A new relationship to God
A new relationship to God
The four images of salvation, which we investigated in chapter 7, all bear witness to our new relationship to God. Now that he has acted in his love to turn aside his anger, we have been justified by him, redeemed for him and reconciled to him. And our reconciliation includes the concepts of ‘access’ and ‘nearness’, which are aspects of our dynamic knowledge of God or ‘eternal life’ (John 17:3). This intimate relationship to God, which has replaced the old and painful estrangement, has several characteristics.
First, it is marked by boldness. The word the apostles loved to use for it is parrēsia, which means ‘outspokenness, frankness, plainness of speech’ (AG), both in our witness to the world and in our prayers to God. Through Christ we are now able to ‘approach God with freedom (parrēsia) and confidence’. We have parrēsia because of Christ’s high priesthood to come to God’s ‘throne of grace’, and parrēsia by Christ’s blood ‘to enter the Most Holy Place’ of God’s very presence.3 This freedom of access and this outspokenness of address to God in prayer are not incompatible with humility, for they are due entirely to Christ’s merit, not ours. His blood has cleansed our consciences (in a way that was impossible in Old Testament days), and God has promised to remember our sins no more. So now we look to the future with assurance, not fear. We feel the power of Paul’s logic that since, when we were God’s enemies, we were both justified and reconciled through Christ’s death, ‘how much more’, having been justified and reconciled, shall we be saved on the last day from God’s wrath. Now that we are ‘in Christ’, we are confident that ‘in all things’ God is working for our good, and that nothing can separate us from his love.4
The second characteristic of our new relationship with God is love. Indeed, ‘we love because he first loved us’. Previously we were afraid of him. But now love has driven out fear. Love begets love. God’s love in Christ, which has in one sense liberated us, in another hems us in, because it leaves us no alternative but to live the rest of our lives for him, in adoring and grateful service.5
Joy is a third mark of those who have been redeemed by the cross. When the Babylonian exiles returned to Jerusalem, their ‘mouths were filled with laughter’ and their ‘tongues with songs of joy’. The old alienation and humiliation were over; God had rescued and restored them. They likened their exhilaration to the revelries of harvest: ‘Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.’ How much more should we rejoice in the Lord, who have been redeemed from a much more oppressive slavery? The early Christians could hardly contain themselves: they shared their meals together ‘with unaffected joy’.6
Boldness, love and joy are not to be thought of as purely private and interior experiences, however; they are to distinguish our public worship. The brief time we spend together on the Lord’s Day, far from being divorced from the rest of our life, is intended to bring it into sharp focus. Humbly (as sinners), yet boldly (as forgiven sinners), we press into God’s presence, responding to his loving initiative with an answering love of our own, and not only worshipping him with musical instruments but articulating our joy in songs of praise. W. M. Clow was right to draw our attention to singing as a unique feature of Christian worship, and to the reason for it:
There is no forgiveness in this world, or in that which is to come, except through the cross of Christ. ‘Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.’ The religions of paganism scarcely knew the word....The great faiths of the Buddhist and the Mohammedan give no place either to the need or the grace of reconciliation. The clearest proof of this is the simplest. It lies in the hymns of Christian worship. A Buddhist temple never resounds with a cry of praise. Mohammedan worshippers never sing. Their prayers are, at the highest, prayers of submission and of request. They seldom reach the gladder note of thanksgiving. They are never jubilant with the songs of the forgiven.7
By contrast, whenever Christian people come together it is impossible to stop them singing. The Christian community is a community of celebration.
Paul expresses our common sense of joyful exhilaration by alluding to the best-known Jewish feast: ‘Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival...’ (1 Cor. 5:7). Strictly speaking, ‘Passover’ referred to the communal meal which was eaten during the evening of the 15 Nisan, immediately after the killing of the paschal lambs that afternoon (14 Nisan), although it came to be applied also to the week-long Feast of Unleavened Bread which followed. The foundation of the people’s rejoicing was their costly redemption from Egypt. Costlier still was the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is because he, our Paschal Lamb, has been slain, and because by the shedding of his precious life-blood we have been set free, that we are exhorted to keep the feast. In fact, the whole life of the Christian community should be conceived as a festival in which with love, joy and boldness we celebrate what God has done for us through Christ. In this celebration we find ourselves caught up in the worship of heaven, so that we join ‘with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven’ in giving God glory. And because the worship of God is in essence the acknowledgment of his worth, we unite with the heavenly chorus in singing of his worthiness as both Creator and Redeemer:
‘You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honour and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.’
(Rev. 4:11)
‘Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise!’
(Rev. 5:12)
It is surprising that Paul’s references to the Passover Lamb and the Paschal Feast come in the middle of an extremely solemn chapter, in which it has been necessary for him to upbraid the Corinthians for their moral laxity. One of their members is involved in an incestuous relationship. Yet they show no signs of humble grief or penitence. He instructs them to excommunicate the offender, and warns them of the danger that sin will spread in the community if decisive steps are not taken to eradicate it. ‘Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?’ he asks (1 Cor. 5:6). It is this allusion to yeast (leaven) which reminds him of the Passover and its Feast of Unleavened Bread. As Christians ‘keep the Festival’, they must do it ‘not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth’ (v. 8). For the Christian festival is radically different from pagan festivals, which were usually accompanied by frenzy and often degenerated into an orgy of drunkenness and immorality. Holiness is to mark the Christian celebration, for Christ’s ultimate purpose through the cross is ‘to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation’ (Col. 1:22).