I said “Okay, Enough Bickering for Now,” but I needed just a little more. TGR runs a coda to my series on eschatology and work, connecting tension over eschatology to tension over soteriology:

Even if we as individuals, and as a church, are not yet perfected and glorified in the present, we are made holy in the present. To borrow David Wells’ helpful – because rhyming! – language, being made holy is not just a matter of condition (progressive sanctification) but also a matter of position. We are set apart to the Lord, not progressively but all at once, when we repent and believe. That is what repenting and believing means.

The world in which we do our daily work has not yet been made holy, has not yet been set apart to the Lord. And we do not work in isolation from our neighbors. Our work is not only shaped but actually constituted by the social situation in which we do it. You can’t work in the world as if the world were the church.

Let me know what you think!