On New Life

My wife, Kim, and I recently celebrated our son Isaac's turning two months old, and I realized I spent very little time reflecting on the experience of being a new parent. In addition to reflecting on parenthood, I've begun to reflect a little bit on life, and how it is a gift. I've been wondering and thinking about life (both present and eschatological) qua gift, particularly with respect to our understanding of salvation, and I wanted to process those thoughts through this blog. (This post is heavily influenced by John Barclay's work on the Gift.)

In his book on justification, R. Michael Allen has a wonderful little concise definition of the gospel: the glorious news that the God who has life in himself freely shares that life with us and, when we refuse that life in sin, graciously gives us life yet again in Christ. What I appreciate about this definition is not only its concision but its emphasis on eschatological life. Perhaps this is because of my background in a branch of Reformed evangelicalism which often emphasized salvation by grace alone but reflected little on its conception of what it is exactly we're talking about when we talk about salvation. What is salvation? How does God's action in salvation get applied to us? These are questions which not only did not receive adequate attention or discussion (let alone clear answers), but did not even get asked. 

But the point of this post is not to disparage the churches of my childhood (which were, by and large, incredibly faithful and formative in very good ways), but to reflect on what it means for salvation to be a gift of life. This entails a few things:

First, somewhat obviously, this definition underscores the gifted-ness of salvation. There are several important things which this signifies, the first of which is the most obvious: it does not originate in us. This aspect of God's redemption in Christ is the one which Reformed churches most often hammer home (and for good reason!). Human nature in its sinful rebellion is adept at finding ways to self-justify; all manner of tasks, items, roles, and relationships can be means of self-justification, and all of them are revealed to be insufficient in light of God's gift. God's gift so wildly surpasses these feeble attempts at self-justification, and this is because God has so ordered reality that only creatures who embrace their created-ness, their inability to produce life from their own finite resources, only those creatures are able to truly receive God's gift of life. 

The gift also necessarily involves reciprocation. We instinctively feel this when we receive or give gifts; if the gift is not reciprocated, even in the form of a verbal (or written) "thank you", something is awry. Typically, however, the reciprocation has a level of fittingness to the gift itself. If I give you my lunch one day, then it would be reasonable to assume that, somewhere down the line, you'd return the favor, or buy me a coffee, or some other comparable act. This reciprocation is fitting, but it is not exact. I don't, upon receiving a gift, begin to calculate what a fiscally equivalent reciprocative gift would be; I intuitively pick up on what is the appropriate response. In a similar way, God's gift necessitates reciprocation, albeit not a sort of tit-for-tat equilibrium. In one sense we might say so: God has given us life, and we give our lives back to God. But in another sense, this is manifestly not the case: God has given us Christ's life - the fullness of humanity wrapped up in the fullness of divinity eternally expressed in the presence of the Spirit of God. In response, we can only offer our devotion and service. If this were a purely transactional model of exchange, this would be paltry recompense. But the gift-exchange economy is never exact and always fitting.

I've noted that the gift of life is, by definition, extra nos (that is, it comes from outside of us), and that gifts naturally necessitate reciprocation, but it is important now to emphasize that salvation is, specifically, a gift of life. And this too is fitting, because God is the one who through Christ has made us and who sustains us by his Spirit. When we think of the language of the Spirit, it is important to consider the metaphors at work. Particularly in the biblical texts in which the Spirit is active, he is talked about using the language of wind and breath (indeed, the words used in Hebrew and Greek for "Spirit" - ruach and pneuma, respectively - mean exactly that). The same ruach which blows through the leaves of the trees is the ruach which is spirated through our lungs - the breath of life. The Spirit is that which animates, which inspires, human beings. Thus, God himself is our life (cf. Col 3.1-4). That which animates human life is the one "in whom we all live and move and have our being" - the Spirit of God. And when, in rebellion against God, we seek to extricate the gift of life from its animating source, we effectively bring about the promised result of Genesis 3: death. In ways both figural and literal, physical and relational, we choose death over life (contra Deut 30) by rejecting the God in whom we live. 

Thus, it is supremely fitting that the work of redemption be the life-giving work of Christ. Indeed, the person and work of the Eternal Son incarnate is God's life-gift. In taking on death and Hades, Christ takes on all that we have earned through our rejection of God's initial creational gift. In a wonderful exchange (mirifica commutatio), Christ's life - which was the fullness of what humans were created for: full participation (and success) in the vocational task of the First Adam - is given to those who deserve death. The Last Adam is God's ultimate gift of life to his people. Furthermore, this gift is not only a finite event; it persists in and through the presence of God's life-giving Spirit (ruach/pneuma). As Spirit-indwelt people, our aspirations are informed by the inspired Word and formed toward the goal of being conformed to the likeness of the incarnate Word. 

This new life is, essentially, the life we were made for. In Christ, we are able to fully receive the gift which God always intended to give us, and we are enabled by his Spirit to reciprocate with our lives; giving all we have to love and follow Jesus Christ our Lord.


*Edit*
Something I should have touched on but didn't (in part because it was brought to my attention only recently), is the significance of the nature of God's life. By its very nature, God's life is eternal and indestructible; hence Jesus' resurrection was entirely fitting with his divine nature. It is this life which we are given in Christ by the Spirit. Our ordinary life is in many ways a shadow of the true life, viz. God's life: it is conditioned and characterized by death. What life we do have in the present, regardless of our eschatological position (in/out of Christ), is life animated by God qua Creator - which means that we are in some sense given life by the Spirit simply by way of being creatures in the imago Dei. However, this by no means leads to a sort of universalism; those who are in Christ find their lives indwelt by the Spirit, that is to say, exchanged for Christ's (i.e. God's) life. Only this life is truly life, and only this life is indestructible and eternal. When we receive it, we are, paradoxically, both transcending our ordinary humanity and consummating it, becoming more than who we are and yet exactly who we were meant to be. The fitting response, then, is love and gratitude for eternity.