Category Archives: Theology

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“In Christ”: united with Christ, immersed in Christ

I knew biblical passages about our solidarity with Christ—we are “in Christ,” we are the body of Christ, and so on. But I wasn’t sure how that connected with our personal spiritual experience of Christ. Was it related to Christ living in us (Gal 2:20)? Was it related to experiencing his resurrection life through the Spirit? After all, ancient Israelites were corporately related to Jacob without a personal experience of Jacob. Humanity is sinful without humans today having ever personally met a guy named Adam.

But of course, as I learned, the nature of the relationship is not exactly the same. We are reckoned in Adam in Rom 5:12-21 as Adam’s heirs, as descendants and fellow sinners. We become reckoned in Christ through baptism into Christ, not through genetic descent. “Adam” might dwell in us in some sense (in terms of solidarity as descendants and sinners), but the Spirit of Christ makes Christ present to us more dynamically (Rom 8:9).

Solidarity with Christ

Paul emphasizes that believers’ solidarity with Christ brings deliverance greater than the defeat effected by our solidarity with Adam (Rom 5:12-21). He then goes on to develop the theme of our union with Christ rather than with the “old person” (6:6) in Adam. Baptized into Christ (6:3-4), we share Christ’s death and resurrection (6:3-6a, 11). Paul can take for granted that being baptized into Christ entails baptism into his death because he understands that immersion into Christ includes sharing his experience. It is not merely theoretical.

“Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by this baptism into this death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life. For since we’ve been grafted together/united with/identified with him in the image of his death, still more certainly we shall be united/identified with him in the image of his resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him … So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:3-5a, 11, ESV)

This sense of solidarity with Christ is not limited to one passage. Not also Colossians 3: “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3 NASB); “Christ who is your life” (3:4, NRSV); you “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (3:10 NIV).

Paul finds partial analogies for this solidarity in shared experience in terms of sharers with Adam in sin (Rom 5:12-21) and Israel’s shared experience with Moses. In 1 Cor 10:2, by analogy with Christian experience of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Israelites were “baptized into Moses” (though, Paul warns, they failed to persevere). We may think similarly how Jesus recapitulates elements of Israel’s experience in the early chapters of Matthew’s Gospel.

Being baptized into Christ means that we have clothed ourselves with Christ (Gal 3:27); we share in him a new identity. We have put on the new person, recreated in God’s image (Eph 4:22-24; Col 3:9-10), as humanity was created in God’s image in the beginning (Gen 1:26). Obviously this solidarity has a forensic dimension: that is, how God views us in Christ. Yet it also must impact reality on our side as well as God’s. We are called to be what we are in Christ. In Christ, we must put off the old person (what we were in Adam) and put on the new, recreated in God’s image (Eph 4:22-24; cf. Col 3:8). We must live according to the new identity God has conferred on us in Christ.

Paul says that as we bore Adam’s mortal image, we shall also bear the immortal image of Christ (1 Cor 15:49). Progressively (2 Cor 3:17) and ultimately (Rom 8:29) we are conformed to the image of Christ, who is God’s image (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). We are conformed to this image by being shaped by the fruit of the Spirit within us (Gal 5:22-23), essentially by Christ living in us (Gal 2:20).

Immersed in Christ

How is this sharing of Christ effected in us? The Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9) lives in us.

The Spirit baptizes us into Christ: “by/in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). Ancient Jewish baptisms were ritual immersions, so the picture here is of the Spirit immersing us in Christ. This picture suggests that being clothed with Christ is not limited only to the way God sees us.

Paul’s expressions would make sense to those already familiar with early Christian language inherited from John the Baptist: “he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit” (Matt 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 11:16). (There is also a narrower sense of this phrase in the NT, but at this point I am using the phrase in the more general way.)

Not surprisingly, then, Luke, who speaks of the church being baptized in the Spirit, in his narratives parallels the ministries of the Jerusalem Jesus movement (led by Peter) and the Diaspora mission (led by Paul) with Jesus’s ministry. The same Lord worked in both Peter and Paul (Gal 2:7-8).

Because the Spirit of God is also the Spirit of Christ, being immersed in the Spirit entails being immersed in Christ. We read the Gospels as the story of our hero, but also our model, and the one the Spirit empowers us to follow. Thus in three successive paragraphs, Mark announces Jesus as the Spirit-baptizer (Mark 1:8), the pioneer of the Spirit-baptized life (1:9-11), and as the model of what this looks like as the Spirit thrusts him into conflict with the spiritual enemy (1:12-13). Jesus keeps warning disciples that they must share both his faith (9:19, 23, 29; 11:21-24) and his suffering (8:34; 13:13).

Walking in Christ

“As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and constructed in him” (Col 2:6-7)

“This is how we know that we’re in him: whoever claims to dwell in him ought to walk just as he walked” (1 John 2:5-6)

Our solidarity with Adamic humanity comes by birth. In Adam, we share glorious DNA designed to reflect God’s image yet alienated from God’s presence and purpose by human sin.

Our solidarity with Christ comes by baptism, yes, in water, at the entrance into new life, but also in the Spirit. We share Christ’s life, death, burial and resurrection because we are immersed in him. Through the mind of the Spirit (Rom 8:5), the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16), we grow to think in his ways and act how Jesus would. The old adage, “What would Jesus do?” is more than a slogan; it invites us to think and act as Jesus thinks and acts, just as Jesus acted only as he saw the Father acting (John 5:19-20). The Spirit communicates Christ himself in the preaching of the gospel (see John 16:7-11; 1 Thess 2:13). Because Christ lives in us by the Spirit (John 14:17), we bear his fruit like branches on the vine (15:4-5), continuing many aspects of his mission (20:21-22). To walk in the Spirit (Gal 5:16) is also to walk in Christ (Col 2:6).

To the extent that we recognize that God has effected our solidarity with Christ, we can appropriate that identity as members of Christ (i.e., of his body; Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 6:15; Eph 4:25). We can remember that Christ lives in us and trust his character to live through us. The better we know what he is like, the more we can reflect that character by faith. Because we are each unique members of his body, we will individually reflect different aspects of his ministry. None of us is the entire body of Christ to himself.

It should be able to go without saying, but unfortunately often can’t go without saying, that we do not take the place of Jesus; the opposite must be the case: Jesus as Lord reigns in us so as to make his heart known. This comes through our direct relationship with the head, Jesus Christ, who is the source of our new life: Eph 4:15-16; Col 2:19; 3:4a).

We aren’t Jesus, but we are his agents. And when those agents work together, those around can see a fuller picture of Christ’s character through his body functioning together. As his body we together ideally reveal his character, his heart, his purposes, so that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us (Gal 2:20). Immersed in Christ, clothed in Christ, we want our lives to reveal Christ in what we say and do and think. Together as the diverse members of Christ’s body, we are invited to show the world what Christ among them would do, proving God’s transforming power even to the heavenly rulers (Eph 3:10). Ideally, we as Christ’s body should mature into unity in trusting and knowing Christ (Eph 4:12-13). No one has seen God, but by loving one another we give the world a taste of God (1 John 4:12), and we know that we live in him and he in us because he has given us his Spirit (1 John 4:13).

Scholars debate today the meaning of “baptism in the Spirit.” More important than those debates about wording, however (which I deliberately sidestep in this post) is that we really embrace all that the Spirit wants to do in us. God desires to enable us to live like those immersed in his Spirit, and immersed in Christ. God wants people to continue to see what Jesus is like as the Spirit of Christ works in and through us.

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Video podcast with Michael Brown on the biblical future (48 minutes)

Friends at CBET recently interviewed Dr. Michael Brown and myself regarding our book, Not Afraid of the Antichrist. The book explains why we do not find any passages in context that support a pretribulation rapture (though we have friends who disagree!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntFde3GQCBw

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Cessationism interview (35 minutes)

The interviewers, Luis and José, continue the interview. They asked me about Calvinism, cessationism, and “Strange Fire.” THIS part of the interview is more about the epistemic possibility of miracles (i.e., responding to those who deny biblical miracles by fiat). (In response to the Calvinism question, I pointed out that only one stream of Calvinism is cessationist; e.g., John Piper is not …)

http://www.luisjovel.net/blog/2019/8/1/interview-of-dr-craig-keener-2-calvinism-cessationism-strange-fire?fbclid=IwAR0dItzS9oRz645UMF_SqLq7kXzuSaQC3i2sJAYe3a-TWF6z4iuT–aS0RE

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How do we relate to members of the Trinity?

Since there are theologians who spend their entire careers studying the Trinity, I dare offer the following only as a thought experiment in Johannine theology. It is, however, one that helps me to relate to the One God in Three Persons.

Whoever has seen Jesus, has seen the Father (John 1:18; 14:7).

Whatever Jesus hears from the Father, he reveals to his own (John 15:15); whatever the Spirit hears, he reveals, revealing Jesus (16:13). One cannot have the Son without the Father or the Father without the Son (1 John 2:23). Through the Spirit, we experience the Father and the Son (John 14:23). Old Testament passages about YHWH (e.g., Isa 25:8; 49:10) are applied to both the Father and the lamb (e.g., Rev 7:16-17).

Rather than picturing this as three persons side by side, to whom we relate in succession, I picture this more like three figures, one in front of the other, but transparent so that seeing one reveals to us the other. Although they are distinct persons, in prayer we relate to them together. As we pray in Jesus’s name, we pray through him to the Father. But we cannot truly invoke any member of the Trinity without implicitly relating to them all.

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Provoking Israel’s jealousy—Romans 11

Paul certainly cared about Gentiles; his letters are replete with signs of his intimate concern for the members of the many congregations he started, many of whose members were Gentiles. The Bible also suggests that the Lord will return after the good news has been proclaimed among all peoples (Matt 24:14), probably related to Paul’s idea about the “full number of the Gentiles” (Rom 11:25).

Yet Paul also had a special concern for his own Jewish people, and he even viewed his Gentile mission as somehow also a witness to his own people. Building on a passage from the Old Testament (which he quotes in Rom 10:19), Paul explains that the conversion of the Gentiles should make his own people jealous (Rom 11:11, 14). Thus the full measure of Gentiles being saved would precipitate his own people turning to God, hence the completion of salvation history (11:25-27).

It would have made sense to Paul that his people would recognize God at work through his and others’ ministry in converting Gentiles. After all, Paul’s people knew the biblical promises about vast numbers of Gentiles coming to acknowledge Israel’s God (Isa 19:19-25; Zech 2:11); if these new followers of Israel’s God came through recognition of Jesus as Israel’s king, surely Israel itself should recognize its own king. Many scholars even believe that Paul intended his own offering from his Diaspora churches, brought for the needs of the Jerusalem church (Rom 15:26-27), as a partial fulfillment of the promised gifts from the nations (Isa 60:9).

Surely the Jewish people today can look around, see the more than two billion Christians in the world, and see how Gentiles now worship their one God and use their Scriptures because of Jesus? Surely Israelis can see all the tourists pouring into the land and see the nations streaming to Zion, as Isaiah promised, fulfilled through Jesus?

That would be nice. Through much of history, however, a large proportion of Jewish people have affirmed that regarding the Jewish teacher Jesus as Messiah is a belief suited only for Gentiles, not for their own people. Although many more Jewish people affirm Jesus as Messiah today than through most of history, the response of his people clearly did not go as Paul hoped.

Why did the proliferation of faith in Israel’s one true God among the Gentiles not serve as a witness to Israel? Largely because Gentile Christians ignored Paul’s other teachings in the same context.

Paul portrayed Gentile Christians as grafted into Israel’s heritage (Rom 11:17), as fulfillments of the promise that Abraham would be a father to many nations (4:16-18). That is, Paul viewed them as spiritual proselytes, who recognized that in accepting Jesus as Lord they were also embracing the king of Israel, the God of Israel, and the heritage and promises that belonged to Israel. He warned Gentile Christians not to boast against the Jewish people into whose heritage they had been grafted (11:18-21).

Yet this is precisely what most Gentile Christians ultimately did. Much of Christendom, through most of Christian history, viewed the church as a replacement for Israel, and viewed formal membership in the church as salvific in the same way that the Jewish community had viewed membership in Israel as salvific—the very sort of arrogance that Paul denounced.

For Paul, salvation was through faith in Christ, not through ethnicity or membership in a particular group. This was especially true when parts of the church implemented rules that excluded those practicing certain ancestral customs that were not genuinely antithetical to faith in Christ. (That is, Messianic Jews were unwelcome in both most Jewish and Christian communities, instead of being welcomed to form a bridge between them.)

Anti-Jewish sentiments were common in the Greco-Roman world, especially among Greeks; indeed, Gentiles in places like Alexandria and Caesarea genocidally slaughtered local Jewish communities in the years and decades after Paul wrote. Many converts to Christianity retained this pagan anti-Judaism when they became Christians, ignoring the Jewish heritage of their faith.

Though few went as far as Marcion (who rejected the Old Testament and the God of Israel outright), many Gentile Christians accepted Christ (the Messiah) while rejecting his people. The subsequent history of Christendom in the west is stained with the blood of vast numbers of Jewish people drowned in “baptisms,” crucified, tortured by the Inquisition, and so forth. While God’s grace is evident in much of Christian history, the Christian doctrine to which it often testifies most eloquently is human depravity. (We should pause to note that many church leaders tried to protect Jews from such pogroms; but on a more popular level anti-Jewish ways of preaching combined with indigenous human prejudice to promote violence.)

Paul’s ideal vision for his people’s salvation never succeeded because it was never really implemented. What might happen today if Gentile Christians were to show the Jewish people that we have come to faith in Israel’s God? What might happen if we expressed appreciation to the Jewish people for sharing their God with the rest of humanity, most of whom once worshiped or feared many lesser gods? If we affirmed that we embrace rather than usurp their heritage?

Whatever the response might be in our day, after so many centuries of anti-Semitism, we owe it both to the Jewish people and to our Lord Jesus to offer this recognition.

(P.S., I strongly disagree with those who use honoring our Jewish heritage as an excuse to be anti-Arab. But that is a subject different from this post.)

Craig Keener is author of a short (yes, short!) commentary on Romans (Cascade, 2009), in a commentary series he coedits with the brilliant and exceedingly humorous Michael Bird. (OK, short compared to his stuff on Acts …)