Sorry for the radio silence over the past two weeks. I was in Sydney and Melbourne leading some conferences for the Christians for Biblical Equality. I’ll make the talks available soon, but wanted to go ahead and share some thoughts on the blog that are the overflow of that work.
My talks in Sydney, in particular, were centered around the theme of “Freedom.” The famous biblical passages about freedom all seem to come from Galatians. It is there we read, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free, therefore stand firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.”
But I’ve been in a Jesus mode lately, and I wanted to approach the question from a different angle.
If “freedom” typifies the life that God wants to give us, then Christians should anticipate that Jesus’ life embodies it. So how is it that Jesus is free, and what does that freedom look like?
Jesus: Beloved Son of God
Looking at the Jesus story, especially in Mark, I isolated a few things. The first is this:
Jesus knew who he was.
The first time Jesus comes on the scene as an adult, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, is at his baptism. The disclosure of who he is is spoken over him by God. In Mark and Luke, it is directed to Jesus specifically, not to the reader or the crowds: “You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased.”
This declaration has to do with Jesus’ unique calling, something that is inseparable from his identity. But we’ll get to that next time.
For now, let’s linger on identity. And let’s linger on the fact that it’s something that God speaks over Jesus. Let’s hear these words as spoken over the human Jesus who came into being at a point in time–a declaration about the human Jesus in relationship with a divine Father.
Jesus, the man, is the beloved child of God. Jesus, the human, is the object of the Father’s pleasure.
God’s Other Daughters and Sons
And I think it’s no accident that the Pauline letter that stands most firmly for freedom is also the one that most sharply on our adoption as God’s children.
At the heart of the freedom that God wants for us is our standing before God on the same ground as Jesus stands before God: we stand as those who have received the Spirit by which we are marked out as God’s new-creation family.
To turn this around: if we don’t know who we are, then we become enslaved to every fleeting possibility of finding our identity in relationships, in accomplishments, in the past, in a job, in a hoped-for future.
But as often as not, when we try to find our identity in these things, either we become destructive or we become destroyed. (cf. Uncle Rico, above!)
Loving Neighbor, Loving Self
A couple weeks ago I blogged about doing theology with the goals of God-love and neighbor-live in mind. If we turn this observation about identity one more time, we’re confronted with the following question:
How do I help the people around me to recognize their own identity as God’s beloved children, and thereby enter the freedom that God desire, plan, and purpose for us all?
This is the question that should haunt us when we treat one group in the church differently from others.
This is why I am committed to the cause of equal access to all ministries for women in the church. When we tell women that they are not welcome at certain tables, we communicate that they are in some ways less beloved of God, less pleasing to God, than men.
When churches and people within them deny women access to ministries, they are countermanding God’s own declaration. They are limiting the possibilities of the Spirit who marks us as beloved daughters no less than beloved sons.
If we are to love as God has loved, then we must ensure that every person and every people in the church knows that they are those upon whom God has lavished boundless Fatherly love. We must be agents of knowledge and assurance that we all have the identity from which comes the freedom to live into anything that the world throws at us.
I’ve also been haunted by the realization that this is where the church has so badly failed our LGBTQ family members. When the church participates in creating self-loathing, we have failed in our calling to be agents of the love that calls us beloved.
In fact, this might be a perfect litmus test for our churches as we wrestle with what acceptance of LGBTQ Christians should look like: Does our posture toward them demonstrate that they are not “them” at all but, instead, alongside us, the “us” who are God’s beloved children?
Freedom, Knowledge, Love
Freedom begins with knowledge of who we are.
This knowledge, and the reality it represents, are both gifts of God.
Freely we have received, and freely we are to give.
Lavishly we have been loved, and lavishly we are to love.
You are God’s beloved daughter. You are God’s beloved son. These are the most true things we can know about ourselves, and loving our neighbors means helping them know it, too.
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