The following is an edited version of an essay which I submitted for "IN TOUCH", a newsletter for young people published for my church fellowship. I have added a controversial paragraph which was not present in the publication.

The initial date of submission was January 6, 2005.

Dear INTOUCH,

[...]

Last time I wrote about my Grandfather, Aldridge Johnson, who died on May 7th. I would like to continue my thoughts about his prayers.

Grandpa's remembrance meeting prayers.

In remembrance meeting, Grandpa's prayers often traced the history of the person of Christ, somewhat like Philippians 2:6-11. The preincarnate glory and fellowship of the Father with the Son. The Son as the delight of the Father's heart and as the Creator. The Incarnation and life of Christ. His suffering, atonement, death, and resurrection. His ascension to glory, and His awaited return.

Grandpa emphasized the relationship between the Father and the Son, and Christ's unceasing incarnate humanity.

Below are some of the things I remember him praying in remembrance meeting.

  "Our God, our Father,
   We thank you for Jesus,
   the *man*, Christ Jesus.

   He was ever Your delight, dwelling in glory with You."
  "We thank You that He would deign to hide that glory
   behind a veil of flesh and walk this earth as a man -- fully man,
   sin apart -- for the express purpose of dying."

  "...ascended to glory, he remains a man, and is ever present
   to plead for us."

Jesus is right now in heaven, dwelling in His physical, glorified body. His body bears the marks of His sacrifice. His intercession for us is based on that sacrifice. Someday He will return, we will receive glorified bodies like His, and we will dwell and reign with Him in the new creation.

  "We thank you that this feast has an end."

The word "end" can mean a termination, an ultimate purpose, or an eschatological fulfillment. (The word "eschatology" refers to the final events of history or its ultimate destiny.) By "end" did Grandpa mean a termination or a consummation? I'm not sure that he ever made this explicit. (It is my opinion that we will celebrate a consummation of the Lord's supper in Christ's kingdom: "I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (Matthew 26.29).) But I think that Grandpa's primary thought was that the Lord's supper is not only a remembrance of what Christ did, but also anticipates His return. "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." (1 Corinthians 11:26). Grandpa sometimes prayed:

  "We thank you that we are able once more to show forth his death, ere
   He come again to take us to be with Himself, where we shall praise
   Him as we ought."

It is appropriate that we be keenly aware of the deep deficiency of our worship and our love for the Lord. I believe that it is our calling in this world is to realize as fully as possible the response to God that we will finally be enabled to give when we are made fully like Him.

Some of my own meditations on the Lord's supper follow.

I believe that the Lord's supper was given to be the central expression of the covenantal relationship of a worshiping community. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood." This covenant involves accountability and commitment -- commitment to God, and mutual commitment to one another. The Lord's supper is an image expressing our oneness with Christ in His incarnation, His death, and His risen and glorified life. "This is my body, which is for you." We, the body of Christ, receive the body and blood of Christ. What does it mean? It is a profound mystery, which a lifetime cannot sufficiently explore. We express that we have imbibed the incarnate life of God. We have become sharers in every aspect of Christ's life. Like Christ, we have become in our physical bodies God's "incarnate" temple. We are called to image in our lives Christ's self-sacrificing love. As with our baptism, so our communion in the Lord's supper expresses that we died and rose with Him.

Not only did Christ redeem us. He cleansed us and united us with Himself, so that we have been made to share mystically in the act by which He redeemed the world. Christ's expiation of sin was something that only He, as perfect God made man, could perform. But I think that it is not unorthodox to say that we share mystically in His redeeming work. And I believe that we as Christians are called to "absorb" (in a "miniature" sense) the sin that others commit against us in a manner analogous to the way that Christ "absorbed" the sin of the world on the cross. The suffering of God's people is a means by which He extends the effects of Christ's redemptive suffering throughout the world. [I suspect that Grandpa would likely have challenged some of what I have written in this paragraph.]

The Lord's supper is an image of the center of history and reality. Is there a portion of scripture, a fact about God's people, or a topic in all of life or creation that is not somehow connected to the remembrance meeting? In the Lord's supper we contemplate the atonement in the light of the incarnation and resurrection, and the incarnation and resurrection in the light of the atonement. If the scope of our vision for what seems relevant to the remembrance meeting seems narrow, perhaps this reflects a poverty of vision for what it means. Perhaps we have not allowed the implications of Christ's incarnation and self-offering love to permeate our lives and our understanding of the world.

Drew Johnson asked in a survey:

4. When you think of who Jesus is, how would you describe Him?

Grandpa wrote the following response:

"It is impossible to describe Jesus. Think of God the Son humbling Himself to become a Man, fully human (sin apart) for the express purpose of redeeming a lost and rebellious people to Himself. Think of him being despised, rejected, scorned and spit upon and nailed to a cross. There consider Him forsaken of His God because He was made sin for us and bare the penalty of our sins in His own Body. Think of Him buried: then think of Him risen for our justification and ascended into heaven to sit as a man at the right hand of God to intercede for us (His own redeemed people). And all the time He was doing this He did not cease being God the Son and being with God the Father. He is beyond description."

May his words bless us with life-giving thought patterns.

Alec Johnson

• "...we have been made to share mystically in the act by which He redeemed the world."

  Some may find this assertion startling and unscriptural. I'm open to being challenged, and it's certainly capable of being taken to mean unorthodox things. I'm trying to express succinctly the following ideas:

  • Jesus thoroughly identified Himself with lost and sinful man. He took our sin upon Himself so that our sin and shame became His own. He accepted the judgment that we merit. He united Himself to us in our sinful and alienated condition so that we might be united to Him in His righteousness and self-offering love.
  • We are called to share not just in the benefits that He obtained for us by His suffering, but in His manner of suffering and identification with those who are afflicted by sin. I think it is not entirely accurate to say that Jesus suffered for us so that we don't have to suffer. Jesus throughout the gospels says that those who would be His disciples must share in the cross. "Take up your cross and follow me."
  • Our identification with Christ in His death and resurrection is not just about our individual reconciliation to God; it is about being reconciled and united with Jesus to God and His people in all the fullness of His person and work, including in His project to save the world. This does not mean that we can take credit for Christ's work, any more than it means that we become God by being united to Him.
  • Jesus united us to Himself so that we might image Him (and be identified with Him) in the way in which he took upon Himself the sin and judgment of those who were alienated from Him. Our call to suffering is more than just a call to refrain from retaliating; it means opening ourselves to share the humiliation and judgments that our friends and enemies deserve.

  In fact, I think that scripture gives implicit support to this idea that we share mystically in Christ's atonement. Consider the following quotes from 2 Corinthians 5:11-21: "One has died for all; therefore all have died..." "...God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ..." "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." It was by giving His life to redeem the world that Christ obtained the right to reclaim and to judge the world. (I'm not absolutely confident of this, but consider Revelation 5:9-10 as evidence.) The Bible indicates that the saints will come with Christ to judge the world (1 Corinthians 6:2, Jude 14-15). This makes sense precisely because the saints have been joined with Christ in the act by which He redeemed the world.

  I think that seeking to know God deeply will involve pushing some limits like this. Indeed, the apostle Paul surely challenged some people's thinking when he wrote things like, "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Who among us would dare to say such a thing if it were not found explicitly in Scripture?

  I don't mean to imply in what I write that we die for the sins of other people or satisfy the wrath of God.

• "The suffering of God's people is a means by which He extends the effects of Christ's redemptive suffering throughout the world."

  This is another statement that might raise a flag in some people's minds. Consider the following scriptures:

  From the writings of Paul:

  • Colossians 1:24: "...in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church..."

  From the first epistle of Peter:

  • 1 Peter 2:20-21: "But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
  • 1 Peter 3:16-18: "It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."
  • 1 Peter 4:12: "But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed."