Over the last month, I have been listening to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, a podcast produced by Christianity Today. It relates the story of Mars Hill, a church that started in Seattle with a handful of people, grew to over 15,000 with multiple campuses in multiple states, but ended up dissolved by 2014. At the heart of the story is the controversial and complicated Mark Driscoll, the pastor who led the church from first to last. It covers the good that God used the church to accomplish but also how the seeds of its destruction can be seen even in the early days of the church and how those seeds blossomed, in many ways due to the influence of Driscoll. One of the main lessons the podcast draws out is that character shapes culture.
For Mars Hill, we see this worked out in a negative influence. But when it comes to the kingdom of God, we note that the main principle still applies but positively. Scot McKnight (whose work on the kingdom of God heavily influences my understanding and is the main source for the reflection in this and upcoming posts) writes, The character of a king shapes the character of that king’s kingdom, and the character of our king is cruciform. This is why the cross and the death of the king is such a central focus to the Christian faith. When the Apostle Paul says that he preaches Christ and Him crucified, that doesn’t mean he only talks about the cross exclusively. One can simply look at the letter that statement comes from (1 Corinthians) and read Paul addressing divisions in the church, excommunication, lawsuits against believers, marriage and singleness, worship matters, and spiritual gifts, just to name a few.
Instead, Paul is drawing a connection that shows how the cross radically changes our understanding of and relationship to all the rest of life. And it does so by reflecting to us the character of King Jesus. We see this cruciform character in places such as Philippians 2:6-11 where we read of Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
McKnight again, Jesus is the one who became a slave unto death to make us kings and queens in the kingdom. The Philippians passage hangs on the cross. Christ’s humiliation finds its ultimate expression not simply in being obedient to the point of death but to a particular type of death, namely death on a cross. And His exaltation flows from that very particular death. And it was this that was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles but to Christians it is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:23-24). The cross stands at the heart of the kingdom.
But if this is the way of the king, then it should also be the way of the king’s people. The great Christ hymn of Philippians 2 is introduced in v 5 with these words, Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…. And from what follows it is clear that such a mind/mindset is shaped by the cross. We are to live as did our king: as servants for the sake of others (McKnight).
Therefore, saints, let us look to the cross. First, we do so in thankfulness as we consider the character of our king and the lengths he went to for our salvation. But secondly, we do so in order to reflect on what the cross has to say about how we live our lives as the people of this king, and we daily deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. May more and more we find the cruciform character of King Jesus shaping every dimension of our life, both as individuals and as a community of faith.
