“In the more modern churches, the triumph of the resurrected Jesus was stressed to emphasize victory…. What they overlooked was the incarnation of Jesus…. This oversight allowed people to triumphantly parade their victory over sin and sinners but failed to call them to humbly incarnate as missionaries in culture to effectively reach lost people.
Conversely, many other churches more akin to the so-called postmodern churches focused almost exclusively on vegetable-munching hippie Christ’s humble incarnation in culture to hang out with sinful lost people…. What is lacking, however, is the understanding that when we next see Jesus, he will not appear as a humble, marginalized Galilean peasant. Rather, we will see the exalted, tattooed King of Kings coming with fire blazing in his eyes and a sword launching from his mouth, with which to make war upon the unrepentant.” -Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. (pp.42-43)
The above quote by Mark Driscoll is one which I believe points out a major theological flaw that is unrealized in both the modern evangelical and the postmodern emerging churches, that being the need to balance the incarnation of Christ along with the exaltation of Christ. As Driscoll further details in his sermon from John Piper’s National Conference in 2006 (linked below), it is this issue which leads to the two common stereotypes of these opposing camps: the evangelicals as being holier-than-though thought nazi’s who rain condemnation on all that is sinful in the world, and the emergents as limp-wristed pacifists who live a little too liberally to actually be saved.
Moreover, I believe this omission is the cause of other major problems which Christians in America face today and which I have tried to address in prior posts. In the evangelical camp I belive that this glorious triumphalism leads to a teaching of works justification and their legalism towards sin. As for the emergents, I feel that their underemphasis on Christ’s exaltation leads to the acceptance of multiple means of salvation and a deadly theological misunderstanding of what Christ achieved on the cross.
I encourage you to analyze this yourself and see where you fall. We are called to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, but in order to do that we must make sure that we are also loving all of the Lord as well.
Mark Driscoll- “The Supremacy of Christ and the Church in a Postmodern World”
