N.T. Wright’s “Surprised by Scripture” Ch. 5: Jesus is Coming—Plant a Tree!

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If you do any amount of reading of N.T. Wright, you will quickly see that one of the biggest things he emphasizes about the original gospel proclamation of the early Church wasn’t simply to argue the fact that Jesus was resurrection—although they certainly did do that—but that what Jesus’ resurrection implied about all of reality itself. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the fundamental proclamation of the early Church was that the resurrection of Jesus signaled the beginning of the New Creation, and the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God into this present world order.

The resurrection, therefore, was not simply some sort of magic trick Jesus did to “prove he really was God.” It signaled the defeat of death and corruption, and it, as Wright says at the end of his chapter, “…is the reaffirmation of the goodness of creation, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is there to make us the fully human beings we were supposed to be, precisely so that we can fulfill the [creation] mandate at last.” Simply put: creation is good, yet because of our sinfulness, we have rendered ourselves incapable of being God’s image-bearers to the rest of His creation; through Christ, it is now possible to be re-made into God’s image bearers so we can be the kind of human beings He always intended for us to be: royal priestly caretakers of His good creation.

Unfortunately, as Wright points out, that is not the message your typical Western Protestant gets. Somehow the good news of God redeeming all of creation through Christ has been twisted into this bizarre dualism where we believe we’re going to “fly away to spirit heaven” when we die, and that eventually this icky, material creation will burn. Therefore, the purpose of Christ’s death and resurrection is to get us a ticket out of this dump—well, sorry, that’s not Christianity. That’s just a modern form of ancient Gnosticism.

Romans 8
Like the good Bible scholar that he is, Wright proceeds to prove his point about the New Creation being a central part of the proclamation of the Gospel by taking the reader through a number of New Testament passages. I will summarize them briefly.

First, read Romans 8, specifically 8:18-27. Romans 8 serves as the climax to Paul’s entire argument in the first half of Romans. When you read Romans 8:18-27, you should see everywhere that Paul is talking about the New Creation and the glorification of God’s children. That “glory” isn’t talking about how Christians will get to chill out an relax in a heavenly hammock for all eternity—it means that they will be restored to their original design and purpose: “to be God’s stewards, ruling over the whole creation with healing, restorative justice, and love.”

Furthermore, in 8:21, Paul says that creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption. What Paul is saying is, as Wright puts it, “When humans are put right, creation will be put right.”

And then there’s all the talk of “groaning”—the “groaning” Paul is talking about is precisely that of birth pains, and the expectation of the re-birth of all creation—not groaning until we’re whisked away to “spirit heaven,” but the groaning of the re-birth and redemption of God’s good creation—his material creation, once enslaved to corruption, but through the power of the resurrection of Christ, will be freed from that corruption and death: that’s the significance of the resurrection.

Wright then takes us back to Romans 8:12-17, where Paul talks about believers, being like Israel in the wilderness, have received the “Spirit of sonship,” and therefore as children of God, will receive the “promised inheritance.” Once again, Wright points out that this “inheritance” Paul is talking about is not heaven. It is the renewed and redeemed creation itself: God’s ultimate “holy land” is all of creation. And we are being remade into the image of God, to be like Christ, to be like a redeemed and transformed Adam…so that we can care for God’s good creation. That is who we were created to be. And even more importantly, Paul emphasizes that salvation has already begun—the resurrection and Pentecost have signaled the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. Therefore, as you are being transformed into the image of God’s Son, you at the same time take part in transforming and redeeming God’s good creation.

The Second Coming
Wright then has a section about the Second Coming. Why? Because most people mistakenly think that the Second Coming means that Jesus will whisk us away to heaven, while letting the material creation burn. But here’s the thing, although the New Testament is filled with talk of Christ’s Second Coming, it sometimes talks as if it is a future event, but then also as if it is a present reality. Stephen, right before he is killed, says he sees Christ standing at God’s right hand; Jesus tells the chief priest that he will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.

Wright makes the point that if we are to better understand the concept of the Second Coming, we should give up the idea that heaven is “somewhere out there,” as if it in another place within our space-time continuum. He says, “Jesus is not far away; he is in heaven, and heaven is not a place in the sky, but rather God’s dimension of what we think of as ordinary reality.”

Let that sink in for a minute. I’ll be honest, I’ve thought that very thing for years. When Wright says that heaven is “a different sphere of reality that overlaps and interlocks with our sphere in numerous though mysterious ways,” I’ve got to say, it makes sense to me. But I’ll admit it, that’s a concept that will take some time to get your head around. The point is, though, when you think about the Kingdom of God and the Second Coming, you should be thinking about the reality of heaven “filling up” this fallen reality of ours, redeeming it, and transforming it into the likeness of God’s Son—you should not think of it as being whisked away to another place in the universe.

I’m Going Away to Prepare a Place for You
Wright also mentions the famous verse in John 14: “I’m going away to prepare a place for you.” He points out that the Greek word translated as “place,” specifically means “lodging house”—a “place to stay awhile and rest and be refreshed until it’s time to continue your journey.” Therefore, Jesus isn’t saying that you’re going to have a “mansion in the sky” after you die. He is saying that from the time you die until the time he comes again and creation is fully redeemed, there is a place prepared for you to rest, “where we can wait in the presence of Jesus until the final day.”

I Thessalonians 4: Not About a Rapture!
The most fascinating part of the chapter is Wright’s take on I Thessalonians. He argues that Paul is using an incredibly array of mixed metaphors to describe the Second Coming and the redemption of creation—but he isn’t talking about some “secret rapture” where Jesus literally flies down on a cloud, and then snatches the faithful away to heaven so that Nicolae Carpathia can unleash his antichrist “hell on earth” seven-year tribulation.

Wright breaks it down quite simply. Paul says five things will happen at the Second Coming: (1) those who are alive will be with those who have previously died; (2) the Christian dead will be raised, and the Christian living will be transformed, to a new transformed bodily life; (3) this will be the great day of vindication for those who have suffered for the faith; (4) Christ will be revealed as king of the whole creation—like Caesar, but a whole lot more; and (5) the reappearance of Jesus will be like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai, but a whole lot more.

The mixed metaphors Paul uses here are the “trump of God” (i.e. Moses on Sinai), the “coming” of Christ (i.e. the Greek word “Parousia” designates the victorious coming of Caesar after a military victory), and the “clouds of heaven” (i.e. a reference to Daniel 7—the day of vindication for God’s people). Then, when Paul says that we will “go out to meet him,” he is referring to the custom that the people of a city would go out to meet their victorious king and then usher him back into the city as a conquering hero.

The point of all this is that Paul is saying the Second Coming will be when Christ is revealed as the true Lord of God’s good creation. These are metaphorical images that are not to be taken literally.

Conclusion
Wright packs a few more things into this chapter, but I think this is plenty to cover. His ultimate point can be summed up as follows: [God] “…calls me and you to live in him and by the power of his spirit, and so to be new-creation people here and now, giving birth to signs and symbols of the kingdom on earth as in heaven. The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit mean that we are called to bring forth real and effective signs of God’s renewed creation even in the midst of the present age.”

Even though Wright doesn’t go where the title of the chapter suggests—he didn’t go into a full-fledged “ecological” message to save the trees—nevertheless, his focus on the new creation, and the goodness of God’s creation, and the purpose of salvation so that human beings can fulfill their vocation and care for God’s creation…all that helps us put into perspective and clarify just what we are called to do and be as God’s image-bearing stewards of creation. And caring for creation is certainly part of that, to say the least.

What I take away from this chapter in those terms is this: all our modern technological advances are certainly a good thing. And although ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution many of these advances have increased pollution, as stewards of God’s creation, we shouldn’t completely ditch those technological advances. Instead, we should (as we already are) continue to perfect and advance those technologies to make them not only pollute less, but perhaps even to aid in keeping creation clean. By doing so, we fulfill, however small, at least a bit of our vocation as God’s image-bearing stewards of His good creation.

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