Karin Foreman New Beginnings (2015)
Matthew, Mark, and Luke each record a deceptively simple and direct question posed to Jesus that goes to the very heart of the gospel: Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? This question, which any of us might have asked, clearly presupposes that Jesus is a good person who stands to inherit eternal life by nature of his goodness, a goodness that we might also attain. Given the apparent reasonableness of the question, the abrupt response of Jesus jars most readers: ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not give false testimony; do not defraud; honor your mother and father.’ This oblique exchange between the young ruler and Christ exposes deep rifts between conventional religion and the work of Christ regarding the root of our alienation from God, the means of our reconciliation with God, and the nature of Christ. Whereas popular religion understands good and evil in terms of relative proportions, scripture defines good as that which is entirely of God and evil as that which is not entirely of God—the standard of goodness is absolute godliness. Though Jesus is indeed good, he rejects any facile attribution of goodness that either degrades its definition or ignores its implications. His challenge—‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.’—is the public equivalent of the question earlier posed to his disciples: ‘Who do you say that I am?” The gospel turns on the answer to this question.
Unlike the prophets, Jesus reconciles humanity to God not by word and example but by fulfilling the Law of God in his very person and then subsuming us in himself. Though godly, Jesus assumes our ungodliness and consequently suffers death in the wake of his estrangement from God. Popular religion presents Jesus paying a penalty he does not owe, thereby establishing a kind of credit against which we individually draw. However, such credit would be sufficient for only one person and even then only if a substitution were allowed. On the other hand, if the sins of everyone belonging to Christ technically accrue to Christ, just as the professional misbehavior of an employee is charged to the employer, then Christ literally expiates our sins as his own. No one is reconciled to God apart from Christ because only this work of Christ satisfies both the justice and mercy of God. Every other formula for reconciliation demands a lower standard of justice, either by relaxing definitions of righteousness or by ignoring breeches or both. Christ’s statement that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it is analogous to saying that he came not to dismiss a debt to God but to pay it in full. Either way the debt ceases to exist, but dismissal implies the original unjustness of the debt, and therefore God, whereas payment affirms the debt’s original justness. Because this expiation holds only if Christ remains an active Lord, his resurrection is a necessary condition of our salvation, as is his continued participation in our lives both corporately and individually. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This gospel encompasses the entire sweep of scripture from the moment God looks upon the things he has created and declares them good. They remain good so long as they remained within their appropriate spheres—hence the ritual uncleanness of swimming creatures that lack fins and scales, flying creatures that lack wings and feathers, and land animals that are not strict herbivores. Adam (Man) and his helper, Eve (Woman), likewise remain good so long as they tend the Garden of Eden and refrain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge. Presumably, his task was to extend the boundaries of the garden or at least guard against encroachment by the surrounding wilderness into which he was eventually banished. Adam falters in this task long enough for the serpent to tempt Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, a temptation to which Adam also succumbs. At the expense of their former intimacy in God, Adam and Eve share a false intimacy rooted in their joint complicity in sin and their shared experience of estrangement both from God and from the work for which they were created. Human history traces many failed efforts to regain true intimacy with God and one another, as well as to create a garden in the wilderness. Scripture traces the contrasting work of God to establish his righteousness in this world. Noah, Abraham, and Jesus represent successive stages of the fulfillment of this plan of redemption.
Though Noah and his household (including the animals under his care) are remnants of the original creation, they represent a new beginning in which the geographical distinction between garden and wilderness is literally washed away in a flood that returns the earth to a primordial state. By faith, Noah and his household enter the ark and pass through the waters of death into new life—hence Peter’s comparison of the ark to our baptism and (by further extension) the resurrection of the dead. Noah is commanded to subdue the world that emerges from the flood, and his descendents are the nations that settle every region of the world. Even as humanity extends its rule over the whole world, however, it cannot govern itself. No individual and no undertaking—no matter how prodigious—is sufficient to counter the chaos engendered by the darkness of the human heart.
The worldwide regeneration of the human heart begins with Abraham, whom God chooses to father a people through whom to reveal a knowledge of himself requiring generations to unfold. With Abraham, the genealogy of godliness transitions from a succession of individual relationships, limited by life span, to an ongoing communal relationship that grows over many generations from a single household into twelve tribes and their dependents. Though each generation is only partially faithful to God, a sizable community is established whose thoughts and actions are governed by two fundamental expectations: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might’ and ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Membership in this community, which functions as a garden in the wilderness, is formalized through a rite of male circumcision signifying acceptance of God’s sovereignty over a particular household. Circumcision, like baptism, is the outward sign of an inner submission to God entailing complete obedience; though in practice complete obedience eludes even the most devout.
The young ruler’s response to Jesus—‘Teacher, all these I have kept since I was a boy.’—thus strikes most readers as presumptuous, but Mark records that Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus clearly recognized in the young ruler an earnest if misguided heart and he subsequently answered the original question in terms the young ruler readily understood: ‘One thing you lack. Go sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ This startling command to forsake all for Christ is equivalent to God’s command to Abraham that he sacrifice the very son through whom were promised descendents as numerous as the stars of heaven. The issue is not surrendering that which is most precious but rather surrendering everything: ‘The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ This hopeful obedience is the essence of faith in God, which differs from simple belief in its expression as obedience and from religious observance in its dependence on the promises of God.
Mosaic Law, which conceives of the land and all it sustains as belonging to God, thus promises that Israel
This then is mystery of the gospel: Jesus has fulfilled the righteousness of God for the sake of those who belong to him. Moreover, those who belong to Christ are a new creation, representing a return to the garden and a work long since interrupted. There is no restoration to God apart from Christ because there is no other means of fulfilling the righteousness of God, and there is no restoration to God unless Christ is raised from the dead because we can only belong to a living Lord. Thus: ‘If you confess with your mouth “Jesus as Lord” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ The only alternative is death.
[1] The role of judge (and later the roles of prophet and king) imposed an executive function over and above the administrative function of the priesthood, an arrangement manifest in the establishment of the temple within the confines of the judge’s house or king’s palace precinct and the pooling of regal and priestly moneys. Structurally, this parallels the practice of surrounding kingdoms whose rulers were regarded as divine offspring.
[2] The Jewish rite of baptism derives from purification rites associated with skin diseases and circumcision. In the case of Christ, as with us, it marks the setting aside of a previous life.
