14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way to the place where I am going” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” [John 14:1-7, NRSV]
Abraham journeying into the land of Canaan, by Gustave Dore, 1866 (public domain)
On the subject of human salvation, two principles seem to be accepted across the board in Christian tradition.
The first principle is that God reigns as Creator and King over the whole world.
The Hebrew people were the first to believe that Yahweh is the Creator of all there is. He put the first humans in a paradise-like garden of Eden where the first man and woman lived harmoniously in His presence, with each other and with the environment. But male and female of the human race through listening to “evil voices” soon committed rebellious deeds that ruined the peaceful and harmonious life in the garden. Ever since then, men and women have brought untold suffering to themselves and to both the social and natural environment.
The miseries of the world cry to heaven. God has heard these cries that begin deep within the human heart and wishes to bring relief.
From Abraham to Daniel, the Old Testament underscores that the Lord God desires a complete overturning or the radical alteration, of what was going on in the world. The suggestion is clear that the change that God seeks is not some superficial cosmetic touch up. The world has gone so awry that a light makeover just will not do. The change must be deep and radical or it fails the divine vision for how humanity ought to live. To cure human misery, God has to change society at its roots.
- The one big problem, it seems, is that God has created the human person free. In light of this key and indispensable element of human freedom, a big question in human salvation – relief from perennial and death-bound miseries – is how God would change society at its roots without taking away its freedom and its humanity? [Question posed by Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was, p.45.]
At this point, the second principle comes into play: God’s royal rule is revealed in Israel.
Why did God choose Israel? Suggestive hints are plenty, but a debate-stopping answer is lacking. Israel, standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, was informed that neither for their numbers nor for their power had God selected them, for they were and have always been but a fraction of the human population and a distinctively minor power among the nations. Yet two elements are in their favour. God chose them because He loves them, that’s one element. But secondly, and rather importantly, God sees in them the unique potential to become a “treasured people,” a “kingdom of priests and holy nation.” The hint gets clearer when we see the Divine imperative given as a charge to Israel in the Book of Leviticus: “You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy” (Exodus 19:5ff; Deut 7:6ff, 10:15, 14:2; Lev 19:2).
From the Old to the New Testaments, the Bible persistently lays it out that God reveals Godself first to Israel, and through Israel to the rest of the world. Salvation, in other words, begins with Israel. Any claim that this sounds “scandalous” is easily met by a fair rebuttal that for human salvation to work, God’s initiative can only “start out small”. In other words, God’s work of salvation needs to be manifested to the world in definitive space and time. Perforce, then, salvation must begin at a single place in the world, which is visible and identifiable, where the world “can become what it is meant to be according to God’s plan”. In practical terms, in this one chosen and selected place we ought to be able to see in the saved and thus re-created society evidence of the twin dimensions of a healthy humanity – liberation and healing. People must be seen living freely and in deep peace and harmony. And, starting from there, this new life in abundance can spread to other places.
In fact, God did not start small with a small nation. God could not even begin with a nation. God had to start with an individual, for it is in the individual that God can build on change undertaken freely. And that is precisely what the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis are telling us. In its opening pages, the Judeo-Christian Bible narrates the creation of the world, the unfolding of the story of humankind, and by various hints, suggests the growth of human civilization and culture.
Along with all this, however, is the unmistakable dark cloud hanging over human heads, for the Bible relates at a very fast pace very early on in the Book of Genesis, the human fall from grace. Before the ink on the parchment paper was dry, as it were, the first humans had already estranged themselves first from God and then from each other. The order is very telling: separation from God precipitates human strife and estrangement (see the details in the two creation stories in Gen 1-2, followed at once by the Fall in Gen 3). In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis lays it down with clarity:
- “The creation accounts … suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. According to the Bible, these three relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. This rupture is sin.” (LS, 66)
In chapter 12 of Genesis, the Bible begins a change in focus. No longer looking at humanity as a whole, it starts to talk about an individual – Abraham. Scriptures begin the testimony to the Creator God’s attempt to transform the world by starting anew, at a particular place and time, with a single individual:
- “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’” (Gen 12:1-3, RSV).
So God chose the Israelites (the descendants of Abraham, Issac and Jacob) for a special purpose. He offered them an opportunity to become the model nation of His way of life for all nations, so that all people could have His blessings. He blessed Israel because of the faith and obedience of Abraham, but He made it clear it wasn’t because they were great or righteous (Deut 7:7-8, 9:6).
Abraham the lone individual will of course be accompanied by others, and he will eventually become a nation. That takes time, but it is unavoidable and necessary, just as God’s vision for humanity needs to be lived and manifested in a new society. Salvation cannot and will not be merely “me and my God” kind of individual salvation, but will always carry a social dimension. In the end, the vision that the Book of Revelation gives us is the image of the “holy city”, the “new Jerusalem” (Rev 21).
And yet, without a doubt, the picture offered by the Bible is that the individual plays an indispensable role and an integral part in God’s plan of a new creation. The people of God is a body of human persons with whom the Lord God relates. At the same time, we cannot just be purely a collectivity or a mass of human bodies, for God relates to each human person individually as well. And the Bible makes it clear that each one of us is called to be like “Abraham”, an individual who is constantly called by God to live and perform his or her duties according to God’s vision for society. This is what is meant by the Abraham principle.
That principle continues from the Old into the New Testaments. Abraham was dragged out of his family and his homeland so that he could become a “nation” and be a blessing for many others. Israel was never meant to be self-enclosed, existing for its own sake. It is chosen out of so many nations precisely for the sake of all nations. There shall be visible and tangible in the people that came from Abraham, the fruits of what God would make of them: nonviolence, freedom, peace, salvation. There shall be justice and peace in the world. Such a world is no utopia (nowhere), it is possible, and one chosen nation (right here) has set the path.
This puts immense burden on one nation – the burden of election. If the nation fails to do justice to its task, “if instead of peace in its midst there is conflict, instead of nonviolence it works violence, instead of showing forth salvation it spreads disaster, it cannot be a blessing for the nations,” it will become a laughing stock for the nations and it will do great harm instead of good. Unfortunately, Israel has failed to be the model nation God desired; and because of their national sins, they incurred God’s punishment.
By the time of Jesus, the people of Israel even though long acquainted with the belief of election, are crying to heaven for a Messiah to save them from miseries. The nation is under occupation by foreign power, and the people are suffering from all manners of oppression. Israel is anything but a shining example for all nations. Israel is indeed no longer the sign of blessing or judgment for others. Has that election failed?
No. When Jesus came, he did not separate himself internally from Israel. Jesus was born a Jew, and he lived and died a Jew. It is wrong to imagine that Jesus of Nazareth only superficially appeared in the nation of Israel as a convenient place of origin and yet detached himself entirely from Israel and its people, preaching an absolute salvation for people in general apart from Israel. He came not to abolish the law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matt 5:17).
Far from isolating himself from the role of Israel in God’s plan of salvation, in his calling into question Israel’s participation in ultimate and definitive salvation, Jesus (like John the Baptist before him) presumes and even reinforces Israel’s function in the history of salvation. What Jesus does insist, and vehemently for that matter, is that Israel must change, Israel must be transformed, and Israel must finally be re-created. The texts of the New Testament abundantly attest that Jesus never abandoned the constant Abraham principle which begins in Israel and is meant to spread abroad. The choice of the Twelve, solidly understood by Christians as a visible sign and “instrument” of Jesus’ will to gather all Israel, illustrates this point. Yes, salvation is first for the sake of Israel but, more importantly, it is for the sake of the world.
The point then, is that just as the “fallen” humanity needed to be rebuilt beginning with the Abraham principle, the “fallen” Israel that has back-tracked despite the patriarchy of Abraham needs to be rebuilt precisely in order that the Gentile nations may seek and find God. The ultimate goal of the rebuilding of Israel is the coming faith of the Gentiles. Jesus the Son, was appointed by God the Father and he never perceived things differently. The principle remains constant. Salvation and the reign (or kingdom) of God cannot otherwise exist in the world.
For Christians, St Paul resoundingly testifies that:
- “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5, RSV).
In his speech, St. James pointedly reiterated this principle with reference to a mixed quotation from Amos 9:11-12:
- “After this I [the Lord] will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it [the dwelling] up, that the rest of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who has made these things known from of old.” (Acts 15:16-18, RSV).
Jesus is all about building the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven. In the book of Ezekiel, especially chapter 36, the twin petitions for the sanctification and gathering of Israel on the one hand, and the coming of the reign of God on the other hand, form the core of the prophetic theology. Jesus came to promote those very same realities and entrusted the work to his disciples before his departure. Salvation and the reign (or kingdom) of God belong together. The resolute will of Jesus to gather all Israel (for the sake of the nations) has everything to do with his proclamation of the reign (kingdom) of God. The text that best summarises Jesus’ praxis and his innermost intention is the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”
This is the Lord who washes feet, who loves each one and exhorts us to remember the example he has set for us, and go love others, with particular attention to those in need.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, May 2022. All rights reserved.
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