On Earth as in Heaven E-Book

Peter J. Leithart

• Herausgeber: Lexham Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 778

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The heavenly city of God resurrects the cities of men. On Earth as in Heaven calls the church to embrace her identity and mission as one shaped by biblical theology and liturgy. The world grows increasingly polarized and politicized, but the church's commission remains unchanged. Christians carry out Jesus's mission by being the church. To change the world, the church needs only to be what she is—the bride of Christ—and to do what she does—teach, preach, sing, pray, break bread. Cultural and political mission and individual witness and service all spring from the church's liturgical life. As the church proclaims God's word and practices vibrant liturgy, she is God's heavenly city, shining as a light to the world.

Leseprobe

On Earth as in Heaven

THEOPOLIS FUNDAMENTALS

Peter J. Leithart

LEXHAM PRESS

On Earth as in Heaven: Theopolis Fundamentals

Copyright 2022 Peter J. Leithart

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [email protected].

Unless otherwise noted, all other Scripture quotations are the author’s own translation or are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are from the King James Version. Public Domain.

Print ISBN 9781683596134

Digital ISBN 9781683596141

Library of Congress Control Number 2022933927

Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Kelsey Matthews, Mandi Newell

Cover Design: Brittany Schrock

To the winner of birth race—

Raylan Daniel Leithart

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PRAYER

HYMN: “BLESSED CITY”

TO THE READER

PART I: THE THEOPOLITAN VISION

1.Blessed City

2.Tasting the End

3.City of Light

4.Angels at the Gates

5.Treasures of Kings

Conclusion: On Vision

PART II: THEOPOLITAN READING

Interlude: On Reading

6.Spiritual Reading

7.World

8.Adam

9.Eve

10.Eden

Conclusion: On Reading

PART III: THEOPOLITAN LITURGY

Interlude: On Liturgy

11.Place

12.Dialog

13.Sacrifice

14.Time

15.Joy

Conclusion: On Liturgy

PART IV: THEOPOLITAN MISSION

Interlude: On Mission

16.Making

17.Carpenter

18.Edification

19.Pilot

20.Vessels of Salvation

Conclusion: On Mission

THEOPOLITAN THESES

FOR FURTHER READING

Acknowledgments

Each of the four parts of Theopolis Fundamentals started life as a separate short volume, published during 2019–2020. I have revised transitional sections and some other details to turn those four volumes into a single book, but the substance of this omnibus volume is the same as the earlier books. Like many people of a certain age, I repeat myself. There’s overlap and repetition, but I hope not so much as to be annoying to the reader, not so much as to reveal the intensity of my dementia. Those four books remain in print, in case you’re looking for something with somewhat less heft to it.

Over the course of the past two years, I’ve had the help of a number of colleagues and friends. My oldest son, Woelke, used a part of his enforced vacation to proofread an early draft of The Theopolitan Vision. Pastor Steve Jeffery, now of All Saints Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, Texas, gave his wise input on the Vision volume, which I, foolishly, didn’t always take. My Theopolis colleagues Alastair Roberts, Jeff Meyers, and John Crawford read through the manuscripts and offered many corrections and suggestions. In the later stages, John Barach and Brian and Ashton Moats copy-edited and proofed the manuscripts, cleaning up a lot of sloppy errors; Chris Kou typeset each volume; all the while, my daughter Emma kept things on schedule. As always, Jim Jordan is present in with and under every sentence of this book. I am grateful to him for decades of friendship and collaboration.

I’m grateful to the original publishers, Athanasius Press, and especially to Jarrod Richey and Zach Parker. And I’m grateful too to Todd Hains and Jesse Myers of Lexham Press for their interest in this combined volume.

On Earth as in Heaven is dedicated to my fifteenth grandchild, Raylan Daniel Leithart, who joined Jordan, Jamie, and Ava in October 2021. With Raylan’s birth, our grandsons edge into a narrow 8–7 lead over the granddaughters. It’s only the top of the fourth, so I expect the girls will stage a comeback. In the meantime, Raylan occupies an honored branch of the family tree. As grateful as I am to have another grandson, I’m far more grateful that he is already a junior citizen of the future city of God. May he flourish like an oak in the courts of the Lord and stand as a pillar in his Father’s house.

Prayer

IN THE NAME of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

YET GOD is my King from of old,

Who works salvation in the midst of the land.

Ps 74:12

My soul faints for Your salvation;

In Your word I put my hope.

Ps 119:81

You send Your Spirit; They are created.

And You renew the face of the ground.

Ps 104:30

You crown the year with Your goodness,

And Your cart paths drop with fatness.

Ps 65:11

The earth has yielded her produce;

God will bless us, our God.

Ps 67:6

Blessed be Yahweh, God, the God of Israel,

Who alone does wonders.

And blessed be His glorious name everlastingly,

And filled with His glory be all the earth.

Amen! Yes, Amen!

Ps 72:18–19

GLORY BE to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

O GOD, you are the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong and nothing is holy. Increase and multiply upon us your mercy, that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that in the end we do not lose the things eternal. Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

“Blessed City”

—JOHN MASON NEALE

1 Blessed city, heavenly Salem,

vision dear of peace and love,

who of living stones art builded

in the height of heaven above,

and with angel hosts encircled,

as a bride dost earthward move!

2 From celestial realms descending,

bridal glory round thee shed,

meet for him whose love espoused thee,

to thy Lord shalt thou be led;

all thy streets and all thy bulwarks

of pure gold are fashioned.

3 Bright thy gates of pearl are shining,

they are open evermore;

and by virtue of his merits

thither faithful souls do soar,

who for Christ’s dear name in this world

pain and tribulation bore.

4 Many a blow and biting sculpture

polished well those stones elect,

in their places now compacted

by the heavenly Architect,

who therewith hath willed for ever

that his palace should be decked.

5 To this temple, where we call thee,

come, O Lord of Hosts, to-day;

with thy wonted loving-kindness

hear thy servants as they pray,

and thy fullest benediction

shed within its walls alway.

6 Here vouchsafe to all thy servants

what they ask of thee to gain,

what they gain from thee for ever

with the blessed to retain,

and hereafter in thy glory

evermore with thee to reign.

7 Laud and honour to the Father,

laud and honour to the Son,

laud and honour to the Spirit,

ever Three, and ever One,

consubstantial, co-eternal,

while unending ages run.

To the Reader

I had a particular kind of reader in mind as I wrote the Theopolis Fundamentals. I’m going to assume you’re that kind of reader.

My ideal reader is young, or young-ish. You’re an Evangelical Christian. I’m Protestant and I mainly write to Protestants, but my ideal reader could be in any denomination. Wherever you are in the church, you’re an Evangelical if you’re committed to the Bible. You may be a pastor or priest or seminary student. You may be a lay leader in the church, or a member observing from a distance.

You share a desire to follow Jesus and become more like Him, your interest in the Bible, your love for the church. These loves shape everything in your life.

You love the church’s tradition, but you aren’t a traditionalist. You realize that the church has to address the challenges of the present, but you aren’t a progressive.

But there’s something else: A restless hunger for something more.

If you’re a pastor or teacher, you feel you’re skimming the surface of the biblical text but don’t know how to dig deeper. You know it’s God’s word, but you wonder why it’s so weird. You may find yourself avoiding some biblical books (Leviticus, parts of Judges, the early chapters of 1 Chronicles) and sticking to the clearer, safer bits, where you at least have some idea of what’s going on.

If you’re a layman or laywoman, you’re edified by your pastor’s sermons, but you suspect there’s so much more to be said. You ask questions, but they don’t get answered. You Google, but you’re rightly cautious about what passes for theology on the Internet.

You attend worship at least once a week, but you wonder if there isn’t more. If you attend a Bible church, you might have slipped away in the last few months to attend an Anglican Evensong or a Catholic Mass, and that somehow seems much more like worship. You know some churches have weekly Communion. That seems intuitively right, though you’re not sure why.

You sense there’s something deeply wrong with today’s world, and you’re anxious for the future. But you don’t want to turn the clock back, you don’t want to stand with the doomsayers, and you think that the politicization of Christianity does more harm than good. Your skin crawls when other Christians merge Christian faith with patriotism. Your skin also crawls when Christians hitch their faith to the latest fad.

You know Jesus is the answer, and that the church is called to carry on Jesus’ ministry of healing, justice, salvation. You want to be part of something big, and Jesus’ mission is as big as it gets. But you wonder if the church is up to the challenge.

You don’t want to switch churches. If you’re not Catholic or Orthodox, you don’t want to become Roman Catholic or Orthodox. You have Catholic and Orthodox friends and you know they’re Christians. Yet you don’t buy the papacy and don’t want to venerate icons. Besides, your mother would roll in her grave if you swam the Tiber or moved to Constantinople.

(If you’re Catholic or Orthodox, you don’t want to become a Protestant; mothers roll in their graves when their children move in that direction too.)

You love your church. You love its vigor and its commitment to the Bible. You love its evangelistic fervor. Yet, whether you’re a Protestant, a Catholic, or an Orthodox Christian, you’re appalled at the church’s divisiveness. You long for the church to be united.

Worst of all, you think you’re the only one in the world who feels this way. You have coffee every other week with another pastor who shares your longings, but the two of you seem alone in the wilderness. You have a friend or two at church with whom you carry on whispered conversations about your restlessness.

You don’t want to be divisive. You know that your pastor is responsible for you, and you want to honor him. You don’t quite know what you want to be different. Only that you want something more. And you have trouble being patient.

Sound familiar? Then this book is for you. It’s for pastors and laypeople who are looking for something more. That “more” is what I’m calling the “Theopolitan vision.”

What’s that? Theopolis Fundamentals will explain it as straightforwardly and simply as I can. But let me give you the gist right here.

The Theopolitan vision is a view of the church and her role in the world. I’m going to show that the church is an outpost of the future city of God. The city of God exists now, in the present, as a real-life society among the societies of men. This real-world, visible community is the family of the Father, the body of the Son, the temple of the Spirit. It exists to transform and renew human societies, inside and out, top to bottom. As God’s city, the church’s carries out a global mission of urban renewal. That’s the theme of Part 1.

Worship is the primary work of God’s city. Christian worship should be attuned to the liturgical tradition of the church, the whole church, but it should avoid traditionalism and nostalgia. Our practice and understanding of worship must be shaped by the whole Bible—from Genesis through Leviticus and Chronicles to Revelation. Worship should be saturated with Scripture—Scripture read, Scripture taught, Scripture sung, Scripture turned into a dialogue of love between the Lord and His Bride. Scripture is my focus in Part 2.

Worship is thinly Christian unless it culminates in joyous festivity of the Lord’s table. The liturgy is the place where we encounter the Word of God, where our worlds are shattered and rebuilt, where we learn to inhabit the symbolic universe of Scripture. I talk about liturgy in Part 3.

A church that worships biblically, a church whose worship is saturated by Scripture, a church whose members have learned to navigate biblically through life, a church that shares Christ’s body and blood each week—that is a church prepared for mission, which is the topic in Part 4.

The garden, the place of worship, is the source of the living water that flows to the world. The sanctuary is the beacon whose light shines out among the nations. Unless we taste the kingdom in worship—and I mean literally taste—we won’t have the words of life that the world needs to hear. If we don’t encounter the light of Jesus in His word and at His table, we won’t be lights in the darkness.

Some of you are pastors or aspiring pastors. If that’s you, I commend you. Pastoral ministry isn’t what you’d call a “sexy” profession. “A clergyman is nothing,” says Mary Crawford in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, and Mary Crawford knows a thing or two about sexiness.

As a pastor, you won’t get rich. You won’t win prestige. You won’t gain attention unless you make a point of being provocative.

You’ll grind away, week in and week out, teaching the Bible to more-or-less attentive parishioners, counseling, confronting, comforting. You’ll spend an inordinate number of hours sharing the crisis moments of life—sickness, marital breakdown, wayward children, job losses. There’s no reliable way to measure success. Your work may seem pointless, the results meager.

Yet you’ve chosen this vocation, or been chosen for it. I don’t commend you for your willingness to accept obscurity. I commend you for believing that this vocation matters.

Because, despite widespread opinion, it does. It matters more than anything. A pastor at the pulpit is at the wheel of the ship of the world. A pastor offering the body and blood of Jesus at the Lord’s table is at the center of the universe. A pastor leads the charge in mission, equipping the troops to fight Jesus’ holy war.

I believe that God calls men, not women, to be pastors, and they have to be men, ready to act with courage, ready to fight, ready to lead. The Theopolitan vision aims to give you your marching orders.

But the Theopolitan vision isn’t just for pastors. It’s a vision for the church, and the church has vastly more non-pastors than pastors. The Spirit equips every man, woman, and child in the church with gifts to build the city and serve its mission.

More than the pastor, you non-pastors straddle the boundary between the heavenly city and the earthly city. It’s you, the people—the laos, “laity”—who take the word and bread and glory of worship out into the corners and byways of the cities of men. Filled with the Spirit, you’re the agents of God’s city who carry out Jesus’ urban renewal program.

I should warn you at the beginning: The cities of men won’t receive what you have to offer—not peaceably. Jesus warned His disciples they would be beaten, arrested, scourged, crucified (Matt 10), and that is forever the life of the church. The world understands, sometimes better than Christians, how radical the gospel is, how fundamental the repentance it demands, how much things will have to change if the gospel is true. The world doesn’t want to repent and it doesn’t like people who call for repentance.

Don’t think for a moment that throwing yourself into the mission of God’s city is a safe decision. Jesus calls you to lay down your life—perhaps in literal ways—to follow Him and build His city.

The world is always hostile to the church, but some worlds are more hostile than others. Our world is more hostile than many, since it’s built on an explicit rejection of Christian faith. Our world is also fracturing and decaying. Politically, geopolitically, economically, culturally, the world is crumbling. That only makes it more vicious: A cornered bear is a dangerous bear.

Tragically, many sectors of the church have become so worldly that they too are hostile to the demands of Jesus. If you call the church to repentance, be prepared for the assaults. Don’t take up the task unless you’re prepared to die.

Death isn’t a defeat. Far from it. We share in Christ’s dying so that we can share in His abundant life and glory. When we share in Christ’s death, when we are like the early martyrs who did not “love life even to death” (Rev 12), we become a world-changing force. Courageous witness shatters old worlds and lays the foundations for new ones. It’s through the cross that God’s city renews the cities of men.

That is the Theopolitan vision of the city of God: A city founded on the blood of Jesus, sustained by the witness and blood of His disciples, established in the world to uproot and to plant, to tear down and to build up.

Part I

The Theopolitan Vision

1

Blessed City

AND HE CARRIED ME AWAY IN SPIRIT TO A GREAT AND HIGH MOUNTAIN AND SHOWED ME THE HOLY CITY, JERUSALEM, COMING DOWN OUT OF HEAVEN FROM GOD.

—REVELATION 21:10

The book of Revelation has an odd ending. The third in-Spirit vision (cf. Rev 1:9–10; 4:1–2) takes John into the wilderness, where he sees the harlot city Babylon drinking the blood of saints and riding on a scarlet beast (Rev 17:1–6). As he watches, the horns of the beast turn on Babylon, strip, eat, and burn her (17:16). Two chapters later, the beast and the false prophet—introduced as the sea and land beasts in chapter 13—are thrown into the lake of fire (19:19–21). Jesus chains Satan and sets the martyrs on thrones, where they reign for a thousand years (20:1–6).

After the thousand years, the dragon is released, deceives the nations, besieges the saints, but is consumed by fire from heaven and thrown into the lake of fire (20:7–10). A final judgment scene follows (20:11–15), and John sees the new heaven and new earth come from heaven, Jerusalem, the Bride who takes the place of the whore (21:1–8).

John has seen the church’s three great enemies: the dragon (Rev 12), the sea and land beast (Rev 13) and the harlot (Rev 17). Then he sees them eliminated in reverse order: the harlot (Rev 17), the beasts (Rev 19), and the dragon (Rev 20). Finally the city descends, the city we look for, the future city whose builder and maker is God.

Everything’s done. It’s all neat and tidy. Time for the credits to roll. After all, what’s left to see or say after a final judgment that ushers in a new heaven and new earth?

Here’s the odd thing: There’s another vision. One last time, John is caught up in Spirit, this time to a mountain (Rev 21:10). And—oddity on top of oddity—the vision is of “the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (21:10). We’d excuse John if he tapped the angel on the shoulder and said, “Um. I’ve seen this one already.”

What gives? Why does the city descend twice? Are there two cities?

No, there’s only one city of God. To understand the final vision of Revelation, we have to remember the Old Testament. John isn’t the first prophet to ascend a mountain and see a vision of a building. Moses climbed Sinai to see the pattern of the tabernacle (Exod 25:9, 40), the blueprints that guided Israel as they built God’s house. Yahweh showed David the pattern of the temple and its furnishings (1 Chr 28:11–19), which he passed on to Solomon the temple builder. Ezekiel was shown a wondrous new temple, city, and land (Ezek 40–48), a set of plans to inspire the exiles returning from Babylon.

Prophets are sacred architects. The Spirit gives them plans, and then the same Spirit equips others to build according to the pattern.

That’s what John is doing on the mountain at the end of Revelation: In Spirit, he sees the plan of heavenly Jerusalem and conveys the plans to his first readers and, centuries later, to us. And that same Spirit makes us wise craftsmen to build that city on earth. It’s an ideal city, but it’s an ideal that we are called to realize.

Revelation ends, in short, with an implied commission: “Go, build.”

New Jerusalem is the people of God. We do long to enter the final city, but already now we’re citizens of that city. The heavenly city is church in the present, not the final city of the future (which is described in Rev 21:1–8). It’s you and me; it’s us. It’s us right now. It’s the city where we already dwell, the city God wants us to keep building, repairing, beautifying until the end of all things.

That’s the Theopolitan vision in a nutshell. The word “theo-polis” comes from two Greek words, theos and polis, and means “God’s city.” The Theopolitan vision is John’s vision, a vision of the church, what the church is and does as a city among the nations.

Throughout this book, we’ll be filling out the picture. I’ll explain what this city does and what it looks like. We’ll be coming back to Revelation 21 a lot. But for now, I want to do one simple thing: to convince you that the church is in fact a city among the cities of men.

Why do I need to convince you? Because many Christians are confused about the nature of the church.

WHAT IS THE CHURCH?

Let’s start with the obvious. When you say, “I’m a member of a church” or, “I’m going to church,” what does the word “church” mean? In the first instance, “church” doesn’t refer to a building with a steeple. To see the church, you have to open the door to see all the people.

The church is people. Every Christian knows that. But it’s so easy to forget. We need to follow through, doggedly, on that basic truth.

Because the church is people, it’s a real-world community, as visible as any other group of people. Real people with real bodies and souls become members of the church through the rite of baptism, which uses water, the most abundant material substance on the planet. Real men and women and children with real bodies and souls gather regularly to hear a real man with a real tongue and vocal chords read and teach in real words from a book, to vibrate molecules of air with words of prayer and sung words of praise, to chew physical bread and drink physical wine at the Lord’s table.

When we’re not gathered, we (still real men and women and children with real bodies and souls) are supposed to pray for one another, encourage one another, help one another in times of crisis, weep and laugh and rant together. When we’re not gathered, we strive to live lives faithful to Jesus, to take opportunities to be witnesses to Jesus, to cultivate faith in our families, to use our vocations to honor our Lord.

All of these are visible, bodily activities, photographable and video-able.

Local groups of Christians are often part of larger bodies. Anglicans are, in the main, part of the global Anglican Communion. Roman Catholics are part of a billion-plus-member church centered in Rome. Orthodox Christians are members of one or another family of Orthodox churches. Protestants group themselves into various denominations. First, Second, Third and up to Ninth Baptist Church may be all part of the Southern Baptist Convention, while First and Second and Third Presbyterian church come from different streams of Presbyterianism.

We can’t see all the Anglicans or Catholics or Lutherans at once. But these wider networks consist of real men and women and children with real bodies and souls. These wider networks consist of local congregations that gather and disperse. They are as visible, as photographable and video-able in principle as the local gathering.

All of these different local communities and larger networks form the complex international reality of the catholic, or universal, church. This catholic church is as visible in principle as any sub-group within the catholic church. It would be theoretically possible, if practically unfeasible, to assemble all Christians from all over the world into one place (a corner of Texas would do), throw up a drone, and take a photo of the whole lot.

For all the specific differences among the subgroups, far-flung as we are, we’re all recognizably part of the same real-world community. All these individuals and groups have certain things in common. What makes them all Christians is a common confession of Jesus Christ as Lord, many shared beliefs, a common baptism, a rhythm of liturgical gathering, and missional dispersal.

Things are somewhat more complicated. Some Christians wouldn’t be able to show up for the group photo because they’d risk persecution if they openly professed Jesus.

There would be debates among those who show up about who belongs in the group photo and who doesn’t. Some Catholics would want to keep their distance from anyone who is not in communion with Roman Pontiff. Some Protestants might want to take their own picture in another corner of Texas. Some Protestants would exclude Roman Catholics and Protestants outside their own denomination. Everyone would have to think about whether to make room for some of the odder African Independent Churches, whose links to historic Christianity are tenuous.

So there would be boundary disputes about who’s in and who’s out. But that doesn’t make the church invisible. It means it’s a visible global communion of local communities with fluid boundaries—just like every other real-world group, the Irish or Nigerians or the Masons.

The church is invisible because we can’t see it all at once. The church is sometimes invisible because it has to go into hiding to survive. The church extends beyond the living to include the dead, from Adam and Abel on to yesterday’s martyr. We commune with the whole church throughout all the ages, with saints who are visible and saints who are invisible. But those dimensions don’t mean that invisibility is a defining quality of the church. The church’s invisibility is empirical, not theological.

Think of Israel. Israel started with Abraham, a real man with a real body and a real wife named Sarah and (eventually) two sons and a company of servants. When Yahweh told Abraham to circumcise his household (Gen 17), he had only one son—Ishmael. The rest of the men and boys who got circumcised weren’t related to Abraham by blood. They were part of his traveling city. This was the first Israel, marked out by the physical sign of circumcision, as visible as any nomadic company of men and women and children.

Throughout her history, Israel remained a visible community, a nation and a people. They escaped Egypt as a people, conquered the land as a people, established a monarchy as a people. Even when they were driven from the land, they retained their identity as a people, so that one day they could return to the land to rebuild the temple. Exile was the death of Israel as a visible people.

This was the people of God. What made them part of the same nation was their common trust in the God of the exodus, their common participation in the rites of worship, their common way of life.

INVISIBLE CHURCH?

Perhaps this surprises you. Perhaps someone taught you that “invisible” is a proper modifier for “church.” Perhaps you learned that the real church is the invisible church.

The distinction between visible and invisible does capture some important truths. It’s a way of saying that not everyone in the church will enjoy eternal life in the new creation and that some who are presently outside the church will one day join with the Bride. The visible/invisible distinction emphasizes that some churches, because of their disbelief and disobedience, negate the word and signs that define the church. There are invisible dimensions to the church—the Spirit’s work that unites the members to Christ and to one another as His body.

The Bible says these things, but the Bible doesn’t say them by talking about an invisible church. The Spirit’s work is invisible, but the Spirit’s work in itself isn’t a “church.” In the Bible, the church is a visible community among other communities of men and women and children—among nations, cities, families, social clubs, political parties, etc.

But you might say Paul tells us that “not all Israel is of Israel,” that not everyone who was a member of the visible people of Israel was committed to the God of Israel. What makes someone a member of Israel in truth isn’t circumcision but the condition of his heart.

That’s a border dispute and doesn’t change the fact that the true Israelite was a real man or woman or child with a real body, a member of a real historical people. There wasn’t some invisible people of God lurking behind Israel. There wasn’t a pristine history of faithfulness hidden in, with, or under the checkered history of Israel. The history of Israel—with all its triumphs and failures, its heroes and villains, its ups and downs—that is the history of the people of God.

But, you object: Sure, Israel was a visible community, but the church is an altogether different thing. Israel was defined by flesh, but there is no fleshly connection between members of the church. Israel was a visible physical people, but the church is an invisible spiritual community.

That’s not the vision of the New Testament. Jesus was a real man with a real body, and He spent His earthly life gathering real men and women to be His disciples and to carry on as His little flock after His resurrection and ascension. Once they received the Spirit, they didn’t cease being real men and women and children with real bodies and souls. Filled with the Spirit, they bore witness to Jesus, gathered to break bread and pray, testified to Jews and gentiles, used the gifts of the Spirit to build up the community, called the body of Christ.

Christians get confused about this because they make a fundamental theological error. It’s been a common theological error throughout the church’s history, but that doesn’t make it any less erroneous. That error is a dualistic understanding of nature and grace, or the natural and the supernatural.

That’s a mouthful, so let me explain. The natural world includes Dalmatians and daisies, galaxies, quarks, and quasars. It also includes the natural activities that all human beings share in to one degree or another—eating and drinking and procreating, growing and preparing food. It includes social, economic, and cultural activities—labor, family and neighborhood organization, sculpture and sonatas, architecture and city planning, politics.

In a dualistic understanding, this natural and cultural world has its own laws and principles. Christians will confess that God created the natural world and providentially guides human history, of course. But the realm of nature doesn’t belong to Christians. You don’t need to be a Christian to know how to grow peas or write code. Christians don’t have any monopoly of artistic skill; it sometimes seems the opposite is true. The Bible doesn’t tell you how to run your business or win an election and lead a nation.

What Christianity offers—in this dualistic understanding—is communion with God, spiritual experience, forgiveness of sins, freedom from the curse. These blessings of salvation are added to the natural business of life. In addition to the insight I gain from observation, reason, science, I can gain spiritual insight from the Bible. That phrase “in addition to” is key: Christianity is a supernatural layer on top of the natural cake of life.

Dualism conceives of Christianity vertically: It sits on top of the natural world.

For a strict dualist, the “supernatural” doesn’t touch natural life: The fact that I’m a Christian doesn’t have anything to do with my work, business, family, politics. I read my Bible and listen to sermons to commune with Jesus, not to be told how to vote or spend my money. At its worst, this dualism can imply that Christianity is an escape from the demands of the natural world.

No Christian is a strict dualist in practice. It’s hard to be a strict dualist if you’ve read any of the New Testament. Paul gives pretty explicit instructions about marriage and family (Eph 5–6), encourages us to work to the glory of God, and explains the purpose of civil government (Rom 13).

But many Christians are soft dualists when it comes to church. If you think of the church as an invisible, spiritual community, rather than a real-life visible society with and among other societies, you have a dualistic mindset. You’re a dualist if you think that, in addition to the natural meals that keep your body chugging along, you now get to eat a supernatural meal at church, which keeps your soul chugging along. Church adds a supernatural dimension to my life but leaves my natural world more or less intact.

We should renounce nature-supernatural dualism and all its works and all its pomp. Everything comes from God. Creation is as much a gift of God’s unmerited grace as redemption. Everything lives, moves, and has its being in God. Redemption transforms and fulfills nature; it’s not a detached addition to it. Through His Spirit, Jesus is remaking and will remake everything about you and everything about the world.

Keep this in mind, because I’ll come back to it several times throughout Part 1 and the rest of this book. For now, remember: The church isn’t an invisible entity, a “supernatural” addition on top of natural human societies. The church is a transformed human society.

Instead of thinking vertically, we should think horizontally, which means thinking: The church is the future city that has entered into the present, the city we build that will be perfected in a new heavens and new earth.

PEOPLE OF THE TRIUNE GOD

I have emphasized—perhaps belabored—the visibility of the church, but I have good reason for it. Erroneous beliefs slip into our heads, and dangerous habits slip into our lives, when we don’t acknowledge that the church is a real-world community of real men and women and children with real bodies and souls.

If we think the church is an invisible community of true believers, we might be tempted to avoid the mess of membership in a real community. After all, other people are tough to live with. If we pound a wedge between the church-as-she-appears and the church-as-she-truly-is, we mistake the very nature of redemption. We might be tempted to think that being a Christian—being saved—means escaping from the real world with all its trials, temptations, and challenges, to search for a secret back door to God.

The Bible doesn’t allow that option. There’s only the front door, the west door, which is the entry door to the church. If you want to commune with your Creator, you’re going to have to do it together with other real men and women and children with real bodies and souls, who also want to commune with their Creator. Redemption isn’t escape from this world or from others. Redemption is becoming a member of a new society of which God’s Spirit is the animating breath and of which Jesus Christ is head.

There’s only the front door because the church—the visible, empirical communion of men and women and children—is more than a mere human society. It’s a human society, but it’s an utterly unique human society. As a visible society, with its fluid boundaries, for all its checkered history, the church is the people of the Triune God. It is a communion of real-life human beings joined in communion with the Creator.

The New Testament describes the church in relation to each person of the Trinity.

We are adopted children of our heavenly Father (1 John 3:1), and thus constitute a family of brothers and sisters (Matt 12:48–50). The family of the Father isn’t some inaccessible invisible family but the real-world church. If you want to be a child of God, you have to be among the children of God.

We are the body of Christ, each of us a member and organ of Christ as our eyes, ears, hands, and feet are members of our personal body (Rom 12; 1 Cor 12; Eph 4). If you want to be united to Christ, you need to be united to His body.

As the body of Christ, the church is animated by the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit distributes gifts to each part (1 Cor 12), enables the body to build itself up into maturity (Eph 4), sanctifies us as saints. The Spirit prays in and through our groans (Rom 8). The church is the temple of that Spirit (1 Cor 3:16). You can’t be a living stone in that Spiritual temple unless you’re part of a structure made of living stones.

All of these descriptions of the church—children of the Father, body of the incarnate Son, temple of the Spirit—are descriptions of the real-world, historical community of real men and women and children with real bodies and souls. They’re all descriptions of the heavenly city that has taken its place among the cities and nations of men.

In His high priestly prayer (John 17), Jesus prays that the disciples would be one as He is one with the Father. That unity is a unity of mutual indwelling: The Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son. Jesus prays that His disciples would form a communion so deeply one that it resembles this divine unity of mutual indwelling.

Jesus also prays that the disciples would be incorporated into the mutual indwelling of the Father and Son: “they in Us … I in them and Thou in Me” (vv. 21, 23). Just as the Father indwells the Son who indwells Him, so the disciples of Jesus are indwelt by the God whom they also simultaneously indwell. God makes the disciples His home, even as He is the disciples’ home. Jesus wants His disciples to become part of the society that exists between the Father and Son in the Spirit.

This communion of mutual indwelling among disciples—this church—is a visible communion of disciples. Jesus doesn’t bring His disciples to communion with God by elevating up and out of their bodies to swirl in invisible spiritual bliss. The disciples don’t form a communion that is visible only to the eyes of faith. It’s a communion visible to the world, with a unity visible to the world (17:21). The church’s unity of mutual indwelling should be visible enough to convince the unbelieving world that the Father sent the Son.

The church has invisible dimensions and depths, deep as the depths of God Himself. But these invisible dimensions are depths of a real-world church. As a real-world people, made of up real men and women and children with real bodies and souls, the visible church is called to manifest on earth the eternal communion of Father and Son.

That means you and your fellow church members, in whatever kind of church you are and wherever you live. Together with your brothers and sisters, you are a visible people joined with one another because the Spirit has brought you into communion with the Father and Son. Your home church is a family of the Father, united as the body of the incarnate Son, indwelt by the Spirit. Your mundane, apparently pathetic little church is the greatest mystery in the universe.

GOD’S FUTURE POLIS

You’ve followed this far. You may be skeptical, suspicious, even angry—at me or at someone who misled you in the past. If you’ve come this far, I’m going to risk another step: The church isn’t simply a real-world, visible and historical society of real-life men, women, and children with real bodies and souls. It’s a particular kind of human society.

The church is a city. It’s the heavenly city, the city of the future.

This brings up another invisible dimension of the church, another reason to say that the church isn’t just another interest group, club, or nation. Remember the beginning of this chapter: John sees the heavenly city descend twice. The first descent comes after the final judgment. It’s the final city, the new heavens and the new earth. The second vision of the city shows the city in history and provides the pattern that guides our building in the present.

The city of God is the present form of a future city. It’s the city that will one day be identical with the new heavens and new earth. Rome rose and fell. London was once the center of an empire but has contracted. Washington’s dominance of the world won’t last forever, nor will Beijing’s (if China’s the next lord of history).

But the city of God will last until the end and beyond the end. The church is the present presence of a perfect city to come. It’s the now of a city that is not yet. Your mundane, apparently pathetic home church is a people in communion with the Triune God. It’s also an outpost of a perfect new creation, future utopia here and now, ahead of time. You should greet one another as if you were in a sci-fi movie: “Hi, I’m from the future. Are you?”

Because the church is the presence of God’s city, His theo-polis, the church is inherently political. It’s inherently like a city, a civic reality. The New Testament makes this clear in the terminology it uses to describe the church, nearly all of which comes from ancient political theory.

Outside the New Testament, the term “church” (Gr. ekklesia) refers to an assembly, a calling-together, of the citizens of an ancient Greek city-state. Faced with military threat, political upheaval, or natural disaster, citizens gathered as the ekklesia to deliberate about what to do. The good order and future of the city depended on the work of the assembly.

For the early Christians, the church is God’s assembly, with its own civic order, its own leaders, its own festivals and rituals, its own way of life. And the early Christians believed their assemblies—their ekklesiai—determined the future of the city where they assembled. The flourishing and future of Ephesus didn’t depend on the ekklesia of Ephesian citizens. It depended on the assembly of Ephesian saints who called on the name of the Lord. No matter how small or weak by the world’s standards, the Christian ekklesiai, because they were the body of Christ the Lord of all, had their hands on the reins of history.

John describes the church as a koinonia (1 John 1:7), a participation in the common good of the Spirit, using a term that Aristotle used to describe the “community” of the city. Ancient thinkers imagined nations as political bodies, like the body of Christ (Rom 12; 1 Cor 12). Paul tells the Philippians that their citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20–21). Peter draws from Exodus 19 to describe the church as a holy nation (1 Pet 2:9–10).

The formation of God’s polis is inherent in the gospel. Jesus didn’t die and rise again simply to rescue us from the eternal torments of hell. He did that, but that was not the limit of His work. He died in order to break down the dividing wall between Jew and gentile and form a new human race, constituted from men and women from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Eph 2:11–22). He is the new Abel, who suffered outside the gates, not to found a Cainite Babel but to found new Jerusalem.

The good news is that Jesus has dealt with our sin and given us new life in the Spirit. The good news is equally that Jesus has founded a new city on the earth, a city as visible as any other city, full of real-life men and women and children with real bodies and souls, a city with a real history. The gospel calls us to repent and seek the mercy of Christ. It also calls us to leave the world behind to become members of a new society, the body of Christ. The gospel is fundamentally political; the church, God’s polis, is embedded within it.

Human beings are social creatures. God created us to speak to, work with, love one another. It was not good for Adam to be alone, and so God provided a helper suitable to him. Together they formed a “we,” a family. It’s not good for families to be alone, so human beings form larger groupings, the larger “we” of a tribe, city, or nation.

If God is to save human beings as we actually are—social and civic creatures—then He has to save us in our social and civic relationships and institutions. If God has acted in history to save the world—if salvation is a reality now—then it must take the form of a redeemed community, a redeemed city.

The church isn’t merely a means for individuals to be saved. The church isn’t a channel of salvation. The church is humanity saved. The church is communion with God and one another in God; it is the future perfect city in an imperfect present. The church is salvation in social form.

CITY ON A MISSION

Salvation is an eschatological reality from top to bottom. Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God is near. He says that His death is the judgment of this world and the casting out of the prince of this world (John 12). When He dies, He announces, “It is finished.” By His resurrection and ascension, Jesus enters fully into the new creation, the Last Adam who has become life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15).

We’re united to Christ by the Spirit and thus receive a share in the new creation. Paul says that wherever anyone is in Christ, new creation has broken through into the old (2 Cor 5:17). We’re united to the risen Christ together so that the church, filled with the Spirit, is new creation. This message is inherent in the gospel: The future has taken root in the present, the coming kingdom has come, the new Jerusalem has nestled among the nations.

For the present, and until Jesus returns, the city of God remains flawed. Her blemishes are all-too-obvious. Her history will continue to bump up and down. There will be villains as well as heroes. But the church—the real-world visible church, the historical communion of real men and women and children with real bodies and souls—that church is the present form of the future city. She is presently the bride who will be unveiled in glory at the last judgment.

We still look for a city whose builder and maker is God. We hope for a bridal city to unite heaven and earth forever. But we also believe that this city already has an earthly address. The world is dotted with outposts of the heavenly city. It is a sign of a future city, but not a mere sign. It’s an effective sign, a present sign that gives us a taste now of the city to come.

The church’s mission is, in the first instance, simply to be what the Lord says she is: the family of the Father, the body of Christ, the temple of the Spirit. The church’s vocation is to be a communion of disciples, each dwelling in each as they dwell together in the God who dwells in them. The church’s vocation is to proclaim the gospel, teach the commandments of Jesus, baptize converts and their children, break bread, encourage and correct.

John has brought the blueprints from the mountain. For two millennia, Christians have been building. We’re called to do our share in that cosmic construction project.

The heavenly city isn’t static. It’s not merely placed in the world, among the cities and nations of men. God established His city among the cities of men to redeem those human cities. Jesus commissioned the church to disciple nations. He established His city to engage in an urban renewal project.

In cities full of dislocated and disoriented strangers, the church offers communion and the safety of home. In food deserts, the church gives bread. Where men are enslaved to addictive sin, the church proclaims the good news of liberation through the Spirit who breaks chains and raises the dead. To addicts and prostitutes who hide themselves in shame, the church preaches the blood of Jesus that cleanses sin and the gift of the Spirit who clothes in glory. When politicians prey on the weak, the church steps in to defend the vulnerable and demand justice. In cities of greed and gluttony, the church proclaims the fruits of the Spirit. Where housing collapses, the church opens a homeless shelter.

The church’s mission isn’t hopeless. The hope the church offers isn’t merely a hope for the distant future, a future after death. God has announced His kingdom and established His city to fulfill His promise to Abraham, the promise to bless the nations. The kingdom came as a stone that shattered the empires of the ancient world. But it’s God’s kingdom, the fifth monarchy, that will grow into a mountain that fills the whole earth (Dan 2). The Son of Man inherits the dominion of the bestial ancient empires so that the saints of the highest one reign in the authority given by the Ancient of Days (Dan 7).

The city of God is a city of light that illumines a dark world (Rev 21:23–24). It’s the source of living waters, which brings life to a desert land (22:1–5). Through the Son and Spirit, the Lord has established Zion as the chief of the mountains, Jerusalem as the queen of cities. As the law of Yahweh flows out, the nations are drawn to Zion to learn the Lord’s ways. They beat their swords into ploughs and their spears into pruning hooks, transforming weapons of war into tools of peaceful productivity (Isa 2:1–4). Jesus has been raised and enthroned, and He will reign until all His enemies, including death itself, are placed beneath His feet.

That is to say, the church will fulfill the mission that Jesus has assigned her. The city of God, sent to renew the cities of men, will renew the cities of men.

Over the centuries, millions upon millions of individuals will hear the gospel, be awakened by the Spirit, be baptized into the body of Christ, and live in Christian faithfulness. But the church’s mission doesn’t end with the gathering of a global network of local churches. As she gathers individuals, the church disrupts the patterns of corporate life in the cities of men, dismantles institutions of injustice and structures that promote ungodliness. As the church is the church, as she is the people of the Triune God, as she is the effective sign of the city to come, Jesus’ Spirit transforms families, tribes, cities, nations through the ministries of the church.

The church that carries out this mission is the church of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord. Crucified Lord. Jesus didn’t go to the cross to save us the trouble of sharing the cross. The opposite is true: Jesus went to the cross to give us a share in His suffering so that, in Him, we can offer ourselves for the life of the world.

The city of man is quite content to be what it has always been. It doesn’t like to be disrupted, and the church is a disruption. The church’s very existence is a rebuke to the city of man, to the world’s pretensions, idolatries, violence, lusts, perversions. The rebuke stings, and the city of man responds violently to the sting.

We will complete the mission Jesus has given us, but we’ll complete that mission in the way Jesus did: by suffering, by enduring hatred and unreasonable opposition, through brutal attacks from the world and sometimes from other citizens of the city of God. That opposition doesn’t spell defeat. It’s the way of victory. When we suffer in Christ, we dynamite the foundations of the city so that a new city can be built from the rubble.

Some cities are friendlier to the church. Some cities and nations profess Christ. That’s not a problem. That’s the aim of Christian mission, that all nations would acknowledge the Lord as King. Yet the church can never be complacent. We are still called to bear the cross. If the church never provokes the city of man, we’re probably not being faithful to the crucified Lord of the church, who has called us to take up the cross to follow Him.

THE THEOPOLITAN ALTERNATIVE

Christians today feel that the world is coming apart at the seams. Politically, economically, culturally, morally, everything seems to be in upheaval. Christians have responded by proposing various remedies: political strategies, tactical withdrawals into quasi-monastic communities of virtue, compromise.

Most of these responses miss the heart of the matter.

Central to the Theopolitan vision is the conviction that the church drives history, for good or ill. Political and cultural trends are secondary to happenings and movements in the church.

The needs of the world can only be met by the Triune God, and He has caught the church up in his work of renewing and glorifying creation. The cities of men can be revived and renewed only as the Spirit of Jesus works through the real-world communion of real men and women and children with real bodies and souls that constitutes the church. The cities of men can be renewed only by that community that shares the suffering and glory of Jesus through his Spirit.

When the world is in disarray, we hope for another world. We want to grasp utopia. But utopia is in our midst. The other world—the world of the future—has become present through Jesus and His Spirit, as the church of Jesus Christ. Only the church can bring the powers of the age to come into the present age. Because it is the Spirit-filled Bride and Body of the Son of God, only the city of God gives hope to the cities of men.

2

Tasting the End

AND THE CITY IS LAID OUT AS A SQUARE, AND ITS LENGTH IS AS GREAT AS THE WIDTH.… ITS LENGTH AND WIDTH AND HEIGHT ARE EQUAL.

—REVELATION 21:16

The Theopolitan vision is a vision of the church in her relation to the world. It highlights the political nature and mission of the church and the political character of the gospel that the church proclaims. Jesus founded the city of God among the cities of men to witness and to transform those cities. God will fulfill the commission Jesus gave the church. The nations are being, and will continue to be, discipled. The kingdoms of this world have become and are becoming the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.

How does that happen? Is this anything more than wishfulness or nostalgia?

It happens because the church is a city whose length, breadth, and height are the same.

Say what? What do the dimensions of new Jerusalem have to do with the mission of the church? Much in every way.

From a mountain, John, like Moses, sees the pattern of heaven. He writes it and sends it to the church so that we can replicate the heavenly pattern on earth. He gives us the blueprints. We’re the builders.

Nearly every phrase and clause of John’s description of new Jerusalem comes from an Old Testament text. The city has twelve gates, marked with the names of the tribes of Israel, three gates at each point of the compass (Rev 21:12–13). It’s a civilized (i.e., “citified”) version of Israel’s wilderness camp, when three tribes camped on each of the four sides of the tabernacle.

The city gleams like a jewel, like pure gold (Rev 21:11, 18). Her foundation stones are gemstones, twelve of them (21:19–20). With her gold walls and streets, she resembles the temple with its gold-plated walls and floor. Her twelve gemstones are like the gems on the breastplate of the high priest (Exod 28). Jerusalem is a bridal city, but she’s dressed like a priest. The throne of God and of the Lamb is in the city, the source of living water (22:1).

These descriptions aren’t grabbed randomly from a thesaurus of biblical imagery. They form a coherent overall picture: The city is Israel, the camp of Israel, the temple, a priestly city.

The dimensions reinforce this in a particular way. The city is a cube, like the Most Holy Place of Israel’s tabernacle and temple (Exod 26:31–33; 1 Kgs 6:20). Jerusalem is the inner sanctuary all growed up into a city.

Let’s take a moment to pause over that. The Most Holy Place was Yahweh’s throne room, inaccessible to any but the high priest (Lev 16:1–2). In new Jerusalem, the citizens live in the throne room, serving the Lord and seeing His face (Rev 22:3–4). The Most Holy Place was the center of Israel’s liturgical system. The temple occupied a large portion of ancient Jerusalem, but there was a difference between temple and city. In new Jerusalem, though, the gap between city and temple has been closed. The equal dimensions tell us that the whole city is liturgical space, of the holiest variety.

That gives us a clue about the work of the city of God among the cities of men. The church is the Spirit’s instrument for accomplishing God’s mission, and the church’s participation in mission centers what happens in the sanctuary. We carry out our mission through the proclamation and teaching of the word of God, liturgical gathering around the Lord’s word and table, faithful witness to the kingship of Jesus, and careful pastoral guidance.

As the church does her churchy things, she brings the life of the age to come to the nations. We’re builders of the city, and the chief labor of building takes place on our day of rest, in the liturgy. We all are builders because the liturgy is the work of the whole people, not merely the work of the pastor. The church fulfills Jesus’ mission by being what she is, a liturgical city.

Mission starts with liturgy. Liturgy is the time and place where the church gathers as the city council, the ekklesia of God, an assembly of the heavenly city. As the real men and women and children with real bodies and souls gather for worship and disperse from worship, heavenly life comes to earth. Having tasted the good things of the age to come, the church goes out to share those goods in the marketplace. The sanctuary, the place of worship and communion with God, is the center of the world. It always has been, right from the beginning.

Or, put it this way:

WATCH THE WATER

When God first created the world, He mapped it into several territories. He planted a garden in the east of a land called Eden. Outside Eden were other lands, like the land of Havilah where the Creator buried gold and precious stones. The world wasn’t homogenous but differentiated. From the beginning, God organized the world into a garden, a land, and a wider world.

Eden’s garden was the original sanctuary, the place of worship and communion with God (Gen 2). At the center of the garden were two trees, a tree that communicated life and a tree that opened eyes to give knowledge of good and evil. Yahweh intended to commune with Adam and Eve in the garden. When He expelled them, He set up cherubim at the gate to keep them out. Later sanctuaries are full of cherubim figures (Exod 25:18–22; 1 Kgs 6:23–28), guardians of the house and throne room of Yahweh.

Adam and Eve had other responsibilities in the other zones of creation. They were commissioned to fill, subdue, and rule the earth. They would trek down to Havilah to mine the gold and precious stones. The garden was planted within the land of Eden, a land that would serve as humanity’s first home. Adam and Eve were called to work in the land and to have dominion in the world. In the garden, they were called to worship.