Cruciform life Archives

The Cross-Shaped Live, Jeff Kennon. Abilene, TX: Leafwood Publishers, 2021.

Summary: A practical exploration of what it means to be made in the image of a God who died on the cross, to have the cross shape and form the way we live.

According to Jeff Kennon, two of my favorite books, The Crucifixion by Fleming Routledge and The Cross of Christ by John R. W. Stott, are among the very few books written in recent years on the cross. Given that the cross is so central to the Christian life, that observation alone is probably worth a book. What this book is about is what it means to “image” God, referring back to the Genesis 1. Kennon contends that God has shown us in the life of Christ, a life shaped by the cross. In fact, what Kennon proposes, using the language of Michael Gorman, is that we image God as our lives become cruciform, shaped by the cross of Christ.

The first four chapters of the book trace the story arc of scripture in terms of roots, ruin, rescue, and restoration. Roots focuses on humanity’s creation in the image of God. Ruin considers our exchange of living in the image of God for the false lure of becoming God, worshiping either ourselves or other things that become idols. Rescue talks about the God, who in Jesus gets his feet dirty, and endures the scandal of the cross, the great exchange of his life for ours. Restoration goes even deeper into the work of the cross, pointing to the reality that to understand what God is like is to understand that this is a God who empties God’s self and dies and we live like God, like Christ, when we live like that, rather than pretending to be gods. That is restoration.

In the next four chapters, Kennon identifies four qualities of the cruciform life. Humility is realizing that we are enough, that God has made us good, loves us, and we’ve nothing to prove. It’s not that we think less of ourselves but rather not thinking of ourselves any differently than we think of others. Service means life lived for others, just for their sake and not being in control. Obedience is saying “not my will” but devoting oneself to listening to Jesus and then doing what he says, even as he did the Father’s will. Obedience thus takes us into the depths of God’s heart. Sacrifice chooses what is best for another over what is best for ourselves.

Kennon supports each theme in the book from scripture and illustrates the key points in each chapter, both from history and his own life, in a straightforward fashion. He moves between Jürgen Moltmann and David Foster Wallace, between N. T. Wright and Jim Carrey as he draws out for us the story of the cross, and how to allow it to shape our lives.

This is a good book to be reading during Lent. All of us need to be reminded of what it means to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Christ. It is also a good book to give either the person considering what it means to become a follower of Jesus or someone recently baptized who is just beginning the journey of being formed by Christ. In a church so distracted by the latest cultural crisis or scheme to make us successful, Kennon focuses on the good stuff of what it is like to be formed by the cross of Christ. In doing so, he doesn’t tell us what we want to hear, but what we desperately need. It’s truly the only way we’ll discover who we were meant to be.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The Drama of Ephesians, Timothy G. Gombis. Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 2010.

Summary: This book approaches Ephesians as a drama of the victory of God over cosmic powers in opposition to Him through Christ and through a redeemed and transformed church that acts as Divine Warrior.

That summary might have caught your attention. I’ve always loved the letter to the Ephesians and read numerous commentaries. Most, in some form or another will divide the book in half, with chapters 1-3 comprising the indicative of what God has done in Christ, and chapters 4-6 the resulting imperative of how the church should live as Christ’s redeemed. I was expecting another treatment of this sort when Timothy Gombis caught my attention by talking about drama and reminded me of Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote an essay asserting that the dogma of the church is the drama–this great, amazing and surprising story that changes everything.

What Gombis gives us here is not another commentary of Ephesians but a perspective on the letter as a whole that ultimately enlists us as players in God’s story. First he gives us the backdrop in explaining the “heavenly” language of Ephesians and the understanding in Paul’s time of the principalities and powers and how some of these function in resistance to God’s purposes in creation. I appreciated his measured approach that takes these realities seriously without becoming obsessed with identification of territorial spirits. There is in fact a cosmic conflict taking place and Ephesians is the drama of how God has achieved a stunning and subversive triumph over these powers and how the church participates in their ultimate defeat. It begins in Ephesians 1:3-19 with a cast of characters incorporated into Christ for the praise of his glory to the rest of the creation. This is a new people with a new identity. Gombis argues that this is not about a “who’s in and who’s out” but rather:

“In the logic of Ephesians, the two groups are not the saved and the damned, the in and the out. The two groups are those whom God is transforming by his love and those to whom the first group is sent in order to embody God’s love” (p. 77).

He goes on in Ephesians 1:20-2:22 to talk about how God in Christ achieved the victory that formed this transformed and transforming group. It begins with the assertion of Christ’s kingship and his conflict with the powers in which he subverts their deathly control over humans, and the power of sin, and their divisions against each other. Through the cross, people are brought from death to life, and from hostile divisions to one new humanity that embodies God’s presence on earth, the temple.

In chapter 3, Paul embodies in his own ministry as an apostle, including his humiliations and imprisonment, the cruciform life and victory of Christ. Paul’s prayer at the end of chapter 3 speaks of the ways God empowers subversive actors like Paul, and the church in the fulfillment of their role in this cosmic war. Chapters 4:1-6:18 then call the Ephesian church into this warfare, where they act as the Divine Warrior. Gombis emphasizes that this is not culture warfare against people and not warfare carried out in arrogance, but rather a church in its unity, and purity, and sacrificial service, and humility that embodies the cross-shaped life.

I not only appreciated the overarching dramatic perspective Gombis gives us of this letter but his willingness to share his own participation in efforts to embody these truths in a church in urban Springfield, Ohio where he was involved at the time this book was written (he has since taken an academic post in Grand Rapids, Michigan). The book reflects extensive research on the cosmic warfare elements in Ephesians and Jewish thought of the time, a vision of Ephesians that is both faithful to the text and captures our imaginations in a fresh way, and is good scholarship that is written to serve the very church he sees as a central actor in this drama of God’s triumph.

Tomorrow’s post will feature an interview with Timothy Gombis.