God is Christlike

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsh, The Shaping of Things to Come

[I]n light of the New Testament, the remarkable truth is not so much that Jesus is Godlike, but that God is actually Christlike. (God is Christlike and in him is no un-Christlikeness at all). In the light of the New Testament revelation all who would wish to know who God is and what he is like, need look no further than the person of Jesus (John 1:18, 14:9). From now on, all true perspectives of God must pass through the very particular lens of the man called Jesus of Nazareth. To say this more technically, all theology must now be understood through Christology. . . . From our perspective as human beings Jesus becomes the reference point for all genuine knowing, all true loving, and all authentic following of God (37).

Evangelism and Being Authentically Human

Rebecca Manley Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker & into the World

Our problem with evangelism is not that we don’t have enough information—it is that we don’t know how to be ourselves. We forget we are called to be witnesses to what we have seen and know, not to what we don’t know. The key on our part is authenticity and obedience, not a doctorate in theology. We haven’t grasped that it really is OK for us to be who we are when we are with seekers, even if we don’t have all the answers to their questions or if our knowledge of Scripture is limited.

But there is a deeper problem here. Our uneasiness with non-Christians reflects our uneasiness with our own humanity. Because we are not certain about what it means to be human (or spiritual, for that matter), we struggle in relating naturally, humanly to the world (22-23).

[T]o share the gospel we must share out life, our very selves. If we don’t grasp that Christ has freed us to be authentic, we will see evangelism as a project instead of a lifestyle. And we will tend to see non-Christians more as objects of our evangelistic efforts than as authentic persons. . . . Evangelism involves taking people seriously, getting across to their island of concerns and needs, and then sharing Christ as Lord in the context of our natural living situations (28).

In Jesus . . . we have our model for how to relate to the world, and it is a model of openness and identification. Jesus was a remarkably open man. . . . We must learn, then, to relate transparently and genuinely to other because that is God’s style of relating to us. . . . We must open our lives enough to let people see that we too laugh and hurt and cry (30).

“. . . the God who wills to be known.”

Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God

YHWH presents himself as the God who wills to be known. This self-communicating drive is involved in everything God does in creation, revelation, salvation and judgment. Human beings therefore are summoned to know YHWH as God, on the clear assumption that they can know him and that God wills that they should know him. . . . Accordingly, making God known is part of the mission of those who are called to participate in the mission of the God who wills to be known (74).

In the New Testament this divine will to be universally known is now focused on Jesus. It will be through Jesus that God will be known to the nations. And in knowing Jesus, they will know the living God. Jesus, in other words, fulfilled the mission of the God of Israel. Or to put it the other way round: the God of Israel, whose declared mission was to make himself known to the nations through Israel, now wills to be known to the nations through the Messiah, the one who embodies Israel in his own person and fulfills the mission of Israel to the nations. . . . Jesus is not merely the agent through whom the knowledge of God is communicated (as any messenger might be). He is himself the very content of the communication. Where Jesus is preached, the very glory of God shines through (122-3).