"I Like Ike?" Current Suffering and a Call for an Age-to-Come Reoriention of the Christian Faith

It's been a long time since I posted a blog, so I figured, since I just recently got it working again, I'd post my musing. Anybody who looks up the word "eschatology" (i.e. the study of last things/end times) will probably be the only ones to find this...at least by accident.

As Texans prepares for the devastating waves, winds, and rains of Ike, few people will be chanting the phrase adorned to get Dwight D. Eisenhower elected. Haiti faces a humanitarian disaster. As I watched the brief but horrifying clip of people merely waiting for food to survive, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is this really being handled in the best way by the UN?” (The video is pretty graphic). CNN doesn’t even cover (or at least headline) the recent, intense, and continued persecution of Christians in India’s Orissa providence. Those who hate the name of Jesus Christ, looking for any reason to persecute His body, even a reason they know is false, are forcing Christians to flee for their lives, if they even can.

A little over a year ago I led a twelve-week lesson on Eschatology and the Christian Life. As I read through the opening chapter of 1 Peter, I am reminded of one of the greatest needs in our western churches today: we need to again recapture that age-to-come orientation of life that characterized, and was meant to characterize, the church during her time in this present, evil age. Only such a radical perspective on this life can and will revitalize the church for her worship and mission now.

Tragically, the perspective to which Peter calls the suffering Gentile churches has been greatly lost to our day. Most Western Christians have both eyes on the here and now and what God can do to make my life better now (a new car, a better job, happiness, healing from various diseases). Certainly the blessings of this life are not bad things (unless they take our focus off of the Giver), but a Christianity focused upon this age will be self-centered, individualistic, and shallow. The cure for this ailment is simple, but it is by no means easy. We must again let Scripture inform our thinking (i.e. our theology, which will in turn affect our living). Brothers and sisters, I urge you to reread the New Testament. But rather than merely skimming it over and reading how you can apply a principle to your life or letting your circumstances or thinking govern how you interpret the text, make conscious effort to let the text change and reorient your thinking (pray for the Holy Spirit's help).

Peter begins by calling his audience “elect exiles,” that is, aliens of this world but those chosen of God (“according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood,” v. 2) to be His special people (the exile of believers being the substance of which Israel’s exile in Babylon was the foreshadow). This is a radical divergence from our everyday way of thinking. We Christians don’t have a lasting home here—we belong to the age to come, to the new heavens and new earth (cf. Heb. 11-12). Our way of interacting with the world (sociologically and politically) ought to be based upon this truth (and upon the finished work of Jesus Christ).

Listen to how Peter makes clear who we are. We are born of God to “a living hope” (hope is of necessity future oriented), and this is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (which was the beginning of the invasion of the age to come into this present evil age—the resurrection, which belongs to the Last Days, has begun). Our hope is in a treasure that is of the age to come (v. 4), and it is God who keeps us persevering in faith for that “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (i.e. when Christ returns).

So what are our lives supposed to look like now? We are to rejoice with a “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” In other words, we are experiencing what the joy of the age to come now, though only in part. This new life that gives us this joy will characterize us (Peter says that “you rejoice,” which is a statement, not a command) even as we go through trials, such as those noted above. The trials we face test our faith as fire tests gold (the gold is refined and the impurities are removed—just as faith is refined and what is not faith, and those not having faith, are removed). And this faith is a more precious than gold. This is because faith will preserve us through God’s judgment, while gold (and all the wealth of this age) perishes. As a Christian, an age-to-come perspective will cause us to treasure faith far more than the riches of this age. Are you a Christian who would rather have faith-producing trials than gold (though Peter does not call us to like the trials themselves)?

When Christ returns/is revealed (for He is already with/in His church), our faith will result in praise, glory, and honor to us from the Lord (which will turn back to His praise, glory, and honor, as the giver of the gift of persevering faith). He will say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter the rest of your Master.” In other words, the outcome of our faith is the salvation of our souls. We need to view ourselves as people who: are saved, are being saved, and will be saved, for the Christian life is rightly seen only in the tension of the already/not yet of God’s reign and His salvation.

Some helpful resources to understand and reorient your thinking include:

The Gospel of the Kingdom, by George Ladd

The Race Set Before Us, by Thomas Schreiner and Ardel Caneday

The Bible and the Future, by Anthony Hoekema

1 Peter