"Nominal"

 "You, with your peace-loving theology... you don't care about truth".

Martin Luther to Erasmus.

"I think that if there's any escapism involved, it's in being able to survey danger and evil (when we read) without any disturbance to our spiritual equilibrium... The company who get worked up incorrectly about people really escaping (from real trials) are jailers!".

JRR Tolkien.

If I was to put you on the spot and ask you tell me right now what truths encapsulate genuine, biblical Christianity - what is the 'hub' you cannot do without in your faith, what would you say? What destination, as it were, to quote Dorothy Sayers, provides the drama from the dogma?

Would you, perhaps, take out a copy of the Apostles Creed, and begin to recite this as the 'essentials'? Would you refer me to the statements of a particular council or confession or a set of articles of belief?  Or would you just tell me to see your church at service on a Sunday?

If you were to seek to concentrate the truth to one particular statement, what would this be? What makes your Christianity truly tick?

I wonder if any of you thought of or turned to Romans chapter three.

No?

If you count yourself to be a Protestant, Evangelical believer, then I have to ask...

Why not?

The church is awash with "theology" of every manner of persuasion on every subject -  it is drowning in 'more politics and pragmatism than serious theological reflection' (Mike Horton - A Better Way), but 500 years ago, it became vitally apparent that there was only ONE truth by which the church would continually stand or fall.

Listen to the Apostle Paul spell it out to us:

"But NOW the Righteousness of God is revealed, apart from the Law, though the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it - the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction - all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and (can only) be justified by His Grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus - God has set Him before us as the  propitiation, by His blood, to be received by faith. This shows us God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He has passed over our former sins. All of this was to show His righteousness in this time, so He may be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:21-26).

In summation, Paul is stating that God justifies the ungodly (4:5).

Round up a plethora of Evangelicals and ask them what is needed to renew, revive or reform the church, and they'll give you numerous differing answers, but the vital reality is that there's only ONE message that, when re-discovered, turned the world upside down (or the right way up!), and it was the one Paul spells out right here.

We can busy ourselves, tinkering with all manner of secondary issues, but when this astonishing good news apprehends us and becomes the engine that drives us forward as those seeking to hold out the Word of Life, then our own lives, our gatherings, our evangelism, can become truly refreshed by the marvel and splendour of what God has done to deliver us.

The message of such justification grounds us in our faith. It continually 'speaks' out that we contribute only one thing to our salvation, as Luther noted - our hostility - everything else is gifted entirely and abundantly by God's mercy and goodness. This underlines the amazing wonder of His nature and makes us those who know, that purely because of this, we can indeed approach the throne ( a seat of grace) in our times of need, and be restored by that unfathomable love.

It is the source of our worship, the motivation for our witness, the truth in the fellowship that binds us together, the 'leaven' the enriches all of our lives and allows all, from the mundane to the exquisite, to become seasoned with the fragrance of eternal life.

In the Cross, the evil of our hostility is quenched, the grave of sin and death are vanquished, and we are clothed only in a righteousness that is not our own - a declaration of pardon we could never deserve.

There is simply no other truth that can match this!

Oh, to be a people that rejoice in this beauty.

Can our day, our gathering, be marked by this splendour?