Late last summer, Abingdon published Scot McKnight’s book, A Community Called Atonement. McKnight gives us theology–a more familiar word may be doctrine. How we understand atonement is central to the Christian Faith. But McKnight calls us see atonement as more than doctrine. Atonement is the purpose of God for his creation. McKnight wrote in his blog (Feb. 2, 2007): “Atonement is God’s work for us but it is also ‘praxis.'” Hans Boersma, professor at Regent College, writes: “It (the book) models what it sets out to demonstrate, namely, that the church is summoned to work with God in his atoning work.”
Salvation is not just what we believe; salvation shapes how we live as community. The church is a community of salvation. As such, it is the church’s business to know and proclaim the salvation of God. It is the church’s responsibility to live out the salvation of God. That God saves and how God saves is no small matter in the life of a genuine “salvation community.” That a church would have no clear voice about salvation is incredible. That salvation would become a personal matter outside the context of the community is unbelievable.
If the church is indeed a “community called salvation,” the church has every right, and even obligation, to seek and speak the will of the Saving God. A church that is not be concerned about salvation as primary surely cannot be Christ’s salvation community. Here then is my call to renewed boldness. A Christian boldness that can be restored only by seeing atonement as the essential need of our world, as God’s plan in Christ, as God’s purpose for his church, and as a belief that shapes how I live my life individually, and in the context of the corporate body of Christ–the community called salvation!