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believe the here and now gets its energy from what happens after death, especially what happens after the resurrection. This is sometimes clumsily referred to as inaugurated eschatology. Romans 8 is the central passage for this idea. We are saved, not just from the guilt of sin, but from the power of sin in our lives (the whole story from Ro. 5-8). The Spirit works in us in order to shape us into Christ-like people. But for now we suffer with Him (Jesus). When we look at that dense passage beginning in vs. 18, we see a creation that is sitting on edge, waiting for God to do what He’s promised He will do–i.e., redeem us and at the same time liberate creation. As Isaiah told us, the lion and the lamb will lie down together, we’ll be fully spiritualized with a Jesus-like physicality, newly created to do what we were always made to do–exercise dominion over God’s creation (Gn. 1, Re. 22.5). So, salvation is about life. It’s about capturing a biblical (not a Platonic or post enlightenment) vision of where the whole project is headed. Looking to the future, chewing on the images of Re. 21-22, or Ro. 8, or little (yet heavy) bits from Jesus’ teaching about the eschaton, we see a new heaven and new earth. The two dimensions finally mesh rather than simply over lapping in places (the present day overlap is the kingdom showing up!). The nations are healed. Love rules, the Spirit is our life-source (no longer soulized but spiritualized in a physical body which dwells in a physical world). There’s peace, oneness, goodness. Salvation today means that I live in that future world in the present (see 2 Co. 4 and 5). Because there’s continuity between this chapter and the next, we labor with Christ to redeem creation right now. If we can show people today–through our communities (the things we call churches) what real humanity ought to look like, and share with them the rich narrative from creation to new creation, lots of people are going to want in on it.
How do we say it in a way that insures that folks know we’re talking about salvation today and after death? It’s not so much what we say, as what we do. We’ve got to learn to model the new creation. How? The answer will come to us in our own context if we pray (maybe even fast) that God pour His spirit into our open hearts at a pace we can stand so that we learn to live off His resources, His grace, His Spirit as a little bit of heaven overlaps with the earth, as Jesus prayed “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is heaven.” We’ve flattened a rich and multi-dimensioned story out to little more than getting the right answers to a handful of religious questions. In a nut shell we need to preach the gospel Jesus preached, and when we talk, we’ll probably have to stop using religious language. Christianity isn’t a religion. It’s reality (though much of what’s been brought into Christianity is doing the cause more harm than good; it’s more parody than reality, unfortunately).
