Jesus, the Last: Part 4 of 4, Salvation

Jesus, the First

In John 1, we are reminded that Jesus is the “first”: “In the beginning was the Word (referring to Jesus, the Messiah); and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….”  In the same passage, Jesus is also called the “firstborn,” a positional reference to one who holds all things together and is primary overseer of all that has been created.  This theme is echoed throughout the New Testament: Jesus is positionally “first” in prominence and in oversight.  The Church has historically put it this way: fully God and fully human, with the fullness of both expressed mysteriously in His person. 

But Jesus is also the “last”: “I am the Alpha [first letter of the Greek alphabet] and the Omega [last letter of the Greek alphabet], who was, who is, and who is to come, the Almighty,” according to Revelation 1.  The idea of Jesus as the last Word, the final and definitive goal of God’s creation is another key theme of Christian theology.  Jesus is what all before has led up to, and Jesus is what everything is moving toward.  Hebrews 1 describes the birth of Jesus as ushering in the “last days” (1:1). First John 2:18 identifies Jesus with the “last hour.”  That means that “last things” (eschatology is the term for this) is not about some place or time in the distant future.  Rather, last things are all about Jesus: Jesus as definitive Word and example of the fullness of God’s love and grace; the goal of God’s work in the world and in us.

Jesus as Last Word in the Christian Life

Companionship with Jesus and fully embracing the ways of Jesus, then, is the goal of life.  Why?  Because this companionship with Jesus is indeed companionship with the loving God. 

That means that when we become Christians – followers of Jesus Christ and His ways – we become people whom God as forgiven and whom God wishes to instruct and to transform into one who, though maintaining unique elements of our own gifting and personality, reflects the loving ways of Jesus Christ, the embodiment of the loving ways of the God who created us.

The reason for God’s saving work through Jesus Christ has to do with things eternal.  But, the saving work of God is not about eternity as something in the distant future.  Instead, the saving work of God in Christ is about a relationship with God that begins now and never ends.  And in this never ending relationship, true transformation happens (called sanctification).  This transformation is not the end, though.  Rather, it is a means to an end.  The end/goal of all of this is the restoration and realization of the deep companionship that God has always desired but that has been stifled by our own walking away from the good and loving ways of an eternally loving God. 

Then What?

The culmination of all things for the early churches of Christianity was not the ominous prospect often portrayed in modern depictions of last things.  Eschatology was a hope-filled study for the ancient Christians.  This is because the prospect of the full realization what had already begun with the coming of Christ (what we celebrate as Advent and Christmas Seasons) continued on in personal and corporate experience of the believers of the peace, love, and joy that a faith-based relationship with God through Jesus Christ provides (expressed fully at Easter and Pentecost seasons we celebrate today).  This new “Jesus Way” of living (a new Kingdom, the Gospels call it) was allowing them to keep in focus the hope that would be fully realized when Christ returns to set all things right with all of creation for all time. 

On a personal level, believers would experience this in what the Church has called “glorification,” which is the full realization of the sanctified life (the life set apart to the service of Christ) that would allow the believer to embody in his or her own death the “empty tomb” experience of Jesus Christ, whom they had followed in life in such a way that death was no longer a fearful proposition. 

Jurgen Moltmann once said that Christians are “people of Advent.”  He meant that we are people who are always living with a sense of anticipation.  We live in such a way that seeks to recognize the need for God’s intervention in all areas of life (salvation), the need for God’s empowerment to live the life that echoes the ways of Jesus Christ by the empowering of the Holy Spirit (sanctification), and the need for God’s faithfulness to bring us to the ultimate participation with God unencumbered by sin and death beyond our own death (glorification).  Living with this kind of expectation is possible not because we eagerly await some final word from God, but instead because the final Word from God has been sent, embodied in Jesus Christ, the first and the last: “This is my Son with whom I am well-pleased; do as He says.”  The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.