Ch 4 The Essential Relational Progression

Throughout the course of church history and in the global church today, the identity of God’s face has not always been on the same theological trajectory. Likewise, the perceived identity of Jesus has often been on a different relational path. This obviously has repercussions on what composes the gospel we claim and follow.

The integral theological trajectory of God and relational path of Jesus emerged from God’s distinguished relational context and unfolded in the irreducible relational process of God’s whole relational terms. And their trajectory and path emerged and unfolded as the direct response to our human condition. The experiential truth of the trajectory of God’s face and the relational reality of the path of Jesus’ person are integrated to compose the whole gospel; and the gospel’s relational outcome integrally emerges and unfolds in the essential relational progression of the whole-ly (both whole and holy/uncommon) God’s trajectory and relational path.

At this point perhaps you wonder: As important as this theology is, do we really need to distinguish all this for our practice of discipleship? Only if we want to claim the whole gospel and follow Jesus in whole theology and practice.

Therefore, Christians who follow Jesus on this theological trajectory and relational path must also undergo this essential relational progression and thereby undertake its progress. This relational process and its progress, however, are impeded when Jesus’ whole person is prevented from emerging such that the full profile of God’s face does not unfold. Typically, Christians inadvertently impede the relational progression of Jesus by a biased interpretive lens from an incomplete Christology, which doesn’t embrace Jesus’ whole person due to their underlying reduced theological anthropology. Moreover, Christians conveniently impede the relational path of Jesus by the skewed effects from a truncated soteriology (saved only from partial sin), which doesn’t encompass Jesus’ whole relational response to our human condition due to their underlying weak view of sin that doesn’t include sin as reductionism. Here again, our theological anthropology and view of sin emerge as inescapable issues, and their shaping of our existing diverse condition in theology and practice is critical to why and how Jesus’ relational progression is essential.

Following Jesus is limited by constraining issues when discipleship is undertaken with a servant model and with related models such as of sacrifice. The issue, for example, with the servant model is not only why we serve (or sacrifice) but how—that is, with whom are we involved. When we serve, how relationally connected are we with Jesus’ whole person, not just his name or merely with his teachings or example? To be relationally connected with the whole of Jesus requires the direct relational involvement with “where I am”; and this primacy is composed by his essential relational progression, which must be understood to determine “there will my servant be also” (Jesus’ relational imperative paradigm for serving, Jn 12:26).

However, even though our theology may appear correct, more often than not our practice is incomplete (as practiced by the church in Sardis, Rev 3:1-2), misdirected (as practiced by the church in Ephesus, Rev 2:2-4), or misguided (as practiced by the church in Thyatira, Rev 2:19-23). Usually in inadvertent or unknowing ways, these diverse models of discipleship limit the direct relational involvement with Jesus on his relational path, whereby the relational progression essential for Jesus’ whole person and his whole disciples either is not paid attention to or ignored. The accompanying bias of such models prevents meeting the hermeneutic challenge of Jesus, on the one hand. But, antecedent to this problem is neither addressing the underlying theological anthropology nor dealing with the influence of reductionism that, on the other hand, directs disciples on a different relational path from Jesus without the relational progression. Whether from these models or any other fragmentary frameworks, the relational consequence has been the diverse condition of disciples and discipleship, which currently prevails over any movement in the relational progression essential for all Jesus’ followers in the image and likeness of the whole-ly God, the unmistakable Whole-ly Trinity.

Therefore, in our diverse condition and the fragmentary context of the church today, it is critical for us to draw the distinction between the Christian faith as religion and its Rule of Faith, and the Christian faith as relationship distinguished by the relational involvement of trust (the work[sing.] of God in Jn 6:29) and its Relationship of Faith. The former could be doctrinally sound/correct, but only the latter integrates the relational progression of the whole-ly God for its primacy in relationship together. The former may highlight the main information about God and the Rule of Faith, but only the latter experiences the relational involvement of God in the reality of the Relationship of Faith, the primary nature of which makes all aspects of the former secondary if not a barrier to the latter’s primacy. The former may be able to describe the referential truth of the gospel, but only the latter unfolds both the experiential truth of the whole gospel in its essential relational progression and the relational reality of its whole-ly relational outcome.

All Christians are challenged today by the pivotal juncture of either the parts of what or the whole of whom we will follow to define our theology and determine our practice. More than likely, the diverse parts of what Christians follow will be confronted by the whole of whom we need to follow.

The face of God illuminated God’s presence and involvement in the human context (Num 14:14), which unfolded in God’s definitive blessing to compose the good news of God’s relational response to us for new relationship together in wholeness (Num 6:24-26). As John’s Gospel summarized, the light of God’s face unfolded the brightest in the embodied Word, so that the full profile of God’s face was clearly distinguished and thereby was involved in face-to-face relationship together by “the face of Jesus Christ” (as Paul integrated, 2 Cor 4:6). In this integral relational process, the full profile of God’s face unfolds in the essential relational progression of the irreducible whole of who, what and how God is. Without this full profile, God’s face is incomplete or distorted, and thus often misidentified in theology and misrepresented in practice.

Following Jesus then necessitates following his whole person face to face on his unalterable invariable relational path in the relational progression. This discipleship was problematic for two of Jesus’ disciples found on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-32). At this juncture, their gospel had evaporated into apparent fake news, despite coming face to face with the intrusive gospel of God’s face (24:17-24). How could this happen to his devoted disciples who followed Jesus to the cross? The simple truth is that they failed to recognize the face of Jesus in his essential relational progression, thus they misinterpreted the events of his profile and journeyed in a different direction from Jesus’ relational path.

This diverse direction may not be typical for the journey of most Christians but it is a common path for Christians to take. For example, a prominent challenge, desire or goal for Christians is to become and be more like Jesus. Yet, this has become a notion that essentially neither includes Jesus’ whole person nor involves his ontology and function. To be like Jesus by necessity requires knowing who and what Jesus is and understanding how he is—that is, his whole ontology and function in contrast to fragmentary parts of Jesus. And to know and understand the whole who, what and how Jesus is unfolds only from his essential relational progression. This integral relational process is brought to the forefront in John’s Gospel, which clearly distinguished the incarnation as not just an historical event but the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes of the whole-ly God’s experiential truth and relational reality. The dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes always is in contrast and conflict with anything less and any substitutes, and therefore it always challenges and confronts us in our theology and practice. Given how essential this dynamic is to the incarnation of Jesus’ relational progression, how much of our diverse condition of disciples and discipleship needs to be challenged and confronted by the same dynamic?

To provide the basis for whole theology and practice, John highlights his summary of Jesus’ essential relational progression with “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us…the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, whole in the relational response of grace and truth in relational terms” (Jn 1:14, NIV). Jesus didn’t appear just in his flesh from outer in and “lived among us” (NRSV) in the human context. Further and deeper, his whole person from inner out “dwelled” (skenoo) with us for this sole integral purpose: (1) to fully define (exegeomai, as in exegete) the whole profile of God’s face that “no one has ever seen,” which Jesus is able to reveal because “he is close to the Father’s heart” (Jn 1:18); and (2) in order for human persons to have the experiential truth and relational reality of relationship together with this whole of God, nothing less and no substitutes (1:10-13). On the one hand, all the solas of the Reformation converge in Jesus’ sole relational purpose, yet, on the other hand, the sole purpose of his relational progression takes us beyond those solas—and this progression is essential for our theology and practice to be whole.

Thankfully, by going further than the other Gospels, John’s Gospel helps us understand that the essential relational progression of Jesus’ whole person is both an epistemological issue and a hermeneutic issue; and both these issues are compounded by a relational issue that kept emerging in those faced with following Jesus (as noted earlier, Jn 6:29-30; also in 5:16-30; 8:12-29 and 10:24-39). As the person “close to the Father’s heart,” he “came from the Father” because “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16). Illuminated further and deeper in the primacy of their relationship, Jesus revealed in their integral bond together:

“The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise” (Jn 5:19). “What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me” (12:50). In their essence, “the Father and I are one” (10:30), and with their persons “the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (10:38). Therefore, “whoever sees me sees him who sent me” (12:45), “…has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9); and in essential addition, “the Spirit descending like a dove on him…my Son, the Beloved” (Mk 1:10-11), with whose person Jesus was inseparably involved to enact the relational progression together (Lk 4:1,14,18; 10:21)—the persons essential with the Father to compose the face’s full profile of the Trinity.[1]

What is essential for Jesus’ relational progression and how is it significant for our theology and practice? This how and what converge in who Jesus is.

In the face-to-face encounter revealing the strategic shift of God’s relational response of grace, the Samaritan woman said to Jesus with an open interpretive lens: “I see that you are a prophet, revealing something new.…I know that Messiah is coming…he will proclaim all things to us” (Jn 4:19,25). “I am he,” Jesus vulnerably disclosed, “the one communicating face to face to you” (4:26). What’s the new that’s disclosed here, which can’t be spiritualized—especially by common notions of theology and practice? Jesus focused on and disclosed in relational terms only the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of the Father for the primacy of new relationship together, whose relational progression “has now come” (4:21-24, NIV).

Jesus didn’t inform the Samaritan woman with theological discourse of God’s strategic shift. In this highly counter-cultural encounter, he vulnerably presented to her the experiential truth and relational reality of the Father in face-to-face relationship. Jesus’ intrusive relational path enacted the relational progression of the Father’s person, because “the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing.” Thus, she had an uncommon face-to-face encounter with the Father, because “whoever has seen me has seen the Father”—in contrast to who and what the other disciples experienced with Jesus (Jn 14:5-11).

As the relational progression of his whole person unfolds, nothing less and no substitutes but the whole-ly Trinity unfolds for this new relationship together in wholeness—fulfilling the definitive blessing of the full profile of God’s face, who has “put my name on them as my own family” (Num 6:24-27). Without this essential relational progression, the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of the whole-ly Trinity is neither an experiential truth nor a relational reality. In such absence, therefore, there would be no new relationship together in wholeness to claim in the gospel, thus precluding its relational outcome whereby there would be the whole disciples following Jesus in whole theology and practice.

Jesus’ embodying dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes continues to challenge and confront our diverse theology and practice. The experiential truth and relational reality of the relational progression essential for the Trinity are not rendered to theological notes, doctrine and the archives of our mind; and whatever is so relegated has lost its relational significance. And the key to unlocking any limits and constraints to the ongoing relational progression of the Trinity’s presence and involvement is the Spirit’s epistemological, hermeneutical and ontological work in reciprocal relationship with us (Jn 14:16-18, 26-27; 15:26; 16:13-15). By the person of the Spirit, the Word continues to be palpable, and with the Father “we will come to them and make our home with them as family together” (14:23)—which Paul also made the whole relational outcome for the church (Eph 2:22), not just for some churches but for the global church of Christ (Eph 1:22-23).

When Christians claim the gospel, we supposedly come face to face with Jesus’ person. The only relational work that Jesus made imperative to validate this claim is “that you believe in him whom he has sent” (Jn 6:29)—involving not merely the assent of our mind but our heart’s relational response of trust in his whole person. But, before we claim the validity of our relational work, Jesus clarified intensely: “When a person believes in me, that person does not believe in me only, but in the Father who sent me. When persons perceive me from inner out, they see the Father’s person who sent me” (Jn 12:44-45, NIV). Jesus made unequivocal that “I have come as light into the world” to illuminate the full profile of God’s face, and therefore to magnify the whole-ly Trinity “so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness” (12:46).

The light of Jesus and his gospel becomes hazy when it is refracted by a biased lens that is unable to focus on Jesus’ whole person. The reality of relative darkness remains for Christians when they exist in a theological fog emerging from an incomplete Christology of merely parts of Jesus; this then locates them in an obscure outcome and ambiguous practice from a truncated soteriology (saved only from partial sin). In other words, the gospel encompasses not remaining in the relative darkness of our diverse condition of fragmentary theology and practice and its underlying condition of reduced ontology and function. These are critically urgent conditions that have not undergone the relational progression with Jesus as long as they undertake following a different relational path from the essential relational progression of his whole person.

It almost seems elementary to talk about believing Jesus at this stage of discipleship. In terms of Jesus’ relational progression, however, this is the compelling challenge of the writer of Hebrews in his discipleship manifesto: “Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and progress to maturity, not remaining focused on the foundation of our faith” (Heb 6:1, NIV). In this manifesto the writer pays close attention to God’s communication in the Son (Heb 1:1-3) and our urgent need to follow Jesus’ whole person—the person enacting the whole gospel in his essential relational progression in order to compose the relational significance of what he saved us whole-ly from and to (2:11-12; 8:13; 10:1-10). In God’s whole relational terms, Jesus’ relational progression presents the whole who, what and how of God that is essential to account for the experiential truth and relational reality of the presence of God’s whole-ly face—without whom there is no valid basis to claim relationship together face to face, presumably the gospel of our faith.

In our theology and practice we have to distinguish between what Jesus presented as the main Object of the Rule of Faith (composing our faith as religion), and who Jesus presented as the primary Subject of the Relationship of Faith (composing our faith only as relationship). At the heart of the issues of the person presented is the integral reality of presence: that is, the person present beyond the fragmentary referential terms of the embodied Object—who can only be observed within the limits of those terms—to have the presence of Subject in whole relational terms, who is vulnerably involved to be experienced within the context of relationship, and therefore who is inseparable from the distinguished Face engaged in relationship Face to face (cf. paneh, presence, face, Ex 33:14). How the person Jesus presented is defined and how Jesus’ person’s presence is defined both directly involve a relational process that has issues needing to be clarified, which emerges with responses in relational terms to these interrelated questions:

The integral reality of presence does not emerge from the Object, who is neither vulnerably present nor relationally involved but embodied simply to be observed and be the object of any faith and theological or biblical study. In pivotal contrast, it is the Subject’s vulnerable closeness and relational involvement that ongoingly defines this integral reality; and the experiential reality (neither virtual nor augmented) of his presence only has significance in relationship face to face, which then necessitates reciprocity compatible with his presence—as opposed to mere belief in the Object. This may require reworking our theological anthropology of defining the person from outer in to inner out and of restoring the primacy of relationship. Moreover, the Subject-person’s face-to-face presence opens to others an integral reality beyond what may appear probable, seem logical or exceed the limits of convention. This is problematic for narrowed-down thinking in a conventional mindset (e.g. from tradition, a quest for certainty, or even just habit). Consequently the depth of his presence is often reacted to by attempts to reduce it to the probable, the logical, and to renegotiate it to familiar (and more comfortable) referential terms,^{^[2]} or reacted to simply by avoiding his presence—all of which refocuses the primary attention to secondary things about his person at the loss of his real presence. Openness to his presence requires a compatible interpretive framework and lens that are conjointly qualitative and relational, which are not the common practice found among Christians. Turning to the primary qualitative-relational focus on Jesus’ presence necessitates ongoing engagement in the process of integrating the secondary into the primary (PIP).

On this basis then, ‘presence’ is least observed by those at a relational distance from the person observed, and is most experienced by those relationally involved with the person presented. The limited, constrained or absent experience of presence is evidence of the human relational condition, our relational condition. This is the reality that Jesus made definitive in Luke 10:21, which we need to take seriously for the epistemic process if we truly want to know and understand God.

The relational connection of those involved with his presence deepens ongoingly in this process:

When it is necessarily made from one’s whole person without the absence of mind or loss of reason, and made in the hermeneutical cone (feedback process for further understanding) with the epistemic humility (subordinating our efforts) affirming the primary determination by the Word to communicate whole knowledge and understanding—while openly engaged with any of one’s fragmentary information for the epistemological clarification and hermeneutic correction necessary to be whole in one’s knowledge and understanding.

In ongoing reciprocal relational involvement with the Spirit in this relational epistemic process, the above process adequately minimizes the human shaping and construction of the person Jesus presents and, most importantly, consistently allows for the epistemological clarification and hermeneutic correction needed for any re-presenting (as in misrepresenting) of Jesus’ person in our theology and practice. Does this speak to our existing condition, individually and collectively?

Christians have commonly depicted Jesus’ face in diverse ways, notably with the bias of their dominant surrounding context (social, cultural, economic or religious, not to mention political). For example, there are idealized portraits of a white, well-groomed man (as by Warner Sallman in 1940), or different snapshots of Jesus’ face in various situations—the most prominent, of course, is his profile on the cross. None of these faces, or their sum, provide the full profile of Jesus’ face. In fact, the alternative facts composing the profile of these faces distort the reality of Jesus’ face with the alternative reality of something less or some substitute. After Philip responded to Jesus’ call to “Follow me,” he told Nathanael that they found the Messiah, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Based on that profile of Jesus’ face, Nathanael rightfully questioned the significance of this portrait of Jesus’ face: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:45-46).

Until Christians see the full profile of Jesus’ face, we all need to question the significance of Jesus’ portrayal in our theology and practice. If we do not have in our embrace Jesus’ whole face, how do we have face-to-face relationship together? Without the full profile of Jesus’ face, with whom can we claim to have relationship of any significance? Without Jesus’ whole face, we are relationally not connected with the essential person of Jesus. And if we are relationally disconnected from his whole person—even though our theology could be doctrinally sound—how can we profess to follow Jesus and on what basis is our discipleship formed? All of Jesus’ disciples need to answer these questions. Our discipleship is challenged to follow nothing less and no substitutes but the relational progression essential to the full profile of Jesus’ whole-ly face.

When Jesus declares in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes that believing him is believing in the Father, the presence of the whole-ly God whom Jesus presents cannot be ignored, selectively received or misunderstood. The both-and of Jesus’ person, therefore, has no options. At the same time, there is a critical either-or of what Jesus presents: Either Jesus presents nothing less and no substitutes for the presence of the whole-ly God, or this God is not present no matter what Jesus presents. What do we in effect believe if it is only the latter? And whatever the quantity or sum of those latter parts, how essential are they to Jesus’ person, the Subject of our faith?

Given what Jesus discloses of his person and not what we may speak for him, there is no alternative for his embodying dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes. The unmistakable incarnation of who, what and how Jesus presents is nonnegotiable and not subject to our diverse terms, though this Good News certainly has been ongoingly subjected to our diverse condition. “Whoever truly believes me believes in the relational progression of the Father’s and the Spirit’s presence and involvement together—nothing less and no substitutes.”

Furthermore, Jesus’ relational progression is not only essential for the presence and involvement of the whole-ly Trinity but for the relational progression of our face-to-face relationship with the Trinity, the whole and holy Trinity. When Mary anointed Jesus in her intimate involvement with Jesus face to face, the depth of her relational connection anticipated the ultimate sacrifice behind the temple curtain made by Jesus’ whole person: “By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial” (Mt 26:12). In this relational progression, the temple curtain (the holy partition) was torn open to give intimate access to the whole-ly Trinity face to face (highlighted in Heb 9:11-15). The Hebrews manifesto makes it imperative for Jesus’ followers to progress in following him into this intimate connection of ongoing face-to-face involvement (Heb 10:19-22)—in relationship together with the full profile of our face, intimately involved without any veil because “when one is in relational progression with the Lord, the veil is removed” (2 Cor 3:16).

Mary both anticipated the relational progression essential for face-to-face relationship together and also anteceded the intimate involvement necessary for new relationship together in wholeness for all of Jesus’ followers in the Trinity’s family. By already enacting the relational outcome of the gospel, Mary magnified the unveiled face of those who “are being transformed into the same image and likeness of the Trinity” (as Paul illuminated, 2 Cor 3:18).

Implied in the compelling challenge from the Hebrews manifesto is the call to follow Jesus’ whole person beyond what in effect has become convenient in our faith (Heb 10:19-25). The comfort, certainty or security of convenience in theology and practice has been influential in misdirecting us to not be on the same intrusive relational path of Jesus’ relational progression. Further, this misguided focus has been an instrumental distractor to maturing as the whole persons who constitute Jesus’ disciples. Deeper still, it has been a common barrier to intimate involvement in reciprocal relationship together face to face, both with the whole-ly Trinity and with each other as God’s new family.

Christians have been slow to recognize that the existing reality (whether real, alternative or virtual) of comfort, certainty or security from convenience in theology and practice has been consequential in both defining and determining ways:

1. Convenience in theology and practice is formulated with diverse alternatives, all of which become defining as fragmentary substitutes for whole theology and practice—most notably as a reduced theological anthropology and a weak view of sin.

2. Therefore, what these fragmentary substitutes determine are persons and their relationships in subtly reduced ontology and function, unable to be whole and live whole together among themselves, much less make whole in the human context.

These consequences are contrary to the distinguishing faith of relationship (not the faith of religion) as distinguished in Hebrews 11, and they counter the relational progression of God’s purpose and outcome unfolding from the whole gospel: “God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would we all be made complete—the new relationship together in wholeness” (Heb 11:40, NIV).

The relational purpose and outcome of the relational progression—which is essential in order to complete the Trinity’s relational response of love to us in our human relational condition—is face-to-face relationship together in wholeness as God’s new family. The ‘grace alone’ (sola gratia) of salvation cannot be taken out of this relational context and process, or it reduces God’s grace to a virtual commodity that God dispenses for our consumption. In God’s relational response distinguishing grace solely, there is no other purpose nor outcome for the Trinity’s relational progression, who transforms us to be whole in likeness of this essential relational progression. The relational purpose and outcome of the Trinity’s progression further required the intrusive relational path of Jesus to penetrate deeper into our human condition; and this penetrating intrusion was neither convenient to receive nor comfortable to respond to in relationship together face to face. This depth of the gospel is seldom proclaimed, which should make us question the profile of Jesus portrayed in the so-called Good News (or perhaps fake news?).

As Mary anticipated, the transformation to face-to-face relationship with the Trinity was constituted by Jesus tearing open the temple curtain and removing the veil from human faces. Those who respond to Jesus’ call to “Follow me” are distinguished only by reciprocal relationship face to face with him in the relational progression together that destroyed the holy partition between them, whereby now they are distinguished in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes both for Jesus’ person and for theirs. Contrary to what Mary distinguished, however, convenience in theology and practice was still the main issue for the other disciples in her presence, who had a measured response to Jesus’ call, essentially remaining at a relational distance in front of the curtain with their veils still on. We need to account fully for what unfolds in the relational progression to distinguish his followers and what counters it. It is always more convenient and comfortable to keep relational distance from Jesus in relational progression, and thereby, in effect, remain in front of the temple curtain without having to intimately connect face to face with the whole-ly Trinity. Therefore, those who truly “Follow me in my whole person” have to undertake the relational progression to be on the same relational path together “where I am.”

As discussed previously, the essential relational progression emerged with the strategic shift of the Trinity’s response in the whole-ly person presented vulnerably by Jesus to the Samaritan woman—who received him as she responded in the tension of face to face. The relational terms that only the complex Subject of Jesus’ whole person made definitive in this interaction are neither optional nor idealized terms, and certainly cannot be understood as mere referential terms. Jesus’ relationship-specific terms embody the whole-ly God’s integral relational response of grace in the gospel and constitute the only terms by what and how God does relationships for the gospel’s reciprocal relational outcome. Understanding the qualitative significance and relational significance of the gospel, however, does not stop with the strategic relational shift. Further shifts unfold in the relational dynamic of the gospel distinguished by the relationship-specific progression to deepen our understanding and to fulfill our experiential reality for its whole relational outcome—as Jesus made definitive in his family prayer (Jn 17:20-23,26).

And in a further shift by the irreducible Subject of the Word, this gospel will be characterized as more of the improbable and intrusive, thus neither a common nor popular gospel. For all who follow Jesus, this progression is essential to define their persons and to determine their discipleship.

From the moment the Subject of the Word established the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of whole-ly God—“I am he, the person who is communicating face to face to you”—the full profile of God’s face was distinguished unmistakably for only new relationship together, never to be merely observed. What people needed, however, was often not what people wanted (as in Jn 6:60,66, cf. Mk 10:17,21-22); and the desire and pursuit of the latter continues even today to shape theology and practice, notably prevailing in a selective process of consumption (as in the commodity of grace). This was the human condition in Judaism that confronted Jesus to his face, and that the face of God embodied whole-ly in Jesus confronted in all our human condition.

As the whole ontology and function of Subject-God’s relational work of grace (not as referential Object) made a strategic shift with the incarnation, Subject Jesus’ relational work of grace makes a tactical shift for deeper engagement in the relational progression. With this shift, only the whole ontology and function of Jesus makes evident the gospel further in the improbable, and deeply distinguishes his intrusive penetration into the human relational condition.

Jesus emerged in the midst of a religious context pervasive with messianic and covenant expectations, with the surrounding context prevailing in cultural, economic and political stratification. He also encountered the interacting effects of these contextual pressures in his public ministry, yet these effects neither defined nor determined what emerges in the tactical shift of the gospel. The presence of these and other contextual influences, pressures and related problems, however, have importance in the life of Jesus, and accordingly for his followers, and are valuable in our understanding of the gospel, for the following purpose: (1) they help define the pervasive common function from which Jesus’ function was distinguished; and (2) they help identify the prevailing common function from which persons needed to be redeemed—both of which are indispensable for the identity of his disciples (to be discussed in the next chapter). This purpose is realized with the tactical shift. The relational dynamic enacted by Jesus in the tactical shift conjointly distinguished his relational involvement in progression with persons, and distinguished those persons in their relational response in relational-specific progression with his.

We have our first exposure in the Gospels to Jesus’ tactical shift when he called Levi to be redefined, transformed and made whole (Mt 9:9-13). What converges in Levi’s story was nothing less than the embodying of the gospel—that is, the gospel that is contingent on nothing less than a complete Christology and no substitutes for a full soteriology. In calling Levi, Jesus demonstrated the new perceptual-interpretive framework distinguished from what prevailed in common function; and this new framework further needs to be distinguished from what prevails today and thus beyond what exists commonly in theology and practice.

Jesus’ whole person crossed social, cultural and religious boundaries to extend his relational work of grace to Levi, a contemptible low level tax collector who crossed those same barriers (for him) to respond to Jesus in order to connect in relationship together face to face. In this highly unlikely relationship (given Levi’s status), Jesus made evident his tactical shift for deeper involvement in the relational progression to the Father and family, thus beyond Sovereign and kingdom. This was initially demonstrated by the significance of their table fellowship together (including the presence of other tax collectors and sinners) after Levi’s response (Mt 9:10). Making evident the reality of redemptive change, Levi was not only redeemed from the old but freed to relationship together in the new: Dinner together was not a routine activity for pragmatic reasons (as is the Western tendency today, especially in families) but a social communion signifying a depth of relationship together involving friendship, intimacy and belonging^{^[3]}—that is, specifically in the primacy of whole relationship together in the relational progression to whole-ly God’s own family. This relationship would transform Levi and make him whole, the relational reality of which Levi would experience even further in relational progression.

Intrusively as complex Subject and vulnerably as whole person, Jesus’ tactical shift enacts the relationship-specific dynamic in this relational progression for persons like Levi to go from a disciple (and servant) of Jesus to his intimate friend (Jn 15:15), and then to be whole together as family (Jn 14:23; 17:21). As persons, our discipleship must by this nature account for this intimate relationship together; and collectively, our ecclesiology must by this tactical shift account in our church practice for this new relationship together as family—not just friends but sisters and brothers in the primacy of God’s whole-ly family. Anything less and any substitutes in our discipleship and ecclesiology deny the relational outcome of the intrusive Subject’s tactical shift and disconnect us from the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of the whole-ly Trinity’s strategic shift. Thus, the question of what kind of news (good, bad, fake) composes our gospel keeps emerging, which the whole-ly Subject (Jesus, Father and Spirit) holds us accountable to answer.

Past or present, the existing relational condition also deepens and broadens our understanding of sinners and the function of sin. In the trinitarian relational context and process vulnerably engaged by Jesus, sin is the functional opposite of being whole and sinners are in the ontological-relational condition “to be apart” from God’s whole. When sin is understood beyond just moral and ethical failure displeasing to God, sin becomes the functional reduction of the whole of God, thus in conflict with God as well as with that which is and those who are whole. Sin as reductionism is pervasive; and such sinners, intentionally or unintentionally, reflect, promote or reinforce this counter-relational work, even in the practice of and service to church. This is the salvation people needed and yet didn’t often want, because to be saved from sin as reductionism includes by its nature to be made whole and thus to be accountable to live whole—an uncommon life in contrast and conflict with the convenience of the prevailing common.

At Levi’s house Jesus responded to the sin of reductionism in religious practice, both to expose its participants and to redeem his disciples for the relational progression. This involved his tactical shift, which was not about sacrifice and serving—that is, in the common function of the religious community or a reductionist reading of Matthew 20:28, which is common in Christian practice today that is based notably on a servant model.

In his relational work of grace, Jesus made clearly evident the importance of Levi’s whole person and his need to be reconciled to the primary relationships necessary to be whole, thereby functionally signifying his tactical shift for further engagement in the relational progression. For his followers to go beyond sacrifice and service “and learn [manthano, understand as a disciple] what this means [eimi, to be, used as a verb of existence, ‘what this/he is’]” (Mt 9:13), they need to understand the heart of Jesus’ person, not merely the meaning of these words in Hosea. That is, this is not the conventional process of learning as a common rabbinic student but the relational epistemic process characteristic of Jesus’ disciples. This then must by nature be the understanding experienced directly in relationship face to face with Jesus’ whole person, aside from any other titles and distinctions ascribed to him—which Peter struggled with and Mary progressed in. Sacrifice and service never supersede relationship (cf. Jn 12:26). For his followers to get reduced in life and practice to sacrifice or service is to stop following Jesus in the relational progression to the whole-ly Trinity, and therefore to be on a different relational path than the full profile of Jesus. Such reductionism needs to be redeemed for the relationship to progress in the primacy of intimate involvement face to face.

The relational progression is further distinguished with Zacchaeus (briefly discussed in previous chap.). What unfolds from Levi to Zacchaeus is certainly more improbable in contextual terms (Lk 19:1-10). The significance of this was the design of Jesus’ tactical shift, which further illuminated his qualitative innermost distinguished from common function prevailing in human context. Yet, it is not the situation that is most significant but the relational messages, connection and outcome composed by the Subject of the Word—functions that cannot emerge from an Object.

To become rich in this ancient community required power to accumulate wealth at the expense of others.^{^[4]} Chief tax collectors (Levi’s boss) in particular became rich often by their greedy management of a system that depended on imposing unjust taxes and tolls for greater profit. Low-level tax collectors like Levi merely did their dirty work. As a chief tax collector, Zacchaeus not only bore this social stigma but clearly appeared to abuse his power to extort others by his own admission (19:8). He was a sinner in the eyes of all (not just the Pharisees, v.7), who apparently warranted no honor and respect despite his wealth—implied in not being given front-row access to Jesus by the crowd, which he could have even paid for but had to climb a tree with dishonor instead (vv.3-4). The image of a short rich sinner in a tree and the Messiah coming together was a highly unlikely scenario.

In this common context, Jesus said: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must [dei] stay [meno, dwell] at your house today” (v.5). Jesus further made evident in the common’s context the intrinsic qualitative distinction of his relational work of grace from common function. This was not about hospitality necessary on his way to Jerusalem to establish a messianic kingdom. This even went beyond the table fellowship of shared community or friendship. This relational shift of God’s thematic action was only for deeper involvement in the relationship-specific progression, which Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem to constitute in the new creation of God’s family.

Though Zacchaeus certainly was not lacking economically, he lacked by any other measurement. Most importantly, he lacked the wholeness of belonging to the whole-ly God. This was the only issue Jesus paid attention to—in demonstration of his perceptual-interpretive framework. By this qualitative lens, he didn’t see a short rich sinner up in a tree but Zacchaeus’ whole person needing to be redefined, transformed and made whole. Zacchaeus also becomes a metaphor for all such persons, whom Jesus must (dei) intrusively pursue in their innermost by embodying face to face God’s relational-specific response of grace; this is how Jesus also pursued the rich young ruler in his innermost, without the same relational outcome as Zacchaeus (Mk 10:17-23). This metaphor for such persons, whom Jesus must “dwell with” (meno) by intimate relational involvement together as family, also signifies the qualitative and relational significance necessary for the gospel—which his tactical shift composes. Yet these are persons who will not be paid attention to, and thus not understood, without this qualitative lens. This is a metaphor that will not be understood, and thus ignored, without the new perceptual-interpretive framework; and its absence is consequential even for how we see each other in church and do relationships as church.

The reality of this new creation of God’s family is revealed conclusively in the experiential truth of the relational progression, which God’s thematic relational work of grace initiates, Jesus’ relational work of grace constitutes and the Spirit’s completes. This new relational condition was neither a response warranted by Zacchaeus nor an experience he could construct by self-determination. The relational dynamics of grace are pivotal for understanding the relational basis that solely yet reciprocally composes this relational outcome. While Zacchaeus declared (in the Greek present tense) that he was already making restitution and helping to restore equity for consequences of his old relational condition (19:8), this could also indicate an intention he assumed already as a foregone reality. Thus it would be an error to conclude that this was the basis for Jesus’ responsive declaration: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham” (v.9). This was not the result of what Zacchaeus did, however honorable an act of repentant Zacchaeus. This was only the relational outcome of Jesus’ relational work of grace: “For [gar, because] the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (v.10). The tactical shift Jesus enacted as expressed in this verse determined the whole outcome in the previous verse.

What we are saved to and what relationship is necessary together with the whole-ly Trinity to make us whole directly involve Jesus’ tactical shift for further and deeper involvement in the relational progression. Levi and Zacchaeus had similar experiences of Jesus vulnerably pursuing them in their condition “to be apart” from the whole; and both directly experienced his intimate relational involvement for the purpose to be made whole. Yet each of these narratives emphasizes a different aspect of the relational progression; combining their experiences with Jesus into one relational process provides us a full view of the relational progression.

It is this relational function of family that the full profile of Jesus’ face made unmistakable, irreducible and nonnegotiable by the trinitarian relational process of family love. This points to the functional shift of Jesus’ relational work of grace to constitute his followers whole-ly in the consummation of this relational progression distinguishing the gospel—the irreducible Subject composing in relational terms nothing less than its relational outcome transforming to wholeness. This shift and its outcome make it more inconvenient in our theology and more uncomfortable for our practice to “Follow me” in the relational progression essential to who we are and whose we are.

In the relational progression essential both to Jesus and his followers, the functional shift is inseparable from his strategic and tactical shifts. They are integral to the relational purpose and outcome of the gospel, yet the functional shift of the Trinity’s relational response is often either commonly minimalized or simply overlooked.

The strategic and tactical shifts illuminated the face of only Subject-God, clearly distinguished from an Object. These shifts make evident the ontology of the Subject—the whole of who, what and how God is—which is inseparable from the Subject’s function. As accessed in these shifts, the Subject’s ontology and function are most notably distinguished in relationships, both within the whole-ly Trinity and with others. The Trinity is not distinguished by each person’s title or role, which would create distinctions causing stratification and relational distance between them. Rather the whole-ly God is always distinguished by the ontology and function of the trinitarian persons inseparably being relationally involved in intimate relationship together as One, the Trinity as family (Jn 10:30; 17:21-23). Subject-God’s vulnerable self-disclosure constitutes the ontology and function in likeness that distinguishes his followers as whole, and his followers in whole relationship together as family (his church). This relational outcome will fulfill Subject Jesus’ prayer above as his functional shift becomes an ontological and functional reality.

In God’s strategic and tactical shifts, the whole of God’s thematic relational action integrally converges within Jesus’ relational work of grace in the trinitarian relational context of family and by the trinitarian relational process of family love. This coherence of relational action is completely fulfilled by Jesus’ whole person with his vulnerable relational involvement in distinguished love—the love that is further distinguished by this process of family love, of which Zacchaeus and Levi were initial recipients. With the qualitative significance and relational function of family love, Jesus (only as Subject) enacted in whole relational terms the gospel’s functional shift—the function necessary for the innermost involvement in the relational progression in order to bring it (and his followers) to relational consummation (not yet to full conclusion). What is this family love specific to the trinitarian relational process?

During their last table fellowship, Jesus intimately shared with his disciples-friends “I will not leave you orphaned” (Jn 14:18). While Jesus’ physical presence was soon to conclude, his intimate relational involvement with them would continue—namely through his relational replacement, the Spirit (14:16-17). This ongoing intimate relational involvement is clearly the dynamic function of the trinitarian relational process of family love, which directly involves all the trinitarian persons yet beyond the sum of their persons (Jn 14:16-18,23,27). Yet, the full qualitative significance (in relational terms not referential) of this dynamic of family love is not understood until we have whole understanding (synesis) of the relational significance of Jesus’ use of the term “orphan” and his related concern.

In their ancient social context orphans were powerless and had little or no recourse to provide for themselves, which was the reason God made specific provisions for them in the OT (Dt 14:29, Isa 1:17,23, cf. Jas 1:27). This might suggest that Jesus was simply assuring his disciples that they would be taken care of. This would address the contextual-situational condition of orphans but not likely the most important and primary issue: their fragmented relational condition separated from the whole of relationship together. It is critical to understand that Jesus’ sole concern here is for the relational condition of all his followers, a concern that Jesus ongoingly pursued during the incarnation (e.g. Lk 10:41-42; Jn 14:9; 19:26-27), after the resurrection (e.g. Lk 24:25; Jn 21:15-22), and in post-ascension (e.g. Rev 2:4; 3:20). Moreover, to understand the qualitative and relational significance of the gospel is to have whole understanding of the gospel’s relational dynamic unfolding the depth of the Trinity’s relational response to the breadth of the relational condition of all humanity.

Orphans essentially lived relationally apart; that is, they were distant or separated from the relationships necessary to belong to the whole of family—further preventing them from being whole rather than living fragmented. Even orphans absorbed into their extended kinship network were not assured of the relational function of belonging in its qualitative relational significance. The relational condition “to be apart” from God’s whole and to not experience the relational function of belonging to the whole-ly God’s family would be intrinsic to orphans. This prominent relational condition—the subtlety of which is also innermost to the human condition—defines the relational significance of Jesus’ concern for his disciples not to be relational orphans but to relationally belong. And the primary solution for what addresses an orphan’s relational condition is the process of adoption. Without adoption, distinguished in the primacy of whole relationship together as family, this relational condition remains unresolved and irremediable to all other alternatives (including church membership). Therefore, Jesus’ relationship-specific work of grace by the trinitarian relational process of family love enacted the process of adoption, together with the Spirit, to consummate the whole-ly God’s thematic relational response to the human relational condition (Jn 1:12-13, cf. Mt 12:48-50; Mk 10:29-30). Paul later provided the theological and functional clarity for the triune God’s relational process of family love and its relational outcome of adoption into God’s family (Eph 1:4-5, 13-14; 5:1; Rom 8:15-16, Gal 4:4-7).

The reality of adoption may appear more virtual than real experience, and that would depend on whether adoption is constituted by the experiential truth of the Trinity. In referential terms, adoption either becomes doctrinal information about a salvific transaction God made, which we can have more or less certainty about. Or adoption could be merely a metaphor that may have spiritual value but no relational significance. Both views continue to lack understanding of the qualitative and relational significance of the gospel enacted by Jesus’ whole ontology and function, and further misre-present the gospel’s relational outcome in the innermost of persons and their belonging in relationship together. The qualitative relational outcome from Jesus’ intimate involvement of family love constitutes his followers in relationship together with the Trinity as family, so that Jesus’ Father becomes their Father (Jn 14:23) and they become “siblings” (adelphoi, Jn 20:17, cf. Is 63:16; Rom 8:29). If the functional significance of adoption is diminished by or minimalized to referential terms—or simply by reductionism and its counter-relational work—the relational consequence for our life and practice is to function in effect as ‘relational orphans’, even as visibly active members of a church. In the absence of his physical presence, Jesus’ only concern was for his followers to experience the ongoing intimate relational involvement of the whole-ly Trinity for the experiential truth and relational reality of belonging in the primacy of whole relationship together as family (beyond church membership)—which the functional shift of his relational work of grace made permanent by adoption. This irreversible relational action established them conclusively in the relational progression to belong as family together, never to be “let go from the Trinity as orphans” (aphiemi, Jn 14:18) as Jesus promised.

Functional and relational orphans suffer in the human relational condition “to be apart” from God’s relational whole, consequently they lack belonging in the innermost to be whole. While this is certainly a pandemic relational condition, it can also become an undetected endemic functional condition among his followers and in church practice—obscured even with strong association with Christ and extended identification with the church. This critical condition requires urgent response from the global church, with particular care directed to areas of expanding church growth today. Its seriousness among participants is an undetected condition when it is masked by the presence of ontological simulations and functional illusions from reductionist substitutes—for example, performing roles, fulfilling service, participation in church activities (most notably in the Eucharist) and membership (including baptism), yet without the qualitative function from inner out of the whole person and without the face-to-face relational involvement of belonging together vulnerably in family love. When Christian life and practice is without this integrating qualitative-relational significance, it lacks wholeness because it effectively functions in the relational condition of orphans, functional and relational orphans.

This then suggests the likelihood that many churches today (particularly in the global North) function more like orphanages than family—that is, gatherings of members having organizational cohesion and a secondary identity belonging to an institution but without belonging in the primary relationship together distinguished only in the innermost of family, that is, the Trinity’s family. This exposes the need to be redeemed further from the influence of reductionism in the human relational condition, most commonly signified by the human shaping of relationships together, which the relational function of family love directly and ongoingly addresses for relationship together as family in likeness of the Trinity. And the penetrating depth of the Trinity’s response and involvement converge in the relationship-specific process of adoption.

Adoption, therefore, is indispensable for making accessible the Trinity and for helping to distinguish the ontology and function of the Trinity, which do not prevail in our diverse theology and practice. Adoption simply is irreplaceable in our theology and practice in order to be compatible with the functional, tactical and strategic shifts of the Trinity’s ontology and function. This compatibility requires being on the same improbable theological trajectory and intrusive relational path as the Trinity, which then may require corresponding shifts (notably Jn 4:24) in our theology and practice—for example, a shift from a theological anthropology of reduced ontology and function, from an incomplete Christology and truncated soteriology, and essentially from the fragmentary religious traditions and reforms prevailing in our contexts. The experiential truth and relational reality of adoption cannot justify anything less and any substitutes in order for our theology and practice to be whole.

In its innermost function, the trinitarian relational process of family love can be described as the following communicative and creative action by the whole-ly Trinity:

The Father sent out his Son, followed by the Spirit (as in Jn 1:14; Mk 1:10-12; Jn 17:4), to pursue those who suffer being apart from God’s relational whole, reaching out to them with the relationship-specific involvement of distinguished love (as in Jn 3:16; 17:23,26; Eph 1:6), thereby making provision for their release from any constraints or for payments to redeem them from any enslavement (as in Eph 1:7,14); then in relational progression of this relational connection, taking these persons back home to the Father, not to be mere house guests or to become household servants, or even to be just friends, but to be adopted by the Father and therefore permanently belong in his family as his very own daughters and sons (made definitive for the new creation church family in Eph 2:13-22).

This is the innermost depth of the Trinity’s family love, which vulnerably discloses both the relational significance of God’s relational work of grace and the qualitative significance clearly distinguishing Jesus’ relational involvement from common function, even as may prevail in church and academy. This integral qualitative relational significance discloses the whole and uncommon God, who penetrates with an intrusive relational path that we must account for in our theology and be accountable to in our practice—as inconvenient and uncomfortable as it could be. This God, the whole-ly Trinity, is present and involved in no other terms, and thus can be experienced in no other way.

By the relational nature of the Trinity, the trinitarian relational process of family love is a function always for relationship, the relationship of God’s family. These are the integrated relationships functionally necessary to be whole in the innermost that constitutes God’s family. That is, distinguished family love is always constituting and maturing God’s family; therefore, family love always pursues the whole person, acts to redeem persons from their outer-in condition and to transform them from inner out, and addresses the involvement necessary in the primacy of relationships to be whole as family together in likeness of the Trinity. In only relational terms, family love functionally acts on and with the importance of the whole person to be vulnerably involved in the primacy of intimate relationships together of those belonging in God’s family. When the trinitarian relational process of family love is applied to the church and becomes functional in church practice, any church functioning as an orphanage can be redeemed from counter-relational work to function whole as God’s family together. Then its members will not only occupy a position within God’s family but also be involved from inner out and experience the relational function necessarily involved in belonging in the innermost of God’s family that integrally holds them together—together not merely in unity but whole together as one in the very likeness of the Trinity, just as Jesus prayed for his church family (Jn 17:20-26).

In this functional shift enacted for the gospel, Jesus’ relational function of family love vulnerably engaged his followers for the innermost involvement in the relational progression to the whole-ly Trinity’s family. This integrally, as well as intrusively, involved the following relational dynamic: the shift of being redefined (and redeemed) from outer in to inner out and being transformed (and reconciled) from reductionism and its counter-relational work, in order to be made whole together in the innermost as family in likeness of the Trinity (as Paul made definitive, 2 Cor 3:18; Col 1:19-20). Theologically, redemption and reconciliation are inseparable; and the integral function of redemptive reconciliation is the relational outcome of being saved to the whole-ly Trinity’s family with the veil removed to eliminate any relational separation or distance (as Paul clarified, Eph 2:14-22). The irreducible and nonnegotiable nature of this integral relational dynamic of family love must (dei) then by its nature be an experiential truth having qualitative-relational significance for this wholeness to be the relational reality of consummated belonging to the Trinity’s family. Family love also then necessarily involves clarifying what is not a function of God’s family, and correcting misguided ecclesiology and church practices, and even contending with notions that misrepresents God’s family, which includes confronting alternative and virtual realities of the church. The integrity of God’s whole is an ongoing concern of family love, and this relational involvement certainly cannot be enacted without first experiencing its relational reality in face-to-face relational progression with the Trinity.

Also intruding, however, on Jesus’ relational path specifically for the relational progression of his disciples, is reductionism and its counter-relational workings. The ongoing influence of reductionism is more commonly subtle, which imposes limits and constraints on our persons and relationships that counter the relational progression. Therefore, Jesus made this relational contingency for his true disciples:

Integrated with the irreplaceable relational structure in John 15:1-11 for all his disciples, Jesus made nonnegotiable our reciprocal involvement in the primacy to “dwell [meno, abide] in my relational terms for relationship together; and you will know the embodied Truth in face-to-face relationship, and the Truth will set you free from your limits and constraints” (Jn 8:31-32).

There is no relational progression to belong in the whole-ly Trinity’s family without redemption, and there is no redemption to be reconciled together as family without relationally receiving and responding face-to-face to Jesus’ family love in his functional shift (Jn 8:35-36). This transformation, however, is the relational outcome only of following Jesus’ whole person behind the temple curtain to have the veil removed for intimate face-to-face relationship together with the whole-ly Trinity and with each other as family in the Trinity’s likeness (2 Cor 3:18; Eph 2:14-18).

Jesus certainly understood our human relational condition—specifically our tendency to labor in ontological simulations and functional illusions of God’s family (as in Jn 8:33,35,39,42; 14:9), which he exposed in his post-ascension critique of churches (Rev 2-3). This further raises the penetrating questions: “Where are you?” “What are you doing here?” “Don’t you know me after all this time?” They get to the heart of our condition and the status of its direction.

To be relationally involved face to face with the whole Word (i.e. in relational terms, not referential terms), and thus to relationally know the embodied Truth only in relational terms, are both indispensable for the complete Christology necessary that constitutes the full soteriology of what we are saved to. Therefore, the relational progression does not and cannot stop at just being a disciple, or end with liberation as it did for many of God’s people in the OT. The prevailing influences from the surrounding contexts—most notably present in the human relational condition shaping relationships together, yet existing even in gatherings of God’s people—either prevent further movement in the relational progression or diminish deeper involvement in its primacy of relationship. God’s salvific act of liberation is never an end in itself but an integral part of God’s creative action for new relationship together in wholeness—the distinguished Face’s relational work of siym and shalôm that brings this relational outcome (Num 6:26). Our human bias (contextualized and commonized) for the secondary preoccupies or embeds us away from the primary composed only by relationship together. This subtle bias is evident where church practice overemphasizing deliverance and other liberation theories are found lacking in this primacy, and thus which promote, reinforce or sustain a truncated soteriology. For example, when the people of Israel were frequently seeking deliverance from YHWH, they usually pursued neither it nor God for the purpose of deeper involvement in the primacy of relationship together in wholeness. Then, for what purpose are we delivered or liberated?

The embodied Truth (of the Way and Life) in the trinitarian relational process of family love is the fulfillment of the whole-ly Trinity’s thematic relational response, nothing less than the strategic shift and no substitutes for the tactical and functional shifts of the Trinity’s relational work of grace. And the full profile of God’s vulnerable presence and relational involvement distinguished within the Truth as Subject are solely for the primacy of this relational outcome. If our gospel is based on ‘the Bible alone’ (sola scriptura) but does not encompass this whole relational outcome, then the good news is selectively composed not on the basis of the whole Word (cf. Jn 5:39-40). From the beginning, liberation (redemption, peduyim, pedut, pedyom, Ps 111:9) was initially enacted by YHWH for the Israelites in contingency with the Abrahamic covenant’s primacy of relationship together (the relational outcome of shakan, “dwell,” Ex 29:46). To be redeemed was never merely to be set free as an end in itself (cf. Gal 5:13) but freed to be involved in the relational progression together. And all our secondary matters, however important, need to be integrated into the primary purpose and function of this primacy.

Moreover, redemption is conclusively relationship-specific to the whole-ly Trinity’s family together on just this God’s whole relational terms, which are the trinitarian relational context and process the Truth embodied. Jesus’ relational words must be understood in the whole context of the Trinity’s thematic relational action as well as in their immediate context. By the strategic, tactical and functional shifts of the Trinity’s relational work of grace, the Subject of Jesus’ person fulfilled whole-ly God’s relational response to the human condition, thereby also defining the contextual contingency of the above familiar words of his relational contingency. Jesus’ relational language is unequivocal:

The embodied Truth is the only relational means available for his followers to be liberated from their enslavements to reductionism (or freed from a counter-relational condition, Jn 8:33-34), for the innermost relationship-specific purpose and outcome, so that they can be adopted as the Father’s own daughters and sons and, therefore, be distinguished as intimately belonging to his family permanently (meno, 8:34-36; cf. shakan above).

Yet, and this is a crucial distinction for the church, belonging in family together has significance only in likeness of the Trinity; and the Word and Truth embodied the Way and the Life of the Trinity in order to intimately disclose in face-to-face relational progression this likeness for family together (Jn 14:6; 17:26), so that there would be no confusion about the nature and identity of the church family (cf. Jn 8:38-39,41,47).

Therefore, Christians and churches are faced with this provocative reality, which is jolting to our existing condition and its direction: With the Good News of this essential relational progression to wholeness together, there is only one exclusive whole relational outcome that emerges and unfolds from the whole-ly Trinity’s relational response to our human condition. Accordingly, we are accountable to be distinguished integrally in our theology and practice for what we are saved for and to.

It is an ongoing issue and problematic for Jesus followers when the relational progression of these integral shifts is condensed into our theology, and thereby limits, constrains or prevents its function in our practice. Such condensed theology and lacking functional practice are subtle indicators of reductionism shaping our theology and practice. This was the critical issue for the doctrinally-sound church at Ephesus, whose primary focus on theology in the Rule of Faith rendered their practice without the primacy of relationship—thus “you have abandoned the primacy of the love you had at first” (Rev 2:4). Abandoned (aphiemi, to leave, let go or quit) is the relationship-specific condition of orphans, which directly counters the relational reality of adoption that Jesus constituted in the relational progression (Jn 14:18; Heb 2:11-13).

The relational reality of the whole-ly Trinity’s family is the maturity that the Hebrews manifesto challenges us to embrace in the relational progression of the Relationship of Faith (as in Heb 11); this progression will require ongoing clarification and correction from the Father in order for his family to fight against reductionism and grow in wholeness together (Heb 12:1-11). Therefore, whenever church practice is not involved in the primacy of relationship together in wholeness (not any kind of relationship) as the Trinity’s family, that church is engaged essentially in the counter-relational workings of reductionism. In the fragmentary condition of the church today—a misguided diversity in the global church on a variable relational path from whole-ly Jesus—we are faced inescapably with the church family’s responsibility (as in Paul’s oikonomia, Col 1:25) to account for what the whole-ly Trinity saves us for. Until we account for what we are saved for, we will not progress and mature in what we are saved to. In further reality, life is not static but dynamic, as is relationship. Accordingly, if we are not progressing in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes, then our persons and relationships are regressing in something less or some substitute. This is the hard reality facing us today that we cannot avoid by rendering it virtual—though we certainly can (and have) deny it with alternative facts.

As emerged and unfolds in the relational progression, the primacy of relationship essential to the Trinity and essential for us is composed only by face-to-face relationship together in the irreducible and nonnegotiable dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes. Face to face is the intrusive relational function that makes our persons uncomfortable at the least. The common response among Christians and churches is to diminish or minimalize such involvement—even if they know what God saves them for. The subtlety of this common response is to maintain relational distance—for example, in virtual or augmented ways that only simulate connection—which then essentially rejects Jesus in relational progression behind the curtain and remains engaged in practice in effect in front of the curtain. The reality of this subtle condition exists in the function of disciples with veiled faces who lack transformation—those followers likely laboring in ontological simulations and functional illusions of God’s family.

This brings us back to convenience in theology and practice and to the distinguishing significance of Mary for us today. What did Jesus magnify in Mary, which also should continue to be magnified by all Christians in the global church today? In the relational progression of Mary (discussed previously), we see the face of Mary’s whole person unfolding to its full profile. She certainly had sanctioned basis to veil her face and to be measured in her relational involvement. Rather than maintain any relational distance, she seized opportunities to present her whole person in face-to-face relationship together with Jesus. Disregarding the common limits and constraints prevailing among the other disciples, she engaged the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes to be intimately involved without the veil, directly with Jesus’ whole person as family together—even before this theology was composed for practice. In other words, Mary involved her whole person (nothing less) without the veil (no substitutes) in direct face-to-face relationship together with Jesus’ whole-ly person; and she thereby enacted the relational outcome of the whole gospel even before Jesus completed his relational work in the relational progression behind the curtain to demolish the holy partition and remove the veil. Are you impressed yet with Mary as Jesus was?

The full profile of Mary’s face progressed face to face only because the Good News of whole-ly Jesus penetrated to the heart of her person. Her relational progression, therefore, distinguished the gospel’s whole relational outcome of what the whole-ly Trinity in the relational progression saves us for and to—in contrast and conflict with a gospel of truncated soteriology. The face of her relational progression, unfolding only from the relational outcome of the gospel, is the whole who, what and how of Mary that Jesus magnifies for (1) all who claim the same gospel, and thereafter (2) who follow his whole-ly person face to face in the same dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes. Is there justification, then, for Mary to be magnified today to distinguish whole disciples and their discipleship from the diverse condition of other disciples and their discipleship, just as the other disciples experienced in Mary’s face-to-face presence?

The other disciples in Mary’s narrative were influenced and shaped by the surrounding context, which biased their theology and practice in the disciples they were and how they followed Jesus. Mary was distinguished from them not because she was exceptional; Jesus expects from all his followers this relational outcome composed by the gospel. Her person and discipleship were distinguished, however, beyond what commonly existed and even prevailed in the surrounding context. That is, Mary embraced the uncommon composed by whole-ly Jesus, thus, unlike the other disciples, she was freed from the bias of the common. The effects of the others’ bias on their theology and practice limited how they saw Jesus’ person and their own persons, which was consequential for the state of their direction. Accordingly, with this skewed and fragmented perception, they constrained how they engaged their relationship together—most notably not giving primacy to face-to-face relationship together and thus not integrating their secondary matters into the only primary (as in PIP) that has significance to whole-ly Jesus (i.e. to the Trinity). Like the two disciples heading to Emmaus in a different direction than Jesus’ relational path, the other disciples from Mary were on diverse paths that neither involved their whole persons nor connected with Jesus’ whole person in face-to-face relationship together. Consequently, contrary to Mary, the other disciples (and all those in likeness) were not progressing in the primary but subtly regressing in the secondary.

The difference between progression and regression is immeasurable, and the gap distinguishing progression from regression cannot be quantified by referential terms in our theology and practice. This makes us susceptible to opening the hermeneutic door (“Did God say that?”) to alternative facts and realities—as in diverse interpretations and proof-texting—that are merely substitutes in subtle regression. For example, the subtlety of regression also emerges from a modern bias in discipleship today, which confuses progression with innovation—apparent especially in worship practice that gathers many in eventful celebration with little (if any) relational significance. Innovative alternatives are unique substitutes for the relational progression and have the same relational consequences experienced as if in front of the curtain.

As Jesus intimately told Peter face to face later at his footwashing, therefore, “Unless you are relationally involved with me face to face, you have no share with me in my whole person and thus in relational progression with the whole-ly Trinity” (Jn 13:8). Still a yet-to-be distinguished disciple in his discipleship, Peter was at the pivotal juncture of what relational path he would follow:

Will he be involved face to face with Jesus in the primacy of the relational progression, and progress in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes?

Or will he be engaged, occupied, even preoccupied in the secondary of his theology and practice, and thereby regress in the limits and constraints of anything less and any substitutes?

The pivotal juncture, in other words, is either progression in or regression from face-to-face relationship together, which is further defined by the essential question: To be whole or not to be?

This pivotal juncture is critical to the human condition and essential for the defining ontology and determining function of all persons and their relationships. The human condition, our human condition, is the basic relational condition “to be apart” from God’s whole (as constituted in Gen 2:18); and this prevailing relational condition has become increasingly subtle and pervasive in the spectrum of human relationships—including among Christians and in churches. Therefore, all Christians and churches are confronted by the reality that, like Peter, we are all at the pivotal juncture of progression or regression, and what relational path we will follow either to be whole with nothing less and no substitutes, or not to be with anything less and any substitutes.

The inescapable reality also facing us at this pivotal juncture is provoking not only for the diverse condition of our theology and practice but for all those with good intentions practicing more:

The focus on the secondary always relegates us to regression in anything less and any substitutes of wholeness. In ways not always recognized, understood or just ignored, the relational consequence for Christians and churches is “to be apart” from the whole-ly Trinity and from each other as new family together in wholeness. This relational condition “to be apart” in all its subtle diversity, then not surprisingly, reflects, reinforces and sustains the human condition of all persons and relationships, even as the gospel is proclaimed.

This reality is obviously difficult to accept in the context of our faith, but the burden of proof rests in our practice of faith to distinguish our persons and relationships beyond the human condition and thus deeper than what is common in our context.

“Follow me” certainly has been oversimplified in our theology and practice—even with affirming Jesus Christ as the only mediator between God and humanity (as in solus Christus, Christ alone). This oversimplification is reflected, reinforced and sustained in the diverse condition of disciples and discipleship. In his essential relational progression, Jesus integrates all his followers together by declaring “I will not leave you as orphans.” His penetrating call to us today is to gather together all the relational orphans occupying, prevailing and serving in the global church to be adopted into the Trinity’s whole-ly family by relationally belonging to nothing less and no substitutes.[5]

“Listen! I am standing at the church door, knocking…with the Spirit: (Rev 3:20,22). When our response to Jesus’ call (1) integrates his essential relational progression with the whole-ly Trinity and (2) encompasses our relational progression to the new church family in whole-ly likeness of the Trinity, we then experience the relational outcome of the whole gospel to be transformed as his whole disciples following him in whole theology and practice by the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes. And like Mary, we progress in the uncommon identity of whole-ly disciples.

[1] The theological task for the Trinity is discussed in my study The Face of the Trinity: The Trinitarian Essential for the Whole of God and Life (Trinity Study, 2016). Online at http://www.4X12.org.

[2] In life in general, Iain McGilchrist locates this activity in the dominance of the left brain hemisphere. The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 140.

[3] For further discussion of table fellowship by Jesus and the Mediterranean world, see S. Scott Bartchy, “The Historical Jesus and Honor Reversal at the Table” in Wolfgang Stegemann, Bruce J. Malina, Gerd Theissen, eds. The Social Setting of Jesus and the Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 175-183.

[4] For a discussion on rich and poor in the Mediterranean context of the NT, see Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 97-100.

[5] An expanded discussion on the global church is found in my study The Global Church Engaging the Nature of Sin and the Human Condition: Reflecting, Reinforcing, Sustaining or Transforming (Global Church Study, 2016). Online at http://www.4X12.org.