Transformed by the Gospel

Imagine, for a moment, being Damaris or Dionysius.

There probably was nothing especially particular about that given day, especially for Dionysius, who was a member of the Council of the Areopagus. He was just at work, adjudicating various cases. Women were not generally welcomed into the discussions which would take place on the Areopagus, and so Damaris possibly was among the Stoic philosophers or would have been a hetaira, an elite, highly educated courtesan.

But on this particular day, a man from Tarsus in Cilicia was speaking of things they had never heard before. They heard about some Jewish man named Jesus whom this man from Tarsus said had died but was raised from the dead. While most people laughed this man from Tarsus off, Damaris and Dionysius didn’t. They believed Paul when he spoke about Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return, and their lives would never be the same again (cf. Acts 17:32-34).

But what would have made their lives so very different? Their general physical constitution likely had not changed much during that day. Dionysius would have remained an Athenian citizen; Damaris’ social situation, whatever it had been before, would not have been changed. They would have most likely gone home that night to the very same houses they had lived in before and to the very same people who were in their families.

But they had come to believe there was one God, their Creator, and He had acted powerfully through Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was with God and was God; He humbled Himself greatly to the point of death, even death on a Roman cross, and God exalted Him and gave Him the name that was above every name (cf. Philippians 2:5-11).

Damaris and Dionysius, therefore, could no longer maintain any confidence in all the various gods and goddesses of the Greeks. They would no longer be able to offer them sacrifices or express any kind of allegiance toward them. They would most likely experience a lot of social pressure because of this posture; by not honoring the gods, they could well have endured persecution and a loss of social and economic standing from their fellow Athenians. Perhaps even family members would have been scandalized by this posture and behavior. Whether Damaris was a Stoic philosopher or a hetaira, the basis of her livelihood was called into question by her newfound belief in and commitment to Jesus.

Yet, as Christians, Damaris and Dionysius would have come to expect this kind of reaction, and were given the framework in which to understand it. Jesus, also, had suffered greatly, and God exalted Him. If they suffered like Jesus, they might also share in His exaltation. They would have to rely on one another and their fellow Christians for encouragement and strength to persevere.

We engage in this act of historical imagination because our ability to perceive the transformative power of the good news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return has been blunted by how familiar we are with the story: the good news has become old news. A good number of Christians were born into families of Christians and have heard the story of the Gospel since before they can remember: they cannot even think of a world in which they knew next to nothing about Jesus. Even those who were not born into a Christian family live in a world and society in which the Christian faith was a common feature, and predominant in many areas. Sadly, many have come to experience the Christian faith as oppressive and exploitative, and therefore find it hard to see much good in its news.

While the good news of the Gospel will unlikely to be as new to us as it was to Damaris and Dionysius, its message should prove no less transformative for our own lives as it did for theirs. If it does not, then perhaps we have not truly heard the Gospel as preached by the Apostles.

Heeding the Gospel call may not change much regarding our physical constitutions. We will still remain the same ethnicity and will still speak the same language, although we do well to decide to speak in more profitable and encouraging ways. We will still remain in the families in which we were born and/or in which we have chosen to live. Some may do well to make significant changes in their diet, lifestyle, and career; yet many others will find no need to do so.

Yet the good news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return should certainly shape and inform how we view ourselves, the world around us, the people with whom we share in relationships, and how we behave in every respect. In Christ we have come to recognize how the world is subject to the powers and principalities and is governed by its worldly, demonic wisdom, and we did not learn Christ in this way. Jesus came from above and brought divine wisdom with Him, serving in humility, absorbing evil without responding in kind, willing to suffer to the point of death and was vindicated in the resurrection.

To this end, the Gospel can never be merely a series of truth propositions regarding which we can debate in the abstract. If Jesus is truly Lord, and was made Lord because He suffered, died, and God raised Him from the dead, then the ways in which the power hierarchies and structures of the world have developed and maintained themselves are morally bankrupt. We can perceive the powers and principalities at work in the exploitation and oppression continually justified, rationalized, and perpetuated everywhere. We are empowered to see the good and the evil latent and manifest within each and every one of us. We humbly confess we cannot redeem ourselves by our own power, and must entrust ourselves into the ways of God in Christ.

If Jesus is Lord as manifest in the Gospel, then Jesus is the Way and our Pioneer (cf. John 14:6, Hebrews 2:10-18). It is not enough to confess orally how He is Lord and Christ and then go and do our own thing according to the cultural standards into which we have been enculturated. Paul commended the Philippian Christians for their partnership, or participation, in the Gospel in Philippians 1:5, and such represents a framework we also do well to maintain. If we want to share in the rewards of the Gospel, we need to share in its full story. We are called to jointly participate in the Gospel, and that will require us to follow Jesus according to the way He lived, died, and was raised, and in every aspect of our lives, now and continually.

Therefore, to be transformed by the Gospel would mean to look more like Jesus, which is exactly what Paul intended in 2 Corinthians 3:18. We will not become first century, Second Temple Period Galilean Jewish people in the process, but we are called upon to love people, display humility, do good, and uphold the truth like Jesus did in our twenty-first century context. The good news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return has not changed, and remains fixed throughout time; it is for us to seek to appropriately apply it and live out the implications of that good news in our time and place, just like Damaris and Dionysius were called upon to do in first century Athens.

We may not be told much about Damaris and Dionysius, but we can certainly understand how their lives were forever transformed on that day when they heard Paul preach about the Lord Jesus Christ on Areopagus in Athens in Acts 17:16-34. The Gospel of Jesus may have greater antiquity and prominence today than it did then, but its message should prove no less transformative for us today. If we have become dulled to the transformative nature of the Gospel message, it is our problem, not a difficulty with the message itself. May we be continually transformed by our encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, ever becoming more transformed to become like Him in His image, and share in eternal life in Him!

Ethan R. Longhenry