
I had the opportunity to hear Miroslav Volf speak today at Bethel Seminary. Dr. Volf is a professor of theology at Yale University Divinity School. He has written several books on the theology of grace and forgiveness including Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace and Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. These books grew out of his experiences teaching seminary in Croatia during the wars that engulfed the former Yugoslavia.
This morning he talked about the incarnation. He said the most stunning thing about the incarnation, is not that God came in the form of a man and dwelt among us, or that Jesus spoke in our language. The most stunning thing is that Jesus Christ had no agenda of his own.
Now Jesus certainly had an agenda, one that drove him all the way to the cross, but it wasn’t his own. It was the Father’s agenda.
Jesus said, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me” – John 7:16.
Jesus was mere witness to the TRUTH. He was the TRUTH because he was a witness of the TRUTH.
Today we place a high premium on originality. If you don’t add something of your own, you are not worth your salt. You are just repeating someone else.
Authenticity is prized. I have to figure out who I am and how I am unique; I need to be true to myself when I speak and if I am true to myself then I am OK… as long as my “self” is a bit original.
There couldn’t be a stronger contrast to what Jesus was after.
Jesus was not looking to make any creative contribution to what his Father said. Something original that he could take pride in. To Jesus it was always the Father’s teaching.
Jesus said, “I do only what I see the Father doing” (John 5:19). Not what I come up with, or what I like, or what is pleasing to my audience, but only what I hear the Father say.
The astounding thing about Jesus is that he did not seek his own glory, but the glory of the Father.
When you strive for originality you are seeking glory in some sense. When we seek our own glory (as we all do) we diminish, in a paradoxical way, ourselves.
On the other hand, if you seek only the glory of the God you are serving, He will glorify you.
Jesus was obviously glorified (Phil 2:9-11). But that is because Jesus’ glory was his Father’s glory. Jesus made his Father’s glory his own.
This is the challenge: to make sure that GOD is at the center of our lives and our activities.
We always say that… but when I go to churches I often see a bunch of folks figuring out how to be creative and original and how to pedal the recent wisdom they have just discovered from reading the latest book.
Volf encouraged us to simply read the gospel in such a way that people are not impressed with how well you read it, but by what is being said.
What can be greater than God the creator, God the redeemer, God the consummator?
Our teaching, our life, our glory is not our own.
So here is what I am wrestling with… if our goal as followers of Christ is, according to Andy Crouch, to cultivate and create culture, how do we do that in a way that brings glory to the Father and not just for the sake of originality?