else. Let’s keep this in mind too.

Tomorrow I’ll post ten theses about this topic as well as a summary conclusion. Then I’ll post answers to objections from those who think my position is too strict, and after that I’ll post answers to objections from those who think it’s too loose. Feel free to share any and all thoughts at any point in the discussion. Even disagreement is welcome, but be kind.

The Solution to Our Problems

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crucifixion, discipleship, gospel, grace, jesus, new testament, old testament, paul, romans, salvation, sin, theology

I know this sounds cheesy, but I believe it’s Jesus. I think Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection saves us completely, and I know of nothing else adequate to the task. Yesterday I talked about how sin works – the process of corruption that results in our world of broken families, political instability, a crisis of spirituality, and injustice all around. Read that one first because without it this won’t make full sense. There I described this process as having five essential steps: we reject God (rebellion) and replace him with something else (idolatry), with the result that we come to increasingly reflect our new idols and thereby lose our full humanness (corruption); we set ourselves a trap from which we cannot escape (bondage), eventually giving in totally to sin or at least resigning ourselves to a “realism” that is actually hopelessness or nihilism (depravity or despair). Here I want to show how Jesus’ death and resurrection save us from this fivefold curse.

1. Jesus reveals to us that God is truly Love and as such can be trusted safely. Remember the root problem of sin is that we doubt God’s love, we fear that he’s holding out on us, so we rebel against him and take our fate into our own hands. If God is love, this rebellion is altogether unnecessary.

This is What’s Wrong with Our World

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depravity, discipleship, God, gospel, idolatry, jesus, new testament, old testament, politics, prophets, salvation, sin

It had been way too long since I’d set aside a significant chunk of time for reflection and prayer, so this morning I went to Vasquez Rocks. I have some messages and decisions coming up so the timing was perfect, and I want to share some of the fruit of my time up there. I’ve been thinking lots lately about sin and idolatry and that sort of thing. (It’s made me extra cheery and fun to be around, I’m sure!) I think that a clear understanding of how sin works both personally and societally, and specifically the dynamics of idolatry, will go a long way in helping us understand the mess our world is in and hopefully how to move towards healing it. Today I’ll write about the five stages or steps of the downward spiral we call “sin” and tomorrow I’ll write about how Jesus overcomes this problem piece by piece.

1. We refuse to trustfully acknowledge God as superior, and so we set up ourselves as competition. This is clearly the issue in Genesis 3 – we want to be like God, knowing all the things that he did. Or as Paul puts it in Romans 1, we refused to thank him and glorify him as God. The root of this is fear that God can’t be trusted; we don’t think he really has our best interests in mind; we think he’s holding out on us. It is rooted in a denial of God’s love for us. I’d call this first step rebellion.

Life Journal 001 // “gospel” in Romans 1

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gospel, isaiah, life journal, new testament, paul, politics, romans, salvation

Recently our church took up the task of “feeding ourselves” by reading the Bible regularly using the same reading plan and journaling format. You can read about it here. I won’t post regularly on this because I don’t want to ruin my own devotions by going public with them, but I’ll throw out some thoughts as I see fit. Part of yesterday’s reading was Romans 1. The first few verses are jam-packed with goodness. But there’s a lot in there that has been caked over with dust through the centuries, so it’s important for us to be clear on what some of the key terms originally meant.

“gospel” – I can’t stress enough how important it is that we get a clear grasp of what this word meant and means. It’s one of the most loved words in the Christian world, but sadly one of the most misunderstood.