The Faith of New Creation
April 25, 2021
It is difficult for me to think through the implications of the resurrection. For one, it means that God is real, so real that he can (and has) reached into history to undo death. Now that I am in Christ, he is doing it in me as well. This means that God can take a bad situation and bring about good through it. This is not to glorify suffering or to spit in the face of the suffering, but it is to recognize that we will suffer for doing right from time to time, and when we do, we can trust that God will work things out. Therefore we turn the other cheek. We are kind to those who wrong us. We are compassionate, not bitter. We avoid becoming callous and jaded.
None of this makes good sense, which is precisely why it is a matter of faith. It makes sense to fight fire with fire, to fight back, to see the brokenness in the world and hide our hearts behind walls too high to breach. To do otherwise is to invite the world to abuse us and take advantage of us. It’s an inefficient use of resources and horribly naive.
To this I reply, so is the cross. The cross is an invitation for abuse and being taken advantage of. The cross is an inefficient use of Jesus’s life. It was horribly naive for God to submit to it, or, more precisely, the cross was the result of God naively coming to earth to illustrate and instruct regarding the way he would have us live. He could have forced us to live the right way, or revealed the right way with glory and splendor. He took on flesh and illustrated it instead, taking the form of a slave, and allowing us to do with Jesus as we pleased. God trusted his people to do the right thing, to repent and listen. We put him to death instead.
And it is precisely this scorn and abuse of God’s trust that brings about God’s redemption and reconciliation. God takes this heinous abuse and turns it on its head. Our rejection of God enables God’s acceptance of us. God’s naiveté turned out to be God’s power. Perhaps God wasn’t naive at all; perhaps he knew he could and would overcome whatever bad response we had.
This, then, is the call of new creation, of reconciliation, of grace—to trust that when we follow God, whether it looks like weakness to the world or not, that when we follow God, the power of God will overcome whatever bad response people have. For Jesus, God waited three days. We don’t know how long God will wait for us. Perhaps we will see God’s power immediately, and behold for ourselves a new splotch of new creation. Perhaps God will wait until 50 years after we are dead, or until the return of Jesus. One way or another, the call of new creation is to live as if God is actively bringing about the restoration of all things when we do what God calls us to do, regardless of how people respond to us doing so. This requires great faith in the power of God, but then again, he’s already shown his strength in the resurrection.
—John Coffey
