The following is excerpted from Mockingbird’s book, Law and Gospel: A Theology for Sinners (and Saints), which is available here. 

A broken machine cannot fix itself nor, as theologian Rudolf Bultmann once observed, can someone sinking in a swamp pull himself out by tugging upward on his own hair. Knowledge relates to and empowers the self, which helps the self solve the everyday problems and hurdles it faces. But when the problem is the self, help must come from outside: must be News that we cannot manipulate (because we would botch it), but is objectively true. But how can something so beyond our normal ways of doing and acting be communicated?

If Earth were facing destruction and no one had any way to avoid it, an advanced, benevolent alien civilization might send a message. But we could not decode it; their language is far beyond our own. Perhaps an alien might even study English, immerse himself in what, to him, is a simplistic language. [Editor’s note: unlike in the movie Arrival, which is a parable of a different kind] But say the message — for instance, “Do this … and you shall live” — were something we simply could not follow? Perhaps we are given two thousand years to heed their advice, and though we worship the aliens as deliverers of our doomed world, we continue to contradict their wisdom. Things only get worse.

At that point, the aliens might decide to send an emissary. He is humble, and he comes in human form. Because he’s still an alien, he interprets and understands the aliens’ words — collected, after two thousand years, in a sacred book — better than everyone else, though he’s had little education. He shows impatience with those who think they understand the aliens’ advice but do not, and he loves those who are wretched, those who make the world a worse place by their actions and are miserable themselves. They alone see something special about this alien-person, so pariahs and scoundrels flock to him. The written advice has failed them, so they’re looking not for another command or more advice but for news. Sadly, his message is too strange and, well, alien to the normal human ways of doing things. He’s too critical of the alien-worshipping elite, and eventually he’s killed as a threat to order.[1]

This point of this rather long-winded parable is that news is not command. Command comes in the imperative voice — ‘Do this’ — and news comes in the indicative voice — ‘This has been done.’ But this News is more than words. Mere words do not work, because they’re addressed to sinners, who misunderstand and manipulate them. Centuries after the good alien is killed, his words will be used to justify tyranny, to baptize massacres, to torture people into paying the good alien lip service.

Which is perhaps why Christ — not an alien, but God him­self — seemed, on some level, not to want people to know who he was, instructing those he’d healed to tell no one, and ordering his disciples, once they finally realized who he was, to keep silent about it. He seemed more concerned with personal presence than reputation or even clear teaching (Mk 4:12). Words can be dodged and manipulated and misused. The Law consists of words, but the Gospel is a Person. This is one reason Jesus was called the “Word of God” — because God’s entire revelation to humans is this Person.

Signs and wonders and displays of power were not Christ’s way of doing things. Contrary to how humans operate, God’s glory is seen in his condescension, his downward movement toward earthlings.[2] Christ is marked first by his humility and self-abasement, his downward trajectory. So it takes special “eyes to see” this person, special “ears to hear” his message, as it is so counter-intuitive.[3]

This Person is certainly ‘news from across the sea,’ from beyond the planet and beyond the impassable divide between Creator and creation. He is God incarnate, yet a carpenter’s apprentice. He accumulates no wealth or power, beyond the occasional veneration of riffraff and mobs, who are mainly in it for bread or healing or a chance at a nationalistic figurehead to push the Romans out of town. He says and does odd things, like giving teachings almost meant to baffle rather than enlighten, or describing God’s coming kingdom as something hidden, para­doxical, and outrageous.[4] He dies a humiliating traitor’s death, like that of an ordinary outlaw. He tells a criminal being crucified beside him that “today you will be with me in paradise,” a tragic and farcical thing coming from a dying, failed rabbi whose life has come to naught. Before expiring, he cries to God the Father, perplexed at his desertion, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and then dies. Three days later, he comes back to life — vindicating the trust which sinners and fishermen had placed in him. He does some teaching, cooks some breakfast, maybe fishes a little, and then disappears. Two thousand years later, we’re still trying to come to grips with him.

The Good News is a Person who accomplishes our deliver­ance. Between God’s assumption of a human form, Jesus’ cruci­fixion, and his resurrection, something very good has happened: Something, some “it,” “is finished” (Jn 19:30).

What did God do on earth; what does this Person mean? A few years after Jesus’ death, a model citizen and perfect lawkeeper named Saul is on his way to Damascus to continue his campaign against this new, irreverent, and blasphemous sect of Judaism when he is visited by its founder and blinded, a symbol for how blind he himself had been to God in human form. After changing his name to Paul, he begins to reflect on Christ’s life and teach­ings. Aided by the Holy Spirit, he decides it means several things: First, God has broadened his reach beyond the Jews to the entire world. Second, our sins are forgiven, and the powers of death, the Law, and sin over us have been broken. Third, we are given new lives, lives which do not operate by the old conditionality and Law and Gospel self-mastery or even moralism, but by the Spirit and by freedom. The Old Adam has been supplanted by a New one: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17).

There is a gap between Paul and Jesus: Jesus taught mainly about the coming Kingdom of God, but Paul writes mainly about grace and forgiveness and reconciliation with God. One easy maxim to lessen the tension is to note that “Paul taught what Jesus did.”[5] But this gap is important to keep in mind. If we focus only on Jesus’ life, we find him to be a moral example, a figure of love, or a healer to be emulated. But Paul tells us how to read Jesus’ life, how to see him accomplishing a radical act of Good News. If Christ is Good News, then Paul is the divinely-sanc­tioned analyst of it.

At the same time, it is dangerous to focus solely on Paul and neglect the Man himself. The statements, ‘You are forgiven’ or ‘You are loved unconditionally’ are by themselves only sen­timental, airy and abstract statements with little grounding in reality. Their point of connection with our world is in the life and actions of the Person who lived in our history, who walked dusty roads and ate and drank and got indigestion, someone who experienced the setbacks and challenges of daily life, yet was sinless. The Gospel is not mere forgiveness or grace, empty of content, but always refers to Jesus.

So the Gospel is Good News, about a human Person who is God in our history, our world, and who came to accomplish something in his life, death, and resurrection. That ‘something’ is not only news from across the sea, but also a gift from above.

COMMENTS

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