Being Nice or Being Made New?

MEETING JESUS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME, Chapter 6 ~ Marcus Borg 
   
Starter Questions For a Study Group

1. Share the best thing that happened to you this week.
2. Share the worst thing that happened to you this week.  
3. Share a time last week when you saw God at work in your community or in another person.   

Questions for the Passage Below

1. How does Borg's transformist understanding of the Christian journey affirm or challenge your own understanding of Christian discipleship?  
2. If transformation is realized by concepts as well as practices, how does the concept of being "Christed" ("Christened", transformed into the "likeness of Christ", raised up into the "full stature of Christ") affect you?  
3. If transformation is more of an "inside job" (the fruit of life in the Spirit and ethos of the community of Jesus), what place is there for the external practices of living a holy life?  What is the relationship, if any, between outer conformity and inner transformation? 

Take Time to Pray Together and Bless One Another

     

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Discipleship involves becoming compassionate.  "Be compassionate as God is compassionate" is the defining mark of the follower of Jesus.  Compassion is the fruit of life in the Spirit and the ethos of the community of Jesus.  
  
Thus we have what I would I would call a transformist understanding of the Christian life, an image of the Christian life richer and fuller than the fideistic and moralistic images I described in chapter 1.  It is a vision of the Christian life as a journey of transformation... from life under the lordship of culture to the life of companionship with God. 
  
It is an image of the Christian life not primarily as believing or being good but as a relationship with God.  That relationship does not leave us unchanged but transforms us into more and more compassionate beings, "into the likeness of Christ."  
  
Marcus Borg ~ "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" 

Did Jesus die for our sins?

MEETING JESUS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME, Chapter 6 ~ Marcus Borg 
   
Starter Questions For a Study Group

1. Share the best thing that happened to you this week.
2. Share the worst thing that happened to you this week.  
3. Share a time last week when you saw God at work in your community or in another person.   

Questions for the Passage Below

1. Have there been times in your life, or in the life of someone you know, when it was meaningful to understand the death of Jesus in terms of forgiveness of guilt and sin?
2. Have there been times in your life, or in the life of someone you know, when it was an obstacle to understand the death of Jesus in terms of forgiveness of guilt and sin?
3. Is this evaluation of the "sacrifice for sin" theory of atonement disturbing or freeing for you or both?  How?

Take Time to Pray Together and Bless One Another

     

__________________________________________________

   

To say that "Jesus died for our sins" is to interpret his significance within the framework of the priestly story.  [See "The Priestly Story" in the blog post below.  Although this language is sometimes used in the New Testament itself, this understanding of the death of Jesus did not become dominant in the church until the early Middle Ages.]  
  
...The priestly story's meaning is simple, direct and radical: we are accepted, just as we are... The priestly story means that our own sense of sin, impurity, and guilt need not stand between us and God.  It means that new beginnings are possible; we do not need to be held in bondage by the burden of our past.  And some people - those for whom the central issue in their lives is guilt or a radically negative sense of self-worth - very much need to hear this message.  
  
But... it leads to a passivity about religious life itself.  Rather than seeing that life as a process of spiritual transformation, it stresses that God has already done what needs to be done.  It leads to a passivity toward culture as well.  One can see this by imagining how our vision of the Christian life would be different if our church services regularly included a description of the human condition flowing from the other two macro-stories...  [See "The Exodus Story" and the "The Story of Exile and Return" in the blog post below.]  What if we were to say, "We are Pharaoh's slave in Egypt, and we beseech you for liberation"? Or "We live in Babylon, and we ask you for deliverance"?  One can understand why the church during the many centuries that is was the official religion of Western culture emphasized the confession of sin rather than saying that the culture we live in is Egypt or Babylon.  The priestly story is a politically dominating story.  The stories of bondage in Egypt and exile in Babylon are culturally subversive stories.  
  
Marcus Borg ~ "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time"