The Church is for the world, because God in Christ is for the world:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. -John 3:16
The Gospel gives us life eternal; the Gospel is God’s life for the world, for us, in Christ; thus, genuine life, of the eternal type, of God’s triune type, comes ecstatically to us. It comes to us from the vicarious humanity of Christ as ‘He becomes us that we might [by grace] become Him, and share in the superabundance of God’s triunity that has always already been. This ‘alien’ form of life becomes native to us only as we come into union with Christ (unio cum Christo); it, again, is a life given to us, afresh anew, as the grace of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, continuously sustains and paracletes us with the risen and ascended body of the Son of Man. Since this life is extra nos (‘outside of us’) this presupposes or implies that life for all, for the world, is outside of them. That is to say, the new creation, that is the resurrected and ascended vicarious humanity of Christ, has universal inclusion. All of humanity is only humanity insofar that God is humanity for them, for us, in Jesus Christ. As such, the constitution of the Church necessarily includes all of humanity, insofar that the Christ’s humanity is archetypal humanity. This calls the Church, as the Church is constituted by the esse of God’s life for the world in Jesus Christ, to a kerygmatic existence. This is an existence that, by definition, is populated by ‘worldings,’ by people like us. This mission of God (missio Dei), as first given for the world ad extra in the economy of His life in the assumptio carnis, is one that requires for the Church’s flourishing (and telos) that she constantly goes out into the highways and byways of the world seeking the lost sheep for whom Christ has shed His eternal blood. The Church is a ‘go out into the nations and make disciples reality,’ or in the end, it is nothing but an incurved sociality of people who are living for themselves, in the name of Christ; thus, forming institutional bonds that keeps the world out there, and the Church ‘in here’—hence, quenching what, and who in fact the Church is ultimately for.
Matt Jenson writes this about the Gospel as Church:
. . . It is the very logic of the gospel which both judges and justifies Christian theology and then compels and frees it to engage widely and deeply with and in the world.
The material implication can be seen in ecclesiology. To be the church, the ekklesia, is to be that body of people who have been ‘called out’ — out of the world, yes, but also out of ourselves. It is to be those who live excurvatus ex se, finding our lives, ourselves in Christ and in one another. A relational account of ecclesiology, particularly one with an ecstatic dynamic, will yield a doctrine of the Church that emphasizes its missional, eschatological and, above all, doxological character. This is a Church open to the world, the future and God; but even more it is a Church open for the world, the future and God. Living in and as the Church is not living self-satisfied in the possession of eternal life but is instead living ecstatically in a continual outreach which hopes for an ever-widening ‘inner circle’ and lives towards the vision of Revelation 7 in which people from every tongue, tribe and nation bow in worship before the Lamb of God.[1]
The Apostle fleshes this very pattern out in the context of his Philippi hymn:
5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.14 Do all things without complaining and disputing, 15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.17 Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. 18 For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.
Paul knew where His life came from, that is from the One who ‘humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” As such, by the Spirit, he lived out of the life being poured into His, afresh anew, moment by moment, as the sustenance of His life has come for His life in Christ’s. This pattern is continued in Paul’s life as he ‘pours himself out as a drink offering,’ since this is the character of the ecstatic life He is receiving from Jesus. It is this freedom, the freedom of God, which God has graciously invited us into through becoming us in Christ, that Paul is compelled by the love of Christ for others; for the Church; for the Gentile world at large.
The Church in this instance isn’t a prolongation of the incarnation, instead it is a testimony, a witness to the fundamentum of its life as that is given to her by the risen and ascended body of Christ. The Church is not the head, but the ambassador to this world that Christ is risen, ascended, and coming again! The Church is the sanctorum communio only insofar that she receives God’s eternal life for the world in Jesus Christ. It is this ‘release of the prisoners’ that the Church is to proclaim loudly from the rooftops; that is, that Christ is Lord, and that because of who He is in the triune life, He is the One for the many. The Church has life only as that is ecstatically given to her, and the life that is given for her is, indeed, given for the sins of the world.
[1] Matt Jenson, The Gravity of Sin (New York: T&T Clark a Continuum Imprint, 2006), 190.