Even when the church has done its best to discern the signs of the times, to understand what are the powers at work in the world, and to point to the issues where decisions have to be made in the conflict between the reign of God and the power of evil, this understanding is partial, limited, and distorted. The human situation is more complex and subtle than even the best Christian analysis can penetrate. Therefore the church cannot make a total identification of conversion to Christ with a particular set of ethical decisions based on its own analysis. It must speak to the best of its ability about what obedience to Christ will involve. But it must also recognize that its own ethical perceptions are limited and blurred by its own sinful self-interest. In preaching Christ it will certainly make clear (perhaps more effectively by example than by word) that conversion will have ethical implications. But it must also be ready to be surprised by the fresh insights of the converts into the ethical implications of the gospel and must expect to have to revise and correct its own patterns of obedience. This point is obscured when we think of mission in terms of “foreign missions.” In this case the sending church is insulated from the correction that it needs to receive from the new converts. Mission, as I have insisted, is not just church extension. It is an action in which the Holy Spirit does new things, brings into being new obedience. But the new gifts are for the whole body and not just for the new members. Mission involves learning as well as teaching, receiving as well as giving.
The church misunderstands itself if it thinks that it is itself the place where the truth and righteousness of the reign of God are embodied as against the reign of evil in the world. This ancient temptation to identify the church with the kingdom of God seems to be present again in some manifestations of the theology of liberation. The relation of the church to the kingdom is a more complex one and, I am convinced, can be truly grasped only by means of the trinitarian model.
Conversion is to Christ. It is primarily and essentially a personal event in which a human person is laid hold of by the living Lord Jesus Christ at the very center of the person’s being and turned toward him in loving trust and obedience. Christ is the Son of the Father by whom all things are made, sustained, and ordered toward their true end, anointed by the Spirit to proclaim the kingdom of his Father and to manifest it in bearing upon himself the sin of the world.
Conversion to Christ is therefore also commitment to be with him and with all who are so committed to continuing in the power of the same anointing, proclaiming, and bearing. It is commitment to follow Jesus, with all who are so committed, along the way of the cross—the way of fearless and trustful encountering and enduring the power of evil in the contemporary world.
The company of those so committed and so following does not possess in itself the fullness of understanding or of obedience. It is a learning community. Part of that learning will be the prophetic discernment in the power of the Spirit of the issues where evil is to be encountered and endured. Part of it will be the receiving of correction and enlargement by those whom the Spirit calls in discipleship. The Spirit is not the property of the community but is its lord and guide, going ahead of the church and using both its proclamation and its endurance to bring fresh people to conversion. The church cannot lay down in advance for such people what commitment will mean but must, like Peter in the house of Cornelius, learn from them new lessons about its own obedience. As a learning community that can only press forward from partial to fuller understanding of the Father’s reign, the church will know that it cannot impose its own ethical insights at any one time and place upon those whom the Spirit calls into its company. It must always press on toward fuller obedience but at the same time proclaim Christ as Lord above and beyond its own faulty obedience, and expect and welcome the correction of those whom the Spirit calls into commitment to Christ.