The New Humanity . . .

THE NEW JERUSALEM

The heavenly Jerusalem is the free woman; she is our mother. Gal. 4:26

This is the only place in scripture where the mother of the Christian is clearly identified. God is our father, to be sure, as the Bible often reminds us; but it is only in this line from Paul’s pen that we are told about our mother, thus completing the family imagery. Brothers and sisters are to be aware of their mother as well as their father, and it is here that our mother is identified as “the Jerusalem which is above.”

The symbolism of mother is common to scripture. Jeremiah refers to Babylon when he says: “But your mother is covered with shame, disgraced is the woman who bore you” (Jer. 50:12). Psalms 87 hails Zion as the mother of nations. Ezekiel, convinced of the validity of the proverb “Like mother, like daughter,” condemns the idolatry of Israel by saying that her mother was a Hittite. Hosea refers to God’s destruction of Jerusalem in such terms as “I will destroy your mother” (Hosea 4:5).

What is important to Paul in the figure of motherhood is that the disciple of Christ is the son of the free woman. To him this is the new Jerusalem as contrasted with “the present Jerusalem,” which represents the old covenant with all its bondage. In the allegory Hagar, the slave girl, represents law and slavery, while Sarah, the free woman, stands for grace and freedom. This makes the old Jerusalem the mother of those bound by law, while the New Jerusalem is the mother of those born of the Spirit. So the New Jerusalem to Paul is the New Covenant, which is not written upon tables of stone, but engraved upon the heart of man. This is not to say that the New Covenant scriptures are our mother, which is not to be confused with the New Covenant itself. It is rather “the gospel of the grace of God” that bears us unto a new life and is the mother of us all.

It would, therefore, be inappropriate for any of us to pick up a book and say, “This is my mother,” for people were born of the Spirit and in Christ before there was ever such a book. We should rather point to a baby as embodying “the grace of God that has appeared to all men” and to the gospel that he gave to the world as our mother. If it is the person of God who is our father, it is the gospel of God that is our mother. This is the New Covenant that makes brothers and sisters of all who are in Christ. This is the New Jerusalem that is our mother, and the “our” should be emphasized, for Paul’s point is that Hagar is their mother while the free woman is our mother.

It is important that we see that Paul is not talking about two laws in this allegory. It is not that Jesus nailed the old law to his cross only to turn around and give us another law in its place. It is not a better law that is our mother. It is grace and not law at all that is our mother. Paul is talking about two women, one of whom represents law (not just the Mosaic law, but any system of law) and the other represents grace. When he says “Cast out the slave girl and her son,” he is telling us that if we choose law for our mother we will most certainly be children of bondage. It is noteworthy that in assuring us that we are sons of the free woman and not the slave girl that he goes on to say “It is for this freedom that Christ has set us free.”

This allegory and the reference to the New Jerusalem is as relevant to us as today’s newspaper, for most of the problems in our congregations, if not also in our personal lives, is our failure to be free people in Jesus and thus accept “the Jerusalem that is above” as our mother. Our carnal nature beckons us to law-keeping. Our pride drives us to legalism. It is only the poor in spirit that accepts his inability to merit salvation and to rely upon God’s grace. Much of our worry and frustration is based upon our struggle with law, which is a slavish yoke upon our backs. Only when we stand before God as free people in Christ, liberated from men and their demands, do we see the New Jerusalem as our mother.

So Ezekiel’s proverb “Like mother, like daughter” is appropriate to us too. If we make our own interpretations and opinions into laws, demanding that others submit to them if they are to be “fellowshipped,” then we can be expected to behave as children of the slave girl. We will be uneasy around people who do not agree with us on all the preferred doctrines. They will be there and we will be here, and there will be no communication, and brotherhood will have lost all meaning. We will tithe our “mint, anise and cummin” and be negligent of the things that matter most. We will stifle growth in ourselves and others through fear of new ideas and by discouraging diversity of viewpoint.

Paul includes another important truth in the allegory of the Jerusalems, and that is that the children of the slave girl can be counted on always to persecute the children of the free woman. It seems never to fail. Regardless of the church (or most any institution for that matter), whenever a man takes his stand for freedom and is no longer willing to uphold the sectarian demands of partyism, resolving to receive all God’s people equally as his brothers, he is going to be persecuted. That is what the apostle is saying: “But just as in those days the natural-born son persecuted the spiritual son, so it is today.” So long as a brother is true to Hagar as his mother, being a “good member,” he can be, and often is, everything from lukewarm to worldly and still be in good standing. But let him turn to Sarah as his mother (“Christ set us free to be free men”), and start be having as a free man instead of a party man, and every little thing he ever did, as well as things he never did, will be remembered against him.

There is a denomination known as “The Church of the New Jerusalem,” started by that mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. I would that our own Churches of Christ could truly be congregations of the New Jerusalem. Too often we behave as if the old Jerusalem had borne us. Frequently these days I am witness to some brother’s struggle to be a free man, or it may be an assembly’s determination to test the validity of that myth called congregational autonomy. It is nearly always the same old story. Men are either labeled with some stigma, or they are fired, or they are written up. Congregations are isolated by “the main line” and branded as unsound or liberal. Effort is made to destroy the dissenter economically. The “loyal churches” will pull away as many members as possible from the assembly that dares to be different. And noted evangelists, who know how to get along, will not conduct meetings for them. What a loss that is! So autonomous are we that if a church chooses to go its own way it is destined to be destroyed, if possible, by the keepers of orthodoxy.

So long as this condition exists our mother is not the New Jerusalem, but rather the old. It is Ishmael persecuting Isaac all over again. It is the flesh against the spirit, the old against the new, the slave against the free. We will be the church of the New Jerusalem only as we are free enough to allow each other and our various congregations to be our own unique selves in Christ Jesus. Sarah is our mother when we are so liberated from the law and partyism that we can, because of God’s grace toward us, allow our brother to be different from ourselves. Hagar has borne us along enough. Let’s cast out the slave girl and her son and be children of the free woman!

This is what Heb. 12:22 is urging upon us, in another reference to the New Jerusalem. In contrast to that religion that caused Moses to say “I shudder with fear” is that which brings man into communion with God through the person of Jesus Christ. “You stand before Mount Zion,” we are assured, “and the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem.” He observes that the Christian comes to Jesus and the New Covenant, to grace and freedom, not to law and works.

In Rev. 21 John sees all this and even more in his description of the New Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from God. Admittedly it sounds like a description of heaven, which is the common interpretation, but this can hardly be since verse 24 tells of how pagan kings of earth will live by its light and how they will be influenced by its spirituality. Or one might say, as do the compilers of The Jerusalem Bible, that chapter 21:1-8 is a description of heaven, while 21:9-27 is “the messianic Jerusalem” on earth in the end-time.

For our purposes here it is enough to say that John, in drawing upon the imagery in Ezekiel, is describing the institution of the New Covenant, the people of grace (it is people, not a place that he describes), in its ultimate glory both on earth and in heaven. If it is easy to confuse heaven and earth in reading of John’s New Jerusalem, let it remind us of how much heaven there can be in our earthly experiences if we will but choose heaven over hell.

When the Spirit fills us with holiness and goodness, his holiness and goodness, and when we are a united, loving, happy people, filled with the knowledge of God and rejoicing in hope, we will indeed be the New Jerusalem on earth, “a foretaste of glory divine.”

“He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone.”

Such richness of blessings can be and should be now as well as then. It is by being of Hagar that we cause each other to weep and make the church a place of fear and hate. A Spirit-filled, free people will so love each other as to wipe away all tears and to count death only as an open door to greater joys. In Christ the old world is gone. The best of earth as well as heaven is for God’s people, the New Humanity.—the Editor