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5 The Affliction and Liberation of the Christian A small number of Christian co-workers and seminarians recently attended a lecture series that I gave in a restricted country. Their underground church endures tremendous pressure, constant vulnerability, and questionable status. Nevertheless, some attribute the falling crime rate in their city to its growth and rising influence. Even local government officials acknowledge this contribution and allow these Christians slightly more freedom than their brothers and sisters experience in other regions of their country. Their joy and generosity spill forth as they witness to Jesus Christ in the midst of oppression and inbreaking hope. Years earlier, I met a group of Christian leaders in a different country; one marked by far greater persecution. As we gathered to pray, I realized that each of them had close friends, and one a spouse, who were currently imprisoned for their faith. One young man had a fiancée living in Florida and had the opportunity to marry her and live permanently in the U.S. Yet he delayed his marriage in order to continue ministering in this context of affliction. He knew that he could be arrested at any time, his marriage plans dashed forever. When we prayed together, I saw that they knew a nearness to our crucified Lord rarely experienced in the West. Not only that, but they knew a liberation that transcended the external constriction and threat under which they lived each day. They knew a liberation in Jesus Christ that could not be lost, that was worth every risk. Biographers note that Watchman Nee often sang in his Shanghai prison cell.1 An influential pastor who spent the last twenty years of his life behind bars, Nee believed that God often uses hardship to transform God’s children, blessing them even in the midst of heartache and loss.2 The final lines of his last 1. Angus I. Kinnear, Against the Tide: The Story of Watchman Nee (Washington: CLC, 1973), 233. Bob Laurent, Watchman Nee: Man of Suffering (Uhrichsville: Barbour, 1998), 8–9. 2. Kinnear, Against the Tide, 237–38. 197 surviving letter, written April 22, 1972, speak of his joy and of his hope that the same joy would also make his reader’s heart full. One biographer notes that in those lines, Nee uses the same Chinese characters for “joy” and “full” that are also found in the Chinese translation of John 16:24: “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”3 Some think that perhaps Nee encoded a reminder, in this censured prison letter, of an enduring joy greater than any circumstance, a joy that no one can ever take away (John 16:22).4 In chapters 2 and 3, I traced the connection between sin and suffering in Barth’s thought. As we encounter sin in our lives or in the world around us, we may be sure that suffering will follow. When God enters into the human condition through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God enters into human suffering. As Jesus bears and removes sin through his suffering and death, he also bears the affliction caused by sin in order to remove it from humanity. By confronting and resolving the problem of sin through his work of atonement, God in Christ confronts and resolves the problem of the suffering that arises from sin. While the full realization of this Great Removal will occur only in the eschaton, we experience proleptic glimpses of it in the present age through the Christian’s prophetic vocation of witness. Chapter 4 examined Barth’s view of Christian vocation and argued that Christian witness consists of both speech and action. This chapter sets forth the third component of witness, which is the Christian’s life pattern of affliction and liberation. Together, the Christian’s speech, action, and life pattern constitute her prophetic witness to the reconciliation of humanity with God in Jesus Christ. As in the last chapter, the direct mode of Barth’s second move comes to the fore throughout this discussion.5 For this reason, I will focus on the temporal, material implications for Christians of the eternal, spiritual dynamics of Christ’s reconciling work. The Hegelian categories remain operative but recede into the background as lucid correspondence emerges between Christ and those who follow him. This chapter begins with an analysis of CD IV/2, “The Dignity of the Cross,”6 in which Barth discusses the relation of the Christian’s cross to Christ...

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