Denver Seminary

14 SPRING 2019 Lynn Cohick, PhD PROVOST/DEAN Lynn Cohick is provost/dean of Denver Seminary. She began her tenure in July 2018, after serving 18 years as a professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. Her recent publications include Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second Through Fifth Centuries (Baker Academic, 2017) and Philippians in Story of God Commentary (Zondervan, 2013). body itself has pairs—hands, feet, eyes, ears, nostrils—for its preservation and care. So too brothers in the same family should work together and care for each other. He wrote, Just as in the same body the combination of moist and dry, cold and hot, sharing one nature and diet, by their consent and agreement engender the best and most pleasant temperament and bodily harmony … so through the concord of brothers both family and household are sound and flourish, and friends and intimates, like a harmonious choir, neither do nor say, nor think, anything discordant. 3 A NEW HUMANITY Paul shares the sentiment expressed by Plutarch, but with an important twist. The "brothers" in Paul's writing are not of the same biological family but are those united by Christ. They include male and female slaves and owners, Jewish and Gentile women and men, diverse ethnicities and economic statuses. These are all adopted sons and daughters of God in Christ (Eph. 1:5). Paul does not accept the class divisions that privilege wealth and social prestige, but instead underscores the work of the Spirit in bringing unity to the one body (4:3–4) and emphasizes Christ's gifts that create different functions within the church (4:13–14; see also 1 Cor. 12:18–25). Paul concludes that Christ's death and resurrection establish a new "humanity" (2:15). Christ's broken body brings peace, reconciliation, and a new community faithful to God, made up of Jews and Gentiles united in Christ (2:14; 4:4). Reconciliation through Christ our Peace is not an entailment of a personal justification—a second step, if you will, in an individual's salvation journey. The new humanity created by this peace is, rather, another way of expressing Paul's declaration that "by grace you have been saved" (2:5; 8). Simultaneously the believer is forgiven and made new, reconciled to God and to enemy at one time (see also Col. 1:19). The scope of Christ's work on the cross extends from personal forgiveness to re-making the people of God, done in a single, redemptive motion of death-resurrection- ascension. This point is especially pertinent for those who see personal salvation as "step one," and corporate participation in church as "step two" in their Christian journey. The unity of the body of Christ offers a foretaste of the cosmic unity yet to come when all things are brought together under Christ (1:10). Paul further defines this reality as a mystery now revealed, namely that Gentiles are co-heirs with "Israel," sharing together the fulfilled promise of God in Christ (3:6). Christ's redemptive motion accomplished God's purpose of making known His great wisdom to the cosmos (3:10), and in bringing the surpassing love of Christ to God's people (3:17–19). In Paul's day, Gentile pagans were far from God and outside the community of faith. Their need for salvation, for worshiping the true God, was obvious, at least to a Jew such as Paul. What might have been less obvious was God's reconciling Jew and Gentile into a new body. They would have expected Gentiles to become Jews, proselytes to the people of Israel. Paul insists that neither group is privileged, for both are changed as they become a new body altogether: Christ's body. In our age of pluralism, it is difficult to speak of conversion, of people being far from God and needing to be reconciled. Pluralism seeks a unity of sorts—that of tolerance. Accepting others' religions to foster peace is the right instinct but does not go far enough. The vision of unity that pluralism seeks can be attained only in Christ and His work on the cross. This reconciliation brings all people together into a new group, where no one culture or language or political party is privileged over another. This is a unity of differences, not a union of uniformity. Here in this new body, all are equally beloved by the Father as members of the body of His Son. 3 Plutarch, Moralia 479A-B. Loeb vol. VI 439A – 523B. English Translation W. C. Helmbold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). Boonyachoat/Getty Images

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