Ch 6 The Light in the Darkness

From now on, therefore, we define no person from a human bias from outer in….

So, if any person is transformed from inner out by Christ’s whole person,

who reconciled us to himself through Christ in the primacy of relationship together

in wholeness as family, and has given us the family responsibility to be

The Word’s narrow road for political theology leads straight to the church, whose identity and function journey with difficulty directly through the limits and constraints of human inequality and inequity. The church journeys through this existential inequality and inequity in order for its identity and function to be turned around to equality and equity in the church. Journeying on this narrow difficult road, the church is constituted in the experiential truth and relational reality of the whole gospel’s relational outcome, whereby the church becomes the penultimate witness for equality and equity in the existential human relational condition (as the Word prayed, Jn 17:20-23). This gospel’s relational outcome is rooted in the covenant of love, and its branches of relationship together in wholeness only unfold according to the qualitative-relational terms of the Word’s Rule of Law. Thus, since this journey for the church is both narrow and difficult, it is problematic as witnessed in the church’s history past and present.

In the separation of church and state, is the church above the law and thus not bound by it or accountable to it? Perhaps, that depends on the nature of the law. In the confluence of church and state, when is the church bound by and accountable to the rule of law? That also depends on the variant used for the rule of law. This has evolved for the church just as variants of the rule of law have evolved. With political and cultural issues, influences and consequences intervening on the church, what distinguishes the church from these evolving distinctions?

What has not evolved, however, is the Word’s Rule of Law, and thus the church being bound by and accountable to it without the negotiable right to ever be above the Law. This is what the church, locally and globally, faces in the current human crisis, whether politically, culturally or medically. And the integrity of church branches and their witness lie in the balance of the shifting winds in the surrounding polarized climate (as Paul illuminated for the church, Eph 4:14-16).

The judicial philosophy of originalism has been the key position of the U.S. Supreme Court since the inception of the Constitution. Originalists believe that judges are bound by the constitutional text and that its words should be read as the public would have understood them at the time each provision was written. That doesn’t mean that originalists always understand the intentions of the author, nor that they necessarily get them right in the rule of law; any lacks typically reflect the influence of intervening political and cultural factors. Yet, this is implied in originalism and the key to applying the rule of law, unless a bias skews originalism. The counterpart to originalism is legalism. Legalists hold to the letter of the law, imposing strict literal interpretations of the law in its application, which give no consideration for the intent by the authors of that law. Christians have occupied either of these positions to define the law and determine its rule of law.

For the free majority, locally and globally, they have been status-ing in quo in the position of voluntarism: a doctrine or system based on voluntary or willing participation in the rule of law, which promotes that the reality of human life revolves ultimately on the nature of free will. Thus, the application of the law centers on the rights of freedom for voluntarists, and participation in the rule of law depends on those rights not being denied or abused. Voluntarism is obviously more flexible than originalism and less strict than legalism. But it certainly also opens the door to relativism of the law and widens the way to more easily justify not adhering to the rule of law. Are Christians also occupying this position in the situations and circumstances of the surrounding climate today?

These three positions parallel positions churches have taken directly with the Word’s Rule of Law. Since its inception, the church has had difficulty with its constituting terms for the covenant relationship together of the Word’s new creation church family; this difficulty continues to evolve for the church in its witness evident today in many churches. The existential integrity (not the theological ideal) of church branches in the early church had to be clarified and corrected by the palpable Word (together with the Spirit, Rev 2-3), whose intrusive purpose was for churches to be whole and uncommon like the whole-ly Trinity (as he prayed for his church family earlier, Jn 17:14-26). The Word’s incisive feedback also confronts the integrity of current church branches and their witness, because the shifting winds of the surrounding climate still have the same impact past to present. Over 70% of the churches examined by the Word had been on a byway from the qualitative-relational terms of covenant relationship together that composed the Word’s Rule of Law. As one of the main leaders of the early church, this byway also deeply concerned James (Jas 2:8-10). Would this reflect the percentage of current churches on a byway if they were examined directly by the Word?

The new covenant constituted by the Word for his church family’s relationship did not negate, change or minimalize the qualitative-relational terms rooted in the covenant of love (Dt 7:9), which composed the original terms of his Rule of Law (Mt 5:17-18). The Word examined these churches on this irreducible and nonnegotiable basis. All the churches emerged in the shifting winds of a surrounding cultural-political climate. How they adapted to and survived in those intervening factors is at the heart of the Word’s critique. And any current church planting and development need to examine these church roots to understand what underlies the church branches they want to grow.

The first church in Ephesus was in the most cosmopolitan of the seven cities of the churches examined.[1] Ephesus contained one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Artemis, which served as the center for emperor worship. This political climate obviously created tension for all the churches under Roman rule, and how they adapted to a Roman imperial edict and other disinformation unfolds in these churches. The church in Ephesus was the most rigorous in resisting the winds of its surrounding climate (Rev 2:1-3). The church basically held onto a strong position of legalism with the Word to interpret its rule of law by the strict letter, not yielding to intervening factors. Yet, their practice of the letter of the law failed to either understand or enact the Word’s intentional purpose that composed the qualitative-relational terms of the Word’s Rule of Law for the primacy of relationship together rooted in the covenant of love; their failure exposed their reduced theological anthropology. Therefore, the Word declared unequivocally to their legalism: “I have this against you, that you have abandoned the primacy of the direct relational involvement of love, of which my love first constituted you as my church family” (v.4). Thus, this church had to take responsibility for the primary—“from what you have fallen, then turn around from the limits of your legalism and return to the qualitative-relational primacy of the Word’s Rule of Law for relationship together in wholeness” (v.5)—the primary relational involvement of love that the letter of the law never duplicates, no matter how rigorous its application.

Legalism, to one extent or another, is a common position held by churches trying to maintain their identity in the shifting winds of their surrounding contexts. The Word’s feedback challenges them to examine how this has affected their function—namely, “What are you doing in your relationships?” and “Where are you in the primacy of the direct relational involvement of love?”

In contrast to the Ephesian church, the church in Philadelphia adhered to the Word with a position in the nature of originalism (3:9-13). Philadelphia housed various temples in this volcanic area that composed a very fertile territory. Thus, the Roman emperor Domitian put political pressure on the city to enforce his self-interests, which certainly intervened on this church along with the cultural intervention of the Jewish community excluding them from association together (as experienced also by the church in Smyrna, 2:8-11). If the church had been influenced by these intervening factors, that would have biased their originalism in the interpretation of the Law to make partisan the application of the Rule of Law. In spite of these intervening political and cultural pressures, this church cultivated their whole minority identity to function in their qualitative-relational integrity constituted by the Word, adhering to the original integrity of the composition of the Word’s Rule of Law: “I know that you have but little power as the minority, and yet you have kept the qualitative-relational integrity of my word and have been relationally involved directly with my person” (3:8). The primacy of their relational involvement was reciprocated by the Word, which is the qualitative-relational nature of the Word’s Rule of Law for reciprocal relationship together to be his whole minority (3:9-13). Illumining this church’s originalism is crucial to the Word’s critique of churches, because it clarifies what and how a church, its persons and relationships need to be in order to be whole as the Word’s new creation church family—the uncommon whole minority in the evolving context of a common fragmentary majority.

The whole minority church of originalism not only contrasts with the church of legalism but also conflicts with the fragmentary majority churches of voluntarism. The remaining four churches in Pergamum (2:12-17), Thyatira (2:18-29), Sardis (3:1-6) and Laodicea (3:14-22) held to some variant of voluntarism, each of which exposes how they adapted to the intervening political-cultural factors that shaped their identity and function belonging to a fragmentary majority. Their willful participation in God’s way of life became voluntary in their public way of life as a church. Thus, what is common to these churches of voluntarism is how relatively the Word’s Rule of Law was applied, which could even contrast with legalism but is unequivocally in conflict with originalism. Not surprisingly then, common to voluntarist churches is their participation in truth and norm gymnastics, which by choice or default makes them enablers and complicitors of the status quo in a fragmentary majority that enables injustice an disables justice.

The church in Laodicea (3:14-22) was status-ing in quo in the context of the wealthiest Phrygian city, known as a prosperous banking center and for both its textile industry and its renown medical school. Accordingly, this church defined its identity and determined its function on the secondary basis of these quantitative distinctions, which made them very comfortable in the illusion of their self-assessment in a fragmentary majority—thus not knowing the existential condition of their identity and function (v.17). The consequence of their self-autonomy and self-determination made them indifferent to the institutional, systemic and structural inequality and inequity of their surrounding context. This made evident their selective bias of participating in public life in relative tension with the irreducible and nonnegotiable terms of the Word’s Rule of Law—a tension rationalized to serve their self-interests. In other words, this church was indistinguishable from the common surrounding them because in reality their identity and function were common-ized, and thus a church of insignificance like distasteful lukewarm water in the mouth (v.16). The Word ongoingly pursues voluntarist churches, because by status-ing in quo in a fragmentary majority they are unable to belong in relationship together with his whole minority (3:19-20).

A subtle version of a voluntarist church was in Sardis (3:1-6), which like the Laodicean church was status-ing in quo in a surrounding context that hosted many pagan cults and had a large, powerful and wealthy Jewish community. Since the Christian community there seems to have experienced no persecution, this voluntarist church practiced status-ing in quo in that surrounding context to build up for its identity “a name, reputation, brand [onoma] of being alive” (v.1). Onoma was the distinct outer layer of their identity. Perhaps their gatherings and worship reverberated with such strength that it even impressed pagans and Jews. What this church accomplished was to use the status quo app to, in effect, generate “likes” in a fragmentary majority as if on social media. The virtual reality of their esteemed identity, however, was intrusively clarified and corrected by the Word when he declared the relational imperative: “Wake up…for I have not found your practice of church identity and function complete [pleroo] in the lens of my God” (v.2). The practice that defined this church (“your works,” ergon) was incomplete because it was contrary to pleroo (to make full, complete or whole). To be complete can only be based on God’s whole and uncommon qualitative-relational terms, which cannot be defined by the common of a fragmentary majority.

Common-ization is the critical issue for the Sardis church, and being common-ized remains the key issue for all voluntarist churches. Common-izing compromises both a church’s way of life and the Word’s Rule of Law, as well as obscuring any light for the church’s witness in the surrounding darkness. Since no explicit sins such as idol worship and sexual immorality were mentioned (as in Thyatira), their incomplete deeds point to something more subtle or lacking. Their activity was perceived as alive, yet likely in the quantitative aspects of bios from outer in, not the qualitative function of zoe from inner out. Their reputation signified only a substitute (onoma) for the integral identity of who, what and how his church is, consequently lacked the integrity of wholeness. While the Word’s polemic about soiled and white (leukos, bright, gleaming) clothes described those incomplete and a remnant who weren’t incomplete respectively, bright clothes symbolized those who participated in God’s life (3:4).This is about reciprocal relationship and involvement together, which soiled clothes symbolized a relational barrier to, precluded or maintained with relational distance. Any type of “soiled” clothes—whether stained by blatant sin or dirtied from subtle incomplete work, including preoccupation with the secondary—would have this relational consequence.

What this more subtly indicates is the lack or absence of ongoing involvement in the ek-eis (“out of”-“into”) relational dynamic that the Word made the relational imperative for his church family to be distinguished en (“in”) the surrounding contexts of the world (the Word’s defining family prayer, Jn 17:11,14-18)—distinguished in their whole and uncommon identity from the common and fragmentary surrounding them. Without this relational outcome from the ek-eis relational dynamic, this church became subject to the shaping influence intervening from reductionist sources (like culture and politics) with the following consequences:

Therefore, they were unable to distinguish being whole from reductionist substitutes in their practice, which emerged from subtly renegotiating God’s whole relational terms to their fragmentary outer-in terms, thereby submitting to a comparative process measured by ‘good without wholeness’, which composed their illusion and simulation of being alive, unable to perceive that “you are reduced and fragmented,” which rendered them to reflect, reinforce and sustain the human condition “not good to be apart,” leaving them to know only ‘sin without reductionism’—the knowledge of “good and evil” too many churches are subject to and thus shaped by in their “balancing act” of the bad.

It seems incongruent that this highly esteemed church was so incomplete. Their practice obviously wasn’t lukewarm to reflect a status-quo church as in Laodicea. Yet, the subtle self-contradiction is that what often appears compatible to Christ’s church (known early as the Way) is in reality not congruent with Jesus’ relational path embodying God’s whole relational terms (cf. Mt 7:22-23). Being complete and whole and not reduced or fragmented has been an ongoing issue in church history, with recurring issues facing the global church today. Yet, the issue of not being complete or being whole started back at creation and the purpose to “fill the earth” (Gen 1:28). The Hebrew term for “fill” (male) generally denotes completion of something that was unfinished. When God declared “it is not good for human persons to be apart,” God started, with Adam and Eve, the relational context and process of the function to be God’s family. This was later fulfilled by Jesus—as he declared “I will not leave you as orphans” and sent us the Spirit for completion—in the trinitarian relational context of family by the trinitarian relational process of family love. This relational context and process of the Trinity’s family were not the primary function of the Sardis church’s involvement and ministry, so the Word rightly critiqued what they “filled their church” with, as he does all churches.

Therefore, churches today with a wide reputation and huge brand need to examine the basis for their identity and function, and what they’re filling their churches with. The Word assesses the integrity of church witness only from inner out; and any identity and function composed by a reduced theological anthropology and weak view of sin will always be incomplete and subject to the Word’s “Wake up” call.

Moving on to a more complicated variant of a voluntarist church is the hybrid found in the church at Thyatira (2:18-29). Thyatira’s economy emphasized trades (including brass-working) and crafts (cf. Acts 16:14). In the Greco-Roman world of that time, trade guilds organized the various trades and were necessary to belong to if one wanted to pursue a trade (much like unions today). These guilds served various social functions as well, one of which was to meet for common meals dedicated to their patron deities, thereby engaging in activities of pagan worship and immorality. For Christians not to belong to a guild and participate would generally mean becoming isolated economically and socially; and we are well aware of the tension between exclusion and inclusion. The economic structure of this church’s surrounding context shaped them to take an apparent pragmatic approach to their practice of faith, rather than become isolated economically and socially. Thus, as a voluntarist church they were more tolerant of questionable differences and became complicit with surrounding practices by using truth and norm gymnastics; this certainly made relative the application of the Word’s Rule of Law.

In the nature of this surrounding context, the Word acknowledged this church’s extensive Christian practice: love, faith, service, patient endurance, and that their “last works are greater than the first,” indicating not a status-quo church but actually performing more practice than before. Yet, what the Word clarified and corrected was that their practice also “tolerated” (aphiemi, to let pass, permit, allow, v.20) a prevailing teaching and practice from the surrounding context (likely related to trade-guilds), which compromised the integrity of a church’s whole theology and practice. Significantly, their hybrid process was not simply an issue about syncretism, synthesizing competing ideologies, or even pluralism; and the issue also went beyond merely maintaining doctrinal purity (as in the Ephesian church) to the deeper issue about participation in (en) a surrounding context having the prevailing presence of reductionism and its subsequent influence on their perceptual-interpretive lens. Their lens, of course, determined what they ignored (or tolerated) and paid attention to, which shaped their practice in a hybrid process (like the church in Pergamum).

In spite of being what would be considered an activist church that cared for people, they made pragmatic concessions with good intentions to serve the common good. The consequence was to become enablers and complicitors of a fragmentary majority, which compromised the integral whole and uncommon integrity of their righteousness and also the qualitative-relational integrity of the whole justice from the Word’s Rule of Law—contrary to the Word’s plumb line of righteousness and in conflict with the measuring line of justice. Theologically, the Thyatira church demonstrated a weak view of sin, that is, sin without reductionism, consequently what they certainly must have considered good works was ‘good without wholeness’. Functionally, this exposes their lack of reciprocal relational involvement with the Trinity in the indispensable ek-eis reciprocating dynamic necessary to distinguish their whole identity as the Trinity’s family en the surrounding context without being fragmented by it in a hybrid process.

What converges in a hybrid process is critical to listen to carefully and pay attention to closely: ‘sin without reductionism’ subtly composes ‘good without wholeness’—which may survive the common good but not the uncommon good of the whole gospel—so that the church’s theology and practice are not distinguished whole in the world, even though perhaps having longstanding, popular or uncompromising distinction in the surrounding context (as other churches demonstrated). To what extent does a hybrid process shape the global church today? Added attention needs to be paid to global South churches, who must adapt to a global economy, fixed cultural traditions, and even the spirit world. Yet, common practices by global North churches already demonstrate having absorbed the limits and constraints from the common into their theology and practice, although the hybrid process is much more subtle. Regardless of the variants of voluntarist churches, the Word makes it unmistakable to them “that I am the one who searches minds and hearts, and I will respond to each of you as your existential identity and function deserve” (2:23).

The Word certainly searches the minds and hearts of all churches, whether voluntarist, legalist or originalist. The political and cultural factors intervening on churches ongoingly create shifting winds in the surrounding climate; and all churches must go beyond merely adapting to these conditions and be responsible to deeply engage in neutralizing and countering them. To clarify this responsibility for addressing these intervening factors, the Word’s integrated three-fold approach to politics and culture includes the qualified cooperative approach. Yet, in these shifting winds there are competing definitions of cooperation that counter the Word’s approach. For this reason the Word’s approach is always the qualified cooperative approach, and thus it is cooperative only when such cooperation does not compromise our whole identity and function from inner out in the primacy of relationship together. In other words, the cooperative practice of the church in the surrounding context must not be common-ized but clearly distinguished whole and uncommon. For this to be the existential identity and function of the church, it must be responsible to neutralize and counter the pervasive and prevailing workings of the common. Then, this whole-ly church illuminates light in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity, which the surrounding fog and darkness cannot obscure.

In the intervening winds of politics and culture, the public life of Christians and churches are faced with the question of whether they have essentially formed a religious culture and a politicized religion. Those formations may not be explicit enough to readily recognize, but they would be evident sufficiently to recognize cultural and political influence and shaping. They should examine if this forms the composition of their identity and function. And is this the common ground that underlies their gatherings as church beyond the ostensible theological markers identified in statements of faith? These are crucial issues notably in a polarized climate, which is amplified for Christians and churches by affective polarization—making them increasingly susceptible to misinformation, disinformation and even to embracing conspiracy theories, as witnessed today. This is political theology’s reckoning alert and beckoning call for our public way of life, because the church is the penultimate witness for the relational outcome of the Word’s whole gospel.

The Word’s “Wake up” call to a highly successful church confronted the reality that “I have found your church practice incomplete based on the qualitative-relational lens of the Trinity.” What then did this church witness to in the persons and relationships composing it? This is directly relevant today because a majority of churches fall into this scenario, whether they would be considered successful or not. The central issues is the existential basis for all these gatherings as church, which always bears a witness.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, churches who didn’t defy health orders have been relegated to virtual gatherings using Zoom. This has been challenging for churches and its members to engage as a substitute for in-person gatherings—though likely less challenging than for students struggling during this crisis. Virtual gatherings as church, however, is not a recent phenomenon; it has actually existed since the early church, which by necessity prompted the Word’s “Wake up” call. What has evolved since the early church is analogous to what’s experienced in the Zoom church.

Certainly, Zoom gatherings require some behavior modifications from in-person gatherings. Yet, do the behaviors modified really involve much difference from in-person interaction? Consider what you see on the Zoom screen, an image of each person participating even if they don’t say a word. Then consider how much that image reflects that person; and if you don’t know the person from before, what does the image make you think about the person? Zoom screens obviously only show the upper image of a person, which has resulted in numerous facetious remarks and jokes about what the lower half of the person is showing.

The sum of Zoom gatherings involves the real dynamics of human relations in general and in-person relationships in particular. Foremost is the presentation of self in an image that only partially represents the whole person, or even an image in contrary reflection of the real person. These images involve merely outer-in distinctions that obscure the whole person behind what effectively serve as a veil or a mask. The relational consequence from these dynamics are immeasurable in human life and far reaching for the church:

1. The existential reality of relational distance, which is merely duplicated in virtual realities like Zoom.

2. Relegating all outer-in distinctions for persons to the inevitable comparative process intrinsic to reducing persons to what they have and do, whether in Zoom or in-person gatherings.

3. This replicates in church gatherings a system and structure that reinforce and sustain human inequality between those persons and human inequity among them.

These consequences evolve in such gatherings all because their whole persons (not partial images) have not been vulnerably involved in face-to-face relationship together (not outer-in gatherings) to be whole and uncommon in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity.

These consequential relational dynamics reflected the gatherings that the early disciples had with Jesus. In their outer-in distinctions (e.g. to be the greatest among them), they maintained relational distance from Jesus (as in Mk 9:33-34) as they participated daily in what Jesus was doing. Most consequential, however, no matter how much time they spent together and saw what he did, they still did not have the inner-out depth of relational involvement to know his whole person (Jn 14:9). It’s as if all their time together was a Zoom gathering—gathered together on common ground without the uncommon connection to be his church family.

Moreover, this relational syndrome also mirrors the incomplete practice of the Sardis church and the relinquished primacy of the covenant relationship of love by the Ephesian church. This reflects the negative impact both on the integrity of a church’s condition and on the credibility of its witness. Whether in virtual or in-person gatherings, these churches re-envision the church and thereby reconstitute the relational outcome of the gospel. This effectively obviates their witness since their identity and function do not illuminate in the darkness but simply blends compatibly into the common. The church, locally and globally, struggles in this relational condition; and its branches need to be restored to their qualitative-relational integrity, so that their penultimate witness will be fulfilled.

The Word’s “Wake up” call to churches is based on God’s undistorted lens, the qualitative-relational lens that neutralizes and counters the common myopic lens prevailing in churches. When you look at your specific church branch or at the host of church branches today, it is essential to understand the roots from which these churches branched. In spite of the theology stated for the vision of many churches, their practice has been coopted by surrounding influences mainly from culture and politics. Currently, for example, identity politics has shaped the church’s public identity, and partisan politics has skewed its function, in which the church descends into gatherings of like-mindedness. The consequence of this intervention has coopted the church to practice essentially a politicized religion in the appearance of a religious culture; and such explicit or implicit simulations and illusions of faith increasingly blend in with today’s post-Christian period pervading in secularism.

This redefining process has produced church branches, the variants of which have re-envisioned the church to render them incomplete according to God’s lens, and thus incompatible with the Word’s vision for his church (Eph 1:22-23; 4:13). Therefore, all the variants of the re-envisioned church need to be neutralized and countered.

The partisan influence from the surrounding context intervening on the church is increasingly consequential:

1. For embedding churches in the common distinctions valued in their surrounding context (as in the church in Laodicea).

2. Thus for inevitably engaging churches in an assumed comparative process or a presumed stratified system of distinctions (as in the church in Sardis) that renders the human order unequal.

3. Then for unavoidably making churches into enablers and complicitors of the existential human inequality and inequity surrounding them.

4. Thereby for misleading them to become enablers of injustice and disablers of justice.

Before countering this partisan influence on the early formation of the church in the palpable Word’s post-ascension church critique, the Word in the incarnation neutralized partisan influence on the initial formative process for the church. For example, this partisan influence was neutralized by the Word in embracing the Samaritan woman and by taking into his family the marginalized tax collectors Matthew and Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-10).

Most significantly, the Word counters the re-envisioning of the church in a pivotal interaction often overlooked on the cross. This interaction needs to be understood in the full context leading to it. The embodied Word constituted the new relational order for his followers’ life together, which countered the common relational order of family they were used to (Mt 12:47-50, cf. Mt 10:34-39). This is the family of the formative church that Jesus promised to them (Mk 10:23-30; Jn 14:18,23). In his intrusive relational path, Jesus was not anti-biological family, whether in extended kinship or nuclear form. Rather he countered the primacy given to it because it was only secondary (not unimportant) for his disciples. The relational path Jesus enacted was the relational progression that constituted his church family—the existential uncommon relational outcome of the gospel that he saved us to. Therefore, his church family is primary for his disciples. Yet, this primacy is warranted only when the persons composing the church are whole and their function in relationship together as family is determined by the new relational order belonging to Jesus, who embodied and enacted the whole-ly Trinity.

The created wholeness for the person is inseparable from one’s relationships. This means that persons can never be whole by themselves, namely as mere individuals. Therefore, the individual person alone is never sufficient to complete being whole; for the person to be whole as constituted by its created nature (original and new) in the image and likeness of the whole-ly Trinity involves also the relationships together necessary to complete being whole, God’s relational whole as in the Trinity. This integral identity of persons and relationships together in wholeness is disclosed first in the Trinity—as relationally revealed by Jesus—to help us understand our ontology and function in likeness.

No trinitarian person alone is the whole of God. That is, each trinitarian person is whole-ly God but is not complete in being the whole of God apart from the other trinitarian persons; necessarily by its nature only the three trinitarian persons together constitute the relational ontology of the Trinity—in whose likeness human persons have been created and thus must function by its nature to be whole, God’s relational whole. Anything less and any substitutes are reductions of the whole—that is, “to be apart” in ontology and function—thus can never reflect, experience or represent wholeness; at best they are only the ontological simulations and functional illusions from reductionism and its counter-relational work.

On this irreducible basis, then, the reality facing our persons, relationships and churches is this: The wholeness of all our persons, relationships and churches is trinitarian wholeness—nothing less than and no substitutes for the whole-ly Trinity, “so that they all may be whole, as we are whole” (Jn 17:21). This reality is not virtual, an alternative reality or a deniable reality that we can dismiss as a theological construction, since it emerges only face to face distinctly without the veil in the primary context of relationship together.

Yet, there is a diverse condition of persons and relationships occupying the church today. Most function “to be apart” as relational orphans in the common variants of the human relational order—who don’t belong by choice or are unable to belong by design. In contrast and conflict, the persons and relationships belonging to Jesus’ church family are whole-ly in ontology and function, and therefore live whole in uncommon relationships together in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity—all of whom and which are distinguished by the uncommon while still in the common (the ek-eis dynamic Jesus prayed for his family, Jn 17:15,21,23). What unfolds here is the relational progression of Jesus’ whole-ly disciples belonging to his family, whose integral identity is composed and thereby distinguished together in the new relational order.

The new relational order is not optional for the church family of the whole-ly Trinity. Jesus didn’t enact his whole ontology and function as just an alternative for us to consider. When we focus specifically in relational terms on the various interactions Jesus had with persons, what unfolds is his relational progression in establishing the new relational order of his family. Jesus was not involved in isolated or unrelated encounters; rather he was always relationally involved in the Trinity’s family love for the relational purpose to pursue, embrace and establish persons to belong in his family. His essential relational work must not be oversimplified, nor its relational outcome minimalized. The relational outcome was not to belong as mere church members, nor to become just relational orphans without truly belonging to his church family. Furthermore, his whole relational outcome was never optional for those who claimed the Good News, therefore cannot be optional for those occupying the church today.

For example, when Zacchaeus responded face to face in relationship with Jesus—an involvement that was prohibited in the existing relational order of Jesus’ religious culture—the relational outcome wasn’t whether or not Zacchaeus wanted to belong in God’s family. Jesus simply declared that this marginalized or discarded person now belonged (Lk 19:9). And based on his adoption, Zacchaeus’ new identity as a son in God’s whole-ly family came with nonnegotiable relational responsibilities that all family members are accountable for to each other to reinforce and sustain the Word’s essential relational work.

The Word’s qualitative-relational lens of his church family countered the re-envisioned church with this new relational order and makes family members accountable to each other in what can only be the uncommon way. This brings us to the pivotal interaction on the cross that resounded in Jesus’ defining statement for his church family. To his mother, “Woman, here is your son,” and to his beloved disciple John, “Here is your mother” (Jn 19:26-27). We cannot overlook or take lightly the relational significance of his family love communicated in this statement. By countering what was common in the surrounding culture with the whole-ly culture of his family, Jesus was fulfilling what he saved us all to—which is not a mere option for us to consider. In this relational reality (not a dramatization or metaphor) Jesus gives us a partial entrance into salvation's relational outcome by opening the functional door—behind the curtain without the veil, thus demolishing the holy partition—to salvation’s new life and practice.

In this defining moment, circumstances, culture, family and Jesus’ promise to his disciples (specifically Mk 10:29-30) converge for those persons to make this intimate relational connection. The initial relational outcome forms the functional roots for the relational growth and development of his church as family. By building relationally with the persons who truly constituted his family (see Mt 12:47-50), Jesus demonstrated the functional significance of being his family in what needs to be understood as a defining interaction for all his followers, yet is often underemphasized or overlooked.

Apparently, Mary had been a widow for a while. In the Mediterranean world of biblical times, a widow was in a precarious position (like orphans), and so it was for Mary, particularly when her eldest and thus primary son (culturally speaking) was about to die. Their culture called for the eldest son to make provision for parents when they could no longer provide for themselves. The kinship family (by blood and law) had this responsibility. Though a widow, in Mary’s case she still had other sons and daughters to care for her (Mk 6:3). Why, then, did Jesus delegate this responsibility to someone outside their immediate family?

Though circumstances, culture and family converge on this scene, they do not each exert the same amount of influence. We cannot let contextual considerations limit our understanding of this defining point in the relational progression of his followers. Jesus wasn’t fulfilling his duty as the eldest son, nor bound by the circumstances. As he had consistently demonstrated throughout the incarnation, Jesus was taking his followers beyond culture and circumstances, even beyond family as we commonly view it. As the embodied whole-ly Trinity, his whole-ly life and practice constituted function beyond the counter-relational workings of reductionism prevailing in the surrounding context, which he expected also of his followers in order to participate in his new covenant family (Mt 5:20).

Jesus’ integral trinitarian relational context of family and relational process of family love was clearly illuminated in his painful condition yet sensitive relational involvement with Mary and John; again, this should not be reduced by the drama of the moment or the obligation of the situation. Though Jesus was in anguish and those closest to him were deeply distressed, this unimaginable interaction took place because Jesus functionally embodied and relationally enacted the family love of the whole-ly Trinity. In the most touching moment on the cross, Jesus teaches us the relational reality of what being his family means: how to see each other, how to be involved with each other, and how the individual person is affirmed in submitting to him for family together.

For Jesus, family involvement was based on the Trinity’s intimate relational involvement of love, so being his family cannot be understood from our conventional perceptions of family involvement or by our conditioned feelings of obligation, and such sentiments of love. Despite his circumstances, Jesus focused on Mary and John with the deepest love involvement and affection (agape and phileo, cf. Jn 5:20, Dt 7:7-8): “Here is your son,” “Here is your mother.” How was he telling them to see each other? How was he saying to be involved with each other? How was the individual person affirmed in submitting to him?

Jesus gave his followers new eyes—God’s family lens—with which to see each other, beyond circumstances, culture, blood and legal ties, social status. He redefined his family to be relationship-specific to his Father (Mt 12:47-50). This is how he wants us to see each other, and how he saw Mary. It seems certain that Mary was not merely Jesus’ earthly mother but increasingly his follower. She was not at odds with Jesus (though she certainly must have had mixed feelings) during his earthly ministry, as were his brothers. She was always there for him in her role as mother but more importantly she was now there with him as one who did the Father’s will—thus, as follower, daughter, sister. This was the Mary at the crucifixion.

Just as Jesus didn’t merely see Mary as his earthly mother, a widow, a female, he didn’t merely see John as a disciple, a special friend. They were his Father’s daughter and son, his sister and brother (cf. Mt 28:10; Heb 2:11), his family together in the relational progression. And that is how he wants us to be involved with each other, not stopping short at any point on this progression—no matter how well we have been servants together, nor how much we have shared as friends. This deeply touching interaction was Jesus’ involvement with and response to his family. It was the beautiful outworking of family love in the reciprocal relational process together of being family and growing it only by qualitative-relational terms. This essential relational work involves the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes, just as Jesus lived and went to the cross. Persons in likeness live the whole function of salvation’s new life and practice in the existential by their ongoing relational involvement in this essential relational work, which makes secondary any other acts of service.

For this unequivocal purpose and essential outcome, Jesus’ action was just as much for John’s benefit as it was for Mary—both in provision and opportunity. In reciprocal response to Jesus, John acted beyond being merely a disciple, even a friend, and took Mary into “his own” (idios, one’s own, denotes special relationship, Jn 19:27). He didn’t just take her into his house to be merely a household member; he embraced Mary as his own mother (or kinship sister). She must have embraced him also as her son (or kinship brother). In response to what each of them let go of in order to follow Jesus, he promised them an even greater family beyond what existed (Mk 10:29-30). True to his words as ever, he fulfilled his promise to them initially in this down payment. This is the uncommon relational outcome existentially for each individual who submits to him to participate in his family. The greatest satisfaction of being accepted without outer-in distinctions, the deepest fulfillment of the individual’s self-worth from inner out, the most certainty of one’s place and belonging can be experienced by the individual person only within the relational reality of the whole of his new covenant family composing his new creation church in the new relational order. Anything less and any substitutes are merely virtual.

This uncommon connection distinguishing the new relational order of the church family can only be complete when in qualitative-relational likeness to the whole-ly Trinity. The integrity of this church’s relational condition can be nothing less, with no substitutes shaped by the common in surrounding contexts. However, this is always met with competition from the common ground of anything less and any substitutes, alternatives which are incomplete and thus fragmentary for persons, relationships together and their human order. Re-envisioned churches gathering in like-mindedness dwell comfortably on common ground, a convenience sufficient for their idea of church. But, they labor in the relational condition of a relational order lacking the relational connection that is only experienced in the uncommon condition of transformed relationships—relationships equalized in their human order and intimately involved in their relational connection together integrally as the Word’s church family.

In a polarized climate, locally and globally, Christians and churches are susceptible to the stress from affective polarization and the instability of minimalist disorder, which even getting a COVID-19 vaccine has amplified for many because of the inequities in who gets it. While churches may argue for having a justified case for how they gather, all this fragments their theological will to allow their practice to be co-opted by partisan influences. Like-minded gatherings have been the common solution to this divisiveness, a solution both in public life and church life. This solution, however, really reduces us to a double-minded condition (cf. Jas 1:2-8), which will not resolve a divided heart (cf. the Thyatira church). The relational condition of churches reflects the need to change from being double-minded to whole-hearted, so that churches can assert theological will over co-opted practice.

The reality facing the church today, locally, regionally and globally, is that re-envisioned churches domesticate the church in the calculus and algorithm of a fragmentary majority. Domesticating the church in the surrounding context allows the parameters of peace and justice to be dictated by the common majority. This process makes evident that a church is common-ized in a dynamic contrary to and in conflict with the whole-ly Word and his family (Heb 2:11; 1 Pet 1:15; 2:9-10). Thus, domestication signifies church identity and function contrary to the Word’s church family of outliers (as in 1 Pet 1:17; 2:11; Heb 11:13). This distinction brings to the forefront the current state of the global church and the relational condition composing its church branches.

As the functional key, Jesus’ essential relational work demonstrated the relationships of love necessary to be the whole-ly Trinity’s new covenant family with family love (both agape and phileo), and this initial experience constituted the uncommon roots of his church as family. Moreover, this relationally experienced reality signified the ongoing fulfillment of his covenant promise to his followers (Mk 10:29-30) beyond what they could imagine. The essential reality of this whole relational outcome becomes distinguished in the here and now by the whole function of his church family in the new relational order, whereby the whole-ly church’s persons and relationships integrally enact the whole gospel embodied by whole-ly Jesus for all to belong to the whole-ly Trinity’s family (Jn 17:21-23; Eph 2:14-22).

The ontology and function of the church in the new relational order emerges definitively from Jesus’ formative family prayer (commonly seen as his high priestly prayer, Jn 17). Based on his prayer, the global church is one, not a division of many churches. For the global church to be one it must be whole by the nature of its likeness to the Trinity, rather than a collection of fragmentary parts. Like the Trinity, all the persons and relationships of the global church must be whole persons in whole relationships together rather than based on their variable surrounding contexts. Accordingly for the global church, the variable integrity of their diverse condition no longer would be in likeness of the whole persons in whole relationships together constituting the Trinity. In practice if not in theology, our existing diverse condition reflects a likeness shaped more by the surrounding context; this domestication then makes evident belonging to a common culture over belonging to the whole-ly Trinity’s family. For the global church to be in likeness of the Trinity, its persons and relationships must by necessity (without option or negotiation) be constituted by the new relational order established by whole-ly Jesus in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes. By belonging in this whole-ly relational condition, we would not be confronted with the critique “Wake up…for I have not found your function complete [fulfilled whole, pleroo] in the sight of the whole-ly Trinity” (Rev 3:2).

The new relational order is not a separatist order isolated from human contexts. On the contrary, it functions with direct relational involvement in human contexts—defined by the Word’s three-fold integrated approach to culture and politics—but not according to the existing order of those contexts. The Word’s approach is necessary in order to bring change to persons and relationships, which may require changing that existing (old) order, or at least its contextualized or commonized bias influencing persons and relationships. The new intersects the old in the relational progression of Jesus’ intrusive relational path to integrate the bad news into the good news of the whole gospel. The relational progression of the change he enacted always engaged persons from inner out. By engaging the whole person with his whole person, Jesus enacted the theological anthropology (countering the existing anthropology) necessary to address our human relational condition and to transform our persons and relationships in two essential ways:

1. The whole person from inner out cannot be engaged by outer-in distinctions of what a person does or has (or doesn’t do or have). These distinctions are the basis in human relations for a comparative order (structure and/or system) that measures persons on this scale and thereby designates them to a particular level in this comparative order—all of which underlies human inequality and inequity. Obviously, the higher we are the better off and the lower the worse off. To whatever extent, we all participate in this comparative process (cf. the early disciples, Lk 9:46; 22:24), which (a) reinforces and sustains human inequality and inequity, and (b) exposes an underlying reduced theological anthropology that counters Jesus’ whole theological anthropology. By engaging the whole person from inner out, Jesus disregarded all human distinctions and equalized all persons from their comparative value. Then, he redeemed persons from the reduced ontology and function of those distinctions, so that their comparative worth will be equalized from inner out as whole persons—free from the veil of distinctions that occupied them from outer in. The relational outcome also transformed their relationships from this comparative process to be equalized together in wholeness, without which their persons and relationships could not be whole and function whole. Therefore, Jesus transformed persons and relationships from their deficit condition belonging to a comparative process—the deficit evident in church divisions—vulnerably to their whole condition of relational belonging in the process of equalization. Being equalized, however, is only the first essential step in their transformation. Integral to the equalization of our persons and relationships to complete the relational equation of transformed persons in transformed relationships is this second essential step.

2. The whole-ly Jesus always engaged persons face to face, whether they could receive his person or not. He enacted this relational process by vulnerably involving the heart of his person without his titles, roles and resources, in order to make relational connection in the primacy of face-to-face relationship together. In this relational process, he vulnerably involved his whole person to enact on the cross the essential relational work needed for direct face-to-face involvement in relationship with the whole-ly God (as in Heb 10:19-22). By removing the veil, human persons could now have heart-to-heart connection for face-to-face relationship together with the whole-ly Trinity. The transformation of persons from inner out opens their heart to the heart of Jesus, the Father and the Spirit. When hearts open to each other and come together in relationship, the relational outcome is intimacy. This intimacy also extends throughout God’s whole-ly family when hearts open to each other in relationship together without the veil. Yet, intimacy in relationship together cannot unfold until persons emerge whole by being equalized from their distinctions that form the veil for relational distance; only simulations and illusions of intimacy exist when equalization is not a relational reality. Mary demonstrated the integral process of transformed persons in transformed relationship by being equalized in her person, so that she opened her heart to come together intimately with the heart of Jesus—in anticipation of, yet prior to, Jesus’ essential relational work on the cross to remove the veil from our hearts (as in 2 Cor 3:16). As long as persons do not relationally progress vulnerably behind the curtain in their relational involvement with Jesus on the cross to have their veil removed, they will not be equalized from their distinctions in reduced ontology and function (reduced theological anthropology). This lack or absence will always create a relational barrier for the heart to open intimately, even masked by subtle illusions of intimacy. At the same time, just being equalized from our distinctions does not guarantee that our persons will open our hearts to be deeply vulnerable for intimacy in relationships together. Nevertheless, when we experience intimacy with the whole-ly Trinity as family together, we extend our persons and relationships to each other in likeness—which is what and who Jesus enacted to transform our persons and relationships (as in 2 Cor 3:18).

In the relational equation of transformed persons in transformed relationships, both equalization and intimacy are integral to the new relational order. Therefore, our belonging to the new creation church family based on the new relational order requires nothing less than equalization and no substitutes for intimacy in both our persons and relationships. Anything less and any substitutes do not involve the relational progression of the change to transformation but the subtle regression that continues to reflect, reinforce and sustain our relational condition in an old order of stratified relations shaped by the common and belonging to a surrounding culture—the relational condition composing church divisions.

In Paul’s transformed ecclesiology, for the church to live in wholeness is for the church to be ongoingly involved relationally with the Spirit for its belonging together “in the bond of wholeness” (Eph 4:3, cf. Rom 8:15-16). This bond (syndesmos) is the whole relationships binding the church together from inner out as one interdependent body, which the Word embodied and enacted for transformed relationships together both equalized and intimate (Eph 2:14-22). For the church to live in wholeness as God’s new creation family is to be deeply involved together in this new relational order of equalized and intimate relationships. This is what holds together the church in its innermost; and apart from these relationships together with the Spirit, there is just a fragmentary condition of church divisions—existing even with an ontological simulation of ecclesial order. When Paul illuminated “God is not a God of fragmentation but the God of wholeness,” he also made unequivocal that this new church relational order is neither optional nor negotiable. The challenge for Paul’s readers, then, becomes both about his assumption of the new creation ‘already’ and if God’s new creation family is truly the church. Paul’s transformed ecclesiology clearly defines these as inseparable and irreducible. Reductionism would renegotiate church order as sufficient alternative, perhaps even with its reification as the peace of God with irenic identity markers serving to promote the mere absence of conflict. The wholeness of the global church does not emerge from such theology and practice.

Any form of reductionism is never an option or substitute for the whole-ly Trinity and the Trinity’s relational whole embodied in the face of Christ, who has “shined on you and been gracious to you…and established the new relationship of wholeness.” This peace—from the God of peace embodied by the completeness of God in Christ for the gospel of peace to fulfill the inherent human relational need and resolve the persistent human problem—must be accounted for by the church now. Doctrine alone is insufficient to account for this peace, tradition has been inadequate, and missional, servant, incarnational, inclusive and postmodern models for church are ambiguous. If the church is not directly dealing with the human shaping of relationships together, then the church is not addressing the human relational condition, both within itself and in the world. In the midst of reductionism, Paul is still exhorting his readers to “embody whatever is necessary to live the gospel of wholeness” (Eph 6:15).

Though Paul was not trinitarian in his theology, traditionally speaking, the Spirit was the key for him in his practice (cf. 1 Cor 2:9-13. The dynamic presence and involvement of the Spirit’s whole person functions while inseparably on an eschatological trajectory. Yet for Paul, this does not and must not take away from the primary focus on the Spirit’s presence and involvement for the present, just as Paul addressed the Thessalonians’ eschatological anxiety with the relational imperative not to quench the Spirit’s present relational involvement (1 Thess 5:19). The Spirit’s present concern and function is relational involvement for constituting whole ontology and function, for making functional wholeness together, and for the embodying of the whole-ly Trinity’s new creation family in whole relationship together without the veil as the church in relational likeness of the Trinity (2 Cor 3:16-18), the completeness of Christ (as pleroma, Eph 1:22-23; 1 Cor 12:11-13)—which is why the person of the Spirit is deeply affected, grieving over any reductionism in reciprocal relational involvement together (Eph 4:30). With the new de-contextualized and de-commonized lens from the Spirit, the person perceives oneself whole-ly from the inner out and others in the same way, and is involved in relationships together on this basis, which is congruent with their experience of relational involvement from the Trinity and in likeness of how the Trinity engages relationships.

The agape relational involvement Paul defines is not about sacrificial love but family love. Clarifying and correcting misconceptions of agapē and Jesus’ love, family love submits one’s whole person from inner out to one another in equalized and intimate relationships signifying whole relationship together—love in likeness of how the whole-ly Trinity functions together and is relationally involved with us. Paul defines conclusively that in the midst of reductionism, this is the new creation church’s new relational order in which “the uncommon peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your persons from inner out in Christ Jesus from reductionism” (Phil 4:7) and by which “the God of wholeness will be relationally involved with you” (4:9).

What unfolds from Christ as the church’s uncommon peace is the relational significance of persons redeemed from their distinctions, and relationships together freed from the relational barriers keeping them in relational distance, detachment or separation. However comparative relations may be structured, Paul declares in unmistakable relational terms: “Christ has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of fragmenting differences” (Eph 2:14, NIV). The relational significance of this uncommon peace is not for the future but for this essential reality to unfold in our experience here and now in the church. This is the pivotal breakthrough in human relations that will transform the church to the new creation of persons redeemed, and thus freed for their relationships to be reconciled in the new order uncommon for all persons, peoples, nations and their relations since ‘from the beginning’. “Christ’s relational purpose was to create in his wholeness one new humanity out of their fragmentation, thus making them whole in uncommon peace” (v.15). When this identity composed by the new relational order becomes the existential relational reality for the persons and relationships of the church, they can claim salvation from sin as reductionism and salvation to wholeness together; and by only this relational reality, they can proclaim and whole-ly witness to the experiential truth of this good news for human relations. Without this essential reality, persons and relationships in the church regress in what amounts to fake news based on alternative facts; this is the syndrome underlying church divisions.

Therefore, the church and its persons and relationships are accountable for tearing down any existing holy partition that allows them to maintain practice with relational distance as if still in front of the curtain torn away by Jesus. By being involved with Jesus’ essential relational work enacted behind the curtain, we also are accountable for removing any existing veil over our face in order to be vulnerably involved face to face in the intimate relationships together that Christ saved us to today and not for the future. In other words, the intimate relationship of equalized persons in the church is neither optional nor negotiable but essential for the church’s whole-ly identity to be distinguished in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity. Without the church’s whole-ly identity, the church functions with, in and for church divisions.

For Paul, God indeed is not a God of fragmentation but the God of wholeness; therefore only nothing less and no substitutes of the person and persons together in the new relational order are functionally significant for all of the following:

To reciprocally involve the whole-ly Trinity in distinct relational terms (Eph 2:17-22), to constitute the Word’s relational whole as family in the Trinity’s relational likeness (Col 3:10-11,15; 2 Cor 3:18), and to embody and enact as Jesus’ whole-ly disciples the ontological identity and relational belonging that are necessary to fulfill the inherent human relational need and resolve the human problem of inequality and inequity existing both in the world and even within churches (Eph 3:6,10-12; 4:13-16).

Congruently, in transformed ecclesiology the identity for all churches is distinguished beyond all surrounding contexts with nothing less and no substitutes for the following:

The church in whole ontology and function in relational terms constitutes only transformed persons relationally involved by family love in transformed relationships together integrally equalized and intimate, which composes the new relational order for the church’s whole-ly identity progressing uncommonly in wholeness in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole and holy Trinity (Eph 4:23-25)—who is not a God of reductionism promoting ontological simulations and functional illusions that only regress.

Solely on this basis will the global church “be whole-ly as we are whole-ly,” and will its persons and relationships “become completely whole, so that the world may know that you have sent me to make them whole and have loved them intimately even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:22-23).

In this uncommon relational outcome of family together in wholeness—which unequivocally opposes churches of anything less and any substitutes—the qualitative-relational integrity of the church’s relational condition is clearly distinguished to illuminate unambiguously the credibility of the church’ witness as the light in the darkness.

There is one encouraging narrative in the midst of today’s polarized crisis: the unmistakable exposure of the evolving human relational condition inherent to humanity, innate to all humankind, and intrinsic to the human order. This exposure is clearly evident even in a democracy, whose ideology points to an evolving utopia rather than devolving dystopian situations witnessed in its past and present. In theory, democracy is for every individual to be free in their way of life, with rights for the pursuit of their happiness. What truly exists in U.S. democracy is this reality: Where and when individuals have been truly free, their exercise of freedom has exposed their human relational condition that reinforces and sustains human inequality and inequity between individuals—which certainly prevents every individual to be free. The good news integral to this bad news, however, is that the Word reconstitutes freedom to heal the human relational condition.

When “Christ Jesus broke down the relational barrier that divided persons by their outer-in differences” (Eph 2:14), he freed them from the condition “to be apart from God’s created wholeness” (Gen 2:18) both as an individual and in relationships together. This initial redemptive change freed partisan individuals to come together as persons from inner out in order to be reconciled together in wholeness as one family (Eph 2:15-16). Therefore, persons were freed not to be more capable to pursue their individual interests (Gal 5:1,13) but freed from inner out for their persons to be equalized, and thereby be transformed from their relational condition “to be apart” and free to come together with other persons (whatever their outer-in distinctions) in intimate relationships together as family “just like the Trinity” (2 Cor 3:16-18; Eph 2:19-22; Jn 17:22). Christians are freed and churches are free for no other relational purpose and outcome.

The Word reconstituting freedom for no other relational purpose and outcome is the pivotal breakthrough in human relations for resolving the inequality and inequity in the human relational condition. Most certainly, this must first be the experiential truth and relational reality for churches existentially in their persons and relationships. That’s why this breakthrough in relationships foremost includes and directly involves relationship with the whole and uncommon God. “In their wholeness together to reconcile all of them having distinctions to God through his relational work on the cross, by which he redeemed their fragmenting differences” (Eph 2:16). It is indispensable for us to understand what Paul unfolds for the church here is that reconciliation is inseparable from redemption (to be freed). To be freed by redemption is integral for reconciliation in order for relationships (including with God) to come together at the heart of persons in their ontology and function from inner out. Since the prevailing condition for persons is not inner out, this then requires persons be redeemed from outer-in distinctions that prevent this relational connection. We cannot maintain distinctions among us and have this breakthrough in relationships for their reconciliation. This is a confronting issue for those in the church (notably its leaders), who depend on distinctions to establish their identity and self-worth. All discussion about reconciliation must include this reality or there will be no redemptive change in our relationships that brings us together equalized intimately person to person, face to face without the veil.

Therefore, the integral relational significance of redemptive reconciliation is for the heart of persons now freed and equalized to be vulnerable to each other (including God) and come together in intimate relationships. Intimate relationships are the relational outcome distinguished by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace. Paul doesn’t merely recommend the uncommon peace of Christ but makes it imperative for transformed relationships equalized and intimate in the new relational order. With God, intimate relationship involves going beyond conventional spirituality and a spiritual relationship to the following: the existential relational reality of the whole person vulnerably involved ongoingly with “God in boldness and confidence” (Eph 3:12), rooted in the experiential truth of being redeemed from human distinctions, from their fragmentation and the deficit condition of reduced ontology and function, and then reconciled in wholeness together belonging in God’s family—“the intimate dwelling in which the whole-ly God lives by his Spirit” (Eph 2:22, NIV cf. Jn 14:23). Accordingly and indispensably, to have this relational outcome with the Trinity and with each other requires existing relations to be transformed from the relational distance of their distinctions to intimate relationships composed by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon wholeness. This whole-ly relational outcome is the whole gospel and the cross that Jesus enacted to fulfill for our intimacy together heart to heart, thus with-in nothing less than our complete identity as persons face to face. Mary embodied and enacted the whole-ly relational outcome of this gospel, in contrast and conflict with the other disciples who struggled in something less at Jesus’ expense and in their relationships together.

The relational significance of intimacy in church relationships should not be idealized, or even spiritualized, because this indeed uncommon relational outcome is at the heart of what Christ saves us to (integrally with what he saves us from). There is no good news unless the church is being transformed to intimate relationships together, no matter how clearly the gospel is defined in our theology and how much it is proclaimed in our practice. This new relational order was the only relational purpose for Jesus when he cleaned out his house for all persons, peoples, tribes and nations to have relational access to God; and the church is accountable to clean out its own house in order to “gather with me and not scatter” (Mt 12:30). To complete his only relational purpose for his house, on the cross Jesus also deconstructed his house by tearing away the prominent curtain (demolishing the holy partition) to open direct relational access face to face with the whole and uncommon God (Heb 10:19-22). This irreversible breakthrough in relationship with the Trinity included removing the veil to transform relationships both with God and with each other to intimate relationships together (2 Cor 3:16-18).

Thus, the experiential truth and relational reality of the Word’s breakthrough in relationships both neutralizes the relational distance common in human relationships and existing in churches, and also counters the inequality and inequity inevitable from such human relations.

In this new relational order of the integrally equalized and intimate relationships that constitute freed church gatherings, what unfolds is the experiential truth and relational reality of the existential new creation, not its notion or ideal (2 Cor 5:16-17). The Word constituted the new creation to be existential in our persons, relationships, way of life together and its human order; and this only becomes the experiential truth and relational reality when distinguished clearly as uncommon from the surrounding common.

When churches and their persons and relationships function in the new relational order of transformed relationships equalized and intimate together, their whole-ly identity is both de-contextualized from belonging to a surrounding culture and de-commonized from shaping influence by the common. The unfolding relational outcome of their relational progression with the whole-ly Trinity is the new creation church fulfilling its family responsibilities by (1) face-to-face involvement in equalizing just as Jesus equalized, and by (2) living equalized together just as the trinitarian persons are equalized together in the Trinity. The church’s equalizing likeness to the ontology and function of the whole-ly Trinity constitutes the global church family’s ontology and function as the equalizer, first among themselves and integrally then in the contextualization and the commonization of the human condition.

Equalizing is directly correlated to peace. The peace given by Jesus and extended by Paul, however, cannot be confused with or associated with the common notion of peace used in the human context and typically by Christians. In contrast and at times even in conflict with this peace, Jesus and Paul’s peace was always and only uncommon peace. This is a crucial distinction needing to be made in our theology and practice that cannot be underestimated or overemphasized, or else we revolve on immature peace lacking wholeness.

Contrary to common peace, uncommon peace is not a comfort zone or a place of convenience for the church family to practice its faith, because the wholeness of uncommon peace conjointly fights for the whole gospel and fights against its reduction to anything less and any substitutes, even if the latter is doctrinally correct. As embodied by Jesus, this integral fight is for the primacy of persons and relationships in their wholeness of ontology and function and against their fragmentation, often subtle, to anything less and any substitutes in reduced ontology and function. This reduction is typically observed in Christians using the model of Micah 6:8 for their practice composed in the terms of common peace, which merely engages in premature justice and immature peace.

In Paul’s integral fight of Christ’s uncommon peace, he illuminated the relational significance of uncommon peace and its relational purpose, process and outcome definitive for the church and its persons and relationships to be whole together—without fragmentation and any relational distance, detachment or separation (Col 3:15). This uncommon peace needs to compose the church’s theology and practice today both in the fight for this primacy of persons and relationships and against their reduction in any way. The explicit or implied reductions by secondary matters have eluded our understanding and fogged our perception—notably by a contextualized bias that enables inequality and a commonized bias that is complicit with inequity. Without uncommon peace, the experiential truth and relational reality of the church family of Christ does not emerge and unfold, even though simulations of the church body of Christ exist today as in the past. What then specifically distinguishes the whole and uncommon identity of the church in everyday life today?

When the palpable Word, illuminated with the Spirit, transformed (not converted) the divisive Jew Saul, his purpose was not for common peace to negate the conflict of Saul’s power relations against the church—which the Word received personally, “why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4-5) The Word’s complete purpose in whole relational terms was for Paul’s redemptive reconciliation from his fragmentation as a member of God’s people to his wholeness as a person-child belonging to God’s whole and uncommon family. And on the relational basis of this experiential truth, Paul’s whole witness would help unfold with the palpable Word the relational reality of the new-order church family (Acts 26:14-18; Rom 5:10-11). This relational significance and outcome of the uncommon peace of Christ is what Paul illuminated definitively for the relational reality of the church to be whole. The global church needs to take into its heart what Paul unfolded with the palpable Word (1 Cor 2:10-16).

In Paul’s transformed ecclesiology, the bond of wholeness with the Spirit is the embodied inner-out function of whole persons who relationally submit to one another in family love to be intimately involved in relationships together without the limits, barriers or comforts of human-shaped distinctions—signifying equalized relationships without the veil. This relational process of equalizing from inner out needs to be distinguished in the experiential truth of church identity and function, and not remain in doctrinal truth or as a doctrinal statement of intention, or else its relational reality will be elusive and likely submerged in an alternative or even virtual reality. When doctrine causes an impasse in the church’s relational progression, its function (not necessarily its theology) must be deconstructed for the relational process to unfold. This experiential truth happens only when the church is made whole by reciprocal relationship with the Spirit in the functional significance of four key dynamics, which reconstruct the church as equalizer. These key dynamics constitute the church as family to function in uncommon wholeness in the qualitative image of God and to live ongoingly in whole relationship together in the relational likeness of the whole-ly Trinity.

Two of these keys for the church necessitate structural and contextual dynamics and the other two involve imperatives for individual and relational dynamics. In each dynamic, redemptive changes are necessary to go from a mere gathering of individuals to the new creation church family—changes that overlap and interact with the other key dynamics. These are dynamics and related changes that the global church must absorb deeply into its theology and practice in order for its whole-ly identity to unfold in likeness.

While church access can be perceived from outer in as a static condition of a church structured with merely an “open-door policy,” or with a “welcome” sign to indicate its good intentions, access from the inner out of God’s relational context and process of family is dynamic and includes relational involvement (not just a welcome greeting—implied, for example, in Jesus’ transformation of the temple for prayer accessible by all. When Paul made Christ’s salvific work of wholeness conclusive for the church, all persons without distinctions “have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2:18) for relational involvement together “in boldness and confidence” (3:12) as persons who have been equalized for intimate relationships together as God’s family (2:19-22; cf. Gal 4:4-7). Access, therefore, is the structural dynamic of the church without the stratifying barriers of distinctions that treat persons differently (denoted in diakrino, 1 Cor 4:7)—that is, without the reducing syndrome of diakrino confronted in the church by Paul—which is congruent with Christ’s relational work of wholeness (Eph 2:14-17) and is in relational likeness to God (Acts 15:9; Col 3:10-11). This structural dynamic of access both confronts churches of like-mindedness and challenges even multiracial-cultural churches evolving today while still maintaining a dominant bias.

Human-shaped distinctions signify having advantage in comparative relations, the absence of which precludes that advantage. After the primordial garden, the human relational condition “to be apart” became an intentional goal of human effort to secure advantage and maintain self-preservation—the ‘survival of the fittest’ syndrome masked even by religious faith. The specific resources for this relational advantage may vary from one historical context to another (cf. even the works of the law and justification by faith). Yet, privilege, prestige and power are the basic underlying issues over which these relational struggles of inequality are engaged—whether the context is family, social, economic, political, or even within or among churches. Church leaders, for example, notably pursue such advantages to establish their “brand”; and most churches reinforce this subtle process of inequality by seeking personalities over persons for their leadership. Any aspects of privilege, prestige and power are advantages (and benefits) that many persons are reluctant to share, much less give up, if the perception (unreal or not) means for them to be in a position of less. The control of this distribution is threatened by equal access.

The unavoidable reality for churches is that human-shaped distinctions create and maintain advantage, which certainly fragments relationships together and establishes a structure of exclusion with a system of inclusion. Inescapably then in church practice, by their very nature human distinctions are an outer-in dynamic emerging from reduced ontology and function, which in itself already diminishes, minimalizes and fragments God’s relational whole (cf. the disparity in the early church, Acts 6:1). Access, however, is an inner-out dynamic signifying the relational dynamic and qualitative involvement of grace prevailing over the quantified distinctions of what persons have and do. That is, the functional significance of access is for all persons to be defined from inner out and not to be treated differently from outer in (including church leaders), in order to have the relational opportunity to be involved with God for their redemption from the human struggle of reductionism, and thereby to be equalized and intimately reconciled together to fulfill their inherent human relational need in God’s relational whole (as Paul clarifies in his polemic, Gal 3:26-29). Equal access does not threaten personness (distinguished from self-ism) and wholeness for the church, but is a necessary key dynamic for their qualitative development whole-ly from inner out. Therefore, for a church to engage the necessary redemptive change that reconstructs its practice and makes functionally significant ‘access without diakrino’ is relationship-specific to what whole-ly embodies church life and practice for only this relational purpose: the ongoing relational involvement with persons who are different, in order for them also to receive equally and experience intimately the ontological identity and relational belonging to the whole-ly Trinity’s new creation family.

Second Key Dynamic: the contextual dynamic of reconciliation absorbing natural human differences and valid God-given distinctions

This is not a contradiction of the church without diakrino, but the acknowledgement of the fact of differences in natural human makeup (the primary human genome with its secondary phenotype) and the reality of valid distinctions given by God, without the church engaging in the reducing syndrome of diakrino. The ancient Mediterranean world of Paul’s time was a diversity of both natural human differences and human-shaped distinctions. Yet, prior to its diaspora due to persecution (Acts 8), the early church community was a mostly homogeneous group who limited others who were different from access to be included in their house churches, table fellowships and community identity (e.g. Acts 6:1). Despite a missional program to the surrounding diversity, church practice had yet to relationally involve the reconciliation dynamic of family love to take in those persons and absorb (not dissolve) their differences, that is, on a secondary level without using any human differences (notably of the dominant group) to determine the primary level of church make-up in identity and function (as Paul made conclusive, Col 3:15). This purposeful relational involvement necessitates a major contextual change in the church, especially for a homogeneous gathering, yet this change should not be confused with the outer-in distinction priority of multiculturalism. Paul was pivotal in bringing such redemptive change to the church (e.g. 1 Cor 11:17-22; Gal 2:1-10), which is incompatible with any forms of reduced ontology and function—which multiracial-cultural churches typically still reinforce and sustain. In other words, without the reconciliation dynamic of family love, inclusiveness is still shaped by the bias of exclusion.

Paul delineates a twofold reconciliation dynamic constituted by God’s relational process of family love. On the one hand, family love dissolves human-shaped distinctions and eliminates diakrino. Equally important, on the other hand, family love absorbs most natural human differences into the primacy of relationships together, but not dissolving or assimilating those differences into a dominant framework (Rom 12:4-5). The twofold nature of this reconciliation dynamic of family love is the functional significance of Paul’s integrated fight against reductionism and for wholeness (1 Cor 12:12-13). Yet, in order to be God’s relational whole, it is not adequate to include persons of difference for the purpose of diversity (e.g. to have a multiracial-cultural church). The relational process of family love extends relational involvement to those who are different, takes in and vulnerably embraces them in their difference to relationally belong integrally to the church family as persons made whole from inner out; thus, this inner-out intimacy always has priority over any outer-in secondary. This is the dynamic made essential by Paul for the church’s “unity of the Spirit in the bond of uncommon peace/wholeness” (Eph 4:3,16); and the relational outcome is not a hybrid church with a mosaic of differences but persons and relationships made uncommonly whole together in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity—the new relational order of the church as the new creation family.

This reconciliation dynamic signifies the contextual change necessary for the church to be ongoingly involved in the relational process of absorbing natural human differences into the church without dissolving or assimilating those differences. Churches typically are not constructed with this design—a design evolving from the early church that had to be corrected (Acts 15:7-11). This involves, therefore, a church’s willingness to change to adjust to differences and even to adopt some differences—that is, only those differences that are compatible with God’s relational whole and congruent with God’s relational terms. Redemptive change also involves the reflexive interaction between these contextual and structural dynamics for the necessary reconstruction of the church to become the equalizer in its new relational order. No claim can be made about having a church structure of access if the church’s context is not reconciling; conversely, a church cannot claim to be reconciling if equal church access is unavailable to others with differences. Inclusion must always contend with the bias of exclusion.

In addition, just as Peter was chastened by Christ in his contextualized bias and theology, and humbled by Paul, making this contextual change functional in the church may require us to humbly accept the limitations of our current interpretive framework (phronēma) and perceptual lens (phroneō)—likely formed with a contextualized or commonized bias (as in Rom 8:5, cf. 2 Cor 11:12)—to understand the significance of differences to the whole-ly Word as well as of those in the whole-ly Trinity. It also requires us to honestly account for any outer-in bias necessitating the change of transformation to the whole phronēma and qualitative phroneō from the Spirit (as Paul delineated, Eph 4:22-25; Rom 8:5-6, cf. 12:2). This humility and honesty are essential for the church’s contextual dynamic of reconciliation to be of functional significance to absorb natural human differences into church life and practice as family together (cf. Eph 4:2).

The importance of these structural and contextual dynamics for the church to be whole as the equalizer from inner out—distinguishing its whole-ly identity in the new relational order—also directly involve the other two interrelated key dynamics. These are dynamics for the individual person and our relationships. The four dynamics intensely interact together in reflexive relationship that suggests no set pattern of their development and function. Yet, there is a clear flow to each pair of dynamics—for example, there has to be access before differences can be absorbed—while in crucial and practical ways the latter pair will determine the extent and significance of the former’s function. The global church and all its persons and relationships, therefore, are accountable together for their ongoing involvement in these integral dynamics with the essential dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes.

Third Key Dynamic: the person’s inner-out response of freedom, faith and love to others’ differences

When a person is faced with differences in others, there is invariably some degree of tension for that person, with awareness of it or not. The tension signifies the engagement of our provincial context or ‘our little world’ we live in—that which is constructed from the limitations of the person’s perceptual lens and interpretive framework influenced by contextualized and commonized biases and shaped by intervening cultural-political factors in the surrounding context. This is why humbly accepting the limits of our particular way of thinking and honestly accounting for our bias in seeing other things in general and other persons in particular are both needed for the reconciliation dynamic to be whole together. What does a person(s) do with those differences in that relational context? The structural and contextual dynamics can be invoked by the church, yet their functional significance in the church interacts with and will ultimately be determined by each individual person’s response—a response whose significance must be composed in vulnerable relational terms and not be mere referential terms enhanced even with good intentions. This is an existing issue in the formation of multiracial-cultural churches today, which even their church leaders struggle with.[2]

In everyday life, the person’s response will emerge either from outer in or inner out, and it may shift back and forth from one person and/or situation to another. What differences we pay attention to and ignore from our perceptual-interpretive lens are critical to understand for the following ongoing interrelated issues: (1) what we depend on to define our person and maintain our identity; (2) then on this basis, how we engage relationships in these diverse conditions; and, thus (3), based on these two issues what level of relationship we engage in within the church. These are inescapable issues that each person must address as an individual and be accountable for, on the one hand, while the church community must account for these in practice at the same time.

In Paul’s whole theology and practice, he composes Christian freedom in the relational context of God’s relational whole, so that the relational purpose of Christian freedom and its functional significance would not be diminished, minimalized or abused in the counter-relational workings of reductionism (Gal 5:1,13; 1 Cor 8:9). From this interpretive framework and perceptual lens, which counters contextualized and commonized biases, Paul highlights his own liberty and the nature of his relational response to others’ differences (1 Cor 9:19-23). He deeply engaged the relational dynamic of family love in the vulnerable relational process of submitting his whole person to those persons, simply declaring “I have become all things to all people” (v.22). Clearly, by his statement Paul is not illustrating what to do with the tension in those situations created by human differences and how to handle those differences. Further clarification is needed, however, since his apparent posture can be perceived in different ways, either negatively or positively.

Given his freedom, Paul was neither obligated nor coerced to function according to the immediate context, yet responds in what appears to be an absence of self-identity in where he belongs. His response also seems to contradict his relational imperative to “Live as children of light” (Eph 5:8). In reality, however, in terms of the three inescapable issues for all persons (noted above), the person Paul presented to others of difference was not a variable personality who has no clear sense of his real identity (e.g. as light). Nor was Paul communicating to them a message of assimilating to their terms, and to try to fit into their level of relationship or even subtly masquerade in the context of their differences. Contrary to these reductionist practices, Paul engaged in practices of wholeness without the veil of outer-in distinctions. Since Paul did not define his person in quantitative terms from the outer in, he was free to exercise who he was from inner out and to decisively present his whole person to others even in the context of any and all of their differences (natural or not)—which always remained in secondary distinction from the primary. He openly communicated to them a confidence and trust in the whole person he was from inner out, the integrity of which would not be compromised by involvement with them in their difference and thus could be counted on by them to be that whole person in his face-to-face involvement with them—his righteousness integrated with the qualitative-relational integrity of his identity. His involvement with them went deeper than the level of their differences and freely responded in the relational trust with the Spirit (the relational involvement of triangulation), in order to submit his whole person to them in their differences for the relational involvement of family love needed for the relational purpose “that I might by all means save some” (v.22). Paul submits his whole person to them in family love not for the mere outcome of a truncated soteriology of only being saved from—and perhaps for them to become members of a church—but for the whole relational outcome of also being saved to gained from “the whole gospel so that I may share in its blessings of whole relationship together as family” (v.23). Therefore, his inner-out response to others’ differences clearly distinguished to what and whom Paul belonged.

It is essential for all in the global church to take Paul seriously and to highlight him along with Mary as the disciples of whole theology and practice necessary for the relational progression of the whole gospel—not for merely promoting a partial gospel. In the face of others’ differences, Paul neither distanced himself from them in the province of ‘his little world’ nor did he try to control them to assimilate and fit (or conform) into his world and the comforts of his framework—as witnessed historically in the Western church and presently in segments of the global church. In contrast, he acted in the relational trust of faith to venture out of his old world (and old wineskin ways of thinking, seeing and doing things) and beyond the limitations that any old interpretive framework (contextualized or commonized bias) imposes on personhood and relationships. Paul underwent such transforming (not reforming) changes in order to illuminate the wholeness of God in the midst of reductionism, thereby acting on his relational imperative to “Live as children of light” (Eph 5:8). In this essential relational process, he also illuminated the relational need of the person and persons together as church to have contextual sensitivity and responsiveness to others in their contextual differences, without losing the primacy of who and whose he was, or denigrating their own ontological identity of who and whose they were (cf. Paul in Athens, Acts 17, and Jesus at the wedding in Cana, Jn 2:1-11).

Clearly, Paul demonstrated the necessary response of the whole person from inner out to those differences in order to engage those persons in the reconciliation dynamic of family love for their experience to belong in the relational whole of the Trinity’s family. Yet, Paul’s response also demonstrated the needed changes within the individual person involving redemptive change (old wineskins, biases and practices dying and the new rising). This process addresses in oneself any outer-in ontology and function needing to be transformed from inner out (metamorphoo, as Paul delineated, Rom 12:2-3), and thus be freed from the limits and constraints imposed from outer in. This transformation from outer in to inner out not only frees the relational process for the new creation but directly leads to its embodying in the new relational order. Redemptive change must antecede and prevail in the relational process leading to reconciliation to the whole-ly Trinity’s new creation family.

Change always raises issues, especially if it intrudes on our freedom to live as we want, which the COVID-19 pandemic certainly has made evident. In the freedom of the person’s inner-out response to submit one’s whole person to others in family love, the act of submitting becomes a reductionism-issue when it is obligated or coerced apart from freedom. There is a fine line between obligation and freedom, which is confused when our responses are merely to conform. For example, in this current pandemic, Christians truly express loving caring for others when their response is the expression of their freedom. Freedom itself, however, becomes a self-serving reduction when it is only the means for self-autonomy, self-determination or self-justification, because these are subtle yet acceptable substitutes from reductionism (as the Word exposed, Mt 5-7). Paul clarified that God never redeems us to be free for this end (Gal 5:1,13; cf. 1 Cor 7:35). God frees us from reductionism to be whole in both our persons and relationships (1 Cor 10:23-24). Redemption by Christ and what he saves from are inseparable from reconciliation and what he saves to. To summarize the relational process and outcome:

The integral function of redemptive reconciliation is the whole (nonnegotiable) relational process of the whole (untruncated) relational outcome of the whole (unfragmented) gospel. Anything less and any substitutes for any of these essential dimensions fragment the church and reduce its persons and relationships.

Therefore, it is crucial for our understanding of the inseparable functions of personness and human relationships, both within the church and in the world, to understand that deeply implicit in the wholeness of Christian freedom is being redeemed from those matters causing distance, barriers and separation in relationships—specifically in the relational condition “to be apart” from whole relationship together, which if not responded to from inner out leaves the inherent human relational need unfulfilled even within churches.

The integral function of whole persons and whole relationships together is deeply integrated, and their interaction must by their nature in relational terms emerge from inner out. For the person and persons together as church to have the functional significance of being equalized in intimate relationships, their ontology and function need to be whole from inner out—nothing less and no substitutes for the person and for relationships together. This inner-out process leads us from the key dynamic for the individual person to its interaction with the key dynamic for relationships.

Fourth Key Dynamic: relationships engaged vulnerably with others (different or not) by deepening involvement from inner out

The dynamic engaged within individual persons extends to their relationships. What Paul defined as his whole person’s inner-out response—“I have become all things to all people”—also defines his relational involvement with them by making his whole person vulnerable from inner out—“I have made my person vulnerable to all human differences for the purpose of inner-out relational involvement with all persons.” This decision to engage relationships vulnerably must be a free choice made with relational trust and in family love because there are risks and consequences for such involvement. On the one hand, the consequences revolve around one’s person being rejected or rendered insignificant. The risks, on the other hand, are twofold, which involves either losing something (e.g. the stability of ‘our little world’, the certainty of our interpretive framework and the identity of our belonging, the reliability of how we do relationships) or being challenged to change (e.g. the state of one’s world, the focus of one’s perceptual lens and mindset, one’s own identity and established way of doing relationships). The dynamic of ‘losing something-challenged to change’ is an ongoing issue in all relationships, and the extent of the risks depends on their perception either from outer in or from inner out.

For Paul, this is always the tension between reductionism and wholeness, that is, between relationships fragmented by limited involvement from outer in and relationships made whole by deepening involvement from inner out. Regardless of the consequences, Paul took responsibility for living whole in relationships for the inner-out involvement necessary to make relationships whole together, because the twofold risks were not of significance to those in wholeness but only to those in reduced identity and function (cf. his personal assessment, Phil 3:7-9; also his challenge to Philemon as the owner of the slave Onesimus).

Later, Paul appeared to qualify the extent of his vulnerable involvement in relationships by stating “I try to please everyone in everything” (1 Cor 10:33). The implication of this could be simply to do whatever others want, thereby pleasing all and not offending anyone (10:32)—obviously an unattainable goal that doesn’t keep some persons from trying, Paul not among them. Paul would not be vulnerable in relationships with this kind of involvement. Aresko means to please, make one inclined to, or to be content with. This may involve doing either what others want or what they need. Paul is not trying to look good before others for his own benefit (symphoros, 10:33). Rather he vulnerably engages them with the relational involvement from inner out that they need (not necessarily want) for all their benefit “so that they may be saved to whole relationship together in God’s family.” In his personal disclosure, Paul does not qualify the extent of his vulnerable involvement in relationship with others by safely giving them what they want. He qualifies only the depth of his vulnerable involvement by lovingly giving them what they need to be whole, even if they reject his whole person or try to render his whole function as insignificant (cf. 2 Cor 12:15). This depth for Paul enacted the first two inescapable issues that first defined his whole person and identity, and thereby engaged relationships with others’ differences—both of which mirrored how Jesus enacted his person in relationships and thus unmistakably identified Paul as his whole-ly disciple.

This deepening relational involvement from inner out to vulnerably engage others in relationship with one’s whole person certainly necessitates redemptive change from our prevailing ways of doing relationships, including from a normative church interpretive lens of what is paid attention to and ignored in church gatherings and relationships together. This then also includes the underlying bias not merely from a specific cultural or political context but shaped by the common prevailing in human life. If the vulnerability of family love is to be relationally involved, whether by the individual person or persons together as church, the concern cannot be about the issue of losing something—something that has no significance to the primacy of wholeness but creates tension or anxiety when the secondary is made primary. The focus on such risks will be constraining, if not controlling, and render both person and church to reduced ontology and function, hereby exposing the greater risk of our own existing condition being challenged to change and our need for it.

Therefore, our faith as relational trust in ongoing reciprocal relationship with the Spirit is critical for freeing us to determine what is primary to embrace in church life and practice and what we need to relinquish control over “for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of wholeness” (Eph 4:3; Gal 5:16,25). The bond of wholeness by its nature requires change in us: individual, relational, structural and contextual changes. With these redemptive changes for persons, relationships and churches—encompassing the three inescapable issues in their depth—the integral function of redemptive reconciliation can emerge in family love for vulnerable involvement with others (different or not) in relationships together from inner out. Such reconstruction by design becomes, lives and makes whole uncommonly in the new relational order, which is not a mere option, merely recommended or simply negotiable for churches and its persons and relationships. Anything less and any substitutes for persons, relationships and churches are no longer whole and uncommon.

The dynamic flow of these four key dynamics is the dynamic of uncommon wholeness composing the experiential truth and relational reality of the church’s identity and function as equalizer from inner out. In ongoing tension and conflict with the church in the bond of wholeness is the counter-relational workings of reductionism seeking to influence every level of the church—individual persons, relationships, its structure and context. For Paul, this is the given battle ongoingly extended into the church, against which reductionism must be exposed, confronted and made whole by redemptive change at every level of the church. While Paul presupposes the need for redemptive change given the pervasive influence of reductionism, he never assumes the redemptive-change outcome of the new emerging without the reciprocal relational involvement of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:17-18; Gal 5:16; 6:8; Rom 8:6; Eph 3:16). Accordingly, the reciprocal nature of the Spirit’s relational involvement makes change in our persons, our relationships and our churches an open question. Our lack of reciprocal involvement makes the Spirit grieve (Eph 4:30).

God’s family has become the vulnerable dwelling of the whole and uncommon Trinity (as Jesus made conclusive, Jn 14:23, and Paul definitively reinforced, Eph 2:19-22). Yet, this relational outcome has no relational significance as long as the curtain (holy partition) and veil are still present, which is integral to the relational work of the Trinity (2 Cor 3:16-18). The Trinity is vulnerably present and relationally involved for intimate relationship together. While we cannot be equal with God (perhaps the purpose for some in the practice of deification), we have to be equalized to participate in and partake of the Trinity’s life in family together. That is, we cannot be intimately involved with the Trinity from the basis of any of our outer-in distinctions, all of which signify the presence of the veil keeping us at relational distance. Those distinctions have to be redeemed without exception, so that we can be equalized from inner out and thereby reconciled in intimate relationship together; and this equalization is necessary to be transformed in relationships together as the Trinity’s whole and uncommon family.

Therefore, the transformed relationships that distinguish the church family must then be, without variation, both equalized and intimate. There can be no complete intimate involvement together as long as the veil of distinctions exists. Distinctions focus our lens on and engage our practice from outer in, unavoidably in comparative relations that create distance, discrimination, separation and brokenness, all of which are incompatible with intimate relationships, and incongruent with equalized relationships. Therefore, the experiential truth and relational reality of the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace (never commonized) involve the church in the integral transformed relationships together of equalized persons in equalized relationships, who are vulnerably involved in intimate relationships face to face, heart to heart as the Trinity’s whole and uncommon family as the equalizing church.

Indeed, based on the uncommon peace of Christ that Paul makes the only determinant for the church (imperatively in Col 3:15), nothing less than equalized relationships and no substitutes for intimate relationships compose the new-order church family of Christ, whose wholeness distinguishes the church’s persons and relationships in their primacy of whole ontology and function in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity. If we take Paul seriously, we cannot take him partially or use him out of his total context but need to embrace his whole theology and practice for ours to be whole also. Therefore, beyond any contextualized or commonized bias, what emerges from the church’s uncommon peace is the experiential truth of uncommon equality, which is the good news transforming the fragmentation and inequality of all persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their human relations—transforming the bad news encompassing human inequality and inequity. The relational reality of this uncommon equality unfolds from the relational progression of this whole-ly church family as it is ongoingly involved in equalizing all persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their relationships—equalizing in whole relational terms composed by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace. All these essential dynamics converge to distinguish the church as the intimate equalizer, the new creation church family living together in wholeness by only transformed relationships integrally equalized and intimate.

One qualifying note should be added to clarify the intimate equalizer church. As the new-order church family in likeness of the Trinity, the intimate equalizer church is still the body of Christ. That is, the functional order that Paul outlined for the church to compose its interdependent synergism is still vital (1 Cor 12:12-31). The uncommon equality composing the church in the intimacy of uncommon wholeness does not mean that all its persons do the same thing and equally have the same resources, nor does everyone engage their practice (including worship) in the same manner. The new-order church is neither a homogeneous unit nor a monotonic composition. Diversity as nonconformity in what persons do and as non-uniformity in the resources they have are basic to the synergism (not the sum of diverse parts) of the body of Christ. The key issue is not differences but distinctions associated with differences that limit and constrain persons and fragment the relational order of the church family from wholeness together. Having this nonconforming and non-uniform diversity in the church is important for the church’s interdependent synergism, but each difference from outer in is secondary and must be integrated into the primary of the whole church from inner out, that is, the vulnerably intimate church in uncommon wholeness and uncommon equality (Eph 4:11-13,16, cf. Col 2:19). When differences (such as gifts and services, 1 Cor 12:4-11) become the primary focus, even inadvertently, they subtly are seen with distinctions that set into motion the comparative process with its relational consequences, which persons and relationships with these distinctions have to bear—the consequences Jesus saw in the temple before he redeemed it.

Despite the extent of differences in the body of Christ, Jesus embodied the church to be nothing less than whole (complete together, pleroma, Eph 1:22-23). As the pleroma of Christ, the church body is neither a mere gathering of our differences nor merely a collection of these differences, as if their distinctions enhance the integrity of the church. In this sense, the metaphor of the body of Christ is insufficient to compose the whole-ly identity of the church as family, whose identity is composed only in the new relational order of the whole-ly Trinity.

The defining line between diversity and distinctions has disappeared in most church theology and practice (including the academy’s) today, such that the consequences are not understood or recognized. In whatever way those consequences emerge in the church (local, regional, global), they all converge in inequality of the church’s relational order—if not explicitly then implicitly. This unequal relational order of distinctions is contrary to and in conflict with the uncommon wholeness of Christ, therefore incongruent with the Trinity. As Paul made definitive Jesus’ salvific work for the church (1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:26-29; Eph 2:14-16; Col 3:10-11), Jesus enacted the good news in order for this relational purpose and outcome:

To compose the uncommon equality of his church family at the heart of its persons and relationships in whole ontology and function, and therefore unequivocally transformed them (1) to be redeemed from human distinctions and their deficit condition and (2) to be reconciled to the new relational order in uncommon transformed relationships together both equalized and intimate in their innermost, and thereby congruent in uncommon likeness with the wholeness of the Trinity.

Redemptive reconciliation is not optional but essential to the uncommon whole of who, what and how the church and its persons and relationships are to be in and for this essential work. This is the gospel of wholeness the Word enacted to constitute the existential new creation as his uncommon church family in nothing less than the intimate equalizer.

On this relational basis alone, the Light’s witnesses are illuminated “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8) with no substitutes for their identity and function.

In the Word’s political theology for public life, the global church and its church branches need to understand their gospel roots in order to claim its relational reality and proclaim its experiential truth constituted by the qualitative-relational roots from the Word. This must not be oversimplified (e.g. with truth gymnastics) or minimalized (e.g. by norm gymnastics), because the branches illuminating from its roots is at stake in this evolving issue.

The Word’s whole gospel never brings the good news without encompassing the bad news. If the bad news is not encompassed, the light doesn’t shine in the darkness. Therefore, only the Word’s whole non-compartmentalized gospel embodied the Light that shined brightly in the darkness. The Word, however, didn’t embody his gospel simply to transmit information about its truth as a proposition, a lingering hope or a virtual reality. His whole person from inner out was vulnerably involved in a different uncommon way, whereby the relational reality of the whole gospel could not be minimalized to a virtual reality. Indeed, the Light shined in the darkness only embodied from inner out.

With nothing less and no substitutes illuminated by the Light in the darkness, his gospel’s roots reveal that the Trinity constituted the unequivocal equalizer of human life and the human order ever since they were equalized in the beginning at creation—equalized in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity. Because human life evolved and the human order mutated into the human relational condition, the Equalizer also had to be the Reconciler in order for human life and its order to be equalized anew by the redemptive reconciliation of the new creation (2 Cor 5:17). Thereafter to the present, the Equalizer gives his witnesses the responsibility to be the equalizer; and this responsibility cannot be fulfilled unless they are also the reconciler—with nothing less and no substitutes. Only these branches of the church illuminate the roots of the whole gospel.

For the churches composing the global church to be this penultimate witness in their existential identity and function, their light needs to be embodied from inner out for wholeness to prevail over any fragmentary reductions. This integrated whole, however, of persons and relationships together as church family is also uncommon from what exists in the human context, in the surrounding contexts, and in our Christian contexts. A subtle assumption, which is not apparent as a theological assumption, made by people of faith in the past and presently is that “You thought I was common just like yourself” (Ps 50:21). Based on this assumption God has been contextualized and commonized in diverse ways on our terms. The relational progression Jesus enacted, and continues to enact as the palpable Word with the Spirit, de-contextualized and de-commonized the whole of who, what and how God is, and thereby disclosed the vulnerable presence and relational involvement of the whole and uncommon Trinity. Yet, even bias in traditional trinitarian theology commonly has not encompassed the uncommon presence and whole involvement of the Trinity as disclosed by the Word.

Disciples of Jesus “Follow me” in his relational progression to the new, thus to be relationally involved “where I am” (Jn 12:26) in what integrally is irreducibly whole and nonnegotiably uncommon. Being uncommon involves knowing where we belong and to whom. Just as Jesus prayed for all his disciples to belong as he belongs, and to be sanctified (made uncommon) as he is sanctified (Jn 17:15-19), our progression to be uncommon necessitates ongoing involvement in the following to be “where I am”:

This is the only discipleship that distinguishes his whole-ly disciples who belong to the whole-ly Trinity (as distinguished in Eph 2:19-22).

Therefore, for our persons, relationships and churches to be whole-ly and function in the likeness of the whole-ly Trinity, we all (both individually and collectively) need unavoidable ongoing involvement in the pivotal processes of de-contextualization and de-commonization—notably to redeem any contextualized bias and commonized bias existing in our midst for us to be freed from their limits and constraints. This conscious involvement is indispensable in order for the relational outcome to be transformed to the new creation of our persons, relationships and churches, and to function with-in the relational progression of the Trinity’s relational response of family love to our undeniable relational condition—and extending now to the human relational condition of all persons, peoples, tribes and nations as the penultimate witness for the whole-ly Word and his nothing-less-and-no-substitutes gospel.

So, we the equalized together intimately as church, “who have been reconciled with the Trinity in reciprocal relationship, have been given the essential work of redemptive reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18). The Trinity expects nothing less from us and holds us accountable for no substitutes for our essential work. May our light embodied inner out shine in the surrounding darkness!

[1] Contextual information taken from Bruce J. Malina and John J. Pilch, Social-Science Commentary on the Book of Revelations (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), and from Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary, New Testament (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1993).

[2] This issue is discussed by sociologist Korie Little Edwards in “When ‘Diversity’ Isn’t Enough,” Christianity Today, Vol. 65, No. 2, March 2021, 36-41.