God Work, God’s Way

How do we live like Jesus in a world that feels endlessly full of confusion, anger, and pain?

The kingdom spreads, not through conquest, but through the Spirit’s life-giving and liberating power being experienced by more and more people and through their life-giving contributions to the world…through suffering love, not violence.

N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Powers

There is an annoying squeak every time I open the back door. I have a kitchen cabinet that does not close properly, no matter how many times I push it. There is a half-dead shrub that irritates me every time I pull into my driveway. These exasperating scenarios often make me exclaim: “I’m going to take this into my own hands and fix it!”

That’s fine with household chores. It is another thing entirely to take into our hands a nation, state, city, or even a church and fix it, like it is a hinge on a door. Given its massive complexities and nuances, fixing a nation will always require insight and power that we don’t fully possess. It takes more than a screwdriver or nail to effectively and ethically deal with human beings and our social constructs.

Our days are crazy-making. Not a day goes by without something alarming appearing in the news. We wonder if our society can make it. We wonder if the whole world is about to implode. As our civic frustration or anger grows, we reach into our limited tool belts and try to take things into our own hands. In the process, we harm others and injure our own souls. 

Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

The Way of the Kingdom Vs. the Way of the World

We often imagine Jesus experiencing life very differently: walking the paths of Galilee, everyone around him experiencing a Peaceful, Easy Feeling (thank you, Eagles). In fact, as Wright and Bird point out in Jesus and the Powers, “Jesus grew up in an era of Galilean rebellions. [But] in contrast to them, the kingship of God was being manifested through the things Jesus was doing and saying—even his death.”

Jesus did God’s work, God’s way.

His work and his manner of working were his Father’s–period.

He consistently said things like:

I can do nothing on my own. I only do as I see the Father doing. (John 5:19)

I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. (John 6:38)

I always do the things that are pleasing to my Father. (John 8:29)

He did God’s work, God’s way. What is the work and the way of God? We see Jesus speaking truth, touching and healing people, and introducing people to the kingdom of God. In the life and death of Jesus, we see suffering love.

In the same way Jesus conformed to the person and work of his Father, the whole goal of Christian spirituality is our transformation into Christlikeness. Being formed into the image of Christ means we take on the kingdom worldview, values, and practices of Jesus.

The main thing that differentiated Jesus from Jewish and Roman leaders was suffering love. Jews and Roman Gentiles were animated by hatred and condemnation. Thus, they dehumanized each other. Similar habits of heart even existed in the disputes the Jews and Romans had within their own people. Jesus knew that the only way to make a true and lasting difference was love, not hate. He knew that “love of neighbor is the way to disrupt hierarchical, grievance-based, identity-ordered ways of assigning status” (Wright and Bird, Jesus and the Powers).  

This is why in the long history of the Church at its best Jesus-imitating self, it is committed to the politics of love: love for God, love for neighbor, and love for our enemies. The Church at its best is the Body of Christ living suffering love.

Living the Way of Suffering Love 

The world is going to be fine—ultimately. But for now, we see lots of human pain and injustice. We don’t ignore it. As agents of God’s kingdom healing, we jump into the mix of it. But we do so in distinct ways: full of love and confidence. Affection for our broken world, willingness to feel the pain and struggle of that brokenness, and the poise to stand within it comes from the sure knowledge that someday this will be true:

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever. (Revelation 11:15)

Oh yes—come Lord Jesus! And while we wait, help us to live in your way of suffering love.