The following is a theology paper written for one of my courses in the Master of Arts in Leadership, Theology, and Society program at Regent College. It assumes an undergraduate-level understanding of basic theological themes and concepts. The paper has been submitted and graded already, but I am always interested in feedback. Feel free to email me if you have any thoughts on this subject or suggestions for how I could build on the ideas.
Introduction
The question, What Would Jesus Do?, which sparked the creation of all sorts of Christian merchandise such as WWJD bracelets, Bible covers, and bumper stickers, helps followers of Jesus shift their decision-making grid from a worldly perspective to a godly perspective. At least, that is the intention. The challenge is in the question behind the question. Namely, how do we know what Jesus would do in any given circumstance? Each of us has a filter through which we might determine what Jesus would do when someone cuts us off in traffic or infringes on our rights and freedoms. We can see by the way Christians react to the latter issue that there is not a consensus on what Jesus would do if he was told to distance himself from others, wear a mask, or receive a vaccination to keep his job.
Perhaps a better question would be, how would Jesus want me to live? What would Jesus want me to do not only when I am experiencing oppression, but when my flourishing is causing oppression for others? In this paper, I will attempt to provide a thoughtful way to address the question of how Jesus would have us live as his followers by connecting the character of the Incarnate God with his mission and purpose for humanity. More specifically, I will show how leaders participate in God’s mission by living a cruciform life in the way of Jesus, using our authority to empower others toward flourishing, culminating in the increase of shalom in our communities.
This paper will follow three main themes which will build upon one another. The first theme is the cruciform nature of the Trinitarian-Incarnate God, which is most succinctly and powerfully demonstrated by Paul in Philippians 2:6-11. The second theme is the call of God for his people to live in the same cruciform way of Jesus. The third theme is how when God’s holy people, led by cruciform leaders, begin to shape their communal life in a cruciform way, shalom will be increased, which is the ultimate purpose and mission of God.
Theme 1: The Cruciform Nature of God
The theme of the cruciform nature of God is foundational for a robust and helpful Trinitarian-Incarnational theology and its implications for leadership. It is possible that many leaders, particularly church leaders, are hindered in the effectiveness of their calling because of the simple reason that they gloss over the deeply profound idea of God’s humility, or as we will explore, his cruciformity.
To consider humility as a central and foundational characteristic of God is not only new to my understanding of God, but it is profoundly altering how I relate to God and how I represent him to others. I will attempt to demonstrate the humility of God using the concept of cruciformity with help from Michael J. Gorman, and others who have built on his writing, around cruciformity. The goal here is to build a foundation for leadership that represents the righteousness of God in a way that goes beyond what Christians are merely for or against. While there is a need for a leadership ethic, which we will look at later, indispensable for establishing an ethic is knowing just what sort of God we are meant to represent as his image-bearers for the world and the people we lead.
Gorman draws his understanding of the cruciform character of God primarily from Philippians 2:6-11, but also from Paul’s overall experience and knowledge of God. In short, Gorman concludes that we should consider God the Father, and not just the Son, as “inextricably interrelated” to the cross.[1] He states that Philippians 2:6-11 “is (in part) about the counterintuitive, essentially kenotic–or cruciform–character of God.”[2] While this is a profound statement on its own, I want to focus more closely on one particular consequence of this proposal, an idea that helps, in a truly powerful way, transform how we relate to God and represent him as image bearers.
What is out of character for normal divinity in our misguided perception of the reality of the form of God is in character for this form of God. That is, although Christ was in the form of God, which leads us to certain expectations, he subverted and deconstructed these expectations when he emptied and humbled himself, which he did because he was the true form of God.[3]
Suppose Jesus was expressing the nature of God through being crucified, and not setting aside his divinity. In that case, it means that to represent God to the world, we must embrace a cruciform lifestyle because that is his very nature. For leaders in particular, we do not embrace it as though we are giving something up, but we view our identity as leaders as inseparable from the cruciform character of God that we are meant to be imaging. As Gorman concludes, “It is not just although Christ, Paul, and all believers possess a certain identity that their story has a certain shape; it is also because they possess this identity.”[4]
As Gorman suggests, a cruciform identity applies to all believers, even those for whom suffering and oppression have been their common experience. Nijay Gupta asks what cruciformity looks like for the disempowered, such as Onesimus who was Philemon’s slave as recorded in Paul’s letters to Colossae and Philemon. Gupta suggests that because cruciformity is not about action per se, but about character, all people are called to live in a way that elevates obedience, love, forgiveness, and hope.[5] He summarizes the cruciform way by offering what it could look like for Onesimus: “Courageous obedience to God in confrontation with Philemon, love and forgiveness for Philemon driven by the love and patience of God, and hope that God can do the impossible, even bringing a slave and master together as brothers in the Lord.”[6]
Without a view of God as cruciform, we risk losing that which gives Christ and his church true power: the ability to overcome evil, not with political persuasion, violence, or oppression, but with sacrificial love.[7] Even more importantly, a cruciform view of leadership combats the tendency to cause oppression in our attempts to “do much” for the kingdom of God. This is why the means and the end of the communal life of God’s holy people need to be properly defined. As I will demonstrate later, the end is shalom, which is the reconciliation of creation and Creator. The means to that end primarily involves relationships full of grace and forgiveness, love and compassion. Above all, the means to bringing shalom is a community marked by cruciform humility in the image of God. It requires leaders to be more concerned than anything else with how the community for which we are responsible is building shalom.
The cruciform nature of God finds even deeper meaning when considering the nature of the Trinitarian relationship of God, among one another and with humanity. It is profound to consider, as is depicted in Andrei Rublev’s Icon of the Holy Trinity, that the fellowship of God includes anyone who would want a seat at the table. Being a perfectly holy God, he not only expects all who come to also be perfectly holy in his presence, but he has made a way for us to be made holy without effort on our part. And, as we come, we can observe the humility of God in fellowship within the three persons of the Trinity and with us, the ones he created and redeemed through his sacrificial blood. What a remarkable image!
As I came upon this theme and began digging into it, I was surprised by its impact on leadership. To think about God as having a cruciform nature helps to make sense of statements such as Henri Nouwen’s in his book, In the Name of Jesus, “It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest.”[8] How can we demonstrate this to the world, a world that considers this to be a foolish way to lead? And, what does the type of community look like that is led by such leaders? I will address these questions in the next two sections, but one thing is certain, this sort of leadership, and the communities led by these leaders, will not exist without deeply vulnerable relationships including a deeply vulnerable relationship with God.
Beth Felker Jones identifies, “The three persons of the Trinity exist in real relationship to each other, and because they are personal, we, their creatures, can have personal relationships with them. One of the gifts of the personal God is to relate personally to us. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that we know and are loved by a personal God.”[9] This understanding of God helps to temper the often distant view of God as creator, judge, and king. God is indeed all of those things, but the fact that he exists in eternal relationship points to the need for us to relate to him every day as one would a close companion. God invites us to obey his commands, to be holy as God is holy, and to find the source of our ability to obey and be holy within an intimate relationship with the Trinity. This continuous fellowship with God will also help us to look, sound and behave more and more like him, bearing his image so that those in our neighbourhoods, workplaces, and families, who do not read the Bible or worship among God’s people, can know what he is truly like. He is not a distant ruler or force of nature, but a humble Father, Brother, and Helper who loves with sacrificial and unconditional love.
1 John 4:19 contains a short and simple statement that has a profound impact in light of the observations we have encountered thus far regarding God’s nature. The statement is that we love because God first loved us. Our love should imitate his love, and our love’s only motive should be the love of God. This is remarkably contrary to the reasons the world gives for love, which are often self-seeking. Henri Nouwen helps us understand the implications of this statement. He refers to the idea of first and second loves, the first being God’s perfect and unconditional love and the second being the imperfect and broken reflection of the first love, which we receive from those closest to us, often causing undesirable and painful feelings.[10]
When we experience the first love of God, demonstrated in the crucifixion of Christ, we are free to let go of our dependence on the love of others for our satisfaction and identity. We are also free from the need to earn the love of God through performance. And, when we point people to God’s love, they will see that they too can experience the freedom that comes through fellowship with the Triune God. While there are still reasons to depend on others for a fruitful life of following Jesus, our core and unshakeable identity rests in the sacrificial and unconditional love of God.
Theme 2: God’s Holy People, Cruciform
The community of God’s holy people is the natural and proper place in which to practice the love and relationship of the Triune God. We are not only sitting at the table of the Trinity, but we are there with God’s people, sharing in the love of God together. Just as God is in relationship, so are we to be in relationship. Beth Felker Jones observes, “To be in the image of God, therefore, might mean that humans are, at our core, beings created to exist in relationship with others. No human can truly be human alone. Not only that but unlike all other animals, human sociality reflects—or ought to reflect—God’s love.”[11]
Relationship is at the centre of who God is and who we are as humans in God’s image, and that relationship is always other-focused; we live for the benefit of the other, for their flourishing. Nijay Gupta emphasizes that “the cruciform life is meant to be lived in community, where sacrifice is made, one to another and vice versa; power is shared, not just given up, and the community itself helps to ensure that exploitation is not happening in a cruciform social body.”[12]
A cruciform community will struggle with being other-focused unless we have a right view of the purpose of Jesus’ work of salvation on the cross. As has been my own experience, it is not uncommon for Christians to speak of salvation in terms of a transaction that takes place for a person to enter heaven upon their death. This is a future-oriented view of salvation that leaves us with the question of the present. If we hold a view that salvation is only future-oriented, with its primary purpose being the determination of our eternal destination, we will not understand the importance of cruciform living today. Of what value is there in offering sacrificial love to others? Why not just tell people the gospel message and let God do the work in their hearts?
Cherith Fee Nordling identifies that the question of what it means to be saved is not only a soteriological question, but also an ontological one, addressing the matter of what it means to bear God’s image presently.[13] What it means to be saved is “to be renewed in the true image of God as women and men in Christ, to have our relationality restored so that our sinful selves… are set free to be new creations in true divine and human koinōnia.”[14]
The communal aspect of redemption is included in this understanding of salvation, as indicated in the inclusion of the Greek word koinōnia. Meaning, the saving work of Jesus on the cross was not just for the future benefit of those who are being saved, but so that there would presently exist within the world a people who bring the benefits of God’s presence, to build shalom, an experience of the kingdom of God. Gordon Fee agrees, “The ultimate goal of human redemption is… the creation of a people for God’s name, reconstituted by a new covenant.”[15]
Salvation is about God’s holy people, with an emphasis on the life of the community, properly bearing his image, now and in the future. It is important to identify here the need for a robust imagination within the community of God. Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat observe, “The primary way any imperial culture claims our lives is through the captivity of our imaginations.”[16] It is easy enough to imagine being saved from the concept of hell and eternal suffering, which is likely why we gravitate toward this being the primary purpose for salvation. It is difficult to imagine what it means to be human in the image of God each day. And, even more challenging, to imagine being joint participants with a group of imperfect people in this calling to properly bear God’s image. An imagination fed by a cruciform community that is deeply relational and intimate will go a long way toward building shalom and properly representing the character of God to the world. Unfortunately, however, most of our time is spent under the influence of a vision for a good life that is opposite to cruciformity. And, the storytellers responsible for convincing us of a self-seeking purpose in life have far better imagination-building capacity than the programs and activities of a local church.
Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat offer a compelling understanding of the church’s relationship with the world. In Colossians Remixed, they explain that the empire of consumerism can be compared to the Roman Empire which the church was, at the time, subverting in very direct and indirect ways. And, they say, this is also the role of the church in an empire of consumerism. To subvert it through an entirely different sort of community.[17] The character of the community that will subvert the empire of consumerism, they say, “looks like the Creator. It images this God. How? By embodying in its communal life the virtues that are formed by this God’s story.”[18]
They also comment on Paul’s instruction to the Colossians to not be taken “captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”[19] Paul is addressing the temptation of the Roman Empire, which makes all sorts of promises of security, wealth and wisdom. Not unlike the empire of consumerism, the temptation to buy into these promises was very real, especially when “the gospel is not manifest in the life of the community.”[20]
It truly is hard to imagine that a cruciform life is better than what the world has to offer. Intentionally living for the sake of others does not make sense unless you have been on the receiving end of it, or you have seen it in action among those whom you admire. Thus the need for whole communities of people who will show the world the gospel and the benefits of the cruciform life. It is not enough for just a few saintly people to live this way. All that produces is the idea that there are some spiritual elites among us who live beyond the ability of most other people. Imagine living the life that Mother Theresa lived. If her life is what we imagine when we think of a life of sacrifice, it is no wonder we embrace the vision of the good life offered by the empire of consumerism, and then tack our faith onto it for good measure. “We can’t all be Mother Theresa” some may say, and thus we overlook the hurting and lost in our communities, leaving them to the professionals or so-called saints.
When the community of God is building shalom, it will become plain to people that they will be loved and cared for among us. Instead, what we have seen is the damage that can be done when the church is known not for our love but for what we disagree with. Instead of extending a healing hand to the outcasts, we have told them what they are doing wrong and how to get themselves out of their situation. As Nouwen points out, “More and more people are suffering from profound moral and spiritual handicaps without having any idea of where to look for healing.”[21]
Without a cruciform understanding of our life together as God’s people, we experience disunity and conflict when our relationships within the church become challenged by disagreements. Instead of being humble and gentle, patiently bearing with one another in love as instructed by Paul in Ephesians 4, we defend our rights and tell people either they need to leave or we are leaving. This is obviously to the detriment not only of our witness to, and care of, our communities, particularly the most vulnerable among us, but it also fractures the fellowship between God and his people, which is meant to be experienced now just as it is in heaven.
A helpful approach for how to exist in community as a reflection of God’s character is Andy Crouch’s model of flourishing, which includes the increase of both authority and vulnerability. “There really is no other goal higher for us than to become people who are so full of authority and vulnerability that we perfectly reflect what human beings were meant to be and disclose the reality of the Creator in the midst of creation.”[22] Jesus is the ultimate example of someone who is completely full of authority and vulnerability. This is the essence of the cruciform life, to not seek authority as though it is something that will bring ultimate satisfaction, and to not seek vulnerability as a means to gain more authority. The authority given to us by Christ is complete, but it will only be fully manifest and useful to others in the presence of vulnerability, both our own and others. For, unless our authority is helping those who are vulnerable, of what use is it? If a local church community acquires a large amount of wealth and influence, it is of no use if the most vulnerable among us are not moving into flourishing.
Theme 3: Leading the Increase of Shalom
The result of cruciform community is the building of shalom, which is defined by Cornelius Plantinga Jr. as the following:
The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfilment, and delight… far more than just peace of mind or ceasefire between enemies. In the Bible shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight–a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as the creator and savior opens doors and speaks welcome to the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom is the way things are supposed to be.[23]
To understand the connection between cruciformity and shalom, we reflect back on Philippians 2:6-11 and Gorman’s suggestion that love results in demonstrating authority through restraint. Gorman states, “For Paul, possession of a right to act in a certain way has an inherent, built-in mandate to exercise truly the status that provides the right by refraining from the exercise of this right out of love for others.”[24] While the most significant impact on a community will be made by leaders adopting this concept of authority, this can be adopted by all people, regardless of their level of authority. Shalom will be built when, instead of using my power to get ahead of people, I use it to empower people. This is not denying my authority or ridding myself of it, but exercising it out of love for others through meaningful action and risk.
I used to think leadership was all about getting things done and accomplishing goals, by any means necessary. Unfortunately, people often stand in the way of goals, particularly people that do not bring any direct value to finishing the task at hand. When a father is struggling to finish a project and his son is attempting to help, but just making a mess of things, the temptation is to send the child away. They slow us down, making the work inefficient and time-consuming. Relationships, particularly ones that involve people who are not contributing to the task, are messy and can complicate things. At our worst, we assign less skilled or so-called dispensable people to the most degrading and undignified work in the world, paying them nearly nothing so that we can increase our own productivity, comfort and wealth. When our goals can be accomplished regardless of the health of relationships, then why would we concern ourselves with people any more than what is necessary for keeping the work moving forward?
The answer is found when we redefine what is important in life. When the flourishing of people is the goal, they become of primary importance, even and especially when they are hindering the progress of a task at hand. However, knowing that this is the answer to the question of why relationships are important is not enough. When we consider the nature of the relationships God is inviting us to participate in, we will see just how upside-down the kingdom of God really is.
Henri Nouwen observed this first-hand in his experience at the Daybreak community near Toronto. Arriving there after having experienced a great deal of personal success and notoriety in academia, he found that the residents in the community had no interest in any of that. He recalls, “Their liking or disliking me had absolutely nothing to do with any of the many useful things I had done until then… I was suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how I was perceived at the moment.”[25]
Nouwen discovered that the power of leadership does not happen when or as a result of accomplishing something great. Rather, it happens when those in your presence experience the presence of Jesus and the increase of their flourishing as a result of you being there. Does your leadership help in the building of shalom? Or, does it only result in the building of your own empire and status? This is both an incredibly liberating and terrifying idea. There is comfort in believing that if I do all the right things and produce measurable results, people will respect me, pay me more, give me more resources and control, and my life will become easier. Being a cruciform leader in the image of Jesus may or may not result in some of those things, but none of those things are guaranteed for a leader who truly seeks to be like Jesus.
Being like Jesus, as I stated at the start of this paper, is not a matter of simply trying to do some of the things he did. Being like Jesus requires acknowledging that we are indeed new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17) and thus have become renewed images of God through the death of Christ. Our becoming ‘like’ Jesus begins as a work of the Trinity, and not when we decide to start behaving in a certain way. What is meant to follow, however, is the cruciform life in the image of Christ. But, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we must take a close look at just who Jesus is and how we can live into his identity and way of being. This identity will transform not only our actions but the very core of what drives us.
Our problem is that, like many others throughout the history of Christianity, we have been looking at Jesus sideways, not seeing him quite right. We narrow our understanding of Jesus and his work to one or two metaphors, such as justification by faith, causing unnecessary anxiety by attaching the ‘by faith’ to the justification as though we are justified when we have enough faith. Justification, however, is freely and unconditionally offered by God through Christ.[26] Our slanted view of Christ is also evidenced in heresies such as Gnosticism, which tells me that Jesus is in my heart, as though the heart is separate from the rest of the person, and that he is not interested in the rest of me.[27]
Nouwen points out, “The question is not: how many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus? Perhaps another way of putting the question would be: Do you know the incarnate God?”[28] When we buy into heresies or metaphors as the centre of our understanding of God, we will inevitably fall victim to the trap of accomplishment, returning us to the cycle of focusing on performance rather than relationship; transaction rather than intimacy.
Nouwen continues by explaining how our world needs leaders who are intimately connected to the heart of God in how Jesus, revealing and embodying God’s heart, loves, forgives and brings healing to those who need it. Most striking is an observation that can easily be forgotten by so many leaders in our attempts to make a name for ourselves while using people as commodities in exchange for our greatness: “Very few people know that they are loved without any conditions or limits.”[29]
What is lacking among us is not more effective strategies for how to do church better, how to reach the lost or bring humanitarian relief to our communities. Finding solutions for these objectives is low-hanging fruit for most leaders, an opportunity to do work that feeds a sense of purpose that is often deficient among the sort of slow work of loving and caring for people. Leaders who demonstrate a cruciform way of living, showing what it means to use authority to take meaningful action and risk toward the increase of flourishing through the building of shalom, will do more than solve immediate needs. It will bring lasting transformational change through imaging God in the community, which truly is the greatest need in the world.
What sort of meaningful action and risk do leaders and communities need to be taking to build shalom? Consider what causes the most vulnerable in our communities to lack any sort of power to gain authority. Crouch observes, “The most important thing we are called to do is help our communities meet their deepest vulnerability with appropriate authority—to help our communities live in the full authority and full vulnerability of Flourishing. And it turns out that to do that, we often must bear vulnerability that no one sees.”[30] Establishing a vision and mission that has at its centre the needs of the most vulnerable in our community is vital for keeping the pursuit of meaningless power at bay. For the leader, it will mean saying no to opportunities for personal gain and possibly saying yes to opportunities that will bring about personal pain and suffering. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this way of leading is that it will be done mostly alone, in prayerful dependence on God. For, as Crouch states, “Disclosing every vulnerability to the community/team is to add to their vulnerability without adding anything to their authority.”[31]
Conclusion
If the above ideas are to be lived out in the community of God’s people, put on display for the world to see the true character of God, they will need to be demonstrated in radical ways by leaders who are unconcerned about the power offered by the world. Henri Nouwen describes what this will look like:
Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led to places where we would rather not go. He asks us to move from a concern for relevance to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern where God is leading us and our people.[32]
This is easier said than done. I imagine two practical steps that can be taken. First, invite one or two other leaders into this conversation, share these ideas and pray through them together. The cruciform life is impossible without the fellowship of others. Second, spend time each day reviewing areas of authority in our lives in which we can take meaningful action toward increasing flourishing among the most vulnerable, locally and globally. Both of these steps must be done in fellowship with the Triune God, asking, “How would you have me live today?”
Endnotes
[1] Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity (Eerdmans, 2021), 17.
[2] Michael J. Gorman, “Although/Because He was in the Form of God” in Journal of Theological Interpretation 1.2 (2007), 148.
[3] Gorman, Although/Because, 161.
[4] Gorman, Although/Because, 160.
[5] Nijay Gupta, “Cruciform Onesimus” in The Expository Times, vol. 133(8), 330-332.
[6] Gupta, 332.
[7] Brian J. Walsh & Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (InterVarsity Press, 2004), 110.
[8] Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (Crossroad, Kindle Edition), 38.
[9] Beth Felker Jones, Practicing Christian Doctrine (Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition), 70-71.
[10] Nouwen, 20
[11] Felker Jones, 104-105.
[12] Gupta, 332.
[13] Cherith Fee Nordling, “Being Saved as a New Creation” in What Does it Mean to be Saved? (Baker Academic, 2002), 115.
[14] Nordling, 123.
[15] Gordon Fee, The Lord Jesus Christ According to Paul the Apostle (Baker Academic, 2018), 4.
[16] Walsh and Keesmaat, 176.
[17] Walsh and Keesmaat, 169-179.
[18] Walsh and Keesmaat, 174.
[19] Colossians 2:8, New International Version.
[20] Walsh and Keesmaat, 114.
[21] Nouwen, 19.
[22] Andy Crouch, Strong and Weak (InterVarsity Press, Kindle Edition), 25-26.
[23] Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Sin: Not the Way it’s Supposed to be (Christ on Campus Initiative, 2010), 2-3.
[24] Gorman, Although/Because, 159
[25] Nouwen, 17.
[26] S.J. Daniel Kendall and S.J. Gerald O’Collins, ed. The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 61.
[27] Heresies such as Gnosticism, as discussed in our classroom lecture, are easy to fall into when we take a single metaphor and make it the centre of our theology. Or, when we attempt to explain or distill incomprehensible ideas about God and how he works. Our discussion on metaphors, along with Gordon Fee’s chapter “Paul and the Metaphors for Salvation” from The Redemption, cannot be set aside as a mere theological discussion for academics. It has a profound impact on how the Christian life is lived and how we pass on the faith to others.
[28] Nouwen, 20.
[29] Nouwen, 20.
[30] Crouch, 122.
[31] Crouch, 124.
[32] Nouwen, 41.
Bibliography
Crouch, Andy. Strong and Weak. InterVarsity Press, Kindle Edition.
Felker Jones, Beth. Practicing Christian Doctrine. Baker Academic, 2014.
Fee, Gordon. The Lord Jesus Christ According to Paul the Apostle. Baker Academic, 2018.
Fee Nordling, Cherith. “Being Saved as a New Creation” in What Does it Mean to be Saved? Baker Academic, 2002.
Gorman, Michael J. Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross. Eerdmans, 2021.
Gorman, Michael J. “Although/Because He was in the Form of God” in Journal of Theological Interpretation 1.2 (2007).
Gupta, Nijay. “Cruciform Onesimus” in The Expository Times, vol. 133(8).
Kendall, S.J. Daniel, S.J. Gerald O’Collins, editors. The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary
Symposium on Christ as Redeemer. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Nouwen, Henri. In the Name of Jesus. Crossroad, Kindle Edition.
Plantinga Jr., Cornelius. Sin: Not the Way it’s Supposed to be. Christ on Campus Initiative, 2010.
Walsh, Brian J. & Sylvia C. Keesmaat. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. InterVarsity Press, 2004.
William Knelsen 