All posts in Salvation

  • March 24, 2016

    Good Friday: A World Indicted

    Cristo_en_la_Cruz (1)

    Good Friday: A World Indicted
    Brian Zahnd

    Good Friday offers humanity a genuinely new and previously unimagined way of understanding both the character of God and the nature of human civilization. As Jürgen Moltmann writes in The Crucified God, “the cross is the test of everything.” But to understand Good Friday we need to be clear on who did the accusing, condemning, and killing of Jesus of Nazareth.

    As we read the passion narratives in the Gospels it’s obvious that it isn’t God who insists on the execution of Jesus. Mark tells us, “the chief priests accused him of many crimes.” (Mark 15:3) Jesus’ jealous rivals accused him of heresy, blasphemy, and sedition because they were possessed by the satanic spirit of rivalry and blame. It wasn’t God who charged Jesus with capital crimes. It wasn’t God who shouted, “Crucify him!” It wasn’t God who ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip. The work of accusation, condemnation, and torture is the work of human civilization under the sway of the satan. The spirit of God is not heard in the crowd’s bloodlust cries of “crucify him,” but in Christ’s merciful plea, “Father, forgive them.” We must not imagine the machinations of the devil as the handiwork of God!

    When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday the principalities and powers of Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate and their constituent institutions of religious, economic, and political power were at enmity with one another. These power brokers were bitter rivals locked in a fatal embrace. But when they took their rivalry-induced fear and hate, and projected it onto Jesus as their chosen scapegoat on Good Friday, they achieved a demonic unity. Luke precisely tells us this. “That same day [Good Friday] Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.” (Luke 23:12)
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    No Comments / Atonement, Cross, Jesus, Salvation, Theology, Violence /

  • July 15, 2015

    When America Went To Hell

    Amerfican Art Exhibit Civil War Church_Our_Banner_In_The_Skyaa
    When America Went To Hell
    Brian Zahnd

    “How I wish that you of all people would understand the things that make for peace.”
    —Jesus (Luke 19:42)

    Whether or not slavery was the direct cause for the first shots fired upon Fort Sumter in April of 1861 is a matter of scholarly debate. What is undeniable is that two and half centuries of slavery was the fuel that caused the American Civil War to ignite into a conflagration that resulted in 750,000 deaths. From its Jamestown beginnings the American colonies and later the United States practiced one of the most brutal forms of slavery the world has ever known. The preservation of an institution that systematically dehumanized millions of people for the sake of economic gain was not a thing that made for peace. Inevitably that kind of cruel exploitation would overflow its cup and unleash death and hell, bringing everything that is the opposite of peace. During the horror of the American Civil War, the “land of the free” became a burning Gehenna. Thirty percent of Southern men of fighting age were slain on battlefields that saw the birth of modern warfare. From now on, war would be totalized and mechanized. The four horseman of the Apocalypse galloped across America leaving a wake of war, disease, famine, and death.
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    23 Comments / A Farewell To Mars, America, Christianity, Hell, Salvation, War /

  • April 1, 2015

    Jesus Died for Us…Not for God

    Edvard_Munch_Golgotha

     

    Jesus Died for Us…Not for God
    Brian Zahnd

    “You killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” –The Apostle Peter, Acts 3:15

    Golgotha is where the great crimes of humanity — pride, rivalry, blame, violence, domination, war, and empire — are dragged into the searing light of divine judgment. At Golgotha we see the system of human organization that we blithely call “civilization” for what it is: an axis of power enforced by violence so corrupt that it is capable of murdering God in the name of what we call truth, justice, and liberty.

    Golgotha is also the place where the love of God achieves its greatest expression. As Jesus is lynched in the name of religious truth and imperial justice he expresses the heart of God as he pleads for the pardon of his executioners. At the cross we discover that the God revealed in Christ would rather die in the name of love than kill in the name of freedom. Our savior is Jesus Christ, not William Wallace.

    The cross is both hideous and glorious, simultaneously ugly and beautiful. It’s as hideous as human sin and as glorious as divine love. It is a collision of sin and grace. But it is not a contest of equals. In the end love and beauty win. We call it Easter.
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    110 Comments / Cross, Jesus, Kingdom, love, Salvation, Violence /

  • November 8, 2014

    Forty Years of Following Jesus

    BZ74

    Forty Years of Following Jesus
    Brian Zahnd
    November 9, 2014

    It was November 1974. I was fifteen and it was my year of discovery. I was awakening to the world around me, forging an identity, becoming a self. I was drawn to the counterculture. I had discovered music — not my parents music, my music. Led Zeppelin was magic for me. I still remember the first time I heard Whole Lotta Love. That opening riff channeled my lust for life. I would sit for hours in my basement bedroom listening to Zeppelin, Hendrix, Mountain, Deep Purple, Allman Brothers. Soon I would discover Bob Dylan and he would provide the soundtrack for my life. My mom was worried about my long hours alone in my bedroom with my music, black lights, and incense. But she needn’t be. I was just making discoveries.

    You can live a whole lifetime when you’re fifteen. I don’t remember that much about being twenty-six or thirty-eight or forty-three, but it seems I remember every week of being fifteen. It was 1974 and people were reading Jaws. President Nixon resigned in August and Lynyrd Skynyrd didn’t care — “now Watergate does not bother me” (Sweet Home Alabama). The Rolling Stones told the truth: It’s Only Rock N’ Roll (But I Like It). Oh yeah, I remember that year. Every week was a new discovery.

    Then came November 9, 1974. It was a Saturday. A crisp autumn day. I woke up to David Essex on the radio. Rock On—
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    3 Comments / Brian Zahnd, Jesus, Music, Salvation, Uncategorized /

  • August 11, 2011

    God Is Like Jesus

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    God is like Jesus.
    God has always been like Jesus.
    There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.
    We have not always known what God is like—
    But now we do.

    Consider these two foundational truths of Christian theology:

    1. God is immutable. i.e. God does not change and is not subject to change.

    2. God is perfectly revealed in Jesus.     i.e. Jesus does not change God, Jesus reveals God.

    (see John 1:1, 14-18; 5:19-21; 7:28-29; 8:19; 10:28-30; 12:44-46; 14:7-9)

    Understanding that God is immutable and that God like Jesus is essential to our understanding of salvation. We must not think that salvation comes about because Jesus placates God (thus changing God) or that God is obligated to satisfy retributive justice in order to forgive sin (thus making God subordinate to a higher justice). Salvation comes about because Jesus reveals the Father and does the Father’s work. Jesus tells us that the great work of the Father is to give life to the dead (see John 5 and 11). Thus the primary problem the Gospel addresses is not personal guilt (though this is included), but human subjugation to death. If we think judicial guilt is the primary problem of sin, instead of death (and then falsely imagine that God is responsible for killing Jesus instead of sinful humanity!), we greatly misrepresent the nature of salvation and concoct a distorted gospel where Jesus is saving us from God. No! Jesus reveals the Father, does the work of the Father, and saves us from the dominion of sin and death.

    The Apostle Paul tells us that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself…not reconciling himself to the world. The cross doesn’t change God (God is immutable). The cross shames the principalities and powers (exposing their claim to wisdom and justice as a naked bid for power) and changes us!

    To hear my full sermon on this topic, the podcast is available here.

    BZ

    9 Comments / Salvation, Theology /

  • February 9, 2011

    One Minute to Address the World

    Scher-Whole-World-590

    I’ve got a new thought experiment for you.

    Imagine you have one minute to address the whole world. You and you alone are given this opportunity. Every person in the world will hear what you have to say. You can say anything you want. You can address politics, economics, religion, culture—anything you want to say. But you are given only one minute. Sixty seconds. That’s all. What would you say? The address you compose is probably quite revealing about yourself.

    I worked on my one minute address to the world for twenty minutes or less. (So there’s not a lot of thought in it.) It’s what I would say today. Tomorrow…who knows? My address is 143 words. I can say it in one minute. Here it is: Read more

    2 Comments / forgiveness, Humanity, Jesus, Salvation /

  • May 13, 2010

    Dweller By A Dark Stream

    I’m a late-comer to the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, but I’m making up for lost time. I love his work. I’ve been listening to his Dweller By A Dark Stream over and over. It’s a beautiful love song to Jesus that gets so much right. This little song has a ton of good theology on atonement, incarnation and eschatology. Not bad for a song! Check it out. Read more

    No Comments / Music, Salvation, Theology /

  • June 18, 2009

    The Savior of the World (and DMB)

    “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” 1 John 4:14

    Do you believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world? This is what the Apostle John claimed in both his gospel and his first epistle. But do you believe it? Do you really believe that Jesus is the savior of the world?

    You know how the famous verse goes…For God so loved the world, etc. And then the next verse: For God did not send his Son into the the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

    Then in the next chapter the Samaritans in Sychar declare that they have come to believe that Jesus is the savior of the world.

    (And I suspect they believed this because they saw how Jesus was capable of mending the breach of historic hostility which separated Jews and Samaritans.)

    But do you believe it? Do you believe that Jesus is the savior of the world? I’m not asking if you believe if Jesus saves individuals who are in the world, but whether you believe Jesus is the savior of the world. Is Jesus the savior of God’s creation and God’s dream of human society living in harmony and exercising dominion as creation’s caretakers? Do you believe that what was lost by the First Adam can be recovered by the Last Adam? Do you believe that the one Mary Magdalene thought was the gardener can restore the Garden? Read more

    4 Comments / Christianity, Jesus, Resurrection, Salvation /

  • April 5, 2009

    Life Made Livable

    So I ask you for the umpteenth time, dear blog reader, what does it mean to be saved? Does it mean some part of you, your spirit let’s say, is saved to exist in a non-spatial, non-temporal existence following your death? That your spirit is “harvested” for a “spiritual” postmortem existence? A saved ghost preserved in a heavenly museum? If so, small wonder that some think we’ve got heaven and hell all rolled into one.

    Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
    Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while

    Yes, I know the Bible can be read in such a way that salvation looks like this — part of you is saved for another time and place — but it’s a tragic misreading. And, sadly, it’s a common misreading. Which, I suppose, is to be expected, thanks to the massive doses of Platonism and Gnosticism which seem to be the very religious air we breathe. The “vapors” of Gnostic Platonism have caused popular American Christianity for the past two centuries to be unabashedly dualistic; to the extent that a dualistic reading of Scripture seems to be orthodox, when in fact it is entirely unorthodox.

    It’s frustrating.
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    No Comments / Heaven, Immortality, Resurrection, Salvation, Theology /
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