Healing Inhumanity/“The Christification of the Cosmos”  

“for one who is ‘in Christ’… his human nature …exists not just alongside of the Creator, but in such a way that his human being is anchored in the very being of God. The breath taking import of all this … is that our human nature has been taken up and in Jesus to the top and summit of being, and that with him and in him man is located in the very centre of all things!” (T.F. Torrance).

Introduction

I have become increasingly persuaded, through Scripture and prophetic experience, that most of the contemporary Western Church denies, in practice, the totality of the dimensions of the biblical vision of the Gospel. Paul’s vision of the “cosmic Christ” (https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=32834) in Ephesians and Colossians puts this most clearly. The call of the “fivefold ministry” of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, is to present the Church as “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13); this means sharing in him who “is all and in all” (Col 3:11). As Paul puts it, “All things are yours, ²² whether Paul or Apollos or Cephasor the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, ²³ and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” (1 Cor 3:21-23). This all-embracing vision of what it means for our feeble humanity to have been taken into the Godhead in Jesus (Athanasian Creed) is indescribably stunning beyond “all we ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20). As the Father of the Nicene Creed put it, “For the Son of God became human so we might share in the divine nature.” This is not exaggerated but biblical, “he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” (2 Pet 1:4). Ordinary mortals through Christ will in the End become Godlike in proportion to how God became humanlike in the descent of his Son (Phil 2:5-13)!

Humanity’s Need for Healing

Visiting the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem years ago I came across a part of the Jewish story which has opened my eyes to the current Israeli mindset. In the final few years of WW II, news was reaching the allies about the trains taking victims into the death camps. When begged to bomb the railways lines they unanimously refused, arguing that this would lead to higher casualties for their soldiers. The Zionists forswear never to trust a power greater than themselves. The hellish antics of Hamas, and the destructions of Gaza, will have no respite until this self-cursing of the Jewish people is broken. By grace the cross has cancelled even the self-condemnation of the very Jewish Peter (Matt 26:73-75). The power of “man’s inhumanity to man” shown in Ukraine, Congo, Myanmar, domestic violence, to Indigenous Australians etc. has been cancelled in Christ alone. I was recently informed of a case of an Iranian Christian tortured for her faith in the notorious prison. The cruel inhumanity of the recently elected Labor government meant she and her dependents have been denied a refugee visa into Australia. (I was asked and agreed to send a letter of protest to the current Minister for Immigration.) For the prophesied biblical expectation is that the glorified humanity of Christ will be regularly revealed through us.“through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:10)., we need more of the real proportions of JESUS!

How Are we Doing In Practice?

Every political hope, Liberal, Labor, Democrat, Republic etc., is but an empty illusion in the glorious light of Christ (Col 2:8; 2 Tim 1:10). This-worldly uselessness for the kingdom of God extends to all other selfish material ambitions (James 3:14-16). E.g. in attempting to give counsel to maturer believers trying to impart wisdom to those struck by “gold fever’, trying to ship bullion out of Africa, I was led to the Scriptures. Whilst Gen 2:12 tells us of Eden, “The gold of that land is good”, the final picture of the eternal city, the Church as the New Jerusalem, tells us “The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.” (Rev 21:21). The glorification of the Lamb who inhabits that Church for eternity his glory will shine gloriously and perfectly through us. Such begins now: “And we all, who with unveiled faces reflecting the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor 3:18). The glory of the eternal is incomparably greater than anything earthly. No genuinely Spirit-filled person can be afflicted by the petty distractions of material wealth. As our Lord says, “you cannot serve both God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). Worshipping the Father in “Spirit and truth” (John 4:24) renders this sort of competition impossible.

Ever-Expanding Grace 

In the New Testament the kingdom of God and Christ are ever-expanding realities up until “the time of the restoration of all things which God promised long ago through his holy prophets … (when) the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:14; Rev 11:15). When Jesus reigns over all (1 Cor 15:28) even death will be healed through resurrection (Matt 19:28). This ever-expanding vision of the universal triumph of grace means the humanisation of the universe in Christ. (The “Christification of the Cosmos”) In the meantime the pathetic Adamic reality continues to divide humanity along sectarian lines, Moslem Gaza vs Jewish Israel, Hindu India vs Muslim Pakistan and so on. The all-abundant victory of Christ, “where sin did abound, grace did much more abound” (Rom 5:20 cf. John 10:10; 2 Cort 5:17; Gal 6:15), has no limits! This is what the prophets saw in vision. For expressions of the Final glory of God appear in visions found in Ezek 1-2; Isa 6; Hab 3:3ff etc; and of the God-man Jesus in Acts 8-9 and throughout Revelation. This manifestation of the eternal God in Christ (Rom 9:5) is being shown to the Church now for his glory and hers. At the End the transcendent Beauty of the humanity of Christ will forever beautify and glorify all Fallen things.

Conclusion

Beauty will not only save the world (Dostoyevsky future tense) but has saved the world (present objective tense). Meanwhile, a divided unprophetic Western Church beset by Adamic insensibilities is so anaesthetised that is scarcely prays. Only through a fresh Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit imparting a saving vision for “every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5) will we see a generation arise with a call to witness to a gospel “bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world” (Col 1:6). This is a vision, not so much of Church growth, but of nothing less than to fulfil the original divine plan. That is, that the Christ of God might fill all things, through his Bride and Body, forever and ever.