Covenant Essays. T. Hoogsteen

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Covenant Essays - T. Hoogsteen


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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_4d82f0be-5261-5307-93b7-ec58e26acc1b">9. ekklesia may describe a common civil assembly, Acts 19:32, 39, 41.

      PARADOXICAL STUDIES

      IN THE WORLD/NOT OF THE WORLD

      Revelation on uncomfortable in the world/not of the world teachings gathered impetus with Abraham and his immediate descendants. Since, this paradoxical assertion in a large way always bears directly on the troubling history of Christ’s Church, also now throughout the drawn-out ages of the Millennium, the ascended Lord Jesus’s one thousand-year reign. The provocative measures of this paradox—in the world/not of the world—marks all post-Abrahamic Scriptures with its currents of anguish in the covenant community everywhere, worldwide.

      Obviously, this inescapable paradox constitutes more than a platitudinous obfuscation.

      1–4

      John 15:1–27 (18–19)

      “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

      If you were of the world, the world would love its own;

      but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,

      therefore the world hates you.”

      IN THE WORLD/NOT OF THE WORLD

      A LOVE-AND-HATE PARADOX

      New generations in Christ, attentive to this paradox, start reflectively, caught by increasing awareness of living in the world, yet not being (a part) of this world. The Lord Jesus in clear language commanded that all his honor this uneasy process to the fullest. The disciples, however, seated at table after the Passover celebration, John 13:1–20, struggled with this quandary, searching out in quiet obedience its hidden distinctions and growing marvels of relevance.

      CHRIST HATE

      To the unified instruction inscripturated as chapters 14–16, the Twelve listened intently; they sensed, without pretending to understand Jesus’s prophecies with respect to the Crucifixion and Resurrection, tremendous events and immediate dangers in the making. In these unknown regions of tension, they nevertheless applied themselves to this complex question, this seemingly contradictory divine injunction, which the Teacher claimed to be true. How could and should the gripping in the world/yet not of the world dividing-line sanctify them as the company of Christ followers? For approximately three years to gain apostolic formation, they walked about Canaan following the Messiah through the well-fed hates of Pharisees and Sadducees. Simultaneously, they were sharply aware of Roman contempt as well as Hellenist scorn for Jews. Yet, they had not made this paradoxical distinction. In that solemn hour after the Passover, however, they slowly absorbed with vexation of soul that they were not of the world. More specifically, the Twelve had crossed a line: Christ headed them as the first of the New Testament generation out of the world. This shared understanding that Jesus commissioned them the point men of the Recreation bonded that company for laborious apostolic work ahead.

      For emphasis, of these open enemies the Jews exerted on Jesus and the Twelve the most censorious authority. They were the Church coming out of the Old Testament dispensation.

      • Only, long before the Incarnation, they had replaced in worship the LORD God with a monotheistic deity.

      • Only, they had over the intertestamentary centuries exchanged the Decalogue for the Oral Law.

      • Only, they had unreasonably altered righteousness in the hope upon the Messiah for a pagan illusion of self-righteousness.

      With a passion they resented the Lord Jesus for beginning the New Church in their hyper-competitive midst; therefore, he shunted them with finality off to the sidelines of history. Over some three years, Jewry’s jealousy and wrath burned hot and high—against their only Messiah.

      Christ’s three chronologically immediate enemies—Hellenism, Caesarianism, and Judaism—envisioned


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