Unity in Christ's servant leadership

In the midst of social divisions, I have been reflecting on a passage in the letter to the Ephesians that describes God's will for unity.

St Paul writes that God has revealed the mystery of his will, which will unfold at the right time: 'to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ' (Eph. 1:9-10; see also Col. 1:15-20).

Thus, God's overarching plan for heaven and earth has been to unite them both under the leadership of Christ. 

Before unpacking what Christ's leadership looks like, it's important to understand how we believe God has guided Old Testament and Early Church history towards making Christ head of all things.

Guiding history towards Christ

In the light of this revelation of God's will, the Early Church began understanding the events, writings and even key people of the Old Testament as signposts to Christ (e.g. Lk. 24:44).

For example, the first human Adam becomes understood as the prototype for Christ. St Paul compares the two, saying the first Adam was a living being, and the last Adam (Christ) was a life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). 

God's promise to Abraham, too, is understood as being fulfilled in Christ, the Seed of Abraham through whom all peoples on earth are blessed (Gal. 3:14-16).

Further, King David is seen as a promise of Christ, who will inherit King David's throne and whose kingdom will never end (Luke 1:31-33).

These are just a few examples, but through it all, the Church has understood that God has guided history towards the coming of the Messiah, whose holy life offered to God saves humanity from sin, death and evil. God has exalted him, making him our kingly high priest (Heb. 5:8-10) who intercedes for us and ministers to God in the heavenly Holy of Holies, where he waits for all enemies to submit to him (10:13), the last of which is death (1 Cor. 15:26). 

Further, although this plan primarily concerns Jewish history, God's intention has been to use the Jewish people, culminating in the Messiah, to bring salvation to all nations (e.g. Eph. 2:11-13). The Early Church gradually understood that through Christ, the barrier dividing Jew and Gentile (2:14-18), and indeed all categories of people (e.g. Gal. 3:26-29), has been replaced by unity in submission to Christ, the Lord of all. 

In other words, God has been uniting this divided world under Christ's leadership.

The nature of Christ's leadership

Christ's leadership is not characterised by an attitude of superiority or an abuse of power, but rather by humility. As Jesus teaches his disciples, those who want to be great should not imitate the political or business world around them, in which leaders flaunt their authority ('lord it over them'), but rather the greatest among them should be servants of all (Mk. 10:42-45).

Thus, Christ's leadership is sacrificial. He uses his power to support and strengthen those he leads. St Paul uses the metaphor of a marriage to describe the relationship between Christ and the Church, saying Christ is like the husband and the Church is like the wife (Eph. 5:23). But St Paul challenges his readers' expectations of the husband's authority, saying Christ uses his headship not for self-gain but rather to consider and respond to the Church's needs (vv. 25-20). 

This headship is expressed in the Orthodox Christian icon below, entitled 'Christ the Bridegroom':

Christ the Bridegroom

It is through Jesus' obedience to God through suffering that he most fully displays his love for his Bride the Church, making her holy through his sacrifice (Eph. 5:25-26). Christ uses his authority not as a tool for control but as a vehicle for healing. 

Also, Christ's sacrifice is not that of a doormat allowing people to bully him, but that of a soldier exchanging himself for prisoners held hostage (and then escaping the prison, tearing it down as he goes!). The difference between the doormat and the soldier here is that the former has no strength, whereas the latter offers the strength he has to help others.

In other words, St Paul writes that Jesus let go of his position as God the Son in heaven and humbled himself by becoming a human and then offering his life, and thus God raised him to the place of highest honour, 

'that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father' (Phil. 2:6-11).

Christ has become leader of all things precisely because he has become servant of all.

Unity through worshipping God in Christ

God's will is to unite all things in Christ. However, we live in a divided world that does not recognise Jesus as Lord. This world submits to other rulers that oppose Christ's teachings and authority. The struggle exists in each of us between turning to Christ in repentance or yielding to the sin that crouches at our doors. Our divisions and conflicts come from our rejection of God (James 4:1-4). 

Christ is head of all things, and we see this most clearly through his being the head of the Church. (By 'Church' I mean God's people in Christ, united by the Holy Spirit; defining this further is beyond the scope of this blog post.) Together, Christ and the Church form one inseparable body (1 Cor. 12:13), which Christ leads and serves. Thus, the Church is the fullest expression to the world of God's will for all things. Although the Church often fails at living up to her calling, she is the clearest sign of what it looks like to submit to the servant leadership of Christ.

Among all the Church's activities, it is her worship that most clearly reveals the unity that God intends between heaven and earth. Through her worship, the Church on earth joins the worship that is happening in heaven (see Heb. 8:1-5) among the Saints, angels and God: the communion feast of the kingdom of God that is the destination of all things (see Isa. 25:6-8).

Thus, it is also God's will that we worship him (see Jn. 4:23-24), since it is in worshipping him that we are united under the leadership of Christ, the high priest and worship leader who serves in the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 8:2).

This means that the closer we move towards the Church, the closer we move towards Christ (and the opposite is true: the more we separate ourselves from the Church, the more we separate ourselves from Christ). If we love Christ, we must also love Christ's Bride, since they are one.

Together with the whole Church, we wait for our Bridegroom's return, worshipping God and sharing with the world the Gospel message of both warning and hope that Christ is Lord: warning because he will 'put all his enemies under his feet' (1 Cor. 15:25), and hope because 'blessed are all who trust in him' (Ps. 2:12).