By Neil Earle
2011 will not go down as the worst year on record – no BP oil spills, not as many loose cannon talk show hosts as 2010. No dreaded total financial collapse of the Western economies.
But it definitely had its moments.
A Congresswoman shot in broad daylight and her inspiring recovery amid heart-breaking losses. The Japanese nuclear disaster had us biting out fingernails a little on the West Coast. Riots in London and Vancouver. Wars ands rumors of wars raged in Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and Syria and protestors alternately inspired and bewildered many.
Not a wipe-out of a year but not a great one either. As 2011 ends, we have to wonder: Is there anywhere to look for a new future? A better hope? There is, but you have to get a little serious about it.
The Book of Romans is the Gospel according to Paul, the First Century’s greatest proclaimer of the Good News that reached the world at Bethlehem – that the Prince of Peace had come and things would be different.
In Romans 1-3 Paul sketches a world that looks very much like the one we see about us today. Take a look. You’ll be shocked. It is a world like ours, one that had fallen under the condemnation of sin and death – yes, even the Jews who had the precious gift of the Law had too often used it as a tool of self-exaltation and exclusivism (Romans 2:24).
By the time Paul wrote, the old Law-based system from Moses’ time was breaking down. The Jewish leadership in Jerusalem had turned into money-changers and high-living collaborators with the Roman power. Too bad because ten of the first Roman emperors were bisexual. Some, like Caligula and Nero, were clearly insane. Against this moral and spiritual futility Paul set “the righteousness of God apart from Law – a righteousness given to us by faith” (Romans 3:21). Paul stressed the message that the Sinless One who gave the Law is also the One who has rescued and redeemed us from the Law of Sin and Death (Romans 5:21). Not easily either, but by a titanic sacrifice – the death of his Son on the cross to pay for the sins of the world.
But Christ’s death was the prelude to an even greater event – Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. John wrote powerfully of the One sent from God who came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10).
This was Paul’s good news for a sin-soaked Romans Empire where slavery was rife, infants were abandoned in the Forum overnight and people were lucky to live to reach age 40. When Christianity began to move out into this educated, decadent, yet stunningly sophisticated Greek and Roman world it had to confront the cynical, pagan spirit of the times. Jesus raised up Paul, an educated and zealous former rabbi, to do just that.
Paul hammered out six key themes that took his audiences from an individual reconciliation with God to a future remaking and reordering of the Cosmos – big themes for a Big God to carry out:
Christ crucified – God’s answer to the guilt of Sin.
The Present Reign of Evil and the opposing Triumph of Jesus’ Resurrection (Colossians 2:15).
Futility of Performance-based systems of Righteousness opposed to the free and undeserved Grace of God the loving Father.
Individuals becoming one in Christ in the New Community, the Church (Galatians 3:28).
The giving of the Holy Spirit to help us understand and live the Love of God, the real answer to so many problems now and….
The New Creation already begun in those who accept Christ but soon to spread to the whole world at his dramatic return.
Sometime Christians forget what Bible translator C.H. Dodd has said, that “Preaching the Gospel is the public proclamation of Christianity to the non-Christian world.” Matthew, Mark and Luke gave a stirring call to action – “Repent, the Kingdom of God has drawn near.”
God is not naïve. The New Creation will violently involve an intervention by God himself into the present order of things (1 Corinthians 15:24-25). But the future, the future will be infinitely better than the past for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
J. Christian Beker said it well: “The abiding center of Paul’s Gospel is that the death and resurrection of Christ have opened up a new future for the world.” The power that raised Christ to the highest heaven will yet be used to reorder this dangerous world system (Ephesians 1:19-23). That, we can use as our guiding star in 2012…and every year after.