The Perfecting Church

Beginnings are important to God, you can never ignore them with Him. After all, the first four words of the bible are, “In the beginning God…” Beginnings are often choreographed to help us understand the scale, scope and intent of God’s work, if we just look closely. This is the case with the beginnings of the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. He started in the manger…now we’re here.

Jesus is not satisfied with us simply no longer being oppressed. Jesus came to commission us, to set others free from oppression. It will never be enough for us to be free from oppression, we must also embrace our calling to set others free. Our on-going freedom is rooted in our on-going freedom fighting. We have been set free and sent forth into the anti-oppression work of Christ.

Since the Garden of Eden, the Kingdom of Darkness has sought to destroy the plans and purposes of God in the earth. As ambassadors of Heaven, our eyes must be opened to recognize the unseen forces working to subvert the will of God. And like Jesus, we are anointed to destroy the works of the devil. We are commissioned to be Troublemakers on behalf of the Kingdom of Light!

Oppression has been a devastating reality on this planet since the Garden of Eden. Oppression began when Satan willfully took a place and position of rulership belonging to God and His representatives agreed to it. All oppression is rooted in Satan causing and exploiting spiritual brokenness between God and His image bearer, mankind. Jesus came to cause good trouble — healing the brokenness and restoring liberty and justice for the oppressed.

In these dark and perilous times the church must learn how to see and how to function in the grace to open blind eyes. Blindness is a frequent theme in the bible, mentioned directly over 75 times and indirectly throughout the Old and New Testament. Jesus was anointed to bring recovery of sight to the blind and His body, the church is called and anointed to do the same.

Jesus came proclaiming the gospel — the good news of His Kingdom — entering a broken fragmented world and our broken fragmented lives. God’s solution for a world held captive by the inhumane grip of orphans fighting for significance and permanence through empire building, political systems, caste systems, and resource hoarding was and is the gospel. When the Kingdom of God enters our lives and this world it ushers in good trouble — it ushers in freedom for captives.

Since the fall of mankind in the Garden, God has sought to restore His children to relationship with Him, standing up for the poor, marginalized, oppressed, imprisoned, sick and brokenhearted, and standing up to the people, policies, systems and devil causing them. This is the very reason Jesus came, delivering us from the consequences of sin and the systems erected upon them, modeling for His Body to do the same.

The Gospel of the Kingdom was the good news Jesus preached. His Kingdom coming had profound impact, reconciling and restoring mankind back to God, ushering in a Kingdom way of seeing God, seeing others and seeing ourselves. The Kingdom of God coming, first and foremost, was and is good news to the poor.

The good news of the Messiah's coming — the Promised One — ushers in good trouble. It upsets the status quo when the One who owns it all, rules it all and controls it all, comes to redeem and reconcile it all. And the gospel of the Kingdom has come to upset the existing state of affairs. Jesus and His body are anointed to bring trouble — Good Trouble.

Jesus has many names that reveal His character and the nature of His ministry; the Lamb of God, the Author and Finisher of our faith, the I Am and the King of Kings are a few. Although it’s not explicitly in the biblical text, Jesus has another name that is equally true about His character and the nature of His work — The Great Emulsifier. Jesus’s life and cross bring things together that are opposed and distinctly different, making something entirely new.