"No one can look with undivided vision at God and the world, so long as these two are torn asunder. Try as we may, we can only let our gaze wander distractedly between the two.
There is one place at which God and the cosmic reality are reconciled, a place where God and Man become one. Only there can our gaze be entirely fixed upon God and the world at the very same time.
This point does not reside in some distant dream-like realm or in the domain of ideas. it is found in the very midst of history as a divine miracle - the manifestation of Jesus Christ, the reconciler of heaven and earth.
Now, we can truly view the two together in the one who makes them so".
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
"Peace... through the blood of His cross".
Paul - Colossians 1:20.
The world has been pierced by the divine, veiled in the oh so human flesh of the Incarnation. God encounters our terrible divorce from Eden first hand, through the contraction to cells in a womb to the cruelty of the most agonising death surrounded by malice in the crucible of Golgotha.
All of this is carried, along with our sin, so that the majesty of what had been bestowed in the beginning might be so again, and may be tasted by us, even here, in this broken day.
This, in essence, is the vital affirmation of the Gospel (John 3:16).
Christianity has just one mission - to be faithful to this good news... to constantly affirm it and to live within its benevolent shires, that we convey the manner of peace given us in the shedding of His blood.
If we are truly brought home in this truth, then we live, as one theologian put it, 'in the boughs' of Romans 7, and the expectation of the opening section of Romans 8, purely because of the delivering power of God in Christ that Paul outlines in Romans 3 to 6. This then allows the manner of living defined in the concluding chapters of this epistle, especially in respect to the liberty grace bestows upon us.
But... there's a problem. The 'religious' me, - so well illustrated by Adam, hiding amidst the fig leaves, thinking his self-confidence in what he espoused was fine.
We now naturally crave religious code that we can assimilate and measure up against in an 'arms length' fashion. 'Look how well I'm doing', we profess, 'but just don't look too close!" The actual Law of God and the astonishing grace of the Gospel cut this pretence to ribbons, leaving us to either double down in our pride or, to be genuinely cut low by our failure, calling on God to be merciful to a poor sinner (who is then raised by Him, entirely by grace).
The problems really begin when our pretence as church leads us to wilfully ignore the thorn God has placed in our side to keep us reliant upon Him. This past season was just such a trouble, but we looked to men rather than Christ for our resolve, and have thereby drunk of a cup tainted with poison.
The consequences of such a position are monstrous. Individually, they lead to spiritual collapse. "If (we are at the point) where you are going to try and meet all the demands (the notion of particular 'holiness') makes upon the natural self, it (this notion of obedience) will not leave enough of anything to live on. The more you 'obey' (in this context), the more that inner "nag" will demand of you... In the end, angrier and diminished, you will either give up the chase or become someone perhaps who 'lives for other's', discontented and emptied, who, frankly, would have been better off remaining selfish" (C S Lewis - Mere Christianity).
Christianity that drives us asunder! What a terror.
We are, in truth, caked, inside and out, with a filth that derives from that unrepentant Adam, so desperately in need of aid (Zechariah 3: 1-3). God reaches down and brakes into our poverty, our very own sin, which no amount of church attendance, relevant prayer, exhaustive study or accountable partnering will ever fix - do we hear that? It's the bare, shredded flesh of Christ crucified, and nothing more beside His spilt blood that heals!
So, fellow redeemed ones, we need to Reform to this! If we want to see God at work amongst us, there is no room for other 'wise' or 'anointed' "Ministry" - God will have NONE OF IT! He is the one who has concluded all, in respect to our purpose here and now, in the declaring of Jesus Christ Crucified - so if our 'work' isn't about that and what is true in that, we are truly off the rails, making the same foolish manner of errors as 'The Greeks' or 'The Jews' (1 Corinthians 1).
The need of the day is that plain.
If the church places its confidence elsewhere (in the promises and deeds of men), then it becomes tainted inwardly with a venom and a misery that is entirely toxic and deadly to faith and fellowship. That is the snare that we must identify and seek God to deliver from as we turn back to the Gospel alone for remedy.
Without such a deep sea change in direction, evangelicalism will wallow in the shallows of meidocre religion and social compromise, and a generation will be entirely detached from the genuine 'dunamis' (power of God), in Christ, reconciling the world.
Time to return to the Lord!
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