Striving is Straying
Every story has a main character. For example, the American western novel, “Lonesome Dove,” has Captains Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae. As for the gospel narrative Jesus is the primary character. Forgiveness and reconciliation with God, life with the promised Holy Spirit, and the hope of resurrection and life in the world to come are received in Jesus of Nazareth. Philippians 2:5-11 teaches us that this Jesus emptied himself, took on the form of a human slave, and obeyed to the point of a humiliating crucifixion. To look for any other Jesus is to stand outside the gospel story and the salvation it promises.
In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul accuses the so-called “super-apostles” of preaching a different Jesus. We might think then that these individuals denied the full humanity or full deity of Jesus or failed in some other point of Christology, but that is not the case. Rather, words like “inferior,” “super,” “unskilled,” and “boasted” bring to the fore that their ministry is stained by a snooty sense of superiority. Accordingly, Paul concludes that such men are false apostles and messengers of Satan. It turns out that striving for status is straying from Jesus.
If striving for status is straying from Jesus, then we must resist superiority. Because of sin, we all have the natural tendency to search out ways that we are better than those around us. We tell ourselves that we do things the right way, that we have the right amount of education, that we make the right amount of money, that we vote the right way, that we go to the right kind of church, and that we eat the right kind of peanut butter. The stories we concoct to justify our place is endless. However, we can begin to combat this tendency by looking to the Jesus of the gospels.
The most climactic moment of Jesus life and ministry took place in a garden (John 18:1-20:10). Jesus was betrayed in a garden, crucified on the outskirts of a garden, buried in a garden tomb, and in his resurrection was mistaken for a gardener. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, failed in a garden and ever since we have joined them in the grasp for glory. Jesus, though, entered the garden for our sake and passed by refusing to count glory a thing to be grasped. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name above every name (Phil. 2:9). Now, when united to Christ by faith we are given a true status, one that cannot be grasped or earned. In him, we are God’s beloved sons and daughters. As this truth grows in us we will become more true to the One in whom the gospel story converges.
