CAN YOU SEE YOUR FACE IN HIS CROWN?

CAN YOU SEE YOUR FACE IN HIS CROWN?

HOW THE REIGN OF GOD MANIFESTS THROUGH HUMAN THEOSIS
CASTELLO VORE
GOSPEL CHRISTOLOGY
DR. BRADLEY JERSAK
DECEMBER 3, 2024

Introduction

Two realities can be concluded by studying the Christian scriptures. The first reality is that God is a king, and the second is that He is not a king according to the model of the empires of the earth. God’s kingship flips worldly kingship on its head. The kings of the world have often wanted to selfishly dominate the peasants beneath them, while Jesus, the king of creation, is drawing the world into His reign. I call awareness of this reality, “seeing our face in God’s crown.” This is an iconographic image of the human being brought into God’s reign by His grace. Humans mirror the image of King Jesus and His reign of love on earth as in heaven. That mirror image is reflected as we “see our face in God’s crown.”

In this work, I will show how the reign of Christ is completed and reaches its crescendo within the person. It makes us like God, empowering humans to become one with Him and transfer that oneness to their neighbors. This will be reflected in the New Testament passage Romans 5:17. I will contrast this sense of subversive “reigning” with that of an empire mentality, providing evidence through scholarly exegetical work by theologians and patristic writings.

Background: Contextualizing The Crown

The book of Romans, a powerhouse of New Testament writings, shows us that the reign of Christ as King is exalted to its highest potential in the context of including humans in a co-creating and shared power relationship with Himself. The context of Romans 5–8 is often heralded as a pinnacle of scriptural conglomeration and has impacted countless Christians in their journey of faith. Everything from sin to the love of God is mentioned.

The Apostle Paul gifts us with the word “we” in this passage, claiming a sense of unity between himself and the apostolic body of believers that he is writing to. This collective sense is important because all the redemptive benefits of the cruciform God drawing us into His reign are not mere individualistic occurrences but rather the effect of the King on His whole kingdom. This is a stark contrast to the “reign of death” through Adam, which is inherently bloated with dominionism. The reign of Christ here is not a collective dominionism in the original context of authorial intent. Rather, it is a co-participation in the expiration of the death reign of Adam through the Church, who has been entrusted with stewarding the incarnational truths that come with being a new creation in Christ.

The backdrop of Romans 5:17 reveals the broader context of the Apostle Paul’s expounding on the concept of justification. His tangent on justification in this verse is anchored to an interplay between the Old Testament and New Testament: between the one who brought death to humanity (Adam) and the one who brings righteousness (Jesus). The passage says that those who become righteous will reign in life through Christ, the Life-giver, as opposed to the death that Adam’s sin bestowed upon the cosmic context.

Much emphasis has been made on distinguishing between justification and sanctification in Romans 1–4 compared to Romans 5–8. Recent scholarship challenges this as it seems Paul may not be making the case for such duality. Paul is headed somewhere in this passage, which includes the Old Testament allusion to the Exodus in the language of “slavery versus adoption.” This is often referred to in Christology as the New Exodus. Jesus, in His unique Messianic reign and kingship, carries the wilderness-confined soul into divine realities, bringing us into union with God and carrying our face into the shimmering of His crown.

Exegesis

The word reign in this text is clearly a monarchal illustration of Jesus. What does it mean in the original language as well as to the original audience that would have read it? Saint Paul uses the secular word of the Roman context of his day to illustrate the divine reign of God in the realm of the spiritual kingdom. The Greek word βασιλεύ denotes the reign of the emperor in the ancient Roman world. Generally, this meant that a monarch had power over their people, often in an oppressive reality. Jesus inverts this kingship and subverts oppression into radical love.

Awareness of this inversion and subversion greatly impacts our theological conclusions concerning Jesus’s cruciform act on the cross. As a result, we can reevaluate the emphasis on the removal of sin in Western Christianity and a de-emphasis on the imputation of God’s nature into ours. This imputation is precisely how we reign in life above and beyond the powers that make us like the world, imitating the spirit of the empire. Saint John Chrysostom elevates this case through his commentary on Romans 5:17:

“Paul speaks of an abundance of grace to show that what we have received is not just a medicine sufficient to heal the wound of sin, but also health and beauty and honor, and glory and dignity far transcending our natural state. Each of these in itself would have been enough to do away with death, but when they are all put together in one there is not a trace of death left, nor can any shadow of it be seen, so entirely has it been done away with.”

We are drawn into the reign of God by divine grace, enabling us to reign over greed, malice, polarizing tendencies, and any vices that fragment humanity rather than unite it around the power of God’s love.

The Fall of Adam and The Reign of Christ

The fall of Adam is not the beginning point of our theology or anthropology but rather Jesus’s ability to make us like God. Within Christology, this does not happen by chance but rather as a direct result of God emptying Himself through kenotic love, leading to the fullness of Himself being poured into the human condition. This outpouring of God’s nature consequently results in theosis in the human. Within theology, kenosis and theosis dance together intimately. God empties Himself in order to fill us with the graces that draw us into the reign of sharing in His nature.

Patristic writer Origen of Alexandria highlights how this passage reflects the good news, also known as the Gospel. In his commentary on Romans, Origen explains that Jesus’s cruciform act on the cross is the prerequisite to our reigning in life with Him. Jesus, the God-man, died to create a way for us to share in His death, and as a result, co-reign with Him. This draws together all aspects of redemption—justification, sanctification, theosis, and glorification—into one miraculous reality, all born from the eternal grace in God’s heart. Origen points to an eschatological dimension, noting that we will reign with Christ in the future over the dominion of death:

“But as for those whom he says are going to reign in life through Jesus Christ, I ask: Over whom are they going to reign? It seems to me that just as he shows that the dominion of death was in those whom, by sinning, it made subject to it, so also with regard to those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness and who are said to be going to reign through the one Jesus Christ, he is pointing to a future dominion over those who become subjected to them in instruction in the kingdom of God; over those who, as I might say, will have been found capable of receiving wisdom, righteousness, and life, which is in them and through which they reign.”

This brings the good news of the Gospel to the future and into the eternal. We experience the benefits of “reigning in life” here and now, but also in a time when pain and struggle have vanished.

Saint Thomas Aquinas helps us explore the present moment, tying the reigning in life of Romans 5:17 to the concept of justice, or right action before God. This brings the discussion into the realm of praxis and its effect on communal life. For Aquinas, justice is not merely about actions but about the formation of virtue within the person. Consequently, a habit is formed, signifying a new way of life, not merely a new set of behaviors. The power of grace to reign in life makes us icons of the Lord, allowing those around us to see us as windows to the divine. This understanding illuminates how the face of humanity can be within the crown of God, reflecting His nature back to others.

When Grace Reigns

When we combine the insights of these patristic writers, we see the hope of a future with God in the eschaton and the grace-filled royal DNA God places in us for the present. Unlike the kings of earthly empires, King Jesus infuses His love into us, offering both a future with Him and His indwelling nature here and now. This “already” and “not yet” kingdom are two magnificent sides of the same coin.

The transforming power of God’s grace places our face in His crown, empowering us to reflect His nature toward our neighbors and the world. To “see our face in His crown” is to participate in His perspective of ourselves and others. Reigning in life with Christ is a living and breathing reality that spans the ages, allowing us to see our humanity transformed by His incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.

Living the Reign

The implications of this reality extend into daily life. By surrendering to the grace of God, individuals throughout history have become jewels in His crown—icons of the Kingdom. Dorothy Day served the poor with the presence of Christ through the Catholic Workers Movement. Father Daniel Berrigan resisted the evils of the Vietnam War as he co-reigned with God nonviolently. These lives reflect the divine love that transforms human existence.

When we shift our understanding of Jesus’s reign and kingship from domination to union, we can view ourselves and our neighbors with fresh eyes. Our humanity is destined to be transformed by the incarnation, cross, and resurrection. Even when the inner condition of sin blinds us, God’s grace reveals the epiphany that He has made us one with Himself.

Summary

I have demonstrated that the face of humanity is within the crown of God. Romans 5:17 reveals how God’s reign includes humanity through theosis, brought about by Christ’s self-emptying and cruciform death. This theological reality is supported by linguistic analysis, patristic writings, and practical examples of how this truth manifests in daily life. God did not keep His crown for Himself but rests it upon the head of His beloved, inviting us to co-labor with Him in the vineyard of His love.

References

1. Aquinas, Thomas. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Translated by John M. Oesterle. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963.

2. Campbell, William S. Romans: A Social Identity Commentary. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.

3. "Romans 5." Catena Bible & Commentaries. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://catenabible.com/rom/5.

4. Ludwig, Carl, Christian Gottlob Wilke, Joseph Henry Thayer, and Maurice A. Robinson. The New Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Being Grimm’s Wilke’s Clavis Novi Testamenti. Christian Copyrights, 1983.

5. Nixon, R. E. The New Exodus in the New Testament. London: The Tyndale Press, 1963.

6. Origen. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 1–5. Translated by Thomas P. Scheck. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2002.

7. Piper, O. A., Karl Barth, and T. A. Smail. "Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5." Journal of Biblical Literature 77 (1958): 36–52. doi:10.2307/3264608.

8. Wright, N. T. Romans. InterVarsity Press, 2011.

9. "SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: Justice (Secunda Secundae Partis, Q. 58)." New Advent. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3058.htm#article1.