Corey Paxton

If you have a couple minutes, watch this video to promo a book by Rick McKinley. This video communicates the mystery of Jesus’ kingdom invitation really well.

I’m always cautious, and even anxious when I hear language of “bringing the kingdom” because it sounds like we are in control of God’s kingdom. This does a great job of communicating that God’s kingdom is present all around us, and God is inviting us to participate in what He is doing in the world.

(I think this is what people mean by saying “bringing the kingdom,” but it’s hard to put language on it and this is often an easy way to say it); other times, I think we actually think we are in control of God

Tuesday, I got to catch up with one of my volunteer high school Young Life leaders. Mike has always been a entrepreneur. He started his own law firm in Roanoke, and has always been heavily involved with ministry since I’ve known him. We had one of those conversations that we had to cut off because it could have kept going the rest of the day.

I’ll share a few highlights from the conversation-

• Over the past few years, God has been giving Mike a hunger for a deeper experience with Christ than what he had previously known. God has opened up his heart to finding freedom and deeper intimacy in Christ and helping others to experience the healing of the Holy Spirit to break cycles of bondage, depression, and addictions.
• Since being opened up to this healing ministry, he sees much of the church as offering a powerless message of the gospel that keeps people stuck in cycles of guilt-grace-try harder-guilt-self loathing-grace-try harder- self-loathing-grace–the gospel we preach often just centers on forgiveness from the consequences of our sin, and not freedom from the power and bondage of our sin.

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For those of you wondering how I spend most of my days right now while I am finishing my degree and raising support for CRM, I work as a painter. Not only have I learned a handy skill (which I had none before), but also end up having great conversations in the process. We have a Burmese refugee who works with us named Su Min who jokes me to “stop talking, start painting” and I joke with Nate (my burly boss) that he hired me as his personal spiritual consultant rather than as a painter. Bernie thinks I should start writing about some of these conversations, so I follow the lead of my trusty therapist friend.

Today I had a really interesting conversation while working the brush with my friend Josh Peace. I recently gave him the book Exiles by Michael Frost to read, and he had some really insightful thoughts about it.

I’ll share one of his ideas that really got me thinking (maybe more later)……

In what sense can we become like Jesus? As Protestants, our basic framework for understanding the good news of Jesus is that humans are imperfect (sinful) and never can be perfect on our own efforts, and Christ lived a perfect life to pay a substitutionary atonement for our sins so that we can be back in right relationship with God.

We now speak of becoming like Christ, but in what sense? We’ve talked about his life in terms of perfection, which is the one thing we can never become, so what does it mean to be like Him? If it means being perfect, why would we even try to become like Him?

I think this is a great question that many people wrestle with, and it really spurred my thinking. The basic Protestant gospel helps us to understand what we are free from (the consequences, penalty, and guilt of sin), but often not what we are free for in terms of our humanity becoming like Jesus.

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