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WHATS GD & BODIES GOT TO DO WITH IT? Re-thinking Church as Christology Applied Grounded in the Triune Missio Dei

Introduction In her 1984 hit solo Tina Turner calls into question what seems like the most basic, fundamental, self-evident given of all romantic relationships when she asks, Whats love got to do with it? Similarly, one would think that wherever the question of the church or missional ecclesiology arises, surely God not just us human beings must have something to do with it, right? In contrast to Turners conclusion ruling out love (of course, because its a second hand emotion), raising the question of whether God has anything to do with the church and missional ecclesiology in particular intentionally forces upon us the conclusion that surely it must be the case that God has something to do with the church and missional theology, right? To ask the question is to answer the question. But exactly what does God have to do with the church and missional ecclesiology? Or exactly how does God link up to our participate in our terrific plans and dreams to reach the world? Is it simply God qua God who has something to do with missional ecclesiology, or the specific triune God made known in and through and only through Jesus Christ? Do we understand as pastoral leaders the Copernican revolution implications for missional ecclesiology when we come to grips with the understanding that the foundational calling of the missional church is grounded in the triune missio Dei not ourselves? Contemporary Perception: ChurchWhy Bother? The church has fallen on hard times in our culture. Suspicion and cynicism has generally replaced respectability and trust in many peoples perceptionand not without good reason. So what a challenging but also an exciting time to re-consider what we believe the Scriptures teach about the church and what she is called to be in the world. Taking a cue 1

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from Dietrich Bonhoeffers famous title Life Together, our calling as present and future leaders in Christs church requires us to ask, What does and what should life together look like for the church? Heres my primary point in this essay: We cannot attempt to answer that question with recourse only to ourselves. In other words, when it comes to church and what were called to be and do as a church community, do we begin with ourselves or with God? Typically in many churches and I sense this is especially the case in those churches with leaders who dream big dreams and desire to see the church be something other than the milk-toast, tepid, impotent institution she has too often reflected when such churches begin to refine their mission statements as they often do, the question Im submitting for consideration is whether such mission statements begin with us as human beings and our acts and intentions or do such mission statements begin with God? And more to the point, with whom should such mission statements begin? To be even a bit more specific particularly for those folks for whom the business of refining a churchs mission statement may already have raised their ire heres the question that seems to me to be an absolutely essential question to ask whether were talking about crafting church mission statements or something more substantial as in considering and trying to describe theologically just what constitutes the church as church: Should we start our ecclesiology or thinking about the church primarily with us as human participants in mind and what we do, or should we start with and root our theology of the church in God and what He does rather than our work as human beings? Of course to ask the question is to answer the question, is it not? The problem however, is too often the question is not asked. When we fail to ask the question there are consequences and not the kind we desire. George Hunsinger once commented to me the problem with the social gospel was it placed

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an inhumane burden upon human persons. In a sense, failure to ask the question with whom should we start in thinking about the church, ourselves or God? is to run the same risk, regardless of ones intentions, all Godly ambitions aside. Perhaps even more specifically and revealing, is to ask the question, If we wanted to start (i.e. ground) our thinking about the church in God and Gods acts, how would we go about doing so? And even if we have a clue that all good theology proper must start with or ground ones assertions regarding God as a triune God in the Person and work of Christ, how can we invest our ecclesiology in the Person and work of Christ? In the Person and work of Christ we come face to face with the One who not only does but also must explain the Father to us (Jn 1:1-18). In and through the Incarnation, God has revealed Himself not as an abstract divine monad or simply as God but He has chosen to reveal Himself as the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit made known concretely in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. The point is not simply that we start with God qua God or God as an abstract divine X, but that we root or ground our ecclesiology in the God revealed in Jesus Christ who happens to be the triune missio Dei who has pursued us even to the point of the descent into hell on the cross! The sending God who as Father sent the Son and together as Father and Son send the Holy Spirit who also sends us as followers baptized into the name of this triune missio Dei. In Johns Gospel, Jesus gives credence to our rooting a missional understanding of the church in a Trinitarian missio Dei when He says regarding His disciples in His high priestly prayer of chapter 17, As the Father has sent Me, so I send you. This biblical understanding on the church rooted in a Christologicallyinformed understanding of the missio Dei provides us with not only the compelling vision for the church we find in the Scriptures, but also the power and efficacy of Gods triune act enabling us to take on the challenge of what it will mean for us if we trust God to bring that

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vision into reality in our post-Christendom context. While every church leader must take seriously the churchs concrete praxis, we must learn to think about the church in a theologically-driven rather than pragmatically-driven manner. Just what is the church? What is her calling in the world? What concrete social practices did the head of the church give to this this community which is needed to embody the gospel? What role does Christ, as head of the church, play in shaping people to be his followers in the world? In what ways can we and can we not participate in Christs continuing ministry of prophet, priest and king in the midst of a community of people? These questions lead us to a theology of the church or an ecclesiology grounded not simply in our human action a view of the church which circumscribes our task in the church as an inhumane burden but enables a much richer and fuller understanding of the church as that community in which Christ continues to do just what He has promised to do I will build My church!

To the despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish them neither to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own bodies and thus be dumb. Body am I, and soul so saith the child. And why should one not speak like children? But the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body.
-Friedrich Nietzsche from Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Disembodied Spirituality Aint Enough So whats the body and bodies got to do with missional ecclesiology? Surely every church and pastoral leader intent on leading the church as a community to be missional has a clear understanding not only of how important our triune missio Dei is to the churchs calling but also sees the necessity of jettisoning what can seem like (at least in my pastoral corner of the world) the all-pervasive success of what might be called disembodied spirituality.

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How strange might it be if Nietzsches word to the despisers of the body of his day at the end of the 19th century also serves as a timely spiritual admonishment to another yet different version of contemporary despisers of the body. Perhaps the descriptor despisers is a tad too strong and pejorative. Yet I have often wondered over the past few years whether a new and different type of despisers of the body has emerged in my own current pastoral context of north Atlanta. The specter of a quite pervasive and successful form of spirituality has intrigued me but as well served as a proverbial Socratic gadfly edging me forward with question after question: Why do forms of Christian life in contemporary church settings that seemingly relegate the human body and the presence of human bodies actually meeting together for the purpose of living out, experiencing and participating in the forms or the social practices constituting the Christian life of that Christian church why do those forms of Christian life and social practices seem so appealing to so many, at least on the surface of appearance? Why has the presence of a human body, whether that of a pastor or that of parishioners as they gather, why has that been relegated to non-essential status? Or to put it another way, why have we and why are we seeing the ascendancy of what might be called for all practical purposes, a disembodied spirituality?

Turning the Hermeneutic of Suspicion Upon Ourselves If critical theorists have taught us anything its that not asking certain questions surely leaves us in harms way. While the infamous hermeneutic of suspicion surely can be used as a sledge hammer supposedly shaming all those making claims to knowledge as simply engaged in a will to power, it seems clear at least to some of us that the even more radical move of having the courage to insist we turn the hermeneutic of suspicion upon ourselves is a theological and character virtue required on the path forward for any church community

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pretending to represent the theological tradition known for semper reformanda. All of us as pastors, but especially those of us who serve as pastoral leaders of evangelical-reformedmissional church communities must trust enough in the gospel of Christ alone such that we have the courage to submit all of our thoughts, actions and ministry structures under the ceaseless questioning of the Scripturesthat is, we must if we want to continue to represent a theological tradition that insists the Scriptures alone are the only unquestionable authority. To cease questioning, especially ceasing to ask questions which question ourselves and our practices in the Christian community called the church, could not be more at odds or antithetical to the theological tradition we all claim to represent.

Reformed Theology is Not Enoughw/o the Thumb! To be committed and even zealous for Reformed theology that finds expression primarily in soteriology is not enough. Reformed soteriology is certainly better than non-Reformed soteriology. Admittedly, looking down our theological noses at our brothers and sisters in Christ who have at least come to see and embrace what the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments teach about the God of all grace in matters of soteriology but have not yet seen what the Scriptures also teach about the way in which human beings normally or ordinarily but not necessarily experience the God of all grace, in other words biblical spirituality or the Reformed traditions emphasis upon the importance of both Word and sacraments (i.e. including worshiping communities embodying the gospel) we must all be willing to lead in repentance that such theological snobbery of looking down our Reformed noses at our brothers and sisters who have merely come to be reformed in soteriology can be an expression of the heart of the Pharisee that is deep within all of us.

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However, if the descriptor reformed is to mean anything important in practice in terms of the church communities we are called to lead being faithful to the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture as the supreme judge in all matters of doctrine and practice, then we must not allow ourselves to be ashamed to proclaim with equal enthusiasm both the truth, beauty and goodness of how we have been loved by this God of all grace at the cross but also the way in which we can experience this God of all grace who has loved us at the cross. It is one thing to be excited about a tangential point in Scripture upon which many may differ yet the avid proponent of a particular view of the tangential point in Scripture elevates their particular view of the tangential point to the level of theological snobbery. That demonstrates the lack of theological virtue of humility and the failure of turning the hermeneutic of suspicion upon oneself. However, that being said, it is quite another thing to attempt through ones enthusiasm and passion to make plain what is not tangential but essential throughout the Scriptures of how we actually in concrete practice do experience Gods presence i.e. a sacramental understanding of worship in which God Himself has chosen to give Himself to His people as they gather! There is never a time in redemptive history in which God did not choose some creaturely physical media (ark, temple, rainbow, smoke, fire, lamb, cutting foreskin, bread, water, flesh of Jesus Christ) to serve as a type of stand-in for Gods presence such that Gods people experienced not in a subjectivized, emotion-only internal mental state notion of experience but the objective experience of some actual physical embodiment of creaturely media apart from or outside of the human participant in the worshiping community, and at the same time said participant knew clearly that such physical creaturely media was not directly equivalent to God or in other words, God could not be reduced to the physical creaturely media such that it replaced God. However over and over again the person called to follow and worship the God of the

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Scriptures was encouraged, reminded repeatedly and even commanded on the threat of being killed if they did not take seriously the actual practice of experiencing Gods presence via these physical creaturely media which could never be directly identical with God but without which one could also never say they with the authority of Gods promise backing their confidence that they were in concrete actual practice experiencing the saving presence of this God of all grace who had given and commanded his followers to engage in such social practices utilizing creaturely physical media. In other words, how we experience Gods presence is not a tangential issue but an essential issue in Scriptureand the one thing that is absolutely beyond any reasonable hermeneutical doubt is that one cannot experience the saving presence of God biblically through a disembodied spirituality. If we care about the bible at all, we must be willing to re-align our sensibilities about how we are commanded to experience Gods presence and how we are not commanded to experience Gods presence. There may be many ways that persons experience Gods presence beyond the embodied practices instituted, prescribed and commanded by Scripture but despite how many other ways one might be persuaded that they subjectively experience Gods presence (i.e. through creation, art, music, pop culture, fishing and hunting, etc), we are never called to forego the actual concrete social practices the Lord of the church has commanded us to take up and utilize in experiencing what might be best called the objective, outside ourselves presence of God via physical creaturely media. To be biblical we need an embodied spirituality!! To understand being Reformed as a verb is essential to being able to uncover or unearth the hidden assumptions in disembodied spirituality whose liturgies themselves evidence primary emphasis in the Christian life given to the ideational over the sacramental, individualism over communal, and a type of contemporary docetic virtual-ism regarding the

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lack of requiring necessity of embodiment whether the pastors, the online parishoners or what bodies do when they gather together [more on this to come from my context]. Being Reformed as a verb requires us to see both the value of the material principle or content of the Reformation expressed in the four solas which are absolutely essential to our pointing people to the God of all grace who has chosen to love us at the cross with the radical alone characteristic of our being loved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone. That said regarding the material principle of the Reformation, we must not forget the thumb of the five solas either! The formal or methodological principle of the Reformation, sola Scriptura, was never intended as a method of isolating a Christian or church into a room to adjudicate all theological questions with only their Bible alone; Luther and Calvin would turn over in their Augustinian theological graves to hear of such a thing. Rather, sola Scriptura as a method of doing theology or seeing the significance of being Reformed in the sense of Reformed as a verb a way of going about doing theology which never ceases submitting oneself and ones church practices to further questioning by the only unquestionable authority not mine as pastor but Scripture alone as the only unquestionable authority such a commitment to Reformed as a verb means we must have the courage of turning the hermeneutic of suspicion upon ourselveseither that or lets cease saying we take the authority of Scripture seriously. To see a Christian community embody the gospel in such as way as to give credence to the claim that we take the authority of Scripture seriously translates in terms of actual concrete practice to nothing less that always submitting what we take to be criteria for judging our church communities to the judgment of Scripture. Size, numbers, budgets, buildings, social prestige and reputation must not replace the only unquestionable theological criterion the head of the church has given us for evaluating ourselves, our doctrine but especially in the

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forefront of our concerns here, to the concrete social practices or forms of life together in to which we call persons to engage, enter into, participate in, with and through and hopefully, Lord-willing, actually experience the presence of the living risen crucified Lord in our midst.

Trinitarian Missio Dei as Ground of Missional Ecclesiology Drawing upon the Latin missio meaning sending, the phrase missio Dei refers not simply to Gods mission but more specifically to God as the missionary God or to God as the sending God. The phrase missio Dei became increasingly popular during the second half of the 20th century, being taken up in missiology by the likes of David Bosch, Lesslie Newbigin, Darrell Guder, Alan Hirsch, to name only a few. According to one version of the history of the phrase, Karl Hartenstein, a German missiologist, coined the phrase in 1934 in response to Karl Barth.1 More recently John Flett has argued in his dissertation at Princeton Theological Seminary that while Hartenstein introduced the actual phrase misso Dei, it was Karl Barth who explicitly located missio Dei in the doctrine of the Trinity.2 Apparently reference to the Trinity did appear in the American Report, a study document prepared for the 1952 Willingen conference, under the leadership of Paul Lehmann and H. Richard

For this account, see for instance, Tormod Engelsviken, Missio Dei: The Understanding and Misunderstanding of a Theological Concept in European Churches and Missiology. International Review of Mission, vol. 92, no. 4 (2003), pp. 481-97. The phrase was clearly used in the 1952 Willingen conference of the International Missionary Council and developed theologically by Lutheran theologian, Georg F. Vicedom in his Missio Dei: Einfhrung in eine Theologie der Mission (Mnchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1958), translated by Gilbert A. Thiele and Dennis Hilgendorf, The Mission of God: An Introduction to a Theology of Mission (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1965).
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John G. Flett, The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and the Nature of Christian Community (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010).

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Niebuhr.3 This American report suggested a link between Gods mission and revolutionary movements in history, a link which served as an impetus for objections to the phrase, especially when used without grounding the concept directly in a Trinitarian understanding of God. David Bosch gave clearer expression to the phrase missio Dei by emphasizing mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God.4 Jrgen Moltmann clarified the importance of a trinitarian understanding of missio Dei by noting, It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.5 In one of the earliest uses of the phrase missional church in print, Darrell Guder offered a helpful assessment on the development of a specifically Trinitarian understanding of missio Dei during the latter part of the 20th century.
During the past half century or so there has been a subtle but nevertheless decisive shift toward understanding mission as Gods mission. During preceding centuries mission was understood in a variety of ways. Sometimes it was interpreted primarily in soteriological terms: as saving individuals from eternal damnation. Or it was understood in cultural terms: as introducing people from East and the South to the blessings and privileges of the Christian West. Often it was perceived in ecclesiastical categories: as the expansion of the church (or of a specific denomination). Sometimes it was defined salvation-historically: as the process by which the worldevolutionary or by means of a cataclysmic eventwould be transformed into the kingdom of God. In all these instances, and in various, frequently conflicting ways, the intrinsic interrelationship between Christology, soteriology, and the doctrine of the Trinity, so important for the early church, was gradually displaced by one of several versions of the doctrine of grace. Mission was understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It was thus put in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity, not of ecclesiology or soteriology. The For background see H. Richard Niebuhr, An Attempt at a Theological Analysis of Missionary Motivation, Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research vol. 14, no. 1 (1963), pp. 1-6. For an earlier expression of Niebuhr's thought see, The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Unity of the Church, Theology Today vol. 3, no. 3 (1946), pp. 371-84. 4 David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), pp. 389390. Jrgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (London: SCM Press, 1977), p. 64.
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classical doctrine on the missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit was expanded to include yet another movement: The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit sending the church into the world. As far as missionary thinking was concerned, this linking with the doctrine of the Trinity constituted an important innovation. Our mission has no life of its own: only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be called mission. Not least since the missionary initiative comes from God alone.Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa. To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of Gods love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love.6

Christology Applied Ecclesiology as Grounded in Christology So how can we re-think the ecclesiology as grounded in Christology rather than grounded in us as human beings or even an abstract understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit, abstract in the sense of being dislocated from Christs continuing work? Stated simply, the church just is that community in which Christ continues his ministry as prophet, priest and king. Christ as our Redeemer, executes the offices of a prophet, a priest, and of a king, both in his estate of humiliation and exaltation. -WSC, Q.23
Christology (via Holy Spirit) Ecclesiology Calling three offices of Christ three marks of the church three aspects of calling Christ as Prophet Scripture/Speaking in Word Confessional Christ as Priest Sacraments/Presence in Worship Sacramental Christ as King Shepherding/Sending in World Missional

This concrete model of the church emphasizes Christs continuing work in the church, representing the Reformed traditions emphasis on the three marks of the church coordinated with the three offices of Christ to see more clearly the confessional, sacramental and missional calling of the church.

Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1998, 4-5.

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While every heuristic model is an oversimplification of reality, such models can be extremely helpful for leaders in training. In fact models or some linguistic vehicle are necessary to do any work. We need to develop a Christological ecclesiology as a concrete model for understanding the biblical teaching on the church. This is why good ecclesiology always honors Christ himself by keeping his continuing ministry as prophet, priest and king at the very center of the covenant community called church. This model of the church as covenant community emphasizes Christs continuing his ascended ministry as our prophet, priest and king by the agency or power of the Holy Spirit through concrete practices in the church or what has traditionally been called the three marks of the church: Word, sacrament and church govt/pastoral care. The course will focus upon the church as the community in which Christ continues His prophetic, priestly and kingly ministry by taking up our human actions as witness to his work as he fulfills the confessional, sacramental and missional aspects of the church. The cash value significance of this for the person wanting to experience more of Jesus Christs concrete practical ministry in her life is also rather straight-forward: the only access one has to experience the fullness of what Christ wants to do in our lives as He continues to be our prophet, priest and king is this community in which Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit continues to speak to us in the Scriptures (his prophetic ministry), give Himself to us via sacramental worship (his priestly ministry) and shepherd us through Christs authorized representatives for caring for his bride, what has been known in church history as pastoral care (his kingly ministry). Coupled with Christs shepherding of his people already experiencing his care for his people via his church community, Christ as king has also sent us to love the world. By both shepherding of this in the community as well as sending those in that community to love the world we glimpse the duality of Christs

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continuing kingly ministry to those in and outside his church community. As in all things Christological a unity-in-distinction is discernible while we might distinguish Christs shepherding and sending of his church community, we can never and should never separate the two. A type of mutual reciprocity exists in the shepherding and sending of the Christian community, and for that matter, the helpful Chalcedonian Christological pattern of a unityin-distinction should be maintained not only with regard to the duality of Christs kingly ministry in our lives but also to the unity or integration of all aspects of Christs continuing prophetic, priestly and kingly ministry in the midst of his church community. As we say in celebrating the marital union of couple towards the conclusion of their wedding, What God has joined together, let no one separate. The integration of Christs continuing ministry as our prophet, priest and king is why the church is the only access to experiencing the fullness of Christ. Surely in other contexts one may and does often experience Christ in one of his continuing ministries; for instance, listening to a sermon online surely we never want to claim more than we should about the church Christ does speak to persons via other contexts than simply their experience of Christs prophetic ministry in the church. The same could be affirmed regarding the experience of God in creation. As Barth once put it, God could speak to us via a Mozart concerto, Russian communism or a dead dog. However, there is a difference between what God could do and what Christ has told us we should expect him to do. In other words, despite these concessions, the church is the only community in which one can experience the integration of all three of these aspects of Christs continued ministry as prophet, priest and king via the agency of the Holy Spirits speaking to us in Scripture, giving Gods presence to us in the sacraments or sacramental worship, and shepherding and sending his community to love the world. Because the covenant community in the Old Testament was structured by the roles

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of prophets, priests and kings in Israels life, our theology of the church should begin with Christs prophetic, priestly and kingly ministry (WSC Q23) in the midst of the church through Word/Scripture, worship/sacraments, and shepherding/sending of the church. In other words, good ecclesiology is nothing more than Christology applied. This concretizing of Christs ministry in the midst of his church community enables a needed theological grounding of the confessional, sacramental and missional aspects of the churchs calling in the world. Why is it important to specify and name the correspondence of these aspects of the churchs calling as grounded in Christs continuing prophetic, priestly and kingly ministry? In other words, why a specifically Christological grounding of ecclesiology? Every church leader and pastor will evaluate the ministry of the church community they are called to serve and lead. The question however remains, by what criteria do we evaluate what is happening in the context of our church communities? Church leaders and pastors will always be tempted to adopt alien criteria for evaluating the success or effectiveness of a church. Rather than the typical 3B criteria of counting buildings, bodies and bucks, servant leaders of Christs church need to adopt biblical criteria for evaluating the confessional, sacramental and missional aspects of the churchs calling in the world. In a sense, our theology of the church as Christology applied has already worked those criteria into our understanding not simply of what the church does but what the church is! If the very being of the community were called to serve and lead is that of Christ speaking in his Word (prophetic), Christ giving himself or his presence to his people through social practices in worship (priestly), and Christ caring for his people through shepherding and sending his people to love the world (kingly), then we already have built into our understanding of the nature of this community the biblical criteria by which one should judge our leadership within that community. To what extent is this pastor and church leaders labor further enabling persons to experience Christ more fully in

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Christs prophetic, priestly and kingly ministry?

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