Your God is Too Small – A New Creation

In recent times I’ve downloaded and installed a new version of a certain Android bible (YouVersion), which comes with the latest NIV (2011) version. Suffice it to say that the name of that app itself is subject to questioning, but I digress. Interestingly I came across one of the all-time favorite passages of Christendom – 2 Cor 5:17. The 1984 version of the NIV (which is the widely known version) puts it this way).

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come”

And yet the modern translation says this

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come; The old has gone, the new is here!”

Now for those who are about to charge the writers of NIV 2011 with changing the word of God, heresy, blasphemy, unfaithfulness to scripture and many other such accusations, I will gladly ask you to find out how Bibles are translated, and how versions of Bibles are updated over time. And for those who judge every other bible by the standard of the King James Version, you will find that “God does not speak King James”, as my friend Kwame Antwi-Boasiako puts it. Such a discourse will take another post altogether, one which someday will be put together.

But indeed I smiled when I saw this. Here was one of those passages which had been one of the foremost evangelistic tools of Protestantism, being shown in a different but extremely important perspective. Not that the previous translation was incompatible with Jesus’s sayings or Paul’s teachings, but because the now corrected construction points to one of the points that is missing in Christendom today. And I will illustrate why with this short scenario.

We read a passage at church the other day, and I asked a question about that passage, answers to which showed` the problem. Jesus was speaking to his disciples, and he made this statement to them.

“I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27).

The question then logically arose how it is possible that Peter, Andrew et al will not die before the kingdom of God comes. Are they still alive today? Did Jesus Christ mean what he was saying or was he smoking something we haven’t heard of yet? Or was there some “spiritual” meaning to what he said?

Try as my brothers at church did, many gave all sorts of theories, from the absurd to the plausible but unlikely. And I know that if I asked many contemporary Christians the same question, I will get the same kind of answers from them. But everyone excluded the 1 possibility:

THAT THE KINGDOM OF GOD HAD ALREADY BEGUN

No, there is no “spiritual” meaning to it; neither was Jesus smoking the pot when he said this. Peter doesn’t need to be alive and waiting 2000 years and more to be part of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God was inaugurated by Jesus’s presence on this earth, and he said this so many times it is surprising that so many people (including myself for a long time) haven’t noticed (Matt 12:28; Lk 4:18-21; Lk 17:20-21).

Jesus’s breaking into this world signified that God has begun changing the world and that man and women are being called into his kingdom to work with him against the kingdoms of this world. Jesus came to lay claim to the whole world as his, and to point out to the world that God had anointed him king of this world, and that everyone needed to submit to him to be a part of his kingdom (Col 1:15-20). And he showed us how – not in overthrowing the world with violence and guns (whether automatic, semi-automatic or non-automatic), but with deeds that speak of the character of their king. The point about the kingdom of God that many Christians miss is that it CANNOT work using the methods of the world, or else it will be defeated by the corrupting influence of the world. It must work with the methods of its king, who lays his life down for others, who calls the leaders to be servants, who is good news to the poor, who challenges the status quo and its comfort zones (including the religious elite), who feeds the flock before feeding himself (and not fleecing them rather – as is the dominant case both politically and religiously).

So therefore the newer translation of 1 Corinthians 5:17 makes a lot of sense to me. For if Jesus’s breaking into this world signifies a changed world then indeed when a person is in Christ, he is not just a new creation, but CREATION HAS BECOME NEW TO HIM. They now live by a new set of rules, serves a different king and belong to a different people. The world is no longer the same to them, because of the following below.

1. He answers to a new king
2. He belongs to a new people
3. He is a new person.

The order is important. The gospel was always about the kingship of Jesus and not about salvation from sin, though it included it. If you doubt it, take the time to read and digest properly all the sermons preached by both Paul and Peter in the book of Acts (2:14-36; 10:34-43; 13:16-40; 17:22-31). To help you navigate this course better, you can look up New Testament scholars like Scott McKnight’s “The King Jesus Gospel”, or NT Wright’s “How God became King”.

Secondly, the gospel called us to be included amongst the people of God by repentance and baptism, and to live with those people who by the Spirit of God in them are fulfilling their King’s purpose and mission. And as we work with these people and we obey our king and his Spirit’s leading, we are further transformed both as a people, and as individuals.

But today the gospel has been turned upside down. Everything is now centered on the number 3 person in the order above. Everything is about how Jesus will solve “my problems”, how he will “make me rich and prosperous”. The number 1 thing that enabled sin to enter the world today – the sin of not submitting to God, but putting ourselves in the center of everything – is the same thing that our gospel has become about. Me.

And when I meet Christians who think Jesus is all about a “personal relationship”, the phrase that comes into my head most often is the title of this post – your God is too small. Your God isn’t the Jewish Messiah – king of this world, who demands that mankind abandon the ways of this world in pursuit of him, who requires that mankind learn to live in peace and in submission and servitude to one another for the purpose of his kingdom, who requires a change in the deepest of hearts of each individual person. No, your god is a genie in a bottle, and when you feel low or your next bout of narcissism shows up, you rub the bottle with some “prayers and tongues, with plenty ‘overcoming’ faith”, say what you want him to do for you, and go about your business, paying no heed to the kingdom of God, which is indeed amongst us, but hidden from our eyes.

This discourse is not over yet, and in my next post we will take a historical look at how the gospel of Jesus changed (or our God became smaller) through the course of history through a better look at the popular Christian creeds.