Transcript 'I Am Making All Things New'

‘I Am Making All Things New’
Michael Goheen
Redeemer University College
Ancaster, Canada
Theme
‘I am making all things new’
If we are to understand this
word from God we must hear
them in three contexts:
 The
context of the whole biblical story
 The
context of the whole book of
Revelation
 The
context of our mission today
Structure of Talk
 ‘I Am
Making All Things New’: The
Climax of the Biblical Story
 ‘I Am
Making All Things New’: The
Climax of the book of Revelation
 ‘I Am
Making All Things New’: The
Climax of our Mission Today
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of the Biblical Story
 It
is important to see the Bible as one
unfolding story
'The way we understand human life depends
on what conception we have of the human
story. What is the real story of which my
life story is a part?’ (Lesslie Newbigin).
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of the Biblical Story
 It
is important to see the Bible as one
unfolding story
 It
is important to see the Bible as the
true story of universal history
I can't understand why you missionaries
present the Bible to us in India as a book of
religion. It is not a book of religion—and
anyway we have plenty of books of religion in
India. We don't need any more! I find in your
Bible a unique interpretation of universal
history, the history of the whole of creation and
the history of the human race. And therefore a
unique interpretation of the human person as a
responsible actor in history. That is unique.
There is nothing else in the whole religious
literature of the world to put alongside it.
- Badrinath
If the church is to be faithful to its missionary
calling, it must recover the Bible as one true story:
‘I do not believe that we can speak effectively of
the Gospel as a word addressed to our culture
unless we recover a sense of the Scriptures as a
canonical whole, as the story which provides the
true context for our understanding of the meaning
of our lives—both personal and public.’ If the story
of the Bible is fragmented into bits (historicalcritical, devotional, systematic-theological, moral),
it can easily be absorbed into the reigning story of
culture.
- Bartholomew and Goheen,
Story and Biblical Theology, p.152
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of the Biblical Story
 It
is important to see the Bible as one
unfolding story
 It
is important to see the Bible as the
true story of universal history
 It
is important to see mission as central
to the Biblical story
. . . the whole Bible itself is a ‘missional’
phenomenon. The writings that now comprise our
Bible are themselves the product of, and witness to,
the ultimate mission of God. The Bible renders to us
the story of God’s mission through God’s people in
their engagement with God’s world for the sake of the
whole of God’s creation. The Bible is the drama of
this God of purpose engaged in the mission of
achieving that purpose universally, embracing past,
present and future, Israel and the nations, ‘life, the
universe and everything.’ Mission is not just one of a
list of things that the Bible happens to talk about, only
a bit more urgently than some. Mission is, in that
much-abused phrase, ‘what it’s all about.’
- Chris Wright, Mission as a Matrix, p.103-104
Drama of Scripture

ACT ONE: God Establishes His Kingdom:
Creation
 ACT TWO: Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall
 ACT THREE: The King Chooses Israel:
Redemption Initiated
– Gen. 12:1-3: Blessed to be a blessing
– Ex. 19:3-6: Showcase for the nations
– Israel fails in their mission
– Prophets
Drama of Scripture

ACT ONE: God Establishes His Kingdom:
Creation
 ACT TWO: Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall
 ACT THREE: The King Chooses Israel:
Redemption Initiated
 ACT FOUR: The Coming of the King:
Redemption Accomplished
– Takes up mission of Israel
– Accomplishes redemption
– Gathers renewed Israel: Commissions them to
continue his mission
Drama of Scripture
 ACT ONE:
God Establishes His Kingdom:
Creation
 ACT TWO:
Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall
 ACT THREE:
The King Chooses Israel:
Redemption Initiated
 ACT FOUR: The
Coming of the King:
Redemption Accomplished
 ACT FIVE:
Spreading the News of the King:
The Mission of the Church
Following the apostles, the church is sent–
Sent with the gospel of the kingdom
to make disciples of all nations,
to feed the hungry,
to proclaim the assurance that in the name of Christ
there is forgiveness of sin and new life
for all who repent an believe–
To tell the news that our world belongs to God.
In a world estranged from God,
where millions face confusing choices,
this mission is central to our being,
for we announce the one name that saves.
The rule of Jesus Christ covers the whole world.
To follow this Lord is to serve him everywhere,
without fitting in,
as lights in the darkness,
as salt in a spoiling world. (CT, 44, 45)
Act Five: Spreading the
News of the King
 Central
to this period of redemptive history
 Tasting and making known the kingdom
 Being a light to the world: Continuing Israel’s
mission
 Bearing witness to the kingdom: Continuing
Jesus’ mission
 Bearing witness to Jesus: Continuing the early
church’s mission
 To the ends of the earth
Drama of Scripture

ACT ONE: God Establishes His Kingdom:
Creation
 ACT TWO: Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall
 ACT THREE: The King Chooses Israel:
Redemption Initiated
 ACT FOUR: The Coming of the King:
Redemption Accomplished
 ACT FIVE: Spreading the News of the King: The
Mission of the Church
 ACT SIX: The Return of the King: Redemption
Completed
Mission as Central to Biblical Story
God’s Mission: To renew the whole creation
(‘I am making all things new’)
 Israel’s Mission: Attractive showcase of
God’s renewal
 Jesus’ Mission: Reveal and accomplish
God’s renewing work
 Church’s Mission: Make known God’s
renewing work in life, word, and deed

God’s Mission and Ours
. . . I do want to argue for the theological
priority of God’s mission. Fundamentally,
our mission (if it is biblically informed and
validated) is our committed participation, at
God’s invitation and command, in God’s
own mission in the world through history.
- Wright, Mission as Matrix, p.104
Climax of Biblical Story
‘I am making all things new.’
 Church’s mission: Embody and announce
that coming renewal until God completes
his work
 ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is part of a new
creation; the old has gone, the new has
come!’ (2 Cor.5:17)
 Differing circumstances, different models of
mission

The Book of Revelation
 The
final chapter of the Biblical drama
 One particular kind of missional
faithfulness
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of Revelation

Setting: Conflict with the Roman empire
– Written to church in Asia Minor
– Threat of imperial cult: Edict of Domitian
– Administered by Asian city councils
– Pressure on Christians to accommodate
– Some did (Nicolaitans, Balaamites, Jezebel)
– Persecution for those who didn’t
 Refusal to be a private cult
 Refusal to participate in idolatry
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of Revelation

Setting: Conflict with the Roman empire
 Message: An Alternative Vision
‘These visions construct a counter-narrative
disputing the imperial one, opening up a different
way of seeing the world.’
- Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission, p.104
Revelation provides ‘the vision of an “alternative
world” in order to encourage the Christians and to
enhance their staying power in the face of
persecution and possible execution.’
- Johannes Nissen, New Testament and Mission, p.147
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of Revelation

Setting: Conflict with the Roman empire
 Message: An Alternative Vision
– Like 2 Kings 6:8-23
– Apocalyptic literature
– The story of Revelation
– Kingdom of God centred in cosmic Christ
– Kingdom of God involved in a cosmic battle
– Kingdom of God assured of cosmic victory
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of Revelation

Setting: Conflict with the Roman empire
 Message: An Alternative Vision
 Mission: Resist Accommodation
‘The demand laid on the Christians addressed in the book
is an unconditional loyalty to the one side in the vast,
unseen struggle between the cosmic powers that is
occurring or is imminent. There is no room for
compromise—no benign acceptance of meat in an
unbeliever’s home, no undefiling commerce—or a
“lukewarm” response. It is a time for “witnessing”, which
can lead to death (as for Antipas, 2:13).’
- Johannes Nissen, New Testament and Mission, p.149
Resisting Accommodation to
Roman Idolatry
‘The Christians are to proclaim the good
news of universal salvation to the world,
and their pulpit is a heroic refusal to
compromise with a system they see as
aligned with the forces of sin and death.’
- The Biblical Foundations for Mission,
Senior and Stuhlmueller, p. 305
‘ . . . it behooves the Church to suffer with hope and
patience whether the attempt be to destroy it or to
domesticate it. Persecution was, and always is, pressure
applied to make the Church serve subordinate ends (in
the time of John--the unity of the Roman empire and its
peoples) or adjust its witness to Christ to the beliefs of
those who will not name Him Lord. . . .
‘The Church was engaged in a life-and- death struggle
with the world, the flesh, and the Devil; and there could
be no compromise with any of the three. The Church’s
public witness to Christ would have no significance if
its inner life were already occupied by other gods.’
- D.T. Niles, As Seeing the Invisible, p.16, 21
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of Mission Today
 Different
settings: What are the
idolatrous cultural forces that we
need to resist?
Differing Circumstances,
Different Models of Mission
Jesus has not left us with a rigid model
for action; rather he inspired his disciples
to prolong the logic of his own action in a
creative way amid the new and different
historical circumstances in which the
community would have to proclaim the
gospel.
- Bosch
‘I Am Making All Things New’:
The Climax of Mission Today
 Different
settings: What are the
idolatrous cultural forces that we
need to resist?
 Global, consumer capitalism
– Economic globalization is the ‘greatest
challenge that the Christian mission faces’
(Rene Padilla).
– R. Bauckham, Bible and Mission, 83-112.
‘The reality of our world is not the end of grand
narratives, but the increasing dominance of the
narrative of economic globalization. . . . This is the
new imperialism . . . [p.94]
‘What do we really need in order to recognize and
to resist this new metanarrative of globalization?
Surely a story that counters the global dominance
of the profit-motive and the culture of consumption
with a powerful affirmation of universal values?
But the Christian metanarrative can adopt this role
only if it resists becoming a tool of the forces of
domination.’ [p.97]
‘It may well be that, only if Christianity in the
west becomes a movement of resistance to such
evils as consumerism, excessive individualism
and the exploitation of the global periphery, can
Christianity in many other parts of the world be
credibly distinguished from the west’s economic
and cultural oppression of other cultures and
peoples.’ [p.97-98]
The Witness of Resistance

‘Can the biblical narrative resist, in a way that is true
to the biblical God’s rule, the narratives of global
power that dominate our world today?’ [p.102]
– Only if we hold to the Bible as a metanarrative that is
not co-opted into another more ultimate story
– If we see that some of the Bible itself was formed in
opposition to global powers in opposition to God’s
kingdom: ‘One element in an answer to this is the fact
that the biblical metanarrative itself took shape partly in
opposition to the globalizing powers of its day.’ [p. 102]
– If opposition and resistance takes the form of noncoersive and suffering witness
How can such a witness be
sustained?
 With
a fresh understanding of the
cosmic Christ
 With a fresh understanding of history
as the cosmic struggle between the
kingdom of God and kingdom of
darkness
 With a fresh understanding of the
cosmic victory of the gospel
With the whole creation
we wait for the purifying fire of judgment.
For then we will see the Lord face to face.
He will heal our hurts,
end our wars,
and make the crooked straight.
Then we will join in the new song
to the Lamb without blemish
who made us a kingdom and priests.
God will be all in all,
righteousness and peace will flourish,
everything will be made new,
and every eye will see at last
that our world belongs to God!
Hallelujah! Come, Lord Jesus. [CT, 58]