"The Word of God enters history both as judgement and as power of renewal. This two-beat rhythm is characteristic." (p. 120, CH Dodd, The Bible Today)
The Bible is a book with two main characters. The Actor and the Acted-upon. God is the ultimate Actor although he works through his creation, and particularly his image-bearers. Creation, and particularly Humanity are then the Acted-upon.
God (and those he works through) act in two main ways toward the Acted-upon: judgement and grace, destruction and creation, law and Gospel, or death and life.
The Actor and Acted-upon are present in all of life and all the Bible. The Act itself is always either death or life.
Jesus Christ unites in one person Creator/creation, Actor/Acted-upon. This is an incredible act of loving condescension and it is done to change the rhythm of his Action.
With Jesus there is a change in the natural rhythm of Creation post-fall. When THE Actor becomes the Acted-upon his power explodes the Act and starts something new. Whereas before the rhythm was always: life->death, life->death, life->death. He makes it death->life!
OT teachers often point to the fact that the 10 commandments start with a record of God's grace in saving his people from Egypt. Or they point out that God's grace is shown in our very creation. Grace is the foundational context and beginning of all God's dealings with us. So many argue, like Karl Barth, that we should really talk about Gospel and law, not Law and Gospel. That is fair enough in some ways, and actually it reflects human experience.
We are given life and given a wonderful law to live by, but then we sin and die. That is the rhythm of life as we know it. But the Gospel is more than the gift of life and relationship with God, it is the gift of new life and restored relationship with God through death. There was life in the old rhythm, and there is life in the new rhythm. But the new rhythm is the one we really want to grasp. It is the new rhythm that we want to see start weaving its way into our lives.
The new rhythm is jarring, and hard to get the hang of because it is so alien. We may even think that it sounds almost perverse. But that rhythm is going to take over from the old completely because the act of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection was utterly comprehensive in its scope:
- It is an individual moral thing: we put to death sin and putting on righteousness (Col 3)
- It is an individual physical thing: our body dies to be raised to new life (2 Cor 5:1-4)
- It is a corporate thing: we die to ourselves to bring life to others (2 Cor 4:11-12)
- It is a cosmic thing: the old heavens and earth will be burnt up and a new heavens and earth will replace it (2 Pet 3:10-13)
"If the witch understood the true meaning of sacrifice, she might have interpreted the Deep Magic differently, for when a willing victim who has committed no treachery, dies in a traitor’s stead, the stone table will crack and even death itself will turn backwards" (CS Lewis, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe)
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