Let the Bird Fly: Life in a World Given Back to Us

By Wade R Johnston

It's easy for Christians in our day to become fearful and confused. From doctrinal debates to culture wars, some Christians feel like they move from one crisis to another. Christ didn't die and rise for us to live afraid, however, and our crucified and risen Savior ascended to rule all things for our good. We are not a people without hope. We have Christ. Let the Bird Fly reminds readers that we are a free people, bought with the price of Christ's own blood. We are free to weigh the issues of the day, to engage our neighbor, to live out our callings, and know who we are no matter what: redeemed children of God. At the heart of the Christian life is a spoken word, God's absolution, the declaration that Christ's righteousness is our own through faith. From this our Christian life flows and in this we find our confidence to live, love, and labor for our neighbor. Law and gospel become lenses through which we see our world and others. Together with the two kinds of righteousness, civil and divine, Christians have a sort of diagnostic tool for navigating life in a world given back to us as a penultimate gift. We are graced to live beyond ourselves and the here and now. We are gifted to consider and look forward to more than those live without the optimism and freedom of sins forgiven. We are turned outside of ourselves and grounded, even as we are made new and set loose to dare to live as though there is more to life than this life. In short, precisely when fear seems most tempting, Christ calls us to let the bird fly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 1517 Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781945978364

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Let the Bird Fly: Life in a World Given Back to Us

© 2019 Wade Johnston

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Published by:

1517 Publishing

PO Box 54032

Irvine, CA 92619-4032

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Names: Johnston, Wade, 1977– author. | Berg, Mike, 1978– writer of supplementary textual content.

Title: Let the bird fly : life in a world given back to us / by Wade Johnston ; foreword by Mike Berg.

Description: Irvine, CA : 1517 Publishing, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: ISBN 9781945978357 (softcover) | ISBN 9781948969291 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781945978364 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Religion and sociology. | Christian life. | Forgiveness of sin. | Apologetics.

Classification: LCC BT738 .J64 2019 (print) | LCC BT738 (ebook) | DDC 261.8—dc23

Cover art by Brenton Clarke Little

And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.

—Mark 5:15

To my friends Michael Berg, Peter Hermanson, and Ben Leyrer, for letting the bird fly with me.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

1. Original Sin and the Bound Will

2. Justification and the Sinner-Saint

3. Law and Gospel Defined

4. Law and Gospel Done

5. Christian Freedom and Vocation

6. Human Value and Rights

7. Two Kinds of Righteousness and Two Realms

8. Stepping outside the Fortress

9. Clothed and in Our Right Mind

Foreword

Michael Berg

Imagine the baptism of a little child. The pastor pours water on the sleeping infant. She is startled by the cold water and starts to whimper, but she does not scream. Instead she readjusts her tiny body in the arms of her godmother. Before this, the pastor made the sign of the cross upon her head and on her heart to, as he stated, Mark her as one redeemed by Christ crucified. The gesture was a symbol of salvation. She was claimed by Christ. This happened at the cross and at the font. In fact, the two come crashing together for the tiny girl at her baptism. She is baptized into Christ—more than that, into His death, burial, and resurrection. She is intimate with Christ. What could be more intimate than dying and rising with someone? It is a rescue. She inherited her parents’ sin, but now she inherits the riches of her new family. She is tattooed with the cross, marking her as righteous, as holy, as a child of God with all the rights that come with this adoption.

But that sign of the cross has a dual meaning. She is weighed down on this baptism day. She will bear a cross, many in fact. There will never be a day in which she does not die and rise. Her sinful nature will be killed in repentance, and her new self will be resurrected to live anew. It’s gospel. It’s wonderful. It’s freeing. It means every day is a new day. It means that she never has to worry about her eternal future. She belongs. She belongs to Christ. Nobody can take away her baptism into Christ. Nobody can undo this day. Nobody can take away her heaven. She will never have to worry, Does God love me? She will never have to fret, Did I do enough to make my Father happy? She is righteous in Christ. She wears a new robe, one of righteousness that covers all her sins.

But there is still the cross. The gift of eternal bliss does not make this life bliss. She will bear a cross, many in fact. Each cross will remind her of His cross and her baptism into it. Each cross will put to death her sinful nature as she lives for others. It won’t be easy. But it won’t destroy her either. She is intimate with Christ, very intimate, death-and-resurrection intimate. She will be called to many vocations. Right now she is simply daughter, but soon she will be student and then who knows? The possibilities are almost endless. In each calling, she will be the coworker of Christ. He will put her on as a mask and love the world through her. And every person she meets will be Christ to her. Her life will be a Christological endeavor. And she will suffer for it just as Christ suffered. It will be another thing they share, intimately. Because of this, she will have every reason to not despair. Christ has taken her along for a ride through death already. She’s already been through it all with Him in the waters of baptism. So He says to His little one, Go. I grant you permission to enter the darkness. You will come out the other side with Me, just as we did before.

She has nothing to fear now. Could anything be more traumatic than what she went through at the font? She is free to venture all things—to be what she has been made to be. She does not have to fear God’s law. Christ has lived in her place. No one can accuse her. With this greatest threat no longer a threat, she truly is free. So what is she to do now? I always imagined Martin Luther asking the same question. As he realized that he was righteous not by law but by faith in Christ, he must have wondered, What’s a monk to do now? Much of his energy and effort was geared toward pleasing God. Much of his worry was about his own standing before God. All of his existence was subservient to this question, Am I right before God? Freed from this tyranny, what was a monk to do? To be fair, of course, the monasteries did much good for their neighbors and continue to do so, and Luther (the Augustinian friar) was no cloistered hermit. Still the question was there—what’s a monk to do now?

An ethical reorientation of sorts occurs. No one can please God, not one. It’s impossible. It is also unnecessary because Christ did this in the sinner’s place. No longer concerned with a vertical ethical relationship (between human and God), what’s a sinner (now made saint) to do with all of this time and energy? Love. So now the ethical orientation is horizontal. And it is a burden. It is a cross. But it is also full of joy. Vocation—that is, God calling a Christian into neighbor relationships—is the setting for this baptismal dying and rising. The Old Adam (sinful nature) hates it. He is only able to love selfish sin. But he is put to death, and a new person arises. This saint cannot do anything but love selflessly. It’s who he is. It’s Christ living and working through His saints. And it is a privilege.

This is the world our little girl, newly baptized, will enter. She is sinner-saint. It will be a battle. The cross will never be very far. This is also the world in which you and I live. Full of a lot of sinners. Full of a lot sinner-saints, too. Full of deeply flawed people and institutions. Full of nightmares from which we do not wake. Ethical questions abound. Dr. Johnston will not guide us through all of them. Rather, Pastor Johnston offers us a primer about life: Who we are, why we are here, and whom do we serve?

We are sinner-saints. There is no reformation of the sinner. He’s dead. Something more drastic occurs—a death and resurrection. Now if this is true, everything changes: how we look at ourselves, our lives, our relationship with God, and our relationship with others. This is the beginning of ethics. One of God’s goals for us is to beat the piety out of us, or, should we say, the false piety out of us. He will graciously block off every avenue we construct to climb the ladder of righteousness by law. He will free us for freedom’s sake. The relationship with God is no longer an employer-employee association—that is, I perform certain tasks and I get paid certain wages. That’s a good thing, for if this were true, I would only learn to hate my employer for the only wage I receive is death.

We have nowhere to go with this fake piety. He beats it out of us even if it means some suffering. We have nowhere to go but to Him. He is our righteousness. I can only offer Him faith, and even that I cannot do. The Spirit reveals the good news to me and creates a living faith from a dead heart. My life looks different now, even if the same suffering remains. The people around me look different too. They are not for me to use. They are not objects of my good deeds so that I might maintain my piety. No, now they are valued. They are valuable even though they are as flawed as I am. They are people for whom Jesus died. I have value in Christ, and they have value too. Not only that, but we have purpose, divine purpose. Each vocation, as ordinary as it might seem to the world, has value. Each vocation is a part of God’s economy of love, which He carries out in minute detail.

Vocation is also the setting for human flourishing. We want and should work for the flourishing of our neighbors. We do this in our family callings and in our career callings but also in our civic callings (voter, mayor, etc.). Here is where ethics, vocation, and love come together in the political sphere. We value our neighbors and want for them whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. And what could be more true and beautiful than the peace of God found in the forgiveness of sins through Christ? So vocation is also the setting for evangelism. Christ values our neighbors, and we do too. We desire them to know the mind of Christ. So our innate fortress mentality, which closes us off from our neighbor and the world around us, must die with the Old Adam every day, drowned in the waters of baptism, and a new person must arise by the power of Christ to do this heavy lifting: talking with other people not like us!

Here apologetics, a subset of evangelism, is so helpful. Can we listen? Can we learn a new vocabulary? Can we be patient? Can we strive not to win the argument but rather win a hearing for the gospel? The Old Adam can’t, but the newly risen guy can. We listen, we talk, we reason, we discuss, we laugh, we cry, we do all of these very human things with our fellow sinners so we might also present this Christ to them. It is such good news for them. Then we let the Spirit do His work. And when He does His work, it is a beautiful thing. What a delight to watch the burden melt away as a sinner becomes a sinner-saint! Now