What Has God Done?

What is confessed [in the New Testament] is not an internal religious or mystical feeling, nor is it a series of spiritual or moral teachings, nor a system of propositional dogmatics.  It is rather the work of God in the life and death of a historical person (G. Ernest Wright: God Who Acts, p. 67)

The entire Bible is made up of stories.  The "theology," or meaning, of the stories emerges from a people's reflection on why particular events actually happened the way they did.  In seeking to explain why and how God delivered a group of slaves from captivity in Egypt, "theology" developed.  In seeking to interpret history, both individual and communal, the Israelites began to form their concepts of the God who had chosen them.  There was simply no explanation of "what happened" except that God had a reason and a purpose for calling them out of darkness into His marvelous light.  He had plans for this weak and helpless nation, and that was through them, to reveal His power and His glory. 

The power of the Bible rests in its "I was there and I saw it happen" tone.

Later, as the Psalms tell us, the people drifted away from God because they forgot what He had done.  They forgot to remember what He had done for them!  The earliest "liturgies" were songs of praise and thanksgiving for deliverance.  Someone would recite the mighty works of God in words or in song, and the people would remember and rejoice with food, drink, thanksgiving, and praise.  The festivals were times of remembering their history.

Unlike the Greek philosphers who sought the perfect, ideal, world that lay behind this world, the Jews did not philosophize---they remembered their history and reflected on what it meant.  The apostles did not preach a "way of life," such as the stoics and the epicureans did among the Greeks.  They preached something they had actually lived through, although they at the time did not completely understand what it meant.  It was only later, under the annointing of the Holy Spirit, that they came to understand its depth of meaning.

The first message was very simple:  This Jesus, whom you crucified, was the Annointed One, and God has raised Him from the dead---and we are witnesses to His resurrection.  Those who believed the Apostles became Christians and wanted to know what that meant in terms of their way of life.  So Paul's epistles begin to deal with the issues that arose:  Is it lawful to....?

For many Christians today, the rules and regulations are the whole story.  But the real question is, "What has God done for us, for me?"  Can I interpret my own history in the light of God acting on my behalf?  Can I look back on my life and recall what He has done for me?  Unfortunately, in our modern churches, there is little room for "recital" and "remembering."  So no one hears the stories of how God continues to reach down and rescue us, to save us from depression and despair and enslavement.  And without the stories, it is hard to have faith in a God of the future---the same God who will continue to hear the cry of His people and act on their behalf.

The little book Guideposts is filled with stories of people who know that God intervened on their behalf.  And reading their stories helps us to look up in praise and thanksgiving to the One Who still rescues the helpless.  More of us need to recall how God saved us and open our mouths to proclaim His mighty work on our behalf!