In Christ Things ‘Hang’ Together

Over at the Hang Together blog, Greg Forster follows up on a series of ruminations about the gospel described as both a “pearl” and a “leaven.”

He proceeds to focus on the reality that so many place the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate in conflict by highlighting a couple of scriptural passages: Colossians 3:23-24 and Romans 12:2:

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
…
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

As Greg notes, here are two places where “we might find these two imperatives stated more clearly in the form of ethical commands, rather than in parables.”

To take another approach that riffs off of musings on the idea of “hanging together,” I’d like to highlight another verse, Colossians 1:17, which says of Christ, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

One way of understanding the verb appearing as “hold together” in this verse is the act “to bring together or hold together something in its proper or appropriate place or relationship” (Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament). This verb, I think, captures the dynamic between our orientation of the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate and their orientation and subordination to Christ. The key question is how we properly relate each one of “all things,” including structures like family, work, church, and government, to Christ.

For the implications of what it might mean for cultural production, engagement, and transformation from the perspective of things “holding,” or even with a bit of license, “hanging,” together in Christ, I submit this from Anthony Bradley, who relates what Abraham Kuyper’s vision of Christ’s sovereignty means for the church today. As Bradley says in light of the doctrine of creation and in specific reference to Colossians 1:17, “Now sin destroyed this shalom, but Christ’s sovereignty over creation and culture did not end.”