mrcrowder.com
“God’s love for sinners is the bridge over which Jesus’ eschatological message leads to a new establishing of law among humans. In their trust in God’s future, humans can preserve for themselves the fellowship with God they have received as a gift, but only if they forgive others as they themselves have been forgiven. Through the message of Jesus, God gives to humans the assurance of fellowship with him, the fulfillment of their destiny, their salvation.”
-Wolfhart Pannenberg, Ethics
I don’t often write overtly come-to-Jesus posts. And honestly, this isn’t one either. But there are days when I feel the urge to articulate what I have faith in. I need it for my sanity. Most days I don’t write it down; in fact, I hardly ever do. But today I wrote.
(Love, Petey.)
It’s curious how Pannenberg makes synonymous the following:
- Fellowship with God
- Our Destiny
- Our Salvation
The function of Jesus’ salvific role is our reconciliation with God (Fellowship). This is what we are created for (Destiny). This is the landing point and direction of our rescue (Salvation).
The preemptive logic is that, in lieu of Christ’s salvation, we are traipsing through life under the power of something that is disconnecting us from what we are created for, our destiny which is relationship with the one who created us.
We could call this death. We could call this sin. We could even call it self.
The Gospel message is that Christ defeats that death for us. He goes headlong into it and comes out the other side so that we can start to see that “other side” breaking through in this life.
So when we say “I follow Jesus” or “Jesus, save me,” or “I’m a Christian,” what we should be saying is that we’ve devoted ourselves (or we’re wanting to devote ourselves) to the fellowship of God, which is the rescue we’re both following Jesus into and allowing him to bring to us.
The Creator of the world, of all that we know, wants us to trust in His future for us. I think this means that we get to stop stressing over the future we have planned for ourselves, that future that will ultimately resolve in failure, cursing, brokenness, and a new (but equally desperate) half-concocted future.
Through death-then-resurrection, Jesus is showing that God’s future doesn’t crash & burn. It may crash in the earthly sense, but we are sustained by a different, bigger, better, Hope.
