Extra Nos—Pro Nobis—In Nobis

EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS* CHRISTIANS ARE THOSE from whom it is not hidden that in the hisfory of Jesus Christ their own history has taken place. By a living word spoken and received in the power of the Holy Spirit, they know that tihe history of Jesus Christ ,is the decisive moment which establishes their existence as Christiians. In the midst of aH other people they ,are free to see themselves as among those for whom and in whose place Jesus Christ did what he did. They are those whose lives he has entered precisely as the one who enacted a particular history, those by whom he is acknowledged , recognized and confessed 1as Lord. They are those whom he has given an 1 active share in the history he enacted. Jesus Christ, his history, thus became and is the foundation of their Christian existence, his history and only his history. From him, his history, from knowledge of it, Christians arise, and to it they look back. It is the ground on whioh they stand. It is the air they b11eathe. It is the word ringing in their ears above and beyond all other words. It is the one light, incomparably bright, which illumines their way. What is the "new garment" Christians have put on-and must continually put on-in order to be Christians? Is it the "new humanity"? Yes, but any suggestion that they may have produced it themselves, or that the garment is new while the wearer is not, is explicitly ruled out when we read in Gal. 3.27 ,and Rom. 13: 14 that putting off the old humanity and putting on the new means putting on Christ. Who else but he is called the new or second Adam from heaven by whom the *Translated by George Hunsinger from Horen und Handlen, lf'estschrift !Ur Ernst Wolf zum 60. Geburtstag, Ed. by Helmut Gollwitzer und Hellmut Traub (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1962), pp. 15-27. 497 498 KARL BARTH first and earthly Adam is taken off, superseded and oveTCOme (I Cor. 15: 47)? His blood is the blood of the Lamb by which, in a bold combination of images, the garments of the elect are made white (Rev. 7: 14, 19: 13). Only with reference to him, it hardly needs to be said, can ,anyone seriously be addressed as a man or woman of God (II Tim. 8: 17) . When the new humanity is described as the inner person, the one meant is plain when Christians are summoned to test themselves against the knowledge that Christ is in them (II Cor. 13: 5). Similarly, when reference is made to the believers' name as inscribed in the book of life, it is simplest ·and surest to think of christianoi (first ascribed to them in Antioch, according to Acts 11: 26), and thereby once again of the name of Jesus Christ himself. Only as his law (Gal. 6: 2) can the work of the law be written in their hearts and fulfilled as God requires. The ·spiritual person is distinguished from the merely physical by the fact that spiritual persons have the "mind of Christ" (nous christou, I Cor. 2: 16). By his circumcision (Col. 2: 11)--or·as the context makes clear, by his death-the new hearts in which he dwells by faith (Eph. 8: 17) become and are centers for the living of new life. Matters are no different when the New Testament speaks of the new birth or regeneration by which alone a person is qualified but also assured of entering God's kingdom. The "privilege" (exousia) by which people become children of God does not fall down on them from heaven, nor can it be conferred by other people, nor can they simply aSiSume it on their own. It is rather given them by the one to whom even John the Baptist could only bea,r witness, by the one who came into the world as the true light, by the one who came to his own though they received him not. He gives it as freedom to believe in him, in his name. Thus it came to pass that people were...