God is Dead and so is His Image

Nietzsche's phrase, "God is dead" is a phase that has either impacted or reflected our society for the past several decades. The rise of outspoken atheism in American culture is an indicator of our spiritual temperature. And it is clear that we have reached a place and time where many people are comfortable or even delighted to say with conviction..."God is dead."

But with God's burial we must admit that humanity has changed. Some would say this change is for the better. Others would disagree. From a Biblical perspective we find that Man's being is wrapped up in God's being. Man was created in God's image (Genesis 1:27). And although many would disagree about exactly what it means to be created in God's image, all would recognize that if God is dead, then His image is also dead. What I am saying is this: If we remove a most basic belief in God, then we also remove the foundational principle that allows us to say that Man is different from other creatures. Scripturally, the lives of human beings are specially protected from harm due to this doctrine that Man is created in God's image. According to Genesis 9:6 it is the reason that murder deserves capital punishment. So it seems that an assault on God's image is equated with an assault on God himself.

But if God is dead then His image is also dead. So now we find that we are confused about how we are supposed to view ourselves. Are we just an advanced species? If we are just a product of evolution can we really say that our lives are more important than other species? What right do I have to say that my life is more important than my dog's? The reason we have to ask these questions is because degree of importance is rooted in purpose. But if we exist only because of chance then there can be no purpose, and if there is no purpose there can be no importance. And if there is no importance then it is absurd to talk about degrees of importance.

So we find ourselves in a society where a group of people are outraged that the president swatted a housefly, yet they do not give a second thought to the the destruction of hundreds of thousands of unborn human babies. If God is dead, in what principle can human rights be rooted? If God is dead, you are no different than your dog, your house plant, or President Obama's dead fly.

Bread of Life: How Does It Taste?

Suppose you are delivering a meal to a man who hasn't eaten in three days. When you go to the Chef to pick up the meal he has it in a special container and asks you not to open it. He tells you that this is the best meal he has ever prepared, and it is designed perfectly to satisfy the taste and hunger of the starving man. Now you know the Chef personally and trust him with your life, so you agree to deliver the unseen meal to the starving man. How do you suppose that you should convince the starving man to eat the meal once you reach him? To some this may seem like a strange question. The man will not have to be convinced. Obviously the aroma of the meal will cause him to go into a frenzy and tackle you in order to get to the food. However, as you are on your way you realize that you don't even notice the aroma of the meal. Perhaps the container is blocking the smell. Or maybe on your journey you have just become used to the aroma and do not notice it anymore. In any case, you begin to ask yourself some questions. Surely the Chef wouldn't mislead you, but what if the meal isn't as great as it's supposed to be? What if the starving man isn't as impressed with the Chef's cooking as you are? You look down and notice that you have a Snickers bar setting in the cup holder of your vehicle. So you begin to reason with yourself. You think, "This meal may not be very appealing to the starving man, so I will offer him this Snickers bar and tell him that he can have the Snickers bar if he will just take the meal."

This seems like a crazy scenario, and granted that no metaphor is perfect, but does it not sound familiar to you? Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst."(John 5:35 ESV) I don't think it is by accident that Jesus associates Himself with a substance that we not only need to survive, but we also have a deep longing for. It is true that if we do not eat and drink we will die. But no one eats and drinks because he thinks, "If I don't eat and drink I will die of starvation." Instead, when we eat and drink we do so because we are hungry and we are thirsty. We eat and drink not just because we need to do so to survive. We eat and drink because we want to. So it is with the Bread of Life. We shouldn't partake of this Bread just because we think to ourselves, "If I don't eat I will die." Rather, we should partake because we are hungry and we want to eat.

But so often, like the previous story, when we are hungry we fear that the meal that has been prepared perfectly to satisfy our hunger and sustain our life will not really do what it has been promised to do. So we begin to look elsewhere thinking that something else might satisfy our hunger. And the things we choose to fill ourselves with, though they seem admirable, noble, and even religious, are like eating garbage compared to the Bread that is offered to us. And now, since we are full, when the Bread is brought to us we don't desire it as we were meant to desire it. I wonder how many times I have opened the Word of God with apathy. And I wonder how many times my ears have heard the Gospel and I have not savored it because I was already full on admirable, noble, religious garbage. It baffles me that Paul could say "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." (Phil. 1:21) and "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us." (Romans 8:18). I think Paul was able to say this because he hungered for the Bread, he feasted on the Bread. It fulfilled him, and it tasted good.

The Already/Not Yet Kingdom of Christ

When John came to prepare the way for the Christ, his message was, "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." In other words, John told the people that the kingdom of God was about to crash down into their world with the appearing of the Christ and they needed to be prepared. And when the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God would come He said, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, 'Look here it is!' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you." So it seems that the Kingdom of Heaven came to earth with Jesus. Still, there are other passages that suggest that the kingdom will come sometime in the future such as Luke 22:18 when Jesus says, "For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." Furthermore, the Kingdom of God is typically associated with the end times. It is when everyone and everything will fully submit to the rule of God as King. So we have two ideas presented. The Kingdom of God has come to the earth with the coming of Christ. And the Kingdom of God is a government that will come in the future.

With the arrival of the textual criticism of the Bible, some tried to use this tension as a means to undermine the authority of Scripture. Some even said that Jesus changed His mind about the Kingdom of God. They said that apparently Jesus believed at the beginning of His ministry that God had brought the Kingdom through Him, but when the Jewish people rejected Him as their King, He began to view the coming of the Kingdom as a future event.
But in 1974 George Eldon Ladd articulated in his book "The Presence of the Future" what I believe the majority of the church had believed all along. He submitted that the Kingdom of God either coming with the incarnation or being a future event is not really an either/or discussion at all. Rather, it is a both/and discussion. Yes, the Kingdom of God was initiated on the earth with the coming of the Messiah, but it is not fully consummated until the King returns to rule. So in one sense the Kingdom of God has already come, but in another sense the Kingdom of God is something that we are still waiting for.

So how is this played out in our lives as Christians. First, Jesus did establish His Kingdom and it was established through the Church. When believers embrace the grace of God in Jesus Christ and then willingly submit their lives to Him we see a glimpse of God's Kingdom. As we have already noted, this Kingdom is not fully established on the earth, but it will be with the return of the King. So we have "already" and "not yet" aspects of God's Kingdom working within the Church. In fact, I would say that most things that we celebrate as believers are both "already" and "not yet" because God's established Kingdom is both "already" and "not yet." So when we place our faith in Jesus Christ we are saved from God's wrath. But we are not fully saved until the final day when we are numbered with the saints. We have been freed from slavery to sin, but we are not fully free from sin until we walk with Him in eternity. We live a new life, but our life is not completely new until the Resurrection. We have been born again, but our new birth is not complete until we are glorified in the new creation. We have been reconciled, but one day we will see Him face to face. We are called God's children, but one day we will share in the inheritance. We are the Bride of Christ, but one day we will celebrate the marriage supper. We see dimly now, but one day we will see fully.

How should we respond to this? Let us surrender to the authority of Christ as people who believe that though we may taste His goodness now, later we will feast.