An Eschatological Community

It is important for the church to recognize itself as an eschatological community because the church has an eschatological hope. The church exists in the future as well as the present. It is the hope of what the church will be that drives the church in its present work and causes the church to realize that what she will be in the future is something that she can take hold of now in the present time. This is called “living up to what one has already attained,” or “taking hold of what one already owns.” This future hope causes the church to act according to that hope. The church becomes in the present what she believes she will be in the future. If the church believes that she will fade and die out in the end then she is in fact fading and dying now. If the church believes that she will shine and be made new in the end then she is in fact shining and being made new in the present. What we believe ourselves to be in the future is what we become today. This is why dwelling upon the sin of the past is unhealthy, because that assumes that what we were yesterday is what we will always be to a certain extent, and if we believe that then we truly will be all that we dwell upon in the past that we allow to captivate us. We must allow the hope of the future glory to shape us now and so cause the future to become the present. “But it is precisely in speaking of the future that we address the here and now; for the needs and hungers of the moment cannot be understood except by reference to that healing and filling which is the promised future.” (Neuhaus 132).