“What would be the good of learning without love — it would puff us up. And love without learning — it would go astray.” -St Bernard of Clairvaux

So why spend the last several posts exploring the biblical story in contrast to the popular story? Regardless of the theological details, isn’t the bottom-line of either story to “love God and love people”?

Let’s imagine you wanted to travel from New York to Los Angeles via plane. Wouldn’t you expect the pilot to make necessary in-flight course corrections in order to keep the plane on course? In a similar way, we need to tell and retell the biblical story to avoid “drift” in our lives.

Or even more drastic, what if you boarded a plane heading in a similar direction but bound for a completely different destination than expected? What if you thought you were flying from New York to Los Angeles only to discover that you were actually heading to Las Vegas. You would be flying in the same direction but would fall short of your intended destination by a few hundred miles.

This was my experience almost 20 years ago when I realized the popular version of Christianity that I embraced was forming me into a person far short of the biblical vision of humanness.

So let’s look at a quick summary of both stories. First the popular, yet distorted version:

“Jesus died for my sins and gave me his righteousness so I can go to heaven when I die.”

Now the fuller biblical version:

“Jesus lived and died to fulfill God’s covenant with Abraham, rescuing Israel in order to rescue humanity from enslavement to idolatry and sin and restore us back to our vocation as God’s image-bearers within God’s renewed creation that launched at Jesus’ resurrection and will be ultimately completed at his appearing.”

If you live by the first story, you will miss the second story. But if you live by the second story, then you will get most of the first story as well. That’s because the first story shrinks the actual biblical story and only highlights certain aspects.

Remember, shrinky-dinks? They were plastic art pieces that one would color and then bake in the oven. They would shrink as they baked and their colors would become more vibrant in the process. That’s what the popular version of the biblical story does. It colors certain parts of the story while ignoring others and then shrinks so the highlighted parts become more emphasized, thus distorting the actual story.

So from a very general perspective, the goal of both stories is to “love God and love people.” But the actual biblical story provides the proper context and definition.

In Mark 12:28-34, Jesus has a conversation with one of the teachers of the law. Asked by the teacher “Of all of the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus replies:

“The most important one,” answered Jesus “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Jesus is not simplifying or abstracting Israel’s ethical code to “just love God and love people so you’ll be okay with God.” Rather, Jesus is summarizing with pinpoint accuracy the covenant God made with Abraham. This is Israel’s vocation in a concentrated amplified form. This is how Israel was to be faithful to the covenant for the sake of the world. If one would worship God with every aspect of human life, pouring everything into glad worship of God and if one would love his or her neighbor with the same respect, care and devotion we show ourselves, then heaven would come to earth!

Jesus condenses the entire Abrahamic covenant, Israel’s vocation as God’s royal priesthood, into a dual-edged purpose that would actually merge heaven and earth.

If we want an example of what this kind of “love” looks like, then we need to look at the cross. For on the cross, Jesus, as Israel’s human representative king, did for Israel what Israel couldn’t do. He fully loved God and fully loved his neighbor as THE Faithful Israelite. He fulfilled Israel’s covenant with God and died in Israel’s place so that they would be rescued and renewed. And through the fulfilled covenant, the rest of the nations and ultimately all of creation would be rescued and renewed.

And on the cross we see Israel’s God, embodied as a human, expressing his full love and faithfulness to his covenant to Abraham and his family. He is faithful despite their unfaithfulness and rescues and renews them so he can rescue and renew the nations and the creation he so loves.

On the cross we see:

The true Image-Bearer

The true Royal Priest

The true King of Israel

Israel being faithful to their covenant with God

God being faithful to his covenant with Israel

The forgiveness of sins

The end of exile

The redemption from idolatry

The vanquishing of evil

The trampling of death

Creation reborn

Humanity is now restored to its original vocation by being received into Abraham’s family and thus God’s fulfilled covenant with Abraham. We are now part of Abraham’s renewed family. As such, we are God’s royal priesthood. We are God’s true image-bearers. We are truly human. We are both benefactors and agents of God’s New Creation. Our vocation is now to follow Jesus into his virtue and vocation — into his faithfulness to the covenant. We are people in whom God is at work according to the pattern of the Messiah for the sake of the wider world. We are learning to live and love like Christ, so we too can embody the covenant-faithfulness of God. To borrow imagery from Revelation, we follow the Lion of Judah (Israel’s and thus the world’s True King) who is also the slain lamb (patterning our lives after his sacrificial life).

In this light, Jesus’ statement, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” is actually about our vocation more than self-denial. His cross is the pattern for our New Creation lives.

Every act of loving God and loving people that embodies Christ’s love as revealed on the cross builds the material through which God will ultimately fashion his New Creation at Jesus’ ultimate appearing. We are like vegetation that merges the carbon dioxide of this creation and the chlorophyll of Christ’s love, transforming it into the oxygen that God will use as the very atmosphere for his New Creation.

This is why after a lengthy discussion of the resurrection, which is the inaugural moment of God’s New Creation, Paul encourages us with, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

Shrinky Dinks image from midwesternmoms.com