Who is Christ... for us? 4. Christ, the World and the Church

 In the concluding part of our series we turn to the other two relationships that belong to the answer to our question, 'Who is Christ... for us?' The relationship between Christ and the world and the consequent relationship between the Church and the world. We begin by recalling,

This text lays down that Jesus is the representative man who dies – and lives – for everyone. There is a trap, into which religious people often fall, of thinking and acting and believing as if it were 'all for me'. Of course there is some truth in that, for Christ so far as he is representative of us humans is my representative and your representative. But he is much more than that, and to think and act and believe as if that were the whole of the truth merely brings the work of Christ into disrepute. If 'God was in Christ reconciling the world', it is not just you and me; it is also for the world, the whole world, the world outside the Church, as well as in it.

'God was in Christ reconciling the world... and... he has entrusted us with the message of reconciliation'. It is not just something for you and me, something for us to enjoy; it is not simply a form of spiritual self-gratification; but it is something that commits us to agonizing on behalf of the world in the way that Christ himself agonized over it; that commits us to serving the world in the way that Christ served it; that commits us to stand in the place of others in the way that Christ stood in their place and ours. It demands not that we turn away from the world and in on ourselves, each one making him or herself the centre of their own religious sphere; rather it demands that we turn away from ourselves and towards the world... the world, which God loves so much.

When we talk about the work of Christ being for the whole world; that ought to reflect upon our own service as Christians. We must remember the NT image of the Church as the body of Christ. We must remember that there can be no presence of Christ in the world today, and no work of Christ in the world today, except so far as the Church goes out, empowered by his spirit, and seeks to do his work. And that work is by no means limited to preaching the Gospel, if by that we mean only the challenge to individual men and women to give their lives to God. That is certainly part of our work, and an important part too; but it is only a part. Our work is not only the renovation of individuals, but the renovation of society, and the renovation of the whole world.

We must never shut our minds to the great issues of our time; the issues of ecology, economics, energy (both conventional and nuclear), politics, pollution, population, health and medicine, food production, relationships (both national and international), justice and freedom, broadcasting and journalism, and so on. We must not close our minds to any of these issues, and we must not close the doors of the Church to them either.