“The transfiguration of bodiliness is the goal… Faith as understanding is the beginning; the lived gestalt of faith is the purposed end.”
(Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 233)
Yesterday we considered the first implication of the incarnation: God came to be with us, so that we can be with him. But there is actually another implication of the incarnation that may even be more amazing and harder to believe. God became like us, so we can become like him. (And you thought all those plastic surgery shows were “extreme makeovers”?)
As Jürgen Moltmann has written about the resurrection, we can assert about the incarnation. Because as Paul taught the Christians in Romans 8:29, the ultimate purpose of God is not just that his creatures will be with him for eternity, but that they will be transformed to be like him.
“For those whom (God) foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…” Conformed to the image of God’s Son. God’s plan from before time began was not just that we’d come to believe in God. It was not ultimately to have a “personal relationship with God.” It was not just helping us escape hell and get to heaven. God’s original and ultimate intention for all of his creatures is the “transfiguration of bodiliness”—that we would become like Jesus, the one who is God in the flesh. That’s why God came here—to make us like him. Jesus is not just the God who has come to earth so we can be with him, Jesus is the God who has come to earth so that we can become like him—so that we will act like him. Jesus is both the means to being with God and the model for living like God.
This is the very point that Paul is making in Philippians 2. While for those of us who are seekers or skeptics, the good news of the incarnation is a challenge to believe so that we can be with God, for those of us who are believers there is a different challenge: A challenge of living--of displaying in our lives the very character of God.
Paul teaches the Philippians about the incarnation, not so that they would understand a theological construct, not so that they would get a star on their Sunday School chart, but so that they could better understand how they are to live with each other.
(v. 3) Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. (This is the way you should act, Paul tell the Philippians. And this is your model…)
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. (NRSV)
This is the ultimate goal of the incarnation: that we who are God’s creatures will become like God—so we can reveal God.
If God is only known through God’s actions, then how is God known today? There aren’t many burning bushes, Jesus died on the cross a long time ago. How does God act for showing his character today? Here is the sobering answer: Through the Church. Christ acts through his Body.
In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul asks, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” While this verse is often interpreted to mean that God dwells in each individual Christian, it is clearly speaking to the corporate body, the Church. The Church replaces the temple as the dwelling place of God on earth. Further in 1 Corinthians 12 and also in Ephesians 3-4, Paul refers to the Community as Christ’s body that together reveals or glorifies God. God reveals himself through the Church. This led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to call the Church, “Christ existing as community.”
If Christ is present today as the Church, and the Church is God’s means of self-revelation to the world, then the Church is called to live and act together in such a way as to demonstrate God’s character. In other words, (following Rahner's Rule from my last post) If "God is as God acts," then the Church should act as God is. The basis of Christian life together must be to reflect or embody the very actions and character of God.
My friends, whether we want to believe it or not: We are the incarnation today.
- We are the “strangers on the bus”, the “slobs”, the lowly servants.
- We are the ones who appear in people’s lives to show them the face of God.
- We are the ones who reveal to the world God’s personality and character.
- We share the good news that God came to be with us, so that we can be with him.
- We show the world through our lives that God became like us so that we can become like him.
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